Peace education

TFF Associate and more… Luna Rossa: Sacred Blood, Cycle Wisdom – an art journal and peace offering – publication. Here is the pre-order campaign and free online events on feminine health & power themes with a deep cyclical understanding of how inner and outer peace can combine.. I’m inviting you… We may think we live in modern, advanced times. On many accounts, including the fact that we still solve conflicts through wars on this planet, we are not.  Menstruation is still a taboo in many cultures around the world, being associated with impurity, shame, and guilt for being a woman. Even though access to sanitary products has increased in many countries, education about menstruation as something to be embraced rather than ignored and medicalized is still lacking. The very ability to give life and reproduce the species that menstruation is a sign of becomes a sign of inferiority or, in other...

David SwansonWorld Beyond War & TFF Associate June 12, 2023 For any given war, one can examine the months or years or decades during which one or both sides worked diligently to make it happen, and both sides conspicuously failed to develop peaceful alternatives. Even in the moment of greatest violence, one can consider the unarmed-resistance alternatives that are carefully kept out of consideration. But even if you can explain away all justification for every side of every particular war — yes, even that one, there remains the false claim that war is somehow simply part of “humanity.” If ants were to stop waging wars, nobody would bat an eye, but such a feat is deemed simply beyond the intelligence of homo sapiens. There is a problem for this nonsense. It is the problem of peaceful human societies. We know that many, if not most, hunter-gatherer groups of humans engaged...

Jan Oberg May 29, 2023 We’re delighted to announce that Kristin Christman has accepted TFF’s invitation to join us as TFF Associate. Read about Kristin in my article from March this year. Head over to her excellent YouTube Channel – and subscribe! – and then visit Countercurrents, which publishes all Christman’s articles as well as the texts she reads in her videos. Here is the latest – an 8-part critical/devastating analysis of the US National Defence Strategy 2022. We love Kristin’s passionate, unique and super-knowledgeable work for a better world and look forward to much synergy and cooperation with her in the years to come. We’re both struggling to prepare for the renaissance of peace that we believe will come when the US empire has declined further and we live in a more just, balanced and multipolar world – a humanity and peace-ruled international order…

Jan Oberg March 21, 2023 Letter from a soul-sister stranger for peace One autumn day in 2022, a mail winged into TFF’s inbox from a woman in the United States. Here first some excerpts; the first sentence reveals a sense of being in a larger world. ” I hope you’re feeling all right, even though it’s difficult to feel that way now. I’d like to send you this letter that I’m sending to as many people that I can think of. Given the urgency of the international situation I figure it’s no time to be shy. Here it is! Hardly a soul responds to me, but I was hoping maybe you would. Peace will never arrive if people are not able to listen to the other side’s perspective. Peace will never arrive if people on one side of conflict tell half-truths and lies to paint the other side as only...

Gordon DumoulinTFF Associate June 1, 2022 “When I went to China, I went to teach; but every day that I stayed I thought less of what I had to teach them and more of what I had to learn from them,” Bertrand Russell’s notes in 1920 (British Philosopher 1872-1970) In 1922, Bertrand Russell published a book “The Problem Of China” – see below – based on his study and also experience during his year in Beijing teaching at the University of Peking as Professor of Philosophy. While many books about China have a shelf life of actuality merely lasting for months to a few years, Russell’s book “The Problem Of China” has stood the test of time mapping out where China would stand about a century later. Although the title might appear as anti-China, it is quite the opposite. It predicts China’s resurgence and outlines the strength of Chinese civilization...

Collage © Jan Oberg 2021 Fredrik Heffermehl December 9, 2021 The 2021 Nobel Peace Prize honoured press freedom and – no surprise – was welcomed by the world press. As I listened to the announcement, on October 8, an old story from the Cold War kept coming back to me: A Soviet official had been travelling in the US for a couple of weeks. As he left, he remarked to his hosts, in puzzled bewilderment “How can it be that you have such perfect control, even with a completely free press?” He was right. Society makes one huge exception from democracy and press freedom: national security. The Military-Industrial Complex is in control, thoroughly disciplined media see it as a sacred duty to keep their own nation strong and united behind the flag and the forces. Nations are governed by fear that any doubt or deviation from military orthodoxy would harm...

Hear this on Spotify By Rachael Mellor September 7, 2021 Over the years people have found incredible inspiration in the brave words, actions, and leadership of peace heroes – Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr and Mahatma Gandhi, to name a few. They display courage, moral strength and compassion to gain the right to freedom and safety, regardless of political or religious differences. To achieve peace, we must compete against governmental institutions, law and order, high-level corruption, the global arms trade, injustices, human rights abuses, and persecution – often at risk to our own personal safety. Originally published at Better World Info What Better World Info has to offer Better World Info is a central information hub covering a vast range of peace topics, useful tools and reliable information specifically for peace activists. The site is here to help you, and to serve as a tool to support your project. The...

Lea Suter, TFF Associate June 21, 2021 Lea Suter, founder of “PeacePrints – Following the Footprints of Peacebuilders” for Peace Reporting on Post-Conflict Countries, Switzerland – and new TFF Associate. Lea has been working in the area of international relations since 2011. First, for the UN, later for a think tank on foreign policy and currently she is the Secretary-General of the UN Association in Switzerland. Originally from Switzerland, she lived in Russia and volunteered in humanitarian projects in Mongolia and Colombia. In 2017, she founded “PeacePrints – Following the Footprints of Peacebuilders” – a blog for which she travels as peace reporter to post-conflict countries to report about outstanding individuals committed to bringing a positive change. Here Lea speaks about her work and how important it is that we know, follow, learn from and honour those millions of fellow citizens around the world who cross borders, reach out and...

TFF Associate and friend over decades, Richard Falk, last year turned 90. Read more about him here – and use the search engine to find lots of his writings. The latest we’ve published is on championing lost causes... Eric Walberg March 10, 2021 Writing this memoir has been as much about discovering my story, that is, myself as it is about telling it. That’s Falk’s version of Socrates’ ‘the unexamined life is not worth living.’ Or should I say, Forrest Gump’s? Falk’s life reads like a storybook, starting with meeting Supreme Court judges with his father at age 9 in 1939, making friends with Claudette Colbert, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Liz Taylor (long story) at age 15, befriending and befoeing many of the dramatis personae of the Cold War throughout his long and productive life, finally landing on the shores of democratic socialism as the US charges towards the (literal) finish line. Falk came...

The 1987 Right Livelihood Award Acceptance Speech  Peace appeals to the hearts; studies to the brain. Both are needed, indeed indispensable. But equally indispensable is a valid link between brain and heart. The history of peace studies is, of course, a collective story, and it did not start in the 1950s – it is as old as humankind, as is the history of war studies, the study of war with warlike means. Originally published at Transcend I guess the same applies to what today is called security studies, or the study of peace with warlike means, balance of power, balance of terror, deterrence through credible retaliation etc. Needless to say, that is not what peace studies are about. Peace studies are about peace with peaceful means, and I think it is generally accepted today that this has to be done in a holistic manner and with a global perspective, or...

Reflecting important global development, it is also a piece of the academic history of peace, conflict and future research Jan Oberg February 3, 2021 Here is a completely new edition of TFF Associates’ blog 2011-2017. In this blog, you’ll find almost everything posted over these 6 years by TFF Associates, our group of experts on international issues who are committed to the UN Charter’s norm, Article 1, that peace shall be established by peaceful means. There are 1360 posts here. Together with the articles posted on the old 1997-2011 homepage, you’ll find an estimated 7000 accessible articles (yes, some links are broken). During those 6 years, several very important international events took place and trends became clear. Just to mention some catchwords: Ukraine/New Cold War, Syria, the war on terror, Libya, North Korea, The Trump administration, China and the new Silk Roads, 2015 European refugee crisis, changing world order –...

Welcome to my worldmoires – a word I have invented for the occasion. It means writing about my life in the perspective of global affairs and trends that have influenced my work and myself since I was born in the middle of the preceding century.  And the occasion? I’m approaching the 50th anniversary of my work as a peace, conflict and future researcher.  The Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, TFF, that my wife Christina and I have established turned 35 on January 1, 2021.  I hope you will find something of interest and follow the creation of the book – of which only the first small fraction is hereby launched. Now explore…