Peace theory

The icon’s legacy is no longer secure, but he anticipated much about our current political moment By Pankaj Mishra January 11, 2019 In 2015, in South Africa, where Mohandas Gandhi lived from 1893 to 1914, a statue of him was defaced by protesters. The following year, the University of Ghana agreed to remove Gandhi’s statue from its campus, after an online campaign with the (misspelled) hashtag #Ghandimustfall charged the Indian leader with racism against black Africans. Compared with other recent targets of political iconoclasts—stalwarts of the Confederacy and Cecil Rhodes—Gandhi seems an unlikely symbol of racial arrogance. Nelson Mandela claimed that Gandhi’s tactics offered “the best hope for future race relations”; Martin Luther King, Jr., held Gandhi up as a model; decades before that, black activists such as Adam Clayton Powell, Sr., and Benjamin Mays were enthralled by the phenomenon of an Indian leading people of color in the campaign...

September 21, 2018 – Peace Day  “Home To Gaia” – An illustrated storybook about finding peace and love inside to share it outside – Age 3 and up Can we work for peace in the world when being conflict-ridden inside? Are we collectively responsible for the conflicts and violence in the world? These are questions and conversations we’ve had many times with professionals in the peacebuilding field. Going for both/and as well as the link between inner and outer realities is a good start when we become aware that everything we are, think and act upon influences our whole environment and the collective consciousness. Political peace is not just about envisioning with the heart but also about putting forward reasonable possibilities to actually create harmony inside out. Fair chances to co-create together wonderful visions for all humankind may appear when we are secure about our own worthiness to be loved...

  • Give the man a break. Donald Trump found out in Singapore that, as Churchill said, “Jaw-Jaw is better than War-War”. If war can be avoided by a warm, long, very private chat without advisers, with effusive body gestures and promises of a world stage when his opponent, Kim Jong Un, is invited to the White House, then Trump has showed the way. It was learning the hard way because a few months ago when Trump threatened to incinerate North Korea he met counter threats from North Korea that could have led to the deaths of 30 million people in South Korea alone, never mind what numbers might die in an attack on American troops stationed in Japan and Guam naval base. I have no proof but I do think Trump can make a grand peace with North Korea, unlike his predecessors. They too had the will but were...

* 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...

Obituary Just a week after his 90th birthday Gene Sharp passed away. The journal New Statesman once described Gene Sharp as the “Machiavelli of Nonviolence” and Thomas Weber labelled him “the Clausewitz of Nonviolent Action.” Who was this man and what is his contribution to our understanding of the possibilities to use nonviolent actions in large scale societal conflicts? Gene Sharp completed his baccalaureate in 1949, just a few scant years after the close of World War II, and quickly turned his attention to the study of nonviolence. After serving nine months in prison for being a conscientious objector to the Korean War, Sharp worked as secretary for A.J. Muste. He next joined the editorial team of Peace News in London before accepting an invitation from Arne Næss to join him in Oslo with Johan Galtung and others to study the philosophy and practice of Mohandas Gandhi. Throughout this time,...

  By Rev. John Dear 15 Jan 2018 • It was early 1968.  Since the previous spring Martin Luther King, Jr. had been pursuing a course that for many was unthinkable.  He had deliberately connected the dots between the  movement  for civil rights and the struggle to end the war in Vietnam, and had paid the price. Originally published by Transcend Media Service here He was roundly criticized by the Johnson administration and the media, as well as people in his own movement. From the right he was attacked for having the gall to question US foreign policy.  From the left he was lambasted for losing focus and not keeping his eyes on the prize. He even got it from a childhood friend who stopped by the house one afternoon to vent. “Why are you speaking out against the Vietnam War?” he carped. King put aside his customary oratory. “When I speak about nonviolence,” he patiently explained, “I mean nonviolent all the way.” As David Garrow’s classic biography of King, Bearing the Cross, reports, he went on to say: “Never could I...

• Keynote, World Futures Studies Federation Conference – Jondal, Norway 7 Jun 2017 West of Jondal is Torsnes, named after the Nordic war god Thor with his Hammer, a center of the Viking era from 800 to 1050, only 250 years. Why so short? Successful with raids and colonization–Gardarike in Russia, Iceland, Greenland, Vineland in Canada. And then: fini. Why? Because they had no future. Evil Lóki had killed Good Baldur – next to Torsnes is Belsnes=Baldursnes. They were doomed. Enters Christianity with Evil Satan and Good God, restoring hope. The end. The Soviet Union Empire had no future: Communism was undefined. Enters Orthodox Christianity – Putin is a true believer – hope restored. The United States Empire has no future: “Allies” refuse to fight US wars and US capitalism increases inequality with reduced growth. Enter Campaigner Trump ‘Making America Great Again’ by buying-hiring American; President Trump making America isolated,...

• Published in Bulletin of Peace Proposals 3-1990, pp 287-298 and on TFF’s homepage at the same time   1. Four hypotheses The West has lost a close enemy, the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Which reactions can be discerned and what psycho-political emotions are they indicative of? How did the West cope with the first years of this new post-Cold War situation? Can we mourn the death of an enemy, can we heal ourselves after the loss? How does one learn to live a new life without a close enemy? Has the West done what it ought to do for itself and for the former enemy? “The West” of course is a term hanging loose. We employ it in this article as meaning interchangeably “NATO, the Western hemisphere, the United States and Western Europe and a few cases, Western or Occidental culture”. The first hypothesis of this essay is...

  By Heather Dubois • Religion, after all, is a powerful constituent of cultural norms and values, and because it addresses the most profound existential issues of human life (e.g., freedom and inevitability, fear and faith, security and insecurity, right and wrong, sacred and profane), religion is deeply implicated in individual and social conceptions of peace. Scott Appleby explains that the ambivalence of religion lies in the interpretation of the sacred, in imperfect human perception: “At any given moment any two religious actors, each possessed of unimpeachable devotion and integrity, might reach diametrically opposed conclusions about the will of God and the path to follow.” In other words, religion can underwrite both conflict and peace on its own terms. It is an intervening variable that sometimes escalates, sometimes de-escalates conflict behavior. Via Journal of Religion, Conflict and Peace As Appleby notes, “Religious leaders and their followers make choices as to...