Editor: Myself (English)A weblog on Iran, technology and pop culture, by Hossein DerakhshanShirin Ebadi advocates sanctions against Iran- (Found June 24, 2008 ) Shirin Ebadi tells the 'progressive' Nation magazine: The only sort of sanctions she is willing to support are direct, political sanctions that target Iran's leaders, from those involved in the Iranian nuclear program to the country's highest officials. Such sanctions, she suggests, could restrict these officials' travel abroad and could order the seizure of privately held assets. In addition, Ebadi believes, the world's countries could collectively shun the Iranian state. "What I mean is that..http://hoder.com/weblog/archives/017467.shtml Roland Rich: NED's man at the UN- (Found June 24, 2008 ) NED's Larry Diamond (who is also a senior fellow at Hoover Institute) has suggested that India should begin promoting democracy in the global South, in a recent article. Somewhere in the article, which is quite interesting and I'll discuss it again later, he proposes that the UN Democracy Fund should help India perform this function: If India were to establish an institution to coordinate and organise exchanges with democrats around the world, richer democracies in the world would want to join..http://hoder.com/weblog/archives/017178.shtml NED et al.: The CIAs successors and collaborators (Le Monde Diplomatique)- (Found June 24, 2008 ) US: overt and covert destabilisation When a scandal in the 1980s revealed the CIAs 35 years of international manipulations, President Ronald Reagan established the National Endowment for Democracy as a more discreet and less controversial instrument. It had the same purpose to destabilise unfriendly governments by funding the opposition. By Hernando Calvo Ospina The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was created in 1983, ostensibly as a non-profit-making organisation to promote human...http://hoder.com/weblog/archives/017207.shtml NED funds NIAC: Trita Parsi must explain- (Found June 24, 2008 ) I always thought of Trita Parsi, the president of National Iranian-American Council (NIAC), as a realist and progressive Iranian (I'm not sure if he is an American citizen yet) whose successful lobby group tries to convince the Americans that the Islamic Republic is here to stay and the U.S. eventually has to acknowledge the reality of this sovereign, democratic state which is built on a resistance against the Euro-American universalism. But in the light of the events in the past few years, and.http://hoder.com/weblog/archives/017180.shtml NIAC's Hadi Ghaemi and Dokhi Fassihian held (likely) NED-funded workshop in Tehran in 2004- (Found June 24, 2008 ) I think I now know about one of the NED-funded workshops that NIAC had done in Iran. In 2004, with pretext of the earthquake in Bam, Hadi Ghaemi (a NIAC's founding member and now a Human Rights Watch senior officer) and Dokhi Fassihian (a then NIAC executive) held a two-day workshop in Tehran for a group of Iranian NGOs 'aimed at strengthening the ability of NGOs to document and present their work to funders.' NIAC's press release names Hamyaran, a capacity-building NGO which is founded and run.http://hoder.com/weblog/archives/017201.shtml Radio Zamaneh commissions Abdee Kalantari's Orientalist prose, Kargozaaran republishes it- (Found June 24, 2008 ) Looking deeper at the Dutch government-funded Radio Zamaneh's 'Andisheh' (or Ideas) section reveals an uncomfortable truth about what this project actually pursues. Abdee Kalantari, a U.S.-based regular contributor to this section (and his friend Mehdi Khalaji) has for over the past year consistently recycled Bernard Lewis' arguments. He explicitly dismisses the entire idea of colonialism and advocates such a Eurocentric and Universalist inquiry that, if translated into English, could even be...http://hoder.com/weblog/archives/017208.shtml NED fellow, Jahanbegloo, defends NED's Tibet project- (Found June 24, 2008 ) I'm not surprised to see Ramin Jahanbegloo, a former fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), coming out supporting the NED-funded and organized bogus Tibet protests and its fake leader, Dalai Lama. Are you Neith I am surprised that you can't find a single word of support or sympathy in Jahanbegloo's work for, say, Gazans who are living in the largest prison on the planet by the people Jahanbegloo never wants to anger. Or perhaps the universal rules of human dignity that...http://hoder.com/weblog/archives/017218.shtml What VOA's women show wants- (Found June 24, 2008 ) Sometimes they give it to you so frankly and beautifully that you can't believe it. This is from the Voice of America's Persian section programme schedule for yesterday. Isn't it like poetry I wish I had a rock band and I could use this in a song. Todays Woman features a profile with. Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, former U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander, and Founder of American Islamic Forum for Democracy, regarding his views on Iranian women activists....http://hoder.com/weblog/archives/017263.shtml Iran Elections 2005: How reformists lost it (Video documentary)- (Found June 24, 2008 ) During the 2005 presidential elections, I made loads of short videos with my little Canon photography camera, mostly from the reformists campaign where I spent most of my time. Then when I got back, I was invited to have a little presentation in the Middle East department at the Columbia University about what I saw in the elections. I decided to put them together in a few chapters and make a longer version documentary. I wanted to put it in this blog before the recent parliament elections, but..http://hoder.com/weblog/archives/017284.shtml Challenging pro-Israel bias on the BBC World Service show- (Found June 24, 2008 ) I was a guest last week on the BBC World's Have your say programme, talking about Iran, Syria and Israel's nuclear programmes. Predictably, the other guests were all Pro-Israel Jewish Americans, but I think I didn't do that bad in challenging their usual self-fulfilling prophecy. Does anyone know if a transcript is available Here is the official BBC description of the show: Does every country have the right to be nuclear (Listen to the entire show - MP3 file) 25 April 2008 America has accused...http://hoder.com/weblog/archives/017304.shtml |