[Majorityrights News] Alex Navalny, born 4th June, 1976; died at Yamalo-Nenets penitentiary 16th February, 2024 Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, 16 February 2024 23:43.
[Majorityrights Central] A couple of exchanges on the nature and meaning of Christianity’s origin Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 25 July 2023 22:19.
[Majorityrights News] Is the Ukrainian counter-offensive for Bakhmut the counter-offensive for Ukraine? Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, 18 May 2023 18:55.
Posted by Kumiko Oumae on Monday, 01 February 2016 03:12.
It’s true. I think you know where this article is going to go.
One of the most notable features of the Donald Trump phenomenon which is being feted by just about every ethno-nationalist website—except Majorityrights, thank goodness—is the remarkable opportunism and irresponsibility which seems to appear at every turn.
The Donald Trump phenomenon is a presidential candidacy phenomenon which was initiated by the actions of one man, Donald Trump himself, who is trying to subsist off of the pre-existing electoral lobbies inside the Republican party. It is not a movement. It’s Donald Trump saying things that he thinks will convince the various contradictory segments of the Republican party voting base to imagine that he empathises with them while you wait with bated breath to see what he’ll say next, so that you can write yet another breathless article on how the Trump train ‘cannot be stopped’.
Excited People
Just because Donald Trump has managed to weaponise the slack-jawed voters of Iowa against their former owners—for now—does not mean that some great revolution has arrived or that there is a ‘train’ that is going somewhere. Donald Trump has merely succeeded in getting people who identify as Republican to become excited about voting for the Republican party.
That doesn’t make them suddenly not a bunch of disorganised idiots who believe idiotic things. It means that they are now merely an excited bunch of disorganised idiots who believe idiotic things excitedly.
Economic Power Precedes Political Power
Now, some of you are reading this and thinking to yourselves, “Why have these people at Majorityrights always got to ruin everyone’s fun?”
Your fun has to be ruined, because it is harmful. Attaching yourself to a political candidate like Donald Trump, and running articles that praise him for an entire electoral season, even though you know that you have no means through which you can control him during his hypothetical presidency because you have no lobby, is a pretty bad idea.
It is said that economic power precedes political power. Where does economic power come from? Not strictly from an abundance of wealth, but rather, from controlled scarcity. For example, if I had control of all water in a country, my power over its governance would be unrivalled. But if everyone could create disparate water-fountains everywhere without my permission, then my power would vanish almost immediately. The same logic applies to political movements, if they are to have any power in the material world at all, then they have to be able to make credible bargains.
In the context of American ethno-nationalist movement figures who claim to appreciate the merits of National Socialism or some variant of it, which kind of economic power should they be aiming to control? They should be aiming to control the one thing which is in abundance everywhere. The people’s labour power. Most people in the United States have only their labour power that they can either choose to give to an employer or withhold from an employer, and any movement that were to gain the ability to switch labour on or off at will and at mass, would be one of the most powerful lobbies in the United States. Given that labour union density in the United States hovers around a pathetic figure like 10%, it is not like there is much competition in that realm from the liberals or anyone else.
Despite this, year after year Americans do nothing other than wait for the next white saviour to descend and save them, while paradoxically festooning their websites with the symbols of a labour movement that actually emerged as a ‘workers party’ from the ground up and not from the top down.
Celebrating for no reason
I’ve been looking at the on-the-ground reporting that Matt Forney has been doing, as he’s been chronicling his adventures in Iowa and a lot of what he’s written I’ve found to be extremely well done and I have no intention of deriding his efforts in that regard.
However, I want to quote something from an article he recently wrote because I think that he has in fact highlighted a large part of the problem without having been aware that it is a problem:
Finally, Trump has expanded the conservative base to a degree that no other politician in the U.S. has done in eons. During the introductory speeches, one of Trump’s campaign co-chairs asked how many people in the audience had never voted in the caucuses before. Close to half the crowd’s hands went up. Trump has done the seemingly impossible: get people who are tuned out of the political process involved again, and supporting conservative principles at that.
It’s clear that Donald Trump’s combination of nationalist, conservative policy proposals, his personal charisma and his willingness to speak the truth will carry him through the presidential primaries. But the real question is whether he can win Iowa, the only one of the early contests where he’s lagged behind: he’s been trailing Ted Cruz in the polls for the past month, though he’s been posting solid leads in the past week.
[...]
This is precisely the danger. Life has been returned to a party which ought to actually have died. Furthermore, what has been occurring are not ‘policy proposals’, more so than a disparate collection of forcefully repeated statements and semi-comical tweets, which no ethno-nationalist group has any power to hold him to after he is elected.
In Iowa, who was he actually making deals with? Christian Zionists and Evangelicals. Many of them are highly motivated and are unfortunately not actually stupid at all. Christian leaders do not see Trump as their first choice for president, in fact only 2% of them view him in that way. However, they are nothing if not pragmatic. They realise that they have the ability to command large numbers of people who sit in pews and are receptive to messages that come across the pulpit about who to vote for. They also have an economic bazooka which stems from that organisational power, which enables them to sit down at the table with the highly cynical Donald Trump, and make actual deals with him.
Trump has been calling out to those people as though to bring them to the table from since the very beginning of his campaign. The message that “If I’m president, you’re going to see ‘Merry Christmas’ in department stores, believe me.”, which was a probing attempt to see what the reaction would be, was his first outreach. Getting a response that looked like it was backed by a voting block with solid fundraising power (albeit funds that he may not necessarily need but would be helpful to him nonetheless) then led to him increasing the appeal to a new level with his statement on how he intends to “protect Christianity”. Next he went on to say that he believes that “Christianity is under siege” and that Christians “don’t exert the power” that he thinks they ought to have.
Trump was calling for Evangelicals to make a deal with him. He may get it, but it will be a two-way street, he will have to give them something in order for them to give him something. They see it as a case not where Trump will somehow grant them cultural leadership again, but rather, a case where Donald Trump can be induced to create the environment in which they would be more free to operate. They enter into alliance with him cautiously and with actual representatives on the ground who know what disgusting things they want and how to get those disgusting things.
Platform melted
That ability to go out and make deals and threats, is an ability that American ethno-nationalists do not have, because American ethno-nationalists haven’t put anything onto the table that they could threaten to remove from the table. Instead, it was as though Donald Trump approached the American ethno-nationalists and they said about it, “It was love at first sight, we looked at Trump and our platform melted away.”
Finding people who are willing to shill for you 24/7 can often be difficult. Generating a good SEO plan with the kind of agility required by a political candidate whose positions change depending on who they are artfully making deals with on any given day, would be gruelling work with an exorbitant cost. Mercifully for Donald Trump, he has almost the entire Alt-Right’s followers who reside in the nexus where Twitter, 4chan, Youtube, Facebook, and Reddit meet, who will do all of that work for him for free, and he can ultimately treat them in any way he likes because he is in no way structurally beholden to them. Trump can get amazing results on the internet for $0.
Donald Trump’s social media accounts could generate interest all day long, simply by entertaining ‘controversial’ ideas and statements. Those accounts could then do even better by mocking the responses of ‘outraged’ social-democratic news sites afterwards. Donald Trump’s Twitter and Facebook could become home to 4chan Pepe the Frog memes, which are often witty and which save the campaign staff the effort of having to invent their own memes. That actually happened. Why then should they do any work at all?
An Israeli political consultant pushed nonwhite Iraqi “Christian” refugees on a dozen European nations before “using his contacts” to get Slovakia to accept them—but refused to consider trying to get them asylum in Israel.
Aron Shaviv and Benjamin Netanyahu
Aron Shaviv, who orchestrated Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent election campaign in Israel, runs a company called Shaviv Strategy and Campaigns, which claims to be a “global political-strategy consultancy specializing in winning election campaigns on behalf of the center-right” and delivers “winning Presidential, Parliamentary, Municipal, and referendum campaigns to political leaders from across Europe and globally.”
According to an article in the Israeli-based Times of Israel titled “How an Israeli opened Slovakia’s doors for Iraqi Christian refugees” (January 25, 2016), Shaviv was the person who arranged for the Iraqi Christians, driven out of their northern Iraqi hometown of Qaraqosh by ISIS, to be resettled in Slovakia.
The Times of Israel reported that when Shaviv was approached by activists trying to find the Iraqis asylum somewhere, he started “combing through and contacting his network of political connections. The team tried at least a dozen countries before getting a hearing in Slovakia.”
“My policy was the path of least resistance—the first country that showed any kind of positive leanings was Slovakia,” Shaviv told the Times of Israel.
He said that it was important in Slovakia, still a very traditional Catholic country, to get both the Vatican and its local religious authorities involved.
“We thought that the right approach was to get the Slovak church to take ownership and say these are our people,” said Shaviv.
And after many trips to the Vatican, it came on board in saving its Iraqi Catholics.
“The determining messaging that got them to really identify and take ownership was that this is the last Christian community on earth that speaks the language of Jesus,” Shaviv said.
Shaviv said that several factors contributed to the Slovakian government’s willingness to accept the refugees. For one, although it was the first European Union country to state it was not willing to accept Muslims during the massive waves of migrants and refugees reaching European shores in 2015, like all EU countries, it must fulfill a refugee quota.
Iraqi Christians demonstrate in Germany.
Of course, it would never enter Shaviv’s head to offer these Iraqis refuge in his own country, because Israel legally forbids immigration by non-Jews, tests potential immigrants by DNA to make sure they are Jewish, and outlaws marriages between Jews and non-Jews.
Shaviv is not the only prominent Jewish activist busy bringing in nonwhite Christian refugees into Europe, and diverting them away from Israel. The recently deceased British Jewish Lord George Weidenfeld set up the “Weidenfeld Safe Havens Fund” in July 2015 specifically to bring them to Europe.
A 17-year-old Danish girl who used pepper spray to defend herself from a rape attack by a nonwhite invader “refugee” in the southern city of Sønderborg will now be prosecuted under the Firearms Act, local police have said.
The picturesque town of Sønderborg; now the scene of nonwhite invader sex attacks.
According to the Danish TV channel TV Syd, the 17-year-old was set upon by the nonwhite invader at 10 at night. The attacker, described as a “dark-skinned English-speaking man,” grabbed the girl by the arm and told her in English that she had to come with him.
She resisted and pulled herself free, whereupon he pushed her over and jumped on top of her, at the same time unbuttoning her pants in preparation for an attempted rape.
The girl managed to pull a pepper spray out of her pocket and sprayed the nonwhite in the face, whereupon he sprang off her and ran away, police spokesman Svend Erik Lassen said.
The street where the attack took place.
The case is being investigated as attempted rape, but it is the charges which have now been brought against the girl which have received media attention in Denmark.
According to the Danish Firearms Act, it is illegal to possess and use pepper spray—even though it is freely available across the continent and there is no active attempt to prevent its importation, as the Sønderborg case shows. Possession of pepper spray can result in fines and up to three months in prison.
Sønderborg lies on the German border, and it is likely that the victim obtained the pepper spray in Germany, where sales of the self-defense spray have rocketed following the ever-increasing rapefugee sex attacks on white women.
“It is illegal to be in possession of, and using pepper spray, so she probably will be charged,” the head of the Sønderborg police, Knud Kirste, told TV Syd. He would not say whether the indictment could be waived because of extenuating circumstances of self-defense.
According to the Danish tabloid BT, police are already investigating a link between the attack and “problems with the local asylum seekers who have attacked other girls” in the city at night.
A local nightclub owner in Sønderborg told BT that ever since a former military barracks in the town had been transformed into an “asylum center,” the sexual harassment had started at the nightspots.
Another article revealed that in the wake of the news about the Sønderborg attack, many other complaints have been received about sexual harassment carried out by nonwhite invader “refugees” in Thisted, where a new “asylum center” housing 400 nonwhites was built only two months ago.
There are now so many “harassment problems in the city” that the council’s children and family director, Lars Sloth, said that “preventative measures” have had to be taken.
He did not say what these measures were, but said that “Thisted recognizes that there is a problem in relation to several girls in nightspots having been harassed by the city’s refugees.”
In addition, media said, there have also been a number of clashes between “citizens and asylum seekers” after several young women were harassed.
Britain will spend 500 million pounds ($700 million) per year for the next five years to try and end deaths caused by malaria, the government said on Monday, announcing a partnership with Microsoft founder Bill Gates worth a total of 3 billion pounds.
Finance minister George Osborne announced the spending, to be funded from the country’s overseas aid budget, at an event with billionaire Gates, whose Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will also contribute around $200 million per year to the package.
“Across the globe over a billion people are infected with malaria and it’s a cause of both untold misery and lost economic potential,” Osborne said in a statement.
“That’s why, working with Bill Gates, I’m determined that Britain leads the world in the fight against this disease.”
In December, the World Health Organization’s annual malaria report showed deaths falling to 438,000 in 2015 - down dramatically from 839,000 in 2000 - and found a significant increase in the number of countries moving towards the elimination of malaria.
The U.N. now wants to cut new cases and deaths from malaria, a parasitic mosquito-borne infection, by 90% before 2030.
Osborne said some of the money would be spent in Britain to advance the science being used to combat the disease. The Gates Foundation first annual contribution will support research, development and regional efforts to eliminate the disease.
The Gates Foundation was launched in 2000 by Gates and wife Melinda to fight disease and poverty around the world.
Are you stupid or just evil, Bill? Just where we need big money directed - to compound Africa’s exploding population…
More than 200 patriots from Austria and Hungary braved sub-zero temperatures and a snowstorm this weekend to demonstrate their European solidarity with Poland outside the Polish embassy in Vienna.
“Austrians, Hungarians, and other nationalities—including some Polish people—came to demonstrate their opposition to the negative media coverage by the German media of the newly elected Polish government,” the press release continued.
“Representatives of the Identitarian movement and Wiedeńska Inicjatywa Narodowa praised the far-seeing Eastern European governments on the ‘refugee’ issue, and warned against increasing Islamization.
“Among those present was Polish Law and Justice Party senator Artur Warzocha.”
A statement by the Austrian Identitarian movement said that it was important to express solidarity with Poland’s patriots “especially against the background of the current invasion of Europe by illegal immigrants.”
The statement went on to highlight the difference between the governments of the Visegrad nations, “whether in Warsaw, Budapest, or elsewhere,” where there are “popularly elected governments that represent their people’s interests and do not allow any invasion of their countries,” and the attitudes of the governments of Western Europe.
“The difference can also be noticed if New Year’s Eve in Cologne and New Year’s Eve in Warsaw are compared,” the statement continued.
“So with this demonstration, we want to show the governments in Vienna and elsewhere in Europe, that we demand a patriotic government and no diktat from Brussels!”
See why Poland’s Administration is gaining support from patriots abroad…
Illegal speech has always been forbidden on Facebook. And there are also opinions which are classified as “hatred and intolerance.” Now Facebook is taking a hard line against dissent by building a system wherein you can report friends whose opinions are dissident of their party line regarding migrants and their assimilation.
Facebook’s COO, Sheryl Sandberg, yesterday presented its new strategy at the World Economic Forum in Davos. This week it has launched a new project which is called the Initiative for Civil Courage online.
“Civil Courage” From left, Sasha Havlicek, Gerd Billen, Sheryl Sandberg, Peter Neumann, Anetta Kahane at the launch of the initiative at the World Economic Forum
There is much talk about stopping the IS and terrorism in the social media. But behind the new venture hides also other motives. It is mainly in response to protests flaring-up in social media against the great migration and refugee flows into Europe that the company now intends to take action. The initiative will particularly target Germany, where the protests were at their strongest according to Reuters.
- ‘Hate speech has no place in our society - not even on the Internet, said Sandberg of the new venture.’
Merkel and the German government are a significant party in pushing Facebook to apprehend “hatred and calls for violence.”
Clear illegality has always been forbidden to write and Facebook’s employees censure that sort of continent as soon as it is discovered. However, the company will now focus on detecting users who make “xenophobic remarks,” according to Britain’s “Independent.” It has now engaged media company Bertelsmann to clean up and monitor traffic on the German part of the platform. The company has also set aside a million euro to be allocated to “nonprofit organizations” to help in the effort.
Opinion based reporting
But the really big operation is not launched yet. Facebook will have an opinion reporting system that allows users to alert the company when friends’ opinions start to diverge too much. Then you should be able to flag that they are ‘at risk of being radicalized, “according to IDG.
It is still unclear what the definition of too radical will be, whose posts will be deleted and if it should be decided by a robot or by human judgment.
Markus Andersson
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Speaking at Davos, Facebook’s COO said the company believes ‘counterspeech’ by the online community is the best way to combat propaganda
Silicon Valley is now an open combatant in the war against Islamic extremism.
In increasingly brash tones, tech executives are discussing publicly how their companies can help the west stop Islamic State recruiting efforts online. That shift is welcome news in Washington, London and Berlin, but it could also raise questions about American tech firms’ role in the global marketplace of ideas.
Less than two weeks ago, Silicon Valley’s leading executives joined a closed-door meeting with America’s most senior security staff and law enforcement officials to discuss how to combat Isis’s recruiting efforts online. Agents for the terrorist organization have increasingly turned to platforms such as Facebook,
Alphabet’s YouTube and Twitter.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos on 20 January, Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg pointed to one source of inspiration for the digital war against Isis – “a ‘like’ attack”.
She explained a recent effort by German Facebook users to “like” the Facebook page of the neo-Nazi party and then post positive messages on the page.
“What was a page filled with hatred and intolerance was then tolerance and messages of hope,” she said.
Google says Isis must be locked out of the open web.
She then pivoted to Isis and added: “The best thing to speak against recruitment by Isis are the voices of people who were recruited by Isis, understand what the true experience is, have escaped and have come back to tell the truth ... Counter-speech to the speech that is perpetuating hate we think by far is the best answer.”
Speaking separately in London on the same day, Alphabet’s director of Google Ideas, Jared Cohen, talked about efforts to force Isis agents off the public internet.
“It could be where we can see greater short-term wins,” said Cohen, who met with Pope Francis on 15 January along with Alphabet executive chairman Eric Schmidt.
Revealed: White House seeks to enlist Silicon Valley to ‘disrupt radicalization’
US officials, lawmakers and politicians have complained that the companies aren’t doing enough to keep terrorists away from civilians online. Donald Trump famously said last month he wanted to talk to Microsoft founder Bill Gates about “closing the internet up” in some places to stop Isis.
And while tech executives privately were sympathetic, they were often nervous about confronting the issue publicly. The internet, by its nature, is open. Tech firms – rooted in America’s liberal tradition of free speech – are skittish about playing traffic cop about posted content. Sandberg’s and Cohen’s remarks Wednesday suggest those concerns have diminished.
During the national security meeting in San Jose, Silicon Valley executives in the room, including Sandberg and Apple’s Tim Cook, appeared open to the idea of helping Washington combat Isis online.
The Guardian reported at the time that US officials asked Sandberg about Facebook’s technology that allows users to flag friends who are posting suicidal thoughts on the platform.
After Sandberg explained it, tech executives in the room discussed whether a similar system could be developed for flagging social media users showing signs of radicalization.
Posted by Kumiko Oumae on Thursday, 21 January 2016 01:33.
It’s time for another instalment of ‘things Putin actually said’. Imagine that Europe became a really hazardous place to live one day, so hazardous that the Jews started looking for places to run to in order to escape from the backlash stemming from their own handiwork.
Russian president Vladimir Putin has met with European Jewish leaders to discuss their concerns over rising anti-Semitism on the continent.
During the meeting, Putin pointed out that many Jews emigrated from Moscow when it was part of the former Soviet Union. He said now they can come back.
The president of the European Jewish Congress, Moshe Kantor said the number of Jews fleeing Europe is also on the rise.
“The situation with the Jews in Europe is the worst it has been since the end of the Second World War,” said Kantor. “The Jews are again in fear and a Jewish exodus from Europe is quite real. There are more Jews fleeing France, which is considered very secure, than from civil-war-torn Ukraine.”
“Let them come here,” said Putin. “They emigrated from here under Soviet Union, but now they can come back.”
Of course. He’ll probably invite them to settle in the ‘Far East’, land which the Russians have no warrant to put themselves in, much less their Jewish friends.
The governor of Russia’s Far East Jewish Autonomous Region says the area is “ready” to house Jews from Europe who are facing anti-Semitism.
Aleksandr Levintal said his region “will welcome Jews from European countries, where they may face attacks by anti-Semitic elements.”
Levintal also called his region “the first officially established Jewish statehood.”
Levintal’s remarks come a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin called on Jews to return to Russia.
In Moscow on January 19, Putin told the head of the European Jewish Congress, Moshe Kantor, that he had seen reports saying European Jews were scared to wear a yarmulke, the traditional Jewish skull cap, in public.
Putin told Kantor, “They can come to us. They left the Soviet Union. Let them return.”
The Jewish Autonomous Region was established by the Soviet government in 1934 in a part of southeastern Siberia that borders China.
In 1948, the Jewish population there peaked at 30,000—a quarter of the region’s total population.
By 2010, out of 180,000 residents in the region, only about 1,600 were of Jewish ancestry.
The Russians want to use their federal structure as a tool to vector more Jews into Siberia. How long is humanity going to have to endure the existence of a structure like the Russian federal state? Who will rid the world of that gigantic bloated cancer?
Iran “has opened a new chapter” in its ties with the world, President Hassan Rouhani said, hours after international nuclear sanctions were lifted.
The move came after the international nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, said Iran had complied with a deal designed to prevent it developing nuclear weapons.
Most Western governments hailed the move but Israel accused Tehran of still seeking to build a nuclear bomb.
Four dual US-Iran nationals were released from jail by Iran on Saturday.
They include Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, who was arrested in 2014 and jailed in November for espionage.
Early reports said all four had left the country, however unnamed US officials later said that while “those who wished to depart Iran have left” and that one of the four, Nosratollah Khosravi-Roodsari, was not on the plane headed for Switzerland.
A fifth American, Matthew Trevithick, was also been released separately.
The US offered clemency to seven Iranians being held in the US for sanctions violations.
Nuclear sanctions have been in place since 2006, on top of other sanctions stretching back decades:
The economic sanctions being lifted now were imposed progressively by the US, EU and UN in response to Iran’s nuclear programme
The EU is lifting restrictions on trade, shipping and insurance in full
The US is suspending, not terminating, its nuclear-related sanctions; crucially, Iran can now reconnect to the global banking system
The UN is lifting sanctions related to defence and nuclear technology sales, as well as an asset freeze on key individuals and companies
Non-nuclear US economic sanctions remain in place, notably the ban on US citizens and companies trading with Iran, and US and EU sanctions on Iranians accused of sponsoring terrorism remain in place
A flurry of Iranian economic activity is anticipated:
Nearly $100bn (£70bn) of Iranian assets are being unlocked
Iran is expected to increase its daily export of 1.1m barrels of crude oil by 500,000 shortly, and a further 500,000 thereafter
Iran is reportedly poised to buy 114 new passenger planes from the Airbus consortium
UN, US and EU sanctions have hit Iran hard for years.
Mr Rouhani said everyone was happy with the deal, apart from those he described as warmongers in the region - Israel and hardliners in the US Congress.
“We Iranians have reached out to the world in a sign of friendliness, and leaving behind the enmities, suspicions and plots, have opened a new chapter in the relations of Iran with the world,” he said in a statement on Sunday morning.
The lifting of sanctions was “a turning point” for Iran’s economy, he added, saying the country needed to be less reliant on oil revenues.
US Secretary of State John Kerry, an architect of the deal, said it had been pursued “with the firm belief that exhausting diplomacy before choosing war is an imperative. And we believe that today marks the benefits of that choice”.
However US Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan said the Obama administration had moved to lift economic sanctions “on the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism”.
And Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: “Without an appropriate reaction to every violation, Iran will realise it can continue to develop nuclear weapons, destabilise the region and spread terror.”
‘Expectations are high’ - Amir Paivar, BBC Persian business reporter
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani says the lifting of sanctions is a victory for the Iranian nation. It is one for him too.
Mr Rouhani had pledged to strike a deal ending the nuclear standoff. He just delivered his biggest promise. This will boost his allies in parliamentary elections next month.
But hardliners will not sit and watch. They call the shots in domestic, security and cultural areas. There is always danger of a backlash unless Mr Rouhani’s faction shares the post-sanctions financial benefits with them.
Expectations are high, and managing them will be a difficult job. The impact of lifting of sanctions in livelihoods of many Iranian will not come overnight. Rouhani now says he will focus on boosting foreign direct investment and Iran’s non-oil exports. Easier said than done.
The prospect of Iran doubling its crude oil exports has contributed to the continuing fall in the oil price. Benchmark Brent crude closed below $29 (£20.3) on Friday. Share prices in Saudi Arabia, the Arab world’s largest stock market, fell more than 6% following the lifting of sanctions.
The IAEA said it had installed a device at the Natanz plant to monitor Iran’s uranium enrichment activities in real time, in order to verify that uranium enrichment levels were kept at up to 3.67% as agreed in the deal with world powers.
As part of the deal, Iran had to drastically reduce its number of centrifuges and dismantle a heavy-water reactor near the town of Arak, both of which could be used in creating nuclear weapons.
Iran has always maintained its nuclear programme is peaceful, but opponents of the deal say it does not do enough to ensure the country cannot develop a nuclear bomb.
This is of course a wonderful development. Despite all the obstacles that were placed in the way, a sane and encouraging outcome has emerged.
As a retrospective look back, I’ll offer you all a set of links to accompany this story:
Those links should cover the highlights on how things ended up like this, and who the key winners and losers have been.
Broadly speaking, the winners have been all oil importers, particularly the United States, the European Union, and certain oil-importing countries in South America and South East Asia.
The losers have been all oil exporters, but especially Saudi Arabia and Russia. Israel also emerges as a loser, having failed to accomplish most of its objectives.
