TFF global posts 2019

Ab At The Transnational, we believe in diversity. And in the likelihood that world events are complex and can be seen from more than one – usually US/Western – perspective. You may have wondered why the, now retired, UN representative for Venezuela, the brilliant lawyer, humanist and poet, Alfred De Zayas, has not been used extensively as an authority of both Venezuela and international law? Well hardly because, like me, you had not heard of him, had you? That’s why we should be grateful to Abby Martin and The Empire Files for having given us this conversation. It debunks – in a fact-based and comprehensive, law-respecting manner – most of what you’ve been told and all of what, as of writing, 54 countries have done in support of the regime policies of the US rather than in support of Venezuela as a sovereign state. And of the UN and its...

In 1883 P. J. Reuter, head of the news agency carrying his name, wrote the following memorandum: To: Agents and CorrespondentsFrom: P. J. ReuterDate: 1883 Re: Please cover the following: “…fires, explosions, floods, inundations, railway accidents, destructive storms, earthquakes, shipwrecks attended with loss of life, accidents to war vessels and to mail steamers, street riots of a grave character, disturbances arising from strikes, duels between and suicides of persons of note, social or political, and murders of a sensational or atrocious character.” (*) Sounds familiar?  Yes, it is called “news”. It is all about action, nothing about structures generating them. It is about persons high up, “of note, social or political”. (People low down generate street riots and strike disturbances.) It is all negative. There is not a single positive thing to “cover”. (To the contrary: a simple murder is not enough, it has to be preferably “sensational or atrocious” to merit cover.) Of...

French president Emmanuel Macron has published an extremely long Open Letter to 27 leading newspapers in all EU member states. (The fact that it has been all over the place and way longer than the usual about 800 words for a feature article speaks volumes about the close connection state-media and the lack of quality control, one might add. The kindest thing one could say – or at least I could say – is that he is at least trying to think a bit about the future where virtually all other Western leaders are doing daily crisis management and unprincipled, pragmatic decision-making. It’s sad that Macron’s visionary attempt and appeals are so unattractive – bordering on boring – at least in the light of having been sold to the public as an intellectual. Sputnik News asked me to comment and here is what I had to say. Although that formulation...

After the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in AD 70 the Jews were thrust into the outer world – many into Arab countries, later to become Muslim, where they were extended protection, and later into the Roman and then Christian world where they were accepted for many centuries. There were no pogroms until the Middle Ages and then they were centuries apart. Over two millennia many big tribal groups have been dispersed – the Slavs, the Moguls, the Bantu, the Tamils, the Celts – the list is a long one – but only the Jews have had an idée fixe about where they want to go back to. During the last thousand years, while the Jews were in the diaspora, the Arabs reinforced their settlements on the same land that some Jews yearned for, just as pre-Arab tribes had settled it in the time before Moses- and just as...

Peace can never be achieved this way a) The issue is about peace, not only nuclear weapons. The US has not been willing to sign a peace agreement after all these years. After some kind of peace process and treaty has been achieved, you can turn to the specific issue of nuclear weapons. b) Making peace takes time, thorough preparations, lots of different expertise, long consultations and only face-to-face meetings when all are sure that, when the parties finally meet at top level, some kind of deal will be signed. c) This would have been an issue for the UN if it were respected and used fairly by member states around the world. Naive and egotist people believe they can do miracles without the institutions of the international system. Probably Trump and Kim are in the same category believing that they are all capable and great guys of history (worthy...

Kim Jong-un, paramount leader of the North Korean dictatorship, is in Vietnam ready to meet President Donald Trump. Last June the two leaders met, applauded themselves and each other and made some sort of a deal even if it wasn’t the one Trump boasted about – the total elimination of the North’s nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, the North has stopped nuclear testing. The US only stopped in 1992 and France in 1996, so this is a very important step forward. It should not be minimized as the American “Blob” is doing. (The “Blob”, a creation of the White House of President Barack Obama, is the highly influential industrial/military/legislative/media complex, a majority of whom are hard line on foreign affairs.) The North also has begun dismantling a missile-engine test site. Set against that, the US intelligence community and independent observers say it is continuing to build intercontinental missiles and is preparing to...

It’s time overdue that the misleading myths on immigration are thrown into the trashcan. They are causing untold damage. The fact is that President Donald Trump’s own government research shows that Mexican migration has dropped sharply in recent years. In Britain, the Brexit debate which began with a whipped up crisis about immigration has now moved to a level where it’s tearing the country apart.  In France and Belgium immigrants are falsely blamed for Islamic terrorism. In Sweden and Denmark the myth-makers have pushed traditionally left of centre electorates rightwards. A new book on the subject, “Blaming Immigrants”, by University of Columbia professor, Neeraj Kaushal, says it all. It pulls together most of the research so far done. Immigration is one of the most divisive issues of our times. Yet the increase in immigration globally is largely in line with the growth in world population. It was 3% in 1990...

A conversation with Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif The Western mainstream press hasn’t done much to enlighten their audiences to the plain fact that there is more than one side to a conflict between at least two. The Transnational is happy to make available some other views, particularly since Iran is the David and the West the Goliath and since omission is more effective in propaganda terms than fake. Iran’s views, its history, its reasons to do what it does and see the world as it does is woefully under-represented in the said press. So is leading media’s criticism of US policies vis-a-vis Iran. They systematically take the side of the strong, the bully and the war-threatening side of the conflict. If the Munich Security Conference has no other merits, it does offer an opportunity to hear many voices and here them from their own representatives and not through Western...

Nigeria is a veritable factory of sophisticated novelists. It was no surprise that Ben Okri won the British Booker Prize that goes annually to the best novelist of the year. Considering that high-class novel writing in English only began in Nigeria in 1958 with Chinua Achebe’s famous work, “Things Fall Apart”, now a classic, it has come a long way in a short time. Will Nigeria move at a similar speed with its economy and banish poverty as it once promised to? Read Ben Okri’s vivid capture of poverty in his novel, The Famished Road, where the words are illuminated as if they had been thrown up in the air, then descend, sparkling like diamonds and rubies: “Everywhere there was the crudity of wounds, the stark huts, the rusted zinc abodes, and the rubbish in the streets, children in rags, and the little girls naked on the sand playing with...

With Trump the silences are usually as expressive of his intentions as the incoherent dogmas. Indeed, his Second State of the Union Address delivered in Congress on February 5, 2019 gives a clear insight into the political mentality of tormentor in chief when it comes to the human condition. The speech contains many tensions, but none more illuminating than his denunciation of socialism and his silence about the resurgence of fascist tendencies throughout the world, and not least in his own country, which he several times anointed that night as the best the world has ever known. He not the first leader to make such a claim, of course, but he is undoubtedly the least qualified, and his own two years of faulty leadership has contributed to making America far less admired, and far more feared, than previously. His diatribe against socialism had at least two targets: First, the Sanders...

On February 11, 2019, the Islamic Republic of Iran marks the fortieth anniversary of the victory of the Islamic Revolution. In his latest speech at a conference of the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), for which he received huge fees, National Security Advisor John Bolton said: The outcome of the president’s policy review should be to determine that the Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1979 revolution will not last until its fortieth birthday. I have said for more than ten years since coming to these events that the declared policy of the United States of America should be the overthrow of the mullahs’ regime in Tehran…and that is why before 2019 we here will celebrate in Tehran. Even more ominously, late last year Bolton instructed the Pentagon to produce options for attacking Iran. Addressing the same conference on June 29, 2018, President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani also predicted: “Freedom is right around the corner...

By Ina Curic February 8, 2019 The story teller who also just became TFF board member for a second time has set up her video channel on YouTube, of course called Imagine Creatively. She did that while working in Zambia – as you will see in the videos. So play for peace, use the love glasses and create happiness making children smile across borders and differences. Isn’t that peace? Now explore the first spontaneous videos on the Imagine Creatively channel! Ina Curic And read more about Ina here.