Archive 1986 – 2017

March 4, 2008 Vicky Samantha Rossi One sunny morning last December I joined John Torday, an Operations Support Officer (OSO) (1), on a visit from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency’s (UNRWA)(2) HQ in Jerusalem to New Fahme, a village in the vicinity of Nablus in the West Bank. The aim of the trip was to confirm whether or not the residents of New Fahme were registered refugees who had somehow been overlooked by UNRWA and were in need of assistance. On the road heading out from Jerusalem, John explained that the OSO mandate is to try to maintain the neutrality of United Nations (UN) property from abuse by Israelis or Palestinians; this includes the movement of UN food and medical convoys through Israeli checkpoints. OSOs also have a protection mandate; they might, for example, be asked to evaluate the local population’s level of food security, or to assess...

February 20, 2008 Jan Oberg Do you believe that freedom of opinion, diversity, fairness, impartiality, basic knowledge, and research should be defining principles behind the news YOU get? Then read the press release from TFF below which contains a fairly unique background story. It was mailed to about 400 journalists and editorial offices in Scandinavia and over 1000 worldwide, specialised in international affairs. We got about the response we expected: 3 – CNN International, Radio Netherlands and Voima in Finland. 1397 chose to cut and paste telegrams from exclusively Western bureaus or write without relying on external expertise or research. So, routine-routine and politically correct – they repeat what for instance George W. Bush, Javier Solana, Nikolas Sarkozy and other Western leaders say interspersed with “angry” Serbs torching a border station on the Kosovo-Serbia border and “defiant” Belgrade – allied with the Russians so we know what to think about them – may...

LONDON – Just how emancipated are we white westerners? What is the acid test? – Electing a black man as president of the U.S., or smiling weakly at the doctor who we have just been told is going to perform a complex surgical manoeuvre on our heart and who turns out to be a big hulking black man? I suspect many of us may be ready for the first, but not so sure about the second. It doesn’t seem that long ago that flying to India I walked up to the cockpit to see if it really was brown men flying that great big 747. These days I fly all over Africa with all black crews and only worry when I’m in Nigeria, not because the pilots are black but because the airline industry imposed no safety standards until recently. Nevertheless, the fact that Barack Obama is now the frontrunner...

By Jonathan PowerFebruary 8, 2008 LONDON – I interviewed Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor and now foreign policy mentor to Barack Obama, before the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran was published. But it did not go into print until this month (in World Policy Journal in the U.S., Prospect magazine in Britain, Global Affairs in Russia and the Arab News in Saudi Arabia, among others). I asked Brzezinski if he wanted to re-write his apocalyptic scenario for Iranian-U.S. relations. He didn’t. “Some people with good reason fear an Iranian-US military clash before Bush leaves office in 12 months time”, he says. “There are still some people in the Administration of Neo-Con persuasion who seem to be tempted by what I believe is a suicidal inclination to compound the Iraqi problem by some sort of military action against Iran.” Brzezinski’s fear is that the Iraqi war instead of winding...

LONDON – After the surge are we losing the fight? – the fight for democracy that is. For fifteen years I have watched, fascinated, curious, and exulted, as the New York-based organization, Freedom House, has chronicled each year the rise and spread of democracy. Even when the Cold War was still our principal preoccupation democracy and freedom were on the up. At the onset of World War 2 there were but five fully fledged electoral democracies in the world. By the time the Berlin Wall came down they were heading for nearly 100. Today it is 121 out of 193 sovereign countries. 64% of the world’s population live in countries that are either “free” or partly “free”. If we take out China only 18% of the world’s people live in countries that are “not free”, ruled by a dictator with the press and the courts under his thumb. But then...

LONDON – Why in the end do we perennial American critics (I purposely don’t say anti-Americans) so respect America? At times it has been hard to – when its electorate re-elected George W. Bush or, going back, when it allowed the defeat of George McGovern with his “Come Home America”. It is because America has a soul. Its religious beliefs may get wonky, whether it be the Mormon cult of Mick Romney or the anti Darwinism of the Huckabee southerners. But Americans are more sincere than most of us. They do want to do what is right. Indeed they read avidly more “how to” books than the rest of us put together. It is just a pity that so few of them don’t read more deeply, either history or literature and that their leaders can be as often as shallow as the masses they lead. (But, of course, you can...

) need to resort to violence in defense of their positions on the Sharia issue since God, whom they both claim to worship, is quite capable of upholding his own causes,” he said in a broadcast. Similarly, tribal tensions have ebbed, partly because the rapid advance in agriculture has brought rising incomes to the countryside and the small rural market towns. Oil income has started to be used better, if not well enough. Even the threat of multiple air crashes appears to have diminished as Obasanjo pushed fly-by-the-pants airlines to consolidate and retire clapped out panes. In Lagos the streets are noticeably cleaner- and no longer are there dead bodies at the roadside, waiting to be removed. Lagos itself is becoming a different place from the days when it was an out-of-control, mass of teaming humanity. As Ben Okri, the Nigerian novelist, wrote a few years ago, “The air vibrating...

Jonathan Power LONDON – Richard Haas, the former high State department official in Republican governments observes in his recent book, “The Opportunity”, that the time has never been better for an organization of great powers to bring peace and stability to the world. For the first time in several hundred years the major nations are not engaged in a struggle for dominance. “It is difficult to exaggerate the significance of this development”, he writes. This could also have been written at the end of the tenure of President G.W. Bush and the onset of the presidency of Bill Clinton. But Clinton lacked initiative and let the ball drop. George W. Bush, who had even less experience, picked the ball up but kicked it all over the field. Now fortune perhaps smiles for second time. A Barack Obama presidency could do what should have been done seventeen years ago at the...

BakgrundMånga medborgare, inte minst flyktingar och andra invandrare, har svårt att orientera sig i det svenska samhället. Den självklara kunskap man, som invandrare, bär med sig hemifrån fungerar inte längre. På främmande mark går man lätt vilse. Att finna sammanhang i tillvaron blir därför en daglig utmaning. Att höra till och delta i vårt gemensamma vardagsliv känns för många avlägset och möts man därtill av misstro blir vägen tung att vandra. Det som understryks hos främlingen är det främmande ursprunget, en egenskap gemensam med andra främlingar. När en generell egenskap är det vi först lägger märke till, förbigår vi samtidigt det som gör en person unik. Ömsesidig misstro motverkar integration och skapar klyftor mellan människor. Det uppstår ett ’vi och dom’.I denna situation är det komplicerat att vara förälder. Det är svårt att ledsaga sina barn i ett samhälle man inte själv är förtrogen med. Att barn lär språket fortare...

December 2, 2007 Vicky Samantha Rossi November 29 is the International Day of Solidarity with Palestinian People. On the eve of 60 years since the flight of the first Palestine refugees in 1948, it is more important than ever to return the spotlight to the Palestinian people, their narrative and their on-going struggle… Through art, craft and music, the Palestinian story and, as an integral part of that, the life of 1948 and 1967 refugees can be narrated in a creative and purposeful way. This is a vision shared by the Dar al-Kalima College in Bethlehem that offers 2-year diploma courses in arts, multimedia and communications. “Palestinians have a story to tell which needs to be told through their own eyes. We must show that we are a people who are part of the human civilization and that we have something to offer the rest of humanity”, says Nuha Khoury,...

December 2, 2007 Vicky Samantha Rossi November 29 is the International Day of Solidarity with Palestinian People. The year 2008 will mark 60 years since the flight of the first Palestine refugees. The marking of all tragic events is an important time to both remember what has been in the past and to envision anew paths towards a more vibrant future. Refugee status is more often than not percieved as a stigma by the “outside world” and even by many within Palestinian society itself. Yet, in truth, there is nobody better to tell the story of Palestine refugees than the refugees themselves. The land is an intrinsic part of the Palestinian identity. The importance of the land for the Palestinian people makes the 1948 and 1967 refugee question all the more poignant. In testimony to this fact, a custom is developing of refugees going back to the villages from where they fled or were...

Af Jan ØbergNagoya, Japan, November 22, 2007 Den kommende tragedie i Kosovo vil være mere forårsaget af internationale faktorer end af lokale Medierne dækker hellere vold end de underliggende konflikter. Det er derfor at du hører så lidt om den snart tilbagevendende tragedie kaldet Kososvo. Inden for få uger eller måneder vil risikoen øge for at at vi skal være vidne til endnu en runde af vold, undertrykkelse og anden menneskelig ulykke. Og så skal medierne nok være der. Siden 1991 har TFF analyseret og forudsagt udviklinger i det tidligere Jugoslavien. For 13 år siden begyndte vi at udgive ideer, modeller og planer for en fredelig løsning til Kososvo konflikterne. Hvis den ovenstående forudsigelse går i opfyldelse, vil det hverken være serbernes eller albaniernes skyld. Det vil være forårsaget af det internationale -såkaldte – samfund (IS), det samfund der intet gjorde for at forebygge vold eller forhandle fred da begge...