Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Remember the Iran "Marking the Jews Story"?

Late last week, the National (com)Post made huge waves by publishing a front page story about how Iran was supposedly going to require their religious minorities to wear identifying badges. The story was fishy from the start - the shadings of Nazi Germany were just a little too profound. Sure enough, later in the day, the story quietly vanished from the National Post's website - consigned to the oubliette of recycled electrons forever.

Since then, some people have done some fairly decent sleuthing trying to track down the source of the article, and one of the best bits of analysis I've seen is here at The Galloping Beaver. If the author has their facts straight - and I have no reason to disbelieve the trail put forward, it leads back to the warmongering neo-thugs that want the US to invade Iran.

I think it's a pretty clear warning for all of us to be very cautious and skeptical about any claims that are made about Iran in the months to come. Clearly, the propaganda machine is winding up. (anybody else remember the "mobile weapons labs" that Iraq supposedly had?)

1 comment:

MgS said...

Apparently, you failed to grok the point I was making.

We have to be very skeptical of the claims being made about Iran right now - it's quite clear that there are propagandists who would choose to conflate the situation to their own ends, regardless of the facts.

Not to dismiss the concerns of the students, but students demonstrate all the time for change - it's not unusual, nor is it representative of an overall desire on the part of a population for radical change.

Iran's regime is a very troublesome one for a variety of reasons, but that does not give foreign powers the carte-blanche right to step in with military force. Given the examples of both Iraq and Afghanistan, I would argue that any such intervention is likely to turn into a military occupation that is morally no better than what it replaces.

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