TFF Blog

  By Gareth Porter* May 3, 2018 The still-unscheduled Donald Trump-Kim Jong Un summit offers the opportunity for a denuclearization deal that would avoid a possible nuclear war, but that potential deal remains vulnerable to a hostile corporate media sector and political elites in the United States. At the center of this hostility is national security adviser John Bolton, who’s not just uninterested in selling a denuclearization deal to the public. He’s working actively to undermine it. Originally published by Truthdig on April 30, 2018, here     Strong circumstantial evidence indicates that he leaked intelligence to a Washington think tank sympathetic to his views in order to generate media questioning about the president’s announced plan to reach an agreement with North Korea’s leader. Bolton made no secret of his visceral opposition to such a deal before Trump announced that Bolton would become national security adviser, arguing that Kim Jong...

  The next few days are fraught with danger. One of the most momentous decisions of the century is about to be made. Will President Donald Trump certify or not that Iran is honouring the agreement made with the US and the other permanent members of the UN Security Council to end its nuclear enrichment research, which some observers argued (but not the CIA) was leading to an Iranian nuclear bomb? Danger number one is that it will push Iran to break its side of the bargain and the fear of nuclear bomb manufacture will provoke Saudi Arabia to emulate Iran. Already the Saudi foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, has charged that “Iran is on a rampage”. Danger number two is that Israel, no longer constrained by the negotiations led by John Kerry, President Barack Obama’s Secretary of State, will launch a preemptive attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. Already there is...

Please watch the video below carefully. You’ll see what could – could, and most likely will – become a piece of world peace history. Note the body language of the two leaders – warm smiles and long handshakes. In spite of being one and the same nation, they meet at the hardest border in the world. Why is it so? Because everybody else around – the US, Japan, Russia, China – to varying degrees want them to be divided and feel threatened by their possible unification. And yes, a unified Korea would be a formidable economic power but a huge, dangerous conflict would be gone, the US could withdraw, Japan would get a chance to reconciliate in substantive terms. What is most amazing in this clip is that Kim first steps over the border line into the South. Then – seemingly surprising Moon – invites Moon to step into the...

Ina Curic has been with TFF since 2006 – an Associate, a Board member and also TFF’s project coordinator when we worked in Burundi. After a few years away from the bigger world issues of the world, Ina Curic is now back as author of children’s books – bedtime stories for children and waking-up stories for parents, in one. In this short video* she tells you about the idea behind the books – which has a lot to do with peace and environmental education. She is also a mother of two and a very playful personality who loves to experiment and make people laugh and feel happy around her. Given all the world crisis we face as humanity, the message Ina Curic conveys is existentially important and gives hope to big and small alike. We recommend that you visit her homepage and download her first free ebook here and find...

Ina Curic became a TFF Associate in April 2006, TFF’s project coordinator in Burundi in May 2007 and a member of the foundation’s Board in March 2008. After years of service, she left the Board to develop her career as author and publisher but, in December 2018, she again joined the Board. Romanian-born Ina Curic is a trained sociologist, with an M.A. in Gender Studies from Babes-Bolyai University, Romania and an M.A. in Peace and Conflict Studies from the European Peace University, Austria. She has a solid background in peace and conflict research, gender studies and NGO management and more than fifteen years work experience with national civil society and international organizations in different countries. Since 1999, Ina has provided numerous national and international training programmes and workshops on different topics related to organizational development, project management, peace, conflict and gender and youth work-related issues in various settings.  Her field...

  • A speech of General George Patton, a famous World War 2 warrior, has an uncanny resemblance to the philosophy of Donald Trump. “All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser- Americans despise cowards. Americans play to win- all the time. That’s why Americans have never lost, not ever will lose a war, for the very thought of losing is hateful to Americans.” Then came the Korean War (a stalemate), Vietnam (a loss), Afghanistan (mired in unconquerable mountains), Iraq 2 (a quagmire). Nevermind the failures, with Trump in the saddle a new toughness is apparent. He’s in the middle of conflicts with North Korea, Russia, Iran, Syria, China, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and in Niger and Mali. “Fire and Fury”, aimed at North Korea, is in danger down the road of becoming his mantra. Recall that the US...

By David Swanson* Imagine some foreign nation sent 100 missiles into Washington D.C. You can imagine this because Hollywood has trained you to imagine it.   Originally published at David Swanson here. April 20, 2018 Imagine that for weeks or months prior to this attack, the foreign nation’s government and public debated whether to do it. You can imagine this because you live in the one nation on earth where such debates happen, or because you have heard about the sorts of things that go on in the United States. Now imagine that the primary excuse for the attack settled on in the debate in the distant foreign capital was this: it would be punishment for the U.S. government’s use of and possession of banned weapons: depleted uranium, white phosphorous, napalm, cluster bombs, etc. You may be able to imagine that, depending on what you know about events in the...

  , speaks with Russia Today and points out why this type of behaviour is totally unacceptable: It violates international law, undermines the UN and brings Syria, the region and the world further and further from peace. The people behind it and their media and other supporters must be perceived as either conflict- and peace illiterate or advocates of criminal activity. Both of which are tragic and making already dark times darker. We must say stop and argue: Peace first – The Secure the peace. In addition, contrary to the Western/NATO belief this is self-destructive and self-isolating. The international so-called community is, for the large majority, not behind this type of policy.

This post is an assessment of the recent Syrian missile attack by the armed forces of the U.S., UK, and France from a variety of perspectives. It is a modified and expanded version of a text earlier published in The Wire  (Delhi) and Il Manifesto(Rome). I intend to write two further posts suggested by the controversy generated by the airstrikes of April 14, 2018, against sites associated with Syria’s alleged chemical weapons capabilities. These strikes raise questions of international law, domestic constitutional authorization for international uses of force, strategic logic, and moral imperatives and rationalizations. Each of these issues is capable of multiple interpretations raising further concerns about the appropriate location of the authority to decide given the nature of world order in the 21stcentury.  Preliminary reflections At this stage, it seems reasonable to wonder whether Syria was attacked because it didn’t use chemical weapons rather than because it did....

Lund, Sweden – April 14, 2018 Statement by Associates of TFF – The Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research Summary The US-British-French attack is a clear and indisputable case of aggression according to international law, and to the UN Charter in particular. And it lacks, like many unilateral wars before it, a UN Security Council mandate. It comes as a consequence of interventionist impulses and militarism and lacks every element of a comprehensive conflict analysis, or diagnosis. Even if one assumes that the government and president of Syria are the main/only culprits and the worst violaters of human rights on earth, the way that the Syrian conflict has been handled by Western governments over the past seven years has been outrageously wrong and counterproductive. It’s been deliberate conflict-mismanagement combined with peace-prevention. Conspicuously, this aggression on Syria takes place before there is a shred of evidence of what chemical weapons...

 In the park today I saw a teenager watching two little kids, one of whom apparently stole a piece of candy from the other. The teenager rushed up to the two of them, reprimanded one of them, and stole both of their bicycles. I felt like it was my turn to step in at that point, and I confronted the bicycle thief. “Excuse me,” I said, “what makes you think you can commit a larger crime just because you witnessed a smaller one? Who do you think you are?” He stared at me for a while, and replied: “the U.S. military.” Originally published at David Swanson here There is no crime larger than war. There is no way to legalize it. The Kellogg-Briand Pact bans it, and the United Nations Charter bans it with narrow exceptions that have not remotely been met by any of the U.S. wars of the...

  President Barack Obama said that the then president of Brazil, Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva, was “the most popular president on earth”. Now, while fighting for a new term in office, he has been brought low, imprisoned for 12 years for corruption. He is still the most popular politician in Brazil and until he went to prison at the beginning of the week was the favourite to win October’s election. After his previous terms in office, he left behind a country, one that had been the most unequal society on earth, see a quarter of its population lifted out of poverty, a fast-growing economy and a sharp increase in its lower-middle class as millions got jobs and/or pay rises. Observers in Brazil appear divided about the nature of the senior judiciary. Some say the prosecutors are crusading judges determined to root out the corruption that is a gangrene on...