Khamenei: No Nuclear Weapon Program, No First Strike

2006-06-05 What happens in Iran?

Khamenei: No Nuclear Weapon Program, No First Strike

The US media presented only a snippet from the speech of Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei of Iran on Sunday, in which he threatened to damage oil supplies to the West if the US militarily attacked Iran. He did say that, but he also announced that Iran had no intention of striking first, had not attacked and would not attack another country, and that it has no nuclear weapons program and does not want a nuclear bomb. I didn't hear any of those statements reported on television.

For some strange reason, a relatively full text of important speeches given by world leaders is almost never provided to the public by any US media in English. I doubt there are even a handful of speeches easily accessible in English by Spanish President Zapatero, e.g. I cannot entirely explain this strange phenomenon, of the coccooned and almost deliberately ignorant approach to the world of the US corporate media and their audience.

If it doesn't show up in print in the US, it may as well not exist. Goebbels would be proud. It's an excellent example of social engineering because often propaganda by omission can include real facts but in such a way as to distort the truth.

HOW DARE HE! This is an outrage. All nations have disavowed first use of nuclear weapons so this means nothing. Well, all nations except one. But then again we are an exceptional nation and cannot be held to the same standards as the rest of the world.

...is to get them to project their own worst tendencies onto the desired enemy. No matter what Iran says, we're being trained to assume that they will be at least as dishonorable as we would be in their situation, whether or not we have any reason to actually think this is so.

It's all the easier when Americans don't know what Iranians are like. Americans only really know what Americans are like. So we assume everyone would act like we would, on our worst days. Which can be pretty damned bad.

...to blame Iran if/when there's another terror attack.