Archive 1986 – 2017

By Richard Falk* • Those who speak on behalf of Israel like to defend Donald Trump’s provocative decision of December 6th to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel with this contention: “Israel is the only state in the world that is not allowed to locate its capital in a national city of its choice.” It seems like an innocent enough proclamation, and even accurate pushback against global double standards, until one considers the political, moral, and legal dimensions of the actual situation. With the benefit of just a moment’s reflection, a more thoughtful formulation of the issue would be: “Israel is the only state in the world whose government dares to locate its capital in a city located beyond its sovereign borders and subject to superior competing claims.” Granted, Israel has declined to date to define its borders for purposes of international law, presumably to leave room for its...

December 12, 2017, marks the anniversary of the liberation – the West called it fall – of Aleppo in Syria. What happened is conveniently forgotten today by the West. Some of us can’t and won’t forget what was both world, regional and local history. Important for Syria, for the West and for the future world order – for at least 5 reasons:   1. The Western mainstream media’s deceptive – constructed, ignorant, or both – narrative since 2011 was debunked. Perspectives that media and political decision-makers deliberately omitted (remember omitted stuff is more important than fake): • History and the colonialists’ role in Syria. • The immense complexity of the Syrian society. • Syria as a 7000 year-old civilisation and as end of the Silk Road. • The decades-long conflicts underlying the violence, since CIA’s coup in 1949. • The Western-driven regime change policies years since before 2011. • Other...

• Paul McCartney – Sir Paul James Paul McCartney was born in Liverpool on June 18th 1942. In 1956, Paul writes his first song, I Lost My Little Girl. For his complete biography (up to 2003), click here. His official website is PaulMcCartney.com Paul McCartney and TFF’s founder Jan Oberg met each other in Liverpool in 2001 through Paul’s school friend and TFF Associate, Jonathan Power. This is how Jan remembers his meeting with Paul – which is where you may also read Paul’s poem for peace, written exclusively for TFF and see the Beatles record from 1961 that he signed for Christina. Sir Paul accepted to become an Honorary Friend of TFF in 2002 and we made it public at the event of his concerts in Copenhagen and Stockholm in early May 2003.   Address mplcommunications, London Sir Paul’s official homepage Photographer Mark Seliger © 2002 MPL Communications Ltd/Inc...

Via transcend.org • The People’s Peace Prize According to Nobel’s Will Celebration-Seminar-Banquet, Orust Peace Movement at Svanvik, Sweden, 2 Dec 2017 – Most gratefully received: a beautifully engraved granite stone that will adorn our garden in Spain, and a wonderful diploma!   I am deeply moved, with a feeling that my long life dedicated to the theory and practice of peace, particularly since 1958, 50 years ago, has arrived, has been understood, and has been appreciated. The “Nobel Peace Prize” administered by Norway is fake. Far from Nobel’s will inspired by Bertha von Suttner’s Nie mehr Krieg as a prize for reducing standing armies, understanding among nations, and peace conferences, to a prize compatible with US-Norwegian policies.  The 2017 prize to ICAN was a felicitous exception to that rule. – – – Read more…

By Bhikhu Parekh Via gandhifoundation.org • If he were alive today, how might Mahatma Gandhi, the greatest apostle of non-violence, challenge Osama Bin Laden’s worldview?  Bhikhu Parekh is Vice-President of The Gandhi Foundation, a professor of political philosophy, a Labour peer, and the author of three books on Gandhi. This article first appeared in Prospect magazine in April 2004. Like millions around the world, I found the atrocities of 9/11 abhorrent and utterly condemn such acts of terror. Despite the war against terror, we continue to see more horrors such as that in Madrid. What drives the bombers? How do they live with their deeds? Is there no alternative to the cycle of violence? No one is better qualified to advise on this than Mahatma Gandhi, the great apostle of non-violence. My imaginary exchange between him and Bin Laden tries to do two things: to comprehend at least part of the...

Via theintercept.com Even as President Donald Trump faces ever-intensifying investigations into the alleged connections between his top aides and family members and powerful Russian figures, he serves as commander in chief over a U.S. military that is killing an astonishing and growing number of civilians. Under Trump, the U.S. is re-escalating its war in Afghanistan, expanding its operations in Iraq and Syria, conducting covert raids in Somalia and Yemen, and openly facilitating the Saudi’s genocidal military destruction of Yemen. Meanwhile, China has quietly and rapidly expanded its influence without deploying its military on foreign soil. A new book by the famed historian Alfred McCoy predicts that China is set to surpass the influence of the U.S. globally, both militarily and economically, by the year 2030. At that point, McCoy asserts the United States empire as we know it will be no more. He sees the Trump presidency as one of...

Via theculturetrip.com • If there ever were any doubts about the standing of Mathias Énard, the reception garnered by his latest novel Compass ought to disperse them. After the book won him the Prix Goncourt in 2015, its English translation—out last month—was shortlisted for this year’s Man Booker International Prize (and garnered glowing reviews in the American press), a distinction outdone days later by the Italian Bussola, which was awarded the von Rezzori prize at the Festival degli Scrittori in Florence. Surely it isn’t premature anymore, or in poor taste, to write what many have for years been thinking: that once again a whole new generation of French writers have their virtuosic frontman? In Compass, Énard’s long-winded, meticulous artful prose takes the reader on a grand historical tour of the cultural exchanges between Europe and the Middle East. We spend a sleepless night with the thoughts of Austrian musicologist Franz Ritter, recently diagnosed with a terminal illness. The narrative follows his memories of travels and studies around the...

By Chris Hedges Journalist, author and war correspondent Chris Hedges spoke at The Sanctuary for Independent Media in Troy NY on November 10, 2017 on fascism and empire in the age of Trump.     Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, New York Times best selling author, former professor at Princeton University, activist and ordained Presbyterian minister. He has written 11 books, including the New York Times best-seller “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt” (2012), which he co-authored with the cartoonist Joe Sacco. His other books include “Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt,” (2015) “Death of the Liberal Class” (2010), “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle” (2009), “I Don’t Believe in Atheists” (2008) and the best-selling “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America” (2008). His book “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning” (2003) was a finalist...

By the State Council of the PR of China, 2015 Via english.gov.cn • The Action Plan on the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative issued by the National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China, with State Council authorization, on March 28. In the 21st century, a new era marked by the theme of peace, development, cooperation and mutual benefit, it is all the more important for us to carry on the Silk Road Spirit in face of the weak recovery of the global economy, and complex international and regional situations. The Belt and Road Initiative is a systematic project, which should be jointly built through consultation to meet the interests of all, and efforts should be made to integrate the development strategies of the countries along the Belt and Road. The Chinese government has drafted and published the Vision...

By Richard Falk Via ahtribune.com A wide-ranging conversation with Richard Falk at the American Herald Tribune on October 5, 2017. Here a few excerpts: • Mohsen Abdelmoumen: You wrote the book “Achieving Human Rights”. Don’t you think that the many interventions of American imperialism, under the pretext of spreading human rights and democracy, have emptied the concept of human rights from its substance? Prof. Richard Falk: I would place the stress on the discrediting effects of the disastrous American imperial intervention, and subsequent occupation, of Iraq starting in 2003. Especially when the allegation of hiding stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction proved false, the United States justified the intervention as a textbook liberation of the Iraqi people, an exercise in what was called ‘democracy promotion.’ Even earlier, the U.S. Government attempted to justify its regime-changing intervention in Afghanistan as beneficial for women, as an undertaking that was described under such...

Via globalissues.org By Anup Shah • Every minute, some 15 children die around the world, from poverty, easily preventable diseases, illnesses, and related causes. This rarely makes the headline news that one might expect such a tragedy to do. Some 21,000 children die every day around the world (data from 2010). The silent killers are poverty, hunger, easily preventable diseases and illnesses, and other related causes. Despite the scale of this daily/ongoing catastrophe, it rarely manages to achieve, much less sustain, prime-time, headline coverage. Unfortunately, it seems that the world still does not notice. It might be reasonable to expect that death and tragedy on this scale should be prime time headlines news. Yet, these issues only surface when there are global meetings or concerts (such as the various G8 summits, the Make Poverty History campaign in 2005, etc). Furthermore, year after year, we witness that when those campaigns end...

• Johan Galtung takes a swim and speaks about Norway, Sweden, American occupation, relations to Russia and the risk of getting killed – in the media and for real. Interview with John Y. Jones, October 2017