Juan Cole points out how the media fails to help us sift through the convenient ommissions of information that might be contrary to the message this administration wants to be heard. Cole has this to say about how the US Media has not included several key statements from the Iranian leader:
The US media presented only a snippet from the speech of Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei of Iran on Sunday, in which he threatened to damage oil supplies to the West if the US militarily attacked Iran. He did say that, but he also announced that Iran had no intention of striking first, had not attacked and would not attack another country, and that it has no nuclear weapons program and does not want a nuclear bomb. I didn’t hear any of those statements reported on television.
For some strange reason, a relatively full text of important speeches given by world leaders is almost never provided to the public by any US media in English. I doubt there are even a handful of speeches easily accessible in English by Spanish President Zapatero, e.g. I cannot entirely explain this strange phenomenon, of the coccooned and almost deliberately ignorant approach to the world of the US corporate media and their audience.The odd thing is that the American public pays tax dollars so that the Open Source Center of the USG can translate such primary texts. They are, however, not made freely available, though you can get them via university and maybe other good libraries.
Who is the only country asserting proudly that they WILL strike first? Such blatant hypocrisy and cultural hubris. OF COUSE THEY can’t be trusted with nuclear weapons. They are THEY; THEM; those OTHERS. On the other hand, we’re US; we’re the moral ones (although our country is the ONLY one to actually USE the bomb on people. Go figure. TOTALLY blinded by false allegiances to the false stories fed to us by the empire which we do not recognize as such. The classic case of the wolf in sheep’s clothing; angel of light, etc. whose purpose is to convince the throng of the righteousness of their cause, all the while doing the bidding of the evil one. Screwtape and Wormwood are alive and well in the United States of America.
How about this: Why not have someone “investigate” the United States methods of using nuclear power for energy needs, and see how well WE pass the test the Bush administration is applying to Iran in order to accuse them of seeking weapons grade nuclear capabilities. Would our “energy” efforts be suspicious? (Oh wait, we ARE using it for weapons as well. So that doesn’t quite work , does it? Of course, it’s fine for us to do so. We’r ethe United States of America — no, wait again —-we’re the only ones to actually use the weapons on people, so that doesn’t quite work…..no wait, it DOES work? How does that work? When one steps outside the Koolaid of all the deterrence theories, how the only actual USER of the nuclear bomb in history is somehow the GUARDIAN of its proper usage is exposed as nonsense.
