Features

Reflections on the Kagan Thesis By Christopher J. Makins (1)President of the Atlantic Council of the United States February 6, 2004 Introduction The relationship between the United States and the countries of Western Europe, like most relationships, whether personal or international, is hard to capture in writing. Few of the hundreds of articles devoted to it succeed in presenting in a satisfactory or accurate balance the elements of practice and psychology, of reality and rhetoric, of action and ideology, that compose the whole. There is a constant temptation to exaggerate transatlantic differences or similarities, whether to suit the argument or the prejudice of the writer or merely to reduce the complexities of the true picture to manageable scale for an essay, article or short report. Nor is it easy to capture the dynamics of attitudes on the two sides of the oceans as individual leaders and the political systems and...

Av Lena SanverLänderkommittén för F.d. Jugoslavien February 6, 2004 Trehundrasjuttioniotusenetthundratrettiofem. Så många flyktingar finns det i Serbien och Montenegro. Merparten av dem kommer ursprungligen från Kroatien eller Bosnien-Hercegovina och har serbisk etnicitet. 379 135 personer är väldigt många människor. Merparten av alla dessa människor lever i total misär på kollektiva center eller i eget boende i s.k. hus som borde ha varit rivna för länge sedan. Bortsett från den lilla hjälp de får från internationella hjälporganisationer får de klara sig bäst de kan. Det handlar nog inte om en ovilja från de serbiska myndigheternas sida att hjälpa dem utan mer om en total brist på resurser. Efter många års sanktioner, diverse krig och NATO:s bombhärjningar mot bl.a den serbiska infrastrukturen då många tiotusentals arbeten strök med, är det kanske inte helt svårt att förstå. Det finns flyktingar från Kroatien och Bosnien-Hercegovina i Sverige också. Men här kallas de för asylsökare...

By Hannelie Booyens January 16, 2004 It’s difficult to imagine a more challenging journey than the one Ginn Fourie faces. She is a senior lecturer in Physiotherapy at the University of Cape Town. After Lyndi’s death she focused on a new direction of study: Reconciliation in SA for a doctoral thesis. For many of her white compatriots it’s a journey into the heart of darkest Africa – a place where the chant “kill the boer, kill the farmer” still inspires fear. How can you possibly travel alone to the seat of the military wing of the Pan Africanist Congress, to the place where the man who gave the order to kill your daughter, is to be honoured by his people? That’s the question Ginn’s been asked countless times. It’s like going into Dingaan’s kraal, a somewhat conservative relative warned her. All sorts of emotions surface as Ginn drives through Limpopo...

By Uri Avnery January 16, 2004 You really can’t rely on these Arabs. Take this fellow, Qaddafi. For decades he played the clown. The whole world laughed at him (except when he downed a French plane in Chad and the Pan-Am jet over Lockerbie.) His Libya was a “rogue state”, an international pariah. He was working on Weapons of Mass Destruction. The Americans hated him, and from time to time bombed him, killing his daughter on one such occasions. You could rely on good old Qaddafi. He supplied us with an alibi for producing all kinds of interesting weapons. Everybody understood that with such people around, Israel needs the doomsday weapon, and that it’s useless to talk about peace. And then, suddenly… Suddenly Qaddafi becomes the darling of the world. Look at him, in his Bedouin robes: a serious man, a sober and pragmatic statesman. Pays a fortune to the...

ByEric A. SmithTokyo, Japan January 9, 2004 9-11 Widow Files rico Lawsuit PHILADELPHIA – Ellen Mariani, whose husband died in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks when UAL 175 was flown into the World Trade Center, has filed suit in a US District Court alleging Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld and other co-defendents had sufficient warning to stop the terrorist attacks but failed to either warn or protect the public. According to a recent CBS News, the Republican 9-11 Commission Chairman agrees: 9/11 Chair: Attack Was Preventable (CBS News — December 18, 2003) For the first time, the chairman of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks is saying publicly that 9/11 could have and should have been prevented, reports CBS News Correspondent Randall Pinkston…. Appointed by the Bush administration, Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, is now pointing fingers inside the administration and laying blame. See here. Mariani’s suit also...

TFF Feature Collection, December 9, 2004Very different perspectives on events in UkraineWe’ve selected a few rather different articles about the elections in Ukraine. We hope this will be pedagogically useful for teachers, students, journalists and media critics. Again, there may be many aspects of truth in what is basically the same story. TFF Feature Collection, December 2, 2004Positive News, Views and StoriesAre you sick and tired of only hearing and seeing negative stuff about the world? Do you feel powerless, losing hope?Then be inspired and charge you social change batteries by reading some of these stories…stories about civil courage, standing up, speaking out, showing solidarity, about inventiveness, new ideas – in short, about the fact that individuals do change the world for the better – every day!We hope to make this a recurrent theme in TFF’s work. Gerald Kaufman, Labour, 1. december, 2004Økonomiske sanktioner og våbenembargo mod IsraelDet fungerede i...

Av Björn EklundRedaktionschef Ordfront magasin 28 november 2003 Björn Eklund i Expressen 24 november 2003Svar till Gellert Tamas Bilden på den avmagrade Fikret Alic i Trnopoljelägret från början av augusti 1992 har blivit en ikon för Bosnienkriget. Bilden tolkades av många medier som att det i Bosnien fanns koncentrationsläger som kunde jämföras med dem i Nazi-Tyskland. Den fick stora politiska konsekvenser. »Mindre än tjugo minuter efter att reportaget sänts i amerikansk teve ändrade Bush sin politik gentemot Serbien· och varje känsla av sympati som allmänheten kanske hade haft för serberna i denna bittra inbördeskonflikt försvann över en natt«, skriver Phillip Knightley, författaren till det internationella standarverket om krigsjournalistik, Krigets första offer. »Vid detta tillfälle fick Jugoslavien-konflikten den rollfördelning som sedan aldrig ändrats: serberna är skurkarna, muslimerna offren och kroaterna någonting däremellan«, skrev jag i den av Gellert Tamas (Expressen 13 nov.) angripna artikeln i Ordfront magasin 7-8/03. Min artikel var...

By Kaare WillochFormer leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister of Norway November 19, 2003 In recent days newspapers in several countries have been carrying large ads directed against suicide bombers. This is unlikely to be of much help. In their summit talks in London this week, on the future of the war on terrorism, President Bush and Prime Minister Blair, should direct their attention towards the root causes of this dreadful form of warfare. They should heed the experience of Israel and would also do well to listen to former US president Bill Clinton, who, during a recent visit to Oslo, asserted that “in a world where it is impossible for us to occupy, capture, or conquer whoever aims to harm us, we need to work harder to achieve a world with more friends and fewer terrorists”. Opinion polls demonstrate an urgent need for a new policy. Over...

Af Kåre WillochFörre ledaren av det konservativa partiet och statsminister i Norge 19 november 2003 Aviser i flere land har nylig brakt flere store annonser mot selvmordsbombere. De vil neppe hjelpe. Man bør heller angripe årsakene til denne fryktelige formen for krig. Det er sammenheng mellom militær avmakt overfor urett, og bruk av terror. Atomvåpnene er en del av en parts knusende overmakt i Midtøsten. Vesten vil – med gode grunner – hindre at flere land i Midtøsten får slike. Men USA av-viser kritikk mot Israels atomvåpen. Om det har lederen for den arabiske liga, Amr Moussa, sagt at “dette er en dob-beltmoral som vil ødelegge kampen mot terrorismen.” Noen håper at kampen mot dem som stod bak angrep-ene mot USA 11. september 2001, og fjerningen av Saddam Husseins terrorregime i Irak, kan gjøre slutt på slik brutal vold. Men, sier den tidl-ig-ere sjefen for Israels sikkerhets-tjeneste, Ami Ayalon; “De...

By Sohail Inayatullah (1)Professor, Tamkang University, Taiwan; Sunshine Coast University, Australia. November 19, 2003 “War is the darkest spot on humanity’s history.”“Struggle is the essence of life.”P.R. Sarkar (2) Given that the 20th century was one of the bloodiest ever, and that scores of low grade wars are currently maiming and killing countless thousands, asking if war has a future may appear ludicrous. (3) But we must raise that question. We must challenge the notion that war is here to stay as if it were an evolutionary natural. Not only do we need to devise new methods to resolve international conflicts, we need to challenge the entire notion of armed conflict, symmetrical and asymmetrical. Doing so requires a multi-level approach. The traditional view of ending war begins with the two poles – the individual and the state. This is often described as: Peace must begin in the hearts and minds...

By Francis Daehoon LeeDeputy Secretary, Peace and Disarmament Centre of PSPD October 31, 2003 1. Introduction Like so many male affairs, international politics surrounding the so-called North Korean nuclear issue hides more than it tells. It portrays countries and governments as they are, as unitary units, as if they are there forever by themselves, while unseen things are being shaken from the bottom. Until recently, life in Korea has been dominated by what we call ‘division system’ and this is since the division of Korea in 1948. The mutual interaction of pretentiously non-interacting two Koreas since then has deeply penetrated in the way politics and economics are conducted and how each state defined itself and its people vis-à-vis the other. In South Korea, the purpose of the state, growth, and ideology was defined as what North Korea is not, and vice versa in North Korea. This is why, for example,...

The recognition of the work of women and human rights activists in Islam The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Ms Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian judge, lawyer and political activist, was as inspired as it was unexpected. The granting of that prestigious prize to the first Muslim woman, especially from a country where women have had to put up with the medieval status forced on them by the mullahs, sends a number of powerful messages to a whole variety of different audiences. The first message of this award is clearly to Iranian reformers and political activists, especially those who work for equal rights for women. Short background The 1962 “Family Protection Law” passed by the Iranian parliament under the shah was one of the most enlightened documents on the rights of women in the entire Middle East and the Islamic world as a whole. That law granted women votes,...