The health care workers have to beg – and people have to die – because their mal-developed country lacks the most basic. It’s a country which, at least since 1945, has created human history’s largest military machine, sees itself as “the policeman of the whole world” – a country that conducted wars virtually every day, built 600+ bases in 130+ countries, deploys its CIA and Special forces virtually everywhere, destroyed societies and killed millions of people around the world in warfare and economic sanctions, a country that kills single individuals it doesn’t like in faraway lands with drones and precision-guided rockets, a country that committed the crime against not only Japan but against humanity when it dropped its nuclear bombs.
A country that never regretted, that never apologized.
Indeed, America, you are too arrogant! And indeed it feels as if God is punishing America now. Even it believes it had God on its side, as Bob Dylan expressed it.
A neurotic country that increasingly sees enemies everywhere and friends nowhere and consumes itself, like a drug addict, with militarism.
That all-mighty country, however, is unable to do one basic thing: to care for the welfare of its own people, particularly the poor, the handicapped, the old, the black, the minorities – the Damned of the Republic and the Empire!
It’s not even able to provide body bags for the mass deaths of its own people. (As I’m writing this, 45 000 Americans have died, 15 times more than on September 11, 2001).
Of course, even a benign America wouldn’t have avoided the effects of the Coronavirus. But much fewer would have died had it cared for its own people, cared for human security.
Someone should be held accountable. Someone is responsible for those perverse priorities. Not single presidents, not even Trump. No, the responsible is the elitist MIMAC – the Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi and all advocates of nonviolence were right: Those who use violence harm not only others, they harm themselves.
Everybody wants to be friends with the United States, but it doesn’t seem to want to be friends with anyone anymore.
It threatens everyone around the world but no one threatens it.
Militarism has eaten it up from the inside, like a cancer – psychologically, culturally, politically and economically. The US has become the biggest threat to itself.
It is no longer a free country, it’s fearfully dependent on violence in general and militarism in particular. On the drug called ever more power that invariably ends in insecurity and ill-health.
And now dependent on body bags for its own civilians.
I am so grateful to MLK for having been there and prophesizing it.
Grateful that – a lifetime later – we may remember when there were great intellectual and moral leaders in America. Grateful that MLK warned us, although in vain, about what would happen when militarism, empire and warfare were given free hands and suffocated civil society and killed laws and ethics.
In the best of cases, the Coronavirus is the last wake-up call for the United States. This is a terminally ill system and not a matter of who is Presiding over it. Neither Trump nor Biden is able to hear that call and change the destiny.
Sad to say for somebody who has never been anti-American – but admittedly anti-Empire and anti-War – the manifest destiny is now decline and fall until the US becomes a normal country without an Empire and without its Militarism.
Pray that that process doesn’t create an even higher demand for body bags.
•
If you found this relevant and informative, please reward TFF with the equivalent of a cup of coffee…
Jan Oberg May 15, 2026 Go to this Fox News page and scroll the whole way down: President Donald Trump tells the world that his meeting with President Xi Jinping yielded a lot of very concrete political and economic results – of course, only where the Chinese side, according to him, agreed with him. He does not mention the Taiwan issue, but Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, says that it did not feature prominently in their talks and that the US policy on Taiwan has not changed. Then go to China Daily – or Global Times – and you will see that for the Chinese it is framework, principles, structure of cooperation etc. that matters – all embedded in the overall idea of “constructive bilateral relationship of strategic stability.” Nowhere is any concrete agreement or deal – all that Trump refers to – mentioned. At the general level, this gives you insights into the very different social...
Lena Petrova of “World Affairs In Context” with more than half a million subscribers on YouTube wanted to explore what a peace researcher like me has to say about, among other things, the First and the Second Cold War and why eethics has disappeared from politics. I am particularly happy about this conversation that also yielded an amazing number of very appreciative comments on YouTube. No doubt, people are longing for alternatives, including peace perspectives.
The MIMAC – Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex – drives the world’s rampant militarism and wars without end. Here is a short reflection of how it works against all interests of humanity. #5 deals with why there is no real enemy or threat images/analysis. It’s all ex-post constructions. And, btw, theTFF Peace Pulse is now on Rumble.
Jan Oberg May 15, 2026 Go to this Fox News page and scroll the whole way down: President Donald Trump tells the world that his meeting with President Xi Jinping yielded a lot of very concrete political and economic results – of course, only where the Chinese side, according to him, agreed with him. He does not mention the Taiwan issue, but Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, says that it did not feature prominently in their talks and that the US policy on Taiwan has not changed. Then go to China Daily – or Global Times – and you will see that for the Chinese it is framework, principles, structure of cooperation etc. that matters – all embedded in the overall idea of “constructive bilateral relationship of strategic stability.” Nowhere is any concrete agreement or deal – all that Trump refers to – mentioned. At the general level, this gives you insights into the very different social...
Lena Petrova of “World Affairs In Context” with more than half a million subscribers on YouTube wanted to explore what a peace researcher like me has to say about, among other things, the First and the Second Cold War and why eethics has disappeared from politics. I am particularly happy about this conversation that also yielded an amazing number of very appreciative comments on YouTube. No doubt, people are longing for alternatives, including peace perspectives.
The MIMAC – Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex – drives the world’s rampant militarism and wars without end. Here is a short reflection of how it works against all interests of humanity. #5 deals with why there is no real enemy or threat images/analysis. It’s all ex-post constructions. And, btw, theTFF Peace Pulse is now on Rumble.
TFF on Substack
Discover more from TFF Transnational Foundation & Jan Oberg.
Jan Oberg May 15, 2026 Go to this Fox News page and scroll the whole way down: President Donald Trump tells the world that his meeting with President Xi Jinping yielded a lot of very concrete political and economic results – of course, only where the Chinese side, according to him, agreed with him. He does not mention the Taiwan issue, but Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, says that it did not feature prominently in their talks and that the US policy on Taiwan has not changed. Then go to China Daily – or Global Times – and you will see that for the Chinese it is framework, principles, structure of cooperation etc. that matters – all embedded in the overall idea of “constructive bilateral relationship of strategic stability.” Nowhere is any concrete agreement or deal – all that Trump refers to – mentioned. At the general level, this gives you insights into the very different social...
Lena Petrova of “World Affairs In Context” with more than half a million subscribers on YouTube wanted to explore what a peace researcher like me has to say about, among other things, the First and the Second Cold War and why eethics has disappeared from politics. I am particularly happy about this conversation that also yielded an amazing number of very appreciative comments on YouTube. No doubt, people are longing for alternatives, including peace perspectives.
The MIMAC – Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex – drives the world’s rampant militarism and wars without end. Here is a short reflection of how it works against all interests of humanity. #5 deals with why there is no real enemy or threat images/analysis. It’s all ex-post constructions. And, btw, theTFF Peace Pulse is now on Rumble.
Jan Oberg May 15, 2026 Go to this Fox News page and scroll the whole way down: President Donald Trump tells the world that his meeting with President Xi Jinping yielded a lot of very concrete political and economic results – of course, only where the Chinese side, according to him, agreed with him. He does not mention the Taiwan issue, but Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, says that it did not feature prominently in their talks and that the US policy on Taiwan has not changed. Then go to China Daily – or Global Times – and you will see that for the Chinese it is framework, principles, structure of cooperation etc. that matters – all embedded in the overall idea of “constructive bilateral relationship of strategic stability.” Nowhere is any concrete agreement or deal – all that Trump refers to – mentioned. At the general level, this gives you insights into the very different social...
Lena Petrova of “World Affairs In Context” with more than half a million subscribers on YouTube wanted to explore what a peace researcher like me has to say about, among other things, the First and the Second Cold War and why eethics has disappeared from politics. I am particularly happy about this conversation that also yielded an amazing number of very appreciative comments on YouTube. No doubt, people are longing for alternatives, including peace perspectives.
The MIMAC – Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex – drives the world’s rampant militarism and wars without end. Here is a short reflection of how it works against all interests of humanity. #5 deals with why there is no real enemy or threat images/analysis. It’s all ex-post constructions. And, btw, theTFF Peace Pulse is now on Rumble.
Jan Oberg, TFF director April 28, 2026 In this third TFF Peace Pulse, I make the important distinction between the violence and the conflict that violence is a symptom of. If you want peace, focus on the underlying conflict because that is the key to resolution, peacemaking, and a better future for the parties. The West is obsessed with violence, just look around you – and 90+ per cent of the public debate is about military issues and other violence – totally wasted for peace. These Peace Pulses will only be published here a few times. You will also not find them on YouTube and Vimeo because both platforms have blocked TFF and me; you know, peace is dangerous these days. Most TFF’s videos since 2007 are now on Rumble.
In contrast to most, we’ll bring alternatives, solutions, hope and strategies for a better future. Times are dangerous, yes, but that only intensifies the need for constructive thinking and action! Jan Oberg, TFF director April 13, 2026 The new TFF Peace Pulse uses video messages in a new way: Max 3-5-minute-long comments, ideas or perhaps mini-lectures, all about peace – positive peace. We launch them today on April 13, 2026 with a carefully crafted visual aesthetic fitting the content. We hope to publish them regularly from now on. We launch Peace Pulse (PP) – for a number of reasons. The world is in chaos, and there are countless reasons to feel concerned, frustrated, even angry. The atmosphere is saturated with doom and gloom, with negative energy and rear‑mirror thinking, while vision, imagination, alternatives, strategies and genuine future‑mindedness remain in short supply. And without them, we simply can’t save the world. Looking at problems from a hundred angles will...
PART II — Publishing Peace in a System That Prioritises Militarism Jan Oberg, TFF director April 10, 2026 How TFF Maintains a Daily Voice in a Digital World Built for Noise This article is part of the series “TFF at 40″ and it invites you to learn about Four Decades of Publishing Peace. It takes a look at how a small, people‑financed peace foundation has communicated across four generations of technology — from wax stencils and fax machines to mass email and Substack — and why TFF continues to publish every single day in a system that rewards noise, conflict, and militarism. ◆ What it means to publish peace every single day in a digital system built for 24/7 news and other noise, confrontation, and militarism. How TFF’s independence, continuity, and global readership defy algorithms, donor cycles, and Western media censorhip — and why the Majority World keeps listening. When the...
ObergComment: Ravaged by its empire and militarism, the US now doesn't have enough body bags for its own
Remember this?
It seems that God is saying: “America, you are too arrogant and I will break the backbone of your power!” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
Listen!
MLK’s strong prophecy came to me today when I read this article in TIME magazine today – “Begging for Thermometers, Body Bags, and Gowns: U.S. Health Care Workers Are Dangerously Ill-Equipped to Fight COVID-19.”
The health care workers have to beg – and people have to die – because their mal-developed country lacks the most basic. It’s a country which, at least since 1945, has created human history’s largest military machine, sees itself as “the policeman of the whole world” – a country that conducted wars virtually every day, built 600+ bases in 130+ countries, deploys its CIA and Special forces virtually everywhere, destroyed societies and killed millions of people around the world in warfare and economic sanctions, a country that kills single individuals it doesn’t like in faraway lands with drones and precision-guided rockets, a country that committed the crime against not only Japan but against humanity when it dropped its nuclear bombs.
A country that never regretted, that never apologized.
Indeed, America, you are too arrogant! And indeed it feels as if God is punishing America now. Even it believes it had God on its side, as Bob Dylan expressed it.
A neurotic country that increasingly sees enemies everywhere and friends nowhere and consumes itself, like a drug addict, with militarism.
That all-mighty country, however, is unable to do one basic thing: to care for the welfare of its own people, particularly the poor, the handicapped, the old, the black, the minorities – the Damned of the Republic and the Empire!
It’s not even able to provide body bags for the mass deaths of its own people. (As I’m writing this, 45 000 Americans have died, 15 times more than on September 11, 2001).
Of course, even a benign America wouldn’t have avoided the effects of the Coronavirus. But much fewer would have died had it cared for its own people, cared for human security.
Someone should be held accountable. Someone is responsible for those perverse priorities. Not single presidents, not even Trump. No, the responsible is the elitist MIMAC – the Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi and all advocates of nonviolence were right: Those who use violence harm not only others, they harm themselves.
Everybody wants to be friends with the United States, but it doesn’t seem to want to be friends with anyone anymore.
It threatens everyone around the world but no one threatens it.
Militarism has eaten it up from the inside, like a cancer – psychologically, culturally, politically and economically. The US has become the biggest threat to itself.
It is no longer a free country, it’s fearfully dependent on violence in general and militarism in particular. On the drug called ever more power that invariably ends in insecurity and ill-health.
And now dependent on body bags for its own civilians.
I am so grateful to MLK for having been there and prophesizing it.
Grateful that – a lifetime later – we may remember when there were great intellectual and moral leaders in America. Grateful that MLK warned us, although in vain, about what would happen when militarism, empire and warfare were given free hands and suffocated civil society and killed laws and ethics.
In the best of cases, the Coronavirus is the last wake-up call for the United States. This is a terminally ill system and not a matter of who is Presiding over it. Neither Trump nor Biden is able to hear that call and change the destiny.
Sad to say for somebody who has never been anti-American – but admittedly anti-Empire and anti-War – the manifest destiny is now decline and fall until the US becomes a normal country without an Empire and without its Militarism.
Pray that that process doesn’t create an even higher demand for body bags.
•
If you found this relevant and informative, please reward TFF with the equivalent of a cup of coffee…
[paypal-donation]Please use and spread #coronaissecuritypolitics
Peace & future researcher + Art Photographer
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