TFF PressInfo

Few citizens can go to conflict regions to develop an understanding and form an opinion. Most of us rely on the dailies, the radio and television. So, the media stand between the events and each of us. What we obtain is not necessarily reality but an image of it, a part of it, some aspects and angles rather than others. In principle, it can hardly be otherwise. But what if the coverage is systematically biased and what if there is a tendency in what is not covered? Once again there is a Balkan crisis and once again some of us who have been on the ground for about ten years ask: do we have a free press on which those at home can safely rely? Here follow some 20 examples of what could have featured prominently in the headlines about Macedonia the last few months. Most citizens are likely not...

The following proposals are presented exclusively out of a deep concern over the deteriorating situation in Macedonia/FYROM. It’s an act of goodwill from TFF. We want to help everyone in Macedonia strengthen their belief in peace and work for it with hope and persistence. The aim of this PressInfo is to stimulate concerned citizen and political leaders in Macedonia, in the region and elsewhere around the world to produce ideas that can help turn Macedonia away from the abyss. You may find some of the ideas and proposals “unrealistic.” But please look deeply into the problem; then you will also recognise that the idea of war and killing to solve social and psychological problems and bring about peace is even more unrealistic. Those who insist on solving conflict predominantly, or exclusively, by peaceful means are at one with the Charter of the United Nations. Conflicts simply happen and are legitimate...

PressInfo 118 offers an independent analysis of 11 reasons why Macedonia is at the brink of war. Number 119 deals with the way the United Nations was forced out of Macedonia and not employed in Kosovo at the time when it could have made a difference. In short, there was a hidden agenda. PressInfo 120 deals with how Macedonia is also responsible, and not only a victim, in the process towards its fatal crisis now. This one deals with insufficient, or deceptive, media coverage, and with Western democracies. Where is the free press? We have explained that the 43,000 NATO/KFOR “peace”-keepers can not control or seal off the border around the territory it has occupied and is tasked with stabilising and controlling. Has it turned the blind eye to Albanian military activity all the time? This mission is much larger than the UN ever was in former Yugoslav territories and much more heavily armed. Very...

PressInfo 118 offers an independent analysis of 11 reasons why Macedonia is at the brink of war. Number 119 deals with the way the United Nations was forced out of Macedonia and not employed in Kosovo at the time when it could have made a difference. In short, there was a hidden agenda. This one deals mainly with the obvious question: Is Macedonia and its various groups totally innocent? Of course not! In some respects there is more repression of the Albanians in Macedonia than in Kosovo. Thus, for instance, Pristina University was the centre of learning for Albanians while for almost a decade the issue of higher education for Albanians have been controversial and, since 1997, the Tetovo University considered illegal by the majority. Albanians do not play a role commensurate to the proportion they make up of the population (25 – 40 pct depending on sources); whether this is a relevant...

PressInfo 118 offers an independent analysis of 11 reasons why Macedonia is at the brink of war. You may summarise them: It’s the international community, stupid! Let’s add some more and look at the sad fate of the United Nations in Macedonia. WHY THE UNITED NATIONS WAS IN THE WAY UN warnings were ignored. UNPREDEP’s leadership repeatedly warned that if NATO bombed Yugoslavia, they could not guarantee the lives of UN personnel just at the other side of the Yugoslav-Macedonian border. Western politicians, Scandinavians from where the UN leadership came in particular, did not understand that if their NATO allies bombed Serbia it could provoke Serb retaliation against the Extraction Force which was partly co-located with their own nationals in the UN mission! The UN was impartial and fair. UN peacekeepers respected and listened to all sides as a matter of professionalism. They did not see the world in black-and-white terms....

For the umptieth time, the politico-military-media complex tells us that local conflicts are caused solely by locals. The international “community” has no part in it but the noble one of trying to persuade the parties to sit at a negotiation table instead. This time the stage is Macedonia and the complex has learnt nothing since Croatia. This PressInfo and PressInfo 119 tell you how this intellectual rubbish covers hidden political agendas instead of expressing the truth. They also reveal why the UN was forced out of Macedonia and that it was prevented from having a common mission in Kosovo and Macedonia which was the only thing that would have made sense in the late 1990s. It is based on my own investigations at the time and published here for the first time. THE INTERNATIONAL “COMMUNITY” : THE MAIN CAUSE OF WAR Since few seem to be burdened with a political memory stretching...

THE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION NOW Only two things are worse than violence: to criticise it without presenting alternatives and to fight it with violent means. The turbo-militarisation of the European Union (EU) is the most important on the agenda of the EU Summit June 14-16 in Gothenburg, Sweden. Shall the EU commit itself to killing by weapons in the name of peace and intervene up to 6000 kilometres away from Brussels? If so, shall it be allowed to do so virtually without public debate and without referendums, irrespective of the fact that it will imply that young boys, one day, come home in body bags? Major EU countries have nuclear weapons; others are NATO members. EU bureaucrats and diplomats work intensely to integrate the ‘Peace’ Forces of the EU with NATO. Do you want the EU to support the existence and possible use of nuclear weapons, or to be a...

DEN VIKTIGASTE FRÅGAN JUST NU Det finns bara två saker som är värre än våld: den första är att kritisera våld utan att föreslå ickevåldsliga alternativ; den andra är att bemöta våld med våld. Den senaste tidens intensiva militarisering av den Europeiska Unionen (EU) är den i särklass viktigaste frågan på agendan för EU toppmötet som kommer hållas i Göteborg den 14-16 juni. Ska EU i första hand kunna döda för fredens skull och intervenera i konflikter som äger rum 6000 km ifrån Bryssel? Om ja, ska det då ske i nästan fullständig avsaknad av offentlig debatt och utan folkomröstning, och utan hänsyn till att det kommer att innebära att unga pojkar en dag kommer att transporteras hem i liksäckar? Stora EU-länder har kärnvapen, andra är NATO-medlemmar. EU:s byråkrater och diplomater arbetar frenetiskt med att integrera EU:s fredsstyrkor med NATO:s. Vill du att EU ska stödja existensen och ett möjligt...

The Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs did it again this year. TFF is now the only – and the first ever — among peace organisations that have received organisational support during the 1990s and is thrown out.*) The conclusion is clear: You and we did not succeed with our dignified appeals last year. So, let’s forgive these decision-makers – not because they do not know what they do, but because they do not know what we do and have never concentrated their minds and hearts on peace or read Gandhi. They seek international security in past paradigms and personal security in following orders. We will waste no more time or energy being disappointed or begging for handouts. Peace is more important than government grants. TFF will concentrate fully on its tasks and hopes that funds will come in little by little – for instance from you. Our thanks to all...

1986. . . TFF took the first steps in January 1986. We have recently described what TFF is about.Today we are a network of 71 scholars, activists, diplomats, officers in 22 countries. We are Orthodox and Catholics, Muslims, Buddhists, Quakers, Gandhians, atheists and, well, God knows what. The foundation has spearheaded the Gandhi-inspired concept and practise of conflict-mitigation. It has conducted over 40 missions to former and present Yugoslavia, to all conflicts regions and parties since 1991. It’s been a small force for the UN norm of “peace with peaceful means” it has done impartial analysis, mitigation and peace education way before all the talk about preventive diplomacy. It’s a small bridge-builder between scholarly and on-the-ground peace work. There are some 60 publications in our TFF Store and Donations. We work also in Georgia and in Burundi and we teach in many countries. TFF reaches out through mails and two websites...

LONDON – He was one of us, I always say, a child of the sixties and seventies, an anti-war protestor, and idealist, and very clever to boot. Moreover he knew poverty and family hardship first hand. It was in his soul to try and make the world a better place, you would have thought. But he blew it, for himself, for his country and for all of us. If an artist were commissioned to paint the eight years of the presidency of Bill Clinton it would be a landscape of missed opportunities. About five years ago I had lunch with the Pulitzer Prize winning editorialist, Paul Greenberg, and my misgivings all fell into place. Greenberg won his formidable reputation as the editorial page editor of the Pine Bluff Commercial, a paper with a circulation of 20,000 out in the sticks of rural Arkansas. “In all his years as governor of...

We have four pieces of good news for you: Nonviolence Forum on our site, training with the Tibetan exile government in Dharamsala in India, an exploratory travel in Gandhi’s footsteps and the proposal of a three-year research program on reconciliation and forgiveness for which we seek funding. M. K. Gandhi’s warned us all against seven social sins: politics without principle, wealth without work, commerce without morality, education without character, pleasure without conscience, science without humanity, and worship without sacrifice. Hardly without relevance today… Nonviolent thinking and politics and Gandhian thinking are themes at the heart of the foundation’s work. But we have not done as much as we think we should around this theme. Like others, TFF tends to get bogged down in day-to-day events in a world spinning faster and faster. We hardly get enough time to think of why we do what we do and what we must...