halle wrote:

HoneyBadger <scotnormanviking.net> wrote:

Seems that yet another attempt was made to get people steamed
up for war against Iran. Who is wagging this dog?

Another failed attempt by the neocons to compare Iran to Nazi Germany

Don't you mean "by the zionists"?

Mabye, but that's not clear from the article.

Another failed attempt by the neocons to compare Iran to Nazi Germany
suggests the public won't stand for another propaganda campaign meant to
drum up war fever.

Jan Frel, AlterNet

A now discredited article by Iranian-American and neocon chum Amir Taheri
that appeared last Friday in the Canadian National Post suggested that new
legislation in Iran would require Jews and other religious minorities to
wear distinctive color badges. At the article's end appeared this
invitation
to readers:

"Dangerous Parallel: Is Iran turning into the new Nazi Germany? Share your
opinion online at nationalpost.com."

The readers who wrote in immediately savaged the article, its author and
the
National Post's facile, transparent attempt to resurrect the Wermacht. No
one took the bait, and the disbelief quickly spread across the internet.

The swift rejection of this attempt to turn Iran into the Fourth Reich
incarnate is surely a natural reflex of a public still smarting from the
ordeal of the Iraq PR campaign. Another explanation for the rapid response
is the massive growth in streams of alternative information available to
the
public -- organizations like Media Matters and PR Watch literally make
their
living exposing lies and propaganda as they are released through media and
government channels.



And then there are the bloggers who can singlehandedly get to the bottom
of
large-scale lies. In the case of the National Post story, blogger Taylor
Marsh phoned the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which had confirmed Taheri's
story
after the report came out. A researcher Marsh spoke with on Friday "was
eager to confirm it, using words like 'throwback' to the Nazi era, 'very
true' and 'very scary.' ... "

Within the day, the story was repudiated. Middle East expert Juan Cole
revealed that there was no evidence of any such anti-Jewish Iranian
legislation, citing a report in the Australian press that quoted an
Iranian
politician denying its existence. Later in the day, Marsh again called the
Wiesenthal Center and got the runaround. Looking at a fax the researcher
sent her as background, Marsh discovered that the National Post had
suggested to a rabbi at the Wiesenthal Center that it was important to
"draw
attention" to Taheri's report, exposing the scaffolding behind the
propaganda effort.

Marsh concluded with the pointed question, "Who got the Simon Wiesenthal
Center to stick their necks out on this bogus Iranian badge story, risking
their very reputation and funding credibility, and who had what to gain by
doing so?"

Marsh's deconstruction matters, because the story quickly made the rounds
in
conservative media, as analyst Jim Lobe wrote for IPS:
Taheri's story ... was reprinted by the New York Post, which is owned by
media baron Rupert Murdoch, and picked up by the Jerusalem Post, which
also
featured a photo of a yellow star from the Nazi era over a photo of
Iranian
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Another neoconservative publication, the New York Sun, also noted the
story Monday, claiming that the specific report that special badges were
required by the legislation had been "incorrect." At the same time,
however,
the Sun quoted two Iranian-American foes of the Islamic Republic as
suggesting that dress requirements for religious minorities were still
being
considered by Iran's ruling circles. It offered no evidence to support
that
assertion.
The rapid discrediting of the Taheri article had real impact; instead of
Condi Rice's trumpeting it as evidence of a proto-Nazi human-rights
disaster, all we heard was a peep from U.S. State Department spokesman
Sean
McCormack, who professed ignorance of the now-toxic article and slyly
referred to the idea of Iran forcing people to wear badges as evocative of
"Germany under Hitler."

Since the evil dictator line has been used and abused to the point of
meaninglessness over the past five years in Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea
and elsewhere, Bush and his team have been reduced to plundering words
that
still have some resonance in American life: "Hitler," "Nazis" and
"Holocaust." Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker quoted a former senior
intelligence official who said that Hitler is the comparison "name they
are
using" for Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

But, as the National Post story makes apparent, this tactic is not really
working. The columnists and propagandists who support attacking Iran
appear
to sense that the Nazi backdrop through which they have been asked to
present "The Iranian Question" reflects the utter baselessness of the
charge
and the facility with which opponents can easily refute their claims.
Unlike
the point-blank lies and bullet-point shotgun blasts on the op-ed pages
and
cable segments we got with Iraq about evil and weapons programs, with the
Iran campaign, it has to be subliminal, surreptitious, stab-in-the-back.

Take conservative pundit Niall Ferguson's attempt in the L.A. Times. His
May
15 opinion article was ostensibly about the rise of many little Cold Wars
with the proliferation of nuclear powers. But within six sentences,
Ferguson
reveals that he wants to talk about Iran. Soon enough, in the most
backhanded way possible, he tiptoes toward the Nazis:

"It is, of course, always dangerous to draw analogies with the 1930s. Too
many bad decisions have been made over the years on the basis of facile
parallels -- between Hitler and Nasser, between Hitler and Saddam
Hussein."

In other words, even the Nazi comparison may have been looted of its
meaning
in the name of making bad decisions. So haven't we learned our lesson? No,
because Bush still has one very bad decision to make, and a fanatic
obsession with war does not generally give rise to creative impulses. So
Ferguson relents: "Still, in one respect, Ahmadinejad really has taken a
leaf out of the Führer's book."

It would be a distraction to explain just which leaf Ferguson is referring
to, because then we'd be missing the point, which is to push us to link
our
historic venom against Nazis with anything Iranian, at any cost. Even the
projection of Ahmadinejad as supreme leader is dubious; analysts and
reporters have argued that he's merely a figurehead, and Seymour Hersh
qouted a European diplomat who declared, "Ahmadinejad is not in control."

If enough people laugh off the attempts to draw Hitler's moustache on
Ahmadinejad's upper lip, we might see the domestic propaganda division of
the Get Iran effort shut down. The rapid and torrential takedown of the
Taheri story is a good step in that direction.

But what if the propaganda were to stop, yet the attack on Iran were
launched anyway?

Given the growing sense of total independence the Bush administration has
displayed over the years, and its contempt for the press, it doesn't take
a
huge leap of the imagination to envision them attacking Iran while
ignoring
congressional power, public opinion, protesters and dissidents alike. That
would be a very scary "first" in American history -- the only
administration
to go to war without a propaganda campaign. They don't even feel the need
to
lie to us anymore.

Jan Frel is an AlterNet staff writer.

© 2006 Independent Media Institute.


--
Mellivora Capensis
http://www.prwatch.org/
http://mediamatters.org/
http://www.alternet.org/

"Stephen Horgan" <stephen@horgan.co.uk> wrote in message
news:1148744120.657030.279860@j55g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

HoneyBadger wrote:

Seems that yet another attempt was made to get people steamed
up for war against Iran. Who is wagging this dog?

Another failed attempt by the neocons to compare Iran to Nazi
Germany suggests the public won't stand for another propaganda
campaign meant to drum up war fever.

If Iran even looks like acquiring nuclear weapons capability then the
Israelis will strike. Such a conflict would cause chaos in the
region, may involve a nuclear exchange, and may drag in other
nations. The US administration is, quite sensibly, trying to avert
this through diplomacy. As for the Iranian regime: it is pretty
unpleasant, oppressive and it has failed its people it almost every
important respect. Only oil money keeps it afloat, though most
Iranians see none of that. More importantly, it is deeply hostile to
the US. It is absolutely certain that an Iranian/Israeli conflict
would place any and all US civilian and military assets in the
region at grave risk. The US government is stepping up to its
responsibilities to both its
citizens and to world peace. Meanwhile idiots like the chap above
want them to do nothing at all.

That was Stephen Horgman, Ladies and Gentlemen, once more reaffirming
his willingness to defend "Israel" to the last drop of British blood !

"Stephen Horgan" <stephen@horgan.co.uk> wrote in message
news:1148744120.657030.279860@j55g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

HoneyBadger wrote:

Seems that yet another attempt was made to get people steamed
up for war against Iran. Who is wagging this dog?

Another failed attempt by the neocons to compare Iran to Nazi Germany
suggests the public won't stand for another propaganda campaign meant to
drum up war fever.

If Iran even looks like acquiring nuclear weapons capability then the
Israelis will strike. Such a conflict would cause chaos in the region,
may involve a nuclear exchange, and may drag in other nations. The US
administration is, quite sensibly, trying to avert this through
diplomacy. As for the Iranian regime: it is pretty unpleasant,
oppressive and it has failed its people it almost every important
respect. Only oil money keeps it afloat, though most Iranians see none
of that. More importantly, it is deeply hostile to the US. It is
absolutely certain that an Iranian/Israeli conflict would place any and
all US civilian and military assets in the region at grave risk.

The US government is stepping up to its responsibilities to both its
citizens and to world peace. Meanwhile idiots like the chap above want
them to do nothing at all.

That was Stephen Horgman, Ladies and Gentlemen, once more reaffirming his
willingness to defend "Israel" to the last drop of British blood !