June 2015

. According to the New York Times, “Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final word on all public matters in Iran, last week demanded that most sanctions be lifted before Tehran has dismantled part of its nuclear infrastructure and before international inspectors verify that the country is beginning to meet its commitments.” “US Secretary of State John Kerry says the United States was prepared to ease sanctions before it fully resolves what, exactly, Iran’s nuclear scientists have been working on in secret for more than a decade. ‘We’re not fixated on Iran specifically accounting for what they did at one point in time or another,” Mr. Kerry said. “It’s critical to us to know that going forward, those activities have been stopped, and that we can account for that in a legitimate way.’” So in the final days of negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program – meant to have been concluded...

By Jan Oberg There could have been a deal with Iran today – to the benefit of everybody – if the nuclear issue had been approached in a fair, principled and visionary manner from Day One. If there will be no deal later, one of the most important possible agreements in contemporary international history will have been lost, the risk of war will increase and the Iranians will suffer. And the United States and the EU (here France and Germany) will move further down in terms of relative global power and up in terms of self-isolation. On the day of no deal, perhaps the Five Ps + Germany should spend a moment on self-reflection: What could we have done differently? To the trained conflict- and peace-making eye, 99% of the Western commentators have failed to point out the benefits of a deal and, instead, devoted their creativity to find all...

By Jan Oberg The elections taking place in Burundi are no elections. The African Union, the European Union, NATO, BRICS and everybody else must know that by now. They are all turning their heads, pretending they just don’t see. When it comes to Burundi, the much celebrated Western concern about human rights and democracy is conventiently put aside. However, since April developments in Burundi have taken only one direction: towards dictatorship and civil war and, in the worst of cases, a new genocide. If Burundi avoids that it’ll be by miracle and I shall be happy beyond words to be proven wrong. Had this country had oil, important minerals or a significant strategic position – or had Burundi been situated in Europe – I am in no doubt that NATO countries would have conducted a “humanitarian” intervention already. Now when a genuine humanitarian intervention is urgently needed to stop the...

and punished for years for not having nuclear weapons?

By Jonathan Power Were the killings in the church in Charleston terrorism, meant to intimidate the black population of America? Of course they were. Moreover, they were a reflection of the still widespread white hatred for America’s first black president, Barack Obama. Indeed, as the New York Times editorialized last week, “The main terrorist threat in the US is not from violent Muslim extremists, but from right-wing extremists. (Many of them anti-black.) Just ask the police”. The New York Times has studied 382 police forces and 74% reported extremism by whites. Severe Muslim extremism was only 3% of the total. The number of violent plots carried out by international terrorists remains very low and most attempts were disrupted. ‘ Last year not one US citizen at home died from international terrorism.

What a gift to humanity, this Pope! To choose global climate change as a major theme of his papacy is in the spirit of the times. What is revolutionary, and he uses that word often, is the focus on the poor. Climate change–including the long trend global warming over and above some lulls and local variations–has a clear class address, goes beyond making him the spiritual world leader. The Pope talks about filth covering the earth, and about greed stimulated by corporate capitalism and consumerism as major causes underlying the technicality of CO2 release. The Pope also mentions the freshness of the gospels, including the unambiguous stand of Jesus for the poor in Matt 6:24–God vs Mammon–Matt 13:12–our economic system, and Matt 19:20-24 about giving one’s riches to the poor. Pope Francis follows in his footsteps. Simply beautiful. But there is more to it: a general theological discourse from the...

By Gareth Porter In the final phase of the negotiations with Iran, the US-led international coalition is still seeking Iran’s agreement to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to visit any military facilities it deems suspicious and to interview a selected list of Iranian nuclear scientists. Such measures are not necessary to ensure that Iran is adhering to its commitments under the agreement, but they are necessary to manage the political threat from the pro-Israel extremists in the Senate to sabotage the whole agreement. To fend off that threat, the Obama administration made the spurious claim that it had succeeded in getting Iran to agree to the demand for IAEA inspection of any site it found suspicious. In fact, Iran had agreed only that IAEA would have “enhanced access through agreed procedures” – as reflected in the wording of the joint statement of the P5+1 and Iran on 2...

America even at its best is a strange place, alive with contradictions, a Teflon political culture that has an unshakable faith in its innocent and virtuous national character and its overall impact on the world, impervious to the ghosts of slavery and of ethnic cleansing of native Americans that should be tormenting our sleep and darkening our dreams, comfortable with its robust gun culture, and with its promiscuous reliance on rogue drones engineered to kill on command and on the brutal happenings that take place in black sites immorally situated in countries whose leaders agree to avert their gaze from the dirty work taking place. Looked at from a short distance this is not a pretty picture. Yet there are still those rare moments when this unsavory national profile seems not to be telling the whole story. For instance, I felt heartened by a recent news item reporting that the...

beslöt att inte låtsas om de löften som Västs ledare i slutet av det kalla kriget gav sina sovjetiska/ryska kollegor. Det var oetiskt och – som Power med viktiga hänvisningar hävdar – en politisk tabbe av historiska proportioner. Hans berättelse förklarar varför Väst inte heller är oskyldigt i fråga om den aktuella Ukrainakrisen – i sin tur åstadkommen genom en annan tabbe: försöket att byta regim i Kiev och få in Ukraina i det kärnvapenbaserade NATO. Blankt förnekande sin egen inblandning börjar politiskt korrekta västmedier, politiker och Natohöjdare lämpligt nog sin historia med att Ryssland annekterade Krim som en blixt från klar himmel. Power säger: ≫Historien kommer inte att se välvilligt på NATOs farliga och kontraproduktiva utvidgning≪. Jan Öberg Rysslands Europablickande drömmare har räknat in Pusjkin, Lenin, Gorbatjov och, tills rätt nyligen, president Vladimir Putin. Alla har de sett sitt lands framtid som en del av ≫det europeiska huset≪. Men...

Lecture at World Congress of Faiths, Annual General Meeting, London School of Economics, University of London, May 20, 2015 Thank you for inviting me to speak to you today, and for giving me the opportunity to share with you my journey for the common good, a journey which I began many years ago, when as a young man I left Iran for England in 1972 in my search for life’s bigger picture. Friends, I very much like to set the scene by reading a short statement, giving you a brief background to my presentation, my abstract, if you will: First: This presentation is dedicated to the youth of the world, our children and grand- children, who are the unfolding story of the decades ahead. May they rise to the challenge of leading our troubled world, with hope and wisdom in the interest of the common good to a better future...

It isn’t helpful to pre-position heavy materiel in Eastern Europe if it is peace you want…