Perspectives on the 2nd Bush term Features collected by TFF between November 2, 2004 and January 20 – Inauguration Day, 2005

This collection contains pointed comments on various aspects of the second term of the Bush Administration. Bookmark it and check now and then the next four years: what was right and what was wrong, what was too ‘hard’ and too ‘soft’ as predictions?

On imperialism

Gore Vidal, In These Times
Imperial amnesia or the United States of Amnesia…

Ignacio Ramet, Le Monde Diplomatique
Bush second time around

Howard LaFranchi, Christian Science Monitor
On foreign policy: how bold will Bush be?
There is Iraq but new challenges also loom in Iran and North Korea.

Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker and Information Clearing House
The Coming Wars.
What Pentagon can now do in secret.

Tom Barry, Laura Carlsen, and John Gershman, International Relations Center
The next four years: A political forecast

Chalmers Johnson, TomDispatch.com
Creating a WIA – Worthless Intelligence Agency.

Scott Ritter, Aljazeera
The Salvador option
The Pentagon is considering the organisation, training and equipping of so-called death squads, teams of Iraqi assassins who would be used to infiltrate and eliminate the leadership of the Iraqi resistance.

On democracy and leadership

Greg Palast, TomPaine.com
Kerry won

Maureen Dowd, The Age
The loonies have taken control.

Howard Fineman, Newsweek
Karl Rove unleashed.

Tom Barry, The Right Web
Robert Zoellick: A Bush Family Man.
No. 2 at Rice’s State Department

On the economy

Paul Krugman, TurthOut
Economic crisis a question of when, not if.

The U.S. National debt Clock
Each U.S. citizen’s share of this debt is $25,792.10.

Joseph Quinlan, The Globalist
Behind the sinking dollar: America’s image as a “rogue nations”.

On human rights

Information Clearing House
The Human Costs of War
– a project by Patricia Foulkrod and in association with Operation Truth, an non-profit organization created by Iraq veteran Paul Rieckhoff. This film is our soldiers’ perspective of the Iraq War, and how they are being treated upon returning home.

Jim Lobe, Information Clearing House
Congress pushes penalties for Global Court Support
U.S. allies in the developing South are now being targeted by lawmakers here, who have already meted out punishment to nations that support the new International Criminal Court (ICC).

Jim Lobe, Foreign Policy in Focus
Mainstream media miss Rumsfel’d “Dirty Wars” talk
Rumsfeld blurs the line between the police and the military.

Eric Margolis, Information Clearing House
Uncle Sam has his own gulag.
Behaving like the Soviet secret police won’t make America safer…

Amnesty International
Human rights not hollow words
An appeal to President George W. Bush on the occasion of his re-inauguration.

Scott Horton, Los Angeles Times
A Nuremberg Lesson – Torture scandal began far above ‘rotten apples.’

On global development

Editorial in the New York Times
America, the indifferent
Almost a third of the way into the program (The UN Millennium Declaration goals), the latest available figures show that the percentage of U.S. income going to poor countries remains near rock bottom: 0.14 percent.

Tom Reagan, Christian Science Monitor
“They hate our policies, not our freedom”.

Timothy Heritage, Reuters
Four more years of Bush makes the world anxious
Mistrust also runs deep among ordinary people. Some 58 percent of people surveyed in a British Broadcasting Corporation poll in 21 countries said they believed Bush’s re-election made the world a more dangerous place.

On media, censorship and puritanism

George Monbiot, Common Dreams
A televisual Fairyland.
The US media is disciplined by Corporate America into promoting the Republican cause.

Dominic Timms, The Guardian
Fearful US TV networks censor more shows
The panic that is gripping American TV bosses facing a puritanical backlash or exorbitant government fines has today extended to a cartoon series and a BBC drama.Would you be browsing this Collection now,
if it wasn’t useful to you?
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On arrogance

Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Nation
Annal of Outrage
The Bush administration’s ten most outrageous scandals – and orgy in fraud, mismanagement and corruption.

Dafna Linzer, The Washington Post – TruthOut
IAEA leader’s phone tapped
U.S. pores over transcipts to try to out nuclear chief ElBaradei

– a type of intimidation used before…

The Progress Report
When it comes to inaugural excess, the numbers speak for themselves.
What you could get for the 40 million dollars inauguration…

PhD, Peace & future researcher + ‌Art Photographer, Professor Emeritus and media commentator

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LONDON – So far so good, at least on the wider level. While internally Iraq seems on the edge of chaos, the much heralded clash of civilizations between the Muslim and Judaeo-Christian worlds has yet to become apparent. We have anger and despair aplenty in the Arab and Muslim worlds. But very little rushing to the standard and there was no great pilgrimage of warriors to join the fight, as happened when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan twenty years ago, and then, having driven the Red Army out, were left to ferment in that mountainous redoubt. With the armaments supplied by the CIA the mujahidin were transformed into Al Qaeda that became, for a relatively brief moment as these things go, ‘the greatest threat to the homeland that America has ever known.’ Nevertheless a ‘Cold War’ between much of the Muslim world and the West is certainly in full swing. Winston...
The Challenge of Nuclear Weaponsin the Twenty-first CenturyA Path Forward The peoples and governments of the world face an urgent challenge relating to weaponry of mass destruction and particularly to nuclear weaponry.  At the crossroads of technology, terrorism, geopolitical ambition, and policies of preemption are new and potent dangers for humanity. Despite ending the nuclear standoff of the Cold War era, nuclear weaponry is again menacing the peoples of the world with catastrophic possibilities.  We recognize the need for any government to pursue its security interests in accordance with international law; and further, we recognize that distinctive threats to these interests now exist as a result of an active international terrorist network having declared war on the United States and its allies. Nonetheless, we reject the assessment of the current US administration that upgrading a reliance on nuclear weapons is in any sense justified as a response. We find it...
By Karin Wegestal MP, the Social Democratic Partyon behalf of the Swedish Committee for Solidarity with the Yugoslav People During the last decade, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia has received more than 500,000 refugees from Croatia and Bosnia, and another 300,000 internally displaced persons, mainly from the province Kosovo and Metohia. For a country with about ten million inhabitants, such an influx of homeless people is obviously a very heavy burden – even under peaceful conditions. But in addition to that, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia has been the subject to sanctions from the western powers for close to ten years and its infrastructure was badly hurt through Nato’s intense bombardment during 78 days in 1999. The result of all this is that Yugoslavia, once the most developed industrial country in Eastern Europe, is today the poorest country in Europe. In Serbia excluding Kosovo, with about ten million inhabitants and...

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Photo above: Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd’s Non-Violence outside UN Headquarters in New York. Kirill Levin, CC BY-NC-SA 2. Jan Oberg November 3, 2026 I am happy to be published in Horizons which is produced by the Center for International Relations and Sustainable Development, CIRSD, in Belgrade. My contribution brings out a radical re-thinking of what concepts such as defence, security, deterrence – and peace – may mean if we want to create a more peaceful world. It also summarises a few things I have been working with the last few decades. Please read it here Og her er den på dansk, takket være Johnny Baltzersens lynhurtige oversættelse
UNITE-tillid, DREAM-velstand og andre konstruktive komponenter Normally we publish articles in English here. But this is a translation of a very important TFF document that should reach as many as possible in Denmark since this country’s government has been one of the most hardline in Europe and, up till now at least, has refused to use diplomacy and, instead, spent tremendous sums on arming Ukraine with the express goal of defeating Russia. Thus this – unique – article is in Danish. Vi er Johnny Baltzersen og hans Fælles Sikkerhed – Fælles Fremtid på Substack overmåde taknemmelige for at have oversat og publiceret TFF’s 2025-portfølje for fredsidéer med henblik på Ukraines fremtid. Vi håber den nu kan nå mange flere danskere – som også vil sprede den og skabe debat – nu den danske regerings og folketingspartiernes politik på dette område siden 2022 står nu – forudsigeligt – ved vejs ende....
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Photo above: Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd’s Non-Violence outside UN Headquarters in New York. Kirill Levin, CC BY-NC-SA 2. Jan Oberg November 3, 2026 I am happy to be published in Horizons which is produced by the Center for International Relations and Sustainable Development, CIRSD, in Belgrade. My contribution brings out a radical re-thinking of what concepts such as defence, security, deterrence – and peace – may mean if we want to create a more peaceful world. It also summarises a few things I have been working with the last few decades. Please read it here Og her er den på dansk, takket være Johnny Baltzersens lynhurtige oversættelse
UNITE-tillid, DREAM-velstand og andre konstruktive komponenter Normally we publish articles in English here. But this is a translation of a very important TFF document that should reach as many as possible in Denmark since this country’s government has been one of the most hardline in Europe and, up till now at least, has refused to use diplomacy and, instead, spent tremendous sums on arming Ukraine with the express goal of defeating Russia. Thus this – unique – article is in Danish. Vi er Johnny Baltzersen og hans Fælles Sikkerhed – Fælles Fremtid på Substack overmåde taknemmelige for at have oversat og publiceret TFF’s 2025-portfølje for fredsidéer med henblik på Ukraines fremtid. Vi håber den nu kan nå mange flere danskere – som også vil sprede den og skabe debat – nu den danske regerings og folketingspartiernes politik på dette område siden 2022 står nu – forudsigeligt – ved vejs ende....
Jan Oberg TFF director October 28, 2026 Exactly one month has now passed since I published my criticism of the introduction to the special issue on Johan Galtung published by the Journal of Global Security Studies, JoGSS, and of Tor Egil Førland’s chapter about Galtung which serves as a preview to his forthcoming biography of Galtung to be published by PRIO. See the original on The Transnational here and the same article on TFF Substack with many general and critical comments and, in particular, the people who decided to withdraw from the biography project in protest. The special issue itself was extraordinary. It was devoted to the intellectual legacy of one of the founders of peace research and contained a number of strong assessments of his personality, scholarship, intellectual trajectory, and public role. Such assessments are, of course, entirely legitimate. No scholar is beyond criticism, and neither was Johan Galtung....
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Photo above: Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd’s Non-Violence outside UN Headquarters in New York. Kirill Levin, CC BY-NC-SA 2. Jan Oberg November 3, 2026 I am happy to be published in Horizons which is produced by the Center for International Relations and Sustainable Development, CIRSD, in Belgrade. My contribution brings out a radical re-thinking of what concepts such as defence, security, deterrence – and peace – may mean if we want to create a more peaceful world. It also summarises a few things I have been working with the last few decades. Please read it here Og her er den på dansk, takket være Johnny Baltzersens lynhurtige oversættelse
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UNITE-tillid, DREAM-velstand og andre konstruktive komponenter Normally we publish articles in English here. But this is a translation of a very important TFF document that should reach as many as possible in Denmark since this country’s government has been one of the most hardline in Europe and, up till now at least, has refused to use diplomacy and, instead, spent tremendous sums on arming Ukraine with the express goal of defeating Russia. Thus this – unique – article is in Danish. Vi er Johnny Baltzersen og hans Fælles Sikkerhed – Fælles Fremtid på Substack overmåde taknemmelige for at have oversat og publiceret TFF’s 2025-portfølje for fredsidéer med henblik på Ukraines fremtid. Vi håber den nu kan nå mange flere danskere – som også vil sprede den og skabe debat – nu den danske regerings og folketingspartiernes politik på dette område siden 2022 står nu – forudsigeligt – ved vejs ende....
JoGSS-Silent
Jan Oberg TFF director October 28, 2026 Exactly one month has now passed since I published my criticism of the introduction to the special issue on Johan Galtung published by the Journal of Global Security Studies, JoGSS, and of Tor Egil Førland’s chapter about Galtung which serves as a preview to his forthcoming biography of Galtung to be published by PRIO. See the original on The Transnational here and the same article on TFF Substack with many general and critical comments and, in particular, the people who decided to withdraw from the biography project in protest. The special issue itself was extraordinary. It was devoted to the intellectual legacy of one of the founders of peace research and contained a number of strong assessments of his personality, scholarship, intellectual trajectory, and public role. Such assessments are, of course, entirely legitimate. No scholar is beyond criticism, and neither was Johan Galtung....
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Let’s discuss using AI to create peace – in contrast to boring geopolitics devoid of creative healing and visions. Jan Oberg TFF director October 15, 2026 I asked VEED to create a short video exemplifying how peace is preferable to war, then chose the lady as a template. Simple as that. In less than a minute, it produced this video, which any peace-loving person would appreciate. The only problem is that human intelligence (HI), at least the one that exists among Western decision-makers, isn’t half as moral or smart as AI. I have used AI to dialogue about peace and peace plans, creative conflict resolution and visions of a better future for humankind. It so happens that I am having more stimulating, intelligent, creative and moral discussions with AI than I could possibly have with any EU or NATO leader today. Yes, AI has very problematic and dangerous aspects; used...
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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...