By Jan Oberg
– A lecture at the World Peace Academy in Basel, Switzerland with words and photographs from his recent visit to Iran
Category: Jan Oberg
Complaint about the Nobel Peace Prize Committee to the Swedish Foundation Inspection Board
By Jan Oberg
Open Letter
Dear Mikael Wiman
May I permit myself to join Mr. Fredrik Heffermehl – one of the world’s leading experts on peace as well as the Nobel Peace Prize – in his letter to you.
There is very substantial arguments that Nobel’s will has been ignored in a series of cases, no matter how much one can and should of course argue that times have changed since he wrote his will.
One of the fundamental features of those changes is that nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction have entered the world and that the world’s governments (with a few exceptions such as Costa Rica and Iceland) have incrementally decided to squander more and more scarce resources on armament and warfare – and preparations for it. The sum total of it amounts to about US$ 1700 billion – in a world where the UN for all its activities has a budget of about 30, development aid stands on 160 and peace-building about 0,5 billion – all according to the latest report by the U.N. Secretary General. Indeed, therefore, the problem Mr. Nobel intended to combat is many times bigger and more threatening to humankind than he could ever foresee.
To award the European Union the prize is to poke fun of Alfred Nobel’s intentions Read More »
New TFF Newsletter
By Jan Oberg
Before TFF’s mission to Iran, we published this Newsletter with what we do, where we think the world is heading and an article by Board member Annette Schiffmann on her photo exhibition about women’s empowerment.
It also contained a rather strong appeal for your support to us – one of the few remaining independent research institutions and in its 26th year devoted to the UN norm of peace by peaceful means. Please hit the support link that suits you on the top right here to support our work, missions, analyses and websites and social media presence.
There is no such thing as a free peace!
Why don’t we make peace when we so easily could?
Jan Oberg lectures at the World Peace Academy in Basel, Switzerland – A one-hour educational video
The scandal called the Nobel Peace Committee
By Jan Oberg
Why? The EU is credited with making making peace in the Balkans while it made war in Bosnia unavoidable by prematurely recognizing Slovenia and Croatia out of old Yugoslavia. After that Bosnia could neither sit in Rest-Yugoslavia nor become independent without war.
EU countries are constantly involved in wars and interventions (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria). Two are nuclear weapons powers. The EU Treaty advocates Read More »
Fredsforskning i Danmark?*
Af Jan Øberg
I begyndelsen af maj begynder konkurrencen om 15 millioner kroner til udvikling af fredsforskning i Danmark. Enhedslisten og andre pressede på for at få nogle penge så der kunne skabes alternativer til den dansk militær interventionspolitik.
Baggrunden var desuden at Danmark jo er en hvid plet på fredsforskningens verdenskort. Read More »
An innocent victim of our sanctions against Iran
Or how “high” politics are connected to the lives of Iranians even abroad
By Jan Oberg
I’ve come to know a young Iranian student here in Sweden. Fortunately he came before the discriminatory law that forces students from outside EU to pay for their studies while those from inside the EU can study freely.
Kourosh – a name I use for the purpose of this article – is a very modest, diligent and polite young man. He has quickly learned to talk everyday Swedish. He sees his life in Sweden as a great privilege and an opportunity to go back to his native Iran and make it a better place. Since I have applied for a visa to go to Iran, I’ve been eager to meet with him and listen to what he can tell me about Iranian culture and about how life has been for his family. The father is a truck driver turned farmer; the family is not among the poorest but also not in the upper class. Read More »
Iran & Israel: What the West should and can do
By Jan Oberg (951 words)
IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE, APRIL 2012 © IPS and the author
Editor’s note:
The overall picture has turned much worse over the last few months. In particular, the Western demands to Iran made public prior to the Istanbul consultations on April 14, bodes ill for the next round of talks in Baghdad. Everyone has stated views, used rhetoric and taken concrete steps that bring us all closer to the abyss called ‘War on Iran’. While it is easy and dangerous to escalate a conflict, it is difficult without losing face to de-escalate and make peace, writes Jan Oberg, director and co-founder of the Transnational Foundation (TFF) in Lund, Sweden.
Among these counterproductive steps are the Western halting of imports of oil from Iran on July 1, 2012 and the tightening of sanctions that already suffocate Iranian society. It is believed – falsely – that sanctions are somehow “soft weapons”. In Iraq, with one-third of the population of Iran, Western sanctions caused roughly one million Iraqi deaths.
What is indicative of a will to promote future peace among the parties? Well, the following are not: pre-negotiation demands, threats to destroy, an oil embargo, sanctions directed at citizens, condescending rhetoric to and about a nation with one of the oldest civilisations in the world, murdering its scientists, providing military training to its dissident terrorists abroad, telling it to abstain from what you have yourself done and requiring inspections there but not with the nuclear-armed “other side”. These are methods to make Tehran consider obtaining nukes although Iran’s highest leader has pronounced repeatedly that nuclear weapons are haram, i.e. strictly prohibited according to Islam (a fact never reported in Western media).
The world needs conflict-resolution capacity, knowledge and training. Those who run these matters steer their policies like unlicenced drivers. Under such conditions, accidents will happen and people will die. There is a huge spectrum of options between doing nothing and smashing up countries by military means.
This article offers plenty of constructive proposals.Read More »
Tonight I lost my last bit of sympathy for President Obama
By Jan Oberg
A man shall be judged more by his deeds than by his words, says President Obama. That is what I do to him here. On the basis of what he has done and says he will do.
This is President Obama’s most nasty, bellicose, one-sided and perversely power-arrogant speech ever. The Nobel Committee ought to revoke its Prize to him, but of course it won’t.
This cynical man speaks about the goodness of even more “crippling” sanctions on a country of 75 million people of which 25 % are children under 14.
At every single aspect he touches upon, he takes the wrong path: towards making war irreversible. There is no excuse that it was for AIPAC. In contrast to George W. Bush, he is neither ignorant, under-educated, or un-intelligent. That’s what makes it so serious, so tragic.
Among several remarkable things is that the President here also gives a carte blanche to Israel deciding alone what it will do in the future vis-a-vis Iran.
Under no circumstance can the U.S. under this man serve in a peaceful role, and it’s laughable to argue that it can be a mediator in the Middle East.
Pray that I am wrong but this speech, combined with everything else that goes on these months, makes me predict war on Iran within 4-6 months.
Addendum:
Of course this speech figures only on 2-3 front pages of the Western mainstream press the day after; they are more interested for a 2nd day in the likely, but so far undocumented, election fraud in Russia. Most editors probably don’t know what AIPAC is, or why Obama’s words in that forum are so important.
New media report confirms violence to be much more important than peace
A new report by Media Tenor and the Institute for Economics and Peace shows that violence still outrules peace in the international TV media. Yet, certain aspects of the study are questionable – how to measure peace quantitatively?
By Jan Oberg and Ida Zidore
We all have a feeling of what peace is. Yet, defining it more precisely is not so easy. It belongs to the category that philosophers have called ‘essentially contested concepts’ – also used about freedom, justice and, say, democracy. Being somehow elusive, perhaps the best we can hope to achieve is intelligent discussions about how to approach peace, rather than defining it precisely.
There are those who jump the philosophy, conceptuality and definitions and go directly to quantifying peace. By means of some “indicators” readily available in data bases they put together a composite measure that enables them to rank-order countries. Developing such hit lists – for happiness, development, corruption, etc.- has become a kind of industry in recent years. Read More »
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