Some more propaganda ads by "United Against Nuclear Iran" ...

The Peace Prize President in the White House continues to increase his empty, but angry rhetoric in an attempt to garner enough support for a strike on Iran. The propaganda juggernaut is in full action, and thousands of articles, TV shows, and politicians are beating the drums for a war against Iran. If this sounds eerily familiar, it's because it is.

In 2001, the London Observer ran a series of reports linking Iraq to the September 11 attacks and going as far as to claim there were secret bases in Iraq that produced anthrax as a weapon of mass destruction.

In late 2009, The Times of London published a now admittedly forged document it asserted revealed "a four-year plan [by Iran] to test a neutron initiator." On the same day, Catherine Phillips, another writer for The Times, quoted Mark Fitzpatrick barefacedly saying, "Is this the smoking gun? That's the question people should be asking. It looks like the smoking gun. This is smoking uranium." To the naïve, this would be a shocking use of the media to garner support for a war that is pre-emptive and unjustified. To everyone else, it's a repeat of 2001 and the pre-Iraq war legacy of the two biggest war criminals of our generation: George Bush and Tony Blair.

Not surprisingly, very few members of the corporate owned media have bothered to ask: does Iran have nuclear weapons? Does Iran even want nuclear weapons? It doesn't matter. When the media is as prostituted as it is now, the sole aim is to convince the masses that Iran threatens our very existence and must be dealt with in a manner that disregards every single international law and charter. The Times of London is part of the seasoned propagandist Rupert Murdoch publishing empire that owns Fox News, the Sunday Times, and the New York Post. As expected, each and every Murdoch-owned media outlet views Iran from a decidedly pro-Israeli lens and disregards the need for evidence in making claims against a country that has fulfilled every clause of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT or NNPT). You know, the same one Israel refuses to sign.

Below are the top myths the media tells us daily about Iran.


Iran Has/Wants Nuclear Weapons

To date, no concrete evidence has been presented about the existence of a nuclear weapons program in Iran. Each and every inspect report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the National Intelligence Estimate has confirmed that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program. Additionally, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamenei, who has the final word in Iran on such issues, has denounced nuclear weapons as un-Islamic and stated unequivocally that Islam forbids the "production and stock piling of nuclear weapons." The Iranian fatwa against nuclear weapons is a registered document with the United Nations. Iran has been the only country to lobby for a nuclear-free Middle East. In contrast, Israel has yet to agree to a single IAEA inspection, and its nuclear weapons plant in Dimona is an open secret used to intimidate the Palestinians and neighboring countries.


Iran Threatened to Wipe Israel off the Map

The world hears incessantly how Iranian president Ahmedinjad threatened to "wipe Israel off the map." Ironically, not a single translation of this speech has been made to clearly prove he made this statement. In 2005, the newly-elected Ahmedinjad was giving a speech at a conference in Tehran about Zionism. He quoted the founder of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Khomeini, and said, "Imam ghoft een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad." A direct translation of this is: "The Imam [Khomeini] said [the] regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time." The words "wiped off the map" are not to be found in that sentence, and any amateur translator will tell you nagsheh, the Persian term for map, is not found in that sentence. In the speech, Ahmedinjad further stated that just as the Soviet regime had fallen, the Zionist one would too. He did not say Israel was going to be wiped off any map. Obviously when the Soviet regime collapsed, was Russia wiped off the map? In the same infamous speech, Ahmedinjad called for a Middle East where Muslims, Jews, and Christians would live in a real democracy and in liberty.

For the record, Iran has not launched an attack on any nation in the past 300 years, but it has defended itself against assaults by other countries. Compare this track record to that of the biggest war monger in the Middle East, the same one that uses cluster bombs to take out innocent children.


The Iranians are Eagerly Awaiting the Arrival of "US Democracy"

American-style democracy has taken over the Middle East; just ask the Iraqis and Afghans how happy they are post-American liberation of their countries. Operation Iraqi Freedom has only cost 1.3 million Iraqi lives to date. In the last Iranian elections, an overwhelming 85 percent of voters turned out to pick the next president, and practically every pre-election poll showed President Ahmedinjad with a significant lead over his opponents. However, the West continues to claim Iran is not a democratic country despite it being the only Middle Eastern country with transparent elections and a fully functional parliament. Western hypocrisy of this magnitude must be respected, and the West has yet to call its allies (Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia) for throwing political opponents in jail and never holding elections.

By all instances, Iran is a democratic society, but to the United States and its allies, the very existence of a democracy in Iran is a threat. They removed this threat in 1953 when they overthrew the democratically-elected government and put in the totalitarian Shah. Speaking of democracy and sovereignty, the US would know a thing or two about those terms, considering for the past 30 years we have tried to overthrow the Iranian government and laid siege upon siege on the Iranian people. More recently, Congress voted to allocate 120 million dollars for anti-regime media broadcasts into Iran. It doesn't end there. The US also generously donated 60-75 million dollars to fund and support violent underground extremist groups like Mujahiden-Khalq (MKO), one of the largest terrorist organizations in Iran. Democracy in the Middle East is synonymous with murderous and catastrophic regime change.


Iran Is Five Years Away from a Nuclear Bomb

Every few months, the United States and Britain try to scare us out of sleeping at night by saying Iran is five years away from a nuclear bomb. Here's the problem: Iran has been "five years away from a nuclear bomb" for the past four decades, since the Shah began the peaceful nuclear program with US help. Those Iranians don't seem to be getting any closer to a nuclear weapon, which they don't seem to want by the way, but that won't detract the propagandist and war criminals. When the Qom facility was "exposed" by the United States last year, the neo-cons were quick to hawk it as proof of Iran's nuclear weapons program. However, they neglected to mention that Iran had openly revealed by it in a voluntary letter to the IAEA days before the US announced it. In addition, the Qom facility is incomplete and non-operational, and if the United States knew about the facility and did not reveal this information, then it too is in direct violation of the NPT. Unless, of course, the facility was not illegal, and thus there was no need to report it.

On April 13, President Obama was asked by a Washington Post reporter if he would "call on Israel to declare its nuclear program and sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty." The usually eloquent Obama stuttered his way through a response once he finally regained his composure and stated, "And, as far as Israel goes, I'm not going to comment on their program."

Maybe he should leave Iran's peaceful program alone and worry about the nuclear warheads Israel and India have.

The "Evil Guys List"? "Free Journalism" in the Service of US Foreign Policy
The Role of Reporters Without Borders

by William Engdahl, 5 May 2010


An organization calling itself Reporters Without Borders (RWB; French: Reporters sans frontières, or RSF) has just named Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, China’s President Hu Jintao, Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kazakhstan’s Nursultan Nazarbayev and Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko to their list of Forty Worst Predators of Press Freedom for 2010. Most significant about their list of ‘bad guys’ is the geopolitical relation of those leaders and those countries to the current ‘enemies list’ of the US State Department. That is no accident, as becomes clear when we look more closely at who funds RWB.

In their declaration RWB states, “Since these predators have faces, we must know them to better denounce them. Reporters without Borders has decided to draw their portraits.” Their colourful language is no accident. The term predator conjures up images of horror in most people.

In their latest ‘Evil Guys’ list just released they remark about Russia’s Putin: "As well as manipulating groups and institutions, Putin has promoted a climate of pumped-up national pride that encourages the persecution of dissidents and freethinkers and fosters a level of impunity that is steadily undermining the rule of law.” RWB said that Putin, "the former KGB officer," has exerted so much control over all aspects of life in Russia that "the national TV stations now speak with a single voice." Interestingly enough, the citation and a report of the naming of Putin appeared in an article in the Russian state-owned media, RIA Novosti.[1]

With respect to China, RWB states: “In honour of the Shanghai World Expo, the biggest display of Chinese might (sic) since the 2008 Olympic Games, Reporters Without Borders has for the past week been inviting Internet users to visit a specially created page on its website dedicated to the freedoms that are flouted in China.”[2]

Perhaps just as important as the list of bad guys from RWB are the names that are not on it. One might ask why names of such world-class enemies of free speech and press freedom as Georgia’s dictator, President Mikhail Saakashvili, or the former Ukraine President Viktor Yushchenko, or the recently deposed dictator of Kyrgyzstan, Bakiyev are absent. All three came to power in Washington-backed coups, also termed Color Revolutions. Notably, all the persons just named by RWB as “predators” have been targets of Washington-financed destabilization attempts in recent years.


Who stands behind RWB?

The slick media image that RWB presents to the world, such as using the term “predators,” is no accident. It is the product of RWB’s ad agency. Announcing the list of forty on May 3 on their website, RWB states, “The list of Predators of Press Freedom is released today, backed by a campaign ad produced by the Saatchi & Saatchi agency…There are 40 names on this year’s list of predators…that cannot stand the press, treat it as an enemy and directly attack journalists. They are powerful, dangerous, violent and above the law.”[3]

Saatchi & Saatchi is one of the world’s most influential “hidden persuaders” or PR firms. They are credited with the campaign that brought Margaret Thatcher to power and are the ad firm for Gordon Brown’s Labour Party. Clients have included Citigroup, Hewlett-Packard, DuPont, Proctor & Gamble. One might ask where RWB gets the finances to hire such elite advisors?


NED hiding behind RWB

The most interesting question is not the deeds of Hu Jintao or Putin or Ahmadinejad in the last year in relation to their national press, but rather who is judging these leaders. We might well ask, “Who judges the judges?” The answer is, Washington.

Reporters Without Borders is an international Non-Governmental Organization (NGO). According to its website it is headquartered in Paris, France. Paris is a curious home base for an organization that, as it turns out, is financed by the US Congress and by agencies tied to the US government.

If we go to the RWB website to find who stands behind these self-anointed judges of world press freedom, we find nothing. Not even their board of directors are named, let alone their financial backers. Their annual published Income and Expenditure statements give no clue who stands behind them financially.

Millions of dollars of their annual income are disclosed as being from “sale of publications.” It does not name the publications or to whom they were sold. As one researcher noted, “Even taking into account that the books are published for free, it would have had to sell 170 200 books in 2004 and 188 400 books in 2005 to earn the more than $2 million the organization claims to make each year ­ 516 books per day in 2005. The money clearly had to come from other sources, as it turns out it did.”[4] An attempt to go on the RWB website to order any of their publications found no link to any purchasing information nor any price listings or book summary. Very curious indeed.

In their official financial statements and income accounts published in September 2009, they state: “The organisation’s finances in 2008 were marked by the end of the campaign (begun in 2001) over the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games which significantly affected income and expenditure.” [5] That means RWB spent eight years and undisclosed amounts of money campaigning against the Government of China in the run-up to the Beijing 2008 Olympics. For what purpose? Notably, the RWB names China’s President Hu Jintao as this year’s ‘predator’ for his actions in cracking down on unrest in Tibet in March 2010 and Xinjiang in July 2009, both of which were the covert work of a US-financed NGO called National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Hmmm.

After years of trying to hide it, Robert Menard, Paris-based Secretary-General of Reporters Sans Frontieres or RWB, confessed that the RWB budget was primarily funded by “US organizations strictly linked to US foreign policy.”[6] Those US based organizations which support RWB include the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the US Congress’ National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Also included is the Center for Free Cuba, whose trustee, Otto Reich, was forced to resign from the George W. Bush Administration after exposure of his role in a CIA-backed coup attempt against Venezuela’s democratically elected President Hugo Chavez.[7]

As one researcher found after months of trying to get a reply from NED about their funding of Reporters Without Borders, which included a flat denial from RSF executive director Lucie Morillon, the NED revealed that Reporters Without Borders received grants over at least three years from the International Republican Institute. The IRI is one of four subsidiaries of NED.[8]

The NED, as I detail in my book, Full Spectrum Dominance:Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order, was created by the US Congress during the Reagan administration on the initiative of then-CIA Director Bill Casey to replace the CIA's civil society covert action programs, which had been exposed by the Church committee in the mid-1970s. As Allen Weinstein, the man who drafted the legislation creating the NED admitted years later, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” [9]

Perhaps an organization sitting as judge of world press freedom ought itself to practice a little more openness and transparency about where its backing originates. Otherwise we might think they have something to hide.



* F. William Engdahl is also author of the book, Gods of Money: Wall Street and the Death of the American Century, available at end of May 2010. He may be reached via his website at www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net

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Notes:

[1] RIA Novosti, RSF names Putin, Kadyrov freedom "predators," RIA Novisti, Moscow, May 4, 2010, accessed in  http://en.rian.ru/world/20100504/158862330.html

[2] Reporters Without Borders website, Reporters without Borders works on all fronts, May 3, 2010, accessed in  http://en.rsf.org/reporters-sans-frontieres-sur-tous-03-05-2010,37337.html

[3] Ibid.

[4] Diana Barahona, Reporters Without Borders and Washington's Coups, ZNet, August 2, 2006, accessed in  http://www.zcommunications.org/reporters-without-borders-and-washingtons-coups-by-diana-barahona

[5] Reporters Without Borders, Income and Expenditures to end December 2008, published September 7, 2009, accessed in  http://en.rsf.org/income-and-expenditure-07-09-2009,34401

[6] Source Watch, Reporters Without Borders, accessed in  http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Reporters_Without_Borders

[7] Ibid.

[8] Diana Barahona, op.cit.

[9] Allen Weinstein, quoted in David Ignatius, Openness is the Secret to Democracy, Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 30 September 1991, pp. 24-25.