c9: (Default)
[personal profile] c9
Perhaps some of you saw the story in the National Post the other day, "Iran Eyes Badges For Jews," and frowned deeply as you considered it. The short version of this post is: it's made up. I bet you didn't see the retraction, nor any explanation of what it's all about. Because the first story made the rounds so fast, we ended up with Canadian PM Stephen Harper denouncing the (non-existent) idea, the Simon Weisenthal Centre in LA getting upset about it, and numerous media outlets repeating the story. All legitimate, except that it's not really making headlines explaining the falsehoods now.

Antonia Zerbisias, a media columnist at the Toronto Star, gathered all sorts of info on this, and outlines: Amir Taheri wrote it. How'd it get to the SWC, and thus around the world? Taheri sent it. Who's he? An employee of Benador Associates. Who're they? A "typical right-wing war-mongering" American PR agency, according to Zerbisias. She has links and details if you're curious.

So basically an American PR guy pushed a false story, fed it to Jewish groups to create a story out of the reaction, and now everyone from right-wing blogs to Rush Limbaugh are running at full tilt on it despite it not being true. *Nice*.

Date: 2006-05-22 04:30 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] bartok.livejournal.com
Charles Foster Kane: Read the cable.
Bernstein: "Girls delightful in Cuba. Stop. Could send you prose poems about scenery, but don't feel right spending your money. Stop. There is no war in Cuba, signed Wheeler." Any answer?
Charles Foster Kane: Yes. "Dear Wheeler: you provide the prose poems. I'll provide the war."

Date: 2006-05-22 05:22 am (UTC)
thespos: (Battlestar America)
From: [personal profile] thespos
Whipping people into a frenzy over crises that don't exist are what right-wing Repugnicans do best, unfortunately. I apologize on behalf of those dishonorable citizens of my country.

Date: 2006-05-22 01:14 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] c9.livejournal.com
Sadly, this behaviour is not restricted to just one side of the political spectrum.

Date: 2006-05-22 06:12 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sisyphus238.livejournal.com
There was a story on the CBS Evening News about American tourists checking out Venezuela and all the thing Chavez is trying to do to spend the nation's wealth on helping the poor. They spent a good deal of the story on ow people claim they have freedom of speech and can broadcast what they like. How 4 out of 5 papers are against Chavez but that he has taken no steps to muzzle them. The one dissenting voice they had was a woman who, with American funding, is trying to "promote Democracy" and who claims that people are indeed being suppressed. She was too pretty as far as I was concerned and struck me as one of those who is being paid to disrupt Venezuela. I was reminded of John Perkins (http://www.johnperkins.org/) whose job it was to go into countries like Venezuela and offer the leaders offers 'they couldn't refuse'. If they DID refuse, they often didn't live too long.

Date: 2006-05-22 10:39 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] miket61.livejournal.com
The first time I heard about this was an AP story that mentioned it in an article about a piece of legislation that would have encouraged (but allegedly not forced) Iranian women to dress more conservatively.

The sentence about how non-Muslims would have to wear identifying symbols and the international outrage that stirred was immediately followed by "copies of the bill provided to the AP showed no indication of this at all."

This really reminds me of the Danish imam who put copies of the cartoons critical of Islam that ran in a paper there into a "media kit" with crude drawings that he's received in hate mail, with no captions or information to distinguish between the two.

(And on the Bush/Republican angle to this - it's amazing how Bush's opponents can simultaneously say that he's an idiot, while also being an evil genius)

Date: 2006-05-22 01:16 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] c9.livejournal.com
It's unfortunate that so much emphasis is placed on a supposed lack of intelligence in President Bush -- he might not be smart in some ways, but neither are the rest of the population. And there sure are a lot of *very* smart people making bad decisions all day long these days...

Date: 2006-05-22 11:35 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] miket61.livejournal.com
The irony, of course, is that he's a well-educated former governor of a southern state, just like the last two Democratic presidents.

And Jimmy Carter says "nuculer" too. :)

Date: 2006-05-22 11:40 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] c9.livejournal.com
Having education and putting it to intelligent use are completely different things, that's for sure. :)

Date: 2006-05-22 11:55 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] gregr92.livejournal.com
It's amazing how fast a story like this can take on a life of it's own.

August 2015

S M T W T F S
      1
234 5678
9101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
3031     

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 14th, 2025 09:26 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios