Peace research

Jan Oberg February 6, 2024 Regrettably, the world’s allegedly most prestigious prize has been awarded to many who did not qualify according to the will of Alfred Nobel. I want to direct your attention to the most important book written about the peace deception called the Nobel Peace Prize. In his last meticulously researched book, “The Real Nobel Peace Prize. A Squandered Opportunity to Abolish War,” my friend and TFF Associate Fredrik Heffermehl (1938-2023) showed that only 36 out of 134 awards would qualify according to Nobel’s clearly anti-militarist intentions. Here is how Nobel himself formulated, in his will, that this prize should go “to the person who has done the most or best to advance fellowship among nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and the establishment and promotion of peace congresses” and that this prize for the “champions of peace” should be awarded “by a committee of...

Be a Peace Warrior – The Online Participatory Peace Project in English and German Dr Norbert Stute & Rachael Mellor September 4, 2023 Better World Info is a unique platform for peace, offering important resources and reliable information on the most pressing peace issues.We invite peace activists who enjoy research and content creation to contact us and contribute to this ever-growing, high-quality Peace Directory making a difference. While military budgets are skyrocketing, peacebuilding remains a grossly underfunded sideline. Global military spending increased for the eighth consecutive year in 2022, reaching a staggering $2.2 trillion. More 28 wars and armed conflicts are currently active, deadly, and unrelenting. “The world is over-armed, and peace is under-funded,” said Ban Ki-moon, former UN Secretary-General. Advancing peace efforts effectively is a collaborative journey. Our common goals for peace require the active participation and shared support of activists, organisations, journalists, scientists, politicians, and philanthropists. The power...

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…

Peter Cronau – Declassified Australia January 11, 2023 An Australian university has unearthed millions of Tweets by fake accounts pushing disinformation on the Ukraine war, Peter Cronau reports. The sample size dwarfs other studies of covert propaganda about the war on social media.  Originally published at Consortium News on November 6, 2022 A team of researchers at the University of Adelaide have found that as many as 80 percent of tweets about the 2022 Russia-Ukraine invasion in its early weeks were part of a covert propaganda campaign originating from automated fake “bot” accounts. An anti-Russia propaganda campaign originating from a “bot army” of phony automated Twitter accounts flooded the internet at the start of the war. The research shows that of the more than 5 million tweets studied, 90.2 percent (both bot and non-bot) came from accounts that were pro-Ukraine, with fewer than 7 percent of the accounts being classed as pro-Russian. The university researchers...

Abolish NATOOr Convert ItTo ServePeace 30 Arguments & 100s of Inspirations This report can be reproduced or quoted freely,but only when referring clearly to TFF, the author and the link Read and download as PDF at the end of the catalogue • Read as Flipbook Media & other inquiries to tff@transnational.live or +46 738 52 52 00 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This Catalogue contains 30 arguments for the abolition of NATO. Each argument is based on rational peace research analysis, in contrast to the fact-resistant propaganda that NATO and mainstream politics and media promote about the ’defensive’ peace alliance. The Catalogue is based on the democratic assumption that diverse perceptions and concepts can exist – for instance, about what peace is – and that this hugely influential Western organisation is not sacrosanct and shall, therefore, not be exempt from critical analysis. While set up in 1949, NATO passed its ”best before” date long ago. The alliance of...

All wars are different from other wars and, thus, it is impossible to use the experiences of one war to predict the course, end, and consequences of the next. Yet, some wars and peace conferences are more important than others because they fundamentally change history. The war in Ukraine is a proxy war between Russia and NATO/USA, in which the USA openly says that the aim is to exhaust Russia. This raises several questions: If that is the purpose of the USA/NATO, then what will be the reaction of an existentially threatened and nuclear-armed Russia? One may further ask whether, in the light of nuclear war, there is something untouched ‘outside’ that will not be affected by the consequences of a nuclear war: a first destruction, after which the survivors will face global nuclear winter, with famine and mass death. If there is no ‘outside’ in a nuclear war, it...

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...

Jan Oberg December 7, 2021 Imagine that the Nobel Prize in Literature is given to a book publisher or papermaker and the official motivation is that publishers or papermakers are preconditions for the writer writing and being read. Roughly, this is how the Nobel Peace Committee, reasons – unreasonably. Here’s how it legitimates that its 2021 prize goes to Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov way outside the letter and spirit of Alfred Nobel’s will: “Without freedom of expression and freedom of the press, it will be difficult to successfully promote fraternity between nations, disarmament and a better world order to succeed in our time. This year’s award of the Nobel Peace Prize is therefore firmly anchored in the provisions of Alfred Nobel’s will.” See? – “without papermakers and publishers, it will be difficult to successfully write good literature and be read…” I believe my readers easily grasp just how far-fetched...

We at TFF are proud to present one of our most amazing Associates who – in so many different ways – has worked for peace over 67 years. His knowledge is encyclopaedic and covers so many fields that it is hard to grasp. Even at the age of 88 and with various health problems and failing eyesight, he writes every day, most of the day – in the belief that we are all responsible for doing all that we can and that it is only through knowledge, humanity and vision we can survive in the long-term perspective as one humanity. The book you can download below runs over 500+ pages – and it’s just one of John’s many. It contains much more than the story of Avery’s work for peace: articles, essays, comments and whole books on various aspects of global affairs. Better scroll and browse and be inspired than...

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...

Edward Curtin April 13, 2021 “I don’t believe in death without resurrection. If they kill me, I will rise again in the Salvadorian people…”  – Archbishop Oscar Romero, martyred, 24 March 1980 Whether we are aware of it or not, we live by stories. We live by others’ stories while we tell our lives by how we live.  Our actions tell our stories. Then when we die, others tell our stories as they wish. This is the spiritual thread that links the meanings of our lives.  It is the way we pass over to other lives and return to our own. But without truth, we end up in the wrong place, living the wrong stories. And don’t the stories of certain special people inspire us to carry on their legacies because their spirits are far stronger than death? Their courage contagious? Their witness the triumph of life over death? Love over hate? Don’t they challenge...