The peace discourse that disappeared: Go on with passion and detachment

The peace discourse that disappeared: Go on with passion and detachment

Jan Oberg December 29, 2020 Look at and listen in to three spheres of contemporary Western society – politics, research and media: The word” peace” and related words, such as the UN Charter norm of “making peace by peaceful means”, nonviolence, negotiations – have disappeared. And with the words, the discourse and with the discourse, […]

Conversation Between Gandhi & Bin Laden – by Bhikhu Parekh

Conversation Between Gandhi & Bin Laden – by Bhikhu Parekh

By Bhikhu Parekh November 5, 2020 If he were alive today, how might Mahatma Gandhi, the greatest apostle of non-violence, challenge Osama Bin Laden’s worldview? Bhikhu Parekh is Vice-President of The Gandhi Foundation, a professor of political philosophy, a Labour peer, and the author of three books on Gandhi. This article first appeared in Prospect Magazine in April […]

One-On-One+ with Johan Galtung

One-On-One+ with Johan Galtung

Johan Galtung 2010 © Jan Oberg Johan Galtung October 23, 2020 On the occasion of Galtung’s 90th birthday tomorrow on UN Day, we bring you a conversation he had ten years ago with Riz Khan at Aljazeera about his life. Johan and co-founder Jan Oberg have been friends and collaborated since 1974 and he’s been […]

On the coming decline and fall of the US Empire

On the coming decline and fall of the US Empire

By Johan Galtung – TFF Associate October 23, 2020 This paper was written in 2015. Republished here on the occasion of Galtung’s 90th birthday, October 24, 2020. It was originally published at TMS, Transcend Media Service 1.  Definitions and Hypotheses: An Overview Definition: An empire is a transborder Center-Periphery system, in macro-space and in macro-time, […]

The love of truth and the truth of love: Bertrand Russell on the two pillars of human flourishing

The love of truth and the truth of love: Bertrand Russell on the two pillars of human flourishing

By Maria Popova October 8, 2020 In the mid-1950s, as the icy terror of the Cold War was cloaking the embering rubble of two World Wars, the BBC producer and cartoonist Hugh Burnett envisioned an unexampled program to serve both as a cross-cultural bridge and a mirror beaming back to a dimmed and discomposed humanity […]

Making change nonviolently

Making change nonviolently

Louis Kriesberg By Louis Kriesberg September 25, 2020 Since Donald J. Trump was inaugurated as president, many Americans have carried out a wide variety of collective nonviolent actions to oppose many of his and his administration’s policies. The actions include massive marches in Washington, D.C. in concert with marches in cities across the nation. They […]

Tolstoy and Gandhi: light as darkness approached

Tolstoy and Gandhi: light as darkness approached

René Wadlow September 16, 2020 “We possess a single infallible guide, the Universal Spirit that lives in men as a whole, and in each one of us, which makes us aspire to what we should aspire: it is the Spirit that commands the tree to grow toward the sun, the flower to throw off its […]

ObergComment: Illiteracy or knowledge? Now an existential choice

ObergComment: Illiteracy or knowledge? Now an existential choice

📌 We know that many of our readers would like to see some short, pointed posts here. So, in contrast to the longer, more analytical articles we usually publish – normal for an academic institution – an Oberg Comment is a short text by the editor of The Transnational, Jan Oberg, which alerts you to […]

Toward a global ethics of nonviolence

Toward a global ethics of nonviolence

Human nature, Gandhi said, “will only find itself when it fully realises that to be human it has to cease to be beastly or brutal”. (Illustration: C R Sasikumar) Charles P. Webel with Sofia Khaydari July 28, 2020 The UN’s peacekeeping mission is premised on the Declaration of Universal Human Rights, based on the assumptions […]

Education for peace and geopolitics

Education for peace and geopolitics

Johan GaltungTFF Associate July 20, 2020 60 years of peace theory and peace practice can be summarized in:                                                 EQUITY x HARMONY                              PEACE =   ——————————-                                                 TRAUMA x CONFLICT Four theory foci, four policy tasks, and four education topics. Any true education should prepare for practice, guided by general theory. Moving from denominator right […]