RUTHFULLY YOURS

In what Washington Post executive editor Martin Baron is calling “an outrageous injustice,” WaPo reporter Jason Rezaian was convicted of espionage. The verdict was handed down two months ago, but because of the byzantine workings of the Iranian judicial system, it is only just now coming to light.

Rezaian was arrested along with his wife, an Iranian journalist, in July of 2014. He has been held at the notorious Evin prison since that time. For many months there were no charges filed against him, only learning of the espionage accusations in the spring of 2015.

President Hassan Rouhani has repeatedly suggested a prisoner exchange in recent weeks. He has said Iran might push to expedite freedom Rezaian and two other Iranian-Americans if the United States released Iranian citizens convicted of sanctions violations. Saeed Abedini of Boise, Idaho, is a pastor imprisoned for organizing home churches. Amir Hekmati of Flint, Mi. is a former Marine who has spent four years in prison since his arrest during a visit to see his grandmother.

If you’ve been following the news from Israel, you might have the impression that “violence” is killing a lot of people. As in this headline: “Palestinian Killed As Violence Continues.” Or this first paragraph: “Violence and bloodshed radiating outward from flash points in Jerusalem and the West Bank appear to be shifting gears and expanding, with Gaza increasingly drawn in.”

Read further, and you might also get a sense of who, according to Western media, is perpetrating “violence.” As in: “Two Palestinian Teenagers Shot by Israeli Police,” according to one headline. Or: “Israeli Retaliatory Strike in Gaza Kills Woman and Child, Palestinians Say,” according to another.

Such was the media’s way of describing two weeks of Palestinian assaults that began when Hamas killed a Jewish couple as they were driving with their four children in the northern West Bank. Two days later, a Palestinian teenager stabbed two Israelis to death in Jerusalem’s Old City, and also slashed a woman and a 2-year-old boy. Hours later, another knife-wielding Palestinian was shot and killed by Israeli police after he slashed a 15-year-old Israeli boy in the chest and back.

President Obama and his foreign-policy admirers—a dwindling lot—hoped that the nuclear deal would make Iran more open to cooperation in the Middle East and with the U.S. Mark this down as another case in which the world is disappointing the American President.
Iran’s judiciary on Monday announced that Jason Rezaian, the Washington Post’s Tehran correspondent, has been convicted. He was on trial for “espionage.” Security forces arrested Mr. Rezaian and his wife, journalist Yeganeh Salehi, in July 2014. Ms. Salehi was later released, but the regime has held Mr. Rezaian “in a black hole for 14 months,” as his brother, Ali, told us. Mr. Rezaian, a U.S. citizen, has been denied even the basic rights the regime sometimes affords political prisoners, including bail and phone calls.

A pair of suicide bombings ripped through a peace rally in Ankara on Saturday morning, killing at least 95 marchers and injuring hundreds. It was the deadliest terror attack in Turkey’s modern history and further evidence that a country that is supposed to be an anchor of Middle East stability is increasingly vulnerable to regional furies and its own domestic discontents.

No group had taken credit for the bombings by our deadline Sunday evening. Turkish security forces believe the attack was carried out either by Islamic State, the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) or one of the country’s resurgent left-wing terror outfits.

While all eyes are on Vladimir Putin’s machinations in Syria, deploying Russian fighters and troops, a potentially more dangerous Moscow effort in Iran is picking up steam. Media outlets are reporting that Russian S-300 surface-to-air missile systems may be delivered before the end of the year.

The S-300 is considered “defensive” and as such is not subject to United Nations sanctions. Each system fielded creates a formidable shield against air attacks over a large area. It operates as a battalion, at the center of which is a search radar that scans out to 180 miles and tracks up to 100 aircraft. All components of the S-300 are mounted on trucks and mobile in minutes.

Surrounding it are six “batteries,” each composed of a guidance radar and up to eight launchers holding four missiles with a range of 90 miles. Each battery can fire on six targets at the same time, allowing a full battalion to engage 36 aircraft simultaneously. According to Russian reports, Iran will receive at least four battalions.

According to a classified document, the German government now estimates that Germany will receive as many as 1.5 million asylum seekers in 2015, including 920,000 in the last quarter of 2015 alone. With family reunifications, the actual number of asylum seekers could swell to more than 7 million. Separately, German authorities now estimate that at least 290,000 migrants and refugees have entered the country without being registered.

“The behavior of these highly delinquent youths towards police officers can be characterized as aggressive, disrespectful and condescending. … When they are arrested, they resist and assault [police officers]. The youths have no respect for state institutions.” — Confidential report, leaked to Die Welt.

In Berlin, a classified police report revealed that a dozen Arab clans hold reign over the city’s criminal underworld. The report says the clans, which are dedicated to dealing drugs, robbing banks and burglarizing department stores, run a “parallel justice system” in which they resolve disputes among themselves with mediators from other crime families. If the state gets involved, the clans use cash payments or threats of violence to influence witnesses.

We do not know just who detonated the two bombs that killed 95 Kurdish and allied activists in Ankara Saturday, but the least likely conjecture is that President Erdogan’s government is guiltless in the matter. As Turkish member of parliamentLutfu Turkkan, tweeted after the bombing, the attack “was either a failure by the intelligence service, or it was done by the intelligence service.”

Betrayed by both the United States and Russia, and faced with the emergence of a Kurdish state on its borders and the rise of Kurdish parties in the parliamentary opposition, Erdogan is cornered. At risk in the short-term is the ability of his AKP party to govern after the upcoming November elections. At risk in the medium term is the cohesion of the Turkish state itself.

China has completed the construction of two lighthouses in the disputed South China Sea, the official Xinhua news agency reported, as tensions in the region mount over Beijing’s maritime ambitions.
A completion ceremony was held for the lighthouses on Cuateron Reef and Johnson South Reef in the Spratly islands, Xinhua said late on Friday. The United States and the Philippines have opposed the construction.

China claims most of the energy-rich South China Sea, through which $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year, and the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei have overlapping claims.
China said on Friday it would not stand for violations of its territorial waters in the name of freedom of navigation, as the United States considers sailing warships to waters inside the 12-nautical-mile zones around islands it has built in the Spratly chain.

“After his speech, thousands of soldiers held up colored cards to spell out “Songun politics” and “Defending our homeland.”
“Our revolutionary force is ready to respond to any kind of war the American imperialists want.”

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un declared Saturday that his country was ready to stand up to any threat posed by the United States as he spoke at a lavish military parade to mark the 70th anniversary of the North’s ruling party and trumpet his third-generation leadership.
The parade, which featured thousands of goose-stepping soldiers and military hardware including missiles and drones mounted on trucks, kicked off what is expected to be one of the North’s biggest celebrations ever — an attention-getting event that is the government’s way of showing the world and its own people that the Kim dynasty is firmly in control and its military a power to be reckoned with.
Kim, clad in black, walked down a red carpet and saluted his honor guard. He then walked up to a podium and waved to the troops taking part in the parade in Pyongyang’s Kim Il Sung Square. Visiting Chinese official Liu Yunshan stood clapping to Kim’s left, with senior North Korean officials on Kim’s right. Kim smiled as he spoke with Liu through an interpreter.

Kim then delivered a speech in which he said North Korea would stand up to the U.S., issuing the type of fiery rhetoric that is commonly used by the North.
“Our revolutionary force is ready to respond to any kind of war the American imperialists want,” said Kim, whose speech was interrupted by applause several times.
“Through the line of Songun (military-first) politics, our Korean People’s Army has become the strongest revolutionary force and our country has become an impenetrable fortress and a global military power,” he said.

The man who failed at revolution is now seen as a revolutionary icon!
Che Guevarra was captured and executed 48 years ago.

As Humberto Fontova wrote, Che’s revolution had been floundering down in Bolivia. He was a beaten man by the time that they caught up with him:

Had Ernesto Guevara not linked up with Raul and Fidel Castro in Mexico city that fateful summer of 1955 – had he not linked up with a Cuban exile named Nico Lopez in Guatemala the year before who later introduced him to Raul and Fidel Castro in Mexico city – everything points to Ernesto continuing his life of a traveling hobo, panhandling, mooching off women, staying in flophouses and scribbling unreadable poetry.

Although a fixture on modern college campuses, Che was no hero. It is thus fitting that when death came for him, on Oct. 8 1967, Che went not with a bang but with a whimper. “Don’t shoot!” I’m Che! I’m worth more to you alive than dead!” he pleaded when approached by two Bolivian soldiers, dropping the fully loaded weapons he had not hesitated to discharge against unarmed victims. To the very end, Che Guevara remained a coward.

We will never know for sure why Che ended up in Bolivia. Maybe someday Fidel and Raul Castro will clear it up in a memoir.