Global
In recent months, Iranian opposition politics has increasingly been dominated by monarchist currents presenting themselves as democratic alternatives to the Islamic Republic. Their rhetoric emphasizes national unity, historical continuity, legitimacy, and liberation from clerical rule. Yet beneath the democratic language lies a deeper tension—one that has less to do with policy preferences than with the meaning of freedom itself. The question is not whether monarchists oppose the Islamic Republic. It is whether they oppose unconstrained power.
Calls for foreign-backed regime change, demands for exclusive recognition as the legitimate voice of the Iranian people, and systematic harassment of rival dissidents are not incidental excesses. They are signals. They point to a conception of politics in which authority must be unified, dissent disciplined, and legitimacy established prior to consent. What is being contested is not the existence of domination, but its rightful owner.
As the White House threatens war against Cuba, I am reminded of the charming evenings my parents and I spent at Havana’s venerable ‘Floridita Bar, sipping a newly invented cocktail, the Margarita, with the renowned writer, Ernest Hemingway.
`Papa’ Hemingway, who then lived in Cuba, loved this island with a great passion and wrote about it often. I feel the same way. I’ve been visiting Cuba since before Castro took over and feel at home in this socialist nation, no matter how threadbare or destitute.
Cubans, whom I call ‘the aristocrats of the West Indies’, have managed to survive efforts by the mighty U.S. to starve, isolate, and attack them for the past five decades. I’ve even been twice in battle against Cuban troops in Angola, Africa. They were valiant and competent soldiers.
Few Americans or Canadians know that Havana is even older than my native New York City. Sadly, today once gorgeous, sultry Havana is falling into ruins after seven generations of crushing embargo by the United States. Cuba’s revolutionary strongman, Fidel Castro, refused to bow to U.S. pressure or take orders from Washington.
While universities outlaw education and Israel outlaws indigenous people, ICE outlaws America, and also América. We lighten it up with a Q-Anon limerick and a review of new pro-formaldehyde policies. A seaweed blob is threatening Florida, and the FDA is threatening us with asbestos.
Bonus: a Trump voter calls in to apologize.
Finally: plans to take Europe.
We start GREEP Zoom #256 with HEDY TRIPP and an update from St. Cloud, Minnesota.
Hedy introduces us to AHMED ABDI, an MN-based Somali radio personality with a deeply disturbing report about life under Trump.
From MYLA RESON, Ahmed gets an invite to become part of the Pacifica Radio Network, which carries this GREEP zoom to more than 200 affiliate stations around the US and world.
With the great SUSIE SHANNON we explore Adaptive Re-Use as an internet-era solution to the housing crisis in a nation with more than 770,000 people who have no place to live, but where we have “homeless encampments in the shadow of empty buildings.” The situation, says Susie, is being addressed by US bill #2410. She adds that 7 homeless persons die on the streets of LA every day, while some 70k housing units sit vacant in the face of 41,000 unhoused.
We have a habit in this country of looking at the monsters of history through a telescope, convinced they are a world away. When we see the heavy boots of the state — the raids, the cages, the Department of Homeland Security’s shadow falling over the vulnerable — we cry that it looks like the Gestapo. We say we are “becoming” Nazi Germany.
But there is a far more terrifying truth: Hitler didn’t build his hell from scratch. He didn’t have to. He looked across the Atlantic, and he saw us.
See, the road to the Holocaust did not begin in Berlin. It passed through lecture halls, grant committees, and the Ivy league institutions of America.
Long before 2026, America had already proven that they believe some lives are worth less than others through eugenics programs, laws targeting Native Americans, and Jim Crow laws. In the early 1900s, Yale stood at the center of American eugenics, helping seed the ideology that led to the executions of millions of people.
Direct Audio Link (Thank You WGRN Columbus):
https://grassrootsep.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/grassrootsep-dr.bob-interview260208-020826.mp3
Video Interview from beginning: https://youtu.be/zrUM1sRdR6g?t=4344
Transcript:
Sunny Wasserman: Myla, did you want to jump in?
myla reson: I do, and you know, this is really important to highlight the SAVE Act, which I believe has not yet passed the Senate, and there is a lot of opposition to it. Hopefully it’ll get stopped.
myla reson: But, I just wanted to,
myla reson: go back to the Epstein files, because, you know, Les Wexner’s name has been coming up a lot.
myla reson: And there… and I know that you were, Bob, I think the first person to really do any real reporting on the connection between Les Wexner and… and Jeffrey Epstein, and you… you all… always say that he was referred to as the boyfriend.
Sunny Wasserman: But…
“While there is broad support across the political spectrum for removing criminal aliens . . .”
Screech! My connection to the words I’m reading grinds to a sudden halt, an inner alarm goes off, I look away from my computer screen and briefly clutch my soul. Oh God . . .
The words are from a Forbes article highly critical of Stephen Miller, Trump’s deporter-in-chief. I was mostly in sync with it as I read. Indeed, the above sentence continues, pointing out that “the vast majority of individuals in the country without legal status have not committed serious crimes.”
