TFF global posts 2018

  • Last week, the American secretary of defence, Jim Mattis, declared a new era: “There has been a return of great power competition……great power competition – not terrorism- is now the primary focus of US security”. In the new national defence strategy document China and Russia are singled out as “adversaries”. Although the US is now spending on defence three times as much as China (1.7% of its GNP as against America’s 3.3%), Mattis is worried that the US’s military advantage over its adversary has eroded “in every domain of warfare”. The military, he said, “was coping with “inadequate resources” and he called for Congress to appropriate it more billions of dollars. Pro Mattis/Trump analysts are arguing that China could be set on replacing the US as the hegemon of East Asia and will then start projecting military power into other regions, even the West. They claim that military...

Most media covering the speech that US Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, gave at the Hoover Institution on January 17, 2018 merely points out that he said that the United States would stay in Syria – open-ended – in the future and until President Bashar al-Assad has left the scene. Read the full speech here. Reuters even twists it all to mean that the US is now more patient about Assad’s removal. Before I continue it is a significant sign of the Western crisis, including moral and legal decay, that it raises few eyebrows – and none in NATO circles – that a top official of the leader of the Western world: a) expresses no regrets about anything done so far in this conflict or in the larger Middle East, b) states clearly that it will continue what must in legal terms be characterized as foreign military aggression and presence...

Foreword to Michael Haas’ Book What is that American Diplomacy, after US bombing killed 3,5 million in Pyongyang in 1952 and the US Army killed 3 million in Vietnam from 1961 (Kennedy) to 30 Apr 1975 (Ford)?  Softer? This very rich, well researched book by Michael Haas–a senior, major US political scientist–gives detailed “softer” empirical, factual answers in Part II.  Indeed, highly recommended. In this foreword, however, I will explore US deep culture implications for US foreign policy, close to “American Diplomacy”. The US self-image as successor to Israel as MFN – most favored nation – by God, with Chosen People-Promised Land, CPPL, status, is from 1620, on Mayflower. Since about Year 70 Israel clearly no longer enjoyed CPPL status; that was under King David and under King Solomon. The position as CPPL was empty, may those with credentials apply. Puritan Pilgrims from East Anglia via Leiden in Holland, did,...

  -2018, the risk of nuclear war has surfaced more or less permanently in the media – the catchword being “North Korea” and the media being Western. It’s all been seen from the West’s point of view, nobody pointing out, for instance, that North Korea’s military expenditures are around 1% of those of the United States. And President Trump found it appropriate to talk about his bigger nuclear button – in response to a pretty pathetic statement from Kim Jong-un about having his on his desk in front of him all the time. In short, an extremely a-symmetric conflict with North Korea, for all practical purposes, seeing enemies and no reliable friends all around it and therefore in need of one tool which it has learned from others that it can be good to have when you are alone and you’re the weaker: nuclear weapons. In 2010, the New York...

/01/16/the-islamic-republic-of-hysteria-iran-middle-east-trump/”>Stephen M. Walt’s “The Islamic Republic of Hysteria” published in Foreign Policy on January 16, 2018 is the one you should choose. Here is how Walt’s starts out – “In October, the White House announced that moving forward, the official U.S. policy is aimed at “neutralizing Iran’s destabilizing influence and constraining its aggression.” … “Yet this ongoing full-court press against Iran makes little sense because it is nowhere close to being a regional hegemon. If anything, the willingness of pundits and politicians to embrace this alarmist fantasy says more about the cavalier nature of U.S. strategic discourse than it does about the actual challenge Iran may pose.” And here is Walt’s conclusion – “The bottom line is that an all-out campaign to counter an Iranian hegemon is unnecessary. Unfortunately, there is little reason to think the Trump administration will recognize this and adopt the sensible course outlined here. If it...

By David Swanson Remarks at Peace and Justice Studies Association Conference in Birmingham, Alabama, October 28, 2017. Thank you for inviting me. Can everyone who thinks that war is never, and can never be, justified please raise your hand. Thank you. Now if you think every war is always justified. Thank you. And finally all the moderates holding the balanced subtle middle ground: some wars are justified. Thank you. You may not be surprised to hear that this room is not typical of this country. Typical is for absolutely everyone to pile into that last group. The relationship between peace and war is clearly not understood by the U.S. public as along the lines of that between alive and dead. Peace and war are things people imagine can coexist. In Virginia, where I live, a school board member once said he would support recognizing the international day of peace as...

By Javad Heiranni The Tehran Times, January 14, 2018 TEHRAN – Professor Farhang Jahanpour, part-time tutor on the Middle East in the Department of Continuing Education at the University of Oxford, tells the Tehran Times that “It should be remembered that a greater part of the statement released by President Trump is for domestic consumption, and also it is a face-saving formula to persuade his base that he has remained firm in his decision.” “The nuclear agreement does not prohibit the development of ballistic missiles by Iran,” Jahanpour tells the Tehran Times in an exclusive interview. He also adds that “The Security Council Resolution that confirmed the deal, in an annex “calls on Iran” to refrain from manufacturing ballistic missiles, but it has been made clear that it is not a binding requirement.” Originally published by The Tehran Times here Following is the full text of the interview:   Q:...

  Is democracy in decline? If you talk about the quality of democracy the answer is clearly yes. The US, the world’s first and most important democracy- although at the beginning a limited democracy for white men only – is in trouble. President Donald Trump has brought old problems to the surface – the money that buys candidates and policies, gerrymandering, an increasingly polarised electorate and a deadlocked Congress. He has added his own negatives – misusing his power to threaten his opponent, Hilary Clinton, with jail, waging a war against the media and attempting to make it clear that he has the sole power to use nuclear weapons and that he will use them against North Korea, even if North Korea has not used its. If we talk about quantity the report issued today by the American organisation, Freedom House, that has monitored the rise and fall of democracy...

  By Jan Oberg • Message sent to Facebook in response to its blocking attempt and change of algorithm, both serious restricting my freedom of communication.   Blocking personal messages to friends Yesterday it was my birthday and roughly 500 people sent me thoughts, pictures and good wishes – also for the international peace issues I work for every day. Today I send a thank-you message to everyone of them (as replies to their messages on my profile, not through Messenger of on their profiles) – with a link to the new platform outside Facebook that we have felt was necessary to build – for the reasons I explain below. Here is the text of that standard message: “Thank you so much for remembering me ! 🙂 May I urge you to visit TFF’s new peace portal and magazine: / – look around and use Get the News on top...

  By Biljana Vankovska Interview with Asahi Shimbun, Tokyo   • Do you support the idea of having the accord with Greece over the disputes on the country’s name? If yes/no, please tell us the reason. It is hard to support an irrational dispute, only because one has a nationalistic idea that the name Macedonia implies irredentism. Apart from that, it is highly asymmetric dispute because Greece has nothing to gain or lose in substantial terms, while the Republic of Macedonia may lose not only its right on self-identification, identity but also to open a Pandora’s box of internal political and ethnic strife. The dispute has never been only over the name of the state (although a state’s name is a part of its international legal identity). All proposals of Matthew Nimetz has been so-called “ a set of ideas”, containing a range of aspects that directly affect the name...

  By Jan Oberg A few comments in advance of President Trump’s speech on January 11 concerning the nuclear deal, JCPOA, with Iran and why it would be stupid of him to isolate the US by violating the agreement’s letter and spirit. Iran’s response will also be very important and here it is essential to build on the goodwill of the world rather than risking giving the US a pretext for more Iranophobia and future military action. January 10, 2018 on PressTV.    

  • What is now unfolding in both North America and Western Europe is fake social activism, controlled and funded by the corporate establishment. This manipulated process precludes the formation of a real mass movement against war, racism and social injustice.   The anti-war movement is dead. The war on Syria is tagged as “a civil war”. The war on Yemen is also portrayed as a civil war.  While the bombing is by Saudi Arabia, the insidious role of the US is downplayed or casually ignored. “The US is not directly involved so there is no need for us to wage an anti-war campaign”. (paraphrase) In turn, dissent has become compartmentalized. Separate “issue oriented” protest movements (e.g. environment, anti-globalization, peace, women’s rights, LGBT) are encouraged and generously funded as opposed to a cohesive mass movement against global capitalism. This mosaic was already prevalent in the counter G7 summits and People’s Summits of the 1990s...