Articles by Richard Falk
We found 818 results.
Obama’s Legacy: “Don’t Do Stupid Stuff”
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Jun 2014
Cautioning against militarism at West Point President on May 22nd Obama in a speech mostly notable for its reassertion of what might be best understood as imperial nationalism of global scope declared the following:
→ read full articleProsecuting Syrians for War Crimes Now
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Jun 2014
Is justice served when the authority of the ICC is invoked as a political instrument to influence the outcome of a civil war? Why was there never any initiative to pursue leaders of the United States and the United Kingdom during the course of the Iraq War, which also included many incidents that seemed to qualify as crimes against humanity? Double standards?
→ read full articlePope Francis Visit to Palestine
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Jun 2014
Pope Francis’ visit to the Holy Land raises one overwhelming question: ‘what is the nature of religious power in our world of the 21st century?’ ‘Can it have transformative effects’?
→ read full articleOn Citizenship in the 21st Century
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 May 2014
Reading Robert Paehlke’s carefully crafted essay on global citizenship provides the occasion both for an appreciation of his approach and some doubts about its degree of responsiveness to the urgencies of the present or more specifically its adequacy in relation to the call for ‘transformative vision and praxis’ that lies at the heart of the ‘Great Transition Initiative.’
→ read full articleCitizens versus Subjects in a Democratic Society: The American Case
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 May 2014
In my understanding silence is passivity as a way of being. Silence can be much more than the avoidance of speech and utterance, and is most poignantly expressed through evasions of body, heart, and soul.
→ read full articleArmenian Grievances, Turkey, United States and 1915 (I)
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 May 2014
The Turkish government has reiterated its offer to establish a joint commission composed of Armenian, Turkish and international historians to establish an authoritative narrative. The idea that core concern is ‘historical’ misses a main point that such a traumatic series of events need to be interpreted from multiple perspectives, including that of international criminal law.
→ read full article‘Genocide’ in 1915: Law, Language, and Politics (II)
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 May 2014
I am arguing that the historical argument should be put to rest, and that the issues that need to be resolved relate to the legal questions surrounding the applicability of genocide, as well as the related semiotic and political questions associated what be called ‘the politics of genocide.’
→ read full articlePalestine: Why the Peace Talks Collapsed—And Should Not Be Resumed
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 May 2014
It is important that world public opinion reject as meaningless the diplomatic charade of peace talks while the fate of a people continues to be daily sacrificed on the altar of geopolitics.
→ read full articleThe New Interventionists: Civil Society Activists
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Apr 2014
Debates about intervention are inevitable in an interdependent world order in which ideals of territorial sovereignty clash with the interests and values of hegemonic political actors. There are no either/or solution for the dilemmas posed. What seems preferable is a contextual assessment tempered by humility arising from the experience of past interventions.
→ read full articleNonviolent Geopolitics: Law, Politics, and 21st Century Security*
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Apr 2014
In this short essay, my attempt will be to articulate a conception of a world order premised on nonviolent geopolitics, as well as to consider some obstacles to its realization.
→ read full articleThe Obsolescence of Ideology: Debating Syria and Ukraine
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Mar 2014
To insist that the left/right distinction obscures more than it reveals is not the end of the story. To contend that ideology is unhelpful as a guide for action is not the same as saying that it is irrelevant to the public debate.
→ read full articleWhy Do I Persist?
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 Mar 2014
I have been asked recently why do I persist in working hard for the things that I believe in, knowing that I will die in the next several years, and am almost certain not to be around for the catastrophic future that seems to cast its dark shadow across the road ahead, and can only be removed by a major transnational movement of the peoples of the world.
→ read full articleBreaking Free: Choosing a Better Human Future
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Mar 2014
I have long believed that prospects for a hopeful human future depend on radical and visionary feelings, thought, and action… Citizenship, then, becomes enacted in time and is not conceived only as a dimension of space as, for instance, in opting to be ‘a world citizen.’
→ read full articleDecember 2013 – Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Occupied Since 1967
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Mar 2014
5 Mar 2014 – This is my last report as Special Rapporteur on Occupied Palestine as my term is coming to an end after six years. The mandate is important as a source of information pertaining to the realities of occupation from the perspective of international humanitarian law and international criminal law
→ read full articleSyria: What to Do Now
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Mar 2014
It is not only that the interventionists, and perhaps the anti-interventionists are motivated by a convergence of humanitarian/moral considerations with geostrategic ambitions, but that the nature of these hidden calculations are discussed in governmental circles behind locked doors and transcribed in secret policy memoranda.
→ read full articleOMAR: Uncovering Occupied Palestine
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2014
OMAR is the second film directed by Hany Alu-Assad to be a finalist among foreign language films nominated to receive an Oscar at the 2014 Academy Awards ceremony on March 2nd.
→ read full articleA Meeting with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini 35 Years Ago
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2014
Khomeini by insisting on all or nothing against the Shah did create an Iranian transition to a new political order. In contrast the 2011 militants in Tahrir Square were content with the removal of Mubarak and promises of reforms, and ended up succumbing to a counter-revolutionary tsunami that has reconstituted the repressive Mubarak past in a more extreme form.
→ read full articleAn American Idol: The United States Should ‘Govern’ the World?
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Jan 2014
This post consists of a much expanded text of an opinion piece that was published by AJE on January 18, 2014; it seeks to discredit imperial and neoliberal claims that the United States is a benevolent hegemon, providing global public goods to the world as a whole, including supposed geopolitical and ideological rivals.
→ read full articleImperiled Polities: Egypt and Turkey—Two Visions of Democracy
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Jan 2014
The recent disturbing political turmoil in Turkey and Egypt, each in its own way, is illustrative. In both countries there are strong, although quite divergent, traditions of charismatic authoritarian leadership, reinforced by quasi-religious sanctification. Very recently, however, this authoritarian past is being challenged by counter-traditions of populist legitimacy.
→ read full articleThe Emergent Palestinian Imaginary
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Jan 2014
It is often overlooked that as early as 1988, and possibly earlier, the unified Palestinian leadership has decisively opted for what I would call a ‘sacrificial’ peace. By sacrificial I mean an acceptance of peace and normalization with Israel that is premised upon the relinquishment of significant Palestinian rights under international law.
→ read full articleBeholding 2014
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Jan 2014
2013 was not a happy year in the chronicles of human history, yet there were a few moves in the directions of peace and justice. What follows are some notes that respond to the mingling of light and shadows that are flickering on the global stage, with a spotlight placed on the main war zone of the 21st century—the Middle East, recalling that Europe had this negative honor for most of the modern era.
→ read full article2014: International Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian People
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Jan 2014
In a little noted initiative the General Assembly on November 26, 2013 voted to proclaim 2014 the International Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.
→ read full articleSamer Issawi, Hunger Strikes, and the Palestinian Struggle
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Dec 2013
For the last three years Palestinian prisoners unlawfully detained in Israeli jails have been engaged in hunger strikes to protest administrative detention, imprisonment without indictment, charges, and access to allegedly incriminating evidence, abusive arrest procedures…
→ read full articleNorthern Ireland and the Israel/Palestine ‘Peace Process’
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Dec 2013
I visited Belfast the last few days during some negotiations about unresolved problems between Unionist and Republican (or Nationalist) political parties, I was struck by the absolute dependence for any kind of credibility of this process upon the unblemished perceived neutrality of the mediating third party.
→ read full articleThe Palestinian National Movement Advances
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Dec 2013
The Palestinian shift toward Legitimacy Wars is a recognition that in this kind of conflict the decisive battles are generally not won by the side with the superior weaponry and technology but rather by the side that prevails in the realm of ideas and symbols of just cause.
→ read full articleEscaping the Abusive State: After Snowden
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Dec 2013
We can and must do better, above all as citizens engaged in the protection of the sort of society we wish to live in; without civic activism of a militant character we can wave goodbye to the promise of genuine democracy.
→ read full articleNelson Mandela’s Inspiration
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Dec 2013
Fifteen years ago I had the extraordinary pleasure of meeting Nelson Mandela in Cape Town while he was serving as President of South Africa. His journey, like that of Gandhi, was not without its major disappointments.
→ read full articleGaza: The Unfolding Humanitarian Catastrophe
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Servivce,
2 Dec 2013
Sadly – how sadly – the Palestinian Authority and the quisling Fateh are in lockstep, fellow travelers with this miasma of shame and inhumanity. Hamas and Fateh must overcome the USraeli “divide and rule” tactics and link arms as a solid force of resistance to the illegal occupation of their homeland. Today, that must be the number one priority!
→ read full articleClashing Views of Political Reality: Chomsky versus Dershowitz
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Dec 2013
The book is much more than a comparison of two influential voices, one critical the other apologetic, with respect to the Israel/Palestine struggle and the subordination of private liberties to the purveyors of state-led security at home and abroad.
→ read full articleTwo Forms of Lethal Polarization: Egypt and Turkey
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Nov 2013
I am arguing that these instances of polarization amount to a deadly virus that attacks the body politic in countries with weak constitutional traditions, especially if such societies are beset by economic disappointment and significant regional and global hostility due to ideological and political tensions.
→ read full articleInvisible Horizons of a Just Palestine/Israel Future
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Nov 2013
4 Nov 2013 – I spent last week at the United Nations, meeting with ambassadors of countries in the Middle East and presenting my final report to the Third Committee of the General Assembly as my term as Special Rapporteur for Occupied Palestine comes to an end.
→ read full articleMalala and Eartha Kitt: Words that Matter
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Oct 2013
I connect Malala and Eartha Kitt in my mind because both seized the moment to speak truth to power, probably sensing that it meant they would never be invited back [to the White House], and for Eartha Kitt it was worse than that. It seems almost certain that neither of these fearless women would have been invited in the first place if their intentions to speak out had been known in advance.
→ read full articleReport of SR on Occupied Palestine to UNGA, 29 Oct 2013
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Oct 2013
In the present report, while noting the continuing non-cooperation of Israel, the Special Rapporteur addresses Israel’s Operation “Pillar of Defense” and the general human rights situation in the Gaza Strip, as well as the expansion of Israeli settlements – and businesses that profit from Israeli settlements and the situation of Palestinians detained by Israel.
→ read full articlePost-Intervention Libya: A Militia State
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Oct 2013
We can only wonder whether Libya as of 2013 is not better understood as a ‘militia state’ rather than a ‘failed state,’ which seems like an emerging pattern for societies that endure Western military intervention. The parallels of Libya with Iraq and Afghanistan are uncomfortably suggestive.
→ read full articleIsrael’s Politics of Fragmentation
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Oct 2013
If the politics of deflection exhibit the outward reach of Israel’s grand strategy of territorial expansionism and regional hegemony, the politics of fragmentation serves Israel’s inward moves designed to weaken Palestinian resistance, induce despair, and de facto surrender.
→ read full articleIsrael’s Politics of Deflection
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Oct 2013
It seems clear that international law supports Palestinian claims on the major issues in contention: borders, refugees, Jerusalem, settlements, resources (water, land), statehood, and human rights. Then why not insist on resolving the conflict by reference to international law with such modifications as seem mutually beneficial?
→ read full articleThe Westgate Mall Massacre: Reflections
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Sep 2013
The Westgate Mall Massacre: The Rage of Fanaticism – Imagine deciding on the life or death of any person, but particularly a child, by whether or not they could name the mother of Mohammed or recite a verse from the Koran. Of course, even fanatics have a certain logic of justification that makes their acts congruent with a warped morality.
→ read full articleThe Violence of Psalm 21
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Sep 2013
Psalm 21 and the Human Predicament – If a religious text nurtures morally unacceptable impulses that are acted upon either consciously or sub-consciously in political domains, how can these adverse influences be repudiated without purporting to claim a hegemonic status for a secular reader?
→ read full articleResolving the Syrian Chemical Weapons Crisis: Sunlight and Shadows
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Sep 2013
Not only did Vladimir Putin exhibit a new constructive role for Russia in 21st statecraft, spare Syria and the Middle East from another cycle of escalating violence, but he articulated this Kremlin initiative in the form of a direct appeal to the American people. For Putin to be so forthcoming, without being belligerent, was particularly impressive.
→ read full articleSyria: Obama’s Surprising (and Confusing) Latest Moves
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Sep 2013
President Obama’s August 31[2013] remarks from the White House Rose Garden will long be remembered for their strangeness, but the final interpretation of their significance will have to await months if not years. There are three dimensions, at least, that are worth pondering.
→ read full articleThe Spreading Wings of Islamophobia in Egypt
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Sep 2013
The Orwellian features of the military takeover in Egypt have received attention, although the use of language to evade unwanted truth continues because incentives to do so persist. What, we might ask, is the el-Sisi concept of inclusiveness? At present, the only plausible answer is ‘my way or the highway.’
→ read full articleGlobalizing Homeland Security
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Aug 2013
It is not just one thing that should worry us about the authoritarian tendencies of the Obama presidency, but one thing after another. The cumulative effect of it all. The latest sign of the times was the August 19th detention of David Miranda, Glenn Greenwald’s partner, at Heathrow Airport under the British anti-terrorist law for nine hours.
→ read full articleOn Bradley Manning & America
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Aug 2013
I am posting on this blog two important texts that deserve the widest public attention and deep reflection in the United States and elsewhere. I would stress the following:
→ read full articleEgypt: Extreme Polarization and Genocidal Politics
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Aug 2013
In these morbid days, there are some home truths that are worth reflecting upon. What Happened After Tahrir Square?
→ read full articleSnowden’s Post-Asylum Relevance
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Aug 2013
The Snowden issues remain important, and it is too soon to turn aside as if the only question was whether the U.S. Government would in the end, through guile and muscle, gain control of Snowden.
→ read full articleWhat If a Russian Snowden?
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Aug 2013
‘Political Crimes’ Are Non-Extraditable and Snowden’s Transfer to the United States for Prosecution Would Have Been a Setback for Human Rights and International Law
→ read full articleWhen Polarization Becomes Worse than Authoritarianism Defer Democracy
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Aug 2013
We may be living at a historical moment when democracy as the government of choice gives rise to horrifying spectacles of violence and abuse. These difficulties with the practice of democracy are indirectly, and with a heavy dose of irony, legitimizing moderate forms of authoritarian government.
→ read full articleReviving the Israel-Palestine Negotiations: The Indyk Appointment
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Aug 2013
Appointing Martin Indyk as Special Envoy to the upcoming peace talks was to be expected. It was signaled in advance. And yet it is revealing and distressing.
→ read full articleGeopolitical Winds Blow in China’s Direction
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Jul 2013
Among those who comment influentially from the sidelines of power, there are new trends visible in thinking about American foreign policy.
→ read full articleGlobal Big Brother and the Snowden Hollywood Chase
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Jul 2013
We will miss the most crucial point of Snowden’s ‘crimes’ if we do not devote our attention to these fundamental political challenges directed at human security, democratic ways of life, and a pluralist world order. To be distracted by the circus of the Snowden chase any longer is to play along with a shameless geopolitical caper!
→ read full articleMisreading the Snowden Affair
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Jul 2013
So far in the Snowden Affair it is small Latin American countries, including Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela, that have risked the ire of the United States by pursuing independent policies with respect to Snowden, and acting correctly from the perspective of law and morality.
→ read full articleProtecting Snowden
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Jul 2013
What seems most dismaying about the Snowden affair is the prosecutorial zeal of the Obama presidency, supposedly liberal in its outlook on matters of personal freedom and the values of constitutional government. What Snowden has done is so clearly ‘a political crime,’ if it is a crime at all, and in recognition of this there has existed since the French Revolution been seen as inconsistent with the generally desirable policy of inter-governmental cooperation in the apprehension of suspected criminals.
→ read full articlePolitical Infernos: United States, Turkey, Egypt
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Jul 2013
A New Political Inferno: Polarization of Immature Democracies – Most importantly, some forces of opposition despair of ever succeeding by democratic procedures, while others pin their hopes on the next election, or the one after that.
→ read full articleGaza: 7th Year of Unlawful Blockade (UN HRC SR Press Release)
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 Jun 2013
I am posting a press release of yesterday, 14 June 2013, to take note of the start of the seventh year of the Israeli blockade. After the Mavi Marmara incident, 31 May 2010 and the more recent November ceasefire agreement between Israel and the Gaza government there was an undertaking to ease the blockade with respect to the flow back and forth of people and goods, but the situation remains desperate for the civilian population of Gaza.
→ read full articleSpecial Rapporteur’s Report on Occupied Palestine, 10 June 2013
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 Jun 2013
What follows below is the text of the report presented on 10 June 2013 to the Human Rights Council. It offers an overview of the situation from the perspective of human rights and international humanitarian law in occupied Palestine. Both Israel and the United States boycotted the session, presumably to express their displeasure with the report and my role as Special Rapporteur.
→ read full articleWhose ‘Two State’ Solution? End Game or Intermission?
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Jun 2013
In pondering this dismal landscape of peace talk without peace, one wonders what became of ‘the roadmap’ and ‘the Quartet.’ It may be a small blessing that their irrelevance is being tacitly acknowledged. These creations never seemed more than a thin and deceitful veil thrown over a one sided American control over Israel/Palestine diplomacy.
→ read full articleResponding to the Syrian Challenge
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Jun 2013
My essential argument is that until the parties engaged in hostilities on both sides recognize their inability to achieve a political victory by way of the battlefield, and external actors acquiesce in this recognition, there can only take place an unproductive and wrongheaded coercive diplomacy of partisanship, supporting the claims of the anti-Assad side.
→ read full articleEnding Perpetual War? Endorsing Drone Warfare?
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Jun 2013
That President Obama chose on 23 May [2013] to unveil his second term cautionary approach to counter-terrorism at the National Defense University epitomized the ambiguity of the occasion. The choice of venue was itself a virtual guarantee that nothing would be said or done on that occasion that challenges in any fundamental way the global projection of American military power.
→ read full articleOn Political Preconditions
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 May 2013
The Netanyahu led government is clearly committed to achieving the political embodiment of Greater Israel, and would not settle for anything less. It is seeking as much legitimation as possible for this expansionist objective, hopeful that adroit diplomacy with American help can yield such a result.
→ read full articleRethinking ‘Red Lines’
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 May 2013
What is strange in all this is that Obama talks the talk, but seems unwilling to walk the walk. Such a disjunction invites cynicism about law and morality, and induces despair on the part of those of us who believe the world we inhabit badly needs red lines, but the right red lines.
→ read full articleClarifying Boston Marathon Post
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Apr 2013
I want to offer a brief clarification and an explanation.
→ read full articleA Commentary on the Marathon Murders
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Apr 2013
Aside from the tensions of the moment, self-scrutiny and mid-course reflections on America’s global role is long overdue. Such a process is crucial both for the sake of the country’s own future security and also in consideration of the wellbeing of others. Such adjustments will eventually come about either as a result of a voluntary process of self-reflection or through the force of unpleasant events.
→ read full articleDivestment in the University of California at Santa Barbara
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Apr 2013
Moving Toward Divestment from Corporations Profiting from Israeli Militarism, Occupation, and Settlements.
→ read full articleSeeing in the Dark – with Victoria Brittain
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Apr 2013
As with the best of journalists, Victoria Brittain has spent a lifetime enabling us to see in the dark! Or more accurately, she has shined a bright light on those whose suffering has been hidden by being deliberately situated in one or another shadow land of governmental and societal abuse, whether local, national, or geopolitical in its animus.
→ read full articleReading Palestinian Prison Diaries
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Apr 2013
The Prisoners’ Diaries: Palestinian Voices from the Israeli Gulag, Gaza, 2013. What is most compelling is how much the material expresses the shared concerns of these prisoners. A few keywords dominate the texts: pain, God or Allah, love, dream, homeland, steadfastness, tears, freedom, dream, prayer. Survival with as much dignity as possible in a dank and poorly lit circumstances of isolation, humiliation, acute hostility on the part of the prison staff, including abusive neglect by the medical personnel.
→ read full articleWhat Was Wrong with Obama’s Speech in Jerusalem
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Mar 2013
In retrospect, worse than speech was the visit itself. Obama should never have undertaken such the visit without an accompanying willingness to treat the Palestinian reality with at least equal dignity to that of the Israeli reality and without some indication of how to imagine a just peace based on two states for two peoples given the severe continuing Israeli encroachments on occupied Palestinian territory that give every indication of permanence.
→ read full articleThe Iraq War: 10 Years Later
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Mar 2013
After a decade of combat, casualties, massive displacement, persisting violence, enhanced sectarian tension and violence between Shi’ias and Sunnis, periodic suicide bombings, and autocratic governance, a negative assessment of the Iraq War as a strategic move by the United States, United Kingdom, and a few of their secondary allies, including Japan, seems near universal.
→ read full articleEnvisioning a World without Nuclear Weapons
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Mar 2013
Book Review – Zero: The Case for Nuclear Weapons Abolition, by David Krieger, 2013, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. I have known David Krieger for the past twenty-five years, and he has never wavered, even for a day, from his lifelong journey dedicated to ridding the world of nuclear weapons and the threat of nuclear war.
→ read full articleInvestigate the Death of Arafat Jaradat
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Mar 2013
What follows is a news report prompted by my press release on the shocking treatment of Arafat Jaradat who died while being held in an Israel prison. 27 February 2013 – A United Nations human rights expert today called for an international investigation into the death of Palestinian prisoner Arafat Jaradat, who died in Israeli custody just a few days after his arrest.
→ read full articleReflections on Teju Cole’s OPEN CITY
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Feb 2013
Anyone interested in the world, or for that matter, an affection for the greatest of modern cities—New York—will find Teju Cole’s Open City, a feast for both mind and heart.
→ read full articleBeyond the Haunted Imagination
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Feb 2013
Ever since atomic bombs were exploded over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the closing days of World War II end of the world forebodings have been present in Western cultural consciousness. In the background of such thinking is the religious anticipation of a day of judgment when life in earth will be replaced by the consignment of everyone then living to either the hell of damnation or the heaven of salvation.
→ read full articleUrgent UN Press Statement: Release Palestinian Hunger Strikers Now
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Feb 2013
The following press statement was issued 13 February 2013 under the auspices of the UN Human Rights Council in my capacity as Special Rapporteur for Palestinian Territories Occupied since 1967. This nonviolent resistance to unlawful and abusive detention practices by Israel is a human rights outrage that should be the occasion of media attention and a worldwide outcry. I encourage all who can to exert pressure on Israel before these individuals die in captivity. They are currently reported to be in grave condition. Please use all social networking tools to alert contacts.
→ read full articleForget ‘Normal’ Politics
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Feb 2013
Political life is filled with policy choices that are made mainly on the basis of calculations of advantage, as well as reflecting priorities and values of those with the power of decision. In a constitutional framework of governance the rule of law sets outer limits as to permissible outcomes.
→ read full articleAn Indispensable Book on Palestine/Israel
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Feb 2013
I realize that without knowing it, I have long waited for this book, although I could not have imagined its lyric magic in advance of reading. It is a triumph of what I would call ‘intelligent innocence,’ the great benefits of a clear mind, an open and warm heart, and a trustworthy moral compass that draws sharp lines between good and evil while remaining ever sensitive to the contradictory vagaries of lives and geographic destinies.
→ read full articleThe Second Anniversary of Tahrir Square Rising
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Jan 2013
What inspired the world was the spontaneous spirit of unity, a movement guided by exhilarating visions of democracy and freedom and hope, generating a new kind of populism that dispensed with ideology and leaders, a sense that the people of Egypt had acted creatively and bravely to recover their country from the clutches of neoliberal predators and their domestic collaborators.
→ read full articleOn Syria: What to Do in 2013
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Jan 2013
19 Jan 2013 – I took part last week in an illuminating conference on Syria sponsored by the new Center of Middle East Studies that is part of the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. This Center has been recently established, and operates under the excellent leadership of Nader Hashemi and Danny Postel, who previously together edited the best collection of readings on the Green Revolution in Iran published under the title THE PEOPLE RELOADED.
→ read full articleSeeing Light: The Blogger’s Delight
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Jan 2013
While reflecting on my prior blog lamenting the challenges of sustaining civility amid tumult and controversy, I came to appreciate my own partial captivity in realms of darkness. The negativities I tried to discuss are the shadow land of my blog experience, which is more essentially lived in the sunshine of new and renewed friendship, solidarity, mutuality, and the new emotional and spiritual resonances of our era, what I would call, in the absence of greater precision, the emergence of ‘digital love.’
→ read full articleLosing Control: A Blogger’s Nightmare
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Jan 2013
When I started this blog a couple of years ago, the thought never entered my mind that I would need to defend the terrain. Although I knew my views were controversial on some issues, I assumed that those who disagreed strongly would stay away, losing interest, or express their disagreements in a spirit of civility. To a large extent this has been true, with the glaring exception of Israel/Palestine.
→ read full articleAn Open Letter of Response to CRIF (Counsèil Représentif des Institutions juives de France)
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
31 Dec 2012
I am shocked and saddened that your organization would label me as an anti-Semite and self-hating Jew. It is utterly defamatory, and such allegations are entirely based on distortions of what I believe and what I have done. To confuse my criticisms of Israel with self-hatred of myself as a Jew or with hatred of Jews is a calumny.
→ read full articleIn Further Memory of Edward Said
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
31 Dec 2012
Always, always
That voice
remains
is gone
needed…
Responding to the Unspeakable Killings at Newtown, Connecticut
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Dec 2012
The template of response has become a national liturgy in light of the dismal pattern of public response: media sensationalism of a totalizing kind, at once enveloping, sentimental, and tasteless (endless interviewing of surviving children and teachers, and even family members of victims), but dutifully avoiding deeper questions relating to guns, violence, and cultural stimulants and conditioning.
→ read full articleEgypt: Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 Dec 2012
10 Dec 2012 – I have had the opportunity to be in Cairo three times for brief visits in the last 20 months, the first a few weeks after the departure of Hosni Mubarak on February 11, 2011, the second in February of 2012 when the revolutionary process was treading water, and this third one over the course of the previous ten days. What is striking is how drastically the prevailing mood and expectations have changed from visit to visit, how fears, hopes, and perceptions have altered over time, and why they are likely to continue to do so.
→ read full articleHamas, Khaled Mashaal and Prospects for a Sustainable Israel/Palestine Peace
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 Dec 2012
The most important element of context that needs to be taken into account is the seeming inconsistency between the fiery language used by Mashaal in Gaza and his far more moderate tone in the course of several interviews with Western journalists in recent weeks. In those interviews Mashaal had clearly indicated a readiness for a long-term hudna or truce, provided that Israel ended its occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, and agreed to uphold Palestinian rights under international law.
→ read full articleVisit to Gaza: UN Press Release
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Dec 2012
The Special Rapporteur [Falk] noted that his visit to the region consisted of meetings in Cairo and the Gaza Strip, with Governmental, inter-governmental and civil society representatives, as well as victims and witnesses. He received helpful briefings from UNRWA and other United Nations agencies, which provided an in-depth picture of the magnitude of the challenges in Gaza and the difficulties of addressing such challenges in a situation of occupation and blockade.
→ read full articleObserving the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People in Cairo
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Dec 2012
Text of my remarks delivered in Cairo at joint UN/Arab League ceremony marking the observance of the 2012 International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, 29 Nov 2012, some 10 hours prior to the historic vote in the UN General Assembly.
→ read full articleThe Gaza Ceasefire: An Early Assessment
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Nov 2012
The Gaza Ceasefire, unlike a similar ceasefire achieved after Operation Cast Lead four years ago, is an event that has a likely significance far beyond ending the violence after eight days of murderous attacks. It is just possible that it will be looked back upon as a turning point in the long struggle between Israel and Palestine.
→ read full articleThe Latest Gaza Catastrophe: Will They Ever Learn?
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Nov 2012
Obama was quoted as saying, “There is no country on earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside of its borders. We are fully supportive of Israel’s right to defend itself.” Much is missing from such a sentiment, most glaringly, the absence of any balancing statement along the following line: “and no country would tolerate the periodic assassination of its leaders by missiles fired by a neighboring country, especially during a lull achieved by a mutually agreed truce. It is time for both sides to end the violence, and establish an immediate ceasefire.”
→ read full articleAn Open Letter on My 82nd Birthday
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Nov 2012
Exactly two years ago I wrote my first blog. Throughout this period it has been a bittersweet experience consisting of work, play, challenge, and occasional consternation. Many warm and generous responses have given me an appreciation of the distinctive satisfactions of cyber connectivity.
→ read full articleFurther Reflections on Istanbul as Global Capital
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Nov 2012
My proposal that we consider the possibility of treating Istanbul as the world capital attracted a broad range of responses. I tried to make clear in my revised text that Istanbul could not hope to have this kind of recognition until Turkey had addressed some serious issues, especially the Kurdish grievances that have induced a massive hunger strike in Turkish jails (with over 600 prisoners now taking part, and more threatening to do so).
→ read full articleIstanbul: A Modest Proposal
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Nov 2012
My most trusted Turkish friends felt that it grossly exaggerated Istanbul’s credentials as a possible future world capital, and in deference, I will tone down some of the language, and call attention to some problematic features of the Turkish political landscape that should not be ignored in proposing such a status for Istanbul.
→ read full articleBeyond Language: Reflections on the Arakan Tragedy
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Oct 2012
Yesterday [14 Oct 2012] I listened to the wife of the Prime Minister, Emine Erdogan, speak about her recent harrowing visit to the Rohingya people in the federal state of Arakan ( mainly known in the West as Rakhine) who are located in northwestern Myanmar (aka Burma). The Rohingya are a Muslim minority numbering over one million, long victimized locally and nationally in Burma and on several occasions over the years their people have been brutally massacred and their villages burned.
→ read full articleHope, Wisdom, Law, Ethics, and Spirituality in Relation to Killing and Dying: Persisting Syrian Dilemmas
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Oct 2012
In appraising political developments most of us rely on trusted sources, our overall political orientation, what we have learned from past experience, and our personal hierarchy of hopes and fears. No matter how careful, and judicious, we are still reaching conclusions in settings of radical uncertainty, which incline our judgments to reflect a priori and interpretative biases.
→ read full articleWas It Wrong to Support the Iranian Revolution in 1978 (Because It Turned Out Badly)?
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Oct 2012
As with the days of the Shah, Iran urgently requires an emancipatory politics that liberates from within, and regenerates the hopes of the Iranian people. What Iran does not need is an Israeli-American military strike or destabilization moves funded and promoted from without. Intervention by way of military attack, or even in the form of strong economic sanctions (as present), stabilize the regime in Tehran and impose added hardships on the Iranian people.
→ read full articleApollo’s Curse and Climate Change
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Oct 2012
The sad story of Cassandra is suggestive of the dilemma confronting the climate change scientific community. In modern civilization, interpreting scientific evidence and projecting trends, is as close to trustworthy prophesy as this civilization is likely to get. The culture is supposed to place its highest trust in the scientific community as the voice of reason, and modernity is largely understood as allowing scientific truth and instrumental reason to supersede superstition and religious revelation.
→ read full articleReviving My Blog after China
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Oct 2012
While in China the media was dominated by the intense Chinese reaction to the Japanese government decision to purchase the Daioyu Islands (called Senkaku Islands by Japan) from private Japanese owners, which was interpreted as a provocative step toward implementing Japanese disputed sovereignty claims.
→ read full articleParadoxes of Turkish Pride
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 Sep 2012
Turkey is now an important middle power at the United Nations. It provides a diplomatic venue for many international events that used to be held in Europe. Its courageous Somalia initiative has given Turkey a post-colonial identity in Africa that no other non-African government has been able to achieve. It is my belief that Turkey more than any other country in the 21st century has increased its relevance to the conduct of regional and global politics.
→ read full articleTen Years of AKP Leadership in Turkey
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Aug 2012
It needs to be appreciated that Turkey viewed from outside by most informed observers, especially in the region, remains a shining success story, both economically and politically. Nothing could bring more hope and pride to the region than for the Turkish ascent to be achieved elsewhere, of course, allowing for national variations of culture, history, and resource endowments, but sharing the commitment to build an inclusive democracy in which the military stays in the barracks and the diplomats take pride in resolving and preventing conflicts.
→ read full articlePalestinian Hunger Strikes: Why Still Invisible?
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Aug 2012
When it is realized that Mahatma Gandhi shook the British Empire with a series of hunger strikes, none lasting more than 21 days, it is shameful that Palestinian hunger strikers ever since last December continue to exhibit their extreme courage by refusing food for periods ranging between 40 and over 90 days, and yet these exploits are unreported by the media and generally ignored by relevant international institutions.
→ read full articleToward a New Geopolitics?
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Aug 2012
The Chinese proverb is correct in its chilling reminder that ‘it is a curse to live in interesting times,’ but given the changing historical experiences with warfare, the growing sense of great ecological hazard, and the strengthening attachment to global justice agendas, maybe just this once, the fascinations of our age will turn out to be ‘a blessing.’
→ read full articleSoul Searching and Common Sense after Oak Creek
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Aug 2012
President Obama has responded to the killing of six members of the Gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin this last Sunday [5 Aug 2012] with these words: “All of us recognize that these kinds of terrible, tragic events are happening with too much regularity….” To fail to mention the grotesque absurdity of legally allowing almost everyone in the United States to buy assault weapons and large quantities of ammunition online or at neighborhood shops can only be explained by the intimidating influence of the gun lobby, and its accompanying gun culture, in this country as currently heightened by an ongoing, nasty presidential election campaign.
→ read full article