Ukraine: 1 year of war on top of 30 years of conflict escalation: The only re-armament needed is intellectual and moral – on all sides

Ukraine: 1 year of war on top of 30 years of conflict escalation: The only re-armament needed is intellectual and moral – on all sides

Beyond Russia, NATO/EU policies will prove morally wrong, unrealistic, dangerous and self-destructive. Jan Oberg February 23, 2023 Introduction: 1 year of violence on top of 30 years of conflict: Too much wrong thinking The world’s focus is on the war. On February 24, it is one year since Russia launched its so-called special military operation. […]

Lying in Politics: Hannah Arendt on Deception, Self-Deception, and the Psychology of Defactualization

Lying in Politics: Hannah Arendt on Deception, Self-Deception, and the Psychology of Defactualization

Maria Popova December 20, 2022 “No matter how large the tissue of falsehood that an experienced liar has to offer, it will never be large enough … to cover the immensity of actuality.” The possibilities that exist between two people, or among a group of people,” Adrienne Rich wrote in her beautiful 1975 speech on lying and […]

Edward Curtin: Who Knew – We’re Here Because We’re Here Because We’re Here Because We’re Here

Edward Curtin: Who Knew – We’re Here Because We’re Here Because We’re Here Because We’re Here

Edward Curtin December 6, 2022 My title comes from a song sung by soldiers as they marched to hell in the trenches of World War I and the same song my sisters and I sang in the car as our parents drove us to our summer vacation in paradise at Edgewater Farm. I think of this as […]

Edward Curtin: Why is Everything Broken?

Edward Curtin: Why is Everything Broken?

Edward Curtin June 9, 2022 “Begin then with a fracture, a cesura, a rent; opening a crack in this fallen world, a shaft of light.” Norman O. Brown, Love’s Body Being sick for the past few weeks has had its advantages. It has forced me to take a break from writing since I could not concentrate enough […]

Edward Curtin: Review of “A Quest for Wisdom – Inspiring Purpose on the Path of Life”

Edward Curtin: Review of “A Quest for Wisdom – Inspiring Purpose on the Path of Life”

Edward Curtin June 13, 2022 This is a fascinating and beautiful book, one of those gems you serendipitously discover and shake your head at your good fortune. Although it is new and I received it as a gift, it reminds me of a few books I have discovered over the years while rummaging through used bookstores […]

“I went to teach but instead had to learn” – Bertrand Russell in Beijing 1920

“I went to teach but instead had to learn” – Bertrand Russell in Beijing 1920

Gordon DumoulinTFF Associate June 1, 2022 “When I went to China, I went to teach; but every day that I stayed I thought less of what I had to teach them and more of what I had to learn from them,” Bertrand Russell’s notes in 1920 (British Philosopher 1872-1970) In 1922, Bertrand Russell published a […]

Alfred De Zayas: A Culture of Cheating – On the Origins of the Crisis in Ukraine

Alfred De Zayas: A Culture of Cheating – On the Origins of the Crisis in Ukraine

Alfred De Zayas February 11, 2022 The current tensions between the United States and Russia with regard to Ukraine goes back to a series of NATO actions and omissions following the demise of the Soviet Union in 1989/91.  On the Russian side, there is a widespread perception of having been misled by the US and […]

Edward Curtin: Nostalgic for the future

Edward Curtin: Nostalgic for the future

Edward Curtin February 11, 2022 Despite its pedigree as a fundamental element in civilization’s greatest stories, nostalgia has come to be associated with treacly sentimentality, defeatism, and spurious spiritual inclinations.  Homer, Vergil, Dante, the Biblical writers, and their ilk would demur, of course, but they have been dead for a few years, so progress’s mantra […]

Nuclear weapons abolition requires more than the five nuclear-weapon states’ recent joint statement

Nuclear weapons abolition requires more than the five nuclear-weapon states’ recent joint statement

Jan Oberg Written on January 7, 2022, as Op-Ed for China Daily * One description of the contemporary world is more accurate and ominous than any other, namely that we live in the nuclear age or the age of nuclearism, i.e. the weapons plus the thinking and power structures that surround these doomsday weapons. In […]

NATO Expansion: Blinken and Stoltenberg lie intentionally and the media let them

NATO Expansion: Blinken and Stoltenberg lie intentionally and the media let them

Masking the truth © Jan Oberg 2022Secretary of State Antony Blinken and NATO’s chief Jens Stoltenberg January 13, 2022 Jan Oberg To deceive, telling half-truths, or a complete lie is nothing new in politics, particularly security in politics. But until some 20-30 years ago, I would – perhaps naively – see it as an exception. […]

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