Iran launches rocket into space as nuclear talks continue

Iran has launched a satellite carrier rocket bearing three research devices into space, according to state media, as difficult negotiations over its tattered nuclear deal with world powers continue in Vienna.

The reports on Thursday did not say when the launch was conducted, nor what devices the carrier brought with it. It was unclear whether any of the objects entered orbit around the Earth.

Previous launches have drawn rebukes from the United States, which unilaterally withdrew from the nuclear deal in May 2018 and reimposed sanctions against Iran.

America

 "America" is an American history book by Victor Kiernan first published in 1978. The book analyzes how this country was formed and how it became one of the greatest empires of the twentieth century. An epilogue is added to the 2015 edition by John Trumpbour that updates events between these two dates.

What Do Iranians Think? Not Much of America, Thanks to Donald Trump

 by Doug Bandow Posted onDecember 22, 2021

Negotiations over restoring the nuclear agreement with Iran aren’t quite moribund, but the Biden administration has begun to sound a bit like its predecessor in muttering threats of military action. War with Iran would be a catastrophe, much worse than with Iraq. And sending in bombers would only delay, not halt, construction of nuclear weapons, if that became Tehran’s objective.

  

The Year In Picture 2021

 NY Times: The Year in Pictures 2021 - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

 

Visions of a Volatile World

By Meaghan Looram, Director of Photography

The year 2021 opened with the promise of vaccines, and the belief that we would all return to “normal” after the tumultuous year of the pandemic. But the year instead took off with an insurrection in the U.S. Capitol, and saw a summer of carefree gatherings derailed by a fast-spreading virus. Governments fell, democracies were challenged, and climate-related destruction was unleashed, all while the casualties of the pandemic continued to amass. The vaccine saved some lives, but human passions, hopes and fears did their usual work to create a year that was anything but calm, and is ending with the prospect of a new variant upending plans once again.

اختراعات ظالمانه

 DISCOVER Magazine, Nov/Dec 2021

از مجله دیسکاور- نوامبر و دسامبر ۲۰۲۱

کسانی که در جولای سال ۱۸۸۸ در آن سالن جمع شده بودند نمیدانستند که چه اتفاقی در شُرُف وقوع بود. ولی همینکه سگ ۱۵۰ کیلویی را دیدند دلواپس شدند. برقکار، هرولد براون، در یک سالن در نیوفاندلند این سگ را در یک قفس حبس کرده بود. ابتدا او آغاز به خواندن مقاله‌ای کرد که در آن توضیح میداد که برق فشار قوی بسیار پر قدرتتر از برق فشار ضعیف بود. پس از اتمام این توضیحات، پنبه‌ای را خیس کرد و آنرا با سیم لخت به پای راست جلو و پای چپ عقب‌ سگ وصل کرد. نفس در سینه تماشاچیان حبس شده بود، چون میدانستند که اتفاق بدی رخ خواهد داد، بخصوص که سیم‌های برق به یک ژنراتور وصل بودند. پس از پایان این کار، براون کلید ژنراتور را زد.ا

Bipartisan American Empire and Catastrophic Climate Change

ALFRED W. MCCOY

November 18, 2021

The environmental destruction in our future will be so profound that anything less than the emergence of a new form of global governance—one capable of protecting the planet and the human rights of all its inhabitants—will mean that wars over water, land, and people are likely to erupt across the planet amid climate chaos.

When the leaders of more than 100 nations gathered in Glasgow for the U.N. climate conference last week, there was much discussion about the disastrous effect of climate change on the global environment. There was, however, little awareness of its likely political impact on the current world order that made such an international gathering possible.

Free

This four-letter word is almost everyone's favorite. It has many different meanings, especially when it is attached to other words. The most popular and favorite meaning of “free” is receiving something with no obligation and without compensating anything in return. Mariam-Webster has 18 definitions for this word, and when it is added to other words as a prefix or suffix, there is a huge number of options with positive connotations, the most famous one being “freedom”, which has a slew of meanings on its own. 

 

 

With COP26 in Overtime

 With COP26 in Overtime, Draft Deal Denounced as 'Clear Betrayal by Rich Nations'

"Instead of funding for loss and damage, what we have is yet another greenwash that will ensure genocide by extreme weather events in developing countries."

Cover-Up of US Nuclear Sub Collision in South China Sea

By John V. Walsh

November 01, 2021

So warned Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte in his address to the UN General Assembly on September 22, 2020. He was referring to the consequences for East Asia of a conflict between the US and China.Fast forward to October 2, 2021, about one year later, and the first patch of grass has been stomped on by the U.S. elephant, trudging stealthily about, far from home in the South China Sea. On that day the nuclear-powered attack submarine, the USS Connecticut, suffered serious damage in an undersea incident which the US Navy ascribed to a collision with an undersea object.

Israel to Attack Iran? Washington Gives the Green Light to the ‘Military Option’

 Information Clearing House

 By Philip Giraldi: 10/28/2021

Some might recall candidate Joe Biden’s pledge to work to rejoin the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) which was a multilateral agreement intended to limit Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon. The JCPOA was signed by President Barack Obama in 2015, when Biden was Vice President, and was considered one of the only foreign policy successes of his eight years in office. Other signatories to it were Britain, China, Germany, France, and Russia and it was endorsed by the United Nations. The agreement included unannounced inspections of Iranian nuclear facilities by the IAEA and, by all accounts, it was working and was a non-proliferation success story. In return for its cooperation Iran was to receive its considerable assets frozen in banks in the United States and was also to be relieved of the sanctions that had been placed on it by Washington and other governments.

 

در جستجوی بهشت

 یکی از واژه‌هایی که در قرآن بسیار استفاده شده "خَسران" است. این کلمهٔ عربی به پارسی ضرر یا زیان معنی شده است، که البته با توجه به جمله‌هایی که این واژه در آنها مورد استفاده قرار گرفته‌اند، معادل پارسی "از دست دادن" و یا "از کف رفتن" شاید ترجمه بهتری باشند. زیان دیدگان به اشخاصی اطلاق شده که به دلیل عدم اجرای قوانین اسلامی به بهشت نخواهند رفت. جالب اینجاست که با مقایسه قرآن با انجیل و تورات، دقیقا همین مفاهیم و به همان دفعات در آن کتب نیز یافت میشوند. ا

بنابراین، برای هر انسانی تلاش برای ورود به بهشت ضروری به نظر می‌رسد. نتیجه آنکه چنانچه گفته شده و ما همه شنیده‌ایم، این دنیا دار مکافات است، و هر آینه تلاش هر انسانی باید بدین معطوف شود که فرامین دینی را، که هزار و چهارصد، دو هزار، پنج هزار، و شاید قدیم‌تر به ما ابلاغ شده اند، به نحو احسنت انجام دهیم. دلیل اینکه ما هم اکنون در بهشت زندگی نمی‌کنیم، و باید قوانین مذهبی را که چنانکه گفته شد، به ما در طول قرون و اعصار توسط اشخاصی که خود چون ما تولد یافته‌اند، ولی ادعا کرده‌اند که با نیروئی که این جهان را آفریده در ارتباط هستند اجرا کنیم، گویا به اکثر اذهان خطور نمیکند. قوانینی که هیچ جنبه علمی نداشته، و در بسیاری جهات با علم در تضاد هستند، و از نظر اجتماعی نیز با دنیای امروز هم‌خوانی ندارند. کسانی را که با چنین اصول ابلهانه‌ای مخالفت میکنند، یا این قوانین بدوی را مورد پرسش قرار میدهند، همواره و در هر مذهبی نابود کرده‌اند. یعنی مذاهب شما را به دلیل عدم علاقهٔ شما به باور کردنِ دنیای دیگر، از تنها دنیای شناخته شده و قابل زندگی، که چه از نظر عقلی و چه از نظر علمی یگانه دنیائی است که با اطمینان می‌توان آنرا ادعا کرد، محروم میسازند.  ا 

Another Look at 9/11: Ask Not 'What Happened?' But 'Who Did It?'

 By: Philip Giraldi: September 17, 2021

The twentieth anniversary of 9/11 last Saturday has raised many of the usual issues about what actually happened on that day. Were hijacked airliners actually crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon or was the damage in New York City attributable to explosives or even some kind of nuclear device? These are fundamental questions and the so-called “Truthers” who raise them have been inspired by their reading of the 585 page 9/11 Report, which is most charitably described as incomplete, though many would reasonably call it a government cover-up.

 I have long believed that unless one actually sees or experiences something first hand the description of any event is no better than hearsay. The closest I came to “seeing” 9/11 was the panicked evacuation of a CIA office building, where I was working at the time. Another related bit of 9/11 narrative also came from two close friends who were driving into work at the Pentagon when they each independently observed what appeared to be a large plane passing over their cars and striking the building. I consider the sources credible but was it an airplane or a missile? And I was not there to see it with my own eyes, so I am reluctant to claim that my friends actually saw something that in retrospect might have been misconstrued.

خروج نظامی آمریکا از افغانستان

 می‌گویند خروج نظامی آمریکا از افغانستان و برگشت طالبان به این کشور، ویتنام دیگری برای آمریکا بود. در ویتنام، دولت آمریکا برای پشتیبانی از حکومت دست نشانده خود در آن کشور به جنگ با نیروهای چریکی پرداخت، و در این جنگ بازنده شد و از ویتنام فرار کرد. این تنها دخالت نظامی آمریکا در کشورهای دست نشانده نبود. بارها دولت‌های آمریکا به کشورهای دیگر از نظر سیاسی، فرهنگی، و نظامی حمله کرده‌اند. به عنوان نمونه در کوبا، عمان، یمن، و بسیاری کشورهای دیگر، بطور مستقیم، تنها با کمک تسلیحاتی، و یا توسط گماشتگان خود در منطقه (مانند کشتار چریک‌های عمان توسط نیروهای ایرانی و انگلیسی) برای راندن نیروهای چپ تلاش کرده است و در اکثر آنها پیروز بوده است. تفاوت افغانستان در این است که این دولت قبل از حمله آمریکا در این کشور حکومت میکرد، و با تجاوز آمریکا آنها بیرون رنده شدند، ولی باز توانستند که باز گردند. تفاوت مهمتر آنکه خود آمریکا چنین رژیمی را پایه گذاری کرد، تا حکومت وابسته به شوروی ساقط شود، که البته در این مورد هم پیروز بود. 

Understanding the Basics of 21st-Century Democracy, Autocracy, and Capitalism

 9/17/2021- Richard D. Wolff

Understanding the Basics of 21st-Century Democracy, Autocracy, and Capitalism     :   Opinion: - (informationclearinghouse.info)

 Democracy exists if and when a community organises its self-governance around the full participation, on an equal basis, of all the members of the community. Its other, autocracy, exists when a community organizes (or allows) its governance by an individual or subgroup of that community, a ruler. Universal suffrage is clearly a step toward at least formal democracy because voters elect leaders. How real this formal democracy is depends on the inclusivity of the population voting and the concrete reality of voters’ equal influence on the election’s outcome.

The Winner in Afghanistan: China

 Alfred McCoy/ September 16, 2021

The Winner in Afghanistan: China  :   Opinion: - (informationclearinghouse.info)

 

The collapse of the American project in Afghanistan may fade fast from the news here, but don’t be fooled. It couldn’t be more significant in ways few in this country can even begin to grasp. “Remember, this is not Saigon,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told a television audience on August 15th, the day the Taliban swept into the Afghan capital, pausing to pose for photos in the grandly gilded presidential palace. He was dutifully echoing his boss, President Joe Biden, who had earlier rejected any comparison with the fall of the South Vietnamese capital, Saigon, in 1975, insisting that “there’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable.”

20 Years On, the War on Terror Grinds Along, With No End in Sight

 
By Mark Landler

September 11, 2021

20 Years On, the War on Terror Grinds Along, With No End in Sight - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

When President Biden told an exhausted nation on Aug. 31 that the last C-17 cargo plane had left Taliban-controlled Kabul, ending two decades of American military misadventure in Afghanistan, he defended the frantic, bloodstained exit with a simple statement: “I was not going to extend this forever war.”
And yet the war grinds on.

 

A Technologically Advanced Architectural Bridge

From Discover Magazine- Sept/ Oct 2021 (Page 66)

When a video of the double-Decker Ruyi Bridge in China's eastern Zhejiang province widely circulated online in early 2021, some viewers assumed it was fake. it's certainly a surreal sight. The nearly 330-foot-long winding glass bridge is composed of three wavy footpaths and spans the foggy gorges of the Shenxianju Scenic Area. 

 

Did the War in Afghanistan Have to Happen?

 

In 2001, when the Taliban were weak and ready to surrender, the U.S. passed on a deal. Nearly 20 years later, the Taliban hold all the cards.

By Alissa J. Rubin

Published Aug. 23, 2021Updated Sept. 2, 2021

 Taliban fighters brandished Kalashnikovs and shook their fists in the air after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, defying American warnings that if they did not hand over Osama Bin Laden, their country would be bombed to smithereens.

Threats and Fear Cause Afghan Women’s Protections to Vanish Overnight

 

By Alissa J. Rubin

Sept. 4, 2021Updated 11:00 a.m. ET

 As the Taliban advanced, safe houses for women closed, and the staff sheltered girls at home as relatives released from prison threatened to kill them.

 It took years for Women for Afghan Women to build up Afghanistan’s largest network of women’s protection services — 32 safe houses, family guidance centers and children’s homes in 14 provinces, growing by word of mouth and driven by the intense need for their services.

Afghanistan’s collapse exposes the truth about U.S. military invasions in the region

By Suzanne Enzerink

(Suzanne Enzerink is an assistant professor of American Studies and Media Studies at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. Her work investigates how cultural producers have seized anxiety over the U.S. role in the world to challenge structures of inequality at home. She is currently completing her first book.)

August 25, 2021

The U.S. has always put its own interest first.

طالبان

با برگشت طالبان به افغانستان، واقعیت سخنان کسانی که حملات آمریکا به افغانستان و عراق و لیبی و سوریه و سومالی و سودان را نقد میکردند، آشکار میشود. ولی طرفداران نظام غرب، و کسانی که از این آبشخوار سود میبرند، این‌را نیز در پرده کوتاه بین خود به اغماض می‌سپرند. تازه گیها کلیپی از هیلاری کلینتون، که خود نقش زننده‌ای در این جنایات داشت، و قهقهه او زمانی که در تلویزیون ناظر کشتار رهبر لیبی بود در حافظه‌ها ضبط شده است، در وسائل ارتباط جمعی در گردش است که از سیاست آمریکا در تاسیس و راه اندازی و پشتیبانی مالی بنگاهی به نام طالبان انتقاد می‌کند. میگوید که زمانی که شوروی به افغانستان سلطه پیدا کرد، برای جلوگیری از تسلط افغانستان طالبان را آمریکا به وجود آورد. نخست آنکه شوروی به دعوت حاکم وقت افغانستان که سوسیالیست بود، و برای دفعه همین طالبان به افغانستان نیرو فرستاد. بنابر این سخن او دروغ محض است. آمریکا در کشورهای که نام برده شد، با صدور اسلام، که خود یک تئوری پس مانده و ارتجاعی مانند سایر مذاهب است، دست به کشتار وسیعی زد و بنیاد این کشورها را نابود کرد. ایرانیانی که اکنون با پشتیبانی از غرب به چین و روسیه میتازند، آیا یک پایگاه نظامی از این دو کشور در هیچ جای جهان دیده‌اند. آمریکا بیش از ۲۵۰ پایگاه نظامی در نقاط مختلف جهان دارد، و بودجه نظامی آاش تقریبا برابر با مجموعه بودجه نظامی سایر کشورهائی دنیاست. باید اضافه کرد که با این وجود، از جنگ جهانی دوم به بعد، آمریکا در کلیه جنگ‌های که خود آغاز کرده است، مانند ویتنام و کره و کشورهائی نامبرده، شکست خرده است.

ISM

Whenever these three letters end a word, a separation seems to be created. For instance, we say Americanism, which means a group of people who act and behave in a certain way and live in a certain geographical boundary. Socialism means living in a social group. Communism or capitalism, mean believing in certain pollical or economical systems. Some people are proud of belonging to any of these groups, and they mention it in their communications. However, there are some words ending in these three letters which are not accepted, and even some people act as if they belong to such groupings, they are not proud of calling themselves those titles, as such titles carry along with them some negative connotations. Examples of such “isms” are sexism, chauvinism, bastardism, and so on. 

 

US Collective Suicide

Chris Hedges

Chris Hedges: US Collective Suicide – Consortiumnews

The debacle in Afghanistan, which will unravel into chaos with lightning speed over the next few weeks and ensure the return of the Taliban to power, is one more signpost of the end of the American empire.

The two decades of combat, the one trillion dollars spent, the 100,000 troops deployed to subdue Afghanistan, the high-tech gadgets, artificial intelligence, cyberwarfare, Reaper drones armed with Hellfire missiles and GBU-30 bombs and the Global Hawk drones with high-resolution cameras, Special Operations Command composed of elite rangers, SEALs and air commandos, black sites, torture, electronic surveillance, satellites, attack aircraft, mercenary armies, infusions of millions of dollars to buy off and bribe the local elites and train an Afghan army of 350,000 that has never exhibited the will to fight, failed to defeat a guerrilla army of 60,000 that funded itself through opium production and extortion in one of the poorest countries on earth.

چگونه ما آدم شدیم!

انسان سلطان زمین است، و شاید بتوان به این سلطنت قسمتی از کهکشان را نیز افزود. این بدین معنا نیست که ما همچنان به فرمانروایی خود ادامه دهیم. در واقع سلطنت ما مانند سلطنت سایر سلاطین به موئی بند است. به عنوان مثال، حیوانات میکروسکوپی مانند ویروس‌ها و باکتریها، مثلا کورونا، میتوانند در یک چشم به هم زدن ما را از پای در بیاورند.ب

ا گر ما را در یک جنگل، محلی که قرنها در آن متولد شدیم و زندگی کردیم، تنها بگذارند شاید حتی یک هفته هم دوام نیاوریم و یا طعمه شویم و یا از گرسنگی هلاک گردیم. با مثال فواره چون به اوج رسد سرنگون شود، ما نیز به آنجایی رسیده ایم که با ذخیره سنگین بمبهای شیمیایی و اتمی و با نابودی محیط زیست، چندان مسیر بیشتری طی نخواهیم کرد.

 ب

How Many People Are at Risk of Losing Their Homes in Your Neighborhood?

 By Sema K. Sgaier and Aaron Dibner-Dunlap

July 28, 2021

Alongside the prospect of a new surge in coronavirus infections, another crisis is on the horizon: A nationwide wave of evictions threatens more than six million families that have fallen behind on rent. The true extent of the threat has been masked by a national moratorium on evictions. But that ban will expire on Saturday, allowing landlords to start or continue eviction proceedings in most states.

The Origins of COVID-19 and the Urgent Case for U.S.-Sino Cooperation

 https://www.jeffsachs.org/journal-articles/cr8rn4hlw6m3ac9yz5r4txr2fs8cls 

By: Jeffrey Sachs- July 19, 2021

As of mid-2021 the world reached nearly 4 million confirmed deaths from COVID-19. By any standard, the global response to the pandemic has been awful. From the very start, there was a dire shortfall of global cooperation. If there is one lesson from the coronavirus pandemic, it is that our very survival depends on cooperation among the major world powers. When they fight over COVID-19, or climate change, or cybersecurity, or other crucial challenges, the entire world loses.