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Forty years later: the media and the Iran hostage crisis

Posted: November 5, 2019 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
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Forty years ago this week, I traveled to Iran to cover the takeover of the U.S. embassy, an event that embarrassed the United States and the administration of Jimmy Carter.

What isn’t debated on this anniversary is how badly I and the rest of the news media reported what happened.

First, the hostage-takers weren’t “students,” the moniker that still sticks today. A.J. Caschetta, a lecturer at the Rochester Institute of Technology, provides some interesting background.

For example, author Tim Wells interviewed most of the hostages for his oral history, 444 Days: The Hostages Remember (1985). Few called their captors “students,” using various terms: Iranians, radicals, militants, terrorists, goons, guards, knuckleheads, turkeys, and assholes.

One of the key leaders of the hostage-takers was Hossein Sheikholeslam, who convened press conferences for the legions of international journalists that flocked to Tehran. But he hadn’t been a student since the early 1970s when he attended the University of California at Berkeley. His proficiency in English also made him suitable to interrogate the hostages. Sheikholeslam “may have been trained in interrogation techniques,” wrote William Daugherty, one of only four CIA officers stationed at the embassy on November 4.

Another ringleader, Mohammad Hashemi, wasn’t a student. He spent his time with friends forming a group called “Muslim Students Following the Imam’s Line,” which gave orders to those who showed up to protest outside the U.S. embassy. They wore laminated photos of Khomeini around their necks and pinned to their jackets.

The hostage-takers “strictly allied with Khomeini and the new mullah establishment,” according to Mark Bowden in Guests of the Ayatollah (2006). As Bowden puts it, they “were all committed to a formal Islamic state and were allied, some of them by family, with the clerical power structure around Khomeini.”

Second, the news media didn’t understand how big the story would become. The foreign editor of Newsweek, where I worked, told me the takeover wouldn’t last more than a day or so. It went on for 444 days!

Newsweek didn’t put the story on the cover until three weeks after the takeover occurred and then only as a part of an overall analysis of the burning of the U.S. embassy in Libya, the Russian influence in the Afghanistan government, and Islamists taking over Mecca.

The U.S. television networks were so unprepared that only one ABC News radio reporter had a valid visa to get into Iran. As a result, ABC had exclusive coverage for several days, laying the groundwork for “America Held Hostage” and then Nightline.

Third, many journalists thought the religious government of Iran had to be better than the Shah. How wrong we were!

I will now say an act of contrition. I hope other reporters do the same. 

Open Skies and Comcast Cable: Both things that need to be cut

Posted: November 2, 2019 by ng36b in Uncategorized
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One of the Russian Open Skies Aircraft
By Oleg Belyakov – http://www.airliners.net/photo/Russia—Air/Tupolev-Tu-214ON/2007280/L/, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17241781

Anytime President Trump goes to cancel a treaty, it sure causes a ruckus. Open Skies, a treaty we’ve had with Russia and 32 other countries since 2002 (although the idea traces back to 1955) that allows flights by very specific aircraft with very specific imaging equipment to fly anywhere over the countries of the signatories. It was designed as a mutual-trust building measure to help the then-Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries build trust with their NATO counterparts.

Now President Trump doesn’t see any point to it. Similar to the INF Treaty, Open Skies has outlived its usefulness, for a lot of reasons:

China is a bigger threat. Yup, China. China is absolutely loving the world created for it by the post-World War Two winners, and has benefited tremendously. Not being constrained by Open Skies, INF, START, or a host of other treaties, it remains openly belligerent to its neighbors. Dropping out of US-Russia agreements allows us to restart negotiations and add in China.

We have other surveillance. Open Skies flights are announced in advance, and both sides take steps to limit what can be observed. The actual usefulness of the flights is pretty limited. Plus, with advances in satellite technology, the flights don’t add much value unless you don’t have access to any satellite imagery. Given that you can purchase public imagery, the Open Skies treaty is increasingly becoming irrelevant.

It’s a swipe at Russia. Russia continues to behave aggressively. Ukraine? Georgia? Still missing pieces of territory. If you’re in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, you’re not exactly comfortable with this trend. This, on top of Russia’s push to legitimize tactical nuclear weapon use, makes them increasingly dangerous. Why reward that behavior?

Open Skies is like Comcast Cable. The subscription gives you so little, yet benefits the other side an awful lot. You know you can do better, but that inertia to keep it remains.

We need to cut the cord on Open Skies and all other deals until Russia stops invading its neighbors.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

A political horror story – This is what the US would be like if the Democrats win in 2020

Posted: October 31, 2019 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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In honor of Halloween I decided to write a truly horrific article.  This is the absolutely scariest scenario I could possibly imagine for the United States as we know it – the Democrats not only taking the White House, but also taking control of the Senate, while maintaining control of the House. 

For proof of the truly catastrophic consequences of this scenario we only need to examine the campaign promises of the Democratic presidential candidates, the Democratic party platforms, and the track record wherever Democrats and other leftists have been in control to implement their policies. 

Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and other Democratic presidential candidates are pushing wealth distribution.  There are no betters examples of the devastating consequences of this tragically flawed economic policy than Venezuela and California.  History has provided everyone with numerous other examples of the economic carnage that would result from this deeply flawed idea, but that won’t stop the Democrats from implementing it here if they won control.  The entire US would rapidly be transformed economically into California, then into Venezuela. 

Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have openly talked about nationalizing different private industries, and I believe others would do the same.  ObamaCare was an attempt to nationalize the entire US health industry and that was a disaster.  All industries were nationalized in the Soviet Union and other socialist countries, with epically horrific results.  The same would happen here.

Nothing can strangle a business more rapidly and thoroughly than government regulation.  The Democrats would overburden US companies with so much red tape the economy would quickly sputter to a halt.

The Second Amendment would quickly be gutted if the Democrats won control.  They would not accomplish by altering the Constitution.  It is clear to everyone that they would enact extremely strict gun control through unconstitutional legislation and activist judges who would gut the Second Amendment,  Only criminals and the government would have guns making everyone vulnerable to criminals and government tyranny.  One candidate has even talked about out right gun confiscation, that won’t end well at all.

Free speech would be a thing of the past.  Political correctness would become a universal standard  of  speech.  Opposing idea would be labeled hate speech and those daring to offend would be punished. If you think this is an overstatement just look at liberal controlled college campuses and countries like Great Britain.

There would only be one religion allowed in the United States and that would be the religion of Progressivism.  That would be done in the name of enforcing the mythical wall of separation between church and state.  Beto O’Rourke has openly called for punishing churches who dare oppose the Progressive orthodoxy.  Other Democrats would do the same if given power. 

Medicare for all would become the law of the land.  The entire US healthcare system would be transformed into the British National Health Service or the VA.  American medical innovation would grind to a halt and wait times would explode.  Health care rationing would soon follow.  Socialized medicine has always resulted in tremendous suffering.

Crime would explode everywhere in the United States like it has wherever Democrats have gained control.  This is a direct result of the policies Democrats impose.

Our economy would collapse because the Democrats would impose the Green New Deal,  all in the name of combating the mythological beast known as climate change. 

There would be so many other horrific consequences of the Democrats gaining control but I think this article would become so scary it would cause nightmares if I continued to list them.  I think I’ve listed enough for now.  Happy Halloween.

Report from Louisiana: Reading

Posted: October 28, 2019 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
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By:  Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT – The Louisiana Book Festival is coming up Saturday, November 2, and I’m kind of sad not to be going this year. Last year, my book had just come out and I was one of the invited speakers. It was a great experience!  This year, I’ll once again be speaking about Cammie Henry on that date, but this time in Natchitoches at an event on Creole Architecture at various locations in Natchitoches parish.

This year there are at least two Louisiana authors on the list of finalists for the National Book Award, Sarah M. Broom and Albert Woodfox, and actually both sound like books I would like to read:

Broom’s The Yellow House is a memoir named for the New Orleans East house in which she grew up. The house was destroyed after Hurricane Katrina and the levee failures, which is when Broom moved back to New Orleans. In the book, she discusses the impact Katrina had on her family….Woodfox’s book, Solitary, discusses his time in Angola Prison, where he joined the Black Panther Party. Woodfox and other members of the Panthers were accused of killing a white guard in 1972.

He would spend more than 40 years in solitary confinement before his eventual release in February 2016, and the book details the harrowing conditions he experienced.

Non-fiction is usually by go-to when I’m looking for something to read, but honestly, I go in spurts. I’m reading The Last Lynching: How a Gruesome Mass Murder Rocked a Small Georgia Town, now, and I also have a fiction stack.  I’m reading my way through Tana French’s oeuvre; I read The Witch Elm earlier in the year, loved it, and have now backtracked to read everything else she’s done. I love a good mystery and she always keeps me guessing.

My stack of books to-be-read is ridiculous.  It reminds me of this article I read in The New Yorker this week about online shopping v. brick-and-mortar shopping; the author was debating the idea of bookstores charging an entrance fee (absurd!), but in discussing his own reading habits, he said,

When I’m out in the world, having a stroll in a city or town, it’s difficult for me to pass a bookstore without at least having a browse. Never mind that I probably own more unread books than I could ever possibly read in a lifetime. Somehow, deep down, I think I believe that I will live long enough to read them and everything else, eventually. Books make me feel immortal, and I want more of them, always.

I can totally relate to this sentiment.

I am nearing retirement in a couple of years and everyone says, “Oh, but what will you DO!?”

I will read, of course, and I will write more books.  What else?!

Pat Austin blogs at And So it Goes in Shreveport and is the author of Cane River Bohemia: Cammie Henry and Her Circle at Melrose Plantation. Follow her on Instagram @patbecker25 and Twitter @paustin110.

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