Articles by Richard Falk
We found 818 results.
A New World Order? ISIS and the Sykes-Picot Backlash
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Dec 2015
The shaping of world order remains mainly the work of the heavyweight states that act on the basis of geopolitical calculations with respect for international law and morality displayed only as convenient. Yet the political monoculture of territorial states remains formally the exclusive foundation of world order, but its political reality is being challenged in various settings and nowhere more so than in the Middle East.
→ read full articleGerry Spence on America Menaced by Impending Police State
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Dec 2015
The book pertains to the situation here in America, but as recent events in Paris, San Bernardino, and Colorado Springs confirm, we are in danger of moving without realizing it toward some kind of ‘global police state,’ all in the name of security, trampling on the rights and self-esteem of billions of people and extinguishing the freedom of all. Such a devastating scenario cannot be separated from the predatory features of global capitalism in its present neoliberal phase.
→ read full articleResponding to Megaterrorism after Paris
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Dec 2015
6 Dec 2015 – The post below is based on an opinion piece published by Middle East Eye on December 1, 2015 under the title “A Different Response to ISIS after Paris.” My modified text places its focus on the originality of megaterrorism and its distinctive challenges, suggesting that the choice of response needs to be extended beyond the iron cage of militarism and vengeance.
→ read full articleThe Failure of U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Nov 2015
22 Nov 2015 – What follows is a modified version of the Morton-Kenney annual public lecture given at the University of Southern Illinois in Carbondale on November 18, 2015 under the joint sponsorship of the Department of Political Science and the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute.
→ read full articleEdward Said’s Humanism versus the U.S. State Department’s Antisemitism
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Nov 2015
There is an obvious tension that exists more vividly than when Edward Said was alive, and commenting on the Palestinian struggle. Israel has created on the ground a set of circumstances that seem irreversible and are institutionalizing a single apartheid Israeli state encompassing the whole of historic Palestine (minus Jordan).
→ read full articleHopes for the Morning After in Ankara: Taking Stock (2002-2015)
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Nov 2015
Let’s hope than when Erdoğan awakens the morning after his glowing victory, he chooses what is best for Turkey rather than to settle for becoming a grandiose figure who is certain to be both revered and feared. Only if he tames his ambitions will Erdoğan ensure his legacy as a great Turkish leader, second only to Ataturk.
→ read full articleAl Jazeera Turka Interview on Turkish Foreign and National Policy
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Nov 2015
28 Oct 2015 – This is a modified text of an interview conducted by Semin Gumusel Guner of Al Jazeera Turka, and published online in abbreviated form on October 19, 2015. The situation in Turkey is increasingly precarious and troublesome.
→ read full articleThe Nuclear Challenge: Seventy Years after Hiroshima & Nagasaki – Against Binaries (10)
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Oct 2015
This is the last in this series of posts prompted by the 70th observance of the atomic attacks in 1945. The intention has been to explore several of the more important dimensions of what is called here ‘nuclearism,’ the securitization of nuclear weaponry in the face of international law, international morality, and simple common sense.
→ read full articleSaudi Arabia, Royal Impunity, and the Quicksand of Special Relationships
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Oct 2015
This post challenges the geopolitics of impunity from both principled and pragmatic perspectives, and also casts doubts on ‘special relationships’ that the United States has established in the Middle East with Israel and Saudi Arabia.
→ read full articleThe Nuclear Challenge: Relying on International Law – Marshall Islands Nuclear Zero Litigation (9)
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Oct 2015
From the time of the atomic explosions at the end of World War II, there have been two contradictory sets of tendencies at work: the repudiation of the weaponry and its contemplated uses as ultimate criminality and the secret feverish refinement of the weaponry to enhance its precision, destructive effects, battlefield capabilities, and delivery systems. To date, the latter tendency has prevailed.
→ read full articleThe Nuclear Challenge: 70 Years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki – Civil Society Activism on Behalf of Nuclear Zero (8)
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Oct 2015
The Jeffersonian faith in the future of democracy rested on the cumulative impact of education on citizen participation encouraging a robust and vigilant civil society. The advocacy of nuclear disarmament must become joined at the hip with the recognition that global demilitarization and conventional disarmament are part of a retrofitted political package of unconditional anti-nuclearism.
→ read full articleAfter 70 Years: The UN Falls Short, and Yet…
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Oct 2015
Seventy years later the UN disappoints many, and bores even more, appearing to be nothing more than a gathering place for the politically powerful. I think such a negative image has taken hold because the UN these days seems more than ever like a spectator than a political actor in the several crises that dominate the current agenda of global politics.
→ read full articleNonagon of Toxic Conflict: Notes on the Turkish Quagmire
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Oct 2015
The focus on Turkey, and its role with respect to Syria, PKK, and ISIS is not meant to minimize the importance of the other actors in the region that are part of the geopolitical nonogon. There are several overlapping regional proxy wars that have precluded a diplomatic resolution, including serious intraregional tensions between Saudi Arabia and Syria as well as the extraregional rivalry between the United States and Russia.
→ read full articleThe Nuclear Challenge: 70 Years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki – Nuclear Civil Disobedience (7)
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Oct 2015
In the years after World War II there was a widespread belief that rational minds would prevail, and that nuclear weapons would not be further developed, and their possession as well as their threat or use prohibited.
→ read full articleThe Yemen Catastrophe: Beset by Contradictions of Will and Intellect
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Oct 2015
The UN Security Council seems shockingly supportive of a major Saudi military intervention that started in March 2015, severely aggravating the overall situation by unanimously adopting a one-sided anti-Houthi Resolution 2216. This Saudi use of force is contrary to international law, violates the core principle of the UN Charter, and magnifies the violent disruption of Yemeni society.
→ read full articleThe Nuclear Challenge: 70 Years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki – Fukushima and Beyond (6)
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Sep 2015
We can only wonder about the lingering effects on the Japanese national psyche of being twice so severely victimized by the diabolical power of the atom? Fukushima was an exemplary tragedy of this new century, exhibiting the destructive force of nature in lethal interaction with the Promethean embrace of nuclear technology.
→ read full articleA Gaza Centric History of Palestine: Past, Present, and Future
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Sep 2015
Jean-Pierre Filiu, ‘Gaza: A History,’ trans. John King, Oxford University Press, 2014, 440 pp., ISBN 9780190201890. This review was initially published in the Journal of the Contemporary Thought and the Islamicate World.
→ read full articleJeopardizing Japanese ‘Abnormality’: Rejoining the War System
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Sep 2015
Washington’s encouragement of Prime Minister Abe’s campaign for a ‘normal’ Japan represents a regressive move regionally and globally, and deserves critical attention from a wider geopolitical perspective as well as from the viewpoint of Japan.
→ read full articleKissinger: A Hero of Our Time
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Sep 2015
For me, Kissinger was the anti-hero, somehow available to justify the unjustifiable, and situate himself in a tradition of statecraft that celebrated the European invention of modern international relations in the 17th-19th centuries.
→ read full articleThe Nuclear Challenge: 70 Years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki – The Weird ‘Good Fortune’ of Tsutomu Yamaguchi (5)
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Sep 2015
“I was struck by the decision to bomb Hiroshima instead of Kyoto out of respect for Kyoto’s cultural heritage. It was the then Secretary of War, Henry L Stimson, who is credited with making the successful plea to the president to spare Kyoto.”
→ read full articleThe Horrifying Syrian Dilemma Persists
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Sep 2015
What this prolonged dilemma in the face of mass atrocity shows is the deficiency of state-centric world order if appraised from the perspective of human wellbeing rather than national interests. The failures in Syria are not just the shortcomings of diplomacy and manipulations of geopolitics, but also a severe mismatch between structures and capabilities of global authority and the vulnerabilities of the peoples of the world.
→ read full articleOutlook India: Interview on ‘Digital India’ & PM Narendra Modi
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Sep 2015
I am posting here an interview with the magazine OUTLOOK INDIA associated with an open letter that was signed by more than 100 Indian scholars and intellectuals, as well as those such as myself with a long research and human interest in India, expressing concern about the forthcoming visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Silicon Valley to promote his vision of ‘Digital India.’
→ read full articleThe Nuclear Challenge: 70 Years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki – The Iran Agreement in Perspective (4)
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Sep 2015
This nuclear agreement reflects ‘where we are’ in dealing with global crises, not ‘where we should be.’ If we value international law, global justice, and indeed the future of the human species, then the distinction between the realm of the ‘feasible’ and the realm of the ‘desirable’ deserves energetic critical exposure by all of us who fancy ourselves as citizen pilgrims.
→ read full articleIsrael’s Likud Troika: Burying the Oslo ‘Peace Process’
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Sep 2015
12 Sep 2015 – Israel’s relentless accumulation of territorial facts on the ground some years ago doomed the peace process associated with the Oslo Framework of Principles adopted in 1993. It became increasingly difficult to envisage an Israeli willingness to dismantle settlements and road network or remove the separation barrier, and without such steps there could never be achieved an independent and viable Palestinian state.
→ read full articleThe Sympathetic Skeptic: Luis Cabrera’s Interview with Richard Falk On Behalf Of the World Government Research Network
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Sep 2015
12 Sep 2015 – The following interview was conducted by Professor Luis Cabrera, a political theorist on the faculty of Griffith University in Brisbane Australia. Cabrera has written notable books on themes of world government and global integration.
→ read full articleThe Nuclear Challenge: 70 Years after Hiroshima and Naasaki – Gorbachev’s Response (3)
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Sep 2015
Of course, Gorbachev is appreciated in the West mainly as having presided over a political process that led to the nonviolent ending of the Cold War, the peaceful liberation of Eastern Europe, and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Yet he was also perhaps the only head of an important sovereign state…
→ read full articleThe Nuclear Challenge: 70 Years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki (2)
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
31 Aug 2015
This is a legal issue, as this book makes clear, but it is also a moral issue, a security issue and, ultimately, a spiritual issue. Humankind must step back from the nuclear abyss now, before it is too late.
→ read full articleWhy Congress Must Support the Nuclear Agreement with Iran
Akbar Ganji & Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Aug 2015
Akbar Ganji is an important human rights defender who spent several years for his efforts in an Iranian jail. He is a leading commentator on Iranian affairs and recipient of an International Press Association World Press Hero award. Our article stresses the critical importance of obtaining American approval of the nuclear agreement.
→ read full articleThe Nuclear Challenge: 70 Years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1)
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Aug 2015
The time is now ripe for the total de-linkage of nonproliferation from disarmament with respect to nuclear weapons policy. Without such a de-linkage false consciousness and confusion are unavoidable. It is time to generate populist impatience with the refusal of decades by government establishment to act on the basis of reason, ethics, and prudence.
→ read full articleLiving in the 21st Century
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 Aug 2015
A confessional to the extent of acknowledging my own surroundings of digital devices that while liberating in some respects are repressive in others. To sustain our freedom under these ‘postmodern’ conditions requires the rechristening of meditative intelligence (as distinct from the instrumental rationality that acted as wet nurse of the ‘modern.’
→ read full articleWartime Journalism: Mohammed Omer on Gaza
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Aug 2015
Omer’s prior reporting earned him the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in 2007, recognizing the excellence of his reportage on Gaza (‘a voice for the voiceless’). After receiving the award in The Netherlands, Omer on his return home received a brutal reception at the Gaza border by Israeli security guards being beaten so severely as to endure serious injury that required specialized surgery.
→ read full articlePondering Jonathan Pollard’s Release
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Aug 2015
Loyalty to the state continues to be the north star of conventional patriotism. For the citizen pilgrim solidarity with an emergent eco-humanist insurgency is the keystone of 21st century political community and ethical responsibility deserving precedence when in conflict with nationalist and tribal affinities.
→ read full articleEco-Insurgency, Tribal Vision, and Ultra-Nationalist Geopolitics
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Aug 2015
Thinking hopefully, the Anthropocene Age may soon witness the first species insurgency against the eco-tyrannical elites of the world, who have become the suicidal guardians of our neoliberal market forces joined in an unbreakable alliance with dominant forces of tribalism and nationalism. In moments of despair, the end-time hegemony of this unbreakable alliance are likely to retain control of species destiny.
→ read full articleAlliance Blackmail: Israel’s Opposition to the Iran Nuclear Agreement
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Jul 2015
JCPOA imposes more restrictions on Iranian enrichment capabilities and stockpiles, and on inspection and monitoring of compliance, than has been imposed on any country in the course of the entire nuclear era. Left out of consideration altogether was the nuclear weapons arsenal of Israel acquired with Western complicity and by covert means, as well as through operations outside the Nonproliferation Treaty regime, which is used to tie Iran’s hands and feet.
→ read full articleUN Gaza Report Part I: War Crimes during Israel’s 51-Day Assault on Gaza
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Jul 2015
Exactly a year ago, for 51 days between July 7 and August 26 Israel carried out its third major military assault on Gaza in the past six years. This last one, code named Operation Protective Edge, was the most vicious, killing 2,251 Palestinians, of which 1,462 were civilians, and included 299 women and 551 children, as well as injuring 11,231, a number that includes 3,436 children, 10% of whom have permanent disabilities, and another 1,500 have been orphaned.
→ read full articleUN Gaza Report Part II: Israel’s Counterinsuurgency Apologist, Colonel Richard Kemp
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Jul 2015
On June 25, 2015 the New York Times published an opinion piece by Kemp assessing the UN Report. What I find scandalous and perverse on the part of this self-claiming authoritative media source, is to publish such a harsh and partisan dismissal of a prudent and overly balanced report without any kind of offsetting piece.
→ read full articleReading Claudia Rankine on Race
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Jul 2015
What Claudia Rankine shares and teaches is that every African American citizen must live with the existential concreteness of racism while even the most liberal of American white citizens live with only an abstract awareness of their own unconscious racism or, at best, their rather detached empathy with the historical victimization of our African American co-citizens.
→ read full articleThe Undisclosed Second Paradox in Michael Walzer’s ‘The Paradox of Liberation’
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Jun 2015
My contention is that Walzer’s paradox dissolves as soon as the claim to categorize Zionism as a mode of ‘national liberation’ is deconstructed while the second paradox, which dwells on the moral and political interplay of what transpires when the liberation of the self is organically linked to the dispossession of the other, remains to be explained.
→ read full articleIs the Middle East America’s to Lose?
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Jun 2015
I was appalled by the embedded colonialism of a recent issue of The Economist [June 6-12, 2015], “Losing the Middle East.” Any doubt about the intent of the magazine is removed by displaying a bedraggled American flag on the cover accompanied by the sub-title “Why American must not abandon the region.”
→ read full articleTurkish Elections: It’s Not Just Erdoğan!
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Jun 2015
9 Jun 2015 – The Turkish general election on June 7th ended more or less as the polls predicted. Turkey has been put back on the shelf and yet relieved that the AKP was again supported by a significant plurality of Turkish citizens in an impressively free and fair electoral process.
→ read full articleFIFA Scandals Are Worse Than Bribes
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Jun 2015
The Palestinian Soccer Association was persuaded by Blatter to drop its charges, with a renewal of previously empty pledges to ameliorate conditions confronting Palestinians coupled with a surely ironic plea to keep ‘politics’ from intruding on ‘the beautiful game.’ As if the humiliations and constraints imposed on the Palestinian teams were not political!
→ read full articleAmerica at Its Best Is Strange
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Jun 2015
America even at its best is a strange place, alive with contradictions, a Teflon political culture that has an unshakable faith in its innocent and virtuous national character and its overall impact on the world, impervious to the ghosts of slavery and of ethnic cleansing of native Americans that should be tormenting our sleep and darkening our dreams, comfortable with its robust gun culture, and with its promiscuous reliance on rogue drones engineered to kill on command and on the brutal happenings that take place in black sites immorally situated in countries whose leaders agree to avert their gaze from the dirty work taking place.
→ read full articleParodies of Parity: Israel & Palestine
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 May 2015
Peace will come to Israel and Palestine, and be sustained, if and only if the oppressor becomes ready to dismantle its oppressive regime by withdrawing, not merely by disengaging Gaza style. So long as this is not so, direct negotiations and these periodic calls issued by Washington to resume direct talks have one main effect–to free Israel to realize its ambition to establish ‘Greater Israel’ while keeping the Palestinians in chains.
→ read full articleThe Semantics of Struggle
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 May 2015
What is not helpful, actually diversionary, is to respond as if the struggle was between good and evil, and that is what happens as soon as the insurgent challenger is labeled ‘a terrorist.’ Such language exempts the defenders of the status quo from self-criticism and considering accommodationist tactics, proscribing negotiation and assessment of grievances.
→ read full articleApartheid and the Palestinian National Struggle
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 May 2015
American citizens have a special responsibility for the long ordeal of the Palestinian people. The Jewish philosopher, Abraham Heschel observed “[f]ew are guilty, but all are responsible.” The Legitimacy War scenario gives each of us ample opportunities to exercise our individual responsibility. We owe the Palestinian people and ourselves nothing less.
→ read full articleThe Geopolitical Right of Exception at the United Nations
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Apr 2015
Overcoming the geopolitical right of exception would require its repudiation by the United States, in particular, through a recognition that it is incompatible with a peaceful, just, sustainable, and more participatory world order. This geopolitical right is also a vehicle of influence by private sector corporate and financial interests contrary to the global public interest.
→ read full articleWeakening and Discrediting the UN: The Mission of Israeli QGOs [Quasi-Government Organizations]
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Apr 2015
This is the full text of my presentation at the conference “The Israeli Lobby: Is it good for US? Is it good for Israel?” National Press Club, April 10, 2015. Although there were many illuminating presentations during the day, I would call particular attention to the memorable remarks of two highly informed Israelis, Gideon Levy and Miko Peled.
→ read full articleArmenians 1915: The Genocide Controversy
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Apr 2015
According to the great American novelist William Faulkner, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” This year being the centenary of the contested events of 1915 makes it understandable that was simmering through the decades has come to a boil, with the anniversary day of April 24th likely to be the climax of this latest phase of the unresolved drama.
→ read full articleChange versus Continuity in the Philippines
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Mar 2015
When I asked how was it possible that the Marcos past has been so cleanly erased from the contemporary blackboard of Filipino awareness, I received various answers: “They have lots of money” “They never lost popularity in their home province where lots of development took place while Marcos governed ” “The past no longer matters; it is the present that counts” “the oligarchy still rules the country and includes all leading families regardless of their political affiliations.”
→ read full articleIran’s Nuclear Program: Diplomacy, War, and (In)Security in the Nuclear Age
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Mar 2015
Iran is expected not only to forego the option to acquire nuclear weapons, but to agree to a framework of intrusive inspection if it wants to be treated as a ‘normal’ state after it proves itself worthy. As indicated, this approach seems discriminatory and hypocritical in the extreme.
→ read full articleStalking Netanyahu’s Victory: Palestine and Iran
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Mar 2015
My immediate reaction to the outcome of the Israeli elections is that for Palestinian solidarity purposes, it was desirable for Netanyahu to receive this electoral mandate. It exhibits as clearly as possible that the long discredited Oslo ‘peace process’ is truly ‘discredited.’
→ read full articleNetanyahu: The Day After
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Mar 2015
4 Mar 2015 – My reaction to Netanyahu’s theatrical performance yesterday in Congress led me to recall that the deepest thinkers turned against democracy in ancient Greece because of the susceptibility of the Athenian citizenry to demagogic oratory from opportunistic politicians. Plato, Aristotle, Thucydides all became sensitive to the degree to which the rhetoric of demagogues contributed to the decline, and eventual downfall, of ancient Athens.
→ read full articleCommentary on Netanyahu’s Visit to the United States
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Mar 2015
2 Mar 2015 – It is far too simple to be merely outraged by the arrogant presumptuousness of tomorrow’s speech by the Israeli Prime Minister to a joint session of Congress two weeks prior to national elections in Israel. The Netanyahu visit has encouraged various forms of wishful thinking.
→ read full article‘Lawfare’ and Liberation
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Mar 2015
In opposition to a law-oriented foreign policy for the United States are arguments of ‘American exceptionalism.’ Such arguments condition its applicability to American behavior and insist on the implementation of international law in relation to the alleged unlawful conduct of adversaries (e.g. Russia involvement in eastern Ukraine)
→ read full article(Italiano) Quando un terrorista non è un terrorista
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Mar 2015
Ciò che la polizia di Chapel Hill, nella Carolina del Nord ha inizialmente pubblicizzato nel mondo come ‘un litigio per un parcheggio’, è stata l’uccisione deliberata di tre giovani e devoti studenti musulmani americani per mano di un assassino, ‘nuovo ateo’ di nome Craig Stephen Hicks, motivato ideologicamente. Quello che The Economist chiama senza esitazione ‘terrorismo a Copenhagen ha implicato il tentativo di sparare a un vignettista danese che ripetutamente deride il Profeta e le convinzioni islamiche e ha implicato anche l’uccisione con arma da fuoco di una guardia di sicurezza ebrea davanti a una sinagoga.
→ read full articleWhen a Terrorist Is Not a Terrorist
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Feb 2015
What the Chapel Hill police in North Carolina initially pitched as ‘a parking dispute’ was the deliberate killing of three young and devout Muslim American students by an ideologically driven ‘new atheist’ killer named Craig Stephen Hicks. What the The Economist unhesitatingly calls ‘terrorism in Copenhagen’ involved the attempted shooting of a Danish cartoonist who repeatedly mocks the Prophet and Islamic beliefs as well as the lethal shooting of a Jewish security guard outside a synagogue.
→ read full articleInterview with William Schabas, Former Chair, UN Commission of Inquiry for 2014 Israeli Attack on Gaza
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Feb 2015
Interview with Prof. William Schabas, recently resigned under pressure as Chair of the Commission of Inquiry appointed by the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva to Investigate Allegations of State Crimes associated with Israel’s military attack on Gaza, code named Operation Protective Edge.
→ read full articleA Presumption against Intervention
Richard Falk, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Feb 2015
It is important to recall that self-determination remains the most significant anti-intervention norm in a post-colonial global setting, and is so often marginalized in debates for or against intervention.
→ read full articleOn the North Carolina Killings
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Feb 2015
14 Feb 2014 – A short interview on how to interpret the ghastly murder of three young Muslims living in the North Carolina university town of Chapel Hill.
→ read full articleMy Tribute to Serena Williams
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Feb 2015
By returning to Indian Wells Serena Williams has made the double point of at once acknowledging the pain of her past victimization and the healing power of forgiveness.
→ read full articleViewing American Sniper
Richard Falk, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Feb 2015
To question this American domination project is to antagonize the entrenched bureaucratic, media, and neoliberal forces that benefit from endless war making and its associated expenditures of trillions. In the end it is this grand project of late capitalism that American Sniper indirectly vindicates, thereby burdening the nation and the world, perhaps fatally.
→ read full articlePope Francis, Salman Rushdie, and Charlie Hebdo
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Jan 2015
The Associated Press reports that despite present tensions and the public celebration of free speech the government in Paris has “ordered prosecutors around the country to crack down on hate speech, anti-Semitism, and glorifying terrorism.” But no message by the French government mentioning ‘hate cartooning’ or the surge of ‘Islamophobia’ in the country.
→ read full articlePope Francis and Religious Cosmopolitanism
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Jan 2015
It has never been more important to counter the widely disseminated view that religion is ‘inherently’ responsible for political extremism, and more destructively, to blame Islam as a religion for sociopathic violence when the culprits are Muslim. True, religious doctrine can be twisted to serve any values, however demonic, as can secularist thinking.
→ read full articleRichard Jackson: Terrorism, Torture, and the Problem of Evil in Our Time
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Jan 2015
Richard Jackson, a professor of peace studies at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, has written a probing political essay that takes the form of an imagined dialogue between a British interrogator and an Egyptian terrorist who is apparently thought at the time of their conversation to be the mastermind of an imminent attack on Great Britain.
→ read full articleThe Irrelevance of Liberal Zionism
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Jan 2015
Frustrated by Israeli settlement expansion, excessive violence, AIPAC maximalism, Netanyahu’s arrogance, Israel’s defiant disregard of international law, various Jewish responses claim to seek a middle ground.
→ read full articleRemembering 2014 (Badly)
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Dec 2014
A posture of cynical hopelessness or despair worsens prospects for positive future developments, however empirically based such a negative assessment seems. All of us should recall that those who struggle for what seems ‘impossible’ today often turn out to be the heroes of tomorrow.
→ read full articleThe Dead End of Post-Oslo Diplomacy: What Next?
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Dec 2014
The Oslo framework was an unseemly tacit assumption that the Palestinians would be willing to carry on negotiations without complaining about the Israeli violations of international law, most conspicuously the continued unlawful settlement activity.
→ read full articleAlkarama Human Rights Award to Shireen Issawi
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Dec 2014
Geneva, 13 December 2014 – A letter written from an Israeli prison by the recipient of the award Ms. Shireen Issawi, a brave, resolute, and inspiring human rights defender who has dedicated her professional career as a lawyer to the long Palestinian national struggle for freedom, human rights, and self-determination.
→ read full articleMemoir Sketch: Championing Lost Causes
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Dec 2014
To contemplate death without the metaphysical painkillers of an imagined afterlife is to be finally alone. In a sense learning to die is equivalent to learning to live alone, and takes courage and fortitude.
→ read full articleGaza 2014 Compilation
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Dec 2014
A POMEAS Compilation of Writings Relating to Israel’s 50-Day Attack on Gaza
→ read full articleRemembering Yoshikazu Sakamoto (1927-2014)
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Dec 2014
I am sharing these words of appreciation, and hope that anyone from Japan who comes across this text will contact me, especially if they have a way of putting me in touch with either Yoshi’s family or Japanese media. I would like to believe that ‘an American appreciation’ of Professor Sakamoto, an important public intellectual, would be of interest to those who knew and admired him.
→ read full articleTwo Interviews [of mine] on Palestine
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 Nov 2014
14 Nov 2014 – Two recent interviews seek to assess the Palestinian national movement as it is unfolding at this critical time.
→ read full articleLooking Back on WW-I One Hundred Years Later: Four Mixed Messages
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 Nov 2014
Dorothy Brown Memorial Lecture, Auckland, New Zealand, November 8, 2014
→ read full articleWhy Foreign Military Intervention Usually Fails in the 21st Century
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Nov 2014
We have reached a stage in the political development of life on the planet where civilizational and species survival itself depends on the urgency of building an effective movement against the war system that remains indispensable to sustain hierarchy and exploitation, wastes huge amounts of resources, and dangerously diverts problem-solving priorities.
→ read full articleOslo Is Dead! Long Live Oslo! The UK House of Commons Supports Diplomatic Recognition of Palestine
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Oct 2014
On October 13 [2014] the House of Commons by an overwhelming vote of 274-12 urged the British government to extend diplomatic recognition to Palestine. At first glance, it would seem a rather meaningless gesture. It is a non-binding resolution.
→ read full articleDid Israel Commit Genocide in Gaza?
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Oct 2014
In a special session of the Russell Tribunal, Israel’s Operation Protective Edge was critically scrutinized from the perspective of international law, including the core allegation of genocide through testimonies by legal and weapons experts, health workers, journalists and others who experienced the 50 days of military assault.
→ read full articleQuestioning Sweden’s ‘Bold’ Diplomatic Initiative
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Oct 2014
The new center-left Swedish Prime Minister, Stefan Lofven, in his inaugural speech to Parliament indicated on October 3 [2014] the intention of the Swedish government to recognize Palestinian statehood.
→ read full articleChanging the Political Climate: A Transitional Imperative
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Oct 2014
The most daunting challenging of adapting to the realities of the anthropocene era is achieving a soft transition from state-centric world order to a geo-centric reconfiguring of political community to enable the emergence of effective and humane global governance.
→ read full article4+ Logics of Living Together on Planet Earth
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Sep 2014
It is misleading to describe ‘world order’ as consisting exclusively of sovereign territorial states. This misimpression is further encouraged by the structure of the United Nations, whose members are states, and only states.
→ read full articleAn Open Letter to Rabbi Ira Youdovin
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Serice,
15 Sep 2014
We have exchanged views frequently in the last few years, most often by way of adversary comments. I write now an ‘open letter’ because of your most recent comment objecting to my support for Steven Salaita in his campaign to have his tenure faculty appointment reinstated at the University of Illinois.
→ read full articleSteven Salaita and Zionist McCarthyism
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Sep 2014
The outcome of the Salaita case will exhibit the current balance of influence as between Zionist McCarthyism and academic freedom. That such a struggle should be in doubt is itself a national disgrace that suggests the worrisome fragility of academic freedom as reinforced by the potency of money and regressive ideology.
→ read full article(Italiano) Due tipi di antisemitismo
Richard Falk – Centro Studi Sereno Regis,
15 Sep 2014
Questo secondo tipo di presunto antisemitismo è una tattica impiegata per screditare i critici di Israele insistendo che non andrebbero distinti la critica di Israele e l’odio del popolo ebraico.
→ read full articleTwo Types of Anti-Semitism
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Sep 2014
This second type of supposed anti-Semitism is a tactic deployed to discredit critics of Israel by insisting that criticism of Israel and hatred of the Jewish people should not be distinguished.
→ read full articleRussell Tribunal Session on Palestine
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Sep 2014
On September 24 [2014] a special session of the Russell Tribunal will examine war crimes allegations against Israel arising from the 50-day Operation Protective Edge military operation that commenced on July 8th.
→ read full articleThe Outlaw State of Israel (Part I)
Richard Falk and Akbar Ganji – Al Jazeera,
25 Aug 2014
Since 1948 Israel has drawn a long list of military aggression, human rights violations and war crimes. It has become an outlaw state.
→ read full articleThe Outlaw State of Israel (Part II)
Richard Falk and Akbar Ganji – Al Jazeera,
25 Aug 2014
Unconditional US support for the state of Israel has precluded a peace settlement and destabilised the Middle East. In Part I we described the reasons that Israel has become an outlaw state. In this part we discuss US support for Israel and its consequences.
→ read full articleThree Questions for Hamas
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Aug 2014
Whether wittingly or not, the international diplomacy of the West has produced dispossession, violence, and seemingly irreconcilable conflict with disastrous and tragic consequences for the indigenous population of Palestine ever since the end of World War I.
→ read full articleStrange Regional Alignments in the Gaza Massacre
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Aug 2014
Neighborly Crimes of Complicity in Gaza – The abysmal failure of the Kerry induced talks showed definitively that Israel has lost all interest in a diplomacy that promises the Palestinians a viable and independent sovereign state at the end of the road.
→ read full articlePalestinian Open Letter to UNSG Ban Ki-moon on Gaza
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Aug 2014
Open letter to Mr. Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon: stand for law and Justice or resign!
→ read full article(Italiano) Dichiarazione congiunta sull’offensiva di Israele contro Gaza da parte di esperti di Diritto Internazionale
Richard Falk – Centro Studi Sereno Regis,
11 Aug 2014
La comunità internazionale deve fermare la punizione collettiva che Israele sta riservando alla popolazione civile nella Striscia di Gaza.
→ read full articleCruelties of Ceasefire Diplomacy
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Aug 2014
Devastation and violence has continued in Gaza, with Palestinians deaths now numbering over 1000 (overwhelmingly civilians) and Israeli deaths latest reported at being 43 (almost all military personnel). Such casualty figures and disparities raise questions of state terrorism in a stark manner.
→ read full articleJoint Declaration on International Law & Gaza – Final List of Endorsers
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Aug 2014
With only a voluntary effort the Joint Declaration on International Law in relation to the Gaza Attacks by Israel has elicited an encouraging response from legal experts from around the world, including some of our most distinguished colleagues. Others without formal legal credentials have also indicated their support, and expressed their desire to endorse the Joint Declaration.
→ read full articlePalestinian Recourse to the International Criminal Court: The Time Has Come
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Jul 2014
The political plausibility of invoking the International Criminal Court to investigate allegations of criminality directed at Israel increases with each passing day.
→ read full articleWhen BBC Calls, Don’t Answer
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Jul 2014
That is, don’t answer, if you are a certified critic of Israeli policies and practices.
→ read full articleGaza Interview
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Jul 2014
[Prefatory note: This is an interview with a knowledgeable Greek journalist covering a range of issues associated with the Gaza ordeal] – “Blood on American Hands”: Richard Falk on Palestine
→ read full articleNo Exit from Gaza: A New War Crime?
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Jul 2014
As the casualty totals continue to mount while the world looks on in stupefied inaction, the attacks go on; at the very least, from a humanitarian perspective, there should be a global outcry demanding that children, mothers, and those sick and disabled be allowed to leave the Gaza Strip until current hostilities end. Yet this is a gap in international humanitarian law and refugee law.
→ read full articleTormenting Gaza
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Jul 2014
There is so much regional turbulence at present that it is unlikely to hope for anything more than scattered verbal denunciations from authorities in the region preoccupied with other concerns, but given the gravity of the situation, attention needs to be refocused on the Palestinian ordeal.
→ read full articleA Tale of Two Cities: Istanbul and Rome
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Jul 2014
Symbolically and culturally Istanbul deserves to be privately christened as the global capital of the 21st century. It is only world city that qualifies by virtue of its geographic and civilizational hybridity, Western by history and experience, Eastern by culture and location, Northern by stage of development, modernism, and urban dynamism, Southern by affinities, outreach, and partial identification.
→ read full articleRemembering Fouad Ajami
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Jul 2014
For me Fouad Ajami’s legacy is that of ‘sleeping with the enemy.’ And it is an enemy that is politically, morally, and legally responsible for millions of deaths, displacements, and devastating losses.
→ read full articleShifts in the Climate Change Debate: Hope and Suspicion
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Jul 2014
The intense lobbying efforts by climate deniers, reinforced in the United States by a right wing anti-government tsunami that has paralyzed Congress, succeeded in blocking even modest market-based steps to induce energy efficiency.
→ read full article