verbena-19

L.A.'s Iranian Expats Want 'Regime Change'

While watching the BBC News on CBC Newsworld just now, a short segment drew my attention. In it, they were talking about the "City of Angels" (Los Angeles) where about 600,000 expatriate Iranians reside. The topic of questioning was: "Regime Change in Iran". They interviewed one Iranian expat woman who said she "couldn't wait for the bombs to fall on Iran's nuclear installations". Another person interviewed was a producer at NITV-LA, which is a station for Iranian expats and dissidents. As expected, he too was all for "regime change" and "bringing democracy to Iran". A couple more TV personalities were also interviewed, parroting the same slogans. Finally, Reza Pahlavi, the son of the late Shah, faced the cameras, from his unnamed American residence. Not surprisingly, he'd like nothing more than to be reinstated as Iran's ruler -- although he did not say it, it was implied.

So now the BBC has joined some of the others in making rumbles about "regime change" in Iran, by only interviewing Iranian expat dissenters, without giving voice to other opinions. At the conclusion of the interviews, the BBC correspondent made some remark about the apathetic Iranian expats living the good life in L.A. and not really working cohesively, hard enough, to foment a real change in their homeland (Iran).

I wonder how many more such "liberal" mainstream media organizations will be beating the war drums on the "bomb Iran" bandwagon soon. Music to the ears of Bush and his cohorts, no doubt! Like they did in Iraq, these warmongers will use the discordant voices of Iranian dissidents and malcontents -- aided and abetted by a slavish, sycophantic media -- to add fuel to their case for another illegal, disastrous war.

I would like to hear readers comments about this (including comments by expats), and if you managed to find the link to this segment, please let me know.

(I looked at the online version of BBC News, but could not find this story. Here is the BBC News online link for those who are more adept at article searches than I am. Sorry, I didn't catch the segment title either. It was on CBC Newsworld at 6:30 pm EST, Feb.21.2006)

posted by Annamarie at 6:29 PM