TFF Blog

First version – to be revised I was recently asked by Abhishek Bhaya at CGTN – China Global Television Network, see Wikipedia here and the network itself here with about 150 million followers across the globe – whether, as a peace researcher, I had any ideas what decision-makers in both the West and in China could do to avoid the worst possible scenario – given the present confrontation, or Cold War-like atmosphere. It’s the first time in a very long time that any media asked me a question about peace – that discourse has disappeared or been disappeared. In preparing my answer, I wrote this: It seems pretty unlikely that the US under Biden/Blinken should come to its senses quickly, if at all. Policy documents, statement and budget laws point in the direction of a well-planned long-term Cold War-like campaign against anything China – 7-8 standard negative stories, perhaps some...

Jan Oberg May 15, 2021 The conflict between the US/West and China will shape humanity’s future more than any other conflict. Therefore, it is not a bilateral issue but a global concern. I believe it ought to be on top of the agenda at the peace research institutions that have not turned state-dependent and/or US-mainstreamed.Both the Trump and the Biden Administrations have determined that what is going on in Xinjiang in China is a genocide and lots of mainstream media, editorials, policy statements and experts have spread this ”determination” as the truth. However, not one has checked the accusation’s documentation, the stated “independence” of the producing institutes or the experts’ ideological connections. This was originally posted as an editorial on Transcend Media Service, TMS, on May 3, 2021 here The world has a right to expect that the extremely serious genocide accusation is based on rock-solid evidence. To find out...

Or – it isn’t every day you address several hundred million people The TFF report “The Xinjiang Genocide Determination As Agenda” has reached more people in more countries than virtually anything else we have produced the last few years. That is, outside the West, in Asia in general and in China in particular. All leading Chinese media have paid substantial attention to it in both their Chinese and English editions. It is as if there was a need for a substantial – not political – scholarly examination of the empirical basis of the accusation, or “determination,” that Western governments have issued spearheaded, of course, by the Trump and Biden Administrations. In the report we reveal that the documentation is very weak, the scholarly work biased and bordering on the anti-academic and that those who have brought the documentation are anything but independent. Instead, many of those who have provided the...

En kritisk analys av en rapport från Newlines Institute och Raoul Wallenberg Center Gordon Dumoulin, Jan Oberg och Thore Vestby Transnationella Stiftelsen för Freds- och Framtidsforskning, TFF, Lund, Sverige TFF@transnational.org • The Transnational • Ph +46 (0) 738 525200 Översättning av engelska utgåvan: Rolf Nilsson Den 5. maj, 2021 Den 8 mars 2021 publicerade Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy i Washington en rapport, The Uyghur Genocide: An Examination of China’s Breaches of the 1948 Genocide Convention i samarbete med Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights i Montreal. Den säger att ”Denna rapport är den första oberoende experttillämpningen av folkmordskonventionen från 1948 för den pågående behandlingen av uigurerna i Kina. Det genomfördes av Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy, i samarbete med Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights, som svar på framväxande redogörelser för allvarliga och systematiska grymheter i Xinjiang-provinsen, särskilt riktade mot uigurerna, en etnisk minoritet, för att fastställa...

This photograph depicts the Armenian leader Papasyan seeing what’s left after the horrendous murders near Deir-ez-Zor in 1915-1916. Photograph Source: Bodil Katharine Biørn – National Archives of Norway – Public Domain Alfred de Zayas & Richard Falk April 26, 2021 The misuse of the word genocide is disdainful toward relatives of the victims of the Armenian massacres, the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide – and as well a disservice to both history, law, and the prudent conduct of international relations. We already knew that we were adrift in an ocean of fake news. It is far more dangerous to discover that we are also at risk of being immersed in the turbulent waters of “fake law”. We must push back with a sense of urgency. Such a development is not tolerable. We thought that Biden’s election would spare us from menacing corruptions of language of the sort disseminated by Donald Trump,...

A new report, published on 14 March, 2021, in the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences’ journal Ambio, points out that humanity is hurtling towards destruction unless we have the collective wisdom to change course quickly. The Ambio article was written as part of the preparation of a meeting of Nobel Prize winners to discuss the state of the planet. The virtual meeting will be held on April 26-28, 2021. We Must Achieve a Steady-State Economic System A steady-state economic system is necessary because neither population growth nor economic growth can continue indefinitely on a finite earth. No one can maintain that exponential industrial growth is sustainable in the long run except by refusing to look more than a short  distance into the future. Of course, it is necessary to distinguish between industrial growth, and growth of culture and knowledge, which can and should continue to grow. Qualitative improvements in human society are possible and...

Yesterday, I was invited by Irans’ PressTV to comment – with professor Marandi at Tehran’s University – on the Biden administration’s policy on the JCPOA – the nuclear deal with Iran and the present discussion in Vienna. You may remember that it was signed in 2015 and that the Trump administration left it unilaterally and in violation of international law while also slamming more suffocating sanctions on Iran and its people. It’s fairly obvious that this is not going to go anywhere – probably not meant to, either. It’s also pretty obvious what Washington should do. Please watch also TFF Associate, professor Farhang Jahanpour, commenting on another program – Scope/Indusdotnews – here. Click on this image and watch The Debate Wonder what DailyMotion is? Read here and ask yourself why Google-owned YouTube closed down PressTV.

Statement of concern – concerning the OPCW – Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons‘ – investigation of alleged chemical weapons use in Douma, Syria in early April 2018. Here NBC News’ coverage of the alleged attack and President Trump’s decision to strike in response to it. We wish to express our deep concern over the protracted controversy and political fall-out surrounding the OPCW and its investigation of the alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria, on 7 April 2018. Since the publication by the OPCW of its final report in March 2019, a series of worrying developments has raised serious and substantial concerns with respect to the conduct of that investigation. These developments include instances in which OPCW inspectors involved with the investigation have identified major procedural and scientific irregularities, the leaking of a significant quantity of corroborating documents, and damning statements provided to UN Security Council meetings. It...

DNS/TFF Peace & Justice course from April to September 2021 starts now… Jan Oberg has been invited by the Denmark-based Necessary Teacher Training College (DNS) to introduce six topics that are then discussed at a one-hour Zoom session with people at the College. Fortunately, it is also open to anyone anywhere in the world. The main purpose of this first session is to discuss what to learn from the global corona crisis, what longterm impact it may have and how to envision what must be done when – as we hope – it will be over. In 27 minutes, Jan Oberg goes through 8 points for discussion of the post-Corona world – some of them healthily provocative and all meant to stimulate dialogue. Why? Because there will be a very different world after the pandemic and because the only thing we can be sure of is that there can be...

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...

© Jan Oberg – How much longer shall the Iranian people suffer? And shall they also be bombed? NEW – Listen to this article here Jan Oberg March 1, 2021 The West-Iran conflict is extremely a-symmetric. It’s the West that has, historically, sought to influence, change, threaten, demanded obedience from, punished (with sanctions and more), liquidated high-level politicians and scholars, shot down a civilian plane, demonised and excluded Iran. Not to speak of giving Saddam Hussein the chemical weapons and the green light for his war on Iran in 1980. Iran has not done similar harm to the West. Originally published by Transcend Media Service, TMS The conflict’s roots go back to 1953 when the US’s CIA and the UK’s MI6 orchestrated a coup d’etat, or regime-change, in Tehran and deposed the democratically elected Prime Minister, Dr Mohammad Mossadegh and installed the Shah and made Iran the most militarized country...

NEW Jan Oberg March 1, 2021 On February 23, I was asked by Iran’s PressTV to comment on Ayatollah Khamenei’s statement about the JCPOA and European leaders. I did that together with political commentator Shabbir Razvi in London. Just click on this link and you’ll be able to watch it. It is on a video platform called Urmedium. It is Iranian because Google-owned YouTube some time ago decided to prevent PressTV – a sort of BBC of Iran – from showing its program and interviews there. Nothing should surprise us anymore…