By Dr. Lawrence Wittner June 5, 2019 In late April, the highly-respected Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reported that, in 2018, world military expenditures rose to a record $1.82 trillion. The biggest military spender by far was the United States, which increased its military budget by nearly 5 percent to $649 billion (36 percent of […]
By Jan Oberg August 13, 2018 This is literally a unique experience of extraordinary educational value: Listen to 98-year old Ben Ferencz sharing his crystal clear perception of the human stupidity of war – all wars – and how he sees the situation of humanity. He remains a realist, he says, with more optimism […]
By Jan Oberg July 10, 2018 • On the occasion of the NATO Summit in Brussels and the Putin-Trump meeting in Helsinki This analysis comes in two parts – one critical and one constructive: This one on “NATO’s crisis and the Transatlantic conflict” and the second on “Make NATO civilian and civilised.” My apologies […]
The ethnic map few understood. Should make it clear that cutting up Yugoslavia in independent republics could not be done without bloodshed. (1) Yellow = Serbs, Dark Green = Muslims, Light Blue = Croats, Light Green = Slovenes, Orange = Montenegrins, Pink = Albanians, Darker Blue = Macedonians By Jan Oberg March 24, 2018, […]
By Jan Oberg March 20, 2018* Today marks the 15th Anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq. Neither solid analyses, moral reasoning and decent argument nor history’s probably largest pre-war, anti-war demonstrations worldwide had any discernible impact on the Bush and Blair Administrations’ decision to go to war and do so on a false […]
Shock. It’s a word that has come up a lot since November – for obvious reasons.I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about shock. Ten years ago, I published “The Shock Doctrine,” an investigation that spanned four decades from Pinochet’s U.S.-backed coup in 1970s Chile to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. I noticed a brutal and […]
By Jan Oberg Lund, Sweden, November 9, 2015 • The big – not great – powers of the world have embassies everywhere, plenty of intelligence services, special forces on the ground and satellites in space. They can even hit and kill individuals they don’t like. They can intervene here and there and everywhere – […]
