TFF global posts 2021

Below are TFF-related media mentions, comments, videos and social media posts published elsewhere but not on this homepage. We happen to catch and list only a fraction. Regarding video comments and debates, we recommend that you go to the TFF Video Channel on Substack where many of them are reproduced. Jan Oberg is a contributor to China Daily – 52 million daily clicks – and Global Times, CGTN and CCTV (the national television), China Investment, Xinhua News Agency and several others. Articles and videos on these media very often multiply into countless Chinese (and Western media) that re-post them from these main media. Thanks to The China Academy, his analyses, interviews and comments are frequently posted on YouTube channels such as Thinkers Forum and Wave Media. These videos are often re-posted on Bilibili (China’s YouTube), the China Content Center on TikTok, and on the Chinese edition of TikTok, Douyin.com. This means reaching hundreds of millions of viewers worldwide over a year. While there are too many to catch on all these...

The Summit slogan by Biden was: ”Democracy doesn’t happen by accident. We have to defend it, fight for it, strengthen it, renew it.” The first sentence is empty of meaning. The rest is confrontational – fight, be strong; someone – guess who? – threatens our democracy. And renewal was absent. With no intellectuals or other thinkers invited, the Summit was theoretically and philosophically void. The hours I browsed didn’t reveal any new concepts or visions of democracy – but instead platitudes, tired metaphors, self-congratulatory words by governments leaders on their own achievements and how they meet ”challenges.” Plus the repeated, extremely unfair, appeal to young people to fix what the present generation has so irresponsibly destroyed. A summit could be used to sum it up: Diagnosis + Prognosis + Solutions: What must we do differently in the future? It wasn’t. We learned that democracy is in crisis – some of...

The 2021 Nobel Peace Prize honoured press freedom and – no surprise – was welcomed by the world press. As I listened to the announcement, on October 8, an old story from the Cold War kept coming back to me: A Soviet official had been travelling in the US for a couple of weeks. As he left, he remarked to his hosts, in puzzled bewilderment “How can it be that you have such perfect control, even with a completely free press?” He was right. Society makes one huge exception from democracy and press freedom: national security. The Military-Industrial Complex is in control, thoroughly disciplined media see it as a sacred duty to keep their own nation strong and united behind the flag and the forces. Nations are governed by fear that any doubt or deviation from military orthodoxy would harm national security. As a result, in 2021 the Nobel awarders...

Imagine that the Nobel Prize in Literature is given to a book publisher or papermaker and the official motivation is that publishers or papermakers are preconditions for the writer writing and being read. Roughly, this is how the Nobel Peace Committee, reasons – unreasonably. Here’s how it legitimates that its 2021 prize goes to Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov way outside the letter and spirit of Alfred Nobel’s will: “Without freedom of expression and freedom of the press, it will be difficult to successfully promote fraternity between nations, disarmament and a better world order to succeed in our time. This year’s award of the Nobel Peace Prize is therefore firmly anchored in the provisions of Alfred Nobel’s will.” See? – “without papermakers and publishers, it will be difficult to successfully write good literature and be read…” I believe my readers easily grasp just how far-fetched this argument is in the...

I’m old enough to remember when you couldn’t do a speaking event related to war and peace without being asked numerous reasonable and not so reasonable questions about 9/11 (each accompanied by a stack of DVDs and flyers presented to you as a revelation from on high). There was a long period when you could count on the inevitable question about “peak oil.” Originally published at Worldbeyondwar.org I’ve been around enough to know that you can’t talk to peace-oriented people without a question about creating a Department of Peace, or to non-peace-oriented people without a question about good humanitarian wars against irrational foreigners who can’t be reasoned with, or to any group at all in the United States and some other countries without “What about Hitler?,” or to any self-selected audience at a peace-related event without the question about why the other people in the room are disproportionately old, white,...

This article is based on observations sent to me by an academic friend living in Italy who wants to be anonymous, given the views it expresses in this situation. The reason we publish it here with a few comments, videos and links is that it is obviously a very serious situation in and of itself but also an example of how democracy can quickly be undermined and how nonviolent demonstrations are squeezed out, framed as neo-Fascists and de-legitimated – as is the entire peace discourse in Western democracies (if we can still call them that). It’s an illustration of how far democratic governments seem ready to go in the direction of authoritarianism in the name of protecting their citizens – without giving those same citizens a chance to express themselves as part of the decision-making process. There is a huge risk that the fear of the pandemic is exploited to...

More than 45 years have passed since the publication of my translation of “Civilisation on Trial” by Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975) – read the entire book in English here. When that translation was first published by Isfahan University Press in 1976 it was warmly received, and in a short time, more than half of the copies of the first printing had been sold. Unfortunately, a short time after its publication, with the start of the growing political tensions and clashes that led to the Islamic Revolution, the book was caught up in the revolutionary maelstrom. Since then, the book has never been republished. However, more than 45 years later, in view of the importance of the book and its relevance regarding some of the latest political developments, some friends asked me if they could republish it online and put it at the disposal of the public free of charge so that...

I’m 70 now and all my life, I’ve heard that the Russians would one day make a surprise attack and, within 48 hours, occupy the Eifel Tower. Fait accompli! We in the West were weak – perhaps not right now but we would be within the next 5 years if we did not invest much more in ”defence”. Well, these damn Russians haven’t come yet – another reason we shouldn’t trust them, I assume! The latest variation on that bizarre and irrational theme is that Swedish military spokespersons maintain that Sweden has to plan for an isolated Russian attack on the island of Gotland – and that China aims to conquer Taiwan and Biden telling the world that the US is committed to defend Taiwan. This is a slightly revised version of an editorial for the Transcend Media Service, October 25, 2021 The time when you could understand international affairs...

We at TFF are proud to present one of our most amazing Associates who – in so many different ways – has worked for peace over 67 years. His knowledge is encyclopaedic and covers so many fields that it is hard to grasp. Even at the age of 88 and with various health problems and failing eyesight, he writes every day, most of the day – in the belief that we are all responsible for doing all that we can and that it is only through knowledge, humanity and vision we can survive in the long-term perspective as one humanity. The book you can download below runs over 500+ pages – and it’s just one of John’s many. It contains much more than the story of Avery’s work for peace: articles, essays, comments and whole books on various aspects of global affairs. Better scroll and browse and be inspired than...

Listen to this on Spotify 13 september, 2021 Contribution to GTI Forum(Great Transition Initiative) Can Human Solidarity Globalize? To envision a better world of tomorrow calls for great courage because the dominant paradigm reads There Is No Alternative. Or, to quote the Borg from the Star Trek: The Next Generation series, “Resistance is futile!” It is how the imagination of another now (to refer to Yanis Varoufakis’s book) is kept imprisoned. The aim is to silence and discourage all thoughtful, rebellious, and critical minds (and groups). Critique is tolerated if it is not too radical (i.e., does not go deep to the root causes of the present inequalities and suffering) and if it comes mostly from the Western (“more civilized”) part of the world. Originally published at The Great Transition Initiative We, the people from the Global South, however, have much to say about the past, present, and future of this world. And most of...

Listen to this article Richard Falk September 14, 2021 Modified responses on Aug. 23rd to questions posed by Zahra Mirzafarjouyan, Mehr News Agency, and originally published on Falk’s homepage. • 1 Why could the Taliban capture Kabul and gain power so rapidly without considerable resistance from people and the army? The U.S. led NATO Afghan intervention and occupation was flawed in mission from its outset in 2001, and indeed in the period before the attack and large-scale, ambitious regime-changing, state-building occupation. In the post-colonial world, the military superiority of Western intervening powers has proved unable to shape the political outcomes of a prolonged struggle for the control of non-Western sovereign spaces, especially if the society is beset by unresolved tribal and ethnic conflicts, as well as by warlordism and drug cartels. In Afghanistan, as elsewhere, this line of observation proved to be once again validated, despite trillions of dollars spent...