US politics

This coming Sunday marks the 15th anniversary of what could be called the most counter-productive, if not stupid, war in modern history: The War On Terror. Today that war is much much more dangerous to the world’s future than the terrorists it is allegedly supposed to hunt down. And it has caused thousands of times more suffering, death and destruction – at least a million innocent people killed. It’s not a war on terrorism but on terrorists and that is as smart as trying to fight all diseases by killing patients. It’s a war fought without any consideration of the one big question: Why did they do it and why do they do it? Media and politics only asking: Who did it? How was it done? Where? How to respond? Without an intelligent, comprehensive diagnosis of 9/11 it could only go wrong. And it has. The next problem was that...

Det är nu 15 år sedan den ödesdigra dagen 11 september 2001. Sedan dess har kriget mot terrorismen utvecklats och krävt minst två miljoner liv och lika många psykiskt och fysiskt skadade, allt enligt en utredning från USAs läkarsällskap, ”Physicians for Social Responsibility” (med 50 000 medlemmar och medlem av Läkare mot kärnvapen). Resultatet av kriget mot terrorismen är dessutom negativt även för väst. Idag har attentaten och offren i väst mångdubblats. Lika anmärkningsvärt är att medborgarnas fri- och rättigheter i väst dramatiskt har urholkats. Kontrollen uppifrån är närmast total med avlyssning utan praktisk begränsning. Hemliga fångläger med tortyr av godtyckligt fängslade har avslöjats i Polen, Tjeckien, Kosovo och Egypten, utöver de öppet erkända på Guantanamo, i Afghanistan och Pakistan. Ett sextiotal personer har suttit på Guantanamo i fjorton år utan rannsakan och dom från USA, som förr kallats ”Världens största demokrati”. Den 11 september kan alltså kopplas till urholkning...

The French ambassador to the US from 1902 to 1924, Jean-Jules Jusserand, observed that distant powers could not easily threaten the US because “On the north, she has a weak neighbour; on the south, another weak neighbour; on the east fish and on the west, fish”. The coming of the submarine-based nuclear missile has not changed that. Apart from the fact that no enemy would dare use them for fear of retaliation, and that there is no country in the world that feels that hostile to America (accept North Korea), the fact is America is too big and too far away to be invaded and dominated. There could not be a blitzkrieg by a foreign army across the mid-west or a Vichy America. The real tragedy of 9/11 is just as a majority of the US electorate had settled into a post-Cold War comfort zone with the new president, George...

Prefatory Note An earlier version was published by Middle East Eye on August 10, 2016. It seems so important at this time for the sake of the future of Turkey that the West look at the country and its political circumstances in a far more balanced way than how the situation has been portrayed since the coup. How to explain this imbalance is another matterthat should be explored at some point, but for now is largely put aside. Much uncertainty remains in Turkey, but there is enough evidence of positive tendencies to raise a tentative banner of hope. Being a witness to the political atmosphere in Turkey that has emerged after the failed coup of July 15th puts me at odds with the secular consensus in the West, which looks up at the sky and sees only dark, ominous clouds of human rights abuse and autocratic leadership. What I have...

The Case for Disengagement A few years ago Barack Obama made much of an American pivot to East Asia, a recognition of China’s emergence and regional assertiveness, and the related claim that the American role in Asia-Pacific should be treated as a prime strategic interest that China needed to be made to respect. The shift also involved the recognition by Obama that the United States had become overly and unsuccessfully engaged in Middle Eastern politics creating incentives to adjust foreign policy priorities. The 2012 pivot was an overdue correction of the neocon approach to the region during the presidency of George W. Bush that reached its climax with the disastrous 2003 intervention in Iraq, which continues to cause negative reverberations throughout the region. It was then that the idiocy of ‘democracy promotion’ gave an idealistic edge to America’s military intervention and the delusion prospect of the occupiers receiving a warm...

Prefatory Note I am posting some reflections on Gerry Spence’s Police State, an ominous book, finely wrought, that we should all read. Besides being my close friend, Gerry is a lawyer par excellence, as well as being someone possessed of deeply artistic, humanistic, and ethical disposition. The book pertains to the situation here in America, but as recent events in Paris, San Bernidino, and Colorado Springs confirm, we are in danger of moving without realizing it toward some kind of ‘global police state,’ all in the name of security, trampling on the rights and self-esteem of billions of people and extinguishing the freedom of all. Such a devastating scenario cannot be separated from the predatory features of global capitalism in its present neoliberal phase. Gerry Spence Police State: How America’s Cops Get Away with Murder New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2015 $27.99 hardcover Amazon $19.43; Kindle $14.99. In an America...

. How far behind the West is China? Is its economy still booming so it could within 20 years overtake America? Is its military becoming of such a strength it will take the big decision to confront the US navy in the South China Sea? While it is obvious that the Chinese leadership is much more far sighted and cautious than, say, Donald Trump, can one conclude with 100 % certainty that potentially dangerous clashes won’t occur? The communist leadership believes that before long it will be the world’s biggest economy. Yet if one looks at national income per head it is way down the league table of economic achievers. Size is not everything. Moreover, if one starts from a low base, as China did before the paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping, introduced capitalism in 1978, fast rates of growth, as reported in government statistics, overstate what is happening in many...

By Gareth Porter Focusing on domestic issues, Hillary Clinton’s acceptance speech sidestepped the deep concerns anti-war Democrats have about her hawkish foreign policy, which is already taking shape in the shadows, reports Gareth Porter. As Hillary Clinton begins her final charge for the White House, her advisers are already recommending air strikes and other new military measures against the Assad regime in Syria. The clear signals of Clinton’s readiness to go to war appears to be aimed at influencing the course of the war in Syria as well as U.S. policy over the remaining six months of the Obama administration. (She also may be hoping to corral the votes of Republican neoconservatives concerned about Donald Trump’s “America First” foreign policy.) Last month, the think tank run by Michele Flournoy, the former Defense Department official considered to be most likely to be Clinton’s choice to be Secretary of Defense, explicitly called...

The US mountain, so rich in human talent, labored and produced the two dwarfs for the huge job. A radical Republican strongman[i] and a conventional Democrat, disliked by 62% and 67%–bad for electing the president of a country that still puts some stamp on the world. Trump challenged, successfully, the Republican machine. The Democratic machine got a Hillary who challenged absolutely nothing. In both parties, in the name of unity, a veil was drawn over these basic US conflicts today, not between the parties, but within. Cruz did not give in, Sanders did–maybe bribed by some verbal rephrasing. Take the issue-complex “foreign policy-war”. An isolationist Trump could save American lives” (and many more non-American lives). But doing so to save money is not good enough; take the issues head on. “Clinton and Trump jostle for a position over North Korea” is more to the point: Trump is open to negotiate...

.com/”>Jill Stein – did you ever hear of that candidate? – doesn’t have a chance because she cannot mobilize the funds. As a European intellectual with a life-long commitment to peace and democracy, I find little reason to celebrate. And why the total focus on a few individuals at the top but not the structures that will run them both, such as the Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex (MIMAC); the cancer in many societies, including Russia, that President Eisenhower warned the world about in his farewell speech already in 1961? How short the media memory! Hillary Clinton’s nomination celebrated all over the mainstream press as a victory for the party – preventing it from splitting – and for all women. But how can people – women in particular – really believe in such genderism: that she will be a better president for the US and the world because she’s a woman? Hasn’t the...

The most comprehensive documentation of Hillary Clinton’s systematic support for military action and of her deceptive talk, if not lies. From The Cairo Review of Global Affairs

The Incirlik air base in southeast Turkey- from which U.S. pilots launch bombing raids on ISIS forces in Syria – is home to about 50 B-61 hydrogen bombs. That makes it NATO’s largest nuclear storage facility. Each bomb has a yield of up to 170 kilotons, nearly a dozen times more powerful than the weapon that destroyed Hiroshima. The bombs are stored in underground vaults within aircraft shelters that in turn are protected by a security perimeter. Last week Incirlik was in the headlines because it appears it was one of the command centres of the attempted coup, meant to topple President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. After the coup had been put down the commander of Incirlik was arrested and charged with complicity in the overthrow attempt. Jonathan Marshall in Consortium News, who has been researching this year the inner workings of the base, reports, “The security of the bombs is...