Articles by Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century
We found 366 results.
Culture as Combat: Palestinian Voices
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Jun 2021
Festivals, Museums and Awards – In stirring opening remarks at the international 2021 mega-conference, Palestine Writes, Susan Abulhawa asserts that “… this festival is meant to expand Palestine’s cultural imprint in the world.”
→ read full article
IDF Operation ‘Guardian of the Walls’: Prelude, Aftermath, Prospects
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Jun 2021
7 Jun 2021 – The Palestinian ordeal is certainly not over, but for the first time we can envision it ending!
→ read full article
Whither Palestine? Whither Israel? After the Violence Spike, after the Abraham Accords, after Netanyahu
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Jun 2021
13 Jun 2021 – The changing circumstances in Israel/Palestine over the last six weeks. Two questions that will shape the Palestinian destiny: Will the post-Netanyahu government push harder the political agenda of the right-wing settler movement? Will the aftermath of the IDF military operation, Guardian of the Walls, increase Palestinian resistance and global solidarity?
→ read full articleA New Different Cold War, an Old Geopolitics
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
31 May 2021
30 May 2021 – This text is based on responses to questions posed by C.J. Polychroniou, a skilled interpreter of the global scene and noted author and interviewer.
→ read full article
Palestine Is Winning the Legitimacy War
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 May 2021
19 May 2021 – This piece attempts to contextualize the current violence directed against Gaza in earlier Israeli provocations and takes note of Israel’s reliance on excessive force upon a helpless Gazan civilian population of over two million people trapped inside a crowded and unlawfully blockaded enclave. I find it appropriate to recall Gandhi’s famous observation along these lines: “First, they ignore you, then they insult you, then they fight you, then you win.”
→ read full article
Citizen Pilgrim: To Be or Not to Be
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 May 2021
Public Intellectual: The Life of a Citizen Pilgrim – Conversation with Richard Falk, Noura Erakat, Victoria Brittain and Jeremy Corbyn~
Monday 17 May, 5:30–7:00 PM (GMT-BST), Where: Online
Israeli Apartheid and Palestine Grievances
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 May 2021
3 May 2021 – Questions from Rodrigo Craveiro from Correio Braziliense, 27 Apr 2021, in response to Report of Human Rights Watch on Israeli Apartheid; it is followed by my responses to questions of Zahra Mirzafarjouyan on behalf of Mehr News Agency in Tehran, addressing some of the underlying causes of Palestinian grievances.
→ read full article
Reflections on Genocide as the Ultimate Crime
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Apr 2021
26 Apr 2021 – The misuse of the word genocide is disdainful toward relatives of the victims of the Armenian massacres, the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide – and as well a disservice to both history, law, and the prudent conduct of international relations. We already knew that we were adrift in an ocean of fake news. It is far more dangerous to discover that we are also at risk of being immersed in the turbulent waters of “fake law”. We must push back with a sense of urgency. Such a development is not tolerable.
→ read full article
Remembering Ramsey Clark
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Apr 2021
12 Apr 2021 – Ramsey Clark was a great man, and it was my privilege to work with him closely on several occasions. His death is a time to mourn, but it is also a time to remember who he was and why his life mattered in profound ways to so many people.
→ read full articleThe Middle East: Geopolitical Battleground
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Apr 2021
18 Apr 2021 – Questions posed on the basis of my memoir, ‘Public Intellectual,’ by an Egyptian journalist. The interview covers several distinct issues that involve interpretations of major foreign policy concerns in the Middle East.
→ read full articleHow Significant Is the $400 Billion Comprehensive Strategic Partnership between China and Iran
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Apr 2021
This post consists of my responses to questions posed by the Iranian journalist Javad Heiran-Nia, Questions on the China/Iran Agreement (4 April 2021). The agreement, officially known as Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, was signed formally just a few weeks before it was announced that so-called ‘indirect talks’ between Iran and the U.S. were taking place in Vienna.
→ read full article
Do We Really Want a Second Cold War?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Apr 2021
31 Mar 2021 – The protection of human rights is being geopolitically manipulated to mobilize public support for an anti-Chinese foreign policy in the West that risks generating a dangerous geopolitical confrontation. Such a confrontation amounts to war-mongering and diverts U.S. attention from self-scrutiny and global peacebuilding. Whether a second cold war is already underway is a matter of interpretation.
→ read full article
Palestinian Balance Sheet: Normative Victories, Geopolitical Disappointments
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Mar 2021
21 Mar 2021 – . It seems to me that Israeli leaders understand that South African racism collapsed largely because it lost the Legitimacy War. Maybe some Israeli leaders are beginning to grasp the writing on the wall. The ICC decision may turn out to be a turning point not unlike the Sharpeville Massacre of 1965. This may be so even, as is likely, not a single Israeli is ever brought to justice before the ICC.
→ read full articleThe Geopolitics of the Normalization Agreements
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Mar 2021
Listen Closely to the Israeli Discourse in an American Liberal Idiom: Geopolitical Dreams, Ethical Nightmares
→ read full articleCorrupting Democracy One Dollar at a Time
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Mar 2021
Commodifying Democracy is a Costly Failure in America – Everyday I receive ten to twenty times more appeals for money to support this or that political campaign than I receive any kind of serious substantive statement of explanation or concern. And because this storm has become so deadening, the language of most appeals is nearly always hysterical, wildly exaggerating good or bad marginal developments designed to create a sense of urgency on the part of recipients.
→ read full article
A German Court Punishes an International Crime Committed in Syria
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Mar 2021
26 Feb 2021 – The case is significant because it asserts the legal authority of a national court to impose accountability when the territorial sovereign is itself the culprit and international tribunals lack the means to pursue those most responsible for the commission of the most serious international crimes. In this instance, Russia and China vetoed an attempt in the UN Security Council to authorize allegations against Syria.
→ read full articleNuclear Violence Is Why We Are Living in the Anthropocene Age
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Feb 2021
15 Feb 2021 – Violence: Another Existential Crisis – As I grasp the essence of the consensus emerging from this discussion of Paul Raskin’s eloquent essay, it is an acceptance of the Anthropocene as a dire warning that the human species is headed for disaster, if not extinction, if its ecological footprint is not greatly reduced in the relatively near future.
→ read full articleIran’s Islamic Republic Celebrates Its 42nd Anniversary
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Feb 2021
9 Feb 2021 – Iran is in the process of celebrating the 42nd Anniversary of the Islamic Revolution that led to the downfall of the Shah of Iran’s dynastic rule and its replacement by the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has defied the odds by resisting successfully a variety of attempts to restore the old established order either by an Iraqi encouraged war in the 1980s, destabilization efforts all along pushed by the U.S. and Israel, and an undisguised goal of regime change.
→ read full article
Remembering George Shultz after 53 Years
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Feb 2021
I recall nostalgically, George’s civility, which according to reports, nevertheless required backbone, resisting the Nixon’s tactics that prefigured Trump’s antic presidency. George impressively stood his ground firmly whenever political leaders asked him to cross his red lines, so unlike the Republicans who inhabit Congress, and toe the Trump line no matter what. [He died on 6 Feb 2021 at the age of 100.]
→ read full article
The B’Tselem Report on Israeli Apartheid
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Feb 2021
3 Feb 2021 – The significance of the B’Tselem Report, which recently concluded that Israel imposes an apartheid regime to sustain Jewish supremacy on both Israel itself and all of the Occupied Palestine.
→ read full articleIs There an American ‘Deep State’?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Jan 2021
23 Jan 2021 – Trump’s foreign policy was indeed disastrous, but it did somewhat illuminate the anachronistic character of the zombie like ‘bipartisan consensus’ that yet be revived in the course of reaffirming the old Cold War/neoliberal globalization orthodoxy of pre-Trump America.
→ read full articleBlocking Twitter & Twitter Blocking Trump: Why We Should Worry
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Jan 2021
Should a government have the authority to limit the dissemination by social media of material derogatory to or defamatory of the elected leadership of the country, as well as have a mandate to impose limits on access to sexually explicit material in deference to public morals?
→ read full articleState Terrorism: Remembering General Soleimani
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Jan 2021
8 Jan 2021 – This first anniversary of the assassination of General Qassim Soleimani, provides an occasion to remember not only the man but the nature of the act, the precedent set, and degree to which Iran and the region have become the main hunting ground of post-colonial Western imperialism. It is also relevant to take note of Mossad’s apparent responsibility for the targeted killing of Iran’s leading nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, ten months later.
→ read full article
The Trump Pardons and Fast-Tracking Capital Punishment
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Jan 2021
31 Dec 2020 – Among the disquieting dimensions of this strangest of all Christmas holidays has been the lurid spectacle of misplaced empathy by Donald Trump, placating cronies and criminals who helped him circumvent law and morality while exhibiting hard heartedness toward those unfortunate souls awaiting execution on death row in federal prisons.
→ read full article
From Counterterrorism to Geopolitics: Reviving the U.S. Deep State
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Jan 2021
25 Dec 2020 – The challenge of transnational non-state violence, what the media dutifully criminalizes as ‘terrorism’ while whitewashing the abuses of state and state-sponsored violence as ‘counterterrorism’ or exercises of every state to act in self-defense. Language matters as those who wanted to sugarcoat ‘torture’ by such phrases as ‘enhanced interrogation.
→ read full article
Peace and Peacefulness: Reaching for the Stars
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Dec 2020
I recall being rather bemused more than 25 years ago when a meditation practice was premised on the confidence that if enough people meditated for a few minutes each day on the reality of a peaceful world it would bend the arc of history toward peace. I know that spiritual attentiveness has wider implications but I find no evidence that links connect my meditation with the policies and actions of performers in ongoing world dramas.
→ read full article
Palestine Legal: Please Support & Donate
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Dec 2020
18 Dec 2020 – Palestine Legal’s work is necessary not only for those of us involved in work for Palestinian human rights, but for anyone who believes in preserving space for open political debate and upholding our rights to protest, which are sacred elements of any genuine constitutional democracy. Needless to say, Palestine Legal’s work will remain urgently necessary under the next U.S. administration.
→ read full articleWill China Run the World? Should It?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Dec 2020
14 Dec 2020 – Responses to interview questions from Javad Heiran-Nia on ‘World Order in the Time of COVID-19,’ with emphasis on China & United States, especially as reflected in the restructuring of the world economy. The underlying issue is whether the Chinese or U.S. approach to global policy and world order will gain the upper hand, and at what costs to humanity.
→ read full articleMurdering Nuclear Scientists Does Not Prevent Proliferation–A Nuclear Free Middle East Does
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Dec 2020
Interview published in the Tehran Times on 2 Dec 2020. Fakhrizadeh’s assassination cannot be legally and politically justified by any acceptable theory governing the use of force in international relations and has very negative implications as an international precedent.
→ read full articleQatar: Between the Scylla of Coercion and the Charybdis of Accommodation: An Inquiry into Sub-Regional Geopolitics
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Dec 2020
11 Dec 2020 – Qatar is caught between seeking the end of the coercive diplomacy led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE and not wanting to end its necessary cooperation with Iran, especially with respect to large maritime natural gas deposits. The efforts at accommodation can turn out to be either a lessening of a confrontational approach to Iran or its intensification.
→ read full articlePompeo’s Diabolical Diplomacy
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Nov 2020
29 Nov 2020 – This interview, devoted to Pompeo’s three-day visit to Israel and Occupied Palestine, was conducted by Eshrat Mardi and published in the Tehran Times Interview Nov. 28, 2020.
→ read full article
Remembering Robert Fisk
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Nov 2020
15 Nov 2020 – ‘Remembering Robert Fisk’ is the text of an interview conducted by Daniel Falcone, and published below on Nov. 9, 2020 in Counterpunch. There is one insertion mentioning Seymour Hersh as a fourth journalist in this style of exceptional devotion to the courage and craft of truth telling in place of danger or where transparency is obscured by state secrets.
→ read full articleA Comic Display of Geopolitical Subservience: Mike Pompeo’s Visit to Israel
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Nov 2020
22 Nov 2020 – On the entirely inappropriate and distasteful visit of the U.S. Secretary of State to Israel for three days. For me the entire event was a grotesque occasion of national embarrassment from start to finish. Even the most dimwitted imperialist would know better than to declare Pompeo’s subservience to Israel in these scary words: “Israel is everything we want the entire Middle East to look like going forward.”
→ read full articleReaching 90 in 2020
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Nov 2020
Note from TMS editor: Richard Falk and his friends around the world celebrated his 90th year on 13 Nov 2020.
Happy Birthday dear Richard! Thank you for existing.
Interpreting the U.S. Election Results: Preliminary Observations
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Nov 2020
9 Nov 2020 – The victory by the Biden/Harris ticket is basically good news for the country and the world, although not as good as expected. And there is some bad news, as well, lurking just beneath the surface. Not only the strength of Trumpism in America, but the likely drift toward the center-right of the Biden presidency.
→ read full article
Making Sense of Hunger Strikes and Symbolic Politics
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Nov 2020
12 Nov 2020 – My essay speaks to the hunger strikes as political resistance of a sublime character, and at the same time to the selective silence of the Western media when it comes to heroic moments in the Palestinian struggle
→ read full articleInterview on U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Nov 2020
2 Nov 2020 – A momentous test of whether the Trump challenge to constitutional democracy will be decisively repudiated by the American people and whether Republicans will mount a perverse challenge via the judicial system. The system is structurally rigged against democratic values by enabling Trump to be reelected via the anachronistic Electoral College even if he loses the popular vote by 5,000,000 or more.
→ read full article
The Politics of Hunger Strikes
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Nov 2020
28 Oct 2020 – During my six years as UN Special Rapporteur for Occupied Palestine, I found disturbing the silence of the Western media about Palestinian hunger strikes, especially when these extreme expressions of nonviolent resistance were in reaction to prison confinement by Administrative Detention decrees, that is, without charges or any show of incriminating evidence.
→ read full articleA Gathering Global Storm
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Oct 2020
24 Oct 2020 – This is my chapter contribution to The Great Awakenkng: New Modes of Thinking Amid the Ruins of Capitalism (2020) edited by Anna Grear & Davd Bollier. My text is preoccupied with the decline of the state as an efficient problem-solving instrument in a period where global scale challenges are generating an ethical-ecological-bio crisis.
→ read full articleWhy Biden Must Win: It Is Not about Democracy, It’s about Fascism
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Oct 2020
8 Oct 2020 – Interview with Iranian Journalist Javad Heiran-Nia on U.S. Elections: “What is the most important issue affecting the upcoming US presidential election? (Economy; Foreign Policy; Domestic Policy; etc.)”
→ read full articleShould Iran Be Concerned about the U.S. Elections?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Oct 2020
30 Sep 2020 – This interview was published by Mehr News Agency on 27 Sept 2020 in Tehran. It addresses questions that arise for foreign societies seeking to comprehend the spectacle of the 2020 US national elections. The outcome of the Trump/Biden struggle is, of course, of particular concern to Iran.
→ read full articleUAE/Bahrain Normalization with Israel: Peace or Geopolitics?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Sep 2020
23 Sep 2020 – the willingness to endorse these normalization agreements in the White House setting was a dramatic expression of identification with Trump’s regional diplomacy in the Middle East and a formalized repudiation of Palestinian aspirations for a sustainable peace based on their inalienable right of self-determination.
→ read full articleIconic Deaths and What They Mean: George Floyd and Ruth Bader Ginsberg
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Sep 2020
26 Sep 2020 – 2020 is a year that will be remembered for its many distinctive features—the global reach and lethality of the COVID pandemic, worldwide protests against racism, and likely, to come, the outcome and aftermath of an American presidential election with likely severe worldwide reverberations. Yet one of the least conceptualized aspects up until now is the occurrence of two very different iconic deaths. By according an iconic status to an individual’s death is to acknowledge its historic impact.
→ read full articleTrump Induced Normalization Agreements with Gulf Monarchies: Is This What Peace Looks Like?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Sep 2020
18 Sep 2020 – Two interviews based on the normalization agreements between Israel and two Arab countries, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, which are being perceived from a variety of angles depending on the agendas of the various political actors. In the present context it seems a win for Israel and Trump, and a loss for the Palestinians and Iran. However,…
→ read full article
A Conversation at the Edge of the Human Future
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Sep 2020
12 Sep 2020 – I am posting below a long interview with Konrad Stachnio on wide-ranging questions, which stretched by knowledge past its breaking point, especially in assessing where the technological innovations on the horizons will lead us. It is one of 17 conversations published by Clarity Press under the title, Civilization in Overdrive: Conversations at the edge of the Human Future.
→ read full articleGlobal Governance after the COVID Pandemic
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Sep 2020
31 Aug 2020 – In making conjectures about global governance in the post-COVID-19 era, it is important to be both cautious and clear. Cautious because there are many uncertainties. Clarity is equally important, especially drawing clear lines between what is expected and feasible, what seems necessary, and what is desirable but not likely attainable.
→ read full articleNuclear Complacency and the Dangerous Drift toward a New Cold War with China
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Aug 2020
22 Aug 2020 – I am increasingly worried by the either/or quality of the U.S. November elections that effectively suppresses concerns about a bipartisan drift toward a second cold war focused on China as geopolitical adversary that will be confronted.
→ read full articleInterpreting the UAE/Israel Agreement on Suspending Annexation
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 Aug 2020
16 Aug 2020 – Responses to interview questions from Javad Heiran-Nia, an Iranian journalist, on the UAE/Israel Normalization/Annexation Agreement of Aug. 13, 2020.
→ read full articleTrumpism: What Will 2020 Bring?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Aug 2020
8 Aug 2020 – During the height of the Cold War when it was viewed as disloyal and compromising to show a sympathetic interest in Marxism or sympathies with Soviet ideology, someone at the U.S. military base at Frankfurt distributed to the soldiers stationed there, a handwritten version of the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments of the U.S. Constitution, in the form of petition.
→ read full article
With John Lewis in Stockholm 1969
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Aug 2020
1 Aug 2020 – Moved by the iconic recognition of John Lewis’ exceptional courage and perseverance on behalf of human rights, nonviolence, and opposition to American militarism, I recall a weekend spent together in Stockholm. We were the two invited American speakers at a conference opposing the American War in Vietnam.
→ read full articleIs the United States a Failing State? A Failed State?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Jul 2020
22 Jul 2020 – To ask whether the United States, the world’s dominant military power, is ‘a failing state’ should cause worldwide anxiety. Such a state, analogous to a wounded animal, is a global menace of unprecedented proportions in the nuclear age. Its political leadership is exhibiting a reckless tendency of combining incompetence with extremism. The November elections will send a strong signal as to whether the United States is failing or has failed.
→ read full articleLearning Now from Gandhi
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Jul 2020
12 Jul 2020 – a faithful and highly accessible presentation of Gandhi’s essential thought and practice as applicable to the rather overwhelming set of circumstances that amount to gathering storm clouds. Such a darkened sky hovering over the present is intended to call to our attention the severe threats to the human and ecological futures all beings on earth confront, whether or not they are aware of these unprecedented dangers.
→ read full article
Poems, Pandemics, and Preservation
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Jul 2020
3 Jul 2020 – With the help of a friend I taught myself to write poems in a haiku form following classic Japanese guidance. Poetry has long been a place of sanctuary for me, and in recent months it has also offered me the pleasures of ‘lockdown therapy.’ I hope I am not abusing readers by posting a sample, and hoping others will be drawn to join an invisible community of haiku lovers.
→ read full articlePost-COVID Prospects Assessed
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Jul 2020
8 Jul 2020 -This text is a slightly edited interview on post-COVID prospects that was published in Mutekabiliyet, a Turkish student online journal, July 3, 2020.
→ read full articleThe Politics of Kneeling: A Tribute to Colin Kaepernick
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Jun 2020
22 Jun 2020 – Of course, there have been many Kaepernick moments that stretch back to the era of slavery, and forward to Rosa Parks’ 1956 refusal to go to the back of the bus sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott , King’s 1963 letter from the Birmingham Jail, and the death of George Floyd, some more resonant than others, but none have been enough to remove the dark stains of systemic racism from the fabric of daily life in America, and elsewhere in the world.
→ read full articleThe Right to Food During the Coronavirus Pandemic: A Time of Bio-Ethical-Ecological Crisis
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Jun 2020
14 Jun 2020 – Even before the Coronavirus Pandemic, humanity faced an unprecedented challenge in the coming decades that threatened the foundations of life itself, and yet, up to this time societal reactions have been disappointingly weak and evasive, aside from a few voices in the wilderness.
→ read full articleRevisiting Meeting Ayatollah Khomeini in January, 1979
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Jun 2020
10 Jun 2020 – This post is a slightly modified text of responses to Javad Heiran-Nia’s interview questions that was published on 2 Jun 2020 in Mehr News. From the Iranian publication I received some criticisms to the effect that I failed to associate Ayatollah Khomeini’s legacy with the repressiveness of the policies and practices of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
→ read full articleArms Control & Disarmament: A Failed Marriage
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Jun 2020
25 May 2020 – The linkage between contagious disease and climate change is too evident to ignore altogether: The falling price of oil, the declining carbon emissions, the global imperative of cooperation, uneven vulnerabilities, and the relevance of justice and empathy. With respect to nuclear weapons hazards and their possible use, there is a growing disconnect between risk and behavior, a combination of nuclearism prevailing among the political elites of the nuclear weapons states and public disregard.
→ read full article
The Darkening Sky over Palestine: Storm Clouds or New Dawn?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Jun 2020
28 May 2020 – If, de jure annexation will go forward, then the sky is likely to emit thunder and lightning. When the storm passes, nothing will seem changed. Annexation is being discussed as if a game changer yet ‘annexation’ has already taken place in the form of settlements, the separation wall, denial of building and residence permits to Palestinians living in Area C, and long-affirmed Israeli sentiments of biblical entitlement solidified by continued tradition of affirming the territory the British administered as ‘Palestine’ between the two world wars as ‘the promised land’ of the Jewish people.
→ read full articlePlanetary Transformations: A Progressive Quest
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 May 2020
20 May 2020 – Below are three texts: a paper by the widely respected writer and progressive scholar, Val Moghadam, which describes what it might mean to have a left transformative movement of planetary scope; followed by a short explanatory essay by Paul Raskin, who exercises intellectual leadership of the Great Transition Network. The third text is my comment on Moghadam’s paper.
→ read full articleThe Coronavirus Pandemic, Sanctions on Iran, and the Maladies of World Order
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 May 2020
12 May 2020 – The U.S. depends primarily on its military capabilities to punish and coerce those states that it regards as hostile to its global ambitions. Iran (and Venezuela) is the current leading example, as victimized by ‘the maximum pressure’ approach based on threats and punitive sanctions. In contrast, China has brilliantly extended its influence and increased its prosperity by reliance mainly on non-military instruments of expansion including trade, investment, and foreign assistance. The two global states exemplify an encounter between hard and soft power foreign policies.
→ read full articleU.S. Policy toward Israel/Palestine in a Deglobalizing World: A Pre-Pandemic Perspective
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 May 2020
7 May 2020 – The text below is from my presentation at the TRT World Forum, 21-22 Oct 2019. What strikes me now is how different the world seems only six months later due to the surreal impacts of the Coronavirus Pandemic on all aspects of perception and assessment, the totality of dislocating developments, and the heightening of an existential appreciation of the precariousness of individual and collective experience and of the radical uncertainty clouding our expectations of the future.
→ read full articleAcknowledging Disorientation after COVID-19: Beyond Horizons of Fear and Doubt
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 May 2020
3 May 2020 – More than earlier crises of my lifetime, including the Great Depression, World War II, 9/11, the COVID-19 pandemic illuminates as never before, how precarious and uncertain is the future wellbeing, and possibly survival, of the human species. The concreteness, immediacy, and haunting uncertainties of the pandemic is quite terrifying on its own, but its heuristic pedagogy seems applicable to a range of potentially catastrophic threats of global scope, most obviously climate change, biodiversity, nuclear weaponry.
→ read full articleWorld Order and COVID-19 Pandemic
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Apr 2020
19 Apr 2020 – I am aware of the greater strength and role of cooperative movements in European countries, a residue of the socialist movements of the prior century, that give rise to more spontaneous approaches on local levels to immediate threats to well-being, exhibiting both less trust and less dependence on governmental undertakings. Furthermore, European health systems are more evolved, fewer people left out, and more sense of public responsibility, although some deficiencies also emerged.
→ read full articleA Prayer in the Time of Pandemic
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Apr 2020
8 Apr 2020 – Affirming spirituality as the power over life and death I aspire to achieve
this spirituality that is nothing other than the blending of love and mystery
cherishing wonder at a precarious precipice, respecting knowledge
In Time of Pandemic Praise for the UN
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Apr 2020
3 Apr 2020 – What the COVID-19 experience made clear was the importance of information to virtually every person and governmental body on the planet, and the degree to which the WHO and its Director General were quickly established as a valued source of reliable and trustworthy information. Establishing public trust and informational reliability become paramount goals, and WHO and Tedros Adhanan Grebreyerus, its Director General, have risen to the occasion, gaining media credibility and worldwide respect.
→ read full articleInvestigating Israeli Criminality at the International Criminal Court (ICC)
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Apr 2020
Amicus Brief submitted to the International Criminal Court in The Hague on 16 Mar 2020 in the jurisdictional phase of a proceeding in which to initiate such a legal proceeding and whether the ICC has jurisdiction, that is, legal authority to investigate and possibly prosecute such alleged. As the Prosecutor indicated, the facts at her disposal indicate a basis for accepting Palestine’s request for an investigation of alleged Israeli criminal conduct.
→ read full articleA 21st Century Worldview: Interviewing Ahmet Davutoğlu
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Mar 2020
28 Mar 2020 – Interview that I conducted with the former Turkish Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, published in Middle East Monitor on March 23-24, 2020. His responses to questions 18-20 concern the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on the world. The interview is long, yet a worthwhile overview how the most important intellectual political figure in Turkey views global and national reality given the shape of recent developments.
→ read full articleExplaining the ‘Asian Miracle’
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Mar 2020
20 Mar 2020 – A timely aspect of Nayyar’s book is the emphasis he places on the importance of effective state/society relations in explaining the remarkable growth experience of Asia. Such an insight seems relevant to the degree to which various governments are effectively managing responses to the challenge of the Coronavirus pandemic. It would seem at this stage that well-managed autocracies do better than most democracies, and much better than poorly managed democracies that embody capitalist structures, priorities, and values.
→ read full articleCOVID-19: Present, Past, and Future
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Mar 2020
17 Mar 2020 – A few days ago when WHO officially declared the COVID-19 a ‘pandemic’ a Rubicon of consciousness and global governance was crossed. Hundreds of millions of individuals around the world are coping physically and mentally with what that word never before used in my lifetime means for themselves and those they care most about. The mental dimensions of self-isolation may turn out to be a big challenge almost as big as the disease itself.
→ read full articleCruelty or Humanity?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Mar 2020
12 Mar 2020 – This is my foreword to Stuart Rees’ exceedingly important study of the role of cruelty in politics, a mystifying dimension of human experience, which is illuminated by integrating the insights and reflections of poets with the narration of political policies. This fusion gives this book a quality of originality as well of practical relevance.
→ read full articleEvasions, Accidents, Engagements, and Fulfillment: An Autobiographical Fragment
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Mar 2020
2 Mar 2020 – This post is something new for me, an autobiographical fragment written at the request of an online listserv as a suggestive model for academics at the start of their careers as diplomatic historians. I publish it here. It was found unsuitable for publication by the group that made the initial solicitation for unspecified reasons.
→ read full articleHow Sanders Wins and Governs–Winning and Losing in 2020
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Mar 2020
24 Feb 2020 – Anyone sensitive to the American political scene has become aware of an emerging collision between surging citizen support for Bernie Sanders and the lamentations of portfolio (stocks & bonds) driven Democrats who purport to question Sanders’ electability, and even if they now most reluctantly acknowledge the robustness of his electoral challenge to Trump, contend that he will be never be able to govern given his left agenda and considering the likely embitterment of the DNC establishment.
→ read full articleWeaponizing Lawfare in the Philippines
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Feb 2020
22 Feb 2020 – Rodrigo Duterte, despite leaving by now a long trail of blood-stained abuse, retains an approval rating of more than 80%. As in the United States, we ask the question that prompted the leading thinkers in ancient Athens to abandon democracy—‘how can we trust the citizenry if they are drawn to support demagogues whose policies are self-destructive for the political community?” If not, the people, then whom? Surely, not the financial oligarchs. Plutocracy is not the answer.
→ read full articleMeeting Grand Ayatollah 41 Years Ago
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 Feb 2020
15 Feb 2020 – In February 1979, along with two others, I had a meeting with Ayatollah Khomeini. The post below is an edited text of an interview by two Iranian journalists, Maryam Khormaei & Javad Heiran-Nia, which was published a few weeks ago in Iran. As few Westerners had such an opportunity to meet the leader of the Iranian Revolution in a relatively relaxed atmosphere and for an ample length of time, there seemed interest in Iran and elsewhere in my recollections of that meeting.
→ read full articleTrump/Netanyahu Diplomacy: Orientalism by any Other Name
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
1 Feb 2020 – This so-called contribution to ‘peace’ requires Palestine to give up its most fundamental rights, and accept a permanent condition of subjugation and victimization. It is framed in such a one-sided pro-Israel manner as if designed to ensure its instant and overwhelming rejection by Palestinian government representatives and by Palestinian public opinion.
→ read full articleMaking the Earth Charter Happen: A Necessary Utopia
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
7 Feb 2020 – Twenty years ago Kamla Chowdhry, one of the founding members of the Earth Charter Commission asked, “How can we ensure that ethical and spiritual values get a fair hearing with the economist, technologist, and the industrialist? How do we weld economics with ethics, and have a technology with a human face?” Answering those questions remains central to our efforts today for a more just, sustainable and peaceful world.
→ read full articleThe Decline of International Law: Reflections of a True Believer
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Feb 2020
27 Jan 2020 – There is widespread agreement that international law is experiencing a sharp decline in relevance when it comes to foreign policy, especially in the eye of the public. At first glance, this seems surprising. The impression of decline derives from high profile issues of governments acting without regard for international law, especially in the area of peace and security.
→ read full article
On the Eve of the Release of Trump’s ‘Deal–Farce of the Century’
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Feb 2020
28 Jan 2020 – Interview by Rodrigo Craveiro from the Brazilian daily Correio Braziliense –
Craveiro: Why are Palestinian leaders rejecting to talk with president Trump about this new peace plan?
Contesting Nuclearism: Management or Transformation? An Urgent Challenge
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Jan 2020
22 Jan 2020 – This essay calls attention to the generally unappreciated tensions between managing nuclear weapons and eliminating them altogether. It stresses the crucial point that management inevitably produces a structure of ‘nuclear apartheid’ that is to some extent ‘legalized’ by way of the Nonproliferation Treaty of 1961, and depends for implementation, not on law, but on geopolitical muscle, including war. This geopolitical pattern of NPT enforcement has been mainly undertaken by the United States, but is generally supported by most of the other nuclear weapons states.
→ read full articleFacing the Global Crisis
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Jan 2020
16 Jan 2020 – This is an amplified version of an interview published on 7 Jan in the online journal, Global Policy. As the interview was conducted in Dec 2019, it fails to address the various disruptive consequences of the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, including the violation of Iraqi sovereignty, Baghdad being the site of the drone attack, as well as the risks of war arising from an escalating tit-for-tat cycle of actions and reactions.
→ read full article
2020 U.S. Presidential Elections: Reflections outside the Box
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Jan 2020
14 Jan 2020 – Four Reflections on What Would Help Democrats Defeat Trump
→ read full articleOpen Letter to Members of the U.S. Congress
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Jan 2020
8 Jan 2020 – I listened to Trump from my own perspective and with an attempt to hear his words as if I were an Iranian living in Iran. I found the statement belligerent, and formulated in an imperialist/hegemonic language, avoiding a diplomatic sequel, and instead resuming the ‘maximum pressure’ approach involving threats and further intensified sanctions and other coercive moves that will bring additional suffering to the Iranian people.
→ read full articleForgetting 2019
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Jan 2020
31 Dec 2019 – At this age, having exhausted prose options, I indulge myself during holidays by sharing poems that seek also your indulgence. I searched 2019 for some glimmers of good news, and felt stymied. Of course here, there, everywhere there were glorious private exceptions.
→ read full articleReconciling Ecological Imperatives and the Right to Food at a Time of Bio-Ethical Crisis
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Dec 2019
15 Dec 2019 – Humanity faces an unprecedented challenge in the coming decades that threatens the foundations of life itself, and yet to date societal reactions have been disappointingly weak and evasive, aside from voices in the wilderness. Despite expertly documented studies from the most qualified climate scientists, the overall response of supposedly responsible political and economic elites has been tepid, escapist, and even denialist.
→ read full articleLearning from Others: Germans and White Supremacists in South USA
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Dec 2019
8 Dec 2019 – Susan Neiman has written a remarkable book, Learning from Others: Race and the Problem of Evil. We are challenged by Neiman not to consider racism or evil as matters of destiny, but fully subject to the vagaries of human responsibility, which includes the domain of a free society.
→ read full articleHealth and Human Rights in Gaza: Shame on the World
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Dec 2019
27 Nov 2019 – I take alarmed note of the refusal of the mainstream media to accord attention to the misery so long endured by the people of Gaza. If ever the norm of ‘the responsibility to protect’ was applied according to humanitarian need, Gaza would be at the top of the list, but of course there is no list, and if ever there were one, given the present international atmosphere, Gaza would remain among the unlisted! This neglect of the people of Gaza is so acute as to extend the web of criminal complicity far beyond the borders of Israel.
→ read full article
Contra Israeli Apartheid
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Dec 2019
1 Dec 2019 – This is a modified version of remarks made at the opening plenary session of the “1st Global Conference on Israeli Apartheid: Dimensions, Repercussions and the Means to Combat It,” 29-30 Nov 2019, Istanbul.
→ read full articleA New Cycle of Gaza/Israel Violence
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Nov 2019
22 Nov 2019 – Whether this latest cycle of violence has ended as of now is difficult to assess, and it should not be confused with the violence at the Gaza Fence as a result of weekly demonstrations of Palestinians in the course of the Great March of Return, a civil society initiative that has continued since March 30, 2018, a remarkable exhibition of sumud on the Palestinian side and of excessive lethal force on the Israel side.
→ read full articleBecoming 89
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Nov 2019
— Istanbul, 13 Nov 2019 [From TMS editor: Richard was born on 13 Nov 1930]
→ read full articleDid the West Win the Cold War?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Nov 2019
6 Nov 2019 – It was assumed and almost never challenged that the outcome of the Cold War was a victory for liberal values, human rights, political democracy, economic growth, and certainly world peace. And since democracies supposedly do not go to war against each other, and if Communism was discredited, then democracy would spread naturally and quickly, and the world would become more peaceful and its people better off.
→ read full articleCasting Doubt: Trusting Whistleblowers More Than International Institutions–Syrian Alleged Chemical Weapons Attack on Douma
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Nov 2019
Courage Foundation Panel Challenges International Finding of Syrian Responsibility for the 2018 Attack on Douma
→ read full article
The Future of Human Rights: Regressive Trends and Restorative Prospects
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Nov 2019
31 Oct 2019 – The main objective of this essay is to sketch the profound challenges to human rights that arise from a series of interrelated and overlapping developments, and to give some sense that to restore and enhance human rights is a difficult undertaking that now seems almost impossible given the ultra-nationalist outlook of the governments of most leading states. Yet the future is uncertain, and will be influenced by what peoples variously situated choose to do or refrain from doing.
→ read full articleInterpreting Turkey’s Military Operation in Syria
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Oct 2019
18 Oct 2019 – Ever since things started to go badly wrong in Syria after the uprising prompted by the 2011 Arab Spring, the situation has converted the customary fog of war into an impenetrable black box. None of the intervening political actors including Turkey, United States, Iran, Russia, Israel, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia calculated correctly, nor did the various non-state extremist groups associated with al Qaeda and later ISIS, as well as a variety of anti-Damascus Syrian insurgencies.
→ read full article
In Praise of Kamila Shamsie’s ‘Home Fire’
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Oct 2019
13 Oct 2019 – It took the withdrawal of the Nelly Sachs Prize to make me familiar with the fine literary achievements and compassionate politics of Kamila Shamsie. Selfishly, I cannot thank the Dortmund City Council enough for its outrageous behavior, evidently canceling the award because a right-wing newspaper outed Shamsie as a supporter of the BDS Campaign. I can imagine Shamsie’ feeling of hurt as well as disappointment as this incident unfolded.
→ read full articleIran’s Gulf Peace Proposal: HOPE
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Oct 2019
7 Oct 2019 – As I understand President Hassan Rouhani’s plan it concentrates upon regionalizing the protection of navigation and safeguarding of energy flows in the Persian Gulf with a particular emphasis on providing security for oil tanker traffic. The proposal comes against a background of months of warmongering threats, harsh sanctions, and dangerous incidents that pose unacceptable risks of provoking violent incidents, and even war.
→ read full articleWill Confronting Iran Lead to War or Peace?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Oct 2019
1 Oct 2019 – This is a slightly modified version of an interview published in The Nation on 25 Sep following the 14 Sep attack on Saudi oil facilities. It follows a pattern, with respect to Iran, of accusations, denials, and public uncertainties. This combination of elements, given the leadership in Washington and Tehran, one blustering, the other inflexible, can easily produce an unintended stumble into war.
→ read full articleDark Clouds and the Human Condition: Youth to the Rescue!
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Sep 2019
25 Sep 2019 – If the young and old act together this kind of UN can be nurtured. In the meantime, we should resist the temptation to pretend that this UN of the peoples already exists, but we should never forget that we have it within our potential collective power to make it happen, and by doing, to make the sort of difference that youth are rightfully demanding.
→ read full article
Chained to Its Past: A German Recipe for Injustice toward the People of Palestine
Hans von Sponeck and Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Sep 2019
17 Sep 2019 – The Bundestag resolution that condemned the BDS Campaign as contributing to a rising threat of antisemitism in Europe is a grave cause of concern. It brands the BDS, a nonviolent Palestinian initiative, anti-Semitic and takes this stand pointing out Germany’s special responsibility toward Jews, without any reference at all to Israel’s prolonged abuse of the most fundamental of human rights, that of self-determination, of the Palestinian people.
→ read full articleBurning Amazonia, Denying Climate Change, Devastating Syria, Starving Yemen, Ignoring Kashmir
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Sep 2019
5 Sep 2019 – What is suggested is the dependence of human wellbeing on the emergence of a transnational activist movement that demands major structural reforms of world order that seek a favorable resolution of the bio-ethical crisis. If this seems utopian, you are quite right to react as if there is no plausible path leading from here to there. Yet I believe it is more illuminating to insist that activating the utopian imagination is the only source of a transformed realism that is sensitive to the distinctive challenges and opportunities of the 21stcentury.
→ read full article