Just a few thoughts on the cable news media here in the US (and the delightful possibility of its extinction after the dust settles on all of this).

Please stop claiming the brave young men and women whose videos and images you are broadcasting as your "iReporters."

Please stop saying...

But first. Important Updates.
I was just on Fox News (of all places) with Shepard Smith (rumors are that he is "liberal"). I was reporting on what I have been reporting all along here and on DB.
Arash has sent a very powerful memo again today from Tehran-

Please read this amazing account I have put on the Daily Beast from Arash Aryan-his second in two days. It will break your hearts. He is a powerful voice coming out of there.

On Friday, through the night, primarily through intermittent internet connection, I have been able to talk...

As promised I continue to try and update with blogs coming out of Tehran. This is a powerful first person account from my friend Arash Aryan, a 40 year old poet who sent his writing in bits and pieces through intermittent internet access. It is reproduced entirely on the...

PLEASE READ THE NEW POST "FROM TEHRANGELES TO TEHRAN: NOISE AND STATIC" BY CLICKING ON THIS LINK

Suddenly there is no dearth of Iranian punditry on cable television, with "academics" and "Iran experts" languishing in the dank closets of academia, brought out to air on every US network. Unfortunately...

As the most animated (and violent) protests in Tehran in a decade and in the thirtieth year after the Revolution unfold, my mailbox is inundated with emails from friends, many also reporting with anger and fear on gmail chat. Text messages were abandoned a few days ago when the blackout...

As a proud member of the Indian diaspora, I used to think that the world's largest democracy was also its most sophisticated. Now, I'm not so certain.

India just voted for its fifteenth Lok Sabha or "People's House." If there is anything to be learned from this largest exercise of...

The Facebook Universe is remarkable. After my recent post "Poor, Israel? Sure, and I am Barack Obama" I got a flurry of immediate responses. I had blogged hastily, still shaking with anger at the events that unfolded yesterday on a panel organized by UN Watch, an organization with a...

On this Eid-al-Adha, the Muslim festival of the sacrifice, I wonder what aspect of my identity troubles me more: the Indian, the Muslim, or both. And is there more to those troublesome questions as well--perhaps willingly being away from the homeland?

For at least a year now, I have very...

Just briefly- for a moment I feel is important to record, for this site I blog for sometimes.
At around 9:53 on Tuesday night (less than an hour ago) I realized that Barack Hussein Obama will be the President Elect of the United States of America. (If I am...

"Michelle Obama scares me. Have you ever worked with a 'professional' black female?"

"Can you imagine those Negro girls running around in the White House?"

The first observation is thoughtfully supplied to me by a part-"Native American" friend of mine in DC, an avowed Democrat. The second is whispered from...

"So it is the number nine after all." I look at the cryptic text message from my friend Shazia, in Lahore and I know that she has spent the whole evening adding them up. Benazir Bhutto, the Dukhtar-e-Mashriq (Daughter of the East) who so many had condemned for so long...

"Ah! Daneshju Park! The smells that waft from across the street! And the forbidden delights that await inside!"

Talking about a life left behind in Iran, my friend had tears in his eyes. But also a steely resolve that one day he would be back. He also reminded me that...

Mahmoud Ahmadi Nejad, the "humble" former mayor of Tehran, has now been thrust on the international stage and if most of the media in the West is to be believed, he is positively Hitlerian.

Not particularly blessed with the dashing good looks I associate with so many Iranian men,...