Tag Archives: Iran

12May/08

The Power of the Dish and the War of Ideas

Freedom and the Internet, Middle East,

 

By Nir T. Boms
FrontPageMagazine.com | August 1, 2003

On March of 2000, Zia Atabi, a former Iranian rock star, placed a small satellite dish on the roof of a former pornographic studio in one of Los Angeles neighborhoods and began broadcasting.

Atabi, formally known as the “Tom Jones of Iran” escaped his homeland shortly after 1979 and found refuge in California, where approximately 600,000 ex-Iranian patriots live today. As is common in many ethnic groups in the United States, The Iranian community enhanced its local cultural activities.  Zia, contributed support to his community’s cultural needs by borrowing some money from his wife, and launching a Farsi satellite station. He called it NITV (The National Iranian Television Network) since he wanted to stress its non-partisan nature to his ex-patriot community. The station began airing some old films, music and eventually news and original programs. Few days later he received his first telephone call from Teheran. Continue reading →

08May/08

The French Connection…to Syria

Middle East, Syria, ,

By Nir Boms
FrontPageMagazine.com | March 5, 2004

In 1978, as protests against Shah Phalavi swept across Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was living in a cozy house in the Parisian suburb of Neauphle-le-Chateau, engineering an Islamic revolution that would soon shake the world. Under the watchful eye of the French government, Khomeini met regularly with journalists and actively campaigned for the Shah’s overthrow. In fact, when Pahlavi finally fled Iran in 1979, Khomeini was provided with a chartered Air France flight to Tehran, where he presided over one of the world’s most repressive regimes until his death in 1989. France’s generous hospitality toward Khomeini is interesting to note in light of the plight of Nizar Nayouf, a dissident Syrian journalist and human rights activist currently living, like Khomeini once did, as a political refugee in the suburbs of Paris.

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