Development worldwide

Part 1 Governments have spent trillions on preparing for military threats created by their own policies. No one prioritised human and societal security. The unique over-reaction to COVID-19 should worry us much more than the virus itself. It can be seen as a panicky attempt to cover-up the failure of an outdated militarist security policy. #coronaissecuritypolitics Part 2 of this series • Part 3 • Part 4 Jan Oberg April 2, 2020 The Coronavirus is a comparatively small killer Over the last 3 months, about 40.000+ people have died worldwide because of (or with) the Coronavirus. No other phenomenon in contemporary history has caused so many drastic decisions in democratic and authoritarian governments alike as thi pandemic. Constitutions, a series of freedoms, including the freedom of movement, and much else have been suspended and new emergency laws passed fast enough to qualify for the Guinness World Records. Not to diminish...

Zivadin Jovanovic* March 25, 2020 The time of adjustment The world is undergoing a period of great development, great change, and adjustment. The international order is changing with the acceleration. The fall of the Berlin Wall thirty years ago (1989) has marked the end of the bipolar World Order. The “winners” of the Cold War adopted a policy of expansion, interventionism and domination. NATO illegal aggression on Yugoslavia 1999 represented the peak of uni-polar world order but, also, the beginning of its downfall. Today, the process of multi-polarization of global relations has already gone far beyond the point of no return. It is impossible any longer that any single power imposes own will or own interests above the will and interests of the others. The driving forces of this historic transformation towards the world of equals, shared responsibilities and community of shared future are China, Russia and other countries of...

Jeff McMahon March 20, 2020 In a new book, the woman who led the negotiations for the Paris Agreement calls for civil disobedience to force institutions to respond to the climate crisis. Originally posted on Transcend.org on February 24, 2020, here “It’s time to participate in non-violent political movements wherever possible,” Christiana Figueres writes in “The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis,” which will be released tomorrow by Knopf. Figueres served as executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) from 2010-16. She co-authored the book with her strategic advisor, Tom Rivett-Carnac. The two also support voting: “Large numbers of people must vote on climate change as their number one priority,” they write. “As we are in the midst of the most dire emergency, we must urgently demand that those who seek high office offer solutions commensurate with the scale of the problem.” But they...

Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.) Senior Fellow, Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University Washington, DC  29 November 2018 Ladies and Gentlemen: You have asked me to say a few words about China’s rise and its role in the post-American world.  There is a lot of nonsense being voiced on this topic at present.  It’s timely to address it.  I played a minor part in the original opening of China to the West.  Somewhat like Leonard Zelig or Forrest Gump in other contexts, over the course of fifty years as China returned to wealth and power, I was often on or in the scene.   I am happy to share some impressions with you. Originally posted on Chas W. Freeman, Jr.’s personal blog on November 29, 2018 here After serving in India, working to keep China out of the United Nations, and studying Chinese in Taiwan, I...

Today TFF launches “Bootprint – Militarism and Environment” – a curated, free-of-charge online magazine that brings you quality knowledge about the connections between the two most urgent problems that humanity faces. These two main clusters of problems which, if not solved, threaten to destroy humanity, our Earth and all future potentials are: Environment – with catchwords such as climate change, global warming, CO2 footprint, non-sustainability, pollution, resource depletion, species extinction, variety and diversity reduction, rain forest destruction, overconsumption, fossil fuels economy, limitless material growth, etc. etc. – and Militarism – with catchwords such as warfare, nuclear weapons, arms production and trade, militarization of land, air, space and oceans, tension creating, interventionism, base networks, terrorism, cyber and propaganda warfare, other weapons of mass destruction, special forces operations, intelligence agency crimes, imperialism, etc. The two clusters a fundamentally connected – militarism is enormously destructive of the environment; climate change and other processes...

and 2016 the average income of the bottom 50% of earners in the world nearly doubled. Direct interventions like building more schools, clinics and hospitals, countering child mortality and deadly diseases, feeding the hungry when famine or floods decimate vast areas, spreading the use of vaccinations and contraception, and preventing malaria have had the most impact. Over the long-term economic growth is important if development is to proceed without foreign aid. Growth does produce more of the wherewithal for government social and development programs – if a government so decides. But we cannot rely just on growth to improve peoples’ lives. China and India have both had periods of high growth, but now are slowing. Is this inevitable or is it, as in China, just a maturing of the economy? This export-led economy can’t grow its exports faster than the world economy is growing. In India, after a 30 year...

By John Perkins February 08, 2020 John Perkins describes the methods he used to bribe and threaten the heads of state of countries on four continents in order to create a global empire and he reveals how the leaders who did not “play the game” were assassinated or overthrown. He brings us up to date about the way the economic hit man system has spread from developing countries to the US, Europe, and the rest of the world and offers a strategy for turning this around. “Each of us,” he says, “can participate in this exciting revolution. We can transform a system that is consuming itself into extinction into one that is sustainable and regenerative.” This video was originally posted on TEDx Talks Youtube Channel on June 24, 2016, here If you think this type of critical analysis by a person who really knows is important… John Perkins’ books, including...

Can we be happier? All of us probably experience grave unhappiness at some point in our lives- a bereavement of someone close, a job loss, a bad illness, a vindictive boss, a drop in income or status, a loss of love for or from one’s partner, even a divorce, a standard of living when ends can hardly be met. Every reader can add their own woes to this list. Yet the world as a whole does appear to be getting happier, except in a few countries where war or fighting has taken over- Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Burundi and Sudan, for example. Indeed the lessening of war is one reason for rising happiness around the world. Another is the rapid decline in infant and maternal mortality- don’t ever think that a big Indian or African family today or a 19th century European family doesn’t or didn’t feel immense pain if a...

By Gordon M. Hahn January 30, 2020 The apparent overreaction by the U.S. to Iranian provocations represented by the assassination of Revolutionary Guards Corps Commander Qassem Soleiman is one of the stronger blows to hit one of the most important nails in the coffin of U.S.-Russian relations: the revival of Russian-Western geopolitical competition outside Russia’s immediate central Eurasian sphere of influence. At the same, time it is also one of the most important turning points in the formation of an anti-Western Eurasian axis that will shape the 21st century’s geopolitics. The outcome of the political struggle may well rest on Europe and whether or not it decides to stick to its American ally in the latter’s efforts to stave off the end of its unipolar hegemony through greater NATO and EU expansion or abandon at least the former project and positively contribute to the reordering of the international system in...

By Richard Falk, TFF Associate Januar 22, 2020 Prefatory Note: The post below is a somewhat amplified version of an interview with C. J. Polychroniou, journalist and professor of political economy at West Chester University, which was published on January 7, 2020, in the online journal, Global Policy. As the interview was conducted in December 2019, it fails to address the various disruptive consequences of the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, including the violation of Iraqi sovereignty, Baghdad being the site of the drone attack, as well as the risks of war arising from an escalating tit-for-tat cycle of actions and reactions. Given growing tensions between the interconnectedness of the world and the state-centric character of international law, including contradictions between totalizing and disregarding territorial sovereignty, state-centric world order is being increasingly marginalized by geopolitical behaviour that both generates and suppresses transnational political violence. A normative crisis with structural implications exists,...

By Conn M. Hallinan November 27, 2019 The fallout from the September attack on Saudi Arabia’s Aramco oil facilities is continuing to reverberate throughout the Middle East, sidelining old enmities – sometimes for new ones – and re-drawing traditional alliances. While Turkey’s recent invasion of northern Syria is grabbing the headlines, the bigger story may be that major regional players are contemplating some historic re-alignments. Originally posted on Counterpunch on November 8, 2019, here After years of bitter rivalry, the Saudis and the Iranians are considering how they can dial down their mutual animosity. The formerly powerful Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) of the Persian Gulf monarchs is atomizing because Saudi Arabia is losing its grip. And Washington’s former domination of the region appears to be in decline. Some of these developments are long-standing, pre-dating the cruise missile and drone assault that knocked out 50 per cent of Saudi Arabia’s oil...

Austere “shock therapy” after the Cold War only shocked the East into reaction. In the West, the corporate political center ultimately did the same. By John Feffer November 18, 2019 The Berlin Wall fell 30 years ago. It was one of the few unambiguously joyous moments in modern history. This popular, nonviolent explosion of dissent effectively toppled East Germany’s despotic regime. And it signaled, if only symbolically, the end of the Cold War that had divided Europe for nearly half a century. Thirty years later, a united Germany remains far and away the largest economy in Europe (and the fourth largest in the world). Most of the countries of the former Warsaw Pact are members of the European Union, and their populations have seen dramatic improvements in living standards. After the horrendous bloodletting that tore apart Yugoslavia in the 1990s, the threat of war in Europe has again receded. Who...