Iranian Atomic Urgency
• Does this CNN video on the Iranian and Israeli nuclear programs create an equivalence between the two? I think Sara Sidner offers enough context to say No, but judge for yourself:
• Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s making the most of his US time for meeting reporters. You can imagine the “new world order” he talked up with AP, along with sanctions, Syria, and his nuclear program.
• LA Times: While Ahmadinejad was addressing the UN, Iranian authorities arrested his top media advisor.
Ali Akbar Javanfekr, who also headed IRAN Magazine, was banned last year from working in journalism for three years after his publication ran an article exploring the history of Islamic dress, which was critical of women being compelled to wear a head scarf. The piece was deemed contrary to “Islamic principles,” leading to charges against Javanfekr for publishing material “offensive to Islamic codes and public morality.”
Javanfekr also served as managing editor of the official Islamic Republic News Agency. His conviction last year was seen as an escalation of the feud between Ahmadinejad and other Iranian conservatives, who accuse the president of undermining Islamic values and trying to marginalize clerics.
• Is it too little, too late for any good to come from this?
Argentina and Iran to discuss 1990s bombings
• Bibi overplayed his hand, agree NY Times columnist Roger Cohen, Toronto Star columnist Haroon Siddiqui, and Patrick Tyler (LA Times). For more commentary, see three views from the Christian Science Monitor (John Bolton, Daryl Kimball, and Edward Haley).
Arab Spring Winter
• Syrian shells land in Israeli Golan Heights:
The IDF stressed that the fire was not intentionally directed at Israel and that it is believed to be the result of the escalating clashes between rebel forces and Syrian President Bashar Assad’s army.
• 300 Syrians killed in single day. 40 were Palestinians, massacred in a town near Damascus.
Rest O’ the Roundup
• Worth reading: Dr. Toby Greene (Huffington Post) examines why Hezbollah’s not on the EU’s list of proscribed terror organizations.
• I’m not making this up: Bonking at the Beeb: why BBC staff can’t keep their hands off each other:
Employees may be, as per the Corporate Manifesto, a wonderful rainbow mixture when they gain access to the Beeb, but the corporation’s homogenising powers are such that it spits them out looking and sounding exactly the same.
Which is why they find each other so attractive: this is not just the world’s biggest broadcasting corporation, this is the world’s biggest mutual appreciation society. Producers, directors, managers (and perhaps caterers and cleaners too) find one another irresistible because they’ve been made in the same image: right-on opinions, estuary English, casual attire. Heck, they even read the same paper – The Guardian.
(Image of Naser via YouTube/PressTVGlobalNews, Google car via Flickr/donjd2)
For more, see the previous Israel Daily News Stream.
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