The debate has been fun and hopefully well have some more. For a bit of fun visit http://www.peopleofwalmart.com. Look through the pics of the people in Walmart. I was dying with laughter but then I realized the significance of my find–we found the long lost Bush voter base!!! Sort of reminds me of “you might be a readneck if you see a sign saying stop crack and pull up your pants–you might be a redneck if go to your job interview with beer in hand–you might be a redneck if your house has wheels!” I have relatives in Kentucky and I am afraid to say some would make it on the people of walmart site. Have a good holidays!

Thx
Bill

That’s like when our government argued that the fact we can’t find evidence of WMD in Iraq proves how well Saddam Hussein is hiding them, Bill.

2) Again, he wasn’t bashing the holiday. He was bashing the commercialization of the holiday, a criticism both you and I share. So what’s the problem?

3) The paper with the photoshopped photo is not Press TV.
Roozonline is not a reliable source. It’s a key pro-Mousavi propaganda outlet.
http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2009/07/21/the-case-of-the-%E2%80%98fatwa%E2%80%99-to-rig-iran%E2%80%99s-election/
Now, the freedom of the press in Iran is very, very lacking. No doubt. And the article may be accurate. But take it with a grain of salt, just as you would something from Press TV. For instance:

One night before the election, Fars news agency quoted a fabricated “public opinion” center to have predicted Ahmadinejad’s victory with more than 60 percent of the vote. The report was disconcerting to Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi’s campaigns regarding the integrity of the election results. On the evening of June 12, the results of the same opinion poll were announced by the head of the government election body as the official final election results.

They’re asserting that the announced results were simply fabricated out of thin air. But this claim has little credibility. The fact is there were observers from both parties at the polling stations, the election council did a recount, and Western opinion polls since have confirmed popular support for Ahmadinejad– in fact at 63% people who approve of him, the exact percentage by which he won the election.

1) Just google Ebrahim Sharifi and their are a number of artilces about this incident. As for validating it I think it is fair to say it will be impossible considering the lengths the Iranian regime has gone to in order to suppress it. It is a little hard to prove your case when the regime silences the medical workers involved, raids Karroubi’s office confiscating any evididence, and tired to intimidate friends and families to remain silent.

2) I actually happened to agree with the ‘over commercialization’ of Christmas as well. My point was you would not find such a direct article bashing a Islamic holiday is western MSM. I encourage you to read more Kian’s articles and the tone is actually quite consistent for anything Western(ie captialism, democracy, and other faith groups.)

3) I agree Western media does practice propoganda and the whole evil called the Iraq war is a perfect example. On the whole I do not think Western media is any where near Presstv when it comes to state sponsored propoganda. A recent example is the pictures both Kahyan and Presstv presented of Ahmandinejad’s Tabriz speech. They both used photoshopped pictures showing a bigger crowd. I saw the Presstv one but it has now been replaced with another( http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=111681&sectionid=351020101). Here is the evidence: http://azadipress.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7533&Itemid=2 & http://enduringamerica.com/2009/11/21/the-latest-from-iran-21-november-towards-another-week/#comments . Because Presstv is designated as the international voice of Iran it would equate to the state department releasing photoshopped photos of our leader. Probably has happened in the past but the Iranian regime has been caught quite to many times by the green movement for either photoshopping pics or claiming green rallies as their own(they of course photoshopped out the green.)

I would like you to also read these two articles to get a feel for the press situation in Iran. The first one talks about how the Fars agency was purged by the regime following the election and the other is story from Newsweek about a freed journalist from Iran. Note in the Newsweek article the claim the corrspondant from the Jon Stewart show was a spy in the you can’t make this up category. Here are the links: http://www.roozonline.com/english/news/newsitem/article/2009/november/20//in-the-hands-of-interrogators.html http://www.newsweek.com/id/223862 .

Thx
Bill

2) The author of that piece is free to express his opinion about Christmas celebration, just as commentators in the West offer their opinions about things, including Islam. I happen to share his opinion on the commercialism of the holiday. I can’t speak for Britain, but his observations are certainly perfectly true for the holiday in the U.S.

He’s also absolutely correct about the unbiblical nature of the holiday. It’s not a “Christian” holiday, but a pagan one. That’s simply a historical fact. You’ll also notice he’s not issuing an “attack” on Christmas. Notice he has a positive view of people celebrating in the spirituality of the holiday. He’s clearly got no problem with Christmas itself. It’s the commercialism and the historical fraud of Christmas he is criticizing. And fair enough. Rightly so.

3) As to the question of whether commentary in the West bashes Islam or spouts propaganda, it’s really not a question. I see no difference between Press TV and the New York Times when it comes to bias and lack of objectivity. If anything, I’ve never seen Press TV engage in the kinds of outright lies and deceptions the NYT and other Western news sources do on a rather consistent basis. Their reporting re: Iraqi WMD being an obvious case in point. Or take Ethan Bronner and Isabel Kershner’s reporting on the Israeli massacre in Gaza, for another case in point.

Really, Bill, I see no sense in criticizing the reporting of foreign media organizations when our own media in our own country engage in such despicable behavior. It’s easy to point the finger. Doing so without hypocrisy is a much more difficult task.

Thank you for your response. My reply is as follows:

1) Terming the video an allegation is correct but you have to ask yourself why this person had to leave Iran to do it. In fact his whole immediate family made it out of Iran. That fact is in line with all the rape victims famlies and friends either being arrested or brought in for questioning. Karroubi even mentioned the “interviews” were in fact interrogations that appeared to be trying to build a case to discredit the claim. One of the rape victims actually commited suicide upon learning the regime was coming to rearrest him. Now why would the regime not pursue the crime but instead be working to discredit it? My point about the killings is that until they got solved they would be front page news in the West. In Iran you may get an article from time to time but on the whole it is largely ignored. Why?

2) Iran does clearly practice a double standard. The articles were just an example of what the focus on while largely ignoring internal issues. As you can see everyday the spend the bulk of their lead articles “bashing” someone else. They have no problem crying interference but practice it quite liberally themselves through the media. Read this article, http://www.presstv.ir/classic/detail.aspx?id=111270&sectionid=3510304 ,and ask yourself have you ever found western MSM medcia putting out an article like this. Plain in simple it is an Islamist attack piece and the author Kian Mokhtari has done a bunch of these articles. Can you imagine a attack on an Islamic holiday in the West to this extent? CAIR would have field day exposing the Islamophobes.

3) I always read an article for its content but the reality exists most Presstv articles do serve a specific agenda. I don’t completely discredit them but take it with a grain of salt knowing the amount of control and censorship evident. Further evidence is the fact that one of the missions of the IRNA is to promote and spread the revolution(I cannot provide the link because IRNA english has been disabled since the election.) This is not to say other western outlets pursue a political agenda it is just that most do so without direct government oversight.

I do agree most western media spouts propoganda but in my mind none equal Presstv. As a side bar I did some research on the author and noticed he had a few other blogs. It was interesting to see that the blogs either stopped or had almost no articles after the election.

Thx
Bill

2) The report, “International probe into Israel organ theft called for” is accurate. I fail to see what the problem is here. The report “Ex-diplomat: US supplies arms to Taliban” cites former Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs Vahid Mujda as its source. I see no problem with this report. As for the ship, yes, Press TV has reported on it. For example: http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=109878. Assuming there were arms on that ship, there’s no reason to presume Iranian government involvement over black market arms deals, etc. We just had a report of an Iranian ship carrying arms to Hezbollah this week. And, as usual, there’s no verification of the assertion, just an unsubstantiated claim by Israel.

3) Saying a media outlet is “state owned” is not a fallacy so long as one is merely observing this fact. Where it becaomse a fallacy is when this fact is used in an attempt to discredit something reported by that outlet. Reports from Press TV, like reports from any other source, should be assessed on the basis of their actual content, not simply on the basis of it being state owned.

4) Gotcha. I misunderstood your point. Thanks for clarifying. I think I presumed because so many people use his name as though it were a bad word. Yet when I ask them if they’ve ever actually read any Chomsky, the answer is almost invariably “well, actually, no”.

***

I’m not saying Press TV is not biased. It certainly is. But so is ever other media outlet. You can Press TV a propaganda outlet. Fair enough. But so is the New York Times.