Quarantine Meditations: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Quarantine Meditations: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

caitlinjohnstone.com

March 24, 2020

The world is messed up because powerful people think in terms of narrative control, and ordinary people don’t. Change that and you change the world.

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Hot tip: Dump all stocks and invest in becoming the kind of decent human being who people will want to help in chaotic times.

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Let’s go humans! The sooner we can put aside our differences all around the world and unite to beat this virus the sooner we can get back to exploiting each other over an imaginary monetary system and murdering each other with bombs!

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FYI if your government is pushing the suspension of civil liberties before coming up with a healthcare plan or providing you with financial security in an unprecedented economic crisis, then their desire to suspend civil liberties has nothing to do with fighting the pandemic.

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Protecting the citizenry in situations like this is the thing governments are supposed to be for. It’s the single most compelling argument for their existence, by a very wide margin. Any government which doesn’t take good care of its people right now does not deserve to exist.

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If this virus hasn’t yet caused you to seriously re-evaluate your priorities in life, it should. For better or worse we appear to be standing on the brink of some very significant worldwide paradigm shifts. Where you choose to put your mental energy right now should reflect this.

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Powerful people will work to advance authoritarian agendas which they have no intention of reversing during this pandemic. They are working on it right now. This is not a possibility, this is a certainty.

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I love that so many people are pleading with the Trump administration to end Iran sanctions during the pandemic because it’s killing civilians, but it won’t work. They know it’s killing civilians, and they know it will kill a lot more. That has always been the objective. Pompeo has openly admitted that Iran is being sanctioned no so that its government will change its behavior, but so that the Iranian people will get so desperate from all the suffering and devastation that they rise up and overthrow their government.

Sanctions are the only form of warfare where it is considered legal and acceptable to deliberately target a civilian population with deadly force. That’s what they’ve been doing this whole time. It’s what they want. The pandemic only helps them.

Every single Iranian who is dying because of these sanctions is on Trump. The MAGA narrative that he’s better on war than Obama has been thoroughly invalidated by every metric.

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Humanity is uniting against this common crisis. We’re uniting in our desire to beat this virus and protect our more vulnerable populations, and in a shared awareness that this thing could technically kill any of us. If ever there was a catalyst for a shift in consciousness, this is it.

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We appear to be watching a confluence of factors on a trajectory to push the world toward vast changes which may leave it unrecognizable in some ways within a matter of months. Maybe we don’t need to pour as much mental energy as we used to into sectarian infighting and petty social media spats.

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Nothing’s the same and it never will be again. Fuck seizing the means of production. Seize this moment. Take back everything they took from us and refuse to give it back.

Also seize the means of production because you can and why not.

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Every time there’s a major mainstream narrative shift half my mentions are people going “Caitlin I’m so disappointed in you for saying something I disagree with. Normally I agree with you but now here you are not agreeing with me, like you’re an independent person or something.”

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Imagine being such a bleating, brainwashed NPC cuck that you believe China is your enemy.

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The nation that is circling the planet with hundreds of military bases and engaging in countless undeclared military operations around the world is the belligerent rogue nation. Everyone else is, at worst, acting in self-defense in response to this belligerence.

Governments using force to dominate the planet put every human being on a trajectory toward extinction via nuclear armageddon, and should be vehemently opposed. One government is the worst offender in this area, by a very, very, very wide margin. And it ain’t China.

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Every few weeks, depending on who the empire is targeting at a given moment, I swing from arguing with liberals about a nation liberals hate to arguing with conservatives about a nation conservatives hate, or vice versa. And they always think they’re different from the others.

“Caitlin I normally agree with you, but I don’t know what’s gotten into you supporting Evil Nation X like this!” they say, firmly believing that they’re doing something original and unique.

“This Official Bad Guy is different from all the others, Caitlin!” they say. “This one’s real!” It’s like listening to a serial loser-dater explain that her new boyfriend with the neck tattoo is actually a really great guy.

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I oppose warmongering against Venezuela and China and they say it’s because I love communism.

I oppose warmongering against Iran and they say it’s because I love theocracy.

I oppose warmongering against Russia and Syria and they say it’s because I love autocracy.

Maybe I just oppose warmongering.

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Rank-and-file Dems unwittingly consented to cold war escalations against Russia out of concern for election interference. Rank-and-file Republicans are now doing the same with China out of concern for a virus outbreak. But both escalations were pre-planned by government agencies.

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The only reason people don’t worry about cold war escalations against China and Russia like they do about hot wars with non-nuclear powers is because we got lucky in the last cold war. But that’s all it was: sheer, dumb luck. No one was ever in control during that time. Not once.

Nobody likes to think about the fact that we came within a hair’s breadth of total annihilation on multiple occasions during the last cold war due to communication breakdowns and tech malfunctions. That can easily happen again, but without getting lucky. People have a tendency to believe they succeeded because they were in control and lost because they lost control, but nobody was ever in control. We survived by sheer, dumb luck.

With hot wars they take a few lives here, a few lives there. With cold war it’s an all-or-nothing dice roll that nothing goes wrong; no tech glitches, no miscommunications, even when things get very tense. And you roll those dice every single day. And with every escalation you add more dice.

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All arguments the US government makes against any “regime” it dislikes are completely invalidated by its alliance with Saudi Arabia alone, to say nothing of all the other tyrannical governments it’s allied with.

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If you find yourself thinking more thoughts about China’s authoritarian government than about the abusive authoritarian governments of US allies like Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey, Egypt, the Philippines etc, it’s because you’ve been propagandized to align you with US interests.

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Establishment narrative managers aim their publications not at their followers but at other establishment narrative managers, seeking their approval. Alternative media should always do the opposite and address the people; too many also engage in upward-looking approval-seeking.

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Everything’s been in a steadily accelerating pattern of unpatterning for a good while now, since well before the virus. There are people who think they’ll be able to shore up control through this thing, but you have no control in a tornado. Nature, which includes homo sapiens, wins out.

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Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics onTwitter, checking out my podcast on either Youtube, soundcloud, Apple podcasts or Spotify, following me on Steemit, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my books Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone and Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.

Washington Weighs Another Crackdown As Germany Reportedly Plans To Snub US And Side With Huawei

Huawei Headquarters tower in Shenzen

Source

http://www.zerohedge.com

Thu, 02/13/2020

One day after the Pentagon and, by extension, the White House sent an unmistakable warning to the UK, Germany, the rest of America’s European allies and – most importantly – Huawei and the Chinese regime, it appears the Pentagon is already moving to make it much more difficult for American manufacturers to sell their products to Huawei.

Last summer, the Trump Administration loosened restrictions on Huawei stemming from the Commerce Department’s decision – made earlier in the year – to add Huawei to a “black last” barring American firms from selling their products to the company. The company has technically remained on the blacklist, but the export ban was, for the most part, not enforced (Commerce only intervened if it was a matter of important national security).

The decision comes not long after the UK decided to allow Huawei parts in “non-core” elements of its national 5G network.

But according to Politico, the Trump Administration and the Pentagon are conspiring once again to tighten the screws on the Chinese telecom behemoth. A meeting to discuss the proposed policy change is reportedly being held on Wednesday, and will include a smattering of cabinet members and other administration officials.

Pentagon undersecretary of policy John Rood is reportedly overseeing the new policy, and has overruled concerns about potential blowback to American semiconductor firms.

The Defense Department’s undersecretary for policy, John Rood, has overruled those concerns, the people said.
Defense and Commerce did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

U.S. semiconductor companies found other ways around the blacklisting, including supplying Huawei through subsidiaries or partners in foreign countries.

Currently, a foreign-produced good that contains 25 percent U.S.-origin content can be exported to a company on the entity list. The Commerce rule would cut that threshold down to 10 percent for any goods exported to Huawei or its in-house semiconductor business HiSilicon.

Politico doesn’t go into great detail on the policy, but it does say that it would reduce the threshold for companies on the Commerce Department’s “entities list” – that is, the blacklist. Under current rules, they can buy products that contain up to 25% American-made components. The new rule would lower that threshold to 10%.

The Commerce Department reportedly withdrew the plan at some point in the not-too-distant past because of these objections.

Further restricting sales of American made components and products to Huawei might hurt American tech firms and ultimately give China an advantage as the two countries battle for the best chip technology. But cutting Huawei off from the American market would create serious complications for the companies supply chain.

If anything, it shows us that Washington believes protecting the Five Eyes Intelligence Alliance – the intelligence-sharing pact between the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – might be worth destabilizing trade relations with Beijing and allowing American semiconductor producers to take a serious shellacking.

Most importantly, readers should remember that this report follows a series of reports yesterday claiming the German legislature is on track to follow the UK – and its conservative Trump ally leader PM Boris Johnson – and reject Washington’s arguments about Huawei being a national security threat.

US Empire’s Passion For Iraqi Democracy Magically Disappears

“It is not a mysterious coincidence that all these horrible dictatorships that urgently need a forceful injection of freedom and democracy just so happen to reside right next to each other. The fight for control over the Middle East has always been about controlling important fossil fuel resources and trade routes, and thereby controlling the world.”

Source

caitlinjohnstone.com

With permission from

AUTHOR: CAITLIN JOHNSTONE

Jan 6, 2020

Following a vote by the Iraqi parliament to remove foreign troops from the nation, the US president threatened to destroy Iraq’s economy in retaliation and to refuse to leave unless an expensive military base worth billions of dollars was paid for.

“If they do ask us to leave, if we don’t do it in a very friendly basis,” Trump told the press on Sunday. “We will charge them sanctions like they’ve never seen before ever. It’ll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame. If there’s any hostility, that they do anything we think is inappropriate, we are going to put sanctions on Iraq, very big sanctions on Iraq.”

“We have a very extraordinarily expensive air base that’s there. It cost billions of dollars to build. Long before my time,” Trump also said. “We’re not leaving unless they pay us back for it.”

The Hill

✔@thehill

#BREAKING: Trump says he’ll sanction Iraq if US troops forced to leave http://hill.cm/jMz6DOn 

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5:29 PM – Jan 5, 2020

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This would be the same President Trump whose starvation sanctions are already known to have killed tens of thousands of people in Venezuela, and probably much more by now. The same President Trump who campaigned in 2016 on bringing the troops home from nations like Iraq.

And this would be the same US empire that used the narrative of bringing democracy to Iraq in order to help manufacture public support for “Operation Iraqi Freedom” (which Bush’s Press Secretary Ari Fleischer kept hilariously calling “Operation Iraqi Liberation” [OIL] by mistake). The same US empire that has used the “liberation” of Iraq from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein and the institution of democracy in the Middle East to justify its evil and unforgivable invasion ever since.

Yet the instant Iraqi democratic institutions become even slightly inconvenient for the US empire, Iraqi democracy gets flushed down the toilet. Iraq’s elected parliament voted very clearly for the removal of America’s military presence in the interests of its own sovereignty, and Trump has stated, in his typical accidentally-honest way, that America will not honor that vote. The US is allowing Iraq the same kind of democracy that Americans have: democracy so long as it doesn’t inconvenience the powerful.

This is, of course, because the invasion of Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with democracy. The invasion of Iraq was about controlling a crucial geostrategic region which refused to bow to the dictates of the US-centralized empire. This is important to remember, because that is also exactly what the regime change agendas against Iran and Syria are about.

It is not a mysterious coincidence that all these horrible dictatorships that urgently need a forceful injection of freedom and democracy just so happen to reside right next to each other. The fight for control over the Middle East has always been about controlling important fossil fuel resources and trade routes, and thereby controlling the world. If the empire can’t gain control of the nations in the region via absorption into the imperial blob (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Turkey, etc) or just constructing a satellite from scratch on top of a previously existing nation (Israel), then the empire will work to gain control by attempting to replace any noncompliant governments with compliant ones (Iraq, Syria, Iran).

And, as we now know, the second a compliant government begins to act noncompliant, it will immediately begin receiving the same treatment that noncompliant governments receive.

As things heat up with Iran you will begin hearing more and more babbling gibberish about the poor, poor Iranians and how unfortunate they are to live in a nation where the women can’t feel their hair in the wind and LGBT people need to hide who they are. But as a leaked State Department memo revealed in 2017, the empire is never actually concerned with human rights, and it is never actually concerned with democracy. The sole concern of the empire is power, and the growth of that power. That’s all this has ever been about.

Iraq seems to be destined to be the nation that keeps teaching us important lessons, so the very least we can do in response is make sure that we learn those lessons, and remember them.

Iran Slams US Sanctions on Access to Medicine as Act of Terrorism and Crime Against Humanity

Source

sputniknews.com

by Tim Korso

Dec 17, 2019

© AFP 2019 / CHRISTOPHE SIMON

Previously, the country’s deputy health minister warned that the US had threatened pharmaceutical companies in order to prevent them from selling medicine and medical equipment to Iran. According to the official, this has created major obstacles for importing crucial drugs, including for patients with special needs.

Chief Justice of Iran Ebrahim Raisi has stated that after failing to pressure the Islamic Republic by orchestrating riots and other means, the US has resorted to “terrorism” by hindering the country’s access to medicine.

“Such measures are not supported by any human or legal right and is a clear sign of economic terrorism and crime against humanity”, Ebrahim Raeisi said.

Raisi urged the international community to remain vigilant about the US actions, which it could use to oppress other the rights of other nations, calling for taking “real action […] against such hawkishness”.

Earlier in December, Iran’s Deputy Health Minister Mohammadreza Shanehsaz warned that supplies of medicine and medical equipment to Iran had been gravely crippled by the US actions.

“[The US] have declared in the letter that they will provide a special line to supply drugs and medical equipment but they use policing methods to threaten the pharmaceutical companies that in case of providing Iran with medicine and medical equipment, they will not be allowed to export to the EU and the US”,  Shanehsaz stated.

US Pressure Campaign Against Iran

The US has been pressuring Iran with economic sanctions ever since Washington withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal that saw the removal of international economic measures against the country. Tehran also accused the US of trying to meddle in its domestic politics in November 2019, when protests against sharp rises in fuel prices erupted across Iran.

© AFP 2019 / BEHROUZ MEHRI

Iran Views US Sanctions Against Mahan Air as Illegal – Foreign Ministry

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has vowed to combat the US actions, namely by introducing a $39 billion draft anti-sanctions budget, which will ensure a reduction of the country’s reliance on oil exports that have been crippled by the US sanctions. Rouhani has also not ruled out negotiating with Washington, but only up to a certain point.

“The government is determined to defeat (the enemy) by bypassing America’s sanctions […] or through various means including talks, but will not cross our red lines”, Rouhani said.

US Enraged After 6 More EU Nations Join Effort to Bypass Iran Sanctions

Source

theantimedia.com

Zero Hedge 

November 30, 2019

(ZH) — On Friday six European countries issued a bombshell joint statement declaring their intent to join INSTEX, or the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges, a European special-purpose vehicle serving as a ‘SWIFT alternative’ to bypass US sanctions on Iran.

Finland, Belgium, Denmark, Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden released a joint statement asserting it’s of “the utmost importance to the preservation and full implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPoA) on Iran’s nuclear program by all parties involved.”

“In light of the continuous European support for the agreement and the ongoing efforts to implement the economic part of it and to facilitate legitimate trade between Europe and Iran, we are now in the process of becoming shareholders of the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (Instex) subject to completion of national procedures,” the statement reads.

Instex is an initiative set up by France, Germany and the UK in January 2019 to provide humanitarian and sanctions relief to Iran after in November 2018 the SWIFT network suspended Iranian banks under Washington pressure, months after Trump pulled the US out of the nuclear deal.

Though the new alternative financial device had shaky beginnings amid further aggressive threats from the US administration, it continued through a trial phase even though Tehran officials had complained it appeared ‘too little, too late’.

But now as this latest six country statement announces, it will serve as the European vehicle to “facilitate legitimate trade between Europe and Iran,” while also providing incentive for Tehran to return to its commitments under the JCPOA, specifically to recently breached uranium enrichment limits. Upon the announcement, US Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell lambasted the move, saying:

Terrible timing – why fund the Iranian regime while its killing the Iranian people and shutting off the internet? You should be standing for human rights not funding the abusers.

Richard Grenell

✔@RichardGrenell

Terrible timing – why fund the Iranian regime while its killing the Iranian people and shutting off the internet? You should be standing for human rights not funding the abusers. https://twitter.com/nordrumlars/status/1200373049247379456 …

Lars Nordrum@NordrumLars

Today announced that we are joining INSTEX together with the #E3 to facilitate trade with #Iran and help preserve the #JCPOA. https://www.regjeringen.no/no/aktuelt/join_instex/id2680468/ …

6,136

1:16 PM – Nov 29, 2019

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Specifically he called out a tweet by Norway’s ambassador to Iran hailing the news of multiple Scandinavian countries joining the nuclear deal-saving initiative.

As the US official’s tweet reveals, the White House is using the latest weeks-long protests and government-ordered internet blockage inside Iran to keep up the pressure and focus on a ‘human rights’ narrative amid the security forces crackdown.

Despite the criticism and what will no doubt be a continued flood of US official anger in response to the news, France said it asserts European autonomy amid an over-reaching Washington administration. French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves le Drian called it an “important decision” that will show “Europe’s autonomy of action.”

Iran’s ‘Only Crime Is We Decided Not to Fold’

“The age of hegemony is long gone. We now have to live in a world without hegemony – regional hegemony or global hegemony.”

Source

consortiumnews.com

By Pepe Escobar
in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan
The Asia Times  

November 26, 2019

Pepe Escobar reports on a searing account by Iran’s foreign minister of his country’s relations with the U.S.

Just in time to shine a light on what’s behind the latest sanctions from Washington, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in a speech at the annual Astana Club meeting in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan, delivered a searing account of Iran-U.S. relations to a select audience of high-ranking diplomats, former presidents and analysts.

Zarif was the main speaker in a panel titled “The New Concept of Nuclear Disarmament.” Keeping to a frantic schedule, he rushed in and out of the round table to squeeze in a private conversation with Kazakh First President Nursultan Nazarbayev.

During the panel, moderator Jonathan Granoff, president of the Global Security Institute, managed to keep a Pentagon analyst’s questioning of Zafir from turning into a shouting match.

Previously, I had extensively discussed with Syed Rasoul Mousavi, minister for West Asia at the Iran Foreign Ministry, myriad details on Iran’s stance everywhere from the Persian Gulf to Afghanistan. I was at the James Bond-ish round table of the Astana Club, as I moderated two other panels, one on multipolar Eurasia and the post-INF environment and another on Central Asia (the subject of further columns).

Zarif’s intervention was extremely forceful. He stressed how Iran “complied with every agreement and it got nothing;” how “our people believe we have not gained from being part of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action; how inflation is out of control; how the value of the rial dropped 70 percent “because of ‘coercive measures’ – not sanctions because they are illegal.”

He spoke without notes, exhibiting absolute mastery of the inextricable swamp that is U.S.-Iran relations. It turned out, in the end, to be a bombshell. Here are highlights.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, at the annual Astana Club meeting in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan, earlier this month. (Asia Times/Pepe Escobar)

Zarif’s story began back during 1968 negotiations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty,  with the stance of the “Non-Aligned Movement to accept its provisions only if at a later date” – which happened to be 2020 – “there would be nuclear disarmament.” Out of 180 non-aligned countries, “90 countries co-sponsored the indefinite extension of the NPT.”

Moving to the state of play now, he mentioned how the United States and France are “relying on nuclear weapons as a means of deterrence, which is disastrous for the entire world.” Iran on the other hand “is a country that believes nuclear weapons should never be owned by any country,” due to “strategic calculations based on our religious beliefs.”

Zarif stressed how “from 2003 to 2012 Iran was under the most severe UN sanctions that have ever be imposed on any country that did not have nuclear weapons. The sanctions that were imposed on Iran from 2009 to 2012 were greater than the sanctions that were imposed on North Korea, which had nuclear weapons.”

Discussing the negotiations for the JCPOA that started in 2012, Zarif noted that Iran had started from the premise that “we should be able to develop as much nuclear energy as we wanted” while the U.S. had started with the premise that Iran should never have any centrifuges.” That was the “zero-enrichment” option.

Zarif, in public, always comes back to the point that “in every zero-sum game everybody loses.” He admits the JCPOA is “a difficult agreement. It’s not a perfect agreement. It has elements I don’t like and it has elements the United States does not like.” In the end, “we reached the semblance of a balance.”

Zarif offered a quite enlightening parallel between the NPT and the JCPOA: “The NPT was based on three pillars: non-proliferation, disarmament and access to nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. Basically, the disarmament part of NPT is all but dead, non-proliferation is barely surviving and peaceful use of nuclear energy is under serious threat,” he observed.

Meanwhile, “JCPOA was based on two pillars: economic normalization of Iran, which is reflected in Security Council resolution 2231, and – at the same time – Iran observing certain limits on nuclear development.”

Crucially, Zarif stressed there is nothing “sunset” about these limits, as Washington argues: “We will be committed to not producing nuclear weapons forever.”

All About Distrust

Then came Trump’s fateful May 2018 decision: “When President Trump decided to withdraw from the JCPOA, we triggered the dispute resolution mechanism.” Referring to a common narrative that describes him and former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry as obsessed with sacrificing everything to get a deal, Zarif said: “We negotiated this deal based on distrust. That’s why you have a mechanism for disputes.”

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry speaks with Hossein Fereydoun, the brother of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, July 14, 2015. (State Department)

Still, “the commitments of the EU and the commitments of the United States are independent. Unfortunately, the EU believed they could procrastinate. Now we are at a situation where Iran is receiving no benefit, nobody is implementing their part of the bargain, only Russia and China are fulfilling partially their commitments, because the United States even prevents them from fully fulfilling their commitments. France proposed last year to provide $15 billion to Iran for the oil we could sell from August to December. The United States prevented the European Union even from addressing this.”

The bottom line, then, is that “other members of the JCPOA are in fact not implementing their commitments.” The solution “is very easy. Go back to the non-zero sum. Go back to implementing your commitments. Iran agreed that it would negotiate from Day One.”

Zarif made the prediction that “if the Europeans still believe that they can take us to the Security Council and snap back resolutions they’re dead wrong. Because that is a remedy if there was a violation of the JCPOA. There was no violation of the JCPOA. We took these actions in response to European and American non-compliance. This is one of the few diplomatic achievements of the last many decades. We simply need to make sure that the two pillars exist: that there is a semblance of balance.”

This led him to a possible ray of light among so much doom and gloom: “If what was promised to Iran in terms of economic normalization is delivered, even partially, we are prepared to show good faith and come back to the implementation of the JCPOA. If it’s not, then unfortunately we will continue this path, which is a path of zero-sum, a path leading to a loss for everybody, but a path that we have no other choice but to follow.”
Time for HOPE

Zarif identifies three major problems in our current geopolitical madness: a “zero-sum mentality on international relations that doesn’t work anymore;” winning by excluding others (“We need to establish dialogue, we need to establish cooperation”); and “the belief that the more arms we purchase, the more security we can bring to our people.”

He was adamant that there’s a possibility of implementing “a new paradigm of cooperation in our region,” referring to Nazarbayev’s efforts: a real Eurasian model of security. But that, Zarif explained, “requires a neighborhood policy. We need to look at our neighbors as our friends, as our partners, as people without whom we cannot have security. We cannot have security in Iran if Afghanistan is in turmoil. We cannot have security in Iran if Iraq is in turmoil. We cannot have security in Iran if Syria is in turmoil. You cannot have security in Kazakhstan if the Persian Gulf region is in turmoil.”

He noted that, based on just such thinking, “President Rouhani this year, in the UN General Assembly, offered a new approach to security in the Persian Gulf region, called HOPE, which is the acronym for Hormuz Peace Initiative – or Hormuz Peace Endeavor so we can have the HOPE abbreviation.”

HOPE, explained Zarif, “is based on international law, respect of territorial integrity; based on accepting a series of principles and a series of confidence building measures; and we can build on it as you [addressing Nazarbayev] built on it in Eurasia and Central Asia. We are proud to be a part of the Eurasia Economic Union, we are neighbors in the Caspian, we have concluded last year, with your leadership, the legal convention of the Caspian Sea, these are important development that happened on the northern part of Iran. We need to repeat them in the southern part of Iran, with the same mentality that we can’t exclude our neighbors. We are either doomed or privileged to live together for the rest of our lives. We are bound by geography. We are bound by tradition, culture, religion and history.” To succeed, “we need to change our mindset.”
Age of Hegemony Gone

Tea Party Rally against the Iran Nuclear Agreement with Donald Trump as main speaker, Sept. 9, 2015. (YouTube)

It all comes down to the main reason U.S. foreign policy just can’t get enough of Iran demonization. Zarif has no doubts: “There is still an arms embargo against Iran on the way. But we are capable of shooting down a U.S. drone spying in our territory. We are trying simply to be independent. We never said we will annihilate Israel. Somebody said Israel will be annihilated. We never said we will do it.”

It was, Zarif said, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who took ownership of that threat, saying,

“I was the only one against the JCPOA.” Netanyahu “managed to destroy the JCPOA. What is the problem? The problem is we decided not to fold. That is our only crime. We had a revolution against a government that was supported by the United States, imposed on our country by the United States, [that] tortured our people with the help of the United States, and never received a single human rights condemnation, and now people are worried why they say ‘Death to America?’ We say death to these policies, because they have brought nothing but this farce. What did they bring to us? If somebody came to the United States, removed your president, imposed a dictator who killed your people, wouldn’t you say death to that country?”

Zarif inevitably had to evoke Mike Pompeo: “Today the secretary of state of the United States says publicly: ‘If Iran wants to eat, it has to obey the United States.’ This is a war crime. Starvation is a crime against humanity. It’s a newspeak headline. If Iran wants its people to eat, it has to follow what he said. He says, ‘Death to the entire Iranian people.’”

By then the atmosphere across the huge round table was electric. One could hear a pin drop – or, rather, the mini sonic booms coming from high up in the shallow dome via the system devised by star architect Norman Foster, heating the high-performance glass to melt the snow.

Zarif went all in: “What did we do the United States? What did we do to Israel? Did we make their people starve? Who is making our people starve? Just tell me. Who is violating the nuclear agreement? Because they did not like Obama? Is that a reason to destroy the world, just because you don’t like a president?”

Iran’s only crime, he said, “is that we decided to be our own boss. And that crime – we are proud of it. And we will continue to be. Because we have seven millennia of civilization. We had an empire that ruled the world, and the life of that empire was probably seven times the entire life of the United States. So – with all due respect to the United States empire; I owe my education to the United States – we don’t believe that the United States is an empire that will last. The age of empires is long gone. The age of hegemony is long gone. We now have to live in a world without hegemony – regional hegemony or global hegemony.”

Pepe Escobar, a veteran Brazilian journalist, is the correspondent-at-large for Hong Kong-based Asia Times. His latest book is “2030.” Follow him on Facebook.

This article is from The Asia Times.

What Globalism Did Was To Transfer The US Economy To China

“How does a country recover when it has given its economy away to a foreign country that it now demonizes as an enemy?”

Source

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org

Paul Craig Roberts

Aug 21, 2019

The main problem with the US economy is that globalism has been deconstructing it. The offshoring of US jobs has reduced US manufacturing and industrial capability and associated innovation, research, development, supply chains, consumer purchasing power, and tax base of state and local governments. Corporations have increased short-term profits at the expense of these long-term costs. In effect, the US economy is being moved out of the First World into the Third World.

Tariffs are not a solution. The Trump administration says that the tariffs are paid by China, but unless Apple, Nike, Levi, and all of the offshoring companies got an exemption from the tariffs, the tariffs fall on the offshored production of US firms that are sold to US consumers. The tariffs will either reduce the profits of the US firms or be paid by US purchasers of the products in higher prices. The tariffs will hurt China only by reducing Chinese employment in the production of US goods for US markets.

The financial media is full of dire predictions of the consequences of a US/China “trade war.” There is no trade war. A trade war is when countries try to protect their industries by placing tariff barriers on the import of cheaper products from foreign countries. But half or more of the imports from China are imports from US companies. Trump’s tariffs, or a large part of them, fall on US corporations or US consumers.

One has to wonder that there is not a single economist anywhere in the Trump administration, the Federal Reserve, or anywhere else in Washington capable of comprehending the situation and conveying an understanding to President Trump.

One consequence of Washington’s universal economic ignorance is that the financial media has concocted the story that “Trump’s tariffs” are not only driving Americans into recession but also the entire world. Somehow tariffs on Apple computers and iPhones, Nike footwear, and Levi jeans are sending the world into recession or worse. This is an extraordinary economic conclusion, but the capacity for thought has pretty much disappeared in the United States.

In the financial media the question is: Will the Trump tariffs cause a US/world recession that costs Trump his reelection? This is a very stupid question. The US has been in a recession for two or more decades as its manufacturing/industrial/engineering capability has been transferred abroad. The US recession has been very good for the Asian part of the world. Indeed, China owes its faster than expected rise as a world power to the transfer of American jobs, capital, technology, and business know-how to China simply in order that US shareholders could receive capital gains and US executives could receive bonus pay for producing them by lowering labor costs.

Apparently, neoliberal economists, an oxymoron, cannot comprehend that if US corporations produce the goods and services that they market to Americans offshore, it is the offshore locations that benefit from the economic activity.

Offshore production started in earnest with the Soviet collapse as India and China opened their economies to the West. Globalism means that US corporations can make more money by abandoning their American work force. But what is true for the individual company is not true for the aggregate. Why? The answer is that when many corporations move their production for US markets offshore, Americans, unemployed or employed in lower paying jobs, lose the power to purchase the offshored goods.

I have reported for years that US jobs are no longer middle class jobs. The jobs have been declining for years in terms of value-added and pay. With this decline, aggregate demand declines. We have proof of this in the fact that for years US corporations have been using their profits not for investment in new plant and equipment, but to buy back their own shares. Any economist worthy of the name should instantly recognize that when corporations repurchase their shares rather than invest, they see no demand for increased output. Therefore, they loot their corporations for bonuses, decapitalizing the companies in the process. There is perfect knowledge that this is what is going on, and it is totally inconsistent with a growing economy.

As is the labor force participation rate. Normally, economic growth results in a rising labor force participation rate as people enter the work force to take advantage of the jobs. But throughout the alleged economic boom, the participation rate has been falling, because there are no jobs to be had.

In the 21st century the US has been decapitalized and living standards have declined. For a while the process was kept going by the expansion of debt, but consumer income has not kept pace and consumer debt expansion has reached its limits.

The Fed/Treasury “plunge protection team” can keep the stock market up by purchasing S&P futures. The Fed can pump out more money to drive up financial asset prices. But the money doesn’t drive up production, because the jobs and the economic activity that jobs represent have been sent abroad. What globalism did was to transfer the US economy to China.

Real statistical analysis, as contrasted with the official propaganda, shows that the happy picture of a booming economy is an illusion created by statistical deception. Inflation is undermeasured, so when nominal GDP is deflated, the result is to count higher prices as an increase in real output, that is, inflation becomes real economic growth. Unemployment is not counted. If you have not searched for a job in the past 4 weeks, you are officially not a part of the work force and your unemployment is not counted. The way the government counts unemployment is so extraordinary that I am surprised the US does not have a zero rate of unemployment.

How does a country recover when it has given its economy away to a foreign country that it now demonizes as an enemy? What better example is there of a ruling class that is totally incompetent than one that gives its economy bound and gagged to an enemy so that its corporate friends can pocket short-term riches?

We can’t blame this on Trump. He inherited the problem, and he has no advisers who can help him understand the problem and find a solution. No such advisers exist among neoliberal economists. I can only think of four economists who could help Trump, and one of them is a Russian.

The conclusion is that the United States is locked on a path that leads directly to the Third World of 60 years ago. President Trump is helpless to do anything about it.