My following article appears in today’s edition of Crikey: Christmas Island is a “pressure cooker”, according to one recently-returned refugee advocate. And the situation will blow up completely if the federal government is allowed to deport asylum seekers back to strife-torn Afghanistan and Sri Lanka. As more boats arrive at the offshore immigration processing centre”‰—”‰and…
Showing all posts tagged Iran
Iranian New Year shows sign of resistance
Don’t let anybody believe that the opposition in Iran isn’t still alive. From a contact: I want to share with you a film of a crowd gathered last night in the shrine of the Persian poet Hafez seeing the Iranian New Year in Shiraz. They can be heard chanting “An Iranian would rather die and…
An idea that Israel really needs at this time
Popular conservative American blogger Glenn Reynolds: If I were the Israelis, not only would I bomb Iran, but I’d do so in such a way as to create as much trouble for China, Russia, Europe and the United States as possible.
Web liberation in the Islamic Republic needs more than lip service
Iranian dissidents clearly need more global support but surely backing from the US government is sending the completely wrong message? At a time when the Obama administration is pressing for harsher sanctions against Iran for its nuclear program, democracy advocates in Iran have been celebrating the recent decision by the United States to lift sanctions…
Those struggling voices in the Islamic Republic
A wonderful new Iranian film, No One Knows About Persian Cats, that proves the reliance of the resistance in that tortured country:
Iran, Iran, Iran (don’t talk about Israel and settlements)
Just in case we’d forgotten why Washington should never pressure Israel (today it’s Iran, yesterday it’s Iraq and perhaps in years to come…Venezuela?): As more than a dozen lawmakers go on record to ask the Obama administration to end the diplomatic spat with Israel following Vice President Joe Biden‘s visit, some are now warning that…
How the Iranian blogosphere fights back
I’ve written extensively over the years about Iranian web censorship. My following piece was commissioned by BBC Persian on the role of the web in Iran’s current political troubles (yes, it’s in Farsi). Here’s the English version: The face of murdered Iranian woman Neda Agha Soltan by a sniper’s bullet echoed around the world. Murdered…
“Israel is not Tehran”
Israel is a supposedly secular nation with an increasingly fundamentalist minority. Enjoy: Around 1,000 demonstrators marched Saturday evening outside the Prime Minister’s residence in Jerusalem to protest Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz’s decision to allow the continuation of single-sex bus lines that serve the Haredi community. Protestors held signs that read “Israel is not Tehran” and…
Iran is fearful and may therefore want the bomb
Noam Chomsky, speaking last week at Harvard, says that the Islamic Republic has every right to fear American foreign policy and is therefore acting rationally to protect itself: No one in their right mind wants Iran to develop nuclear weapons. If they’re not developing a nuclear deterrent, they are crazy.
The risk of speaking out for human rights (in Palestine or Iran)
A curious and rather disturbing story in Haaretz: It is not easy to scare Simone Dinah Hartmann, but lately she has been fearing for her life. Although she resides in serene Vienna, Hartmann is not convinced the law enforcement officials in Austria are sufficiently aware of the dangers threatening her. Her concerns come in the…