My dear friend (and translator of Canada Israel Nexus into Persian) Reza Montazami, has asked me to post his assessment of Iran-US relations, which he sees as Iran-US-Israel relations. 

*My country and New Horizon are fighting for the American people against the most dangerous threat and enemy to the American and Iranian peoples. We need to ask ourselves, why do patriotic Americans, people in the intelligence, security, and military communities, and political leaders allow American military personnel to be killed or humiliated to serve Israel's interests?

In the spirit of Jonathan Swift's Modest Proposal to solve the problem of the Irish famine, the ex-diplomatic offers conditions for a fair war between US-Israel and Iran.

What happened to news about Afghanistan? After their spectacular sweep of the entire country and overnight victory, there is no news now. And Taliban websites remain closed. Just human interest stuff about traitors/ cowards/ whatevers fleeing to the US or wherever. A convening of Afghan women parliamentarians, holding a mock Afghan parliament in exile (a Greek refugee camp). The hysteria about girls schooling ignores the well-documented but little known fact that almost all the schools (80%) that were supposedly educating girls throughout the country were nonfunctioning or even nonexistent. And those teachers who were actually being paid were just pocketing the money (much of it first taken by local officials, who in turn funneled a portion to warlords).

Jung Chang’s Wild swans: Three daughters of China, 2004 [1991], skewers Mao and Maoism like no other memoir of the surreal hell that China descending into from 1954 until the death of Mao in 1976. Both her parents were model communists, her father one of Mao’s early disciples in Yunan, the golden age for Mao. Both were tormented starting in 1954 until 1973, when the horrors of the cultural revolution had reduced the country to a state of collapse, and the surviving old guard comrades were being quietly recalled to try to save the country from ideology gone berserk.

The current Chinese leadership is trying to sweep all this under the carpet.

Lao she's Cat country (1932) is a kind of playful Nostradamus, full of prescient insights, inspired by China's century of humiliation at the hands of greedy, downright horrible imperialists and the scattershot attempts at revolution in the early 20th century. It is the only notable Chinese contribution to sci fi, and was poorly received and then politely ignored. It is without doubt the cause of his persecution by Red Guards in 1966. It's a miracle Lao reached the ripe old age of 67, in the hospital with bronchitis. Zhou Enlai visited him and advised him to stay put, but Lao was a writer, considered one of China's great modern ones – the revolution didn't produce many – and wanted to see firsthand what was going on. Very much like the protagonist of Cat country, who crashlands on Mars and becomes embroiled in the tribulations and joys of these catpeople.

The Taliban’s clever parody of American exceptionalism quickly went viral. They have every right to be proud of defeating the Empire single-handed. Ok, with help from their Pakistani, Saudi and Emirati friends, and in the final lap, the Empire itself as it abandoned state-of-the-art boy toys.

The photoshopped collage provides a neat set of bookends for the Empire. 1945--2021. America’s declaration of empire in 1945, and America’s (sort of) admission of the end of empire in 2021. Japan surrendered to the US September 2, America’s formal departure from Kabul is slated for August 31, though the real anniversary could be August 15, when the Taliban captured the presidential palace in Kabul, prompting other collages comparing the follies of empire and the real thing.