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Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore!

A few days before Seyyed Ebrahim Nabavi wrote “Dear Hossein, You Are Not an Israeli Spy” in his website, I tried to convey more or less the same message in an article published in Iranian.com. Hossein Derakhshan is not a spy, a traitor, or a snitch, as he has been labeled. He is a flamboyant man who loves Iran and writes sensational material, some days with a sharp sense of timing, and some days not. Is he a journalist? Certainly his style leaves something to be desired in that department, precisely the reason why so many people take offense at his quick-witted and unchecked criticism of others. Whether he likes it or not, there are standards to be followed in the field of journalism, starting with form, continuing to content, and evolving into careful reflection of facts, sources, and conclusions. So much of that seems to be absent from his material, especially one of his April 2007 posts, which Iranian.com has published. I am glad Hossein has stepped out of his blog and has submitted his article for publishing at Iranian.com. This gives us a chance to approach him on a more public and uninhibited level, something that is difficult to do when we step into his blog, where articulate as his audience is, standards of polite tolerance and exchange of ideas are often glaringly unobserved.
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Read the rest of this article here: http://www.iranian.com/Kaviani/2007/April/Derakhshan/index.html
If you are in Iran and you can't access iranian.com, please leave me a comment and I'll email the article to you.