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LONDON – Given what we now know about the way the Turkish army fought the terrorist group, the PKK, in south east Turkey during the 1990s, we perhaps should not be surprised that its local commander between 1997 and 2000, General Yas¸ar Büyükanit, is now being accused of being behind the well documented army atrocities visited upon Kurdish villages at that time. Even if he isn’t guilty, as the recent statement of a public prosecutor puts it, of “establishing a criminal group, falsifying documents and misconduct in office”- and the evidence seems to be based on the testimony of a single local businessman- one would be surprised if he was entirely ignorant of what went on. Establishing the degree of his involvement- hands on or simply turning a blind eye- in the crimes of the era is going to take many months if not years. It is clouded further by...

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 How Slobo orchestrated the killing of at least 250.000 in Bosnia I think we begin to see the basic element in Milosevic’ perverse tactics. Tell the others to seek independence, get nationalist and go for Greater Slovenia, Greater Croatia, Greater Bosnia, Greater Albania, etc. When they do, he gets a pretext for invading them, smash them up and take their land and – Keine Hexerei – there it is: Greater Serbia! None of the others actually wanted any of it, but he seduced them, one by one! Bosnia’s Muslim leader, Alija – a good-hearted fundamentalist – was the next to be lead by the nose. Slobo asked him for a little favour that could serve as a pretext for invading Bosnia too. He would then help Alija, the ever non-decisive, to get his desired Muslim Bosnia. “Alija, if we cooperate, you’ll get much more than 43%...

 By The 13 NGO members of the TFF Amahoro Coalition in Burundi This is the story about a dream we work to make come true together. We urge you who reads this to help us establish an open center for peace and reconciliation – a center for information, education and public debate, a library and Internet learning center in one. An open center for civil society organisations to co-operate and build strength together. It shall become a place for every Burundian to get engaged and trained to help solidify peace, democracy and reconciliation. It shall make a strong civil society contribution to once and for all put hatred, etnic cleansing and war behind. Up till now, the peace process in Burundi is one of the most promising but least known in the world. Few governments pay any attention. Thus, we need people-to-people goodwill and a helping hand. But first –...

 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 How soft-headed to call Milosevic a butcher only My objective research lead me to conclude that there is some strange kind of softness or sentimentalism now this evil man has died. The media and the Western diplomats who speak about him these days should grasp the broader and deeper dimensions of his conspiracy, his intrigue and his Fascist plan and not only call him a butcher. “Butcher” is kind of too homy, if you see what I mean, makes this Balkan Monster too human. But he was a beast. There is no doubt that every massacre that happened, every village that was torched and any woman who was raped all happened because of his personal cruel Master Plan and on his order. History, economy, the activities of other actors in former YU don’t mean a thing. He is guilty of it all and we should not...

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Here at his death, I think CNN, BBC and all the rest paint a much too flattering picture of Slobodan Milosevic. OK, they say that he was the butcher of the Balkans and that he was widely regarded as the architect of the Balkans carnage. CNN points out that he was responsible for 170.000 dead in Croatia, 250.000 in Bosnia, for the misery of today’s Serbia and for the 800.000 refugees running when NATO began bombing Kosovo in early 1999. And, yes, Sweden’s radio listeners were informed about a dozen of times that he started four wars and lost them. All fine and good and true too, as you will see – but they never explain to us how he actually did it all. I still think these excellent media people should offer the world some background to this Hitler replica instead of just sounding as if they...

LONDON – A thousand days has passed without a killing by ETA, the Basque terrorist movement- the only homegrown one active on European soil now that the IRA continues to turn its back on violence. Setting ETA an example it cannot ignore, the IRA and its political wing Sinn Fein has never been so politically potent. How long do we have to wait for ETA to declare the truce that could take it in the same direction? The Spanish prime minister, José Luis Rodríquez Zapatero, told parliament on February 15th that ” I am convinced we have never been so close to the end of violence…we may be at the start of the beginning of the end of ETA”. But the opposition, the Popular Party – whose former prime minister José Maria Aznar is still smarting at losing the last election and refuses to acknowledge his below-the-belt attempt on election...

This is TFF Peace Antenna Vicky Rossi’s interview* with Ms Julia Marton-Lefèvre, Rector of the University for Peace, and Prof. Abelardo Brenes who is Head of the Peace Education Programme, University for Peace. The University for Peace (UPEACE) has its main campus in Costa Rica. It was established by the United Nations General Assembly in resolution 35/55, 5 December 1980. It has as its mission: – “to provide humanity with an international institution of higher education for peace and with the aim of promoting among all human beings the spirit of understanding, tolerance and peaceful coexistence, to stimulate cooperation among peoples and to help lessen obstacles and threats to world peace and progress, in keeping with the noble aspirations proclaimed in the Charter of the United Nations.” UPEACE currently offers MA courses in: International Law and Settlement of Disputes, International Law and Human Rights, Natural Resources and Sustainable Development, Gender...

The agreement recently signed between the government of Romania and the government of the United States represents one of the greatest political failures in Romania in recent decades. It is part of a continuing policy rooted in the absence of responsible politics and a reliance on increasing militarism and aggressive military engagement in a broader US dependent alliance. Romania is the first post-Warsaw pact country to establish permanent US military bases in its territory, contributing to increased insecurity and militarization of the Black Sea region. This step is part of the policies of Romanian governments over the past 14 years – regardless of political party – which have led to the promotion of increased militarization, participation in three foreign wars and accompanying occupation, and misuse of national resources for excessive and unnecessary military expenditures. US military deployment in Romania will include use of the Mihail Kogalniceanu airbase in southern Romania...

February 28, 2006 Martin Smedjeback In the early hours of the 5th of August 2005 a group of planters entered AWE (Atomic Weapons Establishment) Aldermaston and planted vines and fig trees.They were soon arrested for their conversion of a nuclear weapons research facility into a peace garden.This is the story of the trial that followed in Newbury Magistrates Court the 7-9th of February 2006. An invitation arrived A letter came to my apartment in Stockholm in December 2005. It read: I ask you, who can resist such a kind invitation? Our vine and fig tree community, about ten people from five countries, began preparing for the upcoming trial. We sent out invitations to friends to come to the trial. We received good help from the law firm Bindman and Partners. They sent us a CD with pictures from the action and a DVD with a video recording of “the crime...

LONDON – As UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan nears the end of his controversial term the names being banded around to succeed him seem more attuned to satisfying particular regional constituencies than looking for the best person around. A Jacques Delors or Mikhail Gorbachev or Sam Nunn could never have become secretary-general. At the time their names were talked about it had to be an African candidate, and although Annan has some sterling achievements under his belt he has never quite had the freedom to be his own man. He has had to live under the dark cloud of being the person in charge of the UN’s peacekeeping department in 1994 and who failed to see what was going on in Rwanda when genocide was unleashed and the world turned away. He has certainly known that Washington would shamelessly use that against him if he tried to take the bit between...

LONDON – Lost somewhere in the mists of history is the knowledge that it was the pro-American Shah of Iran who initiated Iran’s quest to build a nuclear bomb. And it was the anti-American revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini that initially suspended work on the bomb, from 1972 to 1985. Fanning the panic of proliferation has been a mainstay of the Bush Administration, supported in the wings by the British government and more recently France’s president, Jacques Chirac. It is a high stakes game that can slide too easily into the call for regime change, as it did with Iraq. Yet current would-be proliferators are arguably not as dead set on proliferating, nor even as advanced in their capabilities, as their antagonists suggest. But unyielding critical rhetoric combined with a lack of incentives to back down seems to only have the effect of making the likes of North Korea and...

I Damaskus har Sveriges, Norges och Danmarks ambassader stormats och stuckits i brand. Nordiska medborgare uppmanas att lämna Mellanöstern och skandinaviska företag bojkottas i hela arabvärlden. Hur kunde det gå så illa? Hur ska det sluta? Oron växer. Liksom frågorna: Finns det något man kan göra? Ja, det finns det. Det finns konstruktiva saker att göra också i Göteborg. Detta än inte en konflikt mellan Islam och den västliga sekulära världen. Detta är något som startade som en provokation från en liten klick intellektuella som tror sig vara liberala genom att smutskasta den heliga förebilden för en redan förtryckt grupp invandrare. Nu har konflikten eskalerat till en nivå som få kunde ha förutsett. Många har burit eld till brasan den senaste tiden. Västliga politiker, bloggare och mediefolk har var på sitt sätt försökt att hävda att principen om yttrandefrihet hotas om inte provokationerna får spridas fritt. Alla länder har begränsningar...