Articles by David Adams
We found 145 results.
(Français) Leçons Tirés de la Journée Internationale de la Paix de Cette Année
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Oct 2020
2 Oct 2020 – En regardant les résultats de notre enquête sur la Journée internationale de la paix cette année, je suis frappé par deux aspects, l’un à long terme et l’autre à court terme, qui sont de bon augure pour l’avenir.
→ read full article
Lessons from This Year’s International Day of Peace
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Oct 2020
2 Oct 2020 – Looking at the results this year from our survey of the International Day of Peace, I am struck by two aspects, one long term and one short term, that bode well for the future.
→ read full article
(Français) L’espoir d’un atterrissage en douceur
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Sep 2020
1 Sep 2020 – Face aux prévisions pessimistes pour les États-Unis, pouvant aller jusqu’a la guerre civile, de nombreuses initiatives progressistes avancent. C’est la dialectique de l’histoire en action: «when the going gets tough, the tough get going» (quand les temps deviennent durs, les durs avancent.). Et cela fait naître l’espoir que le crash de l’empire pourrait avoir un “atterrissage en douceur.”
→ read full articleHope for a Soft Landing
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Sep 2020
1 Sep 2020 – In the face of pessimistic predictions for the United States, to the point of civil war, there are many progressive initiatives advancing. It’s the dialectics of history in action: “when the going gets tough, the tough get going.” And it raises the hopes that the crash of the empire could have a soft landing.
→ read full articleThe Crash of the American Empire
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Aug 2020
1 Aug 2020 – The American empire is crashing. What will it be like. Let us look at recent precedents.
→ read full articleRacism and the Culture of War
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Jul 2020
1 Jul 2020 – To succeed, the struggle against racism needs to be understood in the context of the struggle against the culture of war. The recent uprisings against racist violence by the police is another step towards the radical transformation from the culture of war to a culture of peace.
→ read full article
Trump and the USA Can Escape, but the Empire Cannot
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Jun 2020
5 Jun 2020 – The USA is trapped. It is ravaged by the coronavirus with inadequate medical preparedness. It is torn apart by racist violence. And it now has an unemployment rate that rivals that of the Great Depression. The military budget must be totally converted in order to save the country. Its military bases around the world must be dismantled and the soldiers brought home and put to useful work.
→ read full articleInvasion of Venezuela: Is It Operation Just Cause, Bay of Pigs or Wag the Dog?
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Jun 2020
1 Jun 2020 – On April 1 (April Fools Day) President Trump announced that the US will send a military force to Venezuela. If Trump does order an invasion, it may resemble the Bay of Pigs more than Operation Just Cause. The Venezuelan military, aided by Russian equipment and advisors, and backed, at least verbally, by China, is a force more similar to the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces in 1961 than the Panamanian forces in 1989.
→ read full articleHas the Crash Arrived?
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Mar 2020
19 Mar 2020 – The headlines provide abundant details about economic shutdowns in order to slow the spread of the COV-19 virus. But behind the headlines, there is another story more important in the long run: the global economy is a house of cards based on speculation and military spending. It seems likely that the house of cards will come crashing down as a result of the global economic shutdown.
→ read full articleTowards a Mayors’ Security Council
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Mar 2020
1 Mar 2020 – Around the world we see the beginning of failed states, consumed by violence: Libya, Yemen, and a case can be made for Mexico. Johan Galtung has gone so far as to imagine that the United States will split into two countries as the American Empire crumbles. The situation is so serious that UN Secretary-General Guterres devoted his annual press conference on February 4 to the “wind of madness” sweeping the globe. ”
→ read full article(Français) Pourquoi le budget militaire gonflé menace de faire tomber l’empire américain
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Feb 2020
1 fév. 2020 – Le budget militaire américain n’est pas payé par les bénéfices des exportations américaines. En fait, les États-Unis importent régulièrement plus qu’ils n’exportent et accusent un déficit qui, pour l’année 2019, était supérieur à un billion de dollars. Comme nous l’avons vu, le budget militaire en représente près de 75%.
→ read full article
Why the Bloated Military Budget Threatens to Bring Down the American Empire
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Feb 2020
1 Feb 2020 – The American military budget is not paid from the profits of American exports. In fact the US regularly imports more than it exports and runs a deficit which for the year 2019 was more than $1 trillion dollars. As we have seen the military budget accounts for almost 75% of this.
→ read full articleA World without the Nation-State
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Jan 2020
2 Jan 2020 – The state is a culture of war. In this case the state is the United States and their culture of war is shown in their role in the overthrow of President Morales of Bolivia (precisely because he was promoting a culture of peace) and their threat to punish Julian Assange (precisely because he revealed the secrets of their culture of war.) Not to mention that the states of the world are unable to seriously attack the problem of global warming, and the USA is the worst in this regard.
→ read full article
(Français) Le Pape, la Religion et la Culture de la Paix
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Dec 2019
2 décembre 2019 – Les initiatives du pape sont particulièrement opportunes, car elles soutiennent ce lien entre le désarmement nucléaire et le développement durable et envoient ce message aux églises catholiques du monde entier et à leurs fidèles qui sont plus d’un milliard.
→ read full articleThe Pope, Religion and the Culture of Peace
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Dec 2019
2 Dec 2019 – The initiatives of the Pope are especially timely because they support this linkage of nuclear disarmament and sustainable development and they send out this message to the Catholic churches around the world and their more than a billion religious followers.
→ read full article
The International Day of Peace
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Oct 2019
2 Oct 2019 – The International Day of Peace, as officially proclaimed by the UN, is the most universal action for peace in our times, and it contributes to the consciousness from the culture of war to a culture of peace. It would be good to be able to measure the IDP actions each year, to know if they are increasing or not, and to know if this is occurring throughout the world, or more in some regions than in others.
→ read full article
What Really Happened in Zimbabwe
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Sep 2019
8 Sep 2019 – Yesterday the New York Times carried several very long articles about former Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe who had just died, saying that he was a “tyrant” and that he “presided over the decline of one of Africa’s most prosperous lands.”
→ read full article(Français) La résolution des Nations Unies pour la culture de la paix
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Aug 2019
1er août 2019 – La lutte pour une culture de la paix pourrait gagner beaucoup plus de force si cette résolution était utilisée comme base d’analyse et de pratique par plus d’organisations dans le monde, mais malheureusement, elle est mal connue. La situation me rappelle l’utilisation d’un autre document historique des Nations Unies, la Déclaration universelle des droits de l’Homme.
→ read full articleThe UN Resolution for the Culture of Peace
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Aug 2019
1 Aug 2019 – The struggle for a culture of peace could gain much more force if this resolution were used as the basis for analysis and practice by more organizations around the world, but unfortunately it is relatively unknown. The situation reminds me of the use of another landmark UN document, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
→ read full articleConsciousness + Institutional Change = Culture of Peace
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Jul 2019
2 Jul 2019 – People are taking to the streets to defend human rights and demand democracy around the world. We need more institutional change if we are to harness the consciousness of people in the coming decade when the global financial system has crashed and a window of opportunity opens for us to move from the culture of war to a culture of peace.
→ read full articleRoadmap for Peace Activism
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Jun 2019
1 Jun 2019 – In this month’s bulletin of CPNN we try to identify those to whom we can look for peace leadership in these turbulent times. Let us consider their actions and advice. Let’s listen first to the new generation of youth activists.
→ read full article(Italiano) Perché Julian Assange è così importante
David Adams | Centro Studi Sereno Regis – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 May 2019
Il controllo dell’informazione è diventato un mezzo cruciale per la cultura dei guerra – esnza il quale non può sostenersi. In passato, solo alcuni dei segreti e delle bugie degli US e dei loro alleati sono state rivelate. Ma grazie a Julian Assange e alla sua organizzazione WikiLeaks, ne abbiamo appreso molti di più negli ultimi pochi anni. Come reagiscono i governi?
→ read full articleWhy Julian Assange Is So Important
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 May 2019
The control of information has become a crucial means for the culture of war – without this control it cannot be sustained. In the past, only a few of the secrets and lies were revealed. But thanks to Julian Assange and his organization WikiLeaks, we have learned about many more secrets and lies in the past few years. How do governments react?
→ read full articleCan Students Become a Revolutionary Force?
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Apr 2019
1 Apr 2019 – It seems we are now starting to see student strikes to demand that their governments address the problem of climate change. Can this movement become revolutionary? Students are beginning to see that their world is being exploited by their governments and that their schools seem to be in complicity with the governments. The American Youth Climate Strike say in their mission statement that “if the social order is disrupted by our refusal to attend school, then the system is forced to face the climate crisis and enact change.”
→ read full articleHow to Prepare for a Global Financial Crash: Rural-Urban Continuum and Electric Vehicles
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Mar 2019
1 Mar 2019 In this blog we have often proposed that the culture of war is not sustainable and that the American empire is destined to crash for the same reasons that the Soviet empire crashed. It can be an opportunity for a transition from the culture of war to a culture of peace. However, the crash of the American empire may well be accompanied (caused) by a global financial crash with suffering for ordinary people, as it did for the Soviet people 30 years ago.
→ read full article(Français) Où est la démocratie?
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Feb 2019
1er février 2019 – Au cours des derniers mois, deux élections ont eu lieu: en République Démocratique du Congo et au Venezuela.
→ read full articleWhere Is Democracy?
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Feb 2019
1 Feb 2019 – In the past few months we have a tale of two elections: In the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in Venezuela.
→ read full articleThe Doomsday Clock
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Jan 2019
2 Jan 2019 – Looking back at 2018, we see progress in all of the areas of a culture of peace except one: disarmament, and in particular nuclear disarmament. Symbolic of this, last year the “doomsday clock” of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists was reset to only two minutes before midnight, the shortest it has been since 1953!
→ read full articleRationale for an Alternative to the UN Security Council
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Dec 2018
3 Dec 2018 – In last month’s blog, I returned to a previous theme of an Alternative UN Security Council. It has been pointed out to me that I did not provide a very explicit rationale about this proposal and why it should be given priority. So let me try to do that now in terms of the following strategy and tactics involved.
→ read full articleAs the Empire Crashes
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Nov 2018
2 Nov 2018 – As the American empire begins to crash, capitalism becomes desperate and takes off its gloves. We see its fist; all of the characteristics of the culture of war carried to extreme. In fact, that is the simple nature of fascism, the culture of war carried to extreme. Trump in the USA, Erdogan in Turkey, now Bolsonaro in Brazil. The capitalists finance their campaigns in a desperate effort to protect their wealth.
→ read full article(Français) La solution souffle dans le vent
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Oct 2018
7 octobre 2018 – Je suis tombé sur an article à propos de deux réunions le même jour aux Nations Unies sur les armes nucléaires. Les principaux États nucléaires (États-Unis, France, Royaume-Uni, Chine et Russie) se sont tous rendus à la réunion sur la non-prolifération et ils ont boycotté ainsi la réunion sur le désarmement! Comme l’article le conclut à juste titre, les États nucléaires “n’accordent pas de priorité à leur obligation d’éliminer leurs propres armes de destruction massive, mais se concentrent plutôt sur l’empêchement des autres d’acquérir de telles armes”.
→ read full articleThe Answer Is Blowing in the Wind
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Oct 2018
7 Oct 2018 – I came across a piece about two meetings at the UN on the same day concerning nuclear weapons. The major nuclear states (USA, France, UK, China and Russia) all went to a meeting for non-proliferation and boycotted the meeting for nuclear disarmament. As the article correctly concludes, the nuclear states “place very little priority on their obligations to eliminate their own weapons of mass destruction, focusing instead on preventing others from acquiring such weapons.”
→ read full articleThe Paradox of the United Nations: Peace vs. Culture of Peace
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Sep 2018
2 Sep 2018 – If we consider the purpose for which the United Nations was formed: “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war,” it is failing badly. This spring, when we hoped that the UN would convene a High-Level Conference on Nuclear Disarmament, the meeting was cancelled due to pressure from the United States and its allies.
→ read full articleMovement for Sustainable Development: Model for Culture of Peace?
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Aug 2018
2 Aug 2018 – Already we see that the paradigm of a culture of peace, as opposed to a culture of war, is becoming internalized in the consciousness of a large proportion of humanity. Can we not expect that the closer we come to a collapse of the present system, the more it will become evident that wise financial investment should seek out productive sectors instead of militarized sectors of the economy? If and when this occurs, then the time will be ripe for a social revolution from the culture of war to a culture of peace.
→ read full article“Slow News” vs “Fast History”
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Jul 2018
2 Jul 2018 – This blog last month suggested that history is moving much faster than we think and that the collapse of the American empire is likely to come within the next two years. This leads me to the question: Can the slow development of the culture of peace make it possible for a transition from the culture of war to a culture of peace when the American empire crashes?
→ read full articleWhy There Is So Much Anger
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Jun 2018
7 Jun 2018 – Wherever we turn, people are angry. In France and United States where I live, voters are angry and turn their anger against immigrants and people of color. And they vote for the Front National and for Donald Trump. And the struggle in the US between students protesting school massacres, gun sales and the National Rifle Association is fueled by anger on both sides. We are going through an especially dangerous period of history, and we need to analyze its causes and possible solutions.
→ read full articleConsequences of the Crash of the American Empire
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Jun 2018
1 Jun 2018 – In last month’s article, I mentioned the prediction of Johan Galtung that the American empire cannot last more than another two years. Is that likely, and if so, what will be the consequences? Having witnessed the crash of a previous empire, I think is likely.
→ read full articleThe Times Call for Radical Action!
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 May 2018
1 May 2018 – Johan Galtung predicted the crash of the Soviet empire within one year, and he predicts the end of the American empire within the next two years. If he is correct, the crash of the global economy is likely to come before the threatened wars, before the full development of fascism, and before the full effects of global warming. And if he is correct, it will provide us with a window of opportunity in the next two years to refound the global political system.
→ read full articleTowards a Global Movement against All Violence
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Apr 2018
1 Apr 2018 – The growing mobilizations by teenagers in the US and Palestine remind me of the mobilizations by youth against the War in Vietnam in the 1960’s and by youth against Apartheid in the 1970’s. The time is short. Johan Galtung has repeated his prediction, first made in 2004, that the American Empire cannot be sustained beyond the year 2020.
→ read full article
The Role of Media for a Culture of Peace
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Feb 2018
1 Feb 2018 – Over the past century the control of information, especially through the mass media, has become the most important characteristic of the culture of war. Why? It is urgent that we continue to develop media for a culture of peace throughout the world, hoping that someday it will obtain an audience as great as that for the culture of war.
→ read full article
The Culture of War Is Hiding in Plain Sight: It Is the State
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Jan 2018
The state devotes its resources and is more or less controlled, overtly or covertly, by the military throughout the world. This is not new but has been true throughout history. If peace is to be obtained, it cannot be based on the state. Can the state be replaced? Yes!
→ read full articleThe Struggle to Eliminate Violence against Women Is Essential to the Culture of Peace
David Adams | Culture of Peace News Network – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Dec 2017
1 Dec 2017 – The advance this year of the struggle to eliminate violence against women is an important step forward for the global movement for a culture of peace. Here’s why.
→ read full articleCatalunya: Culture of War or Culture of Peace?
David Adams | Culture of Peace News Network – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Nov 2017
1 Nov 2017 – It seems that the people of Catalunya will vote in December whether to declare independence from Spain, i.e. to form a separate state. If someone were to ask my advice about this election, I would say that it risks becoming a decision to move Catalunya towards the culture of war. There are good alternative for Catalunya, apart from secession.
→ read full articleTowards a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly
David Adams | Culture of Peace News Network – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Aug 2017
2 Aug 2017 – We need a profound reform of the UN so that it is managed more directly by the peoples of the world – through cities or parliaments instead of the present Member States that are inextricably linked to the culture of war. A significant first step towards such a reform would be the proposed parliamentary assembly of the UN (UNPA). There are proposals from the European Parliament, the Pan-African Parliament and an international conference of around 300 chief justices, judges, legal experts and ambassadors from nearly 60 countries predominantly from the Global South.
→ read full articleRole of Mass Demonstrations in History
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Mar 2017
I am reminded of mass demonstrations which I have experienced over the years in the United States: the gathering for civil rights at the Washington Monument in 1963 when Martin Luther King made his great speech “I have a dream!”; the mobilization of one million people for a nuclear test ban in New York’s Central Park in 1982; and the mobilizations in 2003 against the American invasion of Iraq which involved millions of people around the world.
→ read full article