Peace

Jan Oberg February 17, 2025 Johan Galtung died a tragic death today a year ago. I have taken it upon myself to create a memorial site for one of the greatest social scientists of our time. It is launched today. I have two motives for doing so: One, Johan Galtung was one of my mentors, a colleague, and a dear friend for over precisely 50 years and a TFF Associate since we started in 1986. That is the 80%. The second is that Johan was forced to endure gross human rights violations by the Norwegian health and other authorities as well as by individuals in the last months of his life. So, too, his daughter Irene, who was the only one who cared for him to the end. This human rights story – that Galtung wanted to become public – has been repressed by means that do not belong to...

So happy again to be on a show at Pascal’s Neutrality Studies and meet Ulrike Guérot. I’m advancing the idea – and not for the first time – that humanity, all of us, think far too much about the past and the present – so much so that there is no space and interest in how to define and search for a better future. Click “Watch on YouTube” if you also want to see the – amazingly – many and constructive comments. And share/re-post wherever you can. Was this useful to you? Please share, re-post or refer other to it … OR click here and support TFF’s uniquely independent work for peace by peaceful means in these mad militarist times…

But does the West want to understand China? Jan Oberg February 7, 2025 This is a chapter in a TFF anthology in the making “If You Want To Understand China.” Foreword, Introduction, Authors and Table of Content here. We learn about other cultures than our own mostly through our media – however, in many cases, also through books, films, travels and personal encounters. All news are micro glimpses in time and space – something happens there and then, something else happens the next minute. In addition, the world is seen through negative lenses: dramatic and ’bad’ stuff makes the news. Bad news makes good news. We look for causes behind news and events in the immediate past or present, like B did this because A recently did that. It’s all micro in time and space, and very seldom do we get the macro – the larger/broader or deeper space and...

This is a chapter in a TFF anthology in the making “If You Want To Understand China.” Foreword, Introduction, Authors and Table of Content here. China has had an unprecedented development in the last 4 decades. It cannot be disputed. The progress list is long and covers absolutely everything, literally all walks of life, from on pavements to in space, from schools to research, from microchips to quantum computing, from one child to many and on and on. In several fields, though, China remains stable: the culture, the hard work and the commitment to The Project, the project for a shared future for humankind. It is a fact that the West is in decline, and China is on the rise. Relatively speaking, it is logical because that is how it is in zero-sum games. But is it really a zero-sum game? I do not think so; the cake can be...

I am very pleased with Thomas Karat’s very well-conducted interview and the perspectives he chose to focus on with me. I recommend his fine YouTube Channel warmly. I hope you will like it and share it – and, of course, leave your comments below. You may also go to the interview on YouTube and see the wonderful comments. The interview happened before the Western-supported al-Nusra terrorist regime-change in Syria, but that is, of course, on par with the two conflict areas mentioned in the video title. You’ll find many more videos on TFF’s Video Library on Substack.

Johan and Irene Galtung On August 6, Hiroshima Day, 2024, I published a long, very well-documented article by Irene Galtung, the daughter of peace research professor Johan Galtung, about the tragic circumstances surrounding his last months alive and the human rights violations they both had to endure. What is left of that publication now is only my foreword below. As the editor and publisher of The Transnational, I have decided under threat to delete it, and I owe our readers to explain how I came to that decision. The reason is that her mother and Johan’s wife, Fumiko Nishimura Galtung, her two half-brothers, Andreas Galtung and Harald Eide Galtung and her brother Fredrik Galtung, had turned to lawyer Jon Wessel-Aas at the Glitterlind Law Firm in Oslo, asking him to demand that it be deleted in its entirety. The reason behind that demand and warning was that they considered that...

War takes no brain. Everyone can start a fight. Humanity needs civilised conflict resolution now. We’re making intelligent peace through new thinking on this online public education community. In 2025, we’ll serve many more subscribers with new initiatives and build a peace-intelligent community on Substack. And we’ll continue to serve you here on The Transnational. Of course! Now, read about it on TFF Substack Subscribe! Join! Share!

通过联合国改革实现全球民主治理： 面向未来的多极世界 Jan Oberg January 8, 2025 Last year, I was asked by the prestigious “China Investment” Magazine in Beijing to write a longer analysis of my own choice. It would become the cover story in the first 2025 issue. While I have written several things before (a) for China Investment, it was the first time that I could freely choose. I feel honoured by the trust in extended by the editorial board. Since China relies heavily on long-range thinking and visions, I thought it would be interesting to write something within the field of future research—which I explain in the introduction to the analysis—about how I could envisage a future world with global governance and a reformed United Nations. I think it is urgently necessary to focus much less on the past and focus much more on the future. No one can drive to a goal by only looking...

Jan Oberg December 30, 2024 Not so prestigious or noble The media often describe the Nobel Peace Prize as the world’s most prestigious prize. That is, however, slightly bizarre for at least two reasons: first, there exists no system or set of criteria to rank prizes in various fields in terms of prestige. Secondly, over decades, this Prize has been awarded to people and organisations that reveal a careless interpretation of Alfred Nobel’s short and precise will, if not a direct violation of what he intended his Prize to support. 

A more benign interpretation could also be that it is prestigious because it has a focus on what is probably worldwide seen as the most noble or highest value, namely peace. Or, in a banal materialistic sense, that the huge amount of money accompanying the Prize makes it ’prestigious.’ A few introductory considerations This article discusses what has gone wrong...

) My friend and solidarity colleague, Biljana Vankovska, has been dismissed as director of the Center of the Global Changes Center where she is a full Professor at Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, Macedonia, in a chilling encroachment on academic freedom. The Center was conceived and brought to life by Biljana a year and a half ago and had already built a reputation for academic excellence mainly on the basis of a stimulating conference devoted to “the emerging cooperative multipolar system” and due to her ability to attract world-class scholars to join the Center’s Board and take part in this inaugural event. As the eloquent explanatory essay below indicates, this action by an educational administrator in her university was based on trumped-up charges. Biljana’s explanation that this punitive action in response to a development that undoubtedly enhanced the academic reputation of this Macedonian rings true—namely, that the government...

Peter Peverelli November 22, 2024 This is a chapter in a TFF anthology in the making – “If You Want To Understand China.” Foreword, Introduction, Authors and Table of Content here. Gordon DumoulinEchoes Of Volatile And Delusive Memory: Challenging Historical Interpretations Introduction ”Should the West see China as a threat or as an opportunity, a friend or an enemy? Are we heading for a third world war? Does the seemingly inexorable rise of China spell the doom of many values in which we have long believed? Might some form of communism prevail after all? Are China’s motives sinister? Is it trying to subvert us? Is it plotting mischief? Given the very bad press China has been getting in Western media, one might certainly think so. But the word ‘sinister’ has an interesting derivation. Its original meaning has nothing to do with wily orientalism. It means simply left-handed. Most of us...