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Iranian airplane crash - two kinds of rhetoric

Al Jazeera reports on the fallout from the crash of an Iranian C-130 into an apartment block, starting with this statement from Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:

"But what is important is that they have shown the way to martyrdom which we must follow."

That's the first time I've heard of dying in a fairly arbitrary accident as martyrdom, unless it's in the sense of martyrdom to the cause of not making planes fly when they need maintenance. This fits with the longstanding tendency of Iranian government speakers referring to any Iranian dead as martyrs.

The article does also have a segment that felt slightly more slanted than normal Al Jazeera coverage:

The C-130 workhorse - bought from the United States before the 1979 Islamic revolution and starved of crucial spares by US-imposed sanctions - crashed into the foot of a high-rise housing block after suffering engine failure.

That suggests a bit of blame shifting that I'd say is unwarranted. It's not the responsibility of a nation to supply spare parts for machinery sold to a previous regime and subsequently acquired during a revolt. There's a difference between, say, embargoing medical supplies and embargoing replacement parts for military transport planes.

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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on December 11, 2005 09:03 AM.

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