"Iran under the mullahs is a totalitarian dictatorship, like Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and communist North Korea. Dictatorships, by their nature, have no claim to sovereignty.

"Iran’s mullahs, ayatollahs, and other varieties of witch doctors are a cross between a horde of fanatics and a criminal gang. To speak of their enslavement of their own populace as if it had a particle of legitimacy means the rulers have the right to subjugate and terrorise those caught in its jaws. Such relativism does to morality what jihadists did to the World Trade Center on 9/11.

"As one Iranian escapee asked on social media: Why is it, do you think, that there are no Iranians in the West protesting Israel’s attack? The absence of protests by Iranian refugees tells you all you need to know about the nature of the Iranian regime. ...

"Dictatorships do not recognise any rights of their enslaved subjects. They cannot, therefore, claim some 'right to rule.' ...

"Once we cease to think in collective terms, the principle becomes clear: among fully free countries, it does not matter which one has jurisdiction over the area in which you live. Your life and happiness depend on your rights being protected, not violated, by whichever government has jurisdiction.

"Whether or not one lives under the jurisdiction of a rights-protecting government, not the colours of the flag one lives under, is the life-or-death issue. ...

"The time has come to move toward freeing all the people in the Middle East, thereby making the whole world safer. The time has come to end the Islamic Regime in Iran."

~ Harry Binswanger from his post 'Why not end the Iranian dictatorship?'

That said ...

"Iran [is] a country that is vaster, more populous, and significantly more complex than Iraq. ...

"Should Israel continue on its current trajectory, including the targeting of the Islamic Republic’s civilian and energy infrastructure, it will break the Iranian state. But the Israelis are neither capable of, nor inclined to, pick up the pieces afterward. Rather, they will 'internationalise' the problem.. ...

"Optimists may note that Iran isn’t Iraq — an ethno-sectarian hodge-podge cobbled together within artificially drawn borders. Unlike Iraq, Iran’s ethnic constituents have long related organically as Iranians.

"But while this is true, even this innate coherence couldn’t ease the deeper struggle: the difficulty of rebuilding order in a context of profound, culturally ingrained tension between state and society. ..."

~ Sohrab Ahmari from his post 'The regime change maniacs are back'

Still, Iranians deserve better. Much better. And so does everyone the mullahs and their proxies have terrorised since 1979.

PS: A few Iranian and related folk I follow on Twitter...

Masih Alinejad

𝗡𝗶𝗼𝗵 𝗕𝗲𝗿𝗴 ♛ ✡︎

Kareem Rifai

mersedeh_eye

Elica Le Bon الیکا‌ ل بن

Ali Safavi

Alireza Jafarzadeh

Nasser Sharif

Hamid Azimi

Nasrin Saifi

NCRI-FAC

People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK)

From Igor Stravinky’s Autobiography: “For me, as a creative musician, composition is a daily function that I feel compelled to discharge. I compose because I am made for that and cannot do otherwise. Just as any organ atrophies unless kept in a state of constant activity, so the faculty of composition becomes enfeebled and dulled […]

Eli Tan and Mike Isaac, reporting for The New York Times:

On Monday, WhatsApp said it would start showing ads inside its app for the first time. The promotions will appear only in an area of the app called Updates, which is used by around 1.5 billion people a day. WhatsApp will collect some data on users to target the ads, such as location and the device’s default language, but it will not touch the contents of messages or whom users speak with. The company added that it had no plans to place ads in chats and personal messages.

(a) I’ve never once looked at the Updates tab in WhatsApp; (b) does anyone believe they’re not going to put ads in the other tabs sooner or later?

WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum, back in 2012 (two years before Facebook acquired them for $19 billion, 13 years before this week’s introduction of ads into WhatsApp):

Advertising isn’t just the disruption of aesthetics, the insults to your intelligence and the interruption of your train of thought. At every company that sells ads, a significant portion of their engineering team spends their day tuning data mining, writing better code to collect all your personal data, upgrading the servers that hold all the data and making sure it’s all being logged and collated and sliced and packaged and shipped out... And at the end of the day the result of it all is a slightly different advertising banner in your browser or on your mobile screen.

Remember, when advertising is involved you the user are the product.

At WhatsApp, our engineers spend all their time fixing bugs, adding new features and ironing out all the little intricacies in our task of bringing rich, affordable, reliable messaging to every phone in the world. That’s our product and that’s our passion. Your data isn’t even in the picture. We are simply not interested in any of it.

When people ask us why we charge for WhatsApp, we say “Have you considered the alternative?”

Brian Grazer’s Hollywood bona fides speak for themselves.

• “Splash”
• “Friday Night Lights”
• “Apollo 13”
• “A Beautiful Mind”
• “Arrested Development”
• “Parenthood”

The producer’s decades-long partnership with Ron Howard alone made him a critical cog in Hollywood’s machinery. Grazer spent those years digging deep for Democratic causes, becoming one of the industry’s highest-profile progressive donors.

Until last year.

Brian Grazer Voted for Trump, Admitting It Felt Like “Getting Canceled” https://t.co/OPF29cHu8z

— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) June 6, 2025

The 73-year-old Grazer committed the ultimate sin in La La Land. No, he didn’t cover up for a producer accused of sexual impropriety or back a string of embarrassing flops.

He voted for President Donald Trump in 2024. He even shared the revelation on a FOX Nation docuseries – “The Art of the Surge.”

For that, he must suffer, according to a shocking report in the liberal Puck News.

The feature, written by veteran Hollywood journalist Kim Masters, details the fallout from Grazer’s confession. For the record, the uber-producer said he voted for Trump, in part, due to President Joe Biden’s mental decline. Here’s what he told the far-Left New York Times about his voting decision.

“As a centrist, it was because I could feel and see Biden’s deterioration and the lack of direction in the Democratic Party at that time.”

Puck News followed up on the fallout from Grazer’s confession.

Sources have told me the news that Grazer had, um, flipped came as a blow to Howard, as well as many others, including Tom Hanks….

“When this thing happened, they were beside themselves,” a well-placed source told me. Executives at the company “were getting calls from around town—they’re all mortified.”

Another “high-level source” within Hollywood, according to Puck News, described the confession as “problematic for his partner and people in business with him.”

The report pins Grazer’s Trump embrace on Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who in recent months bought a documentary about First Lady Melania Trump for $40 million and donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund.

It’s a curious turn of events given recent history. Amazon has had an alarming track record of suppressing Right-leaning content.

FLASHBACK: On February 8, 2021, Amazon stopped streaming documentary, Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words, during Black History Month & refused to stream it that month after being alerted to this. I wrote op-ed about this despicable conduct. https://t.co/eRneQuXWMe

— Mark Paoletta (@MarkPaoletta) February 27, 2025

Grazer’s decision couldn’t possibly be connected to President Trump’s policies, the sorry state of the union or the anemic Biden/Harris ticket, according to Puck News.

Set aside the journalistic hubris and Grazer’s intentions. It’s the latest example of Hollywood’s intolerance toward anyone who dares support President Trump or simply leans to the Right.

Just ask James Woods … or Kevin Sorbo … or countless Republicans who stay mum lest their careers go up in smoke. For every Jon Voight or Sylvester Stallone there are many others who fear the fallout from admitting their conservative beliefs.

We’re seeing that in real time.

The oh, so tolerant industry shoved Grazer’s history of Democratic support aside, suggesting his career could suffer from his Trump vote.

The article predicts stars will keep working for Grazer, but mostly due to the industry’s troubled state. Translation? Work is too precious these days for actors to stand on their so-called principles.

Just don’t expect them to be charitable to him on the cocktail circuit.

It’s the latest proof that Hollywood’s intolerance is un-American, undignified and out of control.

The post Is Hollywood’s Anti-Trump Blacklist Worse Than We Thought? appeared first on Hollywood in Toto.