March 2020

Text in TFF PressInfo # 560 It was NATO’s first out-of-area operation, against its own Treaty and without a UN mandate. On March 24, 1999. Independent Kosovo was established – against UN SC resolution 1244. Thanks to the Clinton administration and Madeleine Albright. CNN’s Amanpour endorsed it generously on TV with her State Department husband, James Rubin, a chief operator in the non-negotiations at Rambouillet. And TIME, of course, knew the truth too. Serbia suffered tremendously from the 78 days of indiscriminate, hard bombing. I know because I was there. Finally, Serbia and its president Milosevic was threatened with total destruction of Belgrade. And gave in. Western hubris after the Cold War was won? Of course! Russia was on its knees. International law and the UN Charter sidelined. Militarism embraced. Full-spectrum dominance. The winner takes it all! Right – but with the risk of losing it all later. It’s called...

Julian Assange of Wikileaks languishes in a British jail during a too-long wait for a court to decide if he can be extradicted to the US where the government has made clear that it wants to put him on trial on charges that could land him in prison for the rest of his life, even though President Donald Trump was happy to quote from Wikileaks research on his opponent, Hillary Clinton, during his campaign for president. “I love Wikileaks”, he said. The British and to a lesser extent the US press have done a poor job in uncovering state secrets in their country’s foreign policy until The Guardian and The New York Times linked up with Assange to publish his most damning revelations. And now after a long winding series of events Assange is being punished by a type of confinement that persuaded Nils Melzer, the UN’s rapporteur on torture,...

Read the author’s first article here On January 18, after attending a meeting in Hangzhou, I planned to return to my home in Beijing. At that time, the Spring Festival in China was approaching. Although I had started buying tickets one week in advance, I still did not get a high-speed train ticket from Hangzhou to Beijing so I had to go from Hangzhou to Shanghai and wait for several hours before changing to a later train to return to Beijing. There are high-speed trains between Beijing and Hangzhou and Shanghai every five to ten minutes. Even so, it can’t meet people’s travel needs during the Spring Festival. High-speed railway stations and airports in all major cities were overcrowded and at security checkpoints, people lined up in long queues. China’s transportation sector is doing its best to ensure the world’s largest population’s mobility and transport needs. Everyone was looking forward...

People line up to buy face masks from a medical supply company in Nanning, southern China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region on Wednesday, January 29, 2020. © 2020 Chinatopix. Read the author’s second article here What we have experienced in the past two months is too dreamy and now, in retrospect, it seems not so real. On January 23, the day before Chinese New Year’s Eve, people who were ready to celebrate the New Year were shocked by the sudden outbreak of the virus. Wuhan, a super big city with a population of 11 million, was declared closed by the government. Anxiety and unease quickly enveloped the whole country. According to the government’s guidance, people cancelled New Year’s travels and family reunions one after another, stayed in their own homes according to experts’ suggestions, and kept updating the news with anxiety. Usually, during the Chinese New Year, there will be 4 billion...

Born in Arak, Iran, on April 16, 1989.Favourite quote “Peace begins with a smile.”Joined TFF as Associate in March 2020. Key professional skills • Experienced in project management in both national and international contexts.• Facilitator, experienced in participatory methods in peace education, violence prevention and conflict transformation.• Very good knowledge of disarmament in the field of chemical weapons.• Experienced in working in diverse teams and supervising team members. • Has a background in working with special groups such as veterans, people with disabilities, youth and authorities• Good understanding of social and cultural sensitivity and an ability to work in very diverse contexts.• Competent in building networks and coordinating within networks. • Pooyandeh is a native Persian (Farsi) speaker, fluent in English, ability to read and understand Arabic and basic knowledge of Spanish. Work experience Tehran Peace Museum, International Relations Officer, October 2016 – June 2018:• Project manager in international exchange...

March 26, 2020 By Edward Curtin A Review There are very few writers who have done more to try to open the public’s mind to the evil nature of the American empire than David Ray Griffin.  His series of books on the false flag attacks of September 11, 2001, will endure for a long time, and they will one day when it is safe to do so, be recognized as seminal texts exposing the traitorous conspiracy of elements within the United States’ government to launch the endless so-called war on terror.  That many now know, and many more will, that those so-called “terrorist” attacks were carried out by terrorists in the highest reach of the U.S. government will be due to his extraordinary work. What many do not know is that David Ray Griffin is a Christian theologian with impeccable credentials and a scholarly oeuvre of dozens of theological books....

Zivadin Jovanovic* March 25, 2020 The time of adjustment The world is undergoing a period of great development, great change, and adjustment. The international order is changing with the acceleration. The fall of the Berlin Wall thirty years ago (1989) has marked the end of the bipolar World Order. The “winners” of the Cold War adopted a policy of expansion, interventionism and domination. NATO illegal aggression on Yugoslavia 1999 represented the peak of uni-polar world order but, also, the beginning of its downfall. Today, the process of multi-polarization of global relations has already gone far beyond the point of no return. It is impossible any longer that any single power imposes own will or own interests above the will and interests of the others. The driving forces of this historic transformation towards the world of equals, shared responsibilities and community of shared future are China, Russia and other countries of...

According to the New York Times, President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign is investing more money and resources in an attempt to attract African-American voters than any previous Republican presidential campaign. The Trump camp believe that with eight months of continuous advertising coupled with the opening of field offices in black communities it can peel off enough black voters to improve his standing by a crucial couple of points. Are black votes so critical? Indeed they are as they are clustered in the denser populated states where they tend to vote as a more of a block than any other group. They can swing the election in several crucial states. It’s strange that the pundits didn’t see South Carolina coming. In that primary, Joe Biden soared ahead of his rival Bernie Sanders after having been written off because of his failures in earlier primaries. South Carolina not only has a large...

This little girl’s face expresses both sorrow and hope. It’s been with me ever since I took the picture at the liberation of Eastern Aleppo in December 2016 after 4,5 years of terrorist occupation. These days, it is 9 years ago, violence broke out in Syria. The underlying conflict with the West is much older. Our leaders and media are still so peace illiterate that they don’t know the distinction between conflict and violence. I’ve seen no mention in the Western mainstream media of Syria. While COVID-19 has so far claimed about 10.000 lives worldwide, 400.000 have died in Syria. Today, it is 17 years since US President George W. Bush used shock and awe on Iraq – began the physical, economic, cultural, environmental and political destruction of Iraq. If at all mentioned today, no one asks: What on earth was it we – including small rogue states like Denmark...

Jeff McMahon March 20, 2020 In a new book, the woman who led the negotiations for the Paris Agreement calls for civil disobedience to force institutions to respond to the climate crisis. Originally posted on Transcend.org on February 24, 2020, here “It’s time to participate in non-violent political movements wherever possible,” Christiana Figueres writes in “The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis,” which will be released tomorrow by Knopf. Figueres served as executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) from 2010-16. She co-authored the book with her strategic advisor, Tom Rivett-Carnac. The two also support voting: “Large numbers of people must vote on climate change as their number one priority,” they write. “As we are in the midst of the most dire emergency, we must urgently demand that those who seek high office offer solutions commensurate with the scale of the problem.” But they...

Is Bernie Sanders still in with a chance? It is a slim one, but in these primary elections one never knows. There have been a number of surprising upsets. Even if Joe Biden comes out on top and has to face Donald Trump for the presidency the Democratic Party has been pushed to the left by Senator Sanders. That is all to the good. Biden needs to be more critical of capitalism, more prepared to encourage unionism among workers and more prepared to push for universal health coverage, more taxes for the wealthier classes, among many other things that Sanders has pointed out as necessary if the US is not going to shoot itself in the foot with a disintegrating body politic. If it wants a fair and stable society this is the way to go. On foreign policy Sanders has also pushed Biden to be more explicit about the...

By Swiss Propaganda Research (SPR) March 19, 2020 Largely unbeknownst to the general public, executives and top journalists of almost all major US media outlets have long been members of the influential Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Originally posted on Swiss Propaganda Research’s official website on July 2017 (updated December 2019) here Established in 1921 as a private, bipartisan organization to “awaken America to its worldwide responsibilities”, the CFR and its close to 5000 elite members for decades have shaped US foreign policy and public discourse about it. As a well-known Council member famously explained, they transformed the American republic into a global empire, albeit a “bene­volent” one. Based on official membership rosters, the following illustration depicts for the first time the extensive media network of the CFR and its two major international affiliate organizations: the Bilderberg Group (mainly covering the US and Europe) and the Trilateral Commission (covering North...