Global

in 1914 the Europeans conquered 84% of the globe. The puzzle is why did they rise to the top when for centuries the Chinese, Japanese, Ottomans and South Asians were far more advanced? The short answer, as Mao Zedong once said, is that “Power grows out of the barrel of a gun”. Europeans were at the forefront of gunpowder technology for 200+ years. This may seem odd since firearms and gunpowder originated in China and the rocket in India. Yet by the late 17th century Chinese, Japanese and Ottoman military technology was lagging behind Europe’s. War was what monarchs did in Europe.

Unbelievable but true: Obama, other presidents and governments are seriously contemplating to hand their countries, people and all, over to business to create the largest “free trade areas” in history with NAFTA for North America, TPP for the Pacific, TTIP to the Atlantic and TiSA, services covering some 50 states all over. Pharmaceuticals, chemicals, textiles, chicken; communications, e-trade, financial services, insurance, what not, negotiate across the oceans how to market each other’s products across oceans, overriding domestic laws, even constitutions that stand in the way of business. The State-Capital-People, or Government-Investors-Civil Society restructured against not only Civil Society, but Parliament and Law. The gains for business are obvious; removing the last inter-state tariff and non-tariff barriers, and more importantly: intra-state laws and regulations impeding the free flow of goods and services to protect people and nature; except laws protecting business. So, imagine what may happen.

What a gift to humanity, this Pope! To choose global climate change as a major theme of his papacy is in the spirit of the times. What is revolutionary, and he uses that word often, is the focus on the poor. Climate change–including the long trend global warming over and above some lulls and local variations–has a clear class address, goes beyond making him the spiritual world leader. The Pope talks about filth covering the earth, and about greed stimulated by corporate capitalism and consumerism as major causes underlying the technicality of CO2 release. The Pope also mentions the freshness of the gospels, including the unambiguous stand of Jesus for the poor in Matt 6:24–God vs Mammon–Matt 13:12–our economic system, and Matt 19:20-24 about giving one’s riches to the poor. Pope Francis follows in his footsteps. Simply beautiful. But there is more to it: a general theological discourse from the...

Lecture at World Congress of Faiths, Annual General Meeting, London School of Economics, University of London, May 20, 2015 Thank you for inviting me to speak to you today, and for giving me the opportunity to share with you my journey for the common good, a journey which I began many years ago, when as a young man I left Iran for England in 1972 in my search for life’s bigger picture. Friends, I very much like to set the scene by reading a short statement, giving you a brief background to my presentation, my abstract, if you will: First: This presentation is dedicated to the youth of the world, our children and grand- children, who are the unfolding story of the decades ahead. May they rise to the challenge of leading our troubled world, with hope and wisdom in the interest of the common good to a better future...

“Getting Away With Murder” is the title of Susan George’s (as usual) brilliant analysis of the banking situation after the US banking 9/11, the 2008 crash (published by Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. If the West had freedom of the press the analysis by a leading expert on these matters, and her suggestions for remedies, would have been on media everywhere with detailed interviews. But, alas. Picking one point among many: the operation of the European Central Bank to extend credits; at a generous 1%. In a Union of 28 states, we might imagine, it would go directly to member states with problems. Not at all, directly to banks, from them to states; at, for instance, 6%. In other words, the more miserable the situation in a country, the more banks and their top boards, CEOs and some functionaries will be thriving. This is EU oligarchs feeding EU oligarchs, not direct...

By Jonathan Power The Greek clash with the EU continues. Jean-Claude Junker, the European Union Commission’s president, has publically taken umbrage at the Greek prime minister’s attack on him. In parliament at the end of last week Alexis Tsipras said Junker’s latest proposals were “absurd” and “irrational, blackmailing demands”. Junker likes to think that he is a moderating voice in the confrontation between Greece, the EU and the IMF. But there is no middle way as long as Germany insists the EU be as hard as nails. The blunt truth is that Germany has neither the facts nor history on its side. Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics and one of the key policy makers in the Clinton Administration’s “Goldilock’s economy”, pointed out this weekend that “Greece has met its creditors’ demands more than half way. Yet Germany and Greece’s other creditors continue to demand that the country sign...

By Gareth Porter In February, a US Department of the Treasury press release announced sanctions on three Lebanese in Africa it said were linked to a “Hezbollah terrorist cell.” But behind that press release is a story of how the portrayal of the Lebanese by the Treasury Department was based entirely on a case constructed by Israel’s foreign intelligence agency Mossad through its Nigerian clients, and how that Treasury release suppressed publicly available facts, which made it apparent that those claims were false. It was not the first time the Treasury Department had used its “designations” of foreign individuals and organizations to put out false and misleading information reflecting an Israeli propaganda line. Continue here…

 In my columns, “The Year 2015-What Are We in For?”, I identified four unfolding, dramatic processes: the West will continue fighting unsuccessfully and violently to keep their world grip; Eurasia will expand and consolidate successfully and nonviolently; Islam will expand and consolidate partly violently; Latin America and Africa will expand and consolidate, spearheaded by Brazil, South Africa, BRICS. A third of the year 2015 has now passed; let us take stock. Headlines in the International New York Times tell the story: 18-19 April 2015: “U.S. is said to risk losing economic leadership”; “–a divided nation shedding hard-won clout”, “We’re withdrawing from the central place we had on the world stage”. And for the UK: 29 April: “Britain’s drift from the world stage looms over the vote”. These are statements about leadership, about being the center as a model to emulate; controlling world stage politics; not about economic growth. Losing leadership...

Words Against the Grain While reporting to the UN on Israel’s violation of basic Palestinian rights I became keenly aware of how official language is used to hide inconvenient truths. Language is a tool used by the powerful to keep unpleasant realities confined to shadow lands of incomprehension. Determined to use the rather modest flashlight at my disposal to illuminate the realities of the Palestinian ordeal as best I could, meant replacing words that obscure ugly realities with words that expose as awkward truths often as possible. My best opportunity to do this was in my annual reports to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva and the General Assembly in New York. My courageous predecessor as Special Rapporteur, John Dugard, deserves credit for setting the stage, effectively challenging UN complacency with language that looked at the realities lurking below the oily euphemisms that diplomat seem so fond of. Of...

Editor’s note This is a grand essay on the dimensions, history, structures of the Middle East/Palestine-Israeli-Western conflict over about 100 years. It is extraordinarily rich – but doesn’t cause the reader to drown in too many details. I highly recommend it to any student – young or old, journalist and politician – whose understanding of the issues may be based on the woefully biased, general account in Western mainstream media. – Jan Oberg Preliminary Observations In this period when the centenary of the genocidal victimization of the Armenian people in 1915 is being so widely observed and discussed, it seems especially appropriate to call attention to the comparable victimization of the Palestinian people. This second story of prolonged collective victimization also received its jump start almost a century ago with the issuance by the British Foreign Office of the Balfour Declaration supporting the Zionist movement project of establishing a Jewish...

The West – North America and Europe to somewhere in Mexico and Ukraine – declines, outcompeted economically, defeated militarily, confronted politically, contested culturally. But still strong on all four, with much to offer in a more egalitarian world. There should be no need to fall further by working against itself. Take the 70th anniversary demarcation of the victory over nazism, take thousands of Africans drowning in the waters around Lampedusa, Italy, take the Islamic State, take Ukraine – and a country up there in the high North of Europe, Norway. Elections have moved the country from “red-green” to “blue-blue” coloring of the same color blind foreign policy: follow Washington, Our Father, lest Satan should come. Yes, the Red Army came and liberated Kirkenes 25 October 1944, the northernmost city. Everybody knows Operation Barbarossa, Hitler’s three-pronged attack toward Leningrad (the siege), Moscow (to beat–Napoleon?) and Caucasus (oil); but not the war...