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Why Can’t the American Media Cover the Protests in Iran? Because they have lost the ability to cover real news when it happens By Lee Smith

Posted By on December 31st, 2017

As widespread anti-regime protests in Iran continue on into their third day, American news audiences are starting to wonder why the US media has devoted so little coverage to such dramatic—and possibly history-making—events. Ordinary people are taking their lives in their hands to voice their outrage at the crimes of an obscurantist regime that has repressed them since 1979, and which attacks and shoots dead them in the streets. So why aren’t the protests in Iran making headlines?

The short answer is that the American media is incapable of covering the story, because its resources and available story-lines for Iran reporting and expertise were shaped by two powerful official forces—the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the Obama White House. Without government minders providing them with story-lines and experts, American reporters are simply lost—and it shows.

It nearly goes without saying that only regime-friendly Western journalists are allowed to report from Iran, which is an authoritarian police state that routinely tortures and murders its political foes. The arrest and nearly two-year detention of Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian drove this point home to American newsrooms and editors who might not have been paying attention. The fact that Rezaian was not an entirely hostile voice who showed “the human side” of the country only made the regime’s message more terrifying and effective: We can find you guilty of anything at any time, so watch your step.

The Post has understandably been reluctant to send someone back to Iran. But that’s hardly an excuse for virtually ignoring a story that threatens to turn the past eight years of conventional wisdom about Iran on its head. If the people who donned pink pussy hats to resist Donald Trump are one of the year’s big stories, surely people who are shot dead in the streets in Iran for resisting an actual murderous theocracy might also be deserving of a shout-out for their bravery.

Yet the Post’s virtual news blackout on Iran was still more honorable than The New York Times, whose man in Tehran Thomas Erdbrink is a veteran regime mouthpiece whose official government tour guide-style dispatches recall the shameful low-point of Western media truckling to dictators: The systematic white-washing of Joseph Stalin’s monstrous crimes by Times Moscow correspondent Walter Duranty.

Here’s the opening of Erdbrink’s latest dispatch regarding the protests:

Protests over the Iranian government’s handling of the economy spread to several cities on Friday, including Tehran, in what appeared to be a sign of unrest.

“Appeared”? Protests are by definition signs of unrest. The fact that Erdbrink appears to have ripped off the Iran’s government news agency Fars official coverage of the protests is depressing enough—but the function that these dispatches serve is even worse. What Iranians are really upset about, the messaging goes, isn’t the daily grind of living in a repressive theocratic police state run by a criminal elite that robs them blind, but a normal human desire for better living standards. Hey, let’s encourage European industry to invest more money in Iran! Didn’t the US overthrow the elected leader of Iran 70 years ago? Hands off—and let’s put more money in the regime’s pocket, so they can send the protesters home in time for a hearty dinner, and build more ballistic missiles, of course. Erdbrink is pimping for the regime, and requesting the West to wire more money, fast.

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A Year of Spectacular Accomplishments for President Trump By Joan Swirsky *****

Posted By on December 31st, 2017

It’s only weeks away from the day in January last year when Donald J. Trump ascended to the presidency and took his oath of office as the 45th President of the United States of America.

In only 12 months, it’s fair to say that he has already had an extraordinary presidency—more bold, courageous, and revolutionary than any American president since the Founding Fathers almost two-and-a-half centuries ago.

I use the adjectives spectacular and extraordinary not only to describe the sheer ebullience and optimism the president exhibits every day at his impossibly daunting job—and in spite of the non-stop vilification of the angry, bitter, jealous left—but mostly because his accomplishments in both domestic and foreign affairs have been so stupendous for the American people.

Haven’t you been reading the papers and watching TV?” the pathetic Never Trumpers grouse. “If you had,” they insist, “you would have seen clearly that the president has had just about no accomplishments!”

Of course, if I depended on the media whores at CBS, NBC, ABC, MSNBC, CNN, and The Washington Post, The New York Times, National Public Radio (NPR)—the list is long—I would be forced to believe the avalanche of fake news which consistently fails to give even passing mention to the president’s laudable achievements.

But one of the genius things candidate Trump accomplished before he was elected and entered the Oval Office was identifying the colossal phoniness of the so-called mainstream media.

Jim Hoft, proprietor of Gateway Pundit reports that according to Wikileaks, at least 65 mainstream-media reporters met and coordinated with top Hillary Clinton advisors during the 2016 presidential campaign. Below is only a tiny sampling of what a friend of mine calls partisan prostitutes:

All of these shills worked closely with the Clinton campaign, were invited to top elitist dinners with Hillary Campaign Chairman John Podesta and Chief Campaign strategist Joel Benenson, and in every case were given an “off-the-record” agenda which was blatantly and fawningly pro-Hillary. NOTE: significantly, no fair-and-balanced Fox News reporters made the list.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

MY SAY: THE WOMAN OF THE YEAR NIKKI HALEY

Posted By on December 30th, 2017

The year started with a national feminist tantrums and street theater known as The Women’s March on January 21, 2017. Sporting ridiculous pink “pussy hats” and inspired by the avatars of “human rights” such as the racist and mendacious Linda Sarsour, they congregated, they marched under the mantra:”We stand together in solidarity with our partners and children for the protection of our rights, our safety, our health, and our families – recognizing that our vibrant and diverse communities are the strength of our country.”

The year ended with our magnificent Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley (born Nimrata Randhawa, January 20, 1972) clearly evidence of “our diverse and vibrant communities “who combines great intelligence, unbending principles, and toughness and determination in confronting aggressors and defending democratic allies.

rsk

BOOKS Comments turned off

“The Second World Wars” Victor Davis Hanson by Sydney Williams

Posted By on December 30th, 2017

Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow in classics and military history at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His background is ideal for an analysis of the Second World War. “Wars” are plural in the title because, as Hanson notes, it was fought in many different places, from Singapore to Finland, and in many different ways, on air, sea and land, with weapons ranging from side arms to atomic bombs. It was the first war which saw more civilians die than soldiers.

The book is divided topically, with chapters titled “Ideas,” “Air,” “Water,” “Earth,” “Fire,” and “People.” A complaint may be that the book is repetitive, but different aspects are looked at from different angles. The War was fought on the continents of Europe, Asia and Africa, with combatants from every continent except Antarctica. It was fought on the land, the sea and in the air, and Hanson reviews all facets. The facts he assembles are sobering: From a world population of about two billion, five hundred million people were displaced, perhaps a hundred million mobilized, and sixty million died, two thirds of whom were civilians. Seven million Jews were killed. “No other deliberate mass killings in history, before or since, whether systematic, loosely organized or spontaneous, have approached the magnitude of the Holocaust – not the Armenian genocide, the Cambodian ‘killing fields,’ or the Rwandan tribal bloodletting.”

His details are encyclopedic. In 1939, the U.S. spent one percent of GDP on defense. By 1944, forty percent of GDP was going to defense. During the war years, the U.S. produced forty billion rounds of small-arms ammunition and one billion rounds of artillery shells. In 1939, 9.5 million square feet of industrial plant space was devoted to aircraft production. By 1944, that had grown to 165 million square feet. Britain, despite being bombed, having been defeated in most every major battle during the first two years of the War and having mobilized 3.5 million men, added more ships to its fleet during the war than the entire naval production of the three major Axis powers. The Allies were more efficient manufacturers; The thousandth B-29 to roll off the production line required half the man hours as the four hundredth. With his eye for detail, we learn that in 1942, the Eastern Front was costing the Third Reich a hundred thousand dead each month. “In that year alone, the Germans lost 5,500 tanks, eight thousand guns, and a quarter million vehicles.” About three hundred thousand planes were destroyed or badly damaged during the War.

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Expect America’s Tensions with China and Russia to Rise in 2018 by John Bolton

Posted By on December 30th, 2017

Yesterday’s 2017 review and forecast for 2018 focused on the most urgent challenges the Trump administration faces: the volatile Middle East, international terrorism and the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Today, we examine the strategic threats posed by China and Russia and one of President Trump’s continuing priorities: preserving and enhancing American sovereignty.

China has likely been Trump’s biggest personal disappointment in 2017, one where he thought that major improvements might be possible, especially in international trade. Despite significant investments of time and attention to President Xi Jinping, now empowered in ways unprecedented since Mao Tse Tung, very little has changed in Beijing’s foreign policy, bilaterally or globally. There is no evidence of improved trade relations, or any effort by China to curb its abuses, such as pirating intellectual property, government discrimination against foreign traders and investors, or biased judicial fora.

Even worse, Beijing’s belligerent steps to annex the South China Sea and threaten Japan and Taiwan in the East China Sea continued unabated, or even accelerated in 2017. In all probability, therefore, 2018 will see tensions ratchet up in these critical regions, as America (and hopefully others) defend against thinly veiled Chinese military aggression. Japan in particular has reached its limits as China has increased its capabilities across the full military spectrum, including at sea, in space and cyberwarfare.

Taiwan is not far behind. Even South Korea’s Moon Jae In may be growing disenchanted with Beijing as it seeks to constrain Seoul’s strategic defense options. And make no mistake, what China is doing in its littoral periphery is closely watched in India, where the rise of Chinese economic and military power is increasingly worrying. The Trump administration should closely monitor all these flash points along China’s frontiers, any one of which could provoke a major military confrontation, if not next year, soon thereafter.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

How Palestinians Silence Palestinians by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on December 30th, 2017

Mohammed Al-Dayeh has been under interrogation on suspicion of establishing and managing two Facebook pages — “Sons of the Martyrs” and “No to Corruption.” The Palestinian Authority claims that both accounts were used to wage a smear campaign against top Palestinian officials and accuse them of financial and administrative corruption.

There is only one small problem regarding the charges against Al-Dayeh: The man cannot read or write, and as such there is no way he could have posted the offensive remarks on Facebook.

This is about how Palestinian leaders continue to march their people towards yet more harm and grief. This is also about the ongoing failure of the international community to note any of the above.

Most people probably do not know him by name, but the image of Mohammed Al-Dayeh was a public one for many years. The tough-looking, mustachioed man in military garb served as the trusted bodyguard of former PLO leader Yasser Arafat.

His proximity to Arafat turned Al-Dayeh into one of the most powerful figures in the PLO leadership, especially during the 1990s and 2000s. If you wanted anything from Arafat — from money to springing your son from prison — Al-Dayeh was your man.

He was glued to Arafat night and day. He accompanied him on his persistent globe-trotting. You can hardly find a photo of Arafat without Al-Dayeh. Insiders say Arafat “adopted” him after he was orphaned from his parents during the civil war in Lebanon.

Al-Dayeh’s fall from grace was rapid once his boss, Arafat, died in 2004. This is typical for dictatorial regimes that are run as a one-man show. Arafat managed the Palestinian Authority (and PLO) as if it were his private fiefdom. When the emperor falls, so do many of those around him, particularly his personal picks.

In the past week, Palestinians were surprised to learn that the man who was an icon of power of the Arafat era was now being held in detention in a Palestinian Authority prison in Ramallah. Reports about the incarceration of Al-Dayeh first appeared on social media, and many Palestinians were convinced that these were just rumors and gossip. How could the man once so loved by Arafat be behind bars? What crime did Al-Dayeh, who holds the rank of “brigadier-general” in the Palestinian Authority, commit? It would have to have been quite a misstep on Al-Dayeh’s part.

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2017 Was Trump’s Year of Winning Dangerously Despite fake controversies and his own impulsiveness, he won real victories for America and its citizens. By Deroy Murdock

Posted By on December 30th, 2017

For President Donald J. Trump, 2017 concludes unlike the way it commenced.

His commanding inaugural address soon became swamped by an enervating debate over the size of the crowd that had witnessed it. That national screaming match foreshadowed other huge distractions, including court battles concerning Trump’s travel restrictions on terror-torn nations, a Niagara Falls of classified leaks, and loud threats of impeachment over alleged Russian collusion. Meanwhile, repealing and replacing Obamacare, expected to take just a few months, devolved into a quagmire that devoured time, energy, and morale.

But 2017 ends as Trump’s Year of Winning Dangerously. The President of the United States has navigated these and other troubled waters and defied his critics — from Resist on the left to Never Trump on the right. As he puts it: “We are compiling a long and beautiful list” of achievements.

As Trump and Republicans gathered at the White House to celebrate passage of the Tax Cut and Jobs Act with overwhelming GOP support, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell announced: “This has been a year of extraordinary accomplishments for the Trump administration.”

While free traders and entitlement reformers could ask for more, nearly all of Trump’s triumphs are solidly conservative victories. Indeed, Trump has implemented policies over which the Right has fantasized for years, sometimes decades.

The $1.5 trillion Tax Cut and Jobs Act is the most significant tax-policy overhaul since 1986. On January 1, these conservative dreams will come true: a massive slash in the corporate tax (from a 35 percent rate to 21, thus reducing the business levy by 40 percent), repatriation of overseas profits, a territorial tax system, and immediate expensing of capital investments.

Beyond taxes, per se, TCJA also secures free-market priorities in energy, health care, and school choice.

TCJA permits petroleum development in 2,000 acres of the 19-million-acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. While leaving literally 99.99 percent of ANWR untouched, the 0.01 percent available for drilling could yield up to 1.45 million barrels of oil daily, equal to 14.5 percent of current domestic production. The GOP has tried to unlock ANWR since 1979.

TCJA makes enrollment in Obamacare voluntary by scrapping the individual-coverage mandate. Those who want Obamacare may keep it, but never again will anyone be penalized for rejecting Obamacare. While this will not kill Obama’s disastrous monstrosity immediately, it shoves a shiv between its ribs. This is the GOP’s greatest progress in snuffing out Obamacare since 2010.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

How the Trump Administration Can Hold the U.N. Accountable Again Fred Fleitz

Posted By on December 30th, 2017

President Trump and United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley made a lot of news last week with their condemnations of the United Nations over a U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) resolution criticizing President Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move the U.S. embassy there.

President Trump threatened to withhold billions of dollars in U.S. aid from states that voted for the resolution and said after the vote, “Let them vote against us. We’ll save a lot. We don’t care.” Ambassador Haley warned that the U.S. would be “taking names” of states that voted for this resolution.

Although these comments didn’t represent anything new — U.S. officials have lamented the U.N.’s anti-Israel and anti-U.S. bias for decades — they were still very significant, since they involve the United States’ holding the United Nations accountable again after a 25-year hiatus.

As a CIA U.N. analyst from 1986 to 1994, I remember well the intense focus by the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations to punish U.N. members who voted for anti-U.S. and anti-Israel resolutions. Nations were given scores on their support of the United States in the U.N., which were used to determine U.S. aid.

For example, in 1990, after Yemen voted against a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq in response to its invasion of Kuwait, Secretary of State James Baker told Yemen’s U.N. ambassador, “That was the most expensive ‘no’ vote you ever cast.” Several days later, a $70 million U.S. aid program to Yemen was halted.

There also was a push during this period to curtail the use of the U.N. for espionage against the United States by hostile powers, especially the Soviet Union. In addition, U.S. diplomats fought to lower the U.S. contribution to the U.N. and to address the organization’s epic corruption and inefficiency.

In 1991, then–assistant secretary of state John Bolton scored a huge win against anti-Semitism and animus toward Israel in the U.N. with his successful campaign to persuade the U.N. General Assembly to rescind its odious 1975 resolution that equated Zionism with racism.

While I was providing intelligence support to Bolton for his campaign to rescind the U.N. Zionism/racism resolution, I learned that his main challenge was not twisting the arms of foreign leaders; it was fighting with State Department careerists who did not want to upset Arab countries and seemed to have their own biases against the Jewish state. This problem continues today, and it is why President Trump must fill vacant State Department positions ASAP with people who will defend his policies.

This twelve-year campaign against U.N. bias and mismanagement by two Republican administrations ended with the Clinton administration, which took a “see no evil” approach to the U.N. and adopted a policy called “assertive multilateralism,” which tried to end civil wars with U.N. peacekeeping and used U.S. soldiers as peacekeepers. I explained in my 2002 book Peacekeeping Fiascoes of the 1990s how this policy led to a string of major peacekeeping failures in the former Yugoslavia, Haiti, and Somalia.

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Time to Give Clinton’s Server Technician the Mueller Treatment The Trump Justice Department should reopen the investigation of Paul Combetta. By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on December 30th, 2017

New Year’s Eve gets people thinking about resolutions. Alas, when a year passes, a mothballed prosecutor finds himself thinking about the statute of limitations. As 2018 beckons, it has me thinking about Paul Combetta — the Platte River Networks technician who used the “BleachBit” program to destroy thousands of Hillary Clinton’s emails when they were under congressional subpoena and preservation orders.

It is not just the tick-tock of the criminal clock that has me thinking about Combetta — about how much longer his obstructive destruction of government files in March 2015 could still be subject to investigation and prosecution. The statute of limitations is five years. Time’s a-wastin’, but there could still be a live case for a while.

The other reason Combetta leaps to the front of the mind is . . . Robert Mueller.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein assures us that Special Counsel Mueller is doing a first-rate job probing the possible (but thus far undiscovered) complicity of Trump associates in Russia’s election meddling. That being the case, I’m wondering: Would the Trump Justice Department be up for applying Mueller’s approach to the Clinton caper?

No, I’m not suggesting that DOJ direct the FBI to break into Mr. Combetta’s home with guns drawn in the dead of night, as Mueller did with former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. I’d save the brass-knuckles tactics for hardened criminals, as the law intends. I’m talking about the aggressive but wholly legitimate step Mueller has taken: Calling BS on attempts by criminal suspects to use lawyers to conceal their schemes.

Back in November, we catalogued the stark contrasts between Mueller’s brand of hardball and the kid-gloves treatment given to subjects of the Clinton-emails investigation. The most significant of these involved the attorney–client privilege. Mueller persuaded a federal judge to force an attorney for Manafort and his co-defendant (Richard Gates) to testify against them in the grand jury.

Naturally, the defense attempted to rely on the attorney–client privilege to shield communications between the lawyer and the suspects from disclosure. But Mueller successfully countered that, under the crime-fraud exception to that privilege, communications are not deemed confidential if they are in furtherance of a crime, fraud, or civil wrong — which includes a scheme to dupe the government or undermine an investigation.

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

2017: A Year Of Success And Achievement For The IDF From technological breakthroughs to operational successes, the IDF shows why it’s at the top of the food chain. December 29, 2017 Ari Lieberman

Posted By on December 30th, 2017

2017 was a busy year for the Israel Defense Forces. There were threats emanating from both north and south, above and below ground, from state and non-state actors. There is of course, always room for improvement but the IDF can reflect on the past year with satisfaction in the knowledge that it protected its citizens from genocidal threats and improved its tactical and strategic capabilities by successful integration of new, technologically advanced weapon systems. Let us review some of these achievements with the caveat that there are some successes that are understandably not talked about in open circles or shared with the general public.

Gaza Tunnels – Israel has always been cognizant of the challenges posed by tunnels dug by Hamas terrorists or its affiliates but its recognition of the emerging threat came to sharper focus with Operation Protective Edge in 2014. During that operation, the IDF uncovered and destroyed some 34 tunnels. The 2014 Gaza war forced Hamas to prematurely reveal its hand. Had the war not broken out when it did, it is probable that at some later date Hamas would have carried out a mega attack in Israeli territory involving mass murder and kidnapping. The war pre-empted Hamas’s plans. The tunnel challenge compelled Israel to invest more resources in developing technologies to counter the threat and that investment is paying dividends. This past year, Israel caused a number of tunnels in the midst of construction to collapse. In December, the IDF destroyed a Hamas tunnel that it had been monitoring. In October, the IDF destroyed a tunnel belonging to the Gaza-based Palestinian Islamic Jihad, killing 12 PIJ and 2 Hamas operatives. In the meantime, Israel is in the midst of constructing an anti-tunnel barrier equipped with sophisticated sensors. As the work progresses, the IDF expects to uncover more tunnels.

Iron Dome – Since the conclusion of Operation Protective Edge, Hamas has been wary of firing rockets into Israel for fear of Israeli retaliation. However, following America’s surprise recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Hamas turned a blind eye toward the nefarious actions of other Gaza-based Islamist groups and failed to prevent them from firing rockets. Iron Dome once again proved its mettle intercepting a number of rockets, downing only those rockets determined to have the most menacing trajectories. In November, the Israeli Navy announced the deployment of the Iron Dome system on its sea platforms. The Israeli Navy is tasked with protecting Israel’s vast sea lanes and offshore gas platforms. Iron Dome will significantly enhance the Navy’s ability to perform this vital role.

F-35 Adir – Israel has taken delivery of the F-35 stealth fighter-bomber, the first air force outside of the U.S. Air Force to do so. Israel currently operates nine of these 5th generation fighters and plans to acquire a total of 50. The plane is already believed to have been put to operational use. Some have criticized its prohibitive cost but the aircraft’s stealth characteristics and sophisticated avionics ensure that both plane and pilot will survive even in the most challenging of circumstances thus justifying the cost. There is currently nothing in the world that matches the F-35 in terms of the plane’s advanced technological features and stealth characteristics. The Russians and Chinese are at least eight years behind in this regard.