Peace

December 29, 2020 Stephanie Van Hook “A burning passion coupled with absolute detachment is the key to all success.” – Gandhi (Harijan, 9-29-1946, p. 336) When Gandhi uses the term “detachment” he does not mean a passive disinterest or cold indifference; he is pointing to an active state of conscious awareness of the unity of life. We glimpse that unity when we work to weed out private, selfish attachment and the tiresome obsession about the results of our actions; in other words, we are detached from ourselves. When we think, How does this benefit me? we are not detached. When we think, How does this benefit others? we do have some measure of detachment from ourselves, and our ability to use nonviolence more effectively comes into its own. When we couple that sense of selfless detachment with a burning passion, the apparent paradox becomes a brilliant power. But even that, he says, is only a “key.” At...

Or your government leader’s Coronavirus speech that was never given. Do not believe the future will be better before you hear leaders say something like this… The speech can be seen as part of TFF’s Campaign “Convert Military Expenditures to Global Problem-Solving”. See and listen to the speech by clicking on Vimeo above, or read the transcript below. Fellow Citizens, good evening Tonight, I want to share with you the main lessons my government and I have drawn from the Coronavirus crisis – a crisis which has caused so much suffering and so many deaths. And a crisis that will take very long time for our economy to recover from. That lesson – and my central message to you tonight – is that your suffering has been caused by our failed security policies. Only, secondarily, is this a crisis of our health system. Therefore, I want to extend my most...

Richard Falk December 29, 2020 Unlike most of my interviews, this one is not directly about current political concerns. It rather explores ‘peace’ in its manifold identity. The interview was conducted by Miguel Mendoça a couple of months ago for a book project consisting of such interviews from a variety of persons whose life and work touches on the theme of peace. Miguel has since abandoned the project in favour of producing his own poems. Whether such abstract ideas as peace can be usefully explored independent of concrete circumstances haunts this text. I accept most of the blame. The interaction made me realize how little thought I have given to peacefulness as a personal trait and peace as the core of benevolent political arrangements, whether local or planetary and how their interaction may be understood. I recall being rather bemused more than 25 years ago when a meditation practice was...

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, the interest, the education and expertise, the focus, the awareness and the strategies. Let us start with the political sphere. In Scandinavia where I happen to live, today’s status is very different from the 1980s. There are no global disarmament policies or disarmament ministers; the UN’s basically non-armed peace-keeping is hardly ever mentioned; while Sweden has integrated with NATO and has soldiers under NATO command, it no longer contributes a single UN peacekeeper. Ideas such as human security, common security and confidence-building measures with the presumed enemy are never mentioned in the political discourse. The...

Lund, Sverige – 22. december, 2020 Deklarationen for TFFs Globale Omstillings-kampagne Vær rar at skrive på!Sammen med millioner kan du gør en forskel. Og bed dine familie og venner om at skrive på den også (længst nede). Hvis du ikke vil læse hele deklarationen, så læs blot denne korte udgave og gå ned til “Jeg støtter forslaget…” Kort udgaveOveni de store globale problemer, vi skal have løst, er så kommet Coronaen. Deklarationen argumenterer for at verdens prioriteter er – lad os sige, perverse. For eksempel så koster alt hvad FN gør bare 3% af verdens militære udgifter.TFF – Den Transnationale Stiftelse for Freds- og Fremtidsforskning i Lund – foreslår derfor at alle lande omgående reducerer militærudgifterne med 50%. Det vil frigøre 1000 milliarder dollar – ja, du læste rigtigt. Dette ufatteligt store beløb skal bruges til at få løst de globale problemer – som klimaforandringen, fattigdommen, sulten etc – og...

By Regan Durkin The Global Press Coalition for Peace, GPCP, in Washington kindly turned to me and asked me to speak with them for a longer podcast. GPCP is a rather young but very innovative civil society organization that focuses on how the media deal with conflicts, war and peace – and how it can be done better. I warmly recommend that you visit and look around. Their focus is so very important. I was very grateful for being given this opportunity since its podcasts seem to have a rather wide audience in the United States in particular. The conversation was initiated and the podcast recorded by Regan Durkin and the whole thing was a very pleasant experience. Here is how she has introduced me on their homepage: “Join us as we discuss with Dr. Jan Oberg, Founder of The Transnational Foundation for Peace & Future Research, diving into the...

Karin Utas Carlsson December 1, 2020 The purpose of this article is to highlight the thoughts of peace researcher John W. Burton put forward towards the end of the last century. He is seen as the father of Human Needs Theory, a way of thinking behind the concept of human security, increasingly in focus in today’s debate. According to peace researcher Jan Öberg, the term human security was first used in a research report by him in 1978. Öberg analyses the concept and writes its history (Öberg, 20-05-28). This is a line of thought very different from the established defence and foreign policy, based on power politics. I strongly believe that the world would be less violent and a much better place for most of us if we used constructive methods of conflict resolution, including promoting peace. As we shall see, Human Needs Theory provides a theoretical framework for achieving...

Since 2007, a number of TFF Associates – Fredrik Heffermehl to mention the leading world expert on it – have been engaged in creating awareness of the de facto and de jure misuse of the world’s in principle most prestigious prize – Alfred Nobel’s for peace. We usually do not post appeals on this public education for peace site. But this appeal, crafted by Heffermehl and David Swanson – deserves to be here. Please go to the appeal now and sign it. It is common sense and it is uncontroversial – unless you happen to believe in two things: a) that violence and war is better than peace, and b) that it’s OK that those who manage a will ignore its stated purpose completely over about a century and – with a few important exceptions – use it instead for the opposite purpose than intended by the testator. The testator,...

November 23 and 24, 2020, marks an important event in the international academic/university history of peace and conflict research. The reason is that the Faculty of World Studies at Tehran University holds a large – online – conference – “International Conference on Peace and Conflict Resolution (ICPCR)”. My colleague and friend there, associate professor Ali Akbar Alikhani, is the dynamic pioneer of this important endeavour which includes an international Master’s program in peace and conflict studies. It comes in the wake of a lecture I gave at the Faculty 6 years ago about peace and conflict research. As far as I’m informed, Iran is the second country in the Muslim world to establish a fill program of academic peace and conflict studies (Malaysia the first), and this conference marks the opening of this new academic field. Iran’s bustling capital also hosts an interesting, very lively, Tehran Peace Museum – but...

“Eutopia 15” Abstract photograph 2015 © Jan Oberg David R. LoyTFF Associate October 21, 2020 “Hell is truth seen too late.” (Anonymous) Why would a small group of people want to crash hijacked airplanes into skyscrapers, killing thousands and terrorizing millions? Perhaps only religion can provide the motivation and collective support for such heinous deeds (occasionally including our dominant secular God, the modern nation-state). Does this mean that religious terrorism can be dismissed as just another example of religious fanaticism? Or is there a “logic” to fundamentalist terrorism, which makes it a regrettable but nonetheless understandable reaction to modernity? Mark Juergensmeyer and Karen Armstrong have shown that religious fundamentalism is not a return to premodern ways of being religious. Jewish, Christian and Islamic fundamentalisms are all recent developments reacting to what is perceived – to a large extent correctly, I shall argue – as the failure of secular modernity. Such...

Delaware Senator Joseph Biden presents Secretary of “Defense” William Cohen with a model C5 aircraft at a luncheon in Sec. Cohen’s honor during his visit to Dover Air Force Base on Wednesday, December 15, 1999. 15 November, 2020 In June 2019, Joe Biden promised wealthy so-called donors that nothing would fundamentally change. At this moment hundreds of millions of people — from those shooting off fireworks to those ranting as though they will soon shoot up public places in their MAGA hats — seem convinced that everything will fundamentally change. Biden was wrong. Everybody else is right. Either everything will change for the better or one or both of the twin dangers of environmental and nuclear apocalypse will change everything for the worse. What should someone who cares about ending war think? How can we get from the euphoria of electing a warmonger to mobilizing people to end war? How...

TFF celebrates the world-renowned international law professor, activist, writer, TFF Associate and dear friend By Jan Oberg November 13, 2020 At TFF, we are blessed by having a number of peace and future scholars, world-leading in their professions, who have followed world events over many decades and continue to be committed to world order change and public education. I say “blessed” because I assume that the reader share my reverence for high age and the sharing of long life experience as well as the wisdom that may accompany it in the midst of the youth-worshipping which characterises the ageing and increasingly grumpy West itself – also sometimes called age discrimination. Last month we celebrated Johan Galtung at 90. And today, Richard Falk at 90 – both world-renowned mega-productive scholars restlessly seeking ways to make the world a more peaceful place. And both TFF Associates, mentors and friends of the founders...