October 2024

BRUCE LERRO—In the 19thcentury when liberalism really took hold as a political ideology, liberals were not interested in democracy, and considered it “mob rule”. Most industrialized countries did not have the right to vote at the end of the 19th century. Back then farmer populist parties and socialist parties took their democracy seriously, bringing economics into it. The result was a “substantive democracy” championed by Charles Merriman and Charles Beard in the 1930s. But the rise of fascism and communism had shaken liberal confidence in the natural sympathy between democracy and capitalism. So in the 1940s Joseph Schumpeter introduced a weakened form of democracy as simply the circulation of elite politicians  that people choose between. The procedural democracy of Robert Dahl of the 1950s involved choosing between these elites through voting. There was nothing about economics.

EDITOR—In probably one of the best and most eloquent and important interviews granted by Prof. Marandi to the alternative media, he explains the current conflict between US/Israel and Iran, its origins, its evolution and the outcome of the latest round of hostilities which, contrary to the loud victory proclamations by the Western media was in effect a tactical and strategic defeat for the West and its Zionist client as few of the missiles launched by the Israeli air armada penetrated Iran’s AD wall, the latter probably boosted by Russian ISR, S-400 batteries or better, and perhaps even Russian pilots in advanced aircraft. Prof. Marandi reminds the audience that Israel, per se, is not a real threat to Iran, as it is a small state utterly dependent on US/EU financial, military, diplomatic and media support to remain afloat, and is at present severely overextended. Iran has been preparing for an all-out attack by the US since 1979, notes Marandi, and has built literally ENTIRE military cities underground across the country where not even US bunker buster bombs can reach. In the process, it has also developed its scientific and techno-military industrial capabilities to rate today as one of the world’s leading powers, capable of producing its own missiles, tanks, drones, and advanced AD systems. 

EDITOR—Garland and Laith discuss the actual outcome of the latest Israeli strike on Iran, concluding that the air assault, comprising at least 100 warplanes and probably 200 missiles, and the full-on assistance of the US military, did little damage to Iran’s AD and strategic and economic infrastructure, and could have demonstrated instead Israel’s (and America’s) emerging severe limitations when confronting a peer power. Of course, Iran is now a member of BRICS, and also enjoys a mutual defence alliance with Russia and a de facto one with China, neither of which wants to see a destructive regional war in the Gulf, nor a major military setback by Iran nor the development of a successful regime change op by NATO.