TFF PressInfo

  Can you smell the whiff of smoke? You surely can. But the gunfire? Not yet. But it must start soon if the battle has any chance of success. President Donald Trump has to be faced down. Not only because of his sabotage of the Iran nuclear deal but also because of his attack on Europe’s export of steel and aluminum which breaks all the rules on tariffs set by the World Trade Organisation. This man should not be allowed to get away with his gross disturbance of the world political and economic order. Donald Tusk, the President of the Council of the European Union, said boldly last week, “Who needs enemies when you have friends like this?” Who indeed? Trump is, as David Goodhart wrote in Foreign Affairs, “a living fossil, the sort of ‘ugly American’ common enough in earlier eras”. Trump is leading America into a dark tunnel...

    By Farhang Jahanpour May 22, 2018 Mike Pompeo’s declaration of war on Iran makes the world less safe Speaking at the Heritage Foundation this morning, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo practically declared war on Iran. His unprecedented threats against Iran went even beyond what President Trump had said in the past. Commenting on the speech (full transcript here), JStreet wrote: “With their decision to violate the historic JCPOA arms control agreement, the president and his ‘war cabinet’ have created a strategic disaster of their own making and undone the major accomplishments of the previous administration. They have made the US, Israel and the world less safe.”   Short history of Iran’s nuclear activities: 1957 to the JCPOA After 12 years of intensive talks, initially between Britain, France and Germany (the EU-3), and finally between Iran and the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany (P5+1),...

  Lund, Sweden, May 21, 2018 Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo’s speech, held at the Heritage Foundation can be seen and heard here at The Transnational. And here is State Department’s full transcript. Here are some TFF Associate comments on it:   Stop the war on Iran now! By Farhang Jahanpour, TFF Board Speaking at the Heritage Foundation this morning, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo practically declared war on Iran. His unprecedented threats against Iran went even beyond what President Trump had said in the past. Commenting on the speech, JStreet wrote: “With their decision to violate the historic JCPOA arms control agreement, the president and his ‘war cabinet’ have created a strategic disaster of their own making and undone the major accomplishments of the previous administration. They have made the US, Israel and the world less safe.” Let us review what the US administration is demanding. After 12...

  – all about this agreement and its text here). Noteworthy is that the nuclear deal is incorporated into international law by UN Security Council Resolution 2231, even though the U.S. already at that point stated – as an exceptionalist state – that it did not consider the deal binding for it. With the exception of Germany, the deal was negotiated – cynically, of course – by countries which have themselves thousands of nuclear weapons. It never mentioned the only state in the region that possesses them, against international law in the form of UN resolutions and, additionally, has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). That state is Israel whose nuclear weapons Western politicians and their loyal, politically correct media omit mention of – as systematically and uniformly as if orchestrated by an invisible hand from above. Back in 2014-15, many of us stated that the alternative to a negotiated...

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...

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...

The ethnic map few understood. Should make it clear that cutting up Yugoslavia in independent republics could not be done without bloodshed. (1) Yellow = Serbs, Dark Green = Muslims, Light Blue = Croats,  Light Green = Slovenes, Orange = Montenegrins, Pink = Albanians, Darker Blue = Macedonians   , marks the 19th anniversary of NATO illegal and illegitimate bombing of Yugoslavia, Serbia and its Kosovo, province during 78 days. It has – one is tempted to say: of course – been conveniently forgotten by the West itself. It was masterminded by the United States under Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright after the so-called negotiations between Serbs and Albanians in Rambouillet outside Paris (the parties never met face-to-face) While Clinton may be best remembered for his relations with Monica Lewinsky and his wife, Hillary Clinton, some of us also remember him (and Albright) for bombing Afghanistan, Sudan,...

* Today marks the 15th Anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq. Neither solid analyses, moral reasoning and decent argument nor history’s probably largest pre-war, anti-war demonstrations worldwide had any discernible impact on the Bush and Blair Administrations’ decision to go to war and do so on a false pretext. Neither could major allies like France and Germany by their opposition to the war on Iraq persuade Washington and London to first try a peaceful resolution in accordance with the UN Charter provisions. TFF was deeply engaged in preventing this war – also by being on the ground in Iraq – and wants to a) document the research we did and how we argued back then and b) contribute to this tragedy never being forgotten. We also want to place our analyses and debate articles at the disposal – in one place – of the students, researchers, concerned citizens and...

Lund, Sweden – March 14, 2018 Professor emeritus at Princeton, Richard A. Falk (born 1930), visits Lund, Sweden, this week to discuss his latest book, edited by Stefan Andersson – “Revisiting the Vietnam War And International Law: Views and Interpretations of Richard Falk” (Cambridge University Press). Falk is in a category of his own: An incomprehensibly prolific writer of learned textbooks, analyses, reports and columns over a very long lifetime, critical analyses on virtually every aspect of U.S. foreign policy and world order issues, teaching at numerous universities, living in both the U.S. and Turkey, writing poetry and nominated over many years for the Nobel Peace Prize (however never awarded to a scholar). Already 40 years ago he warned those who cared to listen about what we are witnessing today – “the end of world order” and the lawlessness, chaos and criminal brutality that was bound to follow – not...

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, Johan Galtung is awared the alternative peace prize, The People’s Peace Prize In Accordance With Nobel’s Will. Who is Johan Galtung Born in Norway 87 years ago. The most innovative and productive figure in international peace and conflict research. Has taught at 50 universities around the world and received 50 honorary degrees and other prizes. Consultant to a series of international organisations, the UN in particular. Author of about 160 books in fields such as peace and peace-making, security politics, violence, alternative defence, macro history, mathematics, peace journalism, future research, social science methodology, world order issues, economics and theory of science. Has been a mediator and produced peace plans in around 100 conflicts – among them Palestine-Israel, the Middle East as a region, North and South Korea, Equador and Peru, former Yugoslavia, East and West. Is the founder of Peace Research Institute, Oslo, PRIO, and the network and net...