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These are the sort of voices we should be listening to
By Hidari, Section Iraq-Iran-Syria
These are the sort of voices we should be listening to, but, unfortunately, stories like this are not the ones that get the headlines in the corporate media, generally speaking.
'Mohamed ElBaradei, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Friday he sees no reason to go beyond diplomacy over Iran's nuclear program and warned against rhetoric that is "a reminder of pre-war Iraq." "We have not seen any weaponization of their program, nor have we received any information to that effect -- no smoking gun or information from intelligence," he said. ElBaradei said the United Nations' nuclear watchdog group had a reasonable timetable for Iran to come clean on nuclear activities but that detractors weren't giving its efforts a chance.'
Instead: we get stories like this.
For those who don't know, the Daily Telegraph is one of the 'friendliest' British newspapers in terms of 'publicising' stories 'discovered' by British intelligence agencies. Parsing it produces a number of interesting statements, reproduced again and again and again. 'The US military says that the spying post...' '(British military) Commanders fear...' 'But the US military believes....' 'US forces have responded....' (and we know this, how?) 'British naval personnel who have recently served in the Gulf have told The Sunday Telegraph...' 'British Personnel said....' 'The development is the latest sign of the growing tensions between the US and Iran, which Washington has accused of supporting attacks on its forces in Iraq.' In other words, with the exception of one source (Jane's Defence Weekly) every single source from this 'story' was from the British armed forces or the American armed forces. And this is the difference between stories that are important to the government and those which are not. In any 'normal' story, there would be an attempt to get the point of view of the other side, to get them to defend themselves, to hear what they have to say. But in the case of foreign affairs, specifically foreign affairs as they affect the British and American political establishments, there is no such concern. It is taken for granted, even after WMDs, Osama Bin Laden's 'links' with Saddam Hussein, Niger, the 'dodgy dossier' etc. that 'we' always tell the truth and 'they' do not.
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