Most people are aware that the Iranian government has been severely curtailing access to media and the internet among its citizens in response to the current crisis.  But now it appears that Iranian-Americans like myself are also getting swept up in the recent cyber lockdown. It all began a few weeks ago when the government of Iran, in advance of the Iranian Presidential elections, implemented a shut down of Facebook for all its users. Ahmadinejad’s rival, Mousavi, had garnered nearly 40,000 supporters on Facebook and other social networking arenas.

Although I am based in New York, a US citizen, and did not vote in the Iranian elections, last week, I was removed from the site as well. The last time I used Facebook was on Tuesday evening, June 9th. Two days before the Iranian election, on the morning of Wednesday June 10, I attempted to log-on, but was informed that my account was disabled. I sent a message to disabled@facebook.com at 9:18am that morning. I received an automatic response stating they would look into this situation and get back.  No response. I sent three more messages.

That afternoon, I  called the number listed for Facebook in Palo Alto, California. I left a message. No response. I emailed Facebook the next morning and sent another message. Then I called the press section of Facebook. I left them a message and sent an email. Nothing. So, I decided to set up a new account. Within minutes, three Mousavi supporters asked to be my friend and one other Iranian complimented me on a recent appearance that afternoon on CNN International. In that appearance I criticized Ahmadinejad’s regime for the violent attacks on demonstrators and rigid rules on the national and foreign media.

A Facebook spokesperson addressed the shut down this week:

“Facebook has not been able to get to the bottom of what is affecting its services. We have heard reports that users in Iran are having difficulties accessing Facebook. This is disappointing, especially at a time when citizens are turning to the Internet as a source of information about the recent election. It is always a shame when a country’s cultural and political concerns lead to limits being placed on the opportunity for sharing and expression that the Internet provides.”(Times of London, June 14 2009)

CBS news reported this morning “There are signs censorship by Iran’s government is spreading and becoming more effective.”

Could this mean I was shut off for being outspoken?

No one will deny that in response to allegations of a rigged election, the Iranian government has swiftly acted to remove all opposition Web sites and tried to block or slow down social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Reporters Without Borders, a press freedom watch dog group I work with, issued several statements about Facebook accounts being shut down in Iran from May 27 through the elections and now, in the days following the election.

If you try to find me on Facebook, you will see one listing with no photo.  This is an old account that I set up when at the United Nations that I never used, and it is attached to an email address that is no longer active.  Significantly I never used that account to communicate with anyone in the Iranian community and perhaps that is why it hasn’t been deactivated.

This morning, I logged on—and was informed that the new account I tried to set up on the 14th was disabled as well.

Mobile platforms have been an essential tool in documenting government-sponsored violence. These platforms have provided images and information about the killings of demonstrators by Iranian police, the beatings of university students, and the confiscation of students’ property.

The Associated Press reported yesterday that restrictions imposed by the government made such social-networking sites as Twitter and Flickr more prominent –but what about Facebook? Could Facebook be conspiring with the Islamic Republic of Iran to silence Iranian-American voices?  Who exactly made the decision to shut my account down?  And why?  Assuming the Iranian government has had something to do with the closing of my account, how could it have accomplished this without Facebook’s complicity?

Reporters Without Borders,  said in a statement today issued this week:  “The blocking of access to foreign news media has been stepped up. In addition to the blocking of the BBC’s website, the Farsi-language satellite broadcasts of the Voice of America and BBC — which are very popular in Iran..”

Let Facebook know you don’t support clamping down on US citizens’ voices—especially Iranian-Americans who want change:

Facebook, Inc.
471 Emerson St.
Palo Alto, CA 94301-1605

Phone: 650-543-4800,  (650) 853-1300
Fax: 650-543-4801
http://www.facebook.com

A response was received FINALLY sent by Facebook on Thursday afternoon, hours after the publishing of this article on TRNS and other websites:

Hi Tala,

We sincerely apologize for our delayed response.

Facebook has automated systems in place to block behavior that other users may find annoying or abusive.
These systems restrict the rate at which you can use certain features on the site.  

Your account was disabled after being flagged by one of these systems.

However, after reviewing your situation, we have reactivated your account,
and you should now be able to log in.  Once logged in, please slow down
the rate at which you send friend requests.  

Please let me know if you have any further questions.

Thanks for your understanding,

JerryUser OperationsFacebook

I was born in Tehran right before the revolution and moved to California during the toughest years of war between Iran and Iraq. I often heard horrifying stories of my family members running to basements to seek shelter from bombs going off in the night. As I slept quietly in my room, tucked away in the hills of the Bay Area, I couldn’t help but be overwhelmed with a deep sense of guilt for having got out in time.

Now I am all grown-up. I married an American. I report on human rights and justice. I defend press freedom–and nearly thirty years after the start of the revolution, I am still perplexed by the country I call my native land.

It is estimated that three to five million Iranians live abroad. As one of these Iranians, it will be obvious that my perspective on Iran has been influenced by the West. But I still consider myself an authentic representation of Iran.  I speak the language, Farsi, if albeit with an American accent. I closely study Zoroastrianism, the before Islam form of Iranian religious practices.  And I am always asked to speak on behalf of Iranians, the “what are they really thinking” type of interviews on nuclear power, foreign policy, the Holocaust, and now–the elections.

The presidential election is coming up this Friday, June 12th. So far, the Iranian government has allowed no independent coverage of the election campaign in the Iranian media. Why? According to Reporters Without Borders, an esteemed global press freedom group I have worked with for over seven years, there is a troubling:  “lack of balanced and independent electoral coverage in the Iranian media and the fact that at least 15 journalists have been threatened or summoned for questioning in the cities of Mashhad, Ahvaz, Sanandaj, Khoram Abad, Khohdasht and Tabriz since the campaign for the June 12 presidential election began on May 21st.”

Roxana Saberi, an Iranian-American journalist, was jailed for months on false spying charges until an appeal court set her free a few weeks ago. Phew. We were lucky on that one, but over a dozen journalists still remain behind bars on trumped-up charges.

There are several candidates on the slate who have threatened the tough reign of the current President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is running for another term. The President seems opposed to any challenge.  According to a tally kept by Reporters Without Borders, the candidates running against President Ahmadinejad have had fewer than two hours to talk on national radio and TV stations while the president has had 10 times that. Ahmadinejad’s biggest opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi, the former Prime Minister during the Islamic Revolution, poses a serious pro-reform challenge to the country’s hard-line establishment. Mousavi has often criticized Ahmadinejad for his alleged economic mismanagement (Iran’s current unemployment rate stands at over 12.5% percent with nearly 25% percent youth unemployment) , stating that when Iran “was making profits from the high prices of oil, did he (Ahmadinejad) envisage a situation when the prices would fall?”.

Getting a job and keeping it are key concerns for Iranians. Perhaps more than nuclear power and all the international bluster the President seems to get wherever he goes. Whether or not Mousavi will get the vote and how Iranians hear about his candidacy seems to also have many in the country digging around to find the real facts on the candidates. But they won’t be able to rely on the media to help them out.

“Iran’s 46 million voters have been deprived of independent reporting in the national media throughout the campaign,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Iranian journalists are monitored by the authorities and cannot give their fellow citizens objective coverage of the debates and issues. There are many state-owned newspapers but their reporting is all the same. The radio and TV stations are used by the government while the so-called opposition newspapers are used above all for factional in-fighting. They do not unfortunately serve as forums where opinions can be expressed freely.”

Let’s hope democracy prevails on Friday.  As a hyphenated American, I’d like to see Iranians back home gain some of the advantages I have been privileged to in this country for nearly all my life.

Finally, there is hope – and change – coming to General Motors. Under the leadership of President Barack Obama and washed through an administration-led bankruptcy proceeding, it will emerge for the first time in four decades as a lean, mean competitive automobile company. Despite Republican whining to the contrary, who would have thought that the UAW would ever have voluntarily agreed to reduce pension and labor costs?

The Republican Party, which ought to be named the Bond Holders’ Party, showed where its real loyalties lie when it professed no concern for working Americans but showed the most compassionate conservatism for secured bond holders, fat cat hedge funds and the kind of speculators I thought disappeared after the crash of 1929.

What the Obama administration recognizes, and what his Republican critics simply don’t understand, is what GM’s real stakes were: not just American prestige, not just the financial solvency of thousands of suppliers and small businesses, but also the livelihood of many current and former working-class Americans, the very Reagan Democrats who Republicans once claimed to represent. It turns out that when push came to shove, Republicans stood with bondholders, not householders.

This is not to say the Obama administration’s handling of the looming bankruptcy has been perfect. The American people would certainly like to learn more not only about what the ultimate costs to the taxpayer will be but also more specifies about GM’s plans to compete both at home and abroad. I am confident that these will come.

Finally, there is hope – and change – coming to General Motors. Under the leadership of President Barack Obama and washed through an administration-led bankruptcy proceeding, it will emerge for the first time in four decades as a lean, mean competitive automobile company. Despite Republican whining to the contrary, who would have thought that the UAW would ever have voluntarily agreed to reduce pension and labor costs?

The Republican Party, which ought to be named the Bond Holders’ Party, showed where its real loyalties lie when it professed no concern for working Americans but showed the most compassionate conservatism for secured bond holders, fat cat hedge funds and the kind of speculators I thought disappeared after the crash of 1929.

What the Obama administration recognizes, and what his Republican critics simply don’t understand, is what GM’s real stakes were: not just American prestige, not just the financial solvency of thousands of suppliers and small businesses, but also the livelihood of many current and former working-class Americans, the very Reagan Democrats who Republicans once claimed to represent. It turns out that when push came to shove, Republicans stood with bondholders, not householders.

This is not to say the Obama administration’s handling of the looming bankruptcy has been perfect. The American people would certainly like to learn more not only about what the ultimate costs to the taxpayer will be but also more specifies about GM’s plans to compete both at home and abroad. I am confident that these will come.

I find it odd that those now screaming about the “rule of law” were strangely silent during the long years of Bush’s “coercive interrogations,” that is to say torture. They were silent about Abu Ghraib, silent about Guantanamo, and their continuing silence screams louder about their GM credibility than anything else.

In his management of the financial crises, but especially his plans for GM, Obama has single handedly returned the Democratic Party to a status it was once thought to have lost – the party of the working man and woman. Republicans have attempted to cast Obama as just one more Democratic elite. But Obama, by his action to save the jobs of hundreds of thousands of working Americans, has proved that the charge is flat wrong. It is for this reason that comparisons between Obama and Franklin Roosevelt are not wrong.

By his actions with General Motors, Obama will do for Republicans what FDR did for their grandfathers: He will save capitalism from its warmest defenders. The American economy that will emerge from the current crises will be leaner and far more competitive than the over leveraged fat cat hedge funded swindle ridden mess that he inherited from the Bush administration. It must be remembered that the foundations for American post-World War II prosperity were laid by FDR’s New Deal in the 1930s. Historians will remember that Roosevelt faced some of the most bitter political opposition since the days of Abraham Lincoln. Likewise, Obama is in the process of laying the foundation of American prosperity through the rest of this young century. He too is facing bitter opposition. Obama, like other great predecessors, will not be deterred by this. In the end he will be known as much for how he craftily outfoxed his opponents, as well as the great projects he achieved.

Efforts to cast Obama as socialist, a radical and politically dangerous have all failed. Despite months of ceaseless attack by Republicans and their talking heads from the think tanks, Obama’s popularity with the American people remains undiminished while the Republicans continue in disarray.

General Motors is but one product of President Obama’s commitment to bring hope and change to the American people. So, I will end this column as I began. By changing General Motors through bankruptcy, he is bringing hope to American workers with the promise of a good product made for a good cost.

I propose adding to two words to the Obama mantra of hope and change: He delivers.

Memorial Day, originally titled Decoration Day, is a time to remember those who have died in service to our country. These are not just lives that have been lost. Many of these men and women will never know what it is to be a parent, husband or wife. These are lives cut short by war and all that is associated with war. We honor our soldiers; we honor those who have sacrificed. Since a resolution was passed in 2000, there has been a “Moment of Remembrance” on Memorial Day to ask Americans to have their own moment at 3 p.m. local time so that we can reflect and honor those who have given their lives.

This sacred day should also honor those veterans who have lost their lives as well as those who have lost the quality of their lives due to factors ranging from incompetent contractors to insufficient veteran support. The consequences of war have also made our returning veterans homeless or incapacitated due to conditions such as Post Traumatic Stress
Syndrome. We cannot fully appreciate the sacrifice made by these service members without understanding some of these circumstances that led to this suffering.

This week Sen. Byron Dorgan and the Democratic Policy Committee held a hearing on the $83.4 million dollar bonuses paid by the U.S. Army to KBR, Inc. Dorgan was mad and called KBR’s actions stunning incompetence for their work that lead to four electrocutions of soldiers who were the victims of what Dorgan called faulty wiring. Four soldiers died and hundreds more received electrical shocks. Sgt. Ryan Maseth was electrocuted when he was taking a shower; there was another shower death and two other lethal accidents due to faulty wiring of equipment. The Army has stopped the bonuses and KBR, once a part of Vice President Dick Cheney’s former company Halliburton, has maintained that it is not responsible. Someone clearly did not wire the showers and the equipment properly, and it is the duty of the Pentagon to find out who is responsible if it is not KBR. These are needless deaths that do not need to be part of family grief this holiday.

Memorial Day, originally titled Decoration Day, is a time to remember those who have died in service to our country. These are not just lives that have been lost. Many of these men and women will never know what it is to be a parent, husband or wife. These are lives cut short by war and all that is associated with war. We honor our soldiers; we honor those who have sacrificed. Since a resolution was passed in 2000, there has been a “Moment of Remembrance” on Memorial Day to ask Americans to have their own moment at 3 p.m. local time so that we can reflect and honor those who have given their lives.

This sacred day should also honor those veterans who have lost their lives as well as those who have lost the quality of their lives due to factors ranging from incompetent contractors to insufficient veteran support. The consequences of war have also made our returning veterans homeless or incapacitated due to conditions such as Post Traumatic Stress
Syndrome. We cannot fully appreciate the sacrifice made by these service members without understanding some of these circumstances that led to this suffering.

This week Sen. Byron Dorgan and the Democratic Policy Committee held a hearing on the $83.4 million dollar bonuses paid by the U.S. Army to KBR, Inc. Dorgan was mad and called KBR’s actions stunning incompetence for their work that lead to four electrocutions of soldiers who were the victims of what Dorgan called faulty wiring. Four soldiers died and hundreds more received electrical shocks. Sgt. Ryan Maseth was electrocuted when he was taking a shower; there was another shower death and two other lethal accidents due to faulty wiring of equipment. The Army has stopped the bonuses and KBR, once a part of Vice President Dick Cheney’s former company Halliburton, has maintained that it is not responsible. Someone clearly did not wire the showers and the equipment properly, and it is the duty of the Pentagon to find out who is responsible if it is not KBR. These are needless deaths that do not need to be part of family grief this holiday

Tragic as these deaths are, there is another tragedy that we still can actually do something about. It is the tragedy of the homeless veteran. They can be seen in the streets of every major American city. Homeless vets of the two Iraq wars and of the Global War on Terror are beginning to show up at homeless shelters to request services. Some studies are showing that we may have as many as 150,000 to 200,000 homeless veterans. They are not counted in the numbers of veterans honored this holiday because they did not die as the result of their service, but their lives have been permanently scarred because we did not treat their Post Traumatic Stress, or PTSD, or give them the benefit of the doubt when they went looking for a job after they came home from war.

The National Coalition of Homeless Veterans estimates that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of Iraq and Afghanistan war vets living in shelters or worse on the streets. The Army has said as many as 30 percent of soldiers coming from the Afghanistan and Iraq have emotional problems or PTSD. When you add brain injuries sustained from blasts, their problems are compounded. The Government Accountability Office said there are only 15,000 shelter beds for veterans. By any standard that is not nearly enough.

When you add sexual abuse to women who serve in the military as a risk factor for veterans’ homelessness, it poses an even greater problem. Many homeless shelters are not geared towards the female veteran and the special problems they might have. Drug abuse as self-medication for mental difficulties, lack of affordable housing and a lousy economy all increase the risk of homelessness among all veterans. Our government is well aware of the problem. President Obama addressed the needs of current vets in his radio address this week. However, the resources are not great enough to shelter these former service members and provide job training. This needs to be a national priority. They have served us and it is time we served them.

The saddest thing about the current mess embroiling House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is that the country finds itself mired in the one mess that it needs so badly to move past – the controversies of Bush years. The unpleasant truth is that many peoples’ hands were soiled in the anxiety filled aftermath of 9/11; but to pillory Pelosi now, as if she was the executive who ordered policy of torture – is to attempt to absolve the Bush administration for its human rights violations by claiming that somehow “everybody did it” or “everybody knew.”

I certainly won’t defend the memory of a 60-something speaker in a high-pressure job who probably attends thousands of meetings a year. I’m approaching 60 myself and sometimes have difficulty remembering where I put the car keys. But to implicate her in the policy of torture is absurd. Who knows who knew what and when? This is a bottomless game and one with ultimately no answers. In the meantime, only one interest is served by trying to entrap Pelosi, and that is the interest that is really behind stirring this pot that should have been covered with the election of Barack Obama.

Right now the Republicans are facing an enormously popular president embarking on enormously popular policies. And conservatives can’t stand it. They’ve got no traction at the polls, none in Congress, the White House, the media or the courts, so they’ve decided to bang on the nearest table – scandal. Unfortunately for the House speaker, as far as conservatives are concerned, she’s what’s for dinner.

As I won’t argue the wonder of Pelosi’s memory, so I won’t exalt her speaking skills. She’s made a hash of press conferences and has difficulty even keeping the pages of her prepared statement in order. A Cicero or Obama she’s not. The problem for her opponents is that looking foolish at a press conference is not the same thing as guilt – it’s only what it is – looking foolish at a press conference.

What is most significant is that even during that affair, Pelosi still called for the creation of a truth commission to investigate the alleged crimes of the Bush years. Clearly, she would have to testify before such a commission under oath, as would officials from the CIA, and under oath means pains and penalties for perjury. Affirming support for such an institution doesn’t strike me as the act of a guilty person.

Given the enormities of what this country faces – war, recession, a changing international order – I predict that the Pelosi mess will soon fade and assume its real status: something more than a tempest in a teapot but something less than a real scandal. Right now, the media needs controversies, and Republicans are only too happy to oblige. Tough luck for Speaker Pelosi that this week, she was it.

But if I were here, I wouldn’t worry too much – soon Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu comes to Washington to meet with President Obama. With Netanyahu as dessert, Pelosi will be finished as an entrée and the Congress can resume the peoples’ business.

America has changed. There is no doubt in my mind. I did a brief stint in Memphis, Tenn., in 1965 and 1966 when my family moved there. I was regarded as a northerner who had no sense and was disrupting the socialization norms at my school. I was talking to them about integration, and they thought they were integrating the school with me because I was Jewish. We lived in White Station, a section of greater Memphis, and it was aptly named. Unless someone was cleaning houses, you could not find anyone in the strip shopping mall or Shoney’s restaurant who was black, Chinese or any other minority.

Fast forwarding to 2009’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner that I attended, it made me understand how far America has come and how much it has changed in 44 years. I’m not just talking about small changes but major changes. The White House Correspondents’ dinner did not even admit women until 1952. If you had asked a woman correspondent back then if it were possible to have a black president and a black lesbian comedian at the top of the billing, she would have said it would be easier to land on Mars. It would not have even been in the realm of possibility.

What this year’s dinner shows is that America can change, and – although not without a ton of pain and difficulty – America has a unique ability to move quickly and adapt to an even faster changing world. President Obama was funny, and he knew it. You could see his broad smile every time one of his jokes hit it out of the park. I have said in many columns that we elect presidents who we want to invite in our living rooms for the next four years, and he earned his place in America’s living rooms last night. It wasn’t that he was just funny; it was that he proved he was watching and listening to how America perceived his presidency and could take the issues on one by one.

His humor attempted to diffuse the critics. Clearly the 30 percent of the voting public who will vote for the Republican candidate no matter what were not amused, but the middle voter can relate to the self-deprecating president. He made America laugh at a time when laughs are hard to come by. He addressed the Obama stereotypes the right wing (and even the left wing has to offer) the over use of the teleprompter (fake ones came up as he began to speak). He then used his own notes the rest of the evening. Not wanting to push the Air Force One’s New York City flyover, he joked that his two daughters were grounded because they had taken the plane on its memorable trip. He addressed the not talked about but known feelings about his relationship with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (and giving a nod to the flu epidemic) by saying, “The second she got back from Mexico she pulled me into a big hug and gave me a big kiss, told me I’d better get down there myself.”

He took on a personality characteristic he has been accused of so often: arrogance by tossing off some one-liners designed to defuse it. “I would like to talk about what my administration plans to achieve in the next 100 days. During the second 100 days, we will design, build and open a library dedicated to my first 100 days.” He continued to self-rib by saying, “I believe that my next 100 days will be so successful, I will be able to complete them in 72 days and on the 73rd I will rest.”

This tsunami of a transition in the presidency from a conservative white Eastern blue blood from Texas to a mixed-race child born in rather meager circumstances could only take place in a country that has undergone the pain of the segregated ’50s and the upheaval of the ’60s with a president who is smart and has a good sense of humor. It will move forward proving that the commander in chief must also rely on the ability to be humorist in chief. Laughter, as they say, is the best medicine.