We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Thursday, July 16, 2015

Iran is Heading West Now

Click here to access article by Petr Lvov from New Eastern Outlook.

This Russian writer sees the Iran deal as a cave-in to the Empire, and a defeat for Iranian independence and Russia.
What does all this mean in strategic terms? To be frank, the agreement on the Iranian nuclear program is in fact an achievement of historical significance, since Iran is making a U-turn to seek rapprochement with the US and the EU. The experiment of the Islamic Revolution is over and it has failed. And the winners are the West, the sitting Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and his pro-Western liberal team. And one could predict this happening due to the moods of the overwhelming majority in Iranian society. The population is tired of the hardships that have been brought forward by international sanctions. Iran’s economy has been experiencing a long period of stagnation. The government can hardly fund social programs anymore and the youth, which accounts to over 50% of the population of the country, refuses to understand why it has to live according to the religious concepts of Ayatollah Khomeini instead of following the modern technological and cultural developments that are adopted across the world.

If Iranian government refused to change its ways, it would face a “color” revolution brought around by Western propaganda and the fact that Iran is a multinational state where the rights of minorities are not always respected.