Taheri-ng It Up
The New York Post has reprinted Amir Taheri’s debunked Iranian “yellow badges for Jews” story. Lenin’s Tomb has pictures of the print edition of the National Post story. They made the most inflammatory possible presentation. (You’ll note the headline is not “Iran to Force Zoroastrians to Wear Blue.”)
Meanwhile, as noted on the Just Adventure Forum, while Amir Taheri’s story quotes “Mostafa Pourhardani, Minister of Islamic Orientation.” Google searches on variations of “Iran+Pourhardani” turn up no references that do not stem directly from Taheri’s story. That would be flying under the radar! As noted on the Just Adventure Forum, Iran has a Culture Minister named Mohammad-Hossein Saffar-Harandi. Google News finds nothing on Pourhardani (or “Pourharadani”) that does not stem from the National Post’s Friday story.
Go ahead and mouse over all the cabinet posts on the Iranian Presidency’s official site. There is no “Pourhardani” or variant on that name in the cabinet.
They made it up. Taheri and The Post ran a provably false report, on their own initiative or at the behest of some publicity-shy agency of some government or other, played in as inflammatory way as possible. Why? So that months from now, someone hearing about plans to bomb Iran, or seeing footage of bombing on TV, will say to themselves, “Didn’t I read that Iran was going to round up all the Jews and make them wear yellow stars like the Nazis? Something like that. Well, good riddance.” All the story had to do was live long enough to get into circulation.
Comment by SomeCallMeTim —
May 22, 2006 @ 7:49 am
So fucking evil.
Comment by Mr. Obscura —
May 22, 2006 @ 7:57 am
Also quoted by Rush Limbaugh in his morning radio teaser today. Expect it to be everywhere by nightfall.
Comment by grytpype —
May 22, 2006 @ 9:22 am
Israel wants us to attack Iran. And they want it soon.
Comment by lemuel pitkin —
May 22, 2006 @ 9:24 am
That the Post would repeat this story is no surprise. But that the American Prospect would be just as credulous, is.
Someone really needs to take young Ezra aside.
Comment by Cassidy —
May 22, 2006 @ 9:38 am
To be fair to Ezra, she printed it on May 19 (three days ago) when the story had just hit the web. When I first saw it, I was shocked at first. I doubt people like Ezra would have written that same thing today.
Comment by kth —
May 22, 2006 @ 9:44 am
Agreed, except Ezra’s a dude, like Pound and the one by that name in the Old Testament.
Comment by lemuel pitkin —
May 22, 2006 @ 9:51 am
Cassidy, that won’t fly. In the run-up to war with Iran, there are going to be a steady stream of more and less plausible scare stories about Iran. A basic skepticism about these stories is a minimum requirement for any pundit who does not want to be part of the propaganda machine. Someone who treats them as presumptively true until proven false — as Ezra did — has no business writing at TAPPED.
Comment by Cassidy —
May 22, 2006 @ 10:16 am
My apologies… my fingers were typing ahead of my brain.
Comment by dan —
May 22, 2006 @ 10:30 am
I suspect that they had to make the name up - otherwise they might have found themselves at the sharp end of a very, very expensive libel action.
Comment by jlw —
May 22, 2006 @ 10:36 am
What’s actually astonishing is that the quality of propaganda hasn’t increased since Gulf War Mark I and the evil incubator evictions. Pre-Internet, you could make up quotes from some Minister of Wooly Beards without fear that anyone would be able to falsify the existence of said minister–well, not until some item appeared in Harper’s nine months later. Now, anyone can check out the Iranian President’s website. You’d think that the propagandists would come up with less easily debunkable bullshit.
Maybe they can’t–the old school, Safire-era hacks might not be able to learn new tricks. But it’s equally possible that they just don’t need to. There were myriad flim-flams in the last ten years, and as long as they are useful, none of them–not the tale of Al Gore claiming credit for the Internet, nor that of the Spanish electorate caving into the Madrid bombers, nor the hundreds involved with selling the Iraq War–have lost currency for being found to be counterfeit.
We live in an age of legends.
Unfortunately, they are all urban.
Pingback by PoliBlog: A Rough Draft of my Thoughts » Iran and “Pre-War Propaganda” —
May 22, 2006 @ 11:07 am
[…] ng notion: It’s classic pre-war propaganda. That isn’t a comforting thought. See Jim Henley for more.
Filed under: US Politics, Iran | […]
Comment by Happy Jack —
May 22, 2006 @ 11:17 am
Looks like I need to add some RSS feeds.
I don’t want to miss the story about how Chavez was overheard whistling the Horst Wessel song.
Comment by Canuck Stuck in Muck —
May 22, 2006 @ 12:26 pm
You know, we might have expected such bald-faced lies from the shrub administration. Recall that in Feb. 2002, we heard that Rummy was going to create an Office of Strategic Misinformation, from which to disseminate (no doubt) all manner of real-sounding stories, both to dismay the ’enemy’ and (reading between the signs) to position the enemy’s enemies to accept the notion of visiting brutality on the enemy and that enemy’s friends. Here’s the link…http://www.onthemedia.org/otm022302.html
Comment by Mr.Murder —
May 22, 2006 @ 12:46 pm
Ali Akbar Dareini and Iranian Liberation Front of Paris is Ghorbanifar’s arm of the Iraqi National Conghress of Chalabi working out of London.
Dareini is an asset of our pysops. His Tehran byline is probably fake, his stories were being placed into the media from an Indiana college, one with ties to some of the pundits and lower level appointments to the Intelligence COmmunity via Bushco. dating back to Quayle’s days on different defense policy boards.
Follow the Money.
Comment by xss —
May 22, 2006 @ 12:55 pm
kind of like yellow cake in niger. maybe an italian spy will find a report about this.
Trackback by Dean's World —
May 22, 2006 @ 1:17 pm
sadly
I just lost all respect for Amir Taheri.
When a cause is just and honorable, it should be promoted with honesty. That people like Taheri, with gifts…
Pingback by Polimom Says » Propaganda wars (Updated) —
May 22, 2006 @ 1:51 pm
[…] ated the “Jewish badges in Iran” hysteria. Jim Henley at Unqualified Offerings has more.
3 Comments for ‘Propaganda wars (Updated)’
[…]
Comment by Pere Ubu —
May 22, 2006 @ 2:00 pm
Google searches on variations of “Iran+Pourhardani” turn up no references that do not stem directly from Taheri’s story. That would be flying under the radar!
Pretty much the same kind of thing I discovered when searching for information on the ”Iraqi People Shredders” agitprop awhile back - which has been discredited yet seems to live on in wingnuttia even now.
And if you Google the words now? It’s all over the right wing blogs. One gets the impression this will be another (as Atrios calls it) zombie lie we’ll have to shoot in the head over and over to kill.
Pingback by The Politburo Diktat » Blog Archive » The Iran ‘Jew badge’ story - “pre-war propaganda?” —
May 22, 2006 @ 3:21 pm
[…]
Jim Henley, Steve Taylor, and James Joyner have all commented on this. Start with Henley (clearly a Leftie): They made it up. Taheri and The Post ran a provably false r […]
Comment by Davebo —
May 22, 2006 @ 3:29 pm
”Start with Henley (clearly a Leftie):”
ROTFLMAO!
Comment by jlw —
May 22, 2006 @ 3:35 pm
Idly trying to track down which Indiana college was the hothouse of espionage–hey, it’s I.U.–I turned to Taheri’s page at Benador. (http://www.benadorassociates.com/taheri.php for the record.) Crikey! Look at all those publications. It’s almost one a day since 2002. The cat’s a warblogger, except he uses the New York Post and Arab News instead of Typepad.
Comment by jlw —
May 22, 2006 @ 3:39 pm
Also, check out this:
http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/19508
Wherein Taheri tries to ”clarify” his previous statements.
Comment by Dan —
May 22, 2006 @ 4:01 pm
See also:
http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/48
a June 21, 2001 article about the approaching first anniversary of 9/11.
But maybe that can be chalked up to a typo.
Comment by Avram —
May 22, 2006 @ 4:04 pm
I love the President’s Cabinet page. Head of National Sports is a cabinet-level position! Does Dubya know about this? ’Cause I can kinda see him thinking ”Hey, we should get that over here!”
”Minister of Agricultural Jihad” and ”Martyr’s and Self-Sacrifice Affairs Foundation Chief” sound like something out of The Onion.
Comment by Jon H —
May 22, 2006 @ 4:43 pm
”Head of National Sports is a cabinet-level position! ”
The Brits have a cabinet-level ”Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport”
Comment by Jon H —
May 22, 2006 @ 4:46 pm
”Wherein Taheri tries to ”clarify” his previous statements.”
… where nobody is likely to see the clarification.
Comment by Banagor —
May 22, 2006 @ 5:58 pm
It wasn’t such a far-fetched story. Granted, it wasn’t exactly true and the real story was misinterpreted or misunderstood (you have no proof this was done as propaganda, and just as you ”know” it to be true, I also ”know” it to be untrue).
But Hitler didn’t get the yellow badge idea out of nowhere. It is a well established historical fact that he acquired the idea from the ”tolerant” Muslim laws directed at dhimmis (Jews and Christians). Jews were forced to wear yellow strips in Iran until the 1920’s in fact.
Also, if you recall, the Taliban instituted the same exact rule during their time in power in 1998 or 1999, I believe - mostly directed at the Hindu minority. Hindus (and some others as well) were forced to wear distinguishing badges in public in Afghanistan.
So, while the story was certainly untrue, it isn’t that far-fetched. Please have the decency to accept that being a minority in the Muslim world is far from the rosy ”tolerant” picture that Muslim groups like to portray. If you think that America is ”intolerant”, try being Jewish in Syria or another Muslim country for a while.
I think you’ll change your tune fairly quickly as to what ’intolerance” means.
Pingback by Hot Air » Blog Archive » Iran yellow-badges fallout: Amir Taheri comments —
May 22, 2006 @ 5:59 pm
[…] ns end up with Persian blue as the colour of their zonnar. He sure sounded certain to me. Jim Henley also notes that there’s no record of “Moustafa Pourhardani,R […]
Trackback by Non Partisan Pundit —
May 22, 2006 @ 7:19 pm
Beware the Exiles
Updated The recent controversy surrounding the Iranian “dress code” law got me thinking about the role of exiles in creating policy and influencing public opinion. The “dress code” story was published last week by Canada’s National Post descr…
Comment by Avram —
May 22, 2006 @ 7:20 pm
Banagor, if you’d just browse back through the last few days’ worth of posts by Jim, you’d see that he has no illusions about a Iran having a Western-style ”tolerant” regime.
Comment by Matt Weiner —
May 22, 2006 @ 11:15 pm
it wasn’t exactly true
That’s not exactly a not misleading way to say ”it was made up out of whole cloth.”
Pingback by mindtangle » Blog Archive » consumer products —
May 23, 2006 @ 2:04 am
[…] delusional’ kept me from flat-out denying it instantly. Well, turns out it’s demonstrably false. It is, in fact, so easily verified as false - one search in Googl […]
Pingback by mindtangle » Blog Archive » consumer products —
May 23, 2006 @ 2:06 am
[…] delusional’ kept me from flat-out denying it instantly. Well, turns out it’s demonstrably false. It is, in fact, so easily verified as false - one search in Googl […]
Pingback by Word of Mouth blog » Blog Archive » Fake but Accurate —
May 24, 2006 @ 1:48 pm
[…] elf have not issued a retraction, never mind apologized. Meanwhile, blogger Jim Henley has uncovered evidence that this was not just an honest mistake, but in all likelihood som […]
Comment by Sellam Ismail —
May 24, 2006 @ 3:49 pm
Banagor @#27 says:
”…try being Jewish in Syria.”
Try reading you ignorant fuck:
http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/L/Joshua.M.Landis-1/syriablog/2005/10/jews-of-syria-by-robert-tuttle.htm