Tavaana, an institute for Iranian civil society, interviews Nikhang Kowsar in this two-part video about his cartoons and political activism:
Nikahang Kowsar, Tavaana 
Lots of flutter this morning about this story in The New York Times by Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt over US covert operations inside Libya.
Personally, I'm shrugging my shoulders about some of this. Air operations often require "spotters" on the ground --- consider Pakistan, for example, where this type of assistance to drone strikes has been going on for years. Far more interesting are the US attempt at a bit of psychological warfare --- "[Information from covert operations] might help weaken Libya’s military enough to encourage defections within its ranks" --- and this political nugget: "The American spies are meeting with rebels to try to fill in gaps in understanding who their leaders are and the allegiances of the groups opposed to Colonel Qaddafi."
Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 23:57 | Ali Yenidunya in Africa, EA Global, EA Middle East and Turkey, Middle East and Iran 
1930 GMT: Our live blog coverage ends here. We will be back tomorrow morning.
1920 GMT: Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann, a former foreign minister of Nicaragua, has been named by Qaddafi as Libya’s ambassador to the UN.
1900 GMT: CNN reports a rebel spokesman in Benghazi, Libya saying that fighters are executing a "tactical withdrawal" from territory they previously controlled. It is reported that rebels withdrew towards Brega, prepared to defend Ajdabiya. Other sources report that rebels are leaving their places in Ajdabiya to defend Benghazi!
1452 GMT: Three Kuwaiti soldiers, two Iranians and one Kuwaiti national, have been sentenced to death for spying for the Iranian regime. The three soldiers, and several other civilians, were arrested in May 2010 and accused of passing information about Kuwaiti and U.S. military operations to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Two civilians, a Syrian and another Arab, were given life sentences, and two Iranians were aquitted.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Ramin Mehman Parast, has denied any Iranian involvement with a spy network in Kuwait.
1444 GMT: Human Rights - Mohsen Dogmechi, political prisoner incarcerated at Rajai Shahr prison, has died from cancer and "lack of medical care. According to A Street Journalist, Dogmechi was refused medical help despite the urging of several doctors that Dogmechi be transferred to a hospital for chemotherapy.
1434 GMT: Bahrain's opposition leader, Sheikh Ali Salman, sends a clear message to the Iranian regime today. "We urge Iran not to meddle in Bahraini internal affairs."
1415 GMT: James Miller reports for duty, and finds many interesting developments in Iran.
GVF is reporting that Mir Esmail Mousavi, father of Presidential Candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, has died after a long illness. He was 97.
This is a death that will likely have political repercussions. Mir Hossein Mousavi and his wife Zahra Rashnavard have been held under house arrest since February 14, without formal charges, and was not at his fathers side during his death. It is also unknown whether or not the Iranian security forces will allow Mousavi or his wife to attend funeral services.
See the video (Arabic) here.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to meet again in your council to talk to you today about the situation in Syria and address the dear people of Syria.
Syria, the castle, the glorious, the [strong] in its people.
I am talking to you at an exceptional time. It is a test that happened to be repeated due to conspiracies against this country.
God willing, we will manage to overcome [this conspiracy].
Let the Syrian people always hold their heads high.
I am talking to you from the heart, appreciating the people and sad about the events that happened.
I will be giving a seminar at Northumbria University this afternoon on the Obama Administration and the Dilemmas of "Liberal Intervention".
Ali Yenidunya will be holding the fort here, but LiveBlog updates may be limited today. As usual, we are grateful to readers for bringing in news and analysis.
Comments which are not submitted through Disqus may be delayed in their appearance on their site until I am back from the Great British Northeast.
The starting point for the health care debate is that the US spent nearly $2.2 trillion, or $7,400 per person, on health care in 2007. To put that in context, $2.2 trillion is double the total of discretionary spending, which includes defense, in 2010, and itrepresents 16% of America's annual GDP.
Those numbers and percentages have been been rapidly rising in real terms over the last 40 years. The US spent $714 billion on health care in 1990 and $253 billion in 1980; as a share of GDP, health care has increased from 7.2% in 1970 to a projected 20.3% in 2018.
The bodies surface quietly, like corks bobbing up in the dark. They come in twos and threes, a few times a week, dumped on desolate mountains or empty city roads, bearing the scars of great cruelty. Arms and legs are snapped; faces are bruised and swollen. Flesh is sliced with knives or punctured with drills; genitals are singed with electric prods. In some cases the bodies are unrecognisable, sprinkled with lime or chewed by wild animals. All have a gunshot wound in the head.
This gruesome parade of corpses has been surfacing in Balochistan, Pakistan's largest province, since last July. Several human rights groups, including Amnesty International, have accounted for more than 100 bodies --- lawyers, students, taxi drivers, farm workers. Most have been tortured. The last three were discovered on Sunday.
If you have not heard of this epic killing spree, though, don't worry: neither have most Pakistanis.
Across the Middle East and North Africa, every regime that has come under pressure has offered one explanation or another for why the protesters' demands are illegitimate. Egypt's and Libya's governments blamed the chaos on foreigners with malevolent agendas. Tunisia's blamed Islamists. In Morocco, the government has added the health of the economy to the list of reasons the protesters are out of line. "In the space of a few weeks, [protests could] cost us what we have achieved over the last 10 years," the country's finance minister, Salaheddine Mezouar,warned last month. The implication, it seems, is that Morocco's economy has achieved quite a lot.
2030 GMT: Cartoon of the Day (Iran-Syria Special). Maya Nayestani depicts a special message from Tehran to Damascus, a woman explaining to her friend, "He is sending a smoke signal to Bashar al-Assad":
2015 GMT: The House Arrests. Kalemeh updates on the house arrest/detention of Mir Hossein Mousavi and Zahra Rahnavard....
