The transnational
OK, Trump did not get it. But he got a full endorsement of a possible future US regime change in Venezuela. And that is what Ms Machado has advocated. On October 10, 2025, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded its Peace Prize to Venezuelan opposition figure María Corina Machado. The citation praised her “tireless work promoting democratic rights.” But Ms Machado has openly called for U.S. military intervention in Venezuela, stating on CBS: “The only way to stop the suppression is by force—U.S. force.” She or her party has received funding from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a U.S. government-backed body known as a CIA front organisation and for supporting regime-change operations worldwide. And in 2018, she sent a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, asking him to use “force and influence” to help dismantle Venezuela’s government—citing alleged ties to terrorism, Iran and narcotrafficking. This year’s NATO Norwegian prize is not a celebration of peace—it functions as a blatant geopolitical endorsement of US military action on a country on its enemy list. It’s yet another sign of the West having lost its moral and intellectual compass. Western mainstream media of course hold the microphones, unable to investigate, search or...
A slightly modified version of a text published on Sept. 1, 2025 in TMS. On August 25 Thomas Friedman, always a weathervane for political and economic establishment thinking in the West, wrote a notable column in the NY Times that was pragmatic in tone, misleading in substance, and regressive in intention. Yet it reflects a growing ambivalence toward Israel’s prolonged genocide even among longtime supporters of Israel that now highlights starvation, famine, and a gross distortion of the delivery of humanitarian aid under emergency conditions. But expressed dangerously without hiding the hope that Israel could even now restore its legitimacy without being held accountable for crimes in Gaza and despite all, still expecting to be rewarded by excluding Hamas from any further governance role in Gaza and continuing to move toward the annexation of the West Bank by formal action or through further settlement expansion. It is notable that the headline of the Friedman opinion piece is titled “Israel’s Gaza Campaign is Making It a Pariah State.” [NY Times, Aug 25, 2025]. This Israeli misfortune is blamed by Friedman almost totally on Netanyahu and his ultra-right religious coalition partners usually as represented by Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir who both serve as...
Joie De Vivre, 1946 by Pablo Picasso Not recognizing the magic of the present moment may just be a crime against our humanity. David Andersson August 5, 2025 TFF publishes this with particular joy because, while we have always been pro-peace, future-oriented and proposal-making, we need even more of that now: Peace is to be FOR something and go for it. In my recent article, From Personal Development to Human Development, I explored the imbalance between our inner growth and society’s relentless focus on external activity. One of the greatest obstacles to genuine human development today is the sheer level of negativity we encounter daily. As an editor, I regularly receive submissions from Western contributors. Many center on themes like political corruption—even among progressive leaders—technological control, cognitive warfare, genocide, alarming climate forecasts (“only three years left to avoid the worst”), and Europe’s persistent, deadly hypocrisy. The list continues, each entry more urgent than the last. Collectively, these submissions seem to be constructing a culture of counter-revolution—one defined more by resistance than by creation. But if our goal is true change, we must cultivate a positive vision of the future. We need to recognize the progress that has been made and redirect...
The text below was published in “The Nation” on July 15, 2025, appears here unmodified. The delay is due to a weak Internet here in Turkey. There has been much critical reaction to this US Government defamatory statement justifying the imposition of sanctions on this exceptional independent expert appointed by the UN to an unpaid position, and left to hang in the wind by the politically motivated show of indifference by the UN Secretariat.] Justifying US Sanctions US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, in a dazzling Orwellian display inverted reality by slapping sanctions on Francesca Albanese, the much-embattled UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories of East Jerusalem, West Bank, and Gaza. If the sanctions are implemented against this extraordinary citizen of Italy, in the face of strong UN objections, Albanese will be barred from entering the US, presumably even to discharge her annual UN duty to present a report to the Third Committee of the General Assembly. Additionally, as a vindictive feature of the sanctions, whatever American financial assets she happens to possess, including real state, will be frozen. It is relevant to take notice of the fact that not only is Francesca Albanese, the first UN unpaid...
Recent Posts
A friendly quarrel while we agree that the US sanctions are a weapon of mass destruction and kill more people than wars do. And that we must talk much more about sanctions than we have so far. Jan Oberg, TFF director March 16, 2026 John Mearsheimer recently stated that U.S. sanctions murdered around 38 million people between 1971 and 2021 – see the video below. It is a dramatic figure, and it has spread quickly because it captures, in one sentence, the enormous human cost of modern sanctions. I share his concern about the destructive effects of economic coercion. But the specific number he cites — and the way he attributes it — deserves a friendly academic clarification. The figure comes from a 2023 Lancet Global Health article estimating the mortality effects of unilateral U.S. and EU sanctions over the past half‑century. This is the first point where Mearsheimer’s shorthand diverges from the text: the study...
Jan Oberg May 15, 2026 Go to this Fox News page and scroll the whole way down: President Donald Trump tells the world that his meeting with President Xi Jinping yielded a lot of very concrete political and economic results – of course, only where the Chinese side, according to him, agreed with him. He does not mention the Taiwan issue, but Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, says that it did not feature prominently in their talks and that the US policy on Taiwan has not changed. Then go to China Daily – or Global Times – and you will see that for the Chinese it is framework, principles, structure of cooperation etc. that matters – all embedded in the overall idea of “constructive bilateral relationship of strategic stability.” Nowhere is any concrete agreement or deal – all that Trump refers to – mentioned. At the general level, this gives you insights into the very different social...
Lena Petrova of “World Affairs In Context” with more than half a million subscribers on YouTube wanted to explore what a peace researcher like me has to say about, among other things, the First and the Second Cold War and why eethics has disappeared from politics. I am particularly happy about this conversation that also yielded an amazing number of very appreciative comments on YouTube. No doubt, people are longing for alternatives, including peace perspectives.
The MIMAC – Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex – drives the world’s rampant militarism and wars without end. Here is a short reflection of how it works against all interests of humanity. #5 deals with why there is no real enemy or threat images/analysis. It’s all ex-post constructions. And, btw, theTFF Peace Pulse is now on Rumble.
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Lena Petrova of “World Affairs In Context” with more than half a million subscribers on YouTube wanted to explore what a peace researcher like me has to say about, among other things, the First and the Second Cold War and why eethics has disappeared from politics. I am particularly happy about this conversation that also yielded an amazing number of very appreciative comments on YouTube. No doubt, people are longing for alternatives, including peace perspectives.
A friendly quarrel while we agree that the US sanctions are a weapon of mass destruction and kill more people than wars do. And that we must talk much more about sanctions than we have so far. Jan Oberg, TFF director March 16, 2026 John Mearsheimer recently stated that U.S. sanctions murdered around 38 million people between 1971 and 2021 – see the video below. It is a dramatic figure, and it has spread quickly because it captures, in one sentence, the enormous human cost of modern sanctions. I share his concern about the destructive effects of economic coercion. But the specific number he cites — and the way he attributes it — deserves a friendly academic clarification. The figure comes from a 2023 Lancet Global Health article estimating the mortality effects of unilateral U.S. and EU sanctions over the past half‑century. This is the first point where Mearsheimer’s shorthand diverges from the text: the study...
How amazing! The Danish government seemed unprepared for the eventuality that President Trump, if elected, would insist once again on getting Greenland – and a few other “things.” Who was asleep – or much too occupied with hating Russia and helping Ukraine to see what was coming? Secondly, Trump – who is no peace-maker but has other motives – grabbed the phone to Russian President Putin. Why did no European leader do exactly that during the last almost three years? And why did Europe not foresee that he would do that; Trump had said time and again that he would engage in the Ukraine war and stop it. They sat there hearing and seeing nothing of what – very predictably – happened outside their European groupthink box. This interview by the China Academy and Thinkers Forum was recorded on February 12, that is, before the disaster unfolded further at the...
Professor Zhang Weiwei is a highly respected Chinese intellectual and professor at Fudan University in Shanghai. He is the director of its China Institute and also runs a series of conversations with many different people around the world. Here is what came out of their meetings there and in Skopje, Macedonia in October 2024: & As you can see, also at the end of the second one, we both enjoy win-win exchanges like these about world order issues. Zhang Weiwei is known for using videos and social media to reach a large audience in China and worldwide. We suggest you see many more of Zhang Weiwei’s conversations – like recently with Professor Jeffrey Sachs – on the Thinkers’ Forum on YouTube. PSTFF posts hundreds of videos, its own and those of others, in our Video Collections on TFF Substack – including those that appear on YouTube. However, TFF has been cancelled by Google-owned...
Lena Petrova of “World Affairs In Context” with more than half a million subscribers on YouTube wanted to explore what a peace researcher like me has to say about, among other things, the First and the Second Cold War and why eethics has disappeared from politics. I am particularly happy about this conversation that also yielded an amazing number of very appreciative comments on YouTube. No doubt, people are longing for alternatives, including peace perspectives.
America’s Strategic Assault on Art, Academia, and the Imagination That Sustains Peace The United States once stood as a beacon of cultural audacity—a place where dissent could be beautiful, and beauty and innovation could challenge the present order of things. Its museums, universities, and artists helped inspire a worldwide imagination rooted in creative freedom and innovation. But today, under the Trump regime’s second term, those dynamic qualities are being systematically dismantled. Just read this. As Trump goes after the arts, many museums remain silent | CNN As CNN reports, the administration has launched an aggressive campaign to “eradicate improper ideology” from federally funded museums. Exhibitions involving race, gender, and identity are being censored or cancelled. Amy Sherald’s reimagining of the Statue of Liberty as a Black, trans woman was pulled from the Smithsonian after curators objected to its symbolism. Sherald warned that “history shows us what happens when governments demand loyalty...
In the 17th century, Ming China represented roughly one-third of global output, and Mughal India a little less. Together the two countries accounted for more than half of the world’s output, with a corresponding size of populations (as a proportion of the total global population). By the 1950s, Mao China was a mere 5 per cent of global GDP. India only 1 per cent. Today, after several decades of exceptional economic progress, particularly in China, there is now a historic rise of the Global South. The two behemoths – China and India, and others in the South – are now reclaiming their historic economic weight in the world. The 2013 UNDP Human Development Report documented this rise of the Global South presenting evidence that China, India, and Brazil were collectively in the process of exceeding western developed countries in terms of trade and global output. China is now the largest...
In contrast to most, we’ll bring alternatives, solutions, hope and strategies for a better future. Times are dangerous, yes, but that only intensifies the need for constructive thinking and action! Jan Oberg, TFF director April 13, 2026 The new TFF Peace Pulse uses video messages in a new way: Max 3-5-minute-long comments, ideas or perhaps mini-lectures, all about peace – positive peace. We launch them today on April 13, 2026 with a carefully crafted visual aesthetic fitting the content. We hope to publish them regularly from now on. We launch Peace Pulse (PP) – for a number of reasons. The world is in chaos, and there are countless reasons to feel concerned, frustrated, even angry. The atmosphere is saturated with doom and gloom, with negative energy and rear‑mirror thinking, while vision, imagination, alternatives, strategies and genuine future‑mindedness remain in short supply. And without them, we simply can’t save the world. Looking at problems from a hundred angles will...
TFF’s comprehensive proposal for dialogue about true peace in Ukraine is due in a day or two Jan Oberg November 20, 2025 What is being whispered through diplomatic corridors today is not peace, but quackery. The alleged 28‑point plan drafted in Washington and Moscow is mentioned as a solution to the Ukraine war. It is being negotiated by US businessman, real estate developer and Trump ally, Steve Witkoff, and by Kirill Dmitriev, who is CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund and a close ally of Putin, according to India’s Economic Times. For presumably good reasons, their education, qualifications and experience in international conflict analysis and peace-making remain untold. They look like surgeons who have never opened a medical textbook. It is nothing more than a mirage: a framework of concessions imposed on Ukraine’s citizens, negotiated without Kyiv, and excluding Europe. Like Gaza, it promises “peace” while institutionalising injustice. If half of what is available about...
Jan Oberg, TFF director April 28, 2026 In this third TFF Peace Pulse, I make the important distinction between the violence and the conflict that violence is a symptom of. If you want peace, focus on the underlying conflict because that is the key to resolution, peacemaking, and a better future for the parties. The West is obsessed with violence, just look around you – and 90+ per cent of the public debate is about military issues and other violence – totally wasted for peace. These Peace Pulses will only be published here a few times. You will also not find them on YouTube and Vimeo because both platforms have blocked TFF and me; you know, peace is dangerous these days. Most TFF’s videos since 2007 are now on Rumble.
PART 2 — Diplomacy, Law and Nonviolent Power By Jan ObergTFF co-founder and director January 26, 2026 This is the second of four TFF-created idea portfolios designed to curb the global reach of the United States and, in both the short and long term, help catalyse a worldwide nonviolent resistance to what many observers describe as the Trump administration’s uniquely confrontational, destructive and world-threatening policies. These portfolios outline what governments and citizens across the world can do through dynamic diplomacy, creative initiatives, and strictly nonviolent means. They are typical TFF works in that we do not only tell what the problem is and how bad it will go – as 90+% of all commentators, experts and scholars do – we tell what we think can be done, inviting you to think of what you think you can do. It seems painfully clear to me that the current political dynamics in Washington increasingly resemble the most dangerous...
America’s Strategic Assault on Art, Academia, and the Imagination That Sustains Peace The United States once stood as a beacon of cultural audacity—a place where dissent could be beautiful, and beauty and innovation could challenge the present order of things. Its museums, universities, and artists helped inspire a worldwide imagination rooted in creative freedom and innovation. But today, under the Trump regime’s second term, those dynamic qualities are being systematically dismantled. Just read this. As Trump goes after the arts, many museums remain silent | CNN As CNN reports, the administration has launched an aggressive campaign to “eradicate improper ideology” from federally funded museums. Exhibitions involving race, gender, and identity are being censored or cancelled. Amy Sherald’s reimagining of the Statue of Liberty as a Black, trans woman was pulled from the Smithsonian after curators objected to its symbolism. Sherald warned that “history shows us what happens when governments demand loyalty...
Lena Petrova of “World Affairs In Context” with more than half a million subscribers on YouTube wanted to explore what a peace researcher like me has to say about, among other things, the First and the Second Cold War and why eethics has disappeared from politics. I am particularly happy about this conversation that also yielded an amazing number of very appreciative comments on YouTube. No doubt, people are longing for alternatives, including peace perspectives.
A friendly quarrel while we agree that the US sanctions are a weapon of mass destruction and kill more people than wars do. And that we must talk much more about sanctions than we have so far. Jan Oberg, TFF director March 16, 2026 John Mearsheimer recently stated that U.S. sanctions murdered around 38 million people between 1971 and 2021 – see the video below. It is a dramatic figure, and it has spread quickly because it captures, in one sentence, the enormous human cost of modern sanctions. I share his concern about the destructive effects of economic coercion. But the specific number he cites — and the way he attributes it — deserves a friendly academic clarification. The figure comes from a 2023 Lancet Global Health article estimating the mortality effects of unilateral U.S. and EU sanctions over the past half‑century. This is the first point where Mearsheimer’s shorthand diverges from the text: the study...
How amazing! The Danish government seemed unprepared for the eventuality that President Trump, if elected, would insist once again on getting Greenland – and a few other “things.” Who was asleep – or much too occupied with hating Russia and helping Ukraine to see what was coming? Secondly, Trump – who is no peace-maker but has other motives – grabbed the phone to Russian President Putin. Why did no European leader do exactly that during the last almost three years? And why did Europe not foresee that he would do that; Trump had said time and again that he would engage in the Ukraine war and stop it. They sat there hearing and seeing nothing of what – very predictably – happened outside their European groupthink box. This interview by the China Academy and Thinkers Forum was recorded on February 12, that is, before the disaster unfolded further at the...
Professor Zhang Weiwei is a highly respected Chinese intellectual and professor at Fudan University in Shanghai. He is the director of its China Institute and also runs a series of conversations with many different people around the world. Here is what came out of their meetings there and in Skopje, Macedonia in October 2024: & As you can see, also at the end of the second one, we both enjoy win-win exchanges like these about world order issues. Zhang Weiwei is known for using videos and social media to reach a large audience in China and worldwide. We suggest you see many more of Zhang Weiwei’s conversations – like recently with Professor Jeffrey Sachs – on the Thinkers’ Forum on YouTube. PSTFF posts hundreds of videos, its own and those of others, in our Video Collections on TFF Substack – including those that appear on YouTube. However, TFF has been cancelled by Google-owned...
Lena Petrova of “World Affairs In Context” with more than half a million subscribers on YouTube wanted to explore what a peace researcher like me has to say about, among other things, the First and the Second Cold War and why eethics has disappeared from politics. I am particularly happy about this conversation that also yielded an amazing number of very appreciative comments on YouTube. No doubt, people are longing for alternatives, including peace perspectives.
America’s Strategic Assault on Art, Academia, and the Imagination That Sustains Peace The United States once stood as a beacon of cultural audacity—a place where dissent could be beautiful, and beauty and innovation could challenge the present order of things. Its museums, universities, and artists helped inspire a worldwide imagination rooted in creative freedom and innovation. But today, under the Trump regime’s second term, those dynamic qualities are being systematically dismantled. Just read this. As Trump goes after the arts, many museums remain silent | CNN As CNN reports, the administration has launched an aggressive campaign to “eradicate improper ideology” from federally funded museums. Exhibitions involving race, gender, and identity are being censored or cancelled. Amy Sherald’s reimagining of the Statue of Liberty as a Black, trans woman was pulled from the Smithsonian after curators objected to its symbolism. Sherald warned that “history shows us what happens when governments demand loyalty...
In the 17th century, Ming China represented roughly one-third of global output, and Mughal India a little less. Together the two countries accounted for more than half of the world’s output, with a corresponding size of populations (as a proportion of the total global population). By the 1950s, Mao China was a mere 5 per cent of global GDP. India only 1 per cent. Today, after several decades of exceptional economic progress, particularly in China, there is now a historic rise of the Global South. The two behemoths – China and India, and others in the South – are now reclaiming their historic economic weight in the world. The 2013 UNDP Human Development Report documented this rise of the Global South presenting evidence that China, India, and Brazil were collectively in the process of exceeding western developed countries in terms of trade and global output. China is now the largest...
In contrast to most, we’ll bring alternatives, solutions, hope and strategies for a better future. Times are dangerous, yes, but that only intensifies the need for constructive thinking and action! Jan Oberg, TFF director April 13, 2026 The new TFF Peace Pulse uses video messages in a new way: Max 3-5-minute-long comments, ideas or perhaps mini-lectures, all about peace – positive peace. We launch them today on April 13, 2026 with a carefully crafted visual aesthetic fitting the content. We hope to publish them regularly from now on. We launch Peace Pulse (PP) – for a number of reasons. The world is in chaos, and there are countless reasons to feel concerned, frustrated, even angry. The atmosphere is saturated with doom and gloom, with negative energy and rear‑mirror thinking, while vision, imagination, alternatives, strategies and genuine future‑mindedness remain in short supply. And without them, we simply can’t save the world. Looking at problems from a hundred angles will...
TFF’s comprehensive proposal for dialogue about true peace in Ukraine is due in a day or two Jan Oberg November 20, 2025 What is being whispered through diplomatic corridors today is not peace, but quackery. The alleged 28‑point plan drafted in Washington and Moscow is mentioned as a solution to the Ukraine war. It is being negotiated by US businessman, real estate developer and Trump ally, Steve Witkoff, and by Kirill Dmitriev, who is CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund and a close ally of Putin, according to India’s Economic Times. For presumably good reasons, their education, qualifications and experience in international conflict analysis and peace-making remain untold. They look like surgeons who have never opened a medical textbook. It is nothing more than a mirage: a framework of concessions imposed on Ukraine’s citizens, negotiated without Kyiv, and excluding Europe. Like Gaza, it promises “peace” while institutionalising injustice. If half of what is available about...
Jan Oberg, TFF director April 28, 2026 In this third TFF Peace Pulse, I make the important distinction between the violence and the conflict that violence is a symptom of. If you want peace, focus on the underlying conflict because that is the key to resolution, peacemaking, and a better future for the parties. The West is obsessed with violence, just look around you – and 90+ per cent of the public debate is about military issues and other violence – totally wasted for peace. These Peace Pulses will only be published here a few times. You will also not find them on YouTube and Vimeo because both platforms have blocked TFF and me; you know, peace is dangerous these days. Most TFF’s videos since 2007 are now on Rumble.
PART 2 — Diplomacy, Law and Nonviolent Power By Jan ObergTFF co-founder and director January 26, 2026 This is the second of four TFF-created idea portfolios designed to curb the global reach of the United States and, in both the short and long term, help catalyse a worldwide nonviolent resistance to what many observers describe as the Trump administration’s uniquely confrontational, destructive and world-threatening policies. These portfolios outline what governments and citizens across the world can do through dynamic diplomacy, creative initiatives, and strictly nonviolent means. They are typical TFF works in that we do not only tell what the problem is and how bad it will go – as 90+% of all commentators, experts and scholars do – we tell what we think can be done, inviting you to think of what you think you can do. It seems painfully clear to me that the current political dynamics in Washington increasingly resemble the most dangerous...
Officially, the drones were not identified. By simply thinking critically – which journalists and selected experts no longer do – there may be a good reason for that. And this article will never be mentioned in Denmark… Drones over Denmark. No damage. No trace. No answers. Yet the headlines scream “Russian threat,” and Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen speaks with a certainty that defies logic: “We don’t know they were Russian—but we know Russia is the biggest threat to Europe.” It could be nobody else – unless you make an interest analysis which I did two days ago. This is not security policy. It’s theatre. And the audience is being played. Let’s rewind. These drones—unphotographed, untracked, unclaimed—appear and vanish like ghosts. Airports shut down. Panic spreads. Military budgets swell. And the narrative hardens: Russia is behind it. But what if that’s not just wrong but deliberately misleading? Here’s a hypothesis for...
OK, Trump did not get it. But he got a full endorsement of a possible future US regime change in Venezuela. And that is what Ms Machado has advocated. On October 10, 2025, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded its Peace Prize to Venezuelan opposition figure María Corina Machado. The citation praised her “tireless work promoting democratic rights.” But Ms Machado has openly called for U.S. military intervention in Venezuela, stating on CBS: “The only way to stop the suppression is by force—U.S. force.” She or her party has received funding from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a U.S. government-backed body known as a CIA front organisation and for supporting regime-change operations worldwide. And in 2018, she sent a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, asking him to use “force and influence” to help dismantle Venezuela’s government—citing alleged ties to terrorism, Iran and narcotrafficking. This year’s NATO Norwegian prize...
Jan Oberg February 19, 2026 What a thrill to be interviewed by former British diplomat Ian Proud! Don’t waste a minute: acquaint yourself with him here on his homepage, which he elegantly calls “Proud Diplomat.” Notice also his book, A Misfit In Moscow. Ian is, of course, also on Substack, where he calls himself The Peace Monger, and recently he set up his own PeaceMonger Channel on YouTube. For once, I was not interviewed as if I were a military geopolitical expert, where I normally have to twist the whole thing in the direction of peace. No, we both had a focus on peace – why it has been disappeared by research, politics and the media, but also what can be done to shape a more peaceful future for us all. One idea we came up with was that of connecting people through citizens diplomacy – in an era where more or less authoritarian leaders meet frequently and confirm each other as members...
In the 17th century, Ming China represented roughly one-third of global output, and Mughal India a little less. Together the two countries accounted for more than half of the world’s output, with a corresponding size of populations (as a proportion of the total global population). By the 1950s, Mao China was a mere 5 per cent of global GDP. India only 1 per cent. Today, after several decades of exceptional economic progress, particularly in China, there is now a historic rise of the Global South. The two behemoths – China and India, and others in the South – are now reclaiming their historic economic weight in the world. The 2013 UNDP Human Development Report documented this rise of the Global South presenting evidence that China, India, and Brazil were collectively in the process of exceeding western developed countries in terms of trade and global output. China is now the largest...
America’s Strategic Assault on Art, Academia, and the Imagination That Sustains Peace The United States once stood as a beacon of cultural audacity—a place where dissent could be beautiful, and beauty and innovation could challenge the present order of things. Its museums, universities, and artists helped inspire a worldwide imagination rooted in creative freedom and innovation. But today, under the Trump regime’s second term, those dynamic qualities are being systematically dismantled. Just read this. As Trump goes after the arts, many museums remain silent | CNN As CNN reports, the administration has launched an aggressive campaign to “eradicate improper ideology” from federally funded museums. Exhibitions involving race, gender, and identity are being censored or cancelled. Amy Sherald’s reimagining of the Statue of Liberty as a Black, trans woman was pulled from the Smithsonian after curators objected to its symbolism. Sherald warned that “history shows us what happens when governments demand loyalty...
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The Truly Independent Peace Platform
TFF is an all-volunteer global network. It promotes conflict-mitigation and reconciliation – in general as well as in a selected number of conflict regions – through meticulous on-the-ground research, active listening, education and advocacy. The Foundation is committed to doing diagnosis and prognosis as well as proposing solutions. It does so in a clear, pro-peace manner. TFF works in support of two major UN Charter norms – “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war” and that “peace shall be brought about by peaceful means”.
Peace
Lena Petrova explores peace – in contrast to the omnipresent military geopolitical commenting
Lena Petrova of “World Affairs In Context” with more than half a million subscribers on YouTube wanted to explore what a peace researcher like me has to say about, among other things, the First and the Second Cold War and why eethics has disappeared from politics. I am particularly happy about this conversation that also yielded an amazing number of very appreciative comments on YouTube. No doubt, people are longing for alternatives, including peace perspectives.
Thinking
TFF Peace Pulse # 3 – Focus On Violence Is Wasted For Peace
Jan Oberg, TFF director April 28, 2026 In this third TFF Peace Pulse, I make the important distinction between the violence and the conflict that violence is a symptom of. If you want peace, focus on the underlying conflict because that is the key to resolution, peacemaking, and a better future for the parties. The West is obsessed with violence, just look around you – and 90+ per cent of the public debate is about military issues and other violence – totally wasted for peace. These Peace Pulses will only be published here a few times. You will also not find them on YouTube and Vimeo because both platforms have blocked TFF and me; you know, peace is dangerous these days. Most TFF’s videos since 2007 are now on Rumble.
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Culture
America’s Strategic Assault on Art, Academia, and the Imagination That Sustains Peace The United States once stood as a beacon of cultural audacity—a place where dissent could be beautiful, and beauty and innovation could challenge the present order of things. Its museums, universities, and artists helped inspire a worldwide imagination rooted in creative freedom and innovation. But today, under the Trump regime’s second term, those dynamic qualities are being systematically dismantled. Just read this. As Trump goes after the arts, many museums remain silent | CNN As CNN reports, the administration has launched an aggressive campaign to “eradicate improper ideology” from federally funded museums. Exhibitions involving race, gender, and identity are being censored or cancelled. Amy Sherald’s reimagining of the Statue of Liberty as a Black, trans woman was pulled from the Smithsonian after curators objected to its symbolism. Sherald warned that “history shows us what happens when governments demand loyalty...
On the invisible codes of culture that shape our worldviews long before memory or reason. This analysis was initially published on the author’s “China21 Journal” which contains several analyses of related issues, China-Western relations and how to increase knowledge and mutual understanding. Last week, we picked up our 5-year-old son from his public kindergarten in Beijing. On the way home, he proudly recited a Tang Dynasty poem by heart — 春望 (Chūnwàng, or Spring View, 757 AD), one of the most famous and widely recited works from that vibrant dynastic era over a thousand years ago, written by the renowned poet 杜甫 (Dù Fǔ, 712–770). The poem reflects on wartime and exile — hardly light or child-friendly themes. But that’s not the point. Children (and adults) recite ancient poems not just for their content, but for their rhythm, rhyme, tone, and the cultural feeling embedded in them. This is how cultural programming begins: not through rules or explanations,...
Talk at the Beijing Foreign Studies University, September 2010 Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen It is a great honor to be on a panel with the Director of CPC-CC Foreign Affairs, the Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister, the Editor-in-chief of China Daily, the Dean of the National Office of Chinese Language, the Deputy Commander of the People’s Liberation Army. I express my gratitude to the Chinese People’s Association for Peace and Disarmament and the American Friends Service Committee for having brought me to this tenth visit to China since 1973, and to Beijing Foreign Studies University for inviting me to this Forum on Public Diplomacy and China’s International Image. I define public diplomacy as diplomacy for the people and by the people. The purpose is neither public relations nor propaganda, but to bring the peoples of the world together by making them understandable to each other. Like languages have their own logic,...
This is a chapter in a TFF anthology in the making – “If You Want To Understand China.” Introduction ”Should the West see China as a threat or as an opportunity, a friend or an enemy? Are we heading for a third world war? Does the seemingly inexorable rise of China spell the doom of many values in which we have long believed? Might some form of communism prevail after all? Are China’s motives sinister? Is it trying to subvert us? Is it plotting mischief? Given the very bad press China has been getting in Western media, one might certainly think so. But the word ‘sinister’ has an interesting derivation. Its original meaning has nothing to do with wily orientalism. It means simply left-handed. Most of us are right-handed, using our dominant left-brain hemispheres which are wired to the right side of our bodies. But a few of us are...
Culture
Our Orwellian World: The anniversary of the publication of 1984
George Orwell’s prophetic book, 1984, was written in 1948 and was published on 9 June 1949. So, today is the 76th anniversary of the publication of that important and prophetic book. The book centres on the consequences of the decline of democracy and the rise of totalitarianism, mass surveillance and repressive regimentation of people’s behaviour within society.
