Archive 1986 – 2017

LONDON – One should always read the small print. William Perry’s alert was in the left hand bottom corner of page 4 or the right hand bottom corner of page 6, depending on the paper you read. On July 16th the former U.S. Secretary of Defence warned us that the situation with North Korea “was manageable six months ago if we did the right things….But we haven’t done the right things” and he concluded that the U.S. could be at war as early as this year. Do we blame ourselves or do we blame our editors for being so insouciant about a war that the Pentagon warned Bill Clinton could take the lives of 52,000 American soldiers and god knows how many South Korean lives? Or do we simply blame Kim Jong Il and his vile regime in North Korea for building up an army of over 1 million men, pre-positioning artillery...

Falsehoods ranging from exaggeration to plain untruth were used to make the case for war. More lies are being used in the aftermath. By Glen Rangwala and Raymond Whitaker The Independent (UK) August 22, 2003 1) Iraq was responsible for the 11 September attacks A supposed meeting in Prague between Mohammed Atta, leader of the 11 September hijackers, and an Iraqi intelligence official was the main basis for this claim, but Czech intelligence later conceded that the Iraqi’s contact could not have been Atta. This did not stop the constant stream of assertions that Iraq was involved in 9/11, which was so successful that at one stage opinion polls showed that two-thirds of Americans believed the hand of Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks. Almost as many believed Iraqi hijackers were aboard the crashed airliners; in fact there were none. 2) Iraq and al-Qa’ida were working together Persistent claims by US...

Former UN Under-Secretary-General with special responsibility for peacekeeping operations TFF associate August 20, 2003 YRINGHAM, Mass.- Ralph Bunche was born in Detroit 100 years ago today (August 7, 2003). His passionate determination to get results did not extend to seeking credit for them, so his work is better remembered than he is. Of all his many accomplishments – civil rights pioneer, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, chief drafter of two chapters of the United Nations charter, negotiator of the armistices that ended the first Arab-Israeli war – Bunche said he was proudest of developing what came to be known as peacekeeping. Setting up the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization in Palestine in 1948, Bunche formulated the principles that have governed peacekeeping operations ever since. In the 1956 Suez crisis, working with Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold and Lester Pearson of Canada, he organized the first peacekeeping force, the United Nations Emergency Force...

LONDON – Whatever happens in Liberia, whether President Charles Taylor really goes or stages a come back, whether American marines land or stand off shore, the damage has already been done. It has been done to the weakest and most vulnerable of its people, its children. The country, amongst all its many woes, has become a major recruitment centre for the small child soldiers who like to be photographed with the big man size guns. It is the same, indeed much worse, in the Congo to the south, where there are 40,000 abandoned children and adolescents running amok, ready to attach themselves to any gunslinger who gives them a meal. We have no choice if we want a Saddam-free, bin Laden-free world tomorrow but go into overdrive to do something very serious about this terrible legacy of Africa’s post colonial civil wars. They may not become the leaders, but they are...

STOCKHOLM – Find me a Swede who is holidaying abroad this summer and I’ll eat my newspaper. The Swedish prime minister, Goran Persson, for one, cycled round the countryside with his new girlfriend, appropriately enough the head of the country’s government-controlled alcohol monopoly that runs the system of wine and beer shops that makes sure the average Swede can’t just decide to have a drink and easily reach for one. This is the European country that along with France loves itself the most, is comfortable in its old ways, is wedded to its welfare state that produces an ultra healthy population that claims more sick leave days than anybody else’s, that invariably manages, as it does today, to pull handsome economic growth out of a hat in spite of dire predictions of creeping sclerosis, which heads the Western divorce rate league, accepts late teenage sex unblinkingly and yet, as the other above...

LONDON – For many years we have been blinded by news about immigration. Hardly a day goes by when we are not told some provoking item – yesterday, black Africans in a small boat taking in water in a wild sea trying to reach Europe. And this past month we have been swamped by stories about the slow down of population growth and the ageing population of Europe, with often the corollary – the argument that the Europe of the future cannot survive without opening the immigration gates wide. But, as Walter Lippmann once wrote, news and truth are not the same thing. Into this ill-informed, news-fed, maelstrom in Europe has stepped all manner of bombastic opinion making- from Jean-Marie Le Pen on the anti-immigrant right in France, who gained 17% of the vote in the first round of the presidential election last year, to the sophisticated writer Oriani Fallaci who,...

MIDDLE EAST ILLUSIONSAv: Noam ChomskyRowman & LittlefeldLanham, Boulder, New York, Oxford 2003. USA har motiverat tre stora krig efter varandra med moraliska argument. Bombningarna av Jugoslavien 1999 kallades en “humanitär intervention”. Kriget mot Afghanistan två år senare motiverades till slut med att man ville krossa den förhatliga talibanregimen. Och bombningarna av Irak i år gällde ju inte bara de massförstörelsevapen (som inte verkar ha funnits) utan i lika hög grad en misshaglig regim. I alla tre krigen fanns på köpet män som i propagandan personifierade “ondskan”, Slobodan Milosevic, Osama bin Ladin och Saddam Hussein. Krigen framställdes som de goda krafternas krig mot de onda. Bedriver USA krig efter krig mot “de onda” för att upprätthålla respekten för de mänskliga rättigheterna? Nej, knappast, konstaterar Noam Chomsky i sin senaste bok, “Middle East Illusions”, en samling texter om Mellanöstern och särskilt USA:s politik gentemot regionen. Bokens första del behandlar åren 1968 –...

Diana Johnstones “Fools’ Crusade”, (“Dårarnas korståg”) är det hittills mest ambitiösa försöket att kritiskt granska den västliga bilden av de jugoslaviska krigen, skriver Sören Sommelius. FOOLS’ CRUSADEYugoslavia, NATO and Western DelusionsAv: Diana JohnstoneMonthly Review Press, New York Det Jugoslavien som för femton år sedan var ett välmående sydeuropeiskt land slets sönder av krig efter krig under ett blodigt 1990-tal. Hur kunde det ske? Vad var det som egentligen hände? Medan krigen pågick misslyckades våra medier med att göra det som skedde begripligt. Det talades ofta fördomsfullt om urgammalt hat mellan folk och om en ond man i Serbien, Slobodan Milosevic. Balkans folk delades in i onda och goda. Värst framställdes serberna. Inget av det var sant. Fortfarande är allt som skedde de här dramatiska och destruktiva åren inhöljt i tjocka dimridåer av både halvsanningar och uppenbara lögner. Diana Johnstone, amerikansk författare och debattör sedan länge bosatt i Paris, har nu...

Boken: COLLATERAL LANGUAGE. A User’s Guide to America’s New WarAntologi utgiven av John Collins och Ross GloverNew York University Press De “nya krigen”, bombningarna av Jugoslavien och Afghanistan och det senaste – men knappast sista – USA:s krig mot Irak, har föregåtts av ny politisk retorik. Ett nytt politiskt språk har kommit till användning, för att mobilisera folkligt stöd och rättfärdiga det “goda” och “nödvändiga” kriget. En term förknippad med “de nya krigen” är “collateral damage”, oavsiktlig skada, särskilt då civila dödas utan att det varit den direkta avsikten. Efter den elfte september har värdeladdade ord som frihet, rättvisa, feghet, ondska och terrorism använts flitigt. “Collateral language”, som jag fritt skulle vilja översätta med “Det krigsskadade språket”, är titeln på en antologi om de nya krigens politiska retorik. I fjorton essäer tar en grupp amerikanska forskare, där många arbetar på St. Lawrence University, upp olika aspekter på ämnet. Titlarna är enkla,...

1. Fulfill Existing Obligations. The nuclear weapons states have made solemn promises to the international community to negotiate in good faith to achieve nuclear disarmament. The United States, Russia, Britain, France and China accepted this obligation when they signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and extended their promises at the 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference and again at the 2000 NPT Review Conference. India and Pakistan, which are not signatories of the NPT, have committed themselves to abolish their nuclear arsenals if the other nuclear weapons states agree to do so. The only nuclear weapons state that has not made this promise is Israel, and surely it could be convinced to do so if the other nuclear weapons states agreed to the elimination of their nuclear arsenals. The International Court of Justice, the world’s highest court, unanimously highlighted the obligation to nuclear disarmament in its 1996 Opinion: “There exists an obligation...

Oprindeligt publiceret 26. juni 2003 1. For at opfylde allerede eksisterende forpligtelser. Kernevåbenstaterne har afgivet højtidelige løfter til det internationale samfund om af forhandle redeligt for at opnå kernevåbenafrustning. De forenede Stater, Rusland, England, Frankrig og Kina accepterede denne forpligtelse, da de underskrev Ikke-Sprednings-Aftalen (NPT) og de udvidede deres løfter på NPT revisions- og udvidelseskonferencen i 1995 og igen på NPT revisionskonferencen i 2000.Indien og Pakistan, som ikke har underskrevet Ikke-Sprednings-Aftalen, har forpligtet sig til at afskaffe deres kernevåben, hvis de andre kernevåbenstater afskaffer deres. Den eneste kernevåbenstat, som ikke har afgivet et sådant løfte er Israel og de må kunne overbevises til at gøre det samme, hvis alle andre kernevåbenstater bliver enige om at afskaffe deres kernevåbenarsenaler.Den internationale Domstol i Haag (International Court of Justice), verdens højeste retsinstans afgav en udtalelse i 1996, som understregede forpligtelsen til kernevåbenafrustning: “Der eksisterer en forpligtelse til at forhandle redeligt og til at...

By Walden Bello* July 27, 2003 NoteTFF advocates nonviolent struggle before anything else. We disagree with Bello’s view that “For a people under occupation, armed struggle is not one option. It is the only option.”We hope, however, that by bringing this to our readers, it will contribute to a much needed debate about the ways in which the Iraqis can liberate themselves from the occupation. In addition, many other perspectives in this article certainly merits our attention and reflection. Almost daily, we hear reports of American soldiers being picked off one by one by underground forces in Iraq. Since George W. Bush declared victory on May 1, over 30 US soldiers have died in combat. Soon, the number of Americans killed after victory will outstrip the number who died in the invasion.This speech was delivered at the UP Foundation Day Assembly on June 19, 2003) ” I would like, first...