TFF global posts 2018

TEHRAN – Farhang Jahanpour, an adjunct professor in the Department of Continuing Education at the University of Oxford and a Middle East expert, says that all other signatories to the JCPOA, including the European Troika (the UK, France and Germany) have stated that they are for the nuclear accord, since Iran has remained committed to the deal. (JCPOA = Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action = the deal about nuclear technology between Iran and the five UN Security Council members + Germany + EU. You can read it here.) “Nevertheless, EU countries are in a difficult position with the American demands,” Jahanpour tells the Tehran Times in an exclusive interview. Jahanpour, also a former senior research fellow at Harvard University and TFF Board member, says that Europe is playing a double game with Iran. “On the one hand, they [European countries] have stated openly that they support the JCPOA and have...

  . No other country has seen so many “blue berets”- UN peacekeeping troops- in its short history. The Belgian colonialists may have exploited it and transferred massive amounts of its wealth back to Belgium but one leader after another has continued in its steps, making use of the country’s vast mineral deposits to build an edifice of wealth and unilateral power. Leaders have played on tribal fears and insecurity. War has been the outcome. In the last few years there has been talk of winding down the large contingent. A kind of peace seemed to have arrived. No longer. There are still 16,000 UN troops there. The way the UN peacekeepers work has changed a lot since their first deployment soon after independence. Then the accent was on not using arms. UN soldiers accused of misbehavior were rare. Today force, even killing, is widely used by peacekeepers. So are...

Statistic on Billboard Explained   By World Beyond War – David Swanson In 2008, the United Nations said that $30 billion per year could end hunger on earth, as reported in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and many other outlets. The Food and Agriculture Organization has not updated that figure since 2008, and has recently told us that such figures do not require much updating. In a separate report, most recently published in 2015, the same organization provides a figure of $265 billion as the cost per year for 15 years to permanently eliminate extreme poverty, which would eliminate starvation and malnutrition – a broader project than just preventing starvation one year at a time. The FAO’s spokesperson informed us in an email: “I think it would be incorrect to compare the two figures as the 265 billion has been calculated taking into consideration a number of initiatives...

    It’s been an odd couple of months for southern Africa. No one predicted last year that in almost the same breath the long-serving dictator of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, and the super-corrupt president of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, would be soon overthrown – and non-violently to boot. In Zimbabwe the army did trigger Mugabe’s demise, but it was a sort of passive coup, a non-violent withdrawal of support. In South Africa Zuma was compelled to stand down as leader of the African National Congress because of a majority vote against him in an assembly of the ANC, the party of black protest against former minority white-led rule. Again, all done non-violently. What is more, in South Africa, although violence had played some part in black liberation, the negotiations that took place in the closing years of the apartheid regime were accomplished without violence.  There were peaceful negotiations between the...

The time of the Clinton administration. There is a very good article with links and a PDF on OffGuardian here. It’s a mind-boggling story about how five Americans were tasked with influencing the election of Boris Yeltsin in competition with other candidates who, when they started working in Moscow, had much higher poll figures than he had. This was a couple of years after Bill Clinton had broken all important Western politicians promises to Mikhail Gorbachev to the effect that NATO would not expand “an inch” and started doing exactly that – a process that ended with the crisis and tension in today’s Ukraine. Fortunately, there are Western media that have told you quite a bit about US meddling in the elections and other political affairs of other countries: Huffington Post“The US has been meddling in other countries’ elections for a century. It doesn’t feel good.” Los Angeles TimesThe US...

-05/14/content_740876.htm”>China Today from May 2017 carries the main catchwords from a peace and security viewpoint: • win-win • inclusiveness • vision-based • anti-war • pro-peace (constructive) • respect for sovereignty of states • cooperative structures • common security • interconnectedness • benefits to all • respect for each other’s development path (diversity) • sharing And here some excerpts also from China Today in 2017: “As some western countries move backwards by erecting “walls,” China is contriving to build bridges, both literal and metaphorical. These bridges are China’s important offering to the world, and a key route to improving global governance. Proposed by China, the Belt and Road is for all to enjoy.” “China is not willing or able to replace or replicate the vast web of political and economic tendrils maintained by the United States, but China is trying to take the current structure and build from it a more...

  How rude can you get? The US vice-president, Mike Pence, sitting one row in front of the sister of the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un refused to turn round and say hi. She was one outstretched arm away from him. For the whole of the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics he sat with his back to her. It didn’t have to be a handshake – unless the lady initiated it – but a pleasant expression and a friendly hello would not only be what mother told all us men to do when meeting a lady, it would a way of saying, “We Americans hope that we can substitute ploughshares for the sword”. It would have complemented what the South Korean prime minister did which was to welcome Kim with a beaming smile and handshake, a meal and a serious round of talks during which she passed on...

  By Gunnar Westberg February 16, 2018   This is how I would summarize the new US Nuclear Posture Review, issued last week by the Trump administration: • We can fight and win a nuclear exchange • We are prepared to use nuclear weapons against a conventional attack, e.g. a cyberattack • We may consider using nuclear weapons against a nuclear-weapons-free country • We care not to mention our obligations under NPT Art VI • We have never heard of the climate effects of nuclear war.   In January 2017, President Donald Trump ordered a new Nuclear Posture Review (NPR). The report is now available. It is 75 pages long. Most of the material repeats earlier NPRs. I will here concentrate on the new aspects.   “Escalate to de-escalate” Russian military writers have discussed the possibility of using “small” nuclear weapons if the country is attacked by an adversary with...

82b7f244a4b771c73a0b601ec5″>Associated Press – right out of the Secretary of Defence’s own mouth. Newsweek picked up this – breaking – story but virtually no one else. Compare that with thousands upon thousands of articles throughout the Western press just parroting American officials’ statements, including President Trump’s when he found it appropriate in April 2017 to attack Syria with cruise missiles to teach “the regime” and its “dictator” a lesson for its alleged attack on Khan Seykhoun, stating that “there can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons.” Some of us thought it was a bit too early because there could be no dispute either about another, much more important, thing – namely that, at the time, there could not have been any evidence collected or analysed. TFF and its Associates has stated a few things about the media coverage of Syria in general and the chemical attacks in particular...

  Av Erni och Ola Friholt Sent omsider har svenska militarister och upprustare insett att Sverige är extremt sårbart i ett krig. Var och en inser ju att en fiende kan besegra Sverige även utan militära insatser. Han (för det är ju alltid en han) kan arbeta med det allenarådande datasystemets svagheter och framkalla kollaps enbart genom att överbelasta huvuddatorerna, skicka trojaner eller göra intrång med hackers. Vill han vara grundligare skickas några civilklädda sprängare till valda platser där högspänningsledningarna är särskilt otillgängliga för reparationer. När Sverige stått stilla någon vecka råder mörker, varulagren är tömda och kontantbetalningarna slut. Översvämmade avlopp skapar epidemier och vattenledningarna är tomma.     Med denna vetskap rekommenderar myndigheterna att vi alla lagrar mat och dryck för några veckors behov! Ingen har en tanke på den självklara åtgärden att avsluta samarbetet med NATO-staternas krigsmaskin och upphöra med misstron mot Ryssland (som redan kämpar med inre...

  By Jan Oberg Please see the short video below. Whatever you may think of Tucker Carlson and Fox News, this is an interesting documentation of Google’s indisputable, permanent violations of our human right to privacy. It is, of course, totally unacceptable and a war on freedoms and the right to live in peace. Please note that this test is done without a sim card and one of the phones is in airplane mode. And it anyhow knows anyhow everything about you. What are all these data, even the step out of car, used for? Oh, they say everywhere, to give you a better experience, to help and service you better and faster. Sounds great, right? But when did huge corporations ever do anything for you without getting something back? I say ‘No Thanks’ to surveillance capitalism and to human rights violating corporations. As citizens of formal democracies we do...

Dear story lover! I’m a peace-building practitioner and I have just launched a storytelling-for-peace platform.  I translate integral peace education themes into stories for both children and parents to practice together – for harmonious relationships within the web of life. With two forthcoming books that bring peace education issues at family level, I need support to raise the profile of my work. Two of the forthcoming, illustrated storybooks are available for free to a group of advance readers who can assist with the launches on Amazon.com in May and June 2018. Now, please click on these links to download the new e-books for free: Queen Rain, King Wind – The Practice of Heart Gardening Anagrania’s Challenge – Turning Conflict into Opportunity (Whole Nutrition Series) Enjoy the stories and stay tuned to hear about the upcoming launches where any small contribution will be very much appreciated. Spreading an educational message takes community...