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LONDON – Over the last six years the strengthening of international criminal law and the increase in the prosecution of crimes against humanity appear to have been swept along on a flood tide. Now in 2005 its waters appear to be surging even more strongly as ex-president Augusto Pinochet of Chile, the Congolese and Ugandan rebels and elements of the Sudanese government all look likely to be recommended for prosecution and trial. “An unprecedented movement has emerged to submit international politics to judicial procedures [and] has spread with extraordinary speed”, Henry Kissinger has observed in a tone both despairing and disparaging. The East Timorese Nobel prize winner José Ramos-Horta is rather more welcoming, saying, “In this day and age you cannot kill hundreds of people, destroy a whole country, and then just get fired.” In about two weeks’ time a UN commission of enquiry will report on alleged genocide in...

Socialpsykologiske Essays Af Rolf Kuschel og Faezeh Zand med bidrag af Jan Øberg Den 30. august 2004 udkom “Ondskabens Psykologi” på Frydenlund. Den er i hovedsagen forfattet af Rolf Kuschel og Faezeh Zand og afsluttes med et bidrag af Jan Øberg om ondskaben i det internationale samfund. Læs om bogen hér – hvor du også kan bestille den. Se iøvrigtBerlingske Tidende 26. september 2004 “I mit bidrag forsøger jeg at drøfte om ondskab måske kan være en egenskab ved systemer og ikke bare individer. I vores kultur lokaliseres det onde jo som regel i enkeltindivider eller større eller mindre grupper, der udpeges som onde af dem, der mener de selv er gode. Jeg syntes det kunne være interessant med en drøftelse af hvorvidt man kan tale om at det verdens udviklingssystem og krigssystem kan kaldes ondt. Det kan jo sådan enkelt udtrykt ikke være godt når 100.000 mennesker dør unødvendigt på vor klode...

LONDON – Eight years ago this week, after 200,000 unnecessary deaths, 40,000 “disappearances” and 440 decimated villages, peace formally came to the last redoubt of the Central American war zone, Guatemala. Put it up there with Rwanda, Cambodia, ex-Yugoslavia and today the Congo, as one of the great killing fields of the “post-war” world. The violence never reached the crescendo it did in neighboring El Salvador, nor did as many people just “disappear” as happened in Chile and Argentina, nor did the war stretch on and on as long as in Peru and Colombia, but no country in Latin America came near Guatemala for long-term systematic assassination and torture. Before my first trip to this heart-torn country in 1980 I went for a briefing in London from the secretary-general of Amnesty International. I had asked him to point me in the direction of the worst country on their books and...

LONDON – “Some frontiers are only in the imagination”, wrote Jan Morris in her remarkable book, “Fifty Years of Europe”. Prince Metternich used to say the frontier of Asia was at the Landstrasse, the street which ran towards Hungary, away from Vienna’s city walls. It was also said that Konrad Adenauer, the first chancellor of Germany after World War 11, held similar feelings about Prussia. He was a Rhinelander, and whenever his train crossed the Elbe, on its way eastward to Berlin, he too would groan, “Hier beginnt Asia”, and pull the blinds down. We cannot help but ask, “What is Europe?” Geographically, it is no more than a peninsula protruding from the landmass of Asia. Culturally it has always been a potage of peoples, languages and traditions. Politically it is a moveable feast- of the 35 sovereign states in post Iron Curtain Europe, nine have been created or resurrected...

LONDON – If they say in Mexico, “How far from God and how close to the United States” it is even truer for El Salvador, another 600 kilometers away down the isthmus of Central America. El Salvador’ s currency is now the U.S. dollar, 1.5 million of its over 6 million people work both legally and illegally in the U.S. and the American embassy is a massive fortress, perhaps architecture to intimidate as well as to protect, a reminder that the U.S. is ready if necessary to throw its weight about as it did earlier this year with the involvement of the ambassador in its recent election. This is the U.S.’s “near abroad”. Of all Central America’s civil wars, wars that dominated the headlines almost as much as Iraq’s does today, Salvador’s in terms of killings was the worst. But today the lion has lain down with the lamb. In...

Tom H. Hastings Nonviolent Response to Terrorism Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., Inc., 2004$39.95. 244 pp. ISBN 0786418745 This imminently readable, informed, and well-documented survey of the best thinking about nonviolent responses to terrorism combines the concrete experience of an activist and the theoretical knowledge of a scholar. It emphasizes the intimate connection between developing and using nonviolent structures and between short-term and long-term responses. In four chapters devoted to immediate nonviolent response, it describes the strengths and limitations of smart sanctions, meditation, law, and nonviolent resistance, including nonviolent interposition. Similarly, the final four chapters discuss long-term nonviolent response, such as halting the arms race, building sustainable economies, educating about peace cultures, and repatriating refugees. The author indicates how recent experience and research around the globe have increased activists‚ skills in international negotiation, mediation, and adjudication. Three insightful reflections on terrorism, in an appendix, along with appropriate references and a...

LONDON – Imagine for a moment that the U.S. gave up all its nuclear weapons, a totally farfetched idea but one supported by such luminaries as former secretary for defense, Robert McNamara, the late Paul Nitze, Ronald Reagan’s hard-line negotiator on nuclear arms and General George Lee Butler, the former chief of U.S. strategic (i.e. nuclear) forces. As his successor, General Eugene Habiger, has said, “We have reached the point where the senior military generals responsible for nuclear forces are advocating more vocally, more vehemently, than our politicians, to get down to lower and lower weapons”. But imagine if it did happen what effect this would have on Russia. It would then move immediately to close down its decaying early warning system and its hair-trigger nuclear posture, which former senator Sam Nunn sees as a likely cause of accidental nuclear war. Imagine what effect it would have on Iran, Syria,...

LONDON – The upheavals in the Ukraine have many roots but one of them undoubtedly is the lack of a well thought out long term attitude by the Western powers to post Cold War Russia. Since the days of Mikhail Gorbachev, the last president of the Soviet Union, both Europe and the U.S. have failed to be clear either to themselves or to the outside world what exactly they wanted beyond an end to communism. Although Gorbachev was much lauded in the West as a great reformer there was little offered in the way of economic help so that he would be strong enough at home to preside over a more carefully measured transition than the one that in fact occurred under the impetuous Boris Yeltsin who rode the break up of the Soviet Union on his way to power. Then in 1992, at the time of Yeltsin’s first government...

Af  Solveig Czeskleba-Dupont Lektor & centerleder CNAS, Hvalsø 1. december, 2004 I september 2002, da USA begyndte at true Irak med en militærinvasion, stødte jeg på bogen Sunkne Paladser – historien om Orientens opdagelse af Mogens Trolle Larsen (Gyldendal 1996). Forfatteren er lektor i assyriologi ved Carsten Niebuhr Instituttet ved Københavns Universitet og har selv deltaget i flere udgravninger i Mellemøsten. I sit værk gennemgår Trolle Larsen på 400 sider historien omkring det 19. årh.s store udgravninger langs Eufrat og Tigris , blandt andet udgravningerne af oldtidsbyerne Babylon og Nineve, der er kendt fra Bibelen. Sunkne Paladser er en spændende og rigt illustreret bog, der til fulde viser Iraks særstilling inden for vores kulturhistorie, og som sætter Iraks senere dramatiske udvikling i perspektiv. Som bekendt er det siden efteråret 2002 gået grueligt galt for den irakiske befolkning. I slutningen af marts 2003 blev landet angrebet af en koalition med USA...

25:e november, 2004 Idag, den 25 november är det den “Internationella Dagen För Avskaffande Av Våld Mot Kvinnor”. Generalsekreterare Kofi Annans budskap förra året, den 25 november år 2003, var (enligt UN News Update): “Könsrelaterat våld är kanske den mest avskyvärda kränkningen av de mänskliga rättigheterna. Så länge det fortsätter kan vi inte hävda att vi gör några riktiga framsteg mot jämlikhet, utveckling och fred.” Här relaterar vi det könsrelaterade våldet till frågan om mänsklig säkerhet och tankar om en ny typ av försvarspolitik. En rad ledande tidningar i Sverige har tackat nej till att publicera artikeln. FRÅN PATRIARKAL MAKTUTÖVNING TILL MÄNSKLIG SÄKERHET OCH DEMOKRATI – Vi känner ingen, varken kvinna eller man, som önskar krig och död.  99 % av klotets kvinnor och män önskar inte våld. De önskar ickevåld! Fred. En trygg framtid för sina barn, ett värdigt liv för sina föräldrar. Ett liv befriat från den  rädsla...

LONDON – Mark Palmer, the U.S. State Department’s former top “Kremlinologist”, has proposed the world’s democracies set themselves the goal of ridding the world of its 43 remaining dictators over the next twenty years. Surely this is something liberals and neo-conservatives can agree on. One would wish it so but unfortunately the means separates them. President George W. Bush said the other day that, “The reason I’m so strong on democracy is democracies don’t go to war with each other. I’ve got great faith in democracies to promote peace.” This is a great philosophical leap forward for conservatives. Not so long ago they poked fun at the human rights obsessiveness of former president Jimmy Carter and did everything they could to stymie his efforts in Latin America in particular to quicken the pace of democratic evolution. When Ronald Reagan defeated Carter he gave short shrift to human rights goals and...

The best-prepared and most successful large-scale civil disobedience action in Scandinavian history never took place. Johansen tells the remarkable story that could inspire many others. The background In 1996 the Norwegian Parliament decided to build two large power stations to produce electricity from natural gas. With a company ready to build and a decision made by the authorities, it seemed almost impossible to prevent it. Natural gas had for years been presented as “clean” and “friendly to nature.” To promote the project the company behind the plans took the name “Naturkraft” (The Power of Nature). Who could protest “The Power of Nature?” For many years, Norway has produced and consumed more electricity per capita than any other country in the world, except Canada. Most of the electricity comes from waterfalls with enormous destruction to nature, culture, fauna and flora. Opposition to high energy consumption and environmental destruction dates to the...