November 2018

Photo: March 20, 2018. President Donald Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the White House in Washington. (Photo credit: voanews.com).   By Emile Nakhleh* November 30, 2018 The Middle East, like the rest of the world, is a “very dangerous place!” according to President Trump. The Saudis, with America’s tacit help, made it so. President Trump’s bizarre and strange recent statement giving Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) a pass on his involvement in journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s murder raises a number of serious issues that Trump cavalierly dismisses or doesn’t know about in the first place. Beyond the half-truths and the lame rationale he has offered in defense of MbS, the president is in fact undermining America’s long-term interests in the region and putting the lives of American citizens – civilians, diplomats, and military – in that part of the world at risk. Originally published at lobelog.com To...

                  Born December 9, 1993 Education 2017-present Master’s in Peace Studies, Faculty of Political Science, University of Belgrade 2016-present Master’s in Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade 2012-2016 Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade: Italian language, culture and literature, average grade 9.25/10 2008-2012 Grammar school ‘’DusanVasiljev’’, 23 300 Kikinda, Serbia.   Work Experience April 2018-present Entrepreneur, self-employed September 2017-March 2018 English teacher, p.u. Happy Kids 2015-present Translator for the company ‘’Team Leather d.o.o.’’ in Belgrade which collaborates with the company Sidepel s.p.a. in Montegranaro, Italy 2015-2016 Italian language teacher, the Youth Office at the municipality of Zvezdara, Belgrade] 2014-2018 Assistant at a law office to assist Italian clients 2013-present Volunteer translator working with Nurdor. I translate texts from Serbian to Italian and vice versa for Nurdor organization that cooperates with the Bologna Children’s Hospital.   Skills Computer skills Windows, MS Office (Word,...

Photocredit: nousnatobases.org   By Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate and TFF Associate Presented at the International Conference against US/NATO Military Bases, 16-18 Nov 2018, Dublin, Ireland. November 27, 2018   Dear Friends, It is good to be here with you all. I would like to thank the organizers for inviting me to address the conference. Firstly I thank you all for your work for peace. It is good that we will have an opportunity in the next few days to get to know each other and together discuss what kind of a world we want to live in? There will be many different perspectives on this and the way forward, but let us agree to respect each other and to engage in deep listening and conversation no matter how hard and where the dialogue might take us! Originally published at transcend.org Let us be encouraged by the fact that we have made...

  How can Saudi Arabia be brought low? If the King won’t remove from power his 33 old son, Prince Mohammad bin Salman, there may be no alternative but to do battle (non-violently) with its regime. There seems to be no doubt that it was bin Salman who gave the order to murder Saudi Arabia’s dissident journalist, Jamal Khashoggi. This is not the only reason to take up (non-violent) arms against Saudi Arabia. Others are its massive buying of Western military hardware. Another is its war in Yemen where it has killed tens of thousands of civilians. Another is that it still follows the intolerant strictures of the Wahabi sect of Islam. In 2015 the German vice-chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, publicly accused Saudi Arabia of financing Islamic extremism in the West and warned that it must stop. He said that the Saudi regime was funding extremist mosques and communities that pose...

Photo: Demonstrators dressed as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and US President Donald Trump protest outside the White House in Washington on 19 October 2018, demanding justice for missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi (AFP) (Photo credit: middleeasteye.net).   Tehran has repeatedly delivered on its promises, while Washington has fallen short and backed Riyadh’s disastrous regional adventures. November 22, 2018   By Seyed Hossein Mousavian In a recent op-ed in The New York Times, Thomas Friedman criticised former US President Barack Obama’s bet on Iran and President Donald Trump’s bet on Saudi Arabia, noting that both countries responded with their worst impulses. Friedman argues that the Iran nuclear deal was a bet worth making, but like many critics of the deal, he claims that it enabled Iran’s overreach in four Arab capitals: Baghdad, Damascus, Sanaa and Beirut. I believe he is wrong. In the Iran-US wrangling over the past three decades, Tehran...

  By Stephen F. Cohen November 26, 2018   Stephen F. Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at NYU and Princeton, and John Batchelor continue their (usually) weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War. (Previous instalments, now in their fifth year, are at TheNation.com.) Links under the article. Originally published by The Nation on November 21, 2018, here On the fifth anniversary of the onset of the Ukrainian crisis, in November 2013, and of Washington “punishing” Russia by attempting to “isolate” it in world affairs—a policy first declared by President Barack Obama in 2014 and continued ever since, primarily through economic sanctions—Cohen discusses the following points: 1. During the preceding Cold War with the Soviet Union, no attempt was made to “isolate” Russia abroad; instead, the goal was to “contain” it within its “bloc” of Eastern European nations and compete with it in what was called the...

Iran’s PressTV today asked me to comment on an official Turkish comment on President Trumps statement concerning the Saudi Arabian murder of Mr. Khashoggi. That gave me the opportunity to say a bit about the relationsship between these two countries, the two largest military powers in NATO – and what that may mean. Furthermore, I was asked to say a few words about whether or not the world situation can become better. In that part I speak about the net destructive role of today’s United States of America and what we may be facing the next few years. If you are busy, my participation begins about 1:35 min into the clip.      

Eisenhower’s worst nightmare has come true, as defense mega-contractors climb into the cockpit to ensure we stay overextended   By Gareth Porter November 20, 2018 What President Dwight D. Eisenhower dubbed the “military-industrial complex” has been constantly evolving over the decades, adjusting to shifts in the economic and political system as well as international events. The result today is a “permanent-war complex,” which is now engaged in conflicts in at least eight countries across the globe, none of which are intended to be temporary. This new complex has justified its enhanced power and control over the country’s resources primarily by citing threats to U.S. security posed by Islamic terrorists. But like the old military-industrial complex, it is really rooted in the evolving relationship between the national security institutions themselves and the private arms contractors allied with them. Originally published at theamericanconservative.com The first phase of this transformation was a far-reaching privatization...

  Finally, finally, the over-long, ten year trials of the leaders of the murderous Khmer Rouge leadership of Cambodia, are over. The two defendants, Nuon Chea, and Khieu Samphan, were each given a life sentence at the end of the first trial in August 2015 for crimes against humanity. Now last week they were convicted of genocide. Of the other three that were tried, one, the ex-foreign minister, Ieng Sary died in 2013, one, Ieng Thirith, the wife of Ieng Sary, was too ill with Alzheimer’s to appear and one, Kaing Guek Eav (“Duch”), voluntarily confessed three years ago and was sent to jail for 35 years. In the twentieth century, two massacres of hundreds of thousands people compete for second place after Hitler’s extermination of the Jews, Poles, homosexuals and gypsies. One is Cambodia and the other is Rwanda. But Cambodia, where the deaths were between a million and...

  There is a widely accepted idea among some Americans that Trump does not reflect American values. They are wrong   By Hamid Dabashi In an erudite and timely piece for the New York Times, published just a few days before the midterm elections in early November 2018, my distinguished Columbia University colleague Andrew Delbanco wrote a poignant essay about “The Long Struggle for America’s Soul.” In this learned piece, Professor Delbanco writes passionately about the long US history of human suffering that had come before the cruel behaviours and policies of the democratically elected President Donald Trump, focusing specifically on slavery. “Even free black people in the North …” we learn in this piece, “found their lives infused with terror of being seized and deported on the pretext that they had once belonged to someone in the South. The Fugitive Slave Act forced them to dread every footstep on the...

  By Farhang Jahanpour, TFF Board Professor Farhang Jahanpour, part-time tutor on Middle Eastern affairs in the Department of Continuing Education, University of Oxford, and a member of Kellogg College says that the main reason for the idea of forming a joint European army “has been President Trump’s unilateral and ultra-nationalist approach that puts America first and, by implication, ignores the interests of other countries and tries to impose his views on them.” Former Senior Research Scholar at Harvard adds that “He seems to have no concept of a multipolar world and he wishes to rule other countries like a global hegemon, in the same way, that he is trying to establish an imperial presidency at home.” Following is the full text of the interview: Q: The idea of forming a joint European army is not a new idea, but in recent days, with the comments of French President Emmanuel...

    Hiding Israel’s Crimes of State behind false claims of victimization I along with many others am being victimized these days. They are being labelled anti-Semites, and in some instances, self-hating Jews as well. This is a Zionist and Israeli effort to shut down our voices and punish our non-violent activism, with special venom directed at the BDS Campaign (Boycott, Divest and Sanctions) because it has become so effective in recent years. This negative branding of the opposition is being called ‘the new anti-Semitism.’ The old anti-Semitism was simply hatred of Jews as expressed through negative images and attitudes, as well as discriminatory practices, persecution, and vigilante violence. The new anti-Semitism is a criticism of Israel and Zionism, and it has been endorsed by governments friendly to Israel and pushed by a variety of prominent Jewish organizations, including some associated with Holocaust survivors and memories. Emmanuel Macron, President of...