apparently fabricated
Alexis Debat, source of the recent Sunday Times story that the US had plans for a three day massive airstrike programme against Iran turns out to be a bullshitter of stupendous proportions.
On September 7, Pascal reported that an ABC counterterrorism consultant, Alexis Debat, had faked an interview with Sen. Barack Obama that he published under his name in a French journal, Politique Internationale, and that he had published other alleged interviews in the same journal with Sen. Hillary Clinton, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, former Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, and former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. It turns out, ABC itself later reported, the interviews were apparently fabricated.
That’s awesome. He’s also the guy who claimed that al-Qaeda were sending encoded messages in pornographic email attachments back in 2001.
Interestingly enough, Politique International also patronises the work of Amir “Yellow Star” Taheri, the Iran war advocate who often crops up in the Sunday Times. Sarah Baxter, who reported the Iran strike story, is also close to those circles; as you can see by all the others she quotes in the piece.
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Yes Baxter is a minor Decent. She's the ex-wife of Gregory Elliott (author of a book on Althusser and another on Perry Anderson) and as a student was a CP sympathiser and friend of Seumas Milne. She's occasionally cited approvingly on Normblog. She used to work for Virago and later on the Observer (I think).
Posted by: Chris Bertram | September 19, 2007 at 09:38 AM
These people really are incredible; Virago? Althusser? And now Binyamin Netanyahu and General Boykin?
Posted by: Alex | September 19, 2007 at 11:06 AM
I very much enjoyed John Lloyd the other week describing Michael Moore as an "Unamerican American", presumably on the basis of keen analytical skills acquired as a member of the British and Irish Communist Organisation.
Posted by: jamie | September 19, 2007 at 11:32 AM
Did he really say that?
I think Moore should shoot him to prove otherwise.
Posted by: ejh | September 20, 2007 at 08:11 AM
It was in his Observer review of the Andrew Anthony book.Yeah, shooting him would be apposite.Or eating him.
Posted by: jamie | September 20, 2007 at 05:37 PM