If we point our webbrowserdevices to the J-Post, we find a story headlined “‘Israel may attack Iran after December’.” Y-y-y-yikes! How do they know?
Israel is making preparations to carry out military attacks in Iran after December, a French magazine reported overnight Wednesday.
According to the report in Le Canard Enchainé quoted by Israel Radio, Jerusalem has already ordered high-quality combat rations from a French food manufacturer for soldiers serving in elite units and has also asked reservists of these units staying abroad to return to Israel.
That is journalism of the quality befitting a publication that would hire the racist Daniel Pipes to write a boogedy-boogedy-Muslims column. (Hey look, this one’s about the lobbying-while-Muslim CAIR story.) Six years’ worth of NYC public-school French taught me that the publication the J-Post and Israel Radio are citing credulously is titled “The Chained Duck.” And then a second’s worth of Googling confirms that this particular publication is a satirical newspaper. Here’s what you’ll find in Le Canard Enchaine, according to Le Wikipede:
Famous are the weekly bogus interview “interviews (presque) imaginaires”, its weekly profile (“Prises de Bec”), its “Journal de Carla B.” (a section presenting in a hilarious way an imaginary diary of Carla Bruni, describing her bohemian-bourgeois reactions towards events involving her husband, President Nicolas Sarkozy), its famous sections of press clippings (typos and malaproprisms found in the French press) “rue des petites perles” and “à travers la presse déchaînée”, its two most absurd or incomprehensible sentences of the week by politicians the “mur du çon” and the “noix d’honneur”, as well as its infamous “Sur l’Album de la Comtesse” section of hilarious cryptic spoonerisms.
Sounds like a much better paper than the Jerusalem Post.
(And yes, I wanted to take Spanish, which would have been much more practical.)
Update: Well, I guess it does publish investigative journalism too, so who knows. I hope the IDF at least gets some delicious, buttery, duck-fat-filled rations out of it.
Update 2: OK, my apologies to the J-Post. (And, for that matter, to LCE.) Commenters and others point to me that LCE is indeed a thorough newspaper, satire aside. A France-based friend clarifies that it’s “known for breaking major scoops, with sources deep like Sy Hersh’s. Think Mad magazine, with Woodward and Bernstein circa 1974 attached.” I’m the asshole here.



7 Comments
Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About ATTACKERMAN
RSS/XML Feed
Sorry had to chime in: le Canard Enchaine is the last serious and truly independent newspaper in France (and they refuse to publish ANY ads, nor have a website – all paid sales and subscriptions). They are very well plugged in : when a politico wants to pass on a message discretely, he ‘leaks’ to the Canard. I would not however take their international affairs coverage very seriously – their sources usually have agendas (I mean, yeah, obviously) – and the Canard itself is known to be somewhat lefty when it comes to international politics (which usually means old-school euro-anti-colonialist – they don’t really report a story as we understand reporting here – it’s more like they give a tribune to people in the intel community with a specific agenda – in that case, warnings to Irsrael or something like that).
Le Canard is also the oldest print newsweekly in France – started as a pacifist satirical rag in 1915 (humor being the only way to get around military censorship at the time).
Check out the Wiki page, it’s awesome
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canard_enchaine
I knew ‘canard’ as an English word, too. ‘Chaining’ one didn’t seem conducive to ‘flights of fantasy’. That Wikipedia reference is a hummer.
Learning Spanish. Seen these ?
http://www.ghacks.net/2009/10/14/google-chrome-translate-plugin/
Get 1-click translations from your browser’s toolbar
http://www.translate.google.com/translate_tools?hl=en
borochon is right. Although Le Canard is a satirical magazine, it has been instrumental in exposing multiple government scandals in France. For a perspective, read this. Think “Daily Show.”
As the article noted, while the stories are “true” in a philosophical sense, the “facts” are often invented to illustrate or magnify their point. (Think “truthiness.”) So, while Israel may indeed be planning an attack, the Post exposes its incompetence (and humorlessness) by reprinting it. It’s sort of like CNN fact-checking SNL>
You guys are right! I’m the ignorant asshole here.
Spencer,
You were unduly hard on LCE, but spot on regarding the way the Jerusalem Post used their article.
No apology needed.
Marty
I mean, GROUND TROOPS? For Iran? Really?
The ass was the J-Post for not defining their source better for readers unfamiliar with the duck.