Violence-prevention

. In his magisterial book “Europe”, Norman Davies writes, “Europe is a relatively modern idea. It gradually replaced the earlier concept of ‘Christendom’ in a complex intellectual process lasting from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries.” Jean Monnet, the founder of the European Union, said, “Europe has never existed. One has to genuinely create Europe”. “For more than 500 years”, continues Davies, “the cardinal problem in defining Europe has centred on the inclusion or exclusion of Russia. Throughout modern history the Orthodox, autocratic, economically backward but expanding Russia has been a bad fit.” Nevertheless, Empress Catherine the Great announced in 1767 in St Petersburg that “Russia is a European state”. Dostoevsky, at the poet Pushkin’s funeral, eulogised Europe. “Peoples of Europe don’t know how dear to us they are.” Muscovy has been an integral part of Christendom since the tenth century. Moreover, one can see that since Pushkin’s time Russia...

TFF PressInfo 273 /10/janoberg.jpg”>[/caption] Lund, Sweden August 22, 2014 We are drifting towards a new Cold War. The reason isn’t substance because there is no reason we should not be able to live in peace in Europe – if we want and educated ourselves in handling problems. No, the reason is the woefully incompetent way in which politicians and media focus on violence and ignore the underlying conflict and civil means – yes yes, of course there are exceptions. Escalation doesn’t create peace Here is just one example – NATO S-G Anders Fogh Rasmussen and NATO’s supreme commander General Breedlove (funny name given his anything but loving views coming rather from a Strangelove …) in the Wall Street Journal. They tell you about all the escalation they have already done

Kuala Lumpur, International Islamic University of Malaysia, 19 Aug 2014 Nothing good. But let us have a look at it in the standard peace studies way: Diagnosis – analyzing, Prognosis – forecasting, and Therapy – remedies, even solutions. “Israel-Palestine” is the discourse Tel Aviv-Washington prefers. They have all the strong cards: overwhelming military power, political veto in the United Nations Security Council, the economic upper hand in interlocking economies – not just oil cash from Saudi Arabia-Qatar–and the idea of working for a solution with Washington as “mediator” – only the U.S. can bring the two together, gently or roughly–toward a sustainable peace. A great distance from reality is needed to believe in that spin. USA and Israel are interlocked by a much deeper tie

Vi lever i en interessant tid. Og den er ikke kedelig. Mange faste forestillinger ændrer sig. Det slår mig, at EU politikere og ditto amerikanske ved meget lidt om både Rusland og verden. Som EU borger kan jeg med beklagelse konstatere, at EU ikke har nogen politik i forhold til Rusland. Og højstemt forargelse og at snakke amerikanerne efter munden tæller ikke som en egentlig politik. Hvilke forestillinger har EU politikerne haft om slutspillet i Ukraine? Hvilke forestillinger har de haft om virkningerne af sanktionerne? Hvilken viden og forståelse af hvilket land Rusland er, har de samme politikere haft? Det er som om dæmonisering af Putin har gjort det ud for en politik. Jeg opfordrer ikke her til at man skal elske Putin. Men jeg opfordrer for det første til at finde ud af, hvad man ønsker med Rusland og for den sags skyld også med Ukraine. For det andet,...

Keynote, 25th International Peace Research Association (IPRA) Conference Istanbul, 11-14 August 2014 We have come of age, at 50; and I am the only surviving founder from 1964 in London, capital of a foggy island in the North Sea. Now we meet in the sunny capital of another empire; bridging three continents. One cloned itself all over; the other was more an Islamic umma, a community of togetherness-and-sharing, with millet islands of tolerance. And now: the superb IPRA program. Uniting for peace. But we differ, disagree? Incredible how far we can come if we identify and focus on the good and the positive in Kiev, Donetsk and Moscow, or husband and wife in broken marriages rather than what is wrong, and build new relations on that. Peace is a relation, not attributes of the parties. So also for conferences: focus on the best in paper, praise it; not on the...

/10/janoberg.jpg”>[/caption] Lund, Sweden July 31, 2014 Responsibility for wars and killing A number of Western/NATO politicians – Hillary Clinton foremost among them – and media people have recently introduced a new ethical principle in international affairs: When A delivers weapons to B, A is responsible for what B does with these weapons. The former Secretary of State and perhaps future U.S. President presents this new ethical principle here on CNN. This makes a lot of sense to me. Look at it this way: Here is a young confused boy who has little to look forward to – and less to lose – because his country is falling apart in nasty civil war. He’s been told by some commander, or by his President, that he must hate the enemy; he gets paid for killing off as many as he can. And so he does. He believes also in what he’s been...

Prefatory Note The post below is a revised text of an article published in AlJazeera America on July 26, 2014. Devastation and violence has continued in Gaza, with Palestinians deaths now numbering over 1000 (overwhelmingly civilians) and Israeli deaths latest reported at being 43 (almost all military personnel). Such casualty figures and disparities raise questions of state terrorism in a stark manner. Also, it should be appreciated that if Israel were to do what it is required by international law to do there would be no rockets directed at its population centers – lift the blockade, negotiate peace on the basis of the 2002 Arab proposals and Security Council 242. Yet this would require Israel to give up once and for all its expansionist vision embedded in the settlement phenomenon and the version of Zionism embraced by its leaders and reigning political parties. The best that the UN has been...

/10/janoberg.jpg”>[/caption] Lund, Sweden July 25, 2014 Violence is a dead end Look at the violence in Gaza today, DR Congo (6 million dead), Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Somalia etc: Isn’t it obvious that the world needs a completely new approach to conflicts? We’ll never rid the world of conflicts, conflicts is part of human and social life. Conflict-prevention is a meaningless term. But we can rid the world of most of its violence. If we want, if we educate each other and if economic and other interests stopped supporting killing as a tool in conflict-management. Unrealistic? Hopelessly idealistic? Well, look at the places above and try to find the realism and hope there. Look at the conflict not at the parties and the violence It requires almost no intellectual effort to take sides in a conflict between A and B. If both parties use violence, that means endorsement of the violence...

Tragic misuse of a tragedy The government of Ukraine as well as the separatists, NATO/U.S. and very many leading Western mainstream media seem all to know who has caused the tragedy. Putin believes it was caused indirectly by the West. Given the fact that very few, if any, people or institutions can know who did it with enough details, data and precision to accuse anyone, the MH17 tragedy has been misused to an extent that can itself only be termed tragic. The misuse is tragic because it is a catastrophe for close to 300 people, their relatives and friends. Silence – of both verbal and military weapons – and empathy would have been appropriate. Anyone pointing fingers and calling it a terrorist act at this point is irresponsibly or should present convincing evidence. Secondly, the blame game makes the necessary road to peace and security even more difficult. An All...

Introduction He was a tall man and a great man, a visionary, pacifist, civil resister, educator and philosopher. He took life more seriously than most and he could be playful and fun like a child. His life’s guiding principle was ”Engage in your time!” and while he wrote and talked a lot he also did it. His name was Aage Bertelsen, he was born in Denmark in 1901 and died on August 15, 1980. Bertelsen’s imprint on history is two-fold. First, with his wife Gerda he was a prime mover of one of the groups, the Lyngby Group, which organised the rescue of altogether 7.220 Danish Jews into safety in Sweden in October 1943 during the German occupation of Denmark – more here. The Lyngby Group – Lyngby is north of Copenhagen – got about 1.000 of these in safety by organising their nightly transport onboard small fisher boats over the Sound between Denmark...

Comments by Hans-C. von Sponeck Former UN Assistant Secretary General, UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq & TFF Associate Hearing at the UK House of Commons, London Intro 1. HoC/HoL have repeatedly held Iraq hearings as have British NGOs such as CASI (Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq) and Stop the War Coalition/UK. In Europe these are considered models for responsible public action. 2. My contribution at this hearing is not about the crimes of dictatorship or the details of Iraqi suffering. For both well researched data is available. The objective of my participation is to make two detailed observations about externally-driven Iraq politics during the period 1990-2014. Observation 1 3. Today’s tragic Iraq reality can only be understood if the additive impact of the years before and the years following the US/UK Governments’ illegal invasion and occupation is fully taken into account.

For years, perhaps going back as far as the Madrid Peace Conference of 1991, influential international debate on the future of Palestine has almost exclusively considered variations on the theme of a two-state solution. The American Secretary of State, John Kerry, stampeded the Palestinian Authority and Israel into negotiations that ‘failed’ even before they started a year ago. At least Kerry was prudent enough to warn both sides that this was their do or die moment for resolving the conflict. It was presumed without dissent in high places anywhere that this two-state outcome was the one and only solution that could bring peace. Besides the parties themselves, the EU, the Arab League, the UN all wagered that a resolution of the conflict required the establishment of a Palestinian state. Even Benjamin Netanyahu became a reluctant subscriber to this mantra in his 2009 speech at Bar-Ilan University, although always in a...