TFF Associates & Themes Blog

Archive for the ‘Nonviolence’ Category

By Jonathan Power

September 2nd 2014

Violence should have had its day. Look at its non-achievements: The US/British/French invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. The upheavals of the “Arab Spring”. And now Ukraine.

Will we ever learn its limitations?

In Iraq outsiders’ violence overthrew the dictator Saddam Hussein who for all his faults provided stability, safety on the streets, food, a falling infant mortality rate and universal health services. What did it substitute beside the worthwhile job of killing off Saddam?

Mayhem, tens of thousands of deaths of innocents, fear of the street, shortages of food, upheavals in the health services and schools. And an ongoing instability, not least the opening given to ISIS.

In Libya, Read the rest of this entry »

By Jan Oberg, TFF co-founder

Jan Oberg

Lund, Sweden September 3, 2014 – 11:30 CET.

As announced just a few minutes ago, the Ukrainian and Russian president have agreed to what the first reports call a permanent ceasefire in Eastern Ukraine.
That’s indeed the best piece of news from that region.

It places the NATO Summit in Wales this Thursday and Friday in a new light.

The ceasefire must be solidified
However, an agreement over a phone is only a beginning; the devil is in the details. Secondly, there is no mention – yet – of the East Ukrainian fighters are on board this agreement.

Time for UN peacekeeping
Third, a credible ceasefire should be monitored by neutral observers and competent people. The only ones who can do that is the UN peace-keepers – perhaps with some staff also from Russia and Ukraine. Read the rest of this entry »

By Johan Galtung

Johan Galtung

Keynote, 25th International Peace Research Association (IPRA) Conference
Istanbul, 11-14 August 2014

We have come of age, at 50; and I am the only surviving founder from 1964 in London, capital of a foggy island in the North Sea. Now we meet in the sunny capital of another empire; bridging three continents. One cloned itself all over; the other was more an Islamic umma, a community of togetherness-and-sharing, with millet islands of tolerance. And now: the superb IPRA program.

Uniting for peace. But we differ, disagree? Incredible how far we can come if we identify and focus on the good and the positive in Kiev, Donetsk and Moscow, or husband and wife in broken marriages rather than what is wrong, and build new relations on that.

Peace is a relation, not attributes of the parties. So also for conferences: focus on the best in paper, praise it; not on the dubious and missing.


Building sustainable peace. My formula in A Theory of Peace is:

Equity X Harmony

Peace = ———————

Trauma X Conflict

Four Roots of Peace

• for positive peace: 1) cooperation for mutual and equal benefit, and 2) empathy for the harmony of sorrow at other’s sorrow and joy at other’s joy;

• for negative peace: 1) reconciling trauma, and 2) resolving conflicts–avoiding violence, through skills.

Expansion of interaction – through means of communication and transportation – with rights and obligations has created vast zones with less direct violence. But without equity: more inequality, more structural violence, killing even more. Identifying violence with bullets is as naive as identifying disease with microbes, overlooking structural diseases like cancer, heart; and overlooking chronic violence, like the security state and security world, by the US National Security Agency. Better: make Ukraine a federation, relate West-North to EU and South-East to Eurasia, with both having access to the other! And clone Snowden.

Through universal values. I know only two for sure, basic to Buddhism: reduce dukkha, suffering, and increase sukha, fulfillment (wellbeing). Emotions more than cognitive values? Yes, hence more basic. Negative and positive peace. Be aware of both-and and neither-nor, the ambiguous and the bland, more frequent than either-or.

Democracy? As rule by the consent of the ruled, maybe; but not as multiparty state elections, too easily corrupted into bankocracy. As dialogue to consensus in smaller units? But many rule themselves or go for those smaller units, uninterested in “states” and “regions”.

Human rights? If enriched with collective, people’s rights, yes; but be careful. They are excellent goal-formulations for underdogs but very one-sided as conflict discourse. Where are the goals of the topdogs? Only to remain on top? Only their perennial “if underdogs come up they will treat us like we treated them?” Or also some justified skepticism about an alternative order with former underdogs on top in a majority democracy, given their numbers? We do not know in advance; give them a hearing – not guaranteed by Human Rights. Solve problems.

To be ruled by somebody of your own kind? Universal. Even if one’s own kind is unkind, it is better than the benevolence of somebody else.

The First World War at 100: To see the Sarajevo’s shots on 28 June 1914 as the cause of the Hapsburg Empire attacking Serbia on 28 July overlooks Austria-Hungary annexing Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908. The Serbs wanted to be ruled by their own kind. Self-determination was key. Nor was this a world war, all major battles were in Europe (17 of them in the French-Belgian corner). The massive killing was so insane that Europeans pushed it on the world.

The Second European war, rather, the First being the Napoleonic. The First World was, of course, Western colonialism from 4 May 1493 (Pope Alexander VI)–another atrocity to conceal.

IPRA at 50

What we wanted in 1964 was peace research recognized as a social science, member of the UNESCO International Social Science Council, bypassing turf-concerned Western universities. We got it.

Elise Boulding – role of culture, women – very active at the founding, saving IPRA several times afterward. Her husband Kenneth – the Image, stable peace, economic evolution – was in the background and Bert Röling – the youngest judge at the Tokyo Tribunal, disarmament, law for peace–became the first IPRA Secretary General. And then Galtung – at the time the health studies parallel and positive/negative peace.

We were from the world Northwest and IPRA has, like the world, moved East and South, with a Turkish Delight and a Sierra Leone Diamond as secretaries!

Prognosis: we will move on to Islam and China–India still needs time to grow with our Guiding Spirit: Gandhi. Then back to a more modest Northwest, circling on, as we should.

Criminalizing War

Massive murder, dukkha, inequity, disharmony, trauma leading to revenge, solving nothing in the longer run. The 1648 Westphalia Peace stabilized two Christianities at the price of a state system with the “right to war”. That institutional mandate has to go.

A centuries long process – jus ad bellum, jus in bello, human rights – to outlaw war except for defense, peace-keeping and “peace-enforcement” – recently as R2P (Responsibility to Protect) – opens countless loopholes, protected by anonymity and collectivity.

Personalize by naming the massive killers from top politicians to bottom soldiers – Nürnberg, Tokyo. Individualize by making them responsible, maybe following the Trans-National Corporations with amnesty in return for confession-contrition-compensation.

And remove that mandate from the Abrahamic god’s countless massacres via rex gratia dei – the King by God’s grace – transferred to the state – and via vox popoli vox dei – the voice of people being the voice of god–perverting democracies into killing machines.

Be careful! They may kill even more in order not to be arrested.

And we get further with positive and negative peace, and by fighting war as a social evil.

But the three approaches add up. We have work to do!

Originally published by Transcend Media Service here.

By Johan Galtung

Johan Galtung

Lund, Sweden August 15, 2014

Like so many, like millions, this author’s heart is bleeding for the killed and bereaved in Gaza – so disturbingly similar to the Warsaw ghetto in 1943 and Warsaw 1944. With Arab and Western governments doing nothing; like the Red Army in 1944.

But the latter was heading for Berlin. And the West uses Ukraine as a distraction, trying to hit Moscow.

Like Rabbi Michael Lerner, my non-Jewish heart is also bleeding for Judaism and the Israel that could have been.

The present regime is a traitor to both, driving into the abyss.

Yet they have parliamentary and democratic, voter, support? Except that parliaments are not infallible, democracies can be wrong; even more so if the people think they have a divine mandate.

England, the mother of parliaments, once thought it had; colonized 25% of the world and is now hanging on to the “united kingdom”.

The USA still feels covenanted to the Lord but is lording over less and less; Japan suffers from similar Sun Goddess delusions.

So does the present Israeli regime, but there is enough sanity left.

By “pathology” it is meant not only the megalomaniac-paranoid component but the deficient sense of reality. Particularly:

Pathology 1: The delusion of victory being feasible. Read the rest of this entry »

By Jan Oberg

Jan Oberg

Lund, Sweden August 11, 2014

Quality research leads to better predictions

One criteria of quality research is that it predicts the future better than incompetent research.

Because TFF is independent of governments and coroporations it doesn’t have to take political considerations or exclude certain theories, concepts or values. This free research enabled it over the years to make fairly precise predictions about for instance former Yugoslavia, the Iraq war and East-West relations.

In 1998 – 16 years ago – we warned that NATO’s expansion would lead to future problems with Russia. Read it here.

NATO should never have been expanded

We backed this prediction up with 46 arguments and argued that so many other things would be wiser than containing Russia from the Baltic republics to Georgia – a strategy pursued by Bill Clinton in contravention of all promises given to the Soviet Union/Russia at the end of the Cold War about ten years earlier.

That counterproductive and insensitive expansion has now hit Ukraine. A new Cold War is gathering over Europe. It should have been predicted by advisers, intelligence agencies, big research institutes and columnists.

But it wasn’t.

At the end of the Cold War, NATO/the West got everything it could ever wish – and without war. But it wanted more: keeping Russia down, making NATO bigger and “peace-making” as well as finding new enemies to keeping its Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex (MIMAC) alive and well: Saddam, Milosevic, the Muslim world, terrorism and – now re-cycling – Russia. Read the rest of this entry »

By Jan Oberg, TFF director

Jan Oberg

Lund, Sweden July 25, 2014

Violence is a dead end

Look at the violence in Gaza today, DR Congo (6 million dead), Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Somalia etc: Isn’t it obvious that the world needs a completely new approach to conflicts?

We’ll never rid the world of conflicts, conflicts is part of human and social life. Conflict-prevention is a meaningless term.

But we can rid the world of most of its violence. If we want, if we educate each other and if economic and other interests stopped supporting killing as a tool in conflict-management.

Unrealistic? Hopelessly idealistic? Well, look at the places above and try to find the realism and hope there.

Look at the conflict not at the parties and the violence

It requires almost no intellectual effort to take sides in a conflict between A and B. If both parties use violence, that means endorsement of the violence – the justification both need: “They threaten and kill us, therefore we threaten and kill them.”

Those who support a conflict party who use violence also support violence. As long as violence continues, there will be no process towards peace – only more hate, traumas, suffering, wish for revenge and destruction.

Violence – not the conflict – becomes the main thing and tit-for-tat the rule of the game, with an increase in the violence for each round. Scorpions in a bottle, feeding each other.

Both those who are outside a conflict and debate it – for instance, 99% of the media debates – and the conflicting parties on the ground feed on violence. If A did not use violence against B, how would B justify its own killings?

Gaza today – both parties lose

This is where we are in Gaza today when reports tell that around 800 civilians have been killed without any positive effect, both losing.

It’s not about evil, it’s about desperation coupled with traumas coupled with a lack of insight and education.

This wrong-headed attitude is indicative of conflict and peace illiteracy: among the parties, our media and our decision-makers. Innocent people on both or all sides normally pay the price for it.

The world needs a completely different approach. It’s embedded in the UN Charter and called peace by peaceful means. Read the rest of this entry »

By Johan Galtung

Johan Galtung

The essay “Galtung’s Structural Violence and the Sierra Leone Civil War c. 1985-1992” by Philip Leech [TMS-Analysis 14 Jul 2014],–of all the commentators the deepest–is a very welcome opportunity to clarify and develop further some of the underlying thinking. By and large his comments, based on Peace by Peaceful Means (PBPM, SAGE, 1996); the concepts have been developed further in A Theory of Peace) are very positive. I focus on the questioning and critical, and not on Sierra Leone, having no direct mediation experience. Leech is familiar with the conflict.

Leech says repeatedly something that meets with my full agreement: “No theoretical concept can tell the whole story”. Indeed, how could a string of words match the ever evolving complexity of reality? A sharp edge–by a Marx (means vs modes) or a Toynbee (challenge vs response)–may reveal some deep aspects but never “the whole story” which, in addition, is revised all the time–with new sharp edges.

In my efforts toward nothing less than a new culture to come to grips–diagnosis, prognosis, therapy–with conflict, violence and peace, structural violence is only one component. Read the rest of this entry »

By Jan Oberg, TFF director

Jan Oberg

Tragic misuse of a tragedy

The government of Ukraine as well as the separatists, NATO/U.S. and very many leading Western mainstream media seem all to know who has caused the tragedy. Putin believes it was caused indirectly by the West.

Given the fact that very few, if any, people or institutions can know who did it with enough details, data and precision to accuse anyone, the MH17 tragedy has been misused to an extent that can itself only be termed tragic.

The misuse is tragic because it is a catastrophe for close to 300 people, their relatives and friends. Silence – of both verbal and military weapons – and empathy would have been appropriate.

Anyone pointing fingers and calling it a terrorist act at this point is irresponsibly or should present convincing evidence.

Secondly, the blame game makes the necessary road to peace and security even more difficult.

An All Party Peace Process should come out of MH17 and the civil war

It would have been so much more civilised to use the MH 17 tragedy to say: Read the rest of this entry »

By Jan Oberg & Johan Galtung*

Lund and Kuala Lumpur, July 2014

Introduction

He was a tall man and a great man, a visionary, pacifist, civil resister, educator and philosopher. He took life more seriously than most and he could be playful and fun like a child. His life’s guiding principle was ”Engage in your time!” and while he wrote and talked a lot he also did it. His name was Aage Bertelsen, he was born in Denmark in 1901 and died on August 15, 1980.

Bertelsen’s imprint on history is two-fold. First, with his wife Gerda he was a prime mover of one of the groups, the Lyngby Group, which organised the rescue of altogether 7.220 Danish Jews into safety in Sweden in October 1943 during the German occupation of Denmark – more here. The Lyngby Group – Lyngby is north of Copenhagen – got about 1.000 of these in safety by organising their nightly transport onboard small fisher boats over the Sound between Denmark and Sweden.

In this he deserves a place in international contemporary history for its humanity, civil courage and as an example of non-violent struggle against occupation.

Secondly, Bertelsen was an educator of and for peace. His life work educational efforts included his family and friends, his pupils over 22 years at the Aarhus Cathedral School in Aarhus, Denmark, the general public as well as national and international leaders.

He lived in pre-Internet times and very little is publicly available today about this renaissance man. From two rather different, but compatible, perspectives we’ve taken it upon us to remind the world about him – friends and colleagues of his as we happen to be.

Headmaster Aage Bertelsen in 1961 Photo: Elfeldt, Copenhagen

Why now, over 30 years after his death? Read the rest of this entry »

By Johan Galtung

… Would be the title in English of a book this author just published in Norwegian, Syv veier til lykke (Oslo: Kolofon 2014); with excellent photos by Aase Marie Faldalen. And, very befitting for a book with that title: the book quickly made it to the Top 10 on a best-seller list, of course as No. 7. There will be translations but have a peek here and now.

Why does a peace researcher, concerned with peace theory and practice, write a “how-to” book about happiness, well-being? Read the rest of this entry »