From our own world

…is the title of our conference. There will never be any such thing. “New”, yes; “World”, yes –“Order”, No. Wherever there is life there is contradiction, dialectic, forces and counter-forces. At the very obvious level the question arises – Order, in whose interest, against whom? Sow any new order and the seeds of its undoing are already taking root, sprouts are coming. As the Chinese say, “There are human beings without contradictions; they are called corpses.” Follow that hint; go to the moon. New moons once a month, and order, the order of death, of non-life. The Old Moon Order. As part of this Perdana Global Peace Foundation Conference, so well composed by Dr Hitam, President Tun Dr. Mahathir unveiled a giant copy of my book just published, Abolishing War: Criminalizing War, Removing War Causes, Removing War as an Institution (TPU and IIUM Press, 2015) together with a smaller book...

/10/janoberg.jpg”>[/caption] Lund, Sweden, January 21, 2015 I visited Iran for a third time in December last year, participating in the international UN-endorsed conference, WAVE – World Against Violence and Extremism. I gave interviews to some ten agencies and media but the longest was this exclusive one by a passionate and very professional 24-year old Iranian journalist, Kourosh Ziabari, for the esteemed Iran Review. The distorted image of Iran TFF has been engaged with an in Iran the last three years. We believe that the general image in Western media – covering almost only Iran’s nuclear program, human rights violations and Iran as a threat to the world – is neither objective nor fair. It conveniently omits the harmful effects on the Iranian society of Western policies since the days of the US-UK coup d’etat against the democratically elected President of Iran, Dr. Mossadegh, in 1953. Whether intended or not, this...

TFF wants to express its gratitude to Yoshikazu Sakamoto who served for many years as TFF Associate. Prefatory Note This post is dedicated to my remembrance of Yoshi Sakamoto who died recently. Yoshi was a deeply valued friend and an important public intellectual in Japan who exerted a strong influence on the post-war generation. His political orientation, rejecting extremes of right and left, while questioning the militarist premises of the Cold War and Japan’s willingness to become America’s Asian poodle, gave him a distinctive political profile. I am sharing these words of appreciation, and hope that anyone from Japan who comes across this text will contact me, especially if they have a way of putting me in touch with either Yoshi’s family or Japanese media. I would like to believe that ‘an American appreciation’ of Professor Sakamoto would be of interest to those who knew and admired him. I first...

Keynote, 25th International Peace Research Association (IPRA) Conference Istanbul, 11-14 August 2014 We have come of age, at 50; and I am the only surviving founder from 1964 in London, capital of a foggy island in the North Sea. Now we meet in the sunny capital of another empire; bridging three continents. One cloned itself all over; the other was more an Islamic umma, a community of togetherness-and-sharing, with millet islands of tolerance. And now: the superb IPRA program. Uniting for peace. But we differ, disagree? Incredible how far we can come if we identify and focus on the good and the positive in Kiev, Donetsk and Moscow, or husband and wife in broken marriages rather than what is wrong, and build new relations on that. Peace is a relation, not attributes of the parties. So also for conferences: focus on the best in paper, praise it; not on the...

It has always been my intention to make the tiny fragment of the blogosphere that I inhabit a site for civil discourse on a wide spectrum of concerns, issue oriented interpretations of what is transpiring in the world. Recently the comments sections has narrowed from this perspective into a dialogue between adversaries, several of whom seem preoccupied with, if not obsessed by, Israel, the Jewish experience, Zionism, and the Palestinian/Arab narrative and counter-narrative. Some of the contributions have been learned and sensitive to the reality that there are many diverse voices that need to be heard on this inflamed subject-matter, yet others have been intolerant, launched repeated personal attacks questioning motives and motivations, and have created a polemical aura at the site that has inhibited participation by those with other interests, concerns, and style. For these reasons, I have decided to have a moratorium on all comments relating to this...

Known as IPRA, founded in 1964 in London–and this author, 34 at the time, is the only surviving founder. IPRA rotates every two years from one peace research center to the other, and is now in very competent Turkish hands. And what is more natural than having the 50th anniversary for the hub of peace studies in that hub of the world, Istanbul, 10-14 August this year!! Hurry up, register!!! Today it is hard to believe, but to get IPRA started was as problematic as to launch peace studies in general. The Western establishments did not like “peace”; their favorite was security, absence of violence against themselves in particular and their elites even more particularly. Security studies became academically institutionalized Western paranoia. And the peace movement establishments did not like “studies”–what was there to study? Each one knew the one correct answer!

The daughter of Afghanistan’s last communist president reflects on politics and pluralism in the strife-riven state. Heela Najibullah was only 10-years-old when her father became the president of Afghanistan. To Heela, Mohammad Najibullah was Aba, father, trying to create reconciliation among an Afghan nation divided between communists and Mujhaideen, religious warriors fighting the Soviet occupation. Though Heela saw her father working towards an inclusive solution to the Afghan conflict, few in the general population could separate Najibullah the communist from Najibullah the president calling for reconciliation. In the decades since, however, Najibullah’s image has undergone a transformation. Pictures of a man once tied to communism now hang in people’s cars, windows and shops. In an interview Al Jazeera, Heela Najibullah talks about her father’s changing image 25 years after the Soviet withdrawal. Continue reading the interview here…

/10/1524800_10152796510929386_462625720_n.jpg”> Here is a short – 1:46 min – video about TFF and an appeal for your support. 2013 was a disappointing donation year. We urgently hope you’ll think of peace and TFF in 2014. If you can’t support us with money, could you be so kind to post or mail the link in your circles? Many many thanks!

/10/janoberg.jpg”> TFF and its founders were awarded the People’s Peace Prize on December 7, 2013 .php”>enjoy the photos and get a sense of the lovely people, the atmosphere and the fabulous Nobel dinner. While this prize is not accompanied by any money, we will that it has something the official Norwegian Nobel Prize does not have: decision-makers who know what peace is and what Alfed Nobel really intended. Thank so very much for this great encouragement. We promise to continue on the road that is peace…