Category: USA

Today the world was blessed with a new hero: Edward Snowden

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By Jan Oberg

Spontaneous thoughts at having seen this interview three times in a row.

One moral individual standing up for true democracy and freedom against one of the most evil systems the world has ever seen.

The Guardian: “Snowden will go down in history as one of America’s most consequential whistleblowers, alongside Daniel Ellsberg and Bradley Manning. He is responsible for handing over material from one of the world’s most secretive organisations – the NSA.

In a note accompanying the first set of documents he provided, he wrote: “I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions,” but “I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant.”

I am deeply moved by Edward Snowden. Very deeply. Such civil courage. Such moral awareness. Such knowledge. Such intellectual clarity. Such determination combined with the humility of serving a higher cause.

Do I at all understand what this one single, determined individual is up against? How he dares? No, I don’t think I do. It is too great, too unique, too rare in a world of so much opportunism and “somebody else must do what must be done”.

I’m reminded of Gandhi’s dictum that “A burning passion coupled with absolute detachment is the key to all success.”

Today the world was blessed with a hero of such proportions that it is hard to believe it is true. As long as there is an Ellsberg, a Manning and now a Snowden – and thousands of other courageous unsung heroes fighting for a better world, I will not abandon my hope.

For years I have ended my courses and public lectures by saying that I don’t believe much in peace movements but I believe that every human being is, potentially, a peace movement. Snowden is yet another living proof of this.

– Jan Oberg

Lessons from the U.S.-Korea nuclear crisis

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By David Krieger

The high-profile nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula, pitting the reigning heavyweight nuclear champion, the United States, against the bantamweight nuclear contender, North Korea, is not finished and is deadly serious. The posturing and exchanges that the world has been witnessing are capable of spiraling out of control and resulting in nuclear war. Like the Cuban Missile Crisis more than half a century ago, this crisis demonstrates that nuclear dangers continue to lurk in dark shadows across the globe.

This crisis, for which the fault is shared by both sides, must be taken seriously and viewed as a warning that nuclear stability is an unrealistic goal. The elimination of nuclear weapons, an obligation set forth in the Non-Proliferation Treaty and confirmed by the International Court of Justice, must be a more urgent goal of the international community. The continued evasion of this obligation by the nuclear weapon states makes possible repeated nuclear crises, nuclear proliferation, nuclear terrorism and nuclear war.

Lessons can be drawn Read More »

America’s war criminals

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By Jonathan Power

Someone, somewhere, has to say it – that the U.S. harbours war criminals of its own and they have served not that long ago at the apex of power in the American government.

Alas, no one is going to act like the recently deceased Robert McNamara who served as Secretary of Defence under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. In one speech he described himself as a war criminal – for being party to the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and for his role in the Vietnam war.

The Obama Administration has to move faster and harder. Last month President Barack Obama implicitly criticised himself for not getting the Guantanamo prison closed. Admittedly to do so has been made very difficult as the Republicans in the Senate have blocked his every move. But he could do more, like transferring some federal courts to Guantanamo.

One wonders if once again if it will all come to nothing, as did the talk that has gone on for decades about prosecuting the former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State to President Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger.Read More »

On Barack Obama’s re-election

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By Richard Falk

We share with your editorial (Nov. 11, 2012) the view that one of President Obama’s “singular contributions has been his vision of a world without nuclear weapons.” We would go further, and suggest that realizing this vision would ensure Mr. Obama a legacy of honor, not only for American, but for the world. Your editorial adds a caveat that nuclear disarmament “is a lofty goal that would not be achieved in his second term, or maybe for years after this.”

We dissent from this bit of conventional wisdom that almost always accompanies the affirmation of the goal, almost taking back what was so grandly proposed. In our view there has rarely been a better time to initiate a negotiated process of phased nuclear disarmament, and there is no reason that such a process should be stretched out over a long period. Read More »

EU Commission supports manipulative research for post-democracy

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By Johan Galtung

How do the elites of declining empires react? One answer is demoralization. Like 26,000 annual acts of sexual harassment in the US Army leaving little time for killing; and one US soldier on active duty committing suicide every 18 hours–higher than combat deaths–the figures for veterans being one every 80 minutes. Or else, simply giving up empires–like the colonial powers did before and after the official abolition of colonialism (UN Charter Art. 73). Like Moscow outside and inside the Soviet Union, copying England with a Commonwealth of Independent States. Like the USA is partly doing, and partly not, hanging on to the last countries willing to kill for them, like Canada, Norway, Japan, Georgia. And partly not, working on imperial strongholds in Africa and the Pacific; doing the long distance killing themselves.

But what do such dubious elites do with their own peoples? Wise elites wash their hands off imperialism, declare it passé, a mistake, retool their economies for less dependence on resources and markets from and in their peripheries that now process the resources themselves for themselves and others. Read More »

US policy weakens Iran’s pro-democracy movement

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By Stephen Zunes

While the outcome of the Iranian elections scheduled for June 14 may be hard to predict, it will make little difference as long as power remains firmly in the hands of Ayatollah Khamenei and other hard-line clerics. Indeed, while there are contending factions vying for the country’s relatively weak presidency, the narrow ideological spectrum within which candidates are allowed to run for public office offers little hope for change — at least through the electoral system.

Following the 2009 election, in which the incumbent right-wing president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner despite his apparent loss to the popular reformist Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the people of Iran rose up in a popular civil insurrection, which was brutally crushed.

While it is hard to guess how soon democracy will come to Iran, the government’s theft of the election and subsequent crackdown — shattering the illusion many Iranians still held that they could work within a rigged political system — may have brought that day closer. Read More »

Ending perpetual war? Endorsing drone warfare?

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By Richard Falk

That President Obama chose on 23 May to unveil his second term cautionary approach to counter-terrorism at the National Defense University epitomized the ambiguity of the occasion. The choice of venue was itself a virtual guarantee that nothing would be said or done on that occasion that challenges in any fundamental way the global projection of American military power.

Obama’s skillfully phrased speech was about refining technique in foreign policy, achieving greater efficiency in killing, interrogating the post-9/11 war mentality, and all the while extolling the self-mystifying glories of American exceptionalism. That is, only the United States, and perhaps Israel and NATO, possessed an entitlement to use force at times and places of the actor’s choosing without consulting the UN, respecting the constraints of international law, and heeding the admonition in the Declaration of Independence to show “a decent respect for the opinions of mankind.” Read More »

Destroying Libya and world order

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By Francis A. Boyle

DESTROYING LIBYA AND WORLD ORDER
The Three-Decade U.S. Campaign to Terminate the Qaddafi Revolution
by FRANCIS A. BOYLE
ISBN: 978-0-9853353-7-3
$18.95 / 212 pp. / 2013

It took three decades for the United States government—spanning and working assiduously over five different presidential administrations (Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II , and Obama)—to terminate the 1969 Qaddafi Revolution, seize control over Libya’s oil fields, and dismantle its Jamahiriya system. This book tells the story of what happened, why it happened, and what was both wrong and illegal with that from the perspective of an international law professor and lawyer who tried for over three decades to stop it.Read More »

The Americas: Columbia and the U.S.

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By Johan Galtung

A few years ago the two countries were the leaders in mental anxiety in the Americas. Both had good reasons: the longest lasting violence in any contemporary country; in Colombia from 1949 with some interruption, then on again from 1964 with FARC, the famous guerilla. And for the USA the conviction that Evil is around every corner, domestic and global; better have the arms to handle those bad guys.

In both, structural violence as unequal distribution of economic wealth and control of economic assets are among the world’s highest.

There is a difference, though: one country submits its problem to third party mediation, Read More »

It is possible to close Guantanamo

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By Jonathan Power

“Guantanamo has become a symbol around the world for an America that flouts the law”. Did you say that? Did I? No. It was the president of the United States of America, Barack Obama, speaking last week.

How come that the most powerful man in the world cannot open the locks of this unlawful prison? How come the prisoners can’t be transferred for trial and, if convicted, imprisoned in the United States itself? The simple answer is that the Republicans joined by some Democrats in Congress have continually blocked Obama. While it is true that his hands were tied during his first term he hasn’t tried again since he was re-elected – until last week, when in a speech he made some remarks on the issue including my opening line. Obama has been prodded to raise the issue again because of a hunger strike by most (about 100) of the 166 inmates.

It is still rather unclear what he proposes to do to break the Republican headlock. Read More »