Conflict – violence and war

On November 7, 2020, I wrote a comment on my Facebook Profile that stirred some comments: “Led by CNN and other US media, including Fox News, most Western media now declare Biden the next US president. Is there not some kind of institution in a democracy that shall officially declare who is the winner?It seems they want to appear ignorant about the serious constitutional crisis that is around the corner as Donald Trump is not going to accept this result.We are in for very interesting times…” As you see, there are three elements in this comment. Let me go through them: Here is how the final results of the elections should be announced: “Since the mid-20th century, on January 6 at 1:00 pm before a Joint Session of Congress, the Vice President opens the votes from each state in alphabetical order. He passes the votes to four tellers—two from the...

Jan Øberg 23. oktober 2020 Den norske arkitekt og fredsforkæmper, Susanne Urban har forfattet en righoldig bog, som netop er udkommet for at markere at en af verdens absolut ledende samfundsforskere, Johan Galtung, fylder 90 den 24. oktober 2020. Han er matematiker, sociolog, freds- og fremtidsforsker med en utrolig produktion af foredrag, artikler, gæsteprofessorater og hederdoktorater bag sig – f.eks. medvirket i 170 bøger heraf som eneforfatter af 96. Her mere om ham på Norsk Biografisk Leksikon. Den hedder Galtungs Metode For Fred. Fredsforsker Johan Galtungs liv, teorier og innflytelse – som du kan bladre i hér og købe hér. Bogen er det 7. skrift fra Hardangerakademiet for fred, utvikling og miljø. Den er på 115 sider og har tre hovedkapitler – de som udtrykkes i undertitlen – og den er fyldt med forklarende tekster, figurer, tegninger og fotografier – så man drives videre i denne forskers univers på en...

This paper was written in 2015. Republished here on the occasion of Galtung’s 90th birthday, October 24, 2020. It was originally published at TMS, Transcend Media Service 1.  Definitions and Hypotheses: An Overview Definition: An empire is a transborder Center-Periphery system, in macro-space and in macro-time, with a culture legitimizing a structure of unequal exchange between center and periphery: Empires have different profiles. The US Empire has a complete configuration, articulated in a statement by a Pentagon planner: “The de facto role of the United States Armed Forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing”. (1) In other words, direct violence to protect structural violence legitimized by cultural violence. (2) The Center is the continental USA and the Periphery much of the world.  Like any system it has a life-cycle reminiscent of an organism, with...

Louis Kriesberg October 21, 2020 Louis Kriesberg This post also appears on the  Beyond Intractability website.  The blog is the Constructive Conflict Initiative / COVID-19 Blog and Lou’s essay is here.   We Americans are beset by many awful circumstances in our country and in the world. As analysts and sometimes as activists we examine such developments, analyzing why they are bad and how they have happened. So many bad things are occurring every day, it is hard to fight against any one of them, as new ones distract us. Below, I sketch out an approach to taking actions that have a good chance to be effective and satisfying in overcoming objectionable circumstances. First, we should select three or four matters that we believe should be bettered. We can each choose those matters that particularly concern us. The matters may or may not be connected and they will vary in...

Introduction Below is a long interview from Konrad Stachnio with Richard Falk – TFF Associate – on a wide-ranging set of questions, which stretched by knowledge past its breaking point, especially in assessing where the technological innovations on the horizons will lead us.It is one of 17 conversations published by Clarity Press under the title, Civilization in Overdrive: Conversations at the Edge of the Human Future.Preface by Stachnio after interview.The book is recommended strongly.It can be ordered here Originally published on Richard Falks blog on September 12, 2020 Civilization in Overdrive, edited by Konrad Stachnio “If a digital Fukuyama tells the world that ‘the end of history’ has been reached, he should be scorned this time around.” KONRAD STACHNIO: Do you know what is the role of the so-called Black Budget in building the power of the USA as a global security state? RICHARD FALK: It is not possible for someone without access...

John Steppling October 7, 2020 Some books demand slower reading than others. Ed Curtin’s new book is such a case. But then this assemblage of essays, many published elsewhere, is a corrective to the growing intoxication with technology, with the surveillance and the policing it is being used for, and to what Jonathan Crary wrote about in 24/7, a world where an artificial speed (or hurriedness) is layered over daily life: “Sleep is an uncompromising interruption of the theft of time from us by capitalism.” A corrective to the de-humanizing assault of capitalism. Originally published at Off Guardian This is a book that draws attention to what Curtin references (via James Douglass) as the *unspeakable* — the US capitalist order of crimes, from assassination to the continuing assault on the poor and marginalized. It is appropriate that the first chapter begins with a quote from Harold Pinter’s Noble Prize speech....

Image from Wikileaks Jan Oberg September 30, 2020 The unique, dominating position of the United States in the post-1945 world is well-known. It maintains this position thanks to both a very large historical goodwill capital and former glory in the eyes of generations around the world – and thanks to rampant militarism and imperialism that has destroyed the good ‘America’ that it used to be. The world’s major division the next few years will be this: Are you on the side of continued US global dominance or do you want to see a new multipolar world with more balance and the US in the role of a partner among equals? In my view, the US no longer has the capacity to lead itself effectively and find solutions to its own multi-dimensional crisis be it the economy, democracy, climate change, warfare addiction, social polarization, racism and on top of it all...

A demonstrator raises a fist after clashes with police in the US city of Seattle on 8 June (AFP) As calls for racial justice reverberate across the country, the field of American Studies requires a radical rethink – namely, the active engagement of people around the globe at the receiving end of US militarism.  By Hamid Dabashi September 15, 2020 “The majority lives in the perpetual practice of self-applause, and there are certain truths which the Americans can only learn from strangers or from experience.”  – Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America “Americans are the unhappiest they’ve been in 50 years,” according to recent polls. “It’s been a rough year for the American psyche.”    The deeply troubling presidency of Donald Trump has led to severe consequences of the coronavirus pandemic in the US, where the per-capita mortality rate is among the highest in the world, exacerbated by claustrophobic despair over lockdowns and social distancing, alongside...

Human nature, Gandhi said, “will only find itself when it fully realises that to be human it has to cease to be beastly or brutal”. (Illustration: C R Sasikumar) Charles P. Webel with Sofia Khaydari July 28, 2020 The UN’s peacekeeping mission is premised on the Declaration of Universal Human Rights, based on the assumptions that nonviolent means of conflict resolution are preferable to violence, and that all nations and trans-national organizations need to affirm and institutionalize global values. Unfortunately, despite the UN, humanity is far from being delivered from its bellicosity, and a “global ethics” in general, with nonviolence at its core, is far from realization. To understand the desirability but seeming fancifulness of a “Global Ethics” with nonviolence as one of its cardinal values, it is helpful to examine the theoretical and empirical foundations, as well as the possible shortcomings, of global values in general and nonviolence in...

Some may remember way back when US President Obama said that the US had now isolated Iran. The only problem was that on the very same day, some 130 leaders from the Non-Aligned Movement, NAM, were meeting in Tehran. The more the US withdraws from international treaties, imposes sanctions, threatens wars and otherwise antagonizes the rest of the world, the more that rest will search – and find – new partners and create a future world order that is not Western- or US-dominated. That’s what Iran is now doing. After sanctions since 1979, verbal harassment, a broken JCPOA (nuclear deal), accusations of being the world’s leading supporter of terrorism, maximal pressure policies, threat of massive war, bombings, liquidation of a top government representative, infiltrations and much else – why on earth should the leaders in Tehran (no matter what you may think about them and their policies) continue to seek...

60 years of peace theory and peace practice can be summarized in:                                                 EQUITY x HARMONY                              PEACE =   ——————————-                                                 TRAUMA x CONFLICT Four theory foci, four policy tasks, and four education topics. Any true education should prepare for practice, guided by general theory. Moving from denominator right to numerator left, this means: Mediation is verbal, based on dialogues with the parties, but the four tasks are very concrete, practical.  For doers not only talkers; for practical people like officers.  Hence the Big Question: Is peace theory-practice-education compatible with the military mind – however defined, and there are many military cultures in the world – or not? Originally published at TRANSCEND Thinkers so diverse as Nietzsche and Gandhi saw the military as exemplary because of the ésprit de corps and willingness to sacrifice, even their own lives. For Gandhi the kshatriya (military) caste was a model: he wanted non-violent warriors, with the same perseverance, also indispensable...

Another tragic turning point for the – falling – West as civilization. Its moral irresponsibility is expressed by its roaring silence on this crystal clear and gross violation of international law and evil done to the Palestinian people for decades. It can be seen as a particularly nasty, nationalist form of a victim psychology à la Sigmund Freud’s Wiederholunszwang and Alice Miller’s repetition compulsion – you project onto others today what was done to you earlier. Add to that exceptionalism (like the US), state formation through ethnic cleansing (like the US), a belief in being a Chosen People (like the US), being an extremely militarist, over-armed and nuclear power (like the US) and seeing enemies everywhere without the thought that your own behaviour may create some of them – leading to constant fear/paranoia – and you have most of a recipe for self-destruction (like the US). Two leading countries, with...