Seymour Hersh from The New Yorker has reported that the U.S. is conducting secret operations in Iran. They are scouting for potential military and nuclear facilities; very necessary information for a future bombing run. The story makes extensive use of anonymous quotes, and as a journalist, that doesn’t bode too well with me. Like I said, I have no doubt that the U.S. is conducting covert operations, but anonymous quotes make me feel very skeptical. Let’s not forget about Jason Blair. Hersh quotes one government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon as saying, “The civilians in the Pentagon want…

She’s a fiesty Nobel Laureate defying one of the cruelest totalitarian regimes of our day. But no, I won’t be adding her to the “Babes of Politics” section. Not that her doing this will mean too much. I can imagine it will infuriate the student resistance movement if she is imprisoned, but more importantly, it garners attention from the outside world toward Iran. The more human rights abuses getting focus in the U.S., the better the Iranian peoples’ chances at getting help.

Blog-Iran over at Activist Chat posted some commentary regarding an article by Saul Singer: Singer had this to say about Bush’s policy toward Iran: “Branding Iran, Iraq, and North Korea as the “axis of evil” was the right thing to do. But saying that and then not having a policy, much less implementing it, toward Iran is worse than not having said it in the first place. Since then it seems that Bush has learned not to set such bold markers. That’s the wrong lesson; we need more markers and more follow-up.” I agree with the first part of Singer’s…

Hossein Derakhshan has gotten breeze of more political censorship on the media in Iran, a big hit to the over 60,000 registered bloggers over there. Friends in Iran, journalists and technicians, are saying that judiciary officials have ordered all major ISP to filter all blogging services including PersianBlog, BlogSpot, Blogger, BlogSky, and even BlogRolling. I don’t think this will be the end of blogging and the attempt to voice free opinion in Iran. If we remember back to October, the BBC wrote an article about protests over censorship in Iran. Recognize Hossein in there? This guy deserves a lot of…