Archive 1986 – 2017

Photos © TFF 2000 Read PressInfo 90 “Lift the Sanctions and Bring More Aid to Yugoslavia” See Pictures from Belgrade © TFF 2000 Please reprint, copy, archive, quote or re-post this item, but please retain the source.

LONDON – So far so good, at least on the wider level. While internally Iraq seems on the edge of chaos, the much heralded clash of civilizations between the Muslim and Judaeo-Christian worlds has yet to become apparent. We have anger and despair aplenty in the Arab and Muslim worlds. But very little rushing to the standard and there was no great pilgrimage of warriors to join the fight, as happened when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan twenty years ago, and then, having driven the Red Army out, were left to ferment in that mountainous redoubt. With the armaments supplied by the CIA the mujahidin were transformed into Al Qaeda that became, for a relatively brief moment as these things go, ‘the greatest threat to the homeland that America has ever known.’ Nevertheless a ‘Cold War’ between much of the Muslim world and the West is certainly in full swing. Winston...

The Challenge of Nuclear Weaponsin the Twenty-first CenturyA Path Forward The peoples and governments of the world face an urgent challenge relating to weaponry of mass destruction and particularly to nuclear weaponry.  At the crossroads of technology, terrorism, geopolitical ambition, and policies of preemption are new and potent dangers for humanity. Despite ending the nuclear standoff of the Cold War era, nuclear weaponry is again menacing the peoples of the world with catastrophic possibilities.  We recognize the need for any government to pursue its security interests in accordance with international law; and further, we recognize that distinctive threats to these interests now exist as a result of an active international terrorist network having declared war on the United States and its allies. Nonetheless, we reject the assessment of the current US administration that upgrading a reliance on nuclear weapons is in any sense justified as a response. We find it...

By Karin Wegestal MP, the Social Democratic Partyon behalf of the Swedish Committee for Solidarity with the Yugoslav People During the last decade, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia has received more than 500,000 refugees from Croatia and Bosnia, and another 300,000 internally displaced persons, mainly from the province Kosovo and Metohia. For a country with about ten million inhabitants, such an influx of homeless people is obviously a very heavy burden – even under peaceful conditions. But in addition to that, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia has been the subject to sanctions from the western powers for close to ten years and its infrastructure was badly hurt through Nato’s intense bombardment during 78 days in 1999. The result of all this is that Yugoslavia, once the most developed industrial country in Eastern Europe, is today the poorest country in Europe. In Serbia excluding Kosovo, with about ten million inhabitants and...

Jonathan Power June 9, 2020 Shouldn’t we be Panglossian when it comes to the progress now being made to defeat the Coronavirus? Pangloss in his youth was unreasonably optimistic. He was in Voltaire’s novel “Candide” Candide’s mentor, and coined the phrase, “All this is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.” But how can one be Panglossian, you might say, when Russia still seems to be bogged down with the pandemic and Britain now has the developed world’s highest number of deaths per capita, and the US recently reached a total of 100,000 deaths? Partly because there are Panglossian islands, some very large like Germany, Vietnam and South Korea, which started early as soon as the warnings from China came in and chose to have less severe lockdowns or none at all. Germany has shown the way in Europe with its policy of intensive testing and tracing...

Prefatory Note: Below is a Letter to Members of Congress with an initial group of signatories; there are many more that have been gathered but not listed here. The letter was drafted by myself (Richard Falk) in collaboration with Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg. If you wish to add your signature, please send your name and affiliation to Vida Samiian, vidasamiian@gmail.com who helped compose the original text, and now with the logistics of the initiative. If you agree with the argument, please do join us by adding your name. The Letter was composed prior to the Iranian missile attacks on two American military bases in Iraq and before Trump made his formal statement the following day, January 8th.   Although his statement is being read in many ways, including the suggestion that Trump’s intention was to step back from the brink of a devastating war, I listened to Trump from...

By David Kline A year ago, Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi (sha-oh-me) had fallen from the world’s most valuable unicorn to a “unicorpse.” Sales plunged in 2016, pushing the company from first to fifth place among China’s smartphone makers. No firm had ever come back from a wound that severe in the trench warfare of the global smartphone business. Today, Xiaomi is being called a “Chinese phoenix.” The company has grown so fast in the past year that research firm Strategy Analytics says Xiaomi could overtake Oppo, Huawei, and Apple in the next year to become the world’s second-largest smartphone vendor, behind Samsung. Executives are reportedly considering an IPO in 2018, which could be among the highest-valued ever. Via wired.com The comeback has made Xiaomi a poster child for China’s entrepreneurial dynamism. More than 10,000 new businesses are started every day in China – that’s seven Chinese startups born each minute....

By David Swanson • The case against Iraqing Iran includes the following points: Threatening war is a violation of the U.N. Charter. Waging war is a violation of the U.N. Charter and of the Kellogg-Briand Pact. Waging war without Congress is a violation of the U.S. Constitution. Have you seen Iraq lately? Have you seen the entire region? Via davidswanson.org Have you seen Afghanistan? Libya? Syria? Yemen? Pakistan? Somalia? War supporters said the U.S. urgently needed to attack Iran in 2007. It did not attack. The claims turned out to be lies. Even a National Intelligence Estimate in 2007 pushed back and admitted that Iran had no nuclear weapons program. Having a nuclear weapons program is not a justification for war, legally, morally, or practically. The United States has nuclear weapons and no one would be justified in attacking the United States. Dick and Liz Cheney’s book, Exceptional, tell us...

Jan Oberg comments: This is certainly important, although there are limits to what António Guterres can say. I wish he would have said “reduction of all kinds of violence” or emphasised the UN Charter’s Article one that says that peace shall be built by peaceful means. But anyhow – I applaud him for speaking up on December 31, 2017.

By Gareth Porter • The Trump administration has been telling people for months that the crisis with North Korea is the result of North Korea’s relentless pursuit of a nuclear threat to the US homeland and past North Korean cheating on diplomatic agreements. However, North Korea reached agreements with both the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations that could have averted that threat, had they been completed. Instead, a group of Bush administration officials led by then-Vice President Dick Cheney sabotaged both agreements, and Pyongyang went on to make rapid strides on both nuclear and missile development, leading ultimately to the successful late November 2017 North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) test. Via antiwar.com The record shows, moreover, that Cheney and his allies derailed diplomatic efforts to curb North Korean nuclear and missile development, not because they opposed “arms control” (after all, the agreements that were negotiated would have limited only North...

• Keynote, World Futures Studies Federation Conference – Jondal, Norway 7 Jun 2017 West of Jondal is Torsnes, named after the Nordic war god Thor with his Hammer, a center of the Viking era from 800 to 1050, only 250 years. Why so short? Successful with raids and colonization–Gardarike in Russia, Iceland, Greenland, Vineland in Canada. And then: fini. Why? Because they had no future. Evil Lóki had killed Good Baldur – next to Torsnes is Belsnes=Baldursnes. They were doomed. Enters Christianity with Evil Satan and Good God, restoring hope. The end. The Soviet Union Empire had no future: Communism was undefined. Enters Orthodox Christianity – Putin is a true believer – hope restored. The United States Empire has no future: “Allies” refuse to fight US wars and US capitalism increases inequality with reduced growth. Enter Campaigner Trump ‘Making America Great Again’ by buying-hiring American; President Trump making America isolated,...

Lund, Sweden – December 30, 2017 It’s tomorrow, at December 31, 2017 at 1200 noon CET, that we open The Transnational to the world. It’s a homepage, an archive of some 7000 original research-based articles over more than 30 years. It’s a blog by TFF Associates – the finest and most experienced community devoted to the UN Charter norm that peace shall be created by peaceful means. It’s curated materials from around the world, in easy-to-find themes and menus. It’s links to global news, analyses and inspiration. It’s texts, images, videos, music – culture and art too. Because peace is much much more than just no war. Peace is the basis of the good society. It’s an innovative, multi-dimensional platform for peace – research, analysis, education and policy. It’s factual – in contrast to much else today – it’s critical and constructive. It’s diagnosis, prognosis and solutions. It’s interactive and...