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TFF Associate and a towering figure in academia and culture. Read about him here. He has been forbidden to give a lecture on human rights and democracy in Tetouan in Northern Morocco.

LONDON – “Women hold up half the sky”, said Mao Zedong, although by and large in communist China women had a tough time playing second fiddle to the men. Here in Sweden women do almost hold up half the sky. If foreign minister Anna Lindh had not been murdered last year there might well be a female prime minister in power. For a decade half the cabinet have been women and women occupy nearly fifty percent of the seats in parliament. It shows. When the government dares to suggest that it is thinking about raising taxes in this most highly taxed of nations to pay for better health and social services the country takes the news quietly. When the government decides to cut back on its military spending, likewise. The country, long socially progressive, has now copper bottomed its welfare state by putting woman in the driving seat. According to...

LONDON – Prime Minister Tony Blair is going to give the G8 summit the same kind of energy he famously gave to the launching of the misconceived war against Iraq. The question is will he be any more able to hit the target accurately than he was in that case? He has certainly prepared himself better. Instead of relying on fast-written, poorly researched, intelligence reports, he has spent over a year studying Africa as the chairman of his Commission for Africa. Along with mainly African commissioners he presided over a first rate team of economists who came up with well-informed drafts that not only were the most perceptive observations of all the many reports on Africa over the last two decades, but were well written to boot. However, that is not enough. I still don’t think Blair gets it quite right. Africa is not a basket case, as the subtext...

HVA GØR NORGE I AFGHANISTAN? – spurte Verdens Gang 7 mars i år utenriksminister Jonas Gard Støre. Svaret var tredelt: for å stabilisere Afghanistan som hjemstedet for Taliban og støttespiller for terror, for å beskytte nordmenn mot terror–tilfeldigvis ble ingen nordmenn rammet i London 7 juli 2005–og for å beskytte norske barn mot heroin på norske gater. Gode norske svar. Men fire dager før, 3 mars, hadde Seddiq Weera, afghansk-kanadisk lege, en artikkel i Toronto Star. Han satt lenge fengslet i Kabul under kommunistene, kom ut med sterk kjensle av at her trenges noe nytt, har pendlet mellom landene og arbeidet utrettelig for fred i Afghanistan. Og Weera forteller en helt annen historie enn den angloamerikansk-norske, og med helt andre svar. Hvorfor er det ingen stabilitet i landet etter fire år med internasjonale tropper og økonomiske støtte? La oss gå tilbake til den fatale Bonn-avtalen av november 2001, etter USAs invasjon 7 oktober. Nord-alliansen hadde...

 Av Tyko Granberger* 6:e juli, 2005 Thom HartmannThe Last Hours of Ancient SunlightHodder & Stoughton General Division256 siderPocketpris: 144:-ISBN: 0340822430 Ej översatt till svenska “Möjligheten att förändra ligger enligt Hartmann inte i utopins periferi utan genom en djup historisk förståelse av hur våra tankar besmittats med ett hat mot “de andra”. Vägen ur denna onda cirkel ser Hartmann i en icke-våldsam återknytning till de uråldriga idéer som band oss samman med naturen och med varandra, solskenet. Solskenet är det som binder oss samman men vårt utnyttjande av solskenet är också den mest grundläggande orsaken till vår destruktiva nutida kultur. Hartmannbetonar därför att det är enbart genom en förståelse för detta paradoxala orsakssammanhang som vi kan hitta en hållbar framtid.” Det som gör Hartmanns läsning så betydande är att han går djupare än den externa analysen av vår historia. Med en genealogisk och psykologisk vinkel betonar han hur vår mänskliga kultur...

Motstanden mot EUs grunnlov hos den vanlige europeer ser ut til å være proporsjonal med elitenes støtte til den samme grunnlov. Denne avstanden mellom de styrende og de styrte er et voksende problem, ikke bare i EU. I så vel diktaturer som formelle demokratier er det en tendens til at det demokratiske underskuddet vokser. EU og grunnloven EUs foreslåtte grunnlov møter motstand. Fire hovedområder av begrunnelser dominerer blant de som ikke ønsker grunnloven vedtatt. Det er at “EU er på vei til å bli en superstat”; at “neoliberalt økonomisk system blir lovfestet”; at “EU blir en militærunion med krav på konstant opprustning” og at “det demokratiske underskuddet øker”. Noen kommentarer til det argumentet. Til nå har tolv land tatt en beslutning. Ni stater har gjort dette gjennom vedtak i respektive lands parlament. Det er Østerrike, Ungarn, Italia, Tyskland, Hellas, Litauen, Slovakia, Latvia og Slovenia. Tre stater har gjennomført folkeavstemninger. I...

This is the first of two columns on the coming discussion on Africa at the G8 Summit LONDON – Never in the history of fundraising had so much been raised so fast. Live Aid was the inspiration of one rock musician, Bob Geldof, the Irish leader of the “Boomtown Rats” who, like millions of others, was moved by Michael Buerk’s BBC television report from famine-struck Ethiopia. Later Geldof was to wonder what would have happened if he’d gone to his local pub in London’s Chelsea instead of staying in and watching television that night. Now twenty years later Geldof is aiming even higher – not just more concerts in more venues, but to change the very political climate towards African development. No longer is it just a question of donating coins and notes it is a matter, he says, of doubling government aid, forgiving outstanding debt and abolishing the multitude...

The World Tribunal on Iraq website Arundhati RoyThe most cowardly war in history Brendan Smith & Zeynep ToufeIs that what they call democracy? Richard Falk:Opening Speech on behalf of the Panel of Advocates: Macro approach to the system; the “moral” responsibility underlying the constitution of the UN; the limits to the exercise of power for the states; violation of international law. Hans von Sponeck:The conduct of the UN before and after the 2003 invasion Johan Galtung, TFF Associate, July 15, 2005 Human rights and the illegal US/UK attack on IraqBy some counts the attack on Iraq is US aggression no. 239 after the Thomas Jefferson start in the early 19th century and no. 69 after the Second world war; with between 12 and 16 million killed in that period alone. All of it is in flagrant contradiction of the most basic human rights, like the “right to life, liberty and...

This is a speech given by Galtung at the international Forum on Development and Peace in Seoul June 23-24, 2005 entitled “21st Century Conflicts, the Korean Peninsula, DMZ and Gangwon-do.” (Subheadings and italics added by TFF). Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, A very timely conference indeed, and thanks for the invitation to place the Korean peninsula in the context of key conflicts in the 21st century. The six most important conflicts and problems facing humankind – and the place of the two Koreas in them The most important problems, by being global with frightening consequences and protracted, are in my view the following six: [1] The hyper-capitalist formation with 125,000 dying daily from hunger and preventable/curable diseases; [2] The killing/exploitation of women through selective abortion, infanticide and general abuse with 100 million missing 1980-1990; [3] The nation-state contradiction, with 2,000 nations yearning for autonomy within 200 states out of which only 20...

LONDON – There is no crop in the world more political than sugar. And no moment in the tenure of the Bush Administration when passing a trade deal through Congress has been more important. Tragically, the political power of the American sugar lobby may well be sufficient to torpedo the ratification of the Central American Free Trade Agreement, in many ways the most important American trade arrangement of recent years. There is no free market in sugar- everybody has a deal. For decades the Cuban economy leant heavily on the over-the-market prices paid by the Soviet Union.The Caribbean and African countries depend on special favors granted by the European Community. For long enough a number of Caribbean and Central American countries have relied on preferential access to the U.S.. Nevertheless, the sugar producers- both southern cane growers and temperate zone beet farmers – that the EU, the U.S. and Japan...

Projekt i samarbete mellan Eslövs kommun, ebo, Polisen i Eslöv, Svenska kyrkan, Försäkringskassan, Den Transnationella Stiftelsen för Freds- och Framtidsforskning (TFF) och Europeiska Flyktingfonden (genom Migrations- och Integrationsverket. Projektsamordnare är Christina Spännar från TFF. Målsättning, metod, medel och perspektiv. Hittills gjorda erfarenheter Målsättningen är att utveckla en modell för hur integration kan underlättas. Utvecklingsprocessen innebär en öppenhet för all möjlig information som kan vara till nytta i modellen, som skall vara dynamisk, d v s öppen för förändringar. Stommen i modellen är ett nätverk, d v s en informations- och kommunikationsstruktur. Det är tänkt att bestå dels av aktörer som i sitt arbete möter flyktingar och andra invandrare, dels av flyktingar som genom sina erfarenheter av mötet med det svenska samhället kan ge en bild av den andra sidan i detta möte. Ett nätverk kan också bidra till en samsyn bland kommunens förvaltningar och andra institutioner och aktörer. Det kan...

My dear nephew and nieces, There you are in Ireland, a living example of the so-called Anglo-Saxon model, in the fastest growing economy of the European Union and here I am with my Swedish family seeing before my eyes, both here and across the bridge in Denmark, the strength of a more socialist model of development that combines rather good economic growth with all the benefits of a super-welfare state, including public hospitals that look to my British eyes like first class hotels. Why the citizens of France, Holland and Germany are flagellating themselves to political death is beyond me. With just a bit more rigor and discipline they could continue with their rather successful social models. The French health service is even better than the Scandinavian and Germany out-exports with high technology every other European country. If they had not made the mistake – and is it really a...