U.S. corporate establishment propagandists have a host of ready-made, specious justifications for their suppression of important news. “The public isn't interested” is one. (Of course, that doesn't stop the propagandists from hammering away at things “the public” isn't interested in when they have a covert political or ideological agenda to promote. And the propagandists know how to make things “interesting,” that is, attention-grabbing. They also fill their airtime and pages with mountains of trivia which they think people are interested in.) “We already covered that,” is another excuse- meaning they once made a tiny, fleeting mention of an important fact or significant event.” “It's complicated,” implying it's too hard for us to cover, is another pathetic alibi they offer for themselves at public panels on “the media.” And then there's the “not newsworthy” line, an all-purpose contemptuous brush-off.
Iran is redesigning its nearly-completed heavy-water Arak reactor to reduce by 80% the amount of plutonium it can produce. This will delay the start of operations by three years. (The U.S., which is waging economic warfare against Iran, which it forces foreign nations and companies to participate in, isn't paying for the expensive alterations of course- Iran is.) Iran claims the purpose of the reactor is to produce medical isotopes. (Yeah, that sounds fishy. Spend billions of dollars to produce something that could be purchased abroad for probably tens of thousands of dollars a year? For “national pride”? Maybe for insurance, to be able to make nuclear weapons the next time the U.S. instigates some nation to attack Iran, as it did when it got the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to invade Iran. Or to be able to deter Israel and/or the U.S. from attacking Iran, which Israel constantly threatens to do, and which commits assassinations and sabotage inside Iran.)
But the 80% reduction in plutonium-production capacity isn't good enough for the U.S. and its fellow travelers; they want a near-zero plutonium-production capacity. (Plutonium can be used to make atomic weapons, as can enriched uranium.)
The reactor is open for inspection and verification by international experts from the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, a UN organization dominated by the U.S., especially under its current boss, a Japanese stooge very obedient to U.S. orders. Iran also posted a video on a government website about the reconfiguration.
Given all the hysteria over the so-far-imaginary Iran “nuclear threat,” a media propaganda campaign that has assiduously promoted the Israeli-created lie that “Iran has threatened to blow Israel off the face of the earth” and that ignores repeated findings by the U.S. “intelligence community” that Iran DOESN'T HAVE a nuclear weapons program, but a uranium-enrichment one (which produces concentrated forms of uranium that can be used as reactor fuel for energy production or, with further enrichment, as material for atomic bombs), one would think that the story of a major reconfiguration of the Arak reactor, whose dismantlement the U.S. has demanded (Israel prefers the U.S. bomb it), and a reduction in its projected plutonium output to only one-fifth it was previously, not to say a three year delay in the reactor coming online, would at least be worthy of being reported by U.S. media. But for the most part, no. It hasn't been mentioned on any New York City radio stations, for example. (NYC being the “media capital of America.”) Nor on the U.S. government's domestic propaganda network, NPR. (Nor, for that matter, on the BBC, the British government's main propaganda arm, at least not on its “world service,” the stuff it broadcasts abroad.)
The common establishment propaganda response to someone pointing out such glaring omissions is to sneer “conspiracy theorist,” by which they mean “crackpot.” But facts are not disproven by mere ridicule. And this isn't a conspiracy. It is lock-step political and ideological discipline imposed by the managers of the corporate media. Why would such obviously relevant and significant news, related to an issue this media has made such a big deal about over a period of years, be in effect suppressed?
Some establishment “media critics” promote the alibi that “the” media in such cases is just being “lazy,” or “careless,” or “failing to do its job.” At best such idiotic and implausible explanations are naive. There may be more venal or sinister explanations for why such “critics” invent these ridiculous excuses for the corporate propaganda system's obvious suppressions and blackouts of important information. How could all these different corporations all be lazy? All be careless? All “fail to do their job”? (I should say, “virtually all,” as there are a handful of exceptions, speaking generally. McClatchy's Washington bureau has consistently reported damning information about the U.S. government, for example, that the rest of the corporate media refuses to tell anyone about.) These pet critics ignore the obvious political and ideological motives and agendas that easily explain the “oversights” and “lapses.”
In this case, since the policy of the U.S. corporate oligarchic establishment, including its government and media, has been to present Iran as a devil country starting in 1979 with the overthrow of the dictator the U.S. installed in the CIA coup of 1953, the “Shah,” (“King”), showing Iran making large concessions simply won't do. That doesn't make Iran look “bad.” Likewise, Israel is determined that the U.S. should wage war on Iran, and large swaths of the U.S. media are in thrall to Israel (as is the U.S. government).
Iran is redesigning its nearly-completed heavy-water Arak reactor to reduce by 80% the amount of plutonium it can produce. This will delay the start of operations by three years. (The U.S., which is waging economic warfare against Iran, which it forces foreign nations and companies to participate in, isn't paying for the expensive alterations of course- Iran is.) Iran claims the purpose of the reactor is to produce medical isotopes. (Yeah, that sounds fishy. Spend billions of dollars to produce something that could be purchased abroad for probably tens of thousands of dollars a year? For “national pride”? Maybe for insurance, to be able to make nuclear weapons the next time the U.S. instigates some nation to attack Iran, as it did when it got the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to invade Iran. Or to be able to deter Israel and/or the U.S. from attacking Iran, which Israel constantly threatens to do, and which commits assassinations and sabotage inside Iran.)
But the 80% reduction in plutonium-production capacity isn't good enough for the U.S. and its fellow travelers; they want a near-zero plutonium-production capacity. (Plutonium can be used to make atomic weapons, as can enriched uranium.)
The reactor is open for inspection and verification by international experts from the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, a UN organization dominated by the U.S., especially under its current boss, a Japanese stooge very obedient to U.S. orders. Iran also posted a video on a government website about the reconfiguration.
Given all the hysteria over the so-far-imaginary Iran “nuclear threat,” a media propaganda campaign that has assiduously promoted the Israeli-created lie that “Iran has threatened to blow Israel off the face of the earth” and that ignores repeated findings by the U.S. “intelligence community” that Iran DOESN'T HAVE a nuclear weapons program, but a uranium-enrichment one (which produces concentrated forms of uranium that can be used as reactor fuel for energy production or, with further enrichment, as material for atomic bombs), one would think that the story of a major reconfiguration of the Arak reactor, whose dismantlement the U.S. has demanded (Israel prefers the U.S. bomb it), and a reduction in its projected plutonium output to only one-fifth it was previously, not to say a three year delay in the reactor coming online, would at least be worthy of being reported by U.S. media. But for the most part, no. It hasn't been mentioned on any New York City radio stations, for example. (NYC being the “media capital of America.”) Nor on the U.S. government's domestic propaganda network, NPR. (Nor, for that matter, on the BBC, the British government's main propaganda arm, at least not on its “world service,” the stuff it broadcasts abroad.)
The common establishment propaganda response to someone pointing out such glaring omissions is to sneer “conspiracy theorist,” by which they mean “crackpot.” But facts are not disproven by mere ridicule. And this isn't a conspiracy. It is lock-step political and ideological discipline imposed by the managers of the corporate media. Why would such obviously relevant and significant news, related to an issue this media has made such a big deal about over a period of years, be in effect suppressed?
Some establishment “media critics” promote the alibi that “the” media in such cases is just being “lazy,” or “careless,” or “failing to do its job.” At best such idiotic and implausible explanations are naive. There may be more venal or sinister explanations for why such “critics” invent these ridiculous excuses for the corporate propaganda system's obvious suppressions and blackouts of important information. How could all these different corporations all be lazy? All be careless? All “fail to do their job”? (I should say, “virtually all,” as there are a handful of exceptions, speaking generally. McClatchy's Washington bureau has consistently reported damning information about the U.S. government, for example, that the rest of the corporate media refuses to tell anyone about.) These pet critics ignore the obvious political and ideological motives and agendas that easily explain the “oversights” and “lapses.”
In this case, since the policy of the U.S. corporate oligarchic establishment, including its government and media, has been to present Iran as a devil country starting in 1979 with the overthrow of the dictator the U.S. installed in the CIA coup of 1953, the “Shah,” (“King”), showing Iran making large concessions simply won't do. That doesn't make Iran look “bad.” Likewise, Israel is determined that the U.S. should wage war on Iran, and large swaths of the U.S. media are in thrall to Israel (as is the U.S. government).
