Roxana Saberi's 15 Minutes of Trial

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Reports are that the Roxana Saberi trial—behind closed doors—lasted all of 15 minutes. [earlier CNN coverage]

He told CNN her trial only lasted about 15 minutes.

"The trial of course was not a real trial," her father told CNN. "A few minutes until the trial, she still didn't know there was a trial," he added. "It was a mock trial."

That pretty much sums up the sham that this whole process is. Not a matter of justice, but rather gamesmanship with an important election coming up in Iran in June.

And Roxana is caught in the middle.

Could it be that's too much even for the president of Iran?

Or is this a moment for him to try to curry favor with those who might be inclined to vote against him in the next election unless he pulls out a nice shiny object to polish and buff his own image in the mirror?

Huffington Post is reporting that Mahmoud Amedinejad is now saying Roxana should have a full defense at her appeal.

Sincerity from Amedinejad? Or convenient triangulation? For those of us who watch from Fargo, we do not care about the gamesmanship within Iran or between Iran and the US.

All we know is that Reza Saberi is an anguished parent seeking the release of his daughter Roxana who is, he says, "quite depressed" and "very frail."

And we want her and her parents to come back home...together and safe.
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h/t cbl of fdl for the signpost to HuffPo's article
crossposted at firedoglake's Oxdown Gazette
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UPDATE: News sources and her colleagues at Medill School of Journalism are reporting that Roxana's defense team has gained a powerful new advocate, 2003 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi.

Summer Broke Out

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In all its bright, sunshine-y glory, summer burst through this weekend. Birds are breeding, marigolds are bloomin' in the marshes, and despite occasional thunderstorms with a little added hail, the big, wide, wonderful world beckons.

So I've got a couple suggestions for you for summer weekends to come.

Jason Linkins over at Huffington Post liveblogs among the Sunday morning gasbag shows so you don't have to watch and does it with a sublime touch. Mandatory reading. Exactly the critique the shows' denizens deserve. And I bow to anyone who can actually, at this stage of the Democratic nomination marathon, still muster the intestinal fortitude to watch any show featuring either McAuliffe or Icky Harold.

And speaking of the overexposed...Wolf Blitzer, he of the interminable five breaths questions, has finally maxed out his airtime, one hopes. He is not the host of CNN's new foreign affairs show on Sunday.

Fareed Zakaria, GPS launched Sunday with an in-depth conversation with Tony Blair. Tony has not worn the Bush years well. But then who among us have? A roundtable conversation notably showed that yes, Dougie Feith truly is as awful as we believe. Thank you, Christiane, for educating him that one uses both carrots and sticks.

Dougie is like that schlub on the grade school playground whom neither team wanted to choose for kickball so he contented himself going over by the fence and plucking the wings off butterflies.

Oh, and, China? Owns us all.

What I learned this morning (yes, Manhattan, it's still morning in the rest of America when GPS airs, there is a world west of the Hudson....):

that intelligent journalism and commentary can actually happen when one moves one's own ego, spin, and "balance" out of the way. (And if you happen to be a Sunday morning gasbag denizen, and don't think I'm talkin' to you, go read Linkins)

Putting GPS on my auto-tune. Thanks, CNN.