Archive 1986 – 2017

TFF’s first four photo series from Aleppo have been seen by 95,000 people so far and been featured in online magazines from Vietnam to California, among them a German site with a million visitors daily. Above is the fifth story. It’s about the terrible, systematic destruction of this UNESCO World Heritage site but also about an Aleppo businessman who turned his damaged factory into a school for 1500 children. It had been damaged by the Free Syrian Army and al-Nushra who looted it and then used it as HQ. It’s situated in the Sheikh Najjar Industrial City outside Aleppo that – before the militant/terrorist occupation – represented no less than 50% of Syria’s total industrial production. During two years, these children received no education. Now they do. And hope is slowly coming back. This photo story ends with some “civilisational questions” by Jan Oberg who also took the photos. This...

Attacking the Affordable Care Act; the “global gag rule” against abortion; the federal regulation and hiring freeze; canceling the TPP; restarting the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipeline; limiting entry with the Mexican Wall; the 90-day travel ban on seven countries; more undocumented people prioritized for deportation; no federal funding for cities refusing to cooperate; communications blackout from federal agencies; Guantánamo torture continued: What does it add up to? A very strong white state centered on a president with absolute power and control over life (birth) and death (care) of the citizens. Not regulating police racism. So far, no order on the military. Fascism? Too early to say; but in that direction. It opens for questions about the inner workings of Donald J. Trump. Who is he? A Johns Hopkins psychologist sees Trump suffering from “malignant narcissism“. A Norwegian historian, Öystein Morten, in a detailed analysis of Norwegian king crusader...

Here in the Sheikh Najjar Industrial City outside Aleppo lived and worked 40,000 people. It had 50% of Syria’s industrial capacity. Today – after the occupation by Western-backed militants and terrorist groups, this is what is left. I wonder why the Syrian government did not destroy this industrial city between 2000 and 2012. We are told that all this destruction is caused only by that side and the dictator kills his own. I wonder where the terrorists used the weapons and spent the money they got from NATO countries – Turkey in particular – Saudi and Qatar since they did not do any of this here – according to Western media and the White Helmet reporters and a series of humanitarian organisations. I also wonder where the Western left is? Solidarity with the workers who lived here? No, many among them defend this and want to arm this or that...

477-poll-shows-more-ukrainians-support-nato-dislike-russia.html”>holding a referendum on NATO membership for Ukraine. There are strong indications that it is a commissioned research, financed /02/03/will-ukraine-hold-referendum-on-nato-membership/”>The video interview, details and links here.

Comment by Jan Oberg on PressTV’s Top Five This is nothing new, the US has used it all the time. But isn’t it tragic that almost 70 years after torture was prohibited in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we see 141 countries still using torture – according to Amnesty International.

Originally published on blog.transnational.org, January 2017. This post features a PressTV Newsline video segment. David Swanson and Jan Oberg discuss Trump’s executive orders, US–EU relations, Turkey, Syria, and Theresa May’s visit to Washington during the early months of the Trump administration. David Swanson and Jan Oberg Watch the video «On The Newsline: Trump’s Executive Orders: Trump Dictates The World: May Visits the U.S. & Turkey» uploaded by PressTV on Dailymotion. Via On The Newsline::Trump’s Executive Orders::Trump Dictates The World::May Visits the U.S. & Turkey – Video Dailymotion.

Receiving Dr Honoris Causa, Universidad Madrid Complutense, 27 Jan 2017 Dear Rector, dear Jury! I receive this great honor bestowed upon me in deep gratitude and pride, promising to try to live up to it. I will now share with you some words about how I got launched on the track for which you honor me, peace studies and peace practice. Like so many, I felt desperate about the wars in our enlightened century and continent and asked, Why? What can we do to avoid this suffering, not only the wounded and dead, but the countless bereaved? From my family I knew a little about health studies and had been struck by the fruitful distinction between cause and symptom. The symptom is on the surface of the body, like fever; but the root cause is deeper down, inside, a sepsis. A major breakthrough. “Treat the cause, not the symptom” became...

  The great flaw in ex-president Barack Obama’s record was his policy towards Russia. Going against everything he had said and written about before he became president, one action after another antagonised the Russians – his early proclamation that he wanted Georgia and Ukraine in NATO, his de facto coalition of convenience for a crucial couple of days with the anti-democratic, anti-Russian, neo-fascist, demonstrators in Ukraine, the further expansion of NATO, despite an earlier promise not to, made by President H.W. Bush, to the Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev, and his inability to cooperate with the Russians and Iranians over Syria. No wonder the Russians are reported to be delirious that Donald Trump is now president, a man who has said nice things about Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. If the two meet sometime soon maybe there will be an end to this unnecessary hostility. The Moscow-Washington relationship is the most important...

In recent months the Turkish President, Recep Teyipp Erdoğan, and his principal advisors have not made it a secret that they are reconsidering Turkey’s relations with neighbors, with the countries of the region, and with leading geopolitical actors. The Early Agenda of AKP When the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in 2002 it set about almost immediately to fashion a post-Cold War foreign policy based on the idea that it was time to supersede the Cold War posture of almost total Turkish deference to the United States, especially within NATO and bipolar contexts, and depict a conception of Turkish interests developed in Ankara rather than adhere to Washington’s blueprint. In its early period of national leadership, the AKP seemed to pursue four interrelated international goals: – resolve the Cyprus conflict; – give priority to seeking full membership in the European Union (EU); – improve diplomatic and political...

By Chaiwat Satha-Anand, TFF Associate At the 16th International Peace Research Association (IPRA) conference held in Brisbane, Australia in 1996 under the guidance of Ralph Summy with the theme” Creating Nonviolent Future”, Glenn D.Paige began his keynote address titled: “To Leap Beyond Yet Nearer Bring: from war to peace to nonviolence to nonkilling” by recounting another IPRA meeting held in Yokohama, in 1980. At that meeting, a question was raised as to whether it would be possible for IPRA to take up the subject of “nonviolence”. A distinguished European researcher responded in the negative saying that nonviolence “would discredit peace research”. Six years later in 1986 at the IPRA conference held in Sussex, Theodore Herman convened what I believe to be the first IPRA nonviolence commission. Later in 1988 at the IPRA meeting held in Rio de Janeiro, Herman asked Paige to help convene the next nonviolence commission. Paige became...