{"id":306,"date":"2006-02-21T11:34:37","date_gmt":"2006-02-21T11:34:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=306"},"modified":"2006-02-21T11:34:37","modified_gmt":"2006-02-21T11:34:37","slug":"suicide-bomber-caption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=306","title":{"rendered":"Suicide Bomber Caption"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the Dom Post today an LA Times piece on the rise of Iran to regional dominance is illustrated with a big photo of a girl in hejab writing on a piece of paper.  The caption reads:<br \/>\n<i>&#8220;Signing their life away: Iranians register at Khageh-Nasir<\/i> [sic] <i>University in Tehran this month as suicide bombers to assist in the Palestinian uprising.&#8221;<\/i><br \/>\nThe photo is sourced from REUTERS and bears no relationship to the Iranian article.  The caption caught my interest, for fairly obvious reasons &#8211; it seemed like bullshit.  So I did some digging online.<br \/>\nThe story behind the photo seems to come from Associated Press:<br \/>\n<a href=http:\/\/hosted.ap.org\/dynamic\/stories\/I\/IRAN_SUICIDE_BOMBERS?SITE=NYTRO&#038;SECTION=HOME&#038;TEMPLATE=DEFAULT>Suicide Bombers Warn US, UK Of Attacks<\/a>.  A <a href=http:\/\/www.theage.com.au\/news\/world\/irans-wouldbe-suicide-bombers-line-up-for-duty\/2006\/02\/19\/1140283950595.html>slightly different version<\/a>, with extra information, appears in The Age.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>There is an Iranian group named Esteshadion, or Martyrdom Seekers, formed in late 2004, who held a seminar on suicide-bombing tactics at Khajeh-Nasir University.<\/li>\n<li>Their spokesman claimed that there were over a 1,000 members of the group, and that they would mobilise to attack American and British &#8216;sensitive points&#8217; (in Iraq) if Iran&#8217;s nuclear facilities were attacked.<\/li>\n<li>Attacks on civilians &#8211; an abominable behaviour deeply associated with suicide bombing &#8211; are explicitly not condoned<\/li>\n<li>After the seminar about 50 of the 200-strong audience registered with the group.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Back in July, a report on the organisation aired on Al-Arabiya TV, transcribed <a href=http:\/\/memritv.org\/Transcript.asp?P1=736>here<\/a> (of course no information on the reliability of the translation.  It was rapidly picked up by all the extreme right-wing blog sites.)  This report suggests that the movement is motivated more generally by concern over Islamic holy sites in Palestine and Iraq.<br \/>\nA movement leader in this report stresses that the movement is not symbolic, but the AP report suggests this view is not shared by all members &#8211; in that piece, a 23-year old signee is quoted &#8220;We are trying to defend Islam. It&#8217;s a way to draw the attention of others to our activities.&#8221;  (At least, to me this suggests it&#8217;s a symbolic act; draw your own conclusions.  It is, of course hard to tell for sure given the translation across language and the inevitable bastardisation of journalistic quotation.)<br \/>\nWhat to make of all this?  I&#8217;m going to avoid getting into an essay about this.  I will say that this indicates the caption the Dom Post used was inaccurate and irresponsible, and I just emailed them to that effect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the Dom Post today an LA Times piece on the rise of Iran to regional dominance is illustrated with a big photo of a girl in hejab writing on a piece of paper. The caption reads: &#8220;Signing their life away: Iranians register at Khageh-Nasir [sic] University in Tehran this month as suicide bombers to &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=306\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Suicide Bomber Caption<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8D9ZE-4W","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}