September 2020

The unique, dominating position of the United States in the post-1945 world is well-known. It maintains this position thanks to both a very large historical goodwill capital and former glory in the eyes of generations around the world – and thanks to rampant militarism and imperialism that has destroyed the good ‘America’ that it used to be. The world’s major division the next few years will be this: Are you on the side of continued US global dominance or do you want to see a new multipolar world with more balance and the US in the role of a partner among equals? In my view, the US no longer has the capacity to lead itself effectively and find solutions to its own multi-dimensional crisis be it the economy, democracy, climate change, warfare addiction, social polarization, racism and on top of it all the Covid-19 crisis. Not being able to lead...

Tom Switzer September 25, 2020 CIS Executive Director, Tom Switzer interviews John Mearsheimer and Kishore Mahubani to ask Has China Won? At a time when tensions are running high, CIS Executive Director Tom Switzer asked Has China Won? Our debate between John Mearsheimer and Kishore Mahbubani, two of the world’s leading foreign policy intellectuals. Covid-19 has greatly raised tensions between China and the West. Washington and its allies express outrage at the Communist regime’s opacity concerning the outbreak of the coronavirus. Meanwhile, fears are growing that a pandemic that began in the Chinese city of Wuhan may end by increasing Beijing’s international influence and power. Kishore Mahbubani is author of Has China Won? The Chinese Challenge to American Primacy (just out, PublicAffairs) A former Singaporean ambassador to the United Nations (twice), he was the founding dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. He was a guest of...

Edward Curtin September 25, 2020 In 1888,  the year before he went insane, Friedrich Nietzsche wrote the following in Twilight of the Idols: We have got rid of the real world: what world is left? The apparent world perhaps? … But no!  Along with the real world we’ve done away with the apparent world as well. So, if you feel you also may be going insane in the present climate of digital screen life, where real is unreal but realer than real, the apparent is cryptic, and up is down, true is false, and what you see you don’t, it has a history.  Originally published at off-guardian.org One hundred and thirty-two years ago, Nietzsche added that “something extraordinarily nasty and evil is about to make its debut.”  We know it did, and the bloody butcher’s bench known as the twentieth century was the result. Nihilism stepped onto center stage and has been the...

Louis Kriesberg By Louis Kriesberg September 25, 2020 Since Donald J. Trump was inaugurated as president, many Americans have carried out a wide variety of collective nonviolent actions to oppose many of his and his administration’s policies. The actions include massive marches in Washington, D.C. in concert with marches in cities across the nation. They also include strikes, boycotts, walkouts, and regular meetings to plan and conduct ongoing programs of resistance. The actions have been conducted by diverse segments of the American people. These nonviolent strategies and tactics follow and build on those used throughout American history. Many of the social movements relying on nonviolent methods of struggle have yielded widely beneficial changes in American society. But often they have failed to make substantial lasting change and sometimes they have been counterproductive. Frequently, there are mixed results over time. Originally published at lkriesbe.expressions.syr.edu Fortunately, there are resources that increase the...

Fredrik Heffermehl 23. september 2020 Fredrik S. HeffermehlTlf.: +47 917 44 783, fredpax@online.no Oslo September 21, 2020Den norske NobelkomiteHenrik Ibsens gate 51, 0255 Oslo To the Foreign Press Association in OsloEnclosed please find: 1) today´s media release 2) a letter sent Monday 21 to The Norwegian Nobel Committee, Oslo Sincerely,Fredrik S. Heffermehl,  lawyer and authortlf. 917 44 783, fredpax@online.no    Oslo, September 23, 2020 For the media Nobel Committee condemned in new report / book  — Many speculate who will win the 2020 peace prize, but in my view the vital issue this year is that the committee must formulate its interpretation of Nobel’s intention, says Norwegian lawyer and author Fredrik S. Heffermehl, who on Monday submitted his new book “Behind the Medals” (Medaljens bakside) to the five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee that selects the winner. His conclusion is that the committee in all years since 1901 has failed to understand its mission as the...

Fredrik Heffermehl 23. september 2020 Fredrik S. HeffermehlTlf.: +47 917 44 783, fredpax@online.no Oslo 21. september 2020Den norske NobelkomiteHenrik Ibsens gate 51, 0255 Oslo Vurdering av testators intensjon og måloppfyllelse i Nobelprisforvaltningen Min forskning om Nobels «prisen for fredsforkjempere» har nå pågått i 13 år og resultatet er nylig gjort tilgjengelige for et bredt publikum i boken “Medaljens bakside” (Sandnes 2020). Konklusjonene er alvorlige. Testamentet ble aldri fagmessig tolket og aldri fulgt, det har skjedd en omfattende krenkelse av rettighetene til de mottakerne Alfred Nobel ønsket å støtte. Nobelkomiteen har gitt allmenne fredspriser til mange fine mottakere, men dette hjelper lite så lenge den fortsetter å motarbeide de visjonene og den løsning det var Nobels intensjon å støtte. Jeg har gjennom to år forsøkt å komme i dialog med Nobelstiftelsen og Nobelkomiteen om resultatene av min forskning, både for å følge Gandhis prinsipp om å ikke overraske motparten og for å få...

Evelin Lindner TFF Associate What We Can Do We humans have dug ourselves into a multitude of perilous crises, both despite of and because of what we call progress. Still, few people seem to realize that we live in a historic moment of unparalleled promise. For the first time, humankind has the capacity to bring about the changes we need for a Great Transition. Unlike our forebears, we have the privilege of growing awareness of the planet-as-a-whole and the understanding that we humans are one species living on one tiny planet. The conditions are in place for nurturing mutual trust and solidarity as a global species, and acting to humanize globalization and reap the benefits that flow from our interdependence. What We Do Instead of realizing this potential, we continue to shred our relations with our habitat and with each other—ecocide and sociocide. We degrade our sociosphere and our cogitosphere, our sphere...

Photograph Source: Pete Souza, White House Official Photograph – CC BY 2.0 Eric Draitser September 15, 2020 The scorching desert sun streams through narrow slats in the tiny window. A mouse scurries across the cracked concrete floor, the scuttling of its tiny feet drowned out by the sound of distant voices speaking in Arabic. Their chatter is in a western Libyan dialect distinctive from the eastern dialect favored in Benghazi. Somewhere off in the distance, beyond the shimmering desert horizon, is Tripoli, the jewel of Africa now reduced to perpetual war. But here, in this cell in a dank old warehouse in Bani Walid, there are no smugglers, no rapists, no thieves or murderers. There are simply Africans captured by traffickers as they made their way from Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, Eritrea, or other disparate parts of the continent seeking a life free of war and poverty, the rotten fruit of Anglo-American...

A demonstrator raises a fist after clashes with police in the US city of Seattle on 8 June (AFP) As calls for racial justice reverberate across the country, the field of American Studies requires a radical rethink – namely, the active engagement of people around the globe at the receiving end of US militarism.  By Hamid Dabashi September 15, 2020 “The majority lives in the perpetual practice of self-applause, and there are certain truths which the Americans can only learn from strangers or from experience.”  – Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America “Americans are the unhappiest they’ve been in 50 years,” according to recent polls. “It’s been a rough year for the American psyche.”    The deeply troubling presidency of Donald Trump has led to severe consequences of the coronavirus pandemic in the US, where the per-capita mortality rate is among the highest in the world, exacerbated by claustrophobic despair over lockdowns and social distancing, alongside...

René Wadlow September 16, 2020 “We possess a single infallible guide, the Universal Spirit that lives in men as a whole, and in each one of us, which makes us aspire to what we should aspire: it is the Spirit that commands the tree to grow toward the sun, the flower to throw off its seed in autumn, us to reach out towards God, and by so doing, become united to each other.”— Leo Tolstoy (9 Sep1828 – 20 Nov 1910) November 20 marks the death of Leo Tolstoy in 1910 when he left his estate Yasnaya Polyana and walked to a railroad station at Astopovo, a journey with no set destination.  As Isaiah Berlin writes at the end of his well-known essay on Tolstoy’s philosophy of history, The Hedgehog and the Fox: “At once insanely proud and filled with self-hatred, omniscient and doubting everything, cold and violently passionate, contemptuous and...

Why the 2020 election is so important Why did Prof. Noam Chomsky call the US Republican Party “The most dangerous organization in the history of the world”? He did so because the party is characterized by climate change denial and by support for giant fossil fuel corporations. According to the 2018 IPCC Report, the world has only a very short time left in which to stop the extraction and use of fossil fuels. If we collectively fail to do this within a decade or so, feedback loops may be initiated which will make human efforts to avoid catastrophic climate change useless. Much of the world could become uninhabitable, and a very large-scale mass extinction could be initiated. Although the worst effects of global warming lie in the long-term future, children alive today are at risk. We give our children loving care, but it makes no sense to do so unless...

TFF 35th Anniversary on September 12, 2020 And why are we there and still alive and kicking? Because TFF is like a gourmet restaurant and not like research institutes and think tanks that emulate fast-food chains. TFF doesn’t count success in media attention, followers, fame, or funds. We chase quality results, productivity and constant innovation within our mission. Finding our job the most meaningful on earth, we chase radical alternative thinking – and do research and public education on what we believe in – brain, heart and soul: • Make peace by peaceful means! • All kinds of violence must be reduced for humanity to survive! • Sooner rather than later warfare must be abolished as a legitimate social institution! • Learn to solve unavoidable conflicts with knowledge, intelligence, practical skills and empathy. • A true global human and common security is possible and so is global governance in partnership...