June 2024

“>Sino–Indian Agreement 1954, are: • mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, • mutual non-aggression, • mutual non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, • equality and co-operation for mutual benefit, and • peaceful co-existence Read more about it here. These principles, also called Panchsheel, are fundamental to Chinese foreign policy and embedded in the preamble of the country’s constitution. Here is an excerpt of the invitation letter: “The commemorative events, to be held under the theme “From the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence to Building a Community with a Shared Future for Mankind” will begin with a commemorative conference, followed by a luncheon and sub-forums. His Excellency Xi Jinping, President of the People’s Republic of China, will attend and deliver an important speech at the commemorative conference, and his Excellency Li Qiang, premier of the State Council, will moderate the conference. His Excellency Wang Yi, member of the...

Jeffrey Sachs June 23, 2024 For goodness’ sake, negotiate! For the fifth time since 2008, Russia has proposed to negotiate with the U.S. over security arrangements, this time in proposals made by President Vladimir Putin on June 14, 2024. Four previous times, the U.S. rejected the offer of negotiations in favour of a neocon strategy to weaken or dismember Russia through war and covert operations. The U.S. neocon tactics have failed disastrously, devastating Ukraine in the process, and endangering the whole world. After all the warmongering, it’s time for Biden to open negotiations for peace with Russia. Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. grand strategy has been to weaken Russia. As early as 1992, then Defence Secretary Richard Cheney opined that following the 1991 demise of the Soviet Union, Russia too should be dismembered. Zbigniew Brzezinski opined in 1997 that Russia should be divided into three loosely confederated entities in...

It can safely be assumed that NATO leaders and their media don’t care much about what the President of Serbia, Александар Вучић – Aleksandar Vučić, has to say about the NATO-Russia conflict and the war in Ukraine. Not only do they think that they know everything better than anyone else, but they also have their own experience with Serbia since NATO violated its own defensive Treaty and bombed Kosovo out of Serbia – and blamed Serbia for everything that happened in then Yugoslavia. Serbia and the Serbs have been perceived as the odd man out among the elites of NATO and the EU, as someone you fundamentally look down upon. But perhaps they – and the rest of us – should give Vučić a fair hearing on this particular issue? In my opinion, Vučić here says extremely important things based on analysis and an ability to see things from more...

Richard FalkAnd TFF Associate and dear friend since 1986. June 5, 2024 An intriguing sideshow during the seven months of savage genocidal violence against the entrapped Palestinian population of an estimated 2.3 million has been the attention given to international law and to international procedures available for its interpretation and enforcement. To begin with, many concerned persons wonder about why there are two distinct tribunals: the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC). Beyond this, for many never exposed to a sophisticated explanation of the process by which international law is judicially implemented the distinction between these two tribunals, both located in The Hague, is far from transparent. This short essay is a simplified introduction to the ICJ and ICC, both indispensable judicial resources of a functionally effective and equitable international legal order. Their positive contributions to law and justice are diminished to the extent that...

Michael Brenner June 4, 2024 Is the West launching an all-out war against global ‘South,’ against the BRICS – plus, against the ‘other’? Are we in the first stages of a civilizational struggle initiated by the U.S.-led assemblage we call the “collective West”? That would have seemed an absurd idea until very recently. How can one reconcile such a dire proposition in the age of Globalization, of inter-dependence? Where is the threat of a magnitude and immediacy that might stir that kind of thinking? Yet, there are remarkable developments on the world scene that suggest that dramatic alterations indeed are in the offing. Let us examine them; then interpolate what systemic meaning they might auger.  • Palestine is the most revealing, graphic indicator that something is badly askew in the mentality of political elites in North America and Europe – with resonance among their accommodating publics. Complicity in the genocidal actions of Israel...

Robert Rauschenberg, Untitled (Black Painting with Portal Form), 1952-53 (alternative orientation) San Francisco MOMA. Gordon Hahn June 4, 2024 The NATO-Russia Ukrainian war for and against NATO expansion, is on the brink of expanding to the NATO countries that provoked Russia to invade Ukraine on 24 February 2024 and have supported its continuation ever since, save one—the United States of America—ironically, the real force behind the war’s genesis. Sixteen years ago today’s CIA Director, at the time US Ambassador to Moscow, William Burns was ignored when he informed Washington:  “Ukraine and Georgia’s NATO aspirations not only touch a raw nerve in Russia, they engender serious concerns about the consequences for stability in the region.  Not only does Russia perceive encirclement, and efforts to undermine Russia’s influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests.  Experts tell us that Russia is...