This photograph depicts the Armenian leader Papasyan seeing what’s left after the horrendous murders near Deir-ez-Zor in 1915-1916. Photograph Source: Bodil Katharine Biørn – National Archives of Norway – Public Domain Alfred de Zayas & Richard Falk April 26, 2021 The misuse of the word genocide is disdainful toward relatives of the victims of the […]
“We’ve got to be as clear-headed about human beings as possible because we are still each other’s only hope.” Maria Popova April 23, 2020 NOTE: This is the first installment in a multi-part series covering Mead and Baldwin’s historic conversation. Part 2 focuses on identity, race, and the immigrant experience; part 3 on changing one’s destiny; part 4 on reimagining democracy […]
John Scales Avery TFF Associate April 16, 2021 A new report, published on 14 March, 2021, in the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences’ journal Ambio, points out that humanity is hurtling towards destruction unless we have the collective wisdom to change course quickly. The Ambio article was written as part of the preparation of a meeting of Nobel Prize […]
Photo by Daniel Huizinga | CC BY 2.0 Gabriel Rockhill March 16, 2021 One of the most steadfast beliefs regarding the United States is that it is a democracy. Whenever this conviction waivers slightly, it is almost always to point out detrimental exceptions to core American values or foundational principles. For instance, aspiring critics frequently bemoan […]
TFF Associate and friend over decades, Richard Falk, last year turned 90. Read more about him here – and use the search engine to find lots of his writings. The latest we’ve published is on championing lost causes… Eric Walberg March 10, 2021 Writing this memoir has been as much about discovering my story, that […]
Richard Falk February 3, 2021 This article is a repost from TFF’s homepage, January 20, 2015 By chance I was reading César Vallejo’s poem, “Black Stone on a White Stone,” in a translation by Geoffrey Brock, and was struck by the opening stanza: I’ll die in Paris in the pouring rain a day I have […]
Photo credit: Poster art courtesy paceebene.org John Dear January 20, 2021 It was early 1968. Since the previous spring Martin Luther King, Jr. had been pursuing a course that for many was unthinkable. He had deliberately connected the dots between the movement for civil rights and the struggle to end the war in Vietnam, and had paid the price. He was roundly criticized by the Johnson administration and the media, as well as […]
By Maria Popova October 8, 2020 In the mid-1950s, as the icy terror of the Cold War was cloaking the embering rubble of two World Wars, the BBC producer and cartoonist Hugh Burnett envisioned an unexampled program to serve both as a cross-cultural bridge and a mirror beaming back to a dimmed and discomposed humanity […]
Jørgen Johansen argues that, like terrorism before it, the Covid-19 pandemic is being used by politicians across the world to normalise exceptional restrictions on basic rights with political consequences that will long outlast the health emergency. By Jørgen Johansen September 7, 2020 In his book State of Exception, Giorgio Agamben examined the consequences of policies […]