Stories written by Johan Galtung
Johan Galtung is a professor of Peace Studies and Director of TRANSCEND:
A Peace and Development Network (www.transcend.org). Dietrich Fischer is
Academic Director of the European University Centre for Peace Studies in
Stadtschlaining, Austria (www.aspr.ac.at) and Co-Director of TRANSCEND
Humanity has had and has big projects. Mastery of nature is one, still going on. Middle range phenomena have been mastered, but not the micro level of viri–HIV is a current case–nor the macro level of climate–to the contrary, humanity is making it worse.
Attacking the Affordable Care Act; the “global gag rule” against abortion; the federal regulation and hiring freeze; canceling the TPP; restarting the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipeline; limiting entry with the Mexican Wall; the 90-day travel ban on seven countries; more undocumented people prioritized for deportation; no federal funding for cities refusing to cooperate; communications blackout from federal agencies; Guantánamo torture continued–What does it add up to?
The last one hundred years life expectancy has increased by about 25 per cent-from near 80 to near 100-in some countries. But, instead of increasing playful childhood, education, work and retirement by 25 per cent, the age of retirement has moved much less than the age at death.
Watching Christianity nearly a century–fundamentalist Christians fighting ritualistic Christians fighting secularism, generally moving fundamentalism–>ritualism–>secularism–maybe the same for Islam? Their similarities make “Islam right now” a repetition of Christianity; their differences shout, Watch Out! Let us see where this leads us.
The US mountain, so rich in human talent, labored and produced the two dwarfs for the huge job. A radical Republican strongman[i] and a conventional Democrat, disliked by 62% and 67%–bad for electing the president of a country that still puts some stamp on the world.
The vote turned out like the two referenda held in Norway in 1972 and 1994. And much for the same reason: Protestant break with Rome–Catholic, imperial–Henry VIII made himself head of the Anglican Church in 1534.
Like the Israel-Palestine conflict, the world has gotten tired of it, “what, the two Koreas still unable to sort it out”? Also, like Israel-Palestine, the USA is in it; making the situation complicated.
China is changing world geography, or at least trying to do so.
Not in the sense of land and water like the Netherlands, but in the sense of weaving new infrastructures on land, on water, in the air, and on the web.
We are dealing with mass migration, basically into EU, and European nationalisms, many in favor of exits from the EU.
Why this mass migration, maybe to the point of Völkerwanderung, mainly into EU–but then what kind of EU–and why the European nationalisms now found one way or the other in many member states?
Baher Kamal, in … And All of a Sudden Syria!: “The “big five,” the United Nations veto powers, have just agreed United Nations Resolution 2254 of 18-12-2015, time to end the Syrian five-year long human tragedy; they waited until 300,000 innocent civilians were killed and 4.5 million humans lost as refugees and homeless at home, hundreds of field testing of state-of-the-art drones made, and daily U.S., British, French and Russian bombing carried out.” No Chinese bombing.
A theory serves comprehension, prediction and identification of conditions for change. Seven such historical-cultural pointers will be indicated for China – using the West in general, and the United States in particular, for comparison.
There is much in a name. Ukraine means borderland. The position of the extreme West - like U.S. neocons - is clear: get all into NATO, encircling, containing, defeating Russia.
The linchpin of an empire is the link between two elites, one in the imperial centre, the others in the peripheries. Symmetric alliances exist, but not when there is a superpower at the centre.
Political terrorism failed. The House Republicans used voting in one chamber to put the livelihoods of millions of people inside and outside the U.S. at risk, for their own political goals. And made the mistake of most terrorists, non-state or state: when people suffer they will join us, against our enemy; to find out that people turn against the terrorists instead.
Nobody has brought this simple message to the world like the Perdana Global Peace Foundation in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. As the leader, Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia's fourth prime minister, says: "Peace for us simply means the absence of war. We must never be deflected from this simple objective".