In the course of telling “The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare,” the subtitle of his authoritative new book Manufactured Crisis (Just World Books), Gareth Porter not only assures us that, once and for all, Iran is not developing nuclear weapons. He also explains why Iran feels the need to operate in secret at times and withhold information. Porter begins by writing that, under the last Shah, “Iran had served as the keystone of policy in the region for a quarter century” for the United States.

Turkey’s slide into authoritarianism appeared to continue last week when a court ruling banned Twitter. The verdict was handed down in response to three separate complaints filed against the social media site. One of the petitioners wanted explicit photographs of her removed from the site. Another wanted to close a fake account opened in their name. And a third, a politician and mayoral candidate for the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), was apparently displeased by insulting tweets directed against him.

I had a sense of déjà vu reading a New York Times piece recently – the distinct feeling I’d read the same piece before, or at least a nearly identical one. 

A quick search revealed I had – bizarrely, also in The New York Times, by the same correspondent, less than six months apart: