The health care workers have to beg – and people have to die – because their mal-developed country lacks the most basic. It’s a country which, at least since 1945, has created human history’s largest military machine, sees itself as “the policeman of the whole world” – a country that conducted wars virtually every day, built 600+ bases in 130+ countries, deploys its CIA and Special forces virtually everywhere, destroyed societies and killed millions of people around the world in warfare and economic sanctions, a country that kills single individuals it doesn’t like in faraway lands with drones and precision-guided rockets, a country that committed the crime against not only Japan but against humanity when it dropped its nuclear bombs.
A country that never regretted, that never apologized.
Indeed, America, you are too arrogant! And indeed it feels as if God is punishing America now. Even it believes it had God on its side, as Bob Dylan expressed it.
A neurotic country that increasingly sees enemies everywhere and friends nowhere and consumes itself, like a drug addict, with militarism.
That all-mighty country, however, is unable to do one basic thing: to care for the welfare of its own people, particularly the poor, the handicapped, the old, the black, the minorities – the Damned of the Republic and the Empire!
It’s not even able to provide body bags for the mass deaths of its own people. (As I’m writing this, 45 000 Americans have died, 15 times more than on September 11, 2001).
Of course, even a benign America wouldn’t have avoided the effects of the Coronavirus. But much fewer would have died had it cared for its own people, cared for human security.
Someone should be held accountable. Someone is responsible for those perverse priorities. Not single presidents, not even Trump. No, the responsible is the elitist MIMAC – the Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi and all advocates of nonviolence were right: Those who use violence harm not only others, they harm themselves.
Everybody wants to be friends with the United States, but it doesn’t seem to want to be friends with anyone anymore.
It threatens everyone around the world but no one threatens it.
Militarism has eaten it up from the inside, like a cancer – psychologically, culturally, politically and economically. The US has become the biggest threat to itself.
It is no longer a free country, it’s fearfully dependent on violence in general and militarism in particular. On the drug called ever more power that invariably ends in insecurity and ill-health.
And now dependent on body bags for its own civilians.
I am so grateful to MLK for having been there and prophesizing it.
Grateful that – a lifetime later – we may remember when there were great intellectual and moral leaders in America. Grateful that MLK warned us, although in vain, about what would happen when militarism, empire and warfare were given free hands and suffocated civil society and killed laws and ethics.
In the best of cases, the Coronavirus is the last wake-up call for the United States. This is a terminally ill system and not a matter of who is Presiding over it. Neither Trump nor Biden is able to hear that call and change the destiny.
Sad to say for somebody who has never been anti-American – but admittedly anti-Empire and anti-War – the manifest destiny is now decline and fall until the US becomes a normal country without an Empire and without its Militarism.
Pray that that process doesn’t create an even higher demand for body bags.
•
If you found this relevant and informative, please reward TFF with the equivalent of a cup of coffee…
Below are TFF-related media mentions, comments, videos and social media posts published elsewhere but not on this homepage. We happen to catch and list only a fraction. Regarding video comments and debates, we recommend that you go to the TFF Video Channel on Substack where many of them are reproduced. Jan Oberg is a contributor to China Daily – 52 million daily clicks – and Global Times, CGTN and CCTV (the national television), China Investment, Xinhua News Agency and several others. Articles and videos on these media very often multiply into countless Chinese (and Western media) that re-post them from these main media. Thanks to The China Academy, his analyses, interviews and comments are frequently posted on YouTube channels such as Thinkers Forum and Wave Media. These videos are often re-posted on Bilibili (China’s YouTube), the China Content Center on TikTok, and on the Chinese edition of TikTok, Douyin.com. This means reaching hundreds of millions of viewers worldwide over a year. While there are too many to catch on all these...
Jan Oberg TFF director October 13, 2026 According to Alfred Nobel’s will, the Nobel Peace Prize shall be awarded: ”to the person who has done the most or best to advance fellowship among nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and the establishment and promotion of peace congresses.” Further down, he also expresses how the prize for the “champions of peace” shall be decided: “that for champions of peace by a committee of five persons to be selected by the Norwegian Storting. Alfred Nobel’s will is remarkably short and clear. But few seem to have read it. Nobel did not say that the committee itself should consist of members of parliament. He entrusted the Storting with appointing five persons. In principle, it could have selected diplomats, mediators, peace researchers, conflict-resolution specialists, or other individuals with recognised expertise in matters of peace from around the world. Instead, the Storting gradually...
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Below are TFF-related media mentions, comments, videos and social media posts published elsewhere but not on this homepage. We happen to catch and list only a fraction. Regarding video comments and debates, we recommend that you go to the TFF Video Channel on Substack where many of them are reproduced. Jan Oberg is a contributor to China Daily – 52 million daily clicks – and Global Times, CGTN and CCTV (the national television), China Investment, Xinhua News Agency and several others. Articles and videos on these media very often multiply into countless Chinese (and Western media) that re-post them from these main media. Thanks to The China Academy, his analyses, interviews and comments are frequently posted on YouTube channels such as Thinkers Forum and Wave Media. These videos are often re-posted on Bilibili (China’s YouTube), the China Content Center on TikTok, and on the Chinese edition of TikTok, Douyin.com. This means reaching hundreds of millions of viewers worldwide over a year. While there are too many to catch on all these...
Jan Oberg TFF director October 13, 2026 According to Alfred Nobel’s will, the Nobel Peace Prize shall be awarded: ”to the person who has done the most or best to advance fellowship among nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and the establishment and promotion of peace congresses.” Further down, he also expresses how the prize for the “champions of peace” shall be decided: “that for champions of peace by a committee of five persons to be selected by the Norwegian Storting. Alfred Nobel’s will is remarkably short and clear. But few seem to have read it. Nobel did not say that the committee itself should consist of members of parliament. He entrusted the Storting with appointing five persons. In principle, it could have selected diplomats, mediators, peace researchers, conflict-resolution specialists, or other individuals with recognised expertise in matters of peace from around the world. Instead, the Storting gradually...
The Quest for Humane Survival Richard Falk Professor emeritus, Princeton UniversityTFF Associate since 1986October 12, 2026 After decades of teaching and writing about international law in academic frameworks that were not institutionally situated within law school environments—at Princeton and the University of California, Santa Barbara—I found myself most receptive to the TWAIL outlook. It has been especially illuminating in clarifying the extent to which international law evolved as a dialogical critique of Europe’s efforts to legitimize its colonial undertakings. In particular, TWAIL has exposed how international law has functioned to legalize the subjugation of Third World peoples, securing conditions for exploitative investment and trade relations, the coercive enforcement of public debts, and an ideology of cultural superiority. TWAIL’s exposure of these economic legacies of colonialism has influenced my understanding of the history and development of international law, broadly conceived, as an ideological project of the Western sub-system of the world...
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Below are TFF-related media mentions, comments, videos and social media posts published elsewhere but not on this homepage. We happen to catch and list only a fraction. Regarding video comments and debates, we recommend that you go to the TFF Video Channel on Substack where many of them are reproduced. Jan Oberg is a contributor to China Daily – 52 million daily clicks – and Global Times, CGTN and CCTV (the national television), China Investment, Xinhua News Agency and several others. Articles and videos on these media very often multiply into countless Chinese (and Western media) that re-post them from these main media. Thanks to The China Academy, his analyses, interviews and comments are frequently posted on YouTube channels such as Thinkers Forum and Wave Media. These videos are often re-posted on Bilibili (China’s YouTube), the China Content Center on TikTok, and on the Chinese edition of TikTok, Douyin.com. This means reaching hundreds of millions of viewers worldwide over a year. While there are too many to catch on all these...
Jan Oberg TFF director October 13, 2026 According to Alfred Nobel’s will, the Nobel Peace Prize shall be awarded: ”to the person who has done the most or best to advance fellowship among nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and the establishment and promotion of peace congresses.” Further down, he also expresses how the prize for the “champions of peace” shall be decided: “that for champions of peace by a committee of five persons to be selected by the Norwegian Storting. Alfred Nobel’s will is remarkably short and clear. But few seem to have read it. Nobel did not say that the committee itself should consist of members of parliament. He entrusted the Storting with appointing five persons. In principle, it could have selected diplomats, mediators, peace researchers, conflict-resolution specialists, or other individuals with recognised expertise in matters of peace from around the world. Instead, the Storting gradually...
The Quest for Humane Survival Richard Falk Professor emeritus, Princeton UniversityTFF Associate since 1986October 12, 2026 After decades of teaching and writing about international law in academic frameworks that were not institutionally situated within law school environments—at Princeton and the University of California, Santa Barbara—I found myself most receptive to the TWAIL outlook. It has been especially illuminating in clarifying the extent to which international law evolved as a dialogical critique of Europe’s efforts to legitimize its colonial undertakings. In particular, TWAIL has exposed how international law has functioned to legalize the subjugation of Third World peoples, securing conditions for exploitative investment and trade relations, the coercive enforcement of public debts, and an ideology of cultural superiority. TWAIL’s exposure of these economic legacies of colonialism has influenced my understanding of the history and development of international law, broadly conceived, as an ideological project of the Western sub-system of the world...
Below are TFF-related media mentions, comments, videos and social media posts published elsewhere but not on this homepage. We happen to catch and list only a fraction. Regarding video comments and debates, we recommend that you go to the TFF Video Channel on Substack where many of them are reproduced. Jan Oberg is a contributor to China Daily – 52 million daily clicks – and Global Times, CGTN and CCTV (the national television), China Investment, Xinhua News Agency and several others. Articles and videos on these media very often multiply into countless Chinese (and Western media) that re-post them from these main media. Thanks to The China Academy, his analyses, interviews and comments are frequently posted on YouTube channels such as Thinkers Forum and Wave Media. These videos are often re-posted on Bilibili (China’s YouTube), the China Content Center on TikTok, and on the Chinese edition of TikTok, Douyin.com. This means reaching hundreds of millions of viewers worldwide over a year. While there are too many to catch on all these...
Jan Oberg TFF director October 13, 2026 According to Alfred Nobel’s will, the Nobel Peace Prize shall be awarded: ”to the person who has done the most or best to advance fellowship among nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and the establishment and promotion of peace congresses.” Further down, he also expresses how the prize for the “champions of peace” shall be decided: “that for champions of peace by a committee of five persons to be selected by the Norwegian Storting. Alfred Nobel’s will is remarkably short and clear. But few seem to have read it. Nobel did not say that the committee itself should consist of members of parliament. He entrusted the Storting with appointing five persons. In principle, it could have selected diplomats, mediators, peace researchers, conflict-resolution specialists, or other individuals with recognised expertise in matters of peace from around the world. Instead, the Storting gradually...
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ObergComment: Ravaged by its empire and militarism, the US now doesn’t have enough body bags for its own
Remember this?
It seems that God is saying: “America, you are too arrogant and I will break the backbone of your power!” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
Listen!
MLK’s strong prophecy came to me today when I read this article in TIME magazine today – “Begging for Thermometers, Body Bags, and Gowns: U.S. Health Care Workers Are Dangerously Ill-Equipped to Fight COVID-19.”
The health care workers have to beg – and people have to die – because their mal-developed country lacks the most basic. It’s a country which, at least since 1945, has created human history’s largest military machine, sees itself as “the policeman of the whole world” – a country that conducted wars virtually every day, built 600+ bases in 130+ countries, deploys its CIA and Special forces virtually everywhere, destroyed societies and killed millions of people around the world in warfare and economic sanctions, a country that kills single individuals it doesn’t like in faraway lands with drones and precision-guided rockets, a country that committed the crime against not only Japan but against humanity when it dropped its nuclear bombs.
A country that never regretted, that never apologized.
Indeed, America, you are too arrogant! And indeed it feels as if God is punishing America now. Even it believes it had God on its side, as Bob Dylan expressed it.
A neurotic country that increasingly sees enemies everywhere and friends nowhere and consumes itself, like a drug addict, with militarism.
That all-mighty country, however, is unable to do one basic thing: to care for the welfare of its own people, particularly the poor, the handicapped, the old, the black, the minorities – the Damned of the Republic and the Empire!
It’s not even able to provide body bags for the mass deaths of its own people. (As I’m writing this, 45 000 Americans have died, 15 times more than on September 11, 2001).
Of course, even a benign America wouldn’t have avoided the effects of the Coronavirus. But much fewer would have died had it cared for its own people, cared for human security.
Someone should be held accountable. Someone is responsible for those perverse priorities. Not single presidents, not even Trump. No, the responsible is the elitist MIMAC – the Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi and all advocates of nonviolence were right: Those who use violence harm not only others, they harm themselves.
Everybody wants to be friends with the United States, but it doesn’t seem to want to be friends with anyone anymore.
It threatens everyone around the world but no one threatens it.
Militarism has eaten it up from the inside, like a cancer – psychologically, culturally, politically and economically. The US has become the biggest threat to itself.
It is no longer a free country, it’s fearfully dependent on violence in general and militarism in particular. On the drug called ever more power that invariably ends in insecurity and ill-health.
And now dependent on body bags for its own civilians.
I am so grateful to MLK for having been there and prophesizing it.
Grateful that – a lifetime later – we may remember when there were great intellectual and moral leaders in America. Grateful that MLK warned us, although in vain, about what would happen when militarism, empire and warfare were given free hands and suffocated civil society and killed laws and ethics.
In the best of cases, the Coronavirus is the last wake-up call for the United States. This is a terminally ill system and not a matter of who is Presiding over it. Neither Trump nor Biden is able to hear that call and change the destiny.
Sad to say for somebody who has never been anti-American – but admittedly anti-Empire and anti-War – the manifest destiny is now decline and fall until the US becomes a normal country without an Empire and without its Militarism.
Pray that that process doesn’t create an even higher demand for body bags.
•
If you found this relevant and informative, please reward TFF with the equivalent of a cup of coffee…
Please use and spread #coronaissecuritypolitics
Peace & future researcher + Art Photographer
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