US Empire decline

U.S Vice President Mike Pence, left, joined by Montenegro’s Prime Minister Dusko Markovic during a joint press conference in Villa Gorica in Podgorica, Montenegro on August 2, 2017. (AP Photo / Risto Bozovic)   Did Montenegro’s NATO accession increase the collective defense of the West or merely protect a corrupt regime? When Fox News host Tucker Carlson recently asked President Donald Trump why the United States should defend Montenegro, Trump responded by saying that if Montenegrins decided to “get aggressive.… Congratulations, you’re in World War III.” The subsequent outcry was predictable; a New York Times editorial quickly attacked Trump’s comments as revealing “another facet of his ignorance of and disdain for America’s historic place in the world and its alliances.” Yet Trump’s comments—inarticulately expressed as they were—were in fact in line with the thinking of past American presidents leery of getting the country involved in foreign problems with no bearing...

By Farhang Jahanpour, TFF Board member August 13, 2018   In an interview with Tehran Times, professor Farhang Jahanpour, part-time tutor on Middle Eastern affairs in the Department of Continuing Education, University of Oxford, and a member of Kellogg College says that he does not believe that Arab NATO is “a viable military alliance.” Former Senior Research Scholar at Harvard adds that “Many earlier U.S. attempts to develop a formal alliance with Arab monarchies have failed and, at the moment, there is even less unity among various PGCC members than ever before.” Professor Jahanpour suggests that President Trump should be invited to Iran to see the destruction wrought on her people thanks to Saddam Hussein’s Western-supported invasion of Iran and then he should visit all the other places the US has helped destroy and meet the victims there. Following is the full text of the interview which was published by...

Re-posted from TFF’s earlier website on November 1, 2016 with links to later materials being added at the bottom. TFF PressInfo # 392: Just how grey are the White Helmets and their backers? Added at the bottom of the article on November 23, 2016: The – bizarre – White Helmet Mannequin Challenge video; The Swedish Institute of International Affairs’s event with the White Helmets on November 24; The Right Livelihood Award Foundation’s Award Ceremony to take place on November 25. • • While thousands of humanitarian organisations around the world are struggling fiercely with diminishing support from governments and the public, one has achieved a surprising amount of support from Western governments in a surprisingly short period of time and gained a surprising attention from mainstream media and ditto political elites: The Syrian Civil Defence or White Helmets. Their name of course makes you think of the UN’s Blue Helmets...

Donald Trump’s efforts to block Iran’s oil exports are intended to harm Iran, but his policy also harms the US and the rest of the world.   By Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich July 2, 2018 • It is as clear as day that President Trump is obsessed with regime change in Iran. What is not made clear is the full extent of the damage his gambit will cause to Americans and American interests. Without cause or justification, Mr. Trump pulled out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action (JCPOA), striking a hard blow to America’s European allies—and its own credibility. Moreover, he threatened European countries with secondary sanctions should they continue to trade with Iran. Originally published by Foreign Policy Journal on July 2, 2018 To top it all, in his latest move, he has called for all Iranian oil exports to be cut off by November. Or in practical terms, he...

    290475″ data-end=”1530428399″> Take a look at the short video below that Facebook suddenly sends me today, Saturday June 30, 2018 about my being so important for communities and how great Facebook is at creating a community feeling worldwide. Many thanks, I guess I am supposed to say. Well, I don’t. First, I detest these – I assume, artificial intelligence-based – videos where everything is soooo filled with stock photos, stock happy children, all dancing and having a gooood stock time and the stock music is just mechanical sing-along kitsch…OK, just had to let it out! Second, Facebook has destroyed the worldwide reach TFF and I had until about a year ago – thanks to their “algorithm”, political interference and tracking. We’re basically – that is, 90% or so – reaching only people in Denmark, Sweden and other Nordic countries and the rest outside. All the people I interacted...

  Af Henrik Dahl & Jan Øberg 27. juni 2018 17 år efter 11. september og USA’s invasion af Afghanistan spørger Ræson: Gør vesten verden bedre? Chefredaktionen skriver: På en række områder har præsident Trump udfordret den traditionelle opfattelse af USA’s globale rolle, og givet sine allierede – herunder EU-landene – lejlighed til at overveje hvor langt de fælles interesser rækker. I Mellemøsten har Iran, Saudi-Arabien og Rusland de seneste år indtaget nye roller. I Asien bliver Kina stadig stærkere. En række iagttagere har de seneste år – med eller uden beklagelse – erklæret, at vestens mulighed for at sætte dagsordenen er ved at brænde endegyldigt ud. I en række artikler rejser RÆSON disse temaer over for eksperter, politikere og meningsdannere, herunder fredsforsker Jan Øberg og medlem af Folketinget, sociolog Henrik Dahl. I denne email-duel – “To meninger mødes” – skriver de på skift, fire indlæg hver. Artiklen er på...

By David Swanson May 29, 2018 “Memorial Day is a time to remember, appreciate, and honor the selfless patriots who gave the ultimate sacrifice in service to freedom. At a time when our country seems so divided, we must not forget that it is because of their service and sacrifice that we live in the most free and prosperous nation on Earth.” Congressman Tom Garrett It would be difficult to count all of the lies in the above statement. It’s about the U.S. Memorial Day on May 28, 2018. Let’s just highlight a few. Originally published at David Swanson’s “Let’s Try Democracy” – May 28, 2018 Let’s start with “most free.” The British-based Legatum Institute, which ranks the United States 18th in overall “prosperity,” ranks it 28th in “personal freedom.”(1) The U.S.-based Cato Institute ranks the United States 24th in “personal freedom” and 11th in “economic freedom.”(2) The Canadian-based World...

  By Jan Oberg Will Europe to continue to bow to US demands now that Trump has withdrawn from the Iran Deal? That’s the question John Wight asks of peace researcher Jan Oberg, on this week’s program. A conversation with John Wight of “Hard Facts” at Sputnik Radio, May 16, 2018.    

  – are worried stiff that this will lead to war between Iran and Israel, in which Trump will feel moved to intercede if Israel is being badly hurt. Such a war will not only cause immense damage to Iran it will, unlike when in 1973 Israel fought the combined Arab armies to a standstill well away from its borders, inflict an enormous amount of damage inside Israel. Despite the so-called iron-dome that protects Israel against rockets, enough will get through to cause immense loss of life. Europe doesn’t want to live cheek by jowl with that kind of inflammable neighborhood. It doesn’t want to see more chaos, as after the US military intervention in Iraq which helped trigger the civil war in Syria and gave birth to ISIS. The long-established unity of purpose and liberal, democratic, ideology is being incinerated by the day. Putting America first has meant elbowing...

  – all about this agreement and its text here). Noteworthy is that the nuclear deal is incorporated into international law by UN Security Council Resolution 2231, even though the U.S. already at that point stated – as an exceptionalist state – that it did not consider the deal binding for it. With the exception of Germany, the deal was negotiated – cynically, of course – by countries which have themselves thousands of nuclear weapons. It never mentioned the only state in the region that possesses them, against international law in the form of UN resolutions and, additionally, has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). That state is Israel whose nuclear weapons Western politicians and their loyal, politically correct media omit mention of – as systematically and uniformly as if orchestrated by an invisible hand from above. Back in 2014-15, many of us stated that the alternative to a negotiated...

    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;...

  In the U.S., carrying out military interventions abroad has undermined freedom at home   By Christopher J. Coyne and Abigail R. Hall   Originally published by Stanford University Press blog here The Cambridge Analytica/Facebook scandal continues to be front-page news. According to current reports Cambridge Analytica obtained private Facebook data, which it used to send pro-Trump material to targeted Facebook users. These reports have been met with outrage in Washington, D.C. The Federal Trade Commission has opened an investigation and U.S. senators have called for Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook CEO, to testify in front of Congress. Calls by Congress for increased oversight to prevent private companies from surveilling people are extremely ironic given that they themselves recently renewed a section of the 2008 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act which allows for the warrantless surveillance of Americans. Issues regarding the appropriate use of government surveillance are also at the center of...