Ethics and values

John Scales Avery May 7, 2020 We See Clearly What Is Near to Us There is a remarkable contrast in the way that governments around the world have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic and the way that they have responded to the climate emergency. The pandemic, which indeed represents an extremely grave danger to humanity, has produced a massive global response. Borders have been closed, airlines have become virtually inoperative, industries, restaurants and entertainments have been closed, sporting events have been cancelled or postponed, people have been asked to stay at home and practice social distancing, and the everyday life of citizens around the world has been drastically changed. John Scales Avery By contrast, let us consider the threat that if immediate action is not taken to halt the extraction and use of fossil fuels, irreversible feedback loops will be initiated which will make catastrophic climate change inevitable despite human...

Remember this? It seems that God is saying: “America, you are too arrogant and I will break the backbone of your power!” – Martin Luther King, Jr. Listen! MLK’s strong prophecy came to me today when I read this article in TIME magazine today – “Begging for Thermometers, Body Bags, and Gowns: U.S. Health Care Workers Are Dangerously Ill-Equipped to Fight COVID-19.” TIME – April 20, 2020 The health care workers have to beg – and people have to die – because their mal-developed country lacks the most basic. It’s a country which, at least since 1945, has created human history’s largest military machine, sees itself as “the policeman of the whole world” – a country that conducted wars virtually every day, built 600+ bases in 130+ countries, deploys its CIA and Special forces virtually everywhere, destroyed societies and killed millions of people around the world in warfare and economic...

By Liu Jian, TFF Associate in Beijing Read the author’s first article here March 30, 2020 On January 18, after attending a meeting in Hangzhou, I planned to return to my home in Beijing. At that time, the Spring Festival in China was approaching. Although I had started buying tickets one week in advance, I still did not get a high-speed train ticket from Hangzhou to Beijing so I had to go from Hangzhou to Shanghai and wait for several hours before changing to a later train to return to Beijing. There are high-speed trains between Beijing and Hangzhou and Shanghai every five to ten minutes. Even so, it can’t meet people’s travel needs during the Spring Festival. High-speed railway stations and airports in all major cities were overcrowded and at security checkpoints, people lined up in long queues. China’s transportation sector is doing its best to ensure the world’s...

People line up to buy face masks from a medical supply company in Nanning, southern China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region on Wednesday, January 29, 2020. © 2020 Chinatopix. By Liu Jian, TFF Associate in Beijing Read the author’s second article here March 30, 2020 What we have experienced in the past two months is too dreamy and now, in retrospect, it seems not so real. On January 23, the day before Chinese New Year’s Eve, people who were ready to celebrate the New Year were shocked by the sudden outbreak of the virus. Wuhan, a super big city with a population of 11 million, was declared closed by the government. Anxiety and unease quickly enveloped the whole country. According to the government’s guidance, people cancelled New Year’s travels and family reunions one after another, stayed in their own homes according to experts’ suggestions, and kept updating the news with anxiety. Usually,...

By Jan Oberg March 17, 2020 Defender Europe 20 is a huge, basically US military exercise, on European soil between February and May this year. It has already started. In the midst of a closed-down coronavirus Europe. And it is war-preparing, not peace- or confidence-building. The diagram above from the British Army offers you details of this perverse, surreal idea – take note of Italy being one of the planned participants! Most likely, you have not heard about Defender Europe 20. When it comes to US foreign and war policies, all Western mainstream media practise self-censorship. The media would hardly be able to write about this exercise of militarist madness in a way that would not cause an uproar and moral condemnation in these times of deep, widespread concerns about war risks, climate change and the coronavirus. So better not write at all and cause diplomatic troubles with the unpredictable,...

We hear next to nothing about these sanctions in the so-called free media – primary sanctions by the US hitting Iran directly, secondary sanctions by the US demanding other countries – the EU and NATO allies in particular – to implement its sanctions, i.e. to accept that US sanctions laws shall apply to them as sovereign states. The EU has not been able to get its acts together and respect the nuclear deal, or JCPOA: not in autumn 2015 when it could not find a way to temporarily host 1,5 million refugees arriving as asylum seekers from countries destroyed predominantly by the EU/NATO members themselves – and not now when the coronavirus hits Europe and they have let China be the one who helps their neighbour Italy. On March 15, 2020, I was asked by Iran’s PressTV to comment on these matters in the wake of Iranian foreign minister, Dr...

By Dean Baker Last month George Soros had a New York Times column arguing that Mark Zuckerberg should not be running Facebook. (Does the NYT reserve space on its opinion page for billionaires?) The gist of Soros’ piece is that Zuckerberg has made a deal with Trump. He will allow all manner of outrageous lies to be spread on Facebook to benefit Trump’s re-election campaign. In exchange, Trump will defend Zuckerberg from efforts to regulate Facebook. Originally posted in Counterpunch.org on February 18, 2020, here Soros is of course right. Zuckerberg has said that Facebook will not attempt to verify the accuracy of the political ads that it runs. This is a green light for any sleazebag to push the most outrageous claims that they want in order to further the election of their favoured candidate. This will almost certainly benefit Donald Trump’s re-election since the one area where he...

By Caroline Davies February 17, 2020 Extinction Rebellion (XR) US has four Demands for our governments, local and national, the first of which is “Tell the Truth”. One truth that is not being told or spoken about openly, is the carbon footprint and other sustainability impacts of the US Military.  Originally posted on WorldBeyondWar on February 4, 2020 here I was born in the UK and, although I am now a US citizen, I have noticed that people are very uncomfortable saying anything negative about the US Military here. Having worked with many injured veterans as a physical therapist, I know how important it is for us to support our veterans; many Vietnam veterans still feel hurt about being blamed and discriminated against when they came home from that war. As horrific as wars are for everyone involved, especially the civilians in the countries we are attacking, the soldiers follow...

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...

By David Loy Buddhism encourages us to be wary of antithetical concepts, not only good and evil, but success and failure, rich and poor, even the duality between enlightenment and delusion. Originally posted in Tricycle’s Magazine in spring 2002, here If only there were evil people somewhere, insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? Alexander Solzhenitsyn Because it emphasizes mindfulness of our thought processes, Buddhism encourages us to be wary of antithetical concepts, not only good and evil but success and failure, rich and poor, even the duality between enlightenment and delusion. We distinguish between the opposing terms because we want one rather than the other, yet the meaning of each depends...

February 3, 2020 By Fredrik Heffermehl The annual screening of candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize 2020 by the Nobel Peace Prize Watch (NPPW) has now been posted on its website and sent to the Nobel Committee. We have found 30 of the known candidates qualified and eligible, within the purpose of Nobel’s will. NPPW offers advice and assistance to nominators and candidates and each year supplies the committee with a wide range of genuine candidates. Believing in openness and transparency as indispensable to reaching good decisions and preventing corruption, here as everywhere else, we also publish the secret nominations. In 2020, the NPPW recommends the Committee to recognize the indispensable role of international law, pointing in particular to Klaus Schlichtmann and Ikuro Anzai, both Japan. Their efforts to complete the original security structure of the UN by empowering the Security Council is at the epicentre of the “brotherhood of...

Illustration by Mr Fish, from truthdig By Chris Hedges December 19, 2019 Immanuel Kant coined the term “radical evil.” It was the privileging of one’s own interest over that of others, effectively reducing those around you to objects to be manipulated and used for your own ends. But Hannah Arendt, who also used the term “radical evil,” saw that it was worse than merely treating others as objects. Radical evil, she wrote, rendered vast numbers of people superfluous. They possessed no value at all. They were, once they could not be utilized by the powerful, discarded as human refuse. This article was originally published by truthdig on October 14, 2019 We live in an age of radical evil. The architects of this evil are despoiling the earth and driving the human species toward extinction. They are stripping us of our most basic civil liberties and freedoms. They are orchestrating the...