Articles by Richard Falk
We found 806 results.
Learning 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.
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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.
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Post-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.
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The 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 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 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.
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(Français) Israel: Géopolitique de Gangsters et Projets Mafieux
Richard Falk | Investig'Action - TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Jun 2020
28 Mai 2020 – Richard Falk été rapporteur spécial des Nations unies pour les droits de l’homme dans les territoires palestiniens. Il analyse le plan d’annexion de pans entiers de la Cisjordanie présenté par Benyamin Netanyahu et soutenu par les États-Unis. Un plan qui témoigne d’un mépris flagrant pour le droit international. Pas étonnant de la part de responsables politiques qui se comportent comme de véritables gangsters.
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Arms 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.
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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.
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Planetary 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.
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The 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.
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Gangster Geopolitics and Israel’s Annexation Plans
Richard Falk | Al Jazeera – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 May 2020
13 May 2020 – The Israeli plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank shows a shocking disregard for international law.
→ 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 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 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.
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Investigating 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.
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COVID-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 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 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.
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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.
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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.
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(Italiano) Che cosa muove l’antisemitismo? Forme fasulle e reali
Richard Falk | Centro Studi Sereno Regis – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Jan 2020
30 Dicembre 2019 – Solo il tribalismo più estremo può spiegare l’etichettatura di coloro che si oppongono al trattamento abusivo di Israele nei confronti del popolo palestinese come “antisemiti”. Consideriamo l’incapacità di Aung San Suu Kyi di condannare l’abuso da parte del Myanmar dei Rohingya come il lancio delle nuvole più scure sul suo Nobel Premio per la Pace. È un insulto agli ebrei e agli altri semiti consentire ai sionisti di imprimere solidarietà alla lotta palestinese per i loro diritti fondamentali come antisemitismo.
→ 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 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.
→ 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.
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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]
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The War in Syria
Prof. Richard Falk | TRT – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Nov 2019
24 Oct 2019 – Richard Falk is a member of the TRANSCEND Network, an international relations scholar, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, Distinguished Research Fellow, UC Santa Barbara, author of 40 books, and a speaker and activist. In 2008, the UN Human Rights Council appointed Falk to a six-year term as a UN Special Rapporteur on “the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.” His most recent book is Achieving Human Rights (2009).
→ 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
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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.
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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]
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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 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 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.
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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 articleWill Trump’s War-Mongering Lead to War with Iran?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Aug 2019
12 Aug 2019 – This is an edited version of an interview on 11 Aug 2019 by Iranian journalist Nozhan Etezad and published in Iran News. It addresses various aspects of the troubled recent Iran/U.S. relationship.
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Banning U.S. Congresspersons from Israel
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Aug 2019
18 Aug 2019 – The decision to ban, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, two sitting members of the U.S. House of Representatives, disgraces the leaders of both the United States and Israel, confirms the illegitimacy of both political parties by their tepid responses, and confirms once more the unhealthy relationship that has evolved between Trump and Netanyahu, these two most reactionary of political figures, and badly reflects on the political atmosphere in the countries they represent.
→ 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.
→ read full articleContext Matters Except for the Palestinians
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Aug 2019
2 Aug 2019 – Palestinians could and should have done better in setting forth their own vision of peace. The extreme one-sidedness of the Trump approach handed Palestinians a golden opportunity to declare as forcibly as possible the urgent and immediate need for a new peace intermediary that was a facilitator, and not a partisan as past American presidents, or an imposer as this one seems to be. The United States had long overplayed its hand as ‘honest broker.’
→ read full articleGeopolitical Crimes: A Revolutionary Proposal
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Jul 2019
23 Jul 2019 – International criminal law has developed a framework for judging the criminal conduct of states with respect to armed conflict but is silent about even the most severe crimes of diplomacy. It is these ‘geopolitical crimes’ that are more responsible for inflicting mass suffering on civilian populations than are most of the forms of international behavior currently criminalized. I am aware that criminalizing acts of diplomacy is a revolutionary idea, but no less for that, deserving of commentary and debate.
→ read full articleRequired Reading: Noura Erakat on Palestine and Law
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Jul 2019
Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine, by Noura Erakat, Stanford University Press, 2019 – I make no claim to approach this book with an open mind. Making a fuller disclosure, I acknowledge with some pride that I have endorsed Justice for Some even before it was published, and my blurb appears on its back cover.
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(Italiano) Verso il bordo della guerra: Provocare l’Iran per che cosa? Per chi?
Richard Falk | Centro Studi Sereno Regis – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Jul 2019
10 Luglio 2019 – L’intervista seguente con il giornalista iraniano Javad Hieran-Nia è stata pubblicata in Iran su Iran Mehr News e Tehran Times insieme al Middle Scholar’s Statement sulla politica iraniana di Trump.
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Remembering the World Court Advisory Opinion on Israel’s Separation Wall after 15 Years
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Jul 2019
The question that remains is ‘how much longer can the Zionist Project swim against the strong historical current of anti-colonialism?’ The answer in my view depends on whether the global solidarity movement, together with Palestinian resistance, can reach a tipping point that leads Israeli leadership to reconsider its ‘security’ and its future. Such a point was reached in South Africa, admittedly under quite different conditions, but with an analogous sense that the Afrikaner leadership would never give up control without being defeated in a bloody struggle for power.
→ read full articleToward the Brink of War: Provoking Iran for What? For Whom?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Jul 2019
30 Jun 2019 – The following interview with the Iranian journalist Javad Hieran-Nia was published in Iran’s Mehr News and Tehran Times together with Middle Scholar’s Statement on Trump’s Iran Policy.
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What Comes after Bahrain?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Jul 2019
6 Jul 2019 – Is There an ‘After’ after the Kushner Show in Bahrain? The growing movement of global solidarity as reinforced by Palestinian acts of resistance to apartheid structures of oppression is the sole basis for a peaceful future for both peoples, Palestinians and Israeli Jews.
→ read full articleAn American Attack on Iran Would Be an Unmitigated Disaster for the US, Iran and the World: Iran War Statement
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Jul 2019
25 Jun 2019 – The following statement on US warmongering in relation to Iran was prepared by Mark LeVine, Professor of History, University of California, Irvine and myself. Some of the early signatories are among the leading scholars in the field of Middle East Studies. Their names are listed below.
→ read full articleActing Beyond the State: Toward a Cosmopolitan Awakening?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Jun 2019
20 Jun 2019 – The following review of Ayça Çubukçu’s For the Love of Humanity: The World Tribunal on Iraq, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018, is scheduled to appear in a forthcoming issue of the London Review of International Law.
→ read full articleJurisprudential Notes toward Empowering and Liberating International Law and the United Nations
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Jun 2019
2 Jun 2019 – When law is aligned with injustice it gives rise to resistance, which historically is associated with the hallowed tradition of civil disobedience, influential with Tolstoy, Gandhi, and more recently, Martin Luther King, Jr. In these contexts civil disobedience can involve the nonviolent transgression of any legal norm that calls attention to the specific injustice.
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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 articleR2P and the Palestinian Ordeal: Humiliating the UN
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 May 2019
23 May 2019 – The fact that Gaza has not even been discussed at the UN, despite the prolonged, intense victimization of its vulnerable and impoverished civilian population is one more indication of the primacy of geopolitics and the marginalization of international law and morality. Only civil society activism can keep the torch of justice burning in this global climate.
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On My 88thBirthday: A Reflection
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 May 2019
Poem at Springtime
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Required Reading on Palestine
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 May 2019
Stone Men: The Palestinians Who Built Israel, by Andrew Ross, Verso; 2019 – Andrew: “… it would be no exaggeration to say that the ‘stone men’ of Palestine have built every state in the region except their own.” My final assessment: no matter how much you think you know about Palestine, you do not know enough until you have read this book.
→ read full articleIn Search of Equivalence
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 May 2019
Poem at Springtime
→ read full article(Italiano) L’effimera aspettativa di vita delle democrazie autocratiche
Richard Falk | Centro Studi Sereno Regis – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 May 2019
Le varie democrazie autocratiche ora dominanti il paesaggio politico del mondo sono condannate in quanto forma politica, ma che cosa verrà dopo di esse non si può prevedere. Potrebbe essere un’occasione di celebrazione o di disperazione, o entrambe se società differenti si sposteranno in direzioni opposte, chi verso più profonde democrazie, chi verso una governance fascista.
→ read full articleIstanbul Elections: A Turkish Constitutional Crisis? Davutoglu’s Manifesto
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 May 2019
10 May 2019 – Despite all the deficiencies of Turkish political life and democracy, the most important power is the legitimacy of the elections. The most fundamental value of our political future is the voice of the people, and this will be manifested at the ballot box. Regardless of the excuse given and whatever the rationale, what happened after the March 31st election and the decision of annulment by the High Electoral Council has inflicted damage on these core values.
→ read full articleDoes the Overthrow of el-Bashir in Sudan Signal a Second Arab Spring?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Apr 2019
28 Apr 2019 – Of particular interest is whether the mass movement of the Sudanese people and the counterrevolutionary dangers posed by the retention of emergency powers by the military entourage surrounding the former dictator will destroy the hopes of the mobilized population as happened in Egypt in seemingly analogous circumstances.
→ 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 articleOn Taking Controversial Public Positions: A Reflection
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Apr 2019
18 Apr 2019 – I have chosen activism to the end, both continuing with sports to the limit of my ability and to honor the political commitments of a citizen pilgrim (dedicated to a journey to a desired and desirable political community that functions now only as an imaginary, yet has the ambition to become a political project) to the best of my ability.
→ read full articleJulian Assange: Criminal or Benefactor?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Apr 2019
14 Apr 2019 – I suppose it is of interest that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have found something to agree about—the criminal indictment of Julian Assange. Trump is acutely vulnerable to the exposure of truth and Clinton blames her electoral defeat in 2016 partly on what WikiLeaks disclosed about her improper use of a government computer to send private emails. Such are the perverse ways of the deeply unjust.
→ read full articleMaking Peace: Israel/Palestine
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Apr 2019
Interview with Samu Tamás Gergő, a Hungarian journalist, April 9, 2019, on conditions of peace for the Palestine/Israel, with some initial emphasis on my experience as UN Special Rapporteur addressing human rights in Occupied Palestine on behalf of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
→ read full articleBlood in the Water: How the U.S. and Israel Conspired to Ambush the USS Liberty, by Joan Mellen
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Apr 2019
29 Mar 2019 – The author on the basis of meticulous research probes every detail to establish beyond a shadow of a doubt that the sinking of USS Liberty in the midst of the 1967 War is the greatest moral and political scandal in all of American history. In what was long described as a ‘mistake’ or ‘accident’ Israeli planes and submarines attacked the Liberty, killing 34, wounding 174 American naval personnel.
→ read full articleChallenging Pitzer/Haifa Study Abroad Program: Can Civil Society Act?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Mar 2019
22 Mar 2019 – This post is an open letter to the President of Pitzer College urging support for reconsideration of his veto of a resolution urging the college to suspend its study abroad program with the University of Haifa until Israel ends its discriminatory policies in the educational sphere that affect Palestinians and anyone exercising rights of free expression in a manner that Israel disapproves, and more specifically the BDS Campaign.
→ read full articleIlhan Omar, AIPAC, Congress, and the Future of American Democracy
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Mar 2019
The Ilhan Omar Incident: A Zionist Witch Hunt?
→ read full articleWorrying about Huawei: Is China Winning the G5 Race?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Mar 2019
20 Feb 2019 – My responses to questions posed by Sputnik News Agency a few days ago. The effort to warn European countries not to use equipment from the Chinese telecom giant, Huawei, is part warning and part threat. It claims to be a matter of security, but seems like an effort to avoid the competitive challenge posed by the superior technology of Huawei by claiming a threat to the security of European countries because China will be able to engage in unauthorized data surveillance.
→ 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.
→ read full articleA Response to Heikki Patomaki: Is the Time Right for a World Political Party?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Feb 2019
16 Feb 2019 – My commentary on an essay by Heikki Patomiki, a leading Finnish scholar, where he explores and cautiously advocates a civil society global effort to establish a world political party in a form appropriate to global conditions and with the overriding goal of the enhancement of the individual and collective wellbeing of humanity.
→ read full articleDenouncing Socialism, Practicing Fascism
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Feb 2019
8 Feb 2019 – With Trump the silences are usually as expressive of his intentions as the incoherent dogmas. Indeed, his Second State of the Union Address (delivered in Congress on February 5, 2019) gives a clear insight into the political mentality of tormentor in chief when it comes to the human condition.
→ read full articleThe Future of Statehood: Israel & Palestine
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Feb 2019
3 Feb 2019 – Fatah, Hamas, the Future of Statehood and Peace Prospects – Interview from Brazilian journalist Rodrigo Craveiro for Correio Braziliense on current prospects of Palestinian national movement.
→ read full articleA Talel of Two Speeches: Marc Lamont Hill on Palestine, Martin Luther King, Jr., on Vietnam
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Jan 2019
21 Jan 2019 – In my last post I criticized the news approach of CNN, and by indirection, that of the MSM. I complained that by being Trump-obsessed CNN ever since 2016 helps pacify the American political scene, making us view demagogic politics as nothing more serious than ‘a reality show.’ Beyond the obsession itself, is the inexplicable redundancy in which successive news programs cover the latest episode from virtually identical viewpoints, while ignoring the whole panorama of major developments elsewhere in the world.
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What’s Wrong with CNN?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Jan 2019
16 Jan 2019 – CNN presents itself as the most ‘trusted name in news’ available to the TV viewing public. Of course, this claim of integrity is to be greatly valued if the news channel lives up to such a standard when fairly scrutinized.
→ read full articleToward Geopolitical Disengagement: Uncertain yet Desirable
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Jan 2019
13 Jan 2019 – For a region that has endured so much suffering and abuse, I offer fervent wishes that we will be surprised by hopeful developments during coming months. Already the shakeup of regional politics and perceptions due to the Trump withdrawal move is ambiguous in its implications, but seemingly leading in the positive direction of U.S. political disengagement, and an end to the delusions of being ‘a force for good.’
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Palestinian Aspirations versus Zombie Geopolitics
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Jan 2019
8 Jan 2019 – The mental processes that infuse zombie geopolitics with political vitality long after their viability has vanished is partly mysterious, and partly a calculated effort to deny a changed reality. More concretely, I have in mind the afterlife of ‘the two-state solution’ to the long Israel-Palestine confrontation. It retained its status as the only practical solution for years after it became crystal clear to even semi-informed observers that it would never happen.
→ read full articleReflections for the New Year: 2019
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Jan 2019
31 Dec 2018 – My private commitment for 2019 is to nurture humility, while trusting the formation of identities that link a progressive vision for our nation to a cosmopolitan embrace of humanity, with a major infusion of empathy. And as citizens, we need to be rooted in our particular personal and public experiences, while reaching out to the world and to the future.
→ read full articleJerusalem and Foreign Embassies: Legal, Political, and Diplomatic Implications
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Jan 2019
6 Jan 2019 | Interview with Rodrigo Craveiro, Correio Braziliense – It seems obvious that Israel is trying to induce enough governments to move their embassy to Jerusalem so as to weaken the legal, political, and diplomatic weight of the UNGA Resolution that declared such an initiative by the USA to be ‘null and void’ by a vote of 128-9, finding the proposed move unlawful and lacking any political effect.
→ read full articleIn Praise of the Syria Withdrawal
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
31 Dec 2018
29 Dec 2018 – Trump’s withdrawal of American troops from Syria that defied the bipartisan consensus that has shaped U.S. foreign policy since 1945 poses the biggest challenge to the Trump presidency, especially as it shook Israel’s confidence and coincides with woes of Wall Street. In coming weeks it should become clear whether the American version of the deep state remains asleep or perceives this ‘watershed moment’ as the opportunity to restore confidence in the pre-Trump version of world order.
→ read full articleCan Yemen Be Saved?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Dec 2018
23 Dec 2018 – The people of Yemen have been experiencing devastating civil strife for several years. This ordeal was greatly intensive by a massive and sustained Saudi-led air attacks and other belligerent tactics that have targeted civilians, even hospitals. Several recent events hint at the possibility of restoring peace to the country, thereby averting the worst effects of a threatened mass famine, risks starvation for more than 75% of Yemen’s population of over 22 million.
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