Tuesday, May 01, 2007

British Universities Again!

Right now there is an all out assault on Iranian students at Amir Kabir university. Arash Kamangir and 30Tboy.blogspot have written good detailed reports on how a fake publication deemed to be "insulting" is used as a pretext to attack the students in Iran's most vociferous university against the clerical rule.

One would expect the British universities and students to react in solidarity with their Iranian colleagues to help prevent more Iranian students from being beaten up, sent to prison and banned from their education. Instead, what are the British universities doing? Once again they have given a platform to a lackey of the Islamic Republic to promote a religious Apartheid.

When I was a student, it was rightly inconceivable for a British university to have invited a promoter of Apartheid in South Africa to bolster the image of that regime, so I am lost for words as to why the Islamic Republic continues to receive such opportunities from the British academics??

What is it that these dimwit lecturers, student societies and deans do not understand? How much lower can the British universities sink to?

On 2nd of May, at 6 pm, Trinity College, Cambridge is hosting one of the vilest promoters of the Islamic Republic, Abbas Edalat, to speak on Islamic Republic's nuclear program.

For enquiries please contact ss725@cam.ac.uk or am553@cam.ac.uk
Hosted by CU Persian Society with support from CU Students’ Union Anti-Racism Officer!

16 comments:

Aryamehr said...

Potkin-jAn i've sent in my protest to the email's provided and posted an entry so that more people can do their part.

It's truly repulsive what the British Universities are doing to Iranian students who today are being beaten and arrested for bravely standing up against tyranny - instead of expressing solidarity they are playing hosts to the Islamic Republic's lobbyists!

Anonymous said...

I'm appalled. What a disgrace. ON Labour strike in Iran Yahoo news:

A member of parliament's social commission, Moussal-Reza Servati, said earlier this week that the number of Iranians living under the poverty line had increased by 13 percent to 12 million -- more than one in seven people.

Hundreds of workers protest in Iran

On poverty and new Draconian Labor Laws

Anonymous said...

Who is Abbas Edalat? See below:

Let me tell you what Abbas Edalat has been doing for the last 25 or more years.

As a former anti-shah activist in the confederation of Iranian students he enjoyed a Pahlavi foundation-funded education at Berkeley and when the Shah was toppled he migrated to the UK and studied for his PhD, at Warwick university followed by becoming a researcher at Imperial college. Politically he used to be a follower of Fedayeen-e khalgh, of course the champaign Marxist type. All these years he has worked in favour of the islamic regime's interests so much so that now in partnership with Kamran Elahian (a Bahai entrepreneur in the US) he is providing IT technologies to Iran. He is extremely jealous of all successful Iranians particularly those in universities. As luck had it, and despite being simply a researcher and not a lecturer, thanks to the British universities love affair with academics of ethnic minorities, he got a "research professorship" to balance the equal opportunities quota! To give you an idea about his connections, Edalat's partner is Massoumeh Torfeh, an editor of the BBC's Farsi program. Edalat frequently travels to Iran and receives VIP treatment by his hosts in both universities and the government.

Bardia said...

I don't have any clear information about British Universities concerning their actions in supporting IR. But as you mentioned it might be a close relationship between them as the same has been before in government's relationships.
I don't believe how the deans can be in this relationship without any permit.There's a paradox of British governments as we call Daiijaan Napeleon.

Hanif Leylabi said...

Absolutely ridicuolus! You are purposefully misleading people. This post in highly disingenuous and slanderous.

Abbas is not a promoter of the Iranian regime, he is an opponent of sanctions and military intervention in Iran.

Anonymous said...

The organizer for this event seems to be a Cambridge PhD candidate by the name of Shirin Saedi who is published reguraly at Iranian.com. She sounds like an official spokesperson for the regime.

Anonymous said...

CASMII Revealed: download the file:

http://putstuff.putfile.com/74978/6973089/3

Azarmehr said...

Show me one article or campaign against the Islamic Republic that "Abbas" has been involved in.

"Abbas" has close ties with the Towhid centre in London and is partners with other known regime lobbyists such as Ardeshir Omani and his wife Eleanor, as well as partners with Abbas Maleki, Rafsanjani's deputy minister and "cultural" adviser to Sharif university.

Hannif you really are on another planet.

Anonymous said...

Professor Abbas Edalat is anti-war. Whoever opposes him supports a war in Iran and the plan of the neocons.

Prof Edalat has spoken on Iranian National TV against the regime, resulting in his early dismissal from the station and expulsion.

The writers of these blogs are purposefully misleading the public under the pretense of supporting student movements in Iran. What, may I ask, have you physically done for the Iranians in Iran? Prof Edalat started an Educational Establishment, upholding the democratic ideals of free speech and discussion, and the threats of war, and student incontent morally forced him to combat the absurb calls to invade, bomb or sanction Iran which will devastate not only the innocent civilians, but also the educational establishments and NGOs .

Anonymous said...

This has been such a difficult time for Islamic Republic apologists. The suppression of teachers, workers, students and women in Iran has left them clutching at the straws.
Defending Ahmadi-Nejad has become wholly impossible, and so they are desperately trying to make a distinction between Ahmadi-Nejad and the rest of the system.
Most laughable has been Hossein Derakhshan, hoder.com, on his Persian page, where he is getting excited that a Tehran police cartoon, shows a girl revealing a few strands of hair!! and statements that Khomeini was really against compulsive Hijab and that it was the society which enforced Hejab :)) and as for the mobile film of the girl who is being forced into the police car against her will for 'immodest' dress code, all he can say is 'But we dont know what she was up to before she was forced into the car'!!

Islamic Republic apologists, you have even harder times ahead, you better get ready with even more absurd excuses..

Anonymous said...

The I.R. has often produced false credentials for its most loyal servants by pretending that they are in disfavor with the regime.

Is there actually a recording of Edalat "speaking against the regime" on Iranian TV?

As far as I know 90% of the adult population of Iran is saying things "against the regime" whenever they ride in a cab. Unlike Edalat none of them has ever been close enough to the regime to be interviewed on Khamenei's TV to begin with.

Being in disfavor with Khamenei's bunch is not automatically proof for one's democratic engagement. Moussavian, one of the I.R.'s most loyal servants (former ambassador in Germany who coordinated the terrorist act againt the Kurdish leaders in the "Mykonos" incident and a member of the negociating team in nuclear matters until recently) has now been arrested and probably considers himself a “dissident”, similar to Edalat. For years we have been hearing "critical statements" from people who used to be high ranking members of the ministry of inteligence and have the Iranian peoples' blood on their hands. They criticize the current ruling clique in the I.R. because of rivalry and not because they are democrats.

In the nuclear standoff Edalat is clearly defending the official line of the most reactionary, corrupt and repressive factions within the I.R. and he is doing so in circles to which the official representatives of the regime have little to no access. That is what really counts for Khamenei and his followers at this moment.

Once the I.R. has been overthrown we shall certainly find out whether he rendered this service out of the goodness of his heart or whether some form of compensation played a certain role. I like to hope that he is just a naïve fool.

The sentence "whoever opposes him supports a war in Iran and the plan of the neocons" could have come from an interrogator in the Evin prison. You would just have to replace the word "him" with the name of any of the thugs currently ruling our country.

Whoever supports the illegitimate security interests of the Islamic Republic - including its nuclear programme - is defending one of modern history's most murderous regimes that above all is an enemy of its own people.

Anonymous said...

CASMII's activities are more pro-regime than the regime’s own embassies abroad.

WE could use the following quotes to show the CASMII’s pro-regime stance:

“Over 2,200 man hours of inspections of Iranian nuclear plants by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in some three years have failed to produce any evidence for a nuclear weapons program in Iran. For most of this period, Iran voluntarily adhered to the Additional Protocol allowing snap visits by the IAEA to inspect any place at any time. Iran has also championed the cause of a nuclear weapons free Middle East and Ayatollah Khamenei has issued a religious decree (fatwa), which forbids the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons. Yet, despite all this, the US and some of its Western allies continue to accuse Iran of intending to develop nuclear weapons.. From a historical perspective, the western mistrust has deep roots, which really go back to the Crusades when the invading Christian armies projected their own brutality on their Muslim adversaries. It will be asserted that a resolution of the US-Iran standoff can only come about with a change in the Western imperial mentality and projections onto the Islamic world. (Abbas Edalat, 12.2.2006 Tohid roundtable)

CASMII’s chief in the U.S. is Rostam Pourzal who like Edalat, plays the role of Iranian ambassador. For instance, in the June 2006, a women rally was organized in Tehran, which was brutally repressed by the police. The report of the brutalities was reported by international press and human rights organizations. Rostam Pourzal also released an statement but against the women:

“Most of the opposition sources with whom I am familiar exaggerate the government's shortfalls and do not tolerate any discussion of its accomplishments.

I was reminded of all this by conflicting reports about the women's demonstration in Tehran last week. Contrary to dispatches by news services, I learned from an eyewitness whom I infinitely trust that he saw no beating or gassing of the demonstrators. Now I quote from his email directly:

I witnessed a few women protesters being asked by some female police officers to walk away. In response the protestors [sic] started screaming hysterically at the officers and accused them of beating them, an accusation which looked unsound. "Why are you beating us?", shouted a woman protestor at a female police officer, who was visibly shaken and became speechless at such an accusation

Small crowds of bystanders would also converge on these places to see what is going on, as it is typical in the Iranian culture. I did not see any expression of sympathy by these bystanders and onlookers for the cause of the protestors.

If, for example, equal rights for women are actually not as popular in Iran as we wish, we would be better off facing the facts and asking what we are doing wrong, instead of inventing excuses or blaming the messenger.

I was stunned during a recent visit to Iran to find that President Ahmadinejad is quite popular among women from all walks of life.” ((MRZine 6.18.06)

The following declaration of Pourzal is very helpful to understand the real affiliation of CASMII and the related organizations like NIAC:

“The prevailing spin on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's rise to Iran's presidency wrongly suggests that a win for his rivals could have ushered a dawn of enlightenment. The mainstream press has largely described Iran's competing factions as little more than vote-rigging theocrats arrayed against tolerant modernizers. In particular, strong support for Ahmadinejad among the Basij militia and Revolutionary Guard corps has earned him a reputation as a Muslim fanatic. But there is a quite modern side to his grassroots popularity, too, that stresses non-dependent national development. Like the French and Dutch rejection of the proposed EU constitution earlier this summer, Ahmadinejad's landslide win was a vote for authenticity and against forced globalization.

At a time when rational science is trashed in America by fundamentalist evangelicals tied to the White House, Ahmadinejad won on a platform promising to double the already exploding public funding for advanced scientific research.

To millions of voters of modest means, Ahmadinejad symbolizes resistance to the anti-democratic global free-trade elite with whom the relatively secular reform movement has aligned itself. (August 16, 2005 iranian.com)

CASMII works with the left tendencies in the U.S. and their declarations are regularly published in the Znet, which reflects the views of these groups. In May 2006, one of the anti-war movements released a petition called “Iran: Neither U.S. agression, nor theocratic repression” (Znet, may 18.2006). In this petition, there was a milde reference to the Iranian regime’s record of terror. CASMII released a statement in which strongly condemned the petitioners’ stance against the Iranian regime:

“At a time that Washington's plans to attack Iran are according to Seymour Hersh in their operational phase, it is regrettable that your petition caves into US propaganda by devoting more space in its text to condemnation of the Iranian regime, which is to a large extent based on fallacies, inaccuracies and exaggerations, than to opposing the US warmongers.

As citizens or residents of western countries, our essential duty is to oppose the aggressive and imperial policies of our own elected governments which we face and can impact rather than present a misleading and condescending picture of the internal situation in Iran and promote our version of "democracy" for a country with a different culture than ours.

In our view, the petition as it stands does not work in favor of the freedom loving people of Iran, nor does it justify the good intensions of the thoughtful people behind it.

Rather than joining the bias Western media and condemning Iran for human rights violations at a time when there are explicit plans in place to attack Iran, we feel that it is our obligation to expose the double standards of the Western media and the leaders. The war crimes and the gross violations of human rights committed by the coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, the human rights issues in Israel, and the Arab client states of the United Sates, as well as the violations of the U.S. Constitution, international renditions, Guantanamo Bay, and torture, will remain our main area of public focus.” CASMII, June 11, 2006

Anonymous said...

Dispatching "Fake Dissidents" (jailed for a few days and mysteriously released and miraculously rearing their heads in some western country as professors, or journalists or dissident bloggers), like Etallat and Hossein Derakhshan and Omid memarian are pre-requisites as dictated by instruction manuals used by the propagnda minstery of Islamic Republic.

Anonymous said...

anybody knows history of Rostam Pourzal,s life?

Anonymous said...

who is Rostam Pourzal and what is he doing in U.S.A?

clancey jones said...

Dear Monica Garnsey,
After reading your article in the Evening Standard Magazine on Friday 4th Dec. 2009, regarding the death of Neda Agha Sultan, I wish to express my opinion about what I read which I believe will give you a broader view of the situation in Iran.

I have been married to an Iranian for 40 years and used to live in Iran until the Islamic revolution in 1979 and moved to UK with my husband and children.

The reason why this regime has survived for 30 years is that they used three methods to control people: 1- fear, 2- paranoia, 3-welfare system (you get handouts if you support the revolution). Hence the pro-regime opinion of Profs. Abbas Edalat and Ali Ansari, who are happy to live in the free western society, yet getting hand-outs from the Iranian government (who is anti-west).

Iranians living in the UK have always been divided and there barely exists an Iranian community because of fear and paranoia of the person you are speaking to might be a regime spy and it is not just you that might get into trouble or killed, but your whole family might be at risk.

The one's who live in the Uk/London and supposedly are supporters of the Iranian government are the one's that benefit from regime's corruption and want to go back and fort and bring back money and are basically paranoid to say otherwise. To those people I just say "if you like that regime then go and stay there and live there, don't try to have the best of both worlds on the expense of young Iranians suffering".
People like disgraced Darius Guppy whom you mentioned in your article who is a failed businessman in the UK and was charged for "fraud", hence the next place to misrepresent himself and cause damage is ..... Of course, Iran, where is uses his British identity to attract gullible Iranians and hence grabbing as much money as he can! Yes the youth of Iran are very polite especially to somebody who holds a British/Western passport. We all know there is good and bad in everywhere and young people always misbehave because that’s what being young is about: having fun.
Mr Guppy failed to mention that 60% of the Iranian youth is hooked on some sort of drug and this in a way is another means for the Iranian government to get the youth off their back; they are too drugged up to be bothered!

What is really interesting about the situation at the moment as we watch these so called demonstrations in Iran, you don't hear things like "Death to Ahmadinejad" or "Death to Islamic regime" like they used to do prior to the 1979 revolution which was masterminded by the students mainly studying abroad at the time either in US or UK. I remember the chanting of "Death to Shah and Death to Farah" in London and in Washington in 1978 which still puts the chill up my spine.
Getting rid of Ahmadinejad and putting in his place another founder member of the 1979 revolution is not going to change anything. I can not believe that Iranian people specially the youth are doing this to themselves and not recognising that any one of these people are responsible for the death of many innocent Iranians and caused a lot family heart breaks by dispersing a lot of teenagers and separating them from their families.

Another sad thing that is really bothering us is that a number of Iranians who build the foundations and were instrumental in setting up the Islamic revolution in 1979 are now live in exile! In the west and conducting interviews, and one in specific "Mohsen Sazegara" who now lives, funny enough, in the US and amazingly is a pro-democracy activist and representing The Iranian Dissidents. What a joke!!! Why this guy has not been arrested and put on trial, he has blood on his hands.

Thank you for your wonderful article and your constant attempt to bring important issues to general attention.
I look very much forward to hear from you and get your point of view on this.
Yours sincerely
Clancey Jones