East-West Forum

Om konferensen i Istanbul 26/9:

“For more than a thousand years, Istanbul has been regarded as a bridge between East and West at the junction of two continents, at the crossroads of the cultures. We wish to make use of this symbol to conduct an open dialogue between the different civilizations of the world.

Harici Media and the new European think tank ‘European Transcontinental Initiative’ (ETI) have launched the East-West Forum (EWF) in Istanbul – a high-level forum of international experts to discuss, analyse and shape this transition.

We want to offer those political thinkers and actors, who represent wisdom in a time of delusion and reason in a time of brinkmanship, a platform for the exchange of critical analysis, hopes and ideas. In doing so, we aim to create an opportunity to jointly develop alternative proposals for a reconfiguration of the global systems that would move beyond the prevailing doxa of a unipolar neoliberal order. Especially we want to prevent the establishment of new bloc confrontation between ‘the West’, the BRICS-countries and the Global South.

The East-West Forum will take place in Istanbul on 26 September 2026. We expect to welcome more than twenty distinguished speakers from over fifteen countries, representing a broad geography ranging from the United States and the Middle East to Asia and Europe.

To attend the East-West Forum, please register online via our website: east-west-forum.com”

En lång rad av de många talarna är sådana som figurerat frekvent här på min sida genom åren.

På hemsidan beskriver EWF sin mission på följande sätt, under rubriken Designing the 21st Century:

“The unipolar world order that emerged after the end of the Cold War has come to an end, and the world is now seeking a redesign of the global system.

The quest for a multipolar world and a balanced world system is accompanied by multiple paradigm shifts: resources shortage, climate stress, overpopulation, trade wars, global rearmament, the AI revolution, the rise of regional wars, the break-down of the UN-system, to just name a few.

The G7/ G20 world tries to find ‘classical’ answers to all of that. Progress is attached to technology only, power assigned exclusively to states and capitalism remains unquestioned.

The East-West Forum (EWF) wants to search for heterodox answers, find new solutions, develop alternative societal & political concepts and think differently. It wants to become, over time, the leading platform for innovative ideas for the global system, thinking the unthinkable and discussing the impossible. We think of citizens and humanity, of soul and history, of traditions and the future. We believe in an economy that serves man and respects nature. We value cultural heritage and the roots of history.

The EWF wants to design a realistic utopia for the world in the 21ˢᵗ century, lifting it outside of the paradigms of the 20ᵗʰ century: Join us in putting everything we know on the table! Help us in designing the peaceful & just world of tomorrow! Dare to leave the thought system…

The EWF brings together distinguished experts, intellectuals, and thought leaders. Istanbul, a city that has long symbolized the bridge between East and West, offers a unique vantage to contribute to a constructive reimagining of relations between the Western countries, the BRICS countries and the Global South. EWF is committed to advancing critical dialogue on an inclusive and sustainable international security architecture, one that complements existing structures while encouraging a broader, more balanced framework for international cooperation. In the long term, the EWF envisions a Europe beyond the EU that is more self-confident, strategically autonomous, and capable of assuming a mediating role within a multipolar world.

The EWF aspires to position itself as a forward-looking counterpart to traditional security conferences typically held in European capitals and sticking to a ‘Western-centric framework’ of interpretation of the world. The initiators of EWF draw inspiration from the oldest known map of Europe, dating to 1534, which looks toward the Orient while standing firmly on Eurasian ground, an emblem of the perspective the Forum seeks to revive and reinterpret for the present era.”

East-West Forum

European Transcontinental Initiative

Harici Media

European Transcontinental Initiative

Thomas Fazi informerar om en ny tänktank, European Transcontinental Initiative, grundad av bl.a. Ulrike Guérot, och bjuder in till dess första konferens, East-West Forum:

“We are delighted to invite you to the first Europe-BRICS conference – the East-West Forum (EWF) – which will take place in Istanbul on September 26, organised by the newly founded think tank European Transcontinental Initiative and the Turkish media platform Harici (@haricinews).

The think tank was founded this year by the famous German political scientist Ulrike Guérot (@ulrikeguerot) and the German Philosopher Hauke Ritz together with a team of experts and actors form different spheres, representing crucial expressions of European society thinking Europe beyond the EU. We already serve as the outward face of a different, new Europe – one that upholds its foundational values of diplomacy. We work constructively and operationally in the real world, already acting as a point of contact for non-European partners regarding a new Europe that exists beyond the EU within a multipolar world.

We see Europe as pivotal in the transition to multipolarity, which will only be complete once it reaches Europe; otherwise, we risk merely having a divided world. Thus we plan to dedicate the first EWF to the theme of ‘Designing the 21st century: navigating the multi paradigm shift in the global system and the crucial role of old civilizations’. We strive to co-create a new and more just and balanced multipolar world order peacefully.

On the conference’s website you can find the mission statement and programme: https://east-west-forum.com. I will be speaking on a panel on ‘Europe Beyond the EU and its Philosophical Foundation – Atlanticism, Eurasia and Strategic Autonomy’.

Should our inaugural conference prove successful, it could serve as the starting point for an annual conference series – one that we hope will offer an alternative to the neoliberal, transatlantic agenda of the traditional conferences held in Davos and Munich.

More Information about the European Transcontinental Initiative can be found at: https://www.european-transcontinental-initiative.org“

–

Ulrike Guérot:

Kriegsvasall oder Friedensmacht

Eutopia

Björkesons hus

Översättaren Ingvar Björkesons (Iliaden, Odysséen, de homeriska hymnerna, Hesiodos, Pindaros, Theokritos, Lucretius, Vergilius, Propertius, Dante, Petrarca, Tasso, Milton m.m.) storfönstrade och naturnära, tidigt 50-talslamellsocialistiska hus på Björnsonsgatan i Blackeberg. Att förstå.

Intervju med Rosenberg

Ahmed Moor intervjuar i början av augusti på Foundation for Middle East Peace’ kanal Göran Rosenberg om hans Israelbok. (Moors förberedelser visar sig litet bristfälliga i det han tror att den förra året i USA utgivna engelska översättningen – i januari i år också publicerad i Britannien, anmärkningsvärt nog i Penguin Modern Classics – är Rosenbergs nyskrivna, senaste bok, och att Rosenberg och hans mor på 60-talet flydde till Israel från svensk antisemitism!)

“In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP Fellow Ahmed Moor speaks with Swedish author Göran Rosenberg. They discuss messianism in Jewish history, the continuity from 1950s Tel Aviv to the settler movement Gush Emunim to the manifestation of the settlement movement today. They also look at questions of collective rights, framed in terms of ‘peoplehood,’ versus individual rights.”

Göran Rosenberg: Israel

A Personal History

Other Press, 2025

Amazon.com

Publisher’s Description:

Combining poignant memoir and historical research, a son of Holocaust survivors grapples with the dream of Zionism and its consequences.

Israel: A Personal History takes off where Göran Rosenberg’s internationally acclaimed and award-winning childhood memoir, A Brief Stop on the Road from Auschwitz, ends. After his father’s suicide in 1960 in a small industrial town in Sweden, the remainder of the family, a single mother with two children, emigrates to Israel. At first fully absorbed into the world of pioneer Zionism, enchanted by its visions, formed by its ethos, Rosenberg would eventually embark on a journey of discovery among betrayed ideals, buried stories, false promises, and erased villages.

The result is a deeply personal, painstakingly researched, and beautifully written exploration of the contradictory visions that went into the Zionist project, as well as of the ethnic violence, oppression, discrimination, and dispossession caused by its realization. This book is both an exciting history of ideas and the political autobiography of a Jewish European intellectual, a child of dreams and disillusionments, an astute observer of our times.

Reviews:

“[Rosenberg] takes us from his initial sense of the ‘all-captivating promises’ of the Zionist project to a deep disillusionment with it.”

Washington Post

“A profound reckoning.”

Publishers Weekly

“Fearlessly straightforward … a singularly compelling memoir … Rosenberg is not a household name, although he may become one on the strength of this brilliant appraisal of Israel’s political path.”

Manhattan Book Review

“In a powerful account of his growing disenchantment … Rosenberg presents Zionism as a flawed vision with a tragic aspect: Far from being inevitable, the modern state of Israel, as he recounts its history, evolved in brutal policies that belied the utopian hopes on which the new nation had been founded … his retrospection illuminates the present.”

Public Seminar

“Göran Rosenberg’s book Israel is a brilliant combination of an authoritative, reliable, and critical account of the history of Zionism and the State of Israel, and a sensitive, personal, and humane account that examines with equal scrutiny the author’s own deep and complex entanglement in that history. As the son of a Holocaust survivor from Łódź who emigrated to Sweden after the war, Rosenberg was captivated by the idea of Israel and emigrated there in his youth – only to later become disillusioned with that vision and come to understand the destructive foundations upon which the state is built, and the violent future to which it is leading. This English edition of the book, published two years after October 7, 2023, and amidst the brutal genocide in Gaza, stands as a model of honest, critical, and uncompromising self-scrutiny – something we will all be obliged to undertake, in the wake of the genocide in Gaza, regarding Jewish history, Israeli history, and our own personal histories.”

Amos Goldberg, author of Trauma in First Person: Diary Writing During the Holocaust and coeditor with Bashir Bashir of The Holocaust and the Nakba: A New Grammar of Trauma and History

About the Author:

Göran Rosenberg was born in 1948 in Sweden, the son of Auschwitz survivors. He is the author of several books, including the highly acclaimed Det förlorade landet (the original Swedish edition of Israel: A Personal History), A Brief Stop on the Road from Auschwitz (Other Press, 2015), and Another Zionism, Another Judaism (Other Press, 2025).

JOB’s Comment:

Also available in German (1998), French (2002), and Polish (2011) translations.

Göran Rosenberg: Det förlorade landet

Paul Mason: Yoga Meditation & Dharma

The Teachings of Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, Swami Shantanand Saraswati, & Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Premanand, 2026

Amazon.com

Publisher’s Description:

Yoga Meditation & Dharma: The Teachings of Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, Swami Shantanand, Saraswati & Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is an illustrated view of the lineage of teachers who shared techniques through which the state of yoga can be experienced by those living in accord with the ideals of dharma, the lifestyle dedicated to right action supported by natural law.

Indian texts composed some 2,500 years ago and more contain many references to the word ‘yoga’, a term that can best be understood as meaning ‘a state beyond thinking’, ‘a transcendental state of awareness’, ‘a state in which the mind can enjoy awareness of just being, without the distraction of the churning of mental activity’.

Yoga meditation is an ancient practice, yet until the mid-20th century the word ‘yoga’ was seldom heard of in the West.

Swami Brahmananda Saraswati was the Indian guru who from 1941-53 served as Shankaracharya of Jyotirmath, one of four such posts in India each filled by an eminent spiritual teacher. During his years as Shankaracharya, Swami Brahmananda revived spiritual teachings in Northern India and popularised the practice of meditation. His successor, Swami Shantanand Saraswati, together with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, his gurubhaiee (brother disciple of the same guru), set themselves the task of spreading the teaching of meditation worldwide.

Yoga meditation is a practice aimed at attaining a state of inner stillness wherein one is fully awake and in a state of profound inner alertness, stillness and silence.

Dharma is a way of life, of right action in accordance with nature. Practised together Yoga meditation and Dharma provide the essential ingredients for a balanced, stable, and satisfying lifestyle.

About the Author:

Paul Mason was introduced to the practice of Transcendental Meditation (TM) in 1970 after having hitchhiked from Britain and visited Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s centre at Rishikesh, India, and after meeting with sadhus, swamis and spiritual seekers, Paul felt spurred to dig deeper into the history of the teaching of meditation, leading to his being commissioned to write Maharishi’s lifestory. This highly informative work has since been revised, expanded, and re-published as Maharishi Mahesh Yogi: The Biography of the Man Who Gave Transcendental Meditation to the World.

Sustained interest in meditation prompted Paul to also research the lifestory and teachings of Maharishi’s master, ‘Guru Dev’, Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, Shankaracharya of Jyotirmath, the title being that of the most senior and authoritative religious position in Northern India. Paul Mason has produced several books on Guru Dev based on his translation of Hindi works, and has for many years been gathering material for another more expansive volume on the guru.

Invited to give a talk about Guru Dev to students of Swami Shantanand Saraswati at Townley Hall in Ireland, Paul felt inspired to compile this brief illustrated account of how Guru Dev and his disciples set about spreading the teaching of meditation.

Arday, akademin och yttrandefriheten

Mckay när han är som bäst igen i ett avsnitt om den groteska och signifikativa Jason Arday-skandalen vid Cambridge, och ett uppföljande om yttrandefriheten, föranlett av vänsterns respons.

En nödvändigt fördjupande, komplexifierande och nyanserande analys från “the stance that alienates both racists and woke people”:

The Case of Jason Arday

“In this special programme I look into the tragic case of Jason Arday. A man elevated by Cambridge University, feted in the bourgeois press and then destroyed by the institutions that had once elevated him.”

Why We Must Defend Free Speech

“In this stream I explore why we must be unapologetic defenders of free speech.”

William W. Quinn, Jr.: The Only Tradition

State University of New York Press (SUNY Series in Western Esoteric Traditions), 1997

Amazon.com

Back Cover:

The Only Tradition examines the first principles of the perennial philosophy or ancient wisdom tradition as expressed in the writings of René Guénon and Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, and the current breakdown of value, meaning, and culture in the West due to the decline of these principles since the thirteenth century. The book further focuses on the relationship or reciprocity between the first principles and Western and Eastern culture, and discusses the future development of a homogenous, worldwide system of belief that would restore value and meaning to people’s lives.

Quinn argues for a return to the first principles inherent in the perennial philosophy, which constitute the sacred primordial Tradition and which inform all the world’s great religious traditions. His book makes an excellent introduction to this powerful current of European esoteric thought – primordial tradition.

“I cannot recall reading as clear a statement of the perennial philosophy, nor one as solidly based on empirical research, as I have read in this book. The topic of ‘primordial tradition’ or ‘perennial philosophy’ is important in the area of the history of religions, and there are precious few books that deal with it in a sympathetic and yet critical way. Coomaraswamy is mentioned often and honorably in religious studies literature without telling us much about why. Guénon usually is idolized or vilified, if he is acknowledged at all. Books such as Quinn’s, that treat these influential figures honestly and fairly but with an open and critical eye, fill a real need.”

James Burnell Robinson, University of Northern Iowa

William W. Quinn, Jr. is an attorney with the firm of Shea and Wilks in Phoenix, Arizona.

JOB’s Comment:

Quinn sharply criticizes Guénon’s rejection of modern theosophy, most extensively set forth in his early book Le Théosophisme: Histoire d’une pseudo-religion from 1921.