G-RUN DEFENDS A-LO

Greg Sheridan has a well-deserved but fleeting go -- 36 words out of 1,070 -- at a chronic Israel disser:

What have you got to say, Antony Loewenstein, stupidly and inaccurately labelling Israel an apartheid state and approvingly quoted in the Iranian official media, but listless on your blog in the face of the Iranian repression?

Guy Rundle defends the Crikey regular:

Should Antony Loewenstein sue Greg Sheridan for libel? In his rather hysterical article in yesterday’s Oz, Sheridan slates various people for failing to condemn the actions of the Iranian government with the vociferousness with which they condemn Israel.

Without quoting Sheridan's alleged libel Rundle carries on:

Leaving aside the fact that Israel claims its legitimacy from the West in a way that Iran does not — making a continued protest against its actions necessary to avoid silent consent — it’s clear that Loewenstein has made repression in Iran a subject of his blog, with three posts among the last dozen focusing on the protests, and featuring a letter from Iranian bloggers asserting their rights, which The Australian seems to have missed.

By no fair assessment can that be called ‘listless’ — indeed Iran occupies more space in A-Lo’s blog than it has in The Australian’s op-ed section.

This is clearly a deeply unfair attack on Loewenstein’s reputation — particularly since A-Lo’s book, The Blogging Revolution, was partly written out of a trip to Iran to meet dissident bloggers, a venture not without risk (as the fate of Roxana Saberi demonstrated).

Despite several opportunities, G-Run's article contains nary a link to A-Lo's blog. This is because a quick perusal of A-Lo's blog reveals Sheridan is basically correct. Check out A-Lo's Iran posts and see for yourself: many are actually thinly disguised attacks on Israel. More of the same old B-Shit from Crikey.