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Category: iran

  • Protests spread in Iran as President Raisi vows to crack down

    Demonstrations that began with death of Mahsa Amini while detained by morality police pose biggest threat to regime in 13 years

    Iran’s president has vowed to “deal decisively” with protests that are gathering momentum across much of the country one week after the death of a woman in custody who had been detained by the morality police.

    Demonstrations have spread to most of Iran’s 31 provinces and almost all urban centres, pitting anti-government demonstrators against regime forces, including the military, and posing the most serious test to the hardline state’s authority in more than 13 years.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Chomsky: The US and Israel Are Standing in the Way of Iran Nuclear Agreement

    During the first few decades of the post-war era, the U.S. considered Iran one of its closest geostrategic allies, especially after the CIA overthrew Iran’s democratically elected government in 1953 and restored Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as Iran’s leader. However, since the 1979 revolution, which abolished the monarchy and established an Islamic republic, the U.S. and Iran have been mortal enemies, largely due to the role that Israel occupies in the region. In this context, during the last couple of decades, the thorniest issue in the U.S.-Iran relationship has been Tehran’s nuclear program, which, Iran says, is focused on energy, not weapons. Israel has been adamantly opposed to the program, even though it is accepted beyond dispute that Israel itself is a nuclear power. In 2015, Iran and several other countries, including the United States, reached the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action agreement, according to which Iran was willing to dismantle much of its nuclear program and open its facilities to nuclear inspections in exchange for billions of dollars of relief support. However, the Trump administration withdrew U.S. support from the agreement — and Israel continued its policy of sabotage and assassination of scientists.

    Current talks between Washington and Tehran’s rulers to restore the 2015 nuclear agreement have been stalled, and there is little hope that progress will be made any time soon. Naturally, the U.S. places the blame on Tehran. However, U.S. propaganda grossly distorts the reality of the situation, Noam Chomsky points out in this exclusive interview for Truthout. The barriers to diplomacy are none other than Israel and the United States, says Chomsky.

    C.J. Polychroniou: Noam, the U.S. and Iran are at odds with each other, having difficulty even talking to each other. Why do they hate each other so much, and how much of a role does Israel’s shadow play in this continuous drama?

    Noam Chomsky: At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I’d like to say a few words, once again, on why I feel that the entire framework in which this issue is discussed is seriously distorted — yet another tribute to the enormous power of the U.S. propaganda system.

    The U.S. government has been telling us for years that Iranian nuclear programs are one of the gravest threats to world peace. Israeli authorities have made it clear that they will not tolerate this danger. The U.S. and Israel have acted violently to overcome this grave threat: cyberwar and sabotage (which the Pentagon regards as aggression that merits violence in self-defense), numerous assassinations of Iranian scientists, constant threats of use of force (“all options are open”) in violation of international law (and if anyone were to care, the U.S. Constitution).

    Evidently, it is regarded as a most serious issue. If so, we surely want to see whether there is some way to lay it to rest. There is: Establish a nuclear weapons-free zone (NWFZ) in the Middle East, with inspections — which, we know, can work very well. Even U.S. intelligence agrees that before the U.S. dismantled the joint agreement on nuclear weapons (JCPOA), international inspections of Iran’s nuclear program were successful.

    That would solve the alleged problem of Iranian nuclear programs, ending the serious threat of war. What then is the barrier?

    Not the Arab states, which have been actively demanding this for decades. Not Iran, which supports the measure. Not the Global South — G-77, 134 “developing nations,” most of the world — which strongly supports it. Not Europe, which has posed no objections.

    The barrier is the usual two outliers: the U.S. and Israel.

    There are various pretexts, which we may ignore. The reasons are known to all: The U.S. will not allow the enormous Israeli nuclear arsenal, the only one in the region, to be subject to international inspection.

    In fact, the U.S. does not officially recognize that Israel has nuclear weapons, though of course it is not in doubt. The reason, presumably, is that to do so would invoke U.S. law, which, arguably, would render the massive U.S. aid flow to Israel illegal — a door that few want to open.

    All of this is virtually undiscussable in the U.S., outside of arms control circles. On rare occasions, the major media have come close to bringing up the forbidden topic. A year ago, New York Times editors proposed “One Way Forward on Iran: A Nuclear-Weapons-Free Persian Gulf.”

    Note: Persian Gulf, not Middle East. The reason, the editors explain, is that Israel’s nuclear weapons are “unacknowledged and nonnegotiable.” Filling in the gaps, they are unacknowledged by the U.S. and are nonnegotiable by U.S. fiat.

    In brief, there is a straightforward approach to addressing this grave threat to world peace, but it is blocked by the global hegemon, whose power is so enormous that the topic can barely even be discussed. Rather, we must adopt the framework imposed by U.S. power and keep to the deliberations over renewing some kind of agreement over Iranian nuclear weapons.

    Another matter that must be sidelined, though it is so obvious that even the grandest propaganda system cannot entirely efface it, is that the current crisis arose when the U.S. unilaterally destroyed the JCPOA, over the strenuous objections of all other signers and the UN Security Council, which had endorsed it unanimously. The U.S. then imposed harsh sanctions on Iran to punish it for the U.S. dismantling of the agreement. Again, other signers strenuously objected, but they obeyed: The threat of U.S. retribution is too awesome, as in many other cases; notoriously the crushing Cuba sanctions, opposed by the whole world apart from the two usual outliers, but obediently observed.

    Again, I apologize for continually reiterating all of this. It must, however, be understood. Having made that gesture, let’s accept reality, subordinating ourselves to the mighty U.S. propaganda system, and keep to the permitted framework of discussion.

    Turning finally to the question, first, Israel’s role is more than shadow play. Israel is right at the center of the story, both in its constant violent attacks on Iran and in the “unacknowledged” nuclear arsenal that blocks to path to diplomatic settlement, thanks to its superpower protector.

    On mutual hate, we should remember that we are talking about governments. The U.S. and Iranian governments were close allies from 1953, when the U.S. overthrew the parliamentary government of Iran and reinstalled the Shah’s dictatorship, until 1979, when a popular uprising overthrew the Shah and Iran switched from favored friend to reviled enemy.

    Iraq then invaded Iran and the incoming Reagan administration turned to lavish support for its friend Saddam. Iran suffered huge casualties, many from chemical weapons while the Reaganites looked away and even tried to shift responsibility to Iran for Saddam’s murderous chemical war against Iraqi Kurds. Finally, direct U.S. intervention swung the war in Iraq’s favor. After the war, President Bush Sr. invited Iraqi nuclear engineers to the U.S. for advanced training in weapons production, a serious threat to Iran of course. And the U.S. imposed harsh sanctions on Iran. So, the story continues.

    U.S. charges against Iran are too familiar to need reviewing.

    Unsurprisingly, nuclear talks between the U.S. and Iran have stalled again and it is unlikely that there will be a deal any time soon — if at all — to restore their 2015 nuclear deal. First, what do you see as the stumbling blocks in these talks? And didn’t Iran already make a huge concession when it agreed to the 2015 nuclear agreement without requiring that Israel does away with its own arsenal of nuclear weapons?

    Negotiations, through European intermediaries, seem to have been put on hold until after the U.S. November elections, at least. There are outstanding disagreements on a number of issues. The most important, for now, are reported to be Iranian foot-dragging on inspection of traces of uranium that bear on whether Iran had an undeclared weapons program before 2003. In contrast, Israeli nuclear weapons programs are nonnegotiable by U.S. fiat, not even subject to inspection.

    Iran’s relationship with Russia has been further strengthened since the start of the Ukraine war. Do such moves on the part of Tehran’s rulers indicate the possibility of a complete break from the West?

    It’s hard to see how the break should go much farther. Iran’s closer relations with Russia are part of a general global realignment, its contours unclear, involving the major Asian states and Russia-China links.

    How likely is it that Israel will attack Iran’s nuclear facilities?

    Israel has repeatedly attacked these facilities with sabotage and assassination. It is likely to proceed with further efforts to prevent Iran from gaining the capability to produce nuclear weapons — which many countries have.

    Iranian leaders have consistently claimed that they have no intention of producing nuclear weapons. I have no idea what their strategic thinking might be. Perhaps they are thinking along the lines of U.S. nuclear doctrine: that “nuclear weapons must always be available, at the ready, because they ‘cast a shadow over any crisis or conflict’” (Essentials of Post-Cold War Deterrence, STRATCOM 1995). As Daniel Ellsberg has emphasized, in that respect nuclear weapons are constantly used to enable other aggressive actions with impunity.

    Whatever the motives, for Iran or any other state, these weapons must be eliminated from the Earth. NWFZs are a step in this direction. A more far-reaching step is the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), now in force though without the participation of the nuclear states. Iran was active in negotiation of the TPNW and was one of 122 states that voted in favor its adoption, though it has not yet signed it. These are concerns that should be uppermost in our minds, for all states, for the security of all of life on Earth.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Iran president says death in custody of Mahsa Amini must be investigated

    Ebrahim Raisi says he has contacted Kurdish woman’s family but laments western double standards on human rights

    The death in custody in Iran of a Kurdish woman that led to widespread protests must be “steadfastly” investigated, Iran’s president has said, as he lamented what he claimed were western “double standards” on human rights.

    Ebrahim Raisi told a news conference on the sidelines of the UN general assembly in New York that the death of Mahsa Amini while in the custody of Iran’s morality police “must certainly be investigated”.

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  • ‘We are all Mahsa Amini’ – protests sweep Iran after Kurdish woman killed by ‘morality police’

    Days of protests have erupted across Iran after Mahsa Amina, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, died after being arrested and tortured by the Islamic fundamentalist state’s “morality police”, reports Peter Boyle.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Iran sends police to end protests as rights groups say six killed

    Police reportedly use teargas to disperse crowds as protests spread after death of Mahsa Amini

    Iran has sent police to the streets in a scramble to end protests that have spread to at least 15 cities, as rights groups and local media reported up to six people had been killed in crackdowns.

    There were reports of internet blackouts in parts of the country in an apparent attempt to quell growing anger. The telecommunications minister, Issa Zarepour, was quoted by the official Irna news agency as saying there had been some “temporary restrictions in some places and at some hours”.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Iranians: share your views on the protests following Mahsa Amini’s death

    We’d like to hear from people in Iran how they feel about the protests following the death of Mahsa Amini in custody

    We’d like to hear how Iranians feel about the protests taking place in Iran after Mahsa Amini’s death in custody in Tehran.

    Whether you have witnessed street protests directly or just want to share your views on the situation in Iran, we’re interested to hear from you.

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  • A New World Order is Emerging and Not Before Time

    The recent meeting in Samarkand of the leaders of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, both actual and prospective, received little coverage in the Western media. This was a great pity because this organisation is one of the most important groupings of nations in the world. The meeting was notable on a number of points. It clearly spelt out for example, that notwithstanding the present conflict in Ukraine, Russia remains an important force in the world and if anything, its position has strengthened in the seven months since it took action in Ukraine.

    Despite desperate attempts by the Western media that bothered to report on the conference, the relationship between Russia and China remains very strong, and is, in fact, strengthening by the day. The Americans issued the expected threats that China was risking its position by its continued relationship with Russia, but those threats were ignored by the Chinese who refuse to be intimidated by United States’ threats.

    The American position is not assisted by its frankly two-faced approach to Taiwan. On the one hand it professes to follow the one China policy which acknowledges that Taiwan is a legitimate part of China, but on the other hand by its words and actions treats Taiwan as a separate country. The Chinese do not bother to hide their frustration at this two-faced approach. By their every action, including sending fighter jets into Taiwan’s airspace, the Chinese are making it increasingly clear that their patience with double standards pursued by the Americans is wearing very thin.

    The United States, and its Australian ally, continue its provocative policy of sending their warships into the South China Sea. The ostensible reason for this is to preserve freedom of navigation although neither country can point to a single instance of civilian ships being impeded in any way at any time. The actions are clearly provocative.  Why Australia allows itself to be used in this way remains a mystery. China takes 40% of Australia’s exports and has been its largest trading partner for a number of decades. Its vital interests lie in maintaining a good relationship with China. The frankly provocative actions of successive Australian governments are not conducive to maintaining that relationship. The Chinese provided a clue as to their attitude when they froze the import of several Australian products worth billions of dollars. The new Labor government seems slow to grasp the message that has clearly been sent.

    The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting also sent a number of other clear messages to the world. These included the warm reception given to the Saudi and Turkish delegations. The Turkish case is particularly interesting. Turkey has been a dialogue partner of the SCO for a number of years, but last Saturday the Turkish President Recep Erdogan announced that Turkey was planning to apply for full membership of the SCO in the immediate future.

    Membership of the SCO, while clearly of benefit to Turkey, is hardly compatible with its membership of NATO for whom the existence of the SCO represents a challenge. Quite how the Turks plan to maintain their membership of both organisations remains a mystery. Although the SCO has no military component, it is difficult to see how the Turks can maintain membership of both organisations. This is especially true given the hostility shown by NATO to Russia in particular and barely concealed dislike of China and all its activities.

    It is not just the SCO which poses a fundamental challenge to the West’s continuing position in the world. A far greater threat to the West’s role in the world is posed by the similarly Chinese inspired Belt and Road Initiative. This organisation now has more than 140 members with representation throughout the world including South America which the Americans have traditionally seen as an integral part of their sphere of influence. Indeed, the Americans have in the past not hesitated to interfere in internal South American politics in the interests of maintaining their hegemony in the region. China’s role in South America poses a fundamental threat to the United States view of “their” region.

    The United States monopoly was decisively broken by Brazil’s membership of the BRICS group of nations. Very recently both Iran and Argentina filed official applications to become members of BRICS and Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt have also begun the process of joining. Those latter three countries have a combined population of around 220 million people. The Saudis were the world’s largest exporters of crude oil in 2020 and hold around 15% of the world’s oil reserves. Turkey, among other claims, is also the world’s seventh largest exporter of cotton, a critical material in a range of products.

    The five original members of BRICS have a combined population of over 3 billion people, which is just over 40% of the world’s population. They account for more than one quarter of the worlds GDP. A neat counterpoint to the BRICS was provided by Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova when she stated, last June, that “while the White House was thinking about what else to turn off in the world, ban or spoil, Argentina and Iran applied to join the BRICS.”

    The Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi confirmed his country’s support for Argentina membership of BRICS, and his ministry stated that Argentina’s entry would “strengthen and broaden its voice in defence of the interests of the developing world.”

    What we are witnessing is a major reorientation of the world in which the BRICS, SCO and BRI represent the vanguard of change. The old western countries have lost their previous pre-eminent role to this trio of groupings that represent a new way of doing things. The United States does not like the changes that are occurring and will fight tooth and nail to try and preserve its traditional position.

    The bulk of the world’s nations have had enough of this old system in which they were ruthlessly exploited. A new world order has emerged and. frankly, is to be welcomed.

    The post A New World Order is Emerging and Not Before Time first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • NYC, Manhattan gets world’s attention as protesters gathers during UNGA 77

    Web Desk:

    During the 77th session of the UNGA, people from different countries are recording their protests on the streets of Manhattan, New York.

    At 44th Street 2nd Avenue, Iranian-Americans from various cities in the United States gathered and recorded a protest against the current President Ebrahim Raisi and his government.The protest was attended by a large number of young Iranian-American boys and girls, men and women, who carried banners, placards, and pictures of the Iranian president with various demands written on them. The protesters said that Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who has come to New York,   should be prevented from attending a meeting. The protesters said that they will also record a large protest during the Iranian President’s speech tomorrow.

    People from African countries also held a rally on 47th Street and reached the street reserved for protesters behind the United Nations headquarters. The men and women participating in the protest were wearing red shirts and were holding various banners and placards in their hands.

    Protesters demanded that the United Nations and the international community take strict action against the military that has seized power in their country. The protestors also demanded that martial law should be abolished and power should be transferred back to the democratic government.

    This post was originally published on VOSA.

  • Pakistan’s PM arrives in NY to participate in the high-level general debate of UNGA77

    By our correspondent

    New York: Prime Minister of Pakistan Muhammad Shahbaz Sharif arrived at the United Nations Headquarters to attend the reception given by the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, in honor of the heads of state and government participating in the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly.

    The premier has arrived in New York to participate in the High-Level General Debate of the 77th Session of UN General Assembly (UNGA77), scheduled from 20 to 26 September 2022 at UN HQs, New York, USA.

    According to a statement issued by the media wing of the Prime Minister’s Office, Prime Minister Muhammad Shahbaz Sharif will spend a busy day in New York today.

    The Prime Minister will participate in the opening session of the high-level discussion of the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly.

    Besides this, the Prime Minister will hold bilateral meetings with H.E Mr. Emmanuel Macron, President of the Republic of France;  H.E Mr. Karl Nehammer, Federal Chancellor of the Republic of Austria; H.E Mr. Pedro Sanchez Perez-Castejon, President of Spain: and H.E Mr. Sayyed Ebrahim Raisi, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

    In the afternoon, the Prime Minister will visit The Times Centre for an interview with the New York Time’s Editorial Board.

    In the evening, the Prime Minister will be called on by Mr. John Kerry, US Special Envoy for Climate Change.

    The Prime Minister was received at John F Kennedy (JFK) International Airport, New York by Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the UN Munir Akram, Pakistan’s Ambassador to Washington Masood Khan and other senior officers.

    Meanwhile APP added: The prime minister is set to address the 193-member Assembly during its high-level debate on September 23.

    The debate opens Tuesday and ends on Sept. 26

    The prime minister flew into New York from London where he attended the final rites of Queen Elizabeth II.

    On his arrival at New York’s John F Kennedy International Airport , he was received by Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Munir Akram, Pakistan’s Ambassador to Washington, Masood Khan, Consul General in New York, Ayesha Ali and other senior officials.

    On September 20, the prime minister would attend a reception to be hosted by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

    On the same day, he would also meet French President Emmanuel Macron, the Austrian chancellor and the Spanish president.

    A meeting with President of the European Union Council Charles Michel and participation in Global Food Security Summit to be hosted by President of Senegal and the African Union is also on the agenda of the prime minister’s visit.

    On September 21, he would meet Managing Director of International Monetary Fund Kristalina Georgieva and President of World Bank David Malpass, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.

    Besides meeting with the UNGA president, Csaba Korosi, the prime minister would also attend a dinner reception to be hosted by US President Joe Biden.

    Prime Minister Sharif will also host a luncheon reception in honour of Turkish president and his spouse, besides meeting with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto.

    Meetings with Microsoft founder Bill Gates and the UN chief, Chinese President Premier Li Keqiang and Japanese PM Fumio Kishida are also part of the prime minister’s engagements.

    He would also meet Luxembourg PM Xavier Bettel and Malaysian PM Ismail Sabri Yaakob on the same day, besides interacting with international media outlets.

  • Protests in Iran at death of Kurdish woman after arrest by morality police

    Despite warnings, hundreds of people have reportedly gathered in Mahsa Amini’s home town of Saqqez for her burial

    A series of protests have broken out in Iran after the death of a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, who died in hospital on 16 September, three days after she was arrested and reportedly beaten by morality police in Tehran.

    Demonstrators initially gathered outside Kasra hospital in Tehran, where Amini was being treated. Human rights groups reported that security forces deployed pepper spray against protesters and that several were arrested.

    Continue reading…

  • The Maybe Mob and the Rushdie Attack

    He has survived death threats and attempts on his life since February 1989.  But Salman Rushdie’s luck just about ran out at the Chautauqua Institution, southwest of Buffalo in New York State.  On August 12, at a venue historically celebrated for bringing education to all, the writer was stabbed incessantly by a fanatic who felt little sense of guilt or remorse.  Hadi Matar only had eyes for Rushdie’s neck and abdomen.  As a result of the attack, the author is likely to lose sight of one eye and possibly the use of an arm.

    It was a chilling reminder that the fatwa condemning him to death never risked going stale, even if it might have been put into a form of archived cold storage.  Declared by the Iran’s sickly spiritual ruler, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Rushdie’s remarkable crime was to have blasphemed against the Prophet Muhammad in the novel The Satanic Verses.  The supreme leader, having hardly distinguished himself in a bloody war against Iraq, needed a supreme distraction.

    The entire exercise was an example of how irony and humour have no place for dour, dogmatic priestliness.  How dare an author, in a work of fiction, playfully and plausibly claim that the Prophet was not the sole editor of the message to Angel Gibreel (Gabriel), and that Satan had cheekily inserted his role into it?  And that this was done using the medium of Gibreel Farishta’s hallucinations?

    Dare Rushdie did, and this exhortation to state-sanctioned killing of an author and all those associated with translating and disseminating the book exposed the underbelly of cowardice that often accompanies attempts to defend literary freedoms.  Rushdie’s translator Hitoshi Igarashi was, in fact, murdered, while his Norwegian publisher, William Nygaard, was gravely wounded.  The Turkish translator, Aziz Nesin, escaped a mob assault that led to 37 deaths in Silvas, Turkey.

    It was one thing to find fanatics who had never read the book and wished to do away with the author in a fit of state subsidised zealotry.  But then there was that camp: those who, in principle, opposed the fatwa but still wished to attack Rushdie as an act of cultural understanding and solidarity with his enemies.  (Grahame Wood of The Atlantic calls them the “Team To Be Sure”, who rubbished the West’s free speech defence of Rushdie, claiming that mischief might have been averted if only he hadn’t been so inclined to offend.)

    The events of 1989 cast a long shadow.  There were those in holy orders, who thought that the Ayatollah had a point.  There was Dr. Robert Runcie, Archbishop of Canterbury, who called for a strengthening of blasphemy laws to cover religions other than Christianity, though he was also careful to “condemn incitement to murder or any other violence from any source whatever.”  Very Church of England.

    And there was former US President Jimmy Carter, who seemed to take issue that an author’s rights were considered fundamental even in the face of insulting religions.  What, came the insinuation, about the insulted?  Where would their anger go?  Rushdie’s First Amendment freedoms might be “important”, but there had been “little acknowledgment that this is a direct insult to those millions of Moslems whose sacred beliefs have been violated and are suffering in restrained silence”.  Contemplated homicide against an author, in other words, was being excused, even if the “death sentence” was an “abhorrent response”.

    It was even more galling to see fellow novelists mauling the underdog, showing how solidarity among scribes is rarer than you think.  The Marxist author John Berger did not think much of Rushdie’s case, hiding behind a sham argument that producing threatening literature might well endanger “the lives of those who are innocent of either writing or reading the book.”  Berger’s ingratiating note was an attempt to convince other Islamic leaders and statesmen to avoid “a unique 20th-century holy war, with its terrifying righteousness on both sides.”

    Roald Dahl, man of dysfunctional virtue and author of disturbed children’s tales, decided in a letter to The Times that Rushdie was a “dangerous opportunist”, as if engaging in irony in such matters is to be avoided.  He had to have been “aware of the deep and violent feelings his book would stir up among devout Muslims.”  His suggestion: a modest dose of self-censorship.  “In a civilized world we have a moral obligation to apply a modicum of censorship to our own work to reinforce this principle of free speech.”  Censors from Moscow to Tehran would have approved.

    Nor did John le Carré, consummate writer of espionage novels, disagree.  “I don’t think it is given to any of us to be impertinent to great religions with impunity,” he told The New York Times in May 1989.

    In November 1997, with le Carré complaining of being unfairly branded an anti-Semite, Rushdie wrote a pointed reminder it would have been easier “to sympathize with him had he not been so ready to join in an earlier campaign of vilification against a fellow writer.”  It would have been gracious were “he to admit that he understands the nature of the Thought Police a little better now that, at last in his own opinion, he’s the one in the line of fire.”

    Le Carré sniped back accordingly, taking the position he claimed to have had in 1989: “that there is no law in life or nature that says great religions may be insulted with impunity.”  Little time was spent then, and now, on the malicious, sinister nature of religious totalitarianism that has been a monstrous burden on expression, critique and sober thought.  Instead, the creator of Smiley and the Circus wished to strike a “less arrogant, less colonialist, and less self-righteous note than we were hearing from the safety of his admirers’ camp.”

    As Wood writes, the honourable response to the attack on Rushdie would have been to admit a failure to protect a brave author and declare “that we are all Rushdie now”.  Read his work; throw his name in the faces of the regime’s apologists and their homicidal dolts.  After all, while the Republic of Iran has claimed to have lost active interest in killing the author, it will not object to an independent enthusiast doing the same.  The decision encouraging Rushdie’s murder, stated Khomeini’s successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, “is a bullet for which there is a target.  It has been shot.  It will one day sooner or later hit the target.”

    This crippling germ of authorial assassination is incarnated in more current forms, without the lethal element: cancel culture, the desire to actively enact one’s offended disposition to liquidate, banish and extirpate the views of your opponent.  They offend you because you, somehow, have answers beyond question.  Assassination is simply one of the most extreme forms of censorship, an attempt to silence and kill off the vibrant chatter that makes an intellectual world live.  Sadly, as Rushdie recovers, the maybe mob and their complicity should be noted, their names marked on walls high.  The inner censoring assassin is everywhere.

    The post The Maybe Mob and the Rushdie Attack first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Iran, US resume nuclear talks in Vienna

    Vienna: Indirect talks between Tehran and Washington resumed in Vienna with a meeting between Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator and the EU’s Enrique Mora, who coordinates the talks aimed at salvaging a 2015 nuclear deal, Iranian state media reported on Thursday.

    According to Reuters, both Tehran and Washington have played down the prospect of a breakthrough in this round of talks, while the European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has warned there is no room left for further major compromises.

    As Iran refuses to hold direct talks with the United States, Mora will shuttle between Ali Bagheri Kani and U.S. Special Envoy for Iran Rob Malley, who tweeted on Wednesday he was heading to Vienna with his expectations “in check”.

    Signaling little flexibility to resolve remaining thorny issues, Bagheri Kani put the onus on the White House to compromise, saying in a tweet the United States should “show maturity & act responsibly”.

    According to New York Times, before the meeting, Mr. Malley suggested that he did not expect major progress. “Our expectations are in check, but the United States welcomes E.U. efforts and is prepared for a good-faith attempt to reach a deal,” he wrote on Twitter. “It will shortly be clear if Iran is prepared for the same.” Iran negotiators still refuse to meet directly with Americans.

    Mr. Bagheri Kani said that the burden was on Washington. “The onus is on those who breached the deal & have failed to distance from ominous legacy,” he wrote in his own Twitter message. A spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Nasser Kanani, described the talks as “a discussion and exchange of views.”

    Speaking at the United Nations, Iran’s ambassador to the global body, Majid Takht-Ravanchi, blamed Washington for failing to guarantee that Iran would receive the pact’s economic benefits. “Achieving this objective has been delayed because the United States is yet to decide to give assurance that Iran will enjoy the promised economic benefits in the agreement,” he said.

    The delay has meant that Iran has pressed ahead with its nuclear program so far that it will be difficult to monitor any revived agreement, even if one is reached, suggested the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael M. Grossi.

    Little remains of the 2015 deal, which lifted sanctions against Tehran in exchange for restrictions on its nuclear programme. But then-President Donald Trump ditched the deal in 2018 and reimposed harsh sanctions.

    After 11 months of indirect talks in Vienna between Tehran and President Joe Biden’s administration, however, the broad outline of a revived deal was essentially agreed in March.

    But talks then broke down, chiefly because of Tehran’s demand that Washington remove its Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) from a U.S. terrorism list and the U.S. refusal to do so.

    To overcome the impasse, Borrell in July proposed a new draft text, which two Iranian officials said Tehran “was not happy” with it.

    “Iran has shown enough flexibility. Now it is up to Biden to make a decision. We have our own suggestions that will be discussed in the Vienna talks, such as lifting sanctions on the Guards gradually,” a senior Iranian official told Reuters.

    According to CBS News, Iranian officials have been trying to offer optimistic assessments of the negotiations while blaming the U.S. for the deadlock. They may be worried that a collapse of the talks could send the country’s rial currency plunging to new lows.

    Iran struck the nuclear deal in 2015 with the U.S., France, Germany, Britain, Russia and China. The deal saw Iran agree to limit its enrichment of uranium under the watch of U.N. inspectors in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.

    Then-President Donald Trump unilaterally pulled the U.S. out of the accord in 2018, saying he would negotiate a stronger deal, but that didn’t happen. Iran began breaking the deal’s terms a year later.

    Reports suggest, as of the last public IAEA count, Iran has a stockpile of some 3,800 kilograms (8,370 pounds) of enriched uranium. More worrying for nonproliferation experts, Iran now enriches uranium up to 60% purity — a level it had never reached before. That is a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%.

  • “Fortress Mentality” Among US Leaders Has Trapped Us in a Cycle of Militarism

    Mainstream media and politics routinely assume that the United States is a well-meaning global giant, striving to keep dangerous adversaries at bay. So, it was just another day at the imperial office on July 19 when FBI Director Christopher Wray declared: “The Russians are trying to get us to tear ourselves apart. The Chinese are trying to manage our decline, and the Iranians are trying to get us to go away.”

    Such statements harmonize with the prevailing soundscape. The standard script asserts that the United States is powerful and besieged — mighty but always menaced — the world’s leading light yet beset by hostile nations and other sinister forces aiming to undermine the USA’s rightful dominance of the globe.

    A fortress mindset feeds the U.S. government’s huge “defense” budget — which is higher than the military budgets of the next 10 countries combined — while the Pentagon maintains about 750 military bases overseas. But victimology is among Washington’s official poses, in sync with a core belief that the United States is at the center of the world’s importance and must therefore police the world to the best of its capacity.

    In recent decades, U.S. military power has faced new challenges to retain unipolar leverage over the planet in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse. (Heavy is Uncle Sam’s head that wears the crown.) Along with the fresh challenges came incentives to update the political lexicon for rationalizing red-white-and-blue militarism.

    Ever since Secretary of State Madeleine Albright gave the motto its bigtime national debut in February 1998 on NBC’s “Today Show”, efforts to portray the U.S. as an “indispensable nation” became familiar rhetoric — or at least a renewed conceptual frame — for U.S. interventionism. “If we have to use force,” she said, “it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future, and we see the danger here to all of us.”

    In 2022, such verbiage would easily fit onto teleprompters at the highest levels of the U.S. government. The appeal of such words has never waned among mass media and officials in Washington, as the United States simultaneously touts itself as the main virtuous star on the world stage and a country simply trying to protect itself from malevolence.

    Consider FBI Director Wray’s rhetoric about official enemies:

    “The Russians are trying to get us to tear ourselves apart.”

    This theme remains an establishment favorite. It dodges the grim realities of U.S. society — completely unrelated to Russia — such as longstanding and ongoing conflicts due to racism, misogyny, income inequality, corporate power, oligarchy, and other structural injustices. The right-wing menace to human decency and democracy in the United States is homegrown, as the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol made chillingly clear.

    This month, while the horrific and unjustified Russian war in Ukraine has continued, the United States has persisted with massive shipments of weapons to the Ukrainian government. Meanwhile, official interest in genuine diplomacy has been somewhere between scant and nonexistent. One of the few stirrings toward rationality from Capitol Hill came early this month when Rep. Ro Khanna told The Washington Post: “People don’t want to see a resigned attitude that this is just going to go on as long as it’s going to go on. What is the plan on the diplomatic front?” Several weeks later, the Biden administration is still indicating no interest in any such plan.

    “The Chinese are trying to manage our decline.”

    Leaders in Washington don’t want the sun to set on the U.S. empire, but China and many other nations have other ideas. This week, news of Nancy Pelosi’s intention to visit Taiwan in August was greeted with cheers from the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, which wrote that she deserved “kudos” for planning “what would be the first trip to the island democracy by a House Speaker in 25 years.”

    At midweek, President Biden expressed concern about the planned trip, saying: “I think that the military thinks it’s not a good idea right now. But I don’t know what the status of it is.” However, his team’s overall approach is confrontational, risking a potentially catastrophic war with nuclear-armed China. Despite dire warnings from many analysts, the U.S. geopolitical stance toward China is reflexively and dangerously zero-sum.

    “The Iranians are trying to get us to go away.”

    Iran’s government adhered to the nuclear deal enacted in 2015, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). But the Trump administration pulled out of the pact. Rather than swiftly move to rejoin it, the Biden administration has dithered and thrown roadblocks.

    Two weeks ago, Secretary of State Antony Blinken disingenuously announced: “We are imposing sanctions on Iranian petroleum and petrochemical producers, transporters, and front companies. Absent a commitment from Iran to return to the JCPOA, an outcome we continue to pursue, we will keep using our authorities to target Iran’s exports of energy products.”

    In response, Quincy Institute Executive Vice President Trita Parsi tweeted: “Biden is continuing and embracing Trump’s max pressure policy, while expecting a different result. All of this could have been avoided if Biden just returned to the JCPOA via Exe order” — with an executive order, as he did to reverse President Trump’s withdrawal of the U.S. from the Paris climate accord and the World Health Organization.

    What continues — with countless instances of repetition compulsion — is the proclaimed vision of the United States of America leading the charge against the world’s badness. Beneath the veneer of goodness, however, systematic hypocrisy and opportunistic cruelty persist on a massive scale.

    A case in point is Biden’s recent journey to the Middle East: The presidential trip’s prominent features included fist-bumping with a Saudi monarch whose government has caused a quarter-million deaths and vast misery with its war on Yemen, and voicing fervent support for the Israeli government as it continues to impose apartheid on the Palestinian people.

    Leaders of the U.S. government never tire of reasserting their commitment to human rights and democracy. At the same time, they insist that an inexhaustible supply of adversaries is bent on harming the United States, which must not run away from forceful engagement with the world. But the actual U.S. agenda is to run the world.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • India-Russia-Iran: Eurasia’s new transportation powerhouses

    No longer just an ‘alternative route’ on a drawing board, the International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC) is paying dividends in a time of global crisis. And Moscow, Tehran and New Delhi are now leading players in the Eurasian competition for transportation routes.

    Photo Credit: The Cradle

    Tectonic shifts continue to rage through the world system with nation-states quickly recognizing that the “great game” as it has been played since the establishment of the Bretton Woods monetary system in the wake of the second World War, is over.

    But empires never disappear without a fight, and the Anglo-American one is no exception, overplaying its hand, threatening and bluffing its way, right to the end.

    End of an order

    It seems no matter how many sanctions the west imposes on Russia, the victims most affected are western civilians. Indeed, the severity of this political blunder is such that the nations of the trans-Atlantic are heading towards the greatest self-induced food and energy crisis in history.

    While the representatives of the “liberal rules-based international order” continue on their trajectory to crush all nations that refuse to play by those rules, a much saner paradigm has come to light in recent months that promises to transform the global order entirely.

    The multipolar solution

    Here we see the alternative security-financial order which has arisen in the form of the Greater Eurasian Partnership. As recently as 30 June at the 10th St Petersburg International Legal Forum, Russian President Vladimir Putin described this emerging new multipolar order as:

    A multipolar system of international relations is now being formed. It is an irreversible process; it is happening before our eyes and is objective in nature. The position of Russia and many other countries is that this democratic, more just world order should be built on the basis of mutual respect and trust, and, of course, on the generally accepted principles of international law and the UN Charter.

    Since the inevitable cancellation of western trade with Russia after the Ukraine conflict erupted in February, Putin has increasingly made clear that the strategic re-orientation of Moscow’s economic ties from east to west had to make a dramatically new emphasis on north to south and north to east relations not only for Russia’s survival, but for the survival of all Eurasia.

    Among the top strategic focuses of this re-orientation is the long overdue International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC).

    On this game-changing mega-project, Putin said last month during the plenary session of the 25th St Petersburg International Economic Forum:

    To help companies from other countries develop logistical and cooperation ties, we are working to improve transport corridors, increase the capacity of railways, trans-shipment capacity at ports in the Arctic, and in the eastern, southern and other parts of the country, including in the Azov-Black Sea and Caspian basins – they will become the most important section of the North-South Corridor, which will provide stable connectivity with the Middle East and Southern Asia. We expect freight traffic along this route to begin growing steadily in the near future.

    The INSTC’s Phoenix Moment

    Until recently, the primary trade route for goods passing from India to Europe has been the maritime shipping corridor passing through the Bab El-Mandeb Strait linking the Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea, via the highly bottle-necked Suez Canal, through the Mediterranean and onward to Europe via ports and rail/road corridors.

    Following this western-dominated route, average transit times take about 40 days to reach ports of Northern Europe or Russia. Geopolitical realities of the western technocratic obsession with global governance have made this NATO-controlled route more than a little unreliable.

    The International North South Transport Corridor (INSTC)

    Despite being far from complete, goods moving across the INSTC from India to Russia have already finished their journey 14 days sooner than their Suez-bound counterparts while also seeing a whopping 30 percent reduction in total shipping costs.

    These figures are expected to fall further as the project progresses. Most importantly, the INSTC would also provide a new basis for international win-win cooperation much more in harmony with the spirit of geo-economics unveiled by China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013.

    Cooperation not competition

    Originally agreed upon by Russia, Iran and India in September 2000, the INSTC only began moving in earnest in 2002 – albeit much more slowly than its architects had hoped.

    This 7,200 km multimodal mega-project involves integrating several Eurasian nations directly or indirectly with rail, roads and shipping corridors into a united and tight-knit web of interdependency. Along each artery, opportunities to build energy projects, mining, and high tech special economic zones (SEZs) will abound, giving each participating nation the economic power to lift their people out of poverty, increase their stability and their national power to chart their own destinies.

    Beyond the founding three nations, the other 10 states who have signed onto this project over the years include Armenia, Georgia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Oman, Syria and even Ukraine (although this last member may not remain on board for long). In recent months, India has officially invited Afghanistan and Uzbekistan to join too.

    While western think tanks and geopolitical analysts attempt to frame the INSTC as an opponent to China’s BRI, the reality is that both systems are extremely synergistic on multiple levels.

    China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)

    Unlike the west’s speculation-driven bubble economy, both the BRI and INSTC define economic value and self-interest around improving the productivity and living standards of the real economy. While short term thinking predominates in the myopic London-Wall Street paradigm, the BRI and INSTC investment strategies are driven by long-term thinking and mutual self-interest.

    It is no small irony that such policies once animated the best traditions of the west before the rot of unipolar thinking took over and the west lost its moral compass.

    An integrated alternative

    The INSTC’s two major bookends are the productive zone of Mumbai in India’s Southeast region of Gujarat and the northern-most Arctic port of Lavna in Russia’s Kola Peninsula of Murmansk.

    This is not only the first port constructed by Russia in decades, but when completed, will be one of the world’s largest commercial ports with an expected capacity to process 80 million tons of goods by 2030.

    The Lavna Port is an integral part of Russia’s Arctic and Far East Development vision and is a central piece to Russia’s current Comprehensive Plan for Modernization and Expansion of Main Infrastructure and its Northern Sea Route which is expected to see a five-fold increase of Arctic freight traffic over the coming years. These projects are integrally linked to China’s Polar Silk Road.

    Between these bookends, the INSTC moves freight from India into Iran’s Port of Bandar Abbas where it is loaded onto double-tracked rail to the Iranian city of Bafq and then to Tehran before coming to the Anzali Port on the southern Caspian Sea.

    ‘Be like water’

    Because the INSTC is based on a flexible design concept capable of adapting to a changing geopolitical environment (very much like the BRI), there are a multitude of connecting lines that branch off the main North-South artery before goods make it to the Caspian Sea.

    These include an eastern and western corridor branching off from the city of Bafq towards Turkey and thence Europe via the Bosporus and also eastward from Tehran to Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and thereafter into Urumqi in China.

    Railway is still relevant

    From the Anzali Port in the north of Iran, goods may travel by the Caspian Sea towards Russia’s Astrakhan Port where it is then loaded onto trains and trucks for transport to Moscow, St Petersburg and Murmansk. Inversely goods may also travel over land to Azerbaijan where the 35 km Iran Rasht-Caspian railway is currently under construction with 11 km completed as of this writing.

    Once completed, the line will connect the Port of Anzali with Azerbaijan’s Baku, offering goods a chance to either continue onwards to Russia or westward toward Europe. A Tehran-Baku rail route already exists.

    Additionally, Azerbaijan and Iran are currently collaborating on a vast $2 billion rail line connecting the 175 km Qazvin-Rasht railway which began operations in 2019 with a strategic rail line connecting Iran’s Rasht port on the Caspian to the Bandar Abbas Complex in the south (to be completed in 2025). Iran’s Minister of Roads and Urban Development Rostam Ghasemi described this project in January 2022 saying:

    Iran’s goal is to connect to the Caucasus, Russia, and European countries. For this purpose, the construction of the Rasht-Astara railway is in the spotlight. During the Iranian president’s visit to Russia, discussions were conducted in this regard, and construction of the railway line is expected to begin soon with the allocation of needed funds.

    In recent months, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has lobbied to incorporate the joint Iran-India built Chabahar Port into the INSTC which will likely occur since another 628 km rail line from the port to the Iranian city of Zahedan is currently under construction.

    Once completed, goods will easily move onward to the city of Bafq. While some critics have suggested that the Chabahar Port is antagonistic to Pakistan’s Gwadar Port, Iranian officials have constantly referred to it as Chabahar’s twin sister.

    Since 2014, a vast rail and transportation complex has grown around the co-signers of the Ashkabat Agreement (launched in 2011 and upgraded several times over the past decade). These rail networks include the 917.5 km Iran-Turkmenistan-Kazakhstan route launched in 2014, and Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Tajikistan rail/energy project launched in 2016 which is currently seeing extensions that could easily go into Pakistan.

    In December 2021, the 6540 km Islamabad to Istanbul rail line (via Iran) recommenced operations after a decade of inaction. This route cuts the conventional sea transit route time of 21 days by half. Discussions are already underway to extend the line from Pakistan into China’s Xinjiang Province linking the INSTC ever more closely into the BRI on yet another front.

    Islamabad to Istanbul rail line (via Iran)

    Finally, June 2022 saw the long-awaited unveiling of the 6108 km Kazakhstan-Iran-Turkey rail line which provides an alternative route to the under-developed Middle Corridor. Celebrating the inaugural 12 day voyage of cargo, Kazakhstan’s President Kasym-Jomart Tokayev stated: “Today, we welcomed the container train, which left Kazakhstan a week ago. Then it will go to Turkey. This is a significant event, given the difficult geopolitical conditions.”

    Despite the fact that the INSTC is over 20 years old, global geopolitical dynamics, regime change wars, and ongoing economic warfare against Iran, Syria and other US target states did much to harm the sort of stable geopolitical climate needed to emit large scale credit requisite for long term projects like this to succeed.

    Caspian Summit Security breakthroughs

    As proof that necessity truly is the mother of invention, the systemic meltdown of the entire post-WW2 edifice has forced reality to take precedence over the smaller-minded concerns that kept the diverse nations of Sir Halford John Mackinder’s “World Island” from cooperating. Among these points of endless conflict and stagnation which has upset great economic potential over the course of three decades, the Caspian zone stands out.

    It is in this oil and natural gas rich hub that the five Caspian littoral states (Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan) have found a power to break through on multi-level security, economic and diplomatic agreements throughout the June 29-30, 2022 Sixth Caspian Summit in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan.

    This summit placed a high priority on the INSTC with the region becoming both a north-south and east-west transportation hub. Most importantly, the leaders of the five littoral states made their final communique center around the region’s security since it is obvious that divide-to-conquer tactics will be deployed using every tool in the asymmetrical warfare tool basket going forward.

    Chief among the agreed-upon principles were indivisible security, mutual cooperation, military cooperation, respect for national sovereignty, and non-interference. Most importantly, the banning of foreign military from the land and waters of the Caspian states was firmly established.

    While no final agreement was reached over the disputed ownership of resources within the base of the Caspian, the stage was set for harmonization of partner states’ security doctrines, a healthy environment was established for the second Caspian Economic Summit which will take place in Autumn of this year and which will hopefully resolve many of the disputes pertaining to Caspian resource ownership.

    Although geopolitical storms continue to intensify, it is increasingly clear that only the multipolar ship of state has demonstrated the competence to navigate the hostile seas, while the sinking unipolar ship of fools has a ruptured hull held together by little more than chewing gum and heavy doses of delusion.

    • First published in The Cradle

    The post India-Russia-Iran: Eurasia’s new transportation powerhouses first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Rise of BRICS: The Economic Giant that is Taking on the West

    The G7 summit in Elmau, Germany, June 26-28, and the NATO summit in Madrid, Spain, two days later, were practically useless in terms of providing actual solutions to ongoing global crises – the war in Ukraine, the looming famines, climate change and more. But the two events were important, nonetheless, as they provide a stark example of the impotence of the West, amid the rapidly changing global dynamics.

    As was the case since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, the West attempted to display unity, though it has become repeatedly obvious that no such unity exists. While France, Germany and Italy are paying a heavy price for the energy crisis resulting from the war, Britain’s Boris Johnson is adding fuel to the fire in the hope of making his country relevant on the global stage following the humiliation of Brexit. Meanwhile, the Biden Administration is exploiting the war to restore Washington’s credibility and leadership over NATO – especially following the disastrous term of Donald Trump, which nearly broke up the historic alliance.

    Even the fact that several African countries are becoming vulnerable to famines  – as a result of the disruption of food supplies originating from the Black Sea and the subsequent rising prices – did not seem to perturb the leaders of some of the richest countries in the world. They still insist on not interfering in the global food market, though the skyrocketing prices have already pushed tens of millions of people below the poverty line.

    Though the West had little reserve of credibility to begin with, Western leaders’ current obsession with maintaining thousands of sanctions on Russia, further NATO expansion, dumping yet more ‘lethal weapons’ in Ukraine and sustaining their global hegemony at any cost, have all pushed their credibility standing to a new low.

    From the start of the Ukraine war, the West championed the same ‘moral’ dilemma as that raised by George W. Bush at the start of his so-called ‘war on terror’. “You are either with us or with the terrorist,” he declared in October 2009. But the ongoing Russia-NATO conflict cannot be reduced to simple and self-serving cliches. One can, indeed, want an end to the war, and still oppose US-western unilateralism. The reason that American diktats worked in the past, however, is that, unlike the current geopolitical atmosphere, a few dared oppose Washington’s policies.

    Times have changed. Russia, China, India, along with many other countries in Asia, the Middle East, Africa and South America are navigating all available spaces to counter the suffocating western dominance. These countries have made it clear that they will not take part in isolating Russia in the service of NATO’s expansionist agenda. To the contrary, they have taken many steps to develop alternatives to the west-dominated global economy, and particularly to the US dollar which, for five decades, has served the role of a commodity, not a currency, per se. The latter has been Washington’s most effective weapon, associated with many US-orchestrated crises, sanctions and, as in the case of Iraq and Venezuela, among others, mass hunger.

    China and others understand that the current conflict is not about Ukraine vs Russia, but about something far more consequential. If Washington and Europe emerge victorious, and if Moscow is pushed back behind the proverbial ‘iron curtain’, Beijing would have no other options but to make painful concessions to the re-emerging west. This, in turn, would place a cap on China’s global economic growth, and would weaken its case regarding the One China policy.

    China is not wrong. Almost immediately following NATO’s limitless military support of Ukraine and the subsequent economic war on Russia, Washington and its allies began threatening China over Taiwan. Many provocative statements, along with military maneuvers and high-level visits by US politicians to Taipei, were meant to underscore US dominance in the Pacific.

    Two main reasons drove the West to further invest in the current confrontational approach against China, at a time where, arguably, it would have been more beneficial to exercise a degree of diplomacy and compromise. First, the West’s fear that Beijing could misinterpret its action as weakness and a form of appeasement; and, second, because the West’s historic relationship with China has always been predicated on intimidation, if not outright humiliation. From the Portuguese occupation of Macau in the 16th century, to the British Opium Wars of the mid-19th century, to Trump’s trade war on China, the West has always viewed China as a subject, not a partner.

    This is precisely why Beijing did not join the chorus of western condemnations of Russia. Though the actual war in Ukraine is of no direct benefit to China, the geopolitical outcomes of the war could be critical to the future of China as a global power.

    While NATO remains insistent on expansion so as to illustrate its durability and unity, it is the alternative world order led by Russia and China that is worthy of serious attention. According to the German Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Beijing and Moscow are working to further develop the BRICS club of major emerging economies to serve as a counterweight to the G7. The German paper is correct. BRICS’ latest summit on June 23 was designed as a message to the G7 that the West is no longer in the driving seat, and that Russia, China and the Global South are preparing for a long fight against Western dominance.

    In his speech at the BRICS summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed the creation of an “international reserve currency based on the basket of currencies of our countries”. The fact that the ruble alone has managed to survive, in fact flourish, under recent Western sanctions, gives hope that BRICS currencies combined can manage to eventually sideline the US dollar as the world dominant currency.

    Reportedly, it was Chinese President Xi Jinping who requested that the date of the BRICS summit be changed from July 4 to June 23, so that it would not appear to be a response to the G7 summit in Germany. This further underscores how the BRICS are beginning to see themselves as a direct competitor to the G7. The fact that Argentina and Iran are applying for BRICS membership also illustrates that the economic alliance is morphing into a political, in fact geopolitical, entity.

    The global fight ahead is perhaps the most consequential since World War II. While NATO will continue to fight for relevance, Russia, China, and others will invest in various economic, political and even military infrastructures, in the hope of creating a permanent and sustainable counterbalance to Western dominance. The outcome of this conflict is likely to shape the future of humanity.

    The post The Rise of BRICS: The Economic Giant that is Taking on the West first appeared on Dissident Voice.

  • Biden Says He’d Use Military Force on Iran as “Last Resort” to Prevent Nukes

    U.S. President Joe Biden said in an interview aired Wednesday that he would be willing to go to war with Iran to prevent the country from obtaining a nuclear weapon, a position that drew condemnation from advocacy groups and foreign policy analysts who questioned the moral, strategic, and legal bases for such a stance.

    Biden also reiterated in the sit-down interview with Israeli broadcaster N12 that he is committed to keeping the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organizations list, even if it means sinking the prospects of a deal to revive the nuclear accord that former President Donald Trump violated in 2018.

    While acknowledging that Trump’s decision to abandon the seven-country deal was a “gigantic mistake,” Biden said he would not delist the IRGC to advance nuclear talks that have hit a wall in recent weeks.

    Biden offered a one-word answer — “yes” — when asked whether he would keep the IRGC on the terror list “even if that means that kills the deal.”

    The U.S. president went on to say that he’s prepared to use military force “as a last resort” to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Iran has repeatedly said it is not pursuing a nuclear weapon and that its nuclear energy program is designed for peaceful domestic purposes.

    Watch Biden’s comments:

    Peace organizations were outraged by the president’s interview, noting that the terror designation is largely symbolic while the nuclear deal was a substantive diplomatic achievement that lifted devastating economic sanctions in exchange for limits to Iran’s nuclear program.

    “Let’s be clear: Congress has not authorized — and the American people overwhelmingly do not support — the use of force against Iran,” said the Friends Committee on National Legislation. “If the president is committed to preventing nuclear proliferation, he should return to the nuclear deal and prioritize diplomacy. War is not the answer.”

    Matt Duss, foreign policy adviser to U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), responded that “it makes absolutely zero sense that he won’t delist the IRGC to prevent an Iranian nuke but would launch a war to prevent an Iranian nuke.”

    The president’s remarks came days after his administration announced new sanctions targeting Iranian firms and individuals, a move seen as further evidence that Biden remains wedded to the failed “maximum pressure” campaign that his predecessor launched, imperiling any remaining hopes of a breakthrough in the stalled nuclear talks.

    “Astonishing to see the president say he is willing to throw away the diplomatic progress his team has made and invite war with Iran over pointless partisan symbolism,” said progressive advocacy group Win Without War.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Mike Pompeo’s Revealing Hudson Institute Speech

    Listen to a reading of this article:

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    Former CIA director and secretary of state Mike Pompeo gave a speech at the Hudson Institute last week that’s probably worth taking a look at just because of how much it reveals about the nature of the US empire and the corrupt institutions which influence its policies.

    Pompeo is serving as a “Distinguished Fellow” at the Hudson Institute while he waits for the revolving door of the DC swamp to rotate him back into a federal government position. The Hudson Institute is a neoconservative think tank which has a high degree of overlap with the infamous Project for the New American Century and its lineup of Iraq war architects, and spends a lot of its time manufacturing Beltway support for hawkish agendas against Iran. It was founded in 1961 with the help of a cold warrior named Herman Kahn, whose enthusiastic support for the idea that the US can win a nuclear war with the Soviet Union was reportedly an inspiration for the movie Dr Strangelove.

    A think tank is an institution where academics are paid by the worst people in the world to come up with explanations for why it would be good and smart to do something evil and stupid, which are then pitched at key points of influence in the media and the government. “Think tank” is a good and accurate label for these institutions, because they are dedicated to controlling what people think, and because they are artificial enclosures for slimy creatures.

    Pompeo’s speech is one long rimjob for the military-industrial complex which indirectly employs him. He repeatedly sings the praises of the weapons that are being poured into Ukraine, two of them by name: the Patriot missile built by Raytheon and the Javelin missile built jointly by Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, both of whom happen to be major funders of the Hudson Institute. He repeatedly decries the “disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan,” and excoriates the Biden administration for failing to control the world’s fossil fuel resources aggressively enough in its efforts to “prostrate itself to radicals.”

    Pompeo, easily ranked among the most fanatical imperialists on the entire planet, hilariously says that “China’s Belt and Road Initiative is a form of imperialism.” He decries a “genocide” in Xinjiang and repeatedly implies that China deliberately unleashed Covid-19 upon the world, calling it “the global pandemic induced by China.” He repeatedly claims that Vladimir Putin is trying to reconstitute the Soviet Union.

    Along with praise for NATO and for the various anti-China alliances in the Indo-Pacific, Pompeo names “Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan” as “the three lighthouses for liberty” which those alliances must work to support militarily. You will notice that those three “lighthouses” just so happen to be the hottest points of geostrategic conflict with the top three opponents of the US empire: Russia, Iran, and China.

    But there are a couple of things Pompeo says which have some real meat on them.

    “By aiding Ukraine, we undermined the creation of a Russian-Chinese axis bent on exerting military and economic hegemony in Europe, in Asia and in the Middle East,” Pompeo says.

    “We must prevent the formation of a Pan-Eurasian colossus incorporating Russia, but led by China,” he later adds. “To do that, we have to strengthen NATO, and we see that nothing hinders Finland and Sweden’s entry into that organization.”

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    To stop a "Pan-Eurasian colossus" from forming, @mikepompeo stresses the importance of #Finland and #Sweden joining @NATO as well as #Russia's resulting increase in military capability if they are denied entry. pic.twitter.com/er0BKvcjEK

    — Hudson Institute (@HudsonInstitute) June 29, 2022

    That’s all the major international news stories of today are ultimately about, right there. Underlying all the smaller news stories about conflicts with nations like Russia, China and Iran, there’s one continuous story about the US power alliance trying to secure planetary domination by relentlessly working to subvert any nation which refuses to align with it, and about the nations who oppose that campaign working against it with steadily increasing intimacy.

    This is all the Russia hysteria from 2016 onward has been about. This is all the phony, hypocritical hand-wringing about Taiwan, Xinjiang and Hong Kong have been about. This is all the staged histrionics about human rights in Iran, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Cuba have been about. It’s all been about manufacturing international consent for an increasingly dangerous campaign to secure unipolar global hegemony at any cost.

    It’s worth calling this to mind, as NATO for the first time designates China a threat due to its alignment with Russia and as NATO’s secretary-general admits that NATO has been preparing for a conflict with Russia since 2014. It is worth calling to mind the fact that the US has had a policy in place since the fall of the Soviet Union to prevent the rise of any rival superpower to deny any serious challenge to its planetary domination. It is worth calling to mind that in 1997 the precursor to the US Space Force committed to working toward “full spectrum dominance,” meaning military control over land, sea, air, and space.

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    US unipolar hegemony.

    They are right that China challenges NATO interests: the NATO cartel's existential goal of enforcing a US global dictatorship, one that imposes neoliberalism on the planet, destroying any country that proposes a state-led, people-centered economic model https://t.co/y5HCWAGkiL

    — Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) June 30, 2022

    People like to talk about secret conspiracies by shadowy cabals to establish a one-world government, but what is by far the most tangible and imminent global domination agenda has been orchestrated right out in the open. The US government has long sought to unite the world under a single power structure, no matter how much violence and devastation it needs to inflict upon humanity and no matter how much world-threatening nuclear brinkmanship it needs to engage in to do so.

    This is the US empire which corrupt psychopaths like Mike Pompeo support. A power structure which wages nonstop wars in order to keep the peace, which continually oppresses populations around the world in order to protect freedom, and which risks nuclear war with increasingly reckless aggression to in order save the world.

    _________________

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  • Venezuelan’s view on Gustavo Petro victory in Colombia, US sanctions, Iran pact

    Multipolarista host Benjamin Norton speaks with Venezuelan journalist Jesús Rodríguez Espinoza, editor of independent news outlet the Orinoco Tribune, about the victory of left-wing candidate Gustavo Petro in Colombia’s presidential election, the easing of a few US sanctions, and Venezuela’s 20-year cooperation agreement with Iran.

    The post Venezuelan’s view on Gustavo Petro victory in Colombia, US sanctions, Iran pact appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Double Standards When It Comes To State-Sponsored Assassinations

    Monday’s report by the New York Times that Iranian government officials suspect Israeli involvement in the recent deaths of two Iranian scientists – Ayoub Entezari and Kamran Aghamolaei – should come as no surprise to onlookers.

    In the long-running shadow war between Tehran and Tel Aviv, the assassination of Iranian officials by Israeli agents has become a mainstay of the Zionist state.

    Indeed, the deaths of both Entezari and Aghamolaei came less than two weeks after an assassin on a motorcycle gunned down Hassan Sayyad Khodaei, a Colonel in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp, in Tehran, the most senior member of the elite force to be killed since Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani was assassinated in a US Drone strike in January 2020, a move that brought Washington and Tehran to the brink of war.

    The post Double Standards When It Comes To State-Sponsored Assassinations appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Venezuela and Iran sign 20-year cooperation plan, Maduro pledges joint ‘anti-imperialist struggle’

    Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro took a historic trip to Iran and announced a 20-year cooperation agreement, pledging to more closely integrate the countries’ economies and work together in a joint “anti-imperialist struggle for a better world, of international respect and peace, without hegemonies.”

    Maduro signed the pact with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in Tehran on June 11. It was described by the Venezuelan and Iranian governments as a “partnership agreement” and “cooperation agreement.”

    The deal involves collaboration in science, technology, agriculture, oil and gas, petrochemicals, tourism, and culture, according to Tehran’s Press TV.

    The post Venezuela and Iran sign 20-year cooperation plan, Maduro pledges joint ‘anti-imperialist struggle’ appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Iran V UAE – ‘Russia And Ukraine Gulf Edition’ Coming Soon?

    Although receiving miniscule media coverage, Thursday’s announcement that Israel had deployed military infrastructure to the UAE and Bahrain in the shape of radar systems, ostensibly to counter an alleged missile threat from nearby Iran, should be a cause for concern amongst onlookers.

    Coming in the same 24 hour period in which Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett paid a surprise visit to the Emirates, and in which Israeli Forces bombed Damascus International Airport, the announcement that both Abu Dhabi and Manama had agreed to host Israeli military infrastructure should be seen as the first step towards current tensions between Tel Aviv and Tehran being placed on a possibly irreversible path towards conflict in the region.

    The post Iran V UAE – ‘Russia And Ukraine Gulf Edition’ Coming Soon? appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • What’s stopping the revival of the Iran nuclear deal?

    Rania Khalek of BreakThrough News talks about the latest developments (or lack of) in talks to restore the Iran nuclear deal. Despite Iran and other signatories to the deal being very keen to restore it, the US hesitation and varying positions have proved a stumbling block. She also talks about why the status of the IRGC continues to be a sticking point.

    The post What’s stopping the revival of the Iran nuclear deal? appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Iran proposes new currency for trade with China, Russia, India, Pakistan in Shanghai Cooperation Organization

    Iran has proposed creating a new currency to do trade with China, Russia, India, Pakistan, and other members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

    Tehran sent a letter to the SCO in early 2022 suggesting that a new currency could help the Eurasian nations strengthen their bilateral trade with each other, according to Iran’s foreign minister for economic diplomacy, Mehdi Safari.

    A Eurasian currency would also make it easier for these countries to circumvent unilateral Western sanctions, which are illegal under international law.

    The post Iran proposes new currency for trade with China, Russia, India, Pakistan in Shanghai Cooperation Organization appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Corporate Media Fail to Cover War in Yemen Due to US Support for Saudi Arabia

    News outlets in the United States give prime coverage to the war in Ukraine but mostly ignore the devastating war that the U.S. has supported since March 2015 between a Saudi-led coalition that includes the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the Houthis in Yemen. As a result, most of the U.S. public is unaware of the war’s catastrophic impact on the Yemeni population: according to the United Nations, around 400,000 people have died and 16.2 million are at the brink of starvation.

    The causes of this devastation include a Saudi-led bombing campaign that targets infrastructure, food sources and health services, as well as coercive measures, including a blockade, directed at destroying Yemen’s economy. The UN has called the situation in Yemen the largest humanitarian crisis in the world.

    Recently, the Houthis have retaliated against the Saudi-led coalition by launching transborder attacks into Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Most of those attacks have been deflected with the help of U.S. weapons. The Saudi/UAE airstrikes, missile attacks and strangling blockades regularly overwhelm the relatively ineffective weapons and military power of the Houthis. Yet, the U.S. media confer a disproportionate amount of media coverage and sympathy to Saudi/UAE aggression.

    What’s important to realize — and what the news media fail to discuss — is that the U.S. is complicit in causing this crisis. The U.S. is the main supplier of weapons to Saudi Arabia. According to the Brookings Institute, 73 percent of Saudi arms imports come from the U.S. In fact, 24 percent of U.S. weapons exports go to Saudi Arabia.

    Former President Donald Trump was eager to brag about the high sales of U.S. arms to the Saudis. Although President Joe Biden indicated that he would sell only defensive weapons to Saudi Arabia, the U.S. continues to provide the Saudis with missiles, parts, maintenance, logistical support and intelligence. Without U.S. support, the Saudi war effort would be greatly hampered.

    In view of the devastation to Yemen, it’s no surprise that several efforts were made by Congress to end U.S. support for the war. In 2019, Congress passed a War Powers Resolution calling for an end to U.S. support for the Saudis, partly in response to the brutal assassination of journalist and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi. However, President Trump at the time vetoed the resolution. Likewise, the House of Representatives passed several versions of the National Defense Authorization Act that included language calling for a complete halt to U.S. support for the war. But during final negotiations, those provisions were dropped.

    Recently, lawmakers in Congress, including Representatives Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) and Peter DeFazio (D-Oregon), indicated that they will introduce a Yemen War Powers Resolution to end all U.S. support for the war. We call on our federal lawmakers — especially our own Rep. Adam Smith (D-Washington), who chairs the House Armed Services Committee — to cosponsor the resolution.

    Still, some policy makers want the U.S. to continue support for the Saudi war on Yemen. Their motivations include a desire for continued oil supplies, as well as strategic issues related to China — Saudi Arabia has supposedly considered accepting yuan as payment for oil — and Iran. Another factor is the money earned from arms sales.

    But others point to the high costs of the U.S.-Saudi relationship, including security concerns. In April of this year, 30 members of Congress wrote a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken calling for a recalibration of the U.S.-Saudi partnership. The letter mentions the brutal war on Yemen, Saudi oppression at home, and Saudi Arabia’s flirtations with China.

    Furthermore, the Saudis have been unwilling to raise oil production to aid the international coalition that is confronting Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. Others have published on the ways in which the Saudi-U.S. relationship is damaging to U.S. interests, including dispelling the myth of U.S. dependency on Saudi oil and threats to our national security.

    A discouraging development is that on May 17, Saudi Deputy Defense Minister Khaled bin Salman met with U.S. Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl, and the U.S confirmed its commitment to the U.S.-Saudi military collaboration.

    Moreover, recent reports indicate that President Biden is planning to meet with Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman early next month. This planned meeting is distressing to many antiwar activists because President Biden had earlier promised to make bin Salman a “pariah” for his role in the killing of Khashoggi and the war in Yemen.

    On April 2, a truce between the warring parties went into effect, the first in six years. The agreed upon truce included an end to attacks and provisions for better movement of goods and people into Yemen. The truce will expire on June 2, 2022, and it is unclear if it will be renewed. It is crucial that we prevent a lapse in the truce and the resumption of fighting.

    The threat of the U.S. ending its support for the Saudi-led coalition, especially the War Powers Resolution, has made the April 2 truce possible. Although the truce is fragile, and although not all the conditions were met, it is a first step to ending the devastating war and bringing peace to Yemen. The UN is discussing an extension to the truce, which the Houthi are considering.

    Without U.S. support, the Saudis would struggle to continue the war. So, it is crucial now that Congress supports the War Powers Resolution to send a signal to both the Biden administration and to Saudi Arabia that it will no longer support their war. It is time for Congress to exercise its constitutional right to end U.S. support for the Saudi-led War in Yemen.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • PM does not apologise after Nazanin tells him she lived in ‘shadow of his words’

    Boris Johnson failed to apologise to Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe after she described the “massive impact” his false claim had on her six-year detention in Iran, her husband said.

    The Prime Minister was seemingly “shocked” after the British-Iranian dual national told him she had lived for years in the “shadow of his words” during their first meeting since her release.

    Zaghari-Ratcliffe and husband, Richard Ratcliffe, took their daughter, Gabriella, and constituency MP, Tulip Siddiq, to the discussions in Downing Street on Friday.

    Historic debt

    Nazanin was freed in March along with fellow detainee Anoosheh Ashoori after the UK agreed to settle a historic £400 million debt dating to the 1970s.

    But Johnson had been accused of lengthening her ordeal when, as foreign secretary in 2017, he wrongly claimed she had been training journalists at the time of her arrest in 2016.

    Speaking to reporters in Downing Street, Mr Ratcliffe said his wife challenged the Prime Minister on “why did it take so long” to secure her release.

    Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe meets PM
    Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe with her husband Richard Ratcliffe and daughter Gabriella arriving in Downing Street (Victoria Jones/PA)

    She also told him the “massive impact” his comments had on her, even saying the Iranian authorities brought Johnson’s words up during interrogation shortly before her release.

    Asked if the Prime Minister apologised, Mr Ratcliffe responded:

    Not specifically.

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • 2022 Václav Havel International Prize for Creative Dissent

    On 3 May 2022 the Human Rights Foundation (HRF) announced the three recipients of the 2022 Václav Havel International Prize for Creative Dissent.

    The 2022 laureates are: professional basketball player and human rights advocate Enes Kanter Freedom, Iranian artist project PaykanArtCar, and Ukrainian-born Russian journalist Marina Ovsyannikova. This year’s laureates will receive their awards on Wednesday, May 25, during the 2022 Oslo Freedom Forum.

    Enes Kanter Freedom is a professional basketball player and vocal advocate for human rights. Since the start of the 2021 NBA season, he has used his global platform to consistently raise awareness of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s human rights abuses. Using his basketball shoes as the canvas for his messages, he wore multiple artistic designs highlighting issues such as the Uyghur genocide, the occupation of Tibet, slave labor at the Nike shoe factories, and the intolerance of China’s dictator. As a result of his creative dissent, he is now banned from China and was dropped by both the Boston Celtics and the Houston Rockets, despite being only 29 years old and in the prime of his career. Freedom’s perseverance has captured the attention of international media and informed millions of sports fans about the global struggle for individual rights in places like Tibet and the Uyghur region. At a time when professional athletes display incessant hypocrisy, unlimited greed, and double standards, Freedom emerges as the moral conscience of professional basketball. Freedom first came to international attention as an outspoken critic of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, making him a target of Turkey’s government — he was deemed a “terrorist” by the regime, stripped of his passport, and was publicly disowned by his family. In late 2021, he changed his name and added “Freedom” as his official last name. See: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/laureates/525e5018-7f56-4009-85b8-3f3cce9a8810

    The PaykanArtCar unites the talents of contemporary Iranian artists in the diaspora with a beloved symbol of Iranian national pride — the Paykan automobile — to advocate for human rights in Iran. The car used was once gifted by Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi of Iran to the Romanian dictator, Nicolae Ceaușescu, and was purchased at an auction to serve as the canvas for artwork by Iranian artists in exile. Each year, PaykanArtCar commissions an exceptional Iranian artist-in-exile to use the car to capture the Iranian struggle for human dignity and basic freedoms. The inaugural PaykanArtCar was designed by Alireza Shojaian and features a historic Persian design with a provocative message about the brutality and ruthlessness faced by the marginalized and oppressed LGBTQ+ community inside Iran. The PaykanArtCar represents brave, creative dissent against the human rights abuses of Iran’s theocratic dictatorial regime. The PaykanArtCar will travel to Norway to be present at the Oslo Freedom Forum as part of Human Rights Foundation’s Art in Protest exhibit and will be parked at the event venue. The second edition of PaykanArtCar will be painted by a female Iranian artist and will advocate for women’s rights in Iran.

    Marina Ovsyannikova is a Ukrainian-born Russian journalist and activist, who staged a live protest against the war in Ukraine during a news broadcast of Russian state TV. Ovsyannikova was a longtime editor at Russia’s Channel One, where her job was to assist those engaged in disinformation to be distributed to the Russian people. After thinking through ways in which she could protest, she chose to interrupt a live broadcast, holding a sign calling for “no war.” Following her demonstration on live TV and a subsequent anti-war video, Ovsyannikova was held overnight in a police station, denied access to a lawyer, and ultimately fined 30,000 roubles — she disappeared without contact for more than 12 hours. The Kremlin denounced her protest as “hooliganism,” and Ovsyannikova faces up to 15 years in prison under Russia’s disinformation laws. In a recent article, she expressed profound regret for her years as a participant in “the Russian propaganda machine” where her job was to create “aggressive Kremlin propaganda – propaganda that constantly sought to deflect attention from the truth, and to blur all moral standards,” she says: “I cannot undo what I have done. I can only do everything I possibly can to help destroy this machine and end this war.”

    For more on the Václav Havel International Prize for Creative Dissent and its laureates, see: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/awards/438F3F5D-2CC8-914C-E104-CE20A25F0726

    HRF Announces the 2022 Havel Prize Laureates

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • Iran and Venezuela Energy Cooperation

    PressTV Interview with Peter Koenig

    Iran and Venezuela are poised to enter a new era to fight US sanctions. Their cooperation in Hydrocarbons – production as well as trade – may help them gradually detach from western sanctions.

    An idea brought forward in this interview is their joint exit from the dollar-dominated trade economy, by selling their petrol and gas in one or more other currencies than the US-dollar or even the Euro. Ideally, they may want to join the Russian move of selling gas for rubles instead of US dollars.

    This brilliant Russian initiative, of course, has been a major “explosion” in Europe and elsewhere in the world, but most countries eventually accept this new payment mode – one that is totally delinked from the US dollar and its little brother, the Euro.

    It is a move away from the SWIFT transfer system which makes countries vulnerable to sanctions because using SWIFT – the western payment mode – all transfers have to transit via US banks, thus increasing vulnerability to western, mostly US, interference or sanctions.

    After all, still today 84% of all energy used in the world stems from hydrocarbons, as compared to some 87% in the year 2000. And this despite much talk of shunning petrol and gas, the Paris Climate Agenda, and especially propagating a Green Agenda – empty words, manipulating people’s minds towards a new form of capitalism.

    Another strategy which both countries are actively considering, is increasingly delinking their trading from the west and orienting their economies towards the east; i.e., the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), the Association of South Asian Nations (ASEAN), uniting 11 Asian countries, plus Russia and China. Earlier this year, Iran has been admitted as a member of the SCO.

    These Eastern block economies together make up for about 50% of Mother Earth’s population and at least a third of the world’s GDP. Becoming part of this union is definitely a decisive step away from western domination and sanctions. See full interview (PressTV-PK – video 12 min – 3 May 2022)

    ttp://www.urmedium.com/c/presstv/109212

    The post Iran and Venezuela Energy Cooperation first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Long After Leaving Iran, Dual Nationals Now Labeled Terrorists — Because of Mandatory Military Service

    Talks with Iran to revive the nuclear deal appear to be progressing, but in recent weeks, the United States’s designation of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, as a terror group has emerged as a major obstacle. The listing isn’t just about nuclear diplomacy: Countless Iranians who served in the IRGC are now labeled as terrorists — including hundreds of thousands who were conscripted without a choice. This week on Intercepted, senior news editor Ali Gharib and reporter Murtaza Hussain examine the effects the terrorist designation has had on former conscripts who have lived for decades in the West. These dual nationals have been banned from the U.S., lost jobs, and separated from family as a result of the policy. join.theintercept.com/donate/now

    See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.


    This content originally appeared on Intercepted and was authored by The Intercept.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Tectonic Shifts in the World Economy: A World Systems Perspective

    Orientation 

    One of the main problems with Western media (other than their non-stop anti-Russian propaganda), is the narrow and parochial manner in which they conceive world events. Like realists and liberals of international relations theory, they analyze world events two countries at a time, for example, the U.S. vs Russia. They appear to have little conception of interdependence, like Russia, China, and Iran as a single block. Or the U.S., England, and Israel as another block. No state can make any moves without considering the causes and consequences of their actions for their interdependent states. Secondly, these talking heads fail miserably in understanding that conflicts between states are inseparable from the evolution of global capitalism which, in many respects, is stronger than any state. Thirdly, their “analysis” fails to consider that the world capitalist system has evolved over the last 500 years, as I will soon present. We will see that what is going on in Ukraine is part of a much larger tectonic struggle between Eastern China, Russia, and Iran to create a multipolar world while being desperately opposed by a declining West, headed by the United States and its minions.

    A Brief History of Modern Capitalism

    According to world systems theory, the global capitalist system has gone through four phases. In each phase, there was a dominant hegemon. First, there was the merchant capital of Italy that lasted from 1450-1640. This was followed by the great Dutch seafaring age from 1610-1740. Next, there was the British industrial system from 1776 to World War I. Lastly, the Yankee system which lasted from 1870 to 1970. Note that over these 500 years the pace of change quickened. In the Italian phase, the city states of Venice and Genoa rose and fell over 220 years. By the time we get to the United States, the time of rise and decline is 100 years. All this has been laid out by Giovanni Arrighi in The Long 20th century. In Adam Smith in Beijing, Arrighi also lays out the reasons he is convinced that China will be the leading hegemon in the next phase of capitalism.

    Five Types of Capitalism   

    Historically there have been five types of capitalism. The first is merchant capital in which profits are made by trade, selling cheap and buying dear. This is what Venice and Genoa did, as did Dutch seafarers on a grander scale. Next, is agricultural capitalism, including the slave system of the United States, Britain, and parts of the Caribbean, South America, and Africa. Then, the British invented the industrial capitalism system in which profit was made by investing the infrastructure of society: railroads, factories, and surplus labor from the wage labor system. Lastly, especially in the 20th century, we have two other forms of capitalism. In addition to being an industrial power after World War II, the United States used its industrial power to invest in the military arms industry and relied on finance capital (stocks and bonds).

    Destructive Forms of Capitalism

    In the later stage of all four systems, making money from commodities or technologies becomes problematic because it becomes unpredictable what people will buy. For example, after the Depression from 1929-1941, the United States got out of the depression by investing in the military. This was so successful that after World War II, capitalists began investing in the military even during peacetime (Melman, After Capitalism). It provided a much more predictable profit as long as countries continued to go to war. This encourages arming your own country or supplying the whole world, which is what the United States does today. There is also finance capital, where banks invest in stocks, bonds and financial instruments rather than infrastructure (as industrial capitalists did). For the past 50 years military and finance capital are primarily where the ruling class in Yankeedom has made its profits.

    In the early phases of capitalism, in all four cycles, commodities were produced which required money as mediation, but the purpose was to produce more commodities and technologies. In the decaying part of the cycle, capitalists would rather invest in finance capital than industrial capital because of the quick turn-around in profits. Investing in building bridges, repairing roads, or building schools will surely benefit capitalists in the long run. Smooth supply chains for capitalist profit and a sound education in high school and college would ensure that workers not only know how to do their jobs but that they would be creative-thinkers and innovators. Capitalists these days don’t want to invest in these things, and this is why the infrastructure in Yankeedom is falling apart and the Yankee population cannot compete with students from other countries with better educational systems.

    What is World Systems Theory?

    World systems theory is a macro-sociological theory of long-term social change which includes economic theory and world history. It is provocative in at least three ways. One, its basic unit of analysis is the entire world-system of capitalism rather than nation-states. Second, it argues that the so-called socialist societies were not really socialist, but rather state-capitalist. Third, global capitalism organizes itself into a transnational division of labor which ignores the boundaries of nation-states. World-systems theory has been used by historians, international relations theorists, and international political economists to explain the rise and fall of nation-states, the increase and decrease in stratification patterns, as well as rise and decline of imperialism. Christopher Chase-Dunn and Terry Boswell have specialized in understanding social movements and the timing and placing of revolutions from a world-systems perspective.

    Economic Zones Within the World-system

    Overview of the core, periphery                                                 

    World-systems are divided into three zones: the core, the semi-peripheral, and the peripheral countries. Economically and politically, core countries dominate other countries without being dominated. Semi-periphery countries are dominated by the core, and, in turn, dominate the periphery. The periphery are dominated by both. Part of the wealth of core countries comes from their exploitation of the peripheral countries’ land and labor through colonization.

    Core and periphery

    The core countries control most of the wealth in the world capitalist system. Workers are highly specialized, high technology is used. It has an industrial-electronic base. They extract raw materials from the peripheral countries and sell peripheral countries finished products. Core countries have the most highly specialized workers and a relatively small agricultural base, whereas peripheral countries have strong agricultural or horticultural bases and have a semi-skilled urban working class. The peripheral countries have relatively unspecialized labor whose work is labor-intensive with low wages. Much of the work done in peripheral countries is commercial agriculture—the production of coffee, sugar, and cotton.

    The core countries are the home of the transnational corporations who control the world. Additionally, the core countries control the major banking institutions that provide international loans, such as the IMF and the World Bank. Finally, the core countries have the most powerful militaries. Paradoxically, when core countries are at their peak, their militaries are not very active. They only become more active as a core country goes into decline, as in the United States. Core countries typically have the most highly trained workers. In their heyday, core countries have strong centralized states that provide for pensions, unemployment, and road construction. In their weak stage, states withdraw these benefits and invest in their military to protect their assets abroad as their own territory falls apart. Core countries have large tax bases and, at their best, support infrastructural development.

    The periphery nations own very little of the world’s means of production. In the case of African states or tribes, they have great amounts of natural resources, including diamonds and minerals, but these are extracted by the core countries. Furthermore, core states are usually able to purchase raw materials and cheap labor from non-core states at low prices and yet demand higher prices for their exports to non-core states. Core states have access to cheap skilled professional labor through migration (brain drain) from semi-peripheral states . Peripheral countries don’t have a solid tax base because their states have to contend with rival ethnic and tribal forces who are hardly convinced that taxes are good for them and their sub-national identities.

    Peripheral countries often do not have a diversified economic base and are forced by the world market to produce one product. A good example of this is Venezuela and its oil. Peripheral countries have relatively steeper stratification patterns because there are no middle classes for the wealth to spread across. A tiny landed elite at the top sells off most of the land to transnational corporations. The state tends to be both weak and strong. States in the periphery have difficulty forming and sustaining their own national economic policy because foreign corporations want to come and go as they please. On the other hand, if a nationalist or a socialist rise to power, the state will be very strong and dictatorial. This is because they are constantly at war with transnational corporations who seek to overthrow them. Since transnational corporations often do this through oppositional parties, those in power are extremely suspicious of oppositional parties. Hence their label as “authoritarian”. In contemporary world systems, peripheries are found in parts of Latin America and in the most extreme form in Sub-Saharan Africa.

    Semi-periphery                                                 

    The semi-periphery contains countries that as a result of national liberation movements and class struggles have risen out of the periphery and have some characteristics of the core. They can also be composed of formerly core countries that have declined. For example, Spain and Portugal were once core countries in Early Modern Europe. Semi-peripheral countries often take over industries the core no longer wants such as second-generation computers, appliances, or transportation systems. Semi-peripheral states enter the world systems with some degree of autonomy rather than simply a subordinate country. These industries are not strong enough to compete with core countries in “free trade”. Therefore, they tend to apply protectionist policies towards their industry. They tend to export more to peripheral states and import more from core states in trade. In the 21st century, states like Brazil, Argentina, Russia, India, Israel, China, South Korea and South Africa (BRICS) are usually considered semi peripheral.

    As I said above, the world capitalist system has changed four times in the last 500 years and each time not only have the configurations of the core countries changed but so have the semi peripheral countries in the world systems. For at least half of capitalist world systems, there were some countries that were outside the periphery, including the United States. Semi-peripheral countries are not fully industrialized countries, but they have scientists and engineers which can lead to some wealth.

    Which countries are in the core periphery and semi periphery countries today?

    The core countries in the world today are the United States, Germany, Japan, and the Scandinavian social democratic countries of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland. Minor core countries are England, France, Italy, and Spain. Eastern European countries are in the semi-periphery. South of the border, there are four semi-periphery countries: Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. More powerful up and coming semi-peripheral states include Saudi Arabia, Israel, Russia, China, and India. Most of Africa is in the periphery of the world systems with the exception of South Africa (semi-periphery).

    Where did world systems theory come from?

    Immanuel Wallerstein was a sociologist who specialized in African studies, so he had first-hand knowledge of the reality of exploitation by colonists. He was influenced by the work of Ferdinand Braudel who wrote a great three-volume history of capitalism. Wallerstein was also influenced by Marx and Engels, but he thought their history of capitalism was too Eurocentric. He emphasized that the core countries did not just exploit their own workers, but they have made great profits through the systematic exploitation of the peripheral countries for hundreds of years.

    Modernization theory

    World systems theory was in part a reaction against the anti-communist, modernization theory of international politics that prevailed after World War II into the 1960’s. Please see the table below which compares world systems theory to modernization theory.

    Dependency theory of Andre Gunder Frank

    Around the same time as world systems theory developed, Andre Gunder Frank developed what came to be called “dependency theory”. This theory also challenged modernization theory’s assumption that countries that were called “traditional societies” were improved by contact with the core countries. He claimed that they were systematically exploited by the core countries, made worse than they were before they had any contact with them. As long ago as 1998, Gunder Frank predicted the rise of China. See his book ReORIENT: Global Economy in the Asian Age.

    Karl Polyani

    Other influences on the world-systems theory come from a scholar of comparative economic systems, Karl Polyani. His major contribution is to show that there was no capitalism in tribal or agricultural civilizations and that the “self-subsisting” economy of capitalism was a relatively recent development. Wallerstein reframed this in world systems terms, with the tribal as “mini-systems”, agricultural civilization as “empires” and the capitalist system as “world economies”. Nikolai Kondratiev introduced patterns he saw in the capitalist world economy that centered around cycles of crisis and wars within very specific time periods.

    Interstate System

    As I said earlier, in international relations theory, realist and neo-conservative theory and neoliberal theories of the state treat each state as if they were separate units. Applied to today, that would formulate world conflict as a battle between, say, the United States and Russia. Neo-conservative and neoliberal theory treat any alliance between states as secondary epiphenomenon that can be dissolved without too much trouble. Secondly, both these theories operate as if interstate politics are relatively autonomous from economics. To the extent to which these theories mention capitalism, it is the domestic economy of nation-states. Each tries to hide the international nature of capitalism and the extent to which transnational corporations can, and do, override national interests. The ideology of the interstate system is sovereign equality, but this is practically overridden as states are treated as neither sovereign nor equal, especially in Africa.

    World systems theory sees states differently. For one thing, nation-states are not like Hobbes atoms which crash against each other in a war of all against all. The Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, fresh after the Thirty Years’ War, was an attempt to move beyond dynastic empires to nation-states. In core capitalist countries there were never single nation states. The Treaty created a system of nation-states which had rules of engagement, treaties, do’s and don’ts.

    Today, between the core, periphery, and semi-periphery countries lies a system of interconnected state relationships. This interstate system arose either as a concomitant process or as a consequence of the development of the capitalist world-system over the course of the “long” 16th century as states began to recognize each other’s sovereignty.

    Between these economic zones there were no enforceable rules about how nation-states should act, outside of not impeding the flow of capital between zones. Political domestic elites, international elites, and corporations competed and cooperated with each other, the results of which no one intended. Unsuccessful attempts have been made by the League of Nations and later the United Nations to create an international state. However, nation-states have been unwilling to give up their weapons. Therefore, the international anarchy of capitalist production is still unchecked. The function of the state is to regulate the flow of capital, labor, and commodities across borders and to enforce the structure of market rates. Not only do strong states impose their will on weak states. Strong states also impose limitations on other strong states, as we are seeing with US sanctions against Russia.

    Who Will Be the Next World-Economy Hegemon?

    Situation in Ukraine

    Everything about Ukraine needs to be understood as the desperate clawing of a Yankee empire terrified of being left behind. The U.S. has so far convinced Europe to stay away from Russia and China, but it has nothing to offer. As Gary Olsen said, the Europeans may slowly make deals with Russia and China because they have some sense of where the future lies. So, Western hydra-headed totalitarian media all speak with the same voice: RUSSIA, RUSSIA, EVIL RUSSIA. EVIL PUTIN. Putin certainly had nerve wanting a national economy with its own economic policy. God forbid! But the time is up for Yankeedom and no terrorist police, no military drones, no Republicrats, and no stock exchange jingling with the trappings of divine honor can stop it.

    The weakness of Europe

     So, if Yankeedom is in decline (and even Brzezinski admitted this) who are the new contenders? Up until maybe five years ago, I thought Germany might be, with its industrial base and its strong working class. But in the last five years German standards of living have declined. It seems that the EU is in the midst of cracking up. There is no leadership with the departure of Angela Merkel. Macron is on the way out in France. All the other countries in Europe, including Italy, are under water with debt. England is the puppy dog of the United States and hasn’t been a global power in over 100 years. Germany, Spain, Italy, and Greece could be helped enormously by allaying themselves with Russia and China, but at this point most Europeans have been bullied and complicit in myopically siding with a collapsing United States. There is a good chance the US will drag most of Europe down with them.

    Collapse of the core zones?

    As we have seen, according to world systems theory, the history of capitalism has had three zones: core, periphery, and semi-periphery. The countries that have inhabited the three zones have changed along with the dominant hegemon over the last 500 years, and we are now in unprecedented territory. There is a good chance that the entire batch of formerly core states, the United States, Britain, France, and the west will collapse and that the core capitalist system will be without a hegemon (with the possible exception of the Scandinavian countries). China seems to be about ten years away from assuming that position.

    2022-2030 the reign of the semi-periphery?

    So, is it fair to say there is a huge tectonic shift where most of the core countries will collapse and the world system will have no core for maybe 20 years? It seems clear that the new hegemon is going to be China. Arrighi and Gunder Frank both thought this. But China is still a semi-periphery country and it might take 10-15 years to enter the core. Meanwhile its allies, Russia and Iran, are also semi-periphery countries. In South America, Argentina had the foresight to sign on the Chinese Belt Road Initiative. Brazil and Chile are still uncommitted to China and occupy a semi-peripheral status. The big country in Asia is India. It is very important to the Yankees not to lose control of India, and they have all the reason in the world to beat war drums in an attempt to demonize China. If a right winger such as Modi can refuse to side against Russia in the current events in Ukraine, will a more moderate or social democratic president of India have the vision to see the future lies in aligning with China? I wouldn’t count on it given the behavior of green-social democrat leadership in Germany.

    The only European countries who seem to have made their way through 40 years of Neoliberal austerity, the collapse of Yugoslavia, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the rise of fascist parties in Europe are the Scandinavian countries of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland. There is no reason why they could not maintain core status, though China would be the leading power.

    The new hegemon China and the world-system in 2030  

    I can imagine the world-system in 2030 could consist of China and the Scandinavian countries in the core, with Russia, Iran, and maybe Brazil, Argentina and Chile on the semi-periphery along with possibly India. I don’t know where to place the US and Europe. Since they are drunk with finance capital, it is unfair to put them in the semi-periphery, which is usually involved in productive scientific endeavors. Yet they are more productive than the peripheral countries. Africa could be the last battleground between the decadent Yankee and European imperialists who live on as neo-colonial crypto-imperialists attempting to either sell arms to Africans or directly set up regimes and enslave Africans to work the mines.

    If China is able to develop African productive forces with the Belt Road Initiative, it might be an incentive to calm down the ethnic warfare there. It would be a wonderful thing if the African states could finally control the enormous wealth of their country. We cannot expect too much from China. The best they could do would be to invest in cultivating scientists and engineers to build up Africa as a fully industrialized continent. To me, what matters about China is not arguing whether or not it is really socialist, but that it is doing what Marx liked best about capitalism: developing the productive forces.

    The prospects for a world state?

    We cannot expect the Yankee state to decline peacefully and not start World War III. Is it possible to have a global capitalist realignment without starting World War III? As Chris Chase-Dunn has advocated for decades, we need a world state that has the capability to enforce a ban on interstate warfare. That is not likely now. The only attempts at this: the League of Nations and the United Nations happened after the misery of two world wars. Both attempts at world state have failed because nation-states would not agree to give up their weapons.

    What about world ecology?                                                                              

    But as world systems theorist Chris Chase Dunn points out, a Chinese-centered world still inherits the increasing ecological destruction that has been an inherent part of the world system since the industrial revolution and now the global pandemic. This includes extreme weather (hot and cold), pollution of land and oceans with plastics and the products of industrialization like carbon, flooding from global warming, and desertification of lands due to droughts and monocropping.

    What about Marx’s dream of shrinking the ratio between freedom and necessity in the light of ecological disaster?

    For Marx and Engels, the dream of socialism was based on abundance. Unfortunately, because socialism first took place in what Wallerstein would call peripheral or semi-peripheral countries, socialism has come to be associated with poverty. An implication that could be drawn under socialism is that people should expect to be poor and share the poverty equally. That is the opposite of how Marx and Engels saw things. They hoped that socialism would first break out in the west in an industrialized country, with an organized working-class party taking the lead. They hoped that the revolution of overthrowing capitalism would preserve its material abundance, technology, and scientific achievements, not tear them to the ground. They wanted to develop the forces of production that capitalism unleashed while abolishing the political economy of private property over means of production. As socialism developed, the collective creativity of workers would shrink the ratio between necessary work and freedom. What does this mean?

    This meant that workers would either:

    1. a) work less and produce the same amount
    2. b) work the same amount but produce more
    3. c) work more and produce much more

    In other words, workers would have an increase in the number of choices of what to do with their free time because of an increase in the technology and collective creativity to produce more with less. My question is, given the irreversible ecological situation we are in, is it still realistic to expect socialism will continue to be based on abundance? I can imagine that the way China is going, in that part of the world it may still be possible. I also suspect that in the Scandinavian countries it might be possible. The problem is that global pandemics, extreme weather, flooding, desertification, and pollution cannot easily, if at all, be contained within countries that are capitalist or socialist.

    How Reliable is World-systems Theory?

    I will limit criticisms of world systems theory to those of a political and economic nature. One common criticism is the struggle to do empirical research with a unit of analysis being the entire world system. This is not to say world systems theorists do not do empirical work, because they do. It is more a matter of how to derive meaningful relationships between variables at such a complex level of abstraction. Statistics for individual nation states are easier to manage, although nation-states are not autonomous actors.

    Another criticism is that the successes of existing socialist states are in danger of being given the short shrift. Like many in the West, the first line of criticism by world systems theorists of socialist countries is that they are one-party dictatorships. While this may be true, there is good reason why communist parties in power are nervous about the prospect of oppositional parties being used by foreign capitalists to overthrow them. In addition, socialist countries have better records than capitalist countries on the periphery in the fields of literacy (reading and writing), low-cost housing, healthcare, and free education. Please see Michael Parenti, Black Shirts and Reds for more on this.

    The third major criticism comes from orthodox Marxist, Robert Brenner. Brenner claims that the emphasis by world systems theorists on the relationship between economic zones comes at a cost to understanding the class structure within and between nation-states. I think world systems theorists are well aware of class relationships, but they choose to focus on the capitalist relationships between states. Lastly, Theda Skocpol argues that world systems theory understates the power of the state in international affairs. The state is not just the creature of transnational capital. States engage in military competition which long s capitalism. State structures compete with each other.

    On a positive note, as I said earlier, Christopher Chase-Dunn has done some creative work with Terry Boswell in tracking the timing and location of rebellions and revolutions in the 500 years of the world systems in Spirals of Capitalism and Socialism. In addition, he wrote a very groundbreaking book with Tom Hall Rise and Demise, which challenges Wallerstein by suggesting that there were precapitalist world systems that go all the way back to hunter-gatherers. Also see my book with him, Social Change: Globalization from the Stone Age to the Present.

    • First published in Socialist Planning Beyond Socialism

    The post Tectonic Shifts in the World Economy: A World Systems Perspective first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Iran Says US Responsible For Halt In Vienna Nuclear Talks

    On Monday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said that the United States is responsible for the halt in Vienna talks aimed at reviving the 2015 nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

    Iran has transmitted its “clear” message to the United States through Enrique Mora, the European Union coordinator for the Vienna talks, but no new response has been received from them yet.

    The post Iran Says US Responsible For Halt In Vienna Nuclear Talks appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.