Monday, July 16, 2007

Fake Confessions used as propaganda Against America



Lie or Die

Iran TV shows detained Iranian-Americans

AP: TEHRAN, Iran—Iranian state-run television broadcast clips on Monday of two Iranian-Americans being held on charges of endangering national security, mixing footage of the detainees with images of civil unrest and revolution.

The video was a preview of a program called "Under the Name of Democracy" that state television indicated would be broadcast on Wednesday.

Haleh Esfandiari and Kian Tajbakhsh were shown separately, both in what appeared to be homes and wearing civilian attire. Clips of the two, speaking in Farsi, were shown intermittently throughout the video.

"I was an element in the velvet revolution in Georgia," said Esfandiari at one point. The broadcast made no reference to the context of her comments.
Esfandiari, director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, was jailed in early May.

The Iranian Intelligence Ministry has accused her of trying to set up networks of Iranians with the ultimate goal of creating a "soft revolution" in Iran to topple the hardline Islamic regime, along the lines of the revolutions that ended communist rule in eastern Europe.

Archive images of street violence and protests in what appeared to be eastern Europe and Iran were mixed in with images of the two detainees.

At another point in the video, she said: "Finding speakers has been my role," a possible reference to her efforts to bring prominent Iranians to the U.S. to talk about the political situation in Iran."

Click Here to watch the promotional piece for the scheduled program to be aired on state TV on the so-called confessions. (the video clip, of course, is in Persian)

This propaganda is a direct assault on America and our democracy. I'm so angst-ridden and depressed. There is no leadership to be found in this country and no one is standing up for our democracy and our reputation. The MOIS (Intelligence agents) thugs are known to use horrendous methods such as artificially addicting prisoners to drugs to elicit confessions from them. Luckily, most people in Iran know this and will not believe this propaganda.

P.S. My anonymous reader added this bit of interesting tidbit:

Serendip, Maybe you heared but these days journalists, Student activists, or women rights activists who think they may get arrested, usually announce (in their papers, or blogs)that no one should belive what they say on TV-confessions when they are in jail, becuase it only means they have not been able to tolerate the torture. Everyone knows they are being forced to say certain things.Only non-Iranians specially Leftists believe what the official media says about them.


Many thanks anonymous jan.

8 comments:

programmer craig said...

What is surprising to me is that so many Iranian ex-pats (on Iranian.com for instance) seem to believe that these hostages are being treated justly. That's very bothersome. When even a large percentage of exiles believe what the regime does is either acceptable, or no worse than what the US does, what can be done? Short of military action, I mean? I don't see any other options. I really don't. I've lost faith in any kind of pro-democracy regime change in Iran, mostly due to Iranian bloggers and people on the Iranian Times. It just doesn't seem possible that there will ever be a home-grown democracy in Iran. The same people who are saying Iranians can fix the problems themselves if the US would just stop interfering, defend the regime quite strenuously when it violates even the most basic standards of human decency.

SERENDIP said...

PC: Iranians are not ready for democracy because they don't know what it is. When you don't understand something and don't know about the existence of something, you won't have a desire to get it because you cannot want something when you can't recognize its existence. For instance, you would want ice cream when it's 100 degress because you've tasted it before but if you've never tasted ice cream and only know it in some abstract form, you will not miss it or crave for it. I hope I'm making sense. LOL

I agree that there will not be a home grown democratic movement anytime soon. However, this should not be our main concern. Our concern should be what's good for our nation and for the rest of the Western world before Sharia takes over.

SERENDIP said...

Regarding the Iranian ex-pats: the majority of them are opportunists who have a lot of financial investments in Iran and do not care about freedom and liberty for their fellow Iranians. They don't really see themselves as Iranians anymore only when it comes to eating Kabob...LOL

programmer craig said...

Thanks, Serendip. You did make sense :)

Rita Loca said...

Yes, your exclamations are very revealing. People often bring up the democracy issue.

SERENDIP said...

JM: This conclusion was extremely hard for me to reach...but I had to be truthful to myself. I hope I'm wrong.

Frieda said...

well the only American editorial that has been very outspoken about this issue has been The Weekly Standard..Here again a conservative wing of American politics are more in tune with what is going on in Iran..Shouldn't Democrats learn a thing or two??

Anonymous said...

Serendip, Maybe you heared but these days journalists, Student activists, or women rights activists who think they may get arrested, usually announce (in their papers, or blogs)that no one should belive what they say on TV-confessions when they are in jail, becuase it only means they have not been able to tolerate the torture. Everyone knows they are being forced to say certain things.Only non-Iranians specially Leftists believe what the official media says about them.