Iran

Fox News Airs Phony Footage Of Iran Funds Flight – And Donald Trump Falls For It

Posted by on August 4, 2016 at 4:49 pm. NO Comments :

The Wall Street Journal recently published a story alleging to have uncovered a secret $400 million payment from the United States to Iran. Never mind that the payment was disclosed by the administration last January and was a settlement of a long standing financial dispute. The WSJ ignited a firestorm of frenzied conservatives falsely asserting that the money was a ransom paid to secure the release of Americans imprisoned in Iran.

Fox News

Among the right-wing media spinners that rushed to wield this story as a cudgel against President Obama and Hillary Clinton was, of course, Fox News. They aired a report that parroted the WSJ (also owned by Rupert Murdoch) along with video that Fox implied was of the transfer of American cash to the Iranians. There’s just one problem. The video was actually of a group of prisoners being released in Switzerland.

Not one to let a fake Fox News story go to waste, Donald Trump took to the stage in Daytona, Florida, to address the matter (video below). But he veered even further into a world of delusion as he unfolded a fable of espionage to which he alone was privy:

“I’ll never forget the scene this morning. Remember this: Iran – I don’t think you heard this anywhere but here – Iran provided all of that footage, the tape of taking that money off the airplane. Right? $400 million in cash. How does the President do that? How do you do that? We’re gonna send $400 million in cash, this is in cash, in currency.”

No, Donald, That’s not right. Iran didn’t take any of that footage, which was shot in Switzerland. And there was no cash in it at all. In fact, the claim that the U.S. loaded shipping palettes with cash was utterly false. Due to economic sanctions, the U.S. has no banking relationship with Iran. Therefore, the money was transferred to Swiss banks where it was converted by the them to currencies that they sent to Iran. Trump continued:

“Now, here’s the amazing thing: Over there, where that plane landed, top secret, you don’t have a lot of paparazzi. You know, the paparazzi doesn’t do so well over there, right? And they have a perfect tape, done by obviously a government camera, and the tape is of the people taking the money off the plane. Right? That means that in order to embarrass us further, Iran sent us the tapes. Right? It’s a military tape, it’s a tape that was a perfect angle, nice and steady, nobody getting nervous because they’re gonna be shot because they’re shooting a picture of money pouring off a plane.”

Once again, that is entirely wrong. Iran didn’t send us the tape, and it’s not from their military. So there was no attempt on their part to embarrass the U.S. There was no top secret landing since the entire affair was publicly disclosed by the government. This whole story is as fictional as Trump’s claim to have seen thousands of Muslims in New Jersey celebrating the fall of the World Trade Center towers. That never happened either.

So Trump invented a tale of intrigue wherein he observed a non-existent top secret video of Iranians receiving piles of cash from a clandestine American flight. And just to be clear, his spokesperson, Hope Hicks, was asked by the Washington Post if the video to which he was referring was the one that aired on Fox News. She responded “Yes,” it was “merely the B-roll footage included in every broadcast.” And since we know that that video was not shot in Iran, we also know that Trump’s entire account is pure fiction. Which makes it consistent with pretty much everything else that Trump says (see the Trump Bullshitopedia). and, for that matter, most of what appears on Fox News.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

UPDATE: Trump has now admitted that he never saw the video he claimed at least twice to have seen. He gave no explanation for why he falsely claimed to have seen a video that doesn’t exist.

The Most Hilariously Delusional Response To The Iran Nuclear Arms Negotiations

Posted by on July 14, 2015 at 11:28 pm. 3 Comments :

In the early hours of Tuesday, July 14, 2015, an announcement was made that Iran had agreed to a deal with the United States (and England, France, Germany, Russia, and China) restricting their ability to advance any weapons related nuclear programs. The deal required significant concessions from Iran with regard to research, production, storage, etc., of fissile materials, and set stiff obligations for verification and inspection. It further held that existing sanctions would remain in place until it is certified that Iran is complying with the conditions of the agreement.

This announcement predictably triggered a tempest of antipathy from the usual quarters of the Obama Hate Squad (aka the Republican Party). They immediately jerked their auto-tuned knees to complain that President Obama had just surrendered America to its enemies and offered to build Iran as many nuclear warheads as they want and help to aim them at Israel. This went on all day at Fox News with each anchor and pundit taking turns to find the most scurrilous attack on what they regard as a traitorous president.

Among the critics of the new deal was Senate Republican Whip John Cornyn of Texas. He stood shoulder to shoulder with his GOP leadership colleagues (Senators McConnell, Barrasso, and Corker) to denounce Obama’s appeasement of Iran, the next perpetrators of a holocaust. Cornyn said that the deal allows Iran “a clear path to develop nuclear weapons.” (Which it does not).

John Cornyn

But apparently the risk of global conflagration grew considerably since a previous statement Cornyn made about the arms deal. Back in 2013 he took note of Obama’s nascent efforts at bringing Iran to the table and could not contain himself. He feverishly tweeted…

“Amazing what WH will do to distract attention from O’Care.”

So Cornyn originally believed that Obama’s initiative to constrain Iran’s nuclear ambitions was merely an attempt to keep everyone from paying attention to the fact that he had made health insurance available to more Americans than ever before. How insidious. This is truly a crafty president who, for some reason, didn’t want anyone to know that he was expanding access to healthcare, so he contrived a historic deal to remove Iran’s potential for nuclear warfare as a diversion.

With today’s announcement of a successful agreement, we learn that Obama’s attempted diversion has actually born fruit. The five other negotiating partners, as well as the United Nations, all approved of the deal and celebrated it as an unprecedented achievement. And through it all the Affordable Care Act continued to roll out and is now responsible for producing the highest rate of coverage ever for the American people.

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Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
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I suppose you could therefore call the Iranian arms deal distraction an unqualified success. It enabled ObamaCare to become ingrained in American society while no one was looking, and it also put the screws to Iran’s devious weapons plans. How ever did Cornyn figure all of that out two years ago? He must be some kind of genius, or prophet.

About The GOP’s #47Traitors Letter To Iran…It Was All A Joke

Posted by on March 11, 2015 at 12:59 pm. 10 Comments :

While much of the media is obsessing over emails sent by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton while she was serving the country, another letter has stirred up some controversy over whether Republicans in Congress have engaged in treason.

Clinton Email / Iran GOP Letter

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Freshman senator and Tea Party crush Tom Cotton of Arkansas managed to get forty-seven of his senate colleagues and a couple of GOP presidential hopefuls to sign a letter warning Iran not to take President Obama seriously with regard to negotiations on Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The letter took a decidedly condescending tone that presumed its recipients were unfamiliar with international diplomacy. Cotton offered to school them saying that…

“It has come to our attention while observing your nuclear negotiations with our government that you may not fully understand our constitutional system. […] We will consider any agreement regarding your nuclear-weapons program that is not approved by Congress as nothing more than an executive agreement between President Obama and Ayatollah Khamenei. The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.”

Unfortunately for Cotton and his co-signers, Iran’s foreign minister was better prepared on these subjects than they were. Their misguided attempt to wedge their way into the negotiations was inappropriate, foolish, and possibly illegal. And worse, it probably had the opposite effect of what they were aiming for. Rather than undercutting Obama’s credibility, the letter served to more broadly discredit Congress and the nation. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif scolded Cotton & Co. saying “In truth, it told us that we cannot trust the United States.” He went on to say that the letter’s signatories…

“…not only do not understand international law, but are not fully cognizant of the nuances of their own Constitution when it comes to presidential powers in the conduct of foreign policy. […] I should bring one important point to the attention of the authors and that is, the world is not the United States, and the conduct of inter-state relations is governed by international law, and not by US domestic law. The authors may not fully understand that in international law, governments represent the entirety of their respective states, are responsible for the conduct of foreign affairs, are required to fulfill the obligations they undertake with other states and may not invoke their internal law as justification for failure to perform their international obligations.”

Zarif also pointed out that any attempt by a future Congress or President to renege on an agreement of this sort would be a violation of international law. However, compliance with the law may not be uppermost in the minds of this letter’s authors. By writing and sending the letter they may have violated a domestic law known as the Logan Act that forbids unauthorized citizens from negotiating with foreign governments.

Subsequent to the letter’s publication, the Republicans associated with it have been pilloried for their both their ignorance of international diplomacy and their Constitutional role in negotiating inter-state agreements. Some in the GOP are already distancing themselves from the embarrassing letter, including Sen. Bob Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. But the most peculiar response came from some unnamed GOP aides who are now trying to characterize the whole affair as a joke. Daily Beast reports that…

“Republican aides were taken aback by the response to what what they thought was a lighthearted attempt to signal to Iran and the public that Congress should have a role in the ongoing nuclear discussions. Two GOP aides separately described their letter as a ‘cheeky’ reminder of the congressional branch’s prerogatives.

‘The administration has no sense of humor when it comes to how weakly they have been handling these negotiations,’ said a top GOP Senate aide.”

Lighthearted? Cheeky? Someone is going to have to explain the punch line in this to me because writing to Iran’s leaders to inform that they cannot trust the President of the United States hardly seems like comedy or even playful banter. What’s more, the suggestion that the President has no sense of humor is puzzling. Do they think that the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran is something that Obama should be joking about? Is their assertion that he is handling these negotiations weakly a laughing matter?

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Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

The truth is that if Obama were to have injected humor into this situation in even the smallest way, the GOP would be renewing their calls for impeachment. [Actually, Laura Ingraham has already done so on Fox News Tuesday night with Greta Van Sustern] This shift to portraying the letter as a joke is just a lame attempt to get out from under the bad publicity it has created for the imbeciles who signed it. But it also reveals that Republicans are not averse to endangering sensitive negotiations, and the security of the nation and the world, in order to satisfy their psychotic hatred of our President. And that is what they regard as patriotism.

The NeoCon Plan To Save Obama’s Presidency: Bomb Iran

Posted by on February 3, 2010 at 12:30 pm. 3 Comments :

If you weren’t already repulsed by the rampant cynicism and callousness of the uber-right in America, then an article just published in the National Review should do the trick.

Notorious NeoCon, Daniel Pipes, penned a column that purports to be offering President Obama advice on how to improve his favorability ratings: Bomb Iran!

The notion that any president should order military engagement for the purpose of shoring up polling numbers can only be acceptable to far-right vultures like Pipes. But Pipes is serious about this. The article is not titled “How to eliminate the Iranian Nuclear Threat.” It is titled “How to Save the Obama Presidency.” He even cited as an example the polling bump George W. Bush got after 9/11:

“Just as 9/11 caused voters to forget George W. Bush’s meandering early months, a strike on Iranian facilities would dispatch Obama’s feckless first year down the memory hole and transform the domestic political scene.”

This advice from Pipes could not be more wrong, both morally and strategically. On the moral scale, Pipes is suggesting that the President put the lives of American troops at risk for political gain. He argues that this would be “a dramatic gesture to change the public perception of him.” Why Pipes thinks that that is an appropriate justification for war, he never adequately explains.

But Pipes is also wrong from a strategic standpoint. He asserts that such an attack “would require few ‘boots on the ground’ and entail relatively few casualties.” This shallow assessment ignores the obvious lessons of past military debacles in the region. It is particularly surprising given that Pipes himself admitted that he had misread the risks associated with the war in Iraq. In his article in April of 2003, he belittled admonitions from regional experts that the invasion of Iraq would exacerbate tensions, escalate terrorism, and aid the recruiting efforts of Al Qaeda. He dismissed those warnings saying, “Actually, the precise opposite is more likely to happen.”

Pipes predicted few casualties in Iraq as well. He also bought in to the myth that the war would be short, would reduce terrorism, would produce stability, and that the Iraqis would greet us with candy and flowers. We all know now that the experts were right and Pipes was grievously wrong, as he himself admitted three years later in an update to his original article.

Will we have to wait another three years for Pipes to confess that his fatally flawed judgment failed him again? It certainly hasn’t stopped him from making a similarly erroneous assessment with regard to Iran. And this time he wraps it in a grotesquely political cloak to conceal his true intentions.

Pipes freely admits that he has no interest in seeing Obama’s popularity rise. So the suggestion to bomb Iran is not really a gesture of support for the Commander in Chief. It is more likely an expression of Pipes’ own obsession with hostility, and his thirst for blood. It is evidence of his antipathy for the people of the Middle East. And it is affirmation of his inability to form unbiased conclusions on serious matters like war.

For this he would sacrifice American and Iranian lives; he would promote the cause of jihadists; he would destroy the nascent democracy movement in Iran; and he would commit our nation to a third battlefront in a part of the world that is already unstable and distrustful of our motives. He is advising nothing less than a Crusade. And we know what happened the last time we had one of those.

Fox News Declares War On Iran

Posted by on August 22, 2007 at 8:52 am. NO Comments :

A video (posted below) from FoxAttacks really tells the story of what a corrupt tool for propaganda Fox is.

Fox News

It also should tell people that our battle lines do not end with Bush and other Republicans. Christiane Amanpour’s comment succinctly describes the real threat:

“My station [CNN] was intimidated by the administration and the foot soldiers at Fox News.”

The media is manufacturing fear and misleading the country and the world. And it all begins with Fox. We must resolve to stop being accomplices in our own downfall. This is a good time to revisit my exhortation that Fox must be shunned.

Detox from Fox: Starve The Beast

As I said before, with extensive documentation, appearing on Fox is not only pointless, it is overtly harmful to progressive causes. It is long past time for Democrats and progressives to recognize this simple fact and resolve to stop allowing themselves to be used for target practice by disingenuous pseudo-journalists whose purpose is to defame and defeat them in politics and public opinion.

No more capitulation by our representatives and Fox’s competitors. It cannot, and must not, be tolerated. Do not cooperate with Fox in any way. Just say no!

News Corpse Presents: The ALL NEW 2nd volume of
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.