December 2018

The general election has been postponed yet again. Will this country, the largest and potentially the richest in Africa, ever escape from its continuous dictatorship, and its propensity to civil war? It’s not so long ago that Susan Rice, then the US’s Ambassador to the United Nations, was talking about the Congo as the site of “Africa’s First World War”. Has the UN at long last really pacified this country that has been continuously in a state of unrest since the Belgian colonisers, after effectively looting the country, fled in 1960, turning the country over to a hastily improvised African government? Today we can say that the fighting that has consumed the Congo is within sight of being over, apart from some localized violence in Kivus and Kasai provinces. But, given the history of the most turbulent of all African countries, we should say, let’s wait and see. Nevertheless, it...

Of the United Nations’ 18 major human rights treaties, the United States is party to 5, fewer than any other nation on earth, except Bhutan (4), and tied with Malaysia, Myanmar, and South Sudan, a country torn by warfare since its creation in 2011. The United States is the only nation on earth that has not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is the only country to have pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement. It is by many measures a top destroyer of the natural environment, yet has been a leader in sabotaging climate protection negotiations for decades. Seven countries and the European Union reached an agreement on Iran and nuclear energy, but the United States uniquely withdrew. President Donald Trump is threatening to withdraw, and Congress is threatening to allow it, from critical nuclear disarmament treaties reached by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. The...

28 minutes with John Pilger on RT December 22, 2018 Where does journalism end and satire – black jokes – begin? Link to the original on RT

I have long believed that the three red lines in Washington that no elected president can significantly transgress without being ejected from the Oval Office are unwavering support for the priorities of Wall Street, the Pentagon, and Israel. With the announced withdrawal of American troops in Syria (and their 50% cut in Afghanistan), transgressed one of these red lines. What is more, he upset what the mainstream media has been calling ‘the last adult in the room,’ the Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, who made the country critically ponder Trump’s transgression by his thinly veiled rebuke in the form of a letter of resignation that has been treated as scripture by such hegemonic media outlets as CNN and the NY Times. It has become clear that Trump transgressed two of the three red lines, a reality further aggravated by the Christmas shutdown of the Federal Government and his babyish tantrum...

Den 18. december bringer Altinget en nyhed med overskriften ”Russisk statsmedie gav den falske historie luft”. Jeg vil i denne artikel foretage en analyse af Altingets artikel, som jeg mener, har kastet almindelige journalistiske principper om kildekritik og bestræbelser på objektivitet over bord, fordi historien omhandler den gamle sovjetiske fjende fra øst. Det danske politiske medie Altinget er et udmærket kritisk journalistisk medie, som behandler dansk politik og den offentlige debat på mangfoldig vis. Nu har Altinget rettet sin kritiske journalistik mod det store russiske statsmedie Sputnik, som Altinget kan dokumentere bringer en falsk nyhed den 4. november. Altingets nyhed om Sputniks falske nyhed kommer i forlængelse af deres tidligere afsløring den 13. december af, at Jyllands-Posten den 7. november havde skrevet den samme historie som Sputnik. Begge medier skriver, at 20.000 migranter i Bosnien stod ved grænsen til EU. Det viste sig at være 5000 migranter i stedet, da...

After a long period of relative silence, Reza Pahlavi, the son of the deposed Iranian Shah who has lived in the United States for more than 40 years, recently made a rare public appearance, calling for a U.S.-backed regime change in Iran. Speaking at the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy on Friday, December 14, he called for “non-Military actions” in support of Iranians to replace the Islamic Republic with a secular democracy. Since coming to office and even during the 2016 election campaign, President Donald Trump has adopted a very hostile attitude towards Iran and the landmark nuclear deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA) negotiated under President Barack Obama. Some of the more hawkish members of his team have received huge fees speaking at the annual meetings of the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) that are held outside Paris, and have openly called for regime change in...

In the Western world, there is a constant debate about democracy. In the US the Democrats charge quite correctly that the House’s constituencies are gerrymandered against them. Then there’s the insoluble issue of the Senate’s anti-democratic bias where its numbers are tilted against the Democrats by the fact that rural, less populated, states which tend to be conservative, elect two senators, just as do the Democratic-inclined, heavily populated, states. In Britain, the country is riven by the Brexit debate. A referendum was held two and a half years ago when voters were given the choice of “Remain” or “Leave”. The “Leavers” won by a small margin and the country has been in political turmoil ever since. Now with Prime Minister Theresa May’s exit plans on the rocks the debate has become vitriolic. There are calls for a new referendum to reverse the previous vote. It’s likely to happen since Mrs...

The whole debate about Brexit has had a weird quality about it from beginning to end. Prime Minister Theresa May voted in the referendum two and half years ago to remain in the European Union but then as a quid pro quo for being made prime minister she has led the charge to implement Brexit.  Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labour Party, voted to remain but has made it clear that he too prefers out, albeit keeping the UK in the Customs Union. Mrs May muddied the waters even further when in a radio interview she was asked how she would vote if there was a second referendum replied that she didn’t know. Yesterday at the eleventh hour she postponed a parliamentary vote on whether to approve or not the treaty negotiated with the EU on Brexit. The former prime minister, Gordon Brown, writing in the Financial Times, has...

By Curtis Stone December 7, 2018 China went from being one of the poorest countries on the planet to one of the most powerful. China’s remarkable development has pulled hundreds of millions of its citizens out of poverty and greatly contributes to global peace and prosperity. Originally published by The People’s Daily Online, December 7, 2018 But this significant impact has also triggered a negative response in some quarters of the United States. In his book The Hundred-Year Marathon, Michael Pillsbury, director for Chinese strategy at the Hudson Institute, sounded a clarion call: China has a secret 100-year plan built on a series of strategic deceptions to supplant the United States as the world’s superpower. The rise of China, in his view, is a threat. In his book, Pillsbury writes that China experts have a duty to increase understanding between China and the United States, but ironically, his way of increasing...

I have to admit that the most unforgiving relationship I hold is the one with the media. This may not come as a surprise as one doesn’t need to look further than a front page of any media platform to see that the media has become an increasingly hostile and contradictory arena. We seem to be living in times of linguistic austerity and compassion depravity. We are faced with more and more undeniable evidence that the media is creating an increasing social divide and psychological crisis in our society today. Sadly, this is not something new. If one learns from history and observes the present carefully, it is evident that the media has a critical role in perpetuating and exaggerating conflict. For example, the media has had a single role as a dividing factor and driving force in triggering and perpetuating the Yugoslav wars in the Balkans, by using ethnic...

Today the Universal Declaration of Human Rights turns 70. All reason to celebrate. Without the norms embedded in this extremely important document, humankind would be much worse off. Because normativity is important even though it is only words. It enables us to make those who violate human rights accountable. And that is, in general terms, an extremely important aspect of the UN and its Charter. So too the norm expressed in its Article 1 – that peace shall be established by peaceful means and only when all such means have been tried an found in vain, can the UN member states take to violent means. As a last resort. That said, the only two problems I have with the human rights philosophy and concept are: The word “human” – the implicit idea that only humans have right, not all the other creatures on earth. That is, it is a very...

Det norska stortinget är på väg att göra fredspriset till sin egendom, med fri tolkningsrätt. Ledamöterna tycks inte ha förstått sin roll: när det gäller fredspriset ska man inte agera som parlament utan som ett underordnat organ till en svensk privat stiftelse. För att värna Nobels arv måste Nobelstiftelsen nu hitta en annan lösning, skriver Tomas Magnusson. Kulmen på fredsprisets förfall nåddes tisdagen den 27 november när det norska stortinget behandlade nya regler för den norska prisutdelande Nobelkommittén, och därvid avvisade ett förslag om att kandidater till kommittén bör ha ”kunskap om, och stödja fredsarbete och nedrustning, så som det definierades av Alfred Nobel”. Läs hela artikeln på Dagens Nyheter den 9:e december 2018 Foto: Vegard Wivestad Grøtt/TT