📌 Welcome to the Transnational and Jan Oberg in 2025
War takes no brain. Anybody can start a fight. Humanity deserves civilised conflict resolution now. We're making intelligent peace through new thinking on this online public education community.
2024 was a dynamic year for TFF's promotion of the UN principle of making peace by peaceful means - here on Substack and elsewhere.
In 2025, we'll serve many more subscribers with new initiatives and build a peace-intelligent community here.
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Welcome to TFF Substack 2025!
- to our “old” subscribers and the many new ones we have just transferred from our now-closed email service. You’ll now get much more than an email once a week.
We’re building a new community here on Substack around global and transnational affairs, with that unique and unwavering touch of peace and nonviolence that is the Transnational Foundation for Peace & Future Research, TFF, in Lund, Sweden - and has been since we started precisely 39 years ago.
If you think nonviolence and peace is a good idea, this is a place for you. If you think we need more weapons and war to live in security and peace, it’s also for you.
2025 is exceptionally unpredictable, for good and bad. There are indeed dark clouds, particularly over the West/Occident, but many positive trends also exist. We do not subscribe to the doom and gloom mainstream media impose on citizens.
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What TFF does
We consistently do three things: describing the facts of an issue, criticising when reality is not as good as it ought to be or could be, and proposing ways to make the world a better place for all.
TFF has always stood for research-based public education - pro-peace and not predominantly anti-this or that (which is too easy). And further, while we deal with the past and the present, we insist that no one can drive towards a goal by looking only into the rear mirror - that’s why we do future research: How can things become better in the future - and how?
Perhaps you wonder: What is peace research? It’s a systematic scholarly endeavour to reduce all kinds of violence (negative peace) and build peace and cooperation (positive peace) - very much like medicine is about reducing diseases and creating health.
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Our main themes
We continue to do this type of research and public education in new ways on TFF Substack and, of course, on our flagship homepage, The Transnational. A small outfit like ours should not spread thin, so we focus “only” on China-West relations, NATO-Russia-Ukraine, aspects of the complex Middle East such as Palestine-Israel, Iran and Syria, and everything related to the rapidly changing world order, BRICS etc.
You’ll find TFF all over the place - see the TFF Elsewhere menu above. Link up with us on social media.
TFF speaks with brain and heart and sometimes also with sharpness. We are deeply disturbed by all the unnecessary violence when so many other tools are available…
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What to expect here on TFF Substack?
High-quality analyses and debate articles by TFF Associates, some of the most experienced and productive in peace and future research and global affairs. Not only academics but also former diplomats, activists, media people, etc.
Other analyses and articles that we select because of their relevance to the themes just mentioned and their quality. In times of fake, omission, propaganda and ‘games of lies,’ you can trust that we offer you a selection of the best that is still produced. See us as an academic gourmet restaurant - we don’t belong to a restaurant chain.
We shall intensify our work with video presentations. The TFF Video Library is above. It’s only the beginning, made in 2024. Again, it's only what we would have been proud to produce ourselves. You’ll also see that TFF now reaches millions via video, here mostly on YouTube (which paradoxically has cancelled us) but also in China (e.g., China’s Bilibili, and lots of other places outside the West).
Substack Notes - see above - is another way to build community. There we post stories and observations, comments on topical events that we also drop on our social media (and some especially for you our subscriber).
And then there is Chat - we shall begin (peu en peu) to experiment with it because it is a great way to promote conversations with active subscribers, somewhat like having our own private social network. That’s where we will also hear your views about how you want us to improve and serve your peace information needs better.
You get the about-weekly TFF PressInfo that offers a short sharp comment, all - or a selection of - what we have published here and on our other platforms and important links. At your fingertips. It’s useful if you miss single mails from us.
And finally, we’ll experiment with something yet undefinable non-material: We’re thinking of how to post stuff that is peace-related but not that academic or ‘political’ - such as existential essays, cultural analyses, psychology, philosophy, global ethics, art and music - the things that are as far away as can be from the typically male, geo-political and RealPolitik stuff that fills the Internet and is utterly repetitive and - well, boring.
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Subscribers building community for a more peaceful future
It’s fine if you are a free subscriber; we will never serve only paying subscribers. Never any paywal - also because we want to help the less-privileged and young people to benefit from what we do.
Perhaps you could then help us share what we do on your social media: ‘Look, here is a great article from TFF!’ We know for a fact that every little action counts. You may also tell others to subscribe. So share this:
You may also suggest articles, reports and analyses that you think we should publish - just write to Jan Oberg at oberg@transnational.org - or write them in the comment field below a related article.
We are happy if you are or become a paying user of TFF Substack. TFF is one of the extremely few research think tanks that is genuinely independent: As a policy, we do not accept any money from governments and corporations. All who work with TFF are volunteers, and no one is paid a dime.
Therefore, we are entirely people-financed.
And we’re free! Free to do the research we think is important. Free to say what we think must be said. Free to go where we think we must go to say the word ‘peace.’ (That’s why some Western mainstream media, platforms like YouTube, search engines and social media censor, de-rank, and cancel us).
Our global reach outside the West is growing because that’s where the main interest in a future peace lies today.
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If you already have an active publication here, we can mutually recommend each other and do cross-postings. Substack offers so many opportunities.
The more you support us, the more we can promote peace and build that community - that critical mass that finally creates the needed worldwide nonviolent explosion against all the heartbreaking violence we see in today’s world. Because it does not have to be like that…
So hit that Subscribe button if you like what you just read.
Think of what you can do for peace - now our governments mostly work for war. Join us actively, become one of TFF’s peace public education community and do something concrete to build the necessary, well-informed and ever-stronger peace opinion. Thanks for reading and - Welcome!
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