Kevin Flower at CNN reports:

“Speaking to Israel’s annual Herzliya national security conference, Moshe Ya’alon, who also serves as Israel’s minister for strategic affairs, suggested that an Iranian military compound that mysteriously blew up late last year was developing a long-range missile capable of hitting the United States.

 

Senior defense officials told CNN that the United States believed the Iranians were mixing volatile fuel for a rocket motor for a large ballistic missile on November 12 when the explosion occurred.”

By Humberto Fontova

Last week the regime co-founded by Che Guevara (worldwide icon of youthful rebellion) murdered a young defenseless political prisoner named Wilman Villar for the crime of “disrespect to authorities.”

So 53 years into Cuban Stalinism we’re at about 100,000 Cuban deaths at the hands of the regime and counting. (All of this 90 miles from U.S. shores, while Havana swarms with MSM press bureaus and Hollywood producers, by the way.)

“The Cuban regime is a callous band of murderers that once again has blood on its hands,” said Senator Marco Rubio in a bi-partisan Senate Resolution passed on Jan. 26 in Villar’s honor. “Once again, we are reminded of the unintended but negative consequences of this administration’s loosened travel and remittance policies (to Cuba.) They help deliver more hard currency to the Castro regime, making it easier for them to brutalize and even murder the Cuban people.”

Last November thirty year-old Wilman Villar was peacefully protesting Cuban Stalinism near his home in Eastern Cuba in a sort of “Occupy Santiago de Cuba.” But this protest was more peaceful, less messy and completely devoid of Che Guevara iconography. You’ll notice that this last peculiarity is a historic trademark of people cursed by fate to have actually experienced the handiwork of Che Guevara.

Within minutes of the protest’s commencement the KGB and STASI-trained police that props up the regime co-founded by Che Guevara swarmed in with billy-clubs and arrested all protestors. None of this newsworthy drama was captured by the MSM folks, by the way. And I repeat: Cuba bristles with MSM press bureaus that report every bruise or hangnail among the prisoners in Guantanamo.

In a New York Times article on the 30th Anniversary of Che’s death, Christopher Hitchens rationalized his (not-so) youthful romance with the Stalinist war-monger and mass-murderer (who became an icon of anti-war and anti-death-penalty groups) by claiming that, “Che was no hypocrite.” In fact, Che’s monumental hypocrisy—from stealing Cuba most luxurious mansion, to whimpering to the New York Times in 1959 that he felt “pained” to be wrongly branded a “Communist”—has been amply documented. But in this case, at least, the late Hitchens has a point:

“Youth must refrain from ungrateful questioning of governmental mandates!” raved Che Guevara in a famous speech in 1961. “The very spirit of rebellion is reprehensible!” commanded this icon of Flower Children. “Instead the young must dedicate themselves to study, work and military service.”

Youth, wrote Guevara, “should learn to think and act as a mass.” Those who “chose their own path” (as in growing long hair and listening to Yankee-Imperialist Rock & Roll) were denounced as worthless “delinquents,” and herded into forced labor camps at Soviet bayonet-point. In a famous speech Che Guevara even vowed, “to make individualism disappear from Cuba! It is criminal to think of individuals!” he raved.

In keeping with this fine tradition, after beating and arresting Wilman Villar, his Castroite jailers demanded he wear the uniform of a common criminal (a traditional Stalinist practice as elaborated by Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his Gulag Archipelago.)

But Villar refused (a traditional response by many Cuban political prisoners as elaborated by Armando Valladares in his prison memoirs Against all Hope.) “I refused to commit spiritual suicide,” explained Valladares’ prison-mate Eusebio Penalver, a black Cuban who suffered longer in Castro’s prisons and torture chambers than Nelson Mandela suffered in Apartheid South Africa’s Robben Island. Granted, you’d never know this from the MSM, or Hollywood- much less The Congressional Black Caucus.

“For months I was naked in a 6 x 4 foot cell,” recalled Senor Penalver. “That’s 4 feet high, so you couldn’t stand. But they never succeeded in branding me as common criminal, so I felt a great freedom inside myself. I refused to commit spiritual suicide.”

“They would leave him naked and handcuffed,” reports Wilman Villar’s widow in a recent samizdat from Cuba. “They beat him. They wrapped his body in chains so he could not take them off they told me that they were not going to give him any medical attention, that if he died, his would be just another death.”

Villar died a week later of “multiple organ failure due to general sepsis,” as explained by the Stalinist regime, and dutifully disseminated by all MSM outlets graciously granted Havana press bureaus.

“Stalin tortured,” wrote Arthur Koestler, “not to force you to reveal a fact, but to force you to collude in a fiction.”

“The worst part of Communism,” wrote Solzhenitsyn, “is being forced to live a lie.”

At the risk of torture and death, Wilman Villar and his fellow Cuban prisoner-heroes refused to collude in this lie. So they enraged the torturers commanded by Jimmy Carter’s “old friend.” and Jesse Jackson’s good buddy. Through it all, they refused to wear the uniform of common criminals, standing tall, proud and defiant.

Many of the longest suffering political prisoners in modern history live as exiles in the U.S. today. Men (and women, many of them black) who suffered in Castro and Che’s gulag two and three times as long a Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Natan Scharansky suffered in Stalin’s live within a short cab ride of most MSM studios, including CBS, NBC, ABC, and PBS.

As I recall, Nelson Mandela sure didn’t lack for U.S. media coverage. You’d think victims of Castroite torture might make ideal fodder for interviews on 60 Minutes, History Channel, A&E, Nightline, chat shows, etc.

Alas, these heroes were victims of the Left’s premier pin-up boys.

“Castro’s apologists,” said Eusebio Penalver shortly before his death during an interview with this writer, “those who excuse, downplay or hide his crimes–these people, be they ignorant, stupid, mendacious, whatever–they are accomplices in the bloody tyrant’s crimes, accomplices in the most repressive and murderous regime in the hemisphere.”

_______

Humberto Fontova is the author of four books including Fidel: Hollywood’s Favorite Tyrant and Exposing the Real Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him.  For more, visit www.hfontova.com.

Cross posted at The Americano

By Kenneth R. Timmerman – AIM Special Report

Authorities in Britain revoked the license of the Iranian regime’s English-language global television channel known as Press TV because of evidence that it is a propaganda outlet controlled by the Iranian regime. But the Obama Administration permits the channel to operate on American soil without a license and in violation of U.S. sanctions regulations, which ban commercial transactions with Iran. It appears to be another example of Obama coddling the terrorist regime.

British authorities justified the move by citing the specific example of a Press TV 2009 interview with a Newsweek correspondent held in an Iranian jail. British telecom regulator Ofcom found that the interview by Press TV with Maziar Bahari, who was jailed by the Iranian regime over his reporting of the disputed presidential elections in June 2009, was conducted under duress. It held that Press TV was in violation of its British broadcasting license because its content was dictated by the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, the state broadcasting authority, and instructed the satellite carrier BSkyB to remove Press TV from its platform.

In the United States, the situation is even worse because although it operates openly in Washington, D.C., New York and Los Angeles, and regularly conducts interviews with such figures as Republican Congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul, it does not have a license from the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). So far, the Obama Administration has done nothing to shut it down.

What appears to be lacking is a determination from OFAC pointing out the obvious—that the Iranian state propaganda channel is operating illegally in the U.S. Because of this failure to enforce the law, Press TV is able to operate a propaganda facility in downtown Washington, D.C. with a prestigious K Street address and send its operatives to observe and survey U.S. Government offices, under the cover of “freedom of the press.”

“While other countries might not respect the right to a free press, this is something we take very seriously,” an administration official told this reporter. “We like to stay true to our values.”

But why do our values permit accommodating the actions of an illegal television entity devoted to propaganda and support for an outlaw regime that the Obama Administration itself says supports international terrorism?

In the case at issue in Britain, Bahari was picked up by the Iranian authorities at his parents’ home in Tehran on June 21, 2009, and jailed for four months in Iran. After an international campaign won his release and he returned home four months later that October, Bahari said that his captors had forced him to read a prepared script in front of Press TV cameras, just as American POWs were forced to do in Vietnam.

Press TV has scrubbed the interview from its website but it was widely reported at the time. In the script his captors gave him to read, Bahari accused Western reporters of working “as spies,” and “confessed” that he had been covering “illegal demonstrations” as part of a Western effort to promote a “color revolution” in Iran. His family and the media dismissed his “confession” as clearly coerced.

Clinton Excuses Tehran

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pushed Iran hard to release Bahari, but never made a statement condemning Press TV for airing the coerced interview. “We’ve been condemning the Iranian government writ large on this, not any specific agency,” a State Department spokesman said.

The Obama Administration has continued to allow Press TV to operate unhindered in the United States, despite clear evidence that it is operating as a propaganda arm of the Iranian regime. Indeed, the State Department regularly entertains questions from Press TV reporters, and allows bloggers on its “DipNote” website to plug rabid anti-American and anti-Israel propaganda with links to Press TV articles and interviews.

“If Press TV were to request a license to operate here in the U.S., the activities that led to having their license removed in the UK would certainly be reviewed by us,” a U.S. official said. “But for now, we cannot take a similar action because they have no license.”

So because it operates illegally in violation of the law, the U.S. will take no action. This might be enough for administration lawyers, but it defies common sense.

Other Propaganda Outlets

Press TV is not the only Iranian government media organization operating in the United States. The Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) operates Aftab TV, which broadcasts in Persian and operates a prominent website.

On December 28, 2006, for example, Aftab featured an interview with prominent pro-Tehran advocate Trita Parsi, who heads the National Iranian-American Council, NIAC. In prefacing the interview, Aftab stressed the importance of the “Iranian American lobby on behalf of the Iranian regime” and described it as the regime’s “unofficial diplomacy.”

Last year, IRIB opened yet another 24-hour TV network they billed as “Iran’s CNN,” called Islamic Republic of Iran News Network, IRINN TV. They began broadcasting in the U.S. with an hour-long live program from a new Washington, D.C. studio on April 6, 2011. Their flagship U.S. show is called “Two half-hours (Dow Nim Saat) that airs from 11 a.m. to noon everyday.

While most programs are in Persian, IRINN also broadcasts news in English via satellite to the U.S.

The regime has also lavished money on the print media as a means of maintaining an intimidating presence within the Iranian-American community. The U.S. edition of the Tehran daily, Etelaat, was printed in New York and flown via Federal Express to a dozen distribution points around the country for over two decades, until it was shut down last year after an undercover FBI investigation determined it was being funded illegally out of the Iranian Permanent Mission to the United Nations, a source involved in the investigation told me.

With the exception of Etelaat, the Obama Administration has continued to allow Iranian government media organizations to operate freely in the United States, mostly without licenses, despite nearly two decades of Iran sanctions that prohibit commercial exchanges between the U.S. and Iran.

Doubletalk from Obama

In a series of email and telephone exchanges, officials at the Department of the Treasury refused to acknowledge whether the administration or its predecessors had granted Press TV a license to operate in the United States.

“We are unable to comment publicly on organizations that may or may not have received licenses from OFAC. However, we note that as an official propaganda arm of the Iranian government, Press TV has a history of fabricating news and has faced lawsuits in the UK for airing forced confessions,” a Treasury Department official said.

Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Controls issues trade sanctions guidelines and maintains the list of “Specially Designated Nationals” (SDNs) banned from doing business with U.S. persons.

In the case where an organization subject to U.S. sanctions continues to operate in the United States by moving money under the radar, OFAC has often acted quickly and without warning to shut them down. But not in this case.

Spewing Filth

Press TV spews out unending streams of anti-American propaganda in a full-service program mix that includes talk shows, news reports, and TV magazines, aimed at an American audience via satellite.

Professionally-produced—often times by Americans—these shows trot out a congeries of conspiracy theorists, Holocaust deniers and their apologists, masquerading as “analysts” and “political commentators” to give them a veneer of respectability.

In this case, Press TV appears to be emulating the old Soviet Union, which specialized in propaganda for the regime and against its enemies. The Soviet-led Comintern sent propaganda specialist Willi Muenzenberg to America to recruit propaganda agents.

The Iranian regime has invested heavily in Press TV because it understands the value of propagandists who speak unaccented English and who are not openly tied to the regime to spread its ideological “payload.”

Muenzenberg wrote the playbook that was later used by Press TV and much of the “politically-correct” left in the 1920s and 1930s, when he set up a vast web of cover influence operators stretching from media to academia to America’s newsrooms that continue to make their message felt way beyond the grave.

As former CIA propaganda expert Kent Clizbe explains in his book on Muenzenberg, “the goal of the operations was to make Americans feel that their country was bad.”

“You claim to be an independent-minded idealist,” said Muenzenberg’s widow, Babette Gross. “You don’t really understand politics, but you think the little guy is getting a lousy break… You are shocked, frightened by what is going on right here in our own country… You believe in peace… You yearn for international understanding… You think the capitalist system is corrupt.”

The propaganda from Occupy Wall Street appears to be a modern-day example of the Muenzenberg approach.

Press TV takes the anti-American propaganda to a global level. Like the old Soviet propaganda networks, Press TV uses Americans to make the case against their own government and society.

Consider the case of James Fetzer, “a prominent philosopher” who went on Press TV to comment on the violent turn of the Occupy movement in Oakland last November.

He blamed the police. A professor at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, Fetzer said, “We are seeing the increase in militarization of the police forces throughout the United States and that is a very bad tendency that has been taking place since 9/11. We see the rich getting richer and the increasing gap between the rich and the poor. This gap has been widening since the administration of Ronald Reagan,” Fetzer said.

He went on: “What they are doing, the politicians are ignoring the needs of the average American and the working families. We have had increasing foreclosures, and unemployment is seen as the tip of an iceberg resistance to the corruption of politics in America… I believe this movement is not going to go away, and that what we are seeing is the real face of the police state of America has become.”

As it turns out, James H. Fetzer is indeed well-known—as a conspiracy theorist.

In a Wikipedia entry tagged by editors as “an autobiography,” Fetzer is described as “a well-known conspiracy theorist,” who has written extensively on the JFK assassination, 9/11, and the plane crash that killed U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone.

Fetzer claims, for example, that the film footage taken of the aircraft that crashed into the World Trade Center towers on 9/11 was “video fakery” caused by “holographic projects,” because the high-speed crash was “in violation of Newton’s laws” of physics.

His own website highlights his book, The 9/11 Conspiracy: The Scamming of America. A YouTube video shows Fetzer arguing that Senator Wellstone was assassinated, not killed by accident in a plane crash.

After a federal judge in District Court in New York issued a finding last December that Iran “shared responsibility with al Qaeda” for the 9/11 attacks, Press TV naturally turned to Fetzer for comment. Calling the ruling “preposterous,” he said he knew who was responsible for the attacks: Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad.

“Multiple investigations by independent journalists have revealed that Israel—the Mossad—played a key role in 9/11,” Fetzer said. “Look up ‘the dancing Israelis.’ Look up ‘urban moving systems.’ Look up ‘CITS ‘and you’ll find ample indication that Israel was profoundly involved in 9/11.”

Another Press TV Propagandist

Another propagandist used by Press TV as an on-air commentator is Mark Dankof, whose support for the Ron Paul presidential campaign we highlighted in an earlier story.

In a May 2011 article aimed at discrediting the Ofcom case against Press TV in Britain, Dankof hauled out the big artillery. Why was the British government attempting to shut down Press TV? It was, of course, all because of the Jews.

“It may not be a coincidence that the British Ofcom case against Press TV Iran pops up against the backdrop of Netanyahu’s state visit to the United States to press his own case for ongoing Talmudic Death and Destruction in the Middle East,” Dankof wrote.

The “logic” of his case went like this: Press TV accuser Maziar Bahari was a contributor to Newsweek, whose late chairman, Sidney Harman, was married to Rep. Jane Harman of California, a Jewish Democrat. “Mrs. Harman, in turn…proves to be the very member of Congress wiretapped by the American National Security Agency (NSA) conveying promises to Israeli agents that the dogs would be called off from tailing and successfully prosecuting the espionage case involving key executives of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC),” Dankof wrote.

In the article, “Empire continues to sweat over Press TV,” he went on, “This is the transparent connection in this case, as it is in other recent attacks on Press TV in the West involving media outlets and correspondents with provable connections to the American Jewish lobby; Israeli intelligence; and Neo-Conservatives thirsting for a War of Civilizations with Iran specifically, and the Islamic world generally.”

“If anyone wanted to run the traps and understand the connections, they should read the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion,” Dankof concluded. Press TV was being persecuted because it was “one of the few exceptions to The [Jewish] Lobby’s control of global print and electronically transmitted news and analysis.”

The Protocols was a Russian forgery designed to blame the Jews for the world’s problems. Muslim religious leaders and political leaders have touted its “accuracy” to me in interviews throughout the Middle East for decades.

More material of this sort can be found in the innumerable interviews Press TV conducts with “expert” Paul Sheldon Foote, whose favorite line is that “Crypto-Jews” have initiated a war between Christians and Muslims. Such arguments harken back to the ugliest forms of Western anti-Semitism.

The Rise of Press TV

When Press TV CEO Mohammad Sarafraz announced the creation of the new English-language satellite broadcasting channel in June 2007, he stated at the get-go that the goal was to spread the propaganda payload of the Tehran regime.

“Since September 11, Western bias has divided the media into two camps: those that favor their policies make up one group and the rest of the media are attached to radical Islamic groups like Al-Qaeda. We want to show that there is a different view. Iran, and the Shi’ites in particular, have become a focal point of world propaganda. From the media point of view, we are trying to give a second eye to Western audiences,” Sarafraz said.

While Press TV made some effort in its U.S. programming to invite guests who weren’t always fans of the Iranian regime, all pretense of its propaganda aims disappeared in May 2009, just before the stolen elections that gave Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a second term in office.

That was when a group of Ahmadinejad supporters raided the petty cash desk at Press TV’s Tehran headquarters and used the money to support Ahmadinejad’s election campaign, according to Press TV insiders who subsequently left or were forced to leave the network.

Since the June 2009 elections, opposition politicians, such as Mir Hossein and other challengers to Ahmadinejad, have been banned from the airwaves and Press TV has abandoned any pretense of even-handedness.

Skirting the Sanctions

Press TV has used a number of subterfuges to skirt the U.S. sanctions on commercial transactions with Iran.

From the start, Press TV has maintained close ties to the Iranian Mission to the United Nations, the Iranian regime’s only legal financial base in the United States. The UN mission may have paid some staff in cash brought in through the diplomatic bag. Press TV maintained an official presence at the Iranian Mission.

Because it could not incorporate directly in the United States, Press TV worked through production companies operating in the U.S., which in turn hired crew, correspondents, and producers.

Former Atlantic Television News (ATN) correspondent Colin Campbell questioned U.S. officials on Press TV’s behalf. ATN Productions Ltd. has seven reporters currently registered with the Senate Press Gallery: Nicholas Ewing, Affra Khallash, Taleb Khallash, Zina Khallash, Dirik Rice, Mohamed Said Ouafi, and Firas Tuma. The company is registered in Denmark and produces the weekly magazine show “American Dream,” hosted by an American, Nisa Islam.

ATN operates out of production studios located on K Street in downtown Washington, D.C. AIM Center for Investigative Journalism director Cliff Kincaid was invited and appeared on its “American Dream” program a couple of times, before realizing that ATN was operating as a front for the Iranians. When he criticized the Iranian regime on one of the programs, he was not invited back.

Press TV contacted Accuracy in Media on another occasion, looking for a guest for one of its programs to discuss why Republican Representative and presidential candidate Ron Paul was not getting more favorable attention from the U.S. media. Paul has pleased the Iranian regime by defending its pursuit of nuclear weapons. AIM declined the invitation but considered the request as more evidence of how foreign propaganda channels, such as Press TV and Russia Today, have embraced the foreign policy views of the Texas congressman.

The Press TV Media Universe

Press TV also contracts with American Press and TV Services (APTVS), an outfit run by Egyptian nationals Gamal Hassanein and Samir Ezeldin. Like ATN, they hire producers and camera crews to film events and conduct interviews at Press TV’s request.

“Gamal and Sam were running the operation, because Press TV was not allowed to incorporate here,” a former Press TV insider told me.

APTVS took over Press TV’s bureau at the United Nations in 2010. Like ATN, their correspondents and camera crews have all received press passes for the U.S. Capitol complex from the Senate Press Gallery. They hired Colin Campbell away from ATN, and have also registered the following staff with the Senate Press Gallery: Ibrahim Alshamrani, Moaz Attawia, Fahd Banhawy, Umut Colak, Samir Ezeldin, and Mike Kellerman.

The Senate press passes not only give the Press TV contractors access to the House and Senate chambers, but serve as accreditation for a much wider range of events reserved for members of the press corps, including White House, State Department, and Defense Department briefings. Although each of these three issues its own credentials to beat reporters (the “White House press corps,” etc.), the Senate press pass gets most reporters through the door for the occasional event.

Although APTVS and ATN are not part of Press TV, they produce “works for hire” for Press TV. Should OFAC decide to enforce the law, this could be construed to mean that they are engaging in unlicensed commercial transactions with Iran.

In an effort to forestall precisely such an investigation, APTVS for several years received payment from Press TV through a Palestinian production company in Ramallah run by silent partner Maher Shalabi, according to former Press TV insiders. On his Facebook page, Shalabi identifies himself as General Manager of that company, PMCC TV.

“Press TV used to contract Maher, and he then contracted with APTVS in Washington,” a former insider said. “APTVS then booked the guests and studios and conducted the interviews or satellite link-ups.” Shalabi also works for “Palestine TV,” and conducted a high-profile interview with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for that channel in 2010.

Do the activities of Press TV and these production companies fall within the “information” loop-hole of the Iran sanctions?

“If I am sending an academic journal, or some materials that actually will help the exchange of knowledge, that is allowed,” an Obama administration official told me. “But if I am actually conducting paid journalistic work, right now I still need a specific license to allow that to happen.”

Press TV does not have a license, this official hastened to add. “Therefore, they are operating illegally.”

Yet, the Obama Administration permits the channel to continue to operate in violation of the law. Congress should investigate.

Kenneth R. Timmerman is the New York Times best-selling author of Countdown to Crisis: the Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran (Crown Forum, 2005), among other works. His books and articles can be found at kentimmerman.com

Michael Whipple, Editor usACTIONnews.com

Obama picks Marxist dictator Chavez’s oil instead of ethical Canadian oil choosing Hollywood celebs over middle class workers. What a hypocrite.

One Canadian writer says Obama’s decision was about the millions his Hollywood supporters could raise for his campaign calling the decision a “disgrace.”

Ezra Levant writing in the Toronto Sun:

“That pipeline would have delivered 700,000 barrels of oil every day from Canada … .Which is almost precisely the amount of oil Venezuela now ships to the United States, to those same refineries in Texas.
Hugo Chavez, the bully ruler of Venezuela, is a serial human rights violator.

He’s a Marxist, too, but that’s a different matter. According to impeccably liberal human rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, Chavez has shredded civil liberties in Venezuela — crushing independent labour unions, shutting down newspapers and radio stations that disagree with him ….

 

And Chavez’s new ally is none other than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — the two men share a hatred for Americans. … If it weren’t for oil revenues, they’d both have been toppled by now.

Venezuela sells an enormous amount of oil to the U.S. About 800,000 barrels a day. At a hundred bucks a barrel, that’s $80 million a day.

That’s about $30 billion a year America pays to its greatest enemy in the western hemisphere.

It’s not just conflict oil, though. Venezuelan oil is some of the most carbon-intense oil in the world — even more so than Canada’s oilsands.”

Mr Levant is right. It is an absolute disgrace. While Obama kills the American oil pipeline and drilling for domestic oil the threats from Iran are expected to drive up the price of gasoline and oil. Thank an environmentalist wacko from Hollywood and Obama for $5 gas.

The Obama administration seems to be doing everything it can to raise the price of energy. This is slowing the economy, killing jobs, hurting the poor and the middle class and raising the cost of virtually everything.

Environmentalists don’t want oil drilling and they don’t care that this reduces supply and raises prices. In fact, they want prices to rise.

Obama’s energy secretary Steven Chu is on the record as having said we need higher gas prices like those in Europe. Obama warned us during his 2008 campaign that “under my plan electricity rates will necessarily have to skyrocket.”

Are we going to believe what Obama SAYS or what he DOES?

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BBC News.com

EXCERPTS:

Meanwhile, the Pentagon said the US aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, as well as a British Royal Navy frigate and a French warship, have passed through the Straits of Hormuz at the entrance to the Gulf without incident in the wake of Iranian threats to block the trade route.

Additional restrictions on Iran’s central bank are also expected to be agreed by EU ministers, although no further details have been given.

BBC Europe Editor Gavin Hewitt says it is one of the toughest steps the EU has ever taken.

FULL ARTICLE

By Fred Lucas at CNSNews.com

EXCERPTS:

As president, Perry said he would expand exploration, but also said he favored getting rid of special subsides for the energy industry, preferring a free-market approach.

“It is a travesty, as Iran threatens to close the Strait of Hormuz, that our energy and economic security is so tied to a nation that hates us, that will do us harm,” Perry said.

Iran’s recent threat to close the Strait of Hormuz has prompted concerns of military conflict and increasing oil prices.

FULL ARTICLE & video

by Michael J. Hurd, Ph.D. 1-17-2012

Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, referring to Barack Obama and his foreign/defense policy: “He’s not only the most radical President in history domestically; he is the first President, Republican or Democrat, at least since Franklin Roosevelt, who didn’t get up every morning thinking first about what threats the United States faces. He just doesn’t care about national security the way other presidents did, ” Bolton told an audience at a veterans rally in Hilton Head, South Carolina.

The American people, Bolton continued, are looking for a president “who doesn’t believe that the role of America in the world is to be a well-bred doormat.”

Bolton also stripped the President of any credit for the killing of Usama Bin Laden.

“It’s because Navy Seal Team 6 killed Usama bin laden. That’s his definition of success. As somebody pointed out, in 1969 when Americans landed on the moon, it’s like Richard Nixon taking for credit for that, because it happened to occur during his presidency,” Bolton said.

Bravo John Bolton!

Let’s face facts. The whole situation with Iran is not going to end well, at least not on our current path. Whether or when Iran will gain nuclear weapons is something of a question, but less and less of a question according to all the security reports available. More importantly, there is no question that Iran will use nuclear weapons: Either for blackmail, or as actual weapons of widespread annihilation.

Iran illustrates how one bad President’s policy can create problems for decades to come. The religiously totalitarian government of Iran came into being under the watch of President Jimmy Carter, one of the worst presidents of the twentieth century. Carter encouraged the mullah rebels to overthrow the Shah because this is “what the people wanted.” Witness the results. The other bad President whose policies we’ll pay for, for years to come, is George W. Bush. Bush destabilized the region by overthrowing the dictatorship of Iran’s rival Iraq and doing nothing whatsoever about Iran. Bush tried to appease Iran just as Obama is now. Don’t kid yourselves that there’s any substantial difference in the foreign policies of these two failed Presidents. Sooner or later, something will have to be done about Iran. Will Obama be the one to do it? Absolutely not. He’s practically on their side. Will Mitt Romney? It seems unlikely, although nobody really knows what he believes. All we can do is wait until something happens, and sooner or later it will.

The greatest foreign policy threat to the United States is its continuing economic downfall. The weaker the U.S. economy gets, the less able we will be to defend ourselves. The debt and deficit are growing by the minute. Sooner or later this has to have an impact on the value of our currency and the very underpinnings of the economy itself. But Republicrats in Washington continue along their merry way, ready to blame the other party for following the very same principles of endless spending that they themselves follow. The Tea Party in the House, while sincere, had absolutely no impact. They have been like sugar pills for an infection. I say this not so much to blast the Tea Party as to illustrate just how sick, and perhaps irredeemable, the political spending culture of Washington D.C. is.

Fixing the economy would require sacrifice, but only for those who depend on the federal government for livelihood. Unfortunately, to some degree, this is just about everyone. There are more and more people of retirement age in the U.S. population every single day. Every last one of them is expecting Social Security payments and Medicare coverage. The younger population expects endless unemployment benefits and socialized medicine promised by ObamaCare. To finance all these programs, government needs working age people to actually run businesses and have jobs. There are fewer and fewer jobs and businesses as the economy continues not to grow in any real, sustainable way. Government created this dependence, by taking away responsibility for retirement and medical insurance as long ago as the 1930s. Government programs are eating up the private economy. All of this has been a long time coming. Opponents of these programs were dismissed as “reactionary” when they predicted what actually is now happening would someday happen.

Bolton is so right that America, especially under Obama, is becoming a well-bred doormat. It’s not just because of bad leadership, though. This is what happens to a nation when the majority of its citizenry become partially or fully dependent on government for its livelihood. It rots the society from within. The government, especially in a democracy, can only be as good or great as its people. The kind of dependence and decay the American government has fostered has led the nation to become a much weaker force in the world. As goes the economy, so goes our foreign policy. To reverse one, we’re going to have to reverse the other. And it’s not going to be pretty.

Dr. Hurd has a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Psychology, Saybrook Institute, San Francisco, CA, November 1991. Degree awarded With Distinction. Master’s of Social Work (M.S.W.), Clinical, The University of Maryland at Baltimore, May 1988. Bachelor’s of Arts (B.A.), Psychology, Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, May 1985. Distinguished Psychology Student Award, Phi Beta Kappa, Summa Cum Laude. Dr. Hurd blogs at DrHurd.com

From Voice of America