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By Stephen Zunes In another resolution apparently designed to prepare for war against Iran, the U.S. House of Representatives, in an overwhelmingly bipartisan 401–11 vote, has passed a resolution (HR 568) urging the president to oppose any policy toward Iran “that would rely on containment as an option in response to the Iranian nuclear threat.” With its earlier decision to pass a bill that effectively sought to ban any negotiations between the United States and Iran, a huge bipartisan majority of Congress has essentially told the president that nothing short of war or the threat of war is an acceptable policy. Indeed, the rush to pass this bill appears to have been designed to undermine the ongoing international negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program. According to Iranian-American analyst Jamal Abdi, a prominent critic of both the Iranian regime and U.S. policy, the motivation for the resolution may be to “poison those...

By Johan Galtung Thinking aloud: we need all good ideas to combat our double economic crisis: the increasing misery crisis at the bottom, now also in rich countries in the West, and the increasing system crisis, also striking those countries; but both are all over. So the following are notes for an epilogue to a forthcoming book, Peace Economics, about how to overcome the flagrant structural violence in the misery crisis, and the threat of direct violence, not only terrorism and state terrorism, but a major world war to get the West out of the system – like the Second World War lifted them out of the Great Depression.

By Jonathan Power There is an old Soviet joke from the time of the Red Army attempted occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s: “The past might be unpredictable, but the future is certain”. The Americans and other NATO countries might reflect on this. Obviously the French with their love of word play have and are pulling out their substantial number of troops before the end of the year.

By Richard Falk UN Press Release—HUMAN RIGHT COUNCIL–2 May 2012 GENEVA (30 April 2012) – UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Richard Falk on Monday said he was appalled by the “continuing human rights violations in Israeli prisons,” amid a massive wave of hunger strikes by Palestinian prisoners.

By Johan Galtung From Madrid, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia-UNED, Foro Los Nuevos Problemas Sociales, 24 Mar 2012 Here is one of the hidden faces of the economic crisis: (¶C/¶t) + (¶C/¶S)rS + (1/2)(¶2C/¶S2)q2S2 = rC The famous Black-Scholes equation to find the “correct price” for financial derivatives. Based on partial derivatives over time, this is classical calculus for continuous change; useful within a zone of stability, but not at the edge of that zone, the tipping points explored in René Thom’s catastrophe theory years earlier. Black-Scholes is intellectually like calculating increasing speed of an accelerating car heading for a wall or an abyss. But, with warnings, no 1997 “Nobel Prize in Economics” (actually a Swedish State Bank’s prize honoring Alfred Nobel)? And one year later their company “Long Term Capital Management” had lost $100 billion and collapsed. The trade in derivatives is now at $1 quadrillion a year...

By Jan Oberg At 25, TFF’s Board has decided to move the Foundation in a new direction which we call pro-peace: more imagination, proposal-making and healing, slightly less emphasis on diagnosis and prognosis. In medicine and health it is well-known that the patient won’t recover no matter how much the doctor criticizes the disease or predicts the patient’s death within a year or two. Only when some constructive action is taken to bring about recovery and health, will the patient get a chance to survive. Here’s 3 minutes about TFF’s new, diversified Internet presence, a first step to move in the mentoned direction. There is also an appeal to you because one thing will not change: that TFF is people-financed and all-volunteer. We need your help the Foundation to stay truly independent of government and the corporate world and remain experimental, and outspoken. © TFF Video Productions 2012. Please share...

Jonathan Power TFF Associate Jonathan Power – one of the world’s leading columnists on international affairs, human rights and peace. He syndicates his columns with some 50 papers worldwide. We are proud to have featured every one of them since 1997. In 2003, Power returned to the International Herald Tribune. More about Power here. > When you access an older document below or in the archive, do not click on its top menu when you have read it. Return to this page and use the left menu. January 17, 2012 Taiwan is not going back to China January 11, 2012 Muslim extremism in proportion January 7, 2012 The 10th anniversary of the Euro – the creation of the politically united Europe? 2011 Columns December 27, 2011 The US is off the mark in North Korea December 20, 2011 War and crime is sharply down December 13, 2011 Islam – Nothing...

By Richard Falk 2011 was an exciting and pivotal year in many respects, although its main outcomes will remain inconclusive for years to come.  We will learn in 2012 whether we are moving closer to fulfilling our hopes, dreams, and goals or are trying to interpret and overcome a recurrence of disappointment and demoralization with respect to progressive change in world affairs. The stakes for some societies, and for humanity, have rarely been higher.

Thanks to both general globalization trends and the use of violent means to solve conflicts in countries around the world, cultural encounters are happening more and more frequently amongst many diverse groups. Living with only your own kin in your home society is a feature that belongs to the past. Mixed, multi-cultural, societies are the norm with the problems as well as the new opportunities that this reality gives rise to. Happy moment at the exhibition “Like Bridges Over Dark Waters” 2011 Since 2004 TFF’s co-founder, Christina Spännar, has led three projects on various aspects of the integration of refugees into Swedish society and everyday life. The Foundation’s work in conflict areas around the world has made it natural to ask questions such as: • How can we be helpful to those who knock on Sweden’s doors in the wake of serious, protracted conflict?

 • How can we help Swedes...

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People power and the new global ferment