Articles by Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service
We found 365 results.
Israel’s Genocide: Hate Speech or Truth-Telling?
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Dec 2023
The violence unleashed since 8 Oct is only partially directed at Hamas although for credibility reasons this is what Israeli spokespersons emphasize and receives most of the attention… We are left with the imperative of protecting free speech, especially in calling genocide genocide, and with a challenge to take all responsible action to end this scourge.
→ read full articleHeeding Cornel West’s ‘Cri de Coeur’
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Jun 2023
Biden’s response to the Russian attack on Ukraine was not for a ceasefire and diplomatic compromise but for weaponry and assistance to sustain a prolonged war as a demonstration of US-led NATO resurgence; not motivated by the defense of Ukraine but by an overwhelming interest in humiliating Putin and defeating Russia. Not only this.
→ read full articleIn Homage to David Ray Griffin: Indispensable Public Intellectual
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Feb 2023
I think it was the successful branding of the 9/11 skeptics as ‘wacky’ that proved more useful in squelching their influence than by labeling them as ‘dangerous,’ ‘subversive,’ and ‘radical’ or ‘socialist.’ It might be understood as the advent of a more advanced, more sophisticated version of McCarthyism, a discrediting ploy that George Orwell would have immediately understood.
→ read full article2022 Israeli Elections: A Victory for Settler Colonialists or for the Palestinian Liberation Struggle?
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Nov 2022
There is no doubt that the November 1st Israeli elections will be of lasting significance. The months and years ahead will reveal whether Israel consolidates its status as a settler colonial state or the Palestinian struggle increases its resistance to Israeli rule reinforced by an intensifying global solidarity movement.
→ read full articleUkraine War: Climbing the Escalation Ladder to Oblivion
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 Oct 2022
Not only did Washington mobilize the world to denounce Russia’s ‘aggression,’ but supplied advanced weaponry in great quantities to the Ukrainians doing all it could at the UN and elsewhere to build a punitive coalition hostile to Russia, coupled with a variety of sanctions and the demonization of Putin. This perspective of state propaganda was faithfully conveyed by a self-censoring Western media.
→ read full articleHow We Remember Hiroshima and Nuremberg Reflects Power Not Justice
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Aug 2022
This year the remembrance of the atomic bombings of Japanese cities is especially poignant. The world, as the UN Secretary General noted, is just one miscalculation away from nuclear war. I was also reminded that 8 Aug was the day in 1945 that the Allied Powers had the unfathomable insensitivity to sign the London Agreement setting up the Nuremberg Tribunal to prosecute German war criminals–two days after the first atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima and one day before the second one incinerated Nagasaki. Sad to note, times have not changed.
→ read full articleToward a Peoples Tribunal on the Ukraine Wars
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 May 2022
The time has come for civil society to counter the global confrontation endangering the world for U.S. geopolitical goals disguised, with media complicity, in a Ukraine War for its own defense. This is a false and dangerous image… I hope some readers throughout the world will feel motivated to make the Peoples Ukraine Wars Tribunal a reality!
→ read full articleThe Paused Quest for Humane Governance in the Arab World: Is It Time ‘to fail better’?
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Feb 2022
The acceleration of history foreshortens our memory of past events, especially when disillusionment displaces hope. This happened a decade ago when uprisings were celebrated as ‘the Arab Spring.’ The role of activist youth, the spontaneous displays of populist strivings for a better political future, created the feeling that something irreversible, and for the better, was taking place. Yet it was not to be.
→ read full articleClimate Change, Survival, and Justice
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Nov 2021
The recently concluded UN COP-26 Climate Change Gathering in Glasgow delivered mixed messages to a concerned world public. Only the future will tell whether Glasgow was a welcome new beginning or, in Greta Thunberg’s well-chosen rhetoric, “more blah, blah, blah.”
→ read full articleThe UN after 75: A Mixed Record of Disappointment and Fulfillment
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Oct 2021
UN: Does It Punch above Its Weight? Can pressures toward unity and global public good remake a UN oriented and empowered to serve the human interest rather than national ones or geopolitics? Its contribution is in symbolic politics, as ‘a soft power superpower,’ its Secretary General being almost alone as a respected voice of reason and empathy or a gentle critic of geopolitical excess.
→ read full articleDemonizing Durban
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Aug 2021
The Durban Conference was a forum at which Israel, colonialism, the legacy of slavery, and victimization of vulnerable ethnicities would be depicted and condemned. It is no longer plausible to contend that associating Israeli treatment of the Palestinian people as antisemitic. As a Jew myself, I regard Israeli justifications for its behavior toward Palestine as the embodiment of antisemitic behavior, bringing discredit to the Jewish people.
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‘Rule-Based-International-Order’: A New Metaphor for U.S. Geopolitical Primacy
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
31 May 2021
The implication of this ‘rules-governed’ world is that the USA plays by the rules whereas our adversaries do not. But Snowden revealed that the US has invested more than any other government in intrusive surveillance. Its record of manipulating foreign elections is notorious being a well-known part of the CIA’s portfolio. It has projected more deadly force outside its borders than any other state in last 75 years and has intervened repeatedly in disrupting democracies, blocking and sanctioning their governments if they refuse U.S. tutelage.
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Living by Love [Haiku]
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Feb 2021
30 Jan 2021 – Haiku is my form of lockdown therapy.
→ read full articleA Palestinian Balance Sheet: Normative Victories, Geopolitical Disappointments
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Feb 2021
In decades to come the ICC decision may turn out to be a turning point not unlike the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre. Before dawn, the night is darkest. The African majority waited more than 30 years for their emancipation from apartheid. The Palestinian people have already endured the hardships and humiliations of racist subjugation and Jewish supremacy for more than 70 years. When will it end, and how?
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(norsk-Norwegian) Nedrusting må begynne hjemme
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Dec 2020
Vi ruster opp og bruker nærmere 100 milliarder bare på F-35-jagerfly. USAs og våre militære ledere anser Russland som en potensiell fiende. Den erfarne forskeren Richard Falk mener at global nedrustning neppe er mulig å få til før USA avruster sin egen, tungt bevæpnede befolkning.
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Demilitarization Begins at Home
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Nov 2020
In my view, until the American people are fully disarmed as a matter of law, reinforced by political sentiment, it is foolhardy to expect global demilitarization. The same worldview that exaggerates security threats to overinvest in the military, despite abundant evidence of the disastrous failure of militarist foreign policies in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, is what gives political traction to the powerful gun lobby that has a potency with politicians that seems to exceed even what the Zionist lobby is able to achieve.
→ read full articleCan the U.S. Democracy Be Fixed?
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
31 Aug 2020
After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, attention was redirected to the market-driven economy. With the support of both political parties, the U.S. Government focused on making the world safe for predatory capitalism, ‘the Washington consensus’ or more politely, ‘neoliberal globalization.’ This version of Marxist materialism encouraged consumerist orgies and the militarists required an enemy for continuing with wartime military budgets and restoring their self-esteem as guardians of national and global security.
→ read full articleRepudiating the International Criminal Court
Prof. Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Jun 2020
Even Orwell would be at a loss to make sense of some of the recent antics of leading governments. We would expect Orwell to be out-satirized by the U.S. actions to impose penalties and sanctions on officials of the ICC not because they are accused of acting improperly or seem guilty of some kind of corruption but because they were doing their appointed jobs carefully, yet fearlessly.
→ read full articleTriple Jeopardy for Palestinian Prisoners
Prof. Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Apr 2020
The allegation of Triple Jeopardy arises from the failure to suspend or mitigate prison condition in light of the Coronavirus Pandemic, and the related failure to take responsible steps to protect those so confined from contracting the potentially lethal disease. A virtual death sentence hangs over every single Palestinian prisoner, and in an especially acute form with respect to particularly vulnerable Palestinians living in crowded unhealthy prisons.
→ read full articleWhy International Law Is Crucial for Human Wellbeing
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 Feb 2020
If we are attentive to current events, as the media reports war/peace issues we would quickly conclude that invoking international law in these high profile settings is to be out of touch with how sovereign states go about pursuing their most important economic and political interests, which in areas touching on security is by trusting their defensive capabilities and alliance relations, and not by believing that as long as their actions and policies stay on the right side of the law, they have nothing to worry about.
→ read full articleWhat Drives Anti-Semitism? Fake and Real Forms
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Dec 2019
Only the most extreme tribalism can explain labeling those who oppose Israel’s abusive treatment of the Palestinian people as ‘anti-Semites.’ We look upon Aung San Suu Kyi’s failure to condemn the Myanmar abuse of the Rohingya as casting the darkest of clouds over her Nobel Peace Prize. It is an insult to Jews and other Semites to allow Zionists to brand solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for their most basic rights as anti-Semitism.
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Narrative: Whistleblower Denounces Lies, Deceit and Cover-up by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Report on Syria
Courage Foundation & Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Oct 2019
23 Oct 2019 – Panel Criticizes ‘Unacceptable Practices’ in the OPCW’s Investigation of the Alleged Syria Chemical Attack of April 2018 – The Courage Foundation convened a panel of concerned individuals in Brussels on 15 Oct, which met with a member of the investigation. On this basis the panel issued the following statement. [Foreword by Richard Falk]
→ read full articleWhen Is It ‘Politically Correct’ to Be Politically Correct?
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Oct 2019
Only a day after I published ‘In Praise of Kamila Shamsie’ [posted in TRANSCEND Members below], the Nobel Committee awarded their 2019 Literature Prize to Peter Handke, the Austrian novelist known for his support of ultra-nationalist behavior and endorsement of the crimes of Serbian leaders during the Bosnian War. By contrast, in Shamsie’s case her sin was to honor her conscience by supporting the nonviolent BDS-Boycott Divestment Sanctions Campaign that seeks an end to the violation of the basic rights of the Palestinian people.
→ read full articleFrom Legitimacy Wars to the Politics of Impossibility: Horizons of Hope
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Aug 2019
The Palestinian people are being cruelly pushed hard against walls of submission by violence and threats, which amounts to what has become ‘a lost cause’ somewhat along the lines of Tibet, Western Sahara, and the fates that have befallen most indigenous peoples. This is what Trump is promoting as ‘the deal of the century’ and seems to be what the Arab dynastic autocrats would like to see happen so that they can get on with their business of confronting Iran and keeping their own peoples forever captive.
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What You See Is Not What You Get
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Jun 2019
Poem at Springtime
→ read full article
On My 88thBirthday: A Reflection
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 May 2019
Poem at Springtime
→ read full article
In Search of Equivalence
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 May 2019
Poem at Springtime
→ read full articleThe Short-Lived Life Expectancy of Autocratic Democracies
Prof. Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Apr 2019
The rise of autocratic leaders via democratic procedures is an outcome that can be either reversed or accentuated. The various autocratic democracies now dominating the political landscape of the world are doomed as a political form, but what will come after them cannot now be foreseen. It could be either an occasion for celebration or despair, or both if different societies move in opposite directions, some toward a deeper democracies, some toward fascist governance.
→ read full articleCan We Imagine Peace for Palestine?
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Feb 2019
In such a binational situation, the newly created single state could offer homelands to Jews and Palestinians, while finding a name for the new state that is congenial to both peoples. Maybe this will never happen, but it the most sustainable vision of a peaceful future that responds to decades of diplomatic failure, massive Palestinian suffering and abuse, and recognizes the moral authority and political potency of national resistance and global solidarity, a legislative victory by that unacknowledged Parliament of Humanity.
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My 88th Birthday
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Nov 2018
-13 Nov 2018-
To be almost 90
And happy
With good health
Feels criminal
Transcending World Order Regressions
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Oct 2018
Without even attempting to offer reassurances, Trump champions a law-free sovereignty that is unapologetically dedicated to maximizing its national wealth and influence, backed up by escalating government investments avowedly designed to producing an all-powerful, globally capable military dominance that will last forever.
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I Was Robert Mueller’s Undergraduate Thesis Adviser—and What He Wrote Gives Some Hints about What He’ll Do as Special Counsel
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Jul 2018
14 Jul 2018 – Rereading Robert Mueller’s Princeton thesis 52 years later with an eye as to how he will perform as Trump’s inquisitor. What makes Mueller’s thesis relevant for today is that the core of his inquiry is how a judge should interpret a legal document.
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Great March of Return and the Unspeakable
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Jul 2018
This wordless borderland
Where love and atrocity meet
World Order after the Cold War
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 May 2018
The aftermath of the Cold War exhibited several forms of dysfunctionality: failures by the American-led West to recognize and act upon a new global agenda that served the ‘human interest’ rather than continue to pursue ‘geopolitical ambitions’ by relying on coercive diplomacy and militarism. What is politically ‘feasible’ at this point will not do. The peoples of the world deserve and require a politics that recognizes what is ‘necessary’ and aspires to achieve what is ‘desirable.’
→ read full articleWhy the United Nations Matters (even for the Palestinians)
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Jan 2018
Despite understandable degrees of disillusionment, people of good will dedicated to UN ideals should not give up on the Organization or its potentiality, but work harder to make the UN come closer to fulfilling its original promise, needed now more than ever. Justice for the Palestinian people, however long deferred, remains the defining moral prism by which to assess the shifting balance between achieving global justice and bowing to the whims of geopolitics at the UN and elsewhere.
→ read full articleDemocracy, Development, and Reputation: Vietnam, Turkey, and International Liberalism
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Dec 2017
The cases of Vietnam and Turkey strongly support the central claim here that national reputations of legitimacy should rest on a comprehensive assessment of material, ethical, and spiritual wellbeing of individuals and communities, and no longer be a reflection of geopolitical agendas (with respect to Turkey) and ideological arrogance (with respect to Vietnam).
→ read full articleTrump versus International Liberalism: Should We Care?
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 May 2017
Only civil society militancy on an unprecedented scale can create a mandate for the kind of global transformation in ideas and structures are necessary to enable a sustainable future resting on the values of eco-humanism. If this analysis is correct, Trumpism and liberalism are nothing but sideshows.
→ read full articleAn Open Letter to Myself on New Year’s Day 2017
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Jan 2017
‘Clarity,’ not ‘hope,’ is the opposite of ‘despair.’ To be awake to unpleasant, even dire, realities and resist the temptations of denial demands increasing resolve in the face of the mounting evidence that the human species is facing a biopolitical moment threatening civilizational collapse and species decline and fall as never before.
→ read full articleHuman Rights after the Failed Coup in Turkey
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Aug 2016
It is probably wise to separate human rights concerns from an appraisal of Turkish constitutional democracy. It is quite possible that present tendencies toward a more inclusive democracy will continue, and at the same time, denials of human rights are almost certain to persist, and justify scrutiny and vigilance.
→ read full articleIs Genocide a Controversial International Crime?
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Aug 2016
Why ‘Genocide’ is still a Controversial Crime? In this strikingly original, strange, and brilliant book, Philippe Sands raises a haunting question among a tangle of other intriguing issues discussed throughout East-West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes against Humanity (New York: Knopf, 2016).
→ read full articleSmearing BDS Supporters
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Jul 2016
The misappropriation of anti-Semitism as a propaganda weapon to smear pro-Palestinian activists, especially those supportive of the BDS Campaign. Also the issues of representation by explaining the formal differences between the PLO and PA, which do not seem presently consequential in my understanding.
→ read full articleAre We Heading Toward Global Autocracy, Ecological Collapse, Political Malaise?
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Jul 2016
The failures of neoliberalism, the successes of digitization, the scourge of random violence, and more broadly, the dilemmas posed by late modernity are among the root causes of this global crisis of legitimate governance, which is deepened while being mishandled by unprecedented ecological challenges, extremely irresponsible geopolitical leadership, and a variety of ultra-nationalist backlashes against the encroachments of economic globalization.
→ read full articleA Weak UN Ensures a Weak Secretary General
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Jun 2016
13 Jun 2016 – There are many angles of interpretation relevant to the startling admission by Ban Ki-moon that he succumbed to undisguised diplomatic pressure when removing Saudi Arabia from the ‘shame list’ of countries whose armies are found responsible the maiming and killing of children, earning them dishonorable mentioned in an annex to the annual UN report on violations of children’s rights.
→ read full articleZionism, Anti-Semitism, BDS, and the United Nations
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Jun 2016
The misuse of anti-Semitism by those defending Israel to deflect a rising tide of civil society activism and public criticism of Israeli policies and practices.
→ read full articleA Moral Revolution? Reflections on President Obama’s Visit to Hiroshima
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Jun 2016
5 Jun 2016 – There is doubt that President Barack Obama’s visit to Hiroshima this May crossed some thresholds hitherto taboo. Above all the visit was properly heralded as the first time a sitting American president has dared such a pilgrimage… The whole idea of impunity for the victors and capital punishment for the losers is morally regressive.
→ read full articleOn (Not) Loving Henry Kissinger
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 May 2016
There is an irony that would be amusing if it was not depressing about news that Donald Trump has been courting the 92-year old foreign policy sorcerer Henry Kissinger. Of course, the irony is that earlier in the presidential campaign Hilary Clinton proudly claimed Kissinger as ‘a friend,’ and acknowledged that he “relied on his counsel” while she served as Obama’s Secretary of State.
→ read full articleGeneral Golan’s Holocaust Remembrance Day Speech
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 May 2016
Speaking at Tel Yitzak Kibbutz, where the Massuah Institute for Holocaust Studies is located, General Golan urged that this very special day of observance in Israel be treated as an occasion for soul-searching. He placed this call in an extraordinary context by suggesting that conditions in Israel were disturbing in ways relevant to the Holocaust, horror of horrors.
→ read full articleCelebrating the Life and Legacy of Daniel Berrigan
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 May 2016
I was privileged to know Daniel Berrigan in the last stages of the Vietnam War, not well, but well enough to appreciate his quality of moral radiance and to admire the spiritual dedication that he exhibited in opposing the Vietnam War, and later nuclearism. I also knew Dan’s brother, Phil, who shared these remarkable qualities.
→ read full articleMaking the Most of Obama’s Hiroshima Visit
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 May 2016
Message to President Barack Obama with Respect to Forthcoming Hiroshima Visit – 11 May 2016 | I sent the following message to the White House today, and encourage readers of this blog to do the same.
→ read full articleDreaming of the Next UN Secretary General
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 May 2016
The Charter is astonishingly silent about the qualifications that should guide the selection of a secretary general, but it is clear on the procedure: a recommendation must be made by the Security Council to the General Assembly for its approval. This means that any one of the P-5 can use their veto to block a candidate.
→ read full articleIf Obama Visits Hiroshima
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 May 2016
As the global approach to nuclear weapons, climate change, and neoliberal globalization should make clear, we are not likely to survive as a species very much longer if we continue to base world order on a blend of state-centric national interests and dominant actor geopolitics. Obama has this rare opportunity to choose the road not often traveled upon, and there is no better place to start such a voyage than at Hiroshima.
→ read full articleAn Anecdote about Fascism
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Apr 2016
I tried to engage her in conversation about evolving Israeli attitudes toward the Palestinians and the related failed diplomacy, but she seemed rather uninformed and perhaps even disinterested as if the peace agenda was not really present in her active consciousness. Then all at once she said something that surprised me. “I am not looking forward to returning to Israel, it is becoming a fascist state.”
→ read full articleIf Obama Visits Hiroshima
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Apr 2016
Obama has this rare opportunity to choose the road not often traveled upon, and there is no better place to start such a voyage than at Hiroshima. We in civil society would then with conviction promote his nuclear legacy as ‘From Prague to Hiroshima,’ and feel comfortable that this president has finally earned the honor of the Nobel Peace Prize prematurely bestowed.
→ read full articleShould We Vote for Hillary Clinton? A Meditation
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Apr 2016
14 Apr 2016 – It seems now almost inevitable that Hillary Clinton will be the candidate for the Democratic Party in November. This inevitability came about by a combination of ‘a Southern strategy’ […] Should feelings of solidarity and revolutionary patience outweigh a principled refusal to go along with militarist opportunism?
→ read full articleReading Jeff Halper’s ‘War against the People: Israel, the Palestinians and Global Pacification’
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Apr 2016
I believe that Jeff Halper’s book deserves the widest possible reading. It explains clearly and convincingly one of the deepest and least understood roots of Israel’s diplomatic support throughout the world, which is its role as a niche arms supplier and influential tactical specialist in waging wars against peoples who dare offer resistance to state power as variously deployed against them.
→ read full articleThree Unshakeable Pillars of American Foreign Policy
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Apr 2016
3 Apr 2016 – It deserves to be noticed that it is only the two anti-establishment candidates who have challenged the foreign policy consensus that has guided American politicians ever since the end of World War II: consistently express unconditional support for the Pentagon, Wall Street, and Israel.
→ read full articleReflections on the Brussels Attack
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Mar 2016
The themes addressed and the policies proposed are advanced in a tentative spirit. Debate and reflection are urgently needed with respect to the political violence that is being unleashed in various forms in the West and non-West.
→ read full articleHow Neoliberalism Really Works: A Small Anecdote
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Mar 2016
27 Feb 2016 – Along with several million, I suffer from the eye disease known as glaucoma. It can be managed, rather than cured, by taking eye drops several times a day.
→ read full articleWhy Democratic Party Foreign Policy Fails and Will Continue to Fail
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Mar 2016
5 Mar 2016 – An earlier version of this essay appeared on March 2, 2016 in The Progressive Magazine. It tries to explain the entrapment of liberal Democrats in an iron cage of militarism when it comes to international security policy.
→ read full articleAn Open Letter to Ban Ki-moon
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Feb 2016
We need all to realize what else should not be tolerated: while the Palestinian flag flies outside UN Headquarters, the Palestinian people have lived for almost 70 years under the daily brutalities of occupation, refugee camps, Gazan captivity, and involuntary exile. Can you bring yourself to call this ordeal ‘intolerable’? Then at least you could leave your UN post with a feeling that when your career was no longer in jeopardy you spoke truth to power.
→ read full articleWaiting for Rainbows
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Feb 2016
Below is the cover of my recently published book of poems that can be obtained from Amazon. I have received some inquiries, and although I have been writing poems for the past 60 years, I have never gathered the courage to publish them in one place before.
→ read full articleIsrael’s Security Establishment Makes Public Plea for a Two State Solution
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Feb 2016
7 Feb 2016 – Rarely, if ever, has a newspaper ad mobilized such influential backing for a position of prominent Israelis at odds with the elected leadership of the Israeli state. A full page add appeared in the New York Times on February 4, 2016. Its message was proclaimed in large bold type: “Israel’s Security Chiefs Agree: Separation into two States is in Israel’s vital security interest.”
→ read full articleThe Complex Problematics of Palestinian Representation
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Feb 2016
This post attempts to address the current quandary that arises from the collapse of Oslo diplomacy and the seeming continuing encroachment of Israel on the territories long believed to provide the Palestinian people with a sovereign state of their own.
→ read full articleClimate Change: Post-Paris Challenges and Concerns
Hilal Elver and Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Feb 2016
It is time to move on from the aura of good feelings of accomplishment created by the Paris Climate Change Conference and begin asking some hard questions. Above all we need to assess whether an agreement that consists of voluntary pledges is workable and sufficient, and whether its contribution to slowing global warming should be celebrated or lamented at this stage.
→ read full article‘Voluntary’ International Law and the Paris Agreement
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Jan 2016
16 Jan 2016 – Now that the celebrations by the diplomats have ended, it is time to take a hard look at what was and was not accomplished by the Paris Agreement. What we need and should seek is a moral epistemology that reconnects knowledge with human values configured so as to achieve justice, sustainability, and the pleasures of ‘a good life.’
→ read full articleOn Ghada Ageel’s Edited ‘Israeli Apartheid in Palestine’
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Jan 2016
Ghada Ageel’s expertly edited ‘Israeli Apartheid in Palestine: Hard Laws and Harder Experiences’ has just been published by the University of Albert Press. It is an important contribution to Palestinian studies with an especially welcome linking of activism, scholarly analysis, and experiential narrative, each a vital perspective represented by excellent chapter writers.
→ read full articleWibisono’s Resignation as UN Special Rapporteur on Occupied Palestine
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Jan 2016
I am surprised, but not shocked. Surprised because he should have known that he was faced with a dilemma between doing the job properly of reporting on Israel’s crimes and human rights abuses and gaining Israel’s cooperation. Not shocked, indeed grateful, as it illuminates the difficulty confronting anyone charged with truthful reporting on the Palestinian ordeal under occupation, and by his principled resignation Wibisono doesn’t allow Israel to get away with neutering the position of special rapporteur.
→ read full articleDespair and Hope for the New Year
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Jan 2016
Most needed in these dark times is to hold tight to what we believe with an unruly embrace of faith, patience, and urgency. This is my most fervent New Year’s wish for 2016.
→ read full articleSlouching toward Global Disaster: Chaos and Intervention in the Middle East
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Dec 2015
Even the more thoughtful Democrats limit their proposals to enhanced militarism, hoping to induce the Arab countries to put ‘the boots on the ground’ with nary a worry about either igniting a regional war or the imaginative collapse that can only contemplate war as the recipe for peace, again recalling the degree to which Orwellian satiric irony is relied upon to shape foreign policy prescriptions by ambitious politicians.
→ read full articleA Christmas Message in Dark Times
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Dec 2015
Christmas has an ecumenical resonance that calls for bright lights, ornamented trees, celebration, and wishes for peace on earth and good will toward all, bringing together those of diverse faith or no faith at all. The legions of ‘the politically correct’ determined to avoid offending those, especially Jews, who are not Christians, will carefully express their good wishes with such phrases as ‘happy holidays!’
→ read full articleA New World Order? ISIS and the Sykes-Picot Backlash
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Dec 2015
The shaping of world order remains mainly the work of the heavyweight states that act on the basis of geopolitical calculations with respect for international law and morality displayed only as convenient. Yet the political monoculture of territorial states remains formally the exclusive foundation of world order, but its political reality is being challenged in various settings and nowhere more so than in the Middle East.
→ read full articleGerry Spence on America Menaced by Impending Police State
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Dec 2015
The book pertains to the situation here in America, but as recent events in Paris, San Bernardino, and Colorado Springs confirm, we are in danger of moving without realizing it toward some kind of ‘global police state,’ all in the name of security, trampling on the rights and self-esteem of billions of people and extinguishing the freedom of all. Such a devastating scenario cannot be separated from the predatory features of global capitalism in its present neoliberal phase.
→ read full articleResponding to Megaterrorism after Paris
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Dec 2015
6 Dec 2015 – The post below is based on an opinion piece published by Middle East Eye on December 1, 2015 under the title “A Different Response to ISIS after Paris.” My modified text places its focus on the originality of megaterrorism and its distinctive challenges, suggesting that the choice of response needs to be extended beyond the iron cage of militarism and vengeance.
→ read full articleThe Failure of U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Nov 2015
22 Nov 2015 – What follows is a modified version of the Morton-Kenney annual public lecture given at the University of Southern Illinois in Carbondale on November 18, 2015 under the joint sponsorship of the Department of Political Science and the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute.
→ read full articleEdward Said’s Humanism versus the U.S. State Department’s Antisemitism
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Nov 2015
There is an obvious tension that exists more vividly than when Edward Said was alive, and commenting on the Palestinian struggle. Israel has created on the ground a set of circumstances that seem irreversible and are institutionalizing a single apartheid Israeli state encompassing the whole of historic Palestine (minus Jordan).
→ read full articleHopes for the Morning After in Ankara: Taking Stock (2002-2015)
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Nov 2015
Let’s hope than when Erdoğan awakens the morning after his glowing victory, he chooses what is best for Turkey rather than to settle for becoming a grandiose figure who is certain to be both revered and feared. Only if he tames his ambitions will Erdoğan ensure his legacy as a great Turkish leader, second only to Ataturk.
→ read full articleAl Jazeera Turka Interview on Turkish Foreign and National Policy
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Nov 2015
28 Oct 2015 – This is a modified text of an interview conducted by Semin Gumusel Guner of Al Jazeera Turka, and published online in abbreviated form on October 19, 2015. The situation in Turkey is increasingly precarious and troublesome.
→ read full articleThe Nuclear Challenge: Seventy Years after Hiroshima & Nagasaki – Against Binaries (10)
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Oct 2015
This is the last in this series of posts prompted by the 70th observance of the atomic attacks in 1945. The intention has been to explore several of the more important dimensions of what is called here ‘nuclearism,’ the securitization of nuclear weaponry in the face of international law, international morality, and simple common sense.
→ read full articleSaudi Arabia, Royal Impunity, and the Quicksand of Special Relationships
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Oct 2015
This post challenges the geopolitics of impunity from both principled and pragmatic perspectives, and also casts doubts on ‘special relationships’ that the United States has established in the Middle East with Israel and Saudi Arabia.
→ read full articleThe Nuclear Challenge: Relying on International Law – Marshall Islands Nuclear Zero Litigation (9)
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Oct 2015
From the time of the atomic explosions at the end of World War II, there have been two contradictory sets of tendencies at work: the repudiation of the weaponry and its contemplated uses as ultimate criminality and the secret feverish refinement of the weaponry to enhance its precision, destructive effects, battlefield capabilities, and delivery systems. To date, the latter tendency has prevailed.
→ read full articleThe Nuclear Challenge: 70 Years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki – Civil Society Activism on Behalf of Nuclear Zero (8)
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Oct 2015
The Jeffersonian faith in the future of democracy rested on the cumulative impact of education on citizen participation encouraging a robust and vigilant civil society. The advocacy of nuclear disarmament must become joined at the hip with the recognition that global demilitarization and conventional disarmament are part of a retrofitted political package of unconditional anti-nuclearism.
→ read full articleAfter 70 Years: The UN Falls Short, and Yet…
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Oct 2015
Seventy years later the UN disappoints many, and bores even more, appearing to be nothing more than a gathering place for the politically powerful. I think such a negative image has taken hold because the UN these days seems more than ever like a spectator than a political actor in the several crises that dominate the current agenda of global politics.
→ read full articleNonagon of Toxic Conflict: Notes on the Turkish Quagmire
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Oct 2015
The focus on Turkey, and its role with respect to Syria, PKK, and ISIS is not meant to minimize the importance of the other actors in the region that are part of the geopolitical nonogon. There are several overlapping regional proxy wars that have precluded a diplomatic resolution, including serious intraregional tensions between Saudi Arabia and Syria as well as the extraregional rivalry between the United States and Russia.
→ read full articleThe Nuclear Challenge: 70 Years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki – Nuclear Civil Disobedience (7)
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Oct 2015
In the years after World War II there was a widespread belief that rational minds would prevail, and that nuclear weapons would not be further developed, and their possession as well as their threat or use prohibited.
→ read full articleThe Yemen Catastrophe: Beset by Contradictions of Will and Intellect
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Oct 2015
The UN Security Council seems shockingly supportive of a major Saudi military intervention that started in March 2015, severely aggravating the overall situation by unanimously adopting a one-sided anti-Houthi Resolution 2216. This Saudi use of force is contrary to international law, violates the core principle of the UN Charter, and magnifies the violent disruption of Yemeni society.
→ read full articleThe Nuclear Challenge: 70 Years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki – Fukushima and Beyond (6)
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Sep 2015
We can only wonder about the lingering effects on the Japanese national psyche of being twice so severely victimized by the diabolical power of the atom? Fukushima was an exemplary tragedy of this new century, exhibiting the destructive force of nature in lethal interaction with the Promethean embrace of nuclear technology.
→ read full articleA Gaza Centric History of Palestine: Past, Present, and Future
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Sep 2015
Jean-Pierre Filiu, ‘Gaza: A History,’ trans. John King, Oxford University Press, 2014, 440 pp., ISBN 9780190201890. This review was initially published in the Journal of the Contemporary Thought and the Islamicate World.
→ read full articleJeopardizing Japanese ‘Abnormality’: Rejoining the War System
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Sep 2015
Washington’s encouragement of Prime Minister Abe’s campaign for a ‘normal’ Japan represents a regressive move regionally and globally, and deserves critical attention from a wider geopolitical perspective as well as from the viewpoint of Japan.
→ read full articleKissinger: A Hero of Our Time
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Sep 2015
For me, Kissinger was the anti-hero, somehow available to justify the unjustifiable, and situate himself in a tradition of statecraft that celebrated the European invention of modern international relations in the 17th-19th centuries.
→ read full articleThe Nuclear Challenge: 70 Years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki – The Weird ‘Good Fortune’ of Tsutomu Yamaguchi (5)
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Sep 2015
“I was struck by the decision to bomb Hiroshima instead of Kyoto out of respect for Kyoto’s cultural heritage. It was the then Secretary of War, Henry L Stimson, who is credited with making the successful plea to the president to spare Kyoto.”
→ read full articleThe Horrifying Syrian Dilemma Persists
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Sep 2015
What this prolonged dilemma in the face of mass atrocity shows is the deficiency of state-centric world order if appraised from the perspective of human wellbeing rather than national interests. The failures in Syria are not just the shortcomings of diplomacy and manipulations of geopolitics, but also a severe mismatch between structures and capabilities of global authority and the vulnerabilities of the peoples of the world.
→ read full articleOutlook India: Interview on ‘Digital India’ & PM Narendra Modi
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Sep 2015
I am posting here an interview with the magazine OUTLOOK INDIA associated with an open letter that was signed by more than 100 Indian scholars and intellectuals, as well as those such as myself with a long research and human interest in India, expressing concern about the forthcoming visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Silicon Valley to promote his vision of ‘Digital India.’
→ read full articleThe Nuclear Challenge: 70 Years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki – The Iran Agreement in Perspective (4)
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Sep 2015
This nuclear agreement reflects ‘where we are’ in dealing with global crises, not ‘where we should be.’ If we value international law, global justice, and indeed the future of the human species, then the distinction between the realm of the ‘feasible’ and the realm of the ‘desirable’ deserves energetic critical exposure by all of us who fancy ourselves as citizen pilgrims.
→ read full articleIsrael’s Likud Troika: Burying the Oslo ‘Peace Process’
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Sep 2015
12 Sep 2015 – Israel’s relentless accumulation of territorial facts on the ground some years ago doomed the peace process associated with the Oslo Framework of Principles adopted in 1993. It became increasingly difficult to envisage an Israeli willingness to dismantle settlements and road network or remove the separation barrier, and without such steps there could never be achieved an independent and viable Palestinian state.
→ read full articleThe Sympathetic Skeptic: Luis Cabrera’s Interview with Richard Falk On Behalf Of the World Government Research Network
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Sep 2015
12 Sep 2015 – The following interview was conducted by Professor Luis Cabrera, a political theorist on the faculty of Griffith University in Brisbane Australia. Cabrera has written notable books on themes of world government and global integration.
→ read full articleThe Nuclear Challenge: 70 Years after Hiroshima and Naasaki – Gorbachev’s Response (3)
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Sep 2015
Of course, Gorbachev is appreciated in the West mainly as having presided over a political process that led to the nonviolent ending of the Cold War, the peaceful liberation of Eastern Europe, and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Yet he was also perhaps the only head of an important sovereign state…
→ read full articleThe Nuclear Challenge: 70 Years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki (2)
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
31 Aug 2015
This is a legal issue, as this book makes clear, but it is also a moral issue, a security issue and, ultimately, a spiritual issue. Humankind must step back from the nuclear abyss now, before it is too late.
→ read full articleWhy Congress Must Support the Nuclear Agreement with Iran
Akbar Ganji & Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Aug 2015
Akbar Ganji is an important human rights defender who spent several years for his efforts in an Iranian jail. He is a leading commentator on Iranian affairs and recipient of an International Press Association World Press Hero award. Our article stresses the critical importance of obtaining American approval of the nuclear agreement.
→ read full articleThe Nuclear Challenge: 70 Years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1)
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Aug 2015
The time is now ripe for the total de-linkage of nonproliferation from disarmament with respect to nuclear weapons policy. Without such a de-linkage false consciousness and confusion are unavoidable. It is time to generate populist impatience with the refusal of decades by government establishment to act on the basis of reason, ethics, and prudence.
→ read full articleLiving in the 21st Century
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 Aug 2015
A confessional to the extent of acknowledging my own surroundings of digital devices that while liberating in some respects are repressive in others. To sustain our freedom under these ‘postmodern’ conditions requires the rechristening of meditative intelligence (as distinct from the instrumental rationality that acted as wet nurse of the ‘modern.’
→ read full article