Peace

  By Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev June 16, 2018 • Russia and the United States are not condemned to confrontation. We must now make up for lost time! Mikhail Gorbachev’s Address to Participants in the Conference Marking the 30th Anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s Visit and the Moscow Summit. Originally published at the homepage of the Gorbachev Foundation on June 4, 2018 I welcome all who have gathered to mark the thirtieth anniversary of President Ronald Reagan’s visit to Moscow and the US-Soviet summit. I think it was a truly historic event. It was a kind of summing up of the work we had done, starting in Geneva and then going through Reykjavik and Washington to Moscow. It was not an easy path. Its first major milestone was the Joint US-Soviet Statement which declared that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought” and that “the two sides will...

• This is the second of two articles about the coming end of NATO as we know it and what can be done. The first you find here. It may be good to have at least browsed that one before you read on here. The Banality of Militarism In the field of science, business and culture, new ideas, innovative methods, doing new things and doing old things in new ways are activities usually rewarded and admired. That keeps these fields vibrant, alive and interesting to others too. However, in the field of the all-pervasive, omni-present paradigm of basic military defence and security thinking and policy – drop peace because no one has a peace policy – no such dynamics exist. The same old tune is played over and over again – to make you fearful and pay: The same old tune is played over and over again – to make...

  • Give the man a break. Donald Trump found out in Singapore that, as Churchill said, “Jaw-Jaw is better than War-War”. If war can be avoided by a warm, long, very private chat without advisers, with effusive body gestures and promises of a world stage when his opponent, Kim Jong Un, is invited to the White House, then Trump has showed the way. It was learning the hard way because a few months ago when Trump threatened to incinerate North Korea he met counter threats from North Korea that could have led to the deaths of 30 million people in South Korea alone, never mind what numbers might die in an attack on American troops stationed in Japan and Guam naval base. I have no proof but I do think Trump can make a grand peace with North Korea, unlike his predecessors. They too had the will but were...

  By Patricia Hynes Co-author: Frances Crowe June 4, 2018 Greenfield, MA (Informed Comment) – Fifty-five years ago on June 10, 1963, President John F. Kennedy delivered a commencement address at American University that, in fewer than 30 minutes, turned traditional national security policy on its head. Kennedy proclaimed that world peace is “the most important topic on earth….not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women – not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.” His speech was hailed by then Soviet Union premier Nikita Khrushchev as “the greatest speech by any American President since Roosevelt.” Originally published at Informed Comment by Juan Cole here   Eight months earlier, both men had faced the terrifying possibility of nuclear holocaust in a showdown between the United States and the Soviet Union, remembered to history as the Cuban Missile Crisis. Shaken but emboldened by it,...

    By Uri Avnery 2 Jun 2018 I loved Gaza. That is a play on words. The Biblical Song of Songs says that love is strong as death. Strong in Hebrew is Aza. Aza is also the Hebrew name of Gaza. I have spent many happy hours in Gaza. I had many friends there. From the leftist Dr. Haidar Abd al-Shafi to the Islamist Mahmoud al-Zahar, who is now the foreign minister of Hamas. I was there when Yasser Arafat, the son of a Gazan family, came home. They put me in the first row of the reception at the Rafah border, and that evening he received me at the hotel on the Gaza sea shore, seating me next to him on the stage during a press conference. I met with a friendly attitude everywhere in the Gaza Strip, in the refugee camps and in the streets of Gaza...

Appeal to P.M. May and U.K. Government to choose Peace and not war against Syria. Dear Prime Minister May and Members of the UK Parliament, 12 Apr 2018 – As you are well aware, many people are deeply concerned at the dangerous escalation and tension between political leaders, allegations and accusations and unhelpful rhetoric and threats of war, all of which are leading people to ask if there is going to be a third world war. Only yesterday one young man told me he had just dreamed of a nuclear explosion and asked me if there was going to be a war soon?   What can I tell him Mrs. May?  Can I tell him not to worry that our political leaders passionately believe in peace and are working for a peaceful negotiated solution to the Syrian crisis, and other conflicts?  Can I tell him that you and your parliamentarians will...

Photo by Nadav Kander   By Marzhan Nurzhan The CTBTO Youth Group (CYG) holds its second international conference in Kazakh capital city Astana from August 28-30, 2018. The author is a CYG member from Kazakhstan, a convener of Abolition 2000 Youth Network and a PNND Coordinator for CIS countries. This article first appeared in The Astana Times on May 29, 2018 with the title ‘Kazakhstan’s Nuclear Legacy and Importance of CTBTO’. It is being reproduced with the author’s permission. – The Editor.   PRAGUE (IDN) – I am coming from Kazakhstan, the country which inherited around 1,500 nuclear weapons from the Soviet Union making it the 4th biggest nuclear arsenal in the world at the time. For almost half a century, from 1949 until 1989, the Soviet Union conducted 456 nuclear tests above and underground at the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site, known also as Semey polygon, in the eastern part...

I would like to announce the publication of my new book entitled “The Information Explosion”. This book discusses the role of information in evolution, and especially in the evolution of human culture. Articles and book chapters that I have previously written on this subject are incorporated in the text in modified forms, but more than half of the material is new. The book may be freely downloaded and circulated from this link. Reformed teaching of history Human nature has two sides: It has a dark side, to which nationalism and militarism appeal; but our species also has a genius for cooperation, which we can see in the growth of culture. Our modern civilization has been built up by means of a worldwide exchange of ideas and inventions. It is built on the achievements of many ancient cultures. China, Japan, India, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, the Islamic world, Christian Europe, and the...

Please watch the video below carefully. You’ll see what could – could, and most likely will – become a piece of world peace history. Note the body language of the two leaders – warm smiles and long handshakes. In spite of being one and the same nation, they meet at the hardest border in the world. Why is it so? Because everybody else around – the US, Japan, Russia, China – to varying degrees want them to be divided and feel threatened by their possible unification. And yes, a unified Korea would be a formidable economic power but a huge, dangerous conflict would be gone, the US could withdraw, Japan would get a chance to reconciliate in substantive terms. What is most amazing in this clip is that Kim first steps over the border line into the South. Then – seemingly surprising Moon – invites Moon to step into the...

Ina Curic has been with TFF since 2006 – an Associate, a Board member and also TFF’s project coordinator when we worked in Burundi. After a few years away from the bigger world issues of the world, Ina Curic is now back as author of children’s books – bedtime stories for children and waking-up stories for parents, in one. In this short video* she tells you about the idea behind the books – which has a lot to do with peace and environmental education. She is also a mother of two and a very playful personality who loves to experiment and make people laugh and feel happy around her. Given all the world crisis we face as humanity, the message Ina Curic conveys is existentially important and gives hope to big and small alike. We recommend that you visit her homepage and download her first free ebook here and find...

Ina Curic became a TFF Associate in April 2006, TFF’s project coordinator in Burundi in May 2007 and a member of the foundation’s Board in March 2008. After years of service, she left the Board to develop her career as author and publisher but, in December 2018, she again joined the Board. Romanian-born Ina Curic is a trained sociologist, with an M.A. in Gender Studies from Babes-Bolyai University, Romania and an M.A. in Peace and Conflict Studies from the European Peace University, Austria. She has a solid background in peace and conflict research, gender studies and NGO management and more than fifteen years work experience with national civil society and international organizations in different countries. Since 1999, Ina has provided numerous national and international training programmes and workshops on different topics related to organizational development, project management, peace, conflict and gender and youth work-related issues in various settings.  Her field...

  A short comment to a very good statement by Madam Mogherini about Syria. She is right – and one must wonder why virtually every big power anyhow does not invest in political, negotiated solutions but in weapons. And why the world is so woefully unbalanced in terms of war-making versus peace-making. The simple truth is that every and each conflict on earth gets more difficult to solve from the moment some type of violence is introduced into it. That is why the world should focus on reducing  military development, production and sales. If Syria had been cordoned off and no weapons had entered its space, it would have been much much easier to solve the underlying conflicts – which, by the way, have little to do with Darrah in spring 2011 but much more complex things. I find it relevant to here also mention how pervasively all Security Council...