Aziz was Buried Today

Aziz was buried today in a cemetery in North London. So many of us come to this world and go without leaving a footprint, but Aziz was one of those who did leave a footprint.

I was glad that his burial was as he wanted it to be. His coffin was draped in the Iranian Sun and Lion flag. After his coffin was lowered to the ground, his family then poured some Iranian soil in his grave. I too had brought some Iranian soil with me, it was from the Gardens of Fin, where Iran's great secular Prime Minister, Amirkabir was murdered. It was my last contribution to a man whose judgement and insight, I trusted so much when it came to Iranian affairs.

Each person who could, then took turns with the shovel filling up the grave until Aziz's coffin was fully covered. Then came the many bouquets of flowers from family and friends, many of them in the green, white and red of the Iranian flag's tri-colours.

Once all the flowers were laid, a speech was made by a family friend celebrating the life of a courageous man who stood by his principles and helped anyone he could, without expecting any favours in return. A man who was praised by friend and foe for his honesty and loyalty.

When the speech was finished, we sang the Ey Iran anthem, and finished with the shouts of Payandeh Iran (Long Live Iran).

There was no religious ceremony, it was the way Aziz wanted it.

During the speech, my mind wondered off to all the memories I have of Aziz. His famous humourous one-liners and also his serious side. In the background I could hear his beloved daughter's cries "Baba, why aren't you answering me any more?" and I asked myself who will I turn to for advise now? Who will have Aziz's wealth of practical experience that I could trust as much, now that Aziz is silent?

As I walked away from his grave, I met with Aziz's daughter-in-law. Like most his family members, she thanked me for my previous post on Aziz and said "We were Aziz's relatives but you were his son from politics" and another friend of Aziz shook my hand and said "Aziz was so proud of you, he told me once, see that Potkin, he is one good demonstration why Iran will never die" I was so touched by those comments, I nearly lost my composure and quickly walked away.

Aziz was one of those few older generation Iranians who did not try to hinder the younger activists and instead whenever he could, he would promote them and give guidance. He loved being amongst the younger generation and his footprints will be visible for many years to come.

Aziz's Funeral Tomorrow

Azizollah Esnaashari's funeral will be held tomorrow, 27th Feb - 10 am, at:

Hendon Cemetery
Holders Hill Road
NW7 1NB

My Two Seconds Worth on ListeningPost

I appear for only two seconds. As you can imagine, I said a lot more about Gunaz TV and all that separatist nonsense:



I showed Simon Ostrovsky, the presenter of the program, my post on Gunaz TV, and his strange remark was, "very divisive!" whatever that means?!

But perhaps he answers the likes of Ahmad Obali and Sabri Tabrizi by showing that Aliev's realm is no utopia for Iranians to embrace by any means.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QkXemnUAe8

Aryashahr Residents Shout 'Islamic Government we Don't Want'

Around 200 Aryashahr residents in Tehran reacted angrily, after a girl who was stopped by the Islamic Guidance units for inappropriate Hejab, resisted arrest. The Guidance units started beating up the young girl when she started resisting arrest and their brutality stirred the crowds who came to the girl's rescue.

Islamic Guidance units, faced with angry protests, drove away from the scene in a hurry, forgetting to take one of their colleagues, who was duly set on by the angry protesters. As the crowds got bigger and bigger, they started shouting "Islamic Government, We don't want, we don't want" which can be clearly heard on the youtube clip.

Watch the people spontaneously shout "Islamic Government, We don't want, we don't want"
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=8jGhsaJdyQU

Azizollah Esnaashari Died this Morning

Azizollah Esnaashari, the man who introduced me to Dr. Bakhtiar, died this morning in Ealing hospital. He was my political mentor in many ways and one of the few of the old generation who stood up to the Ayatollahs' take over of Iran.

Esnaashari lost his father at the age of 10, being the eldest son and in order to support his family, he started working in Isfahan's tea houses. Years later by hard work, he managed to save enough money to buy the tea house he worked in. During the oil nationalisation years, his tea house became a debating place for different political groups and he took an active part in the protests that led to the nationalisation of Iranian oil industry.

After the events of 1953, Esnaashari became a successful businessman, and because he was trusted in Isfahan's business community, he was forced the unwanted task of courier for the religious levies paid to the Shiite Ayatollahs by the Bazaari merchants in Isfahan. This also meant he had to travel to Iraq several times and hand over the payments to the likes of Ayatollah Khoeii and also Ayatollah Khomeini.

Here he saw at first hand the hypocrisy of the Ayatollahs and despite his religious upringing, became totally disenchanted with organised religion.

During the mass frenzy of 1979, Esnaashari opposed the religious leadership of the revolution and stood by his long time friends and secular dissidents to the Shah, Dr. Bakhtiar and Dr. Boroumand, and joined them in the National Movement of Iranian Resistance led by Dr. Bakhtiar.

Esnaashari, is the only one ever reported to have stood up and opposed Ayatollah Khomeini to his face.

Both Dr. Boroumand and shortly afterwards, Dr. Bakhtiar were assassinated in 1991 in Paris by the agents of Hashemi Rafsanjani and with the collusion of the Miterand government.

Esnaashari however remained loyal to his friends and to his principles and opposed the Islamic Republic until the last day of his life.

I will remember many of his qualities, his courage, his loyalty in friendship, his honesty, his dislike of ideologies, his tolerance of different opinions and his sharp Isfahani humour.

My fondest memories of him will be when I used to go to his house in Ealing. Often his house would be full with different people and passionate political debates would take place. I will remember how he waited and listened until the other side finished their arguments and he would then start with
"I am not an intellectual like you lot, I am just a tea boy, I had to leave school and work from the age of 10, but..." and with that 'but' he would continue to demolish the shaky arguments of the academics and the intellectuals and those who know politics only through reading books.

I am proud to say that my political mentor was a tea boy who never finished school but he knew his country and his people better than the Iranian intellectuals of the previous generation.

Farewell Aziz, thanks for all you taught me. Sorry you couldn't be buried in Iran.

They are Safe at Last

Remember the 5 Iranian dissident refugees who were beaten savagely by the Turkish police in the border town of Van and then dropped at the border with the Iraqi Kurdistan?

At last they are safe and finally been given asylum by a democratic European government. Arya (Abolfazl) Ajorloo, Ali (Mahan) Alemzadeh, Mojtaba Vatanpoor, Alireza Ranjbar and Pejman Piran's long years of suffering in the Turkish border town of Van and their almost daily ill treatment by the corrupt Turkish authorities has finally come to an end.

I wish them all good fortune in their new homelands and hope they will be good citizens who will positively contribute to their new host countries and communities.

My sincere thanks to our friends in the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran for the kind and generous hospitality they showed the five during their stay in Irbil.

Arch Idiot of Canterbury

What a monstrous idiot this Dr. Williams is? He reminds me so much of Seyyed Hossein Nasr type advisers during the Shah's reign and how they constantly tried to appease the Islamists.
An example to let you know what I am talking about was when more than 400 innocent people, women, children and whole families were charred to death, when the Islamists set the cinema Rex on fire in Abadan.

Rather than bringing the culprits to a public trial and ceasing the opportunity to show the country the indiscriminate savagery and cruelty of the Islamists, the Shah's imperial advisers were more keen on not rocking the boat in case they upset the Islamists and the regime lost the chance of negotiation with them!

Dr. Williams's remarks resonates the same recollections in me of posturing gestures by spineless officials who inch by inch gave more grounds to the radical Islamists.
In their naive innocent goody goody minds they think they are "avoiding conflict in the interest of harmony", but in fact what they are doing is giving ammunition to the extremists who then say to the faithful, look how much we have achieved, look at how much they are conceding, its our strength that is making them retreat and thus making the extremists even more popular.

IRI Event at SOAS is Cancelled

My previous post on the Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran, hiring SOAS university facilities to celebrate the 29th victory of the Islamic Revolution, got some worthwhile publicity.
Iranvajahan, Harry's Blog and the Spectator all picked up on it. Soon the whole thing snowballed into a spontaneous protest by Iranians and non-Iranians. Decent people who could not remain silent for a British university to let its facilities be used as a platform for the very same regime that imprisons students and academics in Iran, protested using sound reasoning and rational arguments.

While we were planning to turn up to the event and hold posters of the latest detained students in front of the Embassy delegates during the event, emails started reaching me that the event has been cancelled.

The email read,
"I write on behalf of Professor Paul Webley, Director and Principal of the School of Oriental and African Studies. Thank you for your email expressing concern over this week’s scheduled event.
I would like to inform you that the event has been cancelled on procedural grounds.
Please contact me with any further questions"

Which was also posted on Harry's Place. Yet I was still not convinced, for I was also getting reports that the event is still shown scheduled and unaltered on the Embassy's website. People who rang the embassy to enquire were also told the event was to go ahead as planned.

In the back of my mind, I was suspicious that perhaps this was the administration's plot to keep us away from the event. For this reason I did not want to say anything until I turned up at SOAS myself and saw with my own eyes that there is no Embassy event at SOAS. My main difficulty was to decide what to tell those who were planning to come from outside London.

Well tonight I can confirm that the celeberation of the 29th anniversary of the victory of the Islamic revolution in Iran is not held at SOAS. When we turned up outside the Brunei gallery, some dipstick holding the poster upside down told us that the event had changed to the Imperial Hotel in Holborn. He was reluctant to say he worked for the embassy at first until his position changed to "I am sort of connected to the embassy but I do cultural work only". We told him it cannot be pleasant to work for an unpopular regime that represses its people, and again he said "But I only do cultural work"

I was told there were eight people in total who had turned up for the new venue at the Imperial hotel, which was soon reduced to five. The three artists Ali Nassirian, Hossen Yari and Golshifteh Farahani who had sold out their principles to promote the religious dictatorship in Iran must have felt so humiliated standing in front of an audience of just handful of embassy employees. A bitter experience for all artists who sell out and let their talents be exploited by repressive states.

The most difficult task now however is to convince the impotent Iranian media, that this is news worth reporting. It will hearten the combatants inside Iran and it will show them that any human rights abuse by the regime inside Iran can cost the regime outside of Iran.

My sincere respect for all those who did not remain silent and reminded a British university that while there are detained students in Iran and while there is "intellectual cleansing" going on in Iran's universities, there shall be no comfort zone for the Islamic Republic in an academic establishment outside Iran.

From SOAS we had to dash to the Listening Post studios who make programs for the Aljazeera English TV. They were doing a piece on Azeri ethnic issues in Iran, we did our bit to make sure there will be a voice against any separatist claptrap and that Azerabadegan was, is and will be an integral part of Iran. We shall see how much will be edited and included.

IRI Uses SOAS as a Propaganda Platform Again

Last year the SOAS Administration claimed they were unknowingly duped by the Islamic Republic embassy in London, who used the university facilities as a platform for their propaganda and disinformation, by holding a "symposium" as a pretext for an official celebration of the Islamic Revolution in a British university.

Well if you could give the SOAS Administration the benefit of the doubt last year, a repeat of the same "symposium" makes it impossible and cretinous to do so this year. For once again, an invitation by the Cultural Centre of the Embassy of the I.R. of Iran, accompanied by a poster with the heading "In Praise of the 29th Anniversary of the Victory of the Islamic Revolution", has been sent out to embassy staff and associates for a 3 day event, 6-8th February at the Brunei Gallery, SOAS, with the usual reception starting at 6:30 pm.

At a time when only recently, 43 Iranian students, across Iranian universities, have either been arrested or abducted by the Islamic Republic agents, it is a travesty of common decency and human values for the SOAS university to allow this cultural facade by the Islamic Republic to be held in a British university.

I shall be ringing SOAS on Monday to make sure they are aware that the Islamic Republic embassy is behind this "symposium". If so, I believe the (ab)use of university facilities for a foreign embassy's propaganda activities is in fact illegal as I was told by the SOAS administration last year.

The event will be attended by three turncoat Iranian actors who have continously served and praised the Islamic Republic, but in no way do they represent the decent mainstream Iranian artists who only recently, during the Fajr film festival, protested at even more increasing government control and censorship by Ahmadi-Nejad's government.

For further information to enquire as to why a British university is allowing its facilities to be used by representatives of a religious dictatorship that has for three decades repressed students, academics and artists in Iran, refer to the following:

SOAS Principal Paul Webley:

email: pw2@soas.ac.uk
Tel 0207 898 4014
Fax 0207 898 4019

SOAS Conference Office:
020 7898 4918

Remember the Days of Free Speech in UK?

The ripples of the 1979 Islamic revolution did not just extend to Iran and the Middle East region. Freedom took a set back in Western democracies too.

There was a time when entertainers and writers weren't scared of fatwas against their heads and the BBC wasn't scared of offending the terrorists. Here is a sketch from the Not the Nine O'clock News comedy team which used to be shown on BBC2 in the early 1980s. The program launched the careers of now established British comedy icons, Rowan Atkinson, Mel Smith, Griff Rhys-Jones and Pamela Stephenson.

Can you imagine the BBC showing a sketch like that now or even show a repeat of this sketch:



Perhaps those who helped engineer this calamity, should have realised the dangers of a fundamentalist state with billions of petro-Dollars at its disposal.

Hopeful Signs in VOA Persian

One must not always criticise without giving credit when it is due. There has been some worthwhile improvements in VOA Persian programs recently. Most noteworthy was a very professionally managed program presented by Shahla Arasteh who had invited Gene Sharp as her guest. The program started with some good background footage in civil disobedience, appropriate questions were asked in a coherent manner by the presenter, and professionally interpreted from Persian to English and vice versa.

Also what I liked was how an IRI plant intent on causing embarrassment during the first call was quickly recognised and dealt with quickly.

Robert Tait also appeared on the News and Views program and talked about how foreign journalists are restrained in reporting news from Iran. How they must be careful not to be too critical and how they have to tread carefully not to cross the red boundaries in order to avoid getting expelled and banned from Iran.

Hopefully all this signals a re-awakening into what is relevant in today's situation than what we have seen before, i.e. irrelevant programs, airtime for IRI apologists, not checking the credentials of the guests and obvious cronyism and favouritism.

It all begs the question as to why VOA management like Sheila Ganji and Kambiz Mahmoody always claimed VOA must be an impartial news agency only and can not broadcast programs which advocate political dissent to viewers!

Iranian student Dies in Custody

Remember the Iranian student at UCLA, Mostafa Tabatabaii-Nejad, who had refused to show his ID card to the campus security? Remember how so many Iranian ex-pats who always turn a blind eye about human rights abuses in the Islamic Republic suddenly became student rights champions? Remember how Islamic Republic lobbyists and agents in America, fanned the flames and encouraged Iranian students in American universities to take action? Remember how the Islamic Republic backed LA TV stations like Shabkhiz, Tapesh and Rangarang, suddenly became so vocal about student rights?

Well since then there has been at least two Iranian students who have died in the custody of the Islamic Republic police, Zahra Bani Yaghoub, a 27-year-old female student, who died in prison in the western city of Hamedan in October, shortly after she was detained by the morality police while out for a stroll with her fiance, and more recently on January 15, Ebrahim Lotfollahi, who was kidnapped by security forces in front of Payame Nur University in Sanandaj and died in custody nine days after.

So, where are those Iranian ex-pats who had become so vocal for Mostafa Tabatabaii-Nejad? Their heads buried in sand as usual!

What Was Shown on Al-Jazeera English

So here is the clip of what the listeningpost.tv decided to show. I appear right towards the end, and the only part shown is when I am talking about how much more organised, focused and professional the IRI propaganda is compared to how pathetic and amateur the US propaganda is. I had a feeling that the program was going to be about how the US tries to manipulate the media for its own end and I was trying to say that actually the US is so naive in propaganda when it comes to the might of the Islamic Republic and all the media they have at their disposal.



and look at what they put down as my occupation, blogger!!

On Aljazeera English

I was contacted by Aljazeera English TV for an interview request on reaction to Bush's visit and to the Iran-US boat incident from an Iranian point of view. I declined the interview at first thinking they are looking for some expert on international relationship, which I am not, but when they insisted they are just after a lay man's view, I accepted the offer. Before going to their recording place, I also asked around other friends what they thought I should say, so I could represent a more collective view.

The recording was not live, it is scheduled for tomorrow. Excerpts of what I said will be edited for the program broadcast. I find these kind of interviews more difficult. You never know what part of what you say will be included and in what context. You also don't have a lot of time to explain the background to your answers, what the program makers are looking for are sound bites they can use and you just have to hope for the best that your point of view is reflected.

So for the record's sake, here is the gist of what I said on the subjects:

On Bush's visit:

"Its all very well sending messages of solidarity to the Iranian people but often these empty messages are not followed by any meaningful help or even worse judging by past experiences we will see the state department doing some kind of a deal with the Iranian regime or some US intelligence agency will give undue credit to the government of Iran. Iranian people who want to change the regime in Iran can not trust the US as a reliable or even well informed ally."


On the Iran-US boats incident:

" The incident highlights that those who fear war between US and Iran and campaign in No War marches etc. should also campaign against the Iranian government which seems to be hell bent on adventurism and actually welcomes war with US to solve its domestic problems and gain more allies. As usual however the US has made a complete mess of the situation and discredited her claims, another PR disaster and is totally losing the media and the propaganda war to the Islamic Republic"

Haleh Afshar, the People's Peer!

A friend outside the UK recently sent me an email asking if I have any contact details from Haleh Afshar. I replied citing Haleh Afshar's university web page which displays her university email account. I was hesitant to continue with saying what I thought of Haleh Afshar in my reply email however. I have seen Haleh Afshar a few times on British TV and on each occasion she has been an absolute disgrace in my opinion.

First time I saw her was years ago on a program called After Dark, where her drunken state and continuous unnecessary giggling was just too embarrassing to watch, let alone listening to her utter nonsense. On another Question Time program, where again her constant giggling with Alex Salmond was annoying and embarrassing, she sort of attributed the candle lit march by Iranians paying condolences to 9/11 victims as an Islamic Republic approved event!

Since Haleh Afshar has become a member of the House of Lords, I have been receiving a lot of emails from people outside UK asking me what I think of her, so I thought if I do this post, I can just refer them to this link.

In my view Haleh Afshar, epitomizes the previous generation of over privileged Iranians, confused and full of unresolved contradictions, who liked to embrace fashionable ideas without thinking them through. The very generation of Iranian intellectuals who got Iran in such a mess today and I despise so much.

To make up your own mind just read this BBC religion program interview transcript with Haleh Afshar:
BBC Religion Program

And this is how I summarise it, if you don't have time to read the above:

In her own words she came from such a pampered background that until the age of 14, she had never combed her own hair, dressed or undressed herself or even had a bath by herself without the help of house servants. After reading Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, she became so impressed by the steely women of England who did their own things, that she insisted her parents send her to a boarding school in Britain.

Haleh Afshar is then sent to a Catholic boarding school in England where she embraces Marxism-Leninism.

She then claims to have worked with the Marxist-Leninist Fedayeen Guerrillas group against the Shah [not clear exactly what she did]. This is an underground secret armed organisation, but she tells her father about it! I can just imagine her saying "Daddy, I am working with the Fedayeen Marxist-Leninst guerrillas". Her father's reply, as she describes it in the interview, is you know if they come to power they will execute me and again in her own words in the interview she says 'Oh no, I won't shoot you - I will protect you'.

When the 1979 Islamic revolution happens, she is convinced it will be a Marxist revolution and a Fedayeen victory! But of course after the Shah's men, the Marxists were next to face the Islamic firing squads. She describes this period in her own interview like this:
"y'know every day there would be a lot of people I knew who were dying. So I used to just open the newspaper, read, have a cry and then go to work. And I knew we were defeated"
Just imagine! her friends are dying every day, she opens the newspapers, has a cry and then goes to work!!! No campaign to raise awareness of what was going on? No effort to bring pressure on Islamic Republic to stop the executions? No attempt to solicit the international public opinion? just have a little cry for the abandoned comrades who were dying every day and then go to work??

Disappointed with Iran not becoming a proletarian state, Haleh Afshar continues with her proletarian activities in UK. Again in her own words she describes how she stood in a designer Chanel suit outside Rowntree's factory asking the workers to go on strike! [I am sorry I just had a belly ache from laughter as I am writing this bit in the post]

Oh of course throughout this time she is also a Shia Muslim woman. My mind boggles as she tries to reconcile Marx's dialectical materialism with Shiite theology.
She claims feminism has been her core consistency through life. In one of her replies in the interview she says "I began by always wanting to be a man," :))

Since she has become a celebrity TV Islamic apologist, this is how she justifes gender apartheid in Islam:
"I think that women are oppressed universally by men, and the Islamic countries are no exception"

In recognition of her Islamic apologist stand, the UK government has decided she is an Islamic and an Iran expert and made her a people's peer in the House of Lords, which is just another contradiction in my view. What the hell is a people's peer? when did people decide she is their peer? and I thought I would never live to see a Marxist's delight at becoming a member of the House of Lords!

I think I have said enough and you get the picture. If you get time, read her full interview, and you will see that I have been very fair.

Robert Tait's Expulsion from Iran

What was surprising about the Guardian correspondent, Robert Tait's expulsion from Iran was not that he was expelled but that he managed to last so long. For Robert Tait, was not the Jim Muir or Francis Harrison BBC type Iran correspondents that sat in their offices and waited for the Iranian officials to feed them with the news.

The Guardian correspondent in Iran, Robert Tait, would go after the news. He had gained the trust of the dissidents and activists inside Iran and would make contact with them to report their side of the story. Robert Tait was the only Western correspondent who extensively and graphically reported the confrontations between the Islamic Moral Police and the Iranian women and youth.

Years ago I met Genieve Abdo and her husband Jonathan Lyons in London. They were in the same predicament as Robert Tait today. They opened my eyes as to why so many foreign correspondents in Iran are seduced by the Islamic regime and prefer an enjoyable assignment of luxuries and privileges in exchange for mild reports to the uncertainties of expulsion and looking for their next assignments and how that choice influences what they choose to report from Iran.

While all other correspondents were mesmerized by the smiles of the cunning President Khatami, Abdo and Lyons would report the crackdown on the students and the hollowness of the so-called reformists. While others would suffice by saying "another blow to the body of the reformists", Abdo would ask "How many more blows must be struck before you can say the reform is finished?".

In the same tradition, Robert Tait, preferred to report the real news and the real Iran behind the mask of the Ayatollahs. Tait knew the distinction between the Iranian people and the Iranian regime. Most importantly Tait reported on the conflict between what the Iranian masses want and the Islamic regime can not provide. A conflict which will always make the Islamic Republic paranoid and unsettled. Best described in his last sentence from his last report:
"[Iranian] people are thirsting for a sense of social freedom which the Islamic system is withholding from them."

1977 UK Archives on Iran

Each year the UK government releases a set of 30-year-old documents to the national archives for public study. Two interesting ones from what I have read so far have grabbed my attention related to Iran in 1977.

First one is around the death of Ali Shariati in Southampton, UK. Shariati is often referred to as the intellectual force of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. Almost all the MeK supporters I have ever come across who played an active part in bringing the Shiite clergy to power in Iran, started their misguided path by reading Ali Shariati's books. Shariati had a great aptitude for creating Socialist interpretations of Islam, and his books particularly impressed youngsters who had never read a book before. Shariati's sermons and his publications were instrumental in turning away the Iranian youth from secularism and nationalism and instead poisoned them with a cocktail of Islamic-Marxism, fondness for the Algerian revolution and glorification of martyrdom.

Shariati's supporters, as can be seen on his official website always claimed that he was murdered by the Shah's secret services, yet the released archives confirm that his death was due to nothing other than a heart attack.

The next document that grabbed my attention was the Shah's very accurate understanding of the players in Rhodesia. In his meetings with Anthony Parsons, the then UK ambassador to Tehran, the Shah expresses his concern about the future of Rhodesia and states that the Mugabe-Nkomo alliance is that of a temporary nature and short-lived political expediency. He expresses his clear preferences for Nkomo and refers to Mugabe as a dangerous village Marxist who will lead the country to ruin.
Remarkably accurate predictions 30 years ago!

In the Year 2007

Here is a summary of my highlights of the year 2007. It looks rather thin compared with 2005 and 2006, perhaps because I was out of the UK for most of 2007 and then ending up rupturing my pectoral tendon towards the end of 2007 or perhaps because this year I have felt more tired than ever before. As I explained to a friend in a New Year greeting email, I can not think of many things in which I have put so much time and effort into and yet got so little tangible returns from.

The year kicked off with exposing IRI propaganda activities in British universities:
http://azarmehr.blogspot.com/2007/02/iri-uses-british-universities-as.html

and then soliciting help for Iranian women campaigners from students and academics in UK universities:
http://azarmehr.blogspot.com/2007/03/promoting-1million-signature-campaign.html

Highlighting protests by Iranian teachers
http://azarmehr.blogspot.com/2007/03/teachers-demos-in-tehran.html

Showing Ahmadi-Nejad's popularity:
http://azarmehr.blogspot.com/2007/03/ahmadi-nejads-popularity.html
http://azarmehr.blogspot.com/2007/06/governor-sacked-for-low-turnout-to.html

Highlighting the crackdown on dress code in Iran:
http://azarmehr.blogspot.com/2007/04/more-pictures-of-crackdown-on-islamic.html
http://azarmehr.blogspot.com/2007/05/dont-arrest-my-mum.html

Then the crackdown on "hoodlums and thugs":
http://azarmehr.blogspot.com/2007/05/more-pictures-of-police-brutality-in.html

Pourya's escape:
http://azarmehr.blogspot.com/2007/07/pouyas-escape.html

Some good news in 2007, was sponsoring the CIS football team:
http://azarmehr.blogspot.com/2007/05/sponsoring-cis-football-team.html

Exposing the hypocrite supporters of the Islamic Republic in London:
http://azarmehr.blogspot.com/2007/06/hypocrisy-of-iri-supporters-in-london.html

Hosting Fakhravar in London:
http://azarmehr.blogspot.com/2007/06/fakhravar-in-uk.html

Meeting face to face with one of my favourite persons, Nazanin Afshin-Jam:
http://azarmehr.blogspot.com/2007/08/with-nazanin-afshin-jam.html

The sort of people the UK Home Office grants asylum to:
http://azarmehr.blogspot.com/2007/09/shahin-parvizi-press-tv-employee.html

Turning up to face the Islamic Republic supporters in London on the Al-Quds day:
http://azarmehr.blogspot.com/2007/10/some-more-pics-from-al-quds-and-counter.html
http://azarmehr.blogspot.com/2007/10/counter-demo-to-al-quds-rally.html

Going to Rome with Fakhravar:
http://azarmehr.blogspot.com/2007/12/back-from-rome-conference.html

and then exposing the way VOA Persian reported it:
http://azarmehr.blogspot.com/2007/12/voa-persian-lies-about-rome-conference.html

Kite Runner

Earlier this week, the US embassy in London showed a pre-premiere screening of the film, The Kite Runner, based on the best selling novel by Afghan-American writer, Khalid Hosseini.
I have been too busy this week to write about the event in my blog until now, but let me tell you straight away, it was an amazing film.

I must admit I had not read the novel and I did not know what to expect. The first thing that grabbed my admiration before the movie even started, was the calligraphy of the starting titles. The film is about many things, the story of Afghanistan, friendship and loyalty, a proud father, the long lasting guilt of showing cowardice, sacrifice, courage, sudden upheaval of lives, exile, re-building of lives in a new land, the roots to the original homeland, new freedoms and opportunities, the misery of living under extremist totalitarian regimes and much more.

You could say I could somehow relate to each one of those topics above and perhaps thats why I was so mesmerized by the story of the film which was so beautifully told and so well directed.

After the film, Khalid Hosseini himself joined the panel which was hosted by the US embassy's cultural attache, Michael Macy. Khalid talked about his own life, his book and the making of the movie and then fielded the questions from the audience. The last question was asked by a woman sitting right next to me and it was which scene in the film was the most memorable for Khalid himself. I can't remember what Khalid Hosseini answered, because somehow my own thoughts made me ask the same question in my mind from myself. It was really difficult to pin point just one scene.

Loyalty is so significant for me in my own friendships and the director, Marc Forster, could not have picked a more suitable young actor for the role of Hassan which was so genuinely played by Ahmad Khan Mahmadizada, in so many scenes which got imprinted in my mind.

Hassan's fascination with the story of Rostam and Sohrab from the Iranian Book of Kings (Shahnameh), and the slight similarities between this saga from the Shahnameh and the story of the film was another memorable scene which became more significant once the entire plot was unfolded.

The entire upheaval of exiled communities and the scenes related to it struck a chord with all of those who have experienced exile, as an Iraqi woman in the audience mentioned in her question.
There was a couple of factual mistakes or perhaps as Hollywood would like to call it, "artistic licence", in the film. The Taliban were shown coming to the stadium after a game of football watched by men and women in burkas, where as in fact Taliban did not allow football nor women being present in a mixed audience with men even in their burkas. Ignoring this minor Hollywood ignorance, The Kite Runner is a film well worth watching. It will keep you glued to your seat and you will talk about it with others who watched it for days after.

Rome Photos

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