The Blogosphere vs. The Neo-Comintern













Kudos toJim Henley for deconstructing the most recent disinformation campaign launched by the neo-comintern . Amir Taheri was apparently the driving force behind spreading the false reports that the Iranian parliament passed a law that envisages separate dress codes for religious minorities, Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians, who will have to adopt distinct colour schemes to make them identifiable in public, starting with an article he authored for National Post of Canada. He is seen above with his publicist Eleana Benador who also represents all the other Usual Suspects, the intellectauls who neoconservative movement and its many think tanks, media organs and other satellites. It's kind of ironic that Taheri is also an author of an article titled The Boom in Conspiracy Theories in which he criticizes journalists for their "intellectual laziness" and attacks those
"investigative journalists", hacks who make up stories on the basis of rumors leaked by un-named "reliable sources."
Taheri reminds me of the old generation of Cold-War era neocons ideologues like Arthur Koestler who have been all around the political map in search for marketable ideologies and for sugar daddies to fund them and help them get their stuff published. One upon a time he worked for the Shah's newspaper in Tehran and was an editor of a third worldist magazine and now he seems to be tailoring his writings to the spin favored by pro-Saudi and pro-Israel neocon publications. I despise the clerics in Tehran and I have a lot of respect for all those Iranians who are fighting for political and economic reform in their country. But this kind of a silly disinformation trick only plays into their hands by helping to discredit accurate reports about their violation of human rights, corruption, etc. In any case, if there are ever going to award Pulitzers to bloggers, Jim Henley should be on the short-list of nominees.

Comments

Anonymous said…
There is so much that is wrong with the Iranian regime - so why make things up? Things that canbe proved wrong? Why not just report the facts, which are often damming in a more substantial, if more complicated way. This is a pattern, it seems. Hussein's reigime in Iraq was monstrous, but so much of the propanda against it was needlesslu inaccurate - Why? In a somewhat similar way - The Bush admin. plays down the heroism and real stories of real soldiers coming back from Iraq - too risky for them. What if a Purple Heart winner turns against them - Instead, they say false things about Jessica Lynch or Pat Tillman - You see the pattern?
Anonymous said…
Arthur Koestler--whatever else one thinks of him--was a consistant and untiring voice against tyranny and for the democratic West. He does not deserve to bracketed with fabulists like Amir Taheri.

Moreover--unlike the neocons--when the job was done,i.e., when a shattered Europe had rebuilt itself and formed NATO, he departed from politics and turned to other things. By contrast, the neocons are perpetually trying to sell the same bill of goods over and over and over again.
Leon Hadar said…
anonymous... You are right! I knew Arthur K., Arthur K. was a good friend of mine, and you, Mr. Taheri are not Arthur K. But seriously, I was trying more to draw an analogy in terms of intellectuals who have been all over the place ideologically speaking.

Popular posts from this blog

Francis Fukuyama (again): Don't shoot! I'm not a neocon

Pundits who screw-up: No big deal...