Articles by Johan Galtung
We found 973 results.
(Finnish) Galtung: Yhdysvallat valmisteli Libyan sotaa pitkään
Johan Galtung - Kansan Uutiset,
25 Apr 2011
Rauhantutkimuksen veteraani Johan Galtung kuvaa Libya-operaation raadollisuutta ja luotaa tulevaa.
→ read full articleMena Revolution and Counter-Revolution
Johan Galtung, 18 Apr 2011 - TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Apr 2011
Africa. The key to the whole exercise: in 1956 still mainly owned by Anglo-France, Libya becoming an Italian colony in 1911; posing threats of union, independence and ties to China. NATO wants to control it through AFRICOM and EUCOM–three different words for Pentagon–and this is where Libya enters; rejecting AFRICOM with Sudan, Eritrea, Zimbabwe and Cote d’Ivoire (and Sahraoui). No US bases–hence countries to be subdued. The Libya action may put Africa on fire.
→ read full articleThe Civil Crime 1861-65
Johan Galtung, 11 Apr 2011 - TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Apr 2011
“Causes of war” is an academic pursuit for the PhD hungry; “causes of peace” is the serious challenge. How could this crime against humanity [American Civil War] have been avoided, what would conflict solution, even peace, have looked like?.. ‘Welcome to America, home to 5% of the world’s people & 25% of the world’s prisoners,’ says the NAACP. Mainly Blacks. Rented out as labor from privatized prisons on the stock exchange, deploring lower crime rates, bribing judges for longer sentences. Jim Crow II, South and North. USA, wake up, before the republic becomes a victim of its own absurdity.
→ read full articleThe Empire Hits Back
Johan Galtung - TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Apr 2011
Then rather treat Gadhafi the way they handled Milosevic: if you do not give in to our demands Beograd–read Tripoli–will be flattened by carpet bombing. The Finn who conveyed that message got a Nobel Peace Prize, maybe he could be called upon again?
→ read full articleLibya: The War Is On
Johan Galtung, 28 Mar 2011 - TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Mar 2011
As someone on National Public Radio quipped, “President Obama has fired more cruise missiles than all other Nobel Peace Prize winners combined”, and they have hit all kinds of targets: flying, driving, walking, being. What is next?
→ read full articleTwo Human Made Disasters: Japan and Libya
Johan Galtung, 21 Mar 2011 - TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Mar 2011
(Japan) We pray, we hope: no Chernobyl 1986. Stop! this is enough. We know enough to end all nuclear plants. There are alternatives. (Libya) BRIC + Germany are now called upon. Abstention is not good enough. Be on the side of history, and that means: be on the side of the Arab liberation from Western European-US-Israeli dominance, and an economy causing ever more inequality-misery, and autocracy. The Abstaining Five have experience in fighting such pathologies. BRIC+G, A5: The ball is in your court. Play it well.
→ read full articleThe Arab World: A Discourse about Discourses
Johan Galtung,
14 Mar 2011
Mainstream discourse is buoyed by interests and the usual anomalies of the media. The focus is on events, not permanents, no sense of history-geography, and a philosophy of cause-effect, not of dialectics inside complex systems. No dismantling empires or coming to terms with islam, but lousy one-country-at-the-time politics. And USA not on the side of history, but out of touch.
→ read full articlePerfide Albion
Johan Galtung,
8 Mar 2011
As the Arab revolt broadens and deepens the roles of a global and a regional empire, USA and Israel, will surface increasingly. There will be more about that next week; here the focus is on the third one of the kind, the United Kingdom, or simply England, Albion, known for its perfidy, Lord Palmerston’s famous “no permanent friends, no permanent enemies; permanent interests”. John Bull = John Bully? That empire had model character, and Tony Blair did his best to revive Albion by serving an Eagle across the Atlantic:
→ read full articleThe Decline of the US Republic?
Johan Galtung, 28 Feb 2011 - TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Feb 2011
That the US Empire is falling with the structure so laboriously built in the Middle East crumbling is clear even if there will be fall-back positions. But the US Republic is also in bad shape, with the threat of government shutdown March 5, like in 1995. Why? Because the US polity is inadequate to the challenge.
→ read full articleThink Cosmically Act Globally Eat Locally
Johan Galtung, 21 Feb 2011 - TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Feb 2011
is the slogan advocated by two University of California Santa Cruz professors, the astrophysicist Joel R. Primack, and his wife, the cultural philosopher (and singer) Nancy Abrams. Their fine book, The New Universe and the Human Future: How a Shared Cosmology Could Transform the World, based on the Terry Lectures at Yale October 2009, will be published by Yale University Press in April.
→ read full article
TRANSCEND: Methods and Solutions
Johan Galtung | Alternate Focus – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Feb 2011
Galtung’s approach to mediation offers concrete proposals that are intended to give both sides the sense that they are winners. In this interview segment he describes his methodology and offers proposals for peace in the Middle East and other areas of conflict.
→ read full articleWorld History Unfolding – What Next?
Johan Galtung, 14 Feb 2011 - TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Feb 2011
And then it happened: Mubarak out. Enormous cheers in Tahrir square; Egypt is Free! A historical deed, triggered by Tunisia, carried by a million heroes. Leaderless of course, as a strategy; leaders can easily be targeted. Everybody rallied around one idea, the ouster of Mubarak–like of Ben Ali in Tunisia. End of Act I…. Sooner or later the Camp David accords and the joint blockade of Gaza–outcomes of autocracy and bribery–will be on the table. Sooner or later the youth wave will hit more dominos; PLO, Syria, Iran, and the Big One–the Saudi Royal House. Maybe even that other Big One–Israel–liberating it from narcissism, paranoia, and generalocracy, to positive judaism. Maybe one day even the Biggest One–the USA–making it less corporate, more democratic.
→ read full article
TRANSCEND: Ideas and Insights
Johan Galtung | Alternate Focus – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Feb 2011
In this interview Galtung gives his views on a wide range of topics including the banality of diplomacy, as revealed by WikiLeaks, and the root causes of the 9/11 attacks. With his usual frankness, he offers a critique of Israel’s approach to solving the question of Palestine.
→ read full articleWorld History Unfolding II
Johan Galtung - TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Feb 2011
What a week! And we have no idea how many weeks are ahead of us!! We only know that the process cannot be reversed, and we can watch on CNN+ one reason why. That lack of understanding, picking the wrong discourses.
→ read full articleWorld History Unfolding I
Johan Galtung - TRANSCEND Media Service,
31 Jan 2011
And then it happens, right there, for our eyes. The pattern, above all a product of the US-Israel alliance (inspired by Jesaiah 2:1-5), is unraveling. The pattern was always the same, by force or bribes or both to create “friendly governments”, “allies in the peace process” as VP Joe Biden–Obama’s foreign policy expert–says. These hours, these days. Some process.
→ read full articleOlof Palme and World Interests
Johan Galtung, 24 Jan 2011 - TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Jan 2011
Leeds City Hall, UK – Jan 23, 2011. To Palme the two superpowers and their hideous arms were more than a problem to each other. Together they were a world problem and it was in the world interest to sort it out…. Olof Palme’s crime, even treason, was very clear and unpardonable: he defined the waiting room-recovery home as normalcy, and created a new concept of Sweden as a Great Power, based on the welfare state and neutrality.
→ read full articleUSA versus China, and a Peace Prize
Johan Galtung,
17 Jan 2011
What we see is rather that countries high on civil and political rights-CPR seem to feel entitled to warfare to impose human rights. But, like democracy, human rights must come from the inside, not imposed, even by breaking them. Free and fair multi-party national elections can even legitimize going to war, and their absence in China comes with almost no inter-state war. If we add to that definition “transparency and dialogue”, then WikiLeaks shows the lack thereof. Democracy by majority serves as license to kill rather than a duty to be transparent across borders and use dialogue for solutions.
→ read full articleTwo Indias: Gandhiji and Modern India
Johan Galtung,
10 Jan 2011
Talk Given in New Delhi, Dec 30 2010 — Gandhi was killed not far from where we are right now by a Pune brahmin, Godse, and I was that 17 years old boy in Norway who cried when hearing the news. Something unheard of had happened.
→ read full articleAbout the Editorial “Islam and the West – Some Differences” – Nov. 29, 2010
Johan Galtung – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Jan 2011
Readers have kindly pointed out two unfortunate formulations.
→ read full articleWikiWishes for WikiPromises for 2011
Johan Galtung, 3 Jan 2011 - TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Jan 2011
The world needs knowledgeable and skilled women and men promoting the interests of nature, humans everywhere, all nations and states, civilizations and regions, and the world. Some might even be called diplomats and narrow it to one point, their nation. And the Country of the Year, Turkey, showed that consistent peace politics, creating amazing friendly relations with all neighbors is possible. What it takes is a decision to do so.
→ read full articleThe Middle East: One More Look
Johan Galtung,
27 Dec 2010
Taming all Arabs with Jesaiah 2:1-5 geopolitics? Impossible, forget about it. No, change has to come from inside Israel, already in Ibn Khaldun stage 4: from kibbutzim idealism via ritualism via moral torpitude to all fighting all. But who are the new Bedouins knocking down the gates, shouting “your time is up”? My best bet and hope: young Israeli women, enraged by (ultra)-orthodoxy, wedded to a state with a Jewish character, but not to zionist geopolitics. You are there, somewhere. The clock of history is ticking for you.
→ read full articleWomen and the 21st Century
Johan Galtung, 20 Dec 2010 - TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Dec 2010
Feminism has made an enormous contribution by identifying patriarchy as a pattern underlying capitalism and militarism…. Making patriarchy visible through brilliant feminist articulation is a transcending contribution, reminiscent of the marxist focus on another deep structure hidden to the unguided eye: the interface of means and modes of production. Or Lenin and others on imperialism, Gandhi and many others on colonialism. Race. And agism: like placing people above 67 etc. in a ghetto called retirement (or children in a ghetto called schools?).
→ read full articleThe Korean Peninsula: Two Scenarios
Johan Galtung,
13 Dec 2010
Acceptance Speech of the DMZ Peace Prize – Chuncheon, South Korea, 5 Dec 2010 – “Today North Korea’s economy is sluggish to say the least, South Korea’s brilliant but vulnerable to crises; having had some of them. And more may be coming if South Korea adopts too much of the US economic style. South Korea may accompany the US economy on its way down, just like North Korea may be hanging on to the Chinese economy on its way up. One falling, one rising. Double digit growth for North Korean capi-communism and crisis, devaluation etc., for South Korean hyper-capitalism? Not impossible.”
→ read full articleGlobal Domestic Policy – And WikiLeaks
Johan Galtung - TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Dec 2010
Nor is class fading out: the world upper classes enrich themselves in the financial system, greatly aided by the International Monetary Fund–and the world lower classes use the drug system for similar purposes, as acted out in Rio de Janeiro. Two perverse systems coming out of the absurdity of world hyper capitalism, supported by a fading empire. We need and deserve something better, nothing perfect, but much better. We cannot build globalization on such absurdities.
→ read full articleThe Education of a Peacemaker
Philip Grant interviewing Johan Galtung – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Dec 2010
“Nationalism is not the same as culture…. This triad of chosenness, glory and trauma produces vicious types of nationalistic ideologies that are constantly threatening world peace…. Nationalism lays claims on land and times…. Education has degenerated into schooling, schooling has mutated into a way of earning degrees, and degrees are seen simply as a ticket to earning a living.”
→ read full articleIslam and the West: Some Differences
Johan Galtung, 29 Nov 2010 - TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Nov 2010
The three abrahamic religions judaism-christianity-islam are similar in being revealed truths 4,000, 2,000, 1,400 years ago; and different by being revealed into different contexts, and by the latter building on the former. These 16 debatable points are based on themes frequently coming up in dialogues.
→ read full articleHitler and the Germans
Johan Galtung, 22 Nov 2010 - TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Nov 2010
Berlin: The exhibition with that name is on and very much worth visiting. The fact that it exists is laudable in itself, and people come, many, standing in line. There is much expertise behind this effort to explore why Hitler attracted the support he got, including with a coalition party winning an election as free and fair as they come early March 1933, right after what is referred to as the Machtergreifung, grabbing the power and actually was a Machtübergabe, giving the power–to Hitler. And his NSDAP, the national socialist German labor party, Na from National and zi from Sozialist add up to Nazi. Imagine now that they actually stood for both.
→ read full articleThe Decline and Fall of Norway
Johan Galtung, 15 Nov 2010 - TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Nov 2010
Then the third revelation. Wars among states decrease as wars among nations increase; the state system going down and the nation system up in salience. What could make young men kill Afghans when Norway is not attacked? Constructing Norway as a killer nation, digging deep down in Norwegian archaeology, to the Vikings, invoking their symbols, helmets and Valhalla, with craniums to boot. Like SS. Quisling, from the Telemark province, also used the Germanic cult of anything old Nordic for his fascist Norwegian Legion. Name of the Norwegian Afghanistan ISAF battalion: Telemark. Ominous.
→ read full articleCivilization as a Way of Life
Johan Galtung - TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Nov 2010
Right now the West of the West, the USA, is losing not only its empire, but after .com, housing and finance bubbles comes the US$ bubble, with the federal debt increasing 3,2 billion dollars per day since 2006, the unemployed 7,300 per day since 2008 and 1,400 jobs lost in industries per day since 2006. And 2 1/2 times more money circulating, meaning printed, than before the 2008 crash (Der Spiegel, 44-2010). Worse than a failed state: a failed society. Will this make the West less arrogant, learning to pay attention to economic-social rights, to togetherness and sharing, to neither too little nor too much, to spiritual growth, to economic and political eclecticism, and democracy by dialogue? To harmony through mutual and equal benefit? The better a Western country manages to learn from the rest of the world, not only preach, the better the people will fare. And the more a non-Western country develops of its own, independent of the West, the better it will fare; not belittling what it can learn from the West for dynamism, democratic transitions and human rights.
→ read full articleThe Cultural Unity of Black Africa?
Johan Galtung,
1 Nov 2010
Douala, Cameroun: That is the title of the fascinating book by Cheikh Anta Diop (1923-86), published by Presence Africaine in Paris and Dakar first time in 1959. A very original doctoral thesis presented at the Sorbonne in 1954, and it passed the test: it was refused by some minor French character. After that, Diop published a number of books on related themes till his demise in 1986, arguing a federal United States of Africa, with 700 million inhabitants, eight natural regions, incredibly rich.
→ read full articleThe UN, Peace and Peace Education
Johan Galtung, 25 Oct 2010 - TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Oct 2010
Voksenåsen, Oslo: Ladies and gentlemen, what an honor to celebrate the 65th anniversary of the United Nations on my own 80th birthday, this 24 October 2010, being invited to deliver the Dag Hammarskjöld lecture! My own health is good, how about the 15 years younger UN?
→ read full articlePeace as a Way of Life
Johan Galtung, 18 Oct 2010 - TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Oct 2010
Clear the past, move on. Conflicts are waiting for you, embrace them as challenges. Fight to solve them for mutual and equal benefit; no flight, please. Identify the sticky issues, search for a solution beyond the passive co-existence of avoiding violence. Fine goals those, but be more ambitious. Search for an active co-existence where all move on, based on the solution, into challenging futures no doubt filled with new conflicts to take on.
→ read full articleThe Western Peace Prize
Johan Galtung, 11 Oct 2010 - TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Oct 2010
One more abuse of the Nobel Peace Prize to promote Western, read US, foreign policy. Last year a speech prize with no follow-up except scrapping some old-fashioned nuclear monsters paving the way for major US nuclear rearmament of warheads and the weapons carrier tripod, protesting possible UK cuts of the Trident. But, verbally the prize touched the reduction of standing armies in Nobel’s testament–whose money they are handling. This year they give a human rights prize for domestic matters in what USA sees as its major competitor, China, far removed from any reduction of armies or Nobel’s concern for understanding among nations.
→ read full articleA Yugoslav Community for a Yugosphere?
Johan Galtung, 4 Oct 2010 - TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Oct 2010
The countries were born in deep anger, much too quickly, much too violently, traumas being heaped on top of old, and new trauma mountains. Time passes, no wounds are healed, but a new decade has sedimented new events on top of the 1990s horrors. For a new generation this is already history. But history has much to tell.
→ read full articleChina and World Harmony: Some Ideas
Johan Galtung, 27 Sep 2010 - TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Sep 2010
China should become better at explaining herself, both in a Western market-growth-democracy-human rights discourse, and in a Chinese discourse of both-and, yin-yang dialectics, distribution and social and world harmony. An oriental Davos in Hong Kong in dialogue with that Western one; and a global TV, more like multi-angle Al Jazeera than BBC-CNN, would give the world a strong, not abrasive, Chinese voice. With very much to say that the world in general, and the West in particular, badly need to hear.
→ read full articleHenri Dunant, Red Cross, What Next?
Johan Galtung, 20 Sep 2010 - TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Sep 2010
[Henri Dunant’s] moment of truth, as we all know, was the battle of Solferino in Lombardy, 24 June 1859, a little more than 150 years ago, where he witnessed the unspeakable suffering brought about by one more stupid battle, pitting 300,000 soldiers against each other, in one more stupid war, between France and Austria that time; mainly waged by their upper classes sacrificing their underlings.
→ read full articleChina Yin/Yang
Johan Galtung,
13 Sep 2010
Talk at the Beijing Foreign Studies University, Sep 2010.
→ read full articleUFOs
Johan Galtung - TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Sep 2010
Being an agnostic on UFOs, let me give one justification, and then one metaphor, for a serious exploration of the UFO scenario.
→ read full articleJapan Right Now: What Happens?
Johan Galtung, 30 Aug 2010 - TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Aug 2010
There are reasons for deep concern. Of the countries in the grip of the US alliances Japan may have become the most American. Beaten in its deep cultural foundations, not only militarily, Japan is like a monotheistic country with God residing 7/24 in Washington. Being so different, americanization was not a dialect, a variation on one’s own idiom, like in Germany and Norway, but a new language.
→ read full articleEducation and Peacebuilding
Johan Galtung, 23 Aug 2010 - TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Aug 2010
Talk at the Japan Education Research Association, Hiroshima
→ read full articleCivilian Peace Service
Johan Galtung, 16 Aug 2010 - TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Aug 2010
Thus, the Nonviolent Peaceforce, and the Civilian Peace Service, are riding on these waves into the future. What could they pick up from past and present? There is a basic problem: now coming from the West, there is always the danger that they could become the continuation of aggressive Western governmental politics by nongovernmental means. How can this be avoided? First of all, by demilitarizing the terminology. Rather than “force”, use “service”, or simply “work”. Gandhi himself was criticized for the term “brigade”, but he was very attached to the idea of the “heroic nonviolent warrior” (kshatria). Also avoid terms like “deployment” and “intervention”; rather, use “working” and “assistance”. Listen with the ears of those who have been killed by, and suffered from, deployment and intervention.
→ read full articleMinistries of Peace?
Johan Galtung,
9 Aug 2010
The text, the message of a ministry, is revealed in its subsections, like the 64 US Congressmen headed by Dennis Kucinich do so well in the proposal for a law to establish a US Department of Peace. Let us think in terms of three major tasks: mediation of present conflicts, conciliation for the traumas of past violence, and construction of a more solid pace for the future. The general formula would be equality and equity between genders, generations, races, classes, nations and districts. This is not the same as human rights; human rights lift the bottom up, but equity is a relation, building equality into the interaction.
→ read full article
The Fall of the US Empire – And Then What? (Part 1)
Paul Jay interviewing Johan Galtung and Dennis Kucinich -The Real News Network,
2 Aug 2010
Johan Galtung and Dennis Kucinich discuss the proposal for a Department of Peace.
→ read full articleThe Fall of the US Empire – And Then What? (Part 2)
Paul Jay interviewing Johan Galtung and Dennis Kucinich - The Real News Network,
2 Aug 2010
Dennis Kucinich and Johan Galtung discuss the proposal for a Department of Peace.
→ read full articleSpying for the USA-And for Peace
Johan Galtung, 2 Aug 2010 - TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Aug 2010
To expose war crimes parading as “secrets” is a service for peace. Ellsberg got the alternative Nobel Peace Prize. So will Assange.
→ read full articleIn Memoriam of Three Colleagues Who Recently Passed On
Johan Galtung,
26 Jul 2010
Elise M. Boulding (1920–24 Jun 2010)
John Wear Burton (2 Mar 1915–23 Jun 2010)
Hakan Wiberg (12 Jun 1942–3 Jul 2010)
I Support Mairead Maguire’s Appeal to Free Mordechai Vanunu
Johan Galtung – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Jul 2010
Mordechai and I got the Right Livelihood Award, aka the alternative Nobel Peace Prize, the same year, 1987. He embodies the best of Western Civilization: courage, honesty, truth, dedication to peaceful resolution.
→ read full articleConflict Transcendence as Driving Force in History
Johan Galtung,
19 Jul 2010
Speech delivered at the International Sociological Association – Gothenburg, Sweden, July 2010.
→ read full articleHedonism as Australia Theory
Johan Galtung,
12 Jul 2010
Sydney: Much can be said about Australian politics, on mining taxes and commodity values up up up, with China buying, of Labour changing chairperson and prime minister like in the Soviet Union, the Party decides, of Australia in Afghanistan heading for Gallipoli II. And the new prime minister rejecting the former, mandarin-speaking Kevin Rudd with a project, a vision for Asia, with close ties to China and ASEAN, ASEAN+8. A world statesman, with a project beyond retired Australia with no project beyond status quo and being a US client. And neurotically concerned with a thousand asylum seekers.
→ read full articleVeterans of Current Wars: Some Perspectives
Johan Galtung - TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Jul 2010
And these are not good wars, in the sense of clear-cut wars of Good against Evil. The goals of USA-West, beyond suppressing “insurrection”, seem to include revenge, pure paranoia, clear economic interests, getting bases for future wars that may also be far from “good”. The goals of the enemy, defined by the US-West as Evil, are often very badly understood or not at all. These are not winnable wars. Like the English experienced 19 April 1775, being attacked by an invisible American enemy on the Boston-Concord road fighting “like savages”: savages have a tendency to win, even it may take time. “Asymmetric war” is in their favor, fighting for sacred values, freedom, human rights, ready to sacrifice their lives, with unlimited time perspective.
→ read full articleAre We Heading for NATO vs. SCO?
Johan Galtung,
28 Jun 2010
How is this working out? Two huge alliances, one mainly Christian, one to a large extent Muslim, but also much broader and representative? Dialoguing with Afghanistan, ASEAN and countries in the former Soviet Union like white Russia, and also with Sri Lanka? The famous West against the Rest? To a large extent, yes–and also USA against China as the key countries on either side. With a difference, though: the USA is at the end of its imperial career, losing ground all over; China is building its position with talent and energy.
→ read full articleConflict Transformation as a Way of Life
Johan Galtung,
21 Jun 2010
“If you cannot remove conflict, why not adjust your thinking about it? Why not try and see conflict as the salt of life, the big energizer, the tickler, the tantalizer, rather than as a bothersome nuisance, as noise in perfect channel, as disturbing ripples in otherwise quiet waters? In short, why not treat conflict as a form of life, particularly since we all know that it is precisely during the period of our lives when we are exposed to a conflict that really challenges us, and that we finally are able to master, that we feel most alive”.
→ read full articleTwo Empires Falling – But How?
Johan Galtung,
14 Jun 2010
The significance of the Rosenstrasse nonviolence in the heart of Berlin in the middle of the war is neglected, just like Obama neglected the role of nonviolence in ending both colonialism and the cold war in his Nobel Peace Prize speech, probably the most belligerent ever given (and his contempt for the prize was emphasized by giving the money away to organizations that had nothing to do with peace).
→ read full articleMexico-USA: Drugs-Arms-Money
Johan Galtung & Fernando Montiel T., 7 Jun 2010 - TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Jun 2010
In 1846-48 the USA conquered 53% of the Mexican territory in a terrible war; the USA says it was 33%. Today a fifth of the Mexicans live in the USA, legally or not; 53% of them would mean 30 million more in the USA. Far too much, says Arizona in the anti-illegal immigration law, denounced by Calderón as threat to human rights and democracy. Obama, to the right of Bush, sends 1,200 soldiers to the border; with 1 million Americans now living in Mexico, mainly close to beaches, to stretch meager pensions…. Meanwhile, Hugo Chávez was on CNN-Español and claimed that during his presidency Venezuelan poverty dropped from 73% to 40%, and misery from 23% to 5%. Given his social policy it might simply be true, or close to it. So much more important than GNP growth. And threatened by Obama’s seven bases in Colombia, and the Fourth Fleet. And yet the voice of the future.
→ read full articleWhere Is the World Economy Heading?
Johan Galtung, 31 May 2010 - TRANSCEND Media Service,
31 May 2010
Imagine you are ill. A health rating agency, let us call it Moody & Poor, publishes your rating. Somebody bets on your death. Others withdraw life support; what might have been a self-denying becomes a self-fulfilling, demoralizing, prophecy. The betting company cashes in “some serious money”–the expression used in Goldman Sachs when they celebrated the fall of the US housing market (Washington Post 24 April 2010). Remedy: outlaw most, make credit rating–teleconferences by 5 voting experts–transparent. They are paid by the people who issue the debts to be rated.
→ read full articleThe US Civil Rights Revolution
Johan Galtung, 24 May 2010 - TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 May 2010
A research project 1958-60 on school desegregation in Charlottesville VA brought this author close to that abominable century of deliberate delay. Interviewing white segregationists brought up three major factors in their prejudice: they, the blacks, are angry because of slavery and will take revenge, stab us in the back; they are all communists against our society; they are ugly. Hidden in this was a recipe for individual black advance in white society: take history with a smile, be right wing Republican, be pretty-handsome. At least two out of these three may take you there. It is not pigment. Examples are obvious.
→ read full articleHung Parliament or Hung Parliamentarism?
Johan Galtung, 17 May 2010 - TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 May 2010
Is Anglo-America a conspiracy against conflict resolution, in favor of conflict settlement through victory? Hosting a Karl Marx, yet for those who think class is out look at the composition of the new cabinet in terms of education, family and nation-within-nation.
→ read full articleDo Peace Studies Reach Out, Including Others?
Johan Galtung,
10 May 2010
Some personal reflections on some personal experiences: it depends on how we conceive of peace studies.
→ read full articleHow Do Wars End?
Johan Galtung, 3 May 2010 - TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 May 2010
Gone are the old days when might was right and unconditional surrender was the end of a 141-year unbroken chain of US wars, from 1812–the final battle in the War of Independence– to 1953, the Korean war armistice. And gone are the days when might was a sign of divine mandate, God is behind. Among christians God may favor the mightiest. Among muslims, perhaps. But certainly not across that divide. Gone are the days of direct battle heroism. Sitting at a computer in the Pentagon directing drones, or in a cockpit at 44,000 feet hitting “coordinates”, in favor of pure cowardice. Or, rather: the risks change with the war. When more commit suicide than are killed in the field reality has changed. Confronted with a choice between a very elusive victory, defeat, and flight, conflict resolution might grow in attractiveness.
→ read full articleThe Three Nuclear Issues
Johan Galtung,
26 Apr 2010
Add to this the divinity problem. God uses extreme force, causing desertification, to punish pagans. So do nuclear bombs, and birds of a feather go together. They can be used to punish Japanese (who had capitulated) telling whose God is the stronger. They confirm divinity on their owners; civilizations, not states and certainly not non-states. Divine power to them is worse than proliferation. It is profanization.
→ read full articleInternational Norms, International Standards
Johan Galtung,
19 Apr 2010
“International” spells Western, the leading norms and standards being those of the leading countries. In no way does this mean that they are irrelevant, or harmful. But it could mean that they are incomplete, dated, Western views, with the state system as the material, and secular enlightenment as the spiritual, pillar.
→ read full articleGlobalizing God: Religion and Peace in the Social Sciences
Johan Galtung,
12 Apr 2010
God has to globalize and should have done so before the stock exchange. Hard readings lead to intolerance or grudging tolerance. Badly needed: respect and curiosity; dialogue and mutual learning. There is so much wisdom! Select! Eclect! Go beyond state-territorial and national-cultural borders, and transcend those jealously guarded borders in the mind, between disciplines and religions.
→ read full articleA World of Regions — And the EU Role?
Johan Galtung,
5 Apr 2010
The US Empire is leaving an economic-military-political-cultural gap, China is not signing up, nor the EU with its recent experience of how colonialism crumbles. The state system is also fading–except for the biggest ones–being increasingly region-oriented. EU is the most mature, but …
→ read full articleThe Cocoyoc Declaration
Johan Galtung – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Mar 2010
October 8-12, 1974 a symposium on “Patterns of Resource Use, Environment and Development Strategies” was convened in Cocoyoc, Mexico by the directors of United Nations Environment Programme and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Maurice Strong and Gamani Corea. The rapporteurs were Barbara Ward for resource use and the environment and Johan Galtung […]
→ read full articleIn Praise of Nonalignment
Johan Galtung,
22 Mar 2010
We are living a world battle against terrorism. With the words of the present US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, then, in 2001 a Senator, in our ears: “if you are not with us (meaning US) you are with the terrorists”. Not the bland, “if you are not with us you are against us, no, […]
→ read full articleWhen Will Men Catch Up with Women?
Johan Galtung,
14 Mar 2010
The Women’s Day came and went, even the 100th after the day was proposed by Clara Zetkin at a woman’s conference in Copenhagen 1910. Later, on 8 March, there were demonstrations in Europe against a male stupidity known as World War I. And that is the point made here: when will men finally catch up […]
→ read full articleDemocracy At Work
Johan Galtung,
8 Mar 2010
This weekend has given us two cases, Iceland and Iraq. In Iceland the referendum, by an overwhelming majority of 90-95%, rejected the idea that Iceland, meaning tax-payers, shall compensate the English and Dutch governments for compensating the losses of US$ 5.3 billion suffered by 300,000 citizens due to the abusive banking by Icesave that collapsed […]
→ read full articleIsrael Against Herself
Johan Galtung,
27 Feb 2010
Yes, incapacitating Hamas missiles is as understandable as firing them on an occupier. But the Gaza massacre a year ago is something else. The extreme rejection of the Goldstone report–if anything biased in Israel’s favor–tells another story. Israel was supported by a vote in a US Congress essentially endorsing itself having done the same, occupying-colonizing […]
→ read full articleDevelopment as a Way of Life
Johan Galtung,
21 Feb 2010
The way development has been conceived of in this book(1) goes far beyond a comparison of countries in economic achievement. All kinds of dimensions are considered, economic, military, political, cultural, and social, seen as structural and cultural. All spaces are there, nature, human, social, world. And a very simple philosophy: development as unfolding of the […]
→ read full articleSerbia Past and Future
Johan Galtung,
12 Feb 2010
Beograd: The NATO attack May-June 1999 left scars still not healed, like the bombed out Ministry of the Interior (Israelis want to invest in a hotel at that site). But the place is as vibrant with culture and restaurants-cafes and intellectualisms of all kinds as ever. An enviable resilience. Orthodox optimism? Processing the past is […]
→ read full articlePoor America
Johan Galtung,
7 Feb 2010
Consider this. Obama promised change we can believe in and delivered non-change we certainly believe in, betraying those who voted for him. His deeds do not match his rhetoric, so he will lose badly at the mid-term elections. A one-term president? Worse, maybe his lame duck presidency is over. Not even one term. Take the […]
→ read full articleAfghanistan: From Killing to Bribing
Johan Galtung,
31 Jan 2010
The London conference on Afghanistan was a done deal and has been in the works for a long time. The Taliban seem to be resistant to killing, they actually add to their numbers like amoeba and launch attacks ever closer to the hearts of power. So, if military power, the Big Stick, even carried by […]
→ read full articleThe Past as a Resource
Johan Galtung,
20 Jan 2010
Tunis, 30 Mouharram 1431. One reason for traveling to Tunisia was its absence from international media these days. So things must be good, even better than good. No major tragedy, nor anything entertaining, just people managing like people usually do, with mutual rights and obligations, sometimes unequal, sometimes not. And this is exactly the case […]
→ read full articleJohn Grisham the Sociologist
Johan Galtung,
11 Jan 2010
In front of me are about half of Grisham’s 22 books, each about 450 pp, brick sized bestsellers, fed to passengers boarding airports all over the world. Thus, exiting from Delhi recently no book by or about Gandhi was in sight (business manuals, yes), but Grisham. So I am negative, maybe envious (oh yes, some?). […]
→ read full articleSome New Year Wishes
Johan Galtung,
4 Jan 2010
Dear friends: I actually prefer the old method: a walk in the wood or the desert, the discovery of that old, rusty lamp, picking it up, rubbing a little, making it shine: and out comes that fairy granting you three wishes! Just as if the calendar turning around accompanied by fireworks, if you live […]
→ read full articleGood News From The Holy Land
Johan Galtung,
28 Dec 2009
There was midnight mass in the little village church. The news–or olds–from the Holy Land were recited by the young priest: For us is today a Savior born, Jesus Christ, the Messiah. The amens filled the church. Next morning an AlJazeera panel about the Holy Land: “West Bank settlers are dominated by a messianic-eschatolgical minority”, […]
→ read full articleA Week of Bad Climate
Johan Galtung,
21 Dec 2009
The mountain in Copenhagen gave birth to a mouse that can hardly crawl. No legally binding agreement, only vague promises for Mexico in 2010. There are national and corporate interest- guided pledges with figures ending in 0 for a year ending in 0 (USA 18%, though). Adding confirmed proposals reduces warming by 2050 from 4.8 […]
→ read full articleA Nobel War Prize Speech by a War President
Johan Galtung,
14 Dec 2009
President Obama’s Nobel Prize acceptance lecture in Oslo 10 December 2009–the Human Rights Day!–added tragedy to the comedy. It was vintage Orwell, war is peace, serving outdated thoughts by nations trying to legitimize their warfare, with the eloquence and charm that came through to many of that persuasion. A reactionary speech, more becoming to war […]
→ read full articleGlobal Warming in Copenhagen
Johan Galtung,
7 Dec 2009
Of course we all wish the Copenhagen conference the best of luck. It is billed as a conference on a major social evil, even a martian invasion of the world supposedly uniting us all. The problem is, as usual, whether it is the right approach; and what may be lurking underneath the surface. We have […]
→ read full article“Incredible India”…
Johan Galtung,
30 Nov 2009
… they say in the publicity spots. Yes it is truly incredible how India is selling itself to that bidder, USA, in one display of americanization after the other. The Washington angle to this is easily understood. Their empire falling, fighting three unwinnable wars on terrorism, Afghanistan and Iraq, allied with problematic regimes in Israel […]
→ read full articlePTSD and PGED: Post Glory Exuberance Disorder
Johan Galtung,
23 Nov 2009
Washington: There is much talk about post traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, these days. Yes, it must be tough to kill so many Afghans who fight secularism, Kabul and foreign soldiers dying for that fraudulent dictator Karzai, and invasions by some chess game drunk players. And, at a risk of an IED, US$ 10 per piece, […]
→ read full articleA Paradise Lost; An Empire Gained
Johan Galtung,
16 Nov 2009
Asunción: The tragedy Paraguay suffered is emblematic. It carries messages of the soft vs the hard Occident, and of soft development vs hard “growth”. And how a genocide drove out the soft. The reference is to the attack in 1865 on Paraguay by the Triple Alianza (or Quadruple): Argentina-Uruguay-Brazil, indeed encouraged by No. 4, England, […]
→ read full articleThe Trilateral Conflict USA – North Korea – South Korea
Johan Galtung,
9 Nov 2009
Seoul: Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen; a great honor to be invited for a keynote on unification–a key concern of mine since 1972–in a room in the National Assembly, the symbol of democracy. And we are meeting in the context of the 20th anniversary of that 1989 miracle, the Fall of the Berlin Wall, and then […]
→ read full articleDisconnected Giant on Clay Feet
Johan Galtung,
2 Nov 2009
Greensboro-NC, USA: What is the mood of the giant these days? One method is through the excellent TV channel C-span, with congressional hearings, politics in the open, debates over the double crisis, the economy, and the war. Another method is to ask people, like down in Heartland USA, North Carolina, bordering on the Blue Ridge, […]
→ read full articleChina and the Economic Crisis
Johan Galtung,
26 Oct 2009
Chongqing: The American Friends Service Committee (the Quakers) and the Chinese People’s Association for Peace and Disarmament–a state-supported NGO like many in the West–had a conference 18-21 October on the economic crisis and social conflict and harmony. World experiences in conflict resolution and state-civil society cooperation were shared with Chinese experts; to handle the […]
→ read full articleTurkey Getting Unstuck
Johan Galtung,
18 Oct 2009
Istanbul – Imagine a country losing an empire in their command for more than five centuries, ending with the occupation of Istanbul 1918 at the end of World War I. England (Mr. Sykes), France (M. Picot) and the Russians had conspired, engineering Arab uprisings against the Ottomans (“Lawrence of Arabia” being a part of that)–promising […]
→ read full articleThe Nobel Peace Prize
Johan Galtung,
12 Oct 2009
The Nobel Peace prize to a president for rhetoric, with no real achievement, is like a peace prize for a movie to a former vice-president, with no real achievement either. True, people are touched by a rhetoric everybody has heard, and even by a movie few have seen; but neither of them meets the criteria […]
→ read full articleGandhi and Mao: Two Giants Compared
Johan Galtung,
5 Oct 2009
The past week had two important anniversary messages. One came through loud and clear in the Western media: the 60th anniversary of the triumph of the Chinese Revolution, guided by Mao, restoring China to its own people, violently, on October 1. The other message was considerably more subdued: the 140th anniversary of the birth of […]
→ read full articleThe Tide is Turning: UNGA 64
Johan Galtung,
28 Sep 2009
This UN General Assembly will go down in history because of three persons: Hu Jintao, Qaddafi and Chávez, from the three Third World continents. And Obama will be less remembered for a speech–a high school essay promising to honor the UN multilateralism his country is committed to as a UN member–than for Chávez’ comment about […]
→ read full articleThe Cold War as a Metaphor
Johan Galtung,
21 Sep 2009
The Cold War is worth remembering. There is much to learn about conflict and meta-conflict. For West vs. Islam. That self-inflicted threat to humanity lasted officially 40 years 1949-89. But it started with the Bolshevik revolution October 1917, and ended with the combined collapse of Communism and the Soviet Union. 1917-1991. Almost a century. I […]
→ read full articleSpirituality and Conflict Work
Johan Galtung,
14 Sep 2009
There is an important connection: with some spirituality conflict work is much easier, whether directed toward the past as conciliation after violence–and after a solution has been found–toward the present as mediation, or the future as peace-building, weaving webs of positive peace as a protection against conflicts turning violent. An example: the ubuntu ‘I am […]
→ read full articleThe World Peace Academy in Basel
Johan Galtung,
7 Sep 2009
Ladies and gentlemen: Today, 4 September 2009, will go down in the history of peace studies as a day to remember: a true world peace academy has been inaugurated, here in Basel, the city straddling three countries, Switzerland, Germany and France. The WPA, brilliantly conceived and launched by Pierre and Catherine Brunner, has a three-point […]
→ read full articleMore Creativity, Please!
Johan Galtung,
31 Aug 2009
The world is often seen in terms of two or more nuclear superpowers; a more positive perspective would be two culinary superpowers, China and France. We had just enjoyed a *** (Guide Michelin) French meal. Indescribable, so better not try. But immensely creative. Tastes unknown were conjured unto the human palate. The esthetics of each […]
→ read full articleGlobal Domestic Policy: Wrong Approaches
Johan Galtung,
17 Aug 2009
The self-appointed Inter Action Council, IAC, chaired by German ex-Chancellor Helmut Schmidt (of US missile stationing fame) had its 27th Annual Meeting in King Abdullah Economic City, Saudi Arabia 10-13 May, with 20 other former prime ministers and presidents, many right wing social democrats, attending. They issued a Final Communique with a Present State of […]
→ read full articleGlobal Domestic Policy – GDP
Johan Galtung - TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Aug 2009
The slogan was coined by the famous German nuclear physicist, philosopher and peace researcher, Carl Friedrich von Weizscäcker, who passed on in 2007 at the age of 94. The term Weltinnenpolitik caught on, with GDP as translation into English; in search of one appealing word. But that is but a word. What does it stand […]
→ read full articleThe Power-Shift to the South
Johan Galtung,
3 Aug 2009
The South is coming, with or–hopefully without–a vengeance. Look at the basic facts in the power distribution. The abrahamic Occident expanded three times: islam 622-1492 from Iberia to the Philippines; christianity from 1492 on all five continents; and judaism in its zionist form from 1948 in the Middle East. They left and leave behind […]
→ read full articleAfter the US Empire: A World of Regions?
Johan Galtung,
27 Jul 2009
A key hypothesis in the recent The Fall of the US Empire – And Then What? (www.transcend.org/tup) is that the successor system to the US Empire will be neither a hegemony run by one big actor like China or the EU, nor globalization run by the TNCs, but a world of regions with regional currencies. […]
→ read full articleTurkey, EU, France and Germany
Johan Galtung,
20 Jul 2009
Of course Turkey will become a member of the European Union, with French and German support. It will take some time, but they need each other. The marriage is written in the stars. When, it is more difficult to say. Probably by 2015, for sure by 2020; it may also come much sooner for reasons […]
→ read full articleWhy That Much Violence These Days?
Johan Galtung,
13 Jul 2009
We find it all over, right now in the streets of Tegucigalpa, Tehran, Urumqi; as massive killing in connection with US-Allies attacks on Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia, and elsewhere. There will probably be much more, looking at the world conflict maps. Politically, each nation ruled not by its own kind but by some “majority”, […]
→ read full articleHonduras and Iran: What is going on?
Johan Galtung,
6 Jul 2009
The brief answer is Obama’s answer: we have to see how it all sorts itself out. Politically this usually means–like Condi Rice’s famous “birth pangs of a new Middle East Order” during the massive killing in Lebanon Summer 2006–that something is going on that should not be interfered with. Or that Obama wants neither to […]
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