Latest news with #politicalElites
The Independent
3 days ago
- Politics
- The Independent
DNI Director Tulsi Gabbard posts ominous video warning ‘elites' are fine with nuclear war because they own bunkers
Donald Trump 's Director of National Intelligence has posted an ominous video suggesting 'political elites' are fomenting nuclear tensions because they own bunkers which would protect them from a bomb. Tulsi Gabbard said she had recently visited Hiroshima making 80 years since the US dropped an atomic bomb on the city. She then went on to say that the bomb of 1945 was nothing compared to the warheads of today which can have yields of over one megaton. 'A single nuclear weapon today could kill millions in just minutes,' she said, before suggesting that 'political elites' and 'warmongers' are encouraging nuclear conflict safe in the knowledge that they have bunkers which will keep them safe.
Asharq Al-Awsat
03-06-2025
- Business
- Asharq Al-Awsat
What Is the ‘New Middle East' ... the Real One This Time
There is hardly a journalist or political analyst, or even an amateur posing as either, in the Arab world who hasn't, at some point over the past decades, written or spoken at length about the 'New Middle East.' And yet, the Middle East we see today is something altogether different from what we were told to expect, both in substance and in the circumstances surrounding it. Our region has become, much like our lives and our socio-political imaginaries, untethered from familiar coordinates. One could even say it is now open to all possibilities. To be clear, this is not a veiled swipe at our political elites, nor at the political consciousness of our peoples, or their capacity to learn from past mistakes and, from there, to choose a better path forward. Not in the slightest. Today, we, alongside the most politically sophisticated and institutionally entrenched societies on earth, are in the same boat. We are all grappling with similar complexities, and facing threats that do not discriminate by region or political tradition. There is no longer any guarantee that words like 'democracy' or 'good governance,' even in countries with rooted democratic traditions, will mean much if those terms are voided. Thus, such concepts will not, on their own, save societies from the turmoil they now face, nor the turmoil we will face. Just yesterday, I heard a leading expert say that the widespread use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the basic, everyday infrastructures of human life is now only a few months away. That's on the technological front. On the political front, Portugal has just joined a growing list of European countries betting, through the ballot box, on the radical far right. In the latest snap election, the populist, quasi-fascist Chega party surged to second place, just behind the center-right Democratic Alliance, and ahead of the formerly ruling Socialist Party. Chega's recent rise in Portugal will embolden the broader spread of neo-fascist populists across Western Europe: the likes of the National Rally in France, Vox in Spain, Brothers of Italy, the Reform Party in the UK, the Freedom Party in the Netherlands, and Alternative for Germany (AfD). But this is no longer a Western European problem. Far-right populism is now well entrenched in countries across Northern and Eastern Europe, most prominently Hungary. Of course, of all Western democracies, the United States presents the bleakest example. A historical rupture with few parallels anywhere else is underway in Washington, and it threatens not only the two-party system that has long been the pillar of American representative politics, but also the very principle of the separation of powers. The same single popular and populist political movement has taken control of all three branches of government: the executive, legislative, and judicial. To this, we can add the unofficial 'fourth branch:' the media. While it had once largely free of partisanship, the media has now become a central weapon in the ruling movement's arsenal thanks to the rise of new media: online platforms, artificial intelligence, and the oligarch-owned newspapers and television networks, not to mention the suspension of public funding for state media. There is no doubt that the institutions owned by figures like Rupert Murdoch (Fox News), Elon Musk (X), Mark Zuckerberg (Meta), and Jeff Bezos (The Washington Post) are shaping what may become America's new (and perhaps enduring) political culture. It speaks volumes that nearly every one of the 30 members of President Donald Trump's administration was in Fox News's orbit. Meanwhile, the world apprehensively follows the sweeping shifts underway in the US landscape. Economic wars are no trivial matter, nor is the fact that the man in the White House has upended notions of who is a US ally or an enemy and who its partners or competitors are. However, in light of the rapid and ongoing developments, it has become increasingly difficult for any single country to directly influence the global economic players or military and political forces. As a result, everyone is watching, hoping, anticipating - quietly, of course - either searching for alternatives or trying to limit the damage. As for the Middle East and the Arab world, we may be faced with even graver challenges than others amid Washington's shifting definitions of its 'allies' and 'enemies.' The United States is a global power with interests and priorities everywhere. Accordingly, there is little room for sentimentality. There are no permanent interests in a world whose rules are being redefined and evolving. In our region, Washington maintains a strong strategic relationship with Israel, which is widely regarded as the most influential foreign actor in the halls of American politics. Its lobbying groups fund many key figures in Congress and exert a lot of political influence. Then there is Türkiye, a pivotal NATO member and a regional power with immense religious, ethnic, and geographic clout, allowing it to shape US decisions. And last but not least, Iran also has a significant say in American policy circles. Like Türkiye, it is seen as a crucial link in the Middle Eastern chain. In every round, experience suggests, Washington's goal is to win over Iran, not destroy it. In this landscape of uncertainty and rapid change, one must ask: Are we, as Arabs, still capable of influencing the regional climate and shaping the priorities of major players?
Russia Today
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Russia Today
Starve the people, miss the point: The cruel logic of sanctions
Sanctions have become a preferred instrument in international diplomacy applied either to avoid war or when war is politically unpalatable. In theory, sections are meant to pressure countries into changing their political course or forcing them into compliance with demands, usually by Western powers, over certain issues of dispute. According to a 2023 UN report, the US, UK, EU and Canada are 'prolific' users of sanctions, including banking sanctions that affect the entire population of a targeted country. Yet sanctions – especially those aimed at entire economies – have repeatedly failed to force political change. Instead, they often cause devastating consequences for civilians while leaving political elites unscathed. They simply morph into a collective punishment against an entire population. History is replete with examples when sanctions have punished populations far more than they have pressured governments. From Afghanistan and Iraq to Libya, Iran and North Korea, sanctions raise a fundamental question: how does the UN, a body founded to promote peace and human dignity, justify the use of tools that so often inflict collective suffering? The preamble to the UN Charter says the UN is 'to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples.' At the same time, Article 41 of the same document gives the UN Security Council (UNSC) full power to impose sanctions including the 'interruption' of communications such as the postal service. Zealous supporters of sanctions, quite deceptively, came up with a term to minimize their devastating human cost. They describe them as 'smart' or 'targeted,' meaning they only target the political class and elites while minimally affecting the wider population. However, this is not the case in reality. Sanctions, both smart and otherwise, include assets freeze, travel bans, economic boycotts, diplomatic isolations and threats with penalizing measures. According to President Vladimir Putin and various studies, Russia is under over 28,000 instances of sanctions imposed after the escalation of the conflict in Ukraine. Thanks to its veto power in the UNSC, none were imposed by the UN. Instead the US, EU, and UK ganged up not only to impose their own sanctions but also to bully other countries to do the same. The idea was to strangle the Russian economy in order to force Moscow to accept ending the Ukraine conflict on Western terms. President Putin, rightly, believes the grand aim is to strategically weaken Russia with long-term economic effects. Some sanctions are weird and comical. Here are a few examples: Russian cats are banned from taking part in international competitions; there is a ban on the export of grand pianos, saddles, US chewing tobacco, snuff and tobacco refuse, American sparkling wine, and Disney's cartoon film 'Turning Red'. How these bans will help Ukraine is a puzzle. On more serious note, and scandalously contradictory in light of the claimed Western 'values,' is the ban of RT and all Russian media in the EU. I used to see the printed Russian Izvestia daily in Paris kiosks, but not after 2022. Yet, the EU never really stopped lecturing the world about freedom of speech. People in EU countries cannot see or hear any Russian news, which subjects them to a one-sided view of Russia and the conflict in Ukraine. Although the sanctions on certain sectors, such as transportation, electronic payments, have affected the lives of normal people, the sanctions regime as a whole has so far failed to produce the result it really wished for: the toppling of Putin and weakening of Russia's overall economic standing. Libya is an example of devastating blanket sanctions on the general population. Unlike Russia, Libya is not a veto-wielding member of the UNSC, meaning almost all of the sanctions were imposed through relevant UNSC resolutions, making them obligatory to all UN member countries. In 1988, Libya was accused of orchestrating the bombing of US Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland killing all 259 on-board and another 11 on the ground. The US and UK imposed their wills on the UNSC to sanction Libya with penalties including a complete shutdown of air travel to and from Libya, freezing of assets, and a trade embargo of many goods, technologies, spare parts, medicine and some types of food. The aim was to force Libya to hand over two of its citizens accused of the bombing, and above all, to topple the Gaddafi government. The entire Libyan population lived under those stringent sanctions from 1992 until 2003 when a compromise was reached to prosecute the suspects in a Scottish court set up in a neutral venue. One of the peculiar sanctions was this: an American exchange student at Malta University could be prosecuted for buying anything from the only university cafeteria, which was owned by the US-sanctioned Libyan company! The worst example of the human toll of sanctions on everyday people is that of Iraq. Iraq was first sanctioned after it invaded Kuwait in August 1990. However, those sanctions failed to force it to leave Kuwait, nor did they lead to the removal of President Saddam Hussein. In 2003, the US and UK accused Iraq of possessing weapons of mass destruction and invaded the country without UN authorization. Preparations for the invasion included widening and strengthening the already existing harsh sanctions to include odd items such as adhesive paper, aluminium foil, batteries, bicycles, books, candles, calculators, cameras, carpets, dishware, eyeglasses, and fans. Saddam Hussein and his government survived the sanctions from 1990s until the invasion in 2003, but for the general population the so-called smart sanctions had a genocidal effect. According to UNICEF, for example, 500,000 children under five years old died because of the sanctions. Other sources put the figure at around 570,000. Overall and after the 2003 invasion, sanctions were the top cause of the death of 1.5 million Iraqis, while those who survived suffered long-term consequences such as malnutrition. Yet, not a single WMD was found in Iraq. Then-US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright explained in 1996 that the human price paid by the Iraqis was 'worth it.' Another devastating example of blanket sanctions can be found in Afghanistan starting in the 1990s when the Taliban first took over. Most of the sanctions then were imposed by the UNSC including Resolution 1267 (1999) banning air travel and imposing an asset freeze. After the Taliban defeated NATO/US-trained forces, in August 2021, those sanctions were not lifted but rather restructured into what were falsely termed smart/targeted sanctions aimed at Taliban officials but still affecting the general population. In 2022, the administration of Joe Biden literally stole $7 billion of Afghanistan's central bank funds. Today, almost all kinds of external aid that would potentially be available to the country is either not coming in or only trickling through in small volumes because of the sanctions, thus hardly meeting the needs of an already war-ravaged population. In the end, the sanctions failed to topple the Taliban or force them to change their policies. Many countries also use blanket sanctions against others together with the US, the global leader in using sanctions in the last 50 years. Israel, an ally of the US, uses sanctions against the general population in Gaza—in many cases the sanctions are an actual blockade and thus amount to a war crime. Since 2006, Israel has imposed a total siege on the Palestinian enclave of Gaza. Even before the eruption of the current war, Israel would inspect and check every cargo that goes into the territory. Among items banned are sewing machines, toys, chocolate and spices. Israel says it bans such items for security reasons. After the war started in October 2023, Israel imposed a complete shutdown of Gaza, cutting fuel, electricity, medicine, water, food and all kinds of electronics and machinery. The harsh Israeli policy of complete siege of the enclave has been the subject of at least three legal cases before the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, which indicated both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity. For any sanctions to be imposed by the UNSC, Article 41 of the UN's charter is always referenced. It gives the Security Council the authority to impose sanctions, in theory, to avoid war and or maintain peace. However, the issue of blanket sanctions raises serious ethical questions. Critics view such sanctions as collective punishment, and many go as far as describing them as weapons of mass destruction akin to detonating a bomb that kills thousands of people very quickly – whereas sanctions merely kill them slowly. The historical record suggests that sanctions fail to achieve their political objectives while severely harming civilian populations. Sanctions also represent another face of Western hegemony since in most cases it is Western countries, particularly the US, that tend to overuse them as a tool of foreign policy.
