April 25, 2006
The
hysteria being generated around Iran’s alleged nuclear 'ambitions’ (the
media’s favourite newspeak word these days) serves several purposes;
one, it conveniently diverts attention away from the situation in Iraq;
two, it acts as a warning to any other country challenging US
imperialism’s increasingly desperate bid for global domination and, it
also serves to divert attention away from the real and present danger
of climate catastrophe which is itself directly the result of the
Western world's suicidal economic system.
And,
as the real nature of the catastrophe that confronts us become
increasingly impossible to hide, so does the importance of a propaganda
campaign that peddles the hysterical message of 'Islamic
fundamentalism' as being the 'real threat' to Western civilisation.
The
media’s role in whipping up the clamour for 'taking out’ Iran’s nuclear
programme is nothing short of outrageous with article after article
rolling out of corporate editors’ offices on Iran’s 'intransigence’
(another fave) or the more extreme, the 'mullah’s bomb’ (see for
example, The Weekly Standard's rant).
UPI for example, carried the following short piece titled 'Report: Iran building nuclear bunkers’, the piece is full of totally unsubstantiated allegations including the title, itself a phrase loaded with innuendo.
WASHINGTON,
April 18 (UPI) — A former U.N. weapons inspector claims satellite
imagery indicates Iran is building underground nuclear facilities south
of Tehran.
David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector who now works for the
Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, said
commercially available pictures show construction work on two huge fuel
enrichment halls at Natanz, about 180 miles south of Tehran. Each
structure is about 480-by-510 foot, he told The Telegraph.
He said the facilities appear to be planned to house centrifuges that are used to enrich uranium, which can be used in nuclear weapons, The Telegraph reported Tuesday.
"Both cascade halls have been covered in dirt. Trucks and steamrollers
are laying what appears to be a grey material, possibly cement, over
the soil," Albright’s report said.
Iran claims its nuclear development is solely for the generation of electricity but there is widespread international suspicion of a covert weapons program. [my emph. WB]
The
UPI story is interesting for what it doesn’t say and how it mixes the
ISIS report with allegations from a story in the London Daily Telegraph
which when read in the context of the UPI story completely misrepresent
Albright’s ISIS report.
The report (available here) actually says as follows:
Following
the [IAEA] briefing, anonymous US officials quickly started to distort
what the IAEA had said. These officials told journalists on a not for
attribution basis that this action by Iran represented a significant
acceleration of its enrichment program. US officials called several
journalists to tell them that in the briefing IAEA officials were
"shocked," "astonished," "blown-away" by Iran’s progress on gas
centrifuges, leading the United States to revise its own timeline for
Iran to get the bomb. In fact, IAEA officials have said they were not
surprised by Iran’s actions. Although Iran’s pace is troubling and
requires concerted diplomatic effort to reverse, it was also
anticipated by other experts, including those at ISIS. A senior IAEA
official told the Associated Press that these US statements came "from
people who are seeking a crisis, not a solution." 'The Clock is
Ticking, But How Fast?’ By David Albright and Corey Hinderstein. The
Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS)
The ISIS report goes on to say
Estimates
of Iran’s nuclear capabilities, accomplishments, and timelines need far
greater public and Congressional scrutiny than they are currently
receiving. This scrutiny becomes even more important as those in the
Bush Administration who favor confronting Iran and pressing for regime
change may be hyping up Iran’s nuclear threat and trying to undermine
intelligence assessments that Iran is several years from having nuclear
weapons.
And again in an article in the Washington Post dated April 17, 2006, Albright is distortingly quoted from the same report
David
Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International
Security, a private research group in Washington that monitors the
Iranian program, said Mr. Ahmadinejad’s declaration, whether political
rhetoric or technical reality, now gave the world "something to further
investigate and worry about."
The quote, when taken out of context enabled the Washington Post
to draw entirely different conclusions and is perhaps a lesson on
so-called objective writing that we can all learn from namely, that
even the most innocuous of comments can be used to distort reality.
Press
coverage is deliberately selective in what it chooses to tell the
public about Iran's alleged 'intentions'. After all, what are
intentions based upon? The use of such a vague word is actually
intrinsic to US rewriting of international relations which are no
longer based upon the rule of law, international conventions and
agreements but on the idea of pre-emption, thus intentions replaces
actions, indeed intentions are now synonomous with actions!
In
this way, the media reinforces the US policy of pre-emption by
accepting innuendo as fact, assumptions as a replacement for actions.
It
should therefore come as no surprise that the corporate and state-run
media never make reference to this fundamental shift in Western policy,
instead the West's 'right' to invade and destroy whatever gets in its
way is an a priori fact of reality and not worthy of bringing to the
attention of the public.
Another
favourite is the phrase 'the international community condemns Iran and
its nuclear ambitions’ when the reality is that it’s only the US and
the UK along with some EU states who take this view and in any case,
it’s only an opinion and about as useful as 'intentions' when it comes
to making judgements about Iran's actions.
The
same applies to the 'rulings' of the UN Security Council dominated as
it is by the US, thus UNSEC is presented to us as being the same as
'international opinion'. The same applies to the International Atomic
Energy Agency, the IAEA, also dominated by the US which informed us
that there is an
"absence
of confidence that Iran's nuclear programme is exclusively peaceful",
and of a "policy of concealment" pursued by Tehran.
But
whose words are these, the US' or the 'international community'? Again,
"confidence" means absolutely nothing but the BBC for example chose to
report this an article titled "Iran threatens to end UN contacts".
And why shouldn't Iran take this position, a tactic used by the US over
and over again when on the odd occasion when the UN actually went
against US policy.
In another BBC story, we read
The
UN says there is so far no proof that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons -
as suspected in the West - but nor has Iran proved that it is not. 'Iran sanctions 'depend on proof'
Note
the phrase "as suspected in the West" used in spite of the fact that
the UN states that there is no proof that Iran is building nuclear
weapons. How is Iran expected to prove a negative? This goes to the
very heart of the West's propaganda campaign; it's based on nothing
more substantial than innuendo and suspicion.
Condemnation,
consensus, confidence, cheating, nuclear ambitions, the list goes on,
yet upon investigation the words are, by themselves meaningless, they
seek only to create an atmosphere of fear and mistrust, built up over
time that constructs a context within which the US, will, at a time of
its own choosing, just as it did with Iraq, deliver the coup de grace.
Ultimately,
the US will tell the world that its 'patience has run out’, that unless
Iran does as its told, the US will be forced to use the military
option. It will also point to the fact that those blocking the use of
the UN Security Council as a weapon of US foreign policy have a vested
economic interest that is, principally China and Russia.
The
public, failing an alternative presentation, have little else upon
which to base their understanding of what is really going on let alone
get any background of why Iran is apparently seeking nuclear
confrontation with the US except of course the Iranian president’s
alleged call to wipe out Israel.
But
is it realistic to think that Iran would attack the West with nuclear
weapons? What could they possibly gain except their own destruction?
This is a question the media never ask for if it did, the
entire propaganda exercise would fall apart. The very idea that Iran
would launch a nuclear attack on the West is sheer fantasy and based
only on the notion, invented by the West, that Iran is a country ruled
by Islamic fanatics who have apparently completely abandoned the idea
of self-preservation.
But
in the context of a propaganda campaign which has turned Islam into
some kind of 'jihad' driven by a messianic fatalism, it makes perfect
sense. Thus the role of racism becomes clear, 'they' are all
uncivilised, bent on some suicidal mission that defies any reasoning
with, after all, how is one to reason with irrational fanatics who
would, if given the chance, destroy the world knowing that they will go
to an afterlife full of beautiful babes living in paradise.
Of
course, such a vision is ludicrous if it weren't for the fact that
beneath all the so-called objective reportage in the Western media,
this is exactly what is being said.
Iraq’s 'WMD’, a casebook example
The demonisation of Iran is a mirror image of the propaganda war used
in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq and one that follows a
predictable course, with a slew of 'experts’ and the 'condemnation of
the international community’ used to create a veneer of authenticity
(See for example 'David Kay and the CIA’ for more on how 'experts’ are used to create a veneer of respectability and authentication.
Kay’s
involvement stretches back to the Reagan years and as I my piece on
Kay, written in October 2003, makes abundantly clear, creating a
climate of fear is the chosen method backed up with a lot of bogus
analysis. Blurry satellite photos along with 'interpretations’ of what
the images represent are rolled out just as with the images being used
of Iran's 'secret' nuclear site. The media of course, accept these
meaningless images as fact, 'interpreted’ of course by their chosen
'security’ correspondent.
This is what Kay had to say in July 2003 regarding Iraq’s alleged WMD programme:
"I
think the American people should be prepared for surprises … I think
it’s very likely that we will discover remarkable surprises in this
enterprise." (www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/10/02/sprj.irq.kay/index.html
The
parallels with the build-up to the invasion of Iraq and the current
situation are blatantly obvious down to the identical use of language
by Kay back in 2003 where he referred to Saddam’s "intentions".
Kay’s
involvement with Science Applications International Corp (SAIC) is well
documented and reveals the vested interest that military contractors
have in participating in the propaganda war. Indeed SAIC was directly
involved in running the propaganda war:
"[The]
SAIC, heavily involved with homeland security projects, has already
acquired several reconstruction contracts in Iraq, and Kay and a number
of other former company employees are firmly planted in [the] country.
The company "has been running the Iraqi Reconstruction and Development
Council (IRDC) since the body was established by the Pentagon in
February," Dauenhauer and Lobe reported. "SAIC is also a subcontractor
under Vinnell Corporation, another big defense contractor that has long
been in charge of training for the Saudi National Guard, hired to
reconstitute and train a new Iraqi army." And SAIC is also running the
recently established Iraqi Media Network (IMN) project, whose charge
was to "was to put together a new information ministry, complete with
television, radio and a newspaper, and the content that would make all
three attractive to average Iraqis.
www.globalexchange.org/countries/iraq/1038.html
The
collaboration between the military corporations and the propagandists
is of course never revealed by the corporate media. Thus whenever an
'expert’ appears on the BBC for example, the fact that the corporation
or institute that employs them has a direct interest in the foreign
policy objectives of the US is rarely if ever revealed to us.
The
use of institutes and think-tanks, all of which are funded with
millions of corporate dollars, creates the appearance of some kind of
objective analysis being brought to bear on the issue when the reality
is that these 'institutes' are in fact part of a carefully constructed
propaganda campaign built over several decades. The 'experts' give the
analysis the stamp of authenticity in a revolving door process with
governments employing these 'experts' to validate policy. Even the
setting for a TV interview is integral to the campaign, with the
'expert' invariably sitting in an office surrounded by thousands of
'learned tomes' thus reinforcing the aura of authenticity.
Is
it any wonder therefore, when presented with such an overwhelming
barrage of 'expert' opinion that it is impossible for the public to
discern truth from fiction especially when set in the context of an
atmosphere of overt racism and xenophobia that paints countries like
Iran as being run by a bunch of rabid fanatics willing to risk nuclear
conflagration in the 'cause' of the 'one true God' or whatever.
Language becomes a weapon of domination just as surely as guns and
bombs.