Re: [A-List] Iranian academic society condemns Lee Bollinger remarks

["Yoshie Furuhashi" <critical.montages@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 9/26/07, Macdonald Stainsby <mstainsby@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Iranian academic society condemns Lee Bollinger remarks
>
> September 25, 2007, Iranian Students News Agency - Tehran
>
> Service: Foreign Policy
>
> http://www.isna.ir/Main/NewsView.aspx?ID=News-1004865&Lang=E
>
> TEHRAN, Sep. 25 (ISNA)-In response to the insulting remarks
> of the Columbia university president against Mahmoud
> Ahamadinejad, Iran's university presidents raised their
> objection to Lee Bollinger.

American power elite, especially the corporate media, have an
extraordinary level of message discipline: they hammer on four main
points, buttressed by minor points about human rights meant to soften
up liberals and leftists for humanitarian imperialism, ignoring the
ten points or more made by Iran's university presidents as well as by
Ahmadinejad and other officials.

What are the four main points?

1.  Iran is killing US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

2.  Iran is illegally developing nuclear weapons.

3.  Iran seeks to "wipe Israel off the map."

4.  Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust.

The first is the most consequential one, most likely to be eventually
used as a casus belli.  It is most widely accepted by the US public.

There is no evidence for 1-3, and 4 is arguably untrue, for he never
denies the Holocaust himself, but asks why there can't be free speech
and research about it (instead of imprisonment of Holocaust deniers),
and asks further why the Palestinians are made to pay for the
Holocaust committed by Europeans.

But truth in propaganda war is not the point.  Message discipline --
everyone sticking to the same main points -- and repetition,
repetition, repetition are.

We have yet to figure out how to effectively counter the empire's
four-point propaganda.
-- 
Yoshie