Hearing an echo

This headline in Guardian would make a normal person sit up and pay attention:

US academics admit aiding Iran democracy drive

Two Americans detained by Iran for alleged spying last night admitted involvement in US-backed pro-democracy projects but appeared to stop short of making widely anticipated full confessions. The acknowledgements by Haleh Esfandiari and Kian Tajbaksh - both Iranian-born academics - came in recorded interviews broadcast on state television apparently to show that civil protest movements in Iran were being supported by the US.

Acknowledgment... Real eerie. Especially considering what it is about and where it comes from.
A sixty seven years old Iranian-American academic against the might of Islamic Republic of Iran.

Ms Esfandiari, 67, Middle East director of the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Centre, and Mr Tajbaksh, 45, an associate of the George Soros Open Society Institute, face charges of "espionage" and "endangering national security" after being accused of trying to overthrow Iran's Islamic system.

And a Guardian scribe registering the farce in a detached way of an uninvolved apolitical observer. An immediate association:

The British lawyer and MP Denis Pritt, for example, wrote: "Once again the more faint-hearted socialists are beset with doubts and anxieties," but "once again we can feel confident that when the smoke has rolled away from the battlefield of controversy it will be realized that the charge was true, the confessions correct and the prosecution fairly conducted."

Probably we are not far from reading in the Guardian something in the line of: "the trials in Moscow Tehran represent a new triumph in the history of progress". No doubt St. Seumas is already training his pen...




to Judeopundit.

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