Did you know that those who practice Zoroastrianism are called Zoars off the top of your head?
On a related note I work with a consipacy theorist who passed around the Iranian President's letter to Bush and said the guy was on the ball etc. and had a lot of good ideas. My favorite part of the letter is when the guy refers to the Holocaust and says "assuming this is true" or something to that effect.

Yes, except I was wrong.

I read it earlier on drudge, for what it's worth.

I think the reason that it hasn't gotten major media attention is because it has a strong vibe of unsubstantiated rumor. There's no official statements from Iran, no internal news sources. The sources are all expatriots... this is the kind of story that would take off in an ex-pat community even if uncorroborated.

My guess is that it isn't actually true.

Just saw the story on MSNBC, still without corroboration.

That was my thought as well. Let's see what happens.

weren't concentration camps and mass killings of jews in germany whispered about as rumor, too?

one denial so far (also unsubstantiated): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/05/19/montreal-news-station-say_n_212....

it really pisses me off that there hasn't been immediate sourcing and verifying/denunciation of this story, yet several outlets have reported the rumor. it's obviously newsworthy enough to demand some immediate factchecking, and how fucking hard is it to verify a legislative action in an established country? the MSM is Shit.

I would wonder if the time difference with Tehran is the problem, but it's only 11:30pm there now, which means that earlier in the day they could have gotten someone on the phone.

I think it's nothing... but man, if there's something that's going to make me interested in more wars it's colored armbands. You're pretty much announcing you're on step one of your genocide plan.

I'll bet in the end it's going to turn out that the only group who has to wear anything is the Zoars (thanks Rodenator) and then nobody will care. "Screw you, believers in a religion that the rest of us can't pronounce or understand."

To clarify, I originally (and incorrectly) wrote Zoars. I later corrected it to read Zoroastrians.

I would think that the trouble is not reaching someone in Tehran per se, but reaching someone who is not going to give you the government's line of bullshit.

Yeah, I didn't realize until later that it was actually Zoarastrians. I was in the shower at the time. Did you know that Freddie Mercury was a Zoar? He also looked a lot like New York Anthony.

The thing about the letter to Bush that I thought was interesting was that, in a certain sense, in a universe consisting only of the Bush admin. and Ahmadinejad w/ the Mullahs behind him, it actually makes sense, in terms of giving legitimacy to words instead of making language purely into instrumental rhetoric.

The thing about identifying armbands is that I want to move to a different world, because if this is true, it adds the kind of legitimacy to the Bush admin.s stance that I don't want them to gain- compounded by the fact that the opposition to the Bush administration in this case is anathema to my whole being on basically every level.

ok, after looking at the simon wiesenthal center's letter, i googled "national uniform law" and found a string of fairly reliable news articles that this has been in the works - a 2 y.o. law that languished until Ahmadinejad pushed for it - that would require all iranians to wear traditional islamic dress. it forbids ties and western dress for men (as is now common), and requires strict head coverings, etc for women. There was no mention in any of these stories about what happens to non-muslims until today. anyhow, a believable background for the above law?

Oh, also interesting to add that Ahmadinejad in a sense legitimizes the Israel he detests in his very act of seeking to delegitimize it, in its entirety, entirely on his terms. (Understand this statement as being as objective as possible, as distinct from the specifics of my own outlook as it possibly can be.)

Before this drives me to strangle random Internet people, I have to point out: the word is "expatriate", someone who has left their home country (Latin: ex + patria). An expatriate is often not an "ex-patriot".

Sorry, last one, for my own posterity: in case I didn't make it clear, I would personally care very deeply, as the descendent of a Jewish refugee from Germany, if this shit about armbands were true- I wouldn't want to come off sounding like it's all just politics to me.

I admit, I don't think I've ever typed it before. For some reason it's one of those words that I don't really think I've ever used before. I guess I don't deal much in international exodii (that's the plural of exodus, right?)

No, it's "exoduses:"

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/exodus

Ha, I know, I was making fun of my inability to correctly spell expatriate. I'm going to stick with exodii though, I like it.

Even if the "i" plural was used, it would be "exodi," not "exodii." Unless "exodius" is a valid alternate spelling of "exodus."

Anyone in the mood for some multimedia boni?

sorry, did you mean to say "boning"? If so, no, I'm cool, thanks.

Didn't you see that guy several years later on the T? Or, I mean, one of those guys?

OK, if you googlenews 'iran badges' right now, you get dozens of major outlets reporting the story, with only CBS and the fucking A-D-L saying there is NO confirmation of the 'badges' part of the story, only denials. an amazing study in the willingness of 'news' outlets to rehash unconfirmed/badly sourced items.

regardless, there is a muslim dresscode, which is pretty awful. http://www.adl.org/PresRele/IslEx_61/4819_61.htm

After reading British newspapers for six months, my radar for this sort of uncorroborated story is pretty high. As strange as it may sound, I found British newspapers much more willing to run stories that seemed totally unsupported by actual facts than American newspapers, it was very frustrating.

My favorite story from the time I was over there was one about a memo that had been obtained from inside the US government talking about something. Two days later they ran a second story pointing out that the memo had used the British spelling of multiple words and hence, PROBABLY, wasn't authentic.

Pretty much every day their newspapers would run a story that seemed shocking, and then you'd never hear about it again because they didn't actually have any evidence... ever. It was a frustrating media environment for me. Say what you will about the frequent reticence of the US media to get into a story (ignoring the current example, of course), I prefer the waiting back approach to the overly aggressive approach from my mainstream media.

Well the ADL showing some restraint is a decent thing. A muslim dress code is definitely shitty (a Bahraini coworker of mine published a funny essay recently in a New School literary mag about the advantages of a Hijab, and the further possibilities offered by adding a Burqa- highlights being her friend's mall theft escapade enabled by the modesty dress, and her own attempts to snap photos from beneath the Burqa during a ceremony at which no photography was allowed).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Persian_Jews
-Check out the exchange regarding the "Criticisms of the Phrase" section, right near the top. Seriously, sometimes the internet reveals things about people that I just don't want to know.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3252934,00.html

jews already wear identifying clothing: yarmulkes!

And those noses...

Well Persian noses and Semitic noses have a lot in common actually.

persianknowsandsemiteknowsandlittlelamseydivey?

also, moses' noses.

I believe Moses had a speech impediment, however I don't know about multiple noses on Moses.

well, seeing as how he didn't exist, why not give him an extra nose?

and let's give jesus an extra testicle, while we're at it.

I think the badging of jews, christians and zoroastrians is just a bad rumor and would be 180 degrees out from what I know as fact. These religions live in peace with muslims currently.

Badges of Mass Destruction?

There is a strong effort to demonize Iran. One case in point was when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was quoted out of context when he supposedly said Israel should be wiped of the planet. He was referencing the collapse of communist russia when he made the comment and was intended to be a call for change. This call for change is also found when Israel is described as an apartheid state worse than seen in South Africa.