Sudan has ordered Iran to close its cultural centres and given their managers 72 hours to leave the country, officials have said, as a diplomatic row threatens normally close relations.

"Sudanese authorities summoned the Iranian charge d'affaires in Khartoum and informed him of the decision to close the three cultural centres and to give the diplomats who ran them 72 hours to leave the country," the AFP news agency quoting an unnamed official said on Tuesday.

Sudanese media speculated that the expulsions were linked to government concerns that Iranian officials were promoting their Shia brand of Islam in the largely Sunni country, according to the Reuters news agency.

This essay makes the case that the ongoing political crisis in the Ukraine is one which has the potential to explode into a confrontation between the United States-led alliance of NATO states and the Russian Federation.

The implications of this are grave in the extreme as it would inevitably lead to the catastrophic exchange of nuclear weapons.

It makes clear that far from the Western mainstream press's narrative of Russian President Vladimir Putin being the belligerent party who is seeking to create a new Russian imperium, the crisis is actually the result of the application of two canons presently influencing the conduct of American foreign policy namely, that of the 'Wolfowitz Doctrine' and the 'Brzezinski Doctrine'; the former an amoral philosophy permitting the pursuance of American hegemony at almost any cost and the latter, an aggressive policy resolved to prevent the rise of any other nation as a competitor to American global domination.

It strives to place the crisis in the historical context of America's longstanding financial and military domination through the post-World War Two institutions created in the wake of the Bretton Woods agreement and the North Atlantic military alliance, in the process making the case that an expanded North Atlantic Treaty Organisation essentially functions as the enforcer of America's financial and corporate dominance.

It argues that NATO's expansion into eastern Europe is in breach of the agreement reached by American and Soviet leaders at the end of the Cold War and that although largely identified with the previous Republican administration of George W. Bush, neo-conservative influence on the policies of the United States are still strong and have not only led to destructive interventions during the Obama administration in both Libya and Syria, but threaten through American policy in Ukraine to push Europe and the world into an abyss.

Iran's President Hassan Rouhani says violence and extremism are threats to the entire world, urging close cooperation and dialog among countries to fight these threats.

"Countries should have more close cooperation [in fighting extremism] and if there is a disagreement, the best solution is negotiations," Rouhani said in a meeting with Lithuania's new Ambassador to Tehran Kestutis Kujmanas on Tuesday.

He criticized the use of military approaches against civilians and said, "Peace requires collective will and process."

Rouhani added that Iran is keen to expand relations with Lithuania in all fields and noted that the presence of Lithuanian businessmen in the Islamic Republic would prepare a very appropriate ground for enhanced trade and economic cooperation between the two countries.

Iran and Lithuania can also bolster political cooperation to find ways to resolve regional and international problems, Rouhani added.

The Iranian president pointed to growing insecurity in the region and noted that the ongoing developments in Ukraine and terrorism in Iraq and Syria are among issues of common concern.

The Case for an Independent Ukrainian War Crimes Tribunal on the 4 Month Anniversary of the Odessa Massacre

The situation in Ukraine today is heart breaking. Ordinary people, women, children, and pensioners, are on the receiving end of deadly rocket and artillery barrages daily, they are gunned down at checkpoints, summarily arrested and put under siege. Refugees have been streaming across the border into Russia with genuine fear of murder and mayhem by Ukrainian punitive brigades and National Guard units out for the blood of the "enemies of Ukrainian unity." Even if the situation was politically and militarily rectified today; the guilty parties must be held accountable for their crimes.


There are well documented crimes and ones yet to be discovered, with allegations flowing on both sides of the conflict that require an impartial and immediate investigation. As a member of the International Criminal Bar, the organization which represents lawyers who practice before the International Criminal Court (ICC), I called for an investigation of the Maidan sniper attacks and Odessa massacre by the ICC. For my efforts I received a form letter. There is no ICC investigation; witnesses are not being interviewed nor is evidence being preserved. The Russian government has collected some evidence; the same cannot be said of Ukraine. But in either case, the partiality of the party will be questioned.


The ICC is supposedly tasked with investigation and prosecution of war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity, I naively assumed the ICC would seize the initiative or at least warn the combatants that war crimes would be prosecuted. What has happened instead is legal maneuvering by Ukraine and the ICC to avoid opening any investigation at all while the crimes are still fresh and ongoing.

This article appeared in the Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung on December 5, 2011.

Book V of Aristotle's Politics describes the eternal transition of oligarchies making themselves into hereditary aristocracies - which end up being overthrown by tyrants or develop internal rivalries as some families decide to "take the multitude into their camp" and usher in democracy, within which an oligarchy emerges once again, followed by aristocracy, democracy, and so on throughout history.

Debt has been the main dynamic driving these shifts - always with new twists and turns. It polarizes wealth to create a creditor class, whose oligarchic rule is ended as new leaders ("tyrants" to Aristotle) win popular support by cancelling the debts and redistributing property or taking its usufruct for the state.

Since the Renaissance, however, bankers have shifted their political support to democracies. This did not reflect egalitarian or liberal political convictions as such, but rather a desire for better security for their loans. As James Steuart explained in 1767, royal borrowings remained private affairs rather than truly public debts. For a sovereign's debts to become binding upon the entire nation, elected representatives had to enact the taxes to pay their interest charges.

By giving taxpayers this voice in government, the Dutch and British democracies provided creditors with much safer claims for payment than did kings and princes whose debts died with them. But the recent debt protests from Iceland to Greece and Spain suggest that creditors are shifting their support away from democracies. They are demanding fiscal austerity and even privatization sell-offs.

This is turning international finance into a new mode of warfare. Its objective is the same as military conquest in times past: to appropriate land and mineral resources, also communal infrastructure and extract tribute. In response, democracies are demanding referendums over whether to pay creditors by selling off the public domain and raising taxes to impose unemployment, falling wages and economic depression. The alternative is to write down debts or even annul them, and to re-assert regulatory control over the financial sector.

The calls presented in the plan of peaceful settlement of the situation in Ukraine by Russian President Vladimir Putin should be heeded in Kiev, Luhansk and Donetsk.

Russia's Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov has stated this at a meeting with OSCE Parliamentary Assembly Chairman Ilkka Kanerva on Thursday.

"We do not give up. President Vladimir Putin personally makes great efforts in direct contacts with President Poroshenko to find such ways of cooperation that will allow immediately put an end to bloodshed, remove the threat for the civilian population, ensure solution to humanitarian problems, problems of reconstruction of the destroyed infrastructure, and, of course, ensure the beginning of the negotiating political process," the Russian minister said.


After such contacts, the Russian president formulated the seven-point initiative that is aimed at helping Kiev's authorities and the militia of the southeast agree on and take steps in coordination to deescalate the situation, Lavrov said.

"We hope the calls will be heeded first and foremost in Kiev, Luhansk and Donetsk," the minister said. "We will be ready together with OSCE within the framework of the contact group to help the conflicting parties to move along the path of stabilization of the situation in practice."

The presence of Russian troops in Ukraine is beyond doubt, President Barack Obama said in Tallinn Concert Hall Nordea.

"Russian troops on the territory of Ukraine are not a humanitarian or peacekeeping mission," he said. According to him, "these are the facts that can be proved," and "they cannot be questioned."

A representative of the American Foreign Ministry Jen Psaki said that the United States Department of State had no independent evidence that the Russian troops crossed the border of Ukraine.

While the western mainstream media hurls abuse at Russia and its government, blaming it for the crisis in Eastern Ukraine there is little mention of the role of USA and its NATO puppets in the continuing tragedy.

The USA, Canada and EU are happy to impose sanctions on Russia and provide military assistance, loans and intelligence to a Ukrainian government that was not elected (established by the violent coup aided by the CIA). However these countries are not willing to allow Russia to assist the Eastern-Ukrainians in any way - even with humanitarian aid.


What is worse again is that while they condemn the Russians for not making the separatists lie down and accept an unelected and prejudiced government they also turn a blind eye to the constant bombing of unarmed civilians. Meanwhile, in Gaza the same thing is happening to the Palestinian people - they are being bombed consistently and it is again mostly unarmed civilians who are being injured or killed.

Observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) have registered no troops, ammunition or weapons crossing the Russian-Ukrainian border over the past two weeks, the OSCE report said on Wednesday.

"Throughout the week, the Observer Teams noticed a net increase of young people (both men and women) wearing military-style dress crossing the border in both directions but did not observe any weapons among these groups," the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission's report covering a period from August 20 to September 3 said.

The observers said they had regular interactions with supporters of the self-proclaimed republics. "Some discussed openly with the OSCE while others expressed their total mistrust toward the OSCE. At both Border Crossing Points, some supporters of the self-proclaimed republics explained that they are not allowed to cross the border with weapons," the report said.

The observers registered a decrease in helicopter sightings compared to last week but they were still observed at border crossing points flying at low altitude along the border.

"In either case, in as far as could be seen, the aircraft did not violate the Ukrainian airspace," the report said.

Vladimir Putin says a ceasefire deal between Ukraine and pro-Russian rebels could be reached by Friday. The Russian President's announcement comes after conflicting reports that a permanent ceasefire agreement had been reached by the two sides this morning.

Following witness reports of loud artillery explosions near the Ukrainian city of Donetsk, the country's President Petro Poroshenko modified his statement to remove the word "permanent". It is unclear whether his actions were in response to reports of the explosion.


Reporting from Mariupol, Ukraine, Sky's Moscow Correspondent Katie Stallard said: "It's extremely unclear at this stage what exactly this ceasefire is supposed to be. No one we have spoken to on the ground seems to know about it.

"The Ukrainian president issued a statement this morning claiming he agreed with Vladimir Putin to a permanent ceasefire in the region. He has since slightly modified that statement and removed the word 'permanent'. A spokesman for President Putin said no such agreement has been reached, nor can it, because Russia is not a party to the conflict."

Mr Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov was earlier quoted as saying the leaders' views "overlap to a considerable degree".

"The heads of state exchanged opinions about what needs to be done first in order to bring an end to the bloodletting in the southeast of the country as soon as possible," said Mr Peskov.