Archive 1986 – 2017

The turning of a year is always a good time to take stock of where we are and to look for lessons of the past that may guide us into the future. Here are a few thoughts as we enter this New Year. We share a single, beautiful Earth, the only place we know of in the universe that supports the miracle of life. We are one people, one great humanity, capable of cooperating to turn this planet into a paradise for all. We may have different histories, but we share a common future. We will rise or fall together.  By the greed and lack of care and vision that is integral to our current economic system, we are poisoning our Earth, destroying other species at a prodigious rate, and foreclosing possibilities for future generations of humans, including our own children and grandchildren.  We have penetrated the power of the...

LONDON – A reader of a column of mine published at Christmas on the social consequences of abandoned street children wrote to point out that my prognosis that these little Lords of the Flies would grow up as the new bin Ladens, primed to wreck vengeance on established societies, was mistaken. “Osama bin Laden’s anger did not develop out of poverty,” she argued, “but out of a middle class malaise”. Of course. And so did Che Guevara’s and Stokely Carmichael’s and that of Marx and Lenin. But this does not exclude the undisputable, well-researched, fact that poverty, particularly when it exists in a society of gross inequalities, breeds violence, crime and the urge to deal out deadly punishment on conventional society. The leaders may be educated; the shock troops often come from the underclass. Besides, humanity has never confronted before 100 million youngsters growing up on the street, without parents....

Thirty policemen, armed to the teeth, arrested Gandhi on the 4th of May 1930 when he extracted salt in the village of Karadhi, near Dandi. He was taken to Yeravda Prison in Poona. It was not the last time he was thrown into jail in this part of India. Between 1917 and 1932, Mumbai/Bombay and Poona (a 4 hours train journey inland) were important places in Gandhi’s long struggle for peace (including Ahmedabad). In Poona he was also imprisoned in the Aga Khan palace, since he had returned empty-handed from the negotiations in London and on New Year’s Eve 1931-32 initiated a non-violence action for Independence. At midnight, between the 3rd and 4th January, he was arrested on the roof (where he was sleeping) of his house in Mumbai, which is now a beautiful Gandhi museum – “Mani Bhavan” – at No. 19 Liburnum Road. In Mumbai he learned how...

“It is good that Gandhi was shot…” – Hindutva The bus ride from Bombay to Ahmedabad, also called ” India’s Manchester”, takes 17 hours. My neighbour for the trip is a businessman who deals in gold and famous Hyderabad pearls. That is to say the pearls originally came from Basra, Iraq, but with Saddam and everything happening there, they are now said to come from China. “India’s latest budget is really good for us business people, but otherwise politicians have just managed to ruin this country. Corruption and shit everywhere. Just look at the streets, this bus, or the schools”. The young energetic capitalist goes on: “You know, what we need is a revolution! You can’t keep a country together where everyone only thinks about themselves. We can’t be independent unless we start acting like a community. We are also far too many. The Chinese left us behind long ago”....

Everyone driving must turn around at the bus and cab station. Dharamsala is actually car-free, peaceful, chaotic and characterised by an astounding pioneering spirit. The street scene is dominated by monks in wine-red clothes and a remarkably great number of beggars with leprousy. On this dangerous, Himalayan slope, fantastic architectural constructions, often hotels, are being built. But they are said to collapse quicker than they have been built, when heavy rains or glacier-melt water come down in torrents. Everything is beautiful around here, except the trees. It is forbidden to cut down their very trunk, but everywhere people have climbed up and chopped off all their limbs. After all, they need firewood. Power cuts happen on a daily basis and, of course, electricity is rationed – except when the governor of the federal state of Himachal Pradesh, to which Dharamsala belongs, descends on his subjects for an official visit. At...

Travelling is living, as H. C. Andersen has said. Travelling in India is like living another kind of life. Actually, the only way to do it successfully is to leave Swedish life at home and not think anymore about it. India is infinitely large, mysterious, wonderful and disgusting. It is poor and rich; it is sublime, meditative and infernally noisy. It has a dazzling beauty but it is about to die because of the pollution. It is nice and friendly; yet I haven’t seen any other place in the world where there are so many tiresome, nagging, obtrusive and indeed insolent people, according to the Swedish norms that is. It is perfectly impossible to make sweeping general statements about India, other than that it makes generalizations impossible. Travelling in India is experiencing a constant interplay of love and hate. And of positive surprises about life. A challenge, to say the...

Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala, India Reproduced from The Wisdom Fund Link to this article Gandhi’s major statement on the Palestine and the Jewish question came forth in his widely circulated editorial in the Harijan of 11 November 1938, a time when intense struggle between the Palestinian Arabs and the immigrant Jews had been on the anvil in Palestine. His views came in the context of severe pressure on him, especially from the Zionist quarters, to issue a statement on the problem. Therefore, he started his piece by saying that his sympathies are all with the Jews, who as a people were subjected to inhuman treatment and persecution for a long time. “But”, Gandhi asserted, “My sympathy does not blind me to the requirements of justice. The cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me. The sanction for it is sought in the Bible and...

En god nyhet: Jugoslaviens Sannings- och försoningskommission Åtminstone tre goda nyheter har kommit från Balkan utan att egentligen någon märkt det: – Jugoslavien har upprättat en Kommission för sanning och försoning. – Dr. Ibrahim Rugovas och LDK:s valseger öppnar nya utsikter för försoning i Kosovo/a. – Icke-våld har visat sig vara starkare än polisrepression och auktoritärt styre i Serbien och starkare än extremistiskt våld från Kosovos Befrielsearmé (KLA/UCK) i Kosovo. I motsats till våld och krig ger icke-våld och tillfällen till försoning inga rubriker. I själva verket blir det inte över huvud taget något för medierna. Destruktiva nyheter främjar pessimism och en känsla av maktlöshet. Konstruktiva eller bra nyheter främjar det motsatta och ger signalen att fred, trots allt, kan vara möjlig. Kort sagt, makthavare såväl som maktlojala medier föredrar naturligt nog det förra framför det senare. Dessa tre nyheter innebär viktiga tecken som borde leda till en debatt om...

At least three recent pieces of good news from the Balkans have passed virtually unnoticed: – Yugoslavia has established a Commission for Truth and Reconciliation. – Dr. Ibrahim Rugova’s and LDK’s election victory opens new prospects for reconciliation in Kosovo/a. – Non-violence has proved to be stronger than police repression and authoritarian rule in Serbia and stronger than extremist violence by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA/UCK) in Kosovo. Contrary to violence and war, non-violence and opportunities for reconciliation don’t make it to the headlines. As a matter of fact, they don’t make it to the media at all. Destructive news furthers pessimism and the feeling of powerlessness. Constructive or good news furthers the opposite and signals that peace may, in spite of all, be possible. In short, those in power, as well as power-loyal media, naturally prefer the former rather than the latter. These three news items contain important evidence...

LONDON – The age of Euro-pessimism is dead. From January 1st on every child in the countries of European Union, bar those in Britain, Sweden, and Denmark, will hold in their hands the first coins of their future – a Europe without borders, barriers and, most important, wars. Of course, it can all be undone, but not in a moment. The common currency binds in a most extraordinary way the destiny of the peoples of this peninsular protruding from the landmass of Asia. If culturally it is a potage of languages, peoples and traditions (and long may it be so!), politically it is no longer a moveable feast of sovereign states whose borders are battered and changed by continuous argument and warfare. I’ve spent my Christmas in a small out of the way Spanish village where I once briefly lived whilst writing a book. Over coffee the headmaster of the...

Sveriges förändrade utrikes- ochsäkerhetspolitik – och debatten om den The change in Sweden’s foreign andsecurity policy – and the debate about it På TFF:s site – On TFF’s site PressInfo # 134, 17 oktober, 2001Sverige og 11. septemberEn konkretisering af PressInfo 133 – om Sveriges støtte til bombningerne i stedet for at understrege FNs Charter om fred med fredelige midler. Og om hvorledes kritiken vokser. PressInfo # 134, October 17, 2001Sverige och 11 septemberKonkretisering av PressInfo 133 – om Sveriges stöd till bombningar istället för att understryka FN:s stadgans normer om fred med fredliga medel . Och om hur kritiken växer. PressInfo # 134, October 9, 2001Sweden and September 11Concrete examples of how the Swedish government chooses to acquiesce in the policies of the U.S. and the European Union (EU) rather than defending the interests of small states and the UN norm of peace by peaceful means. PressInfo # 133, 12 oktober,...

This time of the year provides us all with an opportunity to reflect. Reconciliation and forgiveness, peace of mind and compassion come to our minds. We send season’s greetings to each other and express hopes for a better new year. The latest PressInfos and this one circle about these issues in a concrete manner, applied to a concrete case. That is important in itself. But by focusing on the Balkans we also want to make the point that there are other problems than the September 11 terror that merit attention. That is, if we embrace all of humanity in our compassionate thoughts and deeds and not just the few. It has gone unnoticed that non-violence proved stronger than police repression and authoritarian rule in Serbia and stronger than extremist violence by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA/UCK) in Kosovo. Milosevic went the militant, repressive way. He finally lost when citizens and...