Thursday
Jun172010
Iran Snapshot: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Master of Irony
Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 14:13 
I was going to put this in today's analysis on public posturing or possibly the updates, but there are special occasions when I have to pay tribute to a statement that is so bold-faced that it dares to be challenged as the definition of irony.So I turn the microphone over to a Mr Mahmoud Ahmadinejad so he can pronounce --- with a straight face:
If the US offered its citizens the right to freedom of information on world affairs, so that the American people could be fully informed of their leaders' support for Israeli atrocities as well as the crimes they have committed in Iraq and Afghanistan, the people would take effective measures against their statesmen.
tagged Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Middle East & Iran
Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Middle East & Iran
Reader Comments (11)
Scott,
If that's all there is... then let us Greenies keep dancing ;-)
Arshama
A.N. saying this is indeed hypocritical in the extreme, and quite laughable; however, taken at face value, what he says is probably true, no? In Iran, TV quite often shows footage of pretty graphic violence committed by Israeli troops against Palestinians -- stuff that would never air in the US in a million years. And chances are, if more US citizens saw these atrocities, and realized what unconditional support for Israel actually means, they might feel more strongly about opposing that support.
Agree to an extent but see it more of an issue of interest/desire versus accessibility. Many would agree "mainstream" media presents a narrow view of affairs but we all have access to other views, e.g. EA.
Regards,
Yes. But it's called the internet.
The internet is not filtered. If you want, you can go and find piece of information or video, whether it be about israeli atrocities or IR atrocities. You can easily access any and all that.
In Iran, you only get to see what they show you, which is ONLY israeli atrocities and none committed by themselves or their allies. You cant access many of these sites in iran.
That's the difference.
Gpug,
The graphic violence committed by Israeli troops against Palestinians is shown on IRIB only for ideological reasons, otherwise they don't care a bit for them! IRIB is also excellent in showing horror stories from western countries -- its daily dose of brainwashing, which obviously didn't work out
As to the US, I was there some years ago and really horrified by the lack of information on international issues -- as if Americans were living in a bubble, completely fixated on US matters. If US stations don't show this kind of footage, then simply because they show next to nothing of the world "outside".
Apart from that there is a difference between "news" and news -- the former is meant to stir up the "deprived" (i.e. deprived of uncensored information) against the "bad" West, the latter is very often abused as a commodity to attract the audiences. Nevertheless the two cannot be compared: in the west you can publish whatever you want whenever you want, in the Islamic Republic all critical or oppositional media have been banned, IRIB and Kayhan serving only as "their master's voice".
Arshama
More or less. If you haven't seen them yet, you people should watch the series made by the IRIB about various Iranians acting as foreign spies. The one i watched was about them trying to debase the Iranian Human Rights Organization and HRANA (the news agency) as being puppets of MOSSAD
You all make good points, but I don't think that changes the gist of what I was saying. Yes, it's true that the US does not outright prevent its citizens from getting 'the whole story' about the Israel/Palestine conflict, but there are fairly rigid boundaries in the mainstream media regarding how far they'll go in telling the whole story. My point was simply that mainstream US media willfully omits very important parts of the story, with the effect being that most Americans remain ignorant of what exactly is going on over there.
Forget that A.N. was making a hypocritical reference, and simply look at his point: if US citizens were better informed about the conflict, they would probably vigorously protest their government's support for Israel. Yes, the man's a cretin ... but on this point, he is 100% correct.
gpug
The point you are missing is that the US mainstream media are not "controlled" by the US Govt. When reference is made to THE US - what is meant by that ? - the US Govt, the US people, the US corporations. ??
The mainstream US media is mostly controlled by US corporations - whose main aim is to make money. They therefore provide what they think the US people want to buy. If there is some perceived deficiency in what the US mainstream media supplies, it goes back to their commercial interests - and their biases. However their inherent biases are always tempered by the market that they are selling to.
Barry
ahmadinegad is so full of it
ahmadinegad should be more concerned about his own citizens he rapes and murders rather than meddling in usa and palestine's affairs
I listen to AhmadiNejad in Farsi. He is so outrageous, so ridiculous, so rude, so insulting to the intellect of American people, so confused, so lost in his own convoluted world that made me first laugh at him and then made me really embarrassed that this idiot is an Iranian.
For those of you who understand Farsi before you comment on words of this mad and stupid man, please listen or read Ahmadi’s said speech in Farsi. The English transplantation cleans out outrageous remarks of this pathetic two-legged creature.
Ahmadi needs to focus on his own S**. Americans need not to get a freedom lesson from this stupid ugly buffoon.