Conflict

Here is the highly controversial report’s full text with co-author Richard Falk’s introductory comment on the conflict its publication has created.

The state of being vigorously anti the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, is becoming out of control. It is in danger of becoming pathological and self-destructive. What does the West gain in the long run if it sees nothing ahead but being anti-Russia? The West is in danger of having embarked on a journey to nowhere. Russia is not going to change significantly in the near future. The very close Putin/ Dimitri Medvedev team are going to remain in the saddle for a long time. We are not yet in a second Cold War. Those who say we are don’t know their history. The Cold War was years of military confrontation, not least with nuclear arms. It was a competition for influence that stretched right around the globe and it was done with guns. There was the Cuban missile crisis when nuclear weapons were nearly used. If Putin is here to...

In his book, “The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government”, Mike Lofgren called attention to the fact that much of the real power in Washington is not controlled by the President and members of Congress, but is in the hands of multi-billion-dollar organizations that are not only huge, but also unelected and secret, for example the CIA, NSA and FBI. The enormous power of the deep state is undemocratic by definition, since its organizations operate without public knowledge or control. Its power is not only undemocratic but also extremely threatening to the lives of Americans, and also to to the lives of people throughout the world. This serious threat comes from the fact that the deep state seems to be under the control of the Military-Industrial Complex. It promotes aggressive policies that risk nuclear war. Most people of good will in the...

Videoinspelning av Jan Öbergs föredrag i Stockholm februari 2017 Inspelningen är uppdelad i två delar: Del 1: Vittnesrapport från Aleppo 60 min. Del 2: Debatt och vägar till fred i Syrien 45 min. Bakgrund 10-14:e december 2016 vistades Jan Öberg i Aleppo. Med sin unika erfarenhet från staden ifrågasätter han den gängse massmediarapporteringen, argumenterar för ett nytt sätt att se på konflikter på och ger förslag till den nödvändiga fredsprocessen. Moderator Anders Björnsson, författare Datum Lördag 25 februari kl. 14-16, Bagarmossens Folkets Hus, Stockholm Arrangörer Föreningen Syriensolidaritet, Folket i Bild Kulturfront – Stockholmsavdelningen, FiB-juristerna m.fl. Jan Öberg rapporterar – Jag kunde fritt tala med vem jag ville, och fotografera som jag ville. Jag gick omkring utan säkerhet, polis eller annat skydd. Många tackade mig för att jag var i Aleppo vid befrielsen. – Förstörelsen av Aleppo är värre än jag någonsin trott – efter att ha sett Sarajevo, Mostar och...

Keynote: New Vision of Peace in East Asia – Sino-Japanese Peace DialogueNanjing, 22-23 Feb 2017 As Buddhist philosophy teaches, peace, like violence and conflict, is a relation; not an attribute of China or Japan. As Daoist philosophy teaches, in a holon like East Asia there are forces and counterforces, yin/yang, with yin and yang in both. Negative peace would relate the two without violence or threats; positive peace would relate them with good things flowing. Reality? Past: The “Nanjing massacre”. Present: Threats between China and USA-Japan “collective self-defense” also for Senkaku-Diaoyu, de facto US occupation of Japan. Future: no vision beyond balance of threats. Hence, peace between China and Japan has to be created: visions of peaceful futures, solving present conflicts, conciling past trauma. Peace does not flow from the past. But peace may flow from the future. Geographically the two countries are close, yet very different. Japan, ethnically homogeneous,...

By Jan Oberg Three perspectives on the Syrian conflict formation The Syrian conflict formation is hugely more complicated than we’ve been told by Western politicians (all mainstream in spite of democratic features) and mainstream/dependent media. To some there are only internal aspects and it’s called a civil war only. That’s a necessary but not sufficient aspect. The same goes for the only regional perspective focusing on e.g. the Israel-Palestine conflict, Iran’s, Saudi-Arabia’s, Turkey’s roles and policies. To others, everything can be explained from the point of view of Western interventionism/imperialism. That’s also a necessary but not sufficient aspect. To understand anything of the Syrian conflict formation – and there are very many layers, dimensions and participants over the last 100 years – we need all three basic approaches. But given that Westerners are likely to have been informed by Western media and politicians they are likely to grossly underestimate the...

have been seen here by well over 100.000 people around the world, exclusively by organic, non-paid online sharing. In addition they’ve been linked to and presented by media in the alternative press and social media in about 20 countries, sites such as Telesur, Heise/Telepolis and Pressenza literally reaching millions. I am proud of having helped bring out the story of these people unworthy, as it seems, of the attention of the West. Because they were the majority from Eastern Aleppo who were happy to be liberated and remained in what is now government-controlled areas. Keep focus on Aleppo – #keepfocusonaleppo Aleppo’s liberation was a local, national, regional and global event. Why? Because of Aleppo’s history, beauty, architecture and industrial importance (50% of Syria’s industrial capacity within the huge Sheikh Najjar Industrial City). Because, before the war, it had swelled from about 2 million to some 3 million people due to...

Eleven hundred years ago Europe was a backwater. There were no grand cities, apart from Cordoba in Spain which was Muslim. The Middle East was much further ahead, still absorbing the intellectual delights and challenges of Greek science, medicine and architecture which Europeans were largely ignorant of. In southern China agriculture advanced and trade in tea, porcelain and silk flourished. By 1914 it was a totally different world. The Europeans ruled 84% of the globe and they had colonies everywhere. How was it that Europe and its offspring, the United States, became the dominant dynamic force in the world, and still are today in most things? If I walk round my university town and stop the first ten students I meet and ask them why this was so they would probably say because of the Industrial Revolution. But in 1800 when the Industrial Revolution was only just beginning Europeans already...

By Jan Oberg Jan Oberg’s comment on Chancellor Merkel’s speech at the Munich security conference where she mentioned the duty Europe has to receive refugees and also reiterated that Germany will do its best to increase its military budget to 2% of its GDP. Apart from this one can only get very sad and pessimistic when reading the comments underneath this sequence: Boundless hate against Merkel herself, racism, anti-Islam, anti-Semitism – and not one (of the first 70+ comments) on the issue of NATO, the risk of war or on what I brought up about the need for new, less militarist policies, less interventionism and better ways of handling the refugees. Anger and hatred just under the surface, brought out mostly anonymously. No reasoning, just smear. We still have a long long way to go in terms of public education… Here the short video comment on PressTV where you can...

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...

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...