Violence-prevention

The first editorial here at Transcend of March 3 2008, “50 Years of Fidel Castro” celebrated a political revolution that changed the world, and spelt the end of US-Western imperialism. This editorial celebrates a spiritual revolution that may also change the world, spelling the end of Western materialism, and spread from there. We are talking about processes, not events, and of structures and cultures more than of actors. Again, Cuba played a major role, as meeting place between two major parts of Christianity, Catholic and Orthodox. In the Great Schism of 1054 they had excommunicated each other; and the Roman empire had split Catholic/Orthodox in 395. Fidel’s Catholic brother and successor Raúl was a condition for this historic meeting for peace; so was the meeting between Putin–an Orthodox Christian–and Francis in June 2015. However, not many pairs of brothers rival the two Castros in shaping history. They met, Pope Francis...

By Jonathan Power Is Islam violent? ISIS in Syria and Iraq. In Pakistan, there is Lashkar-e-Taiba and the attempted murderer of the schoolgirl, Malala Yousafzai. Immigrant Moroccan men roughly pushing women and fondling them in the crowd in Cologne. Murderous bombs in Paris. Ayan Hirsi Ali, a Somali female author who was raised a Muslim, writes, “Violence is inherent in Islam- it’s a destructive, nihilistic cult of death. It legitimates murder.” The late Harvard professor, Samuel Huntington, argued that in the later years of the last century and the early years of this an uncannily high percentage of the world’s violent conflicts took place between Muslims and non-Muslims: Turks versus Greeks, Russians versus Chechens, Bosnian Muslims and Albanians versus Serbs, Armenians versus Azeris, Uighurs versus Han Chinese, Indian Hindus versus Muslims, and Arabs versus Jews. Yet most Muslims don’t commit acts of violence. If Islam is intrinsically violent then roughly...

Something is rotten in the State of Denmark and the world will increasingly see it. It’s an unpleasant combination of Islamophobia, militarism and a peculiar ethical and intellectual self-destructive obedience to US/NATO all wrapped up in a pseudo-humanitarian flag. It’s important that intellectuals criticise the policies of their native country and not only and politically correctly criticise that of others. In the case of Danish foreign and security policy it is fairly easy to do so provided you are supported neither by that country’s state nor its corporations. Denmark to be aggressor in Syria – too On March 4, 2016 a large majority of Danish political parties agreed to send F16s and special forces to Syria. The decision is likely to soon be confirmed by the Danish parliament. The most important decision any government can take is the one to go to war. But that sort of thing is now routine in H.C....

Five years ago In 2011 when it all began, an educated conflict analyst or otherwise conflict competent person would have said about the conflict in Syria that it was a very complex thing, caused by history, environment, traumas, external factors, the economic situation, etc. And that al-Assad and his government was certainly an important reason but far from the only one. The conflict expert would have warned against at last four ways of thinking: a) any interpretation that put all the good people on one side and all the bad people on the other – because there are no conflicts in the world with only two such parties; b) any idea that the conflict could be solved by siding with the presumed good ones and going against the bad one(s); c) every attempt to ‘weaponise’ the conflict and increase the level of violence, the duration of the conflict and the human...

By Jonathan Power It’s two years since a mass of demonstrators brought down the centrist government of President Viktor Yanukovych. We don’t hear much about Ukraine these days, mainly because the foreign journalists, not having too much to do – and often being freelance and therefore only paid by the number of lines they get printed – have gone home or to other hot spots. Most of the news these days comes out of the Washington-based IMF that repeatedly warns that the economy of Ukraine teeters on the brink and that corruption remains so deep and widespread that it is difficult, to say the least, to get good economic decisions made. Often the government appears to be checkmated by an unsympathetic parliament where the representatives of the oligarchs, who prefer the status quo, wield their power. To compound the problems – which will surely continue even if Russia, the EU...

Thanks to tabloidization – a concept rapidly integrated into even quality mainstream media – you’ve probably heard that Donald Trump has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize 2016. Well, that prize has been thrown out to so many who didn’t qualify according Alfred Nobel’s will – not even with a very liberal interpretation. But there are two things you may not have seen which have very far-reaching implications and are much more news worthy. Court case against the Nobel Foundation One is that three individuals and an NGO filed a brief to open a court case against the Nobel Foundation – and thus implicitly the Nobel Committee in Oslo – to the Stockholm District Court in December 2015 – all about it here. It’s never happened before and is the result of 8 years of intensive research and public information that you can read about at the Nobel Peace...

Let us have a look, and see what can be done. [1] Economies. NYSE is falling; China is consuming, with problems; the West blames China, not itself, for all. The truth is over-reliance on one commodity, oil-gas, hitting vulnerable economies doubly. Steep fall in price: $120-130 to $30-20, close to 1973 from $1 to $10. Steep fall in demand for that globally toxic product; a sign of rationality (but, the other globally toxic product, derivatives for speculation?) The currencies of oil-producers tumble. stocks fall; in Norway to the tune of half the state budget in three weeks (Finansavisen 21Jan 2016). And over-reliance on trade with vulnerable economies. Remedies: To become less vulnerable, through [1] more self-reliance nationally and locally, indeed for basic needs like food, [2] fully-fledged economies with primary-secondary-tertiary-quaternary (care for people and nature) sectors. Simple, sustainable rules. Beyond that: import-export, but with a wide range of countries. [2]...

Concluding Remarks, Colloque, Université Catholique Lyon, 5-6 Feb 2016 The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 10 December 1948 – the two Conventions of 16 November 1966 are international law – was edited by a committee of Men; Older, White, Bourgeois, Lawyers, French: MOWBLF! Nothing about women’s and children’s rights; wait till the 1980s. The perspective focuses on individuals, not collectives, peoples. There are no rights to access to toilet, nor to sexuality: well-mannered bourgeois do such things but do not talk or write about it. Art. 27.2 even protects remuneration for professionals like themselves. The “human rights=legal claims” discourse defines underdog goals but is silent on topdog goals: status quo. Their justification: “If they rise, they will treat us the way we treated them”. Revenge. In a conflict discourse, all parties have to be heard, for solutions. But the legal discourse is DMA–Dualist-Manichean-Armageddon; two parties, rights vs wrongs, final...

/01/tff-pressinfo-359-why-anti-refugee-policies-in-denmark-and-sweden/”>Article 3/4 – TFF PressInfo # 359 Sweden Permit a digression to neighbouring Sweden. Sweden has – shamefully – not only closed its borders for people without valid documents, scrapped the right to asylum embedded in the Human Rights Declaration. It has declared (January 28, 2016) that it intends to deport 60.000-80.000 refugees already inside Sweden. It was Sweden’s ambassador, the courageous Harald Edelstam, who in 1973 stood at the stadium in Santiago after the Pinochet coup and murder of president Allende and told thousands that they would always be welcome in Sweden. Thousands came and made a good life in Sweden. (There were 90 Chileans living in Sweden before the coup, today over 40,000). A small internationalist country took humanitarian leadership and we could all be proud. But we can’t take that many people now, I hear many say. The head of the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and...

/01/tff-pressinfo-357-denmark-decency-and-decay-14/”>Article 1/4 Article 2/4 But why? One can point to many reasons for such a tragic development in an otherwise decent, wealthy and hitherto well-respected country. • It’s become too easy to go to war. The generation of politicians who might have a sense of war are long gone. If you take property owned by people who have fled thousands of kilometres because their life opportunities have been smashed and who carry just what they could grab in a hurry and carry – you simply have no idea of what life is like in a war zone. Neither do you see any need for advisers. • Only a small percentage of Danish politicians have any international experience, no special competence, in international affairs – in sharp contrast to the 1970s-80s. • Knowledge, broad civic education and cultured manners have been replaced by marketing consultants, styling experts, and fast politics salesmanship....

By Jan Oberg It was a few days ago when Swedish Army chief, Major-General Anders Brännström stated in a (leaked) internal document that ‘Sweden could be at war within a few years.’ This is, of course, nothing but ‘fearology’ and very bad judgement. He may be a great soldier but a victim of his own system’s bizarre threat perceptions – always pointing as they do to the Russians. As I explain here, this is part of a much larger picture – and it isn’t good. The statement – that is not and has not been backed up by any analysis – ought to be enough for general Brännström to be replaced. But that is something both mainstream media and scholars are too diplomatic to suggest. Had he stated something about Sweden being drawn into a war if it were a NATO member it would certainly have caused quite a media...

The state system emerged in the 17th century, with institutions for force. One was for internal and one for external use: the national police and the national military, national standing for the dominant nation in the states. The role of the police was to protect elites against theft and violence by the people; crimes by the law. And the role of the military was to protect the states against each other. Both police and military occasionally initiated violence. The description just given still holds very well for the USA. “Banking scandals” give us insight in class-conscious “justice”. Police patrol the streets, not the boardrooms. And no arrests. But wars between states are now dwindling. They yield to wars between dominant and other nations within states, and dominant and other civilizations in the world; using state and non-state terrorism. How did “modern” elites get these ideas? From intellectuals. They picked Thucydides...