Afshin Rattansi (born 1968) is a British broadcaster, journalist and author who presents ''Going Underground'' broadcast around the world except in the UK and EU, on television stations including the RT network, formerly known as Russia Today. He has also worked for the ''

Today Today (archaically to-day) may refer to: * Day of the present, the time that is perceived directly, often called ''now'' * Current era, present * The current calendar date Arts, entertainment, and media Films * ''Today'' (1930 film), a 1930 ...

'' programme on

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC's ...

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a fourth television service ...

Al Jazeera Al Jazeera ( ar, الجزيرة, translit-std=DIN, translit=al-jazīrah, , "The Island") is a state-owned Arabic-language international radio and TV broadcaster of Qatar. It is based in Doha and operated by the media conglomerate Al Jazee ...

CNN International CNN International (CNNI, simply branded on-air as CNN) is an international television channel that is owned by CNN Global. CNN International carries news-related programming worldwide; it cooperates with sister network CNN's national and inter ...

Press TV Press TV (stylised as PRESSTV) is an Iranian state-owned news network that broadcasts in the English and French languages owned by Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), the only organization legally able to transmit radio and TV broadc ...

and

Bloomberg Bloomberg may refer to: People * Daniel J. Bloomberg (1905–1984), audio engineer * Georgina Bloomberg (born 1983), professional equestrian * Michael Bloomberg (born 1942), American businessman and founder of Bloomberg L.P.; politician and m ...

. He was the launch Business Editor of the Dubai Business Channel. He was also the first English-language producer at Qatar's Al Jazeera Television Network He writes occasional articles for ''

CounterPunch ''CounterPunch'' is a left-wing online magazine. Content includes a free section published five days a week as well as a subscriber-only area called CounterPunch+, where original articles are published weekly. ''CounterPunch'' is based in the Un ...

'' and has contributed to scholarly journal, Critical Quarterly His work appeared in the Penguin Books anthology, Brought to Book and his quartet "The Dream of the Decade" came out in 2005.

Early life

Rattansi was born in

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

, in 1968, the son of immigrant parents, Prof. Pyarally Mohamedally Rattansi and Zarin Miraly Charania, who had married in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

two years before. His father - late emeritus Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at University College London -was born in

Kenya ) , national_anthem = " Ee Mungu Nguvu Yetu"() , image_map = , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Nairobi , coordinates = , largest_city = Nairobi , ...

, one of the ten children of a tea planter, and the Rattansi family had originally come there from Chavand, a village in

Kathiawar Kathiawar () is a peninsula, near the far north of India's west coast, of about bordering the Arabian Sea. It is bounded by the Gulf of Kutch in the northwest and by the Gulf of Khambhat (Gulf of Cambay) in the east. In the northeast, i ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area, the List of countries and dependencies by population, second-most populous ...

.“Pyarally M Rattansi”
in ''England & Wales Civil Registration Marriage Index, 1916-2005'', ancestry.co.uk, accessed 4 September 2022 He has a younger brother, Shihab.

Career

Rattansi began his career as a columnist for ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers '' The Observer'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the ...

'' before working on Britain's Channel 4 primetime documentary series executive produced by

Tariq Ali Tariq Ali (; born 21 October 1943) is a Pakistani-British political activist, writer, journalist, historian, filmmaker, and public intellectual. He is a member of the editorial committee of the ''New Left Review'' and ''Sin Permiso'', and con ...

and

Darcus Howe Leighton Rhett Radford "Darcus" Howe (26 February 1943 – 1 April 2017)"Civil ...

, commissioned by Farukh Dhondy and

Waldemar Januszczak Waldemar Januszczak (born 12 January 1954) is an English art critic and television documentary producer and presenter. Formerly the art critic of '' The Guardian'', he took the same role at '' The Sunday Times'' in 1992, and has twice won the ...

. Rattansi was a guest panelist in a 2018 edition of the BBC's ''

Question Time A question time in a parliament occurs when members of the parliament ask questions of government ministers (including the prime minister), which they are obliged to answer. It usually occurs daily while parliament is sitting, though it can be ca ...

'' in which the

poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal On 4 March 2018, Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military officer and double agent for the British intelligence agencies, and his daughter, Yulia Skripal, were poisoned in the city of Salisbury, England. According to UK sources and the Organi ...

was discussed. Referring to

Keir Starmer Sir Keir Rodney Starmer (; born 2 September 1962) is a British politician and barrister who has served as Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Labour Party since 2020. He has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Holborn and St Pancras s ...

, Rattansi asked "Why is it that neo-con, neo-liberal Labour Party members continue to try and use WMDs to push us into war". In 2022, Afshin Rattansi founded the production company Ghaf TV Productions in the United Arab Emirates where quarter of a century before he was the founding Business Editor of the Dubai Business Channel.

Filmography

Television

Documentaries

Books

* Afshin Rattansi, ''The Dream of the Decade: the London Novels'' (London: BookSurge, 2006)

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Rattansi, Afshin 1968 births Living people British people of Indian descent Press TV people RT (TV network) people