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Originally posted by krakknisse
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Regarding your linked article from www.arabnews.com ?
<< Iran is being demonized for a purpose. The deliberately orchestrated hype and fear mongering obscures the reality. There is no evidence that Iran is working toward the production of nuclear weapons as a US National Intelligence Estimate clearly stated and far from threatening its neighbors it is going out of its way to extend the hand of friendship to all except Israel, which, by the way, President Ahmadinejad did not advocate wiping off the map. His words were mistranslated and the Western media shirked its duty to correct the mistake. >>
With respect and friendship, I would sincerely suggest you may wish to do some elementary-fact checking before endorsing the above viewpoint as your own. Some minimal fact checking will reveal this is some egregiously soft-peddling mis-information and I would not introduce a link to this news outlet on the strength of this article's very poor journalistic integrity. The article you referended mixes the true with the false with an apparent sense of impunity, in the time-honored tradition of misinformation employed everywhere. Refutations of it's assertions is numerous, from some very mainstream sources.
What the article brushes over as softly as a feather is that Iran's just doubled their centrifuge capacity for nuclear fuel enrichment, has stonewalled full and free inspections by the IAEA for years which makes not rational sense if their nuclear efforts genuinely compliant with pure energy research - and that it is precisely this long and persistent ambiguity at the national policy level which has led to the present impasse with that same IAEA. Nowhere is it mentioned in the context of the "unreasonable" demands being placed upon Iran, that they could defuse all of the tension of the past half dozen years on the nuclear question simply by allowing full IAEA inspections.
Lost in the article's "fluff" is the simple fact that no-one has denied Iran the ability to build and operate nuclear enrichment facilities, as long as they permit full IAEA inspections, just exactly like every other IAEA signatory. Israel is not an IAEA signatory, and more tellingly, never has gone so egregiously far as to openly advocate any neighboring country, let alone any country in the world, be "wiped from the map" or even reduced in any way. This is not a mere diplomatic nicety, it is the public measure of a country's temperance, or intemperance.
This article further goes on to give the "feathersoft" treatment to the assertions that Iran is "extending the hand of friendship to all it's neighbors". This is the most egregious piece of misinformation posted in this article - worthy of the hoary AlJazeera.com [ http://www.aljazeera.com ] which takes the prize for shrill slanted garbage dressed as Journalism. As a presumably neutral Scandinavian, you might benefit from carrying out a short bit of research on the extent to which Iran has funded Hezbollah to the hilt, with serious mid-range armaments, (not just "border skirmish" weapons) and has done so with a breathtaking scorn for the risks of destabilizing the entire region. Does it need to be observed moreover that Hezbollah are a paramilitary "State within a State" which is systematically ursurping and sabotaging the Lebanese Government's authority to construct and maintain a peace with Israel?
Please Krakknisse - you hail from one of the Scandinavian countries? Your nations have a very proud reputation as the most scrupulously neutral observers of conflicts. Please do not tarnish my regard for this wonderful credential from your region by telling me you believe the disingenuous whitewash implied in this article. I am fully prepared to side with those calling for the exercise of extreme prudence and patience at this time, but if I see a European willing to swallow the bland and heavily edited assertions from Arabnews.com as unuestioned fact, inclusive of "all the relevant details" it puts some real stress on my faith in the notion of "neutrality" or "objectivity" existing any more.
Answer me this question- was this article carried in your regional Scandinavian press or did you dig it up independently? If it was carried in Northern Europe's press, was it carried without comment or explanatory background on Iran's history of activism in the ME? Such commentary or background might critically serve to better inform your regional readers of the facts?
Further - I've read all kinds of recidivist whitewashing of Ahmedinejad's statments regarding Israel. If your community and readers are swallowing the bland misleading disclaimers of this article, which flatly claims Iran's current Premier has never explicitly advocated "wiping Israel off the Map" please accept my sincere recommendation that you suspend your belief in this assertion long enough to do some independent invbestigation of your own.
You might start with this article from Al Jazeera English - a community we've discussed at length here at iTulip which has been acknowledged to be reputable. It is a spin-off of a former BBC subsidiary and has nothing to do with alJazeera.com. This article's reportage is to be found in dozens of reputable news sources that have thoroughly chased down this controversy.
Anyone who considers it still "uncertain what Iran's Premier really said" regarding the Israelis (on multiple occasions!) has some serious reviewing to do of the quality of their preferred news sources. Ahmedinejad's notions of the art of diplomacy are somewhat "questionable"?
http://english.aljazeera.net/English...rchiveId=15816
Posting references to such articles as this carefully groomed piece from Arabnews.com about the "dangerous sabre ratting" going on against Iran, while omitting any context at all on the comportment, statements, stonewalling the IAEA, and most of all, the active incitement and arming of Hezbollah to foment extremely dangerous further conflicts with Israel - this kind of slanting constitutes a "fluff piece" of proto-"Journalism". It does not represent even a low benchmark for Journalistic objectivity or integrity. Unfortunately the world of journalism is rife with this bilge.
There are a range of false assertions within it, which if accepted by broad segments of the world readership does lead to some highly inaccurate and damaging conclusions as to the seriousness and sincerity of a good body of criticism of Iran's "foreign policy". Such systematic misrepresentation is dangerous. The graduated responses from a whole arc of Western governments have been extremely patient and constructive at every step. Further, can you remotely acknowledge a world where "pure diplomacy" can go bankrupt eventually - how many years does that take, to satisfy the Hans Blix's of this world? After ten years of talk? Fifteen years of talk? Apparently Hans Blix himself has repeatedly expressed exasperation at the length of time Iran chose to play cat and mouse games with the free unfettered inspections.
Meanwhile, what we euphemistically refer to as Iran's "foreign policy" in the Middle East is what may be termed "highly adventurous".
You need only ask Fouad Saniora, Premier of Lebanon, just how "activist" the Iranians truly are. Iran's direct, blatant and very enthusiastic funding of Hezbollah is quite literally chewing his country to pieces. The Lebanese are (were) something very special in the middle east - a truly democratic nation. I fear a possibility that a broad segment of European readers are swallowing such articles far too uncritically?
P.S. In case Fred feels "restless" about seeing such responses here in what is purported to be the "news" segment - I have voluntarily moved my own respons to this website's "Rant and Rave" pages, which is surely an ignominious and demeaning name for the appropriate "grab bag" place on this website to which are delegated legitimate refutations of the quality of "reportage" carried by the cited Arabnews.com Please note: I did not introduce "political discussion" gratuitously into this thread. This post is a straight reply concerning the journalistic quality of the referenced article from Arabnews.com. In my view anyone who m\posts a link to Arabnews.com, or to Paul Craig Roberts' shrill and unremittingly partisan denunciations, deserves at least a coherent rebuttal to balance reader opinions around here with something more bipartisan or politically agnostic in analysis.
Yes, true political agnosticism must be also prepared to point out some shockingly irresponsible actions of Iran's as well as the grieveous errors of the US
If you feel the need to seek out local ME news sources for "unbiased" reporting on Iran's profile in the region, I recommend Al Jazeera English - If you dig around a little not only there, but really research seriously, while not fearing to draw articles from all the leading newspapers out of the EU and the US, you'll quickly confirm it is not only Ahmedinejad, but several cabinet ministers, and even one or two Iranian Ambassadors, who have also gone on record openly advocating the "elimination" of the State of Israel. Tell me, how many other responsible nations in the world can you cite, who's diplomatic staff find it constructive to go on the record with such extremely inflammatory language? An ambassador, using such language, in the context of the already flaming tensions between Israelis and the regional surroundingnations? What is your Scandinavian word for "diplomatic loose cannon"?
Is any of the tripe in the above quoted article actually greeted with the appropriate degree of skepticism in the EU? I would certainly hope so.
This assertion is false: by the way, President Ahmadinejad did not advocate wiping off the map. His words were mistranslated and the Western media shirked its duty to correct the mistake
No - readers are getting spun in a house of mirrors on this point. If you buy that, you are being DIDDLED. It is instead we, who will shirk our duty if we not engage in the elementary research to discover that various Iranian government officials, from the Ministerial level to their State Depatment, right up to the Presidency, have openly stated precisely the above. It is a testament to the crude quality of their diplomatic face to the rest of the world, to the fetid cultural microcosm which they have constructed around their nation, that they have not stopped until recently to wonder just how devastatingly badly this reflects their nation in the world's diplomatic community. This nation hosted a convention of "scholars" to investigate the "reality of the holocaust" ** . Read all about it, it's all over the news records from 2007. Does anyone detect a note of national institutionalized racial hysteria at work there reminiscent of Nazi Germany? Some of you people may feel comfortable defending this formerly wonderful (formerly secular and highly educated!) nation's governing class as "beleaguered and responsible people victimized by a biased Western press", but at very least you should recognize that this cited article cotained several critical omissions, and even outright falsehoods. If you find that much gravely amiss in a single piece of Journalistic reporting, be well on your guard as to the standards of that news source, and be further on your guard against hearing those falsehoods re-stated elsewhere.
** http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/new...p?storyid=6082
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