Sanctions

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...

I have a fantasy. Donald Trump wins. He goes to Moscow on his first trip as president and gives President Vladimir Putin a bear hug and they go hunting in the forest, Soviet style. When they emerge they have shot a couple of bears and have had a good lunch laid out for them by acolytes at which they have discussed the matters of the world. They give a press conference. They have decided to re-start negotiations on major nuclear arms reductions and both say they unilaterally are immediately ridding themselves of a 1000 missiles each. They have found a way to implement autonomy for eastern Ukraine, as done in Scotland, which Trump with his Scottish golf courses knows well. Ukraine can work towards both a trade agreement with the EU and the Russian-backed Eurasian Economic Union. Russia was always happy about such an arrangement, but many Ukrainians weren’t and...

The long awaited Chilcot report (5 years) on the Invasion of Iraq will finally be released on 6th July, 2016. The Report is to be welcomed and the hope expressed that this inquiry will tell the truth of what happened to the Iraqi people and clarify the UKs involvement, through an official Government recognition of facts of the wars, sanctions and invasion of Iraq and for transparency, accountability and reparation to be paid to the Iraqi people by the UK Government who participated in these illegal and immoral genocidal wars. The story of what was done to the Iraqi people by UK and Western allies is shocking and deeply disturbing. The two wars, the imposition of economic sanctions, causing the slow deaths of thousands of people, were indeed crimes against humanity, war crimes, breaking all international obligations and conducted with no respect for human life or the Iraqi people’s rights....

Prefatory Note The review below was published in the current issue of Journal of the Society for Contemporary Thought and Islamic World. I am posting it here because I believe that Jeff Halper’s book deserves the widest possible reading. It explains clearly and convincingly one of the deepest and least understood roots of Israel’s diplomatic support throughout the world, which is its role as a niche arms supplier and influential tactical specialist in waging wars against peoples who dare offer resistance to state power as variously deployed against them. The Israeli experience in exerting oppressive control of the Palestinian people provides the foundation of Israel’s international credibility and perceptions of effectiveness in disseminating for economic and political profit its hardware and software associated with managing and suppressing the resistance of popular movements fighting for their rights. The Israeli stress on pacification rather than victory exposes the true nature of what...

TFF Associate Med den uttalade avsikten att underminera Vladimir Putins ställning i Ryssland har Natostaterna och övriga EUstater systematiskt förtigit Kievregimens vägran att följa de avtal den själv skrivit under. Istället har Ryssland anklagats för dubbelspel och erövrarambitioner. Utvecklingen ser ut så här*: 1. Ukraina förhandlar med EU om ekonomiskt samarbete, vilket skulle innebära att bryta samarbetet med Ryssland. När president Janukovitj av sina ekonomer fick veta vad detta skulle kosta landet, avstod han från att underteckna det framförhandlade EU-avtalet. 2. Detta utlöste Maidanprotesterna, från grupper i västra Ukraina, vilka länge velat ansluta landet västerut. Dessutom deltog Janukovitjanhängare. Skottlossning utbröt från hus omkring torget, med okända skyttar. Detta tolkades som Janukovitjs ansvar. 3. Janukovic och Maidanledarna framförhandlade 21 feb 2014, tillsammans med Frankrikes, Tysklands och Polens utrikesministrar och en representant för Ryssland ett avtal, som gick ut på följande: a. Ömsesidig demobilisering av väpnade grupper. b. Omedelbart arbete med författningsändringar,...

French president Hollande has declared war – war on terror, George W. Bush style. Like September 11, 2001 wasn’t a war, Paris November 13 wasn’t a war. It was a criminal act. The war on terror has been an exceptionally stupid war. In the years before 9/11 about 400 people died worldwide by terrorist attack. The Global Terror Index informs us that 32.600 died in 2014 – 80 times more! And, still, the only answer everywhere is: More war on terror. The only – intelligent – exception is Italy whose PM has announced that Italy is going to counter terrorism by investing billions of Euros in culture, art and creativity – showing the world what civilisation is. Politicians and the mainstream media seemingly try to make us believe – as if we were uneducated – that we in the West are the main victims and innocent victims at that. We...

The Barbarians are not at the gate. There is no need for a rush to war as the French president, Francois Hollande, suggests. The Americans did this after 9/11 and raced into Afghanistan with the intention of eliminating Al-Qaeda. They failed and they are still in Afghanistan – America’s longest war ever. They have become bogged down in fighting Afghani movements including the Taliban. Some of the Taliban may have hosted Al Qaeda for a while, but accounts suggest they weren’t happy about it. They certainly don’t today. In Harvard University’s magazine, “International Security”, Professors Alexander Downs and Jonathan Monten report they have studied over 1000 military interventions over many years. It is very rare that there has been success. Bogged down, bogged down. These two words should resonate in every Western (and Russian) leaders’ head. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Libya. (Also Russia in Afghanistan and in Chechnya). There...

. On the last day of last month right wing demonstrators, mostly from neo-fascist movements, hurled themselves against the police in Kiev’s Maidan square, the same place where in February 2014 a more heterogeneous group of demonstrators effectively ousted President Viktor Yanokovych. A grenade was thrown and three people died and 120 were hospitalized, mostly policemen. In an address to the nation President Poroshenko blamed the clashes on nationalistic forces, calling their actions “a stab in the back”. Finally the Western powers raised a voice of condemnation, although over the last year they have made little criticism of the rightist militias and parties. That is perhaps because it would interfere with their narrative – that the demonstrators that overthrew Yanukovych were of a liberal, democratic hue. The overwhelming majority were. But the ignored fact is that the people who led the crowd and fired the bullets when the demonstrations turned...

Lund, Sweden, September 5, 2015 Updated September 5 and our apologies if you’ve received this before. We want to catch all and miss no one over all these years. Dear friend! We are happy to invite you to the TFF 30th Anniversary Benefit Event ! September 11-12, 2015 Live Lectures by videostream Exciting lectures on world affairs and peace over two days – See program below. This is not an invitation to visit the foundation in person. It is an online, live video streamed event that you will be able to follow from anywhere in the world Here is the link and it’ll also be shown via Facebook, Twitter and on our website. And all the lectures will be available later as videos on our own video channels. Open House at the foundation Saturday September 12 at 14:00-17:00 It’s at Vegagatan 25 in Lund, Sweden – deadline for your registration...

The game is dirty and has lasted 70 years. It came with the idea of development as imitating, but not catching up, with the West, for all states, including the deluge of states due to decolonization. The formula for big profit is simple: give credit to a country poor enough not to be able to pay it off quickly, yet not so poor that it cannot go on servicing the loan for years. To be worthwhile the project must be capital-intensive, like (air)ports and highways to the (air)ports for import-export, assembling cars–something for the rich. Investment to lift up people in misery, or ravished nature, makes no sense: the poor need very little capital and can only pay back in labor, whereas nature pays back but is not capitalized. Ideally, the country asks for more credit to service the first, and a second, third loan is then offered at higher...

Norway, on top of the UN indicator of good life for years, is now hit by two different crises; one for the less developed aspect and one for the more developed. Yet the citizens are protected by a massive oil slick, the biggest sovereign fund in the world, the Government Pension Fund for an aging population when oil dries out. For only 5 million inhabitants, $178,000/capita, and growing. First crisis: Third World monoculture—oil/gas–hit by the world markets; from over $ 100 per barrel to under 50 recently. A crisis of over-supply and also of under-demand, less than expected: toxic fossil fuels do the same to the lungs of Planet Earth as smoking to the lungs of humans. Green alternatives strong in Germany, China, coming in USA. A generation was needed for the smoking truth to penetrate, but smoking survived in the Third World – for some time. We will get...