All the news fit to squeeze

The New York Times will be easier for me to have and to hold on Sunday mornings. That's because it's shrinking its pages by one-and-a-half inches width-wise next year. So much for the good news.

The bad news is that it's cutting 250 jobs, all apparently in production, as well as its ''news hole.''

The newspaper's plans include closing a printing plant in Edison, N.J. The plant's workload will shift to another in New York City, the article said, estimating the moves would save the company $42 million per year. The job cuts account for about one-third of the Times' total production work force of 800, the newspaper said.

The reduction in the size of its pages would mean a loss of 11 percent of the space devoted to news, but the newspaper plans to add pages to make up for about half of that loss.

"That's a number that I think we can live with quite comfortably," Executive Editor Bill Keller was quoted as saying. "The smaller news space would require tighter editing and putting some news in digest form."

Just what the world needs -- more journalism in ''digest form."

Suicide bomb the messenger

THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED:

We know that most governments have a stated policy of not negotiating with terrorists. But should media have a policy of not reporting on terrorist attacks? Some people might think so after hearing about this, a study that links coverage of terrorism with increased incidences of terrorism. (I added the link.)

It's a macabre example of win-win in what economists call a "common-interest game," say Bruno S. Frey of the University of Zurich and Dominic Rohner of Cambridge University.

"Both the media and terrorists benefit from terrorist incidents," their study contends. Terrorists get free publicity for themselves and their cause. The media, meanwhile, make money "as reports of terror attacks increase newspaper sales and the number of television viewers."

The researchers counted direct references to terrorism between 1998 and 2005 in the New York Times and Neue Zuercher Zeitung, a respected Swiss newspaper. They also collected data on terrorist attacks around the world during that period. Using a statistical procedure called the Granger Causality Test, they attempted to determine whether more coverage directly led to more attacks.

The results, they said, were unequivocal: Coverage caused more attacks, and attacks caused more coverage -- a mutually beneficial spiral of death that they say has increased because of a heightened interest in terrorism since Sept. 11, 2001.

What's not clear is whether the correlation can also be found between with all media, including television and websites, or just newspapers. (And really, do terrorists read Swiss newspapers?) If it's just newspapers, is it because terrorists like having the actual pages to stick on their fridges?

There's nothing in the report on this study as to whether invading other countries might actually increase terrorism.

UPPITY DATE: Not surprisingly, some in the rightwingdingosphere are using this study to suggest that the MSM are causing terrorism.

Yeah, that's what they'd they like to believe, as opposed to agreeing with others who say that the war on terror is a failure for other reasons.

Washington is failing to make progress in the global war on terror and the next 9/11-style attack is not a question of if, but when. That is the scathing conclusion of a survey of 100 leading American foreign-policy analysts.

In its first "Terrorism Index," released yesterday, the influential journal Foreign Policy found surprising consensus among the bipartisan experts.

Some 86 per cent of them said the world has grown more, not less, dangerous, despite President George W. Bush's claims that the U.S. is winning the war on terror.

The main reasons for the decline in security, they said, were the war in Iraq, the detention of terror suspects in Guantanamo Bay, U.S. policy towards Iran and U.S. energy policy.

Perhaps in ''defending our freedoms,'' these Chairborne Rangers (wish I had come up with that) would prefer to take away the freedom of the press and the public's right to know. Besides, aren't they the ones constantly screaming about terrorists lurking everywhere?

By the way: 2,500 U.S. military dead in Iraq as of today.

Tangled up in web blues

National Post columnist Robert Fulford, who has a regular media piece in Toronto Life magazine, this month zeroes in on the Star's attempts to ''lure'' readers back from the Internet.

It's not online so I will have to type whatever excerpts I select with these already-ruined-my-manicure fingers. Because of that, I'll sum up what he says, cautioning that I bring my own filter to his view of the Star. These are not quotes, unless marked otherwise. My comments are the purple prose.

The Saturday Star is ''gargantuan'' and threatens to break the back of anybody who hauls it off the front stoop. Reading it the other day made me feel ''like Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise, boldly going where no man has gone before.'' (Cool!)

310 pages, not counting ad brochures. But it mostly sucks. (Didja happen to mention you work for the competition, Mr. Fulford?)

Oh look! The Internet is there, on the horizon, threatening newspapers. It's attacking! Eating! Killing off Star readership! Some people don't actually read newspapers anymore. Many young people never read them in the first place. (Stop the presses on this one.)

But the Star is fighting back, even though  its website doesn't look as good as the New York Times'. (You talking to me? You talking to me? You talking to me? Then who the hell else are you talking to?)

The Star's journalists can't write their way out of a paper bag. (Must be because they like to use cliches like ''can't write their way out of a paper bag.")

The Star is all about ''assembly line'' journalism. (All this is ostensibly coming out of the mouth of editor-in-chief Giles Gherson and yet, strangely, there is no quote from him to this effect.)

Technology, technology, technology. (Scary stuff, kids!)

The Star is big. (Boo!)

The end.

The rest of the magazine has some fun stuff on things to eat, drink and do around town this summer.

Droning on

Before I get to the terrororama in our papers and on our screens -- not to mention the Star's SUPERB COVERAGE despite WHAT SOME PEOPLE THINK (scroll down) -- here's my treeware column from today's business section, which discusses the dearth of labour reporters in the media.

Last month, when the Los Angeles Times' Harry Bernstein died at the age of 83, he was remembered in his paper as "the last of the great labour writers'' who made labour relations "a fascinating subject for the entire community."

There's still a labour beat at the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune and a handful of the larger papers in the U.S.

But here in media-concentrated Canada?

According to a recent essay by Ed Finn of the Ottawa-based Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, "Back in the '60s and '70s, into the '80s, almost every large newspaper had a reporter who specialized in labour-management relations. Wilf List covered labour for the Globe and Mail for an amazing 35 years. I wrote a labour column for The Toronto Star for 18 years, and several other papers also had labour columnists as well as labour reporters. Conventions of the Canadian Labour Congress and most of the larger unions attracted a dozen or more reporters.

"Today, I'm not aware of any paper that has a labour reporter on staff, much less a labour columnist.

"Most union conventions get no press at all. Coverage of a labour-related story (usually a strike) is left to general reporters with little or no knowledge of unions, union history or structure, collective bargaining, labour laws, or any other aspect of labour relations."

Consider the bombshell dropped at the CUPE-Ontario convention in Ottawa on May 27: A unanimous vote to "support the international campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel until that state recognizes the Palestinian right to self-determination.''

Until the Canadian Union of Public Employees issued its news releases, eventually picked up by Canadian Press which did not "staff'' the convention, it received no mainstream coverage. No reporters from any mainstream outlet were there to catch the vote.

I have already received quite a bit of email about this, all of it positive. One writer points out that the reason labour beats have disappeared is because organized labour is less of a force in society. That may be true but ... I am not just talking capital-L labour. There is some serious journalism to be done about how non-unionized workers are used and abused in our plants and factories, on our farms and shop floors.

I mean, we have entire sections devoted to financial news but not even a single reporter to the worker bees??

One more thing: If any newspaper should have a labour reporter, it should be the Star. But we don't. That despite out Atkinson principles, one of which states, and I quote:

The Rights of Working People: The Star was born out of a strike in 1892 and Atkinson was committed to the rights of working people including freedom of association and the safety and dignity of the workplace.

One more thing: The Canadian Media Guild has introduced a $2,000 award this year, in the hope of inspiring more labour reporting. (Lord knows there's plenty of awards for business journalism!) The winner will have

a.. advanced the public's understanding of an issue or set of issues, facing either the labour movement or organized workers in Canada.

b.. Shown innovation in broadening the coverage of trade unions and labour issues beyond "crisis reporting" of disputes such as strikes and lockouts.

This year's award covers reports from 2005 and the deadline is June 30, 2006.

I wonder if there will be any submissions.

He's here, he's there, he's everywhere

The Globe and Mail today reported that National Post chair David Asper has put his Toronto house, which he bought for $6 million only a couple of months ago, on the market for $6.5 million.

The reason: Mr. Asper says it was a "business reason" -- he received a number of phone calls expressing buyer interest in the house and decided to sell. But others say Mr. Asper's personal life is behind the sudden change-about.

"It's tough enough. It's a private aspect of my life," Mr. Asper said yesterday in an interview.

Mr. Asper made headlines two months ago in Toronto and Winnipeg when he and his younger brother, Leonard, who is CanWest's chief executive officer, confirmed they were moving their principal residences from their family's Prairie hometown to Toronto. He bought in the prestigious Forest Hill area, while his brother bought in the equally upscale Rosedale neighbourhood.

I'm not a gossip columnist so I won't even try to speculate on Asper's private life. But how do you reconcile the Globe story with today's related reported in the Winnipeg Free Press (sub. req'd)? The emphasis is mine.

DAVID Asper has a conditional sale agreement to buy a house on one of Winnipeg's ritziest promenades, but the CanWest Global Communications executive says it doesn't mean he's abandoning his recently purchased Toronto mansion.

"It's unfortunately the nature of my life that I'm on the road all the time," he said in an interview in Winnipeg yesterday. "You try to be as comfortable as you can."

The executive vice-president of CanWest said he will continue to commute between Winnipeg and Toronto, where he also serves as the chairman of the National Post newspaper.

"I've been in Saskatoon more than anywhere else the past (while)," he said, referring to his recent testimony at the Milgaard inquiry.

"This is my home, Winnipeg is my home. Period."

Asper said there are a few conditions to be worked out for the Park Boulevard house, which is listed on the Winnipeg Real Estate Board's Multiple Listing Service for $1.79 million.

The only reason I raise this is to muse on the media implications. I am always loathe to speculate on the impending demise of the Post but, given this month's death of Dose, and what I hear are dreadful ad revenues for the Post and now this ...

I am not making predictions. Too many people --  myself included, but not for several years -- have predicted the imminent demise of the Post only to have been proven wrong. I'm just saying because, well, it looks bad. Again.

Geography Lesson

Today's treeware column about MSM credibility -- or lack of it -- has resulted in an avalanche of email, both pro and con. (More about that below.) The column discusses the long-term implications for the newspaper industry if we keep publishing horse droppings and pass them off as facts. It references both the fake Iranian badges story in the National Post and the fake Internet ''virgin'' story in the Toronto Sun.

It's going to take the world a long time to recover, if it ever does, from that fake story in the National Post two Fridays ago, the one that shamelessly invoked Nazi Germany's extermination of six million Jews to stir up fear and loathing of Iran.

As if being included in U.S. President George W. Bush's laundry list of evil-doing axes wasn't enough already.

That's not to mention the media obsession with the current whack job president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has a fetish for geography and Israel. Let's just call him not so magna-nimous with the carta that the Israelis are drawing around the illegal settlements in the occupied territories.

Which is why he says he wants to wipe Israel off the map.

I got some of the expected hate mail that I was a denier of a future Iranian Holocaust, etc. etc. Here's a sample from Gary Gerofsky of Dundas, Ontario, who sent his letter to the editor -- which is why I have no compunction of identifying him here.

The writer can do all she wants to justify terrorism by showing the world how much she hates Israel but her justification for excusing and disregarding the dangers of the Iranian regime are silly and show a total lack of understanding of the Holocaust -- how it grew into a killing machine under the noses of people like the writer who chose to make jokes about it rather than recognize it for what it was and then take action. She has taken the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" slogan a bit too far in so easily excusing the Iranians because they are the enemies of her enemies - the Jews and Israel.

Unexpectedly, most of the email writers chastised me for writing: "Which is why he says he wants to wipe Israel off the map." They argue that Ahmadinejad was merely citing an old speech by Ayatollah Khomeini, and that it has been mistranslated from the original Farsi. Here's Juan Cole on the subject -- and I strongly urge you to read the entire powerful entry:

I object to the characterization of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as having "threatened to wipe Israel off the map." I object to this translation of what he said on two grounds. First, it gives the impression that he wants to play Hitler to Israel's Poland, mobilizing an armored corps to move in and kill people.

He made an analogy to Khomeini's determination and success in getting rid of the Shah's government, which Khomeini had said "must go" (az bain bayad berad). Then Ahmadinejad defined Zionism not as an Arabi-Israeli national struggle but as a Western plot to divide the world of Islam with Israel as the pivot of this plan.

The phrase he then used as I read it is "The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods) must [vanish from] from the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad)."

Ahmadinejad was not making a threat, he was quoting a saying of Khomeini and urging that pro-Palestinian activists in Iran not give up hope-- that the occupation of Jerusalem was no more a continued inevitability than had been the hegemony of the Shah's government.

Whatever this quotation from a decades-old speech of Khomeini may have meant, Ahmadinejad did not say that "Israel must be wiped off the map" with the implication that phrase has of Nazi-style extermination of a people. He said that the occupation regime over Jerusalem must be erased from the page of time.

I want you to know that, yesterday, I wrestled with the map thing. I did research, and decided that, given what the Iranian president said, the way he said it, and most important, the context for it -- at an anti-Zionism conference last year -- it's nit-picking to say it's wrong. Map, shmap. Time, shmime. I believe the intent is the same. Ahmadinejad wants Israel as a Jewish state to disappear. But do I think he has plans to martial troops and bring it down?

Nah.

Don't forget who has the nukes in this fight.

The beast that won't die

Here's the really damaging thing about that false story last week in the National Post, the big, bold front page story that invoked the Holocaust and Iran in one horrifying package.

Even though the story was unequivocally retracted by Post editor-in-chief Doug Kelly yesterday -- the full text of his mea culpa, behind the pay firewall, can be found here and here -- it continues to live in the right-wingdingosphere.

Here's what I found, via The Gazetteer. (Scroll down to ''The Zombie Lives!") It would appear that at least two, if not many more, much-trafficked and well-known neoCON sites continue to perpetuate the myth that Iranian Jews will be forced to wear Nazi-style badges.

Here's the American Spectator on the matter:

One tactic that has no defenders outside the asylum is decorating people with colorful badges singling them out as abhorred castes. Iran had a chance at bluffing and posturing its way into the club of nuclear powers with a strategy of weaving between exaggeration and denial. But no one will tolerate color-coding. Those badges are a red flag, an Amber Alert and a black mark all at once. Its house must come tumbling down.

The piece, published yesterday and penned by the Jewish World Review's Jeff Homnick, does not appear to have been updated anywhere. (But then, my Googling skills kinda suck. Maybe I missed it?)

Then there's the so-far-right-it's-over-the-edge Front Page Mag which reprinted this piece by the American Thinker's Andrew Bostom yesterday. (Boldface is mine.)

The Iranian Majlis or Parliament has reportedly passed  (now disputed ) a law requiring that, “Jews would have to sew a yellow strip of cloth on the front of their clothes, while Christians would wear red badges and Zoroastrians would be forced to wear blue cloth.”  An outraged Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Weisenthal Institute immediately responded to the provisions for Jews:

    “This is reminiscent of the Holocaust…Iran is moving closer and closer to the ideology of the Nazis.”

Such a comparison sprang to the minds of many.

Notice: ''disputed." Not ''retracted,'' nor ''revoked,'' not even ''not true.'' Instead, ''disputed'' -- and on the same day that the Post printed its lengthy ''Our Mistake.'' Again, not an update nor a correction to be found.

See what I mean?

But there may be hope. Looks like the scare/war/weapons mongers may need new tactics. As AlterNet's Jan Frel writes:

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.

Speaking of stabbing, Canadian Cynic gave the keyboard uber-sturmtroopers over at Daimnation a well-deserved frumming -- beware the profanity! -- for distortions on how they've played this very sorry episode in ''journalism.''

Badge of dishonour

THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED:

Today on page A2, the National Post printed a lengthy ''Note to Readers'' with the headline "Our mistake,'' in reference to last Friday's shocking front-page story which claimed that Iran would ''require'' Jews to wear Nazi-era style badges. (SEE UPDATE)The mea culpa, signed by editor-in-chief Doug Kelly, reads, in part:

It is now clear the story is not true. Given the seriousness of the error, I felt it necessary to explain to our readers how this happened.

The story of the alleged badge law first came to us in the form of a column by Amir Taheri. Mr. Taheri, an Iranian author and journalist, has written widely on Iran for many major publications. In his column, Mr. Taheri wrote at length about the new law, the main purpose of which is to establish an appropriate dress code for Muslims. Mr. Taheri went on to say that under the law, "Religious minorities would have their own colour schemes. They will also have to wear special insignia, known as zonnar, to indicate their non-Islamic faith."

This extraordinary allegation caught our attention, of course. The idea that Iran might impose such a law did not seem out of the question given that its President has denied the Holocaust and threatened to "wipe Israel off the map." We tried to contact Mr. Taheri, but he was in transit and unreachable.

From there, Kelly tracks the trajectory of how Taheri's column ended up being spun into the horrifying Holocaust-type story on the front page. He concludes with:

We acknowledge that on this story, we did not exercise sufficient caution and skepticism, and we did not check with enough sources. We should have pushed the sources we did have for more corroboration of the information they were giving us. That is not to say that we ignored basic journalistic practices or that we rushed this story into print with no thought as to the consequences. But given the seriousness of the allegations, more was required.

We apologize for the mistake and for the consternation it has caused not just National Post readers, but the broader public who read the story. We take this incident very seriously, and we are examining our procedures to try to ensure such an error does not happen again.

Coupled with a front-page semi-retraction in Saturday's Post, it's fair to say that the paper acted as swiftly as it could to rectify what was a serious error, one with potentially catastrophic consequences. It did much better than did the New York Times did, say, with its Judith Miller/WMDs horsedip.

But have all the right wingdings accepted the fact that the story isn't true? What do you think?

Yes, many have climbed down. But not all. Their reasoning? It's fake but accurate, as the story goes. Well, knowing Iran, and its president's propensity to make hateful comments against Israel and all, what do you think? Here's a sample, one which ignores the fact that I corrected my errors while not correcting their own:

What I find most fascinating is why the Left isn't jumping all over this in defense of women and minorities in Iran!

The zonnar mark for dhimmis ... was used in Iran until 1908. That the Council of Guardians MAY consider its reinstatement is hardly an odd notion. Even if it is sabotaged by Taheri's report, the bigger issue still hasn't been addressed by the Left.

I should emphasize that, while delusions such as this are not the responsibility of the National Post, it sure added fuel to what threatens to become a raging fire.

My friend D.R.A. sent along this Jim Lobe column about the whole mess which he found in the Winnipeg Free Press (sub. req'd.) The AntiWar folks have it too.

The newspapers that so far have run the story are similarly identified with a hard line against Tehran. The National Post, which was bought by CanWest Global Communications from Conrad Black, a close associate of Perle's, is controlled by David and Leonard Asper, who have accused the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation of being anti-Israel, according to Marsha Cohen of Florida International University, who has closely followed the badges story.

Similarly, the (New York) Sun has consistently taken positions consistent with the right-wing Likud Party in Israel on Middle East issues, while Murdoch owns the strongly pro-Israel Weekly Standard and Fox News, in addition to the New York Post.

"I think the way these stories played – particularly the references to the Holocaust – was designed to arouse and play upon concerns and accusations that Ahmadinejad is another Hitler who needs to be dealt with accordingly," noted Cohen, who added that the Iranian president's questioning of the Holocaust and aggressive statements about Israel have made such stories more credible.

Meanwhile, AntiWar's Justin Raimundo goes much further, connecting the dots between this and the -- cue the ominous music -- pro-Israel lobby.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was in Washington Tuesday, presumably to issue the Bush administration its marching orders. On this sojourn, he is hitting all the right notes – Iran,   which is "close to atomic bomb know-how," is "like Hitler," and poses a threat not just to Israel but "to  Western civilization." This is a change in tactics from last time around, when the Israelis were careful to keep a low profile on the question of invading Iraq: emboldened by success, they have sent the Israeli prime minister himself to make the case for war. And the Amen Corner is taking up the cause with alacrity, loudly beating their tom-toms and smearing anyone who – like Professor Juan Cole – dares to expose their tactics of mass deception.

Iran is years away from acquiring nuclear weapons and has formally stated that its intentions are peaceful. The Israelis think they have reason to doubt the Iranians' motives, and are scared to death – or so they claim. 

Oh what a tangled web they weave.

Another hat tip to Maz.

* UPPITY DATE: It has been pointed out to me that, to read the Post's retraction online, you need to go beyond the front page and then, you require a paid subscription.

Just one of those things that make me go hmmmmmmmmmmm.

All the fables fit to print

Still more on the National Post badges bungle ...

Taylor Marsh, guest-blogging over at Fire Dog Lake, has a wowser post that confirms what I picked up last week as to how all this got started, complete with a memo from the Post to the Simon Wiesenthal Center signed by a ''jte,'' apparently deputy comment editor John Turley-Ewart.

The National Post has an editorial policy similar to Brit Hume’s at Fox "News." They are interchangeable and far leaning to the right. But the above section I emphasized seems to show that not only is Turley-Ewert asking for confirmation of the Iranian badge story, but a sort of collaboration on promoting the story. Someone I spoke to today confirmed that was indeed their assessment, too.

But 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?

Could this story have something to do with Douglas Feith’s Office of Strategic Influence PSYOPS plan to plant false stories in foreign press? Sure, that was supposed to be shut down, but was it? After all, Canada is foreign press and once a story gets printed it’s all stops out for spreading the propaganda.

Frankly, I find that her take has the tang of tinfoil haberdashery to it. Still, there's no doubt that the Post would seize on the Holocaust angle to play to their reader base.

Marsh also notes that Taheri, the author of the op-ed piece at the centre of this storm, has issued a news release distancing himself from the Post story.

Regarding the dress code story it seems that my column was used as the basis for a number of reports that somehow jumped the gun.
As far as my article is concerned I stand by it.

Okey, dokey.

Hat tip to Ross K.

Badger Gate

Some updates to Shame, shame, shame below, about the National Post's disgraceful invocation and exploitation of the Holocaust yesterday to incite the west against Iran. (By the way, you should really read the reader comments. They're great!)

1. Here is the letter sent from the Simon Wiesenthal Centre to UN secretary-general Kofi Annan. Note that it is dated Thursday:

I am writing you on a matter of grave concern regarding a new Iranian “National Uniform Law” that was discussed in the Iranian Parliament, the Majlis, on Monday.  The law was drafted two years ago and held up in the Iranian Parliament.  It has now been revived and pushed forward by President Ahmadinejad.

According to an editorial that was to appear in Friday’s National Post, by Amir Taheri, a well known and well respected analyst on Iranian affairs, a consensus has developed regarding color badges to be worn by non-Moslems: yellow for Jews, red for Christians, blue for Zoroastrians and other colors for other religions.   This would make religious minorities immediately identifiable and allow Moslems to avoid contact with non-Moslems.

If this is true, it would move Iran even closer to the Nazi ideology of the 1930s which also began with yellow badges and ended with the Holocaust that led to the murder of six million Jews and millions of other innocent civilians.

As I blogged last night, what this indicates is that either somebody at the Post or, perhaps Iranian-born analyst Amir Taheri Taheri himself, flipped a copy of Taheri's op-ed in advance of its publication to the SWC. Indeed, that's what sources at the Post say.

From the SWC, it got broadcast to Jewish community groups in Canada which, quite properly, reacted with fear and outrage. (A similar, although post-Post story, reaction was seen in the U.S.)

That chain of events apparently gave the Post the story that wasn't.

I emphasize that I have not had confirmation on that but this letter is the smoking gun.

2. The Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post ran Taheri's commentary today (more about who Taheri is in yesterday's blog post below). It also had a news story which referred to the ''Fourth Reich'' in the headline.

Concerned U.S. officials and Jewish groups yesterday demanded answers from Iran after a shocking report that Tehran's radical leaders passed a Nazi-style law requiring Jews and Christians to wear identifying badges.

Renowned Iranian-affairs expert Amir Taheri reports that the law, approved by Iran's parliament last week, "envisages separate dress codes for religious minorities, Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians, who will have to adopt distinct color schemes to make them identifiable in public."

Jews would be forced to wear yellow cloth strips - like the Star of David that Jews were made to...

Murdoch also owns Fox News.

3. Some right-wing bloggers have complained that I unfairly maligned them by saying that I did not note that they had updated their posts to reflect that doubts had been cast on the original Post story by Chris Wattie.

The Toronto Star’s stupidest (and most anti-Israel) columnist, Antonia Zerbisias, also joins the chorus, attacking LGF for our post without mentioning our update that specifically says the story is in doubt: Shame, shame, shame.

They are correct. I should have noted that.

4. Juan Cole at Informed Comment offers more on the controversial Iranian law at the center of this story.

The actual legislation passed by the Iranian parliament regulates women's fashion, and urges the establishment of a national fashion house that would make Islamically appropriate clothing. There is a vogue for "Islamic chic" among many middle class Iranian women that involves, for instance, wearing expensive boots that cover the legs and so, it is argued, are permitted under Iranian law. The scruffy, puritanical Ahmadinejad and his backers among the hardliners in parliament are waging a new and probably doomed struggle against the young Iranian fashionistas. (The Khomeinists give the phrase "fashion police" a whole new meaning).

There is nothing in this legislation that prescribes a dress code or badges for Iranian religious minorities, and Maurice Motamed was present during its drafting and says nothing like that was even discussed.

The whole thing is a steaming crock.

5.  I can hardly wait for CAMERA, the Committee for ''Accuracy'' in Middle East Reporting in America, to be all over this, demanding corrections and retractions from the Post, both National and New York, as well as all the other papers and sites that carried their story.

Note that I once received a ''notice of libel'' from CAMERA because it did not take too kindly to what I had written regarding water in the West Bank after a tour I took through there.

Last time I checked its website, there was no mention of the Iran badges story at all.

6. I wonder if ''Honest Reporting'' in Canada will put Wattie in the stocks as it has me and other reporters in Canada who have written stories and commentaries that have conflicted with its views of the Middle East.

Strangely enough, it doesn't mention the story at all.