Perhaps you remember when Amnesty International’s journal printed as its lead story a laudatory review that liberal author Margaret Atwood wrote about Reading Lolita in Tehran. Neither Amnesty nor Atwood nor Jacki Lyden, who promoted the twisted account of life in Iran on National Public Radio, bothered to mention the author’s close ties to warmongers like Bernard Lewis and Paul Wolfowitz.
A similar fraud is unfolding this summer. Singer and former Miss Canada, Nazanin Afshin-Jam, is on a U.S. tour this month to sell her new CD and promote “human rights” and world peace at selected Borders Books stores coast to coast. That should be good news — she is good-looking, articulate, and, like Atwood, has all the right liberal connections. The music label’s web page features her solemn declaration in Persian and English that
“Nazanin is an independent. She is not part of any political group, association or organization. She helps all groups and individuals who are working towards human rights, freedom and gender equality.”
Too bad actions speak louder than words.
In this photo from www.helpnazanin.com, Nazanin proudly joins Abbas Fakhravar, a self-described protégé of Washington Likudnik and hatemonger Richard Perle (the photo is also on display on Fakhravar’s blog). Sitting between them is Iran’s corrupt Shah-in-waiting, Reza Pahlavi, who, as the original caption explains in Persian, hosted the private February 2007 meeting to advance “human rights” in Iran!!!
Pahlavi has close ties to the Israel lobby and openly supports trade sanctions against Iran.
UPDATE: “With Defenders Like Nazanin, Who Needs Enemies?” Part 2
Based in Washington DC, Rostam Pourzal writes regularly on the politics of human rights. MRZine has also published Pourzal’s “Market Fundamentalists Lose in Iran (For Now)” (3 August 2005); “Open Letter to Iran’s Nobel Laureate” (27 February 2006); “Open Letter to Iran’s Nobel Laureate: Part 2” (9 March 2006); “The Shah: America’s Nuclear Poster Boy” (25 May 2006); “Iranian Cold Warriors in Sheep’s Clothing” (20 May 2006); “MEK Tricks US Progressives, Gains Legitimacy” (12 June 2006); “What Really Happened in Tehran on June 12? Did Human Rights Watch Get It Wrong?” (18 June 2006); “Iran’s Western Behavior Deserves Criticism” (24 June 2006); “Iranian Anti-Censorship Crusader Accepts Censorship at Amnesty International” (19 July 2006); “An Israeli Attack Can Shatter the Relative Safety of Iran’s Jews” (28 July 2006); and “Let’s Not Trivialize Discrimination in Iran” (22 May 2007).
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