Rob's Blog

What do you call an American who criticises the American government on an Iranian radio station that broadcasts anti-American propaganda around the world?

On Thursday night, thanks to favourable atmospheric conditions, I was able to clearly hear a world band broadcast by the Voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Each night it reports all the news stories that reflect badly on America, referring to the action in Iraq as “occupation” and suicide bombings in Israel as “martyrdom seeking operations”. Their mission seems to consist solely of convincing their audience that America is the source of all the world’s problems.

Richard Becker, of International ANSWER and International Action Center, thought it would be a good idea to help them out. He participated in a telephone interview in which he said:

• $40 million are being spent on this [inauguration ceremony] mostly paid for by big corporations.
• Tens of thousands of people are demonstrating [...] most particularly for an end to the war and the occupation in Iraq.
• In Washington they made a very big effort to prevent demonstrators from being anywhere near the inauguration route.
• The government [...] really conspired to keep the entire route [...] reserved only for the supporters of President Bush…
• It’s very important that the Bush administration knows that [...] it faces [...] active opposition from a significant part of the US population.
• If [the Bush administration] want to go forward, for instance, with a war against Iran, which is a very definite possibility, they will face a very great response not only from the Middle East, not only from elsewhere in the world, but also from the people inside the United States.
• Condoleeza Rice, the secretary of state, who is very aggressive, represents the most aggressive element, so we know that they are continuing with this strategy of global domination.
• That plan to privatise social security constitutes a great threat to the livelihood, to the survival even, of tens of millions of people — working people — who depend on that.
• No to war and occupation, from Iraq to Palestine and everywhere.

Presumably Richard Becker hasn’t been to Iran. If he had, he might have found that life for protestors is rather worse there than it is in America.

I recorded the entire broadcast. These files are in Ogg/Vorbis format. They can be played in Winamp, among other players.

1. Station ID [244K, 2m01s] – “This is the voice of justice…”
2. Koran reading [195K, 1m35s] – I edited out most of the actual reading because I was running out of space on the minidisc, but the translation is intact. “I am going to terminate the period of your stay on Earth”, “As to those who disbelieve, I will chastise them with severe chastisement”, etc.
3. Lineup, [129K, 1m02s] – Introduction and programme lineup.
4. News, [1,522K, 12m24s] – The news. Stories include Iran’s foreign minister saying that US threats are only psychological warfare; Pentagon officials saying that reducing the number of US casualties in Iraq is more important than bringing troops back home; British newspaper the Daily Telegraph reporting on court martial of sodiers in Iraqi prisoner abuse case; South Korean activists saying Bush is the world’s number one terrorist; there being mounting opposition to Republican social security plans; and John Kerry renewing his criticism of White House policy by voting against Condoleezza Rice.
5. China, [298K, 2m23s] – A feature about the Iraqi foreign minister visiting China. The angle here seems to be that China is, “a serious rival to the US in the field of supplying energy.”
6. North Korea, [309K, 2m30] – Apparently, North Korea’s nuclear crisis is a real challenge for Bush. North Korea is calling for a change in the USA’s “hostile policy” as a precondition to entering six party talks. Pyongyang does not trust Washington because of a bill concerning human rights in North Korea.
7. Answer Interview, [916K, 7m31s] –
   The telephone interview with Richard Becker.
8. World Media, [879K, 7m11s] – A summary of stories from world media outlets. They include a Christian Science Monitor report about Condoleezza Rice opponents; a report about US social security; a Financial Times report about the USA knowing about oil smuggling in Iraq; a Los Angeles Times report about war support eroding; and an Internet site Alternet report about missile defenses used for the inaugeration ceremony.
9. Bush’s Grand Plan, [971K, 7m 52] – Now that we’ve been worn down by endless news reports slamming America, the propaganda proper gets going. Bush is inciting civil war in Iraq. “American elites such as Dr Tom Friedman would like to see muslims killing muslims, but it will never happen.” And, “Rumsfeld seems incapable of grasping either the nature of the conflict or the psychology that fuels it.” “The world’s lone superpower is roped to the ground like Gulliver, and the Pentagon is getting increasingly agitated.” Apparently, the right wing authorities insisted that the resistance in Fallujah be crushed by any means possible and Fallijah has been rubble-ized and rendered uninhabitable. And I have no idea what, “the Bush administration applied the nuclear option to Fallujah” is all about.
10. Crime and Punishment, [934K, 7m26s] – This feature seems to be about US anti-envronmentalism. Pollution, consumption, global warming, Kyoto, blah, blah, blah. “Great natural disasters have been considered acts of God in the past. But [inaudible] God is trying to tell us all something now.” Unfortunately the ionosphere is beginning to fail at this point (probably because of US pollution…) which means the radio signal is getting weaker. This recording gets hard to understand towards the end.
11. Summary, [361K, 7m26] – The signal is getting very weak now. I think this is just a summary of the news and the station ID.

In answer to my opening question, anyone who would go on such a radio station and sympathise with it is best described as a great big pussy.

Update: Instapundit has a couple of articles about ANSWER, including a link to an LA Weekly article that claims they are a front for the socialist organisation Workers World Party,

a small political sect that years ago split from the Socialist Workers Party to support the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. The party advocates socialist revolution and abolishing private property. It is a fan of Fidel Castro’s regime in Cuba, and it hails North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il for preserving his country’s “socialist system,” which, according to the party’s newspaper, has kept North Korea “from falling under the sway of the transnational banks and corporations that dictate to most of the world.” The WWP has campaigned against the war-crimes trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. A recent Workers World editorial declared, “Iraq has done absolutely nothing wrong.”

The Workers World Party are indeed sympathetic towards Kim Jong Il’s regime. According to Politics1.com both International ANSWER and International Action Center are fronts for WWP. The Belligerent Bunny has amusing pictures and commentary on an anti-war rally attended by ANSWER. A Small Victory links to the snappily named Authoritarian Opportunists Who Cozy Up To Genocidal Dictators – for Peace website which has information and links about ANSWER.

Related Link: I have written previously about the Voice of Iran.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 23rd, 2005 at 2:03 am and is filed under Civil Liberties, World Band. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.