Imagined/Real

Photo © Jan Öberg Av Karl Wang 28:e mars 2019 Denna artikel är skriven av Karl Wang, pensionerad, tidigare ingenjör inom IT&T. Wang är bosatt i Kina. Den tillför ny information och ger en annan bedömning än en del andra artiklar. Den publicerades först på den av Anders Romelsjö redigerade bloggen Global Politics som du kan läsa mer om här. Karl Wang har delat upp sin framställning i följande avsnitt: Vad är ett imperium? Exempel på imperier Hur kom det sig att det blev så i Kina? Dagens Kina Internationellt Kina idag Läs hela artikeln här och observera också de många synpunkter, som den givit upphov till. Det är principiellt viktigt att lära om Kina och diskutera olika tolkningar och perspektiv.

By Thore Vestby March 27, 2019 To gather national strength, just create an enemy. In Europe, the Americans are doing this daily on many levels, from small businesses to countries and the continent itself. It is apparent from the media coverage last year that China has been designated “the great danger”. The United States is devoting huge resources to discrediting China in Europe. It is mobilising its political and diplomatic corps to get the world, especially Western nations, to believe that if Chinese economic progress continues, the world might collapse. The strategy seems to be to spread insecurity, suspicion and falsehoods, and to threaten misery if countries fail to follow the US. Originally published by The South China Morning Star on March 26, 2019 Washington has threatened retaliation if the EU limits US involvement in pan-continental military projects. It has warned Turkey not to purchase S-400 rockets from Russia. It...

By Dragana Maksimovic January 28, 2019 The author, MA student at University of Belgrade, become a TFF Associate in 2018. More here. There is one thing about which many peace researchers disagree and constantly debate: Are we really living in the most peaceful era ever, or are we facing a dangerous era of conflicts and struggles for global supremacy – very often masked as a fight for human rights but which can lead to a global war? There are those who agree with Steven Pinker when he claims that “today we are living in a most peaceful time in our species’ existence” (1) or with Barack Obama, the 44th president of The United States, who wanted to highlight how “worth it is reminding ourselves of how lucky we are to be living in the most peaceful, most prosperous, most progressive era in human history.’’ (2) Trying to validate his claims,...

  Thwarting the anti-dollar coalition should be Washington’s top national priority   By Gal Luft August 30, 2018   The United States is currently waging economic warfare against one tenth of the world’s countries with cumulative population of nearly 2 billion people and combined gross domestic product (GDP) of more than $15 trillion. These include Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of Congo, North Korea and others on which Washington has imposed sanctions over the years, but also countries like China, Pakistan and Turkey which are not under full sanctions but rather targets of other punitive economic measures. In addition, thousands of individuals from scores of countries are included in the Treasury Department’s list of Specially Designated Nationals who are effectively blocked from the U.S.-dominated global financial system. Many of those designated are either part of or closely linked to their countries’ leadership. Published by Yahoo...

Hardly 10 months after honoring the visiting US president, the Saudis are open to a Russian-Chinese consortium investing in the upcoming Aramco IPO*   By M. K. Bhadrakumar February 16, 2018 In the slideshow that is Middle Eastern politics, the series of still images seldom add up to make an enduring narrative. And the probability is high that when an indelible image appears, it might go unnoticed – such as Russia and Saudi Arabia wrapping up huge energy deals on Wednesday underscoring a new narrative in regional and international security. Originally published by Asia Times here The ebb and flow of events in Syria – Turkey’s campaign in Afrin and its threat to administer an “Ottoman slap” to the United States, and the shooting down of an Israeli F-16 jet – hogged the attention. But something of far greater importance was unfolding in Riyadh, as Saudi and Russian officials met...

Most bankers, economists and investors after a couple of drinks, will admit that money is not wealth. Money is a metric, like inches and centimeters, for tracking real wealth: human ingenuity and technological productivity interacting with natural resources and biodiversity undergirding all human societies along with the daily free photons from our Sun, as described in “Valuing Today’s Circular Services Information Economies”. So brainwashed are we by the false money meme of “money as wealth” that whenever anyone proposes needed infrastructure maintenance, better schools and healthcare or any public goods, we are intimidated by some defunct economist who says “Where’s the money coming from?” They ought to know better, since, of course money is not scarce, it’s just information as I pointed out in 2001 at the annual meeting of the Inter-American Development Bank in an invited talk “Information, The World’s Real Currency, Is Not Scarce “(see World Affairs, April-June, Vol. 5, 2001, Delhi,...

By William Bowles • Before I began this essay I read through some of my past forays that mentioned climate change and capitalism, the first I think, being in 2006 where I opined in a piece on the ‘War on Terror’: Perhaps the impending climate catastrophe as well as the genocidal actions of the US will force us to finally start thinking and acting ‘outside of the box’ but without a clear idea of where we are heading or how to get there, currently the situation looks dire. — WOT is to be done? 2 November, 2006 In the intervening years, things have gotten even more dire on pretty much every front. It appears that the world’s political and business elite are even more entrenched inside their box. Except, we do know what has to be done, so why, in the face of the obvious, do we not act to forestall catastrophe? Original posted...

Introduction This is a collection of biographical sketches showing people whose wise voices from the past can help to guide us today. All of the women and men, brief glimpses of whose lives and ideas are portrayed here, gave a high place to compassion. None of them was a slave to greed. We need their voices today! A Lower-Upper Middle Class Family and Education Eric Arthur Blair (1903-1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was the great-grandson of Charles Blair, a wealthy country gentleman, and Lady Mary Fane, daughter of the Earl of Westmorland. Over the generations that separated Eric Blair from his great-grandparents, some of the gentility remained but most of the wealth disappeared, and he described his family as being “lower-upper middle class”. Eric Blair was born in British India where his father was working, but when he was one year old his mother took the...

• Keynote, World Futures Studies Federation Conference – Jondal, Norway 7 Jun 2017 West of Jondal is Torsnes, named after the Nordic war god Thor with his Hammer, a center of the Viking era from 800 to 1050, only 250 years. Why so short? Successful with raids and colonization–Gardarike in Russia, Iceland, Greenland, Vineland in Canada. And then: fini. Why? Because they had no future. Evil Lóki had killed Good Baldur – next to Torsnes is Belsnes=Baldursnes. They were doomed. Enters Christianity with Evil Satan and Good God, restoring hope. The end. The Soviet Union Empire had no future: Communism was undefined. Enters Orthodox Christianity – Putin is a true believer – hope restored. The United States Empire has no future: “Allies” refuse to fight US wars and US capitalism increases inequality with reduced growth. Enter Campaigner Trump ‘Making America Great Again’ by buying-hiring American; President Trump making America isolated,...

By Roberto Savio Human Wrongs Watch • Rome, Dec 27, 2017 – On 20 December, Europe’s 28 Ministers of Environment met in Brussels, to discuss the plan for reducing emissions prepared by the Commission, to comply with the Paris Agreement on climate change. Well, it is now clear that we have lost the battle in keeping the planet as we have known it. Now, of course, this can be considered a personal opinion of mine, devoid of objectivity. Via human-wrongs-watch.net Therefore, I will bring a lot of data, history and facts, to make it concrete. Data and facts have good value: they focus any debate, while ideas do not. So those who do not like facts, please stop reading here. You will escape a boring article, as probably all of mine are, because I am not looking to entertain, but to create awareness. If you stop reading, you will also...

• Published in Bulletin of Peace Proposals 3-1990, pp 287-298 and on TFF’s homepage at the same time   1. Four hypotheses The West has lost a close enemy, the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Which reactions can be discerned and what psycho-political emotions are they indicative of? How did the West cope with the first years of this new post-Cold War situation? Can we mourn the death of an enemy, can we heal ourselves after the loss? How does one learn to live a new life without a close enemy? Has the West done what it ought to do for itself and for the former enemy? “The West” of course is a term hanging loose. We employ it in this article as meaning interchangeably “NATO, the Western hemisphere, the United States and Western Europe and a few cases, Western or Occidental culture”. The first hypothesis of this essay is...

  • China is embracing megaprojects at an unprecedented rate and will – over the course of a few decades – complete a phase of infrastructure that will rival what the United States has built in its entire history.     You may also like to see this on Shenzhen: The Silicon Valley of Hardware Or this on Shenzhen: City of the future. The high-tech life of China’s Silicon Valley.   Jan Oberg comments: Fascinating and perhaps frightening too. But we in the West have to become more interested in what happens outside our own cultural sphere. We won’t be the center of the world much longer – if we ever were.