First take 70 minutes to watch this powerful HBO documentary about Neda Agha-Soltan and the events surrounding her murder in Tehran almost a year ago– including interviews with brave family members still in Iran.
Then read in The Guardian about the Iranian regime’s efforts to jam the documentary’s broadcast into Iran by the Voice of America’s Persian TV network, and about how it nonetheless “has rapidly gone viral [via the Internet] in Iran in the run-up to next Saturday’s anniversary of the disputed elections that triggered the protests.” (You can also read a piece by the journalist who secretly filmed the interviews with Neda’s family.)
Then watch George Galloway (who used to be a member of Parliament) rage against the Zionist state (and compare the new Conservative government’s position on Israel favorably to that of Labour’s!) via his employer, the Iranian government propaganda arm Press TV– the same Press TV which has disseminated the lie that Neda’s death in an anti-regime demonstration was staged and that she later was murdered by her friends. (This followed Press TV’s dissemination of earlier lies about her death.)
Then consider how eager Iran’s rulers must be to divert attention from the coming anniversary of the fraudulent presidential election and the subsequent brutal crackdown on those who protested. Would any so-called humanitarian accept the offer of the murderers, torturers and rapists of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to escort ships to Gaza?
Finally, note the remarkable fact that the pro-Galloway blog Socialist Unity has in less than a week published by my count 53 posts so far expressing outrage about Israel’s boarding of the Mavi Marmara and the subsequent deaths. Compare that to SU’s treatment of the events following last June’s phony election in Iran. The first post on the subject, by Andy Newman, appeared on June 22– 10 days into the protests, arrests and killings. It began thus:
I have been personally reluctant to express much opinion over the recent events in Iran until the dust settled more, and a wider spread of opinions from Iran itself emerged.
He then went on, essentially, to tell the rest of the world to butt out, and continued to do so in the months that followed.
Draw your own conclusions.
