Soccer Dad

The apple does fall far ...

Ha'aretz reports that the daughter of one of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's allies has made a film opposing torture - and is now seeking asylum.

The daughter of a top adviser to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has applied for asylum in Germany, organizers of a film festival that she was attending said Tuesday.

Narges Kalhor, the daughter of Ahmadinejad's adviser on cultural and media affairs, submitted her asylum application to authorities in southern Germany, Nuremberg Human Rights Film Festival spokesman Matthias Rued said.

Her father, Mahdi Kalhor, has been seen as a close ally of Ahmadinejad since early this decade.

It's interesting how her father feels.

Mahdi Kalhor told Iran's official IRNA news agency that he knew nothing about details of his daughter's films or her plans to leave the country.

He blamed the Iranian opposition for supporting her attempts to challenge the government.

"This issue is one of the symbols of a media and soft war that opposition has launched," the agency quoted Mahdi Kalhor as saying.

He also told IRNA he had divorced Narges' mother a year ago over differences of opinion, saying she was a zealous opponent of Ahmadinejad. Narges had been living with her mother.

He fears the soft power of the opposition. The Iranian leadership fears the "hegemonic powers" of the "media field."

Which is why journalists who support the opposition are fleeing Iran.

Mr. Maleki, 29, is one of dozens of reporters, photographers and bloggers who have either fled Iran or are trying to flee in the aftermath of the disputed June presidential election. Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based organization that promotes press freedom and monitors the safety of journalists, said the number of journalists leaving Iran was the largest since the years after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The wave of departures reflects the journalists' anxiety over the retribution many of them have faced for reporting on the government's violent suppression of the post-election protests. As bloody clashes unfolded in the streets of Tehran, the government went to great lengths to restrict the flow of information to the outside world. Foreign journalists were banned, and local reporters and photographers were warned to stay at home.

I guess if the regime has a motto it would be "The first thing we do, let's kill all the reporters."