March 15, 2006

World Media Watch

by Gloria R. Lalumia

BuzzFlash Note: WMW provides BuzzFlash readers foreign views and perspectives that are not usually available from the media here in the U.S. The presentation of these articles from these international publications is not an endorsement of their viewpoints.

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WORLD MEDIA WATCH FOR MARCH 15, 2006

1//Asia Times Online, Honk Kong--INSIDE THE US’S REGIME-CHANGE SCHOOL (… Cyrus Safdari, an independent Iranian analyst, said: "As I gather, the idea was to fund and train activists to be agents provocateurs along the lines of the Otpor movement in Serbia. Their job was to utilize various techniques, such as anti-government graffiti etc, to embolden the student movement and provoke a general government crackdown, which could then be used as a pretext to 'spark' a mass uprising in Iran that appeared to be spontaneous and indigenous." Nilofar's invitation to attend the Dubai sessions arrived last July, several months before the administration of US President George W Bush requested an extra US$75 million of funding from Congress to accelerate its efforts to achieve regime change inside Iran. Whether the State Department's new initiative proves successful or not, the huge publicity and acute suspicion that already surround it can only make its task harder. "I guess the whole program had developed some serious leaks," commented Safdari, the Iranian political analyst, "since I heard about it repeatedly from various guests at various Iranian social functions who wanted to show off about how well connected to the CIA they had become." … Nilofar is similarly unimpressed by the caliber of the trainees that she encountered in Dubai. She describes the majority as "power-hungry", mahrum - a Farsi word meaning deprived - and beset by temper tantrums. "Of the political activists now in the country, many come from lower-class families who have been deprived of everything and now they've decided to overthrow the government," Nilofar said. "But what they don't understand is that the idiot students who are being beaten up now, they will not be tomorrow's leaders, they'll be pushed aside.)

2//Middle East Times, Egypt--SYRIA’S CYBER REBELS OUTFOX GOVERNMENT (Syria's Internet has emerged as the vehicle for the bold voice of dissent in Damascus, where the state regularly exercises censorship and stifles domestic criticism. The electronic media has pushed the envelope of what is acceptable but at a heavy price. Savvy cyber rebels who have broadened the political debate could be preyed upon at any time and thrown in jail for proselytizing to Syria's burgeoning Internet audience, thought to number more than 500,000 people. The most provocative site online is All4Syria, run by Ayman Abdel Nur, himself a member of the Baath party and a childhood friend of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad. … Despite petty harassment, Nur has avoided punishment at the hand of Syria's security apparatus, perhaps because of his long ties to Assad. He believes that his acidic commentary will help rescue the Baath regime from corruption and incompetence.)

3//The Daily Star, Lebanon--IRAN, INDIA, PAKISTAN START TALKS ON GAS PIPELINE (Officials from Iran, India and Pakistan began talks on Tuesday in Tehran on a pipeline project for the export of Iranian natural gas to South Asia, the Oil Ministry news agency reported. "The main subjects of the talks will be the framework of the project and the price of gas," Iran's Deputy Oil Minister Hadi Nejad-Hosseinian was quoted as saying by the Shana agency. … India plans to initially draw 60 million cubic meters of gas from the pipeline and increase the quantity to 90 million cubic meters within the next two to three years. Pakistan has estimated its initial demand at 30 million cubic meters which would double by 2013. Despite initial opposition, U.S. President George W, Bush said during a visit to India this month that he had no objections to New Delhi buying gas from a country that Washington accuses of supporting terrorism and attempting to make a nuclear bomb.)

4//The Toronto Star, Canada--SALE OF UNIFORMS ON NET ALARMS MILITARY (The military is investigating how uniforms and equipment that is issued only to Canadian soldiers is ending up for sale on the Internet, CBC News reports. The sale is also raising concerns about the security of troops. … Military investigators believe many of the items being sold on online may have been stolen by soldiers or civilians working in the supply chain. The big worry, however, is who is buying the uniforms and why. … A search of the web also turned up gloves, combat helmets, specialized sniper jackets, and a harness meant for the country's elite commandos, the JTF2. That harness sold online last week for $1,200 US before it was even issued to the soldiers.)

5//The Independent, UK--BBC TOLD TO PLACE ENTERTAINMENT AT HEART OF SERVICE (Tessa Jowell has urged the BBC to "take fun seriously", place high quality entertainment at the heart of its schedules and not confine itself to worthy programming. Unveiling the Government's White Paper on the future of the BBC, the Culture Secretary said one of the clearest messages to emerge from a public consultation on last year's Green Paper was a concern that the Government was in danger of losing sight of the importance of entertainment to the BBC. … The Culture Secretary sought to allay the fears of the BBC's commercial rivals by reassuring them the media regulator Ofcom would carry out a market impact assessment before any new services were launched or any major changes made to existing services. The trust will also be given a new duty to take competition issues into account while ensuring the BBC is acting in the public interest. But competitors remain concerned that the BBC trust will have the final say in approving new services through a public value test, although the Secretary of State has the power of veto if the correct procedures are not followed.)

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1//Asia Times Online, Honk Kong Mar 14, 2006

INSIDE THE US’S REGIME-CHANGE SCHOOL
From a Special Correspondent

TEHRAN - When the invitation to attend a human-rights workshop in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates came, it was a complete surprise for Nilofar, an attractive Iranian woman in her early 30s who works for an international organization in Tehran and claims to be apolitical.

"I got the invite through a press officer at another international organization who clearly did not know the real nature of the workshop," Nilofar told Asia Times Online over a series of three interviews from last September to February. "When I arrived in Dubai, the other participants were very surprised to see me and told me that these workshops are only for activists. So I don't know how I got in, really, except if their selection process is not as stringent as they would make it out to be."

Once in Dubai, Nilofar was booked by one of two organizations running the program into the Holiday Inn. She recounts that the course organizers were a mixture of Los Angeles-based exiled Iranians, Americans who appeared to supervise the course and whose affiliation remained unclear throughout, and three Serbs who said they belonged to the Otpor democratic movement that overthrew the late Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic in 2000.

The highly secretive nature of the workshops meant that they were misleadingly advertised in the lobby of the hotel as a conference by the "Griffin Hospital". The organizers, instructors and students identified themselves through aliases and were instructed to communicate with one another after the course was over through Hushmail accounts, an encrypted e-mail service that claims to be hack-proof.

In class, the Serbian instructors organized role-playing games in which the participants would assume the personas of characters such an Iranian woman or a Shi'ite cleric. Throughout these exercises in empathy and psychology, stress was laid on the importance of ridiculing the political elite as an effective tool of demythologizing them in the eyes of the people.

"They taught us what methods they used in Serbia to bring down Milosevic," Nilofar said. "They taught us some of them so we could choose the best one to bring down the regime, but they didn't mention directly bringing down the regime - they just taught us what they had done in their own country."

Cyrus Safdari, an independent Iranian analyst, said: "As I gather, the idea was to fund and train activists to be agents provocateurs along the lines of the Otpor movement in Serbia. Their job was to utilize various techniques, such as anti-government graffiti etc, to embolden the student movement and provoke a general government crackdown, which could then be used as a pretext to 'spark' a mass uprising in Iran that appeared to be spontaneous and indigenous."

Nilofar's invitation to attend the Dubai sessions arrived last July, several months before the administration of US President George W Bush requested an extra US$75 million of funding from Congress to accelerate its efforts to achieve regime change inside Iran.

(SNIP)

Whether the State Department's new initiative proves successful or not, the huge publicity and acute suspicion that already surround it can only make its task harder.

"I guess the whole program had developed some serious leaks," commented Safdari, the Iranian political analyst, "since I heard about it repeatedly from various guests at various Iranian social functions who wanted to show off about how well connected to the CIA they had become."

Safdari added that the inspiration for the workshops such as the one in Dubai may find provenance in one of the right-wing Washington think-tanks that has a proven track record of providing inspiration for Bush administration policy initiatives in the Middle East.

As for the funding, he believes that it may come "only indirectly from the US government ... I'm not sure if that meant the project belonged to some 'political entrepreneurs' acting independently of the US government, or if these are just standard measures intended to create plausible deniability".

Nilofar is similarly unimpressed by the caliber of the trainees that she encountered in Dubai. She describes the majority as "power-hungry", mahrum - a Farsi word meaning deprived - and beset by temper tantrums.

"Of the political activists now in the country, many come from lower-class families who have been deprived of everything and now they've decided to overthrow the government," Nilofar said. "But what they don't understand is that the idiot students who are being beaten up now, they will not be tomorrow's leaders, they'll be pushed aside.

"The Iranians kept on drinking and drinking and drinking," Nilofar said. "And they made endless phone calls, thinking that the Americans would pay for them. But in the end, they didn't."

2//Middle East Times, Egypt March 14, 2006

SYRIA’S CYBER REBELS OUTFOX GOVERNMENT

DAMASCUS -- Syria's Internet has emerged as the vehicle for the bold voice of dissent in Damascus, where the state regularly exercises censorship and stifles domestic criticism.

The electronic media has pushed the envelope of what is acceptable but at a heavy price.

Savvy cyber rebels who have broadened the political debate could be preyed upon at any time and thrown in jail for proselytizing to Syria's burgeoning Internet audience, thought to number more than 500,000 people.

The most provocative site online is All4Syria, run by Ayman Abdel Nur, himself a member of the Baath party and a childhood friend of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad.

Since starting his Website in May 2003, the Syrian government has on occasion shut down Nur's site and he has resorted to sending his digest of his own writings and news articles about Syria around the world by e-mail.

Nur told Human Rights Watch (HRW) in its November 2005 report, "False Freedom: Online Censorship in the Middle East and North Africa", that his digest's readership had ballooned to 16,000.

"We cross all the red lines. We attack the security apparatus, military intelligence, even officials in the presidential palace. There are no more taboos."

Despite petty harassment, Nur has avoided punishment at the hand of Syria's security apparatus, perhaps because of his long ties to Assad.

He believes that his acidic commentary will help rescue the Baath regime from corruption and incompetence.

He told HRW that his aim is "to promote the sense of freedom of speech, to open dialogue. It strengthens the community. When people see that they can participate in the dialogue, they will defend their society."

Another Website, called Champress, provides critical articles that would never make it on the pages of staid state-run papers like Tishrin, Al-Baath and Al-Thawra. A recent dispatch told of Damascus students carrying Syrian flags beating democracy activists.

But the path is fraught for Syria's Web daredevils. A blogger named Ammar Abdel Hamid finally quit the country last September for the United States after dogged harassment by authorities over his scathing commentary on his site amarji.blogspot.com, better known as "A Heretic's Blog".

Now, Hamid lobs his barbs from the safety of Silver Spring, Maryland.

(MORE)

3//The Daily Star, Lebanon Wednesday, March 15, 2006

IRAN, INDIA, PAKISTAN START TALKS ON GAS PIPELINE
By Agence France Presse (AFP)

TEHRAN: Officials from Iran, India and Pakistan began talks on Tuesday in Tehran on a pipeline project for the export of Iranian natural gas to South Asia, the Oil Ministry news agency reported. "The main subjects of the talks will be the framework of the project and the price of gas," Iran's Deputy Oil Minister Hadi Nejad-Hosseinian was quoted as saying by the Shana agency.

(SNIP)

The talks on the pipeline, which would supply gas from Iran's massive South Pars offshore fields, are expected to run until March 15.

The 2,600-kilometer pipeline, estimated to cost more than $7 billion, was first proposed in 1994 but progress has been slowed by tensions between nuclear armed rivals and neighbors India and Pakistan.

India plans to initially draw 60 million cubic meters of gas from the pipeline and increase the quantity to 90 million cubic meters within the next two to three years.

Pakistan has estimated its initial demand at 30 million cubic meters which would double by 2013.

Despite initial opposition, U.S. President George W, Bush said during a visit to India this month that he had no objections to New Delhi buying gas from a country that Washington accuses of supporting terrorism and attempting to make a nuclear bomb.

4//The Toronto Star, Canada Mar. 14, 2006. 09:03 PM

SALE OF UNIFORMS ON NET ALARMS MILITARY
Canadian Press

The military is investigating how uniforms and equipment that is issued only to Canadian soldiers is ending up for sale on the Internet, CBC News reports.

The sale is also raising concerns about the security of troops.

"We'll be looking at all aspects right through and including the supply chain," Capt. Mark Giles of the military's National Investigation Service told CBC News.

Military investigators believe many of the items being sold on online may have been stolen by soldiers or civilians working in the supply chain.

The big worry, however, is who is buying the uniforms and why.

"It could mean that a potential attack is coming with insurgents who are disguising themselves as Canadian soldiers," said Thompson.

Each piece of a uniform is distinct, with its own serial number. And it's not supposed to be worn by anyone other than a member of the Canadian Armed Forces.

(SNIP)

But the CBC says that for just a few hundred dollars, it's possible to buy a complete CADPAT uniform with name badge and rank insignia, making the person wearing it indistinguishable from a real Canadian soldier.

A search of the web also turned up gloves, combat helmets, specialized sniper jackets, and a harness meant for the country's elite commandos, the JTF2. That harness sold online last week for $1,200 US before it was even issued to the soldiers.

5//The Independent, UK Published: 15 March 2006

BBC TOLD TO PLACE ENTERTAINMENT AT HEART OF SERVICE
By Ciar Byrne, Media Correspondent

Tessa Jowell has urged the BBC to "take fun seriously", place high quality entertainment at the heart of its schedules and not confine itself to worthy programming.

Unveiling the Government's White Paper on the future of the BBC, the Culture Secretary said one of the clearest messages to emerge from a public consultation on last year's Green Paper was a concern that the Government was in danger of losing sight of the importance of entertainment to the BBC.

Ms Jowell said: "Licence- fee payers told us it all sounded a bit worthy. What they cared about most was getting BBC programmes they wanted to watch and listen to. So the White Paper makes entertainment central to the BBC's mission. The BBC should continue to take fun seriously engraining entertainment into its services.

"This isn't about writing the BBC a blank cheque or chasing ratings through copycat programming. It is about ensuring that the BBC deliver what licence- fee payers deserve: quality and distinctiveness."

Strictly Come Dancing, Life on Earth and I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue were singled out in the White Paper as examples of content that inspired and excited audiences.

The BBC chairman, Michael Grade, said: "People tend to think of public service broadcasting as being rather worthy, but it isn't. The public tell us that they regard Only Fools and Horses, Strictly Come Dancing and EastEnders as just as much part of public service as an esoteric arts documentary on BBC4."

Ms Jowell also confirmed the BBC's "anachronistic" board of governors would be replaced with a new trust, separate from management, which she described as "a unique solution for a unique organisation in unique circumstances". Under the new system, a separate executive board will be answerable to the trust.

The Culture Secretary sought to allay the fears of the BBC's commercial rivals by reassuring them the media regulator Ofcom would carry out a market impact assessment before any new services were launched or any major changes made to existing services.

The trust will also be given a new duty to take competition issues into account while ensuring the BBC is acting in the public interest. But competitors remain concerned that the BBC trust will have the final say in approving new services through a public value test, although the Secretary of State has the power of veto if the correct procedures are not followed.

(MORE)