Monday, May 21, 2007
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Just how bad is Iran's international image right now?
If you're a developing country that reflexively opposes the United States, you have to work exceptionally hard -- I'm talking years of effort here -- to do anything that provokes the ire of Noam Chomsky. I mean, this is a guy who had few qualms about the Cambodian genocide because the Khmer Rouge was anti-American. Clearly, the bar of awfulness is pretty high to get ol' Noam's attention. Amazingly, Mahmoud Ahmdainejad's Iran has pulled this off. Robin Wright explains in the Washington Post: Momentum is building behind an academic boycott of Iran to pressure the government to release imprisoned American scholar Haleh Esfandiari, director of Middle East programs at the Smithsonian's Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, who was jailed in Tehran's notorious Evin Prison May 8 after more than four months under house arrest....If you're interested in registering your own protest about this action to the Iranian government, Amnesty International has conveniently set up a website to send letters to Ahmdainejad and other Iranian leaders. UPDATE: Wright's follow-up report is not good: American scholar Haleh Esfandiari has been charged with trying to topple the Iranian regime, Iran's state-controlled television reported today.I suspect that Iran's war against American "soft power" is going to have a lot of collateral damage. posted by Dan on 05.21.07 at 09:27 AM Comments: Well, the GOP can comfort itself that the Iranians agree that George Soros is awful. posted by: Bruce Moomaw on 05.21.07 at 09:27 AM [permalink]Deborah Solomon of the NYT Sunday Magazine asked Chomsky if he would ever live outside the US. He replied (in my recollection) "No, the United States is the best country in the world." Who knows what's going on in his pointiest of heads. posted by: George W on 05.21.07 at 09:27 AM [permalink]Post a Comment: |
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