United States – Empire and domestic

Photo: Shutterstock By Jim Lobe March 6, 2019 The ongoing war in Yemen, called the world’s “worst humanitarian disaster” by the United Nations and independent aid agencies since early last year, received a grand combined total of 20 minutes of coverage on the ABC, NBC, and CBS weekday evening news programs in 2018. That compared to a total of 71 minutes that the three major networks devoted to the British royal wedding and a combined total of 100 minutes dedicated to the rescue of a dozen young cave explorers from flooding in Thailand, according to the latest annual compilation by the authoritative Tyndall Report. Originally published at lobelog.com By contrast, the brutal murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in September received a total of 116 minutes of coverage by the three networks, making it one of the very few foreign-based stories to make...

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...

By Michael T. Klare February 26, 2019 In his highly acclaimed 2017 book, Destined for War, Harvard professor Graham Allison assessed the likelihood that the United States and China would one day find themselves at war. Comparing the U.S.-Chinese relationship to great-power rivalries all the way back to the Peloponnesian War of the fifth century BC, he concluded that the future risk of a conflagration was substantial. Like much current analysis of U.S.-Chinese relations, however, he missed a crucial point: for all intents and purposes, the United States and China are already at war with one another. Originally published at juancole.com Even if their present slow-burn conflict may not produce the immediate devastation of a conventional hot war, its long-term consequences could prove no less dire. To suggest this means reassessing our understanding of what constitutes war. From Allison’s perspective (and that of so many others in Washington and elsewhere),...

By Chas Freeman, Jr. February 20, 2019 Remarks to the St. Petersburg Conference on World Affairs Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.)Senior Fellow, Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University St. Petersburg, Florida, 12 February 2019 I’m here at your kind invitation to discuss China, how bad our relations with it may get, and how the contest we’ve initiated with China is likely to play out.  Let me take a minute or two to set the context for this discussion. The context Five hundred years ago this month, Hernán Cortés began the European annihilation of the Mayan, Aztec, and other indigenous civilizations in the Western Hemisphere.  Six months later, in August 1519, Magellan [Fernão de Magalhães] launched his circumnavigation of the globe.  For five centuries thereafter, a series of Western powers – Portugal, Spain, Holland, Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and, finally, the United States – overturned...

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...

By Seyd Hossein Mousavian February 18, 2019 In his State of Union, President Trump focused his comments about the Middle East on Iran, the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS or IS), and the U.S. troop withdrawal from Syria. Despite his negative rhetoric about Iran, Trump did identify some potential common ground with the government in Tehran. The challenge for the next two years is to focus on that common ground, avoid a war between the United States and Iran, and prepare for an eventual U.S. return to the nuclear agreement with Tehran. Originally published by LobeLog February 7, 2019 here. While Iraqi President Barham Salih hailed Iran for supporting the Iraqi nation in the fight against IS, Donald Trump singled out Iran as the world’s leading state sponsor of terror. Moreover the Iraqi president rejected a plan floated by President Trump that calls for keeping U.S. forces in Iraq...

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...

Av Örjan Appelqvist 5:e februari 2019 Just nu bevittnar vi en samstämmig flod av artiklar till stöd för Juan Guaido som utnämnts sig själv till ”interimspresident” i Venezuela och som USA och dess allierade i Latinamerika sedan omedelbart förklarat som landets legitime president. En mängd stater i Europa har sedan följt i spåren även om de inte ännu officiellt brutit förbindelserna med president Maduro utan nöjt sig med att vädja om ”dialog” mellan regering och opposition med sikte på genomförande av ett nytt presidentval under internationell övervakning. Sveriges urikesminister Margot Wallström talar om att uppgiften nu är att ”återupprätta demokratin” och genomföra ”fria och tillförlitliga val”. Det låter ju resonabelt men i sak betyder det att man – utan att motivera sakligt – hävdar att det inte råder en demokratisk ordning i Venezuela och att genomförda val inte varit fria och tillförlitliga. Gäller det också det två val som oppositionen...

Or just how unreasonable US policies against Iran are President Trump doesn’t accept the view of Iran and its behaviour that is stated in the report from the National Intelligence Office. He characterizes his intellligence people as “extremely passive and naive” and says – “Be careful of Iran. Perhaps Intelligence should go back to school!” here quoted from Newsweek: “The Intelligence people seem to be extremely passive and naive when it comes to the dangers of Iran. They are wrong!” So now you know it: Donald Trump has better intelligence than the rest of the US. Here Robert Kelley, former inspector at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna and Jan Oberg, TFF, discuss the general issues of inspections, sanctions and US foreign policy against Iran in spite of Iran’s 100% compliance with the 2015 JCPOA – Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – which is one of the most...

The number of nuclear weapons possessed by the US and Russia is a fraction of what it was during the height of the Cold War. Successive presidents on both sides, since the time of John F.  Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev, have feared their destructive power. Their supposed value, so called Mutually Assured Destruction, known by its capitals, MAD, is in fact valueless. They cannot be used, and nearly everyone accepts that. Yet they continue to exist and, as President Mikhail Gorbachev and his ally in nuclear arms control, President Ronald Reagan, both said, there  is the fear of a false alarm or two errant officers in the silo entering simultaneously their keys which allows the firing  of the rocket. Yet here we are in 2019 with a new American nuclear initiative just announced last weekend. (I doubt that president Donald Trump is in the clutches of Russia. Otherwise, why would...