TFF Blog

This small Chinese fund, soon a foundation, has been established as a result of mutual thinking by the founders. We believe that there is a common ground between all cultures and it is important to build on that instead of on the differences. Out of the four founders, it is Ms Liu Jian from Beijing and Thore Vestby from Oslo who are running this philanthropic undertaking. Over the last two years, they have carried out a series of small projects helping young people from China to meet their counterparts in the West. And vice versa. “We believe that before they are “destroyed” by the adult world, structure and life, they can develop friendship, knowledge and inspiration across national and cultural borders”, says Ms Liu. “We believe that some of them will come into situations later in their professional lives were this early established atmosphere of understanding can be beneficial for...

By David Krieger December 4, 2018 It would be a mistake of significant proportions for the U.S. to unilaterally withdraw from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. It would end an important arms limitation treaty, one that eliminated a whole category of nuclear-armed missiles with a range from 500 km to 5,500 km. The treaty eliminated 846 U.S. nuclear missiles and 1,846 Soviet nuclear missiles, for a combined total of 2,692 nuclear missiles. President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed the treaty in 1987. It was an agreement that followed their realization, “A nuclear war cannot be won, and must never be fought.” Fast forward to President Trump and his national security advisor, John Bolton announcing their intention to jettison the treaty that ended the Cold War; took Europe out of the cross-hairs of nuclear war; and allowed for major reductions in nuclear arms. After the signing of the...

  “We need jaw jaw not war war”, said Winston Churchill rather hypocritically. Still, he would be glad to see that the number of wars around the world has fallen dramatically since the end of World War 2, despite the wars in Korea, Africa, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, Pakistan versus India, Central America, Cyprus, ex-Yugoslavia, Syria and now Yemen. Compared with centuries past this has been a remarkable era, yet one not often acknowledged. Interstate wars, apart from India versus Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, have vanished off the map. The wars that remain are civil wars. The democracies do not go to war with each other, as British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher long ago observed. According to a detailed study made by the Economist last month, analyzed all international wars since 1900, along with the belligerents’ wealth and degree of development. It counted all conflicts in which at...

  How can Saudi Arabia be brought low? If the King won’t remove from power his 33 old son, Prince Mohammad bin Salman, there may be no alternative but to do battle (non-violently) with its regime. There seems to be no doubt that it was bin Salman who gave the order to murder Saudi Arabia’s dissident journalist, Jamal Khashoggi. This is not the only reason to take up (non-violent) arms against Saudi Arabia. Others are its massive buying of Western military hardware. Another is its war in Yemen where it has killed tens of thousands of civilians. Another is that it still follows the intolerant strictures of the Wahabi sect of Islam. In 2015 the German vice-chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, publicly accused Saudi Arabia of financing Islamic extremism in the West and warned that it must stop. He said that the Saudi regime was funding extremist mosques and communities that pose...

Iran’s PressTV today asked me to comment on an official Turkish comment on President Trumps statement concerning the Saudi Arabian murder of Mr. Khashoggi. That gave me the opportunity to say a bit about the relationsship between these two countries, the two largest military powers in NATO – and what that may mean. Furthermore, I was asked to say a few words about whether or not the world situation can become better. In that part I speak about the net destructive role of today’s United States of America and what we may be facing the next few years. If you are busy, my participation begins about 1:35 min into the clip.      

Eisenhower’s worst nightmare has come true, as defense mega-contractors climb into the cockpit to ensure we stay overextended   By Gareth Porter November 20, 2018 What President Dwight D. Eisenhower dubbed the “military-industrial complex” has been constantly evolving over the decades, adjusting to shifts in the economic and political system as well as international events. The result today is a “permanent-war complex,” which is now engaged in conflicts in at least eight countries across the globe, none of which are intended to be temporary. This new complex has justified its enhanced power and control over the country’s resources primarily by citing threats to U.S. security posed by Islamic terrorists. But like the old military-industrial complex, it is really rooted in the evolving relationship between the national security institutions themselves and the private arms contractors allied with them. Originally published at theamericanconservative.com The first phase of this transformation was a far-reaching privatization...

  Finally, finally, the over-long, ten year trials of the leaders of the murderous Khmer Rouge leadership of Cambodia, are over. The two defendants, Nuon Chea, and Khieu Samphan, were each given a life sentence at the end of the first trial in August 2015 for crimes against humanity. Now last week they were convicted of genocide. Of the other three that were tried, one, the ex-foreign minister, Ieng Sary died in 2013, one, Ieng Thirith, the wife of Ieng Sary, was too ill with Alzheimer’s to appear and one, Kaing Guek Eav (“Duch”), voluntarily confessed three years ago and was sent to jail for 35 years. In the twentieth century, two massacres of hundreds of thousands people compete for second place after Hitler’s extermination of the Jews, Poles, homosexuals and gypsies. One is Cambodia and the other is Rwanda. But Cambodia, where the deaths were between a million and...

  By Farhang Jahanpour, TFF Board Professor Farhang Jahanpour, part-time tutor on Middle Eastern affairs in the Department of Continuing Education, University of Oxford, and a member of Kellogg College says that the main reason for the idea of forming a joint European army “has been President Trump’s unilateral and ultra-nationalist approach that puts America first and, by implication, ignores the interests of other countries and tries to impose his views on them.” Former Senior Research Scholar at Harvard adds that “He seems to have no concept of a multipolar world and he wishes to rule other countries like a global hegemon, in the same way, that he is trying to establish an imperial presidency at home.” Following is the full text of the interview: Q: The idea of forming a joint European army is not a new idea, but in recent days, with the comments of French President Emmanuel...

    Hiding Israel’s Crimes of State behind false claims of victimization I along with many others am being victimized these days. They are being labelled anti-Semites, and in some instances, self-hating Jews as well. This is a Zionist and Israeli effort to shut down our voices and punish our non-violent activism, with special venom directed at the BDS Campaign (Boycott, Divest and Sanctions) because it has become so effective in recent years. This negative branding of the opposition is being called ‘the new anti-Semitism.’ The old anti-Semitism was simply hatred of Jews as expressed through negative images and attitudes, as well as discriminatory practices, persecution, and vigilante violence. The new anti-Semitism is a criticism of Israel and Zionism, and it has been endorsed by governments friendly to Israel and pushed by a variety of prominent Jewish organizations, including some associated with Holocaust survivors and memories. Emmanuel Macron, President of...

By Jan Oberg It’s high time for EU and NATO allies to develop a different policy on Iran. It must not only disagree diplomatically with the unethical and international law-violating U.S. primary and secondary sanctions. It must represent an alternative that clearly isolates the U.S. But do we see any signs that they are able to? Do these countries actually have more political action permission and capacity – not to speak of intellectual capacity to think independently – than had, say, the Warsaw Pact countries vis-a-vis the Soviet Union at the time? TFF director Jan Oberg on Iran’s PressTV, November 14, 2018:

  Reacting to the radio interview by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, to mark Armistice Day, in which he was reported as saying, “We have to protect ourselves with respect to China, Russia and even the United States of America… We need a true European army”, President Donald Trump blew a fuse. He tweeted: “President Macron of France has just suggested that Europe build its own military in order to protect itself from the U.S., China and Russia. Very insulting.” In fact Trump’s reaction was based on reading a false report of what Macron said. In that part of the interview he was talking about cyber attacks. Nevertheless, Macron was indeed angrily critical of Trump: “When I see President Trump announcing that he’s quitting a major disarmament treaty which was formed after the 1980s Euro-missile crisis that hit Europe, who is the main victim? Europe and its security”. The treaty...

  Is Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, responsible for Brexit? In a way yes she is because at the time of the great economic crisis of 2007-2013, counterproductively she insisted on austerity throughout the European Union. Austerity helped turn the poorer classes of the UK towards Brexit. But so also are the people in high places who lied to the British electorate and persuaded them to vote in a referendum for it. So are those who have fanned the anti-immigrant flames all over Europe. Angela Merkel, in this case, was the most heroic of all the leaders of the West in going the other way and taking in one million, mainly Syrian, refugees. Unfortunately, in the two years before the Brexit vote she made little effort to support the British government when it argued that it needed to be allowed to sharply reduce immigration from the EU. Yet in 2004...