Did Iran Make Enough Extra Cash to Pay Their Russia Bill

Recently we saw that Russia pulled away from further assistance for Iran's Nuclear program supposedly because they were not paying their outstanding bill for the program. We saw with the recent taking of the UK sailors that the price of oil spiked due to a fear of escalation against Iran. This rise in the oil price must have been an economic shot in the arm for Iran. Will we soon see news of Iran squaring off their debt with Russia and Russia going back full steam ahead with Iran's nuclear program? Makes me wonder if it wasn't part of the plan all along.

Predicted CFL Reporting on Iran Hostages

I recently posted on a media phenomenon where the reporting completely misses the part you want to know about most. I have decided to name it "CFL Reporting". CFL, an acronym for Central Field Loss is a vision problem where you only have peripheral vision and cannot see the center. It is the opposite of Tunnel Vision where you can only see the center. CFL Reporting has occurred when the topmost question the average person would want to know is completely avoided during the giving of the story. An example might be where a child was abducted and there was an eyewitness, yet the story would contain no description of the kidnapper.

During the time Iran held the 15 hostages we were all surprised to see the sailors going on camera and admitting to wrongdoing - stating that they were in Iranian waters in a confession style. The most obvious question on everybody's mind is what would it take to cause a trained hardened military person to submit to such an act? One would suspect that if an Iranian captor would approach one of the sailors and asked them politely to "confess" to being in Iranian waters and apologize on camera, that sailor would tell the captor where to go. Most would even think that if the captors were verbally harsh and made threats demanding they do this, it would be met with failure. This would lead to one of the top questions in the story: what did the Iranians do or say to convince the sailors to submit to such humiliation?

Information may be slow to come out, but when such data is available my prediction is that there will be very little focus on this critical detail if any in most stories produced by the media. I predict there will have been more reporting on the clothing and "goodie bags" provided for the sailors' return than on what spurred the "confessions". The next few days will tell if I am correct. I hope I am not, as I wish to know the answer to this puzzle.

They Want to Have Their Agenda and Their Credibility Too

Since bloggers cannot possibly write about everything or even many things, each blogger has a niche that he or she focuses on to write about. As long as transparency is kept in the process this should be acceptable. Consistency lends credibility, but due to time constraints full balanced blogging is not feasible. So most bloggers focus on their desired niche and clearly post they are doing so. This blog is no exception.

However, there are many organizations that either claim or give the appearance to be non-partisan and have the resources to cover a broad range of activities. Many of these organizations have targeted the disgusting but localized actions Abu Graibh. They have also have made great hay about the Gitmo prisoners by taking the word of the detainees above those of the guards. Many are media outlets that claim to be non-biased. Others are organizations allegedly devoted to fighting human rights abuses.

I have been looking at several of these for any mention about the Iranian hostage situation and found very little. First, our new House Speaker Nancy “the Stumbler” Pelosi appears to have “frozen” at the last minute and did not follow the Senate in passing a resolution denouncing it. One news story quotes Pelosi as wanting to make sure she was doing “more good than harm”. Since when has this concern ever stopped her before?

While I have seen the story mentioned in the news, there is very little showing Iran in a bad light. In the face of evidence that the sailors were clearly in Iraqi waters, this action amounts to an act of war. The retaining of the sailors after the evidence was submitted is no less than making the sailors hostages. The parading of the hostages on television is against the Geneva Convention and an act of humiliation. They have added to the humiliation by forcing the female sailor from a modernized liberated country to wear an Islamic head covering. To top things off they are showing so-called “confessions” by the sailors. No military person would volunteer to do such a thing without being under some kind of duress.

The sorry-excuse United Nations fell short of a full condemnation against Iran. Is anybody surprised? Then there are the organizations supposedly devoted to ridding the world of human rights violations. I have been monitoring the websites of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International for several days now. If there is any mention of the abuses against the UK sailors I could not find it.

Basically it boils down to credibility. If an organization devoted to denouncing these violations turns a blind eye to clear abuses, how can anything they say be trusted. If they put on their site that they exclude any mention of Western civilization victims, then at least we would know why this situation was excluded. Instead there is a deafening silence and their agenda driven heart is laid bare for the world to see.