The bogus quotation machine rumbles on ...

I'm still casting about looking for good (and bad) liberal blogs to visit regularly, and in the process I located "Black Wolfs (sic) Blog," where a liberal Canadian howls about conservatives & whatnot.

The post that prompted me to write dealt with the Israel-Hezbollah conflict ("2 simple reasons why no cease fire in Lebanon"). Black Wolf repeated a supposed quotation of Ariel Sharon that he credited to "Kol Yisrael Radio." That station allegedly reported that Sharon, speaking to Shimon Peres, said "I want to tell you something very clear, don't worry about American pressure on Israel, we, the Jewish people control America, and the Americans know it."

Now, it's true enough that the US tends to support Israel, but the "the Jewish people control America" part seemed a bit over the top, so I resolved to double-check the quotation.

I quickly found that I wasn't the first to raise my eyebrows over that alleged utterance.

Michael Miner wrote a story about the quotation, stemming from a related (apparently false) quotation of Sharon in a story by the Chicago Tribune's Georgie Anne Geyer. In a nutshell, neither quotation is properly sourced--the organization behind the original circulation of the quotation was Illinois' own Islamic Association for Palestine.

This appears to be the account that started the rumour mill in motion.

My take is that nobody, certainly not Black Wolf, will be able to confirm the quotation through the attributed source. It is very probably a fabrication.

Something else caught me eye.

In his previous post, Black Wolf noted the Arab states (not counting Iraq, so far as I can tell) who favor the US do not act according to the will of the people: "everytime there is [an] election, [I]slamic parties usually win, making things worse, because populist government[s] usually do what the people want."

Okay, so democracy is bad since it would make things worse in this case.

Then Black Wolf gives us a string of news blurbs with commentary:

Britons want Bush-Blair divorce
Democracy in action, once elected, one mans [sic] direction is the law, instead of a peoples [sic] wishes.

Apparently democracy would be good in this case since it would keep Bush and Blair from snubbing majority opinions.

From what I can see, Black Wolf doesn't so much care that democracy operates but rather wants to see whoever's in power enacting policies that Black Wolf likes. He supplies the talk of democracy in order to effect a patina of higher principle, I think.

The hint of incoherency seen here is, I suspect, merely the tip of the iceberg with respect to Black Wolf's space.