Archive 1986 – 2017


 Unique photos from Eastern Aleppo in Syria when it was finally liberated on December 11-12, 2016. 
 The people you see here have just come out to freedom from 4,5 years of the occupation by what can be called RIOTs – Rebels-Insurgents-Opposition-Terrorists – mostly the latter. 
 And most of them with some kind of support by NATO countries.  
 Western media, politics and humanitarian organisations focus on the victims from Eastern Aleppo who left to RIOT territories elsewhere, such as Idlib, after the liberation – family members and supporters of the occupiers.  
 That’s not the whole truth about Aleppo. 
 They conveniently ignore the thousands of other Aleppians: Those who were happy beyond words to see all of Aleppo back under the control of the Syrian government. 
 These are the people in this photo story. They are among the 13 million Syrians who, according to the UN in...

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Two closely related points, as a starter. This column has argued Lifting the Bottom Up as economic approach in all weathers, bad, fair, good, to mitigate any suffering, and for them to enter the economy as producers and consumers, not as “cases”. This column has also argued judging Trump not by his poisoning words, nor by commentators’ words, but by his deeds. White-male-workers-no college is not the US bottom, but they were heading down. Now lifted up the Trump way, by keeping/bringing back industry to the “Rust Belt”. Ford Motor Company just did that, GM may be next. If outsourcing to Mexico – under the euphemism “trade” served poor Mexican workers, maybe–but it serves rich elites in both countries. 45 percent tariff on Chinese goods: a non-starter. US homes are filled with affordable “Made in China”. To de-industrialize was US stupidity; to re-industrialize will take time. Keep what is, bring...

When President Barack Obama leaves office will the world be better or worse than eight years ago? Taking the big picture, so often obscured by the wars and uprisings that dominate the front page, more often than not he has resisted the foreign-policy establishment, most importantly in Syria, which makes a fetish of “credibility”. Obama has argued that “dropping bombs on someone to prove that you are willing to drop bombs on someone is just about the worst reason to use force”. In a long interview last April with Jeffrey Goldberg in Atlantic Magazine Obama made the point, “Where am I controversial? When it comes to the use of military power. There’s a playbook in Washington that presidents are supposed to follow that comes out of the foreign policy establishment. The playbook prescribes responses to different events, and these responses tend to be militarised responses. In the midst of an...

January 10th 2017. President Barack Obama steps down at the age of 55. He will probably live, given his healthy lifestyle, until he’s over 90. So what on earth is he going to do for the next 40 years? Run for King of England? He would probably win, as he is much more popular in Europe than he ever was at home. Realistically we don’t know and right now probably he doesn’t. But of one thing we can be sure of as he writes his second autobiography in his very special prose he will be critically re-evaluating every decision and policy change he made. This is an honest man if on a few occasions he failed to be. And we, the jury, try to be, if sometimes we fail too. What did he do right and what did he do wrong? This week I look at his domestic policies, next...

A moment of world history missed by quite a few I was in Aleppo December 10-14, 2016 and the Eastern part was finally liberated on the 12th. Beyond any doubt, this was a world historic moment: because of Aleppo’s importance as city in Syria and the Middle East, its status as UNESCO World Heritage site, as turning point in the soon 6 year long war in and on Syria. And because of the almost 100.000 people who came out of 4,5 years of hell-like occupation and because of the sheer proportions of the destruction. Remarkably, there were no leading Western media present, also not those who were in Damascus and thus had a media visa. Most reported from very far away or from Beirut in neighbouring Lebanon, Istanbul or Berlin. I happened to be the only one from Scandinavia and among the first dozen of people – mostly media people...

Aleppo’s Evil Humanitarians TFF Photo Story # 3 
 Unique photos with text from Aleppo’s Jibrin reception center for people finally liberated in Eastern Aleppo December 11-12, 2016. 
 Documentation of the fact that it was the Syrian authorities, the Syrian Army, Russian doctors, the Syrian Red Crescent and volunteering Syrian youth who took care of these destitute internally displaced people. 
 In short, the evil guys – the only ones at that – according to most Western media. 
 No Western humanitarian organisations were seen, neither any leading Western media. 
 The media have also conveniently stopped writing about Aleppo – beyond doubt a world historic event – and ignored the suffering of the innocent, non-armed victims in this crisis: the largest humanitarian crisis in the world since 1945. 
 The last article about Aleppo in New York Times is from December 19, about 7-year old Twitter-girl Bana and...

This New Year announces itself with bangs all over, not whimpers. Pope Francis made a tour d’horizon on all continents, strongly denouncing the violence in favor of his alternative: negotiation. Much violence is copycat or copyrat; violence being a la mode. Copying–aka learning–is not wrong. But it depends on what is copied. Here my 10-11 wishes: Wish no. 1: copying peace rather than violence, for instance from ASEAN and the Nordic Community, making peace self-reinforcing. Wish no. 2: reporting violence less prominently, more toward the end of newspapers-TV-radio news, and reporting peace upfront. Wish no. 3: understanding war better, not only how many killed but how many bereaved; understanding peace better as model for others. Wish no. 4: introducing Yin/Yang in Western thought: no totally good or bad humans or states around; they are all improvable mixtures. Wish no. 5: linking the good in ourselves to the good in others...

The West African state of the Congo has always been taking one step forward, two steps back. This goes back to the days when Congo became independent from Belgian rule in 1960. Now we see it again. There were supposed to be elections at the end of last year. But President Joseph Kabila has clung to power. Last week after months of negotiations led by the Catholic bishops a deal has been agreed. If Kabila is given one more year in office then he will call elections in a year’s time. The latest round in Congo’s modern history goes back to the Rwandan genocide in 1994 when Hutu extremists organized the mass killing of at least half a million Tutsis. The killings triggered a civil war that led to the eventual defeat of the Hutu-led Rwandan army. As they retreated they forced two million Hutus to leave with them, most...

December 27th 2016 What you see depends on where you sit. There are the pessimists who see President-elect Donald Trump who said in his tweet about the need to engage in a new arms race. There are the optimists, sitting on the other side of the room, who believe the kind words uttered by President Vladimir Putin and Trump to each other mean that there well could be a new agreement on reducing their nuclear armories. 2017 will be a lot better than 2016. When I wrote my history of Amnesty International (“Like Water on Stone”, Penguin, 2002) I was struck both by the staff and activists how positive they were, despite dealing with some of the worst horrors in the world. Amnesty staff would not be in their jobs if they did not possess above-average resilience. The wear and tear of constant failure – as it often seems –...

TFF’s first four photo series from Aleppo have been seen by 95,000 people so far and been featured in online magazines from Vietnam to California, among them a German site with a million visitors daily. Above is the fifth story. It’s about the terrible, systematic destruction of this UNESCO World Heritage site but also about an Aleppo businessman who turned his damaged factory into a school for 1500 children. It had been damaged by the Free Syrian Army and al-Nushra who looted it and then used it as HQ. It’s situated in the Sheikh Najjar Industrial City outside Aleppo that – before the militant/terrorist occupation – represented no less than 50% of Syria’s total industrial production. During two years, these children received no education. Now they do. And hope is slowly coming back. This photo story ends with some “civilisational questions” by Jan Oberg who also took the photos. This...