Nuclear Fundamentalism and the Iran Story

Variant on the "another man´s terrorist is another man´s freedom fighter":

The person who has done more than anyone else to inform the world about that nuclear weapons program, Mordechai Vanunu, left his job as a technician at Israel's Dimona nuclear facility before spilling the beans to the Sunday Times of London in 1986. The Israeli government promptly sent agents to kidnap Vanunu from Rome and take him back to Israel. As a result, Vanunu spent 18 years behind bars, mostly in solitary confinement. Since his release in April 2004, the Israeli authorities have imposed a travel ban along with other restrictions on Vanunu -- and they're threatening to put him back in prison if he keeps talking to journalists. If Vanunu were Iranian instead of Israeli, the U.S. press would be hailing him as a hero instead of giving him short shrift. Like almost every other mainstream U.S. media outlet, the New York Times has provided little coverage of Vanunu, so the American public has scant knowledge of his real-life experience with truth and consequences. Likewise, the Times has little to say about Washington's extreme hypocrisies while the newspaper and the government denounce certain other countries for their nuclear programs.

If Vanunu indeed would be Iranian, his name would be often heard in the US Congress and Senate and he would be praised as a great hero. Now he´s something of a secret.