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Democracy is invoked as moral legitimacy in war, while Iran’s authority rests on layered political, religious, and historical foundations.

Democracy, however, is not the enemy. Its manipulation is.

For decades, Western political discourse has equated legitimacy with elections—numbers counted on a single day, certified by institutions that themselves operate within systems shaped by immense financial power. The result is a troubling reduction: legitimacy becomes procedural rather than moral.

In the United States, democracy functions within a political economy deeply influenced by corporate financing, lobbying structures, and concentrated media ownership. Public opinion is not merely informed; it is engineered. Electoral competition exists, but within boundaries drawn by wealth and institutional continuity.

The war on Iran has not merely opened a new military front in the Middle East. It has shattered long-standing myths that have shaped US policy and regional politics for decades. What has unfolded in the past days is not simply a battlefield confrontation; it is a historical rupture.

Several narratives that once appeared unassailable have collapsed under the weight of reality. At the same time, theories long dismissed as ideological or exaggerated have been confirmed with startling clarity.

The Myth of American Protection

For decades, Washington has portrayed itself as the ultimate guarantor of regional security. US military bases, aircraft carriers, air defense systems and bilateral security agreements were marketed as shields protecting allies from existential threats.

This war has exposed that promise as hollow.

Despite overwhelming US military presence across the Gulf, regional allies have faced missile alerts, drone incursions and maritime threats. American troops themselves have been killed. Energy infrastructure has been threatened. Shipping routes have been destabilized.

“So this is how we get rid of that madman Mossadegh.”

In the summer of 1953, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles reportedly held up a copy of a top-secret plan—Operation Ajax—and made that declaration. The operation, engineered by the United States and Great Britain, overthrew Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh. In his place, Washington and London restored Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, a monarch whose rule would last 26 years and whose regime would become synonymous with repression, inequality, and dependency on Western power.

Dulles delivered the news in his characteristically brisk and forceful manner. Applause reportedly followed. President Dwight D. Eisenhower and senior policymakers regarded the coup as a triumph of American resolve against Soviet influence. In Washington, it was celebrated as strategic genius. In Iran, it planted the seeds of lasting resentment. For his service, Dulles would later receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom—America’s highest civilian honor.

History, however, has a long memory.

When Daniel Ellsberg died in 2023, the world lost a unique voice of sanity. Five decades earlier, as a “national security” insider, he had released the top-secret Pentagon Papers to expose the official lies behind the ongoing Vietnam War. From then on, he never stopped writing, speaking and protesting for peace, while explaining how the madness of nuclear weapons could destroy us all.

Now, Ellsberg’s voice is back via a compelling new book. “Truth and Consequence,” being published this week, provides readers with his innermost thoughts, scrawled and typed over a 50-year period. The result is access to intimate candor and visionary wisdom from a truly great whistleblower.

No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to not read way too many of the stories about Trump’s Folly, the US and Israel attack on Iran. I fool myself, as I read, thinking I can figure out what the frick they think they are doing, and how this will turn out. Any silver lining in these dark clouds of war so far is escaping me.

The best I can figure from the cheap seats thousands of miles away is simple and maybe simple-minded. Trump and Netanyahu seem to have taken a war to Iran, because they could, and because they both think they will never have Iran in a weaker position than they now. They have no idea how this will turn out. They’ve crossed their fingers and are hoping they throw a bunch of missiles in that direction and somehow it will come out all right.

Israel and the United States launched a joint attack on various targets in Iran. The operation, codenamed Roaring Lion by Israel and Operation Epic Fury by the U.S. The more appropriate name for such a joint unprovoked attack on Iran should be "Operation Epstein Fury." Reason? 

A declassified FBI memo from the Epstein files includes incendiary allegations about US President Donald Trump. The memo says that Trump was “compromised by Israel," that convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein worked with Israeli intelligence, and that a Jewish religious group calling itself Chabad-Lubavitch sought to hijack his first term in office. Source: Middle East Eye, Jan. 24, 2026.

The Associated Press and intelligence sources confirm today that the first strike hit its target in Iran at around 10:00 AM Tehran time on Saturday, February 28, 2026. The morning zero hour was calculated to trick Iran into believing that the ongoing negotiations in Geneva might end the conflict peacefully.

As news broke that the United States and Israel had launched war on Iran, two posts kept showing up over and over on my social media feeds. One was from the Israeli military’s official account, which stated an oft-repeated phrase: “Israel has the right to defend itself.”

The other was a video from the Iranian city of Minab, where the first reports of casualties were emerging. The joint U.S.-Israeli attack had hit a girls’ elementary school; the death toll kept ticking higher and higher. At the time of publication, Iranian authorities said 108 people, mostly schoolchildren, had been killed in the strike, with many more injured.

The US Department of Energy announces record $26.5 billion loan to Georgia/Alabama Power

In January, President Trump's Department of Energy (DOE) announced that it was canceling or "de-obligating" $83 billion of a total $104 billion in loan commitments made for wind and solar projects - leaving approximately $19 billion in federal loans for all renewable energy projects nationwide.

In contrast, this week the same DOE announced it would loan $26.5 billion to Georgia Power and Alabama Power, both subsidiaries of the Southern Company.

Georgia Power customers have seen their rates increase by over 40 percent during the past two years. One reason for this increase often cited is the $36 billion price tag for two recently completed nuclear reactors that opened their Vogtle power plant.

These increases came despite a 2024 Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) analysis that found that Georgia Power was the most profitable utility in the nation, earning over $92 in net operating income per customer per month.

Senators propose to bring back 5 percent safe harbor