The government claims about 3,100 dead protesters, including hundreds of security personnel. The UN claims 14,000-20,000 dead. Reports emerged in mid-January that the sheer number of casualties in Tehran and other major cities exhausted the supply of body bags, with authorities reportedly using semi-trailer trucks to transport the dead.
The protests have quieted, largely thanks to security personnel shooting or arresting anyone who dares protest. More than 40,000 people have been arrested. How many of those poor souls will emerge from captivity is unknown.
The internet in Iran is still down, and authorities are terrified of reinitializing it. Their vast internal intelligence networks are telling them that the people are not going back to blind obedience to the regime.That’s because with the internet down, commerce in Iran has come to a screeching halt. Store shelves are empty. People aren’t working. In a nation sitting on an ocean of oil, most gas stations are closed.
This has led Iran into a “doom loop.” Commerce has slowed to a crawl, meaning the conditions that led to the economic protests in the first place have only worsened. It’s inevitable that this will lead to more protests and another crackdown.
How much longer the regime can last is an open question.
Time and time again we’re confronted with “fans” of something who continue to miss the lessons within the media they’re consuming. We’ve seen it with Star Wars, our superhero stories, and it has become an increasing problem with Star Trek “fans.”
More recently, men like The Critical Drinker and Nerdrotic, known for hating anything that seems to be left leaning, have been dogging on the Paramount+ slate of Trek shows. The issue with these Right Wing figure heads talking about Trek is that they miss one important detail about Star Trek: It was never for them.
From the start of Star Trek way back when (60 years ago, to be exact), the series set out to do one thing: Change the world. And that it did. It made history for its inclusivity, including being the first interracial kiss on television in “Plato’s Stepchildren.” The kiss was between William Shatner’s James T. Kirk and Nichelle Nichols’ Lt. Uhura.
It really wasn’t: Sammy Davis, Jr. and Nancy Sinatra got there first, a year earlier, in 1967. Similarly, Star Trek was envisioned right from the start as a show for a mass audience, which by its nature means people from all sides of the aisle. The words “mass audience” were used explicitly in the writer’s guide of the original series, which aired on NBC from 1966-1969:
YES, THE STAR TREK FORMAT IS ACTUALLY THAT SIMPLE. IF YOU’RE A TV PROFESSIONAL, YOU ALREADY KNOW THE FOLLOWING SEVEN RULES:
I. Build your episode on an action-adventure framework. We must reach out, hold and entertain a mass audience of some 20,000,000 people or we simply don’t stay on the air.
II. Tell your story about people, not about science and gadgetry. Joe Friday doesn’t stop to explain the mechanics of his .38 before he uses it; Kildare never did a monologue about the theory of anesthetics; Matt Dillon never identifies and discusses the breed of his horse before he rides off on it.
III. Keep in mind that science fiction is not a separate field of literature with rules of its own, but, indeed, needs the same ingredients as any story — including a jeopardy of some type to someone we learn to care about, climactic build, sound motivation, you know the list.
IV. Then, with that firm foundation established, interweave in it any statement to be made about man, society and so on. Yes, we want you to have something to say, but say it entertainingly as you do on any other show. We don’t need essays, however brilliant.
If anything, Star Trek: The Next Generation, performed even better when compared to other syndicated TV series, as the L.A. Times reported in 1988:
It has taken no time at all for an audience apparently made up of hard-core Trekkies and more recently won devotees to embrace the new “Star Trek” family. In first-run syndication, which means it airs on different days at different times on each of its 210 stations (locally on KCOP-TV Channel 13 Sundays at 5 p.m., repeating Saturdays at 6 p.m.), the new show has earned a national 10.6 Nielsen rating, which translates into an average weekly audience of about 9.4 million households.
While that total audience is about half what Top-10 network shows, such as “Growing Pains” or “60 Minutes,” produce each week in prime time, it is about equal to such network prime-time staples as “Spencer: For Hire” and “The Disney Sunday Night Movie.”
Playing mostly out of prime time, those numbers, Harris said, exceed Paramount’s initial expectations.
And demographically, the raw data that is used to set advertising rates, the show’s numbers are even more impressive. During the February sweeps, “Star Trek: The Next Generation” was the most watched show in its time period among Los Angeles-area men 18-54, according to Don Searle, KCOP’s research director, even beating the Winter Olympics.
The demographics were so good that Paramount’s share of the advertising revenue generated from the series each week is reportedly close to $1 million–greater than the approximately $800,000 license fees the networks generally pay for a one-hour prime-time program.
Those shows succeeded because the story came first, before the messaging, as the 1966-era Trek writer’s guide demanded. All of the modern-era streaming Trek are woke messaging first, story second (or third). Why, it’s as if:
If you read through the press materials it’s clear everyone involved thinks the most salient part of Star Trek was that it was a political show about the 60’s. And in that one misunderstanding you can see why everything has gone wrong https://t.co/1x4qtRYnp5
MEDIAITE: BBC Confirms Authenticity of Viral Video Appearing to Show Alex Pretti Kicking Agents’ Car 11 Days Before Shooting. “The BBC confirmed the authenticity of the video in their 10 p.m. GMT news broadcast. Reporter Ros Atkins said the man in the video ‘has the same coat, facial hair and gait as Alex Pretti and a facial recognition tool suggests a 97% match. We see him shouting abuse at the agents.’ Separately, a spokesperson for the BBC confirmed to Mediaite that they reviewed the footage and verified its team did use facial recognition technology on the video.”
UPDATE: This is CNN:
Last night on CNN.
Ana Navarro: Alex Pretti was the perfect guy. He's the guy that you want to date your daughter. He's the man you want your son to be. They can't malign him because we have the videos.
MUST WATCH: Footage of an a man who looks like Alex Pretti with a gun in his waistband, spitting on and attacking federal law enforcement officers and kicking the tail light of their vehicle on January 13.
“If this video is verified as accurate, and more information comes forth, then it further cements the veracity of recent reporting that Alex Pretti was no peaceful protestor or innocent bystander. Pretti was an anti-ICE activist who sought confrontation and did what MN Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan encouraged: he put his body on the line.”
A CNN correspondent gave a report from Tehran that effectively served as a puff piece for the despotic Iranian regime, omitting the fact that the murderous government had killed thousands of protesters while warning of the Iranian regime’s defiant message to the Trump administration.
“Iran’s leadership is sending a strong and very defiant message to the United States, and specifically, of course, to the Trump administration,” CNN International Correspondent Frederik Pleitgen said. “You could see it here on this gigantic poster on Revolution Square in central Tehran. The message on this massive poster is, ‘If you sow the wind you will reap the whirlwind,’ obviously meaning if the United States attacks Iran, Iran will retaliate in a massive way, which could, of course, lead to a major military confrontation between the United States and Iran.”
* * * * * * * * *
Iran’s leadership is sending a defiant warning to the United States as tensions soar. @fpleitgenCNN reports from inside Iran, and speaks to residents on the streets of the capital Tehran. pic.twitter.com/iXNlRQCLzc
The NFL world was baffled by the news reported by ESPN on Tuesday evening that Belichick, the six-time Super Bowl-winning head coach, was not elected into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, on his first appearance on the ballot.
Belichick fell short of the requisite 40 votes of 50 votes from the voting committee — made up of at least one media representative from each football city and other at-large members — needed to gain entry.
ESPN reported that the two major scandals Belichick was beleaguered by in New England — Spygate in 2007 and Deflategate in 2015 — were part of the discussions. Ex-Colts general manager Bill Polian, an at-large member of the voting committee, reportedly told some voters that Belichick should “wait a year” before getting inducted. Polian denied he voted against Belichick to Sports Illustrated.
Whatever the reason, Belichick — who also won two Super Bowls as a defensive coordinator with the Giants — will not be enshrined in 2026, and the football world was largely stunned.
The British government’s Prevent office, housed under the Home Office (think Department of the Interior, but allergic to dissent), partnered with a media nonprofit called Shout Out UK (like a PBS focused on preventing “radicalism”) to come up with a clever new way to re-educate British youth.
The concern, as always, was “radicalization.” They thought the solution was inspired: a choice-based video game. Kids like games. Games involve decisions. Decisions shape values. What could possibly go wrong?
Thus Pathways was born, a government-funded interactive morality play designed to gently shepherd British children toward being properly antiracist, properly accepting, and properly enthusiastic about the ever-increasing number of migrants reshaping their country. Civics class, but fun. And digital. And corrective.
As part of this effort, the designers introduced a character named Amelia, a cute, purple-haired, vaguely goth girl who carries a Union Jack and talks about Britain being for the British. She was meant to function as a warning, a living illustration of how nationalism can look attractive, even charming, and yet be dangerous to the impressionable youths of Britain who may not have fully internalized the idea that Brexit is bad and they are to obey their elitist overlords.
What they did not anticipate was that the public would take one look at adorable, charming Amelia and decide she was the good guy.
British lefties are incandescent with rage over Amelia going viral:
He means: an abysmal attempt by the state to indoctrinate school children has failed miserably because normal everyday people are ripping the piss out of it with good reason. https://t.co/GOfPS7n4Zn
I know (trust me, I know) there are only so many ways to write about this topic, but beyond the truly horrifying illustration, the article sounds like an overwritten, yet much less funnier version of the original take on this topic: Dave Barry: A journey into my colon — and yours.
WORST. HITLER. EVER:
My favorite anti-ICE protest clip of all time is when a woman here in Asheville NC shows up to a protest wearing a mask, spells her FULL NAME LIVE ON THE NEWS…
Because he’s 88 years old, and he needs to have the proper footnotes in the twilight of his career, so that leftist music critics will remember his last days fondly and write favorable eulogies.
Related:
Philip Glass boycotting the Kennedy Center Philip Glass boycotting the Kennedy Center Philip Glass Philip Glass Philip Glass Philip Glass Philip Glass boycotting the Kennedy Center pic.twitter.com/zpEvaLupUl
While [Pamela Paul’s] opinion pieces trended liberal, she voiced skepticism on issues like cancel culture, cultural appropriation, and especially transgenderism. Such iconoclasm made her a reviled figure on the left and in the Times newsroom (but I repeat myself).
The fate of former Times opinion editor James Bennet may have affected how badly Paul was treated by Kingsbury. Bennet was forced out by the paper’s internal left-wing “child mob” for platforming a piece by Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas who argued federal forces should be sent to (deja vu) Minneapolis during the George Floyd riots of 2020.
Pamela Paul: The crime that James had committed was not writing the column or the op-ed. It was platforming it. And so, if I was writing things that were upsetting the, you know, the, the Little Red Guards or whatever, then that person in charge of the section would be guilty of platforming me….
Paul also got into the under-covered issue of online reader comments and what makes conservative posts mysteriously disappear: The paper’s leftist comment editors would do the bidding of leftist readers, who would accuse other commenters of being offensive or using the wrong pronouns, and the editors would dutifully delete those “offensive” comments – a practice that will sound familiar to conservatives.
She explained that her columns on gender issues received “overwhelmingly positive response” from readers but not from “magazines and newspapers that I felt like once would never have bothered to write stories that were essentially regurgitations and summations of a few angry tweets from activists and sort of invested parties.” The New Republic even called her a fascist.
Her February 2023 column defending author J.K. Rowling from vicious attacks by trans activists was the beginning of the end for Paul at the paper.
The Gray Lady needs to keep its hard left subscribers happy to keep the lights on, and that means avoiding any stories that might upset them. Or as America’s Newspaper of Record reported way back in 2019:
A puzzled reader might object that activists have long monitored police activity, that legal observers carry cameras, that communities organize to protect their neighbors. All true, in isolation. The question is not whether any single act is novel. The question is whether the aggregate pattern exhibits features that distinguish protest from organized obstruction. Research from counterinsurgency studies provides a useful vocabulary. Early stage insurgencies rarely announce themselves with bombs. They begin with infrastructure. They build command structures. They specialize roles. They develop intelligence capabilities. They seek to deny the state freedom of movement while remaining sub kinetic.
By that standard, Minnesota displays a striking resemblance to the organizational phase of an insurgency. Recruitment and cadre formation occur through ICE Watch training sessions organized at local schools, NGO facilities, and even HUD provided meeting spaces, converting civic infrastructure into intake and indoctrination nodes. Encrypted Signal networks, colloquially dubbed SignalGate, are divided by geography and capped at roughly 1,000 participants per zone. Membership is vetted through the use of voter rolls, with applicants screened to exclude anyone listed on Republican voter rolls. Chats are deleted on a daily rotation. Roles are assigned. Some participants act as spotters, scanning neighborhoods for federal vehicles. Others are plate checkers, logging make, model, color, location, and timestamp into a shared database known as MN ICE Plates. Dispatchers monitor the feed and direct mobile chasers to intercept targets. The reporting format mirrors SALUTE, size, activity, location, unit, time, equipment, a method taught in military intelligence.
This matters because intelligence collection is not expressive conduct. It is operational. When information is persistently gathered, verified, stored, and acted upon, it becomes a parallel intelligence system. In multiple instances, vehicles later confirmed not to belong to ICE were nonetheless tailed for hours after being flagged. That persistence reveals intent. The goal is not merely to warn neighbors. It is to degrade federal operations by denying surprise and freedom of movement.
The involvement of political officials further sharpens the picture. Leaked chats show participation or coordination by elected figures and senior staff. Minnesota Lt Gov Peggy Flanagan appears under aliases such as Flan Southside. City Council Member Aurin Chowdhury is linked to administrative roles. Former Walz adviser Amanda Koehler is identified as an organizer. Journalists affiliated with MPR and NPR appear in groups where federal locations and movements are discussed in real time. The line between observation and participation blurs when presence inside an operational channel confers access to intelligence and legitimacy to the network.
Read the whole thing. What happens next? Kurt Schlichter has some thoughts:
1/27/26 – Notes From a Competent Lawyer:
Walz blinked; now his cops are protecting ICE agent hotels. Moreover, we have compromised the left's Signal networks, and they are freaking out. Finally, the dead communist uproar never really happened; it's already fading.
CBS News will undergo a radical transformation in the coming months, with editor-in-chief Bari Weiss outlining her vision at an all-hands meeting Tuesday morning.
Weiss delivered a PowerPoint presentation that outlined her view on the state of media and how CBS can remain relevant in a challenging time for broadcast news. She also noted the barrage of interest and press in her arrival.
“I’m not going to stand up here today and ask you for your trust. I’m going to earn it, just like we have to do with our viewers,” Weiss told staff. “What I can give you is what I’ve always tried to give my readers a a journalist: transparency. Clarity. Straight talk. So here it is as plan as I can say it: I am here to make CBS News fit for purpose in the 21st century. Our industry has changed more in the last decade than in the last 150 years, and the transformation isn’t over yet. Far from it. It’s almost impossible to conceive of how fast things will move from here.”
CBS News unveiled a slate of contributors who are joining the network as part of Bari Weiss‘ new strategy for the news division.
The list of new contributors includes conservative historian Niall Ferguson and Patrick McGee, who specializes in tech and China and is a contributor to Weiss’ The Free Press, which CBS-parent Paramount acquired when she was tapped to lead the news division, according to a source familiar with the plans.
Also on the list are podcasters Andrew Huberman and Peter Attia, chef Clare de Boer, physician Mark Hyman, author Caroline Chambers and Casey Lewis, who has a Substack about emerging trends in youth culture.
During her meeting, Weiss reminded CBS staffers that she knows “there’s a lot of nostalgia” for the Cronkite era:
Back then, 30 million people watched Walter Cronkite every night. Some were on the left, some were on the right. But they trusted him*. Through Cronkite they inhabited a shared world with shared facts and a shared sense of reality.
We can’t reverse time’s arrow. He had two competitors. We have two billion, give or take.
What we can do is what journalists do best: look at the world as it actually is.
We have to start by looking honestly at ourselves.
That sounds like excellent advice for CBS – if only they were thinking that way back in September of 2004.
*Far too much in retrospect, but to make another awkward Titanic analogy, why quibble when someone is at least making an effort to steer the ship away from the icebergs?
Now that a second U.S. citizen has inserted himself into a legal law enforcement matter with deadly results, we get the Kimmel waterworks.
Twice.
“I spent the weekend like probably a lot of you did, looking at my phone and just feeling shocked and sick at what’s happening in Minneapolis … One video after another: screaming people being torn from their families, Americans, people who were born in the United States being pulled out of their cars for the crime of having an accent or whatever. Children, small children, babies being tear-gassed, taken into custody, separated from their parents.”
For those keeping score, that’s a jumble of lies, misinformation and narrative dodging. And, sadly, it’s par for the course.
And he wasn’t done.
“Just one atrocity after another being committed by this gang of poorly trained, shamefully led, mask-wearing goons. And that is what they are: They’re goons committing vile, heartless, and even criminal acts. It’s sickening to watch, and it’s frustrating to watch.”
Kimmel, at least on paper, is a late-night comedian. He’s taken on a new role, one egged on by the Left and Legacy Media outlets (but we repeat ourselves).
He’s the King of the anti-Trump Resistance. Comedy? Laughs? Merriment? That’s no longer his prime directive, and it hasn’t been for some time.
Not everyone is deserving of the Kimmel waterworks, of course:
Iryna Zarutska was butchered to death on a train in Charlotte by a career felon with 14 prior arrests. Her death was the direct result of leadership failures and bad policy. Jimmy Kimmel never mentioned her name, much less cried on camera about it. These people are sociopaths.… https://t.co/AxYssLWmo9
Normie America has weighed in on mass deportations.
Between 55% to 64% want ALL illegals deported. No exceptions.
Don't let the anti-ICE thugs fool you. They are for chaos, criminals, and corruption. They are against democracy, the rule of law, and YOU.pic.twitter.com/98ulHhFpCK
According to an MPD spokesperson, officers received reports of a group protesting outside the Hilton Home2 Suites and making noise. An MPD officer inside the building was assigned to keep guests and staff safe while providing real-time updates to the department.
As the crowd became “disorderly,” MPD said it began its plan to move in, de-escalate the situation and make arrests. Personnel on standby were recalled to duty, patrol officers across the city were called in, and the department requested mutual aid from the Minnesota State Patrol, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and several metro area law enforcement agencies.
After forming a plan, MPD and assisting agencies prepared to surround the crowd, issue dispersal orders and make mass arrests. Before they moved in, MPD said federal law enforcement arrived on scene “without notice or communication” and deployed chemical munitions. MPD stated it did not deploy any chemical munitions.
Was Sunday night’s sequence of events a garden-variety matter of local police wanting a plan in place before they engaged a disorderly crowd, less than 48 hours after a controversial shooting? Or was it foot-dragging, aligned with local officials’ opposition to the presence of ICE in their city and state?
My money is on the latter:
Alarming that Tim Walz and Jacob Frey had the ability to do this the entire time, but they allowed lunatic activists to harass federal law-enforcement officers and create an unnecessarily violent environment. https://t.co/1LYCEOiEDp
InstaPundit is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a
means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.
