Previous | Next :: TV and Torture : Washington DC | May 22, 2006, 2:25 pm

Sitting in a smart DC hotel Amir Abbas Fakhrvar recalls terrible tales of his incarceration in Iranian jails. He gives details of the sensory depravation and other torture he faced over the last 10 years. His crime? To support full open democracy and liberty and then to publish his dissenting views about the totalitarian Islamic state. It struck me as a suitable juxtaposition to include the images of C-span TV flickering silently away on his hotel room TV. The sound is turned down but I know General Steven Blum National Guard Chief is defending the deployment of National Guard soldiers to the US/Mexican border to his oversight committee of lawmakers at the House of Representatives. The Lawmakers are quizzing him on the Presidents decision to send the National Guardsmen to the border and the Guard's ability to respond. Even as a British guy who has always lived in a free society I am sometimes amazed at the real-time political oversight and accountability that is built into the US political system and is just available for all to see. It is undeniably one of the most open, most free countries in the world. The contrast to the fear, repression and ignorance fostered by current Islamic fundamentalist regime in Iran is total.