Category: Pro-peace & proposals

TFF PressInfo # 330 – Iran’s Nuclear Deal: A great achievement, but hard work ahead

JOLeave a comment

By Farhang Jahanpour

The announcement of the nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers is a rare moment in history that gives us hope and provides a basis for optimism.

By contemplating what the alternative would have entailed, any agreement, no matter how defective, is a great achievement and has to be welcomed.

However, the indications are that, as the Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has declared at a joint press conference with the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs, there has been a win-win agreement that will benefit everyone. In short, they have made history.

Ms. Mogherini said: “It is a decision that can open the way to a new chapter in international relations. I think this is a sign of hope for the entire world.” The Iranian foreign minister echoed those sentiments and described the deal as “a historic moment”.

He continued: “Today could have been the end of hope, but now we are starting a new chapter of hope.” Zarif rightly pointed out that the deal has ended an unnecessary conflict. As the TFF Associate Gareth Porter has shown in his book of the same title, it was in fact “A Manufactured Crisis”.

It should be remembered that Iran had been ready since 2003 to reach a nuclear deal when she agreed to ratify the Additional Protocol and voluntarily suspended enrichment for two years. The Bush Administration killed that deal by illegally stating that, contrary to the NPT regulations, Iran was not allowed to have any enrichment on her soil. Read More »

TFF PressInfo # 329: Congratulations and thank you, Iran!

JOLeave a comment

By Jan Oberg

Much better on the 14th of July, the French Revolution Day, than the 13th would have been. And it is a kind of revolution – namely, solving problems at the table rather than through yet another failed, counterproductive and self-defeating Western war on a Middle Eastern country.

A victory for non-violence and intelligence over violence and human folly.

Truly a victory for civilisation, for civilised manners – and with the “object” itself being a civilisation.

Javad Zarif – Iran’s brilliant foreign minister, perhaps the most professional and with the most friendly body language, including smiles, among peers anywhere – and his team achieved the impossible, namely to get a deal in an extremely a-symmetric conflict and negotiation set-up.

A-symmetry? Yes, to the trained conflict eye.

There’s been the Western bullying of Iran since the CIA-led US and UK coup d’etat against Iran’s democratic leader in 1953.

There has been Read More »

TFF PressInfo # 328 – With another approach, we would have a deal with Iran today

JOLeave a comment

By Jan Oberg

There could have been a deal with Iran today – to the benefit of everybody – if the nuclear issue had been approached in a fair, principled and visionary manner from Day One.

If there will be no deal later, one of the most important possible agreements in contemporary international history will have been lost, the risk of war will increase and the Iranians will suffer. And the United States and the EU (here France and Germany) will move further down in terms of relative global power and up in terms of self-isolation.

On the day of no deal, perhaps the Five Ps + Germany should spend a moment on self-reflection: What could we have done differently?

To the trained conflict- and peace-making eye, 99% of the Western commentators have failed to point out the benefits of a deal and, instead, devoted their creativity to find all kinds of possible negative aspects, details and – of course – on how the West should demand even more. They’ve suggested “red lines” at absurdum.

The fundamental a-symmetry of this whole conflict eludes them – or is conveniently left unmentioned.

At the table sit the five largest nuclear weapons powers which have, de facto and de jure, for decades completely and systematically ignored the provisions of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, NPT, and have repeatedly broken international law and conducted wars. They would never allow the type of inspections on their own territory that they demand of Iran. The U.S. issues threats – and plan a war – Iran has never threatened the U.S. And so on and so forth.

Absent from every nuclear discussion is Israel and other nuclear-armed countries which, in contrast to Iran, are not members of the NPT and have a record of warfare and occupation.

Imagine a world in which we had seen negotiations, for real, about reducing the possession of nuclear weapons as a quid pro quo of proliferation – exactly as stated in the NPT.

Imagine that we had required Iran to abstain from getting nuclear weapons as a quid pro quo of a promise by the nuclear “haves” that they would reduce their arsenals. Indeed, imagine that the United States which is Second to None in putting up demands on everybody “or else … and all options remain on the table” had promised the world that it would do something too to further the accepted and UN-based goal of general and complete nuclear disarmament. Imagine the recent NPT Review conference had resulted in something decent in a world order perspective. Indeed, imagine some kind of mutuality, fairness, and equivalence in the whole approach.

The approach was wrong from Day One. It was built on military and structural power, not on intellectual power.

What stands between the parties is Read More »

Pope Francis: Spiritual, Liberating Theology

JOLeave a comment

By Johan Galtung

What a gift to humanity, this Pope!

To choose global climate change as a major theme of his papacy is in the spirit of the times. What is revolutionary, and he uses that word often, is the focus on the poor. Climate change–including the long trend global warming over and above some lulls and local variations–has a clear class address, goes beyond making him the spiritual world leader.

The Pope talks about filth covering the earth, and about greed stimulated by corporate capitalism and consumerism as major causes underlying the technicality of CO2 release. The Pope also mentions the freshness of the gospels, including the unambiguous stand of Jesus for the poor in Matt 6:24–God vs Mammon–Matt 13:12–our economic system, and Matt 19:20-24 about giving one’s riches to the poor.

Pope Francis follows in his footsteps. Simply beautiful.

But there is more to it: a general theological discourse from the same continent as this non-Italian Pope: Liberation Theology. Gustavo Gutiérrez, Leonardo Boff, Miguel d’Escoto–Peruvian, Brazilian, Nicaraguan, from the major parts of the Latin Americas–now in their 80s have been rehabilitated. D’Escoto was foreign minister of the Sandinista government and one-year president of the UN General Assembly.

However, the rehabilitation has moved on, into the Caribbean, to the Latin American country that made world history, Cuba, and to the two Castros. Read More »

America at its best is – strange

JOLeave a comment

By Richard Falk

America even at its best is a strange place, alive with contradictions, a Teflon political culture that has an unshakable faith in its innocent and virtuous national character and its overall impact on the world, impervious to the ghosts of slavery and of ethnic cleansing of native Americans that should be tormenting our sleep and darkening our dreams, comfortable with its robust gun culture, and with its promiscuous reliance on rogue drones engineered to kill on command and on the brutal happenings that take place in black sites immorally situated in countries whose leaders agree to avert their gaze from the dirty work taking place.

Looked at from a short distance this is not a pretty picture.

Yet there are still those rare moments when this unsavory national profile seems not to be telling the whole story. For instance, I felt heartened by a recent news item reporting that the conservative Nebraska Legislature voted to abolish capital punishment, and in doing so went so far as to override the governor’s veto. That’s right, Nebraska!

Unfortunately, the welcome Nebraska move may not survive the backlash in the making. The Republican state governor, Pete Ricketts, vows to overturn the new law: “My words cannot express how appalled I am that we have lost a critical law to protect law enforcement and Nebraska families.” He is supported in this lethal passion by a pro-capital punishment legislator Read More »

The Value of Values to Build a World for the Common Good

JOLeave a comment

By Kamran Mofid

Lecture at World Congress of Faiths, Annual General Meeting, London School of Economics, University of London, May 20, 2015

Thank you for inviting me to speak to you today, and for giving me the opportunity to share with you my journey for the common good, a journey which I began many years ago, when as a young man I left Iran for England in 1972 in my search for life’s bigger picture.

Friends, I very much like to set the scene by reading a short statement, giving you a brief background to my presentation, my abstract, if you will:

First:

This presentation is dedicated to the youth of the world, our children and grand- children, who are the unfolding story of the decades ahead. May they rise to the challenge of leading our troubled world, with hope and wisdom in the interest of the common good to a better future

Second:

Our country, the United Kingdom, like all nations of the world, despite many good works, deeds and actions by so many individuals, organisations, civil societies and more, is facing a number of major socio-economic, political, ecological, moral, ethical and spiritual crises.

However, I wish to argue that:

Our crises can only be addressed, reversed and resolved, and our goals can only be achieved, if we change direction, adopt new values and become concerned with life’s bigger questions. We must reconnect ourselves with nature and with our true human and spiritual values. Moreover, as members of the household of humanity, we must provide security, sanctuary and constructive engagement for all of our human family. Sustained by the bounty of all, called by the Sacred, and animated into action by the Spirit of peace, Justice, and Reverence for All Life, we must be guided by values and take action in the interest of the common good, empowering each other to build a better world, for all of us.

Continued here.

A Warning against Kaplan’s Argument That “It’s Time to Bring Imperialism Back to the Middle East”

JOLeave a comment

By Johan Galtung and Naakow Hayford

There is much to agree with Robert D. Kaplan’s 25 May 2015 publication in Foreign Policy in his well-informed analysis. And very much to disagree with, especially his wrong remedy.

Kaplan ascribes the present “chaos” – as if major changes can be orderly or take place under old much praised “order” and “stability” – to the break-down of imperialisms, in plural, starting with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918. And he manages the incredible: not a single word about who gave them that death blow: Sykes-Picot, UK-France, helped by czarist Russia. Analysis?

However, he has much positive to say about the Empire-Caliphate as an order where diverse groups had very few territorial disputes (the millet system). But he does not draw the obvious conclusion: maybe there is a longing in the whole region back to that order–without Istanbul?

True, it is Sunni but do not leave out the possibility of some genius bridging the Sunni-Shia gap by creating a political-economic-military community including both Iran and a new Saudi orientation. Kaplan leaves no opening for any such potential, even though it is desired by millions in the region. More important than ISIS is the yearning for a caliphate. That is the driving force behind ISIS.

Rather, Kaplan sees the rise of the Islamic State as a result of the collapse of the European empire Read More »