The Vitriol Specialists

Vitriol from the vitriol specialists:

"Pity poor Edwina Storie. Just a couple of weeks into a career as the Sydney-based television reporter for Press TV the 24-hour English language news network owned by the Iranian government, and she has been all but blasted out of a job. Storie... came under withering fire this week from bloggers around the world who coupled her job with the widely perceived propaganda network for the Tehran government with photographs of an early career as a model hopeful. They also complemented their attacks with snaps she posted on her Facebook page showing her holding a full wine glass. Storie, 25, told PS she had closed her Facebook page off and was thinking about moving on. 'I did not expect to receive such vitriol, death threats... the hatred and threats received have been extremely unsettling but I am determined to continue focusing on my journalism career,' she says." (Storie's tough gig, Private Sydney, Damien Murphy, Sydney Morning Herald, 27/4/13)

I'm reminded here of SMH columnist Mike Carlton's ferocious beast:

"It is a ferocious beast, the Jewish lobby. Write just one sentence even mildly critical of Israel and it lunges from its lair, fangs bared." (See my 12/6/10 post A Ferocious Beast)

Should Edwina, who dares to report on such subjects as the 10th anniversary of our involvement in the criminal invasion of Iraq and local initiatives and manifestations of the BDS campaign for Palestinian rights, ever get around to reading Carlton's column on the Israel lobby, she'll realise she's in good company and not feel too intimidated.

I'm also reminded here of the constant Zionist whine about what they call 'the singling out' of Israel for criticism (the slanderous subtext of which is 'You must really hate Jews') as though one has to justify oneself for raising the issues of ongoing Israeli ethnic cleansing, colonization, and apartheid.

But, as the bucketful of vitriol tipped on Edwina Storie shows, the same pack of whiners and demonisers is more than happy to single out Iran for criticism, throwing around such descriptors as 'fascist', 'theocratic', 'tyrannical', 'fanatical', and 'mad' while studiously avoiding any mention whatever of those American-backed bastions of democracy and freedom on the other side of the Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the rest.

And yet, despite its human rights failings, Iran is no colonial implant. It has dispossessed and robbed no indigenous population. It has not attacked any of its neighbors. It occupies no one. And it possesses no nuclear arsenal.

Go figure.