TFF Blog

Richard Falk December 29, 2020 Unlike most of my interviews, this one is not directly about current political concerns. It rather explores ‘peace’ in its manifold identity. The interview was conducted by Miguel Mendoça a couple of months ago for a book project consisting of such interviews from a variety of persons whose life and work touches on the theme of peace. Miguel has since abandoned the project in favour of producing his own poems. Whether such abstract ideas as peace can be usefully explored independent of concrete circumstances haunts this text. I accept most of the blame. The interaction made me realize how little thought I have given to peacefulness as a personal trait and peace as the core of benevolent political arrangements, whether local or planetary and how their interaction may be understood. I recall being rather bemused more than 25 years ago when a meditation practice was...

Lund, Sverige – 22. december, 2020 Deklarationen for TFFs Globale Omstillings-kampagne Vær rar at skrive på!Sammen med millioner kan du gør en forskel. Og bed dine familie og venner om at skrive på den også (længst nede). Hvis du ikke vil læse hele deklarationen, så læs blot denne korte udgave og gå ned til “Jeg støtter forslaget…” Kort udgaveOveni de store globale problemer, vi skal have løst, er så kommet Coronaen. Deklarationen argumenterer for at verdens prioriteter er – lad os sige, perverse. For eksempel så koster alt hvad FN gør bare 3% af verdens militære udgifter.TFF – Den Transnationale Stiftelse for Freds- og Fremtidsforskning i Lund – foreslår derfor at alle lande omgående reducerer militærudgifterne med 50%. Det vil frigøre 1000 milliarder dollar – ja, du læste rigtigt. Dette ufatteligt store beløb skal bruges til at få løst de globale problemer – som klimaforandringen, fattigdommen, sulten etc – og...

By Regan Durkin The Global Press Coalition for Peace, GPCP, in Washington kindly turned to me and asked me to speak with them for a longer podcast. GPCP is a rather young but very innovative civil society organization that focuses on how the media deal with conflicts, war and peace – and how it can be done better. I warmly recommend that you visit and look around. Their focus is so very important. I was very grateful for being given this opportunity since its podcasts seem to have a rather wide audience in the United States in particular. The conversation was initiated and the podcast recorded by Regan Durkin and the whole thing was a very pleasant experience. Here is how she has introduced me on their homepage: “Join us as we discuss with Dr. Jan Oberg, Founder of The Transnational Foundation for Peace & Future Research, diving into the...

By Gordon Dumoulin TFF Associate in Beijing December 14, 2020 When numbers do not add up anymore, people turn to faith… I couldn’t suppress the feeling of a sense of a religious undertone when I went through the following report of more than 70 pages, released a little while ago by the US Secretary of State: The Elements of the China Challenge. It’s a 10-step blueprint for confronting the ‘China Challenge’ or maybe better phrased the 10 Commandments to counter the severe threat of China to the current world order – ‘the free world’. A senior administration official told the Washington Examiner that “over the coming weeks, the Trump administration will continue to expand the depth and breadth of the historic actions it has taken over the past four years to protect the vital interests of the United States and its allies countering Beijing’s predatory and coercive behaviors”. Originally published at Gordon...

Picture design by Saulo Castro at Dribble Farhang Jahanpour TFF Associate November 20, 2020 – December 1, 2020 This is a four-part series by the author, published by the International Press Service, IPS. Below is Part 1 and this is where you find the next two:Part 2 • US Presidential Election: A Campaign of Insults and Lies – November 23, 2020Part 3 • US Presidential Election: President Trump’s Legacy of Mismanagement of the Pandemic – December 1, 2020Part 4 • The Legacy of Slavery and Racism – December 9, 2020 American democracy has survived a dangerous virus, and it has even come off the ventilator, but whether it will be restored to full health or will suffer for a long time (like a long Covid) from the negative effects of the virus of personality cult, chauvinism, populism, racism, militarism and, yes let’s say it, fascism, remains to be seen. So...

Since 2007, a number of TFF Associates – Fredrik Heffermehl to mention the leading world expert on it – have been engaged in creating awareness of the de facto and de jure misuse of the world’s in principle most prestigious prize – Alfred Nobel’s for peace. We usually do not post appeals on this public education for peace site. But this appeal, crafted by Heffermehl and David Swanson – deserves to be here. Please go to the appeal now and sign it. It is common sense and it is uncontroversial – unless you happen to believe in two things: a) that violence and war is better than peace, and b) that it’s OK that those who manage a will ignore its stated purpose completely over about a century and – with a few important exceptions – use it instead for the opposite purpose than intended by the testator. The testator,...

TFF Associate, professor The objective of this paper is to outline and analyse the manner in which governments on the EU’s southeastern periphery (i.e. the Western Balkans) responded to the COVID-19 pandemic and its possible after-effects. The author seeks to shed light on three particular aspects of the crisis: the (de)securitization process of COVID-19, the geopolitics of the EU enlargement process in the post-corona world, and the Balkan way of dealing with the pandemic. Following a prologue that tries to decipher what is behind the façade of this dramatic episode, the article proceeds to characterize both the securitization of COVID-19 and the “gaslighting turnaround”. It then looks at the Balkan version of the so-called “COVID-1984”, i.e. the autocratic tendencies that have blossomed amid (and thanks to) strong security concerns.The central premise is that although the current crisis seems to have been provoked by the spread of an unprecedented disease, COVID-19,...

TFF Associate Not a day goes by without China appearing in Western news or social media. Almost exclusively with negative reports of human rights violations in Xinjiang or the security law in Hong Kong, government propaganda, or serious concerns that China and its communism will take over the world. Many reports and opinions from Western think tanks and researchers have been published this year about what is happening in China and how China should be approached or dealt with. The contents range from high vigilance to direct attacks in which China is labeled as a serious threat to the future of the “free world”. These pieces are widely reported in the media and often taken over by politicians for their China policy in a considerable number of Western governments. Alternative reports with different sounds or perspectives are snowed under or beaten down. As a result, the perception of China in...

Photo – Aleppo December 2016 © Jan Oberg Against the Institution of War – announcing the publication of the book, The Ecological Impact of Militarism John Scales Avery November 27, 2020 As we start the 21st century and the new millennium, our scientific and technological civilization seems to be entering a period of crisis. Today, for the first time in history, science has given to humans the possibility of a life of comfort, free from hunger and cold, and free from the constant threat of infectious disease. At the same time, science has given us the power to destroy civilization through thermonuclear war, as well as the power to make our planet uninhabitable through pollution and overpopulation. The question of which of these alternatives we choose is a matter of life or death to ourselves and our children. The crisis of civilization, which we face today, has been produced by...

November 23 and 24, 2020, marks an important event in the international academic/university history of peace and conflict research. The reason is that the Faculty of World Studies at Tehran University holds a large – online – conference – “International Conference on Peace and Conflict Resolution (ICPCR)”. My colleague and friend there, associate professor Ali Akbar Alikhani, is the dynamic pioneer of this important endeavour which includes an international Master’s program in peace and conflict studies. It comes in the wake of a lecture I gave at the Faculty 6 years ago about peace and conflict research. As far as I’m informed, Iran is the second country in the Muslim world to establish a fill program of academic peace and conflict studies (Malaysia the first), and this conference marks the opening of this new academic field. Iran’s bustling capital also hosts an interesting, very lively, Tehran Peace Museum – but...

“Eutopia 15” Abstract photograph 2015 © Jan Oberg David R. LoyTFF Associate October 21, 2020 “Hell is truth seen too late.” (Anonymous) Why would a small group of people want to crash hijacked airplanes into skyscrapers, killing thousands and terrorizing millions? Perhaps only religion can provide the motivation and collective support for such heinous deeds (occasionally including our dominant secular God, the modern nation-state). Does this mean that religious terrorism can be dismissed as just another example of religious fanaticism? Or is there a “logic” to fundamentalist terrorism, which makes it a regrettable but nonetheless understandable reaction to modernity? Mark Juergensmeyer and Karen Armstrong have shown that religious fundamentalism is not a return to premodern ways of being religious. Jewish, Christian and Islamic fundamentalisms are all recent developments reacting to what is perceived – to a large extent correctly, I shall argue – as the failure of secular modernity. Such...

Today the money meme rules our lives and social interactions in most societies on Earth. How did this happen? I studied all the economics textbooks of every perspective from the Austrian “laissez-faire” market fundamentalists to Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, (1776) and his earlier Theory of Moral Sentiments, (1759), as well as Karl Marx, who claimed not to be an economist. From Karl Polanyi’s broader views, I learned that trading was innate in human behavior and how indigenous peoples in the South Pacific traded shells in their canoe travels and visits among these islands in “Primitive, Archaic and Modern Economics, (1968). In Polanyi’s “The Great Transformation”, (1944), I learned how traditional societies and local market norms in communitarian village life were over-ruled by legislation in the British parliament which created national markets and facilitated global trade and colonial exploitation as these markets expanded. I was fortunate to know Polanyi personally...