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The Idea Imagine living in a healthy environment, in peace and justice, with social conditions, work and production developing creatively, arts blooming, people realizing their potencials. 99% of humankind would prefer that, right? So how can we optimize our efforts to get there?One strange thing is that although every good physician knows that treatment of the patient must complete diagnosis and prognosis in order to get well again, the „physicians“ of the world seem to mostly lack the treatment part.Where do we find constructive thinking, where do we see the stories of success, where do we find the images of a better world, the ideas of what might be possible? Media as well as research and public debate seem to be in love with criticism of the status quo and warnings of the breakdown of the world – and yes, both is clearly neccessary. We definitely need the diagnosis for...

First published February 7th, 2005 In the literature the most used term for such conflicts is «war». War has been defined in various ways but most of the definitions have in common the description of war as an armed conflict with a certain number of deaths. Disagreements are more around the number and how to count the deaths than the much more interesting and important part of the definitions, namely the almost universal view that war is a form of conflict. I will argue below that war is NOT a conflict and that this misinterpretation has had serious consequences for the field. Most research on large-scale conflicts is focused on armed ones. Wars have been studied from a large number of perspectives since the first works in this field were published. This tradition, from pioneers such as Richardson and Wright, has dominated the majority of this particular field of research...

LONDON – A census released in Beijing reported that there is now an extraordinary imbalance in the birth-rate – 117 boys are being born for every 100 girls. In southern Hainan province the gap widens to an astonishing 135/100 ratio. In China today about 97% of all unmarried persons aged between 28 and 49 are male. China is probably the world leader in using cheap scans to enable parents to know the sex of their child in the womb and, despite breaking the law, to find a doctor who will abort a foetus for no more reason than it happens to be female. However, this practice is also widely practised in many other Asian countries. India is not far behind. Adding the two countries together there are perhaps between 60 and 70 million missing females in Asia. The historical record suggests that societies that breed surplus males end up with more crime and...

The most important thing to understand about nuclear weapons is this: these weapons do not and cannot provide physical protection to their possessors.  Please let this thought sink in.  The second most important thing to understand about these weapons is that they are weapons of genocide writ large or, as the philosopher John Somerville has labeled them, weapons of omnicide, capable of the destruction of all.(1) These weapons put at risk the future of humankind and most life on earth.  Please also let this thought sink in. The third most important thing to understand about nuclear weapons is that they are in the hands of human beings with all their frailties and fallibilities, and, as such, these weapons are disasters waiting to occur.  Please let this thought sink in as well. How the new U.S. president understands the functions, limits and dangers of nuclear weapons will guide his approach to U.S. nuclear policy,...

to refer the conflict in the Sudan to the ICC, arguing that it was only the threat of a war crimes court that brought the protagonists of the Yugoslavia wars to the negotiating table and that the same stick is necessary over Sudan. The announced prosecution by the ICC of the Sudanese leader, Omar al-Bashir, has coincided with a major shift in American elite opinion about the usefulness of the ICC. Democrat foreign policy experts are talking as if the U.S. were already a signed up, ratified, member. But more interesting is the stance of the Bush Administration. In the first days of his presidency George W. Bush ‘unsigned’ the U.S. membership. Yet now it is pushing hard in the Security Council for the ICC to act faster over the Sudan prosecution. The turn round suggests it may not be too long before the U.S. formally endorses the Court. This...

LONDON – Kosovo, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Chechnya, the Bakassi Peninsular. All of them disputed territories but only one, the last named, a sizable oil-rich wedge of land lying between Nigeria and Cameroon, has been taken to the International Court of Justice (World Court) for adjudication. Why not the others? There is no good reason, apart from, in the latest situation, hubris on the Russian side and an inflated sense of self-importance on the Georgian side, partly because America has encouraged this. Six years ago Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, confronted with growing tensions with neighboring Cameroon over the Bakassi peninsular, long ruled by Nigeria, decided to resist the advice of his minister of defense, who pushed for a military solution, and to turn the dispute over to the World Court. Newspapers ridiculed Obasanjo, public opinion was nationalistic, but he held his course and did so even when the court ruled in Cameroon«s favor....

“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...

24. april, 2008 Fatuma Ali Jeg har boet og arbejdet i Grønland i 8 år fra 1997 og til 2005. I de 8 år har jeg været almindelig overlæge i 3 år og administrerende overlæge resten af tiden. Fra 2005 og indtil 2006 har jeg arbejdet for det grønlandske sundhedsvæsen men boet i DK. Ifølge min kontrakt skulle jeg fortsat koordinere den psykiatriske indsats på kysten, være fysisk til stede i Grønland i 1 måned i hvert kvartal og ellers være til rådighed for netkonsultationer hele året. Netkonsultationerne handlede udelukkende om kendte og diagnosticerede patienter, hvor der var behov for at optimere den medikamentelle behandling eller supervisere den psykiatriske sygeplejerske. Jeg tror, at mit største bidrag til den grønlandske psykiatri  har været opbygningen af distriktspsykiatrien i det meste af  landet. Med opbakning fra det politiske system og mine overordnede var det lykkedes at etablere psykiatrisk behandling i patienternes nærmiljø således...

Niels Harrit, Associate professor, PhD, Department of Chemistry, University of Copenhagen When viewed in the rear-view mirror of history, the attack on USA on September 11th, 2001 (9/11) might very well prove to be the single most important political event since World War II. It sparked the so-called “war on terror”, which has left a trail of casualties and refugees, with numbers running into the millions. Military expenses and security budgets have soared. As have the number of terrorists. Civil rights have been curtailed for everybody. Fear is prevalent. Our children and grandchildren are left with a less secure world – and a mountain of debt. In spite of this profound impact, the physical and technical realities of 9/11 have never been satisfactorily explained by the US Government. Before considering this claim and its consequences, it is worthwhile reminding ourselves of the “scientific method”, which has served our western societies...

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...

the unarmed demonstrators certainly demoralised the local Soviet soldiers and the satraps in the Czech administration. They also succeeded in bringing the economy almost to a halt but they did not undermine the hard men in Moscow who simply piled on the pressure until the resistance cracked. But we should be sanguine about the chances of the saffron protestors. They don’t have an invincible force to overcome – or at least one of the muscle of the Soviet Union or China. Differences of opinion have already appeared among the military leaders. Moreover, external pressure has been piling up for years and has succeeded in isolating Myanmar in many important ways. The recent decision of Washington to go for the leaders’ private foreign bank accounts was long overdue. Not least, the Burmese protestors have the non-violent traditions of Buddhism to draw upon. This may be scorned by the generals, indeed by...

Mr Chairperson, Foreign Ministers, Excellencies, Panelists! Gandhi was fighting the UK Empire, meaning UK invasion and occupation.  One invasion, Viceroy Richard Wellesley in 1798 against the Sultan of Mysore, was also clearly anti-Muslim. The same year Napoleon’s mission civilisatrice invaded Egypt to make himself Sultan el-kebir, Great Ruler, but were thrown out in 1801. The English came in 1807 and Egypt was a colony till 1922. Gandhi fought an evil empire as seen by how they reacted to the Sepoy mutiny 150 years ago or to the 1919 Amritsar massacre. Churchill not only referred to him as a semi-naked fakir, but sincerely hoped he would fast himself to death. But in 1947 it was all over: first went India, then the rest of the empire, mainly due to Gandhi’s nonviolence. Today they are both, India and England, blossoming, India with a brilliant linguistic federalism and phenomenal economic growth, England heading the same way but still...