Treasures – TFF Associates

Jean BricmontHumanitär imperialismÖversättning Margareta NorlinKarneval Formuleringarna är hämtade ur ett tal som Mohamed Mahathir, Malaysias premiärminister mellan 1981 och 2003, höll vid en konferens om mänskliga rättigheter 2005. Mahathir citeras i ”Humanitär imperialism”, en ny bok av Jean Bricmont om hur mänskliga rättigheter gång på gång har åberopats för att sälja krig, till och med förebyggande krig. Bricmont är professor i teoretisk fysik i Belgien men också ideologikritiker och har gett ut böcker tillsammans med bland andra Régis Debray. I ”Humanitär imperialism” diskuterar Bricmont framförallt USA:s senaste krig, mot Jugoslavien, Afghanistan och Irak och granskar de argument som lanserats för att framställa krigen som rättfärdiga, maktens legitimeringsmekanismer. Vi lever i de ohumanitära ”humanitära” krigens tid. Bombningarna av Kosovo och Jugoslavien 1999 kallades allmänt för en ”humanitär intervention”. Det var ett effektivt sätt att sälja ett krig där den europeiska socialdemokratin mer eller mindre okritiskt accepterade argumenteringen. De humanitära bomberna mot...

The events of the past week in Iran after the disputed presidential election on 12th June have posed the greatest challenge to the Islamic Republic since its formation over 30 years ago. Although the outcome of these events is not yet clear, it is safe to say that the Islamic Republic will not be the same in the future. The authorities have either to resort to a massive crackdown and unprecedented repression, or they have to give in to the just demands of the reformist opposition, which would have enormous impact both on the domestic scene, as well on Iran’s foreign policy.A stolen election A great deal has been written about the nature of the election. However, there is little doubt that there has been massive fraud in the counting of the votes. All three opposition candidates have protested against what they consider the rigged election, but so far their...

Maj Britt Theorin, former Ambassador Lecture given at the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs  15/11 2010 To understand why there is such a strong critique in Sweden of the war in Afghanistan, one must look some decades – yes even some centuries back. Sweden has been out of war for 200 years now. Before 1809 and centuries back Sweden was a conqueror in Europe; fighting Russian, Polish, German, Danish and other people. When the Russian 1809 suddenly defeated Sweden the time of war was over. Sweden started to search for other solutions than war. In World War II Sweden declared itself neutral and non-aligned. When the attempt to create a Nordic Defense Alliance brook down after that war and Norway and Denmark joined NATO, Sweden remained neutral and non-aligned.But neutrality and non-alignment did not mean passivity. On the contrary Sweden was very active in the United Nations. The security...

Violence in Southern Thailand has hitherto claimed more than 3,000 lives of Buddhists and Muslims, ordinary people and government officials since early 2004. General Chavalit Yongchaiyuth, a former Deputy Prime Minister of Thailand, who was in charge of security affairs during the previous Thaksin government that governed Thailand in the early part of this decade, remarked on this violence that: “Our Muslim brothers (sisters) always greet one another with ‘peace be with you’, but at the same time killings have occurred among themselves which is evident of deviant (Islamic) teachings.” (1) In 2003, the PEW Research Center in Washington DC reported its attitude survey of Muslim respondents in Turkey, Pakistan, Morocco and Jordan about suicide bombings. It was found that 74 and 86 per cent of respondents in Morocco and Jordan supported the use of suicide bombings by Palestinians against Israelis. (2) But does this mean that most Muslims would...

July 2, 2009 Chaiwat Satha-Anand On June 4, Barack Hussein Obama, the American President, delivered an important speech at Cairo University. After laying the grounds for his speech which included his life experience with Muslim societies in three continents – Kenya in Africa, Indonesia in Asia and Chicago in North America, and the place of Muslims/ Islam in American history and society, he addressed 7 main issues of global significance: violent extremism, Israeli-Palestinian deadly conflict, nuclear weapon and Iran, democracy, freedom of religion, women’s rights, and economic development/opportunity. As expected, millions of people around the globe paid due attention to this historic speech.  It was reported that 200 million in India watched the speech live. An opinion poll indicated that more than 75% of respondents in Muslim countries viewed it positively while some Palestinian factions based in Syria viewed it as “an attempt to mislead people and create more illusions” to...

Today marks the third anniversary of the terrible bombings in Madrid that killed nearly 200 people and wounded hundreds more, an outrage that was committed by some fundamentalists acting in the name of Islam. This was followed by similar bombings when four terrorists blew themselves up in tube stations and buses in London and killed 52 innocent people, including my cousin’s daughter, and wounded over a hundred more people. This event, and of course the much greater tragedy on 9/11, are manifestations of a very ugly phenomenon that has developed among a small minority of radical Muslims who have a deep sense of grudge against those whom they hold responsible for the afflictions that have beset the Islamic world. Yet it would be as wrong to define their activities as the evidence of a clash of civilisations between Islam and the West, as it would have been wrong to describe...

Reflections on the increasing impossibility of funding peace research that refuses to be intellectual ‘embedding’ in power. Summary This analysis has come about for four reasons: The article gives examples of why free peace research – if not social research in general – is becoming increasingly impossible. It starts out with an exposé of the funds being available worldwide for peace and for the military – about 200 times more for the latter. The ratio of peace researchers to military researchers is probably 1:100+. It may both be true that (government-financed) peace research is booming and that scores of institutes have been closed down. Today’s funding situation in Denmark and Sweden for peace-oriented research is then described and comparative flashbacks made to the situation in the 1980s and 1990s. If you think of Scandinavia in general as liberal and generous in this field, it’s time for a reality check. Then,...

At a large manifestation with thousands of participants on the national day, May 26, the opposition parties of the South Caucasus republic of Georgia escalated their accusations against the Saakasvili regime for ruling the country on the basis of electoral fraud and suppression of alternative opinions. Levan Gachechiladze, who came second at the presidential election in January this year, threatened that the opposition will refuse to take the few seats they won according to the official result of the parliamentary elections some days earlier – May 21st – and prevent the new parliament from convening ”if necessary by force”. If this really comes true it would be an ironical repetition of the method the present regime used to take power through the ”Rose Revolution” in November 2003. Then angry representatives of the opposition of that time, considering their loss at the parliamentary elections a couple of week earlier to be...

May 31, 2010 Chaiwat Satha-Anand [Published in The Bangkok Post as “The effect of violence on the future of reconciliation”, May 28, 2010: op-ed.] That the military would succeed in defeating the UDD, also known as the “red shirts”, and in securing the city space occupied by many who came from rural Thailand was never in doubt.  In fact, some from within the security community might regard this operation as a success given the resulted “low” number of casualties. What certainly is , however, is how the military solution chosen by the government and violent methods incorporated by some UDD leadership will shape the form of continuing political conflict in this society. This article is an attempt to understand the violence effect of the “May 19 incident” on Thai society, especially on future reconciliation efforts.  I would argue that any future reconciliation effort with some hope of success would have to begin...

May 8, 2009 Farhang Jahanpour During their first meeting on the margins of the G-20 conference in London on 1st April 2009, President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced the start of negotiations on a new strategic arms-control treaty that would cut each nation’s long-range nuclear arsenal further than previous agreements. In his first major foreign policy speech in Prague, the president went further and introduced an ambitious vision of getting rid of all nuclear weapons, although he said that this might not happen in his lifetime. He rightly stressed the danger of the existence and ultimate use of nuclear weapons. He also set a four-year target for ‘locking down’ all loose nuclear material scattered around the world to prevent them from falling into the hands of terrorists. While the president referred to North Korea’s satellite launch and Iran’s nuclear programme, he significantly failed to mention Israel’s nuclear...

and the international law.’ Strangely, EU’s President has to defend his Union against critics who maintain that its mission called LEX – meaning law! – is not established according to international law. Unfortunately for Barosso, they are right and have read and understood Resolution 1244 of 1999 (after NATO’s bombing) in which the members were: – “Reaffirming the commitment of all Member States to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the other States of the region, as set out in the Helsinki Final Act and annex 2,” and – “Reaffirming the call in previous resolutions for substantial autonomy and meaningful self-administration for Kosovo.”  Indeed, what is there to discuss? If 1244 were respected by Western law-breaking governments, EULEX could only have been established in agreement with Serbia/Belgrade as were all other international missions in Kosovo since 1999 – and by the local authorities and...

Short text in English below Per Gahrton ger ut engelskspråkig bok om Georgien, Rosenrevolutionen och Ossetienkriget – stödjer EU:s Tagliavinirapport och kritiserar Bildts oreserverade Saakashvili-stöd Per Gahrton, ordförande i den gröna tankesmedjan Cogito ger i dagarna ut en engelskspråkig bok om Georgien, Rosenrevolutionen och Ossetienkriget hos det brittiska förlaget Pluto Press. Gahrton har följt utvecklingen i Georgien under de senaste tjugo åren och var personlig vän med landets premiärminister efter Rosenrevolutionen 2003, Zurab Zhvania, som omkom under mystiska omständigheter 2005. Under sin tid som EU-parlamentariker var han s k rapportör för Sydkaukasien. Han har flera gånger varit valobservatör i Georgien. Han har också sedan länge följt utvecklingen i Sovjetunionen och Ryssland och har “working knowledge” i ryska. Gahrton intar överlag samma hållning som EU:s s k Tagliavini-rapport om Ossetienkriget, d v s att det startades av Georgies president Saakashvili som därmed brott mot folkrätten, men att Ryssland genom att inte...