By Miko Peled, TFF Associate
Category: AA ARTICLES BY ASSOCIATES
Time to give Palestinians their country back
By Miko Peled, TFF Associate
More than the threat of war on Iran, Netanyahu’s re-election is a call for war on Palestinians everywhere.
It is a call for war on human rights and international law. It is a mandate for the Israeli government to murder Palestinians. It gives Netanyahu license to continue Israel’s seven-decade policy of racism and apartheid towards the people from whom they stole the land.
It is also a call for people of conscience to impose boycotts and sanctions to divest and to isolation Israel. No more business as usual – it is time for outrage, for action, the type of action that brought down apartheid in South Africa.
It is a call to finally allow Palestinians to have their country back.
Continued reading in The Hill. Congress Blog
Gandhi and Mao – two Asians
By Johan Galtung
Let us start by summarizing. We are looking at six major leaders of forces and movements shaping centuries – Churchill-Hitler-Stalin-Mao-Gandhi-Mandela – comparing, two at a time. We are looking for similarities and dissimilarities. Some of them are out in the open, in their spoken ideologies. But most of them – maybe the most interesting–are hidden to the untrained eye. There are the similarities when they are from the same civilization and the dissimilarities when different – however much they profess to be on the same or very different lines. The six were themselves hardly aware of this factor.
As Churchill, Hitler and Stalin share the Christian-secular civilization; we would expect anti-Semitism, racism, and little hesitation when killing–by war, starvation (the Lord also did it), by revolution, millions – even with enthusiasm. Deeper down there are deductive reasonings from axioms about race and class and a final state: the British Empire, the Aryan Reich, for one thousand years, and socialism on the way to the final stage, communism forever; run from London, Berlin, Moscow. So we got the triangular Second World War with Moscow entering two alliances of convenience.
Enters Mao. He shares the word “communist” with Stalin (they still use it, long after it disappeared in USSR-Russia). But the Chinese civilization leaves its indelible imprint on that concept, giving the word a very different meaning, commune-ism, common-ism, doing things together, cooperating.
Enters Gandhi. An Asian like Mao, but watch out: there is no Asian civilization. There are West, Central, South–Hindu; Gandhi is here!–Southeast, East–Mao is here!–Asia; all very different–and a sixth, North Asia, Russian Orthodox.Read More »
Iran won upfront sanctions relief, but with potential snags
By Gareth Porter, TFF Associate*
The framework agreement reached on Thursday night clearly gives the P5+1 a combination of constraints on Iran’s nuclear programme that should reassure all but the most bellicose opponents of diplomacy. It also provides the basis for at least a minimum of sanctions relief in the early phase of its implementation that Iran required, but some of the conditions on that relief are likely create new issue between Iran and the Western powers over the process.
The agreement’s dependence on decisions by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the penchant of Israeli intelligence for discovering new evidence of illicit Iranian activities will encourage moves to delay or obstruct relief of sanctions.
US and European officials had been telling reporters that they would phase out their sanctions on oil and banking in return for Iranian actions to modify its programme only gradually over several years, and made it clear that the purpose of this strategy was to maintain “leverage” on Iran.
Iran, however, was demanding that those sanctions be lifted immediately upon delivering on their commitments under agreement. Read More »
Obama’s Middle East retreat – Remember Libya
By Jonathan Power
American Middle East interventionists chide President Barack Obama for not doing more. Why is the US running away from Yemen, why didn’t the US go into Syria and depose President Bashar al-Assad, why did Obama pull troops out of Iraq prematurely, why isn’t he putting “boots on the ground” in the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS)? Why, in short, doesn’t the US use its military might to subdue the stormy parts of the Middle East?
The first answer must be that he does not have to be George W. Bush’s surrogate. It was Bush who triggered much of the upheavals with his invasion of Iraq – although ex-President Jimmy Carter bears the responsibility for arming the Taliban and thus the establishment of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Why should Obama want to continue to try and mop up after Bush’s dirty work, especially as more intervention is likely to up the ante rather than calming the situation?
That said Obama made his own serious mistake of intervening to depose Muammar al-Qaddafi in Arab Libya. Although the UK and France led from the front the US was backing them up in every wayRead More »
Stalin the Communist and Mao the Commune-ist
By Johan Galtung
Churchill and Hitler made history but did not change it; after the war their societies found their old forms. Stalin and Mao changed their much bigger societies basically, and gave the Westphalian state system new fault-lines, alliances: anti-Russia-USSR, anti-China-DPRC.
There was also a short lasting USSR-DPRC alliance 1949-53, when Stalin was alive. But when he was murdered the banner as leader of the rapidly expanding Communist World was not passed on to the biggest country, but stayed in Moscow. The new leader was not Mao Zedong but the colorless Malenkov. Surface level conflict; and important.
But the concept of a monolithic Communist as opposed to a Free world survived in a US mind slow at capturing or admitting deeper aspects of reality, but quick at projecting themselves on the world.
The deep differences between the Western civilization of which Russia was and is a part, and Chinese civilization of course also affected their communisms. So let us explore what happened to these two huge projects.
They were similar on three basic points: ending feudalism in the countryside; capitalism in the cities down; and imperialists – foreign forces – out. This is already a lot, and since the imperialism was mainly Western forces strongly linked to feudal-capitalist economic interests and systems – also culturally in both cases – strong political and military cleavages took shape; with the USA playing double roles.Read More »
Iran nuclear deal – on the road to peace
Jan Oberg commenting on Iranian President Rouhani: “Tehran abides by commitments, if P5 1 fulfills promises” – YouTube/PressTV http://ow.ly/LbX3d
In spite of the deal’s negative sides, Iran has chosen peace to the benefit of the world.
In that perspective it is much more than a nuclear deal, it’s – potentially – a road to peace.
TFF PressInfo # 316: Iran nuclear deal – They’ve done it!
By Farhang Jahanpour*
At last they have done it! After 36 years of hostility between Iran and the West, 12 years of nuclear negotiations initially between Iran and the European Troika (Britain, France and Germany), followed by talks between Iran and the P5+1, finally the two sides have agreed on a framework for a final, comprehensive agreement before the end of June.
It is clear that this agreement falls short of both side’s maximum expectations. It will be strongly opposed by the hardliners in Iran who believe that, as an NPT member, Iran is entitled to the full range of nuclear activities and, therefore, they will accuse the Iranian negotiators of a sell out.
On the other hand, the Israeli Prime Minister and his supporters in the US Congress, who are not satisfied with any agreement with Iran short of the cessation of all forms of nuclear enrichment in Iran, even at the cost of a war, will blame the Obama Administration of appeasement.
It is also clear that both sides have achieved their minimum demands. The West can be sure that Iran will not Read More »
Iran Nuclear Deal: Can One Dare Hope?
By Farhang Jahanpour
After 36 years of hostility between Iran and the West and 13 years of nuclear negotiations, first involving Iran and the European Troika (Britain, France and Germany), followed by the P5+1 (the above countries plus the United States, Russia and China), it seems that finally one can start to be optimistic and hope that a long, dark chapter will come to an end.
The next few days up to the end of March are the most crucial days in this long road, but after many ups and downs and many false hopes the end may be in sight. To be sure, nothing is certain until the final announcement has been made. Still powerful forces are hard at work to prevent the success of the talks, but there is some room for optimism. The important point to bear in mind is that talks with Iran were never only about Iran’s nuclear program.
The victory of the Islamic revolution toppled the staunchly pro-Western Mohammad Reza Shah who was acting as the gendarme of the region on behalf of the West, and replaced him with intensely anti-Western Ayatollah Khomeini who wanted to spread the Islamic revolution and replace the existing order with a religious theocracy. The revolution created the biggest upset in the history of the Middle East since the end of the First World War, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the Sykes-Picot division of the Middle East among various European colonial powers.
With the start of the Cold War and the rise of the American superpower, the Middle East was divided between the two blocs, with some countries such as Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Libya and Algeria leaning towards the East and other countries such as Iran, Turkey and Persian Gulf monarchies leaning towards the West. Despite occasional upsets, that situation had remained fairly stable until the victory of the Iranian revolution.Read More »
Nigeria’s big election questions
It has been said that “Brazil has a future and always will”. The quip cannot be made about Nigeria. It has a future and it is working towards it without the mind-boggling mistakes that have been made in recent years in Brazil.
Nigeria’s economy, the largest in Africa, has grown eleven fold since 2000, according to Goldman Sachs. Since democracy was restored in 2010 the national income has almost trebled. According to a Citigroup report published in 2010 Nigeria will have the highest GDP growth in the world between 2010 and 2050. Already its GDP per capita is 3,900 US dollars per person.
Nigeria goes to the polls on Saturday to vote in what is going to be a closely fought election. It’s probably fair to say that right now poorer voters don’t feel they are on the lift going up. Growth has not trickled down to them as much as it should, at least in terms of incomes although their access to clean water, medical help and education may have improved. Economists say they won’t get a real leg up until Nigeria approaches double digit growth.Read More »
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