Religion

What a good idea, this day! To reflect, take stock, to enjoy peace, to deplore non-peace.21 sep day of peace And the first reflection is this: peace is the normal condition of humanity, just like health. There is so much plain, simple, decent behavior around, so much mutual aid, a helping hand, companionship, friendship, good neighborhood when bad luck strikes at its worst. And we sense mutuality, unquestioning reciprocity; not always but mostly. Go to an airport, stay close to where they come out, arrival, and are met by their nearest–watch the embraces, the warmth, the eyes glittering, the smiles, laughter. There we are. Harmony, resonance–with the occasional deep, joint sadness, sorrow; something has struck. Go to a restaurant, not too stiff, formal–more ordinary eatery. And you see it again, the pleasure, food, drinks, togetherness, the shared pleasure – the jokes, the smiles. Most of the time – then some...

Contrary to much conventional thinking that treats ‘anti-Semitism’ as exclusively a form of ethnic hatred, there is a second kind of attitude that is alleged to be ‘anti-Semitism’ because it is critical, often justifiably so, of Zionism and Israel’s policies and practices. This second type of supposed anti-Semitism is a tactic deployed to discredit critics of Israel by insisting that criticism of Israel and hatred of the Jewish people should not be distinguished. These two distinct types of anti-Semitism actually work at cross purposes, and although there may be situations of overlap, it is a dangerous confusion to lump them together. It is rather unusual for even the harshest critics of the behavior of the U.S. Government to be castigated as anti-American except sometimes in the midst of international security crises, but even then such accusations usually reflect the outlook of red neck patriots or extremists who identify with the...

By TFF’s Board Lund, Sweden August 6, 2014 – Hiroshima Day The Nuclear Age – risk of omnicide and our new responsibilities Nuclear weapons came into the world and were used for the first time in 1945. Their specific feature as weapons of mass destruction and “omnicide” – able to kill us all – has changed what it means to be alive on this earth and to be responsible for its existence. Until nuclear weapons, human beings could not decide whether or not to end project humankind and project planet earth. Today we know that the arsenals and missile projection methods are such that a few decision-makers, or a technical malfunction, could blow up enough of the world to make the living – if any – envy the dead. We live in the Nuclear Age. It means living with the permanent daily threat of extinction.

/10/janoberg.jpg”>[/caption] Lund, Sweden July 25, 2014 Violence is a dead end Look at the violence in Gaza today, DR Congo (6 million dead), Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Somalia etc: Isn’t it obvious that the world needs a completely new approach to conflicts? We’ll never rid the world of conflicts, conflicts is part of human and social life. Conflict-prevention is a meaningless term. But we can rid the world of most of its violence. If we want, if we educate each other and if economic and other interests stopped supporting killing as a tool in conflict-management. Unrealistic? Hopelessly idealistic? Well, look at the places above and try to find the realism and hope there. Look at the conflict not at the parties and the violence It requires almost no intellectual effort to take sides in a conflict between A and B. If both parties use violence, that means endorsement of the violence...

 John B. Sparks made a histomap in 1931—updated in 2010 (Metro Books) – a long, vertical chart covering “peoples and nations for 4,000 years”. Time, history, is on the vertical axis, listing when of events and where in the space of peoples and nations. The chart starts with the Chinese, the Indians, Amorites (Babylon), Aegeans (Minoans and Mycenaeans), Hittites (Anatolia), Iranians and Greeks, goes on to the Romans, the British, the Huns (Mongols) and ends with Latin America, Europeans West and East (the EU is absent), the Middle East, sub-Sahara Africa, Russians and Americans, Asia as India, China and Japan; each part proportionate to their significance at the time. Debatable. But let us focus on something crucial: the shape of the “peoples-nations” bubbles in world history, from a beginning to an end? By and large exactly like that: a birth somewhere in this Einsteinian timespace, and a death. Two points,...

Introduction He was a tall man and a great man, a visionary, pacifist, civil resister, educator and philosopher. He took life more seriously than most and he could be playful and fun like a child. His life’s guiding principle was ”Engage in your time!” and while he wrote and talked a lot he also did it. His name was Aage Bertelsen, he was born in Denmark in 1901 and died on August 15, 1980. Bertelsen’s imprint on history is two-fold. First, with his wife Gerda he was a prime mover of one of the groups, the Lyngby Group, which organised the rescue of altogether 7.220 Danish Jews into safety in Sweden in October 1943 during the German occupation of Denmark – more here. The Lyngby Group – Lyngby is north of Copenhagen – got about 1.000 of these in safety by organising their nightly transport onboard small fisher boats over the Sound between Denmark...

Comments by Hans-C. von Sponeck Former UN Assistant Secretary General, UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq & TFF Associate Hearing at the UK House of Commons, London Intro 1. HoC/HoL have repeatedly held Iraq hearings as have British NGOs such as CASI (Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq) and Stop the War Coalition/UK. In Europe these are considered models for responsible public action. 2. My contribution at this hearing is not about the crimes of dictatorship or the details of Iraqi suffering. For both well researched data is available. The objective of my participation is to make two detailed observations about externally-driven Iraq politics during the period 1990-2014. Observation 1 3. Today’s tragic Iraq reality can only be understood if the additive impact of the years before and the years following the US/UK Governments’ illegal invasion and occupation is fully taken into account.

… Would be the title in English of a book this author just published in Norwegian, Syv veier til lykke (Oslo: Kolofon 2014); with excellent photos by Aase Marie Faldalen. And, very befitting for a book with that title: the book quickly made it to the Top 10 on a best-seller list, of course as No. 7. There will be translations but have a peek here and now. Why does a peace researcher, concerned with peace theory and practice, write a “how-to” book about happiness, well-being?

/10/janoberg.jpg”> Lund, Sweden, July 1, 2014 This PressInfo is about place you’ve probably never visited nor know a lot about: Somaliland. TFF today publishes the report from a mission there in May 2014 – to the capital Hargeisa, the harbour town of Berbera and to Burao. With the report in photos and texts we seek to alert you to this indeed unique and interesting country. Somaliland declared itself an independent state out of Somalia in 1991 and is still not recognised by a single government in the world. But against all odds Somaliland has made considerable progress. It isn’t easy to develop when you are marginal to the aid and investment sources, have no foreign embassies and can’t be a member of inter-national organisations.

Time to take stock. The shot in Sarajevo 100 years ago inspires narratives of 19-year old Gavrilo Princip killing the successor to the throne of an empire and his pregnant wife as the event unleashing mutual mass murder (INYT, FAZ 28-29 June 2014). Not the empire annexing Bosnia-Herzegovina on October 6, 1908 (Art. 25 of the 1878 Berlin Congress of “great powers”). Maybe the inhabitants did not like it? Moral of that stock-taking: watch out for terrorism, not for empires and occupation-colonialism; and protect leaders, not people. ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, alternatively translated as Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham) comes up. TIME 30 June: The End of Iraq. Maybe Iraq – that highly artificial English colonial entity encasing Shia Arabs, Sunni Arabs and Sunni Kurds–never started? Like its French colonial neighbor Syria – adding Alawite Arabs, Christians, Jews...

By Johan Galtung Alfaz; History group, Municipio, Spain Can we know the future? Rhetorical answer: can we know the past? We rewrite history all the time, not because facts become dubious and new facts appear, but because our angle, perspective, changes. Say, from a series of kings, presidents etc. and their exercise of military and political power to economic and cultural changes in the life of common people, in their wellbeing and identity. Quite some change. Will we arrive at that single, true, objective perspective? No, objectivity may be multi-subjective, not inter-subjective. This is why Al Jazeera is so much better for knowing the present than CNN, which presents the US angle, and if there are other angles a US “expert” will give the final interpretation. Al Jazeera presents many angles of many parties and leaves final interpretations to the viewer. How can we shed some light into the future?...

/10/janoberg.jpg”> Lund, Sweden – May 29, 2014 In a speech by the President of the United States of America – read by millions in all corners of our world in minutes – rest assured that every single word has been weighed with utmost care. With this in mind, Obama’s speech can be analysed as both offending to the rest of us and – exceptionally – weak. It caused no enthusiasm among the future army officers he spoke to and no enthusiasm among leading Western media. I will argue that • Intellectually and morally the speech doesn’t have the basics – full of contradictions and imbued with unbearable self-praise. • While there is a recognition of ”mistakes” such as ”our” war in Iraq and a potential step-back from interventionism, there is neither an adequate analysis of the past nor of what the future may need in terms of leadership. • Little...