NotRobVille
We live in strange times.
Times where the deliberate dissemination of demonstrable falsehoods is viewed by many as neither diabolical nor disastrous, but rather as something akin to the smell of napalm in the morning*.
Take the work of Amir Taheri, for example.
Mr. Taheri is the original perpetrator of the 'Iranian Badge' fabrication that was first printed on the front page of the National Post. Mr. Taheri's enablers, a slavish 'news' media turned it into a Zombie in a matter of hours. The following is how we described it at the time:
As of 9:00am PDT Sunday May 21st, less than 48 hours of the initial 'story' in the National Post, there are 218 Google News-cached publications alluding to the Iranian 'Badge' falsehood.
A number now lead with a denunciation of the fraud that was the central tenet of the original 'report'. Specifically, that the Iranian parliament has passed a law that forces minority groups, including Jews and Christians, to wear special identifying tags on their clothing:
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's new dress code bill is aimed at encouraging designers to work on imaginative Islamic clothing, lawmakers said on Sunday, dismissing a report that the bill sought special outfits for religious minorities.
Canada's National Post on Friday reported the draft bill approved last week would force Jews, Christians and other religious minorities such as Zoroastrians to wear colour-coded clothes to distinguish them from Muslims.
A copy of the bill obtained by Reuters contained no such references. Reuters correspondents who followed the dress code session in parliament as it was broadcast on state radio heard no discussion of proscriptions for religious minorities.
However, many are being so bold as to 'ignore' the actual falsehood so that they can instead run with the 'truthier' side of the story, in which the Iranian government is trying to impose a Muslim dress code:Now, that latter story, from the Associated Press, ran this morning in the Washington Post.
So there you have it - voodoo mission accomplished.
And even more interesting, if very recent Will Bunch's dot connecting means anything at all, Mr. Taheri may actually be one of the shadowy hands behind an entire platoon of pestilent News Zombies.
"As predicted yesterday, the scandal over disgraced ex-ABC News consultant Alexis Debat continues to spin out of control, with major implications for the way that Americans have been getting their news about the flashpoints that could determine war or peace in the Persian Gulf and South Asia.....
{snip}
In the meantime, little attention had been paid to the French journal Politique Internationale -- which published Debat's bogus "interviews" with Barack Obama, as well as Hillary Clinton, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, former Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, and former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
{snip}
Iranian-borm Amir Taheri (pictured at top) -- who edited a leading Iranian newspaper prior to the 1979 overthrow of the Shah and has since written for a number of western publications, including several owned by conservative press lord Rupert Murdoch -- has been a leading voice in Politique Internationale. It's not clear what his current role is, but in numerous pressreports from 2001 through 2006 he was listed as its editor.
In recent years, Taheri's work has been prominently promoted by Benador Associates, a New York based public-relations firm that specializes in Middle Eastern affairs with a roster of experts, according to its own Web site, that reads like a Who's Who of the neo-conservative movement, including Richard Perle and James Woolsey.
None of which means the time has come to stock up on wooden stakes.
But it might not be a bad idea for Laura Rozen to give Wade Davis a call.
_____
*a.k.a. 'Victory'
Thanks to Alison in the comments for pointing us towards Dymaxion World's post on the Attywood speculation.
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