Theories and concepts

Ludwigsburg, German Mediation Congress Dear Colleagues; the future of mediation is to make ourselves redundant by spreading a conflict solution culture at all levels of social organization, enabling people to handle conflicts themselves. There will be counter-forces from professional mediators to monopolize the job and countercounter-forces from others to become ever better, to be ahead. The latter will win. Model: the health professions. Incredible gains were made in human health enabling people to take better care of their bodies: protection against contagious diseases through hygiene, washing hands, brushing teeth; keeping fit with adequate food, water, moving-walking –but care with jogging, unnatural, in the direction of a hospital– against the climate through adequate clothing and housing; against sepsis in wounds adequate cleaning: a minimum of health education. More than the complexities of surgery this gave us 25 more years of life. For children and adolescents: watch the pathogens bringing illness from...

/10/janoberg.jpg”>[/caption] No matter what you may think of Putin and Russia this is simply not the way international politics should be conducted, particularly not at the personal level. If it wasn’t an offence to children, one would aptly characterise it as childish behaviour. Western leaders ignored a brilliant opportunity to meet face-to-face with Vladimir Putin and move forward towards mutual understanding instead of signalling that they want a new Cold War. Western leaders tell us that Russia is a ”threat to the world”. That obviously serves other purposes because you don’t bully someone you genuinely fear. The G20 Brisbane should be remembered for its show of Western leaders’ personal display of weakness and conflict illiteracy. Pummelled Putin punching bag CNN reports that, during the meeting, Putin took ”pummelling” and was treated as a ”punching bag” by Western leaders from he set foot on Australian soil where his Australian host had...

By Farhang Jahanpour A shorter version of this article has been published by IPS When ISIS suddenly emerged in Iraq it declared as one of its first targets the Shi’is and what it called the Safavids. The Safavid dynasty (1501-1736) was one of the most powerful Iranian dynasties after the Islamic conquest. At its height, it ruled an area nearly twice the size of modern Iran, including large parts of modern Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Eastern parts of Turkey and Syria, and large areas of Western Afghanistan and Baluchestan, the North Caucasus, as well as parts of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. However, what irks the Sunni jihadists most is the fact that the Safavids made the Twelver School of Shi’ism Iran’s official religion, something that has continued to the present time. The interesting point is that the Safavid dynasty had its origin in a Sunni Sufi order, but at some point they...

“Countercyclicity” means that both move through history in cycles, up and down; with one moving up when the other moves down. Christianity started with its founder crucified, like the first pope St Peter; Christians were tortured, killed, expelled from Jewish Palestine. But then indeed up, as religio licita in the Roman Empire in 313, defined in Nicaea in 325 by Emperor Constantine. The Empire split in 395, with a Catholic Church in the West – contracting, monastic after the Western Empire fell in 476 – and an Orthodox Church in the East, till Constantinople became Istanbul in 1453 – Moscow became “the Third Rome”. Islam started with the Prophet’s hizrat, migration from Mecca to Medina as city-state under Mohammed till he died in 632. From then till the end of the umayyad Damascus dynasty in 750, Islam covered the lands from Iberia (not Asturias) as the caliphate of Cordoba in...

/10/jonathanpower2.jpg”> President Vladimir Putin is often painted as an ogre in the world’s media. The seemingly eternal president of Russia has an iron grip on his nation and a foreign policy to match. Yet a large majority of Russians give him their support. Is it his early economic success? Or is it because of a new stability? Or the nation’s growing self-respect after the ignominious years that followed the demise of the Soviet Union? Or is it a sense of besieged defensiveness because of the advantage the West undoubtedly took of Russia after that demise. The answer is a bit of all these. Few in the outside world seem to talk much about what happened after President Boris Yeltsin pushed aside Mikhail Gorbachev, the last president of the Soviet Union. Few recall the political and economic upheavals of that time and why the stability of Putin’s governance is welcomed by...

/10/janoberg.jpg”>[/caption] On November 9, it is 25 years the Berlin Wall came down. Seventeen months later, Yugoslavia’s dissolution began and various concepts and policies were introduced that fundamentally changed international politics ever since – more so than the fall of the Wall. These features can be seen in the conflict (mis)management in later conflicts. By now we should have accumulated enough evidence of how effective the various ”teatments” of the ”patient” called Yugoslavia were. To put it crudely: A unique country was destroyed – yes from the inside too, but that doesn’t reduce the responsibility of the West/NATO in its role as ”peacemaker”. Today, Croatia is ethnically much more clean; Kosovo remains a failed state; the constituencies of the Dayton Accords for Bosnia (1995) still won’t live together as one state, as elections have just shown us. Macedonia’s problems have only deepened. The split between Serbia and Montenegro was enigmatic....

/10/janoberg.jpg”>[/caption] Två dagar efter detta skrevs stoppades sökningen – som förutsagt i konklusionen nedan. Ni har hört att Sverige jagar en “ubåt” och att den “antas vara rysk”. Exempelvis skriver Financial Times om detta den 21 oktober – och meddelar också att den svenska statsministern lovar att öka försvarsutgifterna. Det finns bara tre problem med detta: 1) Det finns inte det minsta bevis för att där finns något militärt att hitta, inte heller att det är ryskt. 

Sometimes the use of dichotomies, simple cuts, male-female, democracy-dictatorship, negative-positive peace is criticized: the world is more complicated. That the organic world with life, individual and collective, is complex, there is no doubt. That a simplistic us-them division of the world in two blocs or poles, polarization, is a step on the way to violence and war, is clear. On the other hand, the dichotomy is a frequent form of thought; today’s digital world is even based on 0,1. We cannot live without right-left, forward-backward, up-down, North-South, East-West, etc. For this author, with many dichotomies in thought-speech-writing, they are indispensable building-blocs for a complexity that can mirror some of the complexity of the real world,

More senseless bombing of Muslims, more defeats for USA-West, more ISIS-type movements, more West-Islam polarization. Any way out? “ISIS, Islamic State in Iraq-Syria, appeals to a Longing for the Caliphate” writes TFF Associate Farhang Jahanpour in an IPS column. For the Ottoman Caliphate with the Sultan as Caliph – the Shadow of God on Earth – after the 1516-17 victories all over till the collapse of both Empire and Caliphate in 1922, at the hands of the allies England-France-Russia. Imagine the collapse of the Vatican, not Catholic Christianity, at the hands of somebody, Protestant or Orthodox Christians, meaning Anglo-Americans or Russians, or Muslims. A center in this world for the transition to the next, headed by a Pope, the apostolic successor to The Holy Spirit, an emanation of God in Heaven. Imagine it gone. And imagine that they who had brought about the collapse had a tendency to bomb, invade,...

/10/janoberg.jpg”>[/caption] Lund, Sweden October 7, 2014 Part A – Some principles (yesterday) here This two-part PressInfo offers a pro-peace perspective on the present war on ISIS in Iraq and Syria. First some principles to stimulate another discourse, another way of thinking that is not militarist – and then the concrete proposals below – 27 in all for your deliberation, discussion with friends and perhaps to share through your social and other media. The proposals are not numbered – there is no linearity, some of it can be done simultaneously. How to make the bombing and wars irrelevant Stop the financing of ISIS – sadly it is non-democratic allies of the West – Saudi-Arabia, Qatar, UAE etc – that seem to pay its bills. Joe Biden apologised – for being truthful. Allegedly, ISIS has an income of US$ 3 million per day from oil resources they now control. Oil fields should...

/10/janoberg.jpg”>[/caption] Åbn øjnene for muligheder istedet for “Øje for øje” Princippet om øje for øje vil en dag gøre hele verden blind – som Gandhi, der den 2. oktober fødtes for 145 år siden, så klogt sagde. Det er imidlertid dét princip den danske regering, et stort flertal i Folketinget og efter sigende 62% af den danske befolkning nu følger når Danmark går i krig for 5. gang på 15 år. Danmark bomber sammen med de store NATO-lande USA, England og Frankrig og så nogle arabiske småstater. Ud af 193 lande i verden! Som kritiker af en militaristisk – men ikke aktiv – udenrigspolitik får jeg ofte spørgsmålet hvad Danmark (jeg siger ikke ”vi”) i stedet skulle have gjort. Svarene forudsætter dels en anden måde at tænke på og en vis uddannelse og dels nogle konkrete ideer, der skulle kunne implementeres. Her er nogle hurtigt nedfældede svar på de to...

What a good idea, this day! To reflect, take stock, to enjoy peace, to deplore non-peace.21 sep day of peace And the first reflection is this: peace is the normal condition of humanity, just like health. There is so much plain, simple, decent behavior around, so much mutual aid, a helping hand, companionship, friendship, good neighborhood when bad luck strikes at its worst. And we sense mutuality, unquestioning reciprocity; not always but mostly. Go to an airport, stay close to where they come out, arrival, and are met by their nearest–watch the embraces, the warmth, the eyes glittering, the smiles, laughter. There we are. Harmony, resonance–with the occasional deep, joint sadness, sorrow; something has struck. Go to a restaurant, not too stiff, formal–more ordinary eatery. And you see it again, the pleasure, food, drinks, togetherness, the shared pleasure – the jokes, the smiles. Most of the time – then some...