Archive 1986 – 2017

In a surprise announcement, President Bush has called for a restructuring that would convert the United States of America into a wholly owned subsidiary of the Department of Defense. “This will be a good move for both sides,” the President said. “It will give the Defense Department what they want and it will make the American people feel more secure.” The new entity will be known as the Department of Defense USA (NYSE symbol: DOD). Mr. Bush said that under the new structure he would remain on as president, while Donald Rumsfeld, currently Secretary of Defense, would assume the position of Chairman and Dick Cheney would continue as CEO. The president announced that an important step toward achieving this goal would be to turn over another $48 billion to the Defense Department in fiscal 2003, raising their annual budget to nearly $400 billion. This comes on the heels of a...

Åbent brev til regeringen Som andre EU-lande iagttog Danmark tre minutters stilhed for de uskyldigt dræbte i terror-angrebet på World Trade Center og Pentagon den 11. september sidste år. Der blev også afholdt en mindegudstjeneste i København med repræsentaner for regering, kongehus og for De forenede Stater i Danmark. Ud fra et lignende humanistiskt hensyn mener jeg Danmark og ligesindede lande bør vise de uskyldigt dræbte i Afghanistan den samme ære. Af principielle grunde og fordi der er en indlysende sammanhæng mellem de to begivenheder. Alle religioner understreger at ethvert menneskeliv er helligt. Humanisme bygger blandt andet på den ufravigelige grundværdi at alle og ethvert menneskeliv er lige så værdifuldt som ethvert andet uanset nationalitet, race, hudfarve, køn osv. Der er således ingen tvivl om at et uskyldigt dræbt menneskeliv i Afghanistan har eksakt samme værdi som ethvert af de knapt 3000 uskyldige liv, der blev taget 11. september. Særdeles...

Dagbladet Information 6 februar 2002 Danmark skal deltage med elitesoldater, F16-fly og diverse andet i krigen i og over Afghanistan. Beslutningen ligger i forlængelse af de danske regeringers håndtering af begivenhederne siden 11. september. Da denne håndtering har været analysefri og uden tegn på selvstændig holdning eller anvendelse af etiske principper har denne konkrete beslutning samme karaktér. Mens man nok kan forstå daværende statsminister Nyrup Rasmussens panikreaktion – svøbt som den var i statsmandsretorik og landsfaderlige opfordringer til at nationen måtte stå sammen – findes der ikke et rimeligt intellektuelt eller moralsk ansvar for at også den nuværende regering sælger sig til global militarisme og amerikansk verdensdominans. Der er gået godt fire måneder. Der har været tid nok til både ministerielle analyser og til en mangesidet offentlig debat om hvad vi skal stille op med de dødsensalvorlige problemer, der er forbundet med 11 september. På nuværende tidspunkt må det imidlertid...

LONDON – Winston Churchill who invented the phrase “Iron Curtain” did not dream up the term “Cold War”. That- La Guerra Fria- was coined by thirteenth century Spaniards to describe their uneasy coexistence with Muslims in the Mediterranean. This is perhaps the time to bring it back into its correct historical usage. For there can be no doubt that if Saudi Arabia goes ahead with its apparent decision to ask the U.S. to close down its important military base in Saudi Arabia, many Americans will conclude that a Cold War of sorts between the U.S. and the Islamic world will have begun. Everyone knows that removing America’s military presence from the sacred soil of Saudi Arabia has been Osama bin Laden’s number one demand. In meeting it America, however brave a face it puts on it, will feel deep inside itself that its 50-year long relatively benign relationship with the oil...

Tilfældigt falder mine øjne på en lille notits i ‘InternetWorld’ 1-2002. ‘Somalias eneste internet provider, Somali Internet Company, blev tvunget til at lukke i december, fordi USA har mistanke om, at virksomheden har forbindelse til terrornetværket al-Qaida. Resultatet er, at alle Internet-kafeer blev tvunget til at lukke. Lukningen rammer ikke bare somaliere, som vil holde kontakt med slægtninge i udlandet, men også erhvervslivet og alle de internationale hjælpeorganisationer i landet’. Jeg arbejdede i Somalia i 1977 – 81. Dengang sendte jeg breve og telegrammer hjem. Somalia har en samtalens kultur; et skriftsprog var netop skabt under Siad Barré’s første år med visionær statsledelse (siden udviklet i sørgeligt diktatorisk retning). Somalierne mødtes på markedet med deres kvæg og kameler, fortalte historier og nyheder og reciterede poesi, mens de drak sød kanel-te og tyggede khat. Således og takket være slægts- og klanstruktur vidste alle 3.5 millioner somaliere alt om hinanden. Og døgnet...

My President, Right or Wrong On the catastrophic fallibility of U.S. presidents and their men Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers By Daniel Ellsberg Commenting on public disclosure of The Pentagon Papers, the official government history which documents the pervasive lying and misjudgement that characterized the United States’ conduct of its war against Vietnam, White House chief-of-staff R.J. Haldeman paraphrased a colleague’s assessment of the political implications: “To the ordinary guy, all this is a bunch of gobbledygook. But out of the gobbledygook comes a very clear thing: You can’t trust the government; you can’t believe what they say; and you can’t rely on their judgement. And the implicit infallibility of presidents, which has been an accepted thing in America, is badly hurt by this, because it shows that people do things the president wants to do even though it’s wrong, and the president can be wrong.”...

New York Times December 7, 2001 As the Afghan war enters into what may be its final days, and the international community begins discussing its next steps, Americans will be learning more about the warrior people known to the British as Pathans, and more correctly nowadays as Pashtuns. Most of the Taliban were Pashtun – as is the new interim leader of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, to whom Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban leader, has ceded power. The Pashtuns number upwards of 20 million, and their squat stony villages straddle the Durand Line that nominally demarcates Pakistan from Afghanistan, where Pashtuns form the largest ethnic group. These are the fighters who inspired reams of fearful and admiring verse from Rudyard Kipling, the sharpshooters blessed with perfect sight who picked off the soldiers of the British Raj. But the Pashtuns also produced one of the most remarkable pacifist movements of the 20th...

LONDON – The media has paid for its mistake of believing in George Bush’s war against the Taliban. At the end of the day it is pretty clear that in the supposed objective of the war, the hunting down of Osama bin Laden, the trail has gone cold. The scorecard of deaths reveals that not only have more civilian Afghanis died than Americans in the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, but the number of journalists killed in action was eight times the total of American soldiers. Yet by and large the Western media have swallowed the White House hype wholesale. Not only was it generally considered a just and necessary war, they devoted all their considerable resources – and more, even to the point of financial exhaustion and the exploitation of the very lives of their reporters – to covering it in excruciating detail. War, sure enough, provides the journalistic...

Fostering Hope for Humanity’s Future Choose Peace. Your Role in Waging Peace in the Nuclear Age By Daisaku Ikeda and David Krieger In their new book, Choose Hope, two men with far-ranging visions for humanity’s future David Krieger and Daisaku Ikeda illuminate ways for people everywhere to take part in the creation of a better world a world of peace and universal prosperity, with liberty and justice for all. Ikeda, a leader of the Soka Gakkai movement in Japan, points out that many people today have lost confidence in their power to bring about constructive changes. He emphasizes the importance of getting people to have a renewed sense of their abilities to have constructive impacts in many fields.  Krieger, the founder and president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, shares Ikeda’s belief that people everywhere need to see the reasons for genuine hope to become fully aware of the strength they...

War is a force that gives us meaning By Chris Hedges Public Affairs, Oxford, 2002 This is the Kon Tiki of anti-war polemics. Gripping, thrilling, learned and impossible to put down, Chris Hedges, a star New York Times war correspondent, describes war, killing and the sadism and seduction that goes with it in the most extraordinary flowing prose, carrying the reader through the waves and storms of often complex argument to show that there must be another way at looking at irresolvable disputes, the nationalistic need for drama , and the all too human fear of the other side. In his time in the field Hedges too has felt the lure and addiction of war. Here he throws it off, challenging every presumption in its favour, every excuse to pursue it yet, rather amazingly, remaining in the end unconvinced of the need to be a pacifist, just a hater of...

Effekten er stor, fred kan vindes uden vold Jeg støtter TFF, fordi jeg har stor tillid til Jan Øberg, som jeg første gang hørte om i en radioudsendelse for cirka fire år siden. Hans udtalelser og holdninger gik rennt ind hos mig. Det giver så meget mening, og sikken et kæmpearbejde, han gør. Derfor glæder det mig, hver gang jeg modtager en nyhedsmal om nye tiltag og artikler, at se hvor mange mennesker, der efterhånden har fulgt op på Jan Øbergs initiativ. Jeg er sikker på, at effekten er stor, og jeg tror på, at freden kan vindes uden vold. Med vold er det umuligt.Kirsten Fauken Talerør for dem der lider Etablissementets politiske korrekthed og selvgodhed lever i værste velgående – i al ubemærkethed. Her er det ok. at gå i krig mod Irak uden FN-mandat og at ignorere FN´s påtale af Israels gentagne overskridelser at menneskerettighederne. Den globale klassedeling lever de militærindustrielle firmaer af. Det uafhængige TFF...

LONDON – Washington and its closest allies- at least those who try to put themselves in Washington’s shoes- now realize they are beleaguered by the Pandora’s Box of nuclear and missile proliferation and that they have no adequate policy to deal with them. Their moral authority is all but used up, just when they need it most, to deal with Iraq first and now North Korea. George Bush must be wishing he were Lula in Brazil- cancel the order for new military jets, tell the nation the money is going to relieve poverty and meanwhile use the credibility earned to keep the Brazilian economy on a responsible course, even though that will incur quite a bit of belt-tightening for everybody. Lula, a week into office, must be already set to win re-election. But what equivalent moral authority does George Bush have in order to win over the hearts and minds...