Press TV really goes over the top on the Saudis

Can they be serious? Press TV have stooped to the lowest common denominator in disinformation. As if the Israelis would want the Saudis to have the bomb. And as it happens Prince Bandar is out of favour just now. Anyway talk about ridiculous:

Now, Saudi Arabia is prepared to “go nuclear,” to be what they consider the only real Islamic power with nuclear weapons.

This is the plan of “Bandar Bush,” Saudi defense minister, former ambassador to the United States and close Bush family confidant.

TO VIEW FULL STORY CLICK HERE

More journalists arrested in Iran

As Iran is getting closer to the March Parliamentary elections, press freedom standard is rapidly deteriorating in the country, with seven journalists arrested since the beginning of 2012. The last three, Marzieh Rasouli, Parastoo Dokouhaki and the photojournalist Sahamoddin Bourghani, worked for different reformist opposition newspapers and publications, and they have been imprisoned with the charge of acting against the national security of the Islamic Republic. Rasouli has long worked as a freelance journalist, notably for art and cultural publications. Parastoo used to work with Zanan Magazine, a reform-minded feminist magazine that was active for 16 years before being shut down by the authorities in 2008. Sahamoddin Bourghani, national press director for the Ministry of Culture under former president Mohammad Khatami, was also arrested Jan. 17. In the last years, it has been common for journalist in Iran to change continuously publisher, due to temporary closure of the newspaper by the government. Iranian authorities have adopted a policy of putting pressure on the journalist community with frequent arrests and newspapers closures. According to the Committee to Protect Journalist, 42 journalists were in jail at the end of 2011, and the recent increase is a sign of a worrying tendency for the following months. Moreover, 3 Web technologists have been recently sentenced to death. Among them, Saeed Malekpour has been accused of developing software used in porno websites, and he has been forced to confess his alleged crimes on state television. In addition to reduce freedom of press and speech in the country, proceedings against journalists and reformists are used by different factions in their struggle for internal power, especially on the eve of electoral terms. The March 2012 Parliamentary elections will be the first ones since June 2009, and are becoming a turning point for the internal political struggle among different conservative groups.

Press TV licence revoked in the UK

British media authority Ofcom has revoked the licence to Iranian broadcasting channel Press TV on January 20, and the channel has been removed from Sky platform. The decision was taken after Press TV was found guilty of breaching rules of editorial control, and Press TV failed to pay a previous £100,000 fine imposed last year. The struggle between Ofcom and Press TV erupted in 2009, with the “Maziar Bahari case”: Maziar Bahari is a Newsweek and Channel 4 journalist who was interviewed by Press TV while detained in Tehran after the June 2009 elections. After investigations, Ofcom found that the real editorial control of the English channel of the Iranian TV was in Tehran, and accused Press TV of several breaches of UK broadcasting code. Press TV accused Ofcom’s decision to be just a move toward an UK attack against Iran, silencing an inconvenient voice of the British-American actions in the Middle East- Gulf area. After the expulsion of the Iranian representatives in November, now Tehran has to welcome back home also its journalistic staff, while international pressure is really increasing in the effort to stop its nuclear programme.

PRESS TV FAKE REPORTS ON DRONE STRIKES IN SOMALIA

Iranian state-owned Press TV is again accused for its conduct. After being fined £100.000 by UK Ofcom for a fabricated interview of a journalist in jail, now its reports of US drone strikes in Somalia are said false by many source. Since September 2009, the Iranian media group has reported more than 57 attacks, with more than 1370 victims in the local population. Given the high protests against the use of drone in other countries (especially Pakistan), these cases would support the position against the use of this un-man weapon in the American campaign against global terrorism. But many sources disavow Press TV’s claims. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism finds most of the Iranian reports uncompleted, with missing references and details. For instance, on September 15 Press TV reported the alleged killing of 9 women and children by a US drone strike on the outskirts of the Somali town of Kismayo: even if no on-the-field operator confirmed the event, some international organizations reported it as true. It has to be taken into consideration that the situation on the ground is much confused, and it is quite difficult to fund reliable source. According to US journalist Jeremy Scahill of The Nation, American attacks with other weapons could have been confused with other weapons, for instance with cruise missiles. Said that, the misreporting of drone attacks can be seen as a propaganda tool used by Iran in the struggle against the “Big Satan”, while the situation in the Gulf is increasingly dangerous. While the situation in the Horn of Africa is in need of great effort by the international community to find a way out, the US is primarily concerned with its own objectives – killing suspected terrorists – without a significant engagement in solving the problems of the area. For sure, reports of an alleged secret drone strike on the Iranian soil would have major consequences for the parties involved.

Press Tv has to pay ( but not that much)

The Ofcom has finally decided to fine the Iranian state-owned broadcaster Press Tv £100,000 for the “Mahari affair”. As you can remember, the Newsweek journalist Maziar Bahari was imprisoned for four months during 2009, accused by the Iranian authorities to be a spy involved in the demonstrations that after the June elections had been spreading all over the Persian country. Before be freed from the prison of Evin in October, the journalist had to confessed his alleged activities in an interview aired by Press Tv, an interview conducted under duress, with Bahari obliged to read a prepared script, as he later told. When the British media regulator Ofcom told Press Tv that this represented a so serious breach of the broadcasting code that could be punished with the termination of the Iranian media group licence, Press tv accused “powerful pro Israeli politicians and US sympathisers” and “members of the Royal family and the (British) government” to had influenced the decision – WikiLeaks cables about an increasing American diplomatic pressure on English authorities to limit the Iranian media activities somehow supported the Persian claims. The Foreign Office has always denied any involvement in the issue, but nowadays, with the bilateral relations at the lowest level after the events of the last week, the decision of the Ofcom acquires a great value. The decision not to shut down the Press tv activities in the UK can be seen as a positive sign by the British authorities, a way to maintain an open channel towards Iran, also through a satellite connection.

Ahmadinejad denies Holocaust

In an article published on May 17^th, the Saudi Daily Al-Iqtisadiya expressed the view that America has exaggerated the number of people killed during the Holocaust.

Abd Al-Rahman Al-Trairi supported the claims made by famed Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy, that the idea that six million Jews were killed is completely ‘irrational’.

This view was reiterated by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, speaking on IRINN (Iranian news) on the 24^th June; he said that ‘if the black boxes of the Holocaust, and of 9/11 are opened, much evidence will come to light’.

Ahmadinejad compared the two events claiming both showed examples of how America had exaggerated numbers of deaths in order to advance the Jewish cause in the Middle East and highlighted that many people believed these exaggerations were made to give America an excuse to invade and ‘fill the pockets of capitalists’ and to secure the Zionist homeland.

Complaints about Iran

The Cyberdissidents organisation is a neo-con propoganda front for the US extreme right wing. Still, the following was sent round by their boss, David Keyes, and is valid, sadly, not that it tells any of us anything we don't already know, sadly:

On Nov. 18, two Iranian Internet activists, Ali Behzadian Nejad and Omid Lavassani, were sentenced to six years in prison. Their crimes? Mr. Lavassani had the audacity to design a Web site for the leading opposition figure Mir Hossein Mousavi. Mr. Nejad is being jailed for "published comments" written by others on his blog, and "propaganda against the system."Iranian laws about the Web are purposely kept vague. Ahmed Batebi, the dissident who recently escaped Tehran after eight years in prison, told me that "The regime can arrest people and bloggers for any reason precisely because the laws are not clear." >>>

Iranian ex-pats stage demo outside BBC TV studios

Supporters of the Secular Pro-Democracy Movement in Iran staged a demo outside the BBC TV studios to protest against the lack of coverage of recent events at Tehran Polytechnic by the BBC correspondent in Tehran.

The demonstrators stood at the main entrance and handed out leaflets as well as refusing to leave unless their grievances with BBC coverage of Iran events was registered with the BBC News desk and the BBC Press Officer.

The protesters eventually left when the BBC agreed to allow one representative on behalf of the protesters to enter the building and register their criticisms of the BBC Iran coverage in a face to face meeting with a BBC representative.

Below is a transcript of the leaflet handed out to BBC staff during the protest.

Why we are Protesting Here

In the last week, there have been serious disturbances at Tehran Polytechnic. Hundreds of hired thugs and hoodlums as well as security forces have entered the university campus and clashed with Iran’s pro-democracy students. Nearly one hundred Iranian pro-democracy students from the Polytechnic have been arrested and sent to the notorious Evin prison. Twenty are in hospital as a result of their beatings and inflicted injuries and seven are in critical condition. More dissident students are hiding in the dormitories; the regime’s forces have surrounded the polytechnic but are not entering the dormitories as yet in fear of a recurrence of the student uprising in July 99 that spread to 19 Iranian cities.

Yet despite all this happening, the BBC correspondent in Iran has remained silent on the news preferring to report on safer subjects like Iranian women taxi drivers etc. While the plight of Iran’s real students is ignored by the BBC, whenever there is a government sponsored staged demo attacking foreign embassies, for example, the mob is referred to by the BBC as ‘Iranian students’, giving a totally wrong image of who Iran’s real students are to the viewers. So much of the human rights abuse and the struggle of the Iranian people against the theocratic dictatorship is going unreported because the media correspondents fear expulsion from Iran and losing their comfortable posts.

As UK TV licence payers we demand better and more objective coverage of the protests and human rights abuses in the Islamic Republic of Iran by the BBC. This is vitally important especially now that the Islamic Republic funded Press TV is operating in UK and is brainwashing the English speaking Muslim audience with their misinformation party-line broadcasting.

More from Iran

More Iranian racism. This is an item sent over by Felix on the Chronicles of the Elders of Zion. Iranian racism is definately on the increase.

Dr Hossein Mozzafar on the Koran Chanel on Iranian TV - to view full item click here

Iranian Antisemitism

First Woody Allen (see post further down), now Tom and Jerry. Nobody can afford to dismiss this just because it seems so outrageously stupid. It kills.

HERE

Iranian TV antisemitism

From the excellent progressive Jewish website Jewschool.com, edited by Daniel Sieradsky. He comments:

The only thing I can make out is that the narrator is speaking Persian, he sounds completely serious, and he actually seems to be conveying the fascinatingly bizarre notion that Woody Allen is intentionally attempting to corrupt Western values as some sort of Jewish conspiracy.

Moderate Islam, please, for the love of Allah, we’re trying over here. Please, try harder over there.

Holocaust deniers ban dissenting voice

Chris Doyle from Caabu was actually the one to send us this disturbing item on Iran's refusal to even listen to anyone who doesn't agree with them:

Arab lawyer kept from Iran hearings
He planned to challenge denials

Iran: And no-one cares much...

This disturbing holcaust denial conference in Tehran is both bigoted and naive - follow the link below:

Iran: And no-one wanting to 'engage' her cares much...