Tag "Ramin Mazaheri"
By Ramin Mazaheri for the Saker Blog There is an incredibly entrenched political non-reality in the US: a perception that having black skin makes one a reliable and righteous leftist. The US cannot talk honestly about politics – this is just another aspect of that. Looting can indeed have political motivations and messages, and I’ll get to that later, but the looters looting their own poor neighborhoods are not leftists – those looters are motivated
by Ramin Mazaheri for the Saker Blog The US has recently been trying to become a modern, humane society – and this is one of the many great hard-won and predictable consequences from electing a corporate fascist like Trump – but the results are chaos. The US cannot protest Look at these tiny, piddling protests, rarely over 1,000 people. Millions of Iranians can march in silence, unity and respect; China
by Ramin Mazaheri for The Saker Blog The headline says it all – why even write the article? Journalism has – of course, and with universal unanimity – become merely the relaying of the statements of Dr. Anthony Fauci. Fauci is not just an immunologist – he’s an economist, historian, judge, legislator (national, state, county, city and village), manufacturer, landlord, employer, son, daughter, mother, lawyer for both the prosecutor and
by Ramin Mazaheri for the Saker Blog It is often boasted in the US that they forced the implosion of the USSR via military overspending, as if recklessly creating a dangerous and useless arms race was something to brag about. However, the spoiled American rich kid is about to get his comeuppance and learn that money does not equal virtue. The coronavirus hysteria, the West’s foolish Great Lockdown and the
by Ramin Mazaheri for the Saker Blog TITANIC LARGEST SHIP IN THE WORLD SINKING personally I am not sure that the twelvehour day is bad for employees especially when they insist on working that long in order to make more money — John Dos Passos, The 42nd Parallel, part one of the U.S.A. trilogy What if the bailouts actually work? Naturally, socialists aren’t inclined to explore this question, but
by Ramin Mazaheri for The Saker Blog Since the West’s Great Lockdown started I’ve been warning the West that they can’t do it – a capitalist-imperialist system cannot do an immediate 180 and copy China, Iran, Vietnam and others. I gave so many reasons why that was a catastrophically bad idea: The “sports-journalisation” of their media, the unbloody flag of Y2K, counting on Germany as “reliable partners”, the perilous idea
by Ramin Mazaheri for the Saker Blog Iran is a rigid patriarchy, and that is something which is immediately accepted as true by everyone, except for many Iranian women and men. While the sociopolitical role of father-led ideas is of especial interest when it comes to Iran, the sociopolitical role of mother-led ideas in US culture is something which is far less discussed. This disinterest is surprising, because the US
by Ramin Mazaheri for The Saker Blog – “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” “Some apes, it seems, are more equal than others.” “Take your stinking paws off me, you damned, dirty public servant!” One of those quotes is from George Orwell’s Animal Farm, another was said by Charlton Heston towards a primate who rejected ape-human equality during the court interrogation scene from Planet
by Ramin Mazaheri for the Saker Blog Isn’t it interesting that nobody at all has used the phrase “QE 5” – the fifth round of Quantitative Easing – to describe the 2020 bailouts? I found just a single, brief use of it, from three months ago. That’s because – look around yourself – we are in the thick of it right now. Once it finally stops and we can add
By Ramin Mazaheri for the Saker Blog (Hey hey, my new book is out today! Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism. Buy a copy for yourself and 50 of your closest friends and Iranophobic/Islamophobic/socialism-phobic enemies.) On May 14 France’s nurses held a protest march in Paris despite ongoing fears about coronavirus — so are they no longer rightly-guided heroes but far-right neo-fascists now? For several months we’ve been banging pots
Ramin Mazaheri for the Saker Blog Among capitalist economists stagflation is the worst possible outcome, excepting a Great Depression. They even admit they cannot explain it (especially Keynesians), or rather they choose not to – this is why the word has barely been broached during this very depressing coronavirus era. In exactly the same vein, the West’s intellectuals claim they cannot explain the causes of World War I (as I
Ramin Mazaheri and Jeff J Brown – for The Saker Blog We can’t always find it but there is always a tipping point. Last week I crunched the data and suggested it’s May 17: The date the Great Lockdown must end or Everything Bubble 2 pops. Maybe I’m a few days off, but not many more: This bubble-popping is precisely why Trump is not wearing a mask, planned to end
By Ramin Mazaheri – for the Saker Blog A party built around climate change is a luxury only the West can afford, and like most luxuries it is a corrupting influence. While covering a protest in France several years ago a union member told me how she hoped Iran would stop selling its oil in order to protect the environment. “Sure,” I told her, “how many billions of euros can
By Ramin Mazaheri for the Saker Blog The 2008 crisis was top-down – the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers came out of the blue to the average person. Contrarily, a result of the Western coronavirus overreaction, the 2020 economic implosion is building from the bottom-up: it will occur from the result of millions of tiny Lehmans throwing in the towel. Reality was ignored for 12 years: small- and medium-sized businesses need
By Ramin Mazaheri for the Saker Blog Quick: What’s the reason World War One started? And don’t say it was because leftist Yugoslavian patriot Gavrilo Princip joined with Muslim leftists to assassinate Austrian imperialist Archduke Franz Ferdinand – that explanation exists only because Western schoolchildren need something to recite. Few know the right answer: it was a war concocted by Western high finance in order to forestall the anti-1% revolution
by Ramin Mazaheri for The Saker Blog It’s an idea that is worth discussing because – much like how China does not want to discuss possible modern reverberations from their atrocious (mostly upper-class) practice of female foot-binding – the West does not want to deal with the cultural legacy of four centuries of segregation. It’s so perplexing to listen to Western commentators demand in the same breath both massive Great
by Ramin Mazaheri for The Saker Blog It was very pleasant and informative to read Mr. Gary Littlejohn’s April 19 article, Strengthening the US Dollar: Comments on Ramin Mazaheri. I am very happy that he agreed with my article No, the dollar will only strengthen post-corona, as usual: it’s a crisis, after all, which sought to temper the eager glee of those whom I call the “dollar demisers” with some
By Ramin Mazaheri for the Saker Blog There must be SOME criteria where the proponents of the Great Lockdown could say, “In hindsight, this was wrong.” It is obviously hysterical to insist that admitting a policy mistake is totally, completely impossible. German fascists are not wiping out Poland, after all. I mean, what if a secret global doomsday machine in Poland gets triggered if global GNP falls below a certain threshold, wiping out humanity? Certainly then
By Ramin Mazaheri and cross posted with PressTV Part 1 discussed how the West’s coronavirus response totally ignored the needs of their lower classes, and also how Iran’s “Resistance Economy” rejects Western economic liberalism (and neoliberalism) which has always sought to relegate non-Westerners to second-class economic partners. As I have written previously, the West’s corona response is not just murderously mediocre but middle-class – it assumes everyone has a comfortable
by Ramin Mazaheri for The Saker Blog It’s the question upon which Western “real” economies have hinged since 2008: will banks actually loan downward taxpayer bailout money – i.e. computer-generated QE dollars/euros – or will they keep hoarding it among themselves and the asset classes frequented by the 1%? However, this concept goes back much further: since 1980 tax cuts for corporations and the richest tax bracket – essentially giving
