Media

Ukrainian priests lead a commemoration ceremony for Maidan activists or “Heroes of the Heavenly Hundred” killed during anti-government protests in Kiev this time last year. Photograph: Roman Pilipey/EPA By  Ivan Katchanovski May 24, 2019 The new Ukrainian government is faced with reopening an inquiry into evidence of an organized mass killing in Kiev that Poroshenko stonewalled. Ivan Katchanovski investigates. Five years ago, the Maidan massacre in Kiev, Ukraine, of Feb. 18-20, 2014, was a watershed event, not only for the politics and history of Ukraine but also for world politics generally. This mass killing in downtown Kyiv set the stage for the violent overthrow of the pro-Russian government in Ukraine and a new Cold War between Washington and Moscow. Therefore, it is remarkable that five years after this massacre shook the world, no one has been sentenced for any of the Maidan killings. This was the best-documented case of mass...

They hadn’t realized they were living in a world, as Barack Obama once said, is the best time to be alive in human history. Yet the bits and pieces of this information had been around for a long time and I’ve drawn on them in many of my columns. But the fact is that human beings have what Oxford Professor Dominic Johnson and Dominic Tierney call a “negativity bias”- “A subconscious predisposition that humans exhibit whether or not they are aware of it”. Their thesis explains a lot, especially in international relations- threat inflation, the outbreak and persistence of war, the neglect of opportunities for cooperation, and the prominence of failure in institutional memory and learning. In modern times the worst example of this was the threat inflation launched by President George W. Bush in tandem with Prime Minister Tony Blair on the danger posed by Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. They...

You have certainly not heard much about this in the West. And it didn’t get a fraction of the media attention (and none of the hundreds of millions of Euro pledges by the perversely rich) that the Notre Dame fire did. However, if disastrous floods had hit 28 out of 31 provinces and affected 10 million people in some European country or in the US, I believe you would have heard about it from Day One. But now it is Iran. Only the Iranians. The situation is disastrous but not so much because thousands have died. Rather, because floods of this magnitude are likely to have terrible long-term consequences for agricultural and other production, infrastructure, energy production, transport and daily lives (see pictures below and on the links). The basic facts about 3 weeks into the disaster are: 28 of 31 provinces affected, the area around Shiraz the most. 78...

Nobel Laureate and TFF Associate Mairead Maguire requests UK Home Office permission to visit her friend Julian Assange whom this year she has nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize ‘I want to visit Julian to see he is receiving medical care and to let him know that there are many people around the world who admire him and are grateful for his courage in trying to stop the wars and end the suffering of others’ Thursday 11th April, will go down in history as a dark day for the Rights of humanity, when Julian Assange, a brave and good man, was arrested, by British Metropolitan Police, forcibly removed without prior warning, in a style befitting of a war criminal, from the Ecuadorian Embassy, and bundled into a police van. It is a sad time when the UK Government at the behest of the United States Government, arrested Julian Assange, a...

M. K. Gandhi on democracy The jaws of power “The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.” John Adams, (1735-1826) According to the Nuremberg Principles, the citizens of a country have aresponsibility for the crimes that their governments commit. But to preventthese crimes, the people need to have some knowledge of what is going on. Indeed, democracy cannot function at all without this knowledge, What are we to think when governments make every effort to keep their actions secret from their own citizens? We can only conclude that although they may call themselves democracies, such governments are in fact oligarchies or dictatorships. At the end of World War I, it was realized that secret treaties had been responsible for its outbreak, and an effort was made to ensure that diplomacy would...

It’s Friday, April 5, 2019, at 9 PM. An entertaining talk show, “Skavlan”. A dialogue between a prime minister and a special forces soldier who has no regret having kicked in doors and “killed a lot” in Afghanistan. He justifies himself by the most primitive and long-ago debunked theory about Good and Evil in this world. And then the listening prime minister expresses his admiration. Something roamed around in my mind hours after the event and I had to check: Did he really say what I think I heard? It made me think about theories and worldviews on which political decisions can be founded. About the general, normalized fascination of war and killing, and about the soldier as hero and the victim as invisible, non-existent. It made me think about the sophisticated, almost imperceptible, media methods by which perpetrators of law violations and war crimes are turned (and turn themselves)...

TFF’s changing publishing policy – Why we reduce social media presence and what we’ll do instead For more than a decade, I’ve been enthusiastic about social media as a new, potentially more people-powered phenomenon that could serve change for the common good of humankind. Not so today. Sadly, social media have come to resemble fast-food chain restaurants – no taste, no joy, no quality, unhealthy, unsophisticated and boringly predictive. Homepages and blogs, on the contrary, still hold a potential resembling gourmet restaurants with lots of joys, health, innovation and sophistication as well as delicious surprises (and good wines instead of Coca Cola). TFF – the peace and future research foundation I am co-founder and director of – still reach thousands of people every day on social media but what does that mean? Too many have cared far too much about quantities of friends, followers, likes and shares – and far...

His book, Manufacturing Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare, is a classic and must-read for those who want to know in depth the history and the games played over decades by the U.S. and Israel against Iran. It is also relevant as a background to the negotiated JCPOA, or “nuclear deal” with Iran in 2015 (that the U.S. later withdrew from). This video is one part in a small series at The Real News Network – a network that will enlighten any student, researcher and concerned citizen. That will enable you to assess how the mainstream media – also in this case – have fed you all kinds of politically biased information and a uniform anti-Iranian perspective. It has been framing the issue in such a way that they have served well the elites who, as it seems, seek to harm Iran in a series of ways....

Foto: Martin Meissner/AP/TT Av Erni & Ola Friholt* 27:e mars 2019 Såhär kan det gå till “bakom kulisserna” på public service mediet, Sveriges Radio. Men det vet ju inte den som lyssnade på programmet. Vi tycker det är viktigt at förmedla hur det går för sig och kommer självfallet att publicera SR:s svar. Stocken 25 mars 2019 Bästa redaktion för Konflikt! Inför lördagens program om kärnvapenhotet hade Fredsrörelsen på Orust och Maj Britt Theorin kontaktats om intervjuer. Av hänsyn till det förespeglade programinslaget lade Maj Britt om sitt avtalade anförande ”Kvinnor och konflikter. Om kamp för demokrati och jämlikhet”. Istället blev ämnet kvinnors kamp mot kärnvapen, eftersom föredraget skulle spelas in för att (åtminstone delvis) användas i radioprogrammet. Dessutom gjordes en lång intervju med Maj Britt under kvällen. Eftersom det saknades tid inför radioreporterns hemresa till Stockholm uteblev den tidigare önskade intervjun med ordförande och sekreterare i Fredsrörelsen på Orust....

Not so Germany, China and Russia Like the above diagram, it looks dark. For the US. Perhaps that’s the reason you have not seen it on the front pages of the Western mainstream press? Not only does this remarkable Gallup survey – made in the US – tell that Germany’s leadership, i.e. Chancellor Merkel, is the most highly approved by others in terms of leadership. Congratulations to the Chancellor, so well deserved! It also tells that the approval rates turn steadily upward for the two countries which the U.S. – bizarre as it is since they would both make great partners – constantly perceives as enemies: China and Russia. You can find a lot of very interesting and precise poll results for the period 2007-2018 pertaining to all the world’s regions in the report, “American First?” Rating World Leaders: 2019. Above you see the summary ratings for the world, based...

Russian Air Force Su-25 jets fly past the Russian flag on the Kremlin complex during a rehearsal for the Victory Day military parade in Moscow, Friday, May 4, 2018. (AP Photo / Pavel Golovkin) US Cold Warriors escalate toward actual war with Russia. By Stephen F. Cohen March 26, 2019 The John Batchelor Show, March 20, 2019 Heedless of the consequences, or perhaps welcoming them, America’s Cold Warriors and their media platforms have recently escalated their rhetoric against Russia, especially in March. Anyone who has lived through or studied the preceding 40-year Cold War will recognize the ominous echoes of its most dangerous periods, when actual war was on the horizon or a policy option. Originally published by The Nation on March 20, 2019 here Here are only a few random but representative examples: § In a March 8 Washington Post opinion article, two American professors, neither with any apparent...

Ab At The Transnational, we believe in diversity. And in the likelihood that world events are complex and can be seen from more than one – usually US/Western – perspective. You may have wondered why the, now retired, UN representative for Venezuela, the brilliant lawyer, humanist and poet, Alfred De Zayas, has not been used extensively as an authority of both Venezuela and international law? Well hardly because, like me, you had not heard of him, had you? That’s why we should be grateful to Abby Martin and The Empire Files for having given us this conversation. It debunks – in a fact-based and comprehensive, law-respecting manner – most of what you’ve been told and all of what, as of writing, 54 countries have done in support of the regime policies of the US rather than in support of Venezuela as a sovereign state. And of the UN and its...