Iran floods reveal US hypocrisy, economic terrorism and “let ’em all die” policy
Ivan Kesić
Since March 19th, devastating floods swept across large areas of Iran, triggered by the heaviest downpours in many years. Heavy rainfall began two and a half weeks ago, overflowing rivers, washing away bridges, inundating houses and destroying infrastructural establishments in the northern, western and central parts of the country.
According to the Iran Legal Medicine Organization, at least 62 people have so far been killed nationwide in the natural disaster so far, which has also forced tens of thousands of people, mostly in villages, to evacuate their homes and move to emergency shelters.
Hundreds of people have also been airlifted from the affected regions. The flooding caused the destruction hundreds of millions of dollars of infrastructure in 24 out of Iran’s 31 provinces. At least 25,000 houses were completely destroyed, while another 60,000 sustained some form of damage.
The Government of Iran declared a state of emergency in several provinces and cities, while Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani have urged officials to take full advantage of all available technical capacities to save people’s lives.
The Iranian Red Crescent launched widespread relief efforts nationwide, deploying 11,000 personnel to assist more than 192,000 people with life-saving care and support. Their volunteers and staff have evacuated hundreds of people to safety, and have distributed food and items such as tents, blankets and health kits. Thousands of enthusiastic Iranian citizens from all walks of life joined in a nationwide relief campaign.
The Iranian military is also at the forefront of humanitarian response efforts. Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces MG Mohammad Bagheri said after the floods that he has authorized commanders in the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), the Iranian Army’s Ground Force, Police, and the Defense Defence Ministry to use forces under their command to provide full and organized assistance in flood-hit areas in a coordinated manner.
One hundred units of the Army were active in flooded areas. The Army scrambled a dozen military transport helicopters, as well as drones, equipped with night-vision. Their units also built several temporary bridges and sent dozens of armoured personnel carriers in order to speed up rescue operations in inundated areas where road vehicles cannot be used.
The IRGC deployed several helicopters, reconnaissance drones, engineering units, and field hospitals. Moreover, 1,341 groups of the IRGC’s Basij (mobilization forces) were officially active in only two northern provinces. The IRGC further announced that in the next step, it would focus on reconstruction projects. A spokesman of the Law Enforcement Police force announced that 4,000 police forces had been sent to the flood-stricken areas across Iran to establish security. The Imam Khomeini Relief Foundation (IKRF) announced that its offices around the country are ready to receive the aid items and deliver them to the flooded areas.
The Headquarters for Executing Imam Khomeini’s Order (EIKO) known as Setad, another Iranian charity organization popularly known as Setad, donated thousands of blankets, tents, boots, shovels, household appliances, medicines and other relief supplies. The organization also distributed several tons of food, sent medical teams and set up mobile hospitals. It also provided boats to take part in rescuing the residents stuck at the rooftops of their houses or were stranded somewhere in the flood. Doctors and medics also are part of this organization, which set up temporary clinics to help provide instant treatment to the injured.
Market Watch reported:
Before flood hits the country, Setad has insured 140,000 rural homes in Khouzistan under the Barakat Insurance plan. The damaged homes will be repaid to rebuild their homes in the area. The Setad also provided 15,000 families with house equipment to replace what the floods had destroyed, such as fridges, washing machines, carpets, and other necessary elements. Many of these families living in rural areas raised cattle, where more than 9,000 of cattle were killed during the natural disaster.
The Setad was able to replace 4,000 of these, instantly providing many of the families with their previous work so that they would not end up jobless. The officials of the organization promised that as soon as the areas are cleaned and normal life is retained after the floods, they will be able to provide some 3,000 job opportunities to the citizens of these areas.”
When it comes to foreign aid, the situation is far from being enthusiastic despite the long-standing practice of international humanitarian assistance. In similar circumstances where innocent civilians are hit by natural disasters, the countries help each other irrespective of political differences, but that is not the case with the latest Iranian floods. In fact, this time, international aid is largely not even possible, all due to the US unilateral sanctions and their newest anti-Iran policy. One may argue that such an outcome was expected to occur, however, history teaches us that earlier bilateral relations on the issues of disasters had been completely contradictory, regardless of all the political tensions.
Retrospective
In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on the United States, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Mohamed Khatami condemned and denounced the terrorist attacks and those who carried them out. The US leadership reacted by declaring a war on terrorism, and Iran offered its support in very helpful ways, especially by providing significant support against the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, huge crowds attended candlelit vigils in Iran, and 60,000 spectators observed a minute’s silence at Tehran’s stadium two days after the 9/11 attacks.
Yet, Washington leaders not only failed to reward Iran’s constructive behaviour, but beginning in 2002, they were once more beating once more the drums of regime change and pressing the international community to embrace their anti-Iran sanction policy. Furthermore, in accordance with his aggressive neoconservative agenda, former President George W. Bush labelled Iran as part of the Axis of Evil, outraging the Iranian leadership and ordinary Iranians.
Two years after the 9/11 attacks, the earthquake struck south-eastern Iran and was particularly destructive in the city of Bam, with the death toll amounting to at least 26,000 people. Despite the extremely tense relations, the US offered direct humanitarian assistance to Iran and within less than a week, the emergency response team was deployed via US military aircraft which consisted of search and rescue squads, aid coordinators, and medical support.
The Bush administration temporarily eased restrictions on exports and private assistance to Iran, with US Secretary of State Colin Powell saying that the US Government must do everything it can to help those in need.
“What we are doing in Iran is we are showing the Iranian people that American people care, that we have great compassion for human suffering, and I eased restrictions in order to be able to get humanitarian aid into the country,” Bush said. He also sent demagogic remarks on freedom, terrorism and nuclear weapons, but despite such politicization, the US aid has nevertheless been sent, along with similar assistance of 60 other countries.
Iran tried to respond with the same gesture of goodwill in the late summer of 2005 when Hurricane Katrina struck the south-eastern portion of the contiguous United States, causing severe damage and destruction in several US states and killing more than a thousand people.
It also badly disrupted production in the Gulf of Mexico, which supplies up to a quarter of America’s oil, thus Iran’s envoy to OPEC said his country was ready to send up to five shiploads with 20 million barrels of crude oil to the US. He stressed this could only happen if US sanctions were lifted first, at least temporarily. Iran renewed its offer to assist the US in efforts to prevent an ecological disaster caused by the spreading Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, following an explosion on a BP-operated oil platform in 2010. The National Iranian Drilling Company (NIDC) announced their readiness to use its decades-long expertise to fight the oil slick.
In 2012, after twin earthquakes that killed some 300 Iranians and caused widespread damage, the US authorities issued a temporary general license to ease transfers of aid. This time Iran rejected a US offer of aid, underlining what it saw as US hypocrisy given that Washington has done all it can to isolate Tehran by imposing economic sanctions, thus provoking a medicine supply crisis. Still, Iran accepted humanitarian cargoes from other countries.
Block, lie, and let ’em die
Putting aside all political tensions, threats, accusations, demagoguery and politicization, the above examples prove that the United States and Iran have helped each other or have shown willingness to help one another. Today, it’s the very opposite situation. Not only the United States did not offer any aid to Iran, but also its unilateral sanctions are preventing other countries and individuals of doing it. In addition to that, the US highest officials are spreading fake news that Washington is seeking to help the flood-hit people, while the US propaganda outlets cover the flood in Iran as a result of officials’ inefficiency. In comparison with the Trump administration, even George W. Bush and his neoconservative government seem like humanitarians.
Ali Asghar Peyvandi, the head of the Iranian Red Crescent Society, told reporters in Iran that his organization has been unable to receive international help for the victims due to US banking sanctions. “We expected the Red Crescent, which is an aid organization that provides humanitarian services, to be exempted from the sanctions, but this is not the case,” Peyvandi said.
Prior to the latest US sanctions, his society had some bank accounts connected to SWIFT and they previously used them to receive international aid, but these accounts are currently subject to sanctions and it’s not possible to transfer money to Iran from other countries or the International Red Cross Federation. The Belgium-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Communications (SWIFT) financial-messaging service said last year that it was suspending access for Iranian banks. This move came after the US warned that SWIFT could face sanctions if it provided services to Iranian banks blacklisted by Washington.
The world’s largest humanitarian network has released just under 500,000 Swiss francs to bolster local Red Crescent relief efforts. Peyvandi also said that, in the aftermath of a deadly 2017 earthquake in western Iran, his organization had use of the bank account of a hospital that belongs to the Red Crescent to receive aid and transfer it into the country. “We’ve written to the United Nations as well as the Red Cross about the impact of the sanctions on our ability to attract international aid, but we haven’t received any response yet,” he added. Back in October 2018, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered the US to halt the unilateral sanctions it had reimposed on humanitarian supplies to Iran, but Washington has refused to relieve its bans.
“Given that the accounts of the Iranian Red Crescent have been blocked, no foreign citizen or Iranian national living abroad is able to send any relief aid to flood-hit people,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi explained. Qassemi further said: “Usually, even in difficult and emergency conditions, not all banking systems will be blocked and the sending of humanitarian aid will be possible through bodies such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, but the US has blocked all aid delivery channels in an inhumane and cruel move.” The Iranian spokesperson urged the international community and international relief organizations to stand against Washington’s vicious act.
On the same topic, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said that the US is waging economic terrorism against Iran, and it’s indeed far from a tendentious statement. The claim of American officials that they target the Iranian government and not the people is a bad joke. To ordinary Iranians, they are targeting the people, especially the most vulnerable ones like flood victims and hospital patients. However, this is no surprise considering even more monstrous behaviours such as helping Saddam in chemical attacks and genocide, systematic starvation of Iraqi children, destroying Sudan hospitals, and the latest supporting a Saudi-led military coalition that has inflicted profound and deadly damage on Yemen.
Particularly disgusting is the role of the US and UK government-sponsored propaganda media like BBC Persian, Manoto, Radio Farda and VOA which attribute the current floods in Iran to mismanagement in urban planning and in emergency preparedness, thus trying to create a rift among people and officials. If we look at their articles published over the last several years or just months, we’ll see that the IRGC and Setad are some sort of “ultra-rich corporations,” while hundreds of Iranian dams built since the 1979 revolution are “mostly useless” or “completely unnecessary” because they were built in arid areas, therefore, they will “never be filled with water.” Some of them even promoted a bizarre conspiracy theory that Persians from central Iran are “stealing water” of the ethnic Arab minority.
Today, large dams in south-western Iran are 95 percent full. In other words, they saved thousands of lives in the ethnic Arab region of Khuzestan, given that the catchment area of Karun River has been subject to devastating floods in recorded history. For example, in 1956 hundreds of people were killed and thousands of people were rendered. Not only full dam reservoirs saved lives, but also prevented the possibility of drought in the foreseeable time, which means that water shortages seen last year are not repeatable. The members of the IRGC and Setad, represented in above-mentioned media as Iran’s fancy elite, can be seen today at the forefront of humanitarian rescue operations, exhausted from work and covered in mud.
The support of this organization is not only with shovels and hands. Setad Chairman, Mohammad Mokhber declared that 140 thousand houses with insurances across the villages that were struck by floods will be rebuilt, whereas also owners of partially destroyed houses will receive some 35 million tomans to fix what needs to be fixed. The US sympathy and aid are missing, claims an unnamed author from the US-sponsored Radio Farda, because “Americans seem to have had enough of hate-speech and words of abuse by Iran’s Supreme Leader.”
This represents a harsh and brutal distortion of the facts since it was Trump who called Iran “a terrorist nation” and adopted new anti-Iran policies which are indiscriminately targeting the entire Iranian population.
Ivan Kesić is a Croatia-based freelance contributor and independent geopolitical, military and socio-economic writer.
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The US has declared the Iranian military, the official government military, as a “terrorist organisation”.
Discussed in depth here on the fantastic TruNews:
wow. at the behest of netahyahoo. what a israeli slave of a president we have. israeli sychophant. do you think if the psychopaths running our foreign policy had weather weapons, theyd use them to ratchet up tensions w iran? is that really so farfetched? this is the president that walked away from the iran deal for no real reason, except that it was arranged by obama, and wants to give nuclear weapons to irans sworn enemies. this is an extreme escalation of tensions w iran.
Given the level of criminality we are dealing with when speaking of the Great Satan, nothing is unthinkable. They absolutely would use weather weapons to create tension with Iran, just as they use the same technology against their own people. I posted a doc called Frankenskies just below which explains geoengineering and weather manipulation in detail, how it most certainly is real.
We are dealing with ultra right wing, ultra fascist governments (UK, US and Israel), they are each as bad as one another, rogue, Nazi countries the lot of them. I now refer to England as “Naziland”, as it is just like a Nazi theme park, with Nazi technology being rolled out right under the noses of the brainwashed, duped public (5G anyone?)
Last American Vagabond has done some excellent research with regards to the Iranian military annoucnement, with some history too. Very interesting and informative:
Those good little goys have to earn their shekels.
The Orange Baboon might get a pat on the head and a few more shekels from Adelson.
So . . . ‘the United States is at root the primary cause of all of the world’s woes.’ Got it.
If not for the existence of the U.S., rivers would never ever overflow their banks, and urban development in flood plains, in areas with a history of episodic flooding, would never need to rely on the constant availability of helicopters ‘just in case.’
On the other hand, Iran is not a technologically backward nation. That they build and have and maintain and continue to develop an arsenal of modern missiles capable of reaching many hundreds of miles beyond their borders, and this despite the sanctions imposed by the ‘West ‘ kinda demonstrates that fact.
Why then the dependency on the ‘West’ for flood relief in the wake of a disaster that might have been averted by a little foresight? It’s not as if they don’t have the engineering talent to preempt these kinds of ‘disasters.’
As with New Orleans in the U.S. caught flat-footed in the wake of Katrina, at least in part, no matter how hard one tries to deflect responsibility, so it is with Iran.
And what about the Russian and Chinese and Iranian billionaires? Will they be providing some humanitarian aid of their own? Or will the aftermath of this represent for them an ‘opportunity,’ you know, as did Katrina for the American profiteers? One wonders:
“[Katrina] also badly disrupted production in the Gulf of Mexico, which supplies up to a quarter of America’s oil, thus Iran’s envoy to OPEC said his country was ready to send up to five shiploads with 20 million barrels of crude oil to the US.”
Yes. Ready to ship 20 million barrels. Not in return for any dollars, to be sure. But on purely altruistic motives.
Of course, the American establishment are masters of distraction and deflection. You certainly could not say as much for the Iranian state bourgeoisie, who even before having had a chance to assess the obvious failures in urban and flood prevention planning that led to this catastrophe, already know who to blame.
And if the local Iranian population should get it into their heads to express a bit of anger toward their government for a presumed ineptitude and neglect, that will be because that particular rift between the locals and their governing elites will have been fomented by all of that ‘government-sponsored propaganda” opportunistically disseminated by the Uk and the US. For we all know that the locals anywhere in the East can never have a ‘true’ understanding of the failures of their local administrations.
There is nothing,indeed, so disgusting as using a humanitarian catastrophe to score propaganda points.
There are no natural disasters in the United Snakes. No hurricane, flood, drought, or uncontrolled forest fires, would dare strike the Exceptional And Indispensable People. The weather itself bows down before them.
Pilon – :’Like you aren`t a CIA shill?
” Iran is not a technologically backward nation. That they build and have and maintain and continue to develop an arsenal of modern missiles capable of reaching many hundreds of miles beyond their borders, and this despite the sanctions imposed by the ‘West ‘ kinda demonstrates that fact..”
They may have modern missiles.. they would have no need of if it were not for the demonic Israhel and USA! No other country in the whole world is terrorising another country as they do. Show me Iran`s Military presence in and around all other countries.
”Yes. Ready to ship 20 million barrels. Not in return for any dollars, to be sure. But on purely altruistic motives.”
WHAT? Do you mean in return for the temporary lifting of crippling sanctions, as a gesture of two way good will?
What a f*ck*ng ar*e H*le you are.
You need to take your blinkers off. I am presuming you know about Karma and the Universe? As you reap so will you and yours sow! And it will come sooner than you think.
Clearly you misapprehend the gist of what I wrote.
What you don’t seem to understand about Iran (and what is by no means unique to Iran) is that it finds itself in a place of acute external and internal contradictions, and this regardless of the very real U.S. posture of aggression toward it.
Speaking to the external situation: its main export is oil, and the only market into which oil is traded is an international capitalist market.
Even without being excluded from participating in that market, Iran would yet remain vulnerable, as are all of the petroleum exporting nations without exception, in economic, social and political terms.
In good years, when the price of a barrel of oil is high, poverty reduction measures are both affordable and possible; but in periods when the price of oil is low, such spending becomes severely constrained by what are purely external market dynamics, and the majority of Iranians, being working class and dependent on wage labor, are the first to have to bear the brunt of austerities, periods in which government handouts are reduced, and this in the circumstances of a necessary and consequent economic downturn.
In such circumstances, social and political crises are more apt to manifest, as in fact they do. No covert destabilization undertaken by an enemy is required. People know their lives are going to shit — prices rise as the nation’s currency is mechanically devalued in international exchange, and unemployment is high or rises precipitously — and economic grievances spread. Small protests then become larger protests, and the ruling institutions are sometimes suddenly besieged by what appears to be a revolution.
But even when the demand for oil is high and the sector enters a sustained upswing, if redistribution measures are tepid, if the ruling cliques keep most of the profit to grease the skids of their private operations, and because the production of oil is not itself very labor-intensive and does not directly contribute to any significant reduction in unemployment, the living of conditions of the majority is not necessarily improved, and grievances can yet continue to fester and accumulate. All depends upon the management strategies of the ruling class.
Add to all of this a situation in which oil is abundant to the point of excess on the international markets, and monopolists (read the U.S. & Co.) are eager to exclude entrants (Iran & Venezuela), all to maintain their price level and hold over distribution networks, and the situation for Iran in external terms is always precarious, indeed, as it would remain even in the absence of any resistance to its integration into the world market, since such integration would ipso facto put downward pressure on the price of oil and thus on its revenues. Such is the incoherence of the ‘global free market.’
Speaking to the internal situation: Iran is capitalist. Inequality has stabilized at a high level. But more importantly, capitalist dynamics make for periods of high unemployment, and leave the whole of Iranian society vulnerable to catastrophic cycles of economic contraction, and thus to inevitable periods in which mass discontent will sometimes rise to fever pitch. This, of course, isn’t peculiar to Iran, but to all capitalist societies, albeit being riskier for societies whose economies may not yet have developed to the degree of economic resilience characteristic of the more developed and dominant economies of the North.
Thus economic, social and political instability is baked into the Iranian cake, just as it is everywhere else.
The potential for revolt or rebellion or revolution is real, that is to say, with or without the help of the U.S. & Co. As it was and remains in Tunisia. In Egypt. Yes, in Syria, still. In Venezuela. And now also in Algeria. And perhaps even in France, what with the Gilet Jaunes protests having the very real potential of morphing into something bigger. (And note, coincidentally, that the French establishment is as eager to insinuate that the protests it is facing are the result of foreign meddling as Iran itself is prepared to.)
As to the connection, then, between the flooding in Iran and possible expressions of mass discontent: clearly, urban development in flood plains — for a nation as technologically advanced and savvy as Iran – is at best piss poor planning, at worst criminal negligence.
Thus if working class Iranians end up raising some serious hell over this en masse, they will be entirely justified in their cause.
The Iranian leadership can’t blame sanctions for allowing urban development in areas known to be vulnerable to these kinds of events, as infrequent as they may well be.
Heads should indeed roll if only metaphorically speaking. Someone is responsible. And this particular instance it ain’t the Americans.
”People know their lives are going to shit — prices rise as the nation’s currency is mechanically devalued in international exchange, and unemployment is high or rises precipitously — and economic grievances spread. Small protests then become larger protests, and the ruling institutions are sometimes suddenly besieged by what appears to be a revolution.”
Are you talking about the United Snakes here? Because it doesn’t apply to Iran. Unless you mean the world’s ‘revolutions’ fomented by the CIA…
The ‘people’ have always been poor, that is why they are so ready to help one another and share what they have. What you have never had, you don’t miss.
I would prefer to believe the likes of this guy rather than the MSM presstitutes parroting the CIA/Cabal propaganda.
The United Snakes cannot even get their own houses in order.Now compare that to the death of America by drugs, replicated in ‘every’ city… yet they want to stick their fingers in other countries…. when they can’t even look after their own???
”Iran is capitalist. Inequality has stabilized at a high level. But more importantly, capitalist dynamics make for periods of high unemployment, and leave the whole of Iranian society vulnerable to catastrophic cycles of economic contraction, and thus to inevitable periods in which mass discontent will sometimes rise to fever pitch”
By capitalist I presume you mean they have allowed the United Snakes to infiltrate them with crap they didn’t ever need, like MacDonalds and CocaCola? And the rest of their junk..
The more you have – the less you care.
The problems in Tunisia. In Egypt. Yemen, in Syria, and now Venezuela. And now also in Algeria are a DIRECT RESULT of the Americ**ts interference.
And ”coincidentally, that the French establishment is as eager to insinuate that the protests it is facing are the result of foreign meddling as Iran itself is prepared to.”
No insinuation here but absolute truth This where the whole operation is being run from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3q5QxK_gvw&t=393s
“No insinuation here but absolute truth This where the whole operation is being run from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3q5QxK_gvw&t=393s”
No. Obviously you haven’t really been following the events of the last 6 months in France. Otherwise you would have immediately twigged to an implied, from the standpoint of the French ruling class, “Russian involvement” behind the scenes, that and the fact that all the Gilet Jaunes are — if only in the minds of the French well-to-do and those who have been propagandized into their way of seeing things — right wing extremists. But if one takes the time to comb through the Gilet Jaunes’s main grievances, they are of the utmost legitimacy.
Thus for the Iranians, it’s always the ‘American/Israeli’ cabal, because there can be no discontent among the masses in Iran, since things are so swell and egalitarian; for the ‘western triad,’ in Amin’s sense of that phrase, i.e., Japan-U.S.-Europe, it’s the Russians or the Chinese who must be behind any mass dissent, eh.
You see, whether in France or Iran or America or wherever, the expression of mass discontent never has anything to do with the actual living conditions to which the working class and the poor, everywhere the overwhelming majority, are subject.
The ruling classes everywhere, when confronted with either the possibility or the actuality of popular mass movements, will often, not to say always, try to justify their judiciary and police and military crackdowns by delegitimizing and slandering those movements as being the work of foreign enemies, of their ideological influence, and even in circumstances when such ‘enemies’ actually and in fact become allies in operations designed to crush popular rebellions.
“By capitalist I presume you mean they have allowed the United Snakes to infiltrate them with crap they didn’t ever need, like MacDonalds and CocaCola? ”
No. By capitalist I mean to designate what in fact the word designates: an economy premised upon both, on the one hand, private property in the means of production and,on the other, the production and distribution of commodities for profit.
Such a state of affairs cannot but presuppose that most people integrated in such a state of overarching social relations, the overwhelming majority, a) be disposed of all means of ensuring their subsistence and, consequently, b) be thereby at the mercy of having to work for a wage to tide things over between periods when they are lucky enough to find employment.
Iran, like America, and with all of the same predictable results, to which you yourself allude, is in this sense capitalist.
Otherwise, how do you explain the existence of an Iranian bourgeoisie (i.e, the billionaires and millionaire along with their faithfully bought technocratic subalterns, the relatively opulently remunerated “middle class” managers and bureaucrats, who, by the way, control the ‘public narrative,’ or at least the perception of a unifying national creed), on the one hand, and, on the other, the propertiless majority, you know, those who have to work for wages together with the jobless poor, you know, those in their millions who are condemned by their circumstances to live in a state of permanent precarity?
And if you get the chance, have a read of this: The greatest radicalisation since 1979 as Iran explodes
Not everything is either an Israeli or American conspiracy.
Norm:
Obviously America’s predictable response is disgusting …but other than that we are beyond the point when we can look at individual nation state dynamics as isolated economic and social occurrences. I can see exactly where you are coming from: that the strategic dynamics of World Systems Theory and International World Capitalism have to be taken into account.
As one who follows the dynamics of the world oil economy quite closely: apart from sending Haftar to Tripoli, and other such nonsense – the price of oil is NEVER going to rise to the point of making hydrocarbons economically viable on a whole society basis ever again. The missing factor is entropy: which is eminently measurable as EROI and highly predictable (apart from statistical anomalies – it will always tend to decrease). To the point that its ignorance is skewing peoples analysis and therefore any real chance of formulating correct mitigation policies. As such, world civilisation is in for some really nasty shocks. Shocks that could result in societal breakdown met with extreme state fascism. Or internecine war. Something we could maybe avoid if we understood the problem: and not resort to simple binary decisions based on a nation be nation basis. Or Judaised or Americanised scapegoating.
Capitalism is killing us: not slowly – but rapidly. Capitalism – rooted in individuation – also negates a Universal Humanist post-capitalist response. There can be no individuated Humanism for valorisable profit. There can be no common ownership environmental regeneration politic for valorisable profit and exponential growthism. Unless we rapidly come to terms with the problem – over-reliance and addiction to hydrcarbons: no truly socialised solutions can arise in time to mitigate the capitalised solutions – the privatisation of nature and identity (as conformism). We are heading for disaster: driving blind – unaware of the upcoming net energy cliff.
http://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2018/09/13/the-three-vortices-of-doom/
From this POV: the situation for Iranian heavy crude is WORSE than Venezuela. The EROI returned by National Iranian Oil is 1.30 [Celi; Della Volpe; Pardi; Siboni – paywalled]. This is based on outdated information, but it is unlikely to be significantly higher. More likely, it is already lower. The synopsis is: below 5:1 – there is NO benefit to society at all from recovering this oil. All the available energy is used in extraction. As the government of the state-owned corporation must maintain their share – there is nothing left for socialisation (EROIsoc > 5:1). Or even basic living. Iranian oil is already a significant drag on its economy: one that can only increase. One that I can only surmise is subsidised by Iranian gas exports – for the moment.
Globally, low local EROIs are mitigated by the higher EROIs returned by the likes of Aramco and Statoil The weighted mean is 14.12 [Bardi et al]. The synopsis is that from 100:1 to around 15:1 – there is virtually no change in the energy available to society. From that point is a slippery slope to the ‘net energy cliff’ or ‘Seneca Cliff’ of 5:1 – when industrial society ceases to function. This isn’t an Iranian problem: it is a global problem.
So, as you were saying: state and corporation will tend to merge with recuperated civil societies to form an inverted totalitarrian state – to maintain their unequal share of the EROIsoc. Not being needed for production – citizens will be subjected to increasing narrative control to conform. Humanity is redundant. Its plight will be rapidly decreasing living standards, measurable decrease in wellbeing (Gini Coeeficient: Human Development Index): decreasing wages; decreasing social welfare; increased unemployment; increased homelessness, debt, suicide …etc etc.
You must be finding that subtle balanced root cause analysis is not required – in favour of someone to blame? The root cause is hydrocarbon extinctionism. ALL states will turn protectionist, autarchical, and group into militarised trading blocs to protect profit. We have reached the cusp of humanity versus state insanity. It is only humanity that can find a radical and peaceful solution to this. If the problem can be correctly diagnosed. State and neo-state corporate and civil society fear responses are algorithmically genetically expressed by the capitalist valorisational exponential growth vector that will kill us all. In other words, their behavious will be all too predictable.
Trying to explain that might take some doing though, as we all face falling into the narrative trap of the capitalised blame game.
“Trying to explain that might take some doing though, as we all face falling into the narrative trap of the capitalised blame game.”
I could go places with this,and to one in particular, but will refrain from being naughty.
And yet and still: ‘the narrative trap of the capitalised blame game.’ Indeed!
No, what you recommened reading was a CIA and an MI6 conspiracy….
Mostafa Hessami Muslim prospective philosopher, Shia geopolitical analyst
M.A. Islamic Theology and Philosophy & Islamic Mysticism, Qom University
”Green Movement – Central Intelligence Agency – Iran”
Was the CIA behind the “Green movement” in Iran, or was it just trying to affect it?
Parham already provided an insight into some aspect of this bitter convoluted phase of our recent history. But here a more comprehensive analysis if you will.
CIA, MI6 and Mossad and any other intelligence agency hell bent on toppling a foreign government always keep contingency plans for situations that can be exploited against their adversaries.
In other words, whenever there’s social dissent, political tensions or any other crisis in the ”target country” they try their best to have their ”agents”, new-comers or already embedded ones, to exploit the opportunity and implement the most viable subversive plan out of the contingency list.
This means that their role in subversive plots doesn’t necessarily have to involve ‘conscious collaboration’ of all and even most players who may unwittingly create the appropriate situation the foreign enemy seeks to exploit for a sinister agenda.
The Agencies also try to build living, long-term contacts and links with influential internal players or theirs associates that they know they can manipulate or exploit, if only against their conscious will, to implement their agenda.
“Reformists” in Iran have been historically criticized by the ”Princplists” (right wing Conservatives) for having foreign contacts and political alliances with unfaithful elements that lead them to treason against their country and examples are numerous!
As for Green Movement, the Iranian Supreme Leader tends to interpret the foreigners’ overwhelming role in the dangerous turmoils of that period in the above light. Green top leaders were not conscious collaborates but contributed greatly to the plot because of their actions.
Personally having keenly observed the daily developments of that period I see much merit into the Ayatollah’s opinion, because I learned that even though Green top leaders were not part of a conscious, premeditated deliberate plan to topple the IRI in 2009 elections, their egregious wrongdoings, their questionable contacts with ‘foreigners’ and radical secularist elements in the “Reformist” camp and their personal weaknesses and their ideological inconsistency, gave the enemy all that it needed to basically hijack the Green movement as a conduit for fomenting a civil war that was aimed to basically finish off the Islamic Republic forever!!
I can’t get into all enormous details of the overwhelming and sophisticated role played by various foreign adversaries in this historical chapter especially, but I suffice to say that ever since the 2002 MILLENIUM CHALLENGE IRAN-WAR SIMULATION BY THE by US ARMY proved that toppling IRI government through a conventional military invasion was next to impossible.. several think thanks, both Neocon such as Michael Ledeen’s and “Liberal” such as George Soros’s Open Society Foundation, were planning to topple the IRI government by fomenting an anti-establishment “secular democratic pro-reform movement” in Iran!
They had built the necessary links and contacts.. and pushed by the urgency that they felt as a result of Ahmadinejad’s ‘threatening’ political stances against US and Israel, were determined to turn the 2009 elections into a fatal revolution-looking coup!
After allegations of electoral fraud by Green propaganda campaign, MI6 had its ‘field agents’ deployed in Tehran with the mission of ”turning the street protests violent and direct them towards offices of the Supreme Leader, the President and the state TV complex.”
Visits to the British embassy in Tehran had already made a suspicious spike during weeks leading to the elections.
MKO elements were certainly involved in the suspicious murder of Neda Aqa Sultan who just happened to be murdered outside the riots heat-spot with a bullet that didn’t belong to any Iranian armed forces and with ‘clear advance preparation to closely film her agony and use the footage to galvanize people inside and outside Iran against the IRI’. (US and British media blatantly went against their own professional protocol forbidding depiction of gruesome scenes, when they broadcast and rebroadcast the footage of Neda’s painful agony several times a day for several weeks for international audience!)
Some excesses committed by Security and Judicial Forces — which are almost always unavoidable in situations like these — also played perfectly into the sinister plan.
The foreign subversive role in the Green Movement was so vast, richly funded and widely internationally orchestrated with some many different groups, governments and institutions involved, that it appears to have impressed Russian President Vladimir Putin on how IRI could have even survived that plot! Putin is quoted to have said to some Iranian top officials close to the Supreme Leader that he thought IRI would certainly collapse as a result of what transpired during those weeks!
What adds to the wonder is how IRI survived when there was such high level treason in the intelligence ministry during the elections! Two intelligence vice-ministers were actually later executed and another one sentenced to life in prison for conscious collaboration with MI6. These traitors were not passing to the head of the Intelligence Ministry repeated intelligence reports coming from lower ranks indicating MI6 presence in Tehran during the days leading to the elections!
They had also helped the key MI6 agent escape the Iranian agents!
https://www.quora.com/Was-the-CIA-behind-the-Green-movement-in-Iran-or-was-it-trying-to-affect-it
https://iranian.com/2018/01/03/rhetoric-epistemology-iranian-protests/
“No, what you recommened reading was a CIA and an MI6 conspiracy….”
That’s as far as I read and will read . . .
“Not only full dam reservoirs saved lives, but also prevented the possibility of drought in the foreseeable time, which means that water shortages seen last year are not repeatable.”
If Iran has a problem with floods, droughts and soil erosion, then it has a problem with low soil fertility. Storing water in dam reservoirs for irrigation of crops grown in low soil fertility is an inefficient use of water. Water is best stored in the soil.
The problem appears to be deforestation in the northern and other areas that have been most affected by the floods.
https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/422244/The-significant-deforestation-trend-in-Iran-during-last-7-decades
Even here the deforestation could be in part due to Iran being under pressure to be more self-sufficient in food production (and all the possible problems that could arise, such as overusing chemical pesticides, soil degradation from overuse) as a result of economic sanctions that prevent Iran from importing food.
” triggered by the heaviest downpours”.
Caused, not triggered.
There is a difference.
Western media try to portray Iranians as crazed religious freaks.
The reality would appear to be somewhat different.
They seem to be about as hospitable as any people on the planet:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2LEgowbzSc
19 mins.
If reference does not work, put in search box:
Riding a c90 through Iran
John Doran.
Oh look another article on OffGuardian which fails to make the link between Israeli influence in US politics, when it is the most relevant point to the subject matter. Poor
Good qulaity well made doc on geoengineering and chemtrails, another subject which will make you enemy number one if you dare to suggest that the shadow government/MIC is involved in manipulating the weather for nefarious purposes
Frankenskies https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNeOTOytEeA&t=137s
Good documentary. I watch these damned things every day and have for decades.Funny how short, narrow and selective peoples powers of observation are when they don’t want to see something. Isn’t that called ignorance?
The Iranian government response to the floods and the way in which its various agencies have evacuated thousands of affected people compare well (or much better than) to the US government response to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana in 2005. About a decade after that event, there were New Orleans residents still without homes and the housing stock hadn’t quite reached pre-2005 levels.
https://www.livescience.com/22522-hurricane-katrina-facts.html
The response of the US administration to Katrina was to send in Blackwater mercenary thugs to terrorise African Americans in New Orleans.
Hurricane victims in Texas were forced to pledge allegiance to Israel in order to receive funding for hurricance relief. Unbelievable, but true. Full details and proof here:
The Orange Baboon will shortly introduce new legislation requiring all new born babies to take loyalty oaths to Israel.
America is fuc*ed…..
They create an endless stream of goyim cannon fodder for the vampire state Israhell’s endless wars.
Israel are usually first into crisis hit places like Haiti to show what kind considerate people they are.
I am sorry to say this, but there has been a lot of geoengineering going on over the Iranian terrain n I firmly believe that these floods were generated by the military industrial complex secret weather manipulation technology to weaken the Iranian government n the moral of the people. There is a plan to take over Iran that is laid out in the Plan for a New American Century report.
Thanks for this appraisal. Is there information on the respo0nse of China and Russia?
There is news on the Russian response at least if not the Chinese response. The Russian Emergency Situation Ministry has sent 4,000 tents, blankets and folding beds to its regional centre in Yerevan where it is working together in a joint response with its Armenian counterpart.
“Russia sends humanitarian aid for Iran flood survivors”
https://reliefweb.int/report/iran-islamic-republic/russia-sends-humanitarian-aid-iran-flood-survivors
Kuwait, Turkey, Norway, Switzerland and France have already sent or will be sending aid supplies. Germany has supplied rescue equipment and the Iranians have confirmed receiving it. Afghanistan and Azerbaijan have also offered assistance.
“Half a dozen countries help Iran flood survivors as UN sets up channel for cash donation”
https://reliefweb.int/report/iran-islamic-republic/half-dozen-countries-help-iran-flood-survivors-un-sets-channel-cash
All due to the chosen ones .We are like cattle to them.There is not much else to say that we don’t already know.
There comes a time when you’re own resources are so overwhelmed, so far in debt, that dealing with your own disasters as tens of millions of illegals invade your homeland, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, fires, earthquakes devastate cities across the nation.
There comes a time when you need to get your own house in order to help others, and that time has come.
It’s time schitthole countries stop pushing the “free Schitt” button of humanity and grow a pair. Learn to code.
The Exceptional And Indispensable People give nothing away (except to their Zionist Masters.)
They leech off the rest of the world and are the biggest parasites the planet has ever known (except for their Zionist Masters.) They extort $4 billion A DAY from the rest of the world.
40% of humanity are currently subject to US economic strangulation.
500,000 Iraqi children under 5 died as a result from 1991-2003.
What is needed is for US parents to watch THEIR children starve to death in front of them and watch THEIR sick children die in front of them for lack of basic medicine. They need to suffer, as they have made so many hundreds of millions across the planet suffer for so long. The day may not be so far off when this actually happens. It will be more RICHLY DESERVED than anything ese in human history.
The problem is that they wouldn’t know why they were suffering, and only the strong ones with the killer instinct would survive. Then strengthened and more mobile, this lethal group would be right back at it, having learned nothing.
Escapee, remember that the time comes for everyone, no exception!! Given yout thinking…when Your time comes and you’ll have nobody to turn for…..
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
ominous. US weather weapons attacks often precede direct military actions.
Kind of like slinging mud in the kid next doors eyes before you steal his bicycle.