"...This is NO defence of the human rights situation in Iran,.."
"... If they truly wanted to help the Iranian people, the most effective — and easiest — thing they could do would be to lift the illegal sanctions that they have imposed on Iran, which have intentionally devastated the economy and caused extreme suffering to tens of millions of civilians...."
The first part shouldn't need to be said, and that it is said, reflects deep prejudice of the general public in the colonial countries.
Because the imposer of the sanctions is a country that:
- imposes the death penalty on its citizens
- imprisons more of its citizens than any other country in the world
- commonly practices on these prisoners the torture methods known as "solitary confinement" and "lockdown"
- has masked govt militia roaming the streets and kidnapping people
- has for centuries had police killing its minorities with impunity
- has its streets flooded with needlessly homeless people, many of whom need medical and mental care and dont get it and dont even have a national right to such care
That such a country is, within the so called west, unchallenged by its peers on these practices, exposes that human rights was never the issue - this country does not care about the well-being of its OWN people....so it's no surprise that they are mass punishing all Iranians on the pretext of seeking to "help" them.
John Pilger long ago exposed this charade in his book the New Rulers of the World, where he in detail documents that these sanctions regimes killed more Iraqi children than Saddam ever was even accused of. And in his accounts all the UN officials also admitted it. That was like 20 years ago.
Everyone knows these sanctions are a horrific and gruesome form of mass punishment - mass murder of the sick, the elderly and children basically - practiced by the so called west, all in collaboration.
I'm no economist but this is the same amount of devaluation the US dollar has experienced since 2005, using the same measure. 66% devaluation in 21 years. So a dollar in 2005 would cost $1.66 today. And that was before the subprime debacle of 2008. We're facing another one because of the failure of the commercial real estate market. Stay tuned!!!
Of course, if you compare it to the price of gold, in 2001 an ounce of gold cost $271. Today it costs?
$5,052 an ounce.
Maybe Bessent should pay more attention to the health of his own country's economy before jeering.
2001 was the year the US government, "led" by Bush Jr./Cheney, attacked the US economy on 9/11 in an inside job (with the help of Israel, of course--always not far from the center of action). This is how much the US government(s) have stolen from the people they are "representing". Compared to the price of gold, the US dollar today is worth 4 cents in 2001. So millions have died to hide this fact from American citizens who long ago lost the ability to think for themselves, apparently.
So true. If you've lived long enough you can see just in the price of a loaf of bread how devalued the US dollar is. And the world continues to exchange in it, with no longer a gold standard to back it up? Makes no sense.
Despite the unlawful sanctions place upon Iran by the US hegemony, one has to admit that they are a resilient, resourceful, intelligent and determined people. All you have to do is look at how they were able to maintain and sustain themselves by creating partnerships with other nations. There was once a time when Iran was a strategic, diplomatic and economic partner with the US, imagine that. But they did a big No-no they decided to be independent and cut the apron strings that were strangling them during the reign of the Shah. So, like Haiti and Venezuela or any other country that decided that its resources belong to its people, the vulture like nature of the USA Empire decided that it would not allow it.
One of the things that the USA seems to overlook with its economic warfare through sanctions, is that when a people choose to survive, they will find the means to do so. Necessity is the mother of invention, and self-preservation is the first law of nature.
Folks should abandon Western propaganda media and check out Press TV and other news outlets coming out of Iran. They will see just how ingenious the Iranian people are. It is really incredible what they have done despite the warmongering, sanctions and demonization of their people, culture and way of life, specifically since the Iranian Revolution of 1979.
What the USA also fails to realize, is that you cannot successfully undermine a people who have a culture that goes back thousands of years. The USA is one of the youngest countries on the planet. It seems to have little regard for the historical connection that have who live in countries that have been in existence for thousands of years. The USA has no compunction in its efforts to destroy "history" and "historical" artifacts because in order to do so, it would have to admit that it has no real strength in its own history, other than its own revolution from England. If it went back any further it would hit a brick wall of the history of the indigenous who were here before the European arrived. That is something that they would rather ignore. And as they ignore the history of the Americas, they ignore the historical strength of other nations. This historical strength connects people to their land and give them more than enough reason to fight and die for it.
What you point out at the end of your commentary is a very important, and little understood, deficiency in the elites and oligarchy of the world's biggest country.
They have by far the richest and best funded universities in the world, and many of them well respected worldwide and well ranked. But when you look under the covers, the eductional system there, from primary school level to university level, is really lacking in perspectives on history and culture. They treat every thing historically non European as mainly peripheral and in modern times the teach current affairs as completely centred around their own nation and its own myopic people and perspective.
So they have a business and political ruling class that is very well spoken, has big degrees from big univeristies....but actually fundamentally does not understand the world or appreciate the people of the world or rescpect diversity and EQUALITY of cultures and values.
It is upon this huge gaping hole of ingnorance that they are faltering, despite all their resources, weapons and money. Problem is they are dangerous and in their flailing around they are killing millions of people around the world for nothing. And it is getting worse.
And at the same time - as you underlined - many peoples around the world DO understand their OWN worth, and they are resisting and will resist.
It is a dangerous moment in the world right now.
It is up to to people of the Euro-colonial countries to take controll of their nations, their politics and avert this collision.
Kojo, I have to agree with all that you have said. The people in the USA are undereducated about the rest of the world. They live in an "America is the Greatest Nation in the World" bubble. They don't even realize that America is not a nation but a collection of nations, most of whom are in Latin America. It is an ignorance that is all pervasive and smacks of white supremacy. All of their references are from that lens. Even if the educational system teaches world culture it seldom includes other cultures that are not European. You'd have to go to college and then choose to study other cultures through courses like anthropology. This gives those educated in a European educational system the sense that one size fits all. Even when they speak of Judeo-Christian values, they never hardly ever mention Islam, which is as much an Abrahamic faith as the others. In fact, Islam is more comparable to Judaism than Christianity when it comes to its customs.
It requires an inquisitive mind to see how the rest of the world societies live. Since cultures other than Western are considered uncivilized or are demonized as primitive, dangerous or even terroristic, European nations and its people are seldom inclined to explore other cultures. Since other cultures tend towards Socialism or Communism, which are systems that are an affront to the capitalism that most European cultures have as an economic system, socialism and communism are also demonized.
Europeans are seldom taught about how their leaders have attempted to colonize the "other" nations and the wars that ensued as a result of their attempts.
The Christian missionaries have gone into so-called primitive countries to convert them, not to appreciate their way of life because their way of life does not fit the Christian blueprint.
If a person emigrates from their native country or is forced by various reasons to migrate, mostly due to what the colonizers have done to their country, they are expected and sometimes forced to "assimilate."
You said, "It is up to people of the Euro-colonial countries to take control of their nations, their politics and avert this collision."
I am not too sure this collision can be averted. It is embedded in their DNA and supported by their prevailing culture and societal norms. The people in these Euro-Colonial countries would have to give up their supremist tendencies that have nurtured their very existence. They would have to accept that they are the minority when taking a full scale look at the entire world. They would have to accept that there are other, very viable people who exist outside of the white supremacy paradigm.
And, I would like to add, that the other cultures would have to reclaim their own identity and stop emulating the identity of their colonizers.
So yeah, without a major meteor striking the planet and wiping out all but a small band of humans..... we are looking at a huge problem, one that has been centuries in the making, in my humble opinion.
It's a great interview with Mostafa Khoshcheshm. He is a very learned man and he handled the interview. He and Rick Sanchez talk about the myopic view that the people in Western nations, especially folks who live in the USA, have about other people. Mr. Khoshcheshm suggested that folks learn another language, he knows that so much of the culture can be gleaned by learning the language of other cultures.
He also pointed out something that you rarely hear other geopolitical analysts mention, and that's Trump's economic interests in the Region. Trump moves through his geopolitics like an banking investor. He is obsessed with the stock market and obsessed with making more and more money. That's his first priority. His children share trillions of dollars between them because of how their father manipulates the markets. Even threatening wars manipulates the markets. But an actual attack would have a seismic and catastrophic impact on the markets and Trump does not want that to happen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iPBN21XlnA
By what right does the United States decide to attack and destroy another country? THEY HAVE NO SUCH RIGHT. This insane imperialism has got to end before the capitalists destroy the planet.
The strategy to collapse Iran’s economy through sanctions reflects a saturation dynamic where export denial, currency pressure, and financial isolation converge to strain state capacity and social resilience. As inflation accelerates and access to hard currency contracts, defensive adaptation in monetary policy and social networks feeds back into political and economic friction, constraining strategic maneuver even as competition for leverage persists. 
In this reversal pattern, efforts to induce collapse through financial coercion transform resilience into constraint, reconfiguring economic hardship into relational tension rather than definitive systemic collapse.
This has always been the US plan, we have seen it over and over again, we are just not used to them talking about it so openly. No wonder Trump is expanding the war budget, his contempt for the rest of the world, is isolating the US.
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is the world's most water-scarce region, with 11 of the 17 most water-stressed nations. Nearly 90% of children in the region live in areas of high or extreme water stress, threatening health, agriculture, and stability. Rapid population growth, climate change, poor management, and shared water resources (80% of surface water) are driving this crisis.
The Empire of Chaos, Sanctions, White Fucking Men without Lips Smiling Cunts of the Minyan, well well, they are happy with their masters, 130 Jewish billionaires and millions of Jewish millionaires, running the show --
education, engineering, surveillance, media, medicine, finance, banking, psychology, mining, energy, the press, AI-AGI-MR-VR, culture, publishing, entertainment, etc.
Smiling over the death of MILLIONS, man. Albright and "it's worth it" fucking psychosis of their whiteness.
Solving this? Daily, one by one, just dose them with Molotovs, whichever way you can get through their Blackwater Delta force cartel thugs.
"...This is NO defence of the human rights situation in Iran,.."
"... If they truly wanted to help the Iranian people, the most effective — and easiest — thing they could do would be to lift the illegal sanctions that they have imposed on Iran, which have intentionally devastated the economy and caused extreme suffering to tens of millions of civilians...."
The first part shouldn't need to be said, and that it is said, reflects deep prejudice of the general public in the colonial countries.
Because the imposer of the sanctions is a country that:
- imposes the death penalty on its citizens
- imprisons more of its citizens than any other country in the world
- commonly practices on these prisoners the torture methods known as "solitary confinement" and "lockdown"
- has masked govt militia roaming the streets and kidnapping people
- has for centuries had police killing its minorities with impunity
- has its streets flooded with needlessly homeless people, many of whom need medical and mental care and dont get it and dont even have a national right to such care
That such a country is, within the so called west, unchallenged by its peers on these practices, exposes that human rights was never the issue - this country does not care about the well-being of its OWN people....so it's no surprise that they are mass punishing all Iranians on the pretext of seeking to "help" them.
John Pilger long ago exposed this charade in his book the New Rulers of the World, where he in detail documents that these sanctions regimes killed more Iraqi children than Saddam ever was even accused of. And in his accounts all the UN officials also admitted it. That was like 20 years ago.
Everyone knows these sanctions are a horrific and gruesome form of mass punishment - mass murder of the sick, the elderly and children basically - practiced by the so called west, all in collaboration.
Thank you, well said.
I'm no economist but this is the same amount of devaluation the US dollar has experienced since 2005, using the same measure. 66% devaluation in 21 years. So a dollar in 2005 would cost $1.66 today. And that was before the subprime debacle of 2008. We're facing another one because of the failure of the commercial real estate market. Stay tuned!!!
Of course, if you compare it to the price of gold, in 2001 an ounce of gold cost $271. Today it costs?
$5,052 an ounce.
Maybe Bessent should pay more attention to the health of his own country's economy before jeering.
2001 was the year the US government, "led" by Bush Jr./Cheney, attacked the US economy on 9/11 in an inside job (with the help of Israel, of course--always not far from the center of action). This is how much the US government(s) have stolen from the people they are "representing". Compared to the price of gold, the US dollar today is worth 4 cents in 2001. So millions have died to hide this fact from American citizens who long ago lost the ability to think for themselves, apparently.
👏💯
So true. If you've lived long enough you can see just in the price of a loaf of bread how devalued the US dollar is. And the world continues to exchange in it, with no longer a gold standard to back it up? Makes no sense.
Despite the unlawful sanctions place upon Iran by the US hegemony, one has to admit that they are a resilient, resourceful, intelligent and determined people. All you have to do is look at how they were able to maintain and sustain themselves by creating partnerships with other nations. There was once a time when Iran was a strategic, diplomatic and economic partner with the US, imagine that. But they did a big No-no they decided to be independent and cut the apron strings that were strangling them during the reign of the Shah. So, like Haiti and Venezuela or any other country that decided that its resources belong to its people, the vulture like nature of the USA Empire decided that it would not allow it.
One of the things that the USA seems to overlook with its economic warfare through sanctions, is that when a people choose to survive, they will find the means to do so. Necessity is the mother of invention, and self-preservation is the first law of nature.
Folks should abandon Western propaganda media and check out Press TV and other news outlets coming out of Iran. They will see just how ingenious the Iranian people are. It is really incredible what they have done despite the warmongering, sanctions and demonization of their people, culture and way of life, specifically since the Iranian Revolution of 1979.
What the USA also fails to realize, is that you cannot successfully undermine a people who have a culture that goes back thousands of years. The USA is one of the youngest countries on the planet. It seems to have little regard for the historical connection that have who live in countries that have been in existence for thousands of years. The USA has no compunction in its efforts to destroy "history" and "historical" artifacts because in order to do so, it would have to admit that it has no real strength in its own history, other than its own revolution from England. If it went back any further it would hit a brick wall of the history of the indigenous who were here before the European arrived. That is something that they would rather ignore. And as they ignore the history of the Americas, they ignore the historical strength of other nations. This historical strength connects people to their land and give them more than enough reason to fight and die for it.
What you point out at the end of your commentary is a very important, and little understood, deficiency in the elites and oligarchy of the world's biggest country.
They have by far the richest and best funded universities in the world, and many of them well respected worldwide and well ranked. But when you look under the covers, the eductional system there, from primary school level to university level, is really lacking in perspectives on history and culture. They treat every thing historically non European as mainly peripheral and in modern times the teach current affairs as completely centred around their own nation and its own myopic people and perspective.
So they have a business and political ruling class that is very well spoken, has big degrees from big univeristies....but actually fundamentally does not understand the world or appreciate the people of the world or rescpect diversity and EQUALITY of cultures and values.
It is upon this huge gaping hole of ingnorance that they are faltering, despite all their resources, weapons and money. Problem is they are dangerous and in their flailing around they are killing millions of people around the world for nothing. And it is getting worse.
And at the same time - as you underlined - many peoples around the world DO understand their OWN worth, and they are resisting and will resist.
It is a dangerous moment in the world right now.
It is up to to people of the Euro-colonial countries to take controll of their nations, their politics and avert this collision.
Kojo, I have to agree with all that you have said. The people in the USA are undereducated about the rest of the world. They live in an "America is the Greatest Nation in the World" bubble. They don't even realize that America is not a nation but a collection of nations, most of whom are in Latin America. It is an ignorance that is all pervasive and smacks of white supremacy. All of their references are from that lens. Even if the educational system teaches world culture it seldom includes other cultures that are not European. You'd have to go to college and then choose to study other cultures through courses like anthropology. This gives those educated in a European educational system the sense that one size fits all. Even when they speak of Judeo-Christian values, they never hardly ever mention Islam, which is as much an Abrahamic faith as the others. In fact, Islam is more comparable to Judaism than Christianity when it comes to its customs.
It requires an inquisitive mind to see how the rest of the world societies live. Since cultures other than Western are considered uncivilized or are demonized as primitive, dangerous or even terroristic, European nations and its people are seldom inclined to explore other cultures. Since other cultures tend towards Socialism or Communism, which are systems that are an affront to the capitalism that most European cultures have as an economic system, socialism and communism are also demonized.
Europeans are seldom taught about how their leaders have attempted to colonize the "other" nations and the wars that ensued as a result of their attempts.
The Christian missionaries have gone into so-called primitive countries to convert them, not to appreciate their way of life because their way of life does not fit the Christian blueprint.
If a person emigrates from their native country or is forced by various reasons to migrate, mostly due to what the colonizers have done to their country, they are expected and sometimes forced to "assimilate."
You said, "It is up to people of the Euro-colonial countries to take control of their nations, their politics and avert this collision."
I am not too sure this collision can be averted. It is embedded in their DNA and supported by their prevailing culture and societal norms. The people in these Euro-Colonial countries would have to give up their supremist tendencies that have nurtured their very existence. They would have to accept that they are the minority when taking a full scale look at the entire world. They would have to accept that there are other, very viable people who exist outside of the white supremacy paradigm.
And, I would like to add, that the other cultures would have to reclaim their own identity and stop emulating the identity of their colonizers.
So yeah, without a major meteor striking the planet and wiping out all but a small band of humans..... we are looking at a huge problem, one that has been centuries in the making, in my humble opinion.
Kojo, you might like this interview.
It's a great interview with Mostafa Khoshcheshm. He is a very learned man and he handled the interview. He and Rick Sanchez talk about the myopic view that the people in Western nations, especially folks who live in the USA, have about other people. Mr. Khoshcheshm suggested that folks learn another language, he knows that so much of the culture can be gleaned by learning the language of other cultures.
He also pointed out something that you rarely hear other geopolitical analysts mention, and that's Trump's economic interests in the Region. Trump moves through his geopolitics like an banking investor. He is obsessed with the stock market and obsessed with making more and more money. That's his first priority. His children share trillions of dollars between them because of how their father manipulates the markets. Even threatening wars manipulates the markets. But an actual attack would have a seismic and catastrophic impact on the markets and Trump does not want that to happen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iPBN21XlnA
Excellent commentary! Thank you!
Thank you, Renee Marie, glad it was appreciated by you.
By what right does the United States decide to attack and destroy another country? THEY HAVE NO SUCH RIGHT. This insane imperialism has got to end before the capitalists destroy the planet.
These are some disgusting, destructive, hatefilled monsters. They keep killing with impunity. Thank you, Ben.
Can't even run their own economy
The strategy to collapse Iran’s economy through sanctions reflects a saturation dynamic where export denial, currency pressure, and financial isolation converge to strain state capacity and social resilience. As inflation accelerates and access to hard currency contracts, defensive adaptation in monetary policy and social networks feeds back into political and economic friction, constraining strategic maneuver even as competition for leverage persists. 
∞ → economic pressure ↑ → sanctions / currency debasement → adaptive scarcity & strain → contested socio-economic equilibrium ← ∞
In this reversal pattern, efforts to induce collapse through financial coercion transform resilience into constraint, reconfiguring economic hardship into relational tension rather than definitive systemic collapse.
This has always been the US plan, we have seen it over and over again, we are just not used to them talking about it so openly. No wonder Trump is expanding the war budget, his contempt for the rest of the world, is isolating the US.
The empire is gone and now in the littoral zone, building sand castles on quicksand, desperation brinkmanship, and unholy braggarts.
Oh.
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is the world's most water-scarce region, with 11 of the 17 most water-stressed nations. Nearly 90% of children in the region live in areas of high or extreme water stress, threatening health, agriculture, and stability. Rapid population growth, climate change, poor management, and shared water resources (80% of surface water) are driving this crisis.
The Empire of Chaos, Sanctions, White Fucking Men without Lips Smiling Cunts of the Minyan, well well, they are happy with their masters, 130 Jewish billionaires and millions of Jewish millionaires, running the show --
education, engineering, surveillance, media, medicine, finance, banking, psychology, mining, energy, the press, AI-AGI-MR-VR, culture, publishing, entertainment, etc.
Smiling over the death of MILLIONS, man. Albright and "it's worth it" fucking psychosis of their whiteness.
Solving this? Daily, one by one, just dose them with Molotovs, whichever way you can get through their Blackwater Delta force cartel thugs.
https://paulokirk.substack.com/p/not-pissed-off-yet-my-fucking-taxes