Peace

AI generated imagine on Freepik A 2-minute “appetiser” for an extended interview by China’s CGTN. More to come!

A new, innovative, and visionary anthology about the world that is unfolding behind the doom and gloom that the media and politicians try to foist on you. It’s edited by Bijana Vankovska, Richard Sakwa, Weiwei Zhang and Toni Mileski and obviously provocative in the eyes of some (lesser minds). Preface “This volume is the outcome of what might seem, at first glance, to be an ordinary academic conference. Cooperative Multipolar System: In Quest of a New World Order was held on October 3–4, 2024, organized by the Global Changes Center (GCC), the youngest research center at the Faculty of Philosophy. Тhe Chamber of Emigrants from Macedonia eventually joined as a supporting institution, following a formal agreement with the Faculty. Yet, this gathering was far from conventional. It was designed as an intellectual intervention to engage with the evolving global order and challenge the one-dimensional narratives that dominate academic and political...

Naturally, nobody cares about that fraud in today’s Sweden. Jan Oberg April 15, 2025 SIPRI is the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, established in 1966. Read about it here and see how it has twisted its aims to not include the words ‘peace research.’ Because here is what it should do according to § 2 of its statutes: “…to conduct scientific research on questions of conflict and cooperation of importance for international peace and security, with the aim of contributing to an understanding of the conditions for peaceful solutions of interstate conflicts and for stable peace. (My italics). The rather low intellectual level is indicated by the statement that “SIPRI’s vision is a world in which sources of insecurity are identified and understood, conflicts are prevented or resolved, and peace is sustained.” Sources of insecurity shall not be removed, they shall only be identified and understood. Conflicts shall be ‘prevented’...

Wang Yuewei（王玥玮） March 24, 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. How to treat others is a core issue in a nation’s foreign policy and a direct reflection of its moral tradition. Throughout history, the performance of Western civilizations and Chinese civilization has been different. When it comes to dealing with others, China insists on pacifism and coexistence, whereas the West adopts expansionism and interventionism. Pacifism and expansionism are neither inherently good nor bad; each has its own achievements and losses. Pacifist China did not launch bloody colonial conquests despite its strength, but its conservative stance caused it to miss the Industrial Revolution. The expansionist West, through both violence and peace, spread modern technology and systems globally, but this often resulted in slaughter, plunder, and sometimes genocide in the colonies. National...

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. Cultural bias Before looking at concrete patterns of manipulation, it is necessary to point at the cultural bias that is partly driving the manipulation. Not only the regulations and protocols of most international organizations like the UN, WTO, NATO, etc., are culturally biased, the very idea of a ‘rules-based world’ as the ultimate goal of humanity is rooted in Western cultural values that are not supported by most non-Western nations. In fact, the basic idea behind TFF’s Smokescreen Report cannot be fully understood without taking the cultural bias into account. Dimensions of culture This section uses the 7-Dimension (7-D) model of national culture developed by Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner. These two management consultants identified the seven dimensions of culture, and the model was published...

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...