UCL's Marxist Lecturer on BBC Persian!

 I often wonder if the poor UK tax payer has any idea where his or her hard earned money ends up and the upkeep of what kind of institutions and people is maintained through the taxes they pay.

Well here is one example in this video. The person being interviewed is the Marxist UCL lecturer and member of the Socialist Workers Party, Ali Alizadeh.

The interview is taking place on BBC Persian and this is what he is saying:
"we need both factions [hardliners & reformists] in Iran, because the hardliners are the ones fighting in Syria and are defending the security of Iran. We don't want to eliminate the hardliners. If we have a red line in Iran, its with those people who under the Israeli, Saudi and US flags were planning economic and military attack on Iran. We can live with the likes of Jannati and Messbah Yazdi but with those people, never!"

Don't get too taken up by his typical Leftard way of accusing Iranian secular liberals with being under the Israeli, Saudi and US flags, that's just typical Leftist politics. They live in the West, enjoy the privileges provided in the West themselves, and yet accuse others who are happy to live in a Western democracy as being under Israeli, US flag wanting to invade Iran. Pathetic Leftist tactics to throw mud at their enemy.

And I wonder if this Marxist lecturer at the University College of London, who is poisoning the minds of hundreds of UK students, realises where he is living and who he has had to flee from and whether he really thinks the Iranian hardliners, who killed thousands of Marxists, are happy for an atheist effeminate looking bourgeoise Marxist, like him to live amongst them as he claims he wishes to live amongst them?!

BBC4's Disinformation-mentary

USSR's infamous security agency, the KGB, were known for their mastery in spreading disinformation, but BBC4's version of the Shah's 2500 year celebrations ceremony of Iranian history, was definitely vintage KGB disinformation.

Just as in any successful KGB disinformation campaign, you need to spread a myth by telling lots of half truths first, i.e. tell part of the story but not the whole story in order to mislead the public opinion stealthily.

The objective of the so called documentary was simple, viewers should conclude that the people of Iran were starving, yet the Shah of Iran had rather spend a fortune on a lavish banquet than feed his own people!

Pivotal to building such disinformation is of course to induce in the mind of the viewer  a wild exaggeration of the cost of the celebrations. In order to answer such vital question, the BBC conveniently doesn't ask the project manager of the event, Abdolreza Ansari, about the costs, even though he was available and is featured in the same documentary. Instead a figure of $650 Million is dished out, by the first president of the Islamic Republic, Bani-Sadr, who was toppled half way through his presidency and now lives in exile in Paris. How could Bani-Sadr have known what the cost of the celebrations came to? He had nothing to do with the organisation of the ceremonies. He was not even in Iran at the time, but plotting to overthrow the Shah with the help of Syria's dictator, Hafiz Assad.

Fortunately, the project manager of the 2500 year spectacular celebrations of Iran's history has been on the record in the past and has stated the cost of the ceremonies, both in an interview with Cyrus Kadivar and in a much more balanced documentary aired on Manoto TV.  The total cost of the celebrations was in fact $22 Million!
"One third of the money was raised by Iranian industrialists to pay for all the festivities. Another third was from the budget of the Ministry of Court and went to pay for the Tent City. The rest of the money came from the original budget under Senator Amir Homayoun which he had invested in 1960 and was spent on the building of the Shahyad tower" - Interview with Abdolreza Ansari by Cyrus Kadivar.

BBC4's Storyville also conveniently forgets to make any comparisons with other celebrations, such as the French government's $200 million celebration of the 200th anniversary of the fall of the Bastille or perhaps more suitably with what has been spent by the Islamic Republic of Iran on Ayatollah Khomeini's mausoleum, the most opulent mausoleum in the world!

Of course there were people living in poverty in Iran when the 2500 year celebrations ceremony was taking place, just like there were people living in abject poverty in France during the 200th anniversary of the fall of Bastille celebrations and just like between 44.5 - 55% of Iran's urban population alone, according to a recent report titled 'Measurement and Economic Analysis of Urban Poverty', lives below the poverty line in the Islamic Republic of Iran today. But the BBC won't make a documentary on the most costly and opulent mausoleum in the world for Ayatollah Khomeini while there is so much growing poverty in Iran. After all, that may displease the Islamic Republic authorities,  the consequences of which could be the closure of the BBC offices in Iran!

Had the Shah spent the $22 Million cost of the celebrations on feeding the poor people, would that have improved the under-developed parts of Iran? Instead the Shah used the money to promote a magical country steeped in history to the rest of the world. The ceremonies showed the rest of the world Iran's growing confidence in itself and a country with a stable foreign policy of co-existence with the rest of the world which was able  to gather heads of states from all around the world. Would this not have brought about more investment, more trade and improved the living standards of the Iranians? As the English proverb says "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime".

Throughout the documentary there are more truths that are conveniently not told. The program director for example, Hassan Amini, himself is the grandson of a former Prime Minister of the Shah, Ali Amini. Actually this is mentioned in Persian by the Shah's former ambassador to Washington, Ardeshir Zahedi, where he points out the responsibility for the Shah's failures should rest on his officials too, "like your grandfather, the former Prime Minister" Zahedi tells the documentary's director, however this part is conveniently not translated in the subtitles.

Prime Minister Ali Amini, the grand father of the documentary's director, was another one of Qajar dynasty descendants who prospered under the Pahlavi rule. The Turkic Qajar dynasty who ruled Iran for 140 years, were the most incompetent and the most decadent dynasty throughout Iran's 2500 year history. One incompetent Qajar King after another, led the demise of the Persian empire and reduced it to a poor backward country, a vassal of British and Tsarist Russian empires. Throughout Iran's history every time a new dynasty took over, the members of the previous dynasty were mercilessly massacred by the new kings on the block. The Pahlavis, the first Persian dynasty to rule Iran since the Arab invasion 1400 years earlier, with the exception of a few scattered local dynasties, were the only dynasty in the Iranian history who were magnanimous towards the previous ancien régime clan members. Most of the Qajar offsprings and princes, and there were many for they had huge hareems, prospered under the Pahlavi rule and they became important officials in the new era of modernisation, like the documentary director's grandfather, Prime Minister Amini. Yet the treachery of the Qajar offsprings to Iran has never ceased. It seems they carry a gene of betrayal in their DNA.

The viewer is also not told the entire truth about who the dissidents featured in the documentary are. For example Abdolkarim Lahiji is the man who wrote the first draft of the Islamic Republic's constitution that has put Iran under the total dictatorship of the Supreme Leader. At one point the subtitle under Lahiji reads "You are leading us to hell!" Of course Lahiji was referring to the Shah holding the celebrations ceremony but I leave it to the reader to decide what  "led us to hell"? the 2500 year celebrations of Iranian history or the constitution of the Islamic Republic?

Even the true identities of the "experts" used in the documentary are kept from the viewers. One of the so-called 'experts' used, Arshin Adib-Moghadam, is the son of the former head of the Islamic Republic mosque in Hamburg. Again I leave it to the readers to decide where Arshin Adib-Moghadam's loyalties lie or if he is a non-partisan academic?  See:
"Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, an Unlikely Non-partisan Analyst"

Khomeini's opposition to the abolition of the feudal system, a major cause of poverty in Iran, and the women's rights to vote, the rights of the religious minorities and other progressive reforms of the Shah are not fully and properly explained to the viewers either. The idea after all is that the Shah was a tyrant and Khomeini was the liberator of the Iranian people or so the BBC would have the viewers believe.

To confuse the viewers further, the wrong footage is often used for the subject matter, for example the footage of the mobs in 1953 who overthrew Mossadeq and the riots in that era is shown as the people's opposition to the Shah's reforms, known as the "white revolution" in 1963:

The list of half truths and not telling the whole truths continue in this BBC disinformation-mentary and it can be a good text book example of non-objective media reporting.

At the end, all I can say to the BBC is, we were proud of the 2500 year celebrations ceremony of our history and we were more than happy to flaunt it, so get over it BBC and worry about keeping your office in Tehran!

Press TV or PressForSex TV?

Press TV, as most people by now know, is the English speaking arm of the Islamic Republic's state TV broadcasting. On the surface therefore, it has to display all the pious religious credentials the Iranian state claims to safeguard. Male presenters don't wear Western ties that "resemble a Christian cross" and female presenters of course have to adhere to the strict Islamic dress code.

Press TV, as with the rest of the Islamic Republic media and institutions, is also fiercely obsessed with accusing all others of loose morals and having rampant sexual orgies behind the scenes. Such is the obsession by the Islamic Republic's media that they have even stooped as low as creating fake web sites to implicate presenters of other TV presenters and journalists of raping children, and even making blatant lies that a female exiled journalist was raped in front of her child in the streets of London!

The sudden resignation by a Press TV female news anchor, Sheena Shirani, before the weekend and her revelations of how she was under constant harassment by her news director and other male bosses in Press TV, is a manifestation of the old proverb, "The pot calling the kettle black" or to be more PC, "the skunk calling the rose stinky".

Former Press TV news anchor, Sheena Shirani's revelations prove that the underlying reason for the Iranian state media's obsession with accusing all others of having illicit sexual relations behind the scenes, is in fact a deep rooted frustration within the sexually repressed mentality of the Islamic Republic media's own senior male managers.

Sheena Shirani's revelations about the widespread sexual harassment in Press TV, started with her bombshell Facebook status when she announced she had left Press TV:

Soon after the above Facebook status, she posted a 10 minute recorded telephone conversation with her news director, Hamid Reza Emadi, when he demanded from her to ejaculate him in return for all the 'favours' he had done for her in the past.

In the recoded conversation, Emadi tells his news anchor that her breasts drive him crazy. Then he begs her to do him a favour several times. The favour he was asking for turns out to be that she should make him feel better by helping him ejaculate. Emadi then carries on saying his balls have been aching for her since the previous night and despite Sheena's objections that she doesn't want to know about such things, Emadi, the Press TV news director, persists that she is indebted to him and so she should help him ejaculate. Despite Sheena's objections that she can not do such things, Emadi presses on saying "You can do a lot more for me, you can have sex with me... " Sheena tells Emadi he should ask his wife to do these things for him, but Emadi replies "If my wife could please me, why would I come after you?".

The conversation then briefly turns into English. Emadi asks her in English "Why do you hate me so much?" and Sheena answers back in English saying "Why do I hate you so much? You make me hate you! What you are doing is hurting me". Then they revert to talking in Persian again and Sheena says "He is sexually harassing her", Emadi however has a different interpretation of sexual harassment and says "I don't harass you, its just that sometimes I feel frustrated and I call you because you are my friend".

Sheena sounding totally stressed replies "Just because I am polite to you it doesn't mean you should expect such things from me. I don't want to have a relationship with you other than a working relationship".
Emadi again ignores her and insists how much he has stuck up for her in the past and its now her turn to help him. Sheena's answer once again is "It doesn't mean I should sexually please you, I can not do it".
Emadi then refers to another colleague at Press TV, "You know how much I stood up for you against that beastly man, Afshar" Sheena snaps back "Afshar is another lech like you. You know all about him. I really don't want to talk anymore".

Emadi again ignores Sheena and seems to have the delusion that he can turn her on by saying "I am lying completely naked in bed now, you have a very sexy body, you don't realise it yourself. That husband of yours who left you must have been a complete idiot. You are super sexy. I am not the only one saying this. You are just unaware of the treasure you possess. Even despite those awful clothes they make you wear, even when you are wearing those clothes, you drive me crazy. Your body drives me crazy. I do my best to stop myself from the way I feel about you, everyone else feels the same about you. Even when you walk its as if you are offering sex, you don't realise yourself, you are super hot! Will you help me ejaculate?"
Sheena again protests and Emadi clutching at the last straws makes the 'shocking' admission that he is sexually hyperactive and needs help!
Sheena asks him "Is that my fault?" and Emadi quickly replies "Yes it is your fault, because you have such beautiful tits and such sexy lips. You have destroyed me with your breasts. Just give me 2 minutes of your time and make me ejaculate!"
Sheena's last words are "I can't. Bye" before she puts the phone down.

Sheena has also posted the unwanted flirtatious text messages her news director used to send her:

There is also a 30 minute video of Sheena speaking on camera, which reveals the extent of sexual harassment faced by female employees working at Press TV.

Interestingly also, Hamid Reza Emadi, is none other than the man who directed the forced confessions of the former jailed Newsweek correspondent in Iran, Maziar Bahari , which Press TV then aired as if it was a normal interview made without duress and Ofcom repeatedly tried to ignore as a gross violation of its rules, so as not to upset the ruling regime in Iran.

So there you have it, despite all the veneers of piety and reverence for Islamic morals, and all the false accusations against others, once again it seems as the famous Iranian poet, Hafiz, so pertinently put it seven centuries ago:

On the pulpit, preachers, pour out their pious display
Yet in private, they behave in a different way
I have a question to ask of the learned in our midst
Why Confession-Priests, make their own repentance delay.