Media perspectives

and punished for years for not having nuclear weapons?

By Gareth Porter In the final phase of the negotiations with Iran, the US-led international coalition is still seeking Iran’s agreement to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to visit any military facilities it deems suspicious and to interview a selected list of Iranian nuclear scientists. Such measures are not necessary to ensure that Iran is adhering to its commitments under the agreement, but they are necessary to manage the political threat from the pro-Israel extremists in the Senate to sabotage the whole agreement. To fend off that threat, the Obama administration made the spurious claim that it had succeeded in getting Iran to agree to the demand for IAEA inspection of any site it found suspicious. In fact, Iran had agreed only that IAEA would have “enhanced access through agreed procedures” – as reflected in the wording of the joint statement of the P5+1 and Iran on 2...

beslöt att inte låtsas om de löften som Västs ledare i slutet av det kalla kriget gav sina sovjetiska/ryska kollegor. Det var oetiskt och – som Power med viktiga hänvisningar hävdar – en politisk tabbe av historiska proportioner. Hans berättelse förklarar varför Väst inte heller är oskyldigt i fråga om den aktuella Ukrainakrisen – i sin tur åstadkommen genom en annan tabbe: försöket att byta regim i Kiev och få in Ukraina i det kärnvapenbaserade NATO. Blankt förnekande sin egen inblandning börjar politiskt korrekta västmedier, politiker och Natohöjdare lämpligt nog sin historia med att Ryssland annekterade Krim som en blixt från klar himmel. Power säger: ≫Historien kommer inte att se välvilligt på NATOs farliga och kontraproduktiva utvidgning≪. Jan Öberg Rysslands Europablickande drömmare har räknat in Pusjkin, Lenin, Gorbatjov och, tills rätt nyligen, president Vladimir Putin. Alla har de sett sitt lands framtid som en del av ≫det europeiska huset≪. Men...

It isn’t helpful to pre-position heavy materiel in Eastern Europe if it is peace you want…

I was appalled by the embedded colonialism of a recent issue of The Economist [June 6-12, 2015], boldly proclaiming its mood of geopolitical angst on its cover titling its featured story “Losing the Middle East.” Any glimmer of doubt about the intent of the magazine’s editors is removed by displaying a somewhat bedraggled American flag on the cover accompanied by the sub-title “Why American must not abandon the region.” The rationale offered for this political imperative within this most revered journal of intelligent establishment guidance strikes me as even more appalling than this provocative packaging giving the plot away before we even begin reading the story. What The Economist proposes The argument set forth rests on the colonialist assumption that the Middle East is America’s to lose, although not quite, as the lead editorial ends with an enigmatic distinction: “The idea has taken root that America no longer has what...

“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 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...

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...

By Jan Oberg Today, May 9, the citizens and government of Russia commemorate V-Day – that it is 70 years ago they won over Nazi Germany. The price they paid were 20-26 million human beings of which 9 million soldiers. – in other European countries the victory has been celebrated this past week. The total casualties of the Second World War was at least 60 million, depending on how you count. People and governments care about our own history and sacrifices. The implicit message of course is: Pay respect to those who sacrificed their lives and may it never ever happen again. And the world knows everything about the Holocaust/Shoah that cost the lives of 6 million Jews. However, the world knows much less about the huge concentration camp in Jasenovac, Croatia, where at least 100.000 Serbs, Jews and Romas was exterminated. Serb suffering didn’t fit the Western narrative during...

/10/janoberg.jpg”>[/caption] /05/tff-pressinfo-320-what-hopes-for-burundi-now/”>See also TFF PressInfo 320. The world’s leading countries are busy with ongoing conflicts and wars in areas of strategic importance to them. Organisations that work with humanitarian issues and post-war healing have exhausted their capacities long ago. It’s repair work but it must be done. So there is hardly any capacity in the world to do what would be much more productive: Prevention of violence (yes, not of conflict but of violence). For decades there has been talk of early warning – but if it works at all, there is little or no early listening and even less early action. If it all worked as it ought to, the world would have a violence-prevention machinery in place and it would, these very days, plan what to do before a catastrophe descends upon a small, beautiful African country – poor, mal-developed and of no strategic significance to bigger powers....

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...