Or just good fun
Our good friends, the Iranians, with whom the U.S. signed a nuclear agreement in 2015, have opened a new theme park for children. One of the attractions, "City of Games for Revolutionary Children," according to Britain's The Sun, allows youngsters to dress in full military regalia, grab AK-47s with plastic bullets, and fire away at effigies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli and American flags.
The attraction in the free park near Mashad, the country's second largest city, is aimed at boys ages 8-13.
The Sun adds more detail: "Instructors have built control towers, sand-bagged check-points stuffed with replica assault rifles, grenades and land-mines and radios to relay messages to the child soldiers.
"There's also assault courses where they can learn to scale walls and crawl under ropes and through barbed wire while orders are barked at them by trainers and the sound of machine gun fire is played through speakers."
Terrorism expert Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch had a pithy and frightening response to the new jihadist training ground.
"How do you think these children will fare against those who are being trained to be sensitive to microaggressions," he wondered, "and flee to safe spaces at the slightest sign of challenge?"
Meanwhile, Iran continues its rallying cry: "Death to America."
Taste of own medicine
After an election cycle in which its hosts and contributors slammed Donald Trump as racist, CNN is being sued by former and current black employees alleging racial discrimination.
The suit against CNN, Turner Broadcasting and Time Warner alleges black employees were paid less and had fewer opportunities for promotions.
"Dramatic" differences in pay, harsher evaluations for black males and fewer available promotions are among evidence of the prejudice, the suit states.
"Upon information and belief, African-American employees have had to endure racial slurs and prejudicial biases from superiors such as, 'It's hard to manage black people,' and 'Who would be worth more: black slaves from times past or new slaves?' " it also says.
The suit was prompted, according to The Daily Mail, during investigation for a separate $50 million lawsuit against CNN by another black man.
All this from the news network where, among other smears, host Van Jones called Trump's election "whitelash" against a black president, and a contributor accused Trump of "a lack of tolerance for other people."
One man's solution
Elie Mystal, an attorney and editor for the website Above the Law, has an idea to counteract juries who find white police officers innocent of shooting blacks, regardless of the circumstances. His idea is for black jury members to acquit blacks accused of murder or rape, no matter what the facts show.
"Jury nullification would get white people's attention," he wrote on the site. "Remember how p--ed-off white people were about O.J.? And that was just one dude. White people would notice if black jurors simply refused to play along."
Mystal claims white-dominated juries are already doing what he is suggesting - freeing police no matter what the circumstances show.
"Black people lucky enough to get on a jury could use that power to acquit any person charged with a crime against white men and white male institutions," he wrote. "It's not about the race of the defendant, but if the alleged victim is a white guy, or his bank, or his position, or his authority - we could acquit. Assault? Acquit. Burglary? Acquit. Insider trading? Acquit."
John Banzhaf III, a George Washington University law professor who writes regularly on legal matters, said such action would throw the legal system into chaos. Mistrials would increase, and the cost to governments for retrials would rise. But Mystal was undaunted.
"We're just supposed to take it?" he wrote. "Wait for America to produce nicer white people? The options for black America in the face of this state-sponsored injustice seem pretty limited."
Pot meet kettle
MSNBC's Brian Williams jumped on the "fake news" bandwagon last week, apparently oblivious of the irony.
"[L]ately," he said, "there's been a lot of coverage in the real news about the growing and booming business of creating fake news."
Williams suggested it may have had an influence on who was elected president.
"Fake news played a role in this election," he said, "and continues to find a wide audience."
The newsman perhaps forgot for a moment that he was dropped from his spot as anchor for NBC's nightly news program in 2015 after the truth about a 2003 incident during the Iraq war surfaced.
Williams claimed he had come under RPG fire while in a helicopter as he reported on developments in the war. But soldiers who were on the flight and on a different helicopter that did come under fire at the time angrily refuted the incident, which Williams had trumpeted on a recent news program.
Eventually, the anchor admitted he was wrong, citing "the fog of memory over 12 years." Several months later, he was demoted.