Episode 22 Samurkhan: Timur’s Cultural Capitol

The Mongol Empire

Dr Craig Benjamin (2020)

Film Review

First founded in 780 BC, Samurkhan (Samarqand) combined agricultural, valley/mountain pastoral land for summer/winter grazing and lucrative trade routes that prospered under the first Silk Road (202 BC). The Persian king Cyrus the Great fortified it with a citadel and walls in the 6th century BC. Captured from the Persians by Alexander the Great, it expanded significantly under his regional successor Nicator (358-281 BC), who introduced classical Greek architecture. It was next ruled by

• 110 BC – 250 AD Parthian and Kushan empires
• 224-651 AD Sassanian Empire, who helped resurrect the Silk Road and supported the co-existence of Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Nastorian Christianity Manocheism and Judaism
• 440-440 AD Hefalites (aka White Huns) and Turkic empires
• 7th century AD Tang dynasty tributary
• 8th century AD captured by Islamic Umayid
• 819-999 AD became major commercial city under (Islamic) Persian Samanids
• 1000 AD captured by Turkic tribes
• 1220 AD sacked by Chinggis Khan during Khwarazmian campaign
• 1370 AD Captured and rebuilt by Timur, using artists, architects, scholars and musicians he captured in his other campaigns. He renamed Samarkhan suburbs after other cities he had conquered (Damascus, Paris, Baghdad, Shiraz).

Timur order numerous houses demolished to build monumental public building (which enchanting azure domes which were a model for Moghul tombs in India (eg Taj Mahal).

Film can be viewed free with library card on Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/12373094/12373138

Hugo Dionísio

There were many voices of concern and dismay at the announcement by the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, declaring the temporary suspension of new accessions to the BRICS bloc. Dark clouds soon appeared over the multipolar world, especially when it was announced that there would be a waiting list of 40 countries willing to join the bloc. Was Lavrov’s announcement so unexpected?

Without a strong, cohesive and harmonious BRICS bloc, an organized, peaceful and cooperative multipolar world will be threatened. The ability to make economic cooperation (mainly) the backdrop against which contradictions between nations, unilaterally and bilaterally considered, will be sidelined in favor of a greater good, from which everyone equally benefits, is, in my opinion, the great strength of a bloc like the BRICS.

However, history tells us that empires don’t die in peace and that their replacement by new forms of government — not always more advanced — is almost never without setbacks and bumps in the road. That is why it is to be expected that the Western hegemonic power, led by the U.S., will continue, until its strength, to prevent collective understandings that weaken its dominance, is exhausted. The multipolar world is itself the negation of any hegemonic domination.

So, while everyone was able to witness president Lula da Silva’s drift, demanding from Bolivarian Venezuela what he doesn’t demand of any other country with elections — that it demonstrate that its institutions work, not in accordance with its respective national law, but in accordance with the US Rules-Based Order — it is also true that this behavior startled everyone who, like me, longs and fights for a fairer world. The truth is that the Brazilian president’s slipping into the narrative sphere imposed by the U.S. and its “international” order raises many questions when it comes to BRICS.

Considering these facts, what is the status of Venezuela’s entry into the BRICS? Does Lula da Silva’s Brazil now have the moral conditions to accept Venezuela’s entry into the BRICS? What will be left of its image if it accepts, without impositions or conditions? Will he return to the support of a sovereign Venezuela? What fractures will came from a negative Brazilian attitude towards the entry of Bolivarian Venezuela in the bloc (that’s the one we’re talking about, the other one would never enter)?

Wasn’t this Lula da Silva’s real coup? To create the political conditions to justify not accepting Venezuela’s entry into the BRICS? And who will benefit from this? What country, and what bloc, is interested in the world’s largest oil reserves not being integrated into a sphere of economic cooperation largely influenced by Russia and China? Certainly not Brazil.

Whether or not these questions have a material basis to support them, Lula da Silva’s position on the Venezuelan elections puts a deep dent in the future expansion of the BRICS in Latin America, since after Argentina, which declined, and Chile, whose president betrayed the trust of the Chilean people, Venezuela would be the next candidate. After all, once again, who will benefit from blocking the expansion of the BRICS in Latin and Central America?

Russia and China certainly won’t have liked this drift at all, and although they won’t say so, they won’t have failed to read it for what it is: an attempt to subject Venezuela to a political process that will bring it into the sphere of the U.S. “Rules-Based Order”. Placing that country in the limbo in which all the others find themselves, with the exception of Cuba and Nicaragua. They want to belong to the multipolar world, but they’re not allowed to; they could leave the rules-based order, but they don’t want to, or they don’t have the strength and courage to.

While these issues are among the serious contradictions to be faced by the bloc and which are unlikely to be answered at the conference scheduled for Kazan in October 2024, there is another process which, in my opinion, is much more pernicious and dangerous for the very existence of the bloc. A BRICS with its current characteristics and maintaining the capacity to unite political groups that are committed to the multilateralism. This is about the situation in India and the reasons behind Modi’s visit to Kiev, his embrace of Zelensky and the mistreatment suffered and swallowed by the president of the most populous country, at the hands of the former president of the country that has lost the most population in the world in such a short space of time. Some recent counts put Ukraine at 19 million inhabitants. In 1991 it had over 50 million!

Some Indian analysts have raised the possibility that President Modi visited Ukraine, among other things, because he needed to complete the modernization and maintenance of the Antonov fleet (40 An-32s in Ukraine and 65 in India), which has been underway since 2009. Apparently, according to the website The Print, the Russians are refusing to deliver parts so that Ukraine can complete the work on the five planes that are there. The other reason for the visit focused on cooperation in the naval industry, particularly in relation to ship engines used by India, whose Zorya-Mashproekt factory in Mykolaev was destroyed by Russian forces in 2022. According to the Indian Defense News website, Modi admitted Zelensky’s recriminations so that Bharat Forge would buy 51% of Zorya, thus guaranteeing the production of naval gas turbines. India is also taking part in the plundering of Ukraine. As it seems from the beginning, Modi was paying tribute in order to be allowed for India to take a share of Ukraine’s national wealth.

If you can see from this the caricature that result from the reasons why Modi went to Kiev to “kiss hands”, wanting to modernize his naval fleet in order to be able to stand up to his Chinese rival, there are other situations that not only put the interests of countries in the bloc in direct opposition (as in the case of India vs. China, in which India rushes militarily to catch up with China and serves as a destination for the relocations of companies that the U.S. wants to remove from PRC), but also, and above all, those that pit the interests of countries in the bloc against the direct interests of the enemies of multipolarity itself: the USA. On the other hand, the fact that India is installing Ukrainian turbines on Russian-made frigates (Project 11356 frigates to be delivered in the next two years) is absolutely significant in all this complexity.

India is currently a major exporter of light weapons, essentially. And who is its biggest buyer? The Unite States (France and Israel too). Much of this weaponry consists of ammunition, particularly 155mm ammunition, the ammunition most lacking in Ukraine. It’s good to see that Ukraine is now a destination for Indian ammunition, indirectly, if necessary, transiting from New Delhi to Washington and Paris and, there, replenishing stocks and freeing up others — or the same ones — to be thrown at its “strategic” Russian friend and partner. Do you want a bigger contradiction than that? India, directly and indirectly, buys military technology and supplies weapons that will be used by the army hired by NATO against Russia. India, now one of the world’s largest military exporters, has a direct interest in the Donbass war. A war waged by NATO against one important friend.

And if India’s “support” for Kiev, in itself, puts everything in very unethical and transparent terms, making hypocrisy and cynicism the main facilitators of bilateral and multilateral relations in the BRICS, what about the supply of Brahmos missiles, as also announced by The Print, to the Philippines? Brahmos missiles are supersonic cruise missiles (Mach 2.8) and were developed in a joint project with Russia. These missiles are also anti-ship and will be used by the Philippines against… China! But it doesn’t stop there: the Philippines is on its way to becoming the “Ukraine” of the South China Sea, used by the U.S. as a monumental naval base for its “containment” project against the Asian giant. Finally, the U.S. now has privileged access to one of Russia’s most advanced missile technologies. The new version of these missiles (the Brahmos II) is hypersonic and has evolved from the first version.

Now, when the contradictions are political, everyone has taken note; when they become economic, many have dismissed them; but now, the contradictions are becoming military and in the midst of a desperate arms race, from which not even Brazil escapes. We are all aware of the greed for Brazilian public arms companies felt by the countries of the Rules-Based Order. Brazil contributing to the bombing of Russia would not only be a betrayal, it would clarify the situation.

If we can’t find a solution to all these contradictions in the institutional and regulatory sphere, there will come a time when some clarity will emerge from this confusion. Some kind of synthesis will emerge from the thesis and the antithesis. For the time being, it is my opinion that Russia is the biggest stakeholder (at least momentarily) in the success of the BRICS. The second major stakeholder is China. The BRICS are a vaccine (like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization) against attempts to isolate these two countries from other countries with international clout. India and Brazil have a lot of interest in the BRICS, but this is diffusely considered in these countries and reconciled — almost never prioritized — with interests related to belonging to the Rules-Based Order (cases of the G20), in some extent, at least. South Africa is in a similar limbo, but with even less choice.

[…]

Via https://libya360.wordpress.com/2024/09/01/how-lula-and-modi-drove-a-splinter-through-the-heart-of-the-brics-bloc/

Muhammad Yunus awarded Nobel Peace Prize and given Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama despite screwing over poor [Source: nbcnews.com]

By Jeremy Kuzmarov

On August 8, Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank and a pioneer in the issuance of micro-finance credit loans, was sworn in as Bangladesh’s Prime Minister after protests forced the resignation of Sheikh Hasina, who had ruled the country for 20 of the last 30 years.

Yunus was the choice of student protest leaders who coordinated demonstrations that forced Hasina from power.

The demonstrations started over an unfair job allotment system and escalated after Hasina disparaged the protesters and deployed repressive police against them.

Many in Bangladesh had been weary over rising inflation and unemployment and tired of Hasina’s growing autocratic methods.

The violent side of the protests was evident in the throwing of Molotov cocktails at police, an attack on the only metro rail system in the capital Dhaka, and torching of the home of Shekikh Majibur Rahman, the country’s founding leader and Ms. Hasina’s father.^[1]

The Pakistani-backed Jamaat-e-Islami Party, which was allied with the opposition Bangladeshi Nationalist Party (BNP), played a significant role in the protests and now has a presence in the new interim government.^[2]

The U.S. government, predictably, was there to exploit the unrest and supported the protesters.

Hasina was a close ally of China who resisted U.S. efforts to establish a military base on Saint Martin, a strategic island off the coast of Bangladesh, and to allow use of Bangladeshi ports by the U.S. military in an attempt to counteract China’s use of ports in neighboring Myanmar.^[3]

She had delayed signing two military agreements the Biden administration had pushed hard since 2022, which would bind Bangladesh to closer military-to-military cooperation with Washington.^[4]

M. K. Bhadrakumar wrote in the Deccan Herald that “Hasina’s stubborn refusal to join [the] Quad [anti-China alliance including India, Japan, U.S. and Australia] was probably the clincher [in her removal]. With the failure of the colour revolution in Thailand, the stalemate in the insurrection in Myanmar, and Chinese consolidation in Sri Lanka and the Maldives—Bangladesh’s importance to the Western strategy in the region is second to none.”

Ignoring the geostrategic implications, U.S. media outlets idealized the Bangladesh protests (CNN called them the “Gen Z protests”) and celebrated Yunus’s appointment, noting his reputation as a “banker for the poor.”

One progressive media outlet claimed that Yunus “won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for pioneering a microloans program that helped hundreds of thousands of impoverished Bangladeshi, mainly women.”

This assessment is contradicted by a 2019 documentary produced by Tom Heinemann entitled The Micro Debt.

It shows how Yunus’s Grameen Bank—which Yunus established in the 1970s and now provides loans to some 9.5 million people—thrust many impoverished people into debt by charging high interest rates on their loans, and demanded almost immediate repayment.

According to economists interviewed in the film, the standard interest rate demanded by Grameen Bank is 30-40% when commercial banks typically charge 12 or 13% interest.

Because the repayments are due almost immediately and Grameen Bank does not allow for renegotiation, loan recipients often have to seek out private money lenders to take out more loans in order to make their repayments. These lenders charge even higher interest rates and plunge people into further insoluble debt.

Heinemann shows that, if people do not make their repayments, they are threatened by Grameen Bank representatives or others in their village who received the loan with them.

Many people have had to sell their homes and remaining valuables to avoid being thrust into debt. Some women were forced into prostitution and people committed suicide because of the stress and humiliation that they endured.

According to economists interviewed by Heinemann, a large number of loan recipients have been left destitute. Poverty rates have not declined, only risen, while Yunus himself became wealthy and politically prominent.

Yunus is the favored son of the global financial elite because micro-finance loans offer a perceived solution to poverty without redistributing wealth.

Yunus’s hypocrisy was made clear when he transferred $100 million from Grameen Bank to a subsidiary in an attempt to evade taxes. When the scheme was exposed, Yunus transferred $30 million back to Grameen Bank, though it is unclear what happened to the other $70 million.^[5]

Heinemann started his film by spotlighting a visit by First Lady Hillary Clinton in the late 1990s to a Bangladeshi village called Jobra, which was intended as a showcase for micro-finance loans.

The village became known as “Hillary’s model village.” Yunus later became a donor to the Clinton Foundation, with the Grameen Bank receiving loans and grants totaling $2.2 million from USAID during Hillary’s tenure as Secretary of State.^[6]

When Heinemann interviewed villagers in Jobra years after Hillary’s visit, they said that most of the people whom Hillary had met did not live in the village but were brought from somewhere else for the cameras.

While a couple of people were able to buy homes with the loans, most of the villagers lived in poverty. One woman had to survive without a proper roof on her house because she had to sell part of her roof to pay back the loan shark, while another man who made bamboo tools started crying when recounting the stress he felt because of the onerous debt he had come to take on.

What Role Did Donald Lu Play in Regime Change?

On August 11, The Economic Times published an article featuring an interview with the exiled Sheikh Hasina who said that she could have remained in power if she “had surrendered the sovereignty of Saint Martin Island and allowed America to hold sway over the Bay of Bengal.”

The same article accused Donald Lu, the Assistant U.S. Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, of being “the hatchet man” of “Bangladesh’s color revolution.”

Lu visited Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital, in May and issued statements condemning Hasina’s government and vowing U.S. support for democracy and human rights. After his visit, the Biden administration announced sanctions on army chief General Aziz Ahmed for what Washington termed his involvement in “significant corruption.”

Sheikh Hasina on her part summoned the leaders of the 14 parties of her alliance and told them that a “country of white-skinned people” was trying to bring her down.

Lu had previously served as a special assistant to U.S. Ambassador to India Frank Wisner, Jr., whose father was a famous CIA agent. He replaced Robin Raphel, a CIA expert on Pakistani affairs who helped in the arming of the anti-Soviet Afghan mujahadin in the 1980s.

After his assignment in India, Lu went on to Kyrgyzstan (2003-2006) where he supported the 2005 “Tulip revolution,” which resulted in the downfall of President Askar Akayev, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

According to M.K. Bhadrakumar, Lu specializes in “fueling and masterminding color revolutions, which led to regime changes in Albania, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan and Pakistan.”

In the latter case, Lu told the Pakistani ambassador to the U.S., Asad Majeed Khan, that Imran Khan—considered too independent and close to China—had to be removed as prime minister in a parliamentary vote of no confidence, otherwise there would be consequences for Pakistan.

Khan’s replacement, former Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, was a right-wing businessman from a corrupt, oligarchic family who promised a “paradise for investors” and reversed Khan’s opposition to the war in Ukraine. With Khan gone, the Biden administration was also able to broker a bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) after Pakistan came to an agreement to purchase arms for use by the Ukrainian military in its war with Russia.

What Role NED?

Laura Ruggeri, a Hong Kong-based specialist in hybrid warfare, wrote on her substack that “USAID, NED [National Endowment for Democracy] and other U.S. organizations like Soros’ Open Society have invested heavily in ‘democracy promotion’ [in Bangladesh], funded NGOs and education institutions, groomed community leaders, [and] trained activists and students” who participated in the uprising that led to Hasina’s ouster.

Much of the funding went to civil society pro-democracy groups to help them build opposition to the Hasina regime by spotlighting its human rights abuses and alleged corruption and by mobilizing opposition to the government, including through social media.

Netra News, a Swedish-based news agency financed by the NED, supports the Bangladeshi Nationalist Party (BNP) and served as a cheerleader for the protest movement and Yunus’s ascension to power while calling for Hasina’s resignation.

One of Netra News’s articles condemned Western inaction in the face of what it considered popular revolutionary mobilization to be “shameful.”

Another article offered a tribute to departing U.S. Ambassador Peter Haas, a staunch critic of Hasina’s party, the Awami League, who pressed for sanctions against Bangladeshi officials.

Before the protests broke out, Netra News had published articles accusing Cabinet-level officials of corruption while whipping up hysteria against the Hasina government in an attempt to advance the goal of regime change.

Predictably, it was silent about the corruption of prominent BNP figures, including Tarique Rahman, the son of party leader Khaleda Zia, about whom a 2009 State Department cable stated had a “reputation as a corrupt thug” and who has been investigated by the FBI.^[7]

When the BNP was in power, it was dogged by “corruption, kleptocracy, the introduction of a culture of extrajudicial killing and the spread of pervasive torture,” according to a Bangladeshi blogger who prefers to remain anonymous.

The blogger wrote that “there is no reason to regard BNP as the real democratic alternative, which is exactly what NED funded groups are promoting.”^[8]

[…]

Via https://covertactionmagazine.com/2024/08/27/protests-color-revolution-in-bangladesh-brings-to-power-tax-evading-banker-who-plunged-poor-people-into-debt-through-micro-finance-loan-scheme/

Imagine you are a head of state facing a domestic crisis. You bypass vote in the parliament to force unpopular measures through questionable methods (amid major protests), then use excessive violence against the demonstrations. Next, you call snap elections to neutralize radical political dissidents, and lose it. Then, you use a major international sports event to gain more time and just ignore the election results by refusing to name a Prime Minister from the winning coalition.

What are you, then? Some would certainly use the word “dictator” even. It would be hard indeed to describe such a peculiar state of affairs as anything other than a kind of a coup d’état, right? In this case, the international community would certainly denounce the authoritarian head of state and pressure him or her into complying with election results, right? Well, not necessarily so if you are Emmanuel Macron. A quick look at the events may offer a glimpse of the depth of the trouble the French are in.

First, Macron dissolved the Assemblée Nationale and decided to call new legislative elections, on June 30 (and on July 7, for the second round). This was a response to the fact that the right-wing populist party Rassemblement National’s (RN) won the European elections, which in itself was a defeat for the President. RN, formerly known as Front national (until 2018) is the party of  Marine Le Pen, who, bear in mind, vowed to pull France out of NATO’s military command in 2022, when she was a (defeated) presidential candidate. Macron won the election back then, but Le Pen was promising this while heading to the second round and certainly raised many eyebrows among Paris’ political Establishment.

As I wrote before, describing the RN party or European populist parties in general as pure and simple “fascism” is not accurate. The French President’s measure in June was in any case a daring move to crush a political group which is seen as a threat. Senator François Patriat, who is an ally of Macron, at the time said: “The president’s back in control. Now he’s taking action. It’s the end of Marine Le Pen.” Many criticized the decision and feared it could backfire and result in France having a “far-right” Prime Minister. This did not happen. But the result was certainly not what Macron was hoping for.

The snap elections, as mentioned, were described as a risky political gamble. Macron lost it. Even though the result was a “hung parliament”, the New Popular Front or Nouveau Front populaire (NFP) did win the larger number of parliamentary seats, which was a humiliating political defeat for the President. Macron himself, however, begs to differ: “no one won”, he has stated. According to him, “The blocs or coalitions that emerged from these elections all represent a minority.” The NFP disputes this: “The New Popular Front is without contest the first force in the new National Assembly”

The new coalition’s programme promises, among other things, to fight the cost-of-living crisis with a price cap, to raise the minimum wage, and to lower the retirement age besides bringing back the wealth tax Macron had abolished.

Keep in mind that last year Macron resorted to quite unorthodox methods to sign his controversial pension reform bill into law, prompting demonstrations nationwide. The government responded with a massive crackdown on demonstrators and journalists, which was denounced by the Council of Europe and by  Reporters Without Borders and France’s Human Rights League, among others. The political maneuver to go ahead with the pension reform was described as an intricate constitutional coup, which consisted in forcing the bill (which increased the retirement age) through the Parliament with no vote in the lower house.

France has been under a caretaker administration since the aforementioned July general election, which arguably failed to produce a working majority in the country’s national assembly. This has been a deadlock. And there seems to be no way out of it. On August 26 a Elysée press release said that the President would not name the NFP candidate because: “Institutional stability dictates that this option should not be retained.” The reasoning is that by appointing a Prime Minister that the President supposedly “knows” would “fall”, the head of state would then be “in breach of the Constitution, which requires him to ensure the stability and independence of the country.” The intricacies of the French semi-presidentialist system part, one can clearly see a pattern here.

Macron, if one remembers, called the Paris Olympics a “truce” and used the international event to gain time, but could now be running out of excuses. On Saturday, Jean-Luc Mélenchon (leader of far-left party La France Insoumise – LFI) announced LFI members shall not join any NFP government – a scenario including the LFI was supposedly keeping the President from naming Lucie Castets  (the NFP candidate) for Prime Minister.  Macron’s outgoing Prime Minister has responded by saying that the “unilateral application” of the NFP’s policy platform “would lead to an unprecedented fiscal bludgeoning,” and even to “the economic collapse of our country.” The Elysée is just not having it. The truth is that there seems to be no way Macron is accepting a left-wing government. Meanwhile, the political crisis goes on.

One is left then with the puzzling fact that such a peculiar situation taking place in a G7 country is not getting that much press coverage – or that much criticism for that matter. Comparing it with the ongoing political crisis in Venezuela is enough to make the case that the French affair is indeed being underreported. The double standard in any case goes beyond journalism: Western political leaders coming from all across the political spectrum have denounced Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro over the recent presidential election controversy and many are urging the Venezuelan government to come forward with more transparency about the results and so on. No major Western political leaders thus far have pressured the French head of state into honoring the election’s results by naming a Prime Minister from the winning left-wing coalition. It goes without saying that if Macron were a Global South leader pursuing energy projects in his country or if he were a “pro-China” or “pro-Russian” European head of state, then things would be quite different.

Be it as it may, things are expected to get harder for the French President. The left-wing is now threatening Macron with impeachment procedures no one believes will succeed, but, more importantly, the country faces a political and economic crisis and demonstrations are expected to spread and to become increasingly violent, as is the case in other European countries today. As I wrote, Macron has been pursuing bold foreign policy shifts, but it seems domestic issues may get on the way.

[…]

Via https://www.globalresearch.ca/coup-detat-france-macron-refusing-honor-election-results/5866586