TFF Blog

Preliminary Notes This post devoted to health and human rights in Gaza. It is based on a video presentation some weeks ago to a conference on this theme held in Gaza. It makes no effort to update by reference to the latest cycle of violence sparked by the targeted assassination of Baha Abu-Ata, an Islamic Jihad military commander, on November 12. I feel strongly about the issues raised by this post not only because I have witnessed living conditions in Gaza and have friends in Gaza who have endured hardship and injustice for so long without losing their warmth or even their hope. My contacts with Gaza and Gazans over the course of many years has been at once inspirational and deeply dispiriting, a deep insight into the deficiencies of the human condition coupled with an uplifting glimpse at the spiritual courage of those so severely victimized. Reflecting on the...

It’s unbelievable that 102 years have passed since the Balfour Declaration when the British colonial government decided to give the Jews their own homeland- but also promised that “it be done without infringing on the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish population”. Now, this month, the Trump Administration has announced that the Jewish settlements on West Bank Palestinian land are no longer illegal. No matter the rest of the world is against this, the Palestinians face the possibility that 60% of the West Bank will be covered with Israeli settlements. 40% will be left as disconnected and isolated Palestinian cantons. There are now about 400,000 settlers. The much-discussed two-state solution is dead. As the former Secretary of State, John Kerry, once said, there is a distinct possibility that Israel will now become “an apartheid state”. In terms of population, Israelis are about the same as Palestinians but Israel’s...

Of all the present foes of America it is Iran which has consistently been over time the number one.  Since its Islamic Revolution in 1979 that overthrew the secular-minded Shah and supplanted him with a militant, sometimes warlike, Islamic theocracy, it has been America’s Great Satan. (But for Europe rather less so, although no country has broken ranks with Washington.) In the current edition of Foreign Affairs two professors, Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, write, “Imagine historians 100 years from now trying to decide which foreign power the US feared most in the decades from the late Cold War…They would see Russia first as an archenemy, then as a friend, and finally as a challenging nuisance. They would see China become a great power rival. North Korea would appear as sideshow. Only one country would be depicted as a persistent and implacable foe: Iran.” A couple of months ago it...

“Lies, damn lies and statistics”. “You can bend any fact with statistics”. There is some truth in that. Nevertheless, some statistics are necessary, revealing and surprising. Many of us when asked about the position of the poor in America would say that over the last two centuries they have made little progress. But look at the statistics, look at the data. True, many are living in slums and ghettos but today they have indoor plumbing, heating, electricity, smallpox and tuberculosis-free lives, adequate nutrition, much lower child and maternal mortality, doubled life expectancy, increasingly sophisticated medical attention, the availability of contraception, secondary level schooling for their children, buses, trains, cars and bicycles, much less racial prejudice, longer retirement, a rising quality of the goods they buy, better working conditions and the vote. Once these were luxuries that only the richer could experience. For Europe, Canada and Japan it is the same,...

By Jan Oberg November 7, 2019 2019 Introduction The text below is 27 years old, written from 1992. It was the last chapter in a book edited by Jan Oberg, Nordic Security In the 1990s. Options In The Changing Europe (Pinter Publishers & TFF, London/Lund, 1992, 325 pages). In other words, it was written shortly after the euphoria/Europhoria created by the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, and the revolutionary changes in the Eastern system that ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 26, 1991. A group of international scholars had been gathered by TFF to create this project through extensive discussion and then put it all into book form. They were Håkan Wiberg, Ole Wæver, Pertti Joenniemi, Barry Buzan, Johan Galtung, Clive Archer, Jyrki Käkönen, Sverre Lodgaard and, as mentioned, Jan Oberg. You may read more about it on Goodreads – where you...

Photo: Gerard Malie/AFP/Ritzau Scanpix Posing the Question Such a question seems little more than a provocation until the effects of the interval between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the present are critically examined in relation to their principal effects. On closer inspection, I am not quite prepared, although almost so, to say that the peoples of the world lost ground as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union and emergence of the United States as the so-called ‘sole surviving superpower.’ Generally, it was rather automatically assumed almost never challenged, that the outcome of the Cold War was a victory for liberal values, including human rights, political democracy, economic growth, and certainly world peace. There was the added popular view that since democracies supposedly do not go to war against each other, and if Communism was discredited on both ideological and materialist grounds, then democracy would spread...

Before there was Brexit there was Amexit – when the Americans in 1776 decided to revolt against Britain’s King George and unilaterally secede to establish their own independent republic. In retrospect it was a strangely negative thing to do and one that took a long time to put right. As Voltaire who was living in London around that time observed, Britain was the most liberal of all the big nations – there was more freedom of speech and press and a bigger role for parliament than elsewhere in the world. Britain was also fighting hard against the slave trade and was highly critical of how the then independent southern states treated their black inhabitants.  In short, the American Revolution was very much a conservative phenomenon. The newborn America intent on integrating the southern and western parts of North America ended up tolerating slavery in its south, but, thankfully, not for...

It’s the most repeated maxim in all the reportage on the war in Afghanistan: “The Americans have the watches, we, the Taliban, have the time.” “Play it again, Sam” was said in “Casablanca”. It should be played, said and listened to in Kabul and Washington today. This is America’s longest war ever – 18 years and counting. It has cost over one trillion dollars and taken 2,500 American lives. President Barack Obama, blind-sided by the generals, he confided later, pumped up the numbers of troops to 100,000. Before very long, Obama came to realize that even if he did a Lyndon Johnson and sent in half a million troops it would end up as it did in Vietnam with a stalemate (still unanswered is why, after 18 years, the Afghan army isn’t trained to do the job themselves). Obama then rolled back the numbers. Three years ago President Donald Trump,...

Interviewed by RT International Among other things, I argue that the international so-called ‘community’ – there definitely is no such thing – is still regrettably simple, or primitive, when it comes to making peace. Here two leaders meet and discuss affairs pertaining fundamentally to what shall happen on the territory of a third sovereign state which is not present. Their focus is on the means of violence – which have already been used and created the situation whereas there is no awareness, it seems, of how important it would have been to address the underlying conflicts. Conflicts are the basic unit if you want to create peace – the violence mostly a symptom of conflicts – problems – un-resolved. International law is violated in several ways – and has been the last 10-15 years when it comes to Syria. It started with the US deciding to go for regime change...

As entrenched as the military is in our society and minds, a new book shows that civilians can defend a society without using violence. Imagine that government leaders make an announcement: “We’re going to abdicate responsibility for defense. Over the next few years, our military forces will be phased out. They are too dangerous and counterproductive. It will be up to everyone to figure out how to defend us all without violence.” Environmentalists immediately get to work setting up local renewable energy systems. They know that an aggressor can hold a society to ransom by controlling a few refineries and large power plants. In contrast, aggressors, and terrorists too, will see little point in attacking energy-efficient buildings and rooftop solar panels. Originally published by Transcend Media Service and Journal of Resistance Studies here Town planners adopt the same thinking. They rapidly expand opportunities for travel by foot and cycling, thereby...

It’s time overdue for the West to make up with Russia. The contretemps over Ukraine, now played out over five years, is too long. As the world goes it doesn’t deserve so much attention. Ukraine in landmass may be a big country but it’s population is only 44 million and its national income per head a quarter of Russia’s. The Ukrainian puppy’s tail has been wagging the West’s dog. It’s part of the West’s human rights commitment to stand up for the little man, but the Ukraine government’s behavior at the time of its great upheavals didn’t deserve the large amount of support it was given. Yes, it was bad that President Vladimir Putin sent his (disguised) troops into western and southern Ukraine. And equally wrong that Putin organized so fast a referendum in the Crimea on withdrawal from Ukraine that broke the norms of international law (the way the...

Insurgencies may not die, but at least, like old soldiers, they usually fade away. Well, that seemed to be the case with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, the PKK. For the best part of five years between 2000 and 2005 there was a truce in Turkey’s bitter and savage civil war. But it did not last. The Kurdish “problem” goes back to the Ottoman Empire. The rugged mountains where Turkey, Iraq and Iran meet have been called Kurdistan since the early 13th century, and the Kurds’ roots can be traced back at least 2,000 years. Most of the world’s 20m Kurds live in the region, although well over a million have emigrated to Istanbul, Baghdad, Tehran and Beirut, often assimilating well with the local people. Turkish President Recip Tayyip Erdogan blames the PKK for its provocations. However, it is the army that often has done the provoking, even on occasion using...