Reconciliation and forgiveness

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...

Letter from a soul-sister stranger for peace One autumn day in 2022, a mail winged into TFF’s inbox from a woman in the United States. Here first some excerpts; the first sentence reveals a sense of being in a larger world. ” Ihope you’re feeling all right, even though it’s difficult to feel that way now. I’d like to send you this letter that I’m sending to as many people that I can think of. Given the urgency of the international situation I figure it’s no time to be shy. Here it is! Hardly a soul responds to me, but I was hoping maybe you would. Peace will never arrive if people are not able to listen to the other side’s perspective. Peace will never arrive if people on one side of conflict tell half-truths and lies to paint the other side as only evil, thus falsely justifying weapon shipments,...

Welcome to my worldmoires – a word I have invented for the occasion. It means writing about my life in the perspective of global affairs and trends that have influenced my work and myself since I was born in the middle of the preceding century.  And the occasion? I’m approaching the 50th anniversary of my work as a peace, conflict and future researcher.  The Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, TFF, that my wife Christina and I have established turned 35 on January 1, 2021.  I hope you will find something of interest and follow the creation of the book – of which only the first small fraction is hereby launched. Now explore…

Or your government leader’s Coronavirus speech that was never given. Do not believe the future will be better before you hear leaders say something like this… The speech can be seen as part of TFF’s Campaign “Convert Military Expenditures to Global Problem-Solving”. See and listen to the speech by clicking on Vimeo above, or read the transcript below. Fellow Citizens, good evening Tonight, I want to share with you the main lessons my government and I have drawn from the Coronavirus crisis – a crisis which has caused so much suffering and so many deaths. And a crisis that will take very long time for our economy to recover from. That lesson – and my central message to you tonight – is that your suffering has been caused by our failed security policies. Only, secondarily, is this a crisis of our health system. Therefore, I want to extend my most...

By Maria Popova October 8, 2020 In the mid-1950s, as the icy terror of the Cold War was cloaking the embering rubble of two World Wars, the BBC producer and cartoonist Hugh Burnett envisioned an unexampled program to serve both as a cross-cultural bridge and a mirror beaming back to a dimmed and discomposed humanity the noblest and most beautiful ideas of its noblest and most beautiful minds. Originally published at brainpickings Face to Face — a series of intimate conversations with people of genius, influence, and exceptional largeness of spirit, interviewed by the British broadcaster and politician John Freeman — began as short-wave radio broadcasts to listeners in the Far East and soon became a BBC television program. Television was then a young medium, aglow as any young medium with the promise of its potential and blind to its peril — something reflected with chilling clarity in Burnett’s own...

/06/08/us/us-police-floyd-protests-country-comparisons-intl/index.html?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits”>neither will it be the last. Fortunately, it has set in motion significant protests not only in the United States but around the world – on top of the Corona Crisis. And it has created an opportunity for people to do symbolic acts such as taking a knee, criticising President Trump’s Bible Show after he had – classical dictatorship-style – used violence on peaceful demonstrators, etc. And people posted black images on Instagram. These are individual protests in response to an individual being killed in a single event. They are very human, noble and understandable, indeed, necessary – as markers that enough is enough. But where will it go from that first reaction? The comprehensive perspective To approach and answer, read carefully this statement by Martin Luther King, Jr.: “In these trying circumstances, the black revolution is much more than a struggle for the rights of Negroes. It is forcing...

Here is a Table with fifteen faiths organized according to mono-poly-pan-atheism; some might find the table somewhat controversial: Table 1.  Figures of thought, faiths, and beliefs of true believers Figures Faiths Beliefs Mono Judaism Israel, Zion; as Chosen People Mono Catholicism Pope (infallible), Vatican Mono Evangelism Dualism-Manicheism-Armageddon, DMA Mono Islam Togetherness under Alla’h, sharing Poly Hinduism Creation-Preservation-Destruction Pan Buddhism dukkha-sukha, sentient life networks Pan Daoism Holism-Dialectics-Transcendence, HDT Pan Confucianism Authority-Harmony; educated old men Pan Shintoism Japan; as Chosen People Pan Polynesism lokahi, ‘ohana, alo’ha, mana A Humanism Humans; as Chosen species with rights A Liberalism Individuals-Choice-Equilibrium;Markets A Marxism Classes-Struggle-History;Plans A Nature Diversity, Symbiosis The focus of this table is on concrete, this world, implications. Abrahamism, mono-centric, indicative of a centrism that could serve Occident I.  Jesus Christ universalized tribal Judaism to global Christianity, expressed institutionally in catholicism, and biblically by US evangelists in their world view of good-evil dualism, ending in...

Photo – Jan Oberg Gordon Dumoulin May 5, 2020 People from abroad ask me lately how it is to be ‘back to normal’ in Beijing after the lockdown? A little introduction First of all we have not witnessed a strict lockdown here in Beijing such as in Wuhan, Hubei province, some other cities in China e.g. Hangzhou or even in Lombardy or Paris and Madrid. Even though we have not been forced to stay at home since the beginning, public life had been minimized in Beijing and we have resiliently stayed inside most of the time for our own safety, minimizing the risk of further outbreak and in solidarity with the people fighting at the battlefield. We have been subject to intense measure and data organisations to provide a bigger picture of the pandemic and virus, both through on-site checks of temperature and whereabouts and through high-tech with apps checking...

… and for artists to contribute to it … Have you often seen conflicts – big or small – escalate out of control? What do you do when it happens? Do you know how to intervene and de-escalate it again? Do you want more peace in your everyday life? A more peaceful world? Of course, you do! So let’s create something that works with children and adults together. Imagine Creatively is my homepage. It’s a storytelling-for-peace platform. I’m an academic with an MA in peace studies; I have taught courses and written several books before, and I have two children. I’m into both theory and practise. I know what works. You can trust me! It will be another bedtime story for children and a waking up story for parents and adults. I imagine it creatively as a constructive follow-on to the world-renown “Butter Battle Book” of the much endeared Dr...

Or – The US, A Shameless Warrior Yesterday, the US Ambassador to Denmark, Carla Sands, tweeted the following: As will be seen below, there were four photos from an event in Copenhagen. The first shows all the people present, including former Danish Prime minister Fogh Rasmussen (also on the 4th photo with the ambassador), the present Danish defence minister, Trine Bramsen (also on the 2nd photo to the right), and veterans. The third photo is indeed very touching if you note the veteran sitting to the Ambassador’s right side – his right arm and hand as well as his two legs. The Ambassador’s text is revealing for how a representative of the US Empire performs these days. The day is called Wounded Warrior – and of course it would be more difficult to make a barbeque for Dead Warriors – and the ambassador emphases (only) that it reminds us of...

By Dr. Lawrence Wittner June 5, 2019 In late April, the highly-respected Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reported that, in 2018, world military expenditures rose to a record $1.82 trillion. The biggest military spender by far was the United States, which increased its military budget by nearly 5 percent to $649 billion (36 percent of the global total). But most other nations also joined the race for bigger and better ways to destroy one another through war. Originally publishes on Counterpunch.org on May 29th, 2019 here This situation represents a double tragedy. First, in a world bristling with weapons of vast destructive power, it threatens the annihilation of the human race. Second, as vast resources are poured into war and preparations for it, a host of other problems―poverty, environmental catastrophe, access to education and healthcare, and more―fail to be adequately addressed. But these circumstances can be changed, as shown by...

Gambia – or properly The Gambia – a small country in West Africa with about 2 million inhabitants, was peaceful since its internal independent rule was established in 1963. There were good relations with its only neighbour, Senegal. For a long time there was no military force in the country. One could then expect that there would be no militant coups, as in so many other African countries. However, in 1981 a “Revolutionary Council” took power. The revolutionaries were soon ousted by troops from Senegal who reinstated the president.  Now obviously Gambia needed an army “to establish stability” and an army was established. The outcome was that in 1994 a group of soldiers, led by lieutenant Yahya Jammeh, took power. He became the leader of the country, and was elected and re-elected president in 1996, 2001, 2006 and 2011. At least in the early years of his reign, he was...