When Roxana Saberi packed her bags for Iran in 2003 she never could have anticipated that part of her six-year stay would include five months in the country’s most notorious prison. When her press credentials were suddenly revoked in 2006 (after years of filing reports for foreign news organizations) she chose to stay in the country she had grown to love and work on a book instead. Go to Time.

Kaylee Hartung speaks with journalist Roxana Saberi about her imprisonment in Iran.

Free Iran:  A long and rather inarticulate piece essentially attacking the inclusive nature of America.  The author doesn’t accept that Muslim Americans have been doubly victimized by 9/11.  This piece exemplifies what is wrong with the intolerant nature of some who don’t understand nuances.

It can’t have come as a surprise that one of the now entrenched myths about America—namely, its ongoing victimization of Muslims—should have been voiced again by a leading citizen of our myth-producing capital, Hollywood. The citizen was Tom Hanks, and the occasion his March interview in Time Magazine in which he declared that our battle with Japan in World War II was one of “racism and terror.” And that, he noted, should remind us of our current wars.

The comments caused a furor. But Mr. Hanks, who had made them during a publicity tour—he’s the producer of the HBO series, “The Pacific”—saw the issue in perfectly clear terms, which he went on to explain several times more in subsequent media appearances. We can only ponder the joy this must have brought to the hearts of HBO executives….

Go to WSJ.

Iran’s Minister of Justice announced last Wednesday that plans are under way to form a special court for Iranians abroad and that the court will commence work soon. During an appearance at High Council of Coordination with Iranians Abroad, Morteza Bakhtiari said on Sunday that the Council has appropriate authorities based on Articles 127 and 128 of Iranian Constitution.

According to Article 127 of Iranian Constitution, the President can, based on necessity and with approval from the Cabinet, appoint a special representative or representatives with specific authorities. In such cases, decisions made by the representative or representatives will be the same as those made by the President and the Cabinet….

Also:

Australian:  Iranian embassy in Canberra ’spying on activist students’

Go to ICHR Iran.

Iranian Justice Minister Morteza Baktiari announced on April 3 that a special court will be established for Iranians living outside the country.

He didn’t give the reason for the move, but said that the head of Tehran’s Justice Department and the head of the Revolutionary Court have announced their preparations to create the court.

The timing of the move has led to speculation that it could be a reaction to the huge show of support and solidarity by Iranians living abroad for members of the opposition movement that took to the streets last summer to protest against the reelection of President Mahmud Ahmadinejad.

By setting up the court, the Iranian government seems to be trying to send a warning to some of the Iranians based outside Iran who are actively campaigning and supporting the green movement.

Radio Farda reports that some Iranian officials have threatened to take judicial actions against Iranian expats for their show of solidarity with the opposition street protests in Tehran.

– Golnaz Esfandiari

Go to Radio Free Europe.

In choosing Christiane Amanpour to host This Week, ABC News has done something not only right but also brave. Giving the show to a tireless reporter with an avowed commitment to “make foreign news less foreign and link it with domestic policy” puts ABC in a position to break open a paradigm for the Sunday interview programs that has held sway since NBC’s Meet the Press began in 1947.

Amanpour has spent the past twenty-seven years in a different world entirely. At CNN, she has famously occupied herself not with moronic insider gossip but with war, famine and mass rape. Profiled in 1994 in The New York Times Magazine, Amanpour could be found pitching a tent next to the airstrip in Goma, Zaire, having flown in from Port-au-Prince. Describing how “bodies littered the ground for as far as one could see in any direction” amid the overpowering “stench of rotting flesh and human waste,” reporter Stephen Kinzer aptly concluded, “Like perhaps no other reporter on American television, Amanpour seems to belong in such places.”

Amanpour has made a career not of toadying to power but challenging it.

A refugee from the Iranian revolution, she has no taste for violent upheaval in the service of lofty ideals, whether put forth by the Serbs in Sarajevo or the Bush administration in Baghdad. “It’s all about money and power and nothing else. Whatever anyone says, it’s just about power,” she once explained. Nor is she afraid to criticize her profession, including her own network. In September 2003 Amanpour spoke out publicly and said CNN had been bullied by the Bush administration and Fox News, which had created “a climate of fear and self-censorship.” Professional journalists, she later observed, failed “to do our duty, which is simply to ask the hard questions, to stay on it, to fact-check and to cross-check and not just to take one version of the story hook, line and sinker.”

ABC News president David Westin spoke the truth when he said, “With Christiane, we have the opportunity to provide our audiences with something different on Sunday mornings.” The program’s executive producer, Ian Cameron, promises, “You will see less of the sort of default talking points-type programming.” If true, then the difference between what has so far been typical Sunday fare and a show that reflects the journalistic values of Christiane Amanpour are almost as great as that between a White House occupied by George W. Bush and one directed by Barack Obama. So the real question is, Does ABC really have the courage to let Amanpour be Amanpour?

Go to NPR.

After hitting the game-winning three-point shot to dispatch Kansas from the NCAA tournament, UNI guard Ali Farokhmanesh is college basketball’s newest darling. And now comes his newest honor — an appearance on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

Here’s the press release from SI on their cover:

Northern Iowa hero Ali Farokhmanesh graces the cover of this week’s March 29, 2010, cover of Sports Illustrated, on newsstands tomorrow, with the billing Divine Madness: Bracket Busters, Buzzer Beaters and the Perfect Tournament. SI senior writer Tim Layden (http://twitter.com/SITimLayden) introduces us to the Panthers’ three-point gunner while recapping the most memorable first two rounds of the tournament in recent memory (page 28):

“Farokhmanesh leads the Panthers in minutes (30.3 per game) and three-point field goal attempts (201), an unlikely role for an undersized shooting guard who was not recruited out of West High in Iowa City and attended two junior colleges…. Farokhmanesh has been launching 600 to 700 shots a day since junior high. Last summer Northern Iowa assistant coach P.J. Hogan would open the gym at 6 a.m. so that Farokhmanesh could shoot before class. Asked what player Farokhmanesh reminds him of, Hogan says, ‘He reminds me of a towel boy.’ ”

Says his mother, Cindy Fredrick: “Nobody wanted him. He was a 5′ 11″ white boy. All my life I’ve said it’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog. And he is a fighter and he’s a hard worker. From the time he was just a baby, he’d drag us to the gym. Every single day: ‘Let’s shoot baskets, let’s shoot baskets.’ ”

With two huge performances in wins over Richmond and Villanova, St. Mary’s center Omar Samhan proved that Farokhmanesh would not be the only underrecruited star to have his shining moment: “It is Samhan who leads the Gaels, both by force of his circa-1965 post moves (shoulder fakes, drop steps, baby hooks—Walt Bellamy would be proud) and his straightforward talk before, during and after games. Late in Saturday’s win over Villanova, Samhan was next to Wildcats guard Corey Stokes on the foul lane and recalls saying, ‘You impressed me, man. Did I impress you?’ When Stokes didn’t respond, Samhan said, ‘I’ll take your silence as a yes.’ ” SI here.

Go to original article.

To its credit, ABC News recently announced that Christiane Amanpour would replace George Stephanopoulos as host of its Sunday morning This Week program.  Today in The Washington Post, TV critic Tom Shales condemns this decision on several grounds, including the fact that she is viewed by Far Right media groups as suffering from a “liberal bias.”  But as Eric Boehlert notes, the Right thinks that everyone who is not Rush Limbaugh is a biased shill for “the Liberal Media,” and if that’s the standard, then only Sean Hannity or Glenn Beck would be an acceptable choice for Shales.

But I want to focus on a far more pernicious and truly slimy aspect of Shales’ attack on Amanpour.  In arguing why she’s a “bad choice,” Shales writes that “[s]upporters of Israel have more than once charged Amanpour with bias against that country and its policies,” and adds:  ”A Web site devoted to criticism of Amanpour is titled, with less than a modicum of subtlety, ‘Christiane Amanpour’s Outright Bias Against Israel Must Stop,’ available via Facebook.”  Are these “charges” valid?  Is this “Web site” credible?  Does she, in fact, exhibit anti-Israel bias?  Who knows?  Shales doesn’t bother to say.  In fact, he doesn’t even bother to cite a single specific accusation against her; apparently, the mere existence of these complaints, valid or not, should count against her.

Worse still is that, immediately after noting these charges of”anti-Israel” bias, Shales writes this:

Amanpour grew up in Great Britain and Iran. Her family fled Tehran in 1979 at the start of the Islamic revolution, when she was college age. She has steadfastly rejected claims about her objectivity, telling Leslie Stahl last year relative to her coverage of Iran: “I am not part of the current crop of opinion journalists or commentary journalists or feelings journalists. I strongly believe that I have to remain in the realm of fact.”

Without having the courage to do so explicitly, Shales links (and even bolsters) charges of her “anti-Israel” bias to the fact that her father is Iranian and she grew up in Iran.  He sandwiches that biographical information about Iran in between describing accusations against her of bias against Israel and her defensive insistence that she’s capable of objectivity when reporting on the region.

So here we finally have a prominent journalist with a half-Persian background — in an extremely homogenized media culture which steadfastly excludes from Middle Eastern coverage voices from that region — and her national origin is immediately cited as a means of questioning her journalistic objectivity and even opposing her as a choice to host This Week (can someone from Iran with an Iranian father possibly be objective???).  Could the double standard here be any more obvious or unpleasant?

Free Iran:  Both the general media and especially Hollywood are extremely unfair when it comes to portraying Iranian-Americans in a good light.  For instance, considering the number of Iranian -American doctors that are in America, why isn’t there not even one Iranian-American cast as a doctor on a medical TV drama who saves lives?  All the roles we get are bunch of terrorists or shady characters. Why doesn’t the general media say 60 minutes ever do a program about the accomplishments of the Iranian-Americans?

Wolf Blitzer is Jewish, a former AIPAC official, and — to use Shales’ smear-campaign formulation — has frequently “been accused” of pro-Israel bias; should CNN bar him from covering those issues?  David Gregory is Jewish, “studies Jewish texts with a top Jewish educator in Washington,” and has conducted extremely sycophantic interviews with Israel officials. Should his background be cited as evidence of his pro-Israel bias?  The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg is routinely cited as one of America’s most authoritative sources on the Middle East, notwithstanding numerous accusations of pro-Israel bias and, even more so, his choice to go enlist in the IDF and work in an Israeli prison where Palestinians are encaged; do those actions (far beyond his mere ethnicity) call into question his objectivity as a journalist such that The Atlantic should bar him from writing about that region?  Jake Tapper — who Shales suggests as an alternative to Amanpour and who I also previously praised as a choice — is Jewish; does that raise questions about his objectivity where Israel is concerned?

Go to original article.

…Iran has one of the oldest known Jewish communities, going back over 2,500 years to when Jews fled the land of Israel after the destruction of the First Temple. “We take pride in the country of Persia,” said Mrs. Maddahi, who will host the first Seder on Monday night. “It was an old monarchy, with thousands of years of history.”

On a recent night here at Ms. Maddahi’s home, some 60 family members were listening and dancing to Persian music performed by a violinist to celebrate the birthdays of Mrs. Maddahi and another relative, Younes Nazarian. The guests, talking mostly in Farsi, nibbled on pistachios, plump dates, nuts and raisins, signs of welcome in Iran.

…Mrs. Nazarian, who is a psychologist, said the food of Iranian Muslims and Jews is essentially the same, except that Jews don’t use butter with meat. Najmieh Batmanglij, author of “New Food of Life: Ancient Persian and Modern Iranian Cooking and Ceremonies,” which is considered the go-to source on Iranian cooking, agreed. “I tried to look for specifically Persian Jewish dishes,” Ms. Batmanglij said, “but the differences I found were based more on regions, not on religion.”

Go to NY Times.

The image of American Muslims is in serious disrepair. A January 2010 Gallup poll found that almost half of Americans hold an unfavorable view of Islam. About the same number of Americans harbor personal prejudice toward Muslims, according to the poll.

…Because Islam is still a minority religion in America and has had little positive public exposure, Americans have built up a strong distrust of it.

Islam deserves a media makeover. At a time when the United States is mired in two wars in locations where the majority of the people practice Islam, the future of American-Islamic relations is at stake.

…The behavior of ideologues who capitalize on ratings or attention from fueling the fire against Islam does not help US public perception, either.

Each time Pat Robertson refers to Muslims as “fascists,” or Ann Coulter calls Islam “a car-burning cult,” it may get ratings but, more than anything, it damages America’s perspective on Islam and Muslims.

Then there is the behavior of media pundits beholden to the 24-hour news cycle. Each time CNN runs a story on the self-proclaimed “Jihad Jane” or Fox News sounds off about Saudi women who can’t drive, without including an expert interview from someone who can clearly explain cultural context, another American grows weary of Islam and Muslims.

Again and again it plays out: An extremist commits an atrocity in Islam’s name; a non-Muslim ideologue typecasts the act as representative of Islam; and a media pundit cements the stereotype.

This vicious cycle must end if attitudes toward Islam and Muslims are to improve. Of course, it begins within Muslim communities and countering extremists with education, but education in the US is also required.

Whose burden is that? The news media bear the primary responsibility. Isn’t one of the main purposes of the media to empower citizens to make informed decisions concerning their democracy? Sensationalizing or even mischaracterizing incidents can greatly influence how citizens treat one another; it can also influence US policy.

By leaving out the full picture, the news media can ultimately inflame public outrage to such an extent as to facilitate ill-conceived legislation or engender popular vigilantism against American Muslims. Go to CS Monitor.

CNN:  U.N. must stand up for rights of Iranians By Hadi Ghaemi and Aaron Rhodes – who are, respectively, executive director and policy adviser for the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran.

The failure of the Human Rights Council to take serious action to condemn Iran’s human rights abuses, and the election of Iran to the Human Rights Council itself, will be deeply disillusioning for the reform and human rights movement in Iran. It could destroy their faith in the international human rights system, for which many have sacrificed their freedom and security, and for which many have died. It will give legitimacy to hanging political prisoners, and more will be hanged.

But this issue is not just about Iran. It is about the capacity of the U.N. system to protect human rights. If Iran’s grave abuses are ignored and if Iran assumes a place on the council, the council will be further weakened. Other dictatorial regimes will be emboldened to repress their citizens.

That is why it is crucial that members of the U.N. Human Rights Council make it clear to Iran, in a resolution that cannot be brushed off, that torturing and executing political prisoners is not acceptable. And that is why the U.N. General Assembly must reject Iran’s candidacy.

MSNBC:  Iran temporarily releases Iranian-American scholar Iran has temporarily released an Iranian-American scholar serving prison time on an espionage conviction so he can spend the Iranian New Year holiday with his family, officials said Sunday. Kian Tajbakhsh, a social scientist and urban planner, was the only American detained in the crackdown that crushed giant street protests by hundreds of thousands of people after June’s disputed presidential election.

P2E:  Interview with mother of Mostafa Karim Beigi 26 year old Mostafa lost his life on Ashura with a bullet to his forehead, as his body was pushed off the College bridge in Tehran. What follows is the interview conducted by Rooz website with Mostaf`s mother. After 14 days without any news on his fate, the body of her son was returned to her and was buried under tight security measures.

Q: You said that your son had gone to take part in the protest. Did he usually attend such gatherings?

A: Yea, since the summer of 1999 student uprising, he always attended the protests. And he was present at all the protests since the June 2009 election. He used to say that we would get our votes back, and we will not let them trample upon blood of the youth who had lost their lives. He was always saying that it is not clear how much blood will be shed before our children could live freely in the future. He constantly reminded me that if he gets arrested I shouldn’t go to Evin prison. He even said: “Your cry and begging before the officials is the worst type of torture for me. Don`t go there, even if they kill me. Don`t cry, don`t beg. Keep your head up…” Believe me in those 14 days, I never once went to Evin, his father used to go, despite the fact that my heart was in pain, I didn’t go.

New Ledger:  Iran: Jailhouse For Journalists

Ahmad Batebi says he spent nine years in Iranian prisons, where he was tortured for affiliating with student groups working against the government. Iranian Mohsen Sazegara, a former politician-turned-activist who now lives in Virginia, says he routinely receives death threats.

Exiled Iranian dissidents, human rights campaigners and Iranian-American advocacy groups are fearing for their lives as they receive what they say are ongoing death threats from Iranian intelligence agents and regime sympathizers working in the United States.

“I have to change my phone number every month because Iranian intelligence are threatening to kill me,” human rights activist Ahmad Batebi, who fled to the U.S. from Iran in 2008, told FoxNews.com. Now working with the Voice of America, the international broadcasting service funded by the U.S. government, Batebi says he spent nine years in Iranian prisons, where he was tortured for his affiliation with student groups working against the Tehran government.

He said the Iranian agents who are threatening him are working under diplomatic cover at the Iranian mission to the United Nations or coming here on political visas to spy on regime opponents. The U.S. broke formal diplomatic relations with Iran in 1980.

“They say, ‘You are not safe in the U.S. or anywhere, and if we don’t get you in America we will get you in Europe,’” he said.

Another Iranian, Mohsen Sazegara, a former politician-turned-activist who now lives in Virginia, says he routinely receives death threats and was singled out recently by Iran’s deputy minister for intelligence, who Sazegara says declared, “We will catch you wherever you are.”

He said silencing human rights advocates is Tehran’s goal, and he accused Iran’s “cyber army” of hacking his Virginia-based Web site and his YouTube account, on which he posted videos critical of the regime. (YouTube did not return calls seeking comment.)

The threats have not been limited to activists, others say.

“I’m worried about the safety of my children,” said a prominent Iranian-American democracy advocate in Washington, who asked to remain anonymous because he says he and his family routinely receive death threats from male callers speaking Farsi.

“Iran keeps a very close eye on the Iranian Diaspora in the United States, and I’m concerned that they will act on these threats,” he said.

He said he has contacted the FBI and turned over voice mails left on his answering machine to police.

Mary Ann Jennings, a spokeswoman for the Fairfax County Police Department in Virginia, said the man had turned over MP3 audio files containing the threats, and “The case has been turned over to our criminal investigators.”

An FBI spokeswoman said the bureau would not comment on whether it was investigating the threats.

But former CIA agent Robert Baer, who maintains contact with Iranian opposition groups, said Iranians living in America have reason to be afraid.

He said Iran has a history of murdering its opponents in Europe, and it has maintained informal networks of illegal operatives in the U.S. for years.

“If the Iranians think that somebody is a threat to the regime, they will kill them here. These are guys you don’t want to mess with,” said Baer, a 21-year CIA veteran with extensive experience in the Middle East.

“As the Iranian regime becomes more desperate it is more willing to take chances. They have people who can reach out and touch people here in the States,” he said.

John M. Cole, a former FBI counter-intelligence agent, said Tehran’s agents have been targeting dissidents in the U.S. for years. And he said he is concerned that Iranian agents could move beyond threats as the volatility in their country worsens.

Though there is no record of Iranian dissidents being assassinated in the U.S. so far, Cole said, “We’ve had investigations and incidents in the past where Iranians were recruiting émigrés to put pressure on people here in the U.S. If the Iranians find people who are spewing anti-government sentiment, they look for ways to quiet them.”

Baer said it’s difficult for the FBI to investigate the cases. Unless the bureau has a crime scene or a body, he said, the investigations usually go nowhere.

“The FBI doesn’t know what to do with it. It’s very hard for them to figure out dissident politics,” he said.

Hooshang Amirahmadi, director of the American-Iranian Council in Princeton, N.J., a non-profit group promoting relations between Iran and the U.S., said, “We know the regime has agents here in the U.S. who are usually working with official Iranian institutions like the United Nations, and there are also infiltrators.

“It’s a very sensitive issue. They’re trying to discourage the dissidents from speaking out, and many of them are afraid for their lives.”

Tehran’s campaign has spread fear among Iranians in the U.S., many of whom refuse to go public because of threats and arrests of family members and friends still in Iran, Amirahmadi said.

It’s even worse on in Europe, said Iranian human rights activist Ladan Boroumand, whose father Abdorrahman Boroumand, a prominent critic of Tehran, was murdered in 1991 in Paris. Iranian dissidents and French prosecutors said Iranian agents were behind the hit.

Boroumand, who splits her time between Washington and Paris, said Iran’s interior ministry maintains a “black list” of groups and people it accuses of waging war against the regime, declaring them enemies of the Iranian state.

A U.S. State Department official told FoxNews.com, “I think it’s fair to say that we are concerned about threats made to Iranian dissidents in the U.S., and feel that all such threats should be referred to appropriate law enforcement officials.”

Batebi says he has received little help from the police. He says they told him that unless he recorded the threats, there wasn’t much they could do.

He and others need to watch their backs, Iran watchers warn, saying Tehran will mark dissidents for death no matter where they live.

“I would be worried,” Baer said. “It is more than conceivable their lives could be in danger.”  Source:  FOXNews.com

Washington, 16 February – The grassroots network, the Iranian-American Youth, carry out a mobile billboard advertising campaign in Washington, D.C. to raise awareness and draw support for the opposition movement in Iran.

The mobile billboards are expected to travel through the capitals streets, appearing near or at many of the citys major landmarks, including the White House, the State Department and the Capitol.

Washington TV’s article of the event here.

Iranian-American Youth (IAY) and Justice Through Music (JTM) will carry out a mobile billboard advertising campaign in Washington, D.C. on February 16, 2010.  Mobile billboards will travel through Washington’s streets, appearing near or at many of the capital city’s most significant landmarks.  Messages depicted on the billboards are designed to raise awareness and draw support for the current opposition movement in Iran.

In response to events in Iran and local actions such as this mobile billboard campaign, IAY and JTM hope that the American public will stand in solidarity with the Iranian people and urge prominent American leaders and political officials to voice their support for the fight for freedom and human rights in Iran.

For more information, please contact the Iranian-American Youth by e-mail <iranianamericanyouth09@gmail.com> or telephone 703-403-9352 / 703-994-0213.

They’re an eclectic group of young professionals – writers, curators, businessmen, engineers, and researchers – who left the west to build a new life in the country their parents had left roughly 30 years before: Iran. Meeting weekly at a different Tehran cafe to network and chat about politics, art and their daily lives, these dual-national Iranian “ex-expatriates” banded together in a clique dubbed “Cosmopolitan Tehran”.

Members of Cosmo, as the group is affectionately called, represent a rare spectrum within the second-generation Iranian diaspora that have chosen to return to Iran while their counterparts, born and bred in the Islamic Republic, are famously desperate to leave. As the progeny of some of Iran’s richest and brightest pre-revolutionary citizens, these dual nationals signify a notable reverse in the trend of “brain drain” that has plagued Iran since its 1979 revolution.

Recent calls by hardliners to “re-Islamise” universities and cleanse them of “westoxified” liberal arts curricula are reminiscent of Iran’s cultural revolution of the 1980s, which prompted many Iranians to flee the country.

If Iran continues to antagonise its resident dual nationals, it risks driving out a sector of the population that, though small in number, contributes a sizable amount of the country’s social and economic capital. To erode the will of this resilient minority to ride out the current domestic crisis could spur a capital flight that would gravely damage the country’s progress. Go to Guardian.