November 2004

25:e november, 2004 Idag, den 25 november är det den “Internationella Dagen För Avskaffande Av Våld Mot Kvinnor”. Generalsekreterare Kofi Annans budskap förra året, den 25 november år 2003, var (enligt UN News Update): “Könsrelaterat våld är kanske den mest avskyvärda kränkningen av de mänskliga rättigheterna. Så länge det fortsätter kan vi inte hävda att vi gör några riktiga framsteg mot jämlikhet, utveckling och fred.” Här relaterar vi det könsrelaterade våldet till frågan om mänsklig säkerhet och tankar om en ny typ av försvarspolitik. En rad ledande tidningar i Sverige har tackat nej till att publicera artikeln. FRÅN PATRIARKAL MAKTUTÖVNING TILL MÄNSKLIG SÄKERHET OCH DEMOKRATI – Vi känner ingen, varken kvinna eller man, som önskar krig och död.  99 % av klotets kvinnor och män önskar inte våld. De önskar ickevåld! Fred. En trygg framtid för sina barn, ett värdigt liv för sina föräldrar. Ett liv befriat från den  rädsla...

LONDON – Mark Palmer, the U.S. State Department’s former top “Kremlinologist”, has proposed the world’s democracies set themselves the goal of ridding the world of its 43 remaining dictators over the next twenty years. Surely this is something liberals and neo-conservatives can agree on. One would wish it so but unfortunately the means separates them. President George W. Bush said the other day that, “The reason I’m so strong on democracy is democracies don’t go to war with each other. I’ve got great faith in democracies to promote peace.” This is a great philosophical leap forward for conservatives. Not so long ago they poked fun at the human rights obsessiveness of former president Jimmy Carter and did everything they could to stymie his efforts in Latin America in particular to quicken the pace of democratic evolution. When Ronald Reagan defeated Carter he gave short shrift to human rights goals and...

The best-prepared and most successful large-scale civil disobedience action in Scandinavian history never took place. Johansen tells the remarkable story that could inspire many others. The background In 1996 the Norwegian Parliament decided to build two large power stations to produce electricity from natural gas. With a company ready to build and a decision made by the authorities, it seemed almost impossible to prevent it. Natural gas had for years been presented as “clean” and “friendly to nature.” To promote the project the company behind the plans took the name “Naturkraft” (The Power of Nature). Who could protest “The Power of Nature?” For many years, Norway has produced and consumed more electricity per capita than any other country in the world, except Canada. Most of the electricity comes from waterfalls with enormous destruction to nature, culture, fauna and flora. Opposition to high energy consumption and environmental destruction dates to the...

PressInfo # 202 Margaret Hassan has been murdered. That is the most probable conclusion from a video given to Al Jazeera yesterday. For one who met her and got to know her, even if just a little, it is hard to write and read that sentence. But Margaret Hassan – Umm Margaret – in Baghdad has been murdered. Who killed her? Desperate, fanatic people who thereby casts a dark shadow over their nationality, organisation, religion and philosophy. People who mistakenly believe that a better Iraq will emerge from such a crime and who cares nil for the welfare of the Iraqi people to whom she devoted most of her life and work. Or someone related to the occupation forces seeking to discredit the image of all Iraqi resistance. Why she of all? Because she was a courageous, principled and determined humanist who defied danger and could not be intimidated. She...

LONDON – To be blunt, there is no Israel and no Palestine. At least not in a continuous historical sense, as there is a France or an Egypt, a China or a Thailand. Without the British there would be neither a modern Israel nor Palestine. The Jews claim that they are merely returning to their roots, unwinding the clock to Old Testament times. But if every group of ethnic kin with an ancient pedigree did this where would we be? The Indians could reclaim North and South America, the Moguls Russia and the Hottentots South Africa. The Jews left what was relatively recently named Palestine a long time ago. In AD 70 after the Jewish insurrection the Romans destroyed the Jerusalem Temple and the Jews began a new exodus to Babylonia, in modern day Iraq. This large-scale Jewish settlement of Babylonia endured until the eleventh century. Other Jews went to...

“TFF’s team were privileged to meet Margaret Hassan for hours during its fact-finding missions to Baghdad in both 2002 and 2003. Few – if any – we met were so knowledgeable, so committed to the welfare of the Iraqi people, so concerned about its fate should war come – and so generous with her time as Margaret was. We at TFF are deeply saddened to learn that she was taken hostage on her way to work on October 19, 2004. The kidnappers are working against the interests of the Iraqi people. Under no circumstance must their activity be considered legitimate or otherwise acceptable, also not as an expression of resistance to the unjust war and occupation. Powerless as we feel, we condemn such actions and hope that she will be released unharmed.” Jan Oberg, TFF director CNN – November 17, 2004 Tributes to Iraq’s Mother Teresa Heartbreak over Margaret Hassan’s...

LONDON – The Basque autonomy question and its corollary, the future of Europe’s one remaining active, homegrown, terrorist movement, is moving into a new phase, one both subtle and contradictory. The relatively new Socialist government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero works both sides of the street. On the one side it has just convened a meeting of the Anti-Terrorist Pact, a forum where the government and the opposition meet to review a joint approach to Basque terrorism. Despite their bitter differences, as recently as three years ago the Popular Party and the Socialist Party combined their forces in an unsuccessful effort in the Basque regional elections to avoid victory by the moderate Basque Nationalist Party. Both the mainstream parties do their best to stand shoulder to shoulder in their support of the security services which recently had a stunning success in capturing top leaders of ETA, the terrorist arm of...

This is a follow-up to PressInfo 200. With some dialectical thinking, four more years with George W. Bush at the helm of the United States Empire may turn out to be a great opportunity for something new and better to emerge. In the ying-yang of crisis, there is both suffering in the old and seeds of visions about the new. And suffering there will be the next four years; none of the arguments below ignore that. However, the one who despairs too much over Bush’s re-election may contribute more to suffering than to realising the positive potentials we have at hand. Let’s at least try to roll up our sleeves now. 1. Criticism and protests without constructive alternatives is a waste of energy One lesson to be learnt from the most recent wars, the war on terrorism and the re-election of Mr. Bush is that it is not enough to protest...

This is a follow-up to PressInfo 200. With some dialectical thinking, four more years with George W. Bush at the helm of the United States Empire may turn out to be a great opportunity for something new and better to emerge. In the ying-yang of crisis, there is both suffering in the old and seeds of visions about the new. And suffering there will be the next four years; none of the arguments below ignore that. However, the one who despairs too much over Bush’s re-election may contribute more to suffering than to realising the positive potentials we have at hand. Let’s at least try to roll up our sleeves now. 1. Criticism and protests without constructive alternatives is a waste of energy One lesson to be learnt from the most recent wars, the war on terrorism and the re-election of Mr. Bush is that it is not enough to...

Why Bush won? Fear-ology and the lack of alternatives There are good reasons why George W. Bush won. About two-thirds of America – about 60 % of the eligible electorate voted, roughly a half of them for Bush – and the rest of us must now live with both the accumulated global effects of the first four years and with more of the same, and probably worse, for four more long years. For, in the world of George Bush, God’s mandate from above has now been confirmed by the American people’s mandate from below. So there is a kind of trinity of God, Bush and the American believers. Unfortunately none of his policies, except that for re-election, work – but that seems to bother neither Bush nor his followers. Let’s at least hope that God feels a kind of guilt by (alleged) association? 1. Fear-ology The major reason Bush won...

Do you wonder how the operatives of Al Qaeda sleep at night? No problem, I think. After swallowing the double narcotic of killing unbelievers and promised sensuality they sleep the peace of the just, despite the lack of approval for such beliefs in Islamic theology. A more interesting question is how George W. Bush and Tony Blair get a good night’s sleep. What have they imbibed? There are no virgins in the sky awaiting them and their wars have fallen well short of the Augustinian principles of the just war. Yet they are men of a religious conviction and it cannot be easy to switch off the light knowing one has given the orders for a greater slaughter of innocents that happened at the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001. In our Western culture one is judged to be either fully engaged with one’s emotions and one’s deeds or...