Archive 1986 – 2017

Washington-DC In the shorter run, till around 2020, not good; in the longer run, from 2030, not bad at all. Short-run possibilities: Politically: post-democracy, Congress more accountable to business than to people for election; the top executive power possibly sliding from the president to the supreme court justice, with money steering politics, protected as “freedom of expression”; Snowden-type revelations coming from once a year to once a month, once a week. Economically: runaway inflation; accelerating inequality; deep misery affecting one third to a half of the population; depression. Militarily: coup by evangelical fundamentalists to “give us our country back”/”give our, empire, our world”; using war to restore the economy; a temporary strong hand “to get things going”. Culturally: declining faith in a covenant with a universal God as the Exceptional Chosen People; anomie, absence of compelling norms. Socially: atomie, lacking social tissue, leading to collective and individual depression; increase in...

/10/jonathanpower2.jpg”> In the days when Mikhail Gorbachev was president of the Soviet Union, engaged in his policy of glasnost and disarmament, for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize, he used to have a feisty press secretary who, asked about the deteriorating economic situation, replied that his boss didn’t win the Nobel for economics. Could he have said the same about Nelson Mandela? Yes and no. Yes, when Mandela first came out of jail when he talked of the need for massive nationalisation and forcible wealth re-distribution. No, when president, having learnt a thing or two about what had been going on in Africa, he began to preach another message. He saw that most of black Africa had adapted “African socialism”. This, together with dictatorships and maladministration, had led to decades of rising poverty. Even in Tanzania, where the benign leadership of the sage-like, incorruptible, Julius Nyerere, gave the country...

In 1978 Deng Xiaoping, architect of China’s economic miracle, said the intractable problems of which country owns what in the East and South China Seas should be left to the next generation. He was right. China should keep kicking that can of worms down the road. The recent surprise declaration that a huge swathe of international air space above the East China Sea be part of a new Chinese “Air Defence Identification Zone” (ADIZ) is counterproductive. The zone includes the Senaku/Diaoyu islands, claimed by by both China and Japan. The ADIZ demands that any aircraft flying across it must seek permission from China. What does history say? In 1971 the US post-war occupation regime returned the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands to Japan and China did not object. But, according to Meiji era documents unearthed by Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, in 1885 Japan acknowledged China as the owner.

Washington-DC Charles Darwin, in The Voyage of the Beagle, has a passage where he condemns an egalitarian native people on the tip of South America to stay primitive. Development presupposes inequality, having chiefs – human, animals, races – to look up to and learn from; no word wasted on the humans, animals or races at the bottom. And the evolution theory emerging from a mind thus pre-programmed is obvious: competition, struggle for survival, not mutual aid, as the substitute narrative for Genesis 1:20-28, 4th to 6th day–but without God. However, a man of God, Pope Francis – if anyone is saving Western civilization from itself it is he, not economic growth presidents/PMs – comes out and decries inequality and “trickle-down economics” in particular as a “crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power” (Washington Post, 27 Nov 2013, p. 1). Or, maybe “those wielding intellectual power”,...

This material below was distributed by John Whitbeck, distinguished American lawyer and author, living in Paris, and doing his best to keep a group concerned with world affairs informed about latest developments, especially inthe Middle East. I also add a slightly edited text of a message sent by Robert Stiver from Hawaii, who has exhibited consistent empathy for the suffering of the Palestinian people. My press release below, although far less emotional than the cri de coeur that Robert Stiver wrote, issues from the same place of urgent concern for the brave and resolute people of Gaza. I hope that Robert is wrong however when he ends with self-tormenting words of despair: “What to do, in the name of common justice? I know not; it seems useless, all useless.” Such feelings of futility are quite understandable, but let us do all within our power to make sure that this unfolding...

By Chaiwat Satha-Anand TFF Associate Chaiwat Satha-Anand writes warning words to the protesters’ leader about the use and misuse of non-violence in this situation. For your information, here a link to Suthep Thaugsuban, former deputy PM of Thailand, who is the recipient of professor Anand’s open letter – Jan Oberg

/10/jonathanpower2.jpg”> The agreement just signed by Iran, the US, the EU and Russia is more than a milestone, it changes the world. Perhaps. It is bitterly opposed by Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seems determined to be the spoiler. Apparently Israel’s threat to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities remains a serious option, even though such an attack would only have a limited effect and would provoke Iran to raise the ante against Israel. But that is not the only worry. There are two other things.

Bogotá, Dirección de Inteligencia Policial, Ministerio de Defensa Generals, Colonels, Conference Participants, In June 1998 your President’s Office wanted proposals for peace, and I offered peace education, peace journalism and the guiding moral-ethical light, human rights, a holon of civil-political-socio-economic-cultural rights. Colombia is short on the latter, with flagrant injustices and a deep culture of violence. In this conference a highly counter-productive word is being used: postconflict, instead of post-violence. Do not confuse them: violence means hurting-harming; conflicts are incompatible goals. Conflict may lead to frustration-aggression-violence, but personal and social maturity lead to progress bridging goals, to conflict solution. “Postconflict” sounds like all is solved with the end of violence, oblivious to reducing flagrant inequality, to harmony through empathy, trauma reconciliation, and capacity for ongoing conflict resolution. Prognosis: violence returns, with a vengeance. Like in Colombia. In the 1960s major uprisings took place in many parts of the world. There...

/10/jonathanpower2.jpg”> This year the UN Security Council authorised the deployment of troops to the eastern Congo, armed with tanks and helicopter gun ships to defeat the one remaining dissident militia in the Congo. Two weeks ago UN officials declared that war in the Congo, which on and off has consumed the nation for over 50 years, seemed to be over. The UN, instead of using its blue helmets to keep the peace, used its soldiers to blast the enemy. Rarely talked about is Article 42 of the UN Charter which says,“The Security Council ….may take such action by air, sea or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security.”

There is a temptation to suggest that political life in Turkey and Egypt are both being victimized by a similar deepening of polarization between Islamic and secular orientations, and to some extent this is true, but it is also misleading. Turkey continues to be victimized by such a polarization, especially during the eleven years that the Justice & Development Party (AKP) has governed the country, and arguably more so in the last period. In Egypt, so describing the polarization is far less descriptive of the far more lethal form of unfolding that its political cleavage has taken. It has become an overt struggle for the control of the political destiny of the country being waged between the Egyptian armed forces and the Muslim Brotherhood, the two organized political forces capable of projecting their influence throughout the entire country, including rural areas. This bitter struggle in Egypt engages religious orientations on...

Mexico-DF The indigenous rising in Chiapas, 1994 changed Mexico in several different ways. On the one hand it placed hidden historical –and yet massive and painful- topics just in the middle of the political debate: racism and indigenous rights among others came out of the closet to be discussed, addressed and -hopefully- solved. Hard politics entered the scene after the romantic episode of the Zapatista rebellion -characterized by the masked men and women and their tale-writer and political leader- by means of counter insurgency policies, paramilitary groups and propaganda campaigns, among others. And it was exactly then, when more concern and attention and clarity and coverage was needed from the international community, that the eyes of the world started turning to some other crises elsewhere. The massacre of 45 woman and children in Acteal (Dec. 22, 1997) briefly placed Chiapas again in the headlines but after the atrocity silence ruled...

/10/jonathanpower2.jpg”> The negotiations between Iran and the West have not yet produced a deal. At the same time the BBC’s Mark Urban, a defence correspondent, has unearthed a worrying connection between Iran moving towards the nuclear bomb threshold and a Saudi Arabian decision to produce a nuclear bomb with Pakistani help. “Saudi Arabia has invested in Pakistani nuclear weapons’ projects and believes it could obtain nuclear bombs at will”, he says. This meshes with what I wrote in my column 20 years ago that the only way to explain Saudi Arabia’s purchase from China of CSS-2 ballistic missiles was that it was preparing to develop a nuclear arsenal if one day the security situation demanded it. The Chinese missiles have a capacity to carry nuclear weapons. They are too inaccurate to be of use as conventional weapons. They are an insurance against Iran developing nuclear weapons and also have the...