August 2021

Sarah Chayes August 25, 2021 I have been silent for a while. I’ve been silent about Afghanistan for longer. But too many things are going unsaid. I won’t try to evoke the emotions, somehow both swirling and yet leaden: the grief, the anger, the sense of futility. Instead, as so often before, I will use my mind to shield my heart. And in the process, perhaps help you make some sense of what has happened. For those of you who don’t know me, here is my background — the perspective from which I write tonight. I covered the fall of the Taliban for NPR, making my way into their former capital, Kandahar, in December 2001, a few days after the collapse of their regime. Descending the last great hill into the desert city, I saw a dusty ghost town. Pickup trucks with rocket-launchers strapped to the struts patrolled the streets....

Pepe Escobar August 25, 2021 The Persian Gulf harbors an array of extremely compromising secrets. Near the top is the Afghan heroin ratline – with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) positioned as the golden node of a transnational, trillion dollar heroin money laundering operation. Originally posted on LewRockwell homepage on January 18, 2021 In this 21st century Opium War, crops harvested in Afghanistan are essentially feeding the heroin market not only in Russia and Iran but especially in the US. Up to 93% of the world’s opium comes from Afghanistan. Contrary to predominant Western perception, this is not an Afghan Taliban operation. The key questions — never asked by Atlanticist circles — are who buys the opium harvests; refines them into heroin; controls the export routes; and then sell them for humongous profit compared to what the Taliban have locally imposed in taxes. The hegemonic narrative rules that Washington bombed Afghanistan in 2001 in “self-defense” after 9/11; installed a “democratic” government; and after 16 years never de facto left because this is a key node...

When it comes to Western mainstream media’s coverage of international affairs, I would today dare the hypothesis that 10-20% is truthful, 20-30% is fake and narratives and 50-70% is omitted (see definition in point 2 below). This is not a scientific statement or hypothesis that I have tested empirically; rather, it is my judgement based on two things: a) witnessing over some forty years the decay of the mainstream media’s international affairs coverage and b) my experiences from conflict zones such as e.g. all parts of former Yugoslavia, Georgia, Iraq before it was occupied, Iran, Syria and China and comparing them with the media images conveyed by the mainstream Western press. Originally written as an editorial for Transcend Media Service, TMS, here In TFF’s recent analysis ”Behind The Smokescreen. An Analysis of the West’s Destructive China Cold War Agenda And Why It Must Stop”, we make use of the following...

While all Western media have chosen to ignore this pathbreaking analysis of this new Cold War against China, China has a natural interest, of course, in highlighting it. The (self)censorship of the Western mainstream media – and the Media Manipulation Methods, we outline – of course, are significant indicators of the crisis and decline of the West but it is only in recent years that it is practised so efficiently that there is not even a tiny crack in any editorial office wall. When it comes to China, you are being deceived 24/7 – which does not mean, as we also say, that everything is fine in China. But we do need a much more balanced view and we do not need confrontation and Cold War. To solve humanity’s big problems, we need cooperation and no more waste of human and other resources on futile militarism and US attempts at...

Pepe Escobar August 24, 2021 At one point last week, the price of a barrel of crude oil — which had risen as high as $147 last July and, with the global economic meltdown, hit a low of $32 in 2009 — rebounded above $51. Prices at the local gas pump are expected to rise as well in the coming weeks. However, given a worldwide falloff in oil use, these price jumps may not hold for long. Still, cheap or not, oil and natural gas (as well as coal) are what drives global civilization, and that’s clearly not going to change any time soon. Originally posted on Tom Dispatch on March 24, 2009 That, in turn, means the major powers are going to be no less eager to secure key energy reserves and control the flow of energy in bust times as they were in boom times, which is where Pepe Escobar comes in. In a...

It’s far from the longest U.S. war. There was no peace before or after it. There is no after it until they end it — and bombing has always been most of what it is. It has had nothing to do with opposing terrorism. It has been a one-sided slaughter, a mass killing over two decades by a single invading army and air force dragging along token mascots from dozens of vassal states. After 20 years Afghanistan was one of the worst places to be on Earth, and the Earth as a whole was a worse place to be — the rule of law, the state of nature, the refugee crises, the spread of terrorism, the militarization of governments all worsened. Then the Taliban took over. When the U.S. armed the Afghan military with weapons costing enough to cause panic attacks in U.S. Senators had the expense been for anything...

Brilliant cartoon from 2010… August 23, 2021 Jeffrey Sachs is professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. He’s a leading intellectual on global economic affairs in general and sustainable development in particular. Here he chooses the unusual way of communicating: Instead of going into a lot of “academic” issues and dimensions of the US-led war on Afghanistan since 2001, he characterises the underlying mentality, decision quality and level of knowledge by using the word “stupidity” a number of times. And that’s what this US policy has been: stupid. Repeatedly stupid. We find it important that people proven excellent intellectuals do not feel that they have to separate the personal and academia and feel free to express themselves in plain language – indicating also, of course, a sense of frustration and anger over that very ignorance . . . stupidity and its tragic human consequences. Perhaps...

Rana Mitter and Elsbeth Johnson August 23, 2021 Many people have wrongly assumed that political freedom would follow new economic freedoms in China and that its economic growth would have to be built on the same foundations as in the West. The authors suggest that those assumptions are rooted in three essentially false beliefs about modern China: (1) Economics and democracy are two sides of the same coin; (2) authoritarian political systems can’t be legitimate; and (3) the Chinese live, work, and invest like Westerners. But at every point since 1949 the Chinese Communist Party—central to the institutions, society, and daily experiences that shape all Chinese people—has stressed the importance of Chinese history and of Marxist-Leninist doctrine. Until Western companies and politicians understand this and revise their views, they will continue to get China wrong. Originally appeared in the May-June 2021 Harvard Business Review here When we first traveled to China, in the early...

, in Washington and New York, everybody talked about who could have done it, how they did it and with what means. The only thing never brought to the fore was: WHY would somebody want to do something like 9/11 to the United States of America? By not asking the Why question, the US could stand as the innocent victim of cataclysmic violence. It would not have to do any soul searching and therefore no change of its global militarist policy. 9/11 was not a response to US foreign policy – but it needed a response. The world felt sympathy for the American suffering – much more so than for the suffering and deaths in other countries around the world. The fact is that the 9/11 attack targeted the US’ global finance-capital (World Trade Center), its global military (Pentagon) and its political (White House, however not hit) centres – not...

TFF Associate I do not wish to rub salt into the wounds of US and British officials who are responsible for the humiliating debacle in Afghanistan, but there is no way of sugar-coating this appalling tragedy, especially for hard-pressed Afghans who have experienced war and occupation for over 40 years. In my contacts with various senior Afghan officials and ordinary civilians, especially women, during the past 40 years, I had been very encouraged and impressed by how they used a short period of peace to get educated, to establish a civil society, to serve their country and to assume positions of responsibility with relative ease, only for all those hopes and dreams to come tumbling down in a matter of few weeks. The hasty withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan in the dead of night, the hurried departure of US personnel and a few Afghan helpers under fire from Kabul...

“There is virtually zero knowledge or understanding of the Chinese Communist Party in the West. It is seen as a clone of the Soviet Communist Party. In reality, it is entirely different. It has been extraordinarily successful, not just transforming China but is also in the process of changing the world. Everyone needs to know about CPC and understand the reasons that lie behind its extraordinary success.” This is very true – the intro to this video on Martin Jacques’ YouTube channel. Martin Jacques is one of the most important experts around and will give you more food for thought per minute than most others. Voices like his are immensely important in these years when the US/West does nothing significant for the future but developing its utterly destructive China Cold War Agenda, CCWA. Please watch, discuss and share. We desperately need to improve the Western discourse on China as it...

Gordon Hahn on Guadalajara Geopolitics Institute August 10, 2021  Professor Gordon Hahn is interviewed by Hrvoje Morić of Geopolitics & Empire Gordon Hahn discusses what he calls the New East-West Cold War or Russia-West Tinderbox, which can potentially escalate into a WWIII scenario. He examines the key drivers between the Russia-West divide which is primarily EU/NATO expansion (e.g. Belarus, Ukraine, Donbass), a situation that will continue to fester and could explode at any moment unless it is resolved. He comments on China’s rise as a global hegemon and believes Russia and China will make Afghan inroads as the U.S. withdraws and the Taliban likely come to power. Finally, he looks at the “authoritarian-ization” or “Putin-ization” of America, where neo-liberals, leftists, and big tech have melded with the military-industrial-complex and oligarchic globalists who are pushing the U.S. toward a one-party state. Beyond that, these forces are pushing for some form of...