Easy…you would find quotes backing up the OP’s assertion “it means that iranians are far less religious and fanatic than assumed by world wide media”…so you would find quotes saying that the Iranian people are religious fanatic. Showing images of Iranians burning US flags (decades ago) is not exactly the same as stating that the Iranian people are religious fanatics. If we are supposedly bombarded by this message, if its so all pervasive, you should be able to open up any MSM site and find evidence of it…no?
If we are down to anecdotes, well, my own anecdotal evidence is I have NOT see a lot of MSM articles saying that the Iranian people are religious fanatics. In fact, I’ve seen more articles like the one I DID cite in this thread, talking about Iranian appathy and disgruntalment with the various restrictions, grim resignation, etc etc. Hardly fanatical religious types in lock-step with their government. The only time I’ve seen articles such as the OP posits its on non-MSM type sites that have political agenda’s. Most right wing type sites.
And as if on cue, Headline News just gave us some stock footage of Iranian youth with their hands in the air chanting angrily as background visuals for Glenn Beck’s rant on the gathering threat from Iran. There’s your damn cite, xtisme. :rolleyes:
:rolleyes: Did they state that the majority of Iranians are religious fanatics? That the majority of Iranians actively support the government and its policies, especially those policies or a religious bent…as the OP stated?
Or are we just supposed to pick that up on our own from stock footage of angry Iranians? Never mind…its obvious there is a disconnect here. Maybe its just me. You guys carry on.
In one of John Simpson’s books (he is a veteran BBC TV reporter) he describes an anti-American demonstration in Pakistan, there was a lot of shouting and they burnt an effigy of Bush (?), while being watched and filmed by a whole load of journalists.
The interesting thing was that the ‘mob’ were quite friendly towards the journos, definitely not threatening in any way, and were basically ‘acting’.
As Simpson pointed out, that aspect of the demonstration was not reported.
Not totally relevant, but he used it as an example of how the press misrepresents events.
xtisme, I apologize for the nastiness of this post. I wasn’t mad at you, I was mad at HNN for throwing propaganda at us. I let that anger bleed over into my response to you. Again, my apology.
I’m not sure, but I remember hearing that Shi‘ism doesn’t place as much emphasis on mosque attendance–probably because Friday prayer was historically considered a function of the state, and Shi‘ites historically lived under Sunni states, therefore maybe felt less imperative to support the state by attending Friday prayer. Shi‘ite law developed on the assumption that the only “real” Islamic state would be ruled by the Imams and that in their absence people were exempt from Friday prayer attendance… or something like that. Khomeini’s political theology of vilayat-e faqih (rule by mullas) still considers the Islamic Republic government as only a placeholder until the Awaited Imam returns, so by this theory Iran still does not have a “real” Islamic government according to Shi‘ite theology. My point is, mosque attendance figures wouldn’t have the same implication in a Shi‘ite country as they would under Sunni law, which did not have the same issues around state authority and Friday prayer.
Guillou, also know for his rabid anti-Israel views. “[Israel is] an apartheid system, exactly like South Africa", “[The] difference between Israel and the apartheid state of South Africa is that Israel executes more people and is keeping more people in jails and military enforced ghetto zones.", “I am optimistic, I believe Israel will cease to exist before Armageddon.", “[Israel is] racist [and a] European warrior state”. “[The Jewish exodus from Israel was caused by] Israeli agents amongst other things throwing bombs in Baghdad Mosques.” etc. as well as having participated in radio programs with notorious holocaust denier and neo-Nazi Ahmed Rami, who used to run the radio channel Radio Islam (now an Internet site featuring amongst other things, Mein Kampf, Protocols of the Elders, and many articles by Guillou Guillou on Radio Islam). No more than two days ago, while channel surfing at bit, I heard Guillou weaving nostalgic about how he might be killed by an “Israeli terrorist”. click …if I get killed by an Israeli terrorist I’ll become famous… click
In the late 70’s he wrote a book where he stated that Saddam Hussein was a model leader, a progressive statesman, who values the welfare of his people, peace and democracy – denying that Iraq should be a “particular violent” as mere “racist fantasies”. Abu Ghraib is described as a model prison, much better than Swedish prisons. Here are some of his predictions on Iraq on that occation:
“[Before the year 2000 Iraq] will have surpassed European countries in standard of living.” “[With Saddam Hussein] the Baathis regime of Iraq is clearly very popular.” “[During the 70s] the country is to be democratized.” “[Iraq has] fewer restrictions on a free press [than most other countries] and is on a trajectory towards more freedom of press and not less.” “[When Iraq executed a number of Jews in 1969, and hanged them on the largest square of Baghdad] there were absolutely nothing that should indicate that the trial had been a show trial.”
btw. you guys should be happy that Guillou is an equal opportunity hater. On the day after 9/11 (when people still thought the casulties were in the 10’s of thousands) he demonstratively walked out of a tv-show in which he participated when they began a three-minutes of silence observed throughout Europe to remember the victims, saying: “The United States is the great mass murderer of our time.” and the terror attacks were not an attack against us all, but only an attack on U.S. imperialism.”
Oh yeah. There’s a guy of superior moral fortitude.
The area claimed by the Basque separatists is relatively small. The demonstrators get bused around, literally. They have even been known to have demonstrations on the same day, two hours apart, in four different cities… with buses going from one town to the next to the next. They usually make sure that the people at the front are diferent, for TV footage.
So, “there were four demonstrations, each of them with between 1000 and 2000 people” doesn’t add up to “between 4000 and 8000 people demonstrated”.
For some reason, the several hundred people (perhaps over a thousand, in the biggest towns) who were watching from the sidewalks when their saturday shopping got interrupted by the demonstration never get mentioned. I’ve been in a spontaneous counterdemo where we actually were more than the people in the prepared demo, but TV only talked about them, not us (we sat down in the middle of the street, in silence, not moving; they could have passed but they would have had to pick their paths carefully to avoid assault charges).
This leads me to take any reports of demonstrations anywhere with several pounds of salt.
We got another dose of anti-Iranian propaganda yesterday, this time from The History Channel.
The program was titled, incredibly enough, World War III: Beyond Lebanon. In it, we were treated to a lineup of conservative talking heads explaining to us why we simply must attack Iran. No choice in the matter, really. Two of them stated unequivocally that if Iran gets the bomb it will use it against the US. No counterpoint was presented.
And of course, the background visuals were shots of angry Iranians with their fists in the air. :rolleyes: No mention of the majority of Iranians who seem to prefer peaceful discourse with the US.
Damn, but I’m getting tired of seeing unfiltered agitprop on my TV.
You know I have a temper too and sometimes get frustrated.