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by the greatest economist of all time, John Maynard Keynes. The mechanism for doing this is to expand the issue of what the IMF calls Special Drawing Rights, what Keynes considered to be “paper gold”. At Thursday’s summit of the G 20 in London this is one of the important items on the agenda. SDRs could be a major contribution to the world’s crisis of liquidity and lack of demand. Moreover, some members of the G 20 are going to support the revolutionary suggestion made earlier this month by Zhou Xiaochuan, the boss of China’s central bank, to use SDRs as a worldwide reserve currency to replace the Dollar and the Euro, at present the two most important world reserve currencies. What do the fairies have to do with it? SDR’s are created almost literally at the stroke of a pen – an accounting transaction within a ledger of accounts...

LONDON – My eighteen year old daughter asked me on Saturday where she can safely travel to when she finishes school in June and has three months holiday before going to university in September. “The Muslim countries or Japan”, I replied. She was quite taken aback. At school they talk about the USA, Australia, Thailand and South America. “No”, I said very empahtically, “I don’t want you to go there”, and then set about explaining to her and her mother why I felt so strongly. I pulled out the figures from the new 2009 UN World Development Report. After a lot of research into different types of measurement, the UN decided that the only accurate one was the homicide rate. If you try to compare rape, theft, break-ins etc. there is confusion – every country, apart from those in European Union, measure these in different ways. Some figures are accurate,...

20:e april, 2009 Once again Kim Jong Il, the dictator of North Korea, has succeeded in placing his country, and himself, in focus, “The developments in North Korea represents a serious threat”, state media headlines. How concerned should we actually be? And in what ways has the government of the DPRK, North Korea, broken international agreements and treaties? We say we know so little of what goes on in their nuclear program. But is that really so? On the plane from Beijing to Pyongyang four years ago we met – we, a delegation from IPPNW, the international movement for a world free from nuclear weapons – four well known US nuclear experts. “Yes, we go here regularly to meet our colleagues in North Korea” said one of the experts. The recently retired head of the Los Alamos Laboratories, Siegfried Hecker, wrote a paper in the Bulletin of the Atomic Sciences about...

. Once president, after the army coup that ejected the democratically elected Nawaz Sharif, Musharraf cast aside his previous macho character that once had nearly led to nuclear war between Pakistan and India when he led the army to attack the district of Kargil on the border of the divided state of Kashmir. He dropped many of Pakistan’s conditions for making peace with India. Diplomats both in Pakistan and India thought that India would never get a better deal over Kashmir. But although Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India was in favour of the historic compromise he failed to convince his foreign ministry, his intelligence services, the military or much of the public. Going back in time much responsibility needs to heaped on the shoulders of the supposedly most pacific of all American presidents, Jimmy Carter. Carter allowed himself to be thrown off course by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan....

Reflections on the increasing impossibility of funding peace research that refuses to be intellectual ‘embedding’ in power. Summary This analysis has come about for four reasons: The article gives examples of why free peace research – if not social research in general – is becoming increasingly impossible. It starts out with an exposé of the funds being available worldwide for peace and for the military – about 200 times more for the latter. The ratio of peace researchers to military researchers is probably 1:100+. It may both be true that (government-financed) peace research is booming and that scores of institutes have been closed down. Today’s funding situation in Denmark and Sweden for peace-oriented research is then described and comparative flashbacks made to the situation in the 1980s and 1990s. If you think of Scandinavia in general as liberal and generous in this field, it’s time for a reality check. Then,...

Jan Öberg, TFF direktör 21.a mars, 2011 Här följer i telegramstil en kort uppräkning av motsägelser, dåraktiga antaganden och missriktad humanism. En likaledes kortfattad slutsats med förutsägelse följer efter uppräkningen. Jag kommer inom kort att utarbeta någonting kortfattat om vad som kunde och borde ha gjorts i stället för dessa fruktansvärda och kontraproduktiva bombningar. 1. Vi kan inte sammanträffa, tala och förhandla med en sådan!En lång rad av västvärldens ledare har sammanträffat med honom och sett honom som en allierad under de senaste åren. 2. Humanistiska argument och ädla motiv i stället för uttalade intressen och syften.Men överallt annars har västs länder följt sina nationella, strategiska och oljeintressen, en-två miljoner oskyldiga irakier dödades av västvärldens sanktioner och ockupation under åtta år. 3. Uttalanden om att vi inte kan bara stå och titta på när Gadaffi mördar sitt eget folk.Utan att visa upp ett enda bevis på massdödande, brott mot mänskligheten,...

LONDON – Elections for the European parliament take place at the end of the week. It is gradually becoming a body of growing significant political influence. Its 736 elected members represent the 500,000,000 citizens of the twenty seven member states of the European Union. Not since the time of the Roman Empire has there been such an agglomeration of the peoples of the world. This election will be thebiggest trans-national election in the history of humanity. A tower of Babel it is not. The parliament is the under-reported Cinderella of the Union. When the Treaty of Lisbon comes into effect, after what seems likely to be a successful Irish referendum in October, a re-ordering of the governance of the Union will give the parliament more power, as well as strengthening the authority of the Council of Ministers with a permanent president (to whom Henry Kissinger in his wry observation at...

14. februar, 2007 Jan Öberg Utdelningen av Nobels fredspris för 2007 – särkilt den del som gick till Al Gore – är ett populistiskt val som bara kan nedvärdera själva fredspriset. Alfred Nobel skrev i sitt testamente att fredsspriset skulle tilldelas “the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” Utan att förminska betydelsen av global uppvärmnng och det arbete som uträttats av årets mottagare av priset – FN:s klimatpanel IPCC och Al Gore Jr – är det högst tveksamt huruvida det kvalificerar dem till ett FREDSpris i Alfred Nobels anda ens om om man tolkar det i dagens världsläge i stället för i 1895 års, det år då Nobel formulerade sin vision. Begreppet fred och defintionen av det bör visst vara bred. Men ingen...

Lund, Sweden Within a few days, Europe is host to the G20 in London, NATO’s 60th Anniversary in Strasbourg-Kehl and the Alliance of Civilizations in Istanbul. What shall we make out of these frantic travels,meetings and meticulously edited press conference sound bites by world leaders? Here is the firstof two dissident analyses. C5 – Five huge crises coming together The world is facing five hugely complex crises simultaneously: Economic (system breakdown).Environmental (global warming +).Cultural (intolerance, clash of religions, Western cultural dominance).Political (democratic deficits everywhere, lack of hope and political interest in media and amongyoung). Security (drug-like, ever increasing military expenditures to satisfy the Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex, MIMAC yielding ever less human security). Five crises coming together = C 5. In this perspective, watching these leaders, Western ones in particular, deliver self-congratulatoryspeeches and answers to journalists on the outcomes of the G20 and the NATO Summits is almostunbearable. Apart from the reflective,...

12. oktober, 2007 For nylig talte jeg med en tidligere canadisk dommer, som sagde at McDonalds måtte misunde domstolene fordi de er i stand til at få folk til at komme tilbage flere gange end McDonalds er. Det var hans ironiske måde at karakterisere retsvæsenet på og hævde, at det i store træk er uegnet til at tage sig af de fleste kriminelle og ikke mindst de kriminelle fra etniske minoriteter – i Canada helt overvejende indianerne. Også i Danmark diskuteres det hyppigt, hvad man skal stille op med ikke mindst de unge kriminelle indvandrere, og som regel afsynges sangen om nul-tolerance, skærpede strafferammer og flere fængsler, uanset at alle – ja jeg tror faktisk det er alle – ved at disse tiltag har den modsatte virkning. Fængsel er formentlig det dårligste middel til at bekæmpe kriminalitet, og, som en klog mand en gang sagde, kriminalitets-bekæmpelse burde høre hjemme under social- og...

October 24 marks United Nations Day. But which UN? I would say there are two, or perhaps there are three. The First UN is what happens in the UN building on Manhattan, New York: the diplomats of member governments around the table in the Security Council and in the General Assembly making statements they have prepared on behalf of their countries and going about a business that can be characterised by and large by concepts such as power – including the power to save or destroy human lives around the world – Realpolitik and rhetoric. They play power games with each other; they play with the future of the world. Everything there is not power or powerful. Many – particularly first-timers – in that building are also motivated by idealism, visions of a better world including a globalised democracy that is a founding idea of the UN itself but still...

LONDON – It is not a question of who has the dominant personality- Bill or Hillary Clinton? It is how the world works, a world that is, even in its most liberal quarters, essentially male chauvinistic. Margaret Thatcher chose a cabinet that was 100% male, although it was said they were alternately seduced and scared by her. If we hadn’t caught the penny before we certainly heard it drop in South Carolina. Bill and Hilary is ‘two for one’ and where she goes he goes too. If she became president, whilst she would have the constitutional authority he would have the political clout. Can you imagine in some moment of tension Vladimir Putin (or Dimitri Medvedev) or the King of Saudi Arabia not picking up the phone first to Bill rather than Hillary for a clarifying ‘background chat’ on what U.S. policy exactly is. Come to that, why are we...