My tentacles

Wanna hear a funny story?

I got a call from a guy identifying himself as being from the Iranian radio network IRIB asking if I wanted to do an interview about Karl Rove's resignation. Knowing that there are portions of Iranian society that are relatively open, I asked him for the web address and told him to call me back in fifteen minutes, at which time I'd have an answer, 99 percent sure it would be "no"--maybe it's independent Iranian radio, I thought. I don't know, call me naive.

So I poke around on the web site. It's Iranian state radio, totally Stalinist in affect. I find a particularly offensive article. I wait for him to call back. He does. I read him this quote--"while Jews form only 3 percent of the US population they have tightened their tentacles around the economic and political lifeline of the US"--and ask why I, a Jew, should go on his show. He said that they're not anti-Jew, only anti-Zionist, and so I re-read him the quote, say this really is contributing to the store of hatred in the world, that this was the kind of stuff that Hitler said, and that a smart and decent-sounding guy like him should have nothing to do with this. His back up, he barks, "you've probably killed more people than I have!" before hanging up.

Yes: my very own Kitchen Debate. The takeaway: it will probably be a while before I bother to debunk the neocon's voluminous disinformation on Iran's role in Iraq, this particular exercise in person-to-person diplomacy having dampened my appetite.

The article comes from the portion of the site tracking "Political developments in: Iran, Middle East, Zionist Regime, Iraq, Palestine, Europe, World," and is entitled "Zionist Hold on the West's Media," and includes the following: "Presently, big media networks like ABC, ABS and NBC are under Zionist tutelage. For instance, the managing director of ABC is an influential Jew named Leonardo Goldenson. Recently, Ted Turner was removed from his post as the manager of the CNN international network and replaced by a Jew named Lawrence. But the American TV network notorious for its Zionist tendencies is Fox News that was set up by Australian Jew Robert Murdoch in the late 1990s..."

Really, guys, you're not making an anti-neocon's job any easier.

Interesting day. By the way, if you feel like a swim through the sewer, google "Rupert Murdoch" and "Jewish."

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