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In this mailing:
* Giulio Meotti: The European Union is Dead but Does Not Yet Know It
* Amir Taheri: Iran May Need an 'America Free' Day


** The European Union is Dead but Does Not Yet Know It ([link removed])
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by Giulio Meotti • April 19, 2020 at 5:00 am
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* The truth is that there is no "Union".
* The coronavirus now has put the European Union and its comfort zone face-to-face with all its weaknesses, decadence and cowardice.
* Another merciless battle Italy fought with the EU was for protective face-masks. France adopted a policy of requisitioning them; Germany banned their export. Those unilateral decisions undermined a much-touted EU principle: the free movement of goods in the single market.
* As L'Express exposed, France seized four million masks belonging to a Swedish company and that had been intended, in part, for Italy and Spain.
* When Italy and Greece were overwhelmed by migrants from the Middle East and Africa, the EU countries refused to take their "share" of migrants. Lacking a policy to stop the flow of mass immigration, Europe decided to leave the southern countries to their fate.

(Image source: iStock)

The new coronavirus appears to be tearing apart the fragile framework of the European Union.

"Europe" said the former Commission chief and a EU godfather, Jacques Delors, "is in "mortal danger".

If citizens feel themselves abandoned at the heart of the pandemic, said Former French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, the EU could "collapse".

The EU objective was evidently supposed to be an "ever closer union". But now, if the EU does not show solidarity and strength at a time of global crisis, what is the EU's purpose? Its ideological supporters have a mantra: each new problem must be solved by more Europe. "Europe is our future, we have no other", Germany's former Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher once said.

Although these are important and dramatic statements, each time it is as if something even more important and dramatic needs to happen to shake people awake, as if the European Union is never actually seen as dying.

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** Iran May Need an 'America Free' Day ([link removed])
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by Amir Taheri • April 19, 2020 at 4:00 am
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* With the exception of this year, since 1989 Tehran has hosted an annual "End of America" conference attended by anti-Americans from across the globe.
* The "end of America" dream has not been, and may never be, realized, for at least two reasons.... America, perhaps above all, is an idea that, even if formulated as a myth, as most great ideas are, continues to appeal to a large segment of mankind across cultural, racial, and socio-economic borders.
* Rather than bombarding Iranians with America-bashing discourse, Khamenei and his associates might be better off designating an "America free" day every month, a day in which the very word "America" is not spoken, written, or heard anywhere in Iran.
* On that day, Iranians could devote their intellectual energies to pondering the question: Apart from further digging, is there something that we can do to creep out of the hole we have dug for ourselves?

An obsession with America has been a key feature of the Khomeinist mindset that has dominated Iranian politics since 1979. Pictured: Iran's "Supreme Leader," Ali Khamenei, proclaims "Death to America" on March 21, 2015. (Image source: MEMRI video screenshot)

The United States is on the verge of losing its position as the global superpower. Even worse, it may be heading for disintegration as a nation, with its most populous state California seeking secession while the African-American minority set up an independent black state, probably in Mississippi. One thing is certain: by 2025 the US will no longer be the world's biggest economic power.

This is the picture that the daily Kayhan, believed to reflect the views, or the fantasies, of Iran's "Supreme Guide" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, portrays of the current position of the American "Great Satan."

For the whole of the week just ending, the paper has devoted at least one sensational front-page headline each day to "America's imminent collapse."

One may wonder where Kayhan gets what it calls "best information" about the "Great Satan."

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