World
Citing India, China backing Obama blasts opponents of Iran deal
Washington: Citing backing of nations like India and China that helped bring Iran to the negotiating table, President Barack Obama warned lawmakers they risked damaging American credibility if they vote to kill the Iran nuclear deal.
“Let’s not mince words: The choice we face is ultimately between diplomacy and some sort of war – maybe not tomorrow, maybe not three months from now, but soon,” Obama said in a speech at American University Wednesday.
“How can we in good conscience justify war before we’ve tested a diplomatic agreement that achieves our objectives?” he asked.
Obama asserted that it was “our very willingness to negotiate that helped America rally the world to our cause, and secured international participation in an unprecedented framework of commercial and financial sanctions.”
“Keep in mind unilateral US sanctions against Iran had been in place for decades, but had failed to pressure Iran to the negotiating table.”
“What made our new approach more effective was our ability to draw upon new UN Security Council resolutions, combining strong enforcement with voluntary agreements from nations like China and India, Japan and South Korea to reduce their purchases of Iranian oil, as well as the imposition by our European allies of a total oil embargo,” he said.
“Winning this global buy-in was not easy-I know. I was there,” Obama said noting, “In some cases, our partners lost billions of dollars in trade because of their decision to cooperate.”
“But we were able to convince them that absent a diplomatic resolution, the result could be war, with major disruptions to the global economy, and even greater instability in the Middle East,” he said.
“In other words, it was diplomacy-hard, painstaking diplomacy-not sabre-rattling, not tough talk that ratcheted up the pressure on Iran.”
Using two points in history to underscore his argument-John F. Kennedy’s push for diplomacy with the Soviet Union and the vote to invade Iraq in 2002 — Obama warned that US global standing was at stake.
“If Congress kills this deal, we will lose more than just constraints on Iran’s nuclear programme or the sanctions we have painstakingly built,” Obama said.
“We will have lost something more precious: America’s credibility as a leader of diplomacy. America’s credibility as the anchor of the international
system.”
The decision facing lawmakers next month as they review the Iran deal is the most significant since Congress voted to invade Iraq more than a decade ago, Obama said.
Shanghai’s rich middle class is leading a wave of online dissent over the strict and prolonged lockdowns imposed in various parts of the country. Chinese internet censorship is struggling as patience is wearing thin in many urban centers, coming up with creative forms of online protests.
Social Media Posts Revealing Lockdown Tension in Shanghai
Drawn-out lockdowns are nothing new in China as authorities insist with the nation’s zero-Covid policy since the start of the pandemic. Currently over This time around, however, metropolitan areas like Shanghai are increasingly difficult to keep quiet, given that its more than 25 million residents have seen weeks of total isolation along with food shortages and many other service interruptions.
Dozens of towns and reportedly over 300 million Chinese citizens have been affected by lockdowns of different severity. As expected, urban netizens have been most outspoken over their difficulties by finding creative ways to get around state censorship and bans placed on topics, news comments and spontaneous campaigns.
Shanghai residents have been using mobile proxies and hijacking seemingly unrelated hashtags to talk about healthcare issues, delivery failures and the overall severity of their situation. The “positive energy” that the Chinese government wants to transmit during the recent prolonged series of lockdowns does not come naturally to those counting food supplies and online censors are working hard to filter words, trending topics and undesired social media sharing.
WeChat groups and message threads are under constant monitoring. Posts questioning the zero-Covid approach have been quickly deleted, including by leading Chinese health experts like Dr. Zhong Nanshan. Video footage is soon censored and protests and investigations are quickly made to disappear.
Where this has not worked, officials have exposed banners with warnings and outright threats like “watch your own mouth or face punishment”, while drones have been patrolling the city skies. Yet, if anything, this has led to further tensions and unspoken confrontation with Shanghai’s educated and affluent middle class.
Creative Online Solutions Harnessing Civic Energy
Announcements by Chinese social media that they would be publishing the IP addresses of users who “spread rumors” have not helped either. Tech industry research has shown that much of Asia’s tech-savvy population has a habit of using mobile proxies and other privacy tools, quickly finding workarounds to browse the internet freely and talk to the world about the hottest topics.
The sheer volume of forbidden posts is already a challenge for the very censorship system, experts explain. Unable to track all trending hashtags, state workers overlook topics that speak about the US, Ukraine or other popular news. Linking human rights elsewhere to their situation, Chinese online dissidents establish their informal channels and “hijack” the conversation to share personal or publicly relevant information about the Covid suppression in their town.
Sarcastic and satirical posts still dominate. Others hope to evade the censors by replacing words from famous poems or the national anthem. One thing is certain – social media, when harnessed with the right creativity, has proven its ability to mount pressure on the government in even some of the most strictly controlled tech environments like China.
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