29 Jul 2011 | Uncategorized
What happened to former schoolteacher Chris Jefferies (landlord to murder victim Joanna Yates) is a clear-cut example of the British media trashing someone’s reputation. Amongst a series of entirely false allegations, some newspapers also sank to photoshopping Jefferies’ hair to make him look sinister. There was no public interest in the nasty speculation about Jefferies, nor can any of it be justified as “fair comment” (the two defences the Libel Reform Campaign want strengthened). (more…)
28 Jul 2011 | Index Index, minipost, News and features
The Guardian has revealed that the News of the World hacked Sara Payne’s phone, which Rebekah Brooks had given her as a gift.
Payne had previously been told, accurately, that her name did not appear in Glenn Mulcaire’s notes, but her personal details were found there on Tuesday. The News of the World used its final issue to congratulate itself for its campaign for Sarah’s law.
Sara Payne herself wrote a column for the farewell edition, describing the News of the World reporters as her “good and trusted friends.” Tom Watson MP has decried this as “a whole new low”; and Sara Payne has said that she is “absolutely devastated and deeply disappointed.”
Read Brian Cathcart’s writing on the phone hacking scandal here.
28 Jul 2011 | Iran, Middle East and North Africa, Uncategorized
The theme of clothing and preoccupation with exterior representation continues to dominate every day Iranian existence. We’ve seen the sustained crackdown on individual expression for Iranian citizens extending to hairstyle and dyeing, eyebrow arrangement and even pet ownership. Women wearing nail polish (however neutral in colour) are not allowed in official buildings…The scenarios are too numerous and commonplace to mention and the list grows daily. This is the exterior world of Iran, experienced on the streets and in public places. The extreme opposite is found in people’s homes where visiting foreigners are always surprised to experience a perturbing level of hedonism among Iranian youth indulging in all the banned “vices” and modelling the latest, often risque, fashions.
Another parallel, less external, world persists, as hundreds remain incarcerated for unknown reasons and that list grows daily too. This month John Berger writes of us all as Fellow Prisoners, in a thought provoking and resonant piece.
In Iran, within that internal prison world and its horrors, clothing and attire is ever symbolic. Siavosh Jalilli has written The Girl in the Plastic Slippers, an authentic observation of the significance of foot apparel in the Islamic Republic’s Iran, on the occasion of the 27th birthday (last Sunday) of Pegah Ahangarani, arrested on 10 July.
The actress and documentary maker starred in a 1999 film The Girl with the Sneakers.
She was then The Girl in the Green Sneakers as she campaigned for a move towards freedom in the run up to the 2009 elections.
In this clip Pegah speaks to a large crowd, expressing hope for a reformist win and freedom for all. She says: “I am 24. In six years I’ll be 30. This is an important phase of my life. In this time I want to see change; for the films we’d like to see to be made, for the books we’d like to read to be published.”
Pegah joined fellow actresses and film makers Mahnaz Mohammadi and Marzieh Vafamehr, arrested last month, in ward 209 of Evin Prison.
Both Pegah Ahangarani and Mahnaz Mohammadi were released on bail on Wednesday following fierce criticism of Iran’s treatment of artists and human rights campaigners.
28 Jul 2011 | Index Index, Middle East and North Africa, minipost
Lebanese musician Zeid Hamdan was briefly held at the prison of the Palace of Justice in Beirut on Wednesday for defaming President Michel Suleiman, urging him in a song posted on YouTube last year to “go home.” A statement posted on Hamdan’s Facebook page by his lawyer, Nizar Saghieh, noted that the musician had been investigated three times in recent weeks. He was released late on Wednesday, though Saghieh says his client faces a maximum of two years in prison if the prosecutor decides to file formal slander charges against him.
According to the LA Times’ Babylon & Beyond blog, Sagieh called Hamdan’s detention “a blatant violation of the right of freedom of expression.” He added, “this increasingly obvious over-sensitivity of the regime to any form of criticism of the president is the problem of the regime and not the citizen.”
