Media

/10/jonathanpower2.jpg”> The Syrian cease-fire supports the status quo – the armed might of the government on one side and the armed opposition factions on the other. The government cannot eradicate the rebels although it can brutalise them. But neither can the armed opposition hope to topple the government which retains its popularity in the capital, Damascus, and in many other parts of the country where Shiite Islam and the Alawites are a majority. Is this what the world wants? Are the members of the UN and its former secretary-general, Kofi Annan, who has negotiated this cease-fire, aware of the implications of this?

/10/jonathanpower2.jpg”> If it bleeds it leads! The mantra of many a newsroom. In their new book, “Pax Ethnica” two great journalists, Karl Meyer and Shareen Brysac, argue that day in and day out ethnic conflict and tension along religious and cultural lines makes for reliable, if dispiriting, headlines. Journalists regularly play plenty of attention to failed states, sectarian violence and societies at the breaking point. But what about those unsung exceptions, the communities of the world where diverse groups live together in harmony?

A new report /02/idazidore.jpg”> We all have a feeling of what peace is. Yet, defining it more precisely is not so easy. It belongs to the category that philosophers have called ‘essentially contested concepts’ – also used about freedom, justice and, say, democracy. Being somehow elusive, perhaps the best we can hope to achieve is intelligent discussions about how to approach peace, rather than defining it precisely. There are those who jump the philosophy, conceptuality and definitions and go directly to quantifying peace. By means of some “indicators” readily available in data bases they put together a composite measure that enables them to rank-order countries. Developing such hit lists – for happiness, development, corruption, etc.- has become a kind of industry in recent years.

We publish this post right after China and Russia have vetoed the UN SC Resolution draft. Perhaps the situation in Syria is a bit more complex than you are generally told? I’d like to bring to the attention of our readers the Observers’ Mission Report of the League of Arab States (AL = Arab League) to Syria. The report acknowledges the existence of “an armed entity” involved in the killings of civilians and police as well as the conduct of terrorist acts, which in turn have contributed to triggering actions by government forces.

/10/janoberg.jpg”> On Monday the 23rd of January 2012, the EU’s 27 members unanimously decided to stop their oil import from Iran on July 1 this year. That sort of policy is considered benign in comparison with warfare. It won’t be when seen in the long run. Sanctions usually have the opposite consequences of those “intended”. Secondly, as we know from the Iraq case, they are part and parcel of a build-up to war and will have, in the longer run, devastating, cruel consequences for innocent civilians whose lives are already hard. How come EU leaders seem not to see the counterproductivity of their decisions? Do they not know that they contribute to a build up to a war that will be much more catastrophic than that on Iraq both for the region, for themselves and for the economy they otherwise try to keep from even deeper crisis? Virtually everyone speaking...

“It’s clear a long-term success in Afghanistan will require significantly more troops and we welcome those additional troops, no matter what the source”. So said Australian Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon when seven people were killed, earlier this year, in a bomb attack on the luxury hotel in Kabul which housed the Australian embassy. Strengthening the Nato-led “International Security Assistance Force” would be an “essential ingredient”, the Minister went on, in defeating terrorism in Afghanistan. What to make of this proposed remedy? Well, it depends on how we diagnose the problem. And Fitzgibbon was pitching his statement into a media narrative for the Afghanistan story which constantly reiterates a simple proposition – ‘these evil men are out to get us’. Go back to the reports in the Australian press from the day of the attack, in mid-January, and search them for the six vital pieces of information that journalists are supposed...

February 20, 2008 Jan Oberg Do you believe that freedom of opinion, diversity, fairness, impartiality, basic knowledge, and research should be defining principles behind the news YOU get? Then read the press release from TFF below which contains a fairly unique background story. It was mailed to about 400 journalists and editorial offices in Scandinavia and over 1000 worldwide, specialised in international affairs. We got about the response we expected: 3 – CNN International, Radio Netherlands and Voima in Finland. 1397 chose to cut and paste telegrams from exclusively Western bureaus or write without relying on external expertise or research. So, routine-routine and politically correct – they repeat what for instance George W. Bush, Javier Solana, Nikolas Sarkozy and other Western leaders say interspersed with “angry” Serbs torching a border station on the Kosovo-Serbia border and “defiant” Belgrade – allied with the Russians so we know what to think about them – may...

8:e maj, 2007 Jan Öberg Inslaget i Aktuelt 10:e april 2007 om domarna över serbiska krigsförbrytare Kommentaren skickades per e-mail 10:e april 2007 med påminnelse 25:e april men har inte besvarats Hej Det är bra att ni tar upp det; domarna är unika i det forna Jugoslavien. Men bättre hade det varit om det också funnits ett perspektiv kring det hela samt ett minimum av källkritik o balans. Man kunde t ex ha undersökt och förmedlat kunskap om: • huruvida det finns andra liknande domstolar i det forna Jugoslavien (en finns i Bosnien); • vilka andra stater som dömt sine egna; • FNs World Court beslut beträffande Serbiens ansvar för folkmordet i Bosnien, som kom i februari – och åtminstone delvis friar Serbien för anklagelsen om folkmord;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6395791.stm • mer eksakta siffror på hur många som dog i Srebrenica då, hur många som dött senare, hur många som flydde till t...

February 2007 Aleksa Djilas At the beginning of his essay “Of Vicissitude of Things,” Francis Bacon stresses the futility of all human endeavors: “… ‘There is no new thing upon the earth.’…all novelty is but oblivion…the river of Lethe runneth as well above ground as below.” Who has not experienced such weariness? Everything changes but is eternally the same. Nothing is truly new – it only appears so because we have forgotten. And soon we realize this. Like the dead in Hades we drink from the river that makes us forget but, alas, oblivion is merely temporary, and novelty vanishes. Not long after Bacon died in 1626, England experienced civil war, revolution and restoration. Had Bacon witnessed them, would they have challenged the deep skepticism of a seasoned politician and man of the world? The fate of Charles I might have amazed him, though not simply because a king was...

12:e juli, 2007 Robert FiskDet stora kriget för mänsklighetenKampen om MellanösternÖversättning Katalin FöldesiNorstedts Saddam Hussein greps i december 2003. ”Det krävdes bara 600 amerikanska soldater för att tillfångata mannen som i tolv år var en av västs bästa vänner i Mellanöstern och i tolv år västs värsta fiende i Mellanöstern”, skriver den brittiske journalisten Robert Fisk i sitt 1100-sidiga storverk ”Det stora kriget för mänskligheten” med undertiteln ”Kampen om Mellanöstern”. Fisk tog sig direkt efter gripandet till byn vid floden Tigris, där Saddam hade sitt sista flyktställe. Han klättrade ner i den förre diktatorns hål i marken. I en hydda i närheten fann han de böcker Saddam läst och några kassetter med arabiska sånger. Han hittade konserver och några färska Mars-chokladbitar. I sin bok konstaterar han att Saddam tagit sin tillflykt till en plats alldeles nära det ställe där han som ung sårad gerillasoldat 1959 tog sig över floden på flykt...

“En dag som berättigar till fest”, utropade den London-baserade al-Quds al-Arabi efter FN:s eldupphörresolution, “eftersom detta är första gången som Israel accepterar ett FN-beslut från en position som besegrad och inte som segrare”. Att ett arabisk-israeliskt krig för en gångs skull slutat med arabisk seger, är en helt dominerade åsikt i arabiska medier. Al-Quds al-Arabi tillåter sig att drömma om att det israeliska nederlaget skall leda till massflykt från Israel. Men i nästa andetag påminner tidningen om att Israel aldrig brukar genomföra sina internationella åtaganden och varnar för att förlorarna, liksom tidigare, kan hämnas genom att provocera fram inbördeskrig i Libanon. Med tanke på de otaliga massmediala vittnesmålen om det libanesiska folkets eniga motståndskraft förefaller risken för inre stridigheter i det sargade landet just nu liten. Men visst kan man urskilja nyansskillnader i libanesiska tidningar. Vänsterorganet al-Safir uppfattar FN-resolutionen som en komplott i syfte att rädda Israel från ännu större...

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