"SHOULD CHOKE":

Afkhami's TV upsets Iran's conservatives (Middle East Online, 6/07/04)

An Iranian film director has upset the country's conservatives with plans to launch a London-based satellite television channel and serve up a diet of politics from home and movies from Hollywood.

Behrouz Afkhami seems poised to create the media forum which the reformist government of President Mohammad Khatami has long spoken of but seems unlikely to realise as it heads into what looks likely to be its last months in power. [...]

At a glance, Afkhami's project has everything to displease them.

Since the Islamic republic's constitution does not allow any radio or television stations to operate outside state control, he plans to base his channel in London.

It will be aimed at Iranians living abroad, many of them political exiles who fled the country's 1979 Islamic revolution.

Afkhami admits that films "will have English subtitles so that they can be understood by the second and third generations who do not speak Persian."

It is easy to see why the conservatives should choke at the thought, wary as they are of exactly such fare being served up by exiled monarchists who own satellite channels.

Honest information is ever the enemy of tyrants--makes it hard to maintain tyranny in the Age of Information, no?

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 7, 2004 12:04 PM