Iran frees actress Alidoosti, jailed over anti-government unrest

JANUARY 04, 2023

The 75th Cannes Film Festival - News conference for the film "Leila's Brothers" in competition - Cannes, France on May 26, 2022. Cast member Taraneh Alidoosti reacts.

Reuters file

DUBAI — Iran has released top Iranian actress Taraneh Alidoosti on bail, state media reported on Wednesday (Jan 4), weeks after she was detained for criticising a crackdown on anti-government protests that have rocked the Islamic Republic for months.

Best-known for her role in "The Salesman", which won an Academy Award in 2017, the pro-reform artist Alidoosti had supported the protests, including by posting her picture on Instagram in November without the compulsory hijab head covering, and holding up a sign which read "Woman, Life, Freedom" in Kurdish, a popular slogan in the mass protests.

The semi-official ILNA news agency, citing her lawyer, said "Alidoosti, who was arrested on Dec 17, was released today on bail", without giving further details.

Her picture, taken in front of Tehran's notorious Evin prison, was widely shared on social media.

The protests, sparked by the death of a young Kurdish woman while in the custody of the morality police, have posed one of the biggest legitimacy challenges to the Shi'ite Muslim-ruled Islamic Republic since the 1979 revolution.

Since Amini's death, protesters from all walks of life have taken to the streets, calling for the downfall of the country's clerical rulers, with women taking off and burning their headscarves in fury across the country.

Dozens of female Iranian actresses and artists have posted pictures of themselves without the compulsory hijab, in solidarity with the demonstrations in which women have played a leading role.

Facing their worst legitimacy crisis in the past four decades, Iran's clerical rulers have accused a coalition of “anarchists, terrorists and foreign foes" of orchestrating the protests.

The Islamic Republic has so far executed two people involved in mass protests. The Norway-based Iran Human Rights group has said that at least 100 detained protesters face possible death sentences.

ALSO READ: Iranian chess player was warned not to return to Iran after competing without hijab: Source

Source: Reuters

Anti-Boluarte protests resume in Peru

Protesters barricade main routes in southern regions of Puno, Cusco, Apurimac and Arequipa, as well as Junin in the centre, demanding resignation of President Dina Boluarte, who took over from her ousted predecessor Pedro Castillo.

Demonstrators march with makeshift shields during a protest against President Dina Boluarte's government and Congress, in Arequipa. (AP)

After a fortnight-long break, Peruvians have taken to the streets again, blocking roads countrywide to demand the resignation of President Dina Boluarte, who took over from her ousted predecessor in December.

Protesters on Wednesday used stones and burning tires to barricade main routes in the southern regions of Puno, Cusco, Apurimac and Arequipa, as well as Junin in the centre, chanting for Boluarte to leave.

The demonstrations died down over the holiday period, but by Wednesday, the protesters had remobilised.

"There are 10 blockades, mainly around Puno," government spokesperson Alberto Otarola told reporters in Lima, where a crisis centre was erected.

In Arequipa, police sought to break up hundreds of protesters using tear gas.

Dozens also gathered in the capital, Lima.

"The airports are functioning normally," said Otarola.

READ MORE: Ousted Peru leader Castillo calls his detention 'political revenge'

Nationwide state of emergency

Boluarte took over on December 7 as the South American country's first woman president following the impeachment and arrest of Pedro Castillo after he tried to dissolve Congress and rule by decree.

Castillo, a leftist former rural school teacher and union leader, faced vehement opposition from Congress during his 18 months in office, and had been the subject of numerous criminal investigations into allegations of widespread graft.

His ouster sparked nationwide protests, with Peru's rights ombudsman reporting 22 people killed in clashes and more than 600 injured.

Boluarte's government declared a 30-day nationwide state of emergency, while she attempted to calm the uproar by seeking to bring forward elections.

READ MORE: Peru court orders 18-month detention for ousted president Castillo

Riot police face off with demonstrators protesting against President Dina Boluarte's government and Congress, in Arequipa. (AP)

'This will continue'

As a precaution, train services between the town of Cusco and the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu were suspended indefinitely on Tuesday, and some 2,000 tourists were escorted from the heritage site.

In the first wave of protests, thousands of tourists found themselves stranded at Machu Picchu and Cusco for days due to road, railway and airport blockades.

TV footage showed police and the army guarding the headquarters of public institutions in some areas where protests have been announced, including Ayacucho, a region with the highest number of victims in the recent demonstrations.

From Lima, Boluarte called for an end to the protests she blamed for "delays, pain, economic losses" and appealed instead for "peace, calm, unity to promote development of the homeland."

Protest leader Milan Knezvich, in the mountainous Apurimac region, vowed the struggle will continue.

"No one will want to talk to her. As long as Mrs Dina Boluarte does not resign, this will continue," he told Exitosa radio.

The new government has agreed to bring forward elections set for 2026 to April next year, but many want voting to happen even sooner.

On Tuesday, marches were held in various parts of Peru against the planned restart of the anti-Boluarte protests.

READ MORE: Peru Congress to reconsider early election amid protests

West opposes rest of world in UN votes for fairer economic system, equality, sustainable development

The West opposed the rest of the planet in United Nations General Assembly votes that called for a new international economic order based on sovereign equality, sustainable development, and biological diversity.



By Ben Norton
Published2022-12-22




Most countries on Earth voted at the United Nations General Assembly to support a call for a new international economic order that is based on sovereign equality and cooperation, that rejects unilateral sanctions and advocates for debt relief for the Global South.

The only countries that opposed this widely popular proposal were the West and its allies.

The United States and its proxies were also the lone votes against common-sensical resolutions promoting sustainable development, biological diversity, and basic civil rights for Palestinians. Almost the entire world supported these proposals.

Washington showed itself to be a rogue state on the international stage, voting against practically every resolution, even on uncontroversial issues where the rest of the planet is in agreement.

Most of these resolutions were commonplace, are introduced every year, and have been voted on many times before, with similar results: the West vs. the rest.

In 1974, formerly colonized nations in the Global South proposed a plan to dismantle the remaining economic structures of colonialism.

They called it the New International Economic Order (NIEO), and said that it should be “based on the principles of equity, sovereign equality, interdependence, common interest, cooperation and solidarity among all States.”

The NIEO has been consistently voted on at the United Nations in the five decades since. And the West has persistently opposed it.

On December 14, 2022, 123 countries voted in favor of the NIEO – 64% of the UN’s 193 member states. (The number would have been even higher, but several nations that have been illegally sanctioned by the US, such as Venezuela and Zimbabwe, had their UN voting rights temporarily suspended because they have been unable to pay their membership fees in dollars.)

Just 50 nations voted against it, with one abstention, from NATO member Türkiye.



The 50 countries opposed to the call for a fairer, more equitable economic system consisted of the United States, members of the European Union, Britain, Israel, Canada, Australia, South Korea, and Japan.

This grouping has been referred to as the “Collective West.”

The West is not a geographic construct; it is a political one. This is why Australia, which was created as a British settler colony, is located in the eastern hemisphere but is politically and culturally part of the West.

The same is true for apartheid Israel, which like Australia was created as a British settler-colonial project and has since become a US proxy with a key geostrategic location in West Asia.

Similarly, the two East Asian nations that are part of this Western bloc are military occupied by the United States, which has stationed tens of thousands of troops in Japan since the mid-1940s and in South Korea since the early 1950s.

Reflecting on the December 14 vote, Chinese journalist Chen Weihua observed, “It’s US and EU against the rest of the world. Basically 900 million against the more than 7 billion from Asia, Africa to Latin America.”

The UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolution “reaffirms the need to continue working towards a new international economic order based on the principles of equity, sovereign equality, interdependence, common interest, cooperation and solidarity among all States.”

It also “reiterates that States are strongly urged to refrain from promulgating and applying any unilateral economic, financial or trade measures not in accordance with international law and the Charter of the United Nations that impede the full achievement of economic and social development, particularly in developing countries.”

The resolution calls for “mutually supporting world trade, monetary and financial systems” and “coordination of macroeconomic policies among countries to avoid negative spillover effects, especially in developing countries”

It similarly urges debt relief for the Global South, stating that it “expresses concern over the increasing debt vulnerabilities of developing countries, the net negative capital flows from developing countries, the fluctuation of exchange rates and the tightening of global financial conditions, and in this regard stresses the need to explore the means and instruments needed to achieve debt sustainability and the measures necessary to reduce the indebtedness of developing countries.”

The December 14 vote took place in the 53rd plenary meeting of the 77th session of the UNGA, featuring reports from the body’s Second Committee, which focuses on economic and financial affairs.
Rogue state: USA votes against entire world at UN

The votes were very similar on related UNGA resolutions. They illustrated how the United States and its proxies act as rogue regimes, violating the will of the international community.

A proposal on “international trade and development” had almost the exact same vote, with 122 in favor, 48 against, and one abstention (once again, Türkiye).

In this resolution, “the Assembly urged the international community to adopt urgent and effective measures to eliminate the use of unilateral economic, financial or trade measures that are not authorized by relevant organs of the United Nations, and that are inconsistent with the principles of international law or the Charter of the United Nations or that contravene the basic principles of the multilateral trading system and that affect, in particular, but not exclusively, developing countries.”



A related resolution emphasized the “role of the United Nations in promoting development in the context of globalization and interdependence.”

In this vote, European countries abstained. The only votes against the resolution came from the United States and Israel.

In the measure, “the Assembly noted with concern that the mobilization of sufficient financing remains a major challenge in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and that progress has not been shared evenly within and among countries, leading to further deepening of existing inequalities.”



Even on other resolutions that were completely straightforward and common-sensical, the US voted against the entire world.

The UNGA adopted a resolution calling to implement the Convention on Biological Diversity and reaffirming its contribution to sustainable development.

166 countries supported the resolution, while just three nations opposed it (the US, Israel, and Japan), with one abstention (South Korea).

All 193 UN member states except for one, the USA, have ratified the Convention on Biological Diversity. Washington stands alone as the only capital on Earth that refuses to join the planet-saving agreement.



The United States also opposed most of the world in a UN vote to recognized the “permanent sovereignty of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and of the Arab population in the occupied Syrian Golan over their natural resources.”

This resolution passed with 159 countries in favor and 10 abstentions (Australia, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Guatemala, Papua New Guinea, Rwanda, Solomon Islands, South Sudan, Togo, and Tuvalu).

A mere eight member states voted against recognizing these basic political and civil rights for Palestinians, including the US, Israel, Canada, Chad, and small island nations that typically vote as US proxies at the UN, including the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and Palau (all former US colonies that have “free association” agreements with Washington and use the dollar as their currency), and Nauru (which uses the Australian dollar).



This pattern was yet again visible in a resolution titled “Oil Slick on Lebanese Shores,” in which the UN lightly criticized Israel for illegally bombing Lebanon’s Jiyeh Power Station in 2006, unleashing a massive oil spill that still causes problems today.

In addition to severely damaging the environment, the UN noted that this Israeli attack cost Lebanon at least $856.4 million.

The language of the resolution was very mild, expressing “its deep concern about the adverse implications of the destruction by the Israeli Air Force of the oil storage tanks in the direct vicinity of the Lebanese Jiyeh electric power plant for the achievement of sustainable development in Lebanon.”

160 member states voted in favor of the resolution, including European countries.

It was opposed only by the US, Israel, Canada, Australia, and Washington’s proxies in the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, and Palau.



These votes on December 14 were by no means the only time the United States has exposed to the world its status as an unaccountable rogue regime.

In recent UN votes condemning the six-decade US blockade on Cuba and calling on Israel to get rid of its nuclear weapons, Washington and Tel Aviv spat in the face of the rest of the world.

British empire killed 165 million Indians in 40 years: How colonialism inspired fascism

A scholarly study found that British colonialism caused approximately 165 million deaths in India from 1880 to 1920, while stealing trillions of dollars of wealth. The global capitalist system was founded on European imperial genocides, which inspired Adolf Hitler and led to fascism.

ByBen Norton
Published2022-12-12



British colonialism caused at least 100 million deaths in India in roughly 40 years, according to an academic study.

And during nearly 200 years of colonialism, the British empire stole at least $45 trillion in wealth from India, a prominent economist has calculated.

The genocidal crimes committed by European empires outside of their borders inspired Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, leading to the rise of fascist regimes that carried out similar genocidal crimes within their borders.



Economic anthropologist Jason Hickel and his co-author Dylan Sullivan published an article in the respected academic journal World Development titled “Capitalism and extreme poverty: A global analysis of real wages, human height, and mortality since the long 16th century.”

In the report, the scholars estimated that India suffered 165 million excess deaths due to British colonialism between 1880 and 1920.

“This figure is larger than the combined number of deaths from both World Wars, including the Nazi holocaust,” they noted.

They added, “Indian life expectancy did not reach the level of early modern England (35.8 years) until 1950, after decolonization.”



Hickel and Sullivan summarized their research in an article in Al Jazeera, titled “How British colonialism killed 100 million Indians in 40 years.”

They explained:

According to research by the economic historian Robert C Allen, extreme poverty in India increased under British rule, from 23 percent in 1810 to more than 50 percent in the mid-20th century. Real wages declined during the British colonial period, reaching a nadir in the 19th century, while famines became more frequent and more deadly. Far from benefitting the Indian people, colonialism was a human tragedy with few parallels in recorded history.

Experts agree that the period from 1880 to 1920 – the height of Britain’s imperial power – was particularly devastating for India. Comprehensive population censuses carried out by the colonial regime beginning in the 1880s reveal that the death rate increased considerably during this period, from 37.2 deaths per 1,000 people in the 1880s to 44.2 in the 1910s. Life expectancy declined from 26.7 years to 21.9 years.

In a recent paper in the journal World Development, we used census data to estimate the number of people killed by British imperial policies during these four brutal decades. Robust data on mortality rates in India only exists from the 1880s. If we use this as the baseline for “normal” mortality, we find that some 50 million excess deaths occurred under the aegis of British colonialism during the period from 1891 to 1920.

Fifty million deaths is a staggering figure, and yet this is a conservative estimate. Data on real wages indicates that by 1880, living standards in colonial India had already declined dramatically from their previous levels. Allen and other scholars argue that prior to colonialism, Indian living standards may have been “on a par with the developing parts of Western Europe.” We do not know for sure what India’s pre-colonial mortality rate was, but if we assume it was similar to that of England in the 16th and 17th centuries (27.18 deaths per 1,000 people), we find that 165 million excess deaths occurred in India during the period from 1881 to 1920.

While the precise number of deaths is sensitive to the assumptions we make about baseline mortality, it is clear that somewhere in the vicinity of 100 million people died prematurely at the height of British colonialism. This is among the largest policy-induced mortality crises in human history. It is larger than the combined number of deaths that occurred during all famines in the Soviet Union, Maoist China, North Korea, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and Mengistu’s Ethiopia.

This staggering figure does not include the tens of millions more Indians who died in human-made famines that were caused by the British empire.

In the notorious Bengal famine in 1943, an estimated 3 million Indians starved to death, while the British government exported food and banned grain imports.

Academic studies by scientists found that the 1943 Bengal famine was not a result of natural causes; it was the product of the policies of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

Churchill himself was a notorious racist who stated, “I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.”

In the early 1930s, Churchill also admired Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and the Italian dictator who founded fascism, Benito Mussolini.

Churchill’s own scholarly supporters admitted that he “expressed admiration for Mussolini” and, “if forced to choose between Italian fascism and Italian communism, Churchill unhesitatingly would choose the former.”

Indian politician Shashi Tharoor, who served as an under-secretary general of the United Nations, has exhaustively documented the crimes of the British empire, particularly under Churchill.

“Churchill has as much blood on his hands as Hitler does,” Tharoor stressed. He pointed to “the decisions that he [Churchill] personally signed off during the Bengal famine, when 4.3 million people died because of the decisions he took or endorsed.”

Award-winning Indian economist Utsa Patnaik has estimated that the British empire drained $45 trillion of wealth from the Indian subcontinent.


In a 2018 interview with the Indian news website Mint, she explained:


Between 1765 and 1938, the drain amounted to £9.2 trillion (equal to $45 trillion), taking India’s export surplus earnings as the measure, and compounding it at a 5% rate of interest. Indians were never credited with their own gold and forex earnings. Instead, the local producers here were ‘paid’ the rupee equivalent out of the budget—something you’d never find in any independent country. The ‘drain’ varied between 26-36% of the central government budget. It would obviously have made an enormous difference if India’s huge international earnings had been retained within the country. India would have been far more developed, with much better health and social welfare indicators. There was virtually no increase in per capita income between 1900 and 1946, even though India registered the second largest export surplus earnings in the world for three decades before 1929.

Since all the earnings were taken by Britain, such stagnation is not surprising. Ordinary people died like flies owing to under-nutrition and disease. It is shocking that Indian expectation of life at birth was just 22 years in 1911. The most telling index, however, is food grain availability. Because the purchasing power of ordinary Indians was being squeezed by high taxes, the per capita annual consumption of food grains went down from 200kg in 1900 to 157kg on the eve of World War II, and further plummeted to 137kg by 1946. No country in the world today, not even the least developed, is anywhere near the position India was in 1946.

Patnaik emphasized:

The modern capitalist world would not exist without colonialism and the drain. During Britain’s industrial transition, 1780 to 1820, the drain from Asia and the West Indies combined was about 6 percent of Britain’s GDP, nearly the same as its own savings rate. After the mid-19th century, Britain was running current account deficits with Continental Europe and North America, and at the same time, it was investing massively in these regions, which meant running capital account deficits too. The two deficits summed to large and rising balance of payments (BoP) deficits with these regions.

How was it possible for Britain to export so much capital—which went into building railways, roads and factories in the U.S. and continental Europe? Its BoP deficits with these regions were being settled by appropriating the financial gold and forex earned by the colonies, especially India. Every unusual expense like war was also put on the Indian budget, and whatever India was not able to meet through its annual exchange earnings was shown as its indebtedness, on which interest accumulated.

US now world’s top LNG exporter, as Europe boycotts cheaper Russian gas

The USA has rapidly become the world’s biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG), tied with Qatar. Europe replaced Asia as the top market for US LNG in 2022, boycotting cheaper Russian energy over the proxy war in Ukraine.

By  Ben Norton




The United States has rapidly become the world’s biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG), tied with Qatar.

A significant reason for this meteoric increase is because Europe replaced Asia as the top market for US LNG in 2022, as Brussels pledged to boycott Russian energy over the proxy war in Ukraine.

Among the principal importers of US LNG are France, Spain, Britain, the Netherlands, and Italy.

Europe is now paying significantly more for expensive US LNG than it had previously for Russian pipeline gas.

As of 2022, Europe had the highest energy prices on the planet. This was a key factor in fueling an inflation crisis that spread worldwide, and hit Europe especially hard.

Bloomberg reported that the “US tied Qatar as the world’s top exporter of liquefied natural gas” in 2022, calling it “a milestone for the meteoric rise of America as a major supplier of the fuel.”

The outlet added that the United States, “which only began exporting LNG from the lower-48 states in 2016 and has seemingly overnight become a dominant force in the industry.”

A graph from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) illustrates the monumental shift in US LNG exports in just six years.



S&P Global reported in September 2022 that European imports of LNG made up the “lion’s share” of US exports in the first six months of 2022.

Global imports of US LNG nearly doubled from $10.8 billion in the first half of 2021 to $21.2 billion in same period in 2022.

“Many U.S. LNG export cargoes departed for Europe in the first half of 2022 as the war in Ukraine prompted a scramble for LNG supplies,” S&P Global wrote, adding that “LNG market experts have warned that shipments of LNG cannot quickly replace curtailed pipeline imports from Russia and that the region’s need for significant LNG volumes will remain strong.”

The market intelligence unit stressed that Europe has the highest gas prices on Earth. Its benchmark energy price hit a historic high of roughly €320 per megawatt hour in August.

S&P Global followed up with another report in November, stating that the “European energy crisis has put US natural gas in high demand and in a position of acute geopolitical relevance.”

The financial information firm used the same language, that the “lion’s share headed to Europe following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February” and the escalation of the NATO-Russia proxy war.

The industry monitor LNGPrime reported that France, Spain, the Netherlands, Japan, and Italy bought nearly half (46.4%) of total US LNG exports in May 2022.

Reuters noted in December 2022 that US LNG prices had approximately doubled in the previous year. It added that US LNG exports to Europe increased by a staggering 137% in the first 11 months of 2022, compared to 2021.

The news wire added that “the United States will remain the primary supplier of LNG to Europe for at least 2023. This will likely generate even greater revenue for U.S exporters after a record 2022, which totaled $35 billion through September, compared to $8.3 billion over the same period in 2021.”

This massive spike in energy prices is causing economic chaos in Europe. Politico published an article in November 2022 titled “Why cheap US gas costs a fortune in Europe.”

It pointed out that US LNG is almost four times more expensive in Europe. And it is not just North American corporations that are profiting from this substantial markup, but also European importers and resellers.

Even France’s right-wing President Emmanuel Macron, a former investment banker, complained to French industrial executes, “In today’s geopolitical context, among countries that support Ukraine there are two categories being created in the gas market: those who are paying dearly and those who are selling at very high prices… The United States is a producer of cheap gas that they are selling us at a high price… I don’t think that’s friendly.”

Politico added, “Macron’s dig conveniently ignored that the largest European holder of long-term U.S. gas contracts is none other than France’s own TotalEnergies.”

In 2018, the CEO of Austrian fossil fuel company OMV estimated that Russian pipeline gas was 50% cheaper than US LNG. The corporate executive, Rainer Seele, said, “I think it is about 50% difference between LNG and Russian gas.”

The fuel of the future

Jörg HaasJanuary 04, 2023 

Green hydrogen is all the rage these days. During November’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) in Egypt, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced that Germany will invest more than €4 billion ($4.3 billion) in developing a market for it. In the United States, President Joe Biden’s administration has made “clean” hydrogen a centerpiece of its Inflation Reduction Act, which provides subsidies for renewable energies. China, too, is so invested in electrolysis that some observers already fear that it will take over the market the same way it did with photovoltaic panels. And even corporations like the Australian mining giant Fortescue are betting on it becoming a multibillion-dollar industry.

When a technology is hyped to such an extent, many environmental activists tend to become nervous. Is “clean hydrogen” merely a way to greenwash so-called “blue” and “pink” hydrogen, generated from natural gas and nuclear energy, respectively? Is it an attempt to produce a magic techno-fix that vindicates absurd excesses like space tourism and hypersonic flight, when the world’s middle and upper classes should be shrinking their energy and resource consumption? Or is this the next stage of extractivism, appropriating low-income populations’ land and water under the guise of fighting climate change?

The short answer to all these questions is yes. But that is neither inevitable nor the whole story. Yes, the green hydrogen dream could well develop into a nightmare if we do not get it right. Still, it is an indispensable building block of the global economy’s transition from climate-destroying fossil fuels to sustainable models based on 100% renewable energies. It may be difficult to accept this ambiguity, but the urgent need to avert a climate catastrophe requires no less.

Given hydrogen’s many potential applications, some leading experts estimate that it could power 20-30% of global energy consumption by mid-century. But that does not necessarily make it the most efficient choice. Electric batteries, for example, require far fewer renewable kilowatt hours per kilometer traveled to power cars and trucks than hydrogen fuel cells or e-fuels do. Similarly, using heat pumps is more efficient than converting gas boilers to hydrogen. Organic alternatives to nitrogen fertilizer should also be given much more consideration.

But there are several critical sectors with few economically viable zero-carbon alternatives to green hydrogen and its derivatives, including long-distance shipping and aviation, chemicals, and steelmaking. Notwithstanding the hype, many industries will clearly need vast amounts of clean hydrogen to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. To illustrate the scale of the challenge, Bloomberg New Energy Finance founder Michael Liebreich recently estimated that just replacing today’s “dirty” hydrogen – produced from fossil fuels – would require 143% of the wind and solar energy the world currently has.

Several countries in the Global South have been blessed with world-class solar and wind potential, enabling them to produce green hydrogen at very low cost. Some, like Namibia, have built their industrial development strategy around this competitive advantage. But how could international trade in green hydrogen and its derivatives become a pathway to prosperity? And how can developing countries avoid the green extractivism trap and ensure that trade is fair and sustainable?

A series of consultations and studies in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, South Africa, Morocco, and Tunisia have explored these questions at length. A new report by the Heinrich Böll Foundation and Bread for the World synthesizes their findings and highlights the need to do no harm. To prevent the green hydrogen dream from becoming a nightmare, we must develop the sector with territorial planning, and clear standards and policies, as well as uphold local communities’ right to prior informed consent. To deliver on the promise of post-fossil development and foster sustainable economies, governments must devise ambitious and realistic industrial strategies. And these strategies must be embedded in a systemic approach to sustainable development and the energy transition. Moreover, we need to consider how hydrogen is used – not just who can pay for it.

None of this will happen by itself. Achieving a sustainable future is a political choice that requires leadership and cooperation. Several countries could help make fair and sustainable trade in green hydrogen a reality. Namibia, Chile, Colombia, and now (under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva) Brazil, for example, have the right political conditions for balancing green-hydrogen production with strong environmental and social standards. Over time, Argentina and South Africa could join this list and become producer countries.

As a prospective major importer and consumer of green hydrogen, Germany would need to form partnerships with producing countries, based on strong environmental and social standards. And given its progressive government, it can be expected to engage with its long-term partners not just as resource providers, but as fellow travelers on the journey toward sustainable, inclusive prosperity.

To that end, Germany and other energy importers must also support exporting countries in their efforts to localize value creation. In this way, the emerging international trade in green hydrogen could become a harbinger of a new, equitable trading relationship between the Global North and South. That is a future worth fighting for, and renewable energy holds the key.

Copyright: Project Syndicate
-- Contact us at english@hkej.com

JÖRG HAAS

Head of International Politics at the Heinrich Böll Foundation

Geopolitics affects everyone

Brian YS WongJanuary 05, 2023 

One would be forgiven for thinking that the above is a most mundane proposition. After all, it is clearly true that geopolitics is a universal, all-encompassing, and ubiquitous phenomenon.

Yet this statement must nevertheless be said. The thought – that geopolitics is but a matter that affects states and governments, or that can be confined to the subject of conversations over high politics in ‘respectable establishments’ – is sadly delusional and anachronistic. We live in an age when geopolitics affects everyone, including companies and corporations, philanthropy and education, and individual citizens at large.

Whilst I’ll delve into the upshot of this statement in later discussions, it’s worth establishing how the above is true, across the various contexts outlined above.

On the corporate angle – corporations must grapple with a global business climate that is precipitously steered not purely by relatively straightforward calculations pertaining to costs and benefits, but the ongoing encroachment by ideologies and ideologues, national and territorial security considerations, and broader, strategic deliberations revolving around how countries relate to one another. Supply chains are being rerouted as we speak, despite the emerging patterns being neither economically sustainable nor conducive towards private profits for businesses – such rerouting is conducted in name of ‘autonomy’ and ‘security’: the former, for there are sectors that politicians now deem to be too important to be tampered or entangled with by ‘non-aligned’ forces; the latter, for in the age of over-securitisation, anything and all – ranging from food, culture, to gender and family – could be deemed the subject of ‘security discourses’. One could lament such politicisation; one could also ignore it and portray it as some economically rationalisable, defensible move. One would be mistaken in so doing.

Businesses and investors can no longer shield themselves, through equivocation or pollyannish dismissal, from the flashpoints and conflict zones that are coming to define the world we inhabit. Globalisation is splintered, thwarted, and resisted on a local level, as countries come to weigh jingoistic sentiments and brute-force chauvinism over mutually conducive multilateralism. For all the talk of an international order, it is clear that the international multilateral order does not extend to small or medium states whose voices and sovereignties are regularly discarded by powers that subjugate them for their own purposes and as they see fit. Corporate actors must adapt, plan, and hedge accordingly – take the commodity and energy crises that unfolded after Russia invaded Ukraine: a failure to foresee such a drastic and callous move, would have resulted in billions of dollars of deadweight loss as firms rewired their energy and manufacturing schemas in a post-hoc, ad hoc fashion.

Then there’s the question of education and philanthropy. Whilst education should – in theory – be a space sacrosanct from the inanities of partisanship and political Machiavellianism, this is an era where educators, researchers, and academics are increasingly coming under the firing line for… being from the “wrong side”. Their crime? Often no more than bearing the wrong skin colour in the wrong country – for looking and being “alien” to cultures that are inimical to their difference. From the China Initiative to campaigns haranguing foreign academics for importing “malign cultural influences”, it is clear that academia can no longer be kept a relatively sacrosanct and open space free of ideological wrestling. Those who are tasked with teaching and thinking about our future, are now cornered into fighting for their very present existence and right to live and work in places that they call home. They can’t run away from the behemoth – the elephant in the room being, precisely, geopolitics. In face of collectivist struggles and labels, individualism is suppressed, silenced, and eventually fundamentally subjugated – unless we opt to actively fight back against dichotomous, zero-sum thinking.

And that ties me onto the individual question. Can individuals be immune from geopolitics? In theory, we could live in kumbaya and opt to embrace a post-political world order, one where nationality, race, and ethnic/religious background quite simply does not matter in how we interact with or perceive other individuals. In practice, however, this is very much easier said than done. Our media, cultural publications, and even interactions with mentors and friends embed within them stereotypes and controlling images that the public space seeks to inculcate in its participants – there may be no single individual who dictates and can manipulate our cognition on their own, but collectively, in combination, social structures and ideologically enshrined doctrines come to skew and mold how we imagine ourselves, in relation to other peoples. Why are some taught to hate the “West” and all that the “West” stand for? Why are others instructed and raised to be colonial apologists for the British Empire? Our agency is inevitably constricted and conditioned by those who wield real, ideological power in our communities. And the way such power is wielded is neither transparent nor accountable to the masses. Indeed, one could even say, ‘tis geo-political in kind and at its core.

-- Contact us at english@hkej.com

BRIAN YS WONG

Editor-in-Chief, Oxford Political Review

Colombia suspends truce with ELN armed group

Bogota suspend legal effects of ceasefire decree after the country's last recognised rebel group says it didn't discuss any bilateral ceasefire with the government.

Interior Minister Alfonso Prada says the issue of a ceasefire will be taken up again in Mexico. (Reuters)

The Colombian government has said it was suspending a ceasefire it had announced with the National Liberation Army (ELN) armed group, which denied agreeing to any such truce.

The reversal on Wednesday dampened hopes for an imminent end to decades of violence that have continued to plague the South American country despite a 2016 peace pact that led to the disarmament of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrilla group.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro had declared on New Year's Eve that a temporary truce had been agreed upon with the country's five largest armed groups, including the ELN, from January 1 to June 30.

The government subsequently said the ceasefire, hailed by the international community, would be monitored by the United Nations, Colombia's human rights ombudsman and the Catholic Church.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said it "brings renewed hope for comprehensive peace to the Colombian people as the New Year dawns."

But then on Tuesday, the ELN said it had "not discussed any bilateral ceasefire with the Gustavo Petro government, therefore no such agreement exists."

The group added that "a unilateral government decree cannot be accepted as an agreement."

This prompted the government on Tuesday to concede that a proposed ceasefire decree had not yet been finally signed.

And on Wednesday, Interior Minister Alfonso Prada told reporters in Bogota that "we have decided to suspend the legal effects of the decree" in view of the ELN's stated position.

The government called on the ELN to declare a verifiable truce while the issue is discussed at negotiations, the next round of which are set to take place in Mexico, Prada said.

"Only when we have the conditions of the protocols totally agreed can we lift the suspension," he said, adding in the meantime, the military and police can continue their offensive against the rebels.

READ MORE: No agreement on ceasefire with government: Colombia's ELN rebels



Pursuit of 'total peace'

Negotiations between the government and the ELN, the country's last recognised rebel group, have been under way since November.

A first round of peace talks since Petro came to power in August as Colombia's first-ever leftist president, concluded in Caracas, Venezuela, on December 12 without a truce being agreed.

Another round of talks is due to take place in Mexico, although no date has been set.

Prada said the issue of a ceasefire will be taken up again in Mexico.

Tuesday's ELN statement said the group was "ready to discuss the proposal for a bilateral ceasefire."

In pursuit of Petro's quest to bring "total peace" to Colombia, the government is offering armed groups "benevolent treatment from the judicial point of view," Senator Ivan Cepeda recently told the AFP news agency.

This would be in exchange for "a surrender of assets, a dismantling of these organisations" and agreeing to stop their "illicit economies."

According to Petro's tweet, the government had "agreed to a bilateral ceasefire" with the ELN, two dissident splinter factions of the disbanded FARC, the Gulf Clan narco group and the Self-Defense Forces of the Sierra Nevada, a rightwing paramilitary organisation.

The ELN is the only group to have refuted the announcement by Petro, who was himself an urban guerrilla member in his youth.

READ MORE: Colombia strikes ceasefire deal with main armed groups

Over 50 years of violence

Negotiations between the government and armed groups, which have an estimated combined total of 15,000 fighters, have so far failed to end the spiral of violence engulfing the country.

Colombia has suffered more than 50 years of armed conflict between the state and various groups of left-wing guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries and drug traffickers.

The Indepaz research institute recorded nearly 100 massacres in Colombia last year.

Despite the peace agreement that saw FARC guerrillas disarm in 2017, armed groups remain locked in deadly disputes over drug trafficking revenues and other illegal businesses, according to the think tank.

Colombia is the world's largest cocaine producer.

The ELN, created in 1964, had announced a unilateral ceasefire from Christmas Eve to January 2.

Official estimates are that some 3,500 ELN fighters are present in 22 of Colombia's 32 departments.

READ MORE: Colombia ELN rebels declare Christmas ceasefire

Is Colombia's historic peace deal with FARC on the rocks?

Colombia asks Cuba to capture ELN leaders after car bomb attack

Protesters tear-gassed in Bogota as Duque starts 'national conversation'

Eight arrested in connection with Bogota blast

The Planet’s Future Depends on a Stable China-U.S. Relationship

— Foreign Minister Ambassador Qin Gang Publishes an Article in The Washington Post

2023-01-05 10:23

On January 4, 2023, Ambassador Qin Gang, Minister of Foreign Affairs of China, published an article in The Washington Post. The full text is as follows:

“The end,” wrote the poet T.S. Eliot, “is where we start from.” As I leave the United States this week to start a new journey, memorable scenes from my time in this country keep flashing back in my mind.

I visited 22 states and discovered a country different from what I know in Washington, D.C. In the spring, I visited the Kimberley Farm in Iowa, which President Xi Jinping visited in 2012. I tried my hand at driving a John Deere tractor and tasted the local produce. In the fall, I visited a corn and soybean farm in Missouri and was deeply moved by my hosts’ sincerity and hospitality.

I saw with my own eyes how Chinese-American agricultural cooperation benefited both countries and contributed to both the global food supply and the fight against climate change. In Minneapolis, I taught a class to kids in a Chinese language immersion school, and one of the students there just won the Chinese Bridge language competition. I visited Chinese-owned factories in Ohio and California, as American workers explained that Chinese investments helped to put food on their tables. At the ports of Boston and Long Beach, I saw huge stacks of containers shipped from and to China, a testament to the high degree of economic interdependence between our two countries — and a reminder that decoupling serves no one’s interest.

At Busch Stadium in St. Louis, I threw out the first pitch at a Cardinals game to celebrate the 43rd anniversary of Nanjing-St. Louis sister-city relations, our two countries’ oldest such pairing. I celebrated, together with American friends, the 50th anniversary of the giant pandas’ arrival in the United States.

These are, for me, important memories about this country, and I will hold them in my heart. My posting in the United States will provide unfailing strength for me as a diplomat. Going forward, the development of China-U.S. relations will remain an important mission of mine in my new position.

I became ambassador to the United States at a complex and difficult time for China-U.S. relations. Almost all of the dialogue and exchange mechanisms were suspended. Chinese enterprises were unfairly sanctioned. Compounded by the pandemic, people-to-people exchanges were severely impacted. China was often described as America’s “most serious competitor.”

As ambassador, I took it as my mission to promote exchanges and cooperation in various fields, and work for the stability, improvement and development of China-U.S. relations. Improving relations takes work by both sides. I had candid dialogue and built sound working relations with U.S. government officials to properly handle thorny issues, such as the Taiwan question, and to advance cooperation in important areas.

I met with more than 80 members of Congress, including some well-known China hawks, to explain China’s positions and concerns, while lending an ear to theirs as well. I explored with think tanks on how to rebuild a stable, predictable and constructive framework for bilateral relations. I was encouraged by the business community’s confidence in the Chinese market and its strong desire for continued cooperation. I visited many American universities, and helped U.S. students who were kept from going to China because of the pandemic return to their Chinese campuses. I did many interviews with American media. Though we did not always see eye to eye, I appreciated their readiness to listen to the Chinese perspective.

I leave the United States more convinced that the door to China-U.S. relations will remain open and cannot be closed. I am also more convinced that Americans, just like the Chinese people, are broad-minded, friendly and hard-working. The future of both our peoples — indeed, the future of the entire planet — depends on a healthy and stable China-U.S. relationship.

My time here also reminds me that China-U.S. relations should not be a zero-sum game in which one side out-competes the other or one nation thrives at the expense of the other. The world is wide enough for China and the United States to both develop and prosper. The successes of our two countries are shared opportunities, not winner-take-all challenges. We must not allow prejudice or misperception to ignite confrontation or conflict between two great peoples. We should follow the strategic guidance of our presidents and find the right way to get along for the well-being of the world.

This will not be, as Americans sometimes say, a “walk in the park.” It requires the persistent efforts of everyone. However, history will prove that what we have begun is essential and worthwhile.

I will take all these memories with me when I go back. The poet Eliot also wrote, “To make an end is to make a beginning.” I believe that the relations between our countries will follow that path.