Development

Business and Peace are not mutually exclusive. Business does play a crucial role in society. More so, business impacts and depends upon its surrounding. It impacts the social well-being of people and planet, whether intentionally or unintentionally, both locally and globally through the chosen ways of operation and production. Equally, does business play a key role in contributing to economic development, peace and stability in the areas where it operates. Business provides jobs and revenue to local markets; sets examples of sustainable business practices and can provide support for various social programs through strategic social investment. In short, business is an inherent aspect of our society, and therefore, if we are striving for a more peaceful and sustainable world, for-profit private enterprises are the most crucial actors in achieving this goal.

/10/jonathanpower2.jpg”> E.M. Forster, the English novelist, wrote in his “Passage to India” of India “swelling here, shrinking there, like some low, indestructible, form of life”. But the India of today is a totally different place from 1920. Economic growth was tiny in British times (even though a large network of railways and schools were built). Since independence in 1947 infant mortality has dropped to one fourth of what it used to be and longevity has more than doubled. Economic growth has increased since the 1960s from around 3% a year – the so-called “Hindu growth rate” – to a high of 10% – the peak achievement of the present Congress government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and party president, Sonia Gandhi. Why then is the opposition leader of the BJP, Narendra Modi, who has a repugnant reputation when it comes to dealing with India’s Muslims, set for victory? Admittedly, as...

For one who has worked much on the theory and practice of change from systems of hierarchy to systems of equity, June 15 1964 will never be forgotten. Those at the bottom of the world system of states, fragmented away from each other by colonial and imperial structures, marginalized, exploited, came together, 77 of them, and formed–not a very revolutionary word–a Group. In 1967 the Group was confirmed by the Charter of Algiers. They used the UNCTAD-United Nations Conference on Trade and Development as their platform. Then the follow-up in 1974: the New International Economic Order-NIEO, and the Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States, passed by the UN General Assembly. A trade union of states, or their governments, had been born; today 133-states strong. Not included are almost all states that are members of the Council of Europe (which includes the EU), OECD-Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development,...

Islamabad, Ministry of Foreign Affairs Your Excellencies, The basic point is that Pakistan will not get that commodity called “peace” in Kashmir, Afghanistan and Central Asia by pursuing the ends and means of Washington and some local elites only. For peace to blossom the goals of other parties also have to be considered; and they are many. The logic of the political games pursued today presupposes some kind of victory or domination of “our side”: neither feasible nor desirable for peace. Hence, the need for some visions for peace politics is Kashmir, Afghanistan and Central Asia for tomorrow or the day after, with the hope that they can be useful when you have come to the end of the road with current policies. Nothing of this is easy; and without visions even impossible. The fairly detailed, non-dogmatic vision appended (below) was my acceptance speech of the 2011 Abdul Ghaffar Khan...

/10/jonathanpower2.jpg”>The drum beats are already sounding for the soon-to-be-held general election in the world’s largest democracy, India- the country that shows China how it should be done. There is a sense in the country that the ruling Congress Party and the influential Gandhi/Nehru core of it is on its way out after 10 years of a government that has hit the high points and the lows. To my mind, if the inexperienced Rahul Gandhi steps back from offering his own candidacy for prime minister and his mother, Sonia Gandhi, president of the party, pushes to the fore the very clever finance minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, Congress is still in with a chance. If not, the BNP candidate, Narendra Modi, looks like romping home, despite the cloud hanging over him as chief minister of the state of Gujarat at the time of Hindu-Moslem riots in 2002 when, it is said, he didn’t...

This is not the way to do it. A major party to the conflicts cannot be at the same time the conference manager; to the point of making the UN Secretary General disinvite a major invited party. Whether this is due to AIPAC-American Israel Public Affairs Committee buying US Senators, or whatever process internal to the USA-Israel system, or it comes out of Secretary Kerry’s genuine conviction, is immaterial. This looks like a court where the prosecutor is also the judge, having decided who the major culprit is and instructed the judge to proceed accordingly from Court I to II, with only those agreeing to Court I being in the jury of Court II. Had Ban Ki-moon been a man honoring UN authority he would have disinvited himself instead, claiming undue pressure. Disinvite a major party and two things are guaranteed: a lost chance to find a solution to what...

Alfaz, Spain An optimistic prediction held by some; but what does it mean? Let us define that “middle” as thousand years, 250-1250, from the start of the West Roman Empire declining (completed in 476 – 500), to the rise of the Hanseatic League transalpina as another Europe (completed around 1500 with protestantisms, Luther-Zwingli-Calvin; Anglicans). Apart from the Crusades, 1095-1291, an early introduction to the “Modern Period”, this was a peaceful time in Europe due to the integrative forces of the “Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation” – not Holy, not Roman, not German they say – and the Vatican – Holy? – hm; Roman? Yes. 217 of the 266 popes Italian, so far; No. 2: 16 French. The Kings ruled by intermarriages, and the Popes by theocracy, in harmony till the 11th century investiture conflict: who appoints the bishops!? The war on Islam, the Crusades 1095-1291 (Pope Urban II)...

Not one or a group of persons, not one or a group of countries. But they may serve as instruments for scripts engraved on the deeper recesses of their minds, not the conscious, easily retrievable ones. Scripts that are too trivial, obvious, too painful/shameful and hence repressed. Jung calls them archetypes; they often come in syndromes. Imagine that deep down an actor–person, gender-generation-race-class, state-nation, region-civilization–is programmed for two forces in the world, one good the other evil, and sooner or later there will be a final battle for the victory of one over the other: the solution. Dualism-Manicheism-Armageddon for short, DMA even shorter; from the first and last chapters of the Bible, imprinted on the Western mind soon for two millennia. Maybe with some long lasting impact? Imagine all of the above driven by the opposite script: holism–holons of many units along many dimensions–and dialectics–forces and counter-forces, in plural, in...

/10/jonathanpower2.jpg”> We have a lot to be thankful for in 2013. Look at the protests now going on in Bangkok. After some initial clashes at the beginning both sides have become non-violent. One can praise the government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra for this. She ordered the gates and doors of the ministry of the interior, of the police and the Thai equivalent of Scotland Yard/FBI to be opened. The protesters poured into the buildings and then left – bored. In the Ukraine after a couple of nights of police brutality President Vikto Yanukovych ordered the police to restrain themselves. Both sides now use peaceful tactics. Non-violence à la Gandhi and Martin Luther King doesn’t always achieve its objectives, but it keeps the political temperature down and avoids many deaths. It is more likely to work when there is a grave injustice. This is not the case either in Thailand...

My friend and former collaborator, Howard Friel, has written an intriguing book contrasting the worldviews and polemical styles of two Jewish American intellectuals with world class reputations, Noam Chomsky and Alan Dershowitz (Friel, Chomsky and Dershowitz: On Endless War and the End of Civil Liberties, Olive Branch Press, 2014). The book is much more than a comparison of two influential voices, one critical the other apologetic, with respect to the Israel/Palestine struggle and the subordination of private liberties to the purveyors of state-led security at home and abroad. Friel convincingly favors Chomsky’s approach both with respect to the substance of their fundamental disagreements and in relation to sharply contrasting styles of argument. Chomsky is depicted, accurately I believe, as someone consistently dedicated to evidenced based reasoning reinforced by an abiding respect for the relevance and authority of international law and morality. Chomsky has also been a tireless opponent of American...

/10/jonathanpower2.jpg”> Chile has moved to the left. With Michelle Bachelet’s overwhelming victory in the presidential poll she now has the freedom to legislate as she wants. Poverty reduction, income re-distribution and education are the sharp end of her political program. But of all Latin American presidents she is perhaps the most fortunate. Despite his draconian suppression of human rights, the dictator, General Augusto Pinochet, who ruled in the 1970s and 80s, not only engineered high economic growth he also kept deep poverty at bay.

Fifteen years ago I had the extraordinary pleasure of meeting Nelson Mandela in Cape Town while he was serving as President of South Africa. It was an odd occasion. I was a member of the International Commission on the Future of the Oceans, which was holding a meeting in South Africa. It happened that one of the vice chairs of the Commission was Kader Asmal, a cherished friend and a member of the first Mandela cabinet who himself played a major role in the writing of the South African Constition. Kader had arranged for Mandela to welcome the Commission to his country, and asked me if I would prepare some remarks on his behalf, which was for me an awesome assignment, but one that I undertook with trepidation, not at all confident that I could find the words to be of some slight help to this great man. Compounding my...