Archive 1986 – 2017

See PressInfo 195 as a background to this PressInfo This PressInfo in Swedish This PressInfo in Danish There is a long-term background and some root causes behind the emerging peace-keeping failure in Kosovo. Media and politicians tend to forget them because they were ignored during the 1990s and do not fit the standardised image of the conflict. In this analysis, TFF’s director who has been engaged in Kosovo since 1991 discusses some of the most important among those causes. In passing, he also points out how an allegedly “prestigious” NGO such as the International Crisis Group serves as a biased NEGO, a NEar-Governmental Organisation, and continues to offer perspectives and proposals that will make things worse in the Balkans. It’s the beginning of the end Slowly but surely – and sadly – the efforts of the international community to create peace in Kosovo/a are coming to an end in spring...

Baggrund til denne PressInfo, se # 195 Denne PressInfo på svensk og engelsk Der er både en langtidsbaggrund og nogle årsagsrødder bag det sammenbrud i fredsbevarelsen i Kosovo, som nærmer sig. Medier og politikere synes at glemme dem, fordi de blev bevidst overset i 1990erne og ikke passer ind i standardbilledet af konflikten. I denne analyse diskuterer TFFs direktør, som har været engageret i Kosovo siden 1991, nogle af de vigtigste af disse årsager. I forbifarten påeger han også, hvordan en påstået “anset” NGO, som International Crisis Group, virker som en partisk NÆRGO, en Nær-Governmental Organisation – en næsten-regeringsorganisation – og fortsætter med at udbyde perspektiver og forslag, som vil forværre situationen på Balkan. Det er begyndelsen til slutningen. Langsomt men sikkert – og sørgeligt – nærmer det internationale samfunds anstrengelser for at skabe fred i Kosovo/a sig sin slutning i sommeren 2004. Årsagerne er enkle: mægling og konfliktløsning i...

LONDON – Since the early 1970s- the time of India’s first nuclear explosion- India and Pakistan have been walking along the unmarked, mountainous, path that leads to nuclear holocaust. The struggle for the possession of Kashmir, a searingly beautiful piece of Himalayan real estate, has taken both countries, on such a circuitous, diplomatic road that one is tempted to recall what Palmerston said of the Schleswig-Holstein dispute that brought Prussia and Denmark twice to war, “only three people have understood it, and of these one was dead, one was in an insane asylum, and he himself had forgotten it.” A new government is in power in New Delhi. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh hates roundabout talk and cheese-paring diplomacy. He is by nature the most conciliatory of men and his friends cannot imagine that he could ever press the nuclear button. Neither, I think, could Congress president, Sonia Gandhi, judging from the...

Foreword to THE NEW PEARL HARBOR: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11 by David Ray Griffin. David Ray Griffin has written an extraordinary book. If carefully read with only a 30% open mind, it is almost certain to alter negatively the way we understand the workings of constitutional democracy in the United States at the highest levels of government. As such, this is a disturbing book, depicting a profound crisis of political legitimacy for the most powerful sovereign state in the history of the world, and furthermore, a country embarked on the first ever borderless war with no markers of victory and defeat. If The New Pearl Harbor receives the sort of public and media attention that it abundantly deserves, it should alter the public debate, and exert a positive influence on how the future unfolds. It is rare, indeed, that any book has this potentiality to become a...

June 14 , 2004 The unanimous approval of UN Security Council Resolution 1546 about the transfer of sovereignty to the interim Iraqi government was a welcome move. It helped heal some of the wounds caused as the result of the illegal invasion of Iraq by US and UK forces, and has again put the United Nations at the centre of global politics. However, as far as the situation in Iraq is concerned, the resolution should only be regarded as the first step in a long process before a legitimate Iraqi government assumes power. The resolution went through a number of drafts but after a great deal of haggling and the incorporation of amendments proposed by France, Germany, China, Russia and a number of other countries, it was greatly improved. While the passing of this resolution provides a glimmer of hope for the hard-pressed Iraqis, the push for a UN mandate...

Former Yugoslavia entered a process of dissolution many years ago, which may be far from completed yet. It took violent forms from 1991; events in 2004 in Macedonia and Kosovo indicate that we did hardly see the end here either. Was the dissolution unavoidable? Was war an inescapable consequence? I shall attempt to translate these issues into manageable research questions, trying to make various postdictions concerning FY around 1990. There are no natural laws in social science, so the questions will deal with probabilities, asking what were the prognoses with highest likelihood at that time point. No empirical facts are drawn on that were not available at that time; confirmed general propositions are used even if they have only found empirical support later than 1990. WAS A DISSOLUTION INESCAPABLE? The first question is then: how probable was a dissolution, given the characteristics of FY and the circumstances prevailing some fifteen...

The unanimous approval of UN Security Council Resolution 1546 about the transfer of sovereignty to the interim Iraqi government was a welcome move. It helped heal some of the wounds caused as the result of the illegal invasion of Iraq by US and UK forces, and has again put the United Nations at the centre of global politics. However, as far as the situation in Iraq is concerned, the resolution should only be regarded as the first step in a long process before a legitimate Iraqi government assumes power. The resolution went through a number of drafts but after a great deal of haggling and the incorporation of amendments proposed by France, Germany, China, Russia and a number of other countries, it was greatly improved. While the passing of this resolution provides a glimmer of hope for the hard-pressed Iraqis, the push for a UN mandate had more to do...

In his speech, “New Strategies to Meet New Threats,” delivered in West Palm Beach, Florida on June 1, 2004, John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for President, referred to the possibility of nuclear terrorism as “the greatest threat we face today,” and offered a program to eliminate this threat based on US leadership.  Kerry promised to prevent nuclear weapons or materials to create them from falling into the hands of al Qaeda or other extremist organizations. “As President,” he pledged, “my number one security goal will be to prevent the terrorists from gaining weapons of mass murder, and ensure that hostile states disarm.” Kerry recognizes that the US cannot accomplish this task by itself and pledged to build and repair coalitions. “We can’t eliminate this threat on our own,” he stated. “We must fight this enemy in the same way we fought in World War I, World War II,...

LONDON – At the height of Indira Gandhi’s “emergency” when democracy, India’s most precious asset, was suspended, India’s great intellectual, the late Minoo Misani, used the pages of Encounter magazine, the Cold War’s “journal de combat”, to sound an eloquent clarion call against her misrule. Where else at that time in the English speaking world  was there a better place to sound off against authoritariansm, didacticism and  the paronoia of rulers who, by their petty acts of repression, clearly thought that the pen was indeed mightier than the sword? Encounter has been dead a dozen years or more, a victim of the end of the Cold War, the resurgence of democracy and liberty and the urge of today’s younger readers to forget the old intellectual battles of the past. Two weeks ago, just as the Indian electorate had demonstrated once again its democratic maturity,  the long time editor of Encounter,...

LUND – Den 23. maj havde chefredaktør Erik Meier Carlsen en leder om at “Fangemishandling deler danskerne” hvori han tager afstand fra mishandlingen men forsvarer krigen mod Irak. Dén holder ikke. “De amerikanske tab er betydelige og med den voldsomme internationale kritik af den amerikanske krigsførelse, er det en nærliggende mulighed, at USA må trække sig ud af Irak, før der er et sundt demokrati under udvikling. Det vil være meget, meget ulykkeligt.” Det er ikke kun krigens førelse men hele foretagendet den er gal med. Ulykkeligt for hvem, Carlsen? Hvad med ikke-amerikanske tab? Først bukkede mellem en halv og en hel million sagesløse irakere under for vore bestialske sanktioner, siden er titusinder blevet dræbt og såret og sygehuse, skoler, arbejdspladser og boliger ødelagt. Mindst 300.000 børn og unge er klinisk traumatiserede i dagens Irak, ifølge Unicef. Ja, Saddam var en forbryder og det er godt han er væk. Men...

The vast majority of people around the world are much better off in peacetime than in war.  Only a few arms merchants and power-hungry politicians benefit from war, at the expense of soldiers who are sent into battle, and the ever growing number of civilian victims of war. Iceland is in a unique position to promote a new agenda for world peace, based on its history of the Althing, the world’s oldest democratic legislative assembly, established in 930.  It is a forum where differences can be aired and mutually acceptable solutions explored.  In the year 1000, Norwegian missionaries wanted to impose Christianity in Iceland.  A religious war threatened.  But at the Althing, it was decided to adopt Christianity, without outlawing traditional rituals if done in private, and this helped avoid a war.  While people talk, they don’t shoot. In addition, Icelanders have never served in military forces. This may well...

On the 20th of May, US forces raided the Baghdad home of the head of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) Ahmed Chalabi. The media in chorus, without further investigation, described the raid as an effort to silence Chalabi’s condemnation of the US-led occupation: “My house was attacked… We avoided by a hair’s breadth a clash with my guards. I am America’s best friend in Iraq. If the CPA finds it necessary to direct an armed attack against my home, you can see the state of relations between the CPA and the Iraqi people.” ( Press Conference in Baghdad quoted in the Independent, 20 May 2004) The reports pointed to “a changed relationship” between Chalabi and the Coalition. “It’s a stunning reversal!.” Washington has decided  “to drop its backing for Mr Chalabi and to distance itself from him”. Chalabi is said to have been plotting against the US by putting together...