Media perspectives

Ole Petter Ottersen and you can write him at rektor@uio.no These two experts on warfare and interventionism will – Orwellian style – speak about “The United States and World Peace After The Presidential Election”. This is the country that, since 1980, has intervened violently in Iran, Libya, Lebanon, Kuwait, Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Sudan, Kosova/Serbia, Yemen, Pakistan, Syria, i.e. 14 Muslim countries. It has some 630 base facilities in 130+ countries. It has its US Special Forces (SOF) in 133 countries. It has used nuclear weapons without apology and owns the second largest arsenal of nuclear weapons. The US stands for about 40% of the world’s military expenditures, is the world’s leading arms exporter and has killed more people than anybody else since 1945. It’s the master of (imprecise) drone strikes. It presently supports Saudi Arabia’s bestial war on Yemen and conducts a military build-up in Asia and the Pacific...

By Farhang Jahanpour TEHRAN – Professor Farhang Jahanpour, a former senior research fellow at Harvard University, is of the opinion that many American voters viewed Donald Trump “as an outsider standing up against the establishment.” In an interview with the Tehran Times, Jahanpour also says, “Trump made use of some sensational and often contradictory slogans as a way of winning popular support.” Following is the text of the interview

Trotsky, the one-time close comrade of Lenin, reportedly said, “You may not be interested in war but war is interested in you”. This is how it seems to have been with President Barack Obama when it comes to his policy towards Russia. Having come to power with President Vladimir Putin open to a closer relationship after the aggressive pushing forward of Nato’s frontier during the time of presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush Obama will leave the presidency with a state of hostility between the Russia and the US that most thought had evaporated once the Cold War ended in 1991. Now, instead of a life time of peace and cooperation ahead of us, as was widely thought, we have Russia engaged in nuclear sabre rattling and the US expanding the frontier of Nato even further right up to Russia’s border and trying to put the heat on over...

Participant on board Zaytoouna-Oliva boat A few weeks ago, the US Government agreed to give Israel $38 billion dollars, the largest military funding package the U.S. has given any Nation. This $38 billion in military and other type of Aid, will be used to imprison the Palestinians of Gaza, and continue Israel’s military occupation, and imposition of an apartheid state, upon the Palestinian people. This money will be used in the training fields of Israeli military which are in Gaza, where military experiments are done, using US military weaponry, by the Israeli Occupation Forces. The U.S. military and Government is complicit in the crimes against the people of Gaza and the Palestinian occupied territory by the use of military hardware given by USA and the training that the Israelis give USA and USA gives to them. It is also estimated that some 70% of European humanitarian aid to Palestine ends...

By Gareth Porter The Russian-Syrian bombing campaign in eastern Aleppo, which has ended at least for the time being, has been described in press reports and op-eds as though it were unique in modern military history in its indiscriminateness. In an usual move for a senior US official, Secretary of State John Kerry called for an investigation of war crimes in Aleppo. As terrible as that toll of civilian lives is, the United States should drop the stance of moral superiority. The discussion has been lacking in historical context, however. Certainly the civilian death toll from the bombing and shelling in Aleppo has been high, but many of the strikes may not be all that dissimilar from the major US bombing campaign in Iraq in 2003, nor as indiscriminate as Israel’s recent campaigns in densely populated cities. The impression that the bombing in Aleppo was uniquely indiscriminate was a result...

: The – bizarre – White Helmet Mannequin Challenge video; The Swedish Institute of International Affairs’s event with the White Helmets on November 24; The Right Livelihood Award Foundation’s Award Ceremony to take place on November 25 While thousands of humanitarian organisations around the world are struggling fiercely with diminishing support from governments and the public, one has achieved a surprising amount of support from Western governments in a surprisingly short period of time and gained a surprising attention from mainstream media and ditto political elites: The Syrian Civil Defence or White Helmets. Their name of course makes you think of the UN’s Blue Helmets and white is the colour of those who should be protected in harm’s way – and the colour of innocence. However, for many years there has been an Argentinian relief organisation with the same name. The SCD or White Helmets counts nearly 3.000 rescue workers...

Af Jan Øberg Den nuværende periode i menneskehedens historie vil blive svær at forklare for fremtidens historikere – hvis der da findes nogle. Hvordan kunne det gå så skridt så hurtigt og på alle fronter for dén Vestverden, der efter 2. verdenskrig stod med alle kortene på hånden? Hvordan kunne det amerikanske imperium, der byggede på frihed og demokrati, overhovedet styrte sammen dér tilbage i 2026?

 Den vestlige NATO-baserede verden kunne ånde lettet op da Sovjetunionen og Warszawapagten var blevet opløst i 1989. Den havde vundet ideologisk – ingen ville siden have sovjetkommunisme – og økonomisk – Rusland producerede ingen attraktive forbrugsvarer – og militært. Ruslands militærudgifter var bare 8% af NATOs mod Warszawapagtens 75% af NATO førhen. Den Kolde krig forsvandt lykkeligt nok uden Varm Krig eller atomvåbenbrug. En ny verden blev mulig. Ondskabens imperium, som præsident Reagan havde kaldt Kreml-systemet, var borte. Alle talte om fredens ”dividende”. Men...

And why Russia doesn’t have to be a threat to the West TFF Series ”The New Cold War” # 7 If the Ukraine conflict is the centerpiece of the new 2nd Cold War, it is essential to ask: What really happened? What did NATO countries do to cause it? What did Russia do to cause it? And – if you live in the West, in particular: Did we really have to end in this situation given Russia’s significant weakness over 25 years? This article argues that the superior West could have played its cards differently and it’s time for self-critical soul-searching and just a little living yourself into the shoes of the other. If peace rather than war is your true aim. There was a beginning and a framework The Ukraine conflict has a 25-years history. Instead of dissolving NATO, the alliance was expanded. Relieved from there being a Soviet...

Journalists, physicians and mediators have one thing in common: they are expected to ask questions. Having worked as a journalist for some time for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, having a medical family background, and having worked nearly 60 years as a mediator, my obvious conclusion has been for journalists to ask the kind of questions mediators ask, like: • What does the Middle East look like where you would like to live? • What is the situation right now? • Was there a good time, what went wrong, what could have been done? • What is the worst that happened, and the worst that could happen? Journalists should not mediate – they are not trained for that. But they could make the world more ready for mediation, also by readers-listeners-viewers. People will answer, and give interesting answers. Of decision-makers journalists could also ask questions like:… Continue reading here…

Prefatory Note An earlier version was published by Middle East Eye on August 10, 2016. It seems so important at this time for the sake of the future of Turkey that the West look at the country and its political circumstances in a far more balanced way than how the situation has been portrayed since the coup. How to explain this imbalance is another matterthat should be explored at some point, but for now is largely put aside. Much uncertainty remains in Turkey, but there is enough evidence of positive tendencies to raise a tentative banner of hope. Being a witness to the political atmosphere in Turkey that has emerged after the failed coup of July 15th puts me at odds with the secular consensus in the West, which looks up at the sky and sees only dark, ominous clouds of human rights abuse and autocratic leadership. What I have...

The Case for Disengagement A few years ago Barack Obama made much of an American pivot to East Asia, a recognition of China’s emergence and regional assertiveness, and the related claim that the American role in Asia-Pacific should be treated as a prime strategic interest that China needed to be made to respect. The shift also involved the recognition by Obama that the United States had become overly and unsuccessfully engaged in Middle Eastern politics creating incentives to adjust foreign policy priorities. The 2012 pivot was an overdue correction of the neocon approach to the region during the presidency of George W. Bush that reached its climax with the disastrous 2003 intervention in Iraq, which continues to cause negative reverberations throughout the region. It was then that the idiocy of ‘democracy promotion’ gave an idealistic edge to America’s military intervention and the delusion prospect of the occupiers receiving a warm...

.com/”>Jill Stein – did you ever hear of that candidate? – doesn’t have a chance because she cannot mobilize the funds. As a European intellectual with a life-long commitment to peace and democracy, I find little reason to celebrate. And why the total focus on a few individuals at the top but not the structures that will run them both, such as the Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex (MIMAC); the cancer in many societies, including Russia, that President Eisenhower warned the world about in his farewell speech already in 1961? How short the media memory! Hillary Clinton’s nomination celebrated all over the mainstream press as a victory for the party – preventing it from splitting – and for all women. But how can people – women in particular – really believe in such genderism: that she will be a better president for the US and the world because she’s a woman? Hasn’t the...