ZIONCONS

JACOB BACHARACH—In this regard, in both words and actions, Trump can sometimes lie truthfully. The week after the assassination crisis, he went on Fox News and claimed that Saudi Arabia had paid the U.S. $1 billion for more troops in the Middle East and that South Korea would pay another $500 million. These actual sums and transactions are almost certainly pure fantasy, a byproduct of the president’s frequent confabulations of half-remembered comments from programs on that very same Fox News. Yet they capture the rapacious nature of the U.S. and its globe-spanning empire.

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.

JOHN CATALINOTTO—Maduro recognized Parra as the new AN president, saying on Jan. 5: “The National Assembly has voted and there is a new leadership board. It was in the air that Guaidó was going to be removed by the very opposition.” Maduro  criticized Guaidó for “not showing up.” Parra said he would “pursue a path toward reconciliation” with the government.