TFF Blog

As demagogic leaders with popular approval or at least acquiescence dominate the political process of several important ‘democratic’ states questions need to be asked about the core or indispensable content of democracy. Other states seek the imprimatur of ‘democracy’ but limit drastically the choices open to the citizenry or proclaim themselves ‘a Jewish state’ or ‘an Islamic Republic,’ and are more accurately regarded as an ‘technocracy or ‘theocracy.’ The legitimating impact of being a democracy should be based on something more objective than the language of self-identification, that is, claiming that we are a democracy because we describe our governing arrangements as a democracy, nothing more, nothing less. Procedural and Republican Democracy The idea of ‘free elections’ is certainly a prerequisite. It is not possible to think of a political system as democratic if it does not allow its citizens to choose without fear or interference among a wide range of candidates...

    By David Swanson April 9, 2018 Back in the 1890s those who believed conquering a continent was killing enough (without taking over Hawaii, the Philippines, Cuba, Puerto Rico, etc.) included Speaker of the House Thomas Reed. He clipped an article out of a newspaper about a lynching in South Carolina. He clipped a headline about “Another Outrage in Cuba.” He pasted the two together (fake news!) and gave them to a Congressman from South Carolina who was pushing for a war on Cuba. The Congressman eagerly read the article, then stopped, looked puzzled, and remarked “Why, this isn’t Cuba.” Originally published on David Swanson’s Lets’ Try Democracy here I recommend trying this trick. Clip an article about Israelis murdering Palestinians, or some outrage in a U.S. prison or a Saudi square or under the rain of humanitarian bombs in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, Libya, or elsewhere;...

We’re beginning this in and with the year 2018. It will be updated “backwards” in time as we get the time to do so. We live in a time where short articles, secondary literature – as well as images and videos – dominate and is, mostly, accessible on the Internet. Readily available information of course has many good sides. But, while people have easy access to lots of information, what do they know? Information and knowledge is not the same. Knowledge is structured information, based on some categorisations of types of information which are again based on theories and concepts: How do things work, how are different types of information/facts/data related to each other, how complex is a problem that we need to solve? Knowledge is a tool to avoid superficiality, and the more you know, the more you are likely to want to know more. It’s about a never-ending...

We should carefully reflect on Martin Luther King’s  message to the World. MLK understood the relationship between America’s war agenda and social justice and civil rights in America. “No one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war [Vietnam]”. One cannot be a civil rights leader without taking a stance against U.S. led wars. In the words of Martin Luther King: “Silence is Betrayal”. Today with war hawks in the White House and the U.S. State department, America is leading a military adventure which in the real sense of the word threatens the future of humanity. But this is not a talking point on network TV. Nor is it a concern of the “antiwar” movement. Meanwhile, the media is “killing the truth” either through distortion or omission. Today we commemorate the passing of Martin Luther King who was assassinated in a...

The Middle East is Heating Up Again: Richard Falk is interviewed by C.J. Polychroniou Intro This is a somewhat modified text of an interview of two weeks ago conducted by the Greek journalist and author, C.J Polychroniou. Since then several developments have occurred, none more significant than the Return Home Land Day demonstrations of March 30, 2018. The original interview appeared in several online publications. The format is altered to make somewhat more reader friendly.   CJP: Richard, let’s start with Donald Trump’s decision to officially recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and to move the US embassy there by May of this year. First, is this legal from the standpoint of international law, and, second, what are likely to be the long-term effects of the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital on the region as a whole? Richard Falk: There is no question, Chronis, that Trump’s Jerusalem policy relating to...

  . This exciting opportunity stimulated the development of a bigger idea that combines Oberg’s work for peace and art photography with a focus on the Chinese-initiated Silk Belt and Road Initiative, the largest and most visionary in today’s world in terms of linking people and cultures into cooperation rather than confrontation. In various ways the project – with the Road as metaphor – stretches from Shanghai over Myanmar, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Iran and Syria to Venice and seeks to promote cooperation and peace in the process. The “Silk PeaceArt Road” project is made public at this very early development stage where no funding is secured to encourage you to share co-operative ideas, contacts you may have in China and along the Silk Road or to potential partners, artists, sponsors, art institutions, etc. The project integrates peace work and art photography and it is the first cooperative endeavour by TFF and...

  By Gareth Porter, TFF Associate March 30, 2018 Via theamericanconservative.com In my reporting on U.S.-Israeli policy, I have tracked numerous episodes in which the United States and/or Israel made moves that seemed to indicate preparations for war against Iran. Each time – in 2007, in 2008, and again in 2011 – those moves, presented in corporate media as presaging attacks on Tehran, were actually bluffs aimed at putting pressure on the Iranian government. But the strong likelihood that Donald Trump will now choose* John Bolton as his next national security advisor creates a prospect of war with Iran that is very real. Bolton is no ordinary neoconservative hawk. He has been obsessed for many years with going to war against the Islamic Republic, calling repeatedly for bombing Iran in his regular appearances on Fox News, without the slightest indication that he understands the consequences of such a policy. His is not...

TFF Associate John Scales Avery presents his latest book on one of the most destructive institutions in modern societies and of our time. I would like to announce the publication of a new book entitled “The Devil’s Dynamo”. It is a collection of articles and book chapters that I have written about the way in which military-industrial complexes throughout the world drive and perpetuate the institution of war. A considerable amount of new material has also been added. The book can be freely downloaded and circulated from the Danish Peace Academy. Why call a book about military-industrial complexes “The Devil’s Dynamo”? A military-industrial complex involves a circular flow of money. The money flows like the electrical current in a dynamo, driving a diabolical machine. Money from immensely rich corporate oligarchs buys the votes of politicians and the propaganda of the mainstream media. Numbed by the propaganda, citizens allow the politicians...

    This present Pope – Francis – is probably the most powerful man in the world, in the round. Stalin once asked when confronted with the argument about the Pope’s reach and influence, replied, “How many divisions has the pope got?” He missed the point. The pope does not work these days in the world of hard power. He is a peddler of soft power. Francis has much more power, maybe because of the strength of his convictions than any of his predecessors, with the exception of the Polish pope, John Paul 11, who played a front-line role in triggering the events that brought down communism. John Paul 11 set his sights high. How could this youngish pope have such an impact? It was drive, personality and an intuitive knowledge of how power worked. He was also enormously charismatic and could summon up a crowd of half a million people...

The ethnic map few understood. Should make it clear that cutting up Yugoslavia in independent republics could not be done without bloodshed. (1) Yellow = Serbs, Dark Green = Muslims, Light Blue = Croats,  Light Green = Slovenes, Orange = Montenegrins, Pink = Albanians, Darker Blue = Macedonians   , marks the 19th anniversary of NATO illegal and illegitimate bombing of Yugoslavia, Serbia and its Kosovo, province during 78 days. It has – one is tempted to say: of course – been conveniently forgotten by the West itself. It was masterminded by the United States under Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright after the so-called negotiations between Serbs and Albanians in Rambouillet outside Paris (the parties never met face-to-face) While Clinton may be best remembered for his relations with Monica Lewinsky and his wife, Hillary Clinton, some of us also remember him (and Albright) for bombing Afghanistan, Sudan,...

  Like it not we find that we’re having to get used to the paradoxes, contradictions and confusions of the Trump era. None is more apparent than his attack on the landmark Iran de-nuclearisation agreement, fashioned by the Obama Administration and the Iranian government. President Donald Trump wants to unwind it, even though it has the 100% support of the UN Security Council which in an unanimous vote enshrined the agreement in international law. At the same time he is trying to lure the North Koreans into a de-nuclearization policy, at the least into a nuclear freeze to stop it developing its rocket science any further, so that it’s incapable of hitting the US with a nuclear-tipped missile. But, given Iran, why should the North Koreans go along with such a deal? Why should it make such a deal when it knows there is a chance that the US might...

* Today marks the 15th Anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq. Neither solid analyses, moral reasoning and decent argument nor history’s probably largest pre-war, anti-war demonstrations worldwide had any discernible impact on the Bush and Blair Administrations’ decision to go to war and do so on a false pretext. Neither could major allies like France and Germany by their opposition to the war on Iraq persuade Washington and London to first try a peaceful resolution in accordance with the UN Charter provisions. TFF was deeply engaged in preventing this war – also by being on the ground in Iraq – and wants to a) document the research we did and how we argued back then and b) contribute to this tragedy never being forgotten. We also want to place our analyses and debate articles at the disposal – in one place – of the students, researchers, concerned citizens and...