Archive 1986 – 2017

  By ICAN • In a document from October 17, the United States warned other NATO members that efforts to negotiate a treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons or to delegitimise nuclear deterrence “are fundamentally at odds with NATO’s basic policies on deterrence”. In the letter, the US government strongly urges allies and partners to vote no to the resolution, and “not to merely abstain.” and continues to argue that “if negotiations do commence, we ask allies and partners to refrain from joining them.” Via icanw.org Despite claiming that a ban treaty without the nuclear armed states would be meaningless, the US letter outline what they believe would be clear military implications of a ban treaty and for NATO. The document shows that the United States believe a treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons, even without the participation of nuclear-armed states, would indeed have a significant impact. The document was circulated the week before governments...

  • China is embracing megaprojects at an unprecedented rate and will – over the course of a few decades – complete a phase of infrastructure that will rival what the United States has built in its entire history.     You may also like to see this on Shenzhen: The Silicon Valley of Hardware Or this on Shenzhen: City of the future. The high-tech life of China’s Silicon Valley.   Jan Oberg comments: Fascinating and perhaps frightening too. But we in the West have to become more interested in what happens outside our own cultural sphere. We won’t be the center of the world much longer – if we ever were.

  By the Editorial Board of East Asia Forum • One of the biggest questions in current global affairs is how a rising China shapes the world beyond its borders. The scale of China’s rise has had huge impact on the world. Size brings its own natural and inevitable influence: its economic dimension transforms nations from being ‘price-takers’ to being ‘price-makers’ in the international economy and its political dimension carries heft through political and military power. But what kind of influence will China seek, how will it seek it, and to what ends as it gets used to its new found power? These questions were central to the deliberations of the 19th Party Congress and its attempt to define a new and confident role for China in the international community. While the 19th Party Congress received notice most for its elevation of President Xi Jinping in the pantheon of China’s...

By the Chinese government • Officials said that the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road initiatives will be “open” to all nations and are not limited by geography. China plans to set up a scholarship for students from nations involved in initiatives to build a Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. The Belt and Road Initiative is in China’s interest, and also in the interest of the rest of the world, according to experts. Via english.gov.cn China’s plan to re-build the Silk Road is “a story that we can write together to be all winners of the new economic development”. Southeast Asia is an important base for the Belt and Road initiative, and the upcoming establishment of the ASEAN Community will benefit both the bloc and its partners. Countries involved in China’s Belt and Road Initiative welcome China running schools in...

  • The US’ only answer to terrorism is violence against violence, but that’s like trying to eradicate diseases 32-invasion-war-africa-us/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>Via rt.com A report released under the Freedom of Information Act shows the US has been simulating an invasion of West Africa in response to an imaginary terror attack on American soil. The latest Pentagon project was designed to train those who will manage future American wars. The terror attack scenario was played last year as part of the simulated exercise by students from the US military’s war colleges. RT:  Do you have any issues with the US simulating a New York terror attack to invade Africa? Jan Oberg: No. First of all, this is a kind of a war game. … People are thinking about what the future will be like. What is really interesting is that it ends with getting stuck in Africa too, like everywhere else...

  • The UN’s Philip Alston is an expert on deprivation – and he wants to know why 41m Americans are living in poverty. The Guardian joined him on a special two-week mission into the dark heart of the world’s richest nation. By Ed Pilkington “You got a choice to make, man. You could go straight on to heaven. Or you could turn right, into that.” We are in Los Angeles, in the heart of one of America’s wealthiest cities, and General Dogon, dressed in black, is our tour guide. Alongside him strolls another tall man, grey-haired and sprucely decked out in jeans and suit jacket. Professor Philip Alston is an Australian academic with a formal title: UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. His fact-finding mission into the richest nation the world has ever known has led him to investigate the tragedy at its core: the 41...

He was a tall man and a great man, a visionary, pacifist, civil resister, educator and philosopher. He took life more seriously than most and he could be playful and fun like a child. His life’s guiding principle was ”Engage in your time!” and while he wrote and talked a lot he also did it. His name was Aage Bertelsen, he was born in Denmark in 1901 and died on August 15, 1980. Bertelsen’s imprint on history is two-fold. First, with his wife Gerda he was a prime mover of one of the groups, the Lyngby Group, which organised the rescue of altogether 7.220 Danish Jews into safety in Sweden in October 1943 during the German occupation of Denmark – more here. The Lyngby Group – Lyngby is north of Copenhagen – got about 1.000 of these in safety by organising their nightly transport onboard small fisher boats over the...

  By Roberto Savio •This op-ed by Roberto Savio, IPS founder and President Emeritus is adapted from a statement he made as a panelist on Migration and Human Solidarity, A Challenge and an Opportunity for Europe and the MENA region held on 14 December at the Geneva Centre for Human Rights Advancement and Global Dialogue.   ROME, Dec 14 2017 (IPS) – The misuse of religion, of populism and xenophobia, is a sad reality, which is not clearly addressed any longer, but met with hypocrisy and not outright denunciation. Only now the British are realizing that they voted for Brexit, on the basis of a campaign of lies. But nobody has taken on publicly Johnson or Farage, the leaders of Brexit, after Great Britain accepted to pay, as one of the many costs of divorce, at least 45 billion Euro, instead of saving 20 billion Euro, as claimed by the...

By Dan Grazier • A new Government Accountability Office report, released in October 2017, details problems the services are having keeping the F-35 fleet ready for combat. One problem it highlighted was that, at a time when the Pentagon is desperate to ramp up production of new aircraft, the services have to wait an average of 172 days—nearly six months—to repair components for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), when it should only take between 60 and 90 days. While this aspect of the report garnered most of the headlines, the report reveals a much more fundamental and systemic problem involving most of the latest high-tech weapon systems: Defense contractors are creating complicated support systems for the increasingly complex weapon systems the Pentagon buys, which allows the contractors to secure long-term contracts for which they have no competition from other companies. Via pogo.org The F-35 serves as the ultimate example...

  By Daniel Ellsberg • From the legendary whistle-blower who revealed the Pentagon Papers, an eyewitness exposé of the dangers of America’s Top Secret, seventy-year-long nuclear policy that–chillingly–continues to this day. Here, for the first time, former high level defense analyst Daniel Ellsberg reveals his shocking first-hand account of America’s nuclear program in the 1960s. From the remotest air bases in the Pacific Command, where he discovered that the authority to initiate use of nuclear weapons was widely delegated, to the secret plans for general nuclear war under Eisenhower, which, if executed, would cause the near-extinction of humanity, Ellsberg shows that the legacy of this most dangerous arms buildup in the history of civilization–and its proposed renewal under the Trump administration–threatens our very survival. No other insider with high level access has written so candidly of the nuclear strategy of the late Eisenhower and early Kennedy years, and nothing has...

• In this episode of On the News Line: Pentagon held hostage to military contractors – Video Comments by, among other, TFF director, Jan Oberg The United States Defense Department spends hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money annually on military programs. The Pentagon heavily depends on military contractors to acquire various types of weapons, hardware and support services. Major contractors like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman are constantly competing for lucrative contracts. Such weapons manufacturers have powerful lobbies in the Congress and in the highest levels of US government. The major arms companies are even believed to influence US foreign policy to make sure their business always remains booming. The chain of arms manufacturers, their lobbyists and links in the government have come to be known as the Military Industrial Complex. A US Government Accountability Office report has revealed that the powerful contractors are even...

By Vijay Prashad • In the final segment of Paul Jay’s interview with Vijay Prashad on Reality Asserts Itself, the subject is the undermining of international law and military interventions in the name of human rights. Watch the full episode… From The Real News Network Via youtube.com