In case anyone is inclined to relax for even a moment, I bring you the next great global health scare. It’s a world exclusive.

Mammoth Flu: you feel hot, even on cold days

This latest threat to human survival is like a real-life Jurassic Park scenario, with just enough plausibility to justify an elevated state of alarm!

Be very afraid – and if this turns into the BIG ONE, remember you got your first warning here…

The (as yet) slender factual basis for a Level 5 Alert is in this seemingly inoffensive article in yesterday’s Independent: Microbes found miles beneath Greenland ice given new life. I know, the storyline needs a bit more fleshing in. But I figure the mainstream hacks can do that.

Incidentally, if your dog ever digs up an unusually large bone, you might get it checked out by a paleontologist. You don’t know what might have chewed it last.

Since my last foray into Iranian punditry a mere 24 hours ago, large demonstrations in support of Presidential challenger Mir Hossein Moussavi have been held in Tehran and other Iranian cities. The western mass media has been covering the protests feverishly.

Iran’s re-elected President,  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has been politely dismissive of claims that his victory is in doubt. AP reports that the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has directed a “high-level clerical panel, the Guardian Council, to look into charges by pro-reform candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, who has said he is the rightful winner of Friday’s presidential election” – see Iran supreme leader orders probe of election fraud

That same corporate slogan again - did Soros think it up?

Although most of the mainstream media coverage in the west casts aspersions about the legitimacy of the election result, Newsweek has an interesting article which takes a contrary view, more consistent with the analysis I suggested in Bad Losers, my opinion piece of yesterday.

The Changing Face of Iran by Christopher Dickey is by no means symapathetic to Ahmadinejad, but Dickey notes the strength of his support among the Iranian people as a whole:

It appears that the working classes and the rural poor—the people who do not much look or act or talk like us—voted overwhelmingly for the scruffy, scrappy president who looks and acts and talks more or less like them. And while Mousavi and his supporters are protesting and even scuffling with police, they are just as likely to be overwhelmed in the streets as they were at the polls.

Time Magazine, on the other hand, hasn’t been able to restrain it’s enthusiasm to spin the election story against Iran’s re-elected President. It’s online edition is running a headline that screams: Five Reasons to Suspect Iran’s Election Results. I located it through a Google search because I’m interested in testing the sustance of arguments that the election was rigged.

A pro-Mousavi demonstrator in Tehran: who does her message aim to influence?

Unfortunately, it left me none the wiser. The headline was not supported by any list of ‘reasons for doubt’. It was a headline without any body text. The mishmash of articles featured below the headline didn’t cover the topic either. This is trivia, perhaps – but gives an indication of the western mass media’s gung-ho approach to sustaining the momentum of Iranian protestors.

The protest crowd in Tehran on Monday was certainly much bigger than previous demonstrations. Late in the day, there was a fatal shooting. AFP reports

“the incident occurred in front of a local base of the Basij volunteer militia, which was set on fire… Pictures of the incident showed armed men, wearing helmets and in civilian clothes, pointing guns at the crowds from the rooftop of the base. The photographer said the protester was killed by shots fired by the armed men.“

Obama, interviewed in the White House,  disavowed any desire to interfer in Iranian internal affairs, but said he was ‘deeply troubled’ by the turn of events. The USA, Britain and Australia have yet to formally accept the election outcome.

It’s all quite a contrast with The Lebanon a week before, when the losing Hizbollah-backed coalition calmly accepted defest – even though it came much closer on the official count than Moussavi in Iran.

A sceptic might ask who are the real democrats? Should the outcome of democractic elections be conditional on support from the Zionist-dominated mass media? I think not.

We’ve seen the results of that already in Gaza.

Time Magazine's Headline without an article

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UPDATE: Two articles in the Axis of Logic website supplement the basic approach to this issue that I’ve taken here. See:

• Iran: Some Dots You May Want To Connect (June 14th); and
• The Iranian People Speak (june 15th)

As cartoonist Garry Trudeau – creator of the syndicated Doonesbury cartoon strip – recently discovered, the difference between money changers and money lenders is not insignificant. Getting it wrong can lead to trouble.

Garry Trudeau: can't tell the difference between change and a loan

Money changers are the guys who cash you up in local currency when you go on overseas holidays. If you play the foreign exchange market, they make the swaps. Useful, hard-working service providers, those money changers!

On the other hand. money lenders are often considered a disreputable lot. It’s not the lending as such that usually annoys people. It’s the interest they charge. Money lenders are loan sharks. If they get big and respectable, they call themselves banks. Bankers have earned themselves a bad name, over the centuries.

Now, here’s a simple exercise. Don’t think too much about it… just give the first answer that comes to mind…. In the famous account from the New Testament, who did Jesus whip out of the temple? Was it money changers – or money lenders?

The Doonesbury cartoon that the Anti-Defamation League considers 'anti-Semitic'

The correct answer, according to most translations of the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, is money changer. Abe Foxman of the US Anti-Defamation League of B’nai Brith believes that matters a lot. Along with a few other Jews who emailed the Doonesbury website to complain, Abe considers the Doonesbury cartoon above is an anti-Semitic slur. Not for the first time in his long career as a professional offense-taker, Abe is demanding an apology.

Abe Foxman: "we are not amused"

Subject: WE AGREE
Author: Abraham H. Foxman
Posting Date: 6/1/09
Location: New York, NY

We agree with the numerous people who are contacting us that Sunday’s Doonesbury misquotes the Bible, maligns Judaism, and promotes a Christian heresy, all within eight panels. It reinforces age-old stereotypes about Judaism that have been the cause of much suffering and pain over the centuries, and which have been rejected by a variety of Christian denominations over the last decades.

Jesus’ concern in the Gospels is with money-changers, not money-lenders. The money-changers converted the coins of the Roman Empire into the currency accepted by the Jerusalem Temple, as money-changers today convert dollars into Euros. To speak of money-lenders harkens back the stereotype of Shylock, when Jews were forced by Christians to engage in usury.

Christian teaching is clear: the God of the Old Testament is the same God as the God of the New Testament. Doonesbury’s Reverend Sloan is guilty of promoting anti-Jewish stereotypes and biblical illiteracy. He owes both Jews and Christians an apology.

Abraham H. Foxman
National Director
Anti-Defamation League

The notion that Christians forced Jews to engage in usury is intriguing. I think I know what Abe means, but he has a peculiar way of putting it. It’s rather like saying Muslims forced medieval Christians to go on crusades to the Holy Land. A bit rich, really.

El Grego's: Christ Driving the Derivative Traders from the Temple

In any event, how nice to see that Abe has now become the self-appointed spokesman, not only for all the world’s offended Jews, but for offended Christians as well.

Abe now takes umbrage on behalf of the entire Judeo-Christian tradition. It must be a heavy cross to bear.

As yet, there are no indications that the Christian masses have actually taken offense at the cartoon by Garry Trudeau.  The Vatican is yet to comment. The World Council of Churches remains silent.

Mayer Amschel Rothschild: a money changer who got the whip hand

A pedant might point out to Mr Foxman that moneychanging and moneylending are not exactly mutually exclusive activities. The famous Mayer Amschel Rothschild, for example, combined both and made a very nice business out of it; modern institutions such as Goldman Sachs dabble in foreign exchange and banking.

But no normal person would be so pedantic. When it comes to petty-minded pedantry, Abe Foxman and his ludicrous equivalents around the world face little serious competition.

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A Brief Extract from the OLD Testament

1 Samuel 15

15:2 Thus saith the LORD of hosts, I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way, when he came up from Egypt.

15:3 Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.