Culture

Foreign Policy Studies, University of Malmö, Sweden Thanks for wanting a summary of key points in “Galtung Peace Studies”. I was just honored with a “Lifetime Award” by world sociology, 60+ years; in short, time for summary with an author’s caveat: no substitute for reading books. [1] 1951: Peace studies=peace theory+peace practice; applied science, with an explicit value–peace–with practice-indicative theories and theory-testing practice; like health studies, unlike social sciences. Model: peace to violence as health to illness; Diagnosis-Prognosis-Therapy produced health by weakening pathogens-strengthening sanogens; try the same for peace by weakening bellogens-strengthening paxogens. Mantra: through interdisciplinary, international, interlevel research. [2] Like in illness violence=suffering of body-mind-spirit, also of the bereaved; unlike in illness, an intended act of commission, a perpetrator-victim relation, a crime, epitomized by aggressive war. Body wounds may be healed but stigma, shame, humiliation, hopelessness, hatred, fear, revenge may settle in mind and spirit as trauma. To judicial...

Av Jan Öberg Lund , Sverige – 23 maj 2014 Tiden för rationell politik, om begreppet någonsin funnits, är över . ”Realpolitik” har blivit en blandning av marknadsförda ord, propaganda och ledare som gör uttalanden som gränsar till absurd teater. Tunnare och tunnare länkar till Realiteten. Detta är vad som händer när man förnekar nedgången. Alla imperier går ner. Det amerikanska imperiet är på nedgång. Makrohistoriker (se t.ex. British Arnold Toynbee’s 12–volymarbete 1934-1961) berättar att det finns många skäl till att imperier faller: • militarism med konstant krigföring; • överutvidgning – försöka kontrollera mer än vad du kan hantera; • förlust av legitimitet i andras ögon; • strukturella ekonomiska kriser; • moraliskt förfall; • förlust av intellektuell och teknisk innovation; • andra maktstrukturer ökar i styrka över tid och göra saker på nya, kreativa sätt . Efter 1945 ansågs USA vara starkt på en rad olika maktdimensioner: militär, ekonomi, politik,...

/10/janoberg.jpg”> Lund, Sweden – May 23, 2014 The time of rational politics, if it ever existed, is over. ”Realpolitik” has become a mixture of marketing soundbites, propaganda and leaders making statement that borders on the Theatre of the Absurd. Thinner and thinner links to Real-ity. This is what happens when decline in being denied. All empires go down. The U.S. empire is in decline. Macro historians (see e.g. British Arnold Toynbee’s 12-volume work 1934-61) tell that there are many reasons when empires fall: • militarism with constant warfare; • overextension – trying to control more than you can manage; • loss of legitimacy in the eyes of others; • structural economic crisis; • moral decay; • loss of intellectual and technological innovation and • simply other powers gaining strength over time and doing things in new, creative ways. After 1945 the U.S. was considered strong on many power dimensions: military,...

“Have we agreed to so many wars that we can’t Escape from silence?…” Robert Bly, “Call and Answer” In my understanding silence is passivity as a way of being. Silence can be much more than the avoidance of speech and utterance, and is most poignantly expressed through evasions of body, heart, and soul. Despite the frustrations and defeats of the period, America was different during the years of the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement. It was then that alienated gun-wielders assassinated those among us who were sounding the clearest calls for justice and sending messages of hope. In a perverse reaction, Washington’s custodians of our insecurity went to work, and the sad result is this deafening silence! I have long felt that most American ‘citizens’ increasingly behave as ‘subjects,’ blithely acting as if a love of country is exhibited more by obedience than conscience. In my view the...

Business and Peace are not mutually exclusive. Business does play a crucial role in society. More so, business impacts and depends upon its surrounding. It impacts the social well-being of people and planet, whether intentionally or unintentionally, both locally and globally through the chosen ways of operation and production. Equally, does business play a key role in contributing to economic development, peace and stability in the areas where it operates. Business provides jobs and revenue to local markets; sets examples of sustainable business practices and can provide support for various social programs through strategic social investment. In short, business is an inherent aspect of our society, and therefore, if we are striving for a more peaceful and sustainable world, for-profit private enterprises are the most crucial actors in achieving this goal.

China Three Gorges University, Yichang,  A great honor to open the 11th university cooperation conference of N.E.W.S–North-East-West-South—founded in 1993 at the Freie Universität, Berlin by S.P. Park. Classical university cooperation across borders has professors teaching in one country students from other countries. Thus, when Copenhagen ruled Denmark-Norway 1397-1814 Norwegians studied at the University of Copenhagen, founded in 1479. The University in Oslo came in 1811, but the asymmetry continued; some of it necessary and useful, but not ideal. Missing was equity, “I learn from you, you from me”; missing was empathy, “You learn about me, I about you”. The teaching country is superior in power, shaping the minds in the learning country. But the learning country learns about the deeper features of the teaching country, not vice versa. A colonial relation. The colonialist leader, England – also in Scotland-Wales-Ireland – imports raw students for processing at huge fees, and exports...

Depends, of course, on the criteria. A state has an inside towards its citizens, and an outside toward the state system. Depends on domestic and foreign policy, in other words. That means it can fail in two ways, by not catering to its citizens and by not coming to terms with other states. Actually the two are closely related as often pointed out: a regime (running the state) may compensate for failure at home by victories abroad. And, conversely, compensate for failures abroad by taking good care of its citizens. And, success at home used to mobilize grateful citizens for patriotic wars abroad. America, or the USA rather, at present does not take good care of its citizens. A recent study cited in Nation of Change, More Evidence That Half of America Is in or Near Poverty, 24 March 2014, by Paul Buchheit: The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities...

During martial law in the early 1980’s in Poland, graffiti in favour of the illegal trade union Solidarity was quickly painted over by the authorities. This left “blobs” on the walls, so that everyone knew that this was covered graffiti. Activists who identified with a new group called Orange Alternative started to work on these “blobs” by giving them arms and legs so that they became little elves. According to Kenney, who has written about the Orange Alternative and its place in the fall of the communist regimes in central Europe, elves made passers-by “consider the point of the struggle over wall space, and wonder why little elves were threatening to the communists”.(1) Several years later, the elves came to life at an Orange Alternative happening on Children’s day, 1 June 1987, one of the happenings which became what Kenney calls a “catalyst” for the Orange Alternative. An invitation to...

This is not the way to do it. A major party to the conflicts cannot be at the same time the conference manager; to the point of making the UN Secretary General disinvite a major invited party. Whether this is due to AIPAC-American Israel Public Affairs Committee buying US Senators, or whatever process internal to the USA-Israel system, or it comes out of Secretary Kerry’s genuine conviction, is immaterial. This looks like a court where the prosecutor is also the judge, having decided who the major culprit is and instructed the judge to proceed accordingly from Court I to II, with only those agreeing to Court I being in the jury of Court II. Had Ban Ki-moon been a man honoring UN authority he would have disinvited himself instead, claiming undue pressure. Disinvite a major party and two things are guaranteed: a lost chance to find a solution to what...

Lund, Sweden – January 24, 2014 /10/janoberg.jpg”> Subscribe to PressInfos to your right here! The meeting in Geneva about Syria resumes today. It is destined to become a historic failure. Most observers will blame either of the armed Syrian parties – the government or the rebels – for adhering unbendingly to their mutually exclusive positions. But that isn’t fair. Those who set themselves up as conflict-managers, mediators, negotiators and peace-makers and called the meeting must also take responsibility for its failure. It is the UN, the Arab League and several governments, various NATO countries and Russia (”facilitators” in the following). This article is about how to achieve a negotiated peace. Here follow 8 – out of many more – professional criteria that are useful for an evaluation of Geneva. Summary at the end: 1) How well do the facilitators understand what the conflict is about? It’s about history, suffering, socio-economic...

Alfaz, Spain An optimistic prediction held by some; but what does it mean? Let us define that “middle” as thousand years, 250-1250, from the start of the West Roman Empire declining (completed in 476 – 500), to the rise of the Hanseatic League transalpina as another Europe (completed around 1500 with protestantisms, Luther-Zwingli-Calvin; Anglicans). Apart from the Crusades, 1095-1291, an early introduction to the “Modern Period”, this was a peaceful time in Europe due to the integrative forces of the “Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation” – not Holy, not Roman, not German they say – and the Vatican – Holy? – hm; Roman? Yes. 217 of the 266 popes Italian, so far; No. 2: 16 French. The Kings ruled by intermarriages, and the Popes by theocracy, in harmony till the 11th century investiture conflict: who appoints the bishops!? The war on Islam, the Crusades 1095-1291 (Pope Urban II)...

Not one or a group of persons, not one or a group of countries. But they may serve as instruments for scripts engraved on the deeper recesses of their minds, not the conscious, easily retrievable ones. Scripts that are too trivial, obvious, too painful/shameful and hence repressed. Jung calls them archetypes; they often come in syndromes. Imagine that deep down an actor–person, gender-generation-race-class, state-nation, region-civilization–is programmed for two forces in the world, one good the other evil, and sooner or later there will be a final battle for the victory of one over the other: the solution. Dualism-Manicheism-Armageddon for short, DMA even shorter; from the first and last chapters of the Bible, imprinted on the Western mind soon for two millennia. Maybe with some long lasting impact? Imagine all of the above driven by the opposite script: holism–holons of many units along many dimensions–and dialectics–forces and counter-forces, in plural, in...