Yesterday’s The Times newspaper featured this article on its front-page, entitled Iran could make an atom bomb. I urge you to read it while bearing the following in mind:
Israel has one of the largest armies in the world, already has nuclear power and nuclear weapons, and routinely breaks international law. In fact, the USA gives Israel many of its nuclear weapons. Why is Israel’s neighbour, Iran not allowed even to have nuclear power? Is it because it is the only resource-rich Muslim state not in US control left in the world?
The whole article has been prompted into existence by a leaked intelligence report. Do you not think that this is ridiculous? This is the same sort of ‘intelligence’ that was actually believed by some people and indeed led to the illegal occupation of Iraq and the death of 1 million Iraqis and thousands of Western soldiers.
How is it that The Times can just perpetuate the paradigm that Iran is not worthy of nuclear power but others like Israel are? It devotes no words to a debate on whether Iran ’should’ ‘get away with’ having nuclear power.
Israel has nuclear weapons that can reach any part of the world. Yet, regarding the range of different nuclear weapons, all we hear is how “Iran has done extensive research and testing on how to fashion the components of a nuclear payload to be delivered by the Shahab 3, a medium-range missile capable of hitting Israel and parts of southern Europe”.
Why does the article feature many quotations from people like Obama’s National Security Advisor, but there is only one quotation from an Iranian person? The only quotation from an Iranian person is from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s Supreme Leader who apparently said in 1984 that “a nuclear arsenal would serve Iran as a deterrent in the hands of God’s soldiers”. The article attacks Iran and villanizes it. Yet the only quotation from an Iranian person is not from a politician, it is from 1984 and features the word ‘God’. If you don’t believe that Iran is our new target, in part, because it is a Muslim state, think seriously about the significance of this being the only quotation carried from an Iranian person in the entire article, and that it features a religious point.
If you want something to counter the mainstream warmongering, try getting your news from somewhere like The Real News Network.
I despair at the events that are happening regarding the ‘discovery’ that Iran has built a ’secret’ nuclear station. I first heard this ‘news’ a couple of days ago on BBC Radio 4.
[I don't have enough time to write about the issue of Iran in as much detail as I'd like, so I have written what I can. So, please, make the most of the articles/videos to which I have linked to on this page. I have *starred* 3 links below which I think are essential reading.]
The media and our government - entities which we are meant to believe are reputable or credible - have by in large brought shame upon our country in the last few days.
The situation I see makes me fearful on many accounts:
First, I have not heard the British media spouting propaganda in such a pure and crude way in such amounts for a long time - this is disturbing.
Secondly, how will this ‘event’ escalate in terms of international relations? - what will be the consequences for Iranians and peace.
Thirdly, how much further will the British people’s ‘understanding’ of the world be polluted by what they hear, read, and see. You need only watch to this video to see why I despair at how the media had had an affect on people:
The moral question
It’s really a very simple matter. How is it that Iran cannot develop nuclear power, but Britain, France, the USA, and Israel can already have nuclear power and condemn Iran for trying to get them? How is it that they can punish Iran for trying to have nuclear power (as if it was an evil thing) yet they themselves do nothing to reduce their ‘evil’ possession of this technology? Well, clearly, this moral hypocrisy is the crux.
You need only type in “IRAN” in a Google News search to see the lies and hypocrisy that are circulated about it. The first article that I found when I did that search was written by a journalist for the AFP based in Jeruslaem, entitled New plant proves Iran seeking nuclear weapons: Israel. It opens:
Israel on Saturday said the disclosure of a second nuclear enrichment facility in Iranproved the country was seeking nuclear weapons and demanded an “unequivocal” Western response.
Just to remind you that Israel is a terrorist state, *supported in every way (economically, politically, militarily, philosophically)* by the USA, and is the biggest threat to Iran. But the point is this: how is it possible that the main stream media has fallen to such a standard that it’s even possible to publish the sentence I quote above. Israel’s conclusion to the premise is absolutely absurd. I would offer to re-write the sentence for them:
Israel on Saturday said the disclosure of a second nuclear enrichment facility in Iran proved that the country was seeking nuclear power.
… because this is the only sensical conclusion one can draw from such a fact.
Iran is not alone
However, we must remember that it is not just Iran who is in the situation of wanting nuclear power and approaching having it as a reality. Other states too find themselves in the same situation - this is a point expressed in an interview with The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), an international organization that seeks to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy.
Who wants to have nuclear power? Ask a random British person. They will most likely say Iran, for they are told that Iran wants nuclear power and that it is a threat, but they don’t get told about the other states who also want the same thing.
Iran as the terrorist
Often The Independent or The Guardian make statements or take stances on issues that seems radical or abnormal relative to the norm in the mainstream media (MSM), and this allows for the image that we have an overall balanced MSM. I call this the false contention - for usually, the real dissenting opinion are never present, they are omitted, but instead, some weak or peripheral ideas are used and portrayed as radical to create the impression that dissenting opinion is present in our political system. An example of this is The Independent’s comment on recent events. The Independent’s comment was reported by the *BBC in an article* which tries to paint an image of the variety of opinion within the newspapers regarding recent events. The BBC says that The Independent believes ‘that by “ramping up the rhetoric”, the US and its allies might bring about “real international disaster”‘. ‘Gosh!’, we are meant to think.
The Independent asserts that rhetoric is a problem; but it’s not. The problem is that lies regarding Iran are pandemic.
For instance, ‘to quote the misquote, “Israel must be wiped off the map”. Contrary to popular belief, this statement was never made’. What was really said was: “The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time”. You can *read an explanation* of this lie which has been universal in the media.
I leave you with this video, hopefully it instils some hope, it’s a snapshot from an episode of the BBC’s Question Time:
P.S. note how the first speaker says ‘they’ and the tone in which he says it.
Harry Fear's ‘passionettes’ are politics, philosophy and the power of words. He aims to write about them in his online journal, The Advocating Creator. Read more...
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