January 2017

David Swanson and Jan Oberg Watch the video «On The Newsline: Trump’s Executive Orders: Trump Dictates The World: May Visits the U.S. & Turkey» uploaded by PressTV on Dailymotion. Via On The Newsline::Trump’s Executive Orders::Trump Dictates The World::May Visits the U.S. & Turkey – Video Dailymotion.

Receiving Dr Honoris Causa, Universidad Madrid Complutense, 27 Jan 2017 Dear Rector, dear Jury! I receive this great honor bestowed upon me in deep gratitude and pride, promising to try to live up to it. I will now share with you some words about how I got launched on the track for which you honor me, peace studies and peace practice. Like so many, I felt desperate about the wars in our enlightened century and continent and asked, Why? What can we do to avoid this suffering, not only the wounded and dead, but the countless bereaved? From my family I knew a little about health studies and had been struck by the fruitful distinction between cause and symptom. The symptom is on the surface of the body, like fever; but the root cause is deeper down, inside, a sepsis. A major breakthrough. “Treat the cause, not the symptom” became...

. The great flaw in ex-president Barack Obama’s record was his policy towards Russia. Going against everything he had said and written about before he became president, one action after another antagonised the Russians – his early proclamation that he wanted Georgia and Ukraine in NATO, his de facto coalition of convenience for a crucial couple of days with the anti-democratic, anti-Russian, neo-fascist, demonstrators in Ukraine, the further expansion of NATO, despite an earlier promise not to, made by President H.W. Bush, to the Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev, and his inability to cooperate with the Russians and Iranians over Syria. No wonder the Russians are reported to be delirious that Donald Trump is now president, a man who has said nice things about Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. If the two meet sometime soon maybe there will be an end to this unnecessary hostility. The Moscow-Washington relationship is the most important...

In recent months the Turkish President, Recep Teyipp Erdoğan, and his principal advisors have not made it a secret that they are reconsidering Turkey’s relations with neighbors, with the countries of the region, and with leading geopolitical actors. The Early Agenda of AKP When the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in 2002 it set about almost immediately to fashion a post-Cold War foreign policy based on the idea that it was time to supersede the Cold War posture of almost total Turkish deference to the United States, especially within NATO and bipolar contexts, and depict a conception of Turkish interests developed in Ankara rather than adhere to Washington’s blueprint. In its early period of national leadership, the AKP seemed to pursue four interrelated international goals: – resolve the Cyprus conflict; – give priority to seeking full membership in the European Union (EU); – improve diplomatic and political...


 Tulsi Gabbard* and former peace presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich (D) have just visited Aleppo and Damascus in Syria and met citizens, religious leaders and President Assad. 
 Watch here how CNN tries to frame her as siding with Assad: 
 Starting out with Twitter girl Bana with President Erdogan (one more time – how stupid does CNN think we are?) and then showing no interest in what she reports because it doesn’t fit the deceptive Western narrative. 

 Much more important, however, listen to what Gabbard says in just 6 minutes about:

By Chaiwat Satha-Anand, TFF Associate At the 16th International Peace Research Association (IPRA) conference held in Brisbane, Australia in 1996 under the guidance of Ralph Summy with the theme” Creating Nonviolent Future”, Glenn D.Paige began his keynote address titled: “To Leap Beyond Yet Nearer Bring: from war to peace to nonviolence to nonkilling” by recounting another IPRA meeting held in Yokohama, in 1980. At that meeting, a question was raised as to whether it would be possible for IPRA to take up the subject of “nonviolence”. A distinguished European researcher responded in the negative saying that nonviolence “would discredit peace research”. Six years later in 1986 at the IPRA conference held in Sussex, Theodore Herman convened what I believe to be the first IPRA nonviolence commission. Later in 1988 at the IPRA meeting held in Rio de Janeiro, Herman asked Paige to help convene the next nonviolence commission. Paige became...


 Unique photos from Eastern Aleppo in Syria when it was finally liberated on December 11-12, 2016. 
 The people you see here have just come out to freedom from 4,5 years of the occupation by what can be called RIOTs – Rebels-Insurgents-Opposition-Terrorists – mostly the latter. 
 And most of them with some kind of support by NATO countries.  
 Western media, politics and humanitarian organisations focus on the victims from Eastern Aleppo who left to RIOT territories elsewhere, such as Idlib, after the liberation – family members and supporters of the occupiers.  
 That’s not the whole truth about Aleppo. 
 They conveniently ignore the thousands of other Aleppians: Those who were happy beyond words to see all of Aleppo back under the control of the Syrian government. 
 These are the people in this photo story. They are among the 13 million Syrians who, according to the UN in...

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Two closely related points, as a starter. This column has argued Lifting the Bottom Up as economic approach in all weathers, bad, fair, good, to mitigate any suffering, and for them to enter the economy as producers and consumers, not as “cases”. This column has also argued judging Trump not by his poisoning words, nor by commentators’ words, but by his deeds. White-male-workers-no college is not the US bottom, but they were heading down. Now lifted up the Trump way, by keeping/bringing back industry to the “Rust Belt”. Ford Motor Company just did that, GM may be next. If outsourcing to Mexico – under the euphemism “trade” served poor Mexican workers, maybe–but it serves rich elites in both countries. 45 percent tariff on Chinese goods: a non-starter. US homes are filled with affordable “Made in China”. To de-industrialize was US stupidity; to re-industrialize will take time. Keep what is, bring...

When President Barack Obama leaves office will the world be better or worse than eight years ago? Taking the big picture, so often obscured by the wars and uprisings that dominate the front page, more often than not he has resisted the foreign-policy establishment, most importantly in Syria, which makes a fetish of “credibility”. Obama has argued that “dropping bombs on someone to prove that you are willing to drop bombs on someone is just about the worst reason to use force”. In a long interview last April with Jeffrey Goldberg in Atlantic Magazine Obama made the point, “Where am I controversial? When it comes to the use of military power. There’s a playbook in Washington that presidents are supposed to follow that comes out of the foreign policy establishment. The playbook prescribes responses to different events, and these responses tend to be militarised responses. In the midst of an...