I picked up my first issue of Moon Shadows (issue #33), and I have to admit that I was very disappointed. Rather then being a professional and polished magazine like other Pagan publications (PanGaia and SageWoman, for example), it seems rather amateurish and poorly written. I really am loath to say this, since it is clear that the magazine is put together with a lot of love, but it is hardly of the quality of other magazines.

Moon Shadows does offer many wonderful fairy pictures scattered throughout the magazine, most fairly well reproduced. The type setting and arrangement of the magazine needs some work, but it is organized and easy to read. It is also in desperate need of a tough copy editor.

None of the articles or columns were particularly inspiring, although the column from a Wiccan solider in Iraqi was interesting. I was most disappointed by the herbs column, since it seemed to be little more than a paraphrasing of material from Cunningham’s encyclopedia–no real insight was offered.

Moon Shadows may be worth a look if you are interested in faeries and the like, but there are many other more serious and scholarly magazines out there.

Apparenlty the magazine has had some trouble too: Good Works on Earth about Moon Shadows Magazine.

The other day, I wrote about The National Post article claiming that Iran was going to implement a badge system for non-Muslims. Well, it looks like this story really was false, and that it has gotten Canada in a bit of hot water: Iran summons Cdn. envoy after erroneous story. Of course, it doesn’t help that our inept and media-unfriendly PM made a comment to the effect that this dress code was reminiscence for Nazi Germany. *sigh*

I wish I could understand why The National Post decided to run this story, on the front page no less, without throughly checking sources. Did they think people would take them at their word and not check sources themselves? Did they think that there would be no reaction from Iran? I suppose, if the story had turned out to be true, they could have had a great lead on their hands. But, with something so potentially inflammatory, they should have taken the time to make sure that they were publishing the correct information.

Yesterday morning I noticed a picture of Jews from World War II wearing identification badges on the front page of the National Post newspaper. This, of course, caught my attention, so I stopped to read the leading story–Iran had past a law requiring all non-Muslims to wear an indemnifying badge. I was shocked. Why hadn’t I heard about this on the news this morning? Had the National Post managed to get a massive scoop?

Today I decided to look for a story about this online. I couldn’t remember which newspaper I had seen the story in yesterday, so I decided to try both CBC Newsworld and CNN. Strangely, neither of them had any stories about a dress code in Iran for non-Muslims. Hmmmm… what’s going on here? Sure, the National Post is a conservative newspaper (for Canada anyway), but they would check their facts before printing such an inflammatory story. Right?

Well, it turns out that their story was at the very least exaggerated, and at the very most outright false. I found this story on their site today: Iranian embassy denies dress code.

So what was the purpose of this story? Why did the National Post run it without checking to see if such a law really was in place? The fact that both stories ran together with a picture of a Jewish badge from WW2 says to me that they are trying to elicit feelings of anger. I still don’t understand their motivation, though.