Mediaboss Marketing

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps naval commander Admiral Alireza Tangsiri said the Persian Gulf belongs to Iran, saying that Iran has the right to question any vessels entering the Straits of Hormuz and Iranian territorial waters. The statement is the latest in a series of Iranian threats to neighboring countries of the Persian Gulf after six months of tensions in which Iran downed a US drone, attacked six ships and seized one UK-flagged ship in the sensitive waterway.Tangsiris statement is part of the IRGCs increasing attempts to harass or provoke the US and allies. The IRGC navy controls and monitors the foreign vessels which enter the Persian Gulf and questions them about their nationality, type of vessel and their destination, said the Iranian commander. He claimed the US has always responded to these requests. Iran hosted Omans foreign minister recently and sought to reduce tensions with the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Iran wants to push its own initiative called Hormuz Peace Endeavor (HOPE) in the Gulf. It also says that it wants a joint naval drill with Russia and China.Irans mixed statements about peace and also control are a way to send a message to the US and Western navies. For instance the US has sought to lead a maritime security initiative in the Gulf and France has pushed its own European role. Denmark and Holland appear ready to work with France, which has a naval base in the UAE. The US has a naval base in Bahrain. Since August the UK and US have also worked increasingly closely in the Gulf. In July, the UK seized an Iranian tanker and Iran seized a British tanker. Iran wants to claim that its navy can do what it wants, even escort US ships, in the Gulf.Irans IRGC naval commander says the Gulf covers 250,000 square kilometers and that it opposes nuclear-powered vessels entering the Gulf, including submarines. He says foreign states are also adding to insecurity in the Gulf. Iran says that the seven countries, called 7+1 in Irania parlance around the Gulf should be the ones to establish sustainable security in the region. That would apparently mean Kuwait, Iraq, Iran, Bahrain, the UAE, Qatar, Iran and Oman. Tasnim and Fars News both reported the admirals comments.Iran says that it will hold a large-scale naval exercise in the Gulf that will include a massive naval war game. Iran will show off its latest gadgets, although the Iranian navy is not very large and is no match for major Western navies. However, its use of IRGC fast-boats has been successful at harassing large ships of other powers. In March 2018 Iranian IRGC boats harassed the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier and in October 2018, boats harassed the USS Essex, part of the US Amphibious Ready Group. In the summer of 2019 the US increased its naval presence in the Gulf, sending the US destroyer Mason to join the USS Bainbridge. The USS Abraham Lincoln remains near the Gulf with the USS Leyte Gulf. US Central Command said the USS Abraham Lincoln and USS Leyte Gulf were in the Arabian Sea on December 10.

See the rest here:
Irans IRGC: The Persian Gulf belongs to us - The Jerusalem Post

An Iranian man whose lorry broke down in Poland will be given a new truck after a fundraising drive

An Iranian driver who was stranded after his lorry broke down in Poland received a helping hand from locals who launched a crowd-funding initiative for a new truck to take him home.

Self-employed lorry driver Fardin Kazemi was delivering raisins to Poland and planned to continue on to the Czech Republic to pick up goods to import to Iran when his American International 9670 lorry broke down.

Mr Kazemi was forced to sleep in his truck after the breakdown 5,550 kilometres from home in the southern city of Czestochowa in early December. Locals provided him with food and a roof over his head a few days after the vehicle broke down, but quickly decided they wanted to do more to help.

Polish lorry-drivers joined forces to help him repair the vehicle, and when that proved impossible, they decided to crowd-fund him a new one.

I have travelled all over Europe for 27 years so far I have not had the chance to get to know Poles better, although they have always been nice. Now it turns out that they are wonderful people, and it is difficult for me to believe in all the help I received, Mr Kazemi told local newspaper Dziennik Zachodni.

By Friday morning, the appeal on the website zrzutka.pl had drawn more than 250,000 zlotys (Dh240,000) in donations for Mr Kazemi.

A replacement lorry was found on Thursday but its seller DAF Trucks - a Dutch manufacturing company which is a division of US firm Paccar - pulled out at the last minute for fear of being affected by US sanctions against Iran.

The organisers of the online appeal now hope to quickly find another vehicle for Mr Kazemi, according to a video posted to Facebook.

Updated: December 21, 2019 11:50 AM

See the original post:
Polish public to buy new lorry for stranded Iranian - The National

President Trump is waging a war against the free press, according to presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar, and on the other hand, former Attorney General Eric Holder was its champion.

Yes, Klobuchar seriously suggested during Thursday's Democratic primary debate that Holder did more to preserve the rights of the press than Trump a ridiculous statement to anyone who remembers U.S. politics before 2016.

Trump is certainly no friend to the media, but the comparison is ridiculous, considering Holder was the head of a Justice Department that secretly obtained phone records for reporters and editors that worked at the Associated Press news agency.

There is an argument to be made that Trump has done a disservice to the press in both rhetoric and action. He has regularly decried the media as the enemy of the people and did away with the daily White House press briefings. But to claim he is worse than Holder, who seized private, home phone information from more than 20 individual reporters, is absurd.

When confronted about this violation, Holder insisted the DOJ had done nothing wrong. Spying on journalists was necessary, he said, considering there was a prominent national security leak that needed investigating. But Holder never offered specifics and instead left this as an open-ended, unconvincing excuse.

Trump is disparaging journalists, but Holder did much worse. Even the Left admitted as much when the news about Holders subpoena broke. To suggest otherwise now is negligent at best and dishonest at worst, and Klobuchar should know better.

Here is the original post:
Amy Klobuchar is wrong: Eric Holder was no friend to the media - Washington Examiner

The alarming revelation that Rep. Adam Schiffs House Intelligence Committee obtained and released telephone records of a journalist, another House member and President Trump's lawyers is just the latest in an escalating pattern of abuse by Democrats.

Democratic attempts to weaponize government power against their adversaries have largely gone unpunished, leading to ever more brazen offenses.

Having once held the power to write congressional subpoenas myself, I am familiar with the restrictions on Congress. For instance, the courts have not allowed Congress to compel documents from private entities unless the information informs legislation.

NUNES TELLS SCHIFF HE NEEDS 'REHABILITATION' AFTER IG REPORT: 'ADMIT YOU HAVE A PROBLEM'

There is no legislation under consideration that requires Congress to view call records of the president's lawyers or the media.

Intelligence Committee Chairman Schiff, D-Calif., has weaponized the subpoena power of Congress to collect data to which he is not entitled.

There was no justification for Schiff to use his subpoena power to obtain and publish the records of telephone calls by the ranking member of his committee, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif. Nor was there adequate reason to spy on a journalist or legal counsel for the president.

Though this is uncharted territory for the House, partisans in Congress and the media have bent over backward to defend Democrats' spying.

Schiff's abuse of power follows a much more audacious violation by a politicized FBI, as revealed by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz. His recent report detailed numerous egregious abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) by Obama administration bureaucrats.

In one example from the FISA report, we learned that the FBI in 2016 sent an informant to ask whether the Trump election campaign was planning an October surprise. That is information that wouldn't be particularly relevant to a criminal investigation, but would certainly be relevant to political espionage.

Though this flagrant perversion of the FBI and the FISA process may yet be prosecuted, thus far Democrats have gotten exactly what they wanted from their Deep State allies a thin pretext upon which to derail the Trump presidency with years of negative stories in the media.

Where did the Democrats get the idea they could get away with such overreach? Perhaps from the success of past attempts to spy on adversaries and weaponize agencies.

Democrats have certainly not had to worry about prosecution by their allies in the bureaucracy. Hillary Clinton famously destroyed her smartphone with a hammer and wiped her hard drive with Bleach Bit despite congressional subpoenas to prevent investigators from legally accessing evidence of wrongdoing. She got away with it. Why would anybody expect to be prosecuted?

But the spying even candidate Trump and the Clinton email investigation. In 2013, we learned the Obama Justice Department had spied on journalist James Rosen, accessing his emails, tracking his movements and collecting his phone records.

The spying on Rosen was revealed just weeks after reports surfaced that Associated Press reporters had been spied on when phone records of more than 20 lines were secretly obtained.

Obama administration Attorney General Eric Holder made a show in 2014 of signing new rules to assure journalists the Justice Department would abide by written guidelines. But no one was fired or disciplined by Holder.

Just two years later, the Obama Justice Department would change tactics, this time using the FISA Court process to spy on political adversaries,

Concurrent to the Justice Department spying on the media, the Internal Revenue Service was targeting conservative nonprofits for unprecedented scrutiny, requiring them to submit answers to detailed questionnaires about their donors.

This information was not required of left-leaning nonprofits. Like the spying at the Justice Department, this process produced information that was more useful for political than for regulatory use, and it deprived the applicants of their First Amendment rights.

Though my Republican colleagues and I pushed hard for consequences, including the impeachment of the IRS commissioner, the Obama administration held firm against holding anyone accountable. The Justice Department would later pay out millions of dollars to settle claims by the nonprofits.

I even had my own personal brush with Deep State spying when more than 40 members of the Secret Service unlawfully accessed my personnel records. In an effort to intimidate and embarrass me during an investigation of their agency, some leaked my personal information to the media in violation of department policy.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR OUR OPINION NEWSLETTER

In this case, the agency did ultimately mete out soft consequences, but nobody was prosecuted and nobody was fired. Little did I know then that this was just part of a pattern of abusing surveillance.

These are just some of the corruptive acts we know about. What else is out there?

If we don't take action now and prosecute, the pattern will only continue to escalate because federal officials wrongly using their powers will continue to know there are no serious consequences.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

In the long run, that's an outcome that will be bad for Republicans, bad for Democrats and bad for all Americans.

Attorney General William Barr should be applauded for taking this threat seriously and assigning U.S. Attorney John Durham to investigate and prosecute wrongdoing committed during the 2016 election campaign. But thus far, the Democrats have not been held accountable for their brazen spying on their political opponents.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE BY JASON CHAFETZ

Original post:
Jason Chaffetz: Democrats are working to weaponize government power against their adversaries It must stop - Fox News

With the full House of Representatives expected to vote on impeachment Wednesday, it seems appropriate to point outagainhow if Democrats public sentiments about impeachment were sincere, and not purely partisan, theyd have impeached Obama for the very same things many, many, many times.

In addition to abuse of power, Democrats have charged President Trump with obstruction of Congress over the refusal of the White House to simply allow individuals to testify. The Trump White House, like his predecessors, is very much aware of the separation of powers, and hasn't given Democrats open season to call any witness they want to be grilled for hours without some pushback. This is technically how the system is supposed to work. Congress can subpoena witnesses and documents from the executive branch, but the executive branch can fight those in the courts. Democrats, not wanting to prolong impeachment and risk severe public blowback, have essentially argued that such refusals to comply with the first request merit obstruction of Congress.

So, lets take a look at just a few examples of their golden boy Obama doing the exact same thing, and then we can ask ourselves Why didnt Congress impeach Obama over this? If the same standard theyre applying to Trump today were applied to Obama, the latter would have been kicked to the curb.

In 2009, two party-crashers got past the Secret Service during a state dinner, and managed to meet and shake hands with Barack Obama. How does such a breach in security happen? Congress wanted to know and opened up an investigation. For some reason, though, the White House wasnt equally interested in investigating the breach, and when White House Social Secretary Desire Rogers was asked to testify before Congress, the White House refused to let her, citing separation of powers as the reason. There wasnt anything partisan about this investigation. In fact, Democrats were the ones running it. The refusal to comply with the investigation was bizarre, and legal scholars found the separation of powers excuse in this particular case to be rather dubious.

What was the Obama White House really trying to hide? Who knows? But, despite obstructing Congress, the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives didnt launch an impeachment inquiry.

Elana Kagan served as solicitor general for the Obama administration before being nominated and confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court. During her time as solicitor general, she was heavily involved in crafting a legal defense for Obamacare. This was significant as issues involving Obamacare were coming before the Supreme Court and federal law dictates that Supreme Court justices must recuse themselves when their impartiality might reasonably be questioned, such as with Elana Kagan and Obamacare.

Under 28 U.S.C. 455(b)(3), a Supreme Court justice has a legal duty to recuse him- or herself from a proceeding if they have served in governmental employment and in such capacity participated as counsel, adviser or material witness concerning the proceeding or expressed an opinion concerning the merits of the particular case in controversy.

Of course, with a closely divided Supreme Court, Obama couldnt afford to have Kagan recuse herself from Obamacare-related cases. So, when the House Judiciary Committee requested documents and interviews to get a clear understanding of her role relating to Obamacare while she was solicitor general, the Obama/Holder Justice Department refused to comply.

Kagan ultimately never recused herself from Obamacare-related cases. Imagine if the tables were turned.

In 2014, Democratic operatives were concerned that the Obama White House wasnt doing enough to help in the forthcoming midterms. So, Obama launched the White House Office of Political Strategy and Outreach to do more for their candidates. Of course, this raised legitimate concerns that Obama had just created a White House office specifically for political activity.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee launched an investigation in order to make sure the White House was complying with civil services laws that were designed to prevent executive branch employees from engaging in political activity. They subpoenaed David Simas, the director of the Office of Political Strategy and Outreach, but the Obama White House refused to allow him testify, and actually claimed Simas was immune from congressional compulsion to testify on matters relating to his official duties and thus would not appear before the committee.

The Iran Nuclear Deal was so bad Obama didnt even try to get Senate ratification for it, and much of the negotiations were done without Congress being informed. When congressional Republicans wanted to get answers after Ben Rhodes (the failed novelist turned Obama speechwriter turned top foreign policy adviser to Obama) let it spill to the New York Times that the administration relied on a false narrative to sell the Iran deal to the public, the White House wouldnt let him testify, using the separation of powers excuse. Specifically, the appearance of a senior presidential adviser before Congress threatens the independence and autonomy of the president, as well as his ability to receive candid advice and counsel in the discharge of his constitutional duties, explained White House counsel Neil Eggleston. This was after the White House previously claimed they wouldnt hide behind executive privilege.

The investigation of the botched Fast & Furious investigation is perhaps the most significant example of the Obama administration using executive privilege to justify their refusal to cooperate with a congressional investigation. Attorney General Eric Holder, Obama's wingman, refused to provide subpoenaed documents to the House Oversight and Reform Committee. The blatant attempts by the administration to resist cooperating with the investigation ultimately led to a historic vote to hold Attorney General Holder in criminal contempt.

_____

Matt Margolis is the author of Trumping Obama: How President Trump Saved Us From Barack Obama's Legacy and the bestselling book The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama. You can follow Matt on Twitter @MattMargolis

Excerpt from:
Five Times Golden Boy Obama Obstructed Congress and Democrats Didnt Impeach | News and Politics - PJ Media