PJTV Exclusive: Does Ann Coulter Still Support Donald Trump for President? Via You Tube, March 31, 2016
Posted tagged ‘Media’
Media Already Running “Muslims Fear Blowback” Stories after Brussels
March 22, 2016Media Already Running “Muslims Fear Blowback” Stories after Brussels, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, March 22, 2016
After every Muslim terrorist attack, the media rapidly pivots to claiming that Muslims are the real victims by running “Muslims fear blowback” stories. Above all else, we must always remember that the real victims are the murderers.
Did a Muslim terrorist just murder a dozen people, behead a soldier or shoot up a synagogue? The media follows its initial sensational footage of the attack by covering the tragic plight of some Islamist activist who claims to have gotten dirty looks on the bus. Because a Muslim settler’s hurt feelings just count for more than the native population which was just murdered.
After each Muslim terror attack, the shift to the “blowback” narrative comes faster and faster. But after the Brussels attack, we appear to have a new “blowback” speed record.
The International Business Times ran a piece by Michael Kaplan, not long after the attack, headlined, “Muslims Fear Backlash After Brussels Attack: Far-Right, Anti-Immigrant Sentiment Often Follows Violence”
It didn’t actually happen yet. But let’s report it anyway. It’s much more important to speculate about another imaginary blowback than to show sympathy for the politically inconvenient victims of Muslim terror.
Kaplan based his piece on Vocativ which ran its blowback piece at 7:45 AM. That’s really impressive. We may have a new “blowback” speed record.
For the future, reporters should simply skip to reporting the Muslim fears of blowback and avoid discussing the attack itself… because that might just generate more blowback. After every terror attack, reporters should immediately rush to a Muslim neighborhood to preemptively interview potential victims of the possible blowback about their fears of a blowback.
Because real journalism isn’t reporting what actually happened. It’s about aggressively shoving your narrative down everyone’s throats until they learn to accept it. And it’s about the assertion that Muslim fears are more important than European deaths.
International Federation of Journalists Defends Palestinian Violent Incitement
March 18, 2016International Federation of Journalists Defends Palestinian Violent Incitement, Investigative Project on Terrorism, March 18, 2016
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) defended the right of a terrorist-affiliated Palestinian media outlet to incite murder against Israelis, according to Honest Reporting.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) recently closed down “Palestine Today” – a Palestinian Islamic Jihad radio and television station – for inciting violence and glorifying Palestinian terrorists. Instead of condemning the Palestinian media outlet, the IFJ accused Israel of engaging in a “wave of violence targeting journalists.”
“The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), which represents 600,000 journalists across the globe, stands by its affiliate the Palestinian Journalists Union (PJS) in condemning this brutal attack against free press and ask for UN immediate reaction to the escalation of attacks against the press in the occupied territories,” reads an IFJ statement.
The IFJ statement bestows journalistic legitimacy upon the propaganda arm of an organization designated as terrorists by the United States, European Union and other major Western countries. The IFJ also failed to point out that Palestine Today calls for Palestinians to kill Israelis.
“Freedom of the press does not extend to terrorist propaganda and to those who incite to murder,” Israeli parliamentarian Yair Lapid in a statement to the IFJ. “The content on Palestine Today would not pass the editorial guidelines of any of your members. I was a journalist for over three decades; this isn’t journalism. This isn’t free speech, this is hate speech. You are not defending press freedom; you are defending incitement to murder.”
The IFJ has a history of supporting other “journalists” who were exposed as terrorist operatives. The IFJ pressured the Newseum, a Washington D.C. based museum specializing in media, to maintain two Hamas terrorists on its journalist commemoration list, despite revelations of their true identities.
The IFJ also failed to condemn Hamas for intimidating Western journalists in Gaza covering the 2014 summer war between Israel and the terrorist organization. Hamas operatives threatened and harassed journalists for reporting cases of the terrorist groups’ use of human shields, inhibiting the ability for journalists to report the conflict accurately.
Cartoons of the Day
March 18, 2016
Turkey’s All-Out War on Kurds and Media
January 28, 2016Turkey’s All-Out War on Kurds and Media, Gatestone Institute, Uzay Bulut, January 28, 2016
(Oh, nonsense. According to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, the Middle East would be a place of happiness and tranquility if Israel simply ended her occupation of Palestine and committed suicide. Turkey good, Israel bad. Besides, Turkey is a valued member of NATO. /sarc — DM)
♦ On January 20, Turkish police opened fire at a group of civilians who were holding up white flags as they tried to remove the dead and wounded from the street in Cizre, one of the Kurdish towns under Turkish military siege. The Turkish police murdered two people from the group and wounded 12 others.
♦ As the military siege and attacks in Turkey’s Kurdistan intensify with each passing day, the Kurdish media are under a new wave of repression — through arbitrary arrests, psychical violence or blocks on their website content.
♦ “Our only aim today was to share what had happened in Van with the public in a healthy way. Today it was not us, but the people’s right to information that was taken into custody. We will not be silent.” — Reporter Bekir Gunes (from IMC TV), on Twitter. He was taken into custody for trying to report on the murders, but later released.
Since August, Turkey has been bombing and destroying its Kurdistan region in the same pattern: The Turkish government first declares curfews on Kurdish districts; then Turkish armed forces, with heavy weaponry, attack Kurdish neighborhoods and everyone living there. Much of this slaughter is presumably due to the Kurds having gained a large number of seats the latest elections — thereby preventing Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan from attaining the super-majority he sought in order to change the Constitution and become “Sultan” for life, to rule as an autocrat. Kurds are also now asking for their right to rule themselves in their native lands, where they have lived for centuries.
Curfews in 19 Kurdish towns (from August 10, 2015 to the present) have penned Kurds in and enabled Turks to murder them more easily. So far, according to the Diyarbakir Branch of the Human Rights Association (IHD), in the past few months, 170 civilian Kurds have been killed. Of these, 29 were children, 39 were women and 102 were men. At least 140 people were wounded; some have lost eyes, legs or arms; others are the victims of brain trauma.
On January 20, Turkish police opened fire at a group of civilians who were holding up white flags as they tried to remove the dead and wounded from the street in Cizre, one of the Kurdish towns under Turkish military siege. The Turkish police murdered two people from the group and wounded 12 others.
On Jan. 20, Turkish police in Cizre opened fire at a group of Kurdish civilians who were holding up white flags as they tried to remove the dead and wounded from the street. The Turkish police murdered two people from the group and wounded 12 others.
Refik Tekin, a cameraman of IMC TV and an award-winning journalist, was among the wounded but kept filming the attack even after he was shot. He is now in a hospital.
“The state implements a policy of subjugation on the Kurdish demand for a political status. It has become clear once again that this problem is not about ditches [which some Kurdish youths have dug, over objections by officials, to try to stop the progress of the Turkish troops]. The state attempts to annihilate the Kurdish demand for political status by using the ditches as an excuse,”said Raci Bilici, the head of the Diyarbakir branch of the Human Rights Association.
As the military siege and attacks in Turkey’s Kurdistan intensify with each passing day, the Kurdish media are under a new wave of repression — through arbitrary arrests, psychical violence or blocks on their website content.
On January 1, police used water cannons and tear gas against local people marching from central Diyarbakir to the district of Sur to protest the curfews. Meanwhile, masked Turkish police detained Baran Ok, a cameraman of Kurdsat News Channel. Ferat Mehmetoglu, the local representative of Kurdsat, kept trying to explain to the police that Baran Ok was his cameraman. Disregarding Mehmetoglu’s pleas, the masked police drove off at high speed. At one point, after Mehmetoglu had gotten in front of the police vehicle, he barely avoided being run over when the officers drove off with his cameraman.
Meanwhile, the Dicle News Agency (DIHA) alleged that it obtained a restricted and official document, signed by the local Tank Battalion Command (part of the Turkish armed forces). The document instructs the Turkish armed forces operating in Kurdish towns and offers impunity: “No personnel shall forget not even for a moment that any personnel’s restraint from using arms for fear of prosecution might have very grave consequences, result in martyrs on our side; endanger the survival of the state and nation, [and] help traitors, terrorists and enemies of the state feel more powerful,” it said in part.
A day after DIHA covered this alleged document; its website was blocked for the 28th time by the Turkish Telecommunications Authority (TIB).
On January 5, Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) MP Ferhat Encu, in a parliamentary motion, asked Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu about the document. He has not yet received a reply. No Turkish authority has so far either confirmed or denied the existence of such a document.
Kurdish journalists are also exposed to physical violence. On January 5, the special operations police forcibly gathered 37 people from their homes and took them to an indoor sports hall. One of them was Nedim Oruc, a journalist who had extensively covered the military assaults against the Kurdish town Silopi.
At first, no information could be obtained about Oruc who, according to DIHA news agency, had been battered, dragged on the ground and kidnapped by police in an armored vehicle. As a result of the public pressure brought to bear by the Twitter hashtag #NedimOrucNerede Where is Nedim Oruc), Silopi Security Directorate admitted that Oruc was in custody. He is now in Sirnak Prison.
The same day, the police raided a student dormitory and houses in the province of Van. The all-female, pro-Kurdish Jin (Women’s) News Agency reporter and university student Rojda Oguz and many other students were arrested. Rojda is now in Van prison.
“The Turkish public has a right to information from a variety of sources and perspectives, but the government is clearly trying to stifle pro-Kurdish news outlets with these arrests,” said Nina Ognianova, Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator of Committee to Protect Journalists. “We call on Turkish authorities to release Nedim Oruç and Rojda Oğuz without delay and to stop harassing and obstructing journalists.”
On January 9, the “Women for Peace” group staged a demonstration in Izmir’s Bornova district to protest the recent military siege and attacks against Kurdish districts. Police detained theEvrensel reporter Eda Aktas, along with 12 others, while she was reporting on the protest — on the grounds that the press statement of the protesters violated the article 301 of the penal code, which makes it illegal “to insult Turkey, the Turkish nation, or Turkish government institutions.”
On January 5, in Silopi, three female Kurdish politicians — Sêvê Demir, Pakize Nayir, and Fatma Uyar — were murdered by state forces.
On January 10, in Izmir, when the Kurdish Congress of Free Women (KJA) organized a protest to commemorate the slain politicians, the police attacked the protestors, and detained 35 — including Dilek Aykan, the co-head of the Izmir branch of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP).
The police also prevented Serfiraz Gezgin, a reporter from the Kurdish DIHA agency, and Hatice Erhan, a reporter from the left-wing magazine Kizil Bayrak, from filming the police crackdown. Other journalists just barely stopped police from detaining Gezgin and Erhan.
For months, the Turkish armed forces have been using hospitals and schools as military quarters, threatening, and even murdering medical personnel, and forcing thousands of Kurds to flee their native lands.
The state violence in Turkish Kurdistan escalates daily: On January 10, Turkish soldiers murdered 12 Kurds at close range in the province of Van. The office of the governor of Van announced that 12 PKK members were killed in the province. Photos of the slain Kurds were shared on the social media, apparently by Turkish security forces. A YouTube account called “Special Operations Team,” for instance, published a video entitled “The carcasses of the PKK – Van/Edremit” showing the bodies of slain Kurds, with upbeat music playing in the background.
Reporter Bekir Gunes, and cameraman Mehmet Dursun, working for IMC TV, were trying to follow up on news concerning the murders, but were prevented from doing so by the police. Both were taken into custody and released 11 hours later. “Our only aim today was to share what had happened in Van with the public in a healthy way,” Gunes wrote on his Twitter account. “Today it was not us, but the people’s right to information that was taken into custody. We will not be silent.”[1]
According to the 2015 World Press Freedom Index of Reporters without Borders, Turkey, out of 180 states, ranked 149.[2] “Turkey’s ‘underlying situation’ score,” it wrote, “covering such areas as cyber-censorship, lawsuits, dismissals of critical journalists and gag orders — actually worsened, showing that freedom of information continues to decline.” [3]
Lately, pressures on free speech and free press have been gaining new momentum in Turkey. The latest victim was a Turkish comedian and television host, Beyazit Ozturk (“Beyaz”) known for being apolitical and pro-establishment.
Beyaz found himself in the midst of violent threats after a teacher from Diyarbakir phoned into his popular live chat show and called for an end to violence in the region. She said: “Children are dying here. All of these bomb sounds, bullet sounds… People — especially babies and children — are struggling with a lack of water, with starvation. Please show some sensitivity. See us, hear our voice, extend your hand to us. Please let no more people die. Let no more children die.”
Beyaz thanked the caller, said that he too supported her message of peace and asked the audience to applaud her.
Kanal D [Channel D], the mainstream TV channel broadcasting the show, issued a statement saying they were tricked into allowing the caller on. The television channel’s officials added: “Dogan TV and Kanal D have always been on the side of the state from day one.”
The Turkish ministry of national education started an exhaustive hunt to find the caller. They said that no teacher with that name admitted to having called the show.
The teacher on the phone had not even said who killers were, but for some unfathomable reason, the Turkish nationalists, including state authorities, appear to have taken the remark personally, and interpreted it as an “insult to Turkish security forces” and “terrorist propaganda.”
Beyaz thereupon received a negative reaction from Turkish nationalists, and even death threats on social media. Many Twitter users and pro-government media outlets accused him “of allowing PKK propaganda on his show” and “not showing the required reaction to the caller.”
A popular hashtag said: “Beyaz! Apologize from the Turkish Police!”
A masked individual, allegedly a special operations police officer, posted on YouTube a video entitled, “We will not forget,” threatening Beyaz for allowing a caller from Diyarbakir to say on his show that children are dying.
In the end, Beyaz appeared on Kanal D again, apologizing:
“I am a son of a police officer. Whatever the entire Turkish nation thinks about that place [Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast], I also have the same thoughts. Of course, with all our hearts and souls, we want the terrorist organization to lay down its arms and this issue to be resolved as soon as possible. May Allah make it easy for all of our security forces in the southeast. We are on the side of our state and our nation.”
Finally, the police found the “criminal.” Ayse Celik, the art teacher who phoned in, is now being prosecuted for “making propaganda for the terrorist organization”. Eleven lawyers in the province of Antep who declared their support for the Celik’s message are also being prosecuted for “terrorist propaganda.”
This is the level of political and social pressure that a TV personality — who has had nothing to do with political activism throughout his entire career — is exposed to, in response to the most innocent and humanitarian wishes for peace uttered by a caller on his show. Imagine the enormity of the pressure on Kurds and journalists who try to expose the real crimes Turkey is committing against its Kurdish minority.
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[1] On January 10, which marks the Working Journalists Day in Turkey, Murat Verim, a Kurdish reporter of Dicle News Agency (DIHA), was detained following a police raid on his home in Mardin’s Dargecit district. On January 12, gendarmerie special operations forces attacked Mursel Coban, a journalist and photographer, as he was reporting on the funeral of the youths murdered in the Sur district of Diyarbakir. Coban said that the police beat him and tried to detain him, while threatening him with “disappearance.”
[2] In 2014, Turkey ranked 154 in the list. “Turkey’s rise in the index must be put in context,” wrote Reporters Without Borders. “It was due above all to the conditional release in 2014 of around 40 imprisoned journalists who nonetheless continue to face prosecution and could be detained again at any time.
[3] In another mass arrest on December 20, 2011, 58 people (many of whom were Kurdish journalists) were taken into custody in a police raid on their offices or houses in 8 provinces.
Media Ignoring Massive Muslim Rape Attack in Germany?!?
January 14, 2016You Can Count on Governments to Conceal the Truth about Islamic Crimes
January 13, 2016You Can Count on Governments to Conceal the Truth about Islamic Crimes, National Review, David French, January 12,2016
The truth disrupts the elite’s preferred multicultural narrative, which places all faiths and cultures on equal footing — except for our despised Western civilization. The truth must therefore be suppressed. But the lies are starting to backfire. Victims can’t be ignored indefinitely, and it’s hard to hide mass-scale public assaults. Since 9/11, Western governments and mainstream media have relentlessly pounded their people with deception and wishful thinking about Islam, jihad, and the Middle East. The lies are now being exposed by the light of day. Will enough people care?
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At this point, it’s a sad joke — a form of gallows humor shared in times of trouble. When there’s a shooting, and the hours tick by without any identification of the suspect, one can presume that it’s a jihadist. When there’s a riot in Europe, and the perpetrators are described as “youths,” one can presume it’s Muslim men. When an Islamist goes on a shooting spree or stabbing spree or beheads a coworker, authorities will latch onto any explanation but the obvious.
But now even gallows humor is inappropriate. Western denial of Islamic crimes is so common, so systematic, that we can no longer have any confidence that we understand the true dimensions of the jihadist threat. Consider the following:
In Germany, police actively “tried to obfuscate” what happened on New Year’s Eve, when thousands of Muslim men systematically sexually assaulted hundreds of German women — an act that my colleague Andrew McCarthy has aptly termed a “rape jihad.”
The New York Times reported yesterday that Swedish authorities now stand accused of covering up a wave of sexual assaults at a concert last summer. A Swedish newspaper wrote today that national media refused at the time to report factual accounts from the concert assaults, claiming they were nothing but far-right “propaganda.”
Yet for sheer scale, nothing touches the infamous scandal in Rotherham, England, where gangs of Pakistani men brutalized an estimated 1,400 women and girls. Over at least 16 years, from 1997 to 2013, girls and women were trafficked, tortured, and raped while authorities turned a blind eye to the abuse. According to the Rotherham Borough Council’s belated report on the mass abuse, authorities were concerned that they might give “oxygen” to racism claims. Up to 160 British police officers now face investigation for systematically ignoring abuse complaints.
Here at home, willful blindness seems to be a deliberate strategy. The Obama administration for years called Nidal Hasan’s deadly terror attack at Fort Hood “workplace violence,” and in November, the FBI said that it may never release a report into the motivations of the Muslim man who attacked two Chattanooga recruiting stations, killing five. FBI director James Comey said that the Bureau didn’t want to “smear people.” Finally, in December — five months after the event — Comey unequivocally declared the Chattanooga shooting a “terror attack.”
But for sheer brazenness, it’s hard to top Philadelphia mayor Jim Kenney. Immediately after police apprehended Edward Archer for attempting to assassinate a Philadelphia police officer, Archer started telling anyone who would listen that he did it “in the name of Islam.” But don’t tell Kenney. He broke land-speed records to get in front of the cameras and declare that the attack “has nothing to do with being a Muslim or following the Islamic faith.”
The consequences of the lies, cover-ups, and evasions are serious. American and European elites hector their respective publics over accepting increasing numbers of migrants. They belittle the public’s concerns over the terrorist threat and instead praise Islam to the heavens for its tolerance — often with full knowledge of systematic criminal acts. Even now — after Cologne and after Rotterham — those of us outside the halls of power can’t have any confidence that we know the truth about the impact of mass Muslim immigration on Europe, or that we know the true dimensions of the domestic terror threat in the United States.
When, for instance, a Muslim man beheaded his coworker in Oklahoma and attempted to behead another, was his attack “merely” the enraged action of a disgruntled worker? Or was it an act of “lone wolf” jihadist? After all, on social media, he’d made the popular hand sign of ISIS fighters, posted pictures of jihadists (including ISIS fighters and Osama bin Laden), and appeared to call for Jihad.
What about the recent stabbing spree at the University of California, Merced? Authorities say it was over a study-group dispute, but the young Muslim attacker reportedly carried an image of an ISIS flag and a handwritten manifesto that “included instructions to behead a student.”
How many Americans are aware of these incidents? How many Americans are aware that New York City police are now looking at a Muslim terror suspect as a “person of interest” in the stabbing of a nine-year-old boy? To learn that, you might have to read a British newspaper that reported on a student named Fareed Mumuni who allegedly stabbed the child in a “botched audition to join ISIS.” His long-term goal was reportedly the bombing of Times Square.
The truth disrupts the elite’s preferred multicultural narrative, which places all faiths and cultures on equal footing — except for our despised Western civilization. The truth must therefore be suppressed. But the lies are starting to backfire. Victims can’t be ignored indefinitely, and it’s hard to hide mass-scale public assaults. Since 9/11, Western governments and mainstream media have relentlessly pounded their people with deception and wishful thinking about Islam, jihad, and the Middle East. The lies are now being exposed by the light of day. Will enough people care?
Sex Crimes Across Germany: The Coverup Unravels
January 9, 2016Sex Crimes Across Germany: The Coverup Unravels, Power Line,
Michelle, one of the young women who were sexually assaulted, has courageously gone public with her story.
Britain’s Daily Mail must be one of the world’s oddest news sources, but occasionally it does some good original reporting. That is the case with respect to its coverage of the epidemic of sexual assault that has erupted across Germany:
[Michelle] is just one of 120 women who were abused that horrific night in the [cathedral] square, which is dotted with bars, nightclubs and coffee shops, and is where Cologne locals have seen in the New Year for centuries.The men, speaking Arabic and seemingly either drunk or high on drugs, moved around in large groups among a gathering of around 1,000 male migrants and deliberately targeted women. The men easily outnumbered the 190 police officers on duty, who were quickly overwhelmed.
It wasn’t just Cologne:
In other cities across Germany, including Stuttgart, Dusseldorf, Hamburg, Munich and Berlin, where a tourist was sexually assaulted by five men right in front of the famous Brandenburg Gate, it was the same disturbing story.
Nearly 50 women in Hamburg complained to police about sexual harassment by ‘North African’ men, who called them ‘bitches’, shouted ‘Fikki, fikki’ to indicate they wanted to rape them, and ‘chased’ them ‘like cattle’ around the streets. …
In Stuttgart, women complained of sexual attacks by ‘trouble-makers with an immigrant background’ and 15 other ‘Mediterranean men of Arabic appearance’.
When one group of young girls refused these men’s advances, their boyfriends were beaten up. One girl who fought off an attacker ended up in hospital with a broken nose and deep cuts to her face.
The common denominator, of course, is that the attackers were recent Islamic immigrants, most of them apparently “refugees.”
The attacks have sounded the alarm bell in Germany over the consequences of mass migration.
One would hope so! But it’s a little late, and DM notes that around 3,200 Islamic migrants are still entering Germany every day.
What is most remarkable about this story is the coverup, which is now being freely acknowledged:
Many Germans, including some of the victims themselves, have accused authorities of a conspiracy of silence over the assaults to stop criticism of the mass immigration policy pursued by Mrs Merkel and her politically-correct supporters. The mainstream media in Germany has, until recently, toed the Government line; a top public broadcaster, ZDF, recently refused to run a segment about a rape case on its prime-time ‘crime-watch’ show because the ‘dark-skinned’ suspect was a migrant.
The programme’s editor defended her decision, saying: ‘We don’t want to inflame the situation and spread a bad mood. The migrants don’t deserve it.’
American news outlets also censor the news to advance a political agenda, but they are not quite so brazen about it.
Cracks only began to show just before New Year. Bild, Germany’s largest daily newspaper, broke ranks…
Contemplate that for a moment: “broke ranks.”
…by accusing officials of conducting a campaign of deception on a ‘massive scale’ by burying bad news on migration. It reported that drug gangs involved in organised crime were actively recruiting newly-arrived migrants from the vast temporary camps where they live.
The Cologne police force has also been accused of deliberately hushing up the New Year scandal. It issued an official press release the following day describing the celebrations as ‘exuberant, but mostly peaceful’. The release has since been retracted, and last night it emerged that police chief Wolfgang Albers is to resign.
“Mostly peaceful”: interestingly, the same locution that is conventionally used to describe violent Black Lives Matter protests in the American press.
Broadcaster ZDF had to apologise for a ‘cover up’ after it failed to report the Cologne story for three days, even though it knew about it.
And until Thursday, a week after the attacks, there had been silence from Mrs Merkel’s ministers about the backgrounds of the perpetrators. Initially, they insisted there was no evidence that new migrants were involved in the violence.
In fact, contemporaneous police reports indicated that all or virtually all of the attackers were recently-arrived Muslims.
Europe’s leftists are clinging bitterly to their illusions, in some instances actually trying to excuse the sex criminals. Some city officials have issued recommendations for how young women should act to avoid “provoking” rapists from “other cultures.” Will non-elite Europeans put up with such nonsense? I doubt it. In Europe, even more than in the U.S., fundamental transformation through mass immigration is a policy that the elites just can’t sell.
The Iran Deal: From Bad to Worse
December 21, 2015The Iran Deal: From Bad to Worse, Power Line,
[I]s there a deal or not? It hasn’t been signed, and the parties have never agreed on what its terms are supposed to be. In the meantime, if a deal exists, Iran is violating it. Does anyone care? Certainly not President Obama.
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The Iran nuclear deal has faded from the headlines. That must mean things are going well, right?
Just kidding. Amir Taheri brings us up to date:
Last month the president sent his Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz to Vienna to twist the arm of International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano into issuing a favorable report on the state of the Iranian nuclear program.
The yes-or-no question Amano faced was simple: Has Iran closed the military aspect of its nuclear program?
Being an honorable man, Amano could not provide the straight “yes” that Muniz was asking for. “Much progress has been made, but much remains to be done,” he said. “More confidence building is needed, and verification of what Iran is doing may need many more weeks.”
Amano also hedged in his formal report to the IAEA board of governors. In paragraph 79 of the report, he states that the IAEA is in no position to categorically report that all of Iran’s nuclear program is entirely peaceful. That’s because the IAEA does not have access to all nuclear sites in the Islamic Republic.
I think it is blindingly obvious that Iran continues its progress toward becoming a nuclear power. Taheri makes a point that I also have emphasized repeatedly:
Meanwhile, Iran openly flouts the deal — and UN Security Council resolutions — by testing a new generation of medium-range ballistic missiles known as “Al-Qadr 110.”
These tests make sense only if Tehran continues to contemplate a military nuclear dimension to its program. The two new missiles are designed to carry warheads of between 75 to 100 kilograms. It makes no sense to deploy a ballistic missile over a distance of 1,800 to 2,000 kilometers — that is to say, capable of reaching all capitals in the Middle East and parts of Europe — simply to carry a payload of TNT.
One basic question is, is there a deal or not? It hasn’t been signed, and the parties have never agreed on what its terms are supposed to be. In the meantime, if a deal exists, Iran is violating it. Does anyone care? Certainly not President Obama.
It’s embarrassing enough that Obama pushed off implementation of the nuclear deal from last week until the end of January. But here’s the dirty little secret: It doesn’t matter. From Iran’s point of view, it’s getting everything it wants, deal or no deal.
The EU already has gotten rid of most sanctions against the nation, and Obama has suspended our sanctions for 90 days. Assets have been unfrozen, pumping an estimated $8 billion into Tehran. Iran is set to recover some $120 billion.
I can’t wait to see how that famous “snap back” provision will work.
All for a nuclear agreement that Iran has not signed and seemingly has no intention of following.
Remember when Obama claimed the deal would block Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb for fifteen years? The Iranians have never agreed to any such thing:
Behruz Kamalvand, spokesman for the Iranian Atomic Energy commission, said the Obama deal “does not change our nuclear program by a single iota.”
“We continue doing exactly what we were doing before,” he says.
Nice work, Barack! Taheri itemizes some of the fallout from the administration’s craven diplomacy:
After two years of secret negotiations, Obama, far from resolving the Iranian nuclear issue, has made it even more complicated.
In the process, he has virtually killed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, discredited the IAEA, made a mockery of the UN Security Council and emboldened the most radical faction within the Khomeinist regime.
The truth is that there is no deal. It was not the mullahs who took Obama for a ride. It was Obama who hitched a ride with them.
Obama’s “the chance of a lifetime” is just that — for Iran.
The Iran deal isn’t merely sub-par diplomacy, it is a scandal. I don’t see how a president who took seriously his duty to preserve American security could have entered into it. There is another scandal, too: a journalistic one. Here, as in so many instances, reporters have covered up for the Obama administration by deliberately failing to report the facts surrounding the Iranian nuclear debacle. It would be interesting to compare the number of minutes that network news broadcasts have devoted, over the last few months, to the fulminations of Donald Trump with the minutes they have devoted to the crumbling of the Iran agreement. Likewise with column inches in our supposedly sophisticated newspapers.
When the first Iranian nuclear bomb explodes, whether in Europe, Israel or the United States, a number of people will have much to answer for, and they won’t all be officials in the Obama administration.
Post Paris: Liberals Can’t Blame Terror Attack on Muslims
November 19, 2015Post Paris: Liberals Can’t Blame Terror Attack on Muslims, PJTV via You Tube, November 19, 2015
WarSclerotic 
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