March 2018

  By Gareth Porter, TFF Associate March 30, 2018 Via theamericanconservative.com In my reporting on U.S.-Israeli policy, I have tracked numerous episodes in which the United States and/or Israel made moves that seemed to indicate preparations for war against Iran. Each time – in 2007, in 2008, and again in 2011 – those moves, presented in corporate media as presaging attacks on Tehran, were actually bluffs aimed at putting pressure on the Iranian government. But the strong likelihood that Donald Trump will now choose* John Bolton as his next national security advisor creates a prospect of war with Iran that is very real. Bolton is no ordinary neoconservative hawk. He has been obsessed for many years with going to war against the Islamic Republic, calling repeatedly for bombing Iran in his regular appearances on Fox News, without the slightest indication that he understands the consequences of such a policy. His is not...

  A conversation with Sputnik Radio on the ongoing and increasing confrontational policies and media demonization of Russia by West – seen here through the lenses of imperial decline. You may also click on this image to hear the conversation:    

TFF Associate John Scales Avery presents his latest book on one of the most destructive institutions in modern societies and of our time. I would like to announce the publication of a new book entitled “The Devil’s Dynamo”. It is a collection of articles and book chapters that I have written about the way in which military-industrial complexes throughout the world drive and perpetuate the institution of war. A considerable amount of new material has also been added. The book can be freely downloaded and circulated from the Danish Peace Academy. Why call a book about military-industrial complexes “The Devil’s Dynamo”? A military-industrial complex involves a circular flow of money. The money flows like the electrical current in a dynamo, driving a diabolical machine. Money from immensely rich corporate oligarchs buys the votes of politicians and the propaganda of the mainstream media. Numbed by the propaganda, citizens allow the politicians...

    This present Pope – Francis – is probably the most powerful man in the world, in the round. Stalin once asked when confronted with the argument about the Pope’s reach and influence, replied, “How many divisions has the pope got?” He missed the point. The pope does not work these days in the world of hard power. He is a peddler of soft power. Francis has much more power, maybe because of the strength of his convictions than any of his predecessors, with the exception of the Polish pope, John Paul 11, who played a front-line role in triggering the events that brought down communism. John Paul 11 set his sights high. How could this youngish pope have such an impact? It was drive, personality and an intuitive knowledge of how power worked. He was also enormously charismatic and could summon up a crowd of half a million people...

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   , marks the 19th anniversary of NATO illegal and illegitimate bombing of Yugoslavia, Serbia and its Kosovo, province during 78 days. It has – one is tempted to say: of course – been conveniently forgotten by the West itself. It was masterminded by the United States under Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright after the so-called negotiations between Serbs and Albanians in Rambouillet outside Paris (the parties never met face-to-face) While Clinton may be best remembered for his relations with Monica Lewinsky and his wife, Hillary Clinton, some of us also remember him (and Albright) for bombing Afghanistan, Sudan,...

/03/13/the-increasing-global-arms-trade-nato-not-russia-is-the-main-problem/”>See comment 5 here.  

  Like it not we find that we’re having to get used to the paradoxes, contradictions and confusions of the Trump era. None is more apparent than his attack on the landmark Iran de-nuclearisation agreement, fashioned by the Obama Administration and the Iranian government. President Donald Trump wants to unwind it, even though it has the 100% support of the UN Security Council which in an unanimous vote enshrined the agreement in international law. At the same time he is trying to lure the North Koreans into a de-nuclearization policy, at the least into a nuclear freeze to stop it developing its rocket science any further, so that it’s incapable of hitting the US with a nuclear-tipped missile. But, given Iran, why should the North Koreans go along with such a deal? Why should it make such a deal when it knows there is a chance that the US might...

    On March 17, 2018, New York Times posted “How Trump Consultants Exploited the Facebook Data of Millions.” Here is the background as covered by Washington Post. Here is an in-depth undercover investigation by Channel 4 News that reveals how Cambridge Analytica secretly campaigns in elections across the world. Bosses are filmed talking about using bribes, ex-spies, fake IDs and sex workers.     Jan Oberg comments We’ve heard a lot about Russian meddling in the US Presidential election process. We hear daily media stories of just how brilliant Russia’s performance is in the ongoing media/propaganda war. This documentary is deeply disturbing because it reveals the utter decay in business and political ethics that now influence elections processes in what was supposed to be democracies. It seems plausible to me that the pointing of fingers at Russia – which of course also use media manipulations – is a kind...

* 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 pretext. Neither could major allies like France and Germany by their opposition to the war on Iraq persuade Washington and London to first try a peaceful resolution in accordance with the UN Charter provisions. TFF was deeply engaged in preventing this war – also by being on the ground in Iraq – and wants to a) document the research we did and how we argued back then and b) contribute to this tragedy never being forgotten. We also want to place our analyses and debate articles at the disposal – in one place – of the students, researchers, concerned citizens and...

Lund, Sweden – March 14, 2018 Professor emeritus at Princeton, Richard A. Falk (born 1930), visits Lund, Sweden, this week to discuss his latest book, edited by Stefan Andersson – “Revisiting the Vietnam War And International Law: Views and Interpretations of Richard Falk” (Cambridge University Press). Falk is in a category of his own: An incomprehensibly prolific writer of learned textbooks, analyses, reports and columns over a very long lifetime, critical analyses on virtually every aspect of U.S. foreign policy and world order issues, teaching at numerous universities, living in both the U.S. and Turkey, writing poetry and nominated over many years for the Nobel Peace Prize (however never awarded to a scholar). Already 40 years ago he warned those who cared to listen about what we are witnessing today – “the end of world order” and the lawlessness, chaos and criminal brutality that was bound to follow – not...

  Interview with Stephen Cohen For requesting evidence of Russian culpability in the poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, UK Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn has been denounced by PM Theresa May and even members of his own party. We discuss the case with Stephen F. Cohen, Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies at New York University and Princeton. On The Real News on YouTube     Jan Oberg comments Corbyn is a courageous man, indeed, and you see and hear the reactions around him from the British government representatives. We should pay very much attention when one of the West’s indisputably leading authorities on Russia says that the present situation is worse than the First Cold War and could, from various angles, be considered as dangerous as the Cuban Missile Crisis. Professor Cohen also says that there is no one in the US who calls for a robust...

Jeremy Corbyn June 2017 (Image by Jeremy Corbyn Facebook)   By Silvia Swinden A Russian father, former double spy convicted in Russia and exchanged by Britain for other spies, and his daughter were found unconscious on a bench in Salisbury. Preliminary assessment suggests a nerve gas agent. The government has jumped to accuse Russia and in particular Putin of ordering this assassination attempt. The word “war” has been repeated in many speeches from PM May and other members of her government. Originally published by Pressenza here Jeremy Corbyn has appealed for clam and to involve international bodies that deal with chemical warfare in order to test the substance properly as well as establishing controls on the money laundering activities of Russian oligarchs and mafias operating in the UK rather than a simple diplomatic tit-for-tat. Unsurprisingly this has caused a deluge of criticism from the media (the BBC photoshoped his picture...