Despite its major current focus on Iran, the BBC news web sites still say virtually nothing of yesterday's defiant anti-government demonstration by workers in Tehran, which turned upside down the regime's planned use of May Day to further push its pro-nuke propaganda.
Instead, the Beeb's news web site photo gallery of May Day demonstrations across the world features one image from the Tehran demonstration, of a rather submissive looking older woman, captioned:
Thousands of Iranians gathered in Tehran to call for more jobs, better contracts and payment of wage arrears.
And that's despite the BBC news web site featuring reports of angry May Day protests in the Phillipines, Indonesia, Japan, Taiwan and Cambodia, Turkey, Germany, Belarus and oh.. hang on. In its report of May Day protests in Europe, there's also this one-liner about the Tehran demonstration:
Thousands of Iranian workers demonstrate in Tehran over the growing use of short-term employment contracts
Neither of those references alludes to the police violence or discusses the significance of such an exceptional protest and its inclusion of opposition to the Iranian regime's policies on supporting Palestinian terror and the development of its nuclear programme.
It's much the same picture from the Guardian. In fact, the Graun goes one better. Its page of photo cameos of May Day rallies across the world includes a picture of some Tehran May Day demonstrators peacefully propping up a wall painted with an anti-US caricature of the Statue of Liberty with a lurid grinning death's head.
UPDATE: Regime Change Iran has translations of some of the slogans in the excellent photos I linked to in this post. Photos of another of the anti-government demonstrations here.
Funny how Ahmadinejad can pledge $50 million for the Palestinians, fund Hezbollah and fund the "peaceful" nuclear project, but there's no money to pay wages and, last I heard, Bam has yet to have been rebuilt after nearly 3 years.
Posted by: Lynne | May 02, 2006 at 06:07 PM