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This paper was written in 2015. Republished here on the occasion of Galtung’s 90th birthday, October 24, 2020. It was originally published at TMS, Transcend Media Service 1.  Definitions and Hypotheses: An Overview Definition: An empire is a transborder Center-Periphery system, in macro-space and in macro-time, with a culture legitimizing a structure of unequal exchange between center and periphery: Empires have different profiles. The US Empire has a complete configuration, articulated in a statement by a Pentagon planner: “The de facto role of the United States Armed Forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing”. (1) In other words, direct violence to protect structural violence legitimized by cultural violence. (2) The Center is the continental USA and the Periphery much of the world.  Like any system it has a life-cycle reminiscent of an organism, with...

20. oktober 2020 Det er nok så tænkeligt at du aldrig har hørt om Arne Nielsen Hansen – men han er en uhyre interessant og mangfoldig nordjyde på 81 år. Du kan læse mere om ham hér. Jeg vil gerne fortælle dig at Arne er en af Danmarks mest betydende mediepersonligheder – igennem flere år end de fleste – en fremstående humanist og landets eneste freds- og global-journalist (læg mærke til kombinationen). Og så sidder han på en lokal-radio – den i Frederikshavn. Han er primus motor bag den righoldige side, Flygtninge og Fred, hvor han producerer alt materiale selv. Og det handler om et bredt spektrum – udover flygtninge og fred også demokrati, klima, miljø og menneskerettigheder. Og han har gjor det i over 20 år. Sådan hér ser manden med de levende, nysgerrige øjne ud. Han er et meget beskedent menneske og ville sikkert helst have sig frabedt...

Fredrik HeffermehlThe Nobel Peace Prize Watch and TFF Oslo & Gothenburg, October 9, 2020 To the mediaCOMMENT – NOBEL PEACE PRIZE 2020 – NOBEL PEACE PRIZE WATCH: We recognise the great value of the World Food Program, but the 2020 prize is much less ambitious than Nobel’s idea of “conferring the greatest benefit on humankind”. The committee again deals with arbitrary, single aspects of the war problem, and never addresses the root causes that Nobel wished to remove. (See his will here). TFF Associate David Swanson, World Beyond War, has this to say: The Nobel Peace Prize Avoids Peace Again With this addition – in English, Norwegian, Spanish, German, French, and Russian: We had hoped the Norwegian committee this year would have formulated the idea of Nobel and committed to promoting his visionary plan for peace. As long as it fails to do so, the committee is handing out its own...

“Crystal Opalescent” by Jan Oberg 2020 Jan Oberg October 8, 2020 The discourse about, or for, peace has mostly disappeared over the last 2-3 decades. It applies to research (and its non-governmental funding possibilities), to politics in general and to the media.  In foreign and security politics, the intellectual level is now such that it does not even seem strange to decision-makers that they never obtain peace advice or consult peace experts. The fantasy-assumption is that if only there is enough military’ security’ means applied to enough societal problems, peace will automatically come about.  I can’t remember having heard a parliamentarian or minister mention or conceptualise peace beyond the level of the state dinner speech – that is, devoid of theoretical and factual content as well as of meaning.  Originally published as an editorial on the Transcend Media Service, TMS. The mainstream media have no one who can focus on...

Image from Wikileaks Jan Oberg September 30, 2020 The unique, dominating position of the United States in the post-1945 world is well-known. It maintains this position thanks to both a very large historical goodwill capital and former glory in the eyes of generations around the world – and thanks to rampant militarism and imperialism that has destroyed the good ‘America’ that it used to be. The world’s major division the next few years will be this: Are you on the side of continued US global dominance or do you want to see a new multipolar world with more balance and the US in the role of a partner among equals? In my view, the US no longer has the capacity to lead itself effectively and find solutions to its own multi-dimensional crisis be it the economy, democracy, climate change, warfare addiction, social polarization, racism and on top of it all...

Iran’s foreign minister, Dr Mohamad Javad Zarif, says the United States has no right to abuse mechanisms enshrined in a 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and six world powers to restore UN sanctions against the Islamic Republic after they were lifted under the accord. I had the pleasure to comment on this on Iran’s PressTV on August 21, 2020 – just click on this image: The points both the minister and I made were, a couple of days later, confirmed in a longer analysis published on OpinioJuris – “Pompeo’s Attempt to “Snapback” UN Security Council Sanctions on Iran—“Cut That Out!” by Larry D. Johnson who is an Adjunct Professor at Columbia Law School and the former UN Assistant Secretary-General for Legal Affairs. I find it amazing that the United States seems to believe that it could get away with such an unrealistic attempts at eating the cake and have it...

Jan Oberg August 6, 2020 It is natural and human to commemorate what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But these stories, films and photos from back then must never come to serve as a museum for just a historical event. It would also be fairly naive – now 75 years later – to believe that showing such images of the destruction and listening to Hibakushas (survivors) will help abolish the nukes of today. They’ve been seen too many times to make such an impact on today’s people; there is a certain psychic numbing and a mass denial of the fact that “it could happen this afternoon too.” 1) If they had such a – desirable deterrent – effect, nuclear weapons would be gone long ago. While of course Hiroshima and Nagasaki and their victims must never be forgotten, it’s extremely important that Hiroshima and Nagasaki Days are used to focus...

KUWAIT. March 11, 1991. The bodies of dead Iraqi soldiers hang from a truck abandoned by the fleeing Iraqi army by a road leading to Iraq. The Gulf War which was marked by the introduction of live news broadcasts from the front lines of the battle, principally by the U.S. network CNN. The war has also earned the nickname Video Game War after the daily broadcast of images from cameras on board U.S. bombers during Operation Desert Storm.Photograph: Pascal Guyot/AFP/Getty August 2nd, 2020, marks the 30th anniversary of one of the most consequential and perhaps the most underestimated wars in recent history. On 2nd August 1990, between 100,000 (according to Iraqi claims) and 300,000 (according to US claims) Iraqi troops invaded and occupied Kuwait, which Saddam Hussein immediately named Iraq’s nineteenth province. In response, President George H. W. Bush and the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher formed a coalition of 39 countries,...

With statements such as these by US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo: “Securing our freedoms from the Chinese Communist Party is the mission of our time! and “If the free world doesn’t change Communist China, Communist China will change us,” – it’s time to see the danger that is mounting. During the last few months, a systematic Sinophobic (anti-China) policy has been rolled out all over the world by the US and its obedient mainstream media. It is so uniform in content and style that it deserves to be categorized as a ‘campaign.’ It has nothing to do with critical media, questioning and diversity of perspectives. You are being taken for a ride! It revolves around the following 7 themes – all negative, of course: CCP/Dictatorship, Xinjiang, Tibet, Hongkong, Taiwan, human rights, China as a threat in several ways, particularly militarily. • A new US/Western Cold War with China is...

In times of fake and omission – not to speak of deliberate deception and lies – society’s very foundation is shaken: What can we believe? Who can we trust? What is reliable and truthful information – and how do I know? Tragically, substantial knowledge with complex reasoning about our complex world and its problems has been overwhelmed by marketing, smart soundbites, tweets and ignorance. Diversity has been substituted by uniformity, political correctness and, more recently, the awfully destructive cancel culture and its close companion, self-censorship. People read less, and less and less the long argument – such as (good) books about global problems. Perhaps because we think we are so busy? Whatever the reason, the attention span has shrunk and many have a comfort zone the size of a pinhead. It bodes ill – no matter the kind of social body in which this disease takes root. It spread like...

Some may remember way back when US President Obama said that the US had now isolated Iran. The only problem was that on the very same day, some 130 leaders from the Non-Aligned Movement, NAM, were meeting in Tehran. The more the US withdraws from international treaties, imposes sanctions, threatens wars and otherwise antagonizes the rest of the world, the more that rest will search – and find – new partners and create a future world order that is not Western- or US-dominated. That’s what Iran is now doing. After sanctions since 1979, verbal harassment, a broken JCPOA (nuclear deal), accusations of being the world’s leading supporter of terrorism, maximal pressure policies, threat of massive war, bombings, liquidation of a top government representative, infiltrations and much else – why on earth should the leaders in Tehran (no matter what you may think about them and their policies) continue to seek...

Another tragic turning point for the – falling – West as civilization. Its moral irresponsibility is expressed by its roaring silence on this crystal clear and gross violation of international law and evil done to the Palestinian people for decades. It can be seen as a particularly nasty, nationalist form of a victim psychology à la Sigmund Freud’s Wiederholunszwang and Alice Miller’s repetition compulsion – you project onto others today what was done to you earlier. Add to that exceptionalism (like the US), state formation through ethnic cleansing (like the US), a belief in being a Chosen People (like the US), being an extremely militarist, over-armed and nuclear power (like the US) and seeing enemies everywhere without the thought that your own behaviour may create some of them – leading to constant fear/paranoia – and you have most of a recipe for self-destruction (like the US). Two leading countries, with...