Politics

Waving goodbye? Not agreeing whether to wave at the world or not… Words. Words. Words. And words missing. Jan Oberg June 1, 2023 The G7 countries’ share of the global GDP has fallen from about 70% in the 1960s, to 46% in 2019, to 31% in 2021 and is projected to fall to 28% in 2027. They make up less than 10% of the world’s people. According to the World Bank, between 2013 and 2021, all the G7 countries contributed 26% to world economic growth, and China 39%. I shall argue here that the G7s are in denial and need a reality check. The Hiroshima summit will, I predict, be seen in the future as a milestone of Western decline and militarism’s self-destructive role in it. These countries had agreed in advance on a statement of no less than 19 000 words, 40 pages. It contains all kinds of things...

By Lily Lynch May 29, 2023 The anti-war movement has fallen for a progressive circus In January 2018, Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg held an unprecedented press conference with Angelina Jolie. While InStyle reported that Jolie “was dressed in a black off-the-shoulder sheath dress, a matching capelet and classic pumps (also black)”, there was a deeper purpose to this meeting: sexual violence in war. The pair had just co-authored a piece for the Guardian entitled “Why NATO must defend women’s rights”. The timing was significant. At the height of the #MeToo movement, the most powerful military alliance in the world had become a feminist ally. “Ending gender-based violence is a vital issue of peace and security as well as of social justice,” they wrote. “NATO can be a leader in this effort.” Originally published at UnHerd on May 16, 2023 This was a new and progressive face for NATO, the same one it has...

We believe that public education about China is of great importance, not the least given the fact that so much of what the Western mainstream media focus on China is negative, condescending or otherwise unbalanced – some even pure propaganda, as we have shown in the TFF Smokescreen Report. We also believe that it is wrong to try to understand China – which is so very different in most ways from the West – by applying only Western concepts and values. It’s any concerned academic’s duty also to try to understand China on its own premises, its culture, history and ways of thinking. Here is a video – and there are many like it – that explains to you in just 7 minutes how China’s political system works. It also explains why China is neither a ‘dictatorship’ nor a Western-style democracy – how it is a completely different type of...

Toynbee and Ikeda “Another Way of Seeing Things”, is a short film based on an essay by SGI President Daisaku Ikeda – a TFF Associate for more than 20 years – in which, along with a friend and close colleague/collaborator Arnold Toynbee, he challenges media stereotyping and how this can give rise to prejudice and barriers between people of different nationalities and religions. Toynbee – one of the greatest and most respected macro-historians ever – went to a conflict zone and gave an account different from the black-and-white media narrative of the time and was then forced from his academic position. This was more than 100 years ago. That the media convey one-sided, politically correct views or outright lies is nothing new – perhaps what is new today is the uniformity, the intensity and the frequency with which it is done. This is a beautiful and moving rendition of the...

Liu Xin, CGTN April 1, 2023 A short, spot-on documentary about problems the West is not too keen to discuss openly. It ends with an effective statement based on this analysis of media developments over 50 years. Enjoy!

Sam Kolitch February 14, 2022 Ambassador Chas Freeman is a retired career diplomat who served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs from 1993-1994, Ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 1989-1992 during operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs from 1986-1989 during the Cuban troop withdrawal from Angola and the US mediation of Namibian independence from South Africa, Deputy Chief of Mission and Chargé d’Affaires in the American embassies at Bangkok from 1984-1986 and Beijing from 1981-1984, and Director for Chinese Affairs at the US Department of State from 1979-1981. In 1972, he was the primary American interpreter for President Nixon’s trailblazing visit to China. Ambassador Freeman is the author of America’s Continuing Misadventures in the Middle East, Interesting Times: China, America, and the Shifting Balance of Prestige, America’s Misadventures in the Middle East, The Diplomat’s Dictionary, Arts of Power: Statecraft...

Beyond Russia, NATO/EU policies will prove morally wrong, unrealistic, dangerous and self-destructive. Jan Oberg February 23, 2023 Introduction: 1 year of violence on top of 30 years of conflict: Too much wrong thinking The world’s focus is on the war. On February 24, it is one year since Russia launched its so-called special military operation. Much more important is to focus on the underlying conflicts – because there exists no war or other violence without root causes. The focus on war, by definition, won’t lead to a solution or wider, sustainable peace – like feeling the pain in a patient without diagnosing where it comes from can never lead to healing. Unless you ask: What is the problem, the conflict, that stands between the conflicting parties – NATO and Russia – it will end with escalation until one of the sides feel that the nuclear button is the only way...

Lev Voronkov January 25, 2023 In the modern lexicon of supporters of the liberal ideology, the word “democracy” means a certain positive phenomenon, to the triumph of which humanity must certainly strive in all spheres of public life. They declared despotism, authoritarianism, dictatorship, totalitarianism and other similar negative things as the antipodes of this phenomenon. Many politicians in Western countries are now inclined to assert that the central place in world politics and international relations is occupied not by a system of relations between sovereign states, based on universally recognized norms of international law, but by the struggle of democratic political regimes against authoritarian ones, which should be conducted in accordance with “the rules” established by them. The list and content of such rules are not available; for some reason they are kept secret. But one thing is clear, namely that they have little in common with generally recognized norms...

“Ingsoc. The sacred principles of ingsoc. Newspeak, double-speak, the mutability of the past.” – George Orwell, 1984 Edward Curtin January 24, 2023 As today dawned, I was looking out the window into the cold grayness with small patches of snow littering the frozen ground.  As light snow began to fall, I felt a deep mourning in my soul as a memory came to me of another snowy day in 1972 when I awoke to news of Richard Nixon’s savage Christmas bombing of North Vietnam with more than a hundred B-52 bombers, in wave after wave, dropping death and destruction on Hanoi and other parts of North Vietnam.  I thought of the war the United States is now waging against Russia via Ukraine and how, as during the U.S. war against Vietnam, few Americans seem to care until it becomes too late.  It depressed me. Soon after I was greeted by...

This article was published on January 5, 2023, by the very important Chinese “Global Times” under the headline, Two reasons that Europe would be forced to decouple from the US. Please read it directly there and, when you are anyhow there, browse a bit, see various menus and articles – and ask yourself why Global Times is consistently called a “tabloid” by Western mainstream people and media.

• From China’s socialist path to Latin America’s left turn and Asean’s neutral stance, more countries are quietly but firmly spurning the Western world order • Instead, they seek to favour national interests, a more democratic form of international politics and mutual respect Wang Wen January 6, 2023 The global significance of 2022 has been grossly underestimated. Its importance to world history far exceeds that of 2001, when the September 11 attacks occurred, and 2008, when the global financial crisis broke out. Instead, 2022 may be comparable to 1991, when the Cold War ended. If there’s a keyword, it’s “de-Westernisation”. This is not just about Russia’s radical attempt, through the use of military power, to try to break the US-dominated international order. It is also about the unprecedented rising up of non-Western countries against the established order in search of a more independent stance. China, after the successful convening of...

Martin Jacques December 28, 2022 The West could learn a great deal from China’s system of governance. It is highly unlikely this will happen, at least anytime soon. On the contrary, the West believes that its governance system is the best in the world, cannot be improved upon, and is incomparably superior to that of China. Why then is the West in rampant decline? And why has China, in contrast, enjoyed a dramatic rise over the last four decades. Have these contrasting fortunes got nothing to do with their respective governing systems? Are national success and the system of governance utterly disconnected from each other? Is the system of governance little more than an ornament of decoration, with little bearing on the performance of a nation? This is obviously nonsense. The quality of governance is fundamental to the success or failure of a country. If a country is doing well, then...