AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM

ARAM MIRZAI—Nobody has escaped the news of the so called “popular demonstrations” in Iran during the recent days. Hundreds of thousands of articles, updates and tweets have been made on this matter, and many have talked about what the reasons behind these protests have been. Many videos show groups of so-called Iranians tearing down the pictures of Martyr Qassem Soleimani, while others chant “death to the Islamic Republic” and “death to Khamenei”. Thousands of such people have appeared across Iran and many of those Iranians outside of Iran cheer them on, while the Empire takes every chance to attack Iran.

MoA—That explanation has held up well. At the beginning of his regime Trump stuffed the White House with the military faction while the executive government -the deep state- waged a war against him. The corporate side of triangle of power was quite happy with his tax policies. But Trump soon discovered that the military faction did not concur with his ‘America first’ isolationist tendencies. The ‘grown ups’ and generals wanted to explain to Trump why they believe that the U.S. needs many allies and bases and why the many long wars the U.S. fights are sensible policy.

ERIC ZUESSE—On January 17th, Reuters editors chose to publish and headline an alleged ‘news’-report “Flap with Warren knocks Sanders’ strategy off course”, indicating that Sanders was ‘knocked off course’, and that Warren gained at his expense, when the January 14th final pre-primaries debate in Des Moines included Elizabeth Warren saying that Bernie Sanders had told her that a woman can’t win the Presidency in the United States and Sanders responded by saying that he had never said to anyone anything of the sort because he never believed anything of the sort.

JON HELLEVIG—With the stock market at all-time highs, virtually no unemployment (or so they say), and brisk GDP growth (supposedly) in the last decade, economic analysts would declare that the US economy is in excellent shape. But, it isn’t. The stock market is a central bank inflated asset bubble, and what GDP growth there has been, is an illusion brought about by the very same financial bubble and by pumping the economy up with record federal borrowings to finance the deficits that America cannot afford. Rigged statistics showing artificially low inflation serve to hold together the Trumped-up American economic narrative.

MoA—The EU3 will of course mealymouthily explain that they want Iran to pull back its program so that it does not exceed any limit of the deal. But why should Iran do that as long as the EU3 follow US sanctions against Iran and implement them against it? The EU3 have no reasonable answer to those questions. Iran has no real incentive to stick to the JCPOA limits as long as sanctions are held up against it. When the UN sanctions snap back it is likely to leave the JCPOA even if China and Russia continue to trade with it. The outcome here is 100% predictable. UN sanctions will snap back. Then the Trump administration will relaunch the ‘nuclear Iran’ propaganda campaign and will threaten Iran with war.