TFF Blog

/08/28/new-associate-gordon-dumoulin/”>Gordon Dumoulin September 11, 2020 19 years after the horrific September 11 ! We must never forget innocent individual victims of war and other violence. But there is more to the day of September 11 and what has been the consequence of the US response to it. On 9/11, 1906, the nonviolent movement led by Gandhi was born in South Africa — TFF Associate Chaiwat Satha-Anand wrote about it on The Transnational 15 years ago. On 9/11, 1973, the coup d’etat in Chile took place with heavy US involvement, leading to the death of President Salvador Allende and the Pinochet dictatorship. And on 9/11, 2001, targets in New York and Washington representing the economic, military and political power of the US Empire were hit, killing almost 3000 people (around 12% non-US citizens). The US response was to initiate — with the attack on Afghanistan on “10/7” — the Global War...

Idag, den 7. september 2020, i London starter en retssag, som får betydning for den frie presse i vesten i fremtiden. Sagen drejer sig om journalist og stifter af mediet WikiLeaks – Julian Assange – som er tiltalt for overtrædelse af den amerikanske spionagelov i forbindelse med at indhente og offentliggøre fortrolige militære- og diplomatiske dokumenter. Retten i London skal tage stilling til, om Julian Assange skal udleveres til USA til retsforfølgelse og potentielt 175 års fængsel. Men hvorfor har denne retssag betydning for hele den frie presse i vesten og for vores danske demokrati? Sagen og historien om Julian Assange og WikiLeaks er lang og kompliceret, og de fleste danske medier ser ud til at have opgivet at følge den til dørs. Men jeg vil forsøge at opsummere sagen kort, og forklare hvorfor den er relevant for dig som borger i Danmark. Demokrati bygger grundlæggende på at flertallet af...

Jørgen Johansen argues that, like terrorism before it, the Covid-19 pandemic is being used by politicians across the world to normalise exceptional restrictions on basic rights with political consequences that will long outlast the health emergency. In his book State of Exception, Giorgio Agamben examined the consequences of policies and regulations introduced in exceptional circumstances, which then become institutionalised as ’normal’, the state of exception becomes the rule. An illustration might be the USA’s Patriot Act of 2001, enacted after the 9/11 attack, which resulted in a massive expansion of government surveillance. Likewise, the Guantanamo Bay detention camp set up in 2002 as part of George W. Bush’s war on terror, where detainees have been held for indefinite periods without trial and subjected to torture. Originally published at rethinkingsecurity.org Proponents of such exceptional measures justified them by reference to the extraordinary context in which they were introduced – they were...

Chinese students in U.S. universities are increasingly becoming the collateral damage of the ongoing China-U.S. friction. The University of North Texas (UNT) recently became the first American university to cut ties with the Chinese Scholarship Council (CSC) resulting in the expulsion of 15 Chinese visiting researchers. Beijing has criticized the decision, calling it yet another example of the U.S.’s sabotage of people-to-people exchanges. Meanwhile U.S. President Donald Trump is weighing a blanket restriction on Chinese students from studying in the U.S., according to reports. China has been the largest source of international students in U.S. for over a decade. However, the COVID-19 pandemic and Trump’s “unpredictable policies” have already reduced Chinese demand for a U.S. education. Beijing-based Dutch educator and a proponent of cross-cultural competence – and TFF Associate – Gordon Dumoulin sees the latest UNT action as part of the larger decoupling trend between the U.S. and China. “The radical...

Originally published as an editorial at Transcend on August 10, 2020 Connecting dots is neither the trend of our times nor of day-to-day political decision-making. Over the years, time, space and intellectual focus has shrunk. It’s deplorable and dangerous for an increasingly complex world facing increasingly existential challenges. For instance, during the European refugee crisis the dots between wars and refugee movements were hardly ever made. The focus was on how to limit refugees getting into Europe but hardly ever on the wars from which they fled. Western wars are untouchables. The lack of connections between the dots of the Corona and security – human security in particular – would be another example. The present author would see the handling of the Corona pandemic as the most fundamental documentation of the fact that not a single government has practised security the right way: billions of taxpayers’ dollars have been spent...

Ola & Erni FriholtTFF Associerade & Fredsrörelsen på Orust 26:e augusti, 2020 I vår publikation från 2019 kommenterades broschyren ”Om krisen eller kriget kommer”, som sändes till de svenska hushållen hösten 2018 från Myndigheten för samhällsskydd och beredskap (MSB). Dess innehåll är chockerande ytligt. Vår kommentar utgick från den aktuella verkligheten och dess krav på dramatiska förändringar i samhällsutvecklingen. I föreliggande skrift ”Värdland. Del II av ”Krisen pågår – Vad gör vi?” behandlar vi det tekniskt utvecklade samhällets sårbarhet och omöjligheten att skydda det med militära medel. Alternativ finns. De kräver att vi genomskådar de rådande föreställningarna om militära hot mot Östersjöområdet. Dessa formas och propageras av egenintressen hos västvärldens maktgrupperingar och hindrar en fredlig utveckling såväl som välfärds-, miljö- och klimatinsatser. När detta skrevs var coronaepidemin ännu inte en europeisk angelägenhet. De insikter om säkerhet som nu uppstår stärker vår bild av vad säkerhetspolitik bör vara. Nu finns tillfälle...

Erni & Ola FriholtTFF Associerade och Fredsrörelsen på Orust 26:e augusti 2020 Obesvärat av coronatidens bromskrafter ökar historiens tåg farten. Vi märker i våra kupéer hur det förbisusande landskapet ändrar karaktär, med torra brandhärjade slätter och skogar, avlösta av slagregn och översvämningar under en blixtrande mörk himmel. I skrivande stund står en tredjedel av Bangladesh under vatten, ett land med 150 miljoner invånare. Människor på flykt söker skydd där de kan, här och där undsatta av stater som samarbetar för allas säkerhet. Samtidigt rapporterar den holländske journalisten Geert Mak om hatfyllda utfall från USAs ledande militärer, som pekar ut de skyldiga i Ryssland, Mellanöstern och allra mest Kina. Han talar om vikten av att hålla samman ett insiktsfullt, fredligt EU som motor i en utveckling i fred och samarbete. Vi sitter alla i historiens framrusande tåg, en del med gardinerna fördragna i hopp om att kunna stiga av i en...

Iran’s foreign minister, Dr Mohamad Javad Zarif, says the United States has no right to abuse mechanisms enshrined in a 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and six world powers to restore UN sanctions against the Islamic Republic after they were lifted under the accord. I had the pleasure to comment on this on Iran’s PressTV on August 21, 2020 – just click on this image: The points both the minister and I made were, a couple of days later, confirmed in a longer analysis published on OpinioJuris – “Pompeo’s Attempt to “Snapback” UN Security Council Sanctions on Iran—“Cut That Out!” by Larry D. Johnson who is an Adjunct Professor at Columbia Law School and the former UN Assistant Secretary-General for Legal Affairs. I find it amazing that the United States seems to believe that it could get away with such an unrealistic attempts at eating the cake and have it...

Jan Oberg August 6, 2020 It is natural and human to commemorate what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But these stories, films and photos from back then must never come to serve as a museum for just a historical event. It would also be fairly naive – now 75 years later – to believe that showing such images of the destruction and listening to Hibakushas (survivors) will help abolish the nukes of today. They’ve been seen too many times to make such an impact on today’s people; there is a certain psychic numbing and a mass denial of the fact that “it could happen this afternoon too.” 1) If they had such a – desirable deterrent – effect, nuclear weapons would be gone long ago. While of course Hiroshima and Nagasaki and their victims must never be forgotten, it’s extremely important that Hiroshima and Nagasaki Days are used to focus...

KUWAIT. March 11, 1991. The bodies of dead Iraqi soldiers hang from a truck abandoned by the fleeing Iraqi army by a road leading to Iraq. The Gulf War which was marked by the introduction of live news broadcasts from the front lines of the battle, principally by the U.S. network CNN. The war has also earned the nickname Video Game War after the daily broadcast of images from cameras on board U.S. bombers during Operation Desert Storm.Photograph: Pascal Guyot/AFP/Getty August 2nd, 2020, marks the 30th anniversary of one of the most consequential and perhaps the most underestimated wars in recent history. On 2nd August 1990, between 100,000 (according to Iraqi claims) and 300,000 (according to US claims) Iraqi troops invaded and occupied Kuwait, which Saddam Hussein immediately named Iraq’s nineteenth province. In response, President George H. W. Bush and the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher formed a coalition of 39 countries,...

With statements such as these by US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo: “Securing our freedoms from the Chinese Communist Party is the mission of our time! and “If the free world doesn’t change Communist China, Communist China will change us,” – it’s time to see the danger that is mounting. During the last few months, a systematic Sinophobic (anti-China) policy has been rolled out all over the world by the US and its obedient mainstream media. It is so uniform in content and style that it deserves to be categorized as a ‘campaign.’ It has nothing to do with critical media, questioning and diversity of perspectives. You are being taken for a ride! It revolves around the following 7 themes – all negative, of course: CCP/Dictatorship, Xinjiang, Tibet, Hongkong, Taiwan, human rights, China as a threat in several ways, particularly militarily. • A new US/Western Cold War with China is...

In times of fake and omission – not to speak of deliberate deception and lies – society’s very foundation is shaken: What can we believe? Who can we trust? What is reliable and truthful information – and how do I know? Tragically, substantial knowledge with complex reasoning about our complex world and its problems has been overwhelmed by marketing, smart soundbites, tweets and ignorance. Diversity has been substituted by uniformity, political correctness and, more recently, the awfully destructive cancel culture and its close companion, self-censorship. People read less, and less and less the long argument – such as (good) books about global problems. Perhaps because we think we are so busy? Whatever the reason, the attention span has shrunk and many have a comfort zone the size of a pinhead. It bodes ill – no matter the kind of social body in which this disease takes root. It spread like...