Bianca, you ignorant slut

The former Mrs. Mick Jagger waxes psychotic about the prisoners in Guantanomo while ostensibly accepting an award for Iranian human rights advocate Akbar Ganji, who's on a hunger strike in prison in Iran.

Ganji has received scant attention in the western media because President Bush has called for his release, notes Amir Taheri.

And that, as far as a good part of the Western media is concerned, amounts to a kiss of death. How could newspapers that portray Bush as the world's biggest "violator of human rights" endorse his call in favor of Ganji?

To overcome that difficulty, some of Ganji's friends had tried to persuade him to make a few anti-American, more specifically anti-Bush, pronouncements so that the Western media could adopt him as a "hero-martyr." Two years ago, similar advice had been given to Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian lawyer who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. She was made to understand one stark fact of contemporary life: You will not be accepted as a champion of human rights unless you attack the United States.

Ebadi had accepted the advice and used her address during the prize ceremony in Oslo to launch a bitter attack on the United States as the arch-violator of human rights. To the surprise of many Iranians, she had eulogized the 400 or so alleged terrorists held in Guantanamo Bay, but made no mention of the thousands of political prisoners, including some of her own friends and clients, who languish in mullah-run prisons throughout Iran.

Would Ganji adopt a similar tactic in order to get media attention in the West? The answer came last January and it was a firm no.

The result was that Ganji, probably the most outspoken and courageous prisoner of conscience in the Islamic Republic today, became a non-person for the Western media. Even efforts by the group Reporters Without Frontiers, and the International Press Institute, among other organizations of journalists, failed to change attitudes towards Ganji.

Then along comes the now 'pear-shaped" Mrs. Jagger, who does it for him--regardless of his wishes.

She started by telling us about her recent trips to Tehran and Damascus, presumably the two capitals of human rights that she likes best, and how she had been told "by officials and others" that she and other Westerners had "no moral authority" to talk about human rights and freedom.

She then proceeded by saying it is all very well to remember Ganji but that should not prevent us from remembering "those held in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, and all other secret prisons" that the United States is supposed to be running all over the world.