they strangle the economy and "make it scream" as Nixon instructed Kissinger to do to Allende's Chile in 1970. so when we think about what's happening in Iran, we must understand it primarily through the material conditions imposed by the United States which largely shape the agency of every Iranian

sanctions are the PRIMARY contradiction in Iran, and like I mentioned above, they are PRIMARILY responsible for the makeup of Iran, from its class dynamics to its economy to the repressiveness of its police to political corruption. sanctions create black markets, they push states into a corner

I've listened to countless liberal Iranian commentators lament the "regime's" mismanagement of the economy, the corruption, etc. and when pushed, they'll admit the sanctions "factor in." and it's just mind boggling to listen to because what are they mismanaging? a country under severe sanctions

but freedom from what? real freedom for Iranians, when you get to the root of it, would be freedom from US sanctions. the ending of sanctions would radically transform the unrest in the country, but you will never, ever hear a political pundit on the BBC or CNN say a single word about that.

and the Western bourgeois media is prepared too. selectively sharing information that serves their capitalist owners' agendas, never airing footage of the tens of thousands of counter protesters in the streets supporting the Islamic Republic. reducing the situation to a matter of "freedom"

and on top of it, once the unrest explodes into the streets, the United States and its proxies are well prepared to take advantage, to escalate violence, to literally send imperial agents out into the streets to throw grenades into mosques and to burn down clinics with nurses inside them

their anger and frustration are by design—Iran's economy, it's politics, it's repressiveness, it's class composition, it's all a direct results of a sanctions regime that has been strangling the country for almost half a century. this is the entire point of sanctions—to foment unrest

it all happens within the context of the collective punishment imposed by the US against a country that dared to overthrow their puppet in 1979 and has remained sovereign since then. Iranians' subjective agency must be understood in dialectical relationship to objective material conditions

they'll lose the house and senate in the 2030 midterms and lose the presidency to the last elected president of the united states in 2032

the level of disdain and disrespect the democratic party has for us equals that of the republicans, the only difference is that the republicans don't have to pretend they're on our side. that's literally the only difference

"I'M GOING TO BE MORE REAL WITH YOU THAN ANYONE ELSE WILL EVER BE IN YOUR ENTIRE LIFE: DONALD TRUMP IS A BAD PRESIDENT"

sorry to hear that and yeah, they have the power of the purse and they can just deny whatever they want and there's no real recourse

...the alternative was the Democratic Party and so millions of young people & passionate activists poured their money and energy into a Party that is controlled opposition, a party that hates you just as much as the Republicans do, a Party whose purpose has been to neutralize the power of the people

but the other two-thirds are not grotesque little worms—we're descent people with hearts that feel and souls that ache and eyes that see and ears that hear but we don't know what the fuck to do because trillions of dollars have been spent over the decades tricking us into thinking that...

and there's like a third of this country that's into that shit because they identify with the regime and the regime allows them to masturbate to their fantasies of killing the other and taking their rage against the world and their little insecurities out on those who they perceive as weak

this has been the case since forever but what makes the Trump regime stand out is that the pretense is finally over—this administration will look you in the eye and tell you that they're going to kill you if you stand in their way and that they're going to do whatever the fuck they want

the people in power hate you more than your worst enemy in life hates you and they spend hours every single day figuring out exactly how to make your life worse, how to control you, deceive you, and coerce you into wasting your one precious life generating profits for them so they can rape children

a sane society would imprison every last one of them and institute universal healthcare instead of spending $9 million of your tax-dollars every day to illegally blockade venezuela and giving $1.5 trillion of your tax-dollars to weapons contractors so they can burn children alive in Palestine

our society is run by criminals who designed a system that legalizes their criminality and slow murder and which labels anyone who dissents as a "terrorist" and then gives authority to their street thugs to assassinate and murder them