Since the uprising against Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, journalists there have faced a violent backlash for reporting the government’s response to anti-regime demonstrations. Roy Greenslade at the Guardian reported yesterday that Hakim Almasmari, the editor of the English-language Yemen Post, talked with International Press Institute’s Naomi Hunt on what it’s like to report in Yemen. “It’s hell,” he said:

“Journalists in Yemen right now are very much in danger... It’s chaotic; you can see that the freedom of press in Yemen has deteriorated so much. There’s no government, no law. And when there’s no law, anyone’s life is at risk…

That’s why journalists have been killed, four of them, since Saleh came back. … With the absence of law and any government, it’s easy for anyone just to attack a journalist or just to kill him, making this a lesson to others that anyone who goes against a specific group will not be safe.”

Indeed, organizations like the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders have been documenting instances in which journalists in Yemen are being killed or wounded:

Ever since President Saleh’s return from Saudi Arabia on 3 October, the pro-government TV stations have been waging a hate campaign against many journalists, accusing them of treason and espionage. This has triggered a wave of attacks and violence against a growing number of media personnel.

“The [international] media should not forget Yemen,” Almasmari said, “There’s a revolution going on. There are people being killed.”

As part of a push for United Nations recognition, the Palestinians are exploring ways to join various U.N. agencies. But two laws passed by Congress in the early 1990s would kill U.S. funding for any U.N. agency that recognizes Palestine among its member ranks. The issue is coming to a head this week as the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) board will vote on admitting Palestine.

But with the Palestinians primed to work their way into other U.N. agencies, the issue could become a much larger one, potentially affecting organizations crucial to international development and, perhaps, even nuclear non-proliferation. Foreign Policy’s Colum Lynch addressed the topic in a piece today where he raised the potential defunding of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). He quoted neoconservative American Enterprise Institute vice president for foreign and defense policy studies Danielle Pletka expressing support for the law prohibiting funding while acknowledging that holding back IAEA resources is a huge price to pay for attempting to block a relatively minor Palestinian gain:

[I]t would be very unfortunate if we were required by law to do to deny money to the International Atomic Energy Agency. [T]here are consequences to playing fast and loose, even in the international community. This is, at best, a supremely political quest by the Palestinians.

Opponents of the Palestinian U.N. bid seem to always dismiss it as a merely “political” exercise, all the while bemoaning the far reaching consequences of the power that the Palestinians stand to gain from recognition by the General Assembly or individual U.N. agencies — something that indicates they are more opposed to a Palestinian state than simply its out-of-turn recognition. That seems to be the case here, where Pletka is prepared to forsake one of the most effective U.N. agencies — one which works on the crucial global security issue of non-proliferation.

Indeed, when it comes to understand and halting Iran’s nuclear ambitions — something that Pletka’s ostensibly been working toward for a long time — the IAEA has proved an indispensable resource.

At a recent Atlantic Council panel, former top CIA analyst and Georgetown professor Paul Pillar noted just how important the IAEA was for gaining access to good information about Iran’s nuclear program:

[T]he single best source of information about programs of this sort – this was true of Iraq, it’s true of Iran – is an international inspections regime.

And in the case of Iraq, the flow of information was very good when we had it. It was suddenly a lot worse when we didn’t, whether it was because Iraq kicked out the inspectors, or as it happened closer to the war, when the U.S. kicked out the inspectors.

So my concluding observation would be, if we want to try to increase our collective confidence about what we can say about this particular program in Iran, the best way to do that would be to strive for a more inclusive and more extensive intentional inspections regime.

But perhaps less reliable information about Iran’s nuclear program would be a boon to Pletka because she has things on her mind other than collecting good intelligence about Iran’s nuclear program.

This weekend, a group called the Maryland Conservative Action Network is hosting a conference for Republicans and right-wing causes. One of the headline speakers is Frank Gaffney, a notorious hate preacher behind many of the anti-Muslim conspiracies now popular in some parts of the country. As Center for American Progress’s “Fear, Inc.” report revealed, well-funded Islamophobes like Gaffney have penetrated the conservative movement and the larger political discourse largely by taking a lead role in Republican groups like the one hosting him this Saturday.

Although Gaffney has enjoyed an uninterrupted platform on major media outlets, this conference, however, might be different. Former Maryland state Del. Saqib Ali (D) and activists from a number of civil rights groups in Maryland have organized a rally outside the conference. “Unfortunately, instead of inviting legitimate conservative speakers, MDCAN has instead chosen speakers who are well-known conspiracy theorists, McCarthyites, racists and anti-Muslim fanatics,” Ali wrote in a letter protesting the event.

Gaffney, whose unhinged anti-Muslim writings heavily influenced the Norway mass murderer, has responded to Ali’s rally with his signature style of paranoia:

“This is standard operating procedure for CAIR and other Muslim Brotherhood front groups,” Gaffney told TheDC in a discussion about the letter. “They are trying to impose what are known as Shariah blasphemy laws, whereby anyone who says anything critical about Islam, no matter how true, is to be silenced. It is actually a capital offense.”

In an interview with ThinkProgress, Ali laughed off Gaffney’s accusations. “I can promise him that neither I nor anyone else is trying to kill him,” said Ali. “However we do seek to get him some urgent psychological care.” Ali added, “The voices in his head seem to be getting a tad unruly.”

Ali is also concerned that several of the major speakers have a history of bigotry. “At this conference, one of the speakers, Robert Stacy McCain has repeatedly referred to gay people as ‘Faggots’ and Mexicans as ‘Beaners,’” Ali notes. “That is highly offensive to me.”

At a joint subcommittee hearing of the House Homeland Security Committee, a noted Washington hawk made hash of history — ignoring the raging final decade of the Cold War — to demonize Iran as the U.S.’s “number one strategic enemy in the world” and harshly criticize the Obama administration’s policies toward Iran.

Speaking at the hearing, Institute for the Study of War head retired Army General Jack Keane, an architect and prime promoter of the Bush administration’s “surge” escalation in Iraq (who’s now pushing to keep troops there against Iraq’s will), completely elided the last decade of the Cold War with the Soviet Union in order to single out Iran. In Keane’s testimony (PDF), he said:

The Iranian bungled operation to use proxies to assassinate the Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United States and to purposefully plan the operation inside the United States is a stunning rebuke to the Obama administration’s policy of negotiation and isolation with the Iranians. Indeed, Republican and Democratic administrations since 1980 have failed to deal effectively with the harsh reality that Iran is our number one strategic enemy in the world.

Watch it:

In the 1980s, the Cold War was still raging. This was at a time when, according to a Congressional Research Service report (PDF), Soviet military capabilities were surpassing the U.S. in a number of regards; when the U.S. and Soviets were fighting proxy wars in Central America and Afghanistan; and when the young struggles to tear down the Iron Curtain in Europe were getting started. Nuclear-armed submarines patrolled the seas, and both countries kept massive arsenals of missiles aimed at each other.

There’s little doubt that Iran does pose a strategic challenge to the U.S., but Keane’s revisionist history badly stretches credulity. Indeed, that using coordinated law enforcement and (presumably) intelligence gathering to break up the alleged assassination plot is hardly a “stunning rebuke” to the Obama administration’s policies, but rather reinforces that, in this case, they worked.

Furthermore, while calling Iran the “number one” strategic threat during the 1980s is completely ridiculous, that status may even be over-reaching since the end of the Cold War. For example, China is challenging American power, North Korea, unlike Iran, has tested a nuclear weapon; 9/11 demonstrated the threat of al Qaeda to the U.S.; and, no small thanks to Keane, the U.S. has gone to war with Iraq twice since the end of the Cold War.

The New York Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief, Ethan Bronner, has stirred up controversy over recent speaking engagements. But an announcement on the 92nd St. Y’s website shows that Bronner is now scheduled to appear on a panel hosted by the Clarion Fund, an Islamophobic organization, to discuss the “threat of a nuclear Iran.”

The invitation, as it appears on the Clarion Fund’s website, reads:

On Monday, November 7, 2011, at 7:30 PM, the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan, NY will host a panel discussion about the threat of a nuclear Iran, interspersed with clips from the award-winning documentary Iranium. The panel will be moderated by the film’s director, Alex Traiman, and will be simultaneously broadcasted in over 20 communities throughout the U.S. (details below).

Panelists include:

John R. Bolton, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations
Ethan Bronner, Jerusalem Bureau Chief, The New York Times
Nazie Eftekhari, Director, Iran Democratic Union
Richard Green, Executive Director, Clarion Fund
Richard Perle, former Chairman of the Defense Policy Board, Bush administration

Click HERE for details and to order tickets.

Bronner and the 92nd Street Y are free to associate themselves with whatever organizations they choose. But the fact that the Times’ Jerusalem bureau chief is lending his name to a Clarion Fund event, and the promotion of a film which advocates for military action against Iran, raises further questions about Bronner’s growing record of engaging in activities which could produce the appearance of a conflict of interest or undermine the impartiality of his reporting.

The Clarion Fund, which was profiled in the Center for American Progress’ Islamophobia report, “Fear, Inc.,” distributed the inflammatory anti-Muslim documentary Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against The West to 28 million swing state voters before the 2008 presidential election. Clarion is closely tied to Aish Hatorah, an evangelist, far-right, Israeli ultra-orthodox organization. Traiman, Iranium’s director and the moderator of the panel on which Bronner will appear, has close ties the Israeli far-right and lives in an ideological West Bank settlement.

Iranium, makes the case for attacking Iran and promotes an official U.S. policy of regime change. The film, much like the other documentaries produced by Clarion, portrays a clash of civilizations, promotes the view that Muslims value death over life and suggests that irrational hatred of Israeli and anti-Semitism is the only explanation for the frustration expressed by Muslim countries against the U.S.