TFF PressInfo # 291: Coping with the loss of a close enemy. Perestroika as a challenge to the West

TFF PressInfo # 291: Coping with the loss of a close enemy. Perestroika as a challenge to the West

By Jan Oberg Written April 1990 • Published in Bulletin of Peace Proposals 3-1990, pp 287-298 and on TFF’s homepage at the same time   1. Four hypotheses The West has lost a close enemy, the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Which reactions can be discerned and what psycho-political emotions are they indicative of? How […]

Shedding Diplomacy – And Fear as a Tool to Gain Power

  By Roberto Savio •This op-ed by Roberto Savio, IPS founder and President Emeritus is adapted from a statement he made as a panelist on Migration and Human Solidarity, A Challenge and an Opportunity for Europe and the MENA region held on 14 December at the Geneva Centre for Human Rights Advancement and Global Dialogue. […]

International Law and “The Responsibility to Protect” – Vijay Prashad

By Vijay Prashad • In the final segment of Paul Jay’s interview with Vijay Prashad on Reality Asserts Itself, the subject is the undermining of international law and military interventions in the name of human rights. Watch the full episode… From The Real News Network Via youtube.com

Europe’s centre-left risks irrelevance if it can’t respond to the populist challenge

Europe’s centre-left risks irrelevance if it can’t respond to the populist challenge

By Sheri Berman • Several of Europe’s centre-left parties have suffered disappointing election results since the financial crisis, but is this slide in support permanent or can they arrest their decline? Sheri Berman writes that with the rise of new parties on the populist right, the centre-left risks sliding into irrelevance unless it can respond […]

Between Humanitarianism and Security: Displacement in a Perilous State of Exception

Between Humanitarianism and Security: Displacement in a Perilous State of Exception

By James Fitzgerald • This paper examines how the politics of state, border, and biological control affect the journeys and experiences of asylum seekers and “irregular” migrants who are, at once, the victims and recipients of care and security. Building on fieldwork carried out at the “migrant aid centre” in Porte de la Chapelle, Paris, […]

Long-Term Changes and the Crisis of Democracy in Western Society – EuropeNow

Long-Term Changes and the Crisis of Democracy in Western Society – EuropeNow

• Multiple and more frequent crises have been taking place in consolidated democracies where governments fail to solve problems, politics takes extremist directions, and entire institutional systems perform poorly. In a few words, the performances of democracy have been disappointing, and these conditions of dissatisfaction and distress risk to undermine the legitimacy of our institutions. […]

The opportunity cost of world military spending | SIPRI

The opportunity cost of world military spending | SIPRI

  By Dr Sam Perlo-Freeman • Today SIPRI estimated that global military expenditure in 2015 was $1676 billion, about 2.3% of the world’s total Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Such high levels of spending frequently raise concerns as to the ‘opportunity cost’ involved in military spending—the potential civilian uses of such resources that are lost. One […]

TFF Associates Blog

The roll-down menus give you access to (almost) everything TFF Associates have produced since end of 2017 – their writings and videos, their media comment, broadcasts, essays and poetry. The Treasures of their writings 2006-2012 can be found here. And all that we published by them 2012-2017 is here. Time to explore and see how […]

Peace

Various aspects of and approaches to this “essentially contested” concept. And various ways of thinking across cultures. Stuff here is both theoretical and practical – with an emphasis on the former. We thought that a slightly blurred image of a sunset – the far horizon – could illustrate these endeavours. The moment we think we […]

Conversation between Gandhi and Bin Laden

Conversation between Gandhi and Bin Laden

By Bhikhu Parekh Via gandhifoundation.org • If he were alive today, how might Mahatma Gandhi, the greatest apostle of non-violence, challenge Osama Bin Laden’s worldview?  Bhikhu Parekh is Vice-President of The Gandhi Foundation, a professor of political philosophy, a Labour peer, and the author of three books on Gandhi. This article first appeared in Prospect magazine […]