Treasures – TFF Associates

Idag är det 66 år sedan Hiroshima förstördes av atombomben. Tre dagar senare bombades Nagasaki. Fyrtio år senare fanns atomvapen, dessa verktyg för folkmord, med en sammanlagd sprängkraft motsvarande en miljon Hiroshimabomber. Risken för ett stort kärnvapenkrig som skulle kunna utrota mänskligheten är idag mindre än under det kalla kriget, men risken är inte noll. I den senaste versionen av den amerikanska kärnvapendoktrinen Nuclear Posture Review talar man öppet om risken för avfyrande av misttag, t ex genom dataintrång. Det är nödvändigt att avskaffa kärnvapnen innan de avskaffar oss! Det är inte längre bara ”godtrogna aktivister” som tror att kärnvapnen kan avskaffas. De fyra grånade amerikanska statsmännen Shultz, Kissinger, Perry och Nunn har i tre artiklar i Wall Street Journal och vid ett stort antal konferenser uttalat att USA:s säkerhet fordrar att kärnvapnen avskaffas. President Obama deklarerade i sitt berömda Prag-tal att hans mål var en kärnvapenfri värld. Där fanns...

TOKYO, Jul (IPS)  The human spirit has a truly remarkable capacity – the ability to generate hope from the most devastating of crises. This ability to create value can be seen in the response to the earthquake that struck Japan on March 11. Following the earthquake and tsunami, there has been a tremendous response from people throughout the world in the form of aid and relief, as well as countless outpourings of support, both material and psychological. The Japanese people will never forget this heartfelt response: as we embark on the long path to recovery, it will be with a consciousness of our debt of gratitude to the boundless goodwill of people from all around the world. The British historian Arnold J. Toynbee is known for his theory of challenge and response. “Civilisations,” he wrote, “come to birth and proceed to grow by successfully responding to successive challenges.” This struggle...

Maj Britt Theorin, former Ambassador Lecture given at the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs  15/11 2010 To understand why there is such a strong critique in Sweden of the war in Afghanistan, one must look some decades – yes even some centuries back. Sweden has been out of war for 200 years now. Before 1809 and centuries back Sweden was a conqueror in Europe; fighting Russian, Polish, German, Danish and other people. When the Russian 1809 suddenly defeated Sweden the time of war was over. Sweden started to search for other solutions than war. In World War II Sweden declared itself neutral and non-aligned. When the attempt to create a Nordic Defense Alliance brook down after that war and Norway and Denmark joined NATO, Sweden remained neutral and non-aligned.But neutrality and non-alignment did not mean passivity. On the contrary Sweden was very active in the United Nations. The security...

Lecture given at the New Zealand Parliament  15/11 2010 Ladies and gentlemen. As a former college it gives me a special pleasure to visit your parliament again. It was long ago in the 1980s and much has happened in between. Last time I was not only a parliamentarian but also as ambassador responsible for Swedish peace and disarmament policy. In order to answer the question if a small country can have impact on peace and disarmament  I have to go back to 1930s  before the Second World War. The Europe women´s movement was deeply involved against war.  In 1935 a conference on “Women´s unarmed rebellion against war” was organized. Alva Myrdal was elected to take part and demanded stop for all weapon´s trade and proposed peace education at schools. Inga Thorson, the second women as chair of the Swedish disarmament delegation after Alva, brought then up conversion to civil production. ...

Daily, thousands all over the world read, benefit from and use what we at TFF publishes at our “home”, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Many tell us that we contribute to a less-bad, perhaps even a better, world. Some write us to tell that they don’t know what they would have done had TFF not existed and been a constant voice of criticism of elite power, violence and injustice. Quite often our 70 Associates – indisputably some of the world’s most distinguished experts – have produced early warnings and early proposals in conflict zones and other matters, such as UN reform.  That’s good to hear – particularly since we do not know of anybody else who produces as much as we do exclusively on the basis of people’s donations, around € 20.000 or $ 26.000 per year – only possible because we are all volunteering for the cause of peace! That’s how it has always been....

December 15, 2010 Farhang Jahanpour The latest batches of WikiLeaks files do not reveal anything unexpected or exciting, or anything that most people who have an interest in international politics did no already know. All that they do is simply to confirm some open secrets. In her ground breaking 1963 work, Eichman in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil the late Hannah Arendt talked about the “banality of evil”. She showed that when you see the evil monsters who have committed untold atrocities in flesh and in the dock, not only do they not look very impressive and imposing; on the contrary, they look like a bunch of miserable and pitiful cowards. In the same way, the new documents reveal the banality of politics and of most politicians. Many people have a rather rosy and exaggerated view of their politicians, thinking that although they may not be honest, at least they are...

To understand what is going on in Korea it is helpful to try to see the conflict from the other side, from that of North Korea. There is no peace agreement after the Korean War, which ended in 1953 with an armistice agreement. There is still a state of war between the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, DPRK, and the United States. The Armistice Demarcation Line is the 38th parallel. However, no agreement has been reached regarding where that line continues in the sea. The sovereignty of the waters where the recent shelling occurred is disputed. As I write this article, on November 30, 2010, marine forces from South Korea together with US units are conducting a military maneuvre in these disputed waters. Such operations have in the past often been opposed by the North. When shots were fired from the South as a part of that exercise, the North...

September 14, 2010 Chaiwat Satha-Anand In the corner of a Sunday comic strip titled “Pastor Jones goes to New York”, there is a small character saying “ Your fifteen minutes are up reverend.” (Bangkok Post, September 12, 2010) That may be true about Terry Jones’ personal fame since a month ago no one this side of the globe has heard about him or his tiny Protestant church in Gainesville, Florida, nor his 2010 book: Islam is of the Devil. But when he announced the “International Burn a Koran Day” from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. to be held on September 11, world attention descended upon him. Outcry against his proposed act from religious leaders around the world notwithstanding, world leaders from President Obama, to UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon to David Howell Petraeus, a former professor of international relations, he received his Ph.D. from Princeton, and now the commander of...

June 28, 2010 Gunnar Westberg In his famous speech in Prague in April 2009 President Barak Obama presented us with his vision of a world free of nuclear weapons. He emphasized that the U.S. would lead the world towards this goal. He foresaw, however, that this goal would maybe not be reached in his lifetime. Considering that the 48 years old President statistically has a 50% chance of living for 30 more year, adding a few years if he does not relapse into smoking, this was not an optimistic prediction. Can the world survive another three decades with nuclear weapons? Even more ominous was his statement that ”as long as these weapons exist, we will maintain a safe, secure and effective arsenal to deter any adversary, and guarantee that defense to our allies”. Does that mean that the US will be the last to abolish nuclear weapons? During the year since this...

May 31, 2010 Chaiwat Satha-Anand [Published in The Bangkok Post as “The effect of violence on the future of reconciliation”, May 28, 2010: op-ed.] That the military would succeed in defeating the UDD, also known as the “red shirts”, and in securing the city space occupied by many who came from rural Thailand was never in doubt.  In fact, some from within the security community might regard this operation as a success given the resulted “low” number of casualties. What certainly is , however, is how the military solution chosen by the government and violent methods incorporated by some UDD leadership will shape the form of continuing political conflict in this society. This article is an attempt to understand the violence effect of the “May 19 incident” on Thai society, especially on future reconciliation efforts.  I would argue that any future reconciliation effort with some hope of success would have to begin...

Short text in English below Per Gahrton ger ut engelskspråkig bok om Georgien, Rosenrevolutionen och Ossetienkriget – stödjer EU:s Tagliavinirapport och kritiserar Bildts oreserverade Saakashvili-stöd Per Gahrton, ordförande i den gröna tankesmedjan Cogito ger i dagarna ut en engelskspråkig bok om Georgien, Rosenrevolutionen och Ossetienkriget hos det brittiska förlaget Pluto Press. Gahrton har följt utvecklingen i Georgien under de senaste tjugo åren och var personlig vän med landets premiärminister efter Rosenrevolutionen 2003, Zurab Zhvania, som omkom under mystiska omständigheter 2005. Under sin tid som EU-parlamentariker var han s k rapportör för Sydkaukasien. Han har flera gånger varit valobservatör i Georgien. Han har också sedan länge följt utvecklingen i Sovjetunionen och Ryssland och har “working knowledge” i ryska. Gahrton intar överlag samma hållning som EU:s s k Tagliavini-rapport om Ossetienkriget, d v s att det startades av Georgies president Saakashvili som därmed brott mot folkrätten, men att Ryssland genom att inte...

Reflections on the increasing impossibility of funding peace research that refuses to be intellectual ‘embedding’ in power. Summary This analysis has come about for four reasons: The article gives examples of why free peace research – if not social research in general – is becoming increasingly impossible. It starts out with an exposé of the funds being available worldwide for peace and for the military – about 200 times more for the latter. The ratio of peace researchers to military researchers is probably 1:100+. It may both be true that (government-financed) peace research is booming and that scores of institutes have been closed down. Today’s funding situation in Denmark and Sweden for peace-oriented research is then described and comparative flashbacks made to the situation in the 1980s and 1990s. If you think of Scandinavia in general as liberal and generous in this field, it’s time for a reality check. Then,...