TFF Blog

Have you ever thought of why virtually everything you hear in the West about China is negative and judgemental? And that it builds exclusively on Western criteria, values and perspectives – and not on an attempt to understand China on its own, as different from the West? Here is a Singaporean diplomat, expert in philosophy and international affairs who, in about 4 minutes, explains it in a delightfully succinct, pedagogical way. His name is Kishore Mahbubani and here is his homepage.

M. K. Gandhi on democracy The jaws of power “The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.” John Adams, (1735-1826) According to the Nuremberg Principles, the citizens of a country have aresponsibility for the crimes that their governments commit. But to preventthese crimes, the people need to have some knowledge of what is going on. Indeed, democracy cannot function at all without this knowledge, What are we to think when governments make every effort to keep their actions secret from their own citizens? We can only conclude that although they may call themselves democracies, such governments are in fact oligarchies or dictatorships. At the end of World War I, it was realized that secret treaties had been responsible for its outbreak, and an effort was made to ensure that diplomacy would...

It’s Friday, April 5, 2019, at 9 PM. An entertaining talk show, “Skavlan”. A dialogue between a prime minister and a special forces soldier who has no regret having kicked in doors and “killed a lot” in Afghanistan. He justifies himself by the most primitive and long-ago debunked theory about Good and Evil in this world. And then the listening prime minister expresses his admiration. Something roamed around in my mind hours after the event and I had to check: Did he really say what I think I heard? It made me think about theories and worldviews on which political decisions can be founded. About the general, normalized fascination of war and killing, and about the soldier as hero and the victim as invisible, non-existent. It made me think about the sophisticated, almost imperceptible, media methods by which perpetrators of law violations and war crimes are turned (and turn themselves)...

, the US taxpayers are paying US $ 32 million. That is now close to US$ 5000 billion in total! Add to that the tragedy of the absurd: from Vietnam to Syria, 1955 till today or 64 years, there is no documentable evidence that all of its wars, interventions, occupations, meddlings, regime changes have been anything but failures. There is no evidence either that today’s world is a better place than it would have been without these wars, alliances, deterrence and confrontational policies. But there is plenty of hard evidence that the United States of America is in relative decline as a world power. Plenty of facts to show that others – who spend much less on their military and have no Empire – are growing and destined to surpass the US on fundamental indicators in just a few years. As the largest military machine in human history, it has...

“Since the days of the Roman Empire”, Daniel Kalder wrote in his book “The Infernal Library”, “dictators have written books, but in the twentieth century there was a Krakatoa-like eruption of despotic verbiage, which continues flowing to this day.” It’s a strange thing but true that many dictators began their working lives as writers “which probably goes a long way towards explain their megalomaniac conviction in the awesome significance of their own thoughts.” Vladimir Lenin was the father of twentieth-century dictator literature. He relied on the inspiration of Marx. Sitting in the comfort of his mother’s big, comfortable, house he translated “The Communist Manifesto”. Marx was then not well known – in 1883 only eleven people had turned up at his funeral. Contrary to Lenin and Stalin’s books and articles, Marx and Engels (his co-writer) had written a mesmerizing piece of work. In contrast Das Kapital was dense and over theoretical....

Av Erni & Ola FriholtTFF Associerade 6:e april 2019 2018 sände Myndigheten för samhällsskydd och beredskap (MSB) en broschyr till Sveriges invånare. Den heter ”Om krisen eller kriget kommer”, och inleds med rubriken ”Vad skulle du göra om din vardag vändes upp och ner?” På nio punkter visas akut vattenbrist, el-brist, matbrist, drivmedelsbrist, icke-fungerande data, betalkort, transporter och slutligen brist på medicinsk behandling. Och svaret på denna utmålade kris är att hamstra viktiga livsmedel, kontanter, vatten och energi. Dessutom manas vi vara vaksamma mot falsk information och terrorattentat. Och om kriget kommer manas vi att inte ge upp. Detta är de förberedelser som rekommenderas av Sveriges högsta myndighet för vårt skydd. Vi får anta att detta skydd kompletteras av och inordnas i det militära försvaret. Allt är som förut Det är inte fel att vara förberedd för hårdare tider. Men det har stor betydelse hur de befarade tiderna kan förväntas...

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, NATO, celebrated its 70th Anniversary on April 4, 2019. Some of us don’t see anything worth celebrating about an incredibly expensive, dangerous and harmful alliance which should have been closed down exactly 30 years ago. Why 30 years ago? Because in 1989, the First Cold War in the Western sphere – Europe – between the Warsaw Pact and NATO came to an end thanks to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. When that happened and the Berlin Wall came down, NATO too should have been dissolved. Its raison d’etre until then had always and unambiguously been the very existence of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact (which, by the way, was established 6 years after NATO, in May 1955) and its socialist/communist ideology. But NATO instead continued to expand – today 29 countries of which 10 former Warsaw Pact members...

The International Criminal Court (ICC) which prosecutes crimes against humanity is under attack again by the Trump Administration for pursuing Americans. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama supported it. George W. Bush tried to close it down but then decided to cooperate with it. Donald Trump is against it and encouraged John Bolton, his National Security Advisor, to publically savage it earlier this month. To be published in May is a first-rate book on the CIA, its paramilitary armies, operators and assassins. The book is still under wraps so I can’t break the embargo by telling you its title and author. All I can say is that it’s meat for the ICC. The CIA crosses the moral lines all the time: Surprise your target, torture or kill your enemy, vanish without a trace. Then deny it. That was and is its intent – as described in riveting, well-researched detail. The whole book...

TFF’s changing publishing policy – Why we reduce social media presence and what we’ll do instead For more than a decade, I’ve been enthusiastic about social media as a new, potentially more people-powered phenomenon that could serve change for the common good of humankind. Not so today. Sadly, social media have come to resemble fast-food chain restaurants – no taste, no joy, no quality, unhealthy, unsophisticated and boringly predictive. Homepages and blogs, on the contrary, still hold a potential resembling gourmet restaurants with lots of joys, health, innovation and sophistication as well as delicious surprises (and good wines instead of Coca Cola). TFF – the peace and future research foundation I am co-founder and director of – still reach thousands of people every day on social media but what does that mean? Too many have cared far too much about quantities of friends, followers, likes and shares – and far...

His book, Manufacturing Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare, is a classic and must-read for those who want to know in depth the history and the games played over decades by the U.S. and Israel against Iran. It is also relevant as a background to the negotiated JCPOA, or “nuclear deal” with Iran in 2015 (that the U.S. later withdrew from). This video is one part in a small series at The Real News Network – a network that will enlighten any student, researcher and concerned citizen. That will enable you to assess how the mainstream media – also in this case – have fed you all kinds of politically biased information and a uniform anti-Iranian perspective. It has been framing the issue in such a way that they have served well the elites who, as it seems, seek to harm Iran in a series of ways....

Foto: Martin Meissner/AP/TT Av Erni & Ola Friholt* 27:e mars 2019 Såhär kan det gå till “bakom kulisserna” på public service mediet, Sveriges Radio. Men det vet ju inte den som lyssnade på programmet. Vi tycker det är viktigt at förmedla hur det går för sig och kommer självfallet att publicera SR:s svar. Stocken 25 mars 2019 Bästa redaktion för Konflikt! Inför lördagens program om kärnvapenhotet hade Fredsrörelsen på Orust och Maj Britt Theorin kontaktats om intervjuer. Av hänsyn till det förespeglade programinslaget lade Maj Britt om sitt avtalade anförande ”Kvinnor och konflikter. Om kamp för demokrati och jämlikhet”. Istället blev ämnet kvinnors kamp mot kärnvapen, eftersom föredraget skulle spelas in för att (åtminstone delvis) användas i radioprogrammet. Dessutom gjordes en lång intervju med Maj Britt under kvällen. Eftersom det saknades tid inför radioreporterns hemresa till Stockholm uteblev den tidigare önskade intervjun med ordförande och sekreterare i Fredsrörelsen på Orust....

By Thore Vestby March 27, 2019 To gather national strength, just create an enemy. In Europe, the Americans are doing this daily on many levels, from small businesses to countries and the continent itself. It is apparent from the media coverage last year that China has been designated “the great danger”. The United States is devoting huge resources to discrediting China in Europe. It is mobilising its political and diplomatic corps to get the world, especially Western nations, to believe that if Chinese economic progress continues, the world might collapse. The strategy seems to be to spread insecurity, suspicion and falsehoods, and to threaten misery if countries fail to follow the US. Originally published by The South China Morning Star on March 26, 2019 Washington has threatened retaliation if the EU limits US involvement in pan-continental military projects. It has warned Turkey not to purchase S-400 rockets from Russia. It...