A news story and column by Iranian-born analyst Amir Taheri in yesterday's National Post reported that the Iranian parliament had passed a sweeping new law this week outlining proper dress for Iran's majority Muslims, including an order for Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians to wear special strips of cloth.
However, it turns out its all bullshit. From tonight's retraction in the Post:
Sam Kermanian, of the U.S.-based Iranian-American Jewish Federation, said in an interview from Los Angeles that he had contacted members of the Jewish community in Iran — including the lone Jewish member of the Iranian parliament — and they denied any such measure was in place.
Even the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, one of original story sources, is backing off:
Rabbi Marvin Hier, the dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Los Angeles, acknowledged that he did not have independent confirmation of the requirement for Jews to wear badges, but said he still believes it was passed.
And yet even our good PM, yankee Blo Boy Stephen Harper, talked of this today.
Mr. Harper said. “It boggles the mind that any regime on the face of the earth would want to do anything that would remind people of Nazi Germany.”
You know, somebody high up at The Post ought to get sacked for this. We saw a purported national newspaper suckered by what turns out to be blatant right-wing propaganda, which our right-wing government was willing to shamelessly exploit. Minimally, Mr. Taheri ought to be removed from the payroll.
6 comments:
I totally agree with you, Mr. Taheri should be fired. Although it is a right wing paper, the National Post still should exercise a modicum of integrity, and not give in to yellow journalism. This article incites the ultra right wingers who'd like nothing more than have Bush nuke Iran.
Understandably, Iran is a repressive regime, and Ahmadinejad is a pompous fool who blurts out idiotic diatribes (mostly I think because of the attention he gets from doing this, and Bush's goat too!) it is no reason to fan the flames further. It's a shame that our own Dear Leader jumped on the bandwagon with his comments.
This pseudo-news has also created quite a stir here at ProgBlogs, with most bloggers thinking the story was true. (I did not get on here till late, so thankfully spared myself having to verify it. Likely, I would not have reported on it as true anyway, for it sounded too ludicrous, and I prefer to err on the side of caution or silence when it comes to things that are incendiary.)
Thanks for letting us know it's a bunch of bull!
Amir Taheri is a world class analyst. That said, I suppose he was taken, too.
What do you think ought to happen to the news outlets that reported Rove was going to be indicted, or that some phone companies here were handing over private data to the government? How about the Canadian papers that glossed over Liberal scandals and corruption, and went on to misrepresent the Conservative party agenda?
I'd imagine given your remarks, you'd like to see heads roll.
Of course you would.
Nice attempt at obfuscating Sigmund.. classic Conservative attempt at saying "Well, we're not as bas as these other guys".
Doesnt Matter (Though I think your example of turning phone data over is a bad example - its pretty obvious the phone companies in the US are doing that - secretively or not. Pretty bad when Bush signs a law authorziing the telcos to lie about handing over records per "national security" issues)
Again- to date, there is no evdence the telcos identified in the USA Today article actually were requested to and subsequently turned over data.
In fact, BellSouth is suing USA Today.
Further, there was no attempt at obfuscation- and for you to imply so is a bit deceitful. IN fact, if there were delibertate obfiscation on the part of the media, I'm all for bringing it out into the open.
That said, you didn't address the questions I posed. While you were quick to jump all over the NP, you seem reticent to demand the same standards for other media outlets that mislead their readers.
Attempting to discredit my remarks and deflect attention away from my original questions, isn't an intellectually adequate way of nullifying my remarks.
The Rove story origonated at Truthout.org. My first reading of it was that they were claiming that Fitzgerald had filed some more documents (perhaps linking Cheney to the CIA leak story), and that a Rove indictment was imminent, which it still may be. I don't think they made the claim that Rove had actually been indicted, but that story took off after the origonal had gone through too many mouthes.
In any case, Truthout seems to be a couple of guys running a lefty on-line magazine. They survive on donations. The National Post is supposed to be a national newspaper. Their standards ought to be a little more rigorous.
It has too often been mentioned that Amir Taheri, the slanderous article's writer, is a member of Benador Associates and has written for this or that newspaper. But you need to go much further back in his career to understand who he is. As executive editor-in-chief of Iran's main daily newspaper, Kayhan, between 1972 and 1979, he was very close to the Shah. The Revolution deprived him of his high position, and he has been taking revenge by writing lies and slanders ever since. His Wikipedia biography is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amir_Taheri
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