Archive 1986 – 2017

Tio frågor som borde ha ställts till president Clinton, när han i tisdags besökte Kosovo President Bill Clinton gjorde i tisdags en blixtvisit i Kosovo. I ett tal manade han albanerna att sluta hämnas på den krympande serbiska minoriteten. Han besökte också de amerikanska soldaterna på den nya Bondsteelbasen. Det finns viktiga frågor som borde ha ställts still honom om Balkan och Kosovo och om USA:s ledande roll i bombningarna av Jugoslavien. Det borde vara en självklarhet att oberoende medier i demokratiska länder låter politiska ledare svara på viktiga frågor. Men ställdes verkligen de viktiga frågorna? Här är några frågor som jag skulle ha ställt ˆ om jag vore journalist och hade fått tillfälle att göra en intervju i tisdags. (1) Mr President! Amerikanska plan bombade i våras Jugoslavien och Kosovo med er som överbefälhavare. Aktionen rättfärdigades av uppgifter om ett folkmord planerat av Belgrad. Dessa uppgifter har nu visat...

LONDON- In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Hound of the Baskervilles”, the great detective Sherlock Holmes lectures his faithful assistant, Watson, on the unlikely subject of free trade. Says Holmes: ” Capital article this on free trade. Permit me to give you an extract from The Times, ‘You may be cajoled into imagining that your own special trade or your own industry will be encouraged by a protective tariff, but it stands to reason why such legislation must in the long run keep away wealth from the country, diminish the value of our imports and lower the general condition of life in this island.'” “What do you think of that, Watson?” cries Holmes in high glee, rubbing his hands together with satisfaction. “Don’t you think that is an admirable statement?” That was written in 1901. At century’s end the intellectual battle for this central point in economic life is being fought...

”With e-mail and Internet it has become so much more easy to generate and share ideas instantly. Below you find 53 different ideas about peace in Macedonia from people around the world who responded to our call in the preceding PressInfo. It’s a free gift to anyone who cares to listen and take inspiration – many could also be implemented in Kosovo,” says TFF director Jan Oberg. “Our respondents are not a representative sample but, among other things, this exciting experiment shows that: 1) there are so many ideas out there and an amazing willingness to contribute constructively; 2) people who have not been to Macedonia can share ideas and initiatives that have worked in other conflicts, a general body of knowledge and experiences are developing; 3) they focus much more on the human dimensions of conflict-resolution than governments do; 4) they by and large reject military means in peacebuilding,...

“Read the farewell interview with Macedonian President Kirov Gligorov and the analysis by TFF’s Macedonian adviser Dr. Biljana Vankovska on our site and you will understand how fragile Macedonia’s stability and peace is. Why not try a citizens’ ‘early warning’? We invite you to send us your ideas on how we can help Macedonia avoid violence and move towards peace in spite of all the obstacles,” says director Jan Oberg. “After the Kosovo war, all citizens of Macedonia go through very difficult times; presidential elections take on October 31. If there is one lesson from Kosovo, it is this: the earlier we deal with the problems, the more options there are, and the easier it is to solve conflicts without resorting to violence. It is a safe prediction that, unless various types of violence-preventive measures are taken and taken in time, Macedonia is likely to slide into chaos. If citizens...

”With e-mail and Internet it has become so much more easy to generate and share ideas instantly. Below you find 53 different ideas about peace in Macedonia from people around the world who responded to our call in the preceding PressInfo. It’s a free gift to anyone who cares to listen and take inspiration – many could also be implemented in Kosovo,” says TFF director Jan Oberg. “Our respondents are not a representative sample but, among other things, this exciting experiment shows that: 1) there are so many ideas out there and an amazing willingness to contribute constructively; 2) people who have not been to Macedonia can share ideas and initiatives that have worked in other conflicts, a general body of knowledge and experiences are developing; 3) they focus much more on the human dimensions of conflict-resolution than governments do; 4) they by and large reject military means in peacebuilding,...

Links to Facts & Views Beauty and nonviolence, and International Day for Tolerance Let’s begin this Transnational WIRE with a text on beauty and on how we could learn from appreciation of beauty that violence is a bad idea• Does beauty really equal truth?Philosopher Elaine Scarry defends beauty from politically correct critics. Here is one of her beautiful thoughts: “One of the reasons that violence has in our own era been so easily anesthetized is precisely because we’ve gotten unanchored from beauty.” November 16 was the UN-declared International Day for Tolerance. Here is how UNESCO’s new Director-General, Koichiro Matsuura, observed this important day:• Tolerance – a dynamic world valueAnd the UN Secretary-General promised to make tolerance a priority:• We can advance tolerance every day, says Kofi Annan. The old Cold War – and the New… On the occassion of the end of the Cold War:• CIA warned of Gorbachev’s fallWhat did CIA think it...

LONDON- The West has gone uncannily calm about last month’s military take-over in nuclear-armed Pakistan. Could it be embarrassment, that it hasn’t delivered on the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty – an essential ingredient in the grand bargain of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty that states that the old established nuclear powers will make significant progress in disarmament in return for the rest of the world – 95% of it in fact – abjuring manufacture of their own nuclear weapons? Or is it just carelessness that takes its cue from President Bill Clinton’s lack of conviction on the urgent necessity for nuclear disarmament? It is a quite extraordinary silence. Nowhere else in the world does the military – so blatantly at least – have its finger directly on the nuclear trigger. There has always been, right through the darkest days of the Cold War, the buffer of civilian authority. Even when the Soviet...

Links to Facts & Views, Kosovo and the Second Cold War Europe was extremely close to a major war. Did the allies know? Who would have made the decision? What would we, the citizens of NATO countries, have been told? Was Europe’s security and the existence of NATO put at risk because of the sufferings of Kosovo-Albanians? Because of a genocide that did not take place? Or because we are heading for a new Cold War?• NATO moved very close to invasion in KosovoThe United States, Britain, Germany, Italy, France, Finland and Yugoslavia — the United States came much closer to a ground war in Europe than is commonly understood. Read Steven Erlanger’s absolutely shocking analysis in New York Times. And what shall we do with the trophy? The American press is beginning to see that Kosovo was not all that simple and easy…• Kosovo in limboThis word picture is painted by the U.N....

So how many people were killed in Kosovo? Opponents of the NATO bombing campaign claim estimates were wildly exaggerated through cynical propaganda. But the totals for confirmed dead are mounting. By Ian Williamsin New York Holocaust revisionism – denial of the massacre of Jews during the war – is illegal in some countries. But the downward revision of the numbers murdered in Kosovo is proving very fashionable – even in the New York Times. In mid-October a Texas-based analytical group called Stratfor <www.stratfor.com> issued a report claiming that casualty figures among civilians in Kosovo were deliberately exaggerated to justify NATO’s attack on Serbia. “It really does matter how many were killed in Kosovo,” the report said. “The foreign policy and political implications are substantial. There is a line between oppression and mass murder. It is not a bright shining one, but the distinction between hundreds dead and tens of thousands...

The US is planning a massive intervention in Colombia under the pretext of fighting the ‘narco-guerrillas’ By John Pilger Following its attack on the Balkans, the United States is planning a massive intervention in Colombia. The Clinton administration has decided to seek congressional approval for $1bn in military aid to the government of Andres Pastrana in Bogota. This is for a low-level air war, American-planned and “advised”, with Blackhawk helicopters, satellite surveillance and cluster bombs. “It is the same policy,” says Amnesty International, “that backed, death squads in El Salvador in the 1980s.” It is the policy that started the war in Vietnam. Colombia receives more US arms and equipment than any country in the world, apart from Israel and Egypt. Last May, the Washington Post disclosed that 200 American military personnel were playing key parts in the war against the guerrillas of Colombia’s popular resistance, who occupy an area...

LONDON- When Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Secretary General of the Soviet Union, the idealistic leader from within who accepted the end of communism, arrived in Berlin earlier this week he said “Now, ten years after, we see the world does not appear as we had hoped”.Commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall compells us to notice the extent to which the high hopes and raised expectations its demise generated have not been realized. The Clinton and Yeltsin administrations, who received a mandate from their Cold War-weary electorates, to navigate their respective superpowers, with the rest of the world in tow, into a safe harbour, have been found bitterly wanting. As both regimes reach their finale we can judge practically the whole performance- a re-birth of mutual antagonism and mistrust, an almost total lack of new initiatives and progress on nuclear disarmament, a reactivation of nuclear posturing and, worst of all, an...

Två delade städer står som symboler för den nya världsordningen efter det kalla krigets slut, det återförenade Berlin och den bosniska staden Mostar som efter kriget blivit en delad stadDet korta seklet har Eric Hobsbawm kallat vårt 1900-tal, som kan sägas ha varat från 1914 till 1989. Seklet föddes i blod då den viktorianska eran gick under efter skotten i Sarajevo. Under och efter första världskriget rasade imperier som korthus, det österrikisk-ungerska kejsardömet, det turkisk-osmanska väldet, de tsarryska och tyska kejsardömena. En världsordning gick oåterkalleligen i graven.För i dag just tio år sedan föll Berlinmuren. Det kalla kriget tog slut. Världen blev en annan. I november 1989 var det lätt att drömma om en bättre och fredligare värld. Det dröjde heller inte länge förrän det delade Tyskland återförenades. Nu håller såren på att läkas också i Berlin, efter nästan femtio år som skärningspunkt för två oförsonliga politiska system. Att Tyskland...