I had a momentary flashback to 1979 and the seizing of three hundred American hostages in the American Embassy in Tehran.
The photo above is a documented picture of an American hostage from those days and the guy in the circle is allegedly Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in his salad days of local Iranian politics.
The headline and words in the CNN piece below did not immediately clarify the situation to me.
Britain blasts arrest of embassy staffers in Iran
The arrest of local staff members at the British Embassy in Iran is "harassment and intimidation of a kind which is quite unacceptable," British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said Sunday.
"About nine" staffers have been affected, he said, adding that some had already been released.
"We have protested in strong terms directly to the Iranian authorities about the arrests that took place yesterday," but there has been no response, Miliband said.
Iran's government-backed Press TV said earlier on Sunday that eight local British embassy staffers had been seized for their role in the unrest following the disputed presidential elections on June 12.
My main complaint about this piece of “Journalism” above is that it does not fully follow the old rules of newspaper journalism and answer the basics of who, what, how, where and why and being addressed in the first paragraph of the news story.
“Local staff members” does not say if the local staffers are British Citizens or not.
As I usually do, I turned to a British news source to get a fuller, tighter, more professional body of the story and situation.
Iran arrests UK embassy staff
David Miliband, the foreign secretary, has angrily refuted allegations that Iranian employees of the British embassy in Tehran played a role in the post-election protests of the past two weeks.
In the latest in a series of spats between the two countries, Iran detained eight or nine local embassy staff for playing a "significant role" in the unrest, which has seen serious clashes between demonstrators and security forces.
Miliband, speaking from a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Corfu, said the government was "deeply concerned" at the arrests. "This is harassment and intimidation of a kind that is quite unacceptable," he said. "We want to see them released unharmed."
The other side, the Iranians, who are not unlike the Chinese in 1971 before Nixon’s visit in 1972 – their dictionaries and handbooks on western protocol are decades out of date.
Words are important. Not everybody on the planet talks urban street. An old fuddy duddy such as myself sent an E-mail to CNN or one of the mainstream media because they had called the actress Loretta Young an actor in her obit when she passed in 2000.
Other people may have decided that actor is good word, not actress, for a female. I do not agree. I thought it disrespectful and or inept on the part of the MSM. Lorette Young lived and displayed her talents in another age in which she was called an actress. Modern day PC words did not fit her obituary. Just because I had not gotten with the new asexual word of “actor”, does not mean that I liked or understood it as part of the obit.
We should do not presume that headlines in an American News Source are correct, or interpreted correctly and or reliable especially when the other side, or its leadership is still in a permanent unmovable 1979 AD western moment frame of mind (like Iran).
I doubt that we can be drawn into another Iranian Hostage situation even though it would suit the Supreme Thug (wearing a so-called mantle of God) and his cronies especially his grape peeling sycophant Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
I doubt that the “bunker busters” are at this moment on Air Force transports to Israel.
I am mildly concerned that a major story on a major American News source in its opening vagueness might escalate a propaganda war on both sides of this potentially hostile global conflict.
Obama is a lawyer and I expect him to put negotiations first or foremost. If that does not work – well – let’s not go there.
