Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Unrest Spreads in Iran

Our server outage here has been delayed for one day, so I thought I'd post this interesting tidbit. Apparently, there have been six days in a row of unrest in Iran, spreading throughout much of that country. The thugocracy of the mullahs has, of course, moved to suppress it, and a report from the BBC is happy to spread the party line. Nontheless, the story's lede is rather telling:
Calm has returned to the streets of Tehran after six days of sometimes violent confrontations between pro-reform students and hardline vigilantes supported by the police.
As the BBCers low-keyed the story, they did include a little map which tells a different story:



Each numbered dot represents a significant protest activity.

I have one question. Why have we not seen ONE SINGLE THING about this in the MSM here in the US? Answer: it would conflict with the MSM's current "Civil War in Iraq Dooms Bush to Disgrace" meme. Which, of course, is untrue. Or more likely, fake but accurate.

You have to wonder where these clowns are when real news is happening. The Iraq mess is horrendous, but more than likely the work of Al Qaeda with help (counterintuitively) from Shiite Iran. And while the Iraqi death toll is not good, neither has Iraq descended into civil war by a long shot. This has to be deeply disappointing the blow-dries who are inventing this story as they go along.

The only news coming out of Iran at all is reportage of their predictable, and media-favored "defiance" of pretty much the entire world which does not want these 21st century Hitlerians to possess nuclear capabilities—even as the West wrings its collective hands for its supposed helplessness to stop it. The MSM is actually cheering the mullahs on with regard to their nuclear quest, because this would, somehow, humiliate Bush. The fact that it might also end up frying a few tens of millions of Americans is less important than twisting a story to make Bush look like an idiot. Or manufacturing another lame joke about the Veep's poor aim.

One wonders how far heads would be poked into the sand these days were it not for the intrepid blogosphere?

BTW, how did Wonker pick this story up? (Even Drudge, Instapundit, and Power Line don't have it as of this writing.) An offhand tip, not followed up, on the CNNMoney daily market report, giving this as one of the reasons for today's market decline:
U.S. light crude oil for April delivery fell 25 cents to $60.75 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange amid a continued waning of concerns about unrest in Iran and how it might impact crude supplies from OPEC's No. 2 oil producing nation.
What unrest? That's it. Not another thing, even on Fox, although the day is still relatively young. 20 seconds with a search engine unearthed the story highlighted here (and very few others). The only other major outlet on it, of course, is Al Jazeera. Which, come to think of it, is probably more objective than the MSM today.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure it's correct to suggest that MSM have their "heads in the sand." Heads up their... is the start of what seems a better phrase.

L

Anonymous said...

Here's more

http://www.fas.org/news/iran/1999/990713-iran3.htm

L

Wonker said...

Thanks to "anonymous" for his usual perspicacity!