US Empire decline

Mazin Qumsiyeh July 16, 2020 Winston Churchill told the Peel Commission  in 1937: “I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly-wise race… has come in and taken their place”.   Originally posted on Transcend Media Service June 29, 2020 Thirty years later, Martin Luther King Jr describes the biggest purveyor of violence in the world as the government of the (dis)United States of America which took the rain of empire from Britain...

June 29, 2020 Intro by Tom Engelhart to article by Andrew Bacevich Today, in the context of the Black Lives Matter protests, TomDispatch regular Andrew Bacevich considers the all-American version of “extreme materialism” that Martin Luther King called out more than half a century ago. And when it comes to the overwhelming urge to get one’s hands on the goods, among the looters of this moment two groups are almost never mentioned: the Pentagon and the police. Yet, in 1997, the Department of Defense set up the 1033 program as part of the National Defense Authorization Act to provide thousands of domestic police forces with “surplus” equipment of almost every imaginable militarized kind. Since then, thanks to your tax dollars, it has given away $7.4 billion of such equipment, some of it directly off the battlefields of this country’s forlorn “forever wars.” For items like grenade launchers, mine-resistant armored vehicles,...

Pulling down statues may make us feel good but will not eliminate the root causes of racism and discrimination Farhang JahanpourTFF Associate June 23, 2020 Part Two – Part 1 here The protests to the cruel killing of George Floyd and many others before him and even some after him have not remained confined to the United States or among black people alone, but have given rise to a global movement for change and an end to racism and discrimination. Many protestors in the United States have called for the toppling of the statues of Confederate generals and for the names of places and institutions named after them to be changed, while in many European countries demonstrators have called for the toppling of statues of those who are symbols of racism, imperialism and white supremacy. Clearly, toppling a few statues may give temporary satisfaction to those who have been the...

June 10, 2020 Jan Oberg The horrific police murder of the black American George Floyd is, of course, not the first, neither will it be the last. Fortunately, it has set in motion significant protests not only in the United States but around the world – on top of the Corona Crisis. And it has created an opportunity for people to do symbolic acts such as taking a knee, criticising President Trump’s Bible Show after he had – classical dictatorship-style – used violence on peaceful demonstrators, etc. And people posted black images on Instagram. These are individual protests in response to an individual being killed in a single event. They are very human, noble and understandable, indeed, necessary – as markers that enough is enough. But where will it go from that first reaction? The comprehensive perspective To approach and answer, read carefully this statement by Martin Luther King, Jr.:...

June 9, 2020 John Scales Avery In written Chinese, the word “crisis” is represented by two characters. One of these, taken alone, means “danger”. The other, by itself, means “opportunity”. A crisis nearly always leads to great change. There is a danger that this will be a change for the worse. But there also is the opportunity to change society for the better – to reform and improve it. Both paths are present in a crisis like our present one. We must strive with all our strength to make society take the right path. Our present crisis In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is in itself a crisis, many American cities have erupted in massive protests over the senseless killing by police of yet another black man – George Floyd. The country is deeply divided. Throughout the world there have been anti-racist protests, partly in sympathy with the...

June 5, 2020 By Lynn Burnett Mahatma Gandhi’s teachings of nonviolent resistance had a famous and profound impact on the civil rights movement in the United States. That impact was facilitated in part by the journeys of two of Martin Luther King’s future mentors – Howard Thurman and Benjamin Mays, who were good friends with King’s father – to meet with Gandhi in 1936. However, the Black American interest in Gandhi goes all the way back to 1919, when the Indian freedom struggle exploded in the wake of World War I after the British Empire failed to extend greater autonomy to India despite the Indian participation in the war. Gandhi’s interests in the Black American freedom struggle date back even further – to the 1890s – when he first studied the abolitionist movement that destroyed slavery. This article traces those earlier connections between Gandhi and Black Americans, in the decades...

China has learned from its own rich history and is applying those lessons to re-emerge as a major 21st century power May 20, 2020 Pepe Escobar With hybrid warfare 2.0 against China reaching fever pitch, the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative, will continue to be demonized 24/7 as the proverbial evil communist plot for economic and geopolitical domination of the “free” world, boosted by a sinister disinformation campaign.  It’s idle to discuss with simpletons. In the interest of an informed debate, what matters is to find the deeper roots of Beijing’s strategy – what the Chinese learned from their own rich history and how they are applying these lessons as a re-emerging major power in the young 21st century.  Originally published by Asia Times on May 11, 2020, here Let’s start with how East and West used to position themselves at the center of the world.  The first...

The world is supposed to be pulling together to defeat the Coronavirus and to some extent it is. Earlier on Russia sent special equipment to the US and recently the US has sent some to Russia. China has aided Italy and Africa with doctors and equipment. Tiny Cuba, with its deep pool of doctors, has also helped Africa. Around the world there is a sense of “we are all in this together” and that this is a bigger problem than the ones the world has faced since World War 2. The last two days the World Health Organization has brought all the world’s countries together to discuss how to go forward. Both the US and China, to a degree, have messed things up. President Donald Trump has been vicious in his attacks, suggesting Chinese culpability for spreading the virus. (He’s forgotten how the US incubated AIDS, an even greater killer....

Photo: Pepe Escobar The coming decade could see the US take on Russia, China and Iran over the New Silk Road connection May 18, 2020 Pepe Escobar The Raging Twenties started with a bang with the targeted assassination of Iran’s General Qasem Soleimani. Yet a bigger bang awaits us throughout the decade: the myriad declinations of the New Great Game in Eurasia, which pits the US against Russia, China and Iran, the three major nodes of Eurasia integration. Every game-changing act in geopolitics and geoeconomics in the coming decade will have to be analyzed in connection to this epic clash. The Deep State and crucial sectors of the US ruling class are absolutely terrified that China is already outpacing the “indispensable nation” economically and that Russia has outpaced it militarily. The Pentagon officially designates the three Eurasian nodes as “threats.” Originally published by AsiaTimes on January 16, 2020 Hybrid War techniques...

The author in front of a part of his photo-based, multi-media installation, “Silk Peace Art Road – SPAR” which was exhibited at the Venice Biennale 2019 and will be shown in China 2020. Yesterday, The Necessary Teacher Training College, DNS, in Denmark held its annual conference on peace and justice. As a couple of times before, I had the honour of being invited to be the keynote speaker. Because of the Coronavirus, it was online and not onsite – and I had produced the lecture in advance and then there was a Q&A session in the afternoon via Zoom. The two-part lecture is now on TFF’s Vimeo Channel here: Part 1 Part 2 The discussion that followed after group work If you found this lecture interesting or useful, please help us do more in the future. Remember, TFF is 100% people-financed and therefore completely independent of the government and corporate...

ICAN: The US boosted its nuclear arms budget A record $73 billion spent on nukes in 2019 – says ICAN. Nuclear-armed states spent a record $73 billion on nuclear weapons in 2019, a nearly 10% increase from 2018, and the US accounted for almost half of the spending, a new report states. Please find a short conversation about that at PressTV’s Channel at Urmedium.

The war in Syria has dropped out of the news, like almost everything else, in a time when the Coronavirus seems to dominate all discourse and reporting. But the regime of Bashar al-Assad continues to strangle its own country. The Russians continue to bomb on his behalf, terrifying civilians and hospitals. The Americans work semi-clandestinely to undermine both the regime and its Russian backers. There is no sign in the US-Soviet relationship of what was called in the 1970s and 80s détente. The big powers, Russia, the US, the UK and France appear intent on maintaining their interests in the Middle East. Russia has long been a friend of Syria and has had its single foreign base there since Soviet days. For even longer the US, France and the UK have been a friend of Saudi Arabia and today provide weapons for the Saudi air force so it can support...