TFF Blog

Part 3 Part 1 and 2 were introductory and then made the diagnosis.In this part, we shall outline some theories and concepts that will lead to – Treatment. Part 1 of this series • Part 2 • Part 4 Jan Oberg April 16, 2020 Militarist threat analysis that lead to disaster In spite of the often enormous sums at stake, few funds are allocated with so little intellectual input as those for the national military budget. It basically seems to be enough to point out – through the media – that there are some countries that threaten us and thereby instil fear among the citizens who are to pay for the policies. Once it was the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, then Iraq in Kuwait, then Serbia, then Afghanistan (in response to 9/11), then Iraq again and Saddam’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, then Libya, then Syria, then Iran...

President Trump has taken one more step toward self-isolation of the US from the world community. This BBC post tells who the main contributors to the WHO were in 2018-2019 and – yes – you’ll see that the US was the largest contributor. But at least three things are striking. 1) The US contribution seems to be only US$ 400; that is the same sum Trump recently gave in military support to Ukraine. The price of just one Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II fighter aircraft ranges between US$ 90 and 115 million.In the larger scheme of things, the WHO is a cheap organisation and the real priorities of the US are crystal clear: We can’t afford millions on something so useless as the WHO. We have more useful things to spend our money on! 2) China contributes US$ 86 million to the WHO and doesn’t rank among the ten largest...

Joseph Biden for president! Yesterday his main rival for the Democratic Party’s nomination, Bernie Sanders, endorsed him. If the world could vote, the overwhelming majority would vote for Biden, despite some misgivings. My reservations would be on his foreign policy. Like President Barack Obama he would be good on domestic policy but mistaken on much of his foreign policy. Obama made Biden responsible for dealing with the Ukraine crisis where he fashioned an anti-Russian policy based on little evidence that this was fair to the facts. He writes now of the need to “counter Russian aggression” and that “we must impose real costs on Russia for its violations of international norms”. If he can’t get Russian policy right, what hope is there he will get other issues right? We don’t need an unnecessary second Cold War. If the US can’t have a policy for rapid nuclear disarmament with Russia, going well...

Let’s get death in proportion. True, Coronavirus is an appalling disease but the number of deaths it has caused this year is far lower than deaths caused by either common flue, car accidents, drug-taking, alcoholism or cigarette smoking.  Governments don’t like these things and make an effort to combat them. But they don’t get themselves as worked up as they have with Coronavirus (For starters, why don’t they outlaw all smoking?). A Russian friend texted me from Moscow the other day saying the pandemic we should worry about is “the pandemic of fear”. Where is our sense of proportion? Another issue to examine in order to clarify our thinking is how many people have US and NATO troops killed compared with the numbers killed by terrorism. Again it is a matter of getting things in proportion. Terrorism puts the fear of God up to people and governments. But there’s less...

Part 2 Governments have spent trillions upon trillions of dollars on a ‘security’ politics that has had only destructive effects on humanity and on Nature.What are the security theories and concepts – the way of thinking – that have led governments to run only militarist and military-dominated security policies to the extent that their own populations are left completely unprotected when a thing like the Coronavirus happens?And why have people accepted to be cheated so grossly? Part 1 of this series • Part 3 • Part 4 Jan Oberg April 7, 2020 How threat analyses are constructed to assist elites rather than provide security “There is nothing so practical as a good theory,” said the father of social psychology, Kurt Lewin, as far back as in 1943. It’s still true. One reason so many countries are hit now by the Coronavirus is that their governments have based their policies on...

Imagine, it is the year 2050 and we are looking back to the origin and evolution of the coronavirus pandemic over the last three decades.  Extrapolating from recent events, we offer the following scenario for such a view from the future. As we move into the second half of our twenty-first century, we can finally make sense of the origin and impact of the coronavirus that struck the world in 2020 from an evolutionary systemic perspective. Today, in 2050, looking back on the past 40 turbulent years on our home planet, it seems obvious that the Earth had taken charge of teaching our human family. Our planet taught us the primacy of understanding of our situation in terms of whole systems, identified by some far-sighted thinkers as far back as the mid-nineteenth century.  This widening human awareness revealed how the planet actually functions, its living biosphere systemically powered by the...

… and for artists to contribute to it … Have you often seen conflicts – big or small – escalate out of control? What do you do when it happens? Do you know how to intervene and de-escalate it again? Do you want more peace in your everyday life? A more peaceful world? Of course, you do! So let’s create something that works with children and adults together. Imagine Creatively is my homepage. It’s a storytelling-for-peace platform. I’m an academic with an MA in peace studies; I have taught courses and written several books before, and I have two children. I’m into both theory and practise. I know what works. You can trust me! It will be another bedtime story for children and a waking up story for parents and adults. I imagine it creatively as a constructive follow-on to the world-renown “Butter Battle Book” of the much endeared Dr...

Part 1 Governments have spent trillions on preparing for military threats created by their own policies. No one prioritised human and societal security. The unique over-reaction to COVID-19 should worry us much more than the virus itself. It can be seen as a panicky attempt to cover-up the failure of an outdated militarist security policy. #coronaissecuritypolitics Part 2 of this series • Part 3 • Part 4 Jan Oberg April 2, 2020 The Coronavirus is a comparatively small killer Over the last 3 months, about 40.000+ people have died worldwide because of (or with) the Coronavirus. No other phenomenon in contemporary history has caused so many drastic decisions in democratic and authoritarian governments alike as thi pandemic. Constitutions, a series of freedoms, including the freedom of movement, and much else have been suspended and new emergency laws passed fast enough to qualify for the Guinness World Records. Not to diminish...

Julian Assange of Wikileaks languishes in a British jail during a too-long wait for a court to decide if he can be extradicted to the US where the government has made clear that it wants to put him on trial on charges that could land him in prison for the rest of his life, even though President Donald Trump was happy to quote from Wikileaks research on his opponent, Hillary Clinton, during his campaign for president. “I love Wikileaks”, he said. The British and to a lesser extent the US press have done a poor job in uncovering state secrets in their country’s foreign policy until The Guardian and The New York Times linked up with Assange to publish his most damning revelations. And now after a long winding series of events Assange is being punished by a type of confinement that persuaded Nils Melzer, the UN’s rapporteur on torture,...

Text in TFF PressInfo # 560 It was NATO’s first out-of-area operation, against its own Treaty and without a UN mandate. On March 24, 1999. Independent Kosovo was established – against UN SC resolution 1244. Thanks to the Clinton administration and Madeleine Albright. CNN’s Amanpour endorsed it generously on TV with her State Department husband, James Rubin, a chief operator in the non-negotiations at Rambouillet. And TIME, of course, knew the truth too. Serbia suffered tremendously from the 78 days of indiscriminate, hard bombing. I know because I was there. Finally, Serbia and its president Milosevic was threatened with total destruction of Belgrade. And gave in. Western hubris after the Cold War was won? Of course! Russia was on its knees. International law and the UN Charter sidelined. Militarism embraced. Full-spectrum dominance. The winner takes it all! Right – but with the risk of losing it all later. It’s called...

By Liu Jian, TFF Associate in Beijing Read the author’s first article here March 30, 2020 On January 18, after attending a meeting in Hangzhou, I planned to return to my home in Beijing. At that time, the Spring Festival in China was approaching. Although I had started buying tickets one week in advance, I still did not get a high-speed train ticket from Hangzhou to Beijing so I had to go from Hangzhou to Shanghai and wait for several hours before changing to a later train to return to Beijing. There are high-speed trains between Beijing and Hangzhou and Shanghai every five to ten minutes. Even so, it can’t meet people’s travel needs during the Spring Festival. High-speed railway stations and airports in all major cities were overcrowded and at security checkpoints, people lined up in long queues. China’s transportation sector is doing its best to ensure the world’s...

People line up to buy face masks from a medical supply company in Nanning, southern China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region on Wednesday, January 29, 2020. © 2020 Chinatopix. By Liu Jian, TFF Associate in Beijing Read the author’s second article here March 30, 2020 What we have experienced in the past two months is too dreamy and now, in retrospect, it seems not so real. On January 23, the day before Chinese New Year’s Eve, people who were ready to celebrate the New Year were shocked by the sudden outbreak of the virus. Wuhan, a super big city with a population of 11 million, was declared closed by the government. Anxiety and unease quickly enveloped the whole country. According to the government’s guidance, people cancelled New Year’s travels and family reunions one after another, stayed in their own homes according to experts’ suggestions, and kept updating the news with anxiety. Usually,...