Category: Abolition

TFF PressInfo # 312: Netanyahu’s Insulting, Dangerous and Divisive Speech: Wrong in Detail and Wrong in Substance

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By Farhang Jahanpour

After all the huffing and puffing and all the aroused expectations about the speech by the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the joint session of US Congress, the speech proved a great disappointment and even an embarrassment. A great deal has already been written about it, and there is no need to repeat all that here. Here I only wish to draw attention to some of the glaring distortions in the speech and the harm that it can do to the cause of Iranian and Israeli rapprochement and, more importantly, to the cause of peace in the Middle East.

The speech was a cynical use of the US Congress for domestic electoral ambitions.

Recently, Netanyahu had been trailing the Zionist Camp leader Isaac Herzog in the number of projected seats in the forthcoming Israeli election. He certainly hoped that as the result of the publicity that his speech would generate he could reverse the trend. In the process, his intrusion into America’s domestic politics has deepened the divide between the Democrats and the Republicans and has introduced a strong element of partisanship to US relations with Israel. In other words, the speech was more about himself than the fate of the State of Israel or US-Israeli relations or international peace.

When Senator Lindsey Graham, a senior Republican senator, visited Jerusalem last December, he told the Israeli leader: “I’m here to tell you, Mr. Prime Minister, that the Congress will follow your lead… [on Iran].” (1) Therefore, it was no surprise when the Republican Majority leader asked Netanyahu to address a join session of Congress, for the third time, to issue his marching orders.

After President Obama’s State of the Union address, in which he indicated that he was working hard to resolve Iran’s nuclear dispute by peaceful means, House Speaker John A. Boehner decided to invite the head of a foreign state to address the Congress without informing the White House or even Minority Democratic leaders.

This was an act of gross discourtesy to the president, a violation of diplomatic protocol, and a clear departure from the US Constitution that puts the executive branch in charge of foreign policy and relations with foreign political leaders.Read More »

TFF PressInfo # 310: Terrorism – small dot in a larger picture

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By Jan Oberg

Jan Oberg

What is terrorism? Why do we talk much more about that than other types of deaths? Why is the word misused? What has nuclear weapons – that politicians and media hardly ever talk about – got to do with terror? Why should we all be careful not to exaggerate the phenomenon of terror?

10 x more terrorism than before 9/11

Tell you what: I’ve been critical of the ”war on terror” since September 12, 2001 and particularly since 10/7 when the war on Afghanistan started. If the War on Terror was the answer to 9/11, the U.S. and its friends asked the wrong questions.

Because, what has been the result?

According to U.S. statistics at the time, in the years up to the horrific crime in New York, about 1,000-1,500 people were hit by terror per year worldwide; 1/3 of whom died, the rest were wounded. Most of it happened in South America, some in Europe; small groups such as Baader-Meinhof.

Almost 3,000 were killed on 9/11, many nationalities, far from only American citizens. (About 30,000 die annually from shooting each other).

Today? About 18,000 were killed in terror in 2013.
Although data may not be directly comparable or definitions be the same, the difference between 1,500 and 18,000 cannot be explained by methodological and other variations.Read More »

The Nuclear Zero lawsuits: A conversion of hearts

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By David Krieger

The Nuclear Zero lawsuits, initiated by the Marshall Islands, are about the law, but they are about much more than the law. They are also about saving humanity from its most destructive capabilities. They are about saving humanity from itself and about preserving civilization for future generations. They are incredibly important, and I will try to place them in a broader context.

I will begin by sharing two quotations with you. The first is by Jayantha Dhanapala, a Sri Lankan diplomat, former United Nations Under-Secretary General, and long-time and committed leader in the area of nuclear disarmament. He states: “The spectre of the use of a nuclear weapon through political intent, cyber-attack or by accident, by a nation state or by a non-state actor, is more real than we, in our cocoons of complacency, choose to acknowledge.”

The spectre of nuclear use, even nuclear war, is real and most of the world lives in “cocoons of complacency.” It is clear that we must break free from those cocoons, which are as dangerous to the human future as are the nuclear weapons that now imperil us. The Nuclear Zero lawsuits seek to accomplish that.

The second quote is by His Holiness Pope Francis, the leader of the Catholic Church, who has brought new light and compassion to his office. He states: “As long as so great a quantity of arms are in circulation as at present, new pretexts can always be found for initiating hostilities. For this reason, I make my own the appeal of my predecessors for the non-proliferation of arms and for disarmament of all parties, beginning with nuclear and chemical weapons disarmament.” The Pope talks about disarmament in general, but he puts nuclear disarmament, along with chemical weapons disarmament, at the top of his list.

Pope Francis continues: “We cannot however fail to observe that international agreements and national laws — while necessary and greatly to be desired — are not of themselves sufficient to protect humanity from the risk of armed conflict. A conversion of hearts is needed which would permit everyone to recognize in the other a brother or sister to care for, and to work together with, in building a fulfilling life for all.”

“A conversion of hearts.” Can there be any doubt that such conversion is necessary? Can there be any doubt that traditional diplomacy is not getting the job done?Read More »

A visit to NATO’s HQ in Brussels: Nuclear weapons, fear and blame

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By Gunnar Westberg

A memory: Russia as a candidate for NATO membership

Members of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, IPPNW, have for many years regularly visited the NATO Headquarters in Brussels. We also had good contacts with Russian military officers and Foreign Office politicians. In the middle of the nineties members of NATO’s commission on Nuclear Weapons asked if we could arrange a meeting in Moscow, “because we meet the Russians only under very formal circumstances”. Some open discussions over the vodka were hoped for.

We arranged the meeting and got a group of leading Russian military brass and politicians on the participant list. But NATO hesitated. We were told they could not afford the trip… Finally only one officer, a Canadian, came from Brussels. So there we were with a group of disappointed Russian officers. The NATO representative in Moscow showed up for a couple of hours. She assured the meeting that the relationship between NATO and the Russian military leaders was excellent. Actually, she was looking forward to the time, not too far away, when Russia would be a member of NATO.

That was the dream. But more and more countries from the dissolved Warsaw pact became NATO members. And the connections deteriorated step by step.Read More »

Memoir sketch: Championing lost causes

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By Richard Falk

Richard Falk

By chance I was reading César Vallejo’s poem, “Black Stone on a White Stone,” in a translation by Geoffrey Brock, and was struck by the opening stanza:

I’ll die in Paris in the pouring rain

a day I have a memory of already.

I’ll die in Paris—I won’t try to run—

a Thursday perhaps, in Autumn, like today.

Without being literal, I was reminded that I could appraise my death while alive, and not leave a final reckoning to some solemn memorial event in which speakers are challenged to find humorous anecdotes to lighten the occasion, otherwise uttering honorific platitudes quite unrelated to the experiential core of my being.

I had been thinking quite a bit recently about ‘lost causes.’

Recently I gave a lecture at Columbia University on this theme, inspired by Edward Said’s seminal late essay “On Lost Causes” (1997) in which he ties together the ‘nobility of failure’ as portrayed in literature with his own unswerving dedication to the Palestinian struggle for a just peace. On that occasion, Read More »

Banning nuclear bombs

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By Jonathan Power


January 7th 2015

“Ban the Bomb!” When we were students many of us marched behind that banner, stamped with the now iconic image of the white outlines of a rocket on a black background. Even the ex-prime minister of Britain, Tony Blair, who later joined President George W. Bush in going to war against Saddam Hussein, supported the cause when he was young.

Many of those students, now in their seventies, have given up the struggle. After all it seems unending with not too much to show for it, except it may have raised consciousness among Western leaders to attempt to limit proliferation.

President Barack Obama, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, which cited his anti-nuclear efforts while a senator, has made cuts in nuclear weapons at a slower pace than preceding presidents, even than George W. Bush. Ironically it is Republican presidents- Reagan (who made a big push to abolish all of them) and father and son Bush who have cut the most. Conservatives have a better chance of carrying the day with popular, visceral, untrusting, opinion, the Congress and the military-industrial-academic complex than the liberals.

Critics of Obama point out that he is spending more than previous administrations to modernize the remaining arms and for authorizing a new generation of weapon carriers. It is the largest expansion of funding on nuclear weapons since the fall of the Soviet Union.

This sets a bad example to the other nuclear bomb nations, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, China, Israel, the UK and France. Ironically, Obama has said, “We have more nuclear weapons than we need”.

The White House defends its record. Read More »

Remembering 2014 (Badly)

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By Richard Falk

Richard Falk

Considering the year that is about to end is a time to pause long enough to take stock of what went wrong. In the United States not much went right aside from Barack Obama’s surprising initiative to normalize relations with Cuba after more than 60 years of hostile and punitive interaction. Although the sleazy logic of domestic politics kept this remnant of the worst features of Cold War diplomacy in being for a couple of extra decades, it is still worth celebrating Obama’s move, which when compared to the rest of his record, seems bold and courageous.

As well, Obama exhibited a strong commitment to doing more than previously on climate change, using his executive authority to circumvent Congressional unwillingness to act responsibly. Obama’s immigration reform proposals also seem on balance to be positive, although whether they will be implemented remains an open question.

Drifting Toward Cold War II: Remembering World War I

There are several signs of a worsening global setting that seemed to gain an ominous momentum during 2014. Perhaps, worst of all, is a steady drumbeat of anti-Russian rhetoric backed up by Western sanctions, that seems almost designed to produce Cold War II. Read More »

TFF PressInfo 297: Misleading the world on Iran’s “bomb”

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By Jonathan Power

December 23, 2014

The negotiations over Iran’s supposed nuclear bomb-building abilities seem to be stuck in a rut. Given the detailed undertakings by Iran incorporated in the interim agreement made last year it should have only been a hop, skip and a jump to forge a final agreement.

In reality it hasn’t been so easy. Over many years the US with European connivance most – not always – of the time manufactured and manipulated the whole crisis. To overcome the suspicions aroused by that, now past, tactic is not easy. That is not just my opinion after following this subject for 30 years. It is that of the former vice-chair of the US National Intelligence Council, Graham Fuller.

Now a new book, “Manufactured Crisis” by the astute investigative journalist, Gareth Porter, has taken the lid off the attempt by the US, often in collusion with Israel, to paint Iran into a corner, whilst shunning any effort by Iran to resolve the dispute.

But before we get into that I want to make one point about the Islamic sense of morality. Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamenei, the successive top clerics and paramount leaders of the country, have made it clear on a number of occasions that for their country to build a nuclear bomb would go against Islamic belief and jurisprudence.

I don’t find this difficult to believe – during the bitter and savage war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 1980 when Iran lost 2 million people Iran refused to deploy chemical weapons even though Iraq did. They too were regarded as un-Islamic. Iran has been consistent in its morality. Iran’s religious practice today is about as far away from the Islamic State or Pakistan’s Taliban as you can get.Read More »

Ukraine and nuclear weapons – Scrap all nuclear weapons

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By Gunnar Westberg

”Ukraine is going to make nuclear weapons. You’ll see. There is strong support in the parliament. All the intercontinental missiles in the Soviet Union were made in Ukraine, and there are at least 25 of them left. And we have uranium. And we have the know-how. Just wait, you’ll see!”

So said an officer in the Ukrainian army whom I met about a month ago. This prediction, that Ukraine is going to make nukes, can also be found in some Western news media.

Fortunately, this is not going to happen.

There is no uranium of weapons grade in the country. To produce a sufficient amount of high grade uranium thousands of centrifuges for enrichment are needed. Only Pakistan could sell them, as was done to Iran, but both the USA and Russia will stop this trade. Ukraine could Read More »

TFF PressInfo 282: Instead of bombing ISIS – Concrete proposals (Part B)

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By Jan Oberg, TFF

Jan Oberg

Lund, Sweden October 7, 2014

Part A – Some principles (yesterday) here

This two-part PressInfo offers a pro-peace perspective on the present war on ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

First some principles to stimulate another discourse, another way of thinking that is not militarist – and then the concrete proposals below – 27 in all for your deliberation, discussion with friends and perhaps to share through your social and other media.

The proposals are not numbered – there is no linearity, some of it can be done simultaneously.

How to make the bombing and wars irrelevant

Stop the financing of ISIS – sadly it is non-democratic allies of the West – Saudi-Arabia, Qatar, UAE etc – that seem to pay its bills. Joe Biden apologised – for being truthful.

Allegedly, ISIS has an income of US$ 3 million per day from oil resources they now control. Oil fields should have been protected at an early stage. Fire your intelligence service leaders if they did not see this coming.

Instead of starting out with war, declare yourself willing to talk with some representatives of ISIS and other conflict parties. Some of them have been trained by the U.S. so they are obviously possible to talk with. And if not, you take it from there.

Recognise – even apologise – for wrong deeds and mistakes and brutalities you have yourself committed. In the case of Iraq this is particularly relevant because the invasion, occupation and 13 years of world history’s most brutal sanctions have killed about 1 million innocent Iraqis and made 4 millions to flee their homes.

Danish poet and philosopher Piet Hein has said it beautifully: ”The nobel art of losing face may one day save the human race and turn into eternal merit what weaker minds would call a disgrace.” Don’t be that weaker mind – because, if so, you will over time become a mirror image of those terrorists you are fighting – a disgrace.

Deploy a robust, impartial, globally composed UN-led force Read More »