Iran Cannot "Violate" The Nuclear Deal That the U.S. Nullified in 2018- Another Big Lie By Western Propaganda Media

What would you think of someone who openly cancelled a deal they made with you, but insisted that YOU had to ABIDE by it, and threatened violence to force you to do so?

You'd call that a gangster.

Imperialists, of course, are gangsters.

Western media and political elites are all in a tizzy suddenly about Iranian "violations" of the agreement that the U.S. abrogated over a year ago, and which is thus null and void. This is an example of how demented Western "elites" are. Trump tore up the nuclear accord with Iran in March of 2018, and not only reimposed the sanctions that were lifted by the U.S. in return for Iran shutting down and mothballing its various nuclear enrichment programs, even permanently crippling a brand new reactor to prevent it from producing plutonium, but has intensified sanctions even more than the Obama regime had imposed, including a declared goal of blocking ALL Iranian oil exports. The U.S. has forced even China and India to stop buying Iranian oil. It just had its British stooges seize an oil tanker carrying Iranian oil to a Syrian refinery, near British-controlled Gibraltar on the Mediterranean tip of Spain. (To be sure, the Assad regime is monstrous.) The U.S. has effectively prevented all major companies all over the world from doing business with Iran, under threat of U.S. economic punishments levied on the companies. Iranians are dying today because vital medicines are effectively blockaded by the U.S.' actions.

But IRAN is expected to continue to ABIDE BY THE AGREEMENT! It's simply insane. Iran should have stopped abiding by it as soon as the U.S. abrogated it and reimposed sanctions. Iran got raped, completely ripped off, by the U.S. They handed over a stockpile of enriched uranium, crippled a reactor, mothballed their centrifuges, and much else. This is one of the greatest double-crosses in recent history. (The Kurds know a lot about being double-crossed by the U.S., having been so victimized repeatedly.) [1]

But Trump said it was "the worst deal ever." Because? it expires in 15 years. And it didn't ban Iran from having ballistic missiles. And it didn't end Iran's alliance with Hezbollah, a major part of Lebanon's political establishment. And it didn't ban Iran from trying to help Hamas in the Gaza open air concentration camp. And it didn't force Iran to abandon the Houthi rebels in Yemen. And it didn't conpel Iran to stop fighting on the side of the Assad regime in Syria.

But Trump said it was "the worst deal ever." Because? it expires in 15 years. And it didn't ban Iran from having ballistic missiles. And it didn't end Iran's alliance with Hezbollah, a major part of Lebanon's political establishment. And it didn't ban Iran from trying to help Hamas in the Gaza open air concentration camp. And it didn't force Iran to abandon the Houthi rebels in Yemen. And it didn't compel Iran to stop fighting on the side of the Assad regime in Syria.

And another fatal flaw in the 2015 Obama deal, from the perspective of John Bolton and Michael Pompeo: it didn't overthrow the Iranian regime.

However, the U.S. was just one party to the agreement. It was Iran on one side, pitted against the U.S., China, Russia, France, Britain, and Germany, all against Iran's nuclear program. Iran has patiently waited for over a year for those other parties to the deal to DO something to counter the U.S. imposition of the worst sanctions yet. Instead they have abided by the U.S. sanctions policy, while in the case of the Europeans, making noises about creating mechanisms for their companies to do business in Iran. But those countries won't even purchase Iran's oil. And the lame moves the Europeans have made otherwise have been a joke.

 So now Iran is being roundly attacked in the Western media, and threatened by European politicians (and most gallingly, by TRUMP!) for not continuing to abide by the deal in which they have been totally double-crossed. Even though Iran totally lived up to the deal from 2015 until last month, over a year after Trump killed the agreement and in the face of relentless economic warfare. (And no doubt all kinds of covert sabotage by "special ops" and via computer attacks.)

Trump has called for a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (which is responsible for monitoring Iran's compliance with the agreement) to gin up further political and diplomatic attacks on Iran to force it to keep its side of a bargain that Trump loudly reneged on.

It's enough to make your head spin, unless you ignore reality. Which is exactly what those in power in Western nations expect you to do.

The deal that had been worked out took years, and immense pressure on Iran, and was the best that was obtainable. Trump's strategy is to force Iran to crawl on its belly, using U.S. power to wreck the Iranian economy (done) and compel the rest of the world to bow to U.S. diktat and conform to U.S. policy (done). Will it work? Who knows?

In addition, the U.S. has created fake "Iranian attacks" on oil tankers as part of a military brinksmanship campaign, using the threat of war to intimidate the Iranian rulers. [2] So far it hasn't worked. That was followed by Iran shooting down a U.S. spy drone (which maps the location of Iranian defense installations and sniffs out vulnerabilites in their defenses and collects the frequencies of their radars and communications, enabling the U.S. to jam, attack, spoof, and render ineffective these systems). U.S. surveillance ops provide preparation for future U.S. aggression. The Iranians properly defended itself from this menacing, hostile foreign power by shooting down the drone. The bickering over which side of the Iranian maritime border it was on at the time is frankly irrelevant. (The U.S. is SO punctilious about international law when it wants to be. Not so much in its own behavior, like sabotage, torture, subversion, election-meddling, coups, assassinations, invasions, and other such "tools of statecraft.")

There was much screeching by U.S. politicians and "commentators" over the fact that Trump didn't pound Iran with bombs afterwards. One of the few things Trump did that was RIGHT.



Look, the Iranian government is pretty bad. It's a repressive theocracy. But only about half as repressive as the Saudi Arabian theocracy, with which the U.S. is so chummy. So "freedom" and "democracy" and "human rights" have NOTHING to do with the U.S. hostility towards Iran. And by making the Iranian economy scream, and killing Iranians by blockading medicine, the U.S. demonstrates how much it really cares about the well being of the Iranian people. It's the same cynical song the U.S. sings whenever it destroys a country- Iraq, Guatemala, Vietnam, you name it.

He's kinda arrogant, don't you think?

1] It just so happens that the U.S. has one of the worst records in the world of honoring its treaty obligations. It solemnly signed hundreds of treaties with Native American Nations and broke every single one. It has committed international aggression repeatedly, a crime under international law. It has subverted governments. Under Bush the Younger it infamously created a system of institutionalized torture, even though it is a signatory to the Torture Convention. And so on.

2] See "Dishonest U.S. Media Lying U.S. Into Another War of Aggression" for detailed factual analysis of the U.S.-created "Iranian tanker attacks." As the crew of the Japanese tanker said, they were attacked by flying objects, not limpet mines placed on the hull. Plus we are supposed to believe that Iran wanted to sabotage its own diplomacy with Japan! The story is too long and detailed to recount here. There are videos included with this report.

The Last, Best Word About July 4th, U.S. Independence Day

We've just been subjected to our annual booster shot of chauvinistic jingoism about the Birth of America, Land of Liberty, Home of Democracy, Guardian of Human Rights.

Herein, a small, necessary corrective.

Over a century and a half ago, someone gave a speech that precisely nailed the truth about the U.S.A. The impassioned, uncompromising words of this speech lifted up the rock of mendacious and stultifying rhetoric to reveal the ugly face of the U.S. beast that lives behind the shiny facade of Big Lies.

Today, those words are still right on the money about the U.S. Having withstood the test of time, and never been surpassed in incisiveness, they bear repeating.

They are the words of Frederick Douglass, a man born in slavery, spoken in 1852 to the Rochester [NY] Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society on July 5th of that year. The Society had asked Douglass to speak in celebration of the Fourth of July. No doubt they got more than they bargained for.

The original speech is quite long. It was untitled, and since has been given the title “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” or small variations thereon. It deals mostly with American slavery, the laws and practices of it, the supporting role of American churches, and the hypocrisy of American blather about liberty democracy freedom blah-blah-blah. Yet much of it is relevant to today's U.S. crimes, its spread of oppressive death squad dictatorships around the world, its role as the Arsenal of Fascism since World War II, its economic hyperexploitation of poorer countries, and most of all, the demented, self-righteous, totally un-self-aware prattle that constitute its declared "values."

Here are excerpts: [1]

Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?

I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you this day rejoice are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you has brought stripes [i.e. marks from whippings] and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today?

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is a constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes that would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation’s ear, I would, to-day, pour forth a stream, a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and the crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.

Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.

We need more fierce people like him today.

Current American Emperor Donald J. Trump The First

1]  I found a lengthy version that is labeled "full document" at TeachingAmericanHistory.org. That site also has related documents.

Anchorage, Alaska Breaks Temperature Record at 90 Degrees Fahrenheit- Another Omen For the Future

That's 32.2 degrees Celsius to you in the rest of the world. Understand that Alaska is America's Siberia- far north and freezing cold, partly above the Arctic Circle.

But that's not hot enough to change the minds of the global warming deniers, or their cousins in denial and dishonesty, those who deny that the increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels is the cause.

Maybe if it hits 100 degrees they'll budge?

NAH! Ideology always trumps mere reality. As Ronald Reagan once said: "Facts are stupid things."

So he just made up his own. As does his GOP (Gang Of Plunderers) successor Donald J. "Jackass" Trump.

And ideology driven by economic interest has the weight of a mountain!

In case you hadn't noticed, the oil industry in particular is huge and lies at the core of the current global economic structure, as it is the main fuel for transportation, including airplanes and ships, which makes it a critical military commodity. Saudi Arabia's power is derived from petroleum, and the U.S. strongly protects Saudi Arabia, (even after the murder of a contributor to the Washington Post, the in-house organ of the power elites of the capital of the U.S. empire, Washington D.C.).

Oil corporations are hugely wealthy and politically powerful in the U.S. And in addition, plastics are derived from petrochemicals.

Reactionary polemicists for hire by the oil and coal industries are plentiful. And the U.S. media is reactionary and pro-corporate oligarchy. This power structure is already indifferent to such facts as the 50% reduction in Arctic sea ice since 1979. [1] Why would they care about a hot day in Anchorage?

So guess what? A hot day in Alaska changes nothing.

Once a happy family, now not long for this world:  polar bears. Having no habitat means extinction.

So long, fellow mammal.

1] CBS News, of all places, radio broadcast, July 6th, 2019, 11 am Eastern Standard Time.

Trump Violates Constitution to Fund Vanity Parade For Himself

Trump has been hankering for a grand military parade for himself ever since French neoliberal president Emmanuel Macron celebrated Trump's arrival in Paris with such a display of military might. (Trump and Macron are such great friends that Trump even ostentatiously plucked "dandruff" off Macron's suit, announcing what he was doing in front of the gathered media, when Macron visited in Washington.)

So Trump has stolen $2.5 million from the National Parks Department budget, appropriated by Congress for funding park improvements, to pay for tanks and jets to celebrate The Ego of Trump. Coincidentally, the military muscle will be shown off on July 4th, officially U.S. "Independence Day." (The Parks Department has a maintenance backlog of $11 billion. So what's a few million more. Make America Great Again!)

The Constitution delegates to Congress the appropriation of funds. For the president to take funds appropriated for one purpose and use them for another is a direct violation of the U.S. Constitution and the president's oath of office.

Trump in his carnival barker mode tweets that it will be "The Parade of a Lifetime!"

This is the first time heavy armored vehicles are going to be on Washington streets. The mayor objected because the tanks will damage the pavement. The mall is expected to take a beating. Don't be surprised if the local government will have to pay for the repairs itself.

In another first, the mall is being closed off to the public and is being reserved for GOP (Gang Of Plunderers) big shots, who will receive tickets for entry to the "V.I.P." zone. Nothing like an ersatz aristocracy to celebrate "democracy."

Presumably the climate-crisis-denying Republicans will thrill to the sight of U.S. bombers and fighters flying overhead, safe in the knowledge that they only drop their "payloads" on defenseless and poor Third World countries, killing mostly poor people, in "defense" of the "freedom" of rich swells.

This is not the first time Trump has stolen funds appropriated for other purposes and illegally used them to satisfy his own whims, like a medieval King (or a Saudi ruler) might do. Trump took money for badly needed repairs on military bases to pay for wall construction on the Mexican border.

Nor is Trump the first president to swipe money in this way. He may be the first to do so openly, however. What differentiates Trump from his modern predecessors is that he says and does openly what used to be denied. This is a symptom of the political degeneration of the U.S. empire.

Another symptom of political decadence is that presidents routinely violate the Constitution in various ways, but are never impeached for it. But that goes back to at least the second president, John Adams, who imprisoned publishers of newspapers that criticized him. (So much for those "guarantees" of "rights.") So maybe we should just consider it evidence of the moral and political corruption at the core of the U.S. power establishment.

They used to do their coups covertly, and deny them. Now they do them openly and with fanfare, as the Trump regime is doing to Venezuela, to the vigorous applause of the top Democratic Party politicians such as Nancy Pelosi and Charles Schumer, "leaders" of the Democrats in the House of Representatives and U.S. Senate, respectively.

This degeneracy is not recent either. The Reagan regime (1981-1989) created the so-called "National Endowment for Democracy," which has been tasked ever since with doing openly things the CIA used to do covertly: subverting foreign governments, creating front groups abroad, manipulating elections in other countries. In other words, the U.S. now acts as if it has the RIGHT to do things it used to hide because they are outrageous and illegal under international law, violate the sovereignty of other nations, and attack and destroy the right of other peoples to self-determination. In other words, as so often with the U.S. the "National Endowment for Democracy" has a perfectly Orwellian name that reverses the meaning of words. It is the National Endowment for ANTI-Democracy.

And of course the U.S. wouldn't be satisfied if it wasn't an outrageous hypocrite at the same time. Witness the years-long propaganda campaign falsely claiming that "Russia attacked our democracy!" and "hacked our election!" The sanctimonious outrage of the politicians and "pundits" is a sight to behold.

The U.S. is certainly Number One in utter cynicism and breathtaking hypocrisy. Give credit where credit is due.

Thanks for the Tanks!

Ego, I Salute You!

I love a parade! Especially when it's for ME!

Racial Segregationist Joe Biden's Dishonesty on Full Display In Democratic Party "Debate"

In the second round of the Democratic Party's candidate "debates" (more like quasi-free-for-alls) on June 27,  Senator Kamala Harris of California challenged Joseph Biden Jr. on his anti-"busing" record, meaning in effect  his opposition to school integration. (The millions of kids who are bussed to school daily NOT for integration purposes doesn't bother the opponents of "busing.")

In his response, he continued his practice of blatant lying, which he's been doing starting just before he officially announced his run for the presidency:

"I do not praise racists, that is not true," Biden emphatically insisted. This is lying on a Trumpian level. Blatant, outrageous, in your face absolute inversion of reality. He has repeatedly praised the worst racists in the U.S. Senate. Either he's denying his own words, including of just a few days ago, when he lauded two of the worst Southern crackers to an audience of rich swells in the Carlyle Hotel in New York City whose money he wants for his campaign for president, or he's denying that the likes of James Eastland, Herman Talmadge, John Stennis, Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, were racists. Either assertion is absurd.

"I ran because of civil rights..." WHAT! There he goes again. Presumably he means ran for U.S. Senate, or maybe vice president with Obama. He also ran twice before for president, in 1988 and 2008.

Or maybe by "because of" he meant "in order to oppose civil rights." But I assume he runs for office because he's driven by personal ambition and a lust for power, and for Senator to defend and advance the interests of big banks and credit card companies, which are the main powers in his state, Delaware. This is the guy who got a law on the books forbidding the discharge of student loan debt by bankruptcy, among other awful acts.

Harris launched her challenge by relating her personal experience as a child, how "busing" was critical to her education and subsequent success. Biden replied that there was no problem because her locality was okay with busing. Telling Harris things worked out fine because her local government bowed to Constitutional law as set down in 1954 ignores the fact that the vast majority of U.S. localities ONLY integrated grudgingly, if at all, and only under pressure. And massive resistance continues to this day in many places, especially the South, where private all-white "academies" were created to ensure that pure "white" youth would not mingle with and be contaminated by "black" ones.

Biden disingenuously bellowed at Harris that he wasn't against "busing," he was merely against the Federal government mandating it. HE wanted to leave enforcement of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision to local city councils. But it is precisely BECAUSE such local "authorities" (and states too) adamantly REFUSED for DECADES after the Brown decision to integrate their schools, and continued to consign "black" children to grossly inferior ones, that the Federal government was finally forced to do SOMETHING. Biden denounced the 1954 Supreme Court decision, and opposed racial integration of schools for decades, indeed apparently until a month or so ago, when under pressure he suddenly belched out some mendacious, mealy-mouthed, revisionist rhetoric.

EVEN IF his abrupt change under political pressure were genuine (which there is no reason to believe is the case), his entire political history would have to weigh a hundred times greater in considering the man for the presidency.

In fact, in the debate of June 27, Biden took the segregationist position that it should be up to local government to integrate, NOT the Federal government. That is precisely the "states" rights" argument of Southern racists. However, this went unnoticed in the bourgeois blatherariat that is corporate media "commentary."

And the fact that, of all the Democratic Party hacks he could have chosen to be his vice president, Barack "The Drone Assassin" Obama chose a segregationist, speaks volumes about the cynical, completely amoral character of Obama. And how thoroughly duped black Americans were and are about Obama. Not to mention his other supporters.

Biden insists he's not a racist ("I don't have a racist bone in my body") and his rival Democrats have carefully avoided saying he is. But what is a person who supports segregation? That is objectively racist. So whatever Biden's subjective consciousness is, however he "feels" about "black" people, he is objectively racist by his actions over decades of time.

And of all the U.S. Senators that he's known over a long career, the ones he chooses to fondly reminisce about are the very worst racists!

Some propagandists thought Harris crossed some invisible line of political propriety. Rachel Martin, a co-host of the "news" program "Morning Edition" on the U.S. government radio propaganda network NPR, said of Harris in a scandalized tone of voice that "she's making it personal" and "she's attacking his record on civil rights." Actually Harris was accurately describing his record of opposition to civil rights, and calling him to account for it. If you aren't supposed to talk about politicians' actual records of what they did and said, what CAN you discuss, Rachel? (NPR, "Morning Edition," npr.org, June 28, 2019.) Harris did preface her anecdote about her own childhood schooling by saying the issue was "personal" for her. It was NOT a "personal attack" on Biden, unless critiquing someone's political record is too "personal" to do!

Here's an extended quote of Biden from the debate, responding to Harris:


"It’s a mischaracterization of my position across the board. I did not praise racists. That is not true, number one. Number two, if we want to have this campaign litigated on who supports civil rights and whether I did or not, I’m happy to do that. I was a public defender; I didn’t become a prosecutor. I came out, and I left a good law firm to become a public defender. …" [That was a dig at Harris, who was a prosecutor and indeed later California state Attorney General, before snagging a Senate seat. She actually compiled a terrible record of repression, protection of police criminality, and imprisoning innocent defendants as state AG. But on the other hand, she did cut at least one criminal a break: Stephen Mnuchin, Trump's U.S. Treasury Secretary. Mnuchin controlled a bank in California, OneWest, of which he was CEO, which Harris' staff found committed 1,000 cases of mortgage foreclosure fraud, and estimated they could find another 1,000 if they kept looking. Harris killed the investigation into this racketeering bank. Mnuchin showed his gratitude with a $2,500 campaign donation to her. That makes Harris not just a political prostitute, but a very cheap streetwalker of a political prostitute.]

Biden again: "In terms of busing, the busing—I never—you would have been able to go to school the same exact way, because it was a local decision made by your city council. That’s fine. That’s one of the things I argued for, that we should not be—we should be breaking down these lines. But so, the bottom line here is, look, everything I’ve done in my career—I ran because of civil rights. I continue to think we have to make fundamental changes in civil rights. And those civil rights, by the way, include not just only African Americans, but the LGBT community." 

Oh shut up, man. You're no progressive. That's the segregationist line. Let the white racists choose whether or not to integrate.

"I did not oppose busing in America. What I opposed is busing ordered by the Department of Education. That’s what I opposed. I did not oppose—" and then he stopped. 

Of course this is totally disingenuous, as I explained already.

Biden collaborated with the Southern racists in the Senate to pass his own anti-busing bills. That is what he's referring to when he says they "worked together to pass legislation." Biden even wanted to amend the U.S. Constitution to ban the use of busing for school integration. That is pretty extreme. 

Biden is a typical reactionary Democrat of the "old" school. He is the most rightwing of all the politicians vying for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. And THAT is why much of the "elite" establishment media keeps promoting him as the "front runner" with the "best chance of beating Trump." (Coincidentally, the line that he has the best chance of beating Trump is Biden's line too. Fancy that.)

The propaganda system always promotes the most rightwing politicians they think they can put over on the populace. 

Guess it's only "asinine" if it's to integrate schools. 

Kamala Harris Confronts Joseph Biden, Jr., on his opposition to "busing."

For more on this horrible segregationist's history of hostility to black advancement, see for example "When Joe Biden Collaborated With Segregationists," The Nation, June 6, 2019; 

"Jonathan Kozol on 'When Joe Biden Collaborated with Segregationists,'” DemocracyNow!, June 26, 2019; 

"Jonathan Kozol: Joe Biden Didn’t Just Praise Segregationists. He Also Spent Years Fighting Busing," DemocracyNow!, June 25, 2019; and 

"How Joe Biden worked with and praised a longtime opponent of civil rights," CNNPolitics, May 28, 2019.