This is an HSBC Financial Service Company ad currently on display at the Athens airport. (h/t Noah Pollak)

Apparently the ad’s suggestion that women have more opportunities in Iran than in the United States isn’t meant as a joke, as I found another version of the ad online:


I guess HSBC considered, and then decided against, using the following photos (of Iranian women being beaten for participating in a peaceful womens rights demonstration) for the ad:

And, HSBC, no doubt, considered, and then rejected this one, too.


Thirty three women’s rights advocates were arrested that day in 2007 for staging a peaceful gathering in front of the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Tehran – a move, no doubt, motivated by the Revolutionary Court’s sincere concern that such protests would conflict with their film making.

This should of course not come as a surprise when HSBC, a leader in Shari’a finance, apparently lent hundreds of millions of dollars in the past to the Iranian government, is the bank of choice of terror funder, Viva Palestina, and is the subject of ongoing investigations into anti-money laundering and bank secrecy act violations which so far have resulted in a consent order with the US Treasury Department.

Oh and HSBC just happens to be one of the Guardian’s advertisers. How coincidental.