At Blacklisted, Eve Barlow reminds us of the mainstream media’s long shilling for the wrong side in the great saga of Iran. Consumed by hatred for the Shah, the CIA and the U.S. government, leading outlets like the New York Times promoted a murderous totalitarian – the Ayatollah Khomeini – as a reasonable answer to Iran’s problems. Barlow notes how the media have remained trapped in their moral inversion – to the very moment the mullahcracy finally appears set to topple.
Blueprint for Alberta?
Writing in Jewish World Review, Frederic Fransen reminds Americans of a key lesson from Revolutionary War-era pamphleteer Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. “The colonies need to declare independence,” Fransen summarizes Paine, “because so long as their goal was seen as reconciliation, foreign governments would consider the Americans as rebels and the conflict an internal affair.” But a unilateral declaration of independence, Fransen notes, instantly converts mere complaints from an aggrieved group into a negotiation between sovereign states.
