A ranking Iranian diplomat has strongly discouraged Western countries from resorting to pressure, intimidation, and confrontational approach against the country over its legitimate and peaceful nuclear energy activities.
Seeking recourse to the above measures “does not amount to adoption of a sustainable and credible course, and [application of such methods] will eventually hit a dead end,” Mohsen Naziri Asl, Iran’s permanent representative at the United Nations office in Vienna, said on Friday.
“The Islamic Republic is [rather] prepared for joining positive interaction through dialog and constructive cooperation towards potential achievement of a sustainable solution [to standing issues].”
The remarks came after the Board of Governors of the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), adopted an anti-Iranian resolution based on a proposal that had been forwarded by the UK, France, and Germany. The resolution reiterated the trio and their allies’ accusations against the Islamic Republic of insufficient cooperation with the IAEA.
In chorus with the United States and others, the threesome European states have been taking numerous similar measures against Iran in line with the accusations that run counter to the standing status of the country and the agency’s cooperation, which has even increased in frequency and quality over the past years.
The ongoing confrontational approach on the part of the West comes, while it was the US that broke off its internationally-endorsed commitments to Iran by unilaterally and illegally leaving a 2015 nuclear agreement between the Islamic Republic and world countries and returning the sanctions that the deal had lifted.
The European trio, which were likewise signatories to the deal, meanwhile, failed to return Washington to the accord, despite their repeated insistence that they would do so.
Naziri considered the US’s illegal withdrawal from the deal to be the principal reason behind the deal’s current unfavorable status, noting that Washington “has not stopped short of taking any measure to destroy the deal.”
He also reminded the European parties of their refusal to live up to their commitments under the accord.
The official also pointed to the retaliatory measures that Iran has been taking in response to the US’s withdrawal, and the European countries’ and the IAEA’s confrontational attitude, which, most recently, saw the country activating its advanced centrifuges.
He cited Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi’s repeated statements, during which the officials asserted that the Islamic Republic would walk back its legal remedial steps if the American sanctions were effectively and verifiably annulled and the nuclear deal’s other parties returned to performing their contractual duties.
Naziri, therefore, advised the European sides “not to repeat their unsuccessful courses of action of the past.”
Separately, he strongly condemned the European countries’ recent sanctions against the Iranian national carrier and shipping company, considering the bans to be in violation of the nuclear deal’s “spirit and text.”
“We consider these [economic] measures to be in contradiction with the commitments that could serve as the foundation of any future interaction.”
The official also denounced the European trio for ignoring their duty towards lifting the sanctions that they have illegally imposed over Iran’s missile program, which they have to lift under their commitment to the nuclear deal’s sunset clauses.
“One must stress that, in line with an announcement that has been made by the UN Secretariat, Iran’s missile program will no longer be subject to the restrictions that have been imposed by the UN Security Council.”
Naziri again asserted that the Islamic Republic was ready for positive interaction as long as the other parties to the nuclear deal proved their political will and commitment to the accord by not tying negotiations that address the agreement’s potential revival to irrelevant issues.
November 22, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | France, Germany, UK, United States, Zionism |
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The latest round of US sanctions against Russian financial institutions, which specifically target Gazprombank, is an attempt to block Russia’s gas supplies to the EU, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated on Friday. The lender is Russia’s primary bank for energy-related transactions.
Peskov warned that Moscow would respond to restrictions with countermeasures, though he did not specify what they would entail.
The Kremlin spokesman’s remarks follow an announcement by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Thursday, which said Gazprombank and six of its international subsidiaries had been added to its sanctions blacklist. Gazprombank had already been sanctioned by the UK and Canada shortly after the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022. However, the US had previously avoided placing restrictions on the lender as it was used by EU states to pay for Russian gas.
When asked whether the Kremlin viewed sanctions on Gazprombank as an attempt to jeopardize supplies of Russian gas to Europe, and whether Moscow planned any response, Peskov replied: “The answer is ‘Yes’ to both questions.”
He noted that Russian authorities were already working on ways to alleviate the problems that the new restrictions could cause Russia and its foreign gas buyers.
“Of course, we’ll find options. It is impossible to introduce completely blocking measures against a country like Russia. It may take some time, but a solution will still be found,” Peskov said.
The new measures mean Gazprombank can no longer carry out transactions that involve the dollar-based financial system. Gazprombank earlier said that sanctions would not affect its operations within Russia, but warned that its UnionPay cards may stop working outside the country.
Apart from Gazprombank, the new US restrictions also targeted more than 50 small-to-medium Russian lenders, some 40 securities registrars, and 15 financial officials.
After the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, the EU declared the elimination of its reliance on Russian energy to be its top priority. Many member states, including Poland, Bulgaria, Finland, the Netherlands, and Denmark, voluntarily halted their imports. However, several EU nations, including Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Italy continue to rely on Russian gas to meet their energy needs, and have not stopped buying the commodity despite pressure from peers within the bloc.
Moscow has slammed Western sanctions as illegal, and noted that they keep backfiring on the countries that impose them. Russia has also been gradually moving away from the dollar in trade, switching to transactions using national currencies with most of its international partners.
The newly imposed US sanctions against Russia’s Gazprombank are expected to send energy costs surging in parts of Europe, Finam Financial Group analyst Aleksandr Potavin told TASS on Friday. The risk of secondary restrictions will force buyers of Russian oil and gas to seek new payment tools, he predicted.
On Thursday, the US Treasury Department introduced blocking sanctions against more than 50 Russian lenders, including Gazprombank and six of its international subsidiaries. The new penalties effectively cut one of Russia’s largest banks off from the SWIFT interbank messaging system, meaning it can no longer carry out transactions that involve the dollar-based financial system. Gazprombank’s assets in the US have also been frozen.
“Due to the new sanctions against Gazprombank, foreign buyers of Russian gas and oil will be faced with the need to look for alternative payment routes that are likely to complicate the entire process, increase risks, and make the payment procedure more expensive,” Potavin said.
He specified that European buyers could use accounts in other banks or pay for energy supplies via other world currencies as an alternative.
“The new sanctions will lead to an increase in prices for Russian hydrocarbons in Europe, and supply disruptions can’t be ruled out as well, since all this creates new risks for foreign companies working with Russia,” he explained.
According to Alexander Frolov, expert at the InfoTek energy news center, the latest restrictions won’t have a direct impact on buyers of Russian gas who previously agreed to adopt the “gas for rubles” scheme to pay for their energy purchases. They will only apply to individuals and legal entities subject to US jurisdiction, he said, as quoted by TASS.
The analyst admitted, however, that companies using rubles for Russian energy supplies are at risk of secondary sanctions, “so gas buyers from Europe will turn to the US Treasury for clarification.”
Supplies of Russian pipeline gas to Europe have substantially declined due to Ukraine-related restrictions and the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, although EU nations are still importing record volumes of LNG from the sanctions-hit state. Despite the bloc’s vows to drop purchases of Russian energy, it remains one of the world’s major buyers of Russian fossil fuels. In August, pipeline gas comprised the largest share of the EU’s purchases of Russia’s fossil fuels (54%), followed by LNG (25%), according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA).
November 22, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Russophobia | European Union, Russia, United States |
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Following its crushing defeat in the 2024 election, the Democratic Party might finally face its day of reckoning. The party markets itself as the champion of the working class and a bulwark against the party of the plutocrats. But this has been a lie for at least three decades.
The Democratic Party has partnered with Wall Street donors since at least the 1990s. Under President Bill Clinton, the party overturned Glass Steagall and other New Deal programs that had effectively restrained Wall Street greed for 60 years. It also sold out American workers with so-called trade deals that freed their bosses to ship American jobs overseas. It ended welfare “as we know it” and passed draconian crime bills that destroyed mostly black and brown communities, sending mothers and fathers to prison for decades in the name of a cruel and senseless war on drugs.
Into the 21st century, the Democrats continued pushing the lie that they were fighting for working people. After September 11, 2001, the party put up a token resistance to the Bush/Cheney regime of illegal regime-change wars, black sites, indefinite detention and torture. All the while, it continued soliciting campaign contributions from the arms dealers profiting from Bush’s wars.
In 2008, the party found a Black face to carry on its Wall Street-friendly agenda. Gullible Americans, myself included, were taken in by Barack Obama’s promises to end “dumb wars” and to institute a single payer healthcare system. We ignored the red flags, like the fact that Obama’s campaign broke records in pocketing Wall Street donations. It was later revealed by Wikileaks that nearly every member of Obama’s cabinet had been selected by the giant Wall Street bank Citigroup.
It didn’t take long for President Obama to crush our hopes that he was a different kind of Democrat. One of his first acts as president was to funnel trillions of dollars to the big banks that, newly freed by Clinton from FDR-era regulations, had embarked on an orgy of unbridled greed, swindling millions of Americans out of their homes and retirement savings with a scheme to sell worthless mortgage-backed securities.
Adding insult to injury, Obama saw to it that the bailed-out bank executives faced no criminal prosecutions and received their year-end bonuses. In their place, the Obama Justice Department brought federal mortgage fraud charges against thousands of poor people — I represented a half dozen of these folks — who had signed their names to the phony mortgage loans that the Wall Street bankers encouraged, packaged and sold to pension funds and other unwitting investors.
The pipe dream that Obama would be an anti-war president was also quickly dispatched. During his two terms, Obama ushered in a new era of continuous war, envisioned by George Orwell and favored by Wall Street. Obama expanded Bush’s bombing campaigns into Libya, Pakistan, Yemen, Syria and Somalia. Today’s Democratic Party is indistinguishable from the Republicans in its ties to war profiteers and trillion-dollar Pentagon budgets.
Obama also effectively ended the Democrats’ promise to fight for a true national health care system in which all Americans would be able to go to the doctor when sick without fear of bankrupting their families. In its place, Obama pushed through a health care plan developed in right-wing think tanks, that guaranteed profits (and taxpayer subsidies) for the private insurance industry and did little to contain costs.
By 2012, Glen Ford of the Black Agenda Report was describing the Democratic Party as the “more effective evil” for using its reputation as protector of the working class to neutralize effective opposition and push through right-wing policies that the Republicans could not get passed.
In 2016, the Democrats received a wake-up call when their chosen successor to Obama lost the White House to a crude-talking New York City real estate developer and game show host with no prior political experience. But with the help of its partners in corporate media, the party managed to limp along for another eight years, first by telling the American people that President Trump was an agent of Russia, and then by claiming that Trump was Hitler who was planning concentration camps and firing squads for his political enemies.
Now after the November 2024 elections in which Trump won every swing state and the popular vote, the Democratic party is finally being forced to face some uncomfortable truths. The party’s partners in the corporate media initially tried blaming the election result on the voters for being too misogynist, too racist, or too dumb to vote correctly. But there is little trust that remains in corporate media.
The party’s corporate consultants have put the blame on the party’s excessive focus on identity politics. But the issues for the Democrats run much deeper than bad messaging. The real problem is that the party takes direction from plutocrats whose interests are antagonistic to the needs of the working people it pretends to represent. Both Democrats and Republicans are financed by the same corporate interests. Thus, there is general agreement and support for policies that guarantee high rates of return on investment capital, policies like continuous war, for-profit health care, and outsourcing jobs. This leaves few issues for the parties to fight about other than abortion and identity politics.
Fifty years ago, American capitalists still relied on American workers to build everything from cars and televisions to sneakers and light bulbs. These titans of industry had to care about things such as functioning schools, decent wages, cities and public transportation. But the times have changed. Today’s plutocrats support outsourcing jobs to low-wage countries and have little concern for the condition of American workers. And while ordinary Americans want the country’s resources to be spent at home, plutocrats are heavily invested in foreign wars, and they shun diplomacy.
These contradictions could only be covered up for so long. Even with reliable partners in the corporate press, the internet has given Americans alternative sources for their news. During the last few years, in a desperate effort to keep its scheme afloat, the Democrats embraced censorship and a regime of corporate “fact checkers” to police social media and remove or punish unsanctioned speech. In so doing, the party abandoned the last of its core principles: standing up for free speech and the right to dissent.
Many Democrats argue that they had to go after Wall Street money to compete with the Republicans. In 2016, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer explained the strategy: “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.” But for this plan to work, the party still needed an actual message to take to the voters.
Forbes Magazine reports that during the 2024 presidential race, Kamala Harris’s campaign raised a billion dollars while Trump’s campaign raised $388 million. Harris’s substantial edge in fundraising allowed her to flood the airwaves with commercials. But she had nothing of substance to say to voters.
The Atlantic Magazine reports that early in her campaign, Harris gained ground by attacking Trump as a stooge of corporate interests—and touted herself as a relentless scourge of Big Business. But then, suddenly, Harris abandoned her attacks on big business at the urging of her brother-in-law, Tony West, Uber’s chief legal officer.
Many Democrats, especially in swing states, opposed the Biden Administration’s unfailing support for Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza, which has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians and displaced nearly all of its 2.3 million residents. Harris could have gained the support of many of these voters by promising to stop arming Israel during the genocide. But her Party’s donors wouldn’t allow her to even hint at such a change in policy. Two days before the election, while campaigning in the swing state of Michigan, Harris stated, “I will do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza.” But as Ali Abunimah of the Electronic Intifada pointed out on election night, this promise carried no weight because Harris had also promised that she would never do the one thing within her power to stop the slaughter: cut off the flow of bombs to Israel.
After decades of malfeasance and deception, it has become evident that the corporate Democratic Party cannot serve as the lone opposition party to the corporate Republicans. The American people need a viable political party that represents the interests of ordinary working people.
A true workers party will not raise as much money as the corporate Democrats. But it will have an honest message with the potential to appeal to large numbers of Americans. Further, a political party that actually represents workers will press for reforms that begin to even the playing field between the haves and the have nots.
For example, one the most effective ways plutocrats game the political system is by flooding campaign contributions to the lawmakers who sit on the key committees that oversee their businesses. Members of Congress covet these committee chairs because they guarantee high fundraising numbers. Lawmakers who sit on the House Financial Services Committee have jurisdiction over banks and insurance companies and are targeted by those firms with campaign contributions. Lawmakers who sit on the Armed Services and Appropriations Committees provide funding for lucrative government contracts and are flooded with war industry cash.
These practices are corrupt and deprive American citizens of their right to be governed by representatives free from conflicts of interest. A judge who has received political contributions from a litigant must be removed from the case. Similarly, the most important functions of government, such as determining tax and how our tax revenue will be spent, should be performed by lawmakers who have not been bribed.
In 2017, the Center for American Progress, a think tank aligned with the Democratic Party, proposed a “Committee Contribution Ban” for Congress. It asserted: “Congress should enact a law to make it unlawful for members of Congress to accept campaign contributions from entities that fall within the jurisdiction of their committees.” Unsurprisingly, this proposal never reached the floor of Congress, that I could find.
Some states have enacted similar conflict of interest rules. And Congress could certainly pass such a law, if it chose. Of course, this will never happen as long as we are ruled by two corporate parties that benefit from the corruption. But if we had a political party that represented ordinary people, countless opportunities for positive change would soon emerge.
Leonard C. Goodman is a Chicago criminal defense lawyer and has been an Adjunct Professor of Law at DePaul University.
November 20, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Economics, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | Democratic Party, Obama, United States |
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By Patrick Poppel | November 20, 2024
The federal government is assuming greater Chinese involvement in the Ukraine war. On the sidelines of an EU meeting in Brussels, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock spoke of “Chinese drone support” for Russia and demanded: “This must and will have consequences.”
The European Union’s Foreign Service had previously confirmed that indications are currently being examined that China produces drones for Russia. An EU official said: “We have received reports from intelligence sources about the existence of a factory in China that produces drones that are supplied to Russia and used in the war against Ukraine.”
If direct cooperation between China and Russia in the field of military equipment is confirmed, sanctions could be imposed. According to diplomats, drone production is a joint project between Russia, China and Iran.
Lithuania’s Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis demanded that the EU react decisively. Europe should not show weakness because it is afraid of the Chinese reaction, said Landsbergis, referring to Europe’s dependence on raw materials from the People’s Republic.
Finland’s Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen said there could be no “business as usual” in trade with China if Beijing was compromising Europe’s security. A very anti-Chinese sentiment is clearly evident in all of these statements.
China rejects the allegations. With regard to arms exports, China has always taken a responsible stance and has never provided the parties to the conflict with lethal weapons, said a Chinese Foreign Office spokesman. China strictly controls drones for military purposes and those that can be used for civil and military purposes in accordance with the law.
However, this German advance against China must be clearly seen in the context of the current economic war. China is currently a major competitor against the German automotive industry. The fact that the German Foreign Minister in particular is demanding consequences is very interesting.
In this context, consequences mean that sanctions are required. Will such sanctions perhaps also affect the import of Chinese cars? Since the German automotive industry is currently in a major crisis, politicians must of course react.
The high energy prices in particular make it impossible for Germany to remain competitive against Chinese production. The EU and the USA are currently trying to compensate for the difference in production costs with punitive tariffs on the import of Chinese cars.
However, since an even larger difference is now foreseeable due to Europe’s difficult economic situation, these punitive tariffs can only be viewed as a first step. The only way to protect the internal market for cars in the long term would be to stop imports of cars from China.
However, such a situation can only be achieved with sanctions. The current discussion is clearly heading in this direction, but the question is whether the actors in European politics are prepared to follow this path to the end.
Maybe people are just speculating about a warning against China. But in this context, politicians in Europe are too short-sighted. It can be assumed that China is adequately prepared for any economic punitive measures from Europe.
In contrast to companies in Europe, China has been much more successful in finding new markets. For example, due to European sanctions, Russia is quickly becoming a large market for many Chinese companies. This is particularly evident in the automotive industry.
The current discussion about the unproven delivery of drones to Russia is an attempt to take the next step in the economic war against China. And as is usually the case with decisions in European politics, this can immediately become a shot in the foot.
This reality is clearly visible in the example of the sanctions against Russia, as we can analyze it based on the state of German industry. Furthermore, attempting to defend one’s own market with punitive tariffs and sanctions is a sign of weakness.
German politicians have managed to bring the growth of the German economy to a standstill and forecasts even speak of a negative development. The German automobile industry will be overtaken by Chinese cars and this trend will most likely not change in the next few years.
After the next federal election, a new government in Germany must take care of repairing the damage caused to the German economy. The time of the German “economic miracle” from the 1950s, which made Germany a top location for the automobile industry, is over. This reality must be understood by those responsible. The attempts to punish China for its success show that there are currently no other strategies to save the German automotive industry.
Patrick Poppel is an expert at the Center for Geostrategic Studies (Belgrade).
November 20, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Economics | China, Germany |
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Following Trump’s election, there has been much speculation about how the war in Ukraine might end. But to understand how it might end, it’s vital to understand how it started.
The origins of the war in Ukraine can be traced back to the ouster of Ukrainian President Yanukovych in February 2014. Russia labelled it a coup, realists would say it was unconstitutional change in power, and U.S. & British officials would shrug their shoulders.
After Russia occupied Crimea and as insurgency broke out in the Donbas, the French and Germans launched a peace process involving the Presidents of Russia and Ukraine. From this so-called ‘Normandy format’ emerged two peace deals named the Minsk agreements. But the UK was sidelined from the peace process and the Americans suspicious of it.
Left out, Britian, supported by the U.S., pushed sanctions as the primary vehicle to contain Russia, running counter to what the French and Germans were trying to achieve. By the summer of 2015, the Minsk agreements had become sidelined, and sanctions were set in stone.
Since that time, Russia has become the most sanctioned country on the planet. Thirty-three western countries, led by the USA, imposed more than twenty thousand sanctions against Russian people and companies. That’s fifteen times more sanctions than Iran in a distant second place.
If we could completely cut Russia’s economic ties with the west, so the theory went, then that would be so damaging that Russia would have to withdraw from Ukraine. Western powers therefore sanctioned everything that they could, from money, ships, oil, gold, diamonds, weapons and all manner of hi-tech components. But from a very early stage, it was clear that sanctions weren’t altering Russian policy to Ukraine, quite the opposite.
When I left the Foreign Office in 2023, the UK government with its western partners, had gone through all the sanctions that they thought might weaken Russia. The west could probably find more people or entities to sanction. But policy makers never really gripped Russian gas, as some European countries still rely on it. And anyway, the destruction of the Nordstream pipeline solved that conundrum. Russian oligarchs that had political connections in the west were spared as were Russian companies that owned factories in the USA, to prevent American job losses. But we hit most things and neared the bottom of the barrel.
Yet, Russia’s economy always seemed to bounce back. That’s partly because, sanctions were never as big a deal as other events that moved the global economy, such as the oil price collapses in 2014 and 2016 and Covid. But it was also because Russia continually adapted its macroeconomic policy to absorb and, in the end, profit from sanctions. Following an immediate post-sanctions contraction of economic growth in 2022, Russia has grown more strongly than the western countries that imposed sanctions.
Western powers therefore needed something stronger, so sanctions evolved into a political tool to isolate Russia on the world stage. The USA, European Union and other countries including Japan and Australia sanctioned every possible type of economic, social and cultural activity involving Russia. Western academics no longer collaborate with Russian academics. Russian airliners can’t pass over western airspace and vice versa. Border posts have been closed or minimised. Russia can’t compete in international sporting events or even the Eurovision song contest.
Russian Ministers are subjected to indignant walkouts by western diplomats and ministers at international gatherings. Ordinary Russian people were denied a weekend ParkRun. Ukraine did its part, cancelling the Russian Orthodox church and going on a propaganda offensive with any western company that sold goods with the word ‘Russia’ in their branding.
And yet, outside of the west, Russia’s standing on the global stage doesn’t seem to be in decline. In a process accelerated by the Ukraine war, Russia, with China, has spearheaded a rapid shift by the developing world to create their own formats for dialogue and cooperation. There are over 200 countries on this planet, so the wealthy ‘west’ is in a minority. The BRICS group has grown rapidly, with a long queue of countries waiting to join, including NATO member Turkey. Vladimir Putin has an International Criminal Court arrest warrant out on him, yet he still travels freely to ‘friendly’ countries, where he receives the red-carpet treatment. He recently hosted a successful BRICS summit in Kazan while war continued to rage in Ukraine.
War started in February 2022 a few days after the Ukrainian government finally signalled the death knell of the Minsk peace agreements. But the point is that the Minsk agreement was [not] necessarily bad; it’s simply that the U.S. and UK invested significant efforts in ensuring its failure.
Sanctions never looked likely to prevent war, nor force its end, despite the death or injury to over one million people and a vast exodus of Ukraine’s population. War in Ukraine became reduced to the brutal, bloody town by town fighting in Europe after D-Day, while life in the west, and in Russia, carried on almost as normal. Fighting alone, Ukraine has never had sufficient resources to survive and never will.
There is a strong case that sanctions created the conditions for war to erupt, by undermining the very peace process – the Normandy Format – that was established to prevent it. And that the west’s continued blind faith in sanctions took us to the brink of a doomsday scenario, more horrific than the use of nuclear weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Western leaders, not wanting war themselves, focussed blindly on supporting Ukraine for as long as it takes. But the notion of ‘as long as it takes’ became tarnished with increasing numbers of western politicians started complaining that it is taking too long. Not least as the economics and demographics of war still show that Russia can continue fighting for as long as it takes, and that Vladimir Putin has the domestic political support to do that.
So, beyond the hype, if Trump is serious about ending the war in Ukraine, he must look at its origins. A ceasefire alone won’t cut it with Putin. There needs finally to be a peace proposal that includes targeted sanctions reduction. That, and a final reckoning with the NATO membership issue, the brightest red line of all.
November 18, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Russophobia | European Union, NATO, Russia, UK, United States |
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The spectacular rise of China will inevitably spark security competition with the US and create tensions between the two leading economies in the world. The peaceful rise of China is, however, not solely the responsibility of Beijing as the US must also manage the security competition by accommodating shifts in the international distribution of power. The US constructed an international system based on unipolarity / global dominance after the Cold War, and attempting to preserve this system when it no longer reflects realities on the ground will make it near impossible to manage the security competition.
A temporary strategy
China’s peaceful rise in its previous format was to a large extent a temporary strategy. China’s peaceful rise involved rapid industrialisation and building its strength without engaging much in international affairs to avoid attracting unwanted concerns from other great powers. In Deng Xiaoping’s own words, a peaceful rise meant that China’s objective was to “bide our time and hide our capabilities”. China pursued an export-driven development model to rapidly industrialise, build up vast amounts of foreign reserves, and gradually climb up global value chains. What would happen when China could no longer hide its capabilities?
This “mutually beneficial” partnership with the US was not sustainable as China would incrementally increase its industrial competitiveness vis-à-vis the US and the US would continue to send more money to China to buy Chinese goods. At some point, the US would want to exit the relationship as debt levels become untenable and the loss of production power prevents recovery. The Chinese side would similarly seek to restructure the partnership as the growing US debt becomes a vulnerability as the US would not be able to pay its debts. As John Maynard Keynes succinctly put it: “If you owe your bank a hundred pounds, you have a problem. But if you owe your bank a million pounds, it has…”.
The breaking point for the relationship became the Global Financial Crisis in 2008-09 when the US discovered that borrowing and spending was not a sustainable economic model, while the Chinese took note that the US would not restore its fiscal discipline. Washington’s policy to “borrow and consume” its way back to prosperity implied that China could either invest more in an increasingly insolvent US, or alternatively accept the devaluation of its existing investments since the US Federal Reserve would print the money. The US effectively blackmailed China by demanding that China either lend them more money or the US would print the money. Washington also began to recognise that interdependence should not be measured by absolute gain, but by relative gain.
China was destined to outgrow the US-led international economic system and thus challenge the dominant position of the US. China would need to diversify away from the excessive reliance on the US by connecting with the other Eurasian giants, making inroads into Africa and even entering Latin America as the US “backyard”. The US would naturally view this challenge to its dominant position as a threat, at which point it would be very dangerous to be too reliant on the US. Chinese excessive dependence on US technologies meant that Washington could disrupt Chinese supply chains, excessive dependence on transportation corridors and choke points under the control of the US Navy meant China could be severed from the arteries of international trade, and excessive reliance on US banks, payment systems and the dollar meant that the US could shut down China’s finance. Furthermore, the US would begin to challenge China’s sovereignty over Taiwan, destabilise Hong Kong and Xinjiang with “human rights NGOs”, and pull China’s neighbours into a confrontational US alliance system. A confident US hegemon seeks to build trust in reliance on its international economic architecture and the possibility for peaceful coexistence, but a declining US hegemon is predictably extremely vicious and uses its administrative control over the international economic system to weaken or destroy rivals.
What would be good advice to China after the Global Financial Crisis? China should diversify its economic partners to reduce dependence on the US and prepare for increasingly aggressive US policies aimed at cutting China down in size. China subsequently began to launch ambitious industrial policies to take leadership in the most advanced technologies associated with the Fourth Industrial Revolution, it developed the Belt & Road Initiative to connect with the wider world, and new financial instruments such as alternative development banks, payment systems and trade in national currencies. Furthermore, China began building a powerful military deterrent and prepared to push through the containment of the US island chains.
America Shared Responsibility
A “peaceful rise” can be considered a dual process, as China must be willing to integrate itself into the rules and structures of the international order, while concurrently the power dominating the existing system must be prepared to reform and adjust to accommodate China. Preserving a hegemonic strategy in a multipolar world entails abandoning any efforts to mitigate the security competition, as unipolarity requires the containment, weakening or destruction of rising rivals.
Washington has not accommodated China sufficiently in the existing structures, which compelled China to develop alternative economic structures. The US has for example been reluctant to accommodate China by relinquishing the mechanisms of US primacy within institutions such as the IMF, World Bank and Asian Development Bank. China’s technological development is sabotaged with economic coercion that clearly violates the rules of the WTO. The US no longer abides by the rules of the US-led international economic system.
The US is developing new rules that the other side cannot agree to and thus disrupts stability. The intention of marginalising China was made explicit in an op-ed by Obama in 2016, where he posited that “the world has changed. The rules are changing with it. The United States, not countries like China, should write them”. The economic warfare that further intensified under the Trump presidency and then Biden presidency was rooted in the failure to manage shifts in the international distribution of power. The efforts to build a Europe without Russia as the largest European state predictably led to conflict, and the effort to construct an Asia where China is a spectator will have the same consequences.
A New Format for a Peaceful Rise?
For decades, China has been open about its critical view of a system based on US hegemony, as it is inflexible in accommodating the rise of other powers and shifts in the international distribution of power. The mere rise of other powers threatens to disrupt a system of hegemony. China’s desire to develop alternatives is also not new. In 1990, Deng Xiaoping told members of the Central Committee that the world was moving towards multipolarity:
“The situation in which the United States and the Soviet Union dominated all international affairs is changing. Nevertheless, in the future when the world becomes three-polar, four-polar or five-polar, the Soviet Union, no matter how weakened it may be and even if some of its republics withdraw from it, will still be one pole. In the so-called multi-polar world, China too will be a pole. We should not belittle our own importance: one way or another, China will be counted as a pole. Our foreign policies remain the same: first, opposing hegemonism and power politics and safeguarding world peace; and second, working to establish a new international political order and a new international economic order”.
China has not necessarily abandoned its “peaceful rise”, but merely reformulated it. Peaceful rise no longer entails building and hiding its strength within the US hegemonic system to avoid unwanted attention. Rather, peaceful rise entails developing a multipolar economic system that is more capable of managing changes in the international distribution of power and thus harmonising its interest with other great powers.
November 16, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Timeless or most popular | China, United States |
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US President-elect Donald Trump has moved quickly to form his proposed new administration. His team is better prepared to take power than it was in 2016 – when neither the candidate himself nor the vast majority of his supporters believed he could win.
It’s too early to draw far-reaching conclusions, but in general, the composition of the preferred government reflects the ideological and political coalition that has gathered around the president-elect. From the outside, it may look motley, but so far it is all in line with Trump’s views.
Contrary to the perception actively propagated by Trump’s opponents, he is not an unpredictable and inconsistent eccentric. More precisely, we should separate his character and mannerisms, which are flighty, from his overall worldview. The latter has not changed, not only in the years since Trump entered big politics, but more generally in his public life since the 1980s. It suffices to look through the old interviews of the famed tycoon to see this: ‘Communism (in the broadest sense) is evil’, ‘the allies must pay up’, ‘the American leadership does not know how to make favorable deals but I do’, and so on.
Trump’s personal qualities are important. But more importantly, in a somewhat cartoonish way, he embodies a set of classic Republican notions. America is at the center of the universe. However, not as a hegemon that rules everything, but simply as the best and most powerful country. It must be the strongest, including (or especially) militarily, in order to advance its interests wherever and whenever it needs to. Essentially, there is no need for Washington to get directly involved in world affairs at all.
Profit is an absolute imperative for the future president (he is a businessman), and this does not contradict conservative ideals. America is a country built on the spirit of enterprise. Hence his rejection of over-regulation and his general suspicion of the extensive powers of the bureaucracy. In this, Trump joins forces with the equally flamboyant libertarian Elon Musk, who promises to rid the state of a hodgepodge of bureaucrats.
Musk himself is unlikely to be hanging around the president’s office for long, but politicians who think along these lines are likely to be there.
An important difference between the new Trump cohort and traditional Republicans is a significantly lower degree of ideologization of politics in general and international politics in particular. Domestically, the rejection of an aggressive agenda in the spirit of the Woke movement and the imposition of the cult of minorities (which the Republicans call ‘Marxism’ and ‘communism’) plays an important role. It’s about imposition, because the human right to any lifestyle is not in itself questioned by conservatives. For example, key figures around Trump – ardent supporter and former ambassador to Germany Ric Grenell and billionaire Peter Thiel – are married to men.
In foreign policy, the conceptual difference is that Trump and his entourage do not believe, as the Biden White House does, that at the core of international relations is the struggle of democracies against autocracies. This does not mean ideological neutrality. The idea of the ‘free world’ and criticism of ‘communism’ (in which they include China, Cuba, Venezuela, and by inertia, Russia) plays an important role in the thinking of many Republicans. But the defining factor is something else – intolerance of those who for various reasons do not accept American supremacy.
Trump’s choice for national security adviser, Michael Waltz, for example, speaks negatively and disparagingly of Russia, but not in terms of a need to be ‘re-educated’, but because it interferes with America. Marco Rubio, who is being considered for secretary of state, does not oppose regime change in his ancestral homeland of Cuba, but is otherwise not a militant supporter of American intervention anywhere.
The undoubted priority of the Trumpists and those who have joined them is to support Israel and confront its opponents, first and foremost Iran. Last year, Elise Stefanik, the likely US ambassador to the UN, publicly shamed the presidents of leading American universities in Congress for alleged anti-Semitism. It is worth remembering that the only really effective use of force in Trump’s first term was the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani, the head of the special forces of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Trump is not a warrior. Threats, pressure, violent demonstrations – yes. A large-scale armed campaign and mass bloodshed – why? Perhaps because of the peculiarities of relations with China, which is clearly seen as the number one rival. Not in a military sense, but rather in the political and economic sphere, so any ‘war’ with it (forcing it to accept terms favorable to America) should be cold and ruthless. This also applies in part to Russia, though the situation is very different. All of this is neither good nor bad for Moscow. Or to put it another way, it’s both good and bad. But the main thing is that it is not the way it has been up to now.
Fyodor Lukyanov is the editor-in-chief of Russia in Global Affairs, chairman of the Presidium of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, and research director of the Valdai International Discussion Club.
This article was first published by the newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta and was translated and edited by the RT team
November 15, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Militarism | China, Iran, Russia, United States, Zionism |
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The EU must reconsider the sanctions it has placed on Russia in connection with the Ukraine conflict, and work to end hostilities as soon as possible, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said.
Speaking on Kossuth Radio on Friday, Orban explained that the current economic problems within the bloc stem from Brussels’ “hare-brained” decision to respond to the Ukraine conflict by placing restrictions on Moscow, which have driven up energy prices and overall inflation, hindering the EU’s competitiveness.
The EU declared the elimination of its reliance on Russian energy as a key priority after the Ukraine conflict escalated in February 2022. Sanctions and the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines later that year led to a dramatic drop in Russia’s gas supplies to the bloc, resulting in a spike in energy prices and soaring inflation.
“Sanctions were a wrong, hare-brained answer to the [Ukraine conflict], the EU made a mistake… Energy prices must definitely be brought down. This means that the sanctions must be reconsidered, because the policy of sanctions… it will destroy the European economy,” Orban stated. He called for an “anti-bureaucratic rebellion” within the bloc so that decisions on EU policies will be made with the people’s welfare in mind, both in regard to sanctions and to peace.
Orban also said that European businesses and industries cannot focus on development goals and growth opportunities when there is a war going on, so everything needs to be done to end the Ukraine conflict.
“If we look at this conflict from the point of view of our pockets, our economy, our income, it is a scourge of God on us all… In order to be successful again, we have to end it, end it as soon as possible,” he stressed.
Orban said Hungary would continue its diplomatic efforts toward peace in Ukraine, but said that it needs “a protagonist” who will be “strong enough to not only want peace but also to be able to create it.” He reiterated his hope that the power shift in the US with Donald Trump’s election would help achieve that goal. The Republican has previously claimed that he could end the Ukraine conflict in 24 hours. Until Trump takes office in January, Budapest will work on “achieving change in Brussels” to make sure “EU bureaucrats” do not decide to “continue the war without the Americans,” Orban pledged.
Orban has long been at odds with Brussels over the approach to Ukraine, opposing both aid to Kiev and sanctions on Moscow. Tensions grew further after he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin as part of his Ukraine ‘peace mission’ earlier this year.
Some EU leaders accused Orban of siding with Russia and abusing Hungary’s rotating presidency of the bloc. The premier clarified that he was representing only his own nation, but pledged to continue to work on changing the EU’s overall stance on the conflict.
November 15, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Russophobia | European Union |
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Friendly relations between Moscow and New Delhi are an important element of international stability, Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar told Sky News Australia in an interview published this week. According to the diplomat, the West should be less concerned about countries enjoying good relationships with Russia and more about diplomacy and ending the Ukraine conflict.
The minister defended New Delhi’s decision to increase oil purchases from Russia after the US and its allies slapped Moscow with unprecedented sanctions over the Ukraine conflict, which targeted Russia’s financial sector and international trade.
“If we had not made the moves we had, let me tell you the energy markets would have taken a completely different turn and actually would have precipitated a global energy crisis. It would have caused inflation across the world as a consequence,” Jaishankar said.
Imports of crude oil from Russia currently constitute nearly 40% of India’s total oil purchases, up from less than 1% before the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022. Earlier this week, the foreign minister said that he expected bilateral trade between the two nations to reach a target volume of $100 billion before 2030.
The minister was responding to Sky News host Sharri Markson, who said that New Delhi’s close ties to Moscow were causing “angst” in Australia. Jaishankar hit back by saying that “countries don’t have exclusive relationships” nowadays. Using the same logic, India should be worried about any country who has a relationship with its regional rival, Pakistan.
“What India has done and is doing with Russia is actually… helpful to the international community as a whole,” the minister said. He said that not only had India’s actions helped to avert a potential global energy crisis, but may also contribute to ending the fighting between Moscow and Kiev.
New Delhi can talk to both parties and “try to find some intersection in those conversations” to eventually find a way to get them both to the negotiating table, according to the top diplomat.
“I think the world, including Australia, needs such a country that will help bring this conflict back to the conference table,” he stated, adding that “conflicts rarely ends on the battlefield, mostly they end [through] negotiations.”
When further pressed by Markson on whether India is concerned about growing cooperation between Russia, China, North Korea and Iran, Jaishankar replied that such developments, which were further encouraged by the Ukraine conflict, show that the West should also be primarily interested in ending the hostilities.
”It’s in everybody’s interest that the sooner the conflict ends the better,” the minister said. “The longer the conflict drags out… all sorts of things are going to happen. Not all those things could necessarily be to Australia’s advantage or… that of Western countries.”
November 14, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Militarism, Russophobia | Australia, India, Russia, Ukraine |
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The predictable consequences of stealing Russia’s sovereign funds
The West’s decision to freeze and legalise the theft of Russian sovereign funds predictably diminished trust in the Western financial system, resulting in a huge demand for gold and other precious metals as a safe haven. Gold is not a yield-bearing asset, yet it preserves its value during turbulent times. There are some more twists to the story: There is a rise in demand for physical gold and a push to store it in their home countries due to the lack of trust it can be stored safely in the West.
What was done to Russia could happen to anyone. An adversary like China is obviously next in line as the economic coercion to prevent its continued development intensifies. The EU demands China must pay a “higher cost” for supporting Russia, linking Russia and China seemingly for the purpose of convincing Trump to continue the war in Ukraine. Even friendly countries such as India could be targeted anytime with secondary sanctions for failing to bow to the demands of Washington.
From the US seizure of Afghanistan’s sovereign funds to Britain confiscating Venezuela’s gold, there is evidently reason for distrust. The main shock to the system was nonetheless the legalisation of the theft of Russia’s sovereign funds, which was justified by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The moral premise is dubious at best as it would obviously not be considered acceptable if countries around the world seized the funds of the US and its NATO allies to pay reparations to the countries they have invaded.
Even within Western countries, predictability diminishes as the rules of law weaken. A British journalist reporting from Donbas had his bank account frozen without a day in court.[1] In Canda, hundreds of people had their bank accounts frozen for organising or attending the trucker protest.[2] Even the British opposition politician, Nigel Farage (“Mr. Brexit”), had his account suspended for political reasons.[3] Metro Bank used access to its financial services to punish opposition to its gender ideology as it denied banking services to an organisation opposed to the medical transitioning of children.[4] With many similar cases emerging, the term “de-banking” has entered the vocabulary.
Inflation and weaponisation of the dollar, coupled with growing political instability, are compelling large powers to take their money out of the Western financial system. China is still making dollars with its great trade surplus, but there is a growing reluctance to buy Western bonds or even leave the money in the Western financial system. China lends these dollars to other countries around the world rather than reinvesting it into the US market.
BRICS countries also prefer buying physical gold and they are also moving it to their own countries. Central banks and investors are not interested in exchange-traded funds (ETFs) as a cheap and easy way to own gold. Paper gold is not trusted, and investors demand physical gold. The gold is not even trusted to be stored in Western vaults anymore. China is having hundreds of tonnes of gold shipped from the West to China. Switzerland alone sent 524 tonnes of gold to China in 2022.[5] India brought home 100 tonnes of gold from the UK in 2024, the first large shipment since 1991. The transfer and storage of these metals are neither convenient nor cheap, yet the collapse in trust demands drastic actions. Bloomberg reports on Singapore constructing a six-story warehouse “designed to hold 10,000 tons of silver, more than a third of global annual supply, and 500 tons of gold”.[6]
There are many reasons not to store assets in rogue states: Risk of seizure or confiscation, lack of transparency, economic volatility, political instability etc. Unfortunately, all of these symptoms are becoming associated with the G7 countries as the financial system was weaponised. A key lesson of sanctions is that severe and prolonged sanctions result in the rest of the world adapting by learning to live without the belligerent actors.
Large gold reserves safely protected within national borders can also become important as new trade and reserve currencies are promoted. Fiat currencies will lose much trust in the financial turmoil that awaits, and future alternatives may need to yet again be backed by gold. Gold will certainly play a greater role as BRICS prepares a post-American financial system.
[1] PETER HITCHENS: Freedom for all means freedom for nasty people – Mail Online – Peter Hitchens blog
[2] Canada Ends Its Freeze on Hundreds of Accounts Tied to Protests – The New York Times
[3] Debanking: How Nigel Farage’s Banking Woes Have Raised Serious Concerns Over Account Closures
[4] The terrifying rise of ‘debanking’ – spiked
[5] Switzerland sent 524 tonnes of gold to China last year, the most since 2018 | Euronews
[6] As the Rich Snap Up Gold Bars, Storage Vaults Brace for Business – Bloomberg
November 13, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Economics | China, India, Russia, United States |
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… And the US empire
When a nation becomes known as a genocide perpetrator it suffers reputational damage. And reputational damage has economic consequences. A whole branch of the public relations industry specializes in such matters: Well-paid damage-control hacks are hired by wealthy individuals, corporations, and governments when reputations propping up fortunes are threatened.
By murdering tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza in a transparent effort to steal more and more Palestinian land, the illegitimate state of “Israel” has labeled itself genocidal in the eyes of the world. And a nation that is genocidal, like an individual who is a serial killer, cannot expect to be treated as a respectable member of the community. Just ask the Germans, who were labeled “genocidal” after World War II and have been suffering economic consequences ever since.[i]
Partisans of Israel have used ethnic nepotism to gain control over western media. Due to its disproportionate media influence, the zionist entity has thus far managed to evade critical scrutiny of its long list of outrageous crimes. But as social media and international media erode the power of the zionist monopoly on western mainstream media, Israel’s hasbara flacks have entered ever-more-desperate damage-control mode.
Their uphill battle is not winnable in the long term. Today, well-informed people in all of the world’s nearly 200 countries know that “Israel” is committing genocide in Gaza. That knowledge is now a permanent part of humanity’s collective consciousness, and will remain so for generations.
“Israel” has become an international pariah due to the Gaza genocide. And even if it stopped committing genocide and other crimes tomorrow, the damage has already been done. The zionist entity is tainted and unsustainable. The only question is the timing of its forthcoming collapse. And economic data reveal that the collapse could happen sooner rather than later.
Since Hamas’s “most successful military raid of this century” on October 7, 2023, the Israeli economy has lost roughly 50,000 businesses to bankruptcy. According to some estimates as many as 500,000 zionist squatters (aka settlers) have fled the country, leaving shuttered businesses and unfilled positions in their wake. What’s worse, from the zionist perspective, is that the people fleeing “Israel” are, by and large, its most productive citizens. Or make that “former citizens.” These disgruntled expatriates are the well-educated engineers, doctors, entrepreneurs, technicians, and above all, the computer professionals who run Israel’s high-tech sector, the most productive element of its economy. Shir Hever writes:
Prof. Dan Ben David, a famous economist argued that the Israeli economy is held together by 300,000 people (the senior staff in universities, tech companies, and hospitals). Once a significant portion of these people leave he says “We won’t become a third world country, we just won’t be anymore.”
So who will remain in “Israel” after its most highly-educated and productive citizens leave? Increasingly, the zionist entity is becoming dominated by millenarian-messianic religious fanatics. These are the people who vote for ultra-genocidal lunatics like Ben Gvir and Smotrich, and who make up the bulk of the illegal squatters on stolen West Bank land.
This ultra-zionist segment of the population is characterized by extremely high birthrates, with families routinely reaching double figures. They get little or no education in history, math, science, and other non-religious subjects. The ultra-zionists are exempt from military duty and often evince no interest in work, preferring to live on public subsidies.
Handouts to messianic settlers are “widely unpopular among secular Israelis but ultra-Orthodox parties are a key pillar of Netanyahu’s ruling coalition” according to the Washington Post. The messianic maniacs long for the day their Messiah will return, conquer the world for the Jews, and give every Jew 2800 non-Jewish slaves. The demographic explosion of these unproductive, parasitical lunatics spells doom for the zionist settler colony.
Though western economic institutions are disproportionately run by Jews sympathetic to “Israel,” that systemic bias can’t hide harsh reality. Foreign investments were down 60% by the first quarter of 2024 and have gone even lower since then. The zionist entity’s credit rating has sunk to almost junk-bond levels. Multinational corporations like Intel, which recently canceled its plan for a $25 billion dollar factory, are increasingly aware that the genocidal zionist entity has no future.
Desperate for funds, the zionists have begun swindling local governments in the United States by having their mobbed-up agents purchase worthless “Israel bonds” that will ultimately be paid for by US taxpayers. The worst offender, Florida’s Palm Beach County, is now facing a lawsuit of epic proportions.
Proverbial wisdom has it that if you find yourself deep in a hole, you should stop digging. But the deeper the hole gets, the faster the zionists dig. When I wrote the original version of this article on October 21, 2024, “Israel” had all but announced plans to launch a huge and devastating attack on Iran. Israeli leaders vaunted their plans to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, while others hinted they might “only” destroy oil refineries and other energy infrastructure. But when the attack finally came on October 26, it was anticlimactic. Israeli planes were forced to turn back before entering Iranian airspace, reportedly after being locked onto by a new Iranian air defense system, and their standoff missiles killed four soldiers and damaged radar systems. Iran says it will retaliate with a “crushing response… involving more weapons and more powerful warheads than the 1 October attack… the new barrage would come between Tuesday’s US elections and the inauguration of the next US president in January.”
In the wake of the upcoming (November or December) Iranian retaliation against Israel, which will be larger and more destructive than the two previous Iranian rocket barrages, the Zionists will once again threaten to target Iranian leadership, nuclear, or energy facilities. But if Tel Aviv conducts a major attack by targeting Iranian leadership, nuclear facilities, or energy infrastructure, the Iranian response—even a limited one—could push the zionist settler colony off the cliff.[ii]
If the zionists attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, Iran will almost certainly retaliate in kind. The sight of Iranian rockets pulverizing Israeli nuclear sites, with ensuing concerns about radiation, would accelerate the flight of the zionist entity’s most productive citizens and intensify the financial world’s disinclination to invest in an obviously doomed settler colony. And since Iran would likely react to an Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities by changing its principled anti-WMD stance and quickly developing and deploying nuclear weapons, thereby destroying the zionists’ regional monopoly, such an attack would amount to raising a self-inflicted radioactive mushroom cloud of doom over the zionist entity. (Indeed, it is not unlikely that Iran has already secretly changed its doctrine and now has a covert nuclear weapons capability waiting to be announced in the wake of regional escalation.)
The Biden regime, knowing this, has succeeded in convincing “Israel” to refrain from attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities. But even if the zionists “only” attack Iran’s leadership or energy infrastructure, the response could be just as devastating. Iran has demonstrated its ability to defeat the so-called Iron Dome and land its missiles, beginning with hypersonic ones, anywhere it likes inside “Israel.” And if the zionists attack Iran’s leadership or infrastructure, Iran will likely target the Achilles heels of the zionist energy grid. In a worst case (for the zionists) scenario, “Israel” could lose most of its transformers and find itself without reliable electricity for up to two years.
Any Axis of Resistance attack on Israel’s energy infrastructure would intensify already-existing vulnerabilities. Shir Hever writes:
The biggest supplier of coal to Israel is Colombia which announced that it would suspend coal shipments to Israel as long as the genocide was ongoing. After Colombia the next two biggest suppliers are South Africa and Russia. Without reliable and continuous electricity Israel will no longer be able to pretend to be a developed economy. Server farms do not work without 24-hour power and no one knows how many blackouts the Israeli high-tech sector could potentially survive.
If South Africa and Russia follow Columbia and cut off Israel’s coal supply, pressure on Turkey will mount to do the same to the zionists’ oil supplies. “Israel” is running its genocide on oil from the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which Erdogan is under pressure to turn off. One way or another, the lights in “Israel” will soon be going out.
The election of the uber-genocidal Donald “finish the job” Trump may hasten the process of Israel’s destruction. Trump, true to his promises to Miriam Adelson and other poorly-informed and emotionally-overwrought ultra-zionists, will likely give Netanyahu enough rope to hang himself and his genocidal settler colony. By wading ever-deeper into a conflict he can’t possibly win, Netanyahu, obeying orders from messiah-awaiters Smotrich and Ben Gvir, is courting national suicide. And even rabid-zionist-owned Trump won’t be able to save Israel from its own hubris. If the US doesn’t sever its bonds with the zionists and cut its losses, it too will go down.
The zionists think they can terrorize the world into submission in perpetuity. But reputational damage will gradually erode their impunity and impose accountability. Israelis, due to their own actions, have become global pariahs. Genocidal war criminals, they are despised wherever they go. No-one wants to deal with them, and no-one thinks they have a future. The economic blowback from their crimes will doom the blood-soaked settler colony and finally end its abominations in the Holy Land of Palestine.
[i] Germany was a genocide victim as well as perpetrator. Millions of Germans were murdered by the partially-implemented Morgenthau plan and by ethnic cleansings orchestrated by the Jewish-dominated US and Soviet occupiers in the wake of World War II. Today’s emasculated Holocaust-reparations-paying Lesser Germany, whose economy was devasted by its American masters’ destruction of the Nordstream pipeline, is a pale shadow, both economically and culturally, of what a sovereign Germany would have become. For more information on the anti-German holocaust see Thomas Goodrich’s Hellstorm and James Bacque’s Other Losses.
[ii] Most Zionist settlers, especially those who are educated and economically productive, are (1) rootless cosmopolitans who could live reasonably well in any large Western city, and (2) relatively intolerant of pain and insecurity. By initiating a long-term genocidal war that will inevitably make “Israel” the target of billions of people’s wrath for generations, the Zionist entity’s leaders are rendering the colonists’ lives insecure, and inadvertently “cleansing” Occupied Palestine of the very people who make the settler colony economically sustainable.
November 10, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | Iran, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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Rolling sanctions imposed on Iran for years have generated a degree of endurance and resourcefulness which enables the country to deal with any possible fallout of Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
The mainstream Western media is already conjuring the things that will come out, citing what they call people briefed on his early plans saying he will drastically increase sanctions on Iran and throttle its oil sales as part of an aggressive strategy to undercut Tehran’s abilities.
Trump took a dim view of Iran during his first term, aborting a six-nation agreement with Tehran—known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. He also imposed what was described as a “maximum pressure” strategy in hopes Iran would abandon its anti-US and anti-Israeli policies.
However, he sounded contrite at an event for the New York Economic Club in September, where he fielded questions about his future plans, saying he would use sanctions as little as possible and singling out Russia and Iran.
“The problem with what we have with sanctions, and I was using the sanctions, but I put them on and take them off as quickly as possible, because ultimately it kills your dollar and it kills everything the dollar represents. And we have to continue to have that be the world currency. I think it’s important. I think we’d be losing a war.
“If we lost and we lost the dollar as much as the world currency, I think that would be the equivalent of losing a war. That would make us a third-world country. We can’t let it happen.
“So I use sanctions very powerfully against countries that deserve it. And then I take them off because, look, you’re losing Iran. You’re losing Russia. China is out there trying to get their currency to be the dominant currency, as you know better than anybody.
“All of these things are happening. You’re losing so many countries because there’s so much conflict with all of these countries that you’re going to lose that, and we can’t lose that.
“So I want to use sanctions as little as possible,” Trump said.
Analysts say a Trump administration return to a maximum-pressure campaign on Iran would mean tougher enforcement of US oil sanctions, but it could struggle to get China as Iran’s top crude customer to cooperate.
China, they say, could retaliate by strengthening work in the BRICS club of emerging economies, consisting of Iran, Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa and others, including by reducing reliance on the dollar in deals in oil and other goods.
Iranian officials have played down the significance of the US election result, with the government saying it will not affect the livelihoods of the Iranians.
“The US elections are not really our business. Our policies are steady and don’t change based on individuals. We made the necessary predictions before and there will not be change in people’s livelihoods,” Government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani said Wednesday after Trump claimed victory.
Iranian economists think Trump’s return to power is unlikely to lead to any turbulence in the country’s economy.
Nevertheless, much depends on measures taken by state planners to deal with the situation. The history of sanctions has shown every threat entails an opportunity that can be used to stabilize the situation and improve.
Trump’s sanctions in 2018 initially led to a steep drop in Iran’s oil exports, but they forced the country to find alternative export channels and return the Iranian oil to the market.
Iran has also been able to tamp down the effect of American sanctions by expanding its trade with third countries through a proactive economic policy.
One should not forget the wise leadership of the country’s top authority to the accompaniment and support of the people which have greatly reduced and sometimes neutralized the effects of the sanctions.
Moreover, the hegemonic power of the United States is waning, and its last tactic of using economic sanctions as a weapon against countries is losing effectiveness in the face of rising multilateralism.
As reflected in Trump’s remarks, further resort of such coercive measures has grave consequences for the country.
China, Russia and Iran have built a trading system that uses mostly national currencies in trade, avoiding the dollar and exposure to US regulators, making sanctions enforcement tough.
When Trump imposed sanctions during his first term, Iran was an observer member of BRICS. Now, it is a full member of the expanding strategic and economic coalition, which has given it diverse means of trade and ways to effectively fend off any hostile measure.
November 10, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Economics | China, Iran, Russia, Sanctions against Iran, United States |
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