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LONDON – Clinton is out of it and Bush is not yet into it so the Palestinians and Israelis are on their own. That is no bad thing. The meeting in Cairo is make or break time. If they fail Prime Minister Ehud Barak of Israel will surely be voted out in the election on February 6th. If they succeed the euphoria unleashed might save Barak, and save Israel too. A future Israel under the leadership of Ariel Sharon can only be the downward path for both Israel and the Palestinians. It is a future that goes nowhere. For the Israelis it means more years as an occupying power that demands for precarious survival a resort to increasingly brutal tactics to survive, that debilitates Israel as least as much as it does its antagonist. For the Palestinians it means a future in which there is no possibility of economic advance and...

States of Denial: Knowing About Atrocities and Suffering By Stanley Cohen Polity Press, 2001 We all know that there are people dying of starvation in many countries around the globe. We all know that there are brutal dictatorships. We all know that there are numerous wars going on, with millions of refugees. We all know that torture is widely used. We all know about the problems. What are any of us doing about them? Now listen to the responses. That’s someone else’s “problem.” “There’s nothing I can do.” “I have enough problems of my own.” “They brought it on themselves.” The reality is that we can all do a lot to help. Contributions to human rights organisations like Amnesty International make a difference to political freedoms. Contributions to independent aid organisations help save lives. Even a few dollars can make a difference to a child’s life. The sad fact is...

This article is forthcoming in the Gandhi Marg journal, New Delhi Introduction Gandhi’s biographer, Louis Fischer, once said that Gandhi’s greatness “lay in doing what everyone could do but doesn’t.” (1) Gandhi provided a signpost for moral living, he left us with some valuable insights about the way life should be oriented so as not to become dysfunctional to the self, society or planet, and provided valuable guidelines to help us with difficult decisions. For example, his seven social sins warn us against politics without principle, wealth without work, commerce without morality, education without character, pleasure without conscience, science without humanity, and worship without sacrifice. (2) In another place he gives us a test to apply when we are in doubt. This “talisman” asks us to consider the poorest and weakest person we have seen and examine our proposed action in light of the consequences for this person. (3) And of course he is...

The post-Gandhi Gandhian movement in India (1998) La Trobe University, Australia, TFF Associate As the 50th anniversary of Gandhi’s assassination approaches, the question will inevitably be asked – where is the Gandhian movement now? And some will argue that the place to look is not in India at all. Attenborough’s film Gandhi saw a great revival of interest in the Mahatma worldwide – and this included in India. At around this time, many of the older generation, including older Gandhians, lamented the fact that Gandhi was dead in India and now had to be imported from the West. Many of Gandhi’s closest colleagues had become leading politicians or have established well respected Gandhian institutions. To some, who continued to work at the grass-roots, these were called (not always too kindly) “professional Gandhians”. Those who continued to work at the grass-roots by and large maintained seemingly essential symbols – the sacrificial...

LONDON – In the dying days of the Clinton Administration two totally separate but nevertheless very interlinked Jewish issues are possibly but uncertainly in the final stages of being laid to rest. The first, more than well publicized, are the negotiations orchestrated personally by President Bill Clinton, over a settlement of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Will the losing side, the Palestinians, regain land and religious sites they then lost and will the refugees who lost their homes and farms in the area now claimed by Israel as the Jewish state be given “the right to return”? The other, rather less publicised, but just as important an issue is almost the mirror reverse of the Middle East one. It is the restitution of Jewish property, art and businesses appropriated by the Nazis in Austria. Tomorrow (Wednesday), under the mediation of the U.S. deputy Secretary of the Treasury, Stuart Eizenstat, opens what is...

The white, palatial house of the business dynasty, Birla, stands just a couple of kilometres from Connought Place, a well-known tourist attraction in the greenest area of Delhi. This is the place where Gandhi spent the last 144 dramatic days of his life. The museum in the building reflects his life and death. In the park, the visitor can follow the steps of his last walk. From the door of the plain, white painted room with a glass veranda where he lived there are cement footprints across the park to where he was murdered. Here the visitors go barefoot and silent. In the park, there are colossal trees with abundant birdlife, a sea of flowers, vast lawns, sculptures and a mural relief illustrating the history of India and the achievements of Gandhi. Birla House or “Gandhi Smriti” is an oasis, which is run lovingly in the spirit of Gandhi. Its...

“India cannot possibly make more progress leaning only on the spirit of Gandhi, but neither can it do so without it”.– Jan Oberg, director of TFF. Gandhi was murdered in New Delhi on Friday, the 30th of January, 1948. The next day his body was carried on a gun-carriage to the river Jamuna to be cremated, escorted by 4,000 soldiers, one thousand air force soldiers, and as many policemen. It was not a mere coincidence that the regime of the day “honoured” the country’s father of non-violence in this manner. I also think that there are obvious connections between this and the India of our days, with all its corruption, elitism and its nuclear weapons. I happened to arrive in Delhi on the 29th of January and I went to Rajghat, which is by the Jamuna river, to see the monument, Gandhi Samadhi, a giant cube in black marble with...

Kjell Magnusson, en av Sveriges främsta Balkan-experter, skrev en klok och välinformerad artikel OM konflikten i Makedonien, Baftije Mehmedi ett partsinlägg I konflikten. Bådadera hör hemma i en fri debatt, men bör inte förväxlas. Mehmedis tonläge gör nog karaktären av partsinlägg klart för de flesta. Grundläggande osanningar bör dock påpekas för dem som inte kan alla detaljer. Jag håller mig till Makedonien och låter Kosovo ligga. Uppgifterna om folkräkningar är osanna. År 1991 skattades den albanska befolkningen till 21 procent, vilket var högre än 1981. Den internationellt förberedda och kontrollerade folkräkningen 1994 kom upp till 23 procent. Då etniskt albanska kvinnor föder omkring sex barn och etniskt makedoniska litet över två, kan dagens tal rimligen vara c:a 27 procent. Bägge folkgrupperna har många utlandsarbetare, så eventuella skillnader i relativt antal kan högst förskjuta detta tal c:a en procent uppåt. Det har förekommit omfattande illegal invandring från Albanien och Kosovo, som...

Introduction All of us who share an interest in peace almost instinctively turn to study war in the search for answers that may open our ways to find alternatives, solutions and lessons that may be translated into nonviolence, absence of war and justice. But from where is it that we obtain, construct and weave our images of war? The use of history textbooks, television broadcasts and newspaper articles may be useful to a certain extent, but if our expectations and views ought to be challenged and enriched we should also consider the images of war and peace offered by literature. The Bhagavad-Gita, the exquisite text of Hindu culture, has endured for centuries communicating a deep understanding of mortality through the dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna. The profound and manifold teachings of the Gita can be taken to other cultures and contexts and can certainly be brought to assist our present concern...

The death from leukemia of eight Italian peacekeepers stationed in Bosnia and Kosovo sparked an uproar in the Italian Parliament, following the leaking of a secret military document to the Italian newspaper La Republicca. In Portugal, the Defense Ministry was also involved in what amounted to a deliberate camouflage of  “the cause of death” of Portuguese peacekeeper Corporal Hugo Paulino. “‘Citing “herpes of the brain’, the army refused to allow his family to commission a postmortem examination.”1 Amidst mounting political pressure, Defense Minister Julio Castro Caldas advised NATO Headquarters in November that he was withdrawing Portuguese troops from Kosovo: “They were not, he said, going to become uranium meat”. 2 As the number of cancer cases among Balkans “peacekeepers” rises, NATO’s cover-up has started to fracture. Several European governments have been obliged to publicly acknowledge the “alleged health risks” of depleted uranium (DU) shells used by the US Air Force in NATO’s...

The plunging airliners, commandeered by terrorists, ripped gaping holes in more than the towers of the World Trade Center. They ripped away the veneer of security that we believed surrounded us. We in America can never again feel secure in the same way.  We were vulnerable before the hurtling planes crashed into the World Trade Center, but we never stopped to think that this could happen to us. Now we understand our vulnerability, and our lives will never be the same.  What madmen seek to kill us? Are the plans for the next attacks already set in motion? Are there more suicidal phantoms, coiled like cobras, in our midst? We remain apprehensive with good reason.  Some Americans are calling for vengeance. But we are fighting phantoms, and our military power is not sufficient to assure an end to future threats. It will not be so easy to find these terrorists...

Imagine this: A Chinese airplane is spying on the United States. In a routine flight, it flies just off the coast of Hawaii, using its sophisticated electronic surveillance capabilities to gather intelligence. Since it is a dangerous world, the Chinese want to know what plans our military are making that might affect them. Naturally, our government is somewhat uncomfortable knowing that we are being spied on like this. Why, we wonder, are the Chinese spying on us? What are their intentions?  US planes regularly intercept Chinese reconnaissance planes, approaching within a safe distance. However, this time, one fighter pilot gets a little overzealous. There is a slight collision. Our plane goes down in the sea. Our pilot is lost at sea. The Chinese plane is damaged and makes an emergency landing on the island of Maui. There are 24 Chinese soldiers aboard the aircraft. They are taken into custody by...