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Iran: Dark Clouds, Future Uncertain

In Middle East & North Africa, Human Rights, Current Events, Solidarity, Democracy, Conflict Resolution, The Search for Peace, Being a World Citizen, United States, Nonviolence, Peacebuilding on January 8, 2026 at 7:30 AM

By René Wadlow

Since the “12-day war” of Israel and the USA last June, Iran has been a powder keg with unresolved political tensions, deepening economic turmoil, and rising domestic dissent. With the start of 2026, the keg has exploded. Protests have started in some 32 cities and larger towns throughout the country.

The protests were first focused on economic issues symbolized by the sharp collapse of the rial, the national money, and the inflation exceeding 40 percent. These dynamics have turned the bazaaris – the merchants – traditionally a more conservative social group, into key participants in the protests. Economic hardship has become a daily experience for a wide segment of the population.

Although the protests began with economic demands, reports from across the country indicate that slogans have increasingly shifted toward explicitly political and antigovernmental messages, including chants directed at the Iranian leadership and the political system as a whole. Universities have once again emerged as key protest centers with action by both students and professors.

(C) Time Magazine

The government led by President Masoud Pezeshkian has promised economic reforms, but there is no protest leadership with which to negotiate. The security forces have increased repression with a large number of people arrested. A number of persons have been killed. Funerals for the protesters killed have become occasions for additional protests. The repression has led the United States (U.S.) President, Donald Trump, to say, “If Iran violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue. We are locked and loaded and ready to go.”

The U.S. threats in the Iran situation are very unhelpful. It is time to unlock and unload. Rather, the Association of World Citizens calls on the Iranian authorities to cease immediately the use of force against peaceful protesters and to release those arbitrarily detained. This will create space for genuine dialogue and the needed reforms for economic justice.

Prof. René Wadlow is President of the Association of World Citizens.

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BOOK REVIEW: Jean Ziegler, “Destruction Massive: Géopolitique de la faim”

In Being a World Citizen, Book Review, Human Development, Human Rights, Latin America, Social Rights, Solidarity, Sustainable Development, The Search for Peace, United Nations on January 8, 2026 at 7:30 AM

By René Wadlow

Jean Ziegler, Destruction Massive: Géopolitique de la faim.

Paris: Editions du Seuil, 2011, 343pp.

Translated into English and published as

Jean Ziegler, Betting on Famine: Why the World Still Goes Hungry

New York: The New Press, 2013

The First Millennium Goals set in 2000 were to half poverty and hunger by 2015.

Hunger and malnutrition are major causes of deprivation and suffering. As there has been no rapid progress in reducing hunger, other goals, such as reduced child mortality and improved maternal health, have not been met either. Many years of empirical evidence point to the negative impact of hunger and malnutrition on health, education, and labor productivity.

The impact of hunger has been known for some time. Jean Ziegler pays tribute to the research and action of a mutual friend, Josue de Castro, Brazilian nutritionist and World Citizen.

De Castro had pointed out in the late 1930s that hunger in Brazil was not a fatality of nature but the result of unjust human structures. Thus, things could change with enlightened action by farmers with the help of enlightened governments. He helped to organize peasant leagues and was elected to the parliament of Brazil. He undertook visits and studies in other Latin American countries. These studies convinced him of the socio-economic causes of hunger and of their wide geopolitical impact. The Geopolitics of Hunger is de Castro’s most widely read book and serves as the subtitle of Jean Ziegler’s book as hunger remains a geopolitical issue, not simply a question of locally improved agricultural techniques.

De Castro had been the independent president of the Executive Council of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations (UN) from 1952 to 1955, at which time the governments decided to abolish the post of independent president. The Executive Council has been chaired by national diplomats since. While at the FAO, de Castro was invited to look at agriculture in a good number of countries. He had created in 1957 a Nongovernmental Organization, World Campaign against Hunger (Association mondiale de lutte contre la faim), ASCOFAM from its title in French. He drew on persons active in the world citizen movement such as l’Abbé Pierre, René Dumont and Max Habicht.

When I arrived in Geneva to teach at the Graduate Institute of Development Studies in September 1963, de Castro was the Ambassador of Brazil to the UN in Geneva, and I went to see him shortly afterwards to discuss development issues. Then in April 1964, the military led by General Castelo Bianco took power in Brazil. Their right-wing and brutal dictatorship lasted from 1964 to 1985. De Castro was quickly replaced as Ambassador and moved to Paris to teach and work with NGOs on hunger and agricultural issues. I saw him a number of times in Paris. He died in Paris in September 1973, aged only 65, but he left a heritage of study and action on the power dynamics of hunger and agricultural policies. Jean Ziegler, a sociologist of African societies and for a good number of years a Socialist member of the Swiss parliament, was from 2000 to 2008 the UN Commission on Human Rights’ Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. Much of the research for the book was carried out with his UN team but is presented in a fiery style not found in UN reports.

Increased action to improve rural life needs to be taken quickly. As the recent UN-sponsored Millennium Ecosystem Assessment states, “Human activity is putting such strain on the natural functions of Earth that the ability of the planet’s ecosystem to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted. It is becoming ever more apparent that human society has a rapidly shrinking window of opportunity to alter its path.”

However, as Ziegler points out, it is not general human activity that is causing a strain, but the human activities of the powerful, the pred$atory sharks and financial speculators. He stresses the dangers of the increasing use of ethanol and other biofuels, often without consideration of the impact of the production of biofuels on land use and food production.

Their use should be limited at present so that the consequences of their use can be studied and biofuels developed from non-food sources. Ziegler also stresses that there needs to be a detailed analysis and then action on the role of speculation in the rise of commodity prices.

Banks and hedge funds, having lost money in real estate mortgage packages, are now investing massively in commodities. For the moment, there is little governmental regulation of this speculation. There needs to be an analysis of these financial flows and their techniques of operation − the wide use of offshore banks and holdings − and their impact on the price of grains and other foods.

Ziegler also stresses relatively new dangers to a just world food system. In many developing countries, the urban elite have been buying farmland as an investment, not necessarily to increase agricultural production with improved techniques, but to resell later when prices go up. Ziegler also stresses the sale or long-term rent of agricultural lands, especially in Africa, to governments or State-related companies of the Arab Gulf States and China. Again, the land is often not used for current agricultural improvement but is held for future use or sale. Thus, rather than seeing land reform, we are seeing dangerous trends of an increasing number of landless agricultural workers.

Jean Ziegler highlights the need for cooperation among the UN system of agencies, national governments, non-governmental organizations, and the millions of food producers.

There is a need for swift, short-term measures to help people now suffering from lack of food and malnutrition due to high food prices, the systems of food distribution, and situations of violence. However, it is the longer-range and structural issues on which we must focus our attention. The world requires a holistic World Food Policy and a clear Plan of Action. A knowledge of the geopolitics of hunger is a necessary first step.

Prof. René Wadlow is President of the Association of World Citizens.

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BOOK REVIEW: Jean Hardy, “A Psychology with a Soul”

In Asia, Book Review, Nonviolence, Peacebuilding, Solidarity, The Search for Peace on January 7, 2026 at 8:00 AM

By René Wadlow

Jean Hardy, A Psychology with a Soul.

London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987, 245pp.

This is a book on the psychosynthesis system of psychotherapy developed by Roberto Assagioli.

Roberto Assagioli (1888-1974) set out a path to the Higher Self with the power of the will. Roberto Assagioli was a close coworker of both Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung. In 1910, he broke from the Freudian approach and began to develop his own psycho-spiritual model which he called psychosynthesis. He was closer in approach to Jung, but as the first translator of Freud’s writings into Italian, he is often cited as the introducer of Freudian thought into Italy.

Roberto Assagioli was an Italian psychiatrist and humanist.

A short presentation of Assagioli’s view is that “I am what I will to be”. In a sense, the individual does not have a will: rather he is a will, a directing energy, that has taken human form as an individual. The individual will-force is in some way identical to the universal will-force. Assagioli who had studied Asian thought highlighted the Chinese sage becoming one with the universal energy – the Tao.

As the individual will starts on its path toward the Higher Self, it must drop off images of its earlier self formed by experiences, memories, feelings and images of the past. Some of these self-images and experiences have been repressed and stored in the subconscious. Thus, in many cases, there is a first task of self-discovery of past experiences and emotions stored in the subconscious. Only when this is done can one deal with the current self-images and emotions which make up the current personality.

The process of dropping off current self-images Assagioli calls “disidentification”. Disidentification is needed so that a new identity emerges, one that is capable of accepting and integrating in a harmonious synthesis all the earlier emotions, thoughts, and experiences. This is why Assagioli called his approach “psychosynthesis”. It is this fresh, new personality, which Assagioli termed the “I” that can set out on the road to develop the Higher Self. This inner journey is not always easy. There is a progressive examination of the contents of the field of consciousness and the functions of the psyche. This involves a progressive movement through the preconscious, the subconscious and culminating with the higher conscious. Assagioli writes, “Spiritual development is a long and arduous journey, an adventure through strange lands full of surprises, difficulties and even dangers. It involves a drastic transmutation of the ‘normal’ elements of the personality, an awakening of potentialities hitherto dormant, a raising of consciousness to new realms, and a functioning along a new inner dimension”.

Along the way to the Higher Self, the will can be strengthened by what Assagioli calls “transpersonal experiences” and what Abraham Maslow calls “Peak Experiences”. Such experiences help to stimulate the drive toward the Higher Self. However, some of these transpersonal experiences can be short-lived and ephemeral unless they are grounded through meditation and techniques of visualization of oneself as already functioning as the Higher Self.

These techniques of creating an identity as being the Higher Self are one of the outstanding features of psychosynthesis. However, after 1936, his work became increasingly difficult both because of the growing antisemitism under Nazi German pressure on Italy and because his humanitarian activities aroused hostility from the Italian Fascist government. In 1940 he was arrested and kept in solitary confinement for a month and then kept under strict police surveillance. In 1943, he was again actively persecuted and forced to hide in remote mountain villages. He narrowly escaped twice from the Nazi soldiers who had destroyed his family’s home with dynamite.

After 1945, he increased his contacts with a wide group of spiritual thinkers from different traditions. However, his aim remained finding approaches to wholeness, realizing the full human potential, transcending contradictions and achieving enlightenment.

Prof. René Wadlow is President of the Association of World Citizens.

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