September 2023

A couple of years ago, The Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, TFF, in Sweden, of which I am the director, published ”Behind The Smokescreen. An Analysis of the West’s Destructive China Cold War Agenda And Why It Must Stop” (130 pages). Among several perspectives of the U.S./Western accusation industry, we looked into the medialised stories about genocide in Xinjiang, forced labour, and Taiwan and nine mainstream media manipulation methods that aim to manufacture a systematically negative image of China in the Western mind. We found that the Cold War happens by attempts to influence the ’free’ press – also the Western state press – through three main mechanisms: a) Fake or fabricated stories, b) Omission – for instance, of every positive aspect of China’s developments, and c) Source Ignorance: using the same few disinformative sources from the U.S. rippling through and being repeated ad nauseam and never checking...

© Jan Oberg “Biking Mom in Xian” Collage – 2023 Certainly, China has evolved continually and progressively, step by step. My expectations were high when I visited this autumn, my first trip post-pandemic. Between 2015 and 2020, I had visited this vast country almost 20 times. Each visit revealed positive changes and swift progress. Allow me to share some observations from my daily experiences there. Firstly, what remains unchanged is their absence of cheese (!). This tradition stems from their historical lack of cattle farming, prioritizing crops and vegetables. However, cows are now present, particularly in Hebei province’s highlands. They’ve even adapted to the sound of wind windmills, unlike the reindeer in Norway’s Sami-land. Another crucial observation is the deep integration of mobile phones into daily life. You can hardly catch a taxi without a mobile app, and ordering coffee from the highly successful chain, Luckin Coffee, also necessitates an...

Michael Gfoeller & David H. Rundell September 27, 2023 In 1919, John Maynard Keynes was a young economist with the British delegation negotiating the Versailles Treaty. Keynes strongly objected to the harsh economic treatment being meted out to Germany. He resigned and went home to write “The Economic Consequences of the Peace,” which accurately predicted how the treaty would sow the seeds for future conflict. Had Keynes been alive last year, he might well have written “The Economic Consequences of the War,” predicting how the economic sanctions being placed on Russia would, in fact, unravel Europe’s political order. Few products contribute more to economic prosperity and political stability than affordable food and energy. Increased energy costs retard every aspect of economic growth. Rising food costs act much like a regressive tax increase. By imposing economic sanctions on Russia, Europe destroyed its own access to inexpensive food and energy. One did...

A facsimile of the signature-and-seals page of the 1864 Geneva Convention. Photograph Source: Kevin Quinn, Ohio, US – CC BY 2.0 Alfred De Zayas September 26, 2023 Progress and retrogression characterize the reality of international law, international relations, and the concrete enjoyment of human rights by women and men throughout the planet. We hail the tides of opportunity, the times of liberation and expansion, but we should not be blind to recurrent abuses, crimes, and moments of disgrace. Today our world is experiencing chaos, but not more so than in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. At least we are not burning witches or massacring indigenous Hopi, Pequots, Sioux, Quechua and Taínos, the slave trade is abolished, colonialism is drastically reduced. We welcome the landmark resolution 48/7 adopted by the UN Human Rights Council on 8 October 2021 concerning the legacies of colonialism in Africa, Asia and Latin America, particularly...

A collection of relevant articles brought to you by The Transnational Foundation. When will the investigative reports come, if not after one year? The destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines had neither a photogenic character nor a death toll comparable with 9/11, 2001. It also did not provoke a German or Russian response in the vicinity of the totally out-of-proportion US Global War on Terror that has cost millions of innocent lives. That said, one could hypothesise that, as a destructive event and over time, this gigantic infrastructure destruction will have consequences for the international order as comprehensive as 9/11. Be this as it may, we’ve all noticed how this unique destruction disappeared very quickly from the media and has also not been mentioned in, say, statements from NATO, G7, G 20 or the EU. The world has also not heard anything from any formal investigation, and an investigation could...

This article in Danish on my online home and blog. On 6 September, Denmark’ TV2 Channel ran a 35-second clip with the Prime Minister under the headline “Mette Frederiksen: You don’t win a war with words, you win it with weapons.” Watch and listen to it here. Her brief presentation of her views on Ukraine’s situation testifies to an ignorance – conscious, unconscious or opportunistic – that is not easily reconciled with state leadership in general and war participation in particular. I believe that a doctor of the same intellectual level of medical knowledge would be put out of commission. (1) War versus conflict Mette Frederiksen believes that it is impossible to win a war with words, especially when you are “up against Russia.” By focusing on the war and not the underlying NATO/Russia conflict playing out in Ukraine, she can avoid asking herself: Why did the war happen in...

Aloha is a cultural foundation of Hawaii, an expression of kindness, inclusiveness, comforting attitude, and loving relationship. This is how you can build security and peace on that interesting concept. Pōkā Laenui September 21, 2023 – UN Day of Peace Here is a national security system for the Hawaiian nation to replace the current U.S. military system which now exist in Hawaii, a plan for not merely a military force for armed combat, but a total system of national security including addressing the effects on climate change including the harsher weather which brings in multiple hurricanes in one season, dry seasons which make us susceptible to wild fires, rising ocean levels, hunger in our streets, homelessness, etc. This is a proposal to take place as we move to an independent nation free of U.S. colonialism. More to learn about the author and about Hawaii and some videos If you think...

This unbiased presentation – which she reads to you in the video below – is very important, not only because it is based on very extensive reading of what he has written and said but also because he is already the victim of character assassination and demonisation. He is systematically villified and marginalised in the US media – and hardly known to people outside the US. Most Europeans, for instance, believe there are only Biden and Trump. It’s very clear that Christman is highly positive to RFK Jr. As a leading peace researcher and educator in the US, this is natural because he is the only one who fundamentally challenges – with solid knowledge, life experience and civil courage – what we call the MIMAC, the Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex. Nobody else argues for dialogue with ‘the other’ instaed of war and for the US withdrawal from all of its 600+ military...

US dependence on Chinese components means defense industry and critical infrastructure could soon be in the line of fire David P. Goldman, Asia Times September 20, 2023 America doesn’t have the factories or skilled labor to replace Chinese imports that support defense contractors and basic infrastructure, leaving the US economy vulnerable to harm in the event of an all-out trade war with China, corporate and government officials told Asia Times. That’s why Biden administration officials are unlikely to heed calls from China hawks to completely cut off China’s semiconductor sector from US technology. A group of 10 prominent House Republicans wrote to the US Commerce Department on September 14 demanding a shutoff of US exports of chip technology to China, claiming that the export controls imposed in October 2022 were ineffective. Originally published by Asia Times on September 16, 2023 The Republicans’ letter cited “recent reports that Huawei Technologies Co. (Huawei)...

TFF Associate and more… Luna Rossa: Sacred Blood, Cycle Wisdom – an art journal and peace offering – publication. Here is the pre-order campaign and free online events on feminine health & power themes with a deep cyclical understanding of how inner and outer peace can combine.. I’m inviting you… We may think we live in modern, advanced times. On many accounts, including the fact that we still solve conflicts through wars on this planet, we are not.  Menstruation is still a taboo in many cultures around the world, being associated with impurity, shame, and guilt for being a woman. Even though access to sanitary products has increased in many countries, education about menstruation as something to be embraced rather than ignored and medicalized is still lacking. The very ability to give life and reproduce the species that menstruation is a sign of becomes a sign of inferiority or, in other...

It’s an old US playbook. My assessment is that the US attempt to contain China is not only wrongheaded in principle, but destined to fail in practice. Jeffrey Sachs September 18, 2023 China’s economy is slowing down. Current forecasts put China’s GDP growth in 2023 at less than 5%, below the forecasts made last year and far below the high growth rates that China enjoyed until the late 2010s. The Western press is filled with China’s supposed misdeeds: a financial crisis in the real-estate market, a general overhang of debt, and other ills. Yet much of the slowdown is the result of US measures that aim to slow China’s growth. Such US policies violate World Trade Organization (WTO) rules and are a danger to global prosperity. They should be stopped. Originally published on Jeffrey Sach’s homepage on August 22, 2023 The anti-China policies come out of a familiar playbook of...

US lawmakers say the alliance’s movement into Asia is “inevitable.” It’s actually a completely avoidable, completely bad idea. Branko Marcetic September 15, 2023 A little over a century ago, rising inter-imperial tensions coupled with a complicated, evidence board–like set of alliances pulled Europe into the most disastrous, pointless war the world had ever seen up to then, World War I. Today, a ’roided-up version of that scenario is looming, as US-China relations deteriorate and the NATO alliance begins to dip several toes in Asia, nearly six thousand miles away from its headquarters in Brussels. Originally published at Jacobin on July 29, 2023 This isn’t an exaggeration. Asked recently at a joint appearance on Meet the Press whether NATO’s expansion into Asia was “inevitable,” Senators Tammy Duckworth (an Illinois Democrat) and Dan Sullivan (an Alaska Republican) answered yes. “Oh, I think it is,” said Sullivan. “I agree with my friend,” said Duckworth. They had good...