TFF Blog

. On December 12, 2012, on the day, 4 years earlier, Western countries and allies – perversely calling themselves ‘Friends of Syria’ – carried through a regime change by statement and set up a Syrian National Council of people never elected by anyone in Syria and told the world that it was, from now on, the only ‘legitimate representative of the Syrian people!’ During the 4 years, Western, Saudi, Turkish and the Gulf States supported innumerable illegal, destructive and mainly foreign terrorist groups with the goal to undermine the legitimate Syrian government and destabilise the country – as had been recommended by US ambassador William Roebuck (1) in Damascus as far back as in 2006 (WikiLeaks documentation here). December 12, 2016, marked a fundamental turning point. Aleppo did not “fall to the dictator/butcher/mass murderer” aka President Bashar al-Assad – no, it was liberated and the occupation by terrorist groups such...

Israeli politics gets messier and messier. Now there is to be yet another election, hard on the heels of the last one which, in turn, was hard on the heels of the one before. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears to have two major aims in life. The first is to remain prime minister for as long as he feels like it. (He is already Israel’s longest-serving premier.) The second is to escape prison. He has been charged with bribery and graft. Only if he is holding his high office can he escape prosecution. After the recent election, with his Likud Party not doing well, he discussed the possibility of a coalition with his rival, also a conservative. But a deal was elusive and so it is back to the polls. Many Israelis have talked about the end of Israeli democracy. Avraham Berg, the former speaker of the Knesset (parliament), has...

Here is a good backgrounder with her speech and an interview at COP 25 in Madrid: Greta Thunberg Slams COP25, Says Response to Climate Crisis Is “Clever Accounting and Creative PR” What she says in her intro is really important, important as a criticism of the world’s media: If she does not say something personal and emotional, few will listen. This fact-oriented speech has received much less media attention – proving her important point: When you speak facts, rely on research and appear “dull”, the media cannot get their satisfaction in terms of drama, individual story/identity, smashing superficial headlines and sensationalism. While one can certainly point out that she says less-thought-through things about democracy and the Free World towards the end of this speech, she is growing better and better – and she obviously knows more than anyone in decision-making positions. And in the mainstream media. Now, what does that...

The Europeans have not done well in countering President Donald Trump’s onslaught on Iran. When Trump unilaterally decided that the US should withdraw from the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal, which committed Iran to winding down its nuclear research in return for the West, Russia and China (the latter two were also part of the deal) lifting sanctions which were crippling the Iranian economy, the Europeans huffed and puffed and then did little. The UN membership considered the 2015 deal to be very fair. The Security Council gave it unanimous support. Indeed, the US is now in breech of international law by opting out. But if the Europeans had had the guts when President Donald Trump announced the US withdrawal they would have pushed for debate on this issue at the Security Council and got the US condemned, even punished. Unfortunately, Trump had the Europeans’ guts for braces. After shouting loudly...

This is the digitalized version of a TFF Statement published by TFF’s Board almost 31 years ago. Could that be of any interest today? First, it reflects the situation and the issues discussed at the time as well as the hopes for a better future – now sadly lost. Secondly, it is one example of how peace researchers were thinking and made constructive political recommendations, available for anyone to take inspiration from – which virtually no one in power did. So, it’s a piece of international political as well as intellectual history. Third, it is an indicator of what the West could – and should – have done to have been in a much better situation than it is today. Admittedly, this is a contra-factual argument, but it can be defended on intellectual grounds although not empirically proven. Fourth, the authors pointed out a series of longterm priorities which match...

Imagine that you tell a friend something and you say it’s a fact and you know the sources are reliable – but then, a few weeks later, you learn that there was more to it, perhaps even that what you were in good faith believing was unfortunately factually wrong. Would you not call that friend and say – “hey, I’ve just learned that what I told you wasn’t really true; rather, it turned out to be a story, more or less constructed for a purpose, and the facts are much more complex?” Well, you are surely a decent person so you would. But what about our mainstream media? Do you remember to have seen a front-page item stating something to the effect that “we are sorry to inform you that the news story this media published some weeks back, turned out to be a planted propaganda story. We have now...

Here is the background – Germany’s, France’s and the UK’s letter to the UN Security Council accusing Iran of violating the 2015 nuclear deal. Iran’s PressTV asked me to comment on this issue in the larger framework of global nuclear policies.

It goes back to the French revolution of 1789. At the Revolutionary Convention, the most radical of the insurgents decided to seat themselves on the left side. “Why not on the other side, the right side, the place of rectitude, where law and the higher rights resided, when man’s best hand could be raised in righteous honour?” wrote Melvin Lasky in what was then Britain’s most influential intellectual monthly, Encounter. “Anyway they went left, and man’s political passions have never been the same since.” When Oskar Lafontaine, the German finance minister, broke with Chancellor Gerhard Schroder in the early days of the last Social Democratic government, he explained it was “because my heart beats on the left.” The right could never say that, even the liberal-inclined, ex-prime minister of the UK, David Cameron. When Humpty-Dumpty insisted on his own “master-meanings” he reassured Alice, “When I make a word do a lot of...

Political NATO’s London Summit on December 3 and 4, 2019 displays the deep political crisis of the 70-year-old alliance: Only a dinner and a short meeting, no statement to be issued, quarrels among the leading military members, accusations, substantial differences on Syria and many other issues, the deepest-ever Transatlantic conflict and the usual issues of burden-sharing. Legal But the political dimension of NATO’s crisis is only one. There is also a legal crisis. You’ll recognize it if you care to read the NATO Treaty text – something academic and media people don’t generally seem to have done. They would then have noticed that the Alliance of 2019 consistently operates outside – indeed in violation of – its own goals, purposes and values. For instance, the UN Charter which should be NATO’s guideline has been violated on a permanent basis for decades – such as in its out-of-area bombings of Yugoslavia...

Following revelations of grave flaws in its Syria reporting, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) must allow whistleblowers’ evidence to be heard at the coming OPCW Conference of States Parties.  That’s the message from the following public figures who have signed an Open Letter to OPCW permanent representatives: José Bustani, Ambassador of Brazil, first Director General of the OPCW and former Ambassador to the United Kingdom and France. William Binney, a former technical director at NSA George Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury Noam Chomsky, Emeritus Professor, MIT Alain Chouet, former chief of the Security Intelligence Service within the French external intelligence service (DGSE) Marcello Ferrada de Noli, Professor Emeritus, former head Research group Cross-cultural Injury Epidemiology, Karolinska Institute. Chair Swedish Doctors for Human Rights – SWEDHR Anne Gazeau-Secret, former French Ambassador, The Hague Katharine Gun, former GCHQ (UKGOV), Whistleblower John Kiriakou, Former CIA Officer and Former Senior...

As representatives of almost every state in the world gather in The Hague, all eyes should be on them. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) – whose conference they are attending – was mandated by the people of the world to play a vital part in reducing the evils of war. Instead, it seems, the OPCW has been manipulated to serve the ends of warmongers. Critics and non-Western nations arrived at this understanding some time ago. Key investigators at the OPCW have known it for a fact. Their knowledge was brought to light first by the leak of a suppressed report, then by firsthand testimony heard by an international panel, and now by Wikileaks’ release of an email in which an OPCW inspector expresses the gravest concern about intentional bias introduced to a redacted version of the report he co-authored. Crucial facts about the 2018 Douma chemical...

“Uanset om man tror, at Assad står bag angrebet eller ej, er det journalisternes opgave at være kritiske over for egne magthaveres beslutningsgrundlag.” Det skrev jeg i Ræson den 20. april 2018 i forbindelse med at Assad og den syriske regering blev beskyldt for at udføre et giftangreb mod sin egen befolkning i byen Douma. Danmark, med tidligere udenrigsminister Anders Samuelsen i spidsen, støttede op om et amerikansk missilangreb mod Syrien på den baggrund, inden vi nåede at tag en offentlig debat om det i det danske demokrati. Hvordan vidste den danske regering, at Syriens regering stod bag? Hvorfor venter Danmark ikke med at støtte op om et missilangreb og fordømme den syriske regering, før der har været en undersøgelse? Er missilangreb en konstruktiv måde at “svare igen” på? Hvordan er Danmarks erfaring med at løse problemer i Mellemøsten ved at affyre missiler? Takket være de – dovne – danske...