Peace

  , speaks with Russia Today and points out why this type of behaviour is totally unacceptable: It violates international law, undermines the UN and brings Syria, the region and the world further and further from peace. The people behind it and their media and other supporters must be perceived as either conflict- and peace illiterate or advocates of criminal activity. Both of which are tragic and making already dark times darker. We must say stop and argue: Peace first – The Secure the peace. In addition, contrary to the Western/NATO belief this is self-destructive and self-isolating. The international so-called community is, for the large majority, not behind this type of policy.

Lund, Sweden – April 14, 2018 Statement by Associates of TFF – The Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research Summary The US-British-French attack is a clear and indisputable case of aggression according to international law, and to the UN Charter in particular. And it lacks, like many unilateral wars before it, a UN Security Council mandate. It comes as a consequence of interventionist impulses and militarism and lacks every element of a comprehensive conflict analysis, or diagnosis. Even if one assumes that the government and president of Syria are the main/only culprits and the worst violaters of human rights on earth, the way that the Syrian conflict has been handled by Western governments over the past seven years has been outrageously wrong and counterproductive. It’s been deliberate conflict-mismanagement combined with peace-prevention. Conspicuously, this aggression on Syria takes place before there is a shred of evidence of what chemical weapons...

We should carefully reflect on Martin Luther King’s  message to the World. MLK understood the relationship between America’s war agenda and social justice and civil rights in America. “No one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war [Vietnam]”. One cannot be a civil rights leader without taking a stance against U.S. led wars. In the words of Martin Luther King: “Silence is Betrayal”. Today with war hawks in the White House and the U.S. State department, America is leading a military adventure which in the real sense of the word threatens the future of humanity. But this is not a talking point on network TV. Nor is it a concern of the “antiwar” movement. Meanwhile, the media is “killing the truth” either through distortion or omission. Today we commemorate the passing of Martin Luther King who was assassinated in a...

Martin Luther King, Jr., speaking against the Vietnam War, St. Paul Campus, University of Minnesota | 27 April 1967 . (Image by Minnesota Historical Society| Creative Commons)   By Robert Burrowes, Australia April 4, 2018 Fifty years ago, on 4 April 1968, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated The night before he died, King gave another of his many evocative speeches; this one at the packed Mason Temple in Memphis. The speech included these words: ‘Men for years now have been talking about war and peace. Now no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and non-violence in this world, it is non-violence or non-existence. That is where we are today.’ In clearly identifying this stark choice and having been inspired by Mohandas K. Gandhi’s wide-ranging social concerns, King’s concerns were also broad: ‘The Triple Evils of poverty, racism and...

  . This exciting opportunity stimulated the development of a bigger idea that combines Oberg’s work for peace and art photography with a focus on the Chinese-initiated Silk Belt and Road Initiative, the largest and most visionary in today’s world in terms of linking people and cultures into cooperation rather than confrontation. In various ways the project – with the Road as metaphor – stretches from Shanghai over Myanmar, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Iran and Syria to Venice and seeks to promote cooperation and peace in the process. The “Silk PeaceArt Road” project is made public at this very early development stage where no funding is secured to encourage you to share co-operative ideas, contacts you may have in China and along the Silk Road or to potential partners, artists, sponsors, art institutions, etc. The project integrates peace work and art photography and it is the first cooperative endeavour by TFF and...

TFF Associate John Scales Avery presents his latest book on one of the most destructive institutions in modern societies and of our time. I would like to announce the publication of a new book entitled “The Devil’s Dynamo”. It is a collection of articles and book chapters that I have written about the way in which military-industrial complexes throughout the world drive and perpetuate the institution of war. A considerable amount of new material has also been added. The book can be freely downloaded and circulated from the Danish Peace Academy. Why call a book about military-industrial complexes “The Devil’s Dynamo”? A military-industrial complex involves a circular flow of money. The money flows like the electrical current in a dynamo, driving a diabolical machine. Money from immensely rich corporate oligarchs buys the votes of politicians and the propaganda of the mainstream media. Numbed by the propaganda, citizens allow the politicians...

    This present Pope – Francis – is probably the most powerful man in the world, in the round. Stalin once asked when confronted with the argument about the Pope’s reach and influence, replied, “How many divisions has the pope got?” He missed the point. The pope does not work these days in the world of hard power. He is a peddler of soft power. Francis has much more power, maybe because of the strength of his convictions than any of his predecessors, with the exception of the Polish pope, John Paul 11, who played a front-line role in triggering the events that brought down communism. John Paul 11 set his sights high. How could this youngish pope have such an impact? It was drive, personality and an intuitive knowledge of how power worked. He was also enormously charismatic and could summon up a crowd of half a million people...

The ethnic map few understood. Should make it clear that cutting up Yugoslavia in independent republics could not be done without bloodshed. (1) Yellow = Serbs, Dark Green = Muslims, Light Blue = Croats,  Light Green = Slovenes, Orange = Montenegrins, Pink = Albanians, Darker Blue = Macedonians   , marks the 19th anniversary of NATO illegal and illegitimate bombing of Yugoslavia, Serbia and its Kosovo, province during 78 days. It has – one is tempted to say: of course – been conveniently forgotten by the West itself. It was masterminded by the United States under Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright after the so-called negotiations between Serbs and Albanians in Rambouillet outside Paris (the parties never met face-to-face) While Clinton may be best remembered for his relations with Monica Lewinsky and his wife, Hillary Clinton, some of us also remember him (and Albright) for bombing Afghanistan, Sudan,...

* Today marks the 15th Anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq. Neither solid analyses, moral reasoning and decent argument nor history’s probably largest pre-war, anti-war demonstrations worldwide had any discernible impact on the Bush and Blair Administrations’ decision to go to war and do so on a false pretext. Neither could major allies like France and Germany by their opposition to the war on Iraq persuade Washington and London to first try a peaceful resolution in accordance with the UN Charter provisions. TFF was deeply engaged in preventing this war – also by being on the ground in Iraq – and wants to a) document the research we did and how we argued back then and b) contribute to this tragedy never being forgotten. We also want to place our analyses and debate articles at the disposal – in one place – of the students, researchers, concerned citizens and...

By Shahed Ghoreishi March 5, 2018 At the Munich Security Conference in February, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif repeated his administration’s proposal to engage Iran’s Persian Gulf neighbors with the goal of creating a Persian Gulf Security Agreement. Originally published by Lobe Log here. According to Zarif, the talks for such an agreement would be “founded on dialogue, common principles, and confidence building measures” with the goal of avoiding “turmoil or potentially far worse.” Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi referenced his boss’ plan during a visit to the British think tank Chatham House the following week, repeating the goal of a Helsinki-inspired non-aggression pact that would first begin with confidence-building measures in tourism, pollution, and drug trafficking. Of course, this proposal is largely aimed at Saudi Arabia. This type of plan, if ideally pursued by all parties, would echo the hope President Obama had during his administration. In what later...

  Asia and the Middle East lead rising trend in arms imports, US exports grow significantly, says SIPRI March 12, 2018 Via sipri.org Continuing the upward trend that began in the early 2000s, the volume of international transfers of major weapons in 2013-17 was 10 per cent higher than in 2008-12, according to new data on arms transfers published today by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). The flow of arms increased to Asia and Oceania and the Middle East between 2008–12 and 2013–17, while there was a decrease in the flow to Africa, the Americas and Europe. The five biggest exporters – the United States, Russia, France, Germany and China – together accounted for 74 per cent of all arms exports in 2013–17. ‘The increased flow of arms raises concerns over their impact on international peace and security’, says Ambassador Jan Eliasson, Chair of the SIPRI Governing Board. ‘It stresses the...

  By Richard Falk discussing with Jeff Warner and Yossi Khen   Prefatory note This post consists of an exchange of views prompted by my talk at a United Methodist Church in Culver City (Los Angeles) published by Tikkun’s online magazine, March 6, 2018. The core disagreement is whether to retain the emphasis on ending occupation as still the best, and some say, the only path to peace, and my view that a sustainable peace can only be obtained by a process of eliminating the apartheid structure by which Israel currently subjugates the Palestinian people as a whole (that is, including those living as a minority in pre-1967 Israel or in refugee camps spread across neighboring countries or as involuntary exiles in the Palestinian global diaspora). I regard this difference of views as of analytical, political, and normative importance, but as always, defer to authoritative Palestinian views as to the...