Watch the following video closely. It shows Neda Agha-Soltan holding an unknown object in her hand as she lies on the ground apparently moments from death. She then moves her hand across her face and seconds later her face is covered in blood.

What of Dr. Arash Hejazi, who said he had been present during the incident but has since fled Iran out of fear of government reprisals?

At 19:05 June 20th Place: Kargar Ave., at the corner crossing Khosravi St. and Salehi st. A young woman who was standing aside with her father [sic, later identified as her music teacher] watching the protests was shot by a Basij member hiding on the rooftop of a civilian house. He had clear shot at the girl and could not miss her. However, he aimed straight her heart. I am a doctor, so I rushed to try to save her. But the impact of the gunshot was so fierce that the bullet had blasted inside the victim’s chest, and she died in less than two minutes. The protests were going on about one kilometre away in the main street and some of the protesting crowd were running from tear gas used among them, towards Salehi St. The film is shot by my friend who was standing beside me.

His friend shoots the video, the doctor supplies the testimony to the western media and then he is gone.

Is this another case of Western propaganda designed to prime the viewing audience? How often does the media show people actually dying on our screens? Usually they are careful to protect our delicate western sensibilities. They might show us hazy Gameboy images of “terrorists” being “taken out” by missiles fired from heroes in helicopters. But nothing up close and personal in the way this woman’s death was presented.

Is this another baby incubator farce or a Jessica Lynch re-run? Another hysteria fuelled fake out? A prelude to massed tanks on the border?

Does anybody dispute the fact the Iranian government is a vile and oppressive instrument? I doubt it. Does anyone doubt the Iranian authorities reacted fiercely during the period of unrest? Can anyone not have sympathy for the victim? I think not. But given the amount of stories our media continues to fabricate can we take it for granted the events surrounding this woman’s death occurred as reported by our unworthy agencies such as the BBC and CNN? Why trust proven liars and propagandists? Much better to investigate their motives.

Could anything like this ever happen in the eternally virtuous west? Well, yes it could and yes it has and there doesn’t even need to be civil unrest on the streets. Any time a thug gets a gun there’s going to be a victim. But you need to make allowances for such acts of authoritarian thuggery, it’s all done to protect you. Remember?

Except when it happens in Iran. It’s okay to call it like it is or even embellish when “they” are doing it. But “us”, we never meant it, it was a mistake, here’s some money, go away, no public inquiry required. Close up video of “our mistakes?” Kidding me, right?

“It has been established that there has been a technical problem with the CCTV equipment on the relevant platform and no footage exists… Although there was on-board CCTV in the train, due to previous incidents, the hard drive had been removed and not replaced.

Never forget. Iran bad. West good. Iran bad, West good, Iran baaaaa-d, West good. Two legs baaa-baa-bad, Four legs good. Or is it the other way around? Or all the same and is anything true any more?

UN council endorses nuclear curbs

The nations that currently hold the whip hand over the rest of the planet by retaining nuclear weapons whilst insisting nobody else develops them are nervous. Their ability to launch illegal wars and invasions with impunity has been threatened. Several of their potential victims have been attempting to build a meaningful deterrent to the rapacious advances of empire.

Take Iran, steady boys – I don’t mean literally. Iran can’t help but to have noticed the destruction of Iraq by overwhelming conventional (in most cases) force. If you recall, Iran is a nation that has the temerity to insist it retains control of its own national affairs. This automatically places it at odds with the empire.

Now Iran may or may not be developing nuclear weapons. There’s not a shred of proof to suggest the former, despite the most stringent of inspection regimes. But as we have seen, lack of evidence is no deterrent to imperial aggression.

America’s unruly stepchild Israel has repeatedly threatened Iran, from behind the security of its own undeclared nuclear arsenal. Unsurprisingly a nation that actually has waged extreme aggression against its neighbours and genuinely does engage in nuclear proliferation is not much of a concern to the chaps at the Security Council who claim to be gunning for world peace. Instead it is Iran, a nation with every justification to develop a deterrent given the circumstances, that is under the spotlight.

All the kings horses and all the kings men haven’t been able to pin anything credible on Iran in terms of identifying an active nuclear weapons program. With the blatant illegality of the invasion of Iraq still raw in the public mind, kicking off another atrocity without justification is a tough sell. Time to turn to the public relations team and where better than to stage the theatre than the UN Security Council?

Why not have all the main offenders get together and sing a song of peace? Russia, China, France, The UK and America, linked hand in hand for a rousing chorus of Kum Ba Yah. These are the nations who own all the weapons, bar an insignificant hand-full and excluding Israel that (shhhh!) isn’t showing and isn’t telling. These are the nations that have throughout modern history engaged in brutal wars, mainly against defenceless human beings. And this is the team that is bringing you world peace and will be slapping upstarts like Iran into their long-standing and apparently rightful status, subservient to the new world order.

The big hitters won’t be getting rid of all their weapons, mind you. They claim they will eventually but, given Gordon Brown has so far committed to a reduction of a single submarine by 2020, don’t go holding your breath.

Brown is having a tough time getting the British public to foot the bill for his new nuclear toys, at a cost of billions of pounds when we are all coming to terms with the banks having made off with the contents of our wallets. Brown has been lending the banksters a hand for the past decade and has also assisted the inequality drive by throwing away the nation’s gold and driving taxes on the average guy through the roof. People are getting sick of his demands so now he’s generously offered to cut his Christmas list. It’s the sort of offer that a Cameron, for the only example, might be grateful for, because it doesn’t really matter who’s in power provided the agenda of empire proceeds. You noticed that, right?

Put bluntly, if you had a pea shooter and had to go up against an adversary who was packing a suitcase full of guns, would you be more confident if your enemy tipped half the suitcase away? Would it make a difference?

Because politicians are liars and cheats and crooks and the most cynical and anti-social guys in the room, it’s easy enough to figure their sing-song at the UN is nothing more than an attempt to secure the supremacy of the empire and proliferate without causing too much of a fuss among the helpless and voiceless masses who pay the bills.

Or, I suppose, you could go with the theory that a massive change has really occurred. That’s what the BBC is reporting. Bwahhaha!