Standards of Evidence

The government's chief propaganda service, the BBC has persistently misrepresented the position of Iran and it's president. The main issue has been the non-existence of Iranian nuclear weapons. The media have persistently referred to Iran's nuclear weapons programme instead of civil nuclear power programme. This blatant misrepresentation on behalf of Washington and London is bad enough but they also painted the president of Iran as a killer who would 'wipe Israel off the map' at any opportunity. Debates over on MLMB and POV and clarifications from Iranian translations made it clear that he had quoted Khomeini's prediction that the zionist reshime would vanish from the page of history/time. In fact this is no bad thing and that the disappearance of a rabid extremist racist reshime from the middle-east would be welcomed by the majority of countries who are worried by Israeli extremism and nuclear weapons. That is completely different to wiping a country off a map but the media insist this is what is meant, despite Iranian clarification. The Israeli nuclear weapons must never mentioned of course although the Iranian non-existent ones must be referred to continuously, preferably in every bulletin. The Iranian chief nuclear negotiator clarified this issue in a recent interview:

Q) President Ahmadinejad raised the issue of wiping out Israel off the map at a time when Iran was under pressure for its nuclear programme. Do you think this made the situation more dangerous?

A) This was part of a propaganda campaign. Our position vis-a-vis the Palestinian issue is clear. We believe in a democratic solution and that the Palestinian people must vote to elect their ruling system. He (the president) meant a democratic change involving all Palestinians, including those inside and outside Palestine.......
Some two years ago, they forced us to resume work on our peaceful nuclear programme. But their disturbances continued over the past one and a half years. Under the present circumstances, we are working under supervision of the IAEA. We are committed to NPT and the IAEA inspectors visit Iran. There is nothing to hide................I appreciate stances and supports by your people and government. We signed NPT from the very beginning and in our national security doctrine there is no room for atomic weapons. We believe that a nuclear weapons rivalry would not benefit the region and has lost its deterrent effect. So, we are struggling for peaceful nuclear technology. The West's problem with Iran's nuclear programme is rooted in other things. By West, I mean a few countries not the whole bloc. These are the countries which have atomic bombs, have created crisis in our region and have killed the people of Iran and Afghanistan.

They created such a fiasco in Iran. Their military commander said the day the Americans occupied Iran, they will create a democracy tower there. This is the democracy tower which they have built. They saw the outcome of their attitudes in their recent elections. They want to establish a feudal system at the international level. They did not want Muslims to be free and make progress and resolve their problems.

Ahmadinejad is always referred to as a hardline president whilst Olmert, Bush and Cheney - the people responsible for countless deaths, are never referred to as hardline. Time and again the criminals responsible for the Iraq war, people like Richard Perle and others march into BBC studios and spout more lies and smears without fear of challenge. Contrast this to the treatment of mavericks such as George Galloway who is immediately confronted and often smeared before being allowed a brief slot to explain his position. Other deceptions include the repeated lie without evidence that Iranians are giving technology to insurgents. Time and time again, the BBC have repeated this allegation without a sniff of proof yet they have the chutzpah to declare that they are committed to 'evidence-based journalism'. The standards of evidence appear to be variable indeed. If they information is provided by British or US authorities then that is treated as almost concrete proof. Look no further than the killing of another anti-syrian minister last week. The blood was hardly dry before the Syrians were accused by one news agency after another of another 'murder'. Rupert Murdoch's Scum declared that despite hopes that Syria would play a more positive role in the region, Damascus had ordered the killing. No room for doubts there, or any necessity for requiring evidence for an outrageous charge. Of course their is no danger of a successful legal action against Murdoch's organ particularly when one of Murdoch's minions is the Prime Minister. The evidence against the media is clear and it is only those who are committed to supporting the Islamaphobic output of the media who deny that the media is biased.