Archive 1986 – 2017

By Samir Amin Al-Ahram Weekly 22 – 28 April 1999 Issue No. 426 Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 The 28 March issue of the New York Times contains an informative article on US political strategy. Its content is summed up by an eloquent image that takes up one page of the publication: a boxing glove in the colours of the American flag, accompanied by the following caption: “What the world needs now — for globalisation to work, America can’t be afraid to act like the almighty superpower that it is”. The reason for the announced punches is elucidated in these terms: “The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies is called the US Army, Air Force, Navy and...

By John Kenneth Galbraith Page A11 of the Boston Globe The following remarks are from a speech John Kenneth Galbraith delivered last week on receiving an honorary degree from the London School of Economics. Much in this last century has, indeed, been accomplished. In what we choose to call the advanced countries there has been an enormous change in the basic substance of life, particularly in the production of food, shelter, clothing, other manufactured artifacts, provision of health care and in the means of transportation. I began my life in economics with the study of agriculture. At that time just under half of all those gainfully employed in the United States were engaged in producing food, tobacco, and cotton, as for centuries before most had been so occupied. Now fewer than 5 percent are thus engaged. In this last century men and women have escaped the repetitive and often dismal...

Nåh, hvad skal DU egentlig lave nytårsaften? Det ER jo ikke noget der sker sådan lige med det samme igen, vel! Vé den der ikke har svar på rede hånd. Som jeg. Overalt hører man at “nu hvor vi er på vej mod et nyt århundrede, så må vi lige have ordnet…” eller at “her ved indgangen til et nyt årtusind” bør vi sætte os for at..og “af begivenhederne i det her århundrede bør vi lære…”. På vej ind i “den nye tid” hvad tror man så at vore efterkommere vil sige, når de ser tilbage om et årti, århundrede, årtusind på 1900-tallet? Vil de fremhæve det som teknikens, krigenes, vækstens, den kolde krigs, eller globaliseringens århundrede? Kendetegnes “vor tid” af liberalismens sejr over fascismen og kommunismen? Eller lidt af hvert? Fascinerende, ikke! Nogle planlægger at befinde sig på bestemte, mere eller mindre mærkelige, steder, nytårsaften, f.eks. på en luksustagrestaurant i New...

LONDON- After the Congo peace agreement, nothing but an eerie silence. Will they? Won’t they? President Bill Clinton made a post Kosovo speech only a few weeks ago promising immediate U.S. intervention the next time lives are at risk. Yet the silence continues. Mention the word Congo and whether it be in Washington, London or Paris, you can hear a pin drop. Is Washington now prepared to turn the clock back to where it was before the 1993 Somalia debacle when in the flush of good feeling following the end of the Cold War UN peackeeping was not only to be given a new lease of life and a rush of new mandates but more robust guidelines for military engagement? It was all dramatically undermined by a great American panic after 18 U.S. rangers were killed in a firestorm of guerrilla bullets in Somalia. Today it is not so much a...

Juli är en het månad på Cypern. Samtidigt som meteorologerna varnar för nya värmerekord pågår på var sida om den buffertzon som skär igenom ön förberedelserna inför den 20 juli. I år tilldrar sig detta datum särskild uppmärksamhet. Det är nämligen tjugofem år sedan som Turkiet genomförde den militära intervention som ledde till att ön delades och en gräns drogs mellan grekcyprioter i söder och turkcyprioter i norr. Alla ansträngningar att återförena ön har hittills misslyckats. Interventionen skedde den 20 juli 1974. I en andra våg tre veckor senare avancerade de turkiska styrkorna tills dess att de kontrollerade en tredjedel av ön. För grekcyprioterna var interventionen och den efterföljande ockupationen av norra Cypern en katastrof. Hundratusentals grekcyprioter tvingades lämna sina hem och egendomar i norr. Turkcyprioterna däremot välkomnade de turkiska soldater som seglade ner i sina fallskärmar som räddande änglar. För dem var det turkiska ingripandet en räddning undan enosis;...

“If a UN operation had gone this wrong from the beginning, if the mandate had been violated to this extent, politicians, diplomats and media worldwide would have cried ‘Failure!’ But since it is a US-lead NATO operation, independent-minded evaluations and criticism is conspicuously absent from mainstream media and the political discourse. The homogenisation of public opinion with NATO propaganda throughout the Western democracies is disheartening,” says TFF director, Dr Jan Oberg. While NATO troops have been in Macedonia the last 8 months, only on June 14 could the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan present a plan for a civil UN administration for Kosova. It puts the EU in charge of reconstruction and gives the OSCE primary responsibility for establishing democratic institutions, organising elections, and monitoring human rights. The UNHCR will take charge of the resettlement of refugees and displaced persons. The UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) will administer the...

Da je neka UN-ova operacija od samog svog pocetka ovoliko zastranila, da je do te mere prekrsila svoj mandat, politicari, diplomate i mediji sirom sveta vec bi povikali Neuspeh! Propast! Medjutim, posto je ovo NATO-ova operacija pod vodjstvom Amerike, nezavisne ocene i kritike su (zanimljivo) izostale i u vodecim medijima i u politickim razgovorima. Poistovecivanje javnog mnenja sa NATO-ovom propagandom u svim zemljama zapadne demokratije naprosto obeshrabruje, kaze direktor TFF-a, Jan Oberg. Dok su NATO trupe u Makedonij provele cak 8 poslednjih meseci, Generalni sekretar UN-a, Kofi Anan je tek 14. juna podneo plan o UN-ovoj civilnoj upravi za Kosovo. Njime se obnova prepusta EZ-u a osnovna odgovornost za uspostavljanje demokratskih institucija, organizaciju izbora i nadzor nad ostvarivanjem ljudskih prava preuzima OEBS. UNHCR-u je preputeno staranje o povratku izbeglica i raseljenih lica. Prelazna misija UN-a Uprava za Kosovo (INMIK) ce nadzirati policiju, pravosudje, skolstvo, javni prevoz, telekomunikacije i proizvodnju energije....

Bristen på medkänsla och solidaritet med de elva miljonerna medborgare i dagens Jugoslavien, vars samhälle dag för dag förstörs, är lika förvånande som beklagansvärd. Jag minns hur humanister inom kultur, vetenskap, politik och medier flockades till Sarajevo när den staden förstördes. Journalister vallfärdar nu i hundratal till Makedonien och Albanien ˆ på goda grunder ˆ och till NATO:s presskonferenser. Men få tycks vara motiverade nog att själva vilja uppleva och rapportera hur det känns att vara objekt för den värsta militära, ekonomiska och sociala förstörelsen i Europa sedan 1945. Var är de som tycker Jugoslavien är en diktatur? De tvärsäkra håller sig hemma. Var är förkämparna för mänskliga rättigheter när NATO på det grövsta bryter mot dem? Var är humanisterna när en europeisk huvudstad och en kulturnation går under i urskillningslöst västligt våld? Var är de intellektuella när en handfull megalomaniska ledare åtar sig att köra en propaganda som skulle...

Al-Ahram Weekly29 April – 5 May 1999 As I write these lines, the NATO campaign is a month old, with none of the alliance’s announced objectives anywhere near being accomplished. The tyrannical and xenophobic regime of Slobodan Milosevic is still in power, gathering more Serbian adherents, even from among his former enemies in the country. Dissidents, democratic opposition figures, anti-government radio stations and papers have either been silenced or now support him against NATO, an unsurprising thing given that the increasingly damaging air campaign is correctly perceived as a war against all of Serbia. The atrocities in Kosovo have also increased, with more refugees, more destroyed villages, and more (rather than less) Serbian troops creating havoc in a place that is supposedly being protected from further ravages. This is by far the worst of NATO’s miscalculations, for which the starkest proof is the clear unreadiness of the attacking countries to...

För 27 år sedan skrev den norsk-svenska filosofen Harald Ofstad en banbrytande bok, “Vårt förakt för svaghet. Nazismens normer och värderingar – och våra egna” (Prisma, Stockholm). Nu, efter den tillfälliga kulmineringen i Kosovo av Västs Balkanpolitik, tar jag åter fram den eftersom jag inte har begripit hur Väst kunde begå vad jag menar är ett förträngt civilisationsbarbari. Mitt syfte här är INTE att påstå att USA eller NATO eller Sverige är nazistiskt eller på väg att bli det, utan att resa frågan om det auktoritära i vår egen kulturkrets, just utifrån det sätt som Ofstad gör det i förordet till boken: “Om vi håller upp nazismen som en spegel för oss, ser vi våra egna drag förstorade, men just därför så avslöjande. Antisemitismen är inte det väsentliga i nazismen. Det väsentliga är läran om att den starka ska härska över den svage, och att den svage är föraktlig emedan han...

By John PilgerNew Statesman, London12th July 1999 On 17 June, the Guardian published a letter by Ben Bradshaw MP, a new Labour bomber. “In one radio discussion I did with [Pilger],” he wrote, “he even suggested the refugees were inventing stories of massacres.” He demanded my apology. I took the trouble to get a tape of Scott Chisholm’s programme on Talk Radio, on which Bradshaw and I appeared. What I actually said was that refugees “often tell the truth, but this is sometimes difficult to verify” – the opposite of what Bradshaw wrote. Bradshaw’s smooth transition from an incomplete career at the BBC to obedient Blairite MP was reflected not only in his distortion of what I said, but in his indignation. “Why,” he said to me, “are you criticising America and Britain . . . your own countries [sic] . . . as the baddies?” Not having the nationality...

By Michael DobbsThe Washington Post On my way out of Kosovo last month, I stopped off in the southern Serbian city of Nis. I wanted to find out what Serbs thought about the war that had been waged in their name, and how they felt about the atrocities committed by Serbian forces against ethnic Albanian civilians. My first call was on the mayor, Zoran Zivkovic, a leader of Yugoslavia’s Democratic party and a longtime opponent of President Slobodan Milosevic.While Zivkovic certainly did not condone the killings of ethnic Albanian civilians in Kosovo, he was more interested in talking about killings he had witnessed within sight of his own office. On two occasions during the war–on May 7 and May 12–NATO warplanes dropped cluster bombs on the center of Nis, killing a total of 15 civilians. (NATO maintains that both times it was trying to hit the airport, several miles away.)...