{"id":20551,"date":"2011-02-21T08:35:08","date_gmt":"2011-02-21T08:35:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=20551"},"modified":"2011-02-24T19:24:44","modified_gmt":"2011-02-24T19:24:44","slug":"iran-opposition-protests-popular-unrest-or-media-generated-mirage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=20551","title":{"rendered":"Iran Opposition Protests: Popular Unrest Or Media Generated Mirage?"},"content":{"rendered":"

News Commentary \u2013 February 21, 2011<\/strong><\/p>\n

As widespread popular protests swept the Middle East observers have watched Iran this past week to see if\u00a0discontent would spill over\u00a0there too.<\/span><\/p>\n

The corporate media has certainly been working hard to drum up expectatations, even if\u00a0it wasn\u2019t actually happening on the ground.<\/span><\/p>\n

Just over a week ago London\u2019s <\/span>Financial Times reported demonstrations in Tehran<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/a> attended by “hundreds of thousands” of protestors, or so it claimed.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"<\/a>

Photo from Fox News showing the "hundreds of thousands" protesting in Tehran<\/p><\/div>\n

It sounded impressive enough except that the Financial Times didn\u2019t povide any photgraphic coverage to support those claims.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Moreover, the only photographic reports on demonstrations in Tehran at that time showed no more than a few hundred protestors, not the “vast numbers” the FT had claimed.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Still, what the FT report lacked in substansive evidence it made up for with confident hyperbole. Claiming that the protest “crowd \u2013 whose size far exceeded the predictions of most analysts \u2013 assembled despite threats by the Revolutionary Guard.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Again, there was no photographic evidence to back those claims and the witnesses quoted remained unnamed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Unlike the recent crackdowns in Bahrain and Libya, where despite stringent restrictions hard proof\u00a0had been\u00a0provided \u2013 with cell phone videos, named eyewitnesses and accounts from doctors who were treating the injured on the ground \u2013 the FT report could easily have been concocted by a journalist with little more than an active imagination.<\/span><\/p>\n

However\u00a0a week after the FT “story”, similar reports appeared in the Wall Street Journal and the <\/span>New York Times<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

“For a second time in a week, Iran’s opposition drew tens of thousands of supporters to the streets across the nation on Sunday calling for the end to the Islamic Republic’s rule”, <\/span>the WSJ reported<\/strong><\/span><\/a>. But as with the Financial Times the week before, the WSJ carried little else to substantiate those claims.<\/span><\/p>\n

No photographs, no video links, no links of any kind and the only first hand accounts came from unnamed “eyewitnesses”. And these could just as easily have come from intelligence operatives with their own agenda to fulfil.<\/span><\/p>\n

Remember, we\u2019ve been down this path before with Iraq and Saddam Hussein and his fabled \u2018Weapons of Mass Destruction\u2019. It\u2019s a familiar routine with the same unnamed sources, the same lack of evidence and the same unspoken, implied suggestions.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve just seen a BBC report from Bahrain, which illustrates this perfectly; with Caroline Hawley reporting on the unrest sweeping the Middle East, where she said: “we\u2019ve just heard similar reports from Tehran”.<\/span><\/p>\n

She made no attempt to question the veracity of the report from Tehran or whether she was just repeating disinformation. Instead, she just lumped it together with other reports of protests in Libya, Bahrain and Yemen.<\/span><\/p>\n

Reports on unrest\u00a0at these\u00a0locations\u00a0have been\u00a0confirmed. So by reporting Iran together with them confirmation is implied, if only by association.<\/span><\/p>\n

Intelligence chiefs must love the likes of Caroline Hawley. Even if they don\u2019t pay her she does their dirty work for them, under the guise of “balanced journalism”.<\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile <\/strong><\/span><\/span>Voice of America reported\u00a0the latest protests in Tehran<\/strong><\/span><\/a>. Quoting “opposition websites”, the VOA said, “protests were under way in a number of squares and streets in Tehran”.<\/span><\/p>\n

Again, no direct links were provided and all the eyewitnesses quoted remained unnamed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Not to be left out the <\/span>FT also reported on the latest protests in Iran<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

“Eyewitnesses” said the FT, “could not estimate the number of protesters because they were scattered across the capital city.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Again the FT doesn\u2019t name its “eyewitnesses”, although this time around it\u2019s a little more cautious in estimating the numbers involved.<\/span><\/p>\n

So maybe “100,000” were not involved but maybe more like one thousand?<\/span><\/p>\n

While we have no doubt that there have been some protests against the regime in Iran, they are as nothing compared to the unrest elsewhere in the Middle East, such as Libya where more than 200 are estimated to have died in less than a week.<\/span><\/p>\n

More significantly however, we suspect the involvement of covert agencies \u2013 the CIA, Mossad and British Intelligence \u2013 in fomenting\u00a0dissent in Iran\u00a0and trying through their media lackeys to exploit it for their own purposes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Finally, the authorities in Iran say <\/span>Tehran saw no anti-government rallies on Sunday<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

We reserve judgement on that. The protests may have simply been nipped in the bud through a combination of strong police presence and lack of support.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>However, the really interesting thing is that police say they arrested two people: one for carrying a petrol bomb, the other for carrying a pistol and a silencer.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now, a petrol bomb <\/span>is exactly the sort of thing to take to a riot, but a pistol with a silencer? That sounds more like the tools in trade carried by MI5 or Mossad or those in their pay.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

The above video is of alleged \u2018anti-government protests\u2019 in Tehran on Sunday. Note that those involved are dressed in Western style clothing: in other words they are Western orientated, probably middle-class, urban and very much a minority in Iran.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As widespread popular protests sweep the Middle East observers have watched if it would well up in Iran. Did it? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":110,"featured_media":20538,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61,42,58,51,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Commentary","category-controlling-the-news-andor-the-free-exchange-of-ideas-and-information","category-Current_Affairs","category-Iran","category-The_Media"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/110"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20551"}],"version-history":[{"count":36,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20608,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20551\/revisions\/20608"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}