December 2021

The Summit slogan by Biden was: ”Democracy doesn’t happen by accident. We have to defend it, fight for it, strengthen it, renew it.” The first sentence is empty of meaning. The rest is confrontational – fight, be strong; someone – guess who? – threatens our democracy. And renewal was absent. With no intellectuals or other thinkers invited, the Summit was theoretically and philosophically void. The hours I browsed didn’t reveal any new concepts or visions of democracy – but instead platitudes, tired metaphors, self-congratulatory words by governments leaders on their own achievements and how they meet ”challenges.” Plus the repeated, extremely unfair, appeal to young people to fix what the present generation has so irresponsibly destroyed. A summit could be used to sum it up: Diagnosis + Prognosis + Solutions: What must we do differently in the future? It wasn’t. We learned that democracy is in crisis – some of...

By Gordon M. Hahn December 15, 2021 It is now quite clear, as I have stated for decades, that NATO expansion is the main cause of U.S.-Russian and WesternRussian tensions, and the Russian Angst over said expansion is the cause of the Ukrainian crisis sparked in winter 2013-2014. It appears that Putin is escalating the stakes in the Ukrainian crisis in an effort to solve it and the overall problem of NATO expansion and European security. The positioning of Russian troops closer to the Ukrainian border – not on the border as is being reported – is an attempt to concentrate the minds of the West and bring the main driver of the Ukrainian crisis on the Western side – the U.S. – into the Minsk 2 process directly or otherwise. His highlighting the issue has the important side benefit of putting the issue in a central place before Western...

The embassy of the People’s Republic of China in the United States of America 10 December 2021 This Joint Article was published on ”The National Interest”. Qin Gang is the Chinese Ambassador to the United States. Anatoly Antonov is the Russian Ambassador to the United States. We publish it here on The Transnational because we believe it is a historic document both because of China-Russia cooperation which is increasing rapidly and because it makes the important point that the US no longer has any legitimate – or exceptionalist – right to tell others how to operate. The upcoming American-led online Summit for Democracy will stoke ideological confrontation. Faced with an array of global challenges, countries urgently need to strengthen coordination and cooperation for common progress. The United States will be hosting the online Summit for Democracy on December 9-10, 2021, empowering itself to define who is to attend the event and who is not, who is a “democratic country” and who is not eligible for such status. An evident...

By Baher Kamal December 25, 2021 MADRID, Dec 6 2021 (IPS) – ”All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” These words are a sound introduction to the transcendental issue of human rights and equalities, as stated by the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The Declaration proclaims the “inalienable rights that everyone is entitled to as a human being – regardless of race, colour, religion, sex, language, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.” “All Human, All Equal” is the slogan for the 2021 Human Rights Day, marked 10 December. Its theme relates to equality: “The principles of equality and non-discrimination are at the heart of human rights.”According to the UN, “equality, inclusion and non-discrimination, in other words – a human rights-based approach to development  – is the best way to reduce inequalities and resume the path towards realising the 2030 Agenda” “Equality includes addressing...

The United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., U.S. /Getty By Josef Gregory Mahoney December 15, 2021 Editor’s note: Josef Gregory Mahoney is a professor of politics at East China Normal University in Shanghai. The article reflects the author’s opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN. There has been an active debate among American scholars and pundits for many years over whether the United States is a republic or democracy. One of the keys to this discussion is the argument advanced by some, particularly those on the right, that these two terms are somehow opposites – that one cannot be both at the same time, and that the U.S. is definitively a republic and not a democracy. Originally published at CGTN On the face of it, this assertion is ridiculous. It’s absolutely possible to be both a republic and democratic, and to whatever extent one regards the U.S. as democratic,...

The 2021 Nobel Peace Prize honoured press freedom and – no surprise – was welcomed by the world press. As I listened to the announcement, on October 8, an old story from the Cold War kept coming back to me: A Soviet official had been travelling in the US for a couple of weeks. As he left, he remarked to his hosts, in puzzled bewilderment “How can it be that you have such perfect control, even with a completely free press?” He was right. Society makes one huge exception from democracy and press freedom: national security. The Military-Industrial Complex is in control, thoroughly disciplined media see it as a sacred duty to keep their own nation strong and united behind the flag and the forces. Nations are governed by fear that any doubt or deviation from military orthodoxy would harm national security. As a result, in 2021 the Nobel awarders...

Imagine that the Nobel Prize in Literature is given to a book publisher or papermaker and the official motivation is that publishers or papermakers are preconditions for the writer writing and being read. Roughly, this is how the Nobel Peace Committee, reasons – unreasonably. Here’s how it legitimates that its 2021 prize goes to Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov way outside the letter and spirit of Alfred Nobel’s will: “Without freedom of expression and freedom of the press, it will be difficult to successfully promote fraternity between nations, disarmament and a better world order to succeed in our time. This year’s award of the Nobel Peace Prize is therefore firmly anchored in the provisions of Alfred Nobel’s will.” See? – “without papermakers and publishers, it will be difficult to successfully write good literature and be read…” I believe my readers easily grasp just how far-fetched this argument is in the...

William J. Astore December 3, 2021 Who is America’s god? The Christian god of the beatitudes, the one who healed the sick, helped the poor, and preached love of neighbor? Not in these (dis)United States. In the Pledge of Allegiance, we speak proudly of One Nation under God, but in the aggregate, this country doesn’t serve or worship Jesus Christ, or Allah, or any other god of justice and mercy. In truth, the deity America believes in is the five-sided one headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. In God We Trust is on all our coins. But, again, which god? The one of “turn the other cheek”? The one who found his disciples among society’s outcasts? The one who wanted nothing to do with moneychangers or swords? As Joe Biden might say, give me a break. Originally published at Responsible Statecraft America’s true god is a deity of wrath, whose keenest followers profit mightily...

I’m old enough to remember when you couldn’t do a speaking event related to war and peace without being asked numerous reasonable and not so reasonable questions about 9/11 (each accompanied by a stack of DVDs and flyers presented to you as a revelation from on high). There was a long period when you could count on the inevitable question about “peak oil.” Originally published at Worldbeyondwar.org I’ve been around enough to know that you can’t talk to peace-oriented people without a question about creating a Department of Peace, or to non-peace-oriented people without a question about good humanitarian wars against irrational foreigners who can’t be reasoned with, or to any group at all in the United States and some other countries without “What about Hitler?,” or to any self-selected audience at a peace-related event without the question about why the other people in the room are disproportionately old, white,...

This article is based on observations sent to me by an academic friend living in Italy who wants to be anonymous, given the views it expresses in this situation. The reason we publish it here with a few comments, videos and links is that it is obviously a very serious situation in and of itself but also an example of how democracy can quickly be undermined and how nonviolent demonstrations are squeezed out, framed as neo-Fascists and de-legitimated – as is the entire peace discourse in Western democracies (if we can still call them that). It’s an illustration of how far democratic governments seem ready to go in the direction of authoritarianism in the name of protecting their citizens – without giving those same citizens a chance to express themselves as part of the decision-making process. There is a huge risk that the fear of the pandemic is exploited to...