Media perspectives

/10/jonathanpower2.jpg”> Despite Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Israel/Palestine and Southern Sudan the world is a lot more peaceful than it was at the end of the Cold War and shows no sign of returning to the bad old days when there were some 25 wars going on every year. Now it is down to about a dozen. The task today is to keep that number going down – a difficult job when the outbreak of conflict in Syria, Libya and Ukraine have turned the graph upwards a few notches for the first time. Protagonists in political quarrels tend to push the non-violent activists to one side – as they have done in Syria, Libya, Gaza and Ukraine. This is not a good tactic as these situations have clearly shown. In Syria whole parts of cities have been reduced to rubble. Likewise in Gaza. In Ukraine this is starting to happen....

Prefatory Note On September 24 a special session of the Russell Tribunal will examine war crimes allegations against Israel arising from the 50-day military operation that commence on July 8th. The Tribunal has developed a record of examining the criminality of state actors that enjoy impunity internationally because they are insulated from accountability by what I have called a ‘geopolitical veto’ in this case exercised by the United States and several major European countries. Where governments and the UN fail to implement international law, there exists a right of peoples to play a residual lawmaking function. It is somewhat analogous to the residual role that the General Assembly is empowered to play when the Security Council is unable or unwilling to perform its primary role in relation to international peace and security. To fill this normative vacuum the Russell Tribunal has long played made an honorable contribution to what might...

President Obama’s speech last night This speech is a record low in terms of moral and intellectual analysis: What it boils down to is war – i.e. killing every single ISIS person anywhere, people who he compares to cancer cells. The war on terror has always been about killing terrorists but you can not kill an ism – terrorism. To do something about the causes that compel people to become terrorists would be much more efficient. The President has said repeatedly that a lasting solution is political, not military. The speech, however, is exclusively military – not a word of political, psychological or other insights: No, we kill people because we think it is wrong to kill people… The speech can be seen as a proof of how utterly misguided the U.S. response to 9/11 was – had it been more intelligence and less revenge-oriented, there would neither have been...

A couple of messages to NATO’s Summit /10/janoberg.jpg”>[/caption] Lund, Sweden September 5, 2014. Yugoslavia then and now TFF’s first report from Yugoslavia from September 1991 carried the title, After Yugoslavia – What? It is now one of 127 reports and articles in the huge research and policy blog – Yugoslavia – What Should Have Been Done? It contains the equivalent of 2000 book pages authored by Johan Galtung, Jan Oberg and Hakan Wiberg. All articles are published as they were written at the time. For anyone to see whose analyses stood the test of time. We opened this blog two days ago – on the 23rd year of TFF’s first of some 70 peace missions into the war zones. While it is important to analyse the world, it is more important to criticise it and most important to search – and re-search – alternatives to it. Thus the title. You...

By David Krieger and others A long list of prominent individuals has signed, a number of organizations will be promoting next week, and you can be one of the first to sign right now, a petition titled “Call For Independent Inquiry of the Airplane Crash in Ukraine and its Catastrophic Aftermath.” The petition is directed to “All the heads of states of NATO countries, and of Russia and the Ukraine, to Ban-ki Moon and the heads of states of countries on the UN Security Council.” And it will be delivered to each of them. The petition reads . . continue here. And please sign it!

/10/jonathanpower2.jpg”> Finally, finally the over-long, seven year trial of the leaders of the murderous Khmer Rouge leadership of Cambodia, is over. The two defendants, Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan, were each given a life sentence. Of the other three that were tried, one, the ex-foreign minister, Ieng Sary died in 2013, one, Ieng Thirith, the wife of Ieng Sary, was too ill with Alzheimer’s to appear and one, Kaing Guek Eav (“Duch”), voluntarily confessed three years ago and was sent to jail for 35 years.

Vi lever i en interessant tid. Og den er ikke kedelig. Mange faste forestillinger ændrer sig. Det slår mig, at EU politikere og ditto amerikanske ved meget lidt om både Rusland og verden. Som EU borger kan jeg med beklagelse konstatere, at EU ikke har nogen politik i forhold til Rusland. Og højstemt forargelse og at snakke amerikanerne efter munden tæller ikke som en egentlig politik. Hvilke forestillinger har EU politikerne haft om slutspillet i Ukraine? Hvilke forestillinger har de haft om virkningerne af sanktionerne? Hvilken viden og forståelse af hvilket land Rusland er, har de samme politikere haft? Det er som om dæmonisering af Putin har gjort det ud for en politik. Jeg opfordrer ikke her til at man skal elske Putin. Men jeg opfordrer for det første til at finde ud af, hvad man ønsker med Rusland og for den sags skyld også med Ukraine. For det andet,...

Billedet af Rusland i de vestlige medier er i dag næsten mere dystert end under den kolde krig. Mange tror, at russerne lever i fattigdom og ufrihed i evig angst for Putins rædselsregime, præget af få censurerede medier. Rusland skulle angiveligt være ved at falde sammen og borgerne længes efter de friheder, som vesten kan tilbyde. Putin skulle angiveligt være nervøs for, at den ukrainske ’demokratiske’ revolution skulle sprede sig til Rusland. Derfor skal vi i vesten entydigt støtte Kiev regeringen og den ikke-parlamentariske opposition i Rusland. Mange vestlige politikere mener, at vi økonomisk skal isolere Rusland. EU og USA fokuserer i disse tider på at straffe Rusland og

Quality research leads to better predictions One criteria of quality research is that it predicts the future better than incompetent research. Because TFF is independent of governments and coroporations it doesn’t have to take political considerations or exclude certain theories, concepts or values. This free research enabled it over the years to make fairly precise predictions about for instance former Yugoslavia, the Iraq war and East-West relations. In 1998 – 16 years ago – we warned that NATO’s expansion would lead to future problems with Russia. Read it here. NATO should never have been expanded We backed this prediction up with 46 arguments and argued that so many other things would be wiser than containing Russia from the Baltic republics to Georgia – a strategy pursued by Bill Clinton in contravention of all promises given to the Soviet Union/Russia at the end of the Cold War about ten years earlier....

That is, don’t answer, if you are a certified critic of Israeli policies and practices. The siren lure of big time media is partly a romancing of the ego, partly a rare moment to intrude a moment or two of truthfulness into the endless spinning of the Israel’s narrative that stresses its extravagantly humane response to Hamas flurries of rockets and alleged human shield tactics. Four times in the past week I have received invitations to be a guest on BBC programs dealing with Israel’s military operations in Gaza. Each time the female producer, with charming British intonation, expressed her strong interest in arranging my participation at such and such a time. And each time I agreed, although

Prefatory Note The post below is a revised text of an article published in AlJazeera America on July 26, 2014. Devastation and violence has continued in Gaza, with Palestinians deaths now numbering over 1000 (overwhelmingly civilians) and Israeli deaths latest reported at being 43 (almost all military personnel). Such casualty figures and disparities raise questions of state terrorism in a stark manner. Also, it should be appreciated that if Israel were to do what it is required by international law to do there would be no rockets directed at its population centers – lift the blockade, negotiate peace on the basis of the 2002 Arab proposals and Security Council 242. Yet this would require Israel to give up once and for all its expansionist vision embedded in the settlement phenomenon and the version of Zionism embraced by its leaders and reigning political parties. The best that the UN has been...

/10/janoberg.jpg”>[/caption] Lund, Sweden July 25, 2014 Violence is a dead end Look at the violence in Gaza today, DR Congo (6 million dead), Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Somalia etc: Isn’t it obvious that the world needs a completely new approach to conflicts? We’ll never rid the world of conflicts, conflicts is part of human and social life. Conflict-prevention is a meaningless term. But we can rid the world of most of its violence. If we want, if we educate each other and if economic and other interests stopped supporting killing as a tool in conflict-management. Unrealistic? Hopelessly idealistic? Well, look at the places above and try to find the realism and hope there. Look at the conflict not at the parties and the violence It requires almost no intellectual effort to take sides in a conflict between A and B. If both parties use violence, that means endorsement of the violence...