Blog

By Jan Oberg Lund, Sweden – March 24, 2020 Text in TFF PressInfo # 560 It was NATO’s first out-of-area operation, against its own Treaty and without a UN mandate. On March 24, 1999. Independent Kosovo was established – against UN SC resolution 1244. Thanks to the Clinton administration and Madeleine Albright. CNN’s Amanpour endorsed […]

March 30, 2020 Born in Arak, Iran, on April 16, 1989.Favourite quote “Peace begins with a smile.”Joined TFF as Associate in March 2020. Key professional skills • Experienced in project management in both national and international contexts.• Facilitator, experienced in participatory methods in peace education, violence prevention and conflict transformation.• Very good knowledge of disarmament […]

Zivadin Jovanovic* March 25, 2020 The time of adjustment The world is undergoing a period of great development, great change, and adjustment. The international order is changing with the acceleration. The fall of the Berlin Wall thirty years ago (1989) has marked the end of the bipolar World Order. The “winners” of the Cold War […]

By Jan Oberg February 14, 2020 Today TFF launches “Bootprint – Militarism and Environment” – a curated, free-of-charge online magazine that brings you quality knowledge about the connections between the two most urgent problems that humanity faces. These two main clusters of problems which, if not solved, threaten to destroy humanity, our Earth and all […]

By Richard Falk January 28, 2020 Based on CORREIO BRAZILIENSE, Jan. 28, 2020, Interview by Rodrigo Craveiro on Trump’s ‘Deal of the Century’ Question 1 Why are Palestinian leaders rejecting to talk with President Trump about this new peace plan? Trump made so many important controversial and major concessions to Israel on issues that prior […]

Based on CORREIO BRAZILIENSE, Jan. 28, 2020, Interview by Rodrigo Craveiro on Trump’s ‘Deal of the Century’ Question 1 Why are Palestinian leaders rejecting to talk with President Trump about this new peace plan? Trump made so many important controversial and major concessions to Israel on issues that prior pro-Israeli US presidents refused to do. These unilateral giveaways included moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem in defiance of UN agreement to resolve this issue by negotiations between the parties; assert that the establishment of settlements on Occupied Palestine was legal despite the near-universal agreement that all settlements are unlawful if established on Occupied Palestine; recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which Israel acquired by force in the 1967 War and by unanimous  Security Council Resolution 242 was ordered to withdraw from. In effect, it became obvious to even the weakest Palestinian leadership that such a one-sided approach to resolving...

Iran Collage # 1 by Jan Oberg By Jan Oberg August 27, 2019 On August 21, 2019, Iran’s foreign minister, Dr. Javad Zarif, gave a speech at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI. Zarif spoke at length without a manuscript, in details and with references to facts and history of the region and the […]

By Jan Oberg April 17, 2019 The amazing person and phenomenon called Greta Thunberg can be looked at from many perspectives. What connects them all is the energies of hope. Thus, for instance, her own personal story and what drives her so passionately – and scientifically – at the age of only 16. Or, how […]

By Jonathan Power February 12, 2019 Nigeria is a veritable factory of sophisticated novelists. It was no surprise that Ben Okri won the British Booker Prize that goes annually to the best novelist of the year. Considering that high-class novel writing in English only began in Nigeria in 1958 with Chinua Achebe’s famous work, “Things […]

By Jonathan Power Those, like some highly placed people in the US government and Congress, who say it is inevitable that Taiwan with its population of 23 million will one day return as part of mainland China rather as Hong King did, have really missed a beat. There is simply no likelihood that an overwhelming majority of Taiwanese will ever agree to that.

The Goddess of democracy at Victoria Park in Hong Kong. Photo credit: AP The notion of a globally menacing ‘authoritarian China’ is too simplistic. Dig deeper, and you will find signs of local democratic experiments, thanks to its skittish rulers afraid of losing control By John Keane January 2, 2019 As China rapidly moves to the centre of the international order, the question that’s becoming increasingly pertinent is: what kind of a political system is this new global power? In the booming business of China watching, the standard answer is that it is an “authoritarian” regime, with qualifiers such as “soft authoritarianism”, “hard authoritarianism” and “authoritarian capitalism” commonplace. But by all accounts, China is reckoned the antithesis of a “liberal democracy” defined by open competition among freely formed political parties. Originally published at The South China Morning Star scmp.com Some Chinese observers celebrate the advantages of this “authoritarianism” and welcome...

Of the United Nations’ 18 major human rights treaties, the United States is party to 5, fewer than any other nation on earth, except Bhutan (4), and tied with Malaysia, Myanmar, and South Sudan, a country torn by warfare since its creation in 2011. The United States is the only nation on earth that has not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is the only country to have pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement. It is by many measures a top destroyer of the natural environment, yet has been a leader in sabotaging climate protection negotiations for decades. Seven countries and the European Union reached an agreement on Iran and nuclear energy, but the United States uniquely withdrew. President Donald Trump is threatening to withdraw, and Congress is threatening to allow it, from critical nuclear disarmament treaties reached by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. The...