Archive 1986 – 2017

This is a follow-up to PressInfo 148. We continue the peace-making analysis with these dimensions: The peace process Negotiation as the only method There has been an emphasis on “getting them to the table”, on negotiations and compromise. When not knowing what to do, call a conference! What if the emphasis had been on dialogues with each party first, based on active listening to their stories, fears and hopes? In other words, deep understanding first, and the development of a minimum of trust and mutual respect. After that there would be talks/conversations and more confidence. And finally, some kinds of negotiations shaped around the core issues as defined by the parties rather than a negotiation agenda set up by external governments that seek simultaneously to promote their own interests in the region? What if the principle of compromise had been scrapped and we had recognised that no side should be...

LONDON – On September 17th President George Bush declared that the capture or death of Osama bin Laden was his prime objective. “I want justice”, he said, “There’s an old poster out West I recall that said, ‘Wanted Dead or Alive.'” He also said that the purpose of going to war in Afghanistan was to “smoke him out”. Almost to the day, seven months later, a new video tape of bin Laden surfaces on the screens of al-Jazeera tv station seemingly suggesting he is still alive. Washington appears almost insouciant. Meanwhile, Afghanistan has been intensively bombed. But no one bothers much to cast aspersions on the reports that more innocent civilians, including many more children, died than they did in the destruction of the World Trade Centre. For sure an odious regime was pushed aside and one that harboured bin Laden, but bin Laden had never been short of hiding...

For the project INSTEAD OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS By the Swedish Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (SLMK) in cooperation with International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) Ten years after the so-called end of the Cold War, nuclear weapons are still with us. There is the BMD, the risk of diversion of fissile materials, the fear of nuclearisation of terrorism. The weapons and their means of delivery have become ever more sophisticated. Through base systems, sub-marines, aircraft carriers, the global reach of militarism has intensified. Still, in proportion to the increasing threat all this represents to humankind’s survival as well as to democracy and global development, public debate with visions of a nuclear-free is desperately feeble. Advocates of a nuclear-free world, face immensely powerful governments and military-industrial-scientific structures. We also face the arrogance of power of the roughly 600 individuals (presidents, prime ministers, defence ministers, chiefs of...

LONDON – As Israeli tanks roam at will through Palestinian territory, it is apparent to all but the most blinded that the ability of Yasser Arafat and his people to regain the initiative has never been more circumscribed. No one doubts the power of the Palestinian militants to inflict enormous pain on Israeli civilians. No one should minimise the sheer fear that runs through everyday Israeli family life. Indeed, no one should be surprised if tens of thousands of young highly educated families pack up their bags and join other Israelis in the modern day diasporas of places like the San Francisco Bay area where some 30,000 of them have already built new – and safer – lives. And no one should feign surprise if, among battle hardened veterans of previous Israeli campaigns, the number of peaceniks begins to grow. But the truth is however large the peace movement or...

TFF does not work with the larger Middle East and the Israel-Palestine conflict inside it. But the situation in spring 2002 is so serious that we feel we cannot ignore it on our website. We want to help disseminate information and assist our visitors in understanding and taking action for peace. What you find below – a work in progress by the day – is by no means systematic, comprehensive or impartial. But it offers access to perspectives often left out in mainstream media coverage, including nonviolent options and possible longterm solutions. We will post links, analyses and articles as we find them. So come back soon and read more. Local peace organisations Ariga The Courage to Refuse. Combatants’ letters Neve Shalom-Wahat al-Salam, Oasis of Peace Peace – A Mid-East Dialogue Group Peace Now Yesh Gvul. Supports soldiers who refuse B’Tselem Dor Shalom An Entire Generation Demands Peace Givat Haviva...

Bush-Blair must be Indicted for War Crimes by the ICC By Christian P. Scherrer Professor at Hiroshima Peace Institute (HPI) of Hiroshima City University, JapanHead, ECORHPI April 9, 2002 In these hours the Iraqi people become victims of superpower aggression. How could that be justified? In the USA the governments and media propaganda machinery made Saddam the scapegoat for 9-11. We know that this is a big lie. The US government lies when talking of a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda. There is not a shred of evidence; the Bath party has traditionally tried to uproot Islamist tendencies. Any operational link with al-Qaeda is due to ideological and political incompatibility to be excluded. The US government also maintained that Saddam Hussein possesses what the UN inspectors did not find, but what US-UK stockpile and might even use in case of failing to achieve Iraq’s surrender: weapons of mass destruction. Abuse...

By Yves Contamine World Global Trends, Québec, Canada April 9, 2002 Some facts :  306 billionaires totaling $1.300 billion in wealth. 1.3 billion people – live on incomes of less than $1 a day. The world spent on its military sector in the three decades from 1960 to 1990 $21,000 billion. Total world military expenditure has been rising again since 1998. Total world military expenditure in 2000 amounted to about $798 billion, in current dollars. 2002: Pentagon will devour some $379 billion. Arms transfers USA 50%, followed by Russia, France, the UK and Germany. US chemical weapons incineration program $15 billion (1). Space station $60 billion. Agricultural subsidies in the developed industrial member states of the OECD total $300 billion a year. U.S. pet food industry: $11 billion per year. USA adult entertainment industry:$10 billion. Largest population of overweight adults: United States = 61% of adult U.S. population. USA dieters currently spend an average of $30 billion annually on products that promise to remove...

April 2, 2002 Are we going to have a “clash of civilizations” a la Hollywood as predicted by Osama bin Laden and Samuel Huntington? Is this going to be between Islam in general and the West, or only between Arabs and the Anglo-Americans? And who is going to lead it? Some lieutenant of Osama and his Wahhabi warriors? Saddam Hussein and his secular forces? Colonel Khaddafi supported by his oil fortunes paid for by Europe? Or perhaps will the forces of a militant Islam be led by President Khamenei of Iran? Even the mere mention of such names is likely to remind us of how preposterous these paranoid speculations turn out to be. There is now in the West a curious inchoate anxiety about a huge swath of mankind who, it is thought, is somehow out to destroy Western capitalist civilization. At least so writes, Paul Kennedy, the celebrated Yale...

By Shastri Ramachandaran, Times of India  April 2, 2002  STOCKHOLM – “Are you not afraid? Is there no fear in India and among Indians after the September 11 attack on the United States?” This was a recurrent question posed by friends, journalists, travelling companions and acquaintances during my 13-day sojourn from Copenhagen, through Malmo, Lund and Kalmar to Stockholm. The questions came from Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, Hungarians, Austrians, Pakistanis and, of course, Indians also living in these parts. Invariably, I would burst in to a laugh that provoked them to insistently ask: “But aren’t you frightened with all this terrorism?” I get serious and say that there are few terrors for me as an Indian, at home or abroad. Their perplexed expressions and the expectant silence oblige me to explain that you can die for a million reasons in India; it does not have to be terrorism or bombs alone; and...

By Suzanne Elston, INFACT Canada April 2, 2002  Since the September 11th attacks, global military and security spending has spiraled. In total, $1.6 trillion is spent annually on military weapons. At the recent Salt Lake City Winter Game alone, organizers spent an estimated $300 million on security measures or approximately $125,000 per athlete. By contrast, the 1999 WTO meetings in Seattle had a mere $5 million to spend on security. This is in response to the deaths of 3,000 people. By contrast, in the last twelve months: – more North Americans were murdered by their spouses – three times as many people died from food poisoning – five times as many people were killed by drunk drivers – ten times as many people committed suicide – 100 times as many people died from smoking North American governments are now planning to spend more than 20 billion dollars a year to...

Writing in the March 10, 2002 edition of the Los Angeles Times, defense analyst William Arkin revealed the leaked contents of the Bush Jr. administration’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) that it had just transmitted to Congress on January 8. The Bush Jr. administration has ordered the Pentagon to draw up war plans for the first-use of nuclear weapons against seven states: the so-called “axis of evil”: Iran, Iraq, and North Korea; Libya and Syria; Russia and China, which are nuclear armed. This component of the Bush Jr. NPR incorporates the Clinton administration’s 1997 nuclear war-fighting plans against so-called “rogue states” set forth in Presidential Decision Directive 60. These warmed-over nuclear war plans targeting these five non-nuclear states expressly violate the so-called “negative security assurances” given by the United States as an express condition for the renewal and indefinite extension of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) by all of its non-nuclear...

By William M. Arkin for ‘The Los Angeles Times’ (March 10, 2002)  April 2, 2002 A secret policy review of the nationís nuclear policy puts forth chilling new contingencies for nuclear war. WASHINGTON – The Bush administration, in a secret policy review completed early this year, has ordered the Pentagon to draft contingency plans for the use of nuclear weapons against at least seven countries, naming not only Russia and the “axis of evil”–Iraq, Iran, and North Korea–but also China, Libya and Syria. In addition, the U.S. Defense Department has been told to prepare for the possibility that nuclear weapons may be required in some future Arab-Israeli crisis. And, it is to develop plans for using nuclear weapons to retaliate against chemical or biological attacks, as well as “surprising military developments” of an unspecified nature. These and a host of other directives, including calls for developing bunker-busting mini-nukes and nuclear weapons...