January 2001

Lund, Sverige & Nagoya, Japan Under Folketingets åbningsdebat krævede Mogens Lykketoft (S) at statsministeren skal sige undskyld for at han tog fejl vedrørende Irak og at grundlaget for krigen ikke holdt. Når amerikanerne selv siger det, så tør vi – og FE – skam også at indrømme det, der har stået klart i årevis. Det er 8 år siden inspektørerne meddelte at 95-98% af alt hvad Saddam havde var fundet og destrueret. Forholdet mellem Saddams militærudgifter og USAs plus Englands var 1:332 – ifølge CIAs egen hjemmeside. Så nogen trussel var han heller ikke. Der er således ikke tale om en fejltagelse. Det er en bevidst politik, der er ført hvis grundlag var helt igennem konstrueret, ikke fejlagtigt. Colin Powells over 70 minutter lange indlæg i Sikkerhedsrådet forud for krigen var ét stort teaterstykke med dårlige rekvisiter. Ingen med det mindste kendskab til efterretningsvæsen og -teknologi kan have troet ham....

“Indien kan inte utvecklas bara med Gandhis spinnrock – men inte heller utan den” skriver Jan Öberg, TFF direktör. Gandhi mördades i New Delhi fredagen den 30 januari 1948. Påföljande dag fördes hans kropp för att kremeras till floden Jamuna på en kanonlavett, eskorterad av 4.000 soldater, tusen flygsoldater och lika många poliser. Det var ingen slump att den tidens regim “hedrade” landets ickevålds-fader på detta vis. Jag tror också att det finns tydliga samband mellan detta och dagens Indien, dess korruption, elitism och kärnvapen. Jag råkade anlända till Delhi 29 januari och for ut till Rajghat vid Jamuna-floden för att besöka minnesmärket, Gandhi Samadhi, den stora svarta marmorkuben med den eviga flamman och inskriptionen med hans sista ord: He Ram! – – Åh Gud. Kuben har placerats på en enorm gräsmatta. Det är en estetisk kylig minnesplats, pompös i omvänd proportion till Gandhis enkelhet. En vakt talar om att det...

LONDON – The Pinochet affair is now inexorably moving towards its denouement. The script is written. The players have but to act out their lines, which we in the audience by now know almost as well as the actors themselves. At last, this most miserable of men is set to confront his fate and witness his own final destruction- in name, and mind, but not in body. The Chilean social and legal system is too kind and forgiving for that- even the daughter of Salvador Allende, the president he overthrew, asks for mercy once the trial is over. Thus mankind this year will take a giant step forward towards its goal of civilization, a state of political being where the rule of law grounded in the belief that disputes can be settled short of violence triumphs over the baser and more primitive instincts of each one of us. In Chile Judge...

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...

By Arun Gandhi, director M.K.Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence gandhi@cbu.edu www.gandhiinstitute.org   Understandably, after the tragedy in New York and Washington DC on September 11 many have written or called the office to find out what would be an appropriate nonviolent response to such an unbelievably inhuman act of violence. First, we must understand that nonviolence is not a strategy that we can use in a moment of crisis and discarded in times of peace. Nonviolence is about personal attitudes, about becoming the change we wish to see in the world. Because, a nation’s collective attitude is based on the attitude of the individual. Nonviolence is about building positive relationships with all human beings’ relationships that are based on love, compassion, respect, understanding and appreciation. Nonviolence is also about not judging people as we perceive them to be — that is, a murderer is not born a murderer; a terrorist is not...

LONDON – Clinton is out of it and Bush is not yet into it so the Palestinians and Israelis are on their own. That is no bad thing. The meeting in Cairo is make or break time. If they fail Prime Minister Ehud Barak of Israel will surely be voted out in the election on February 6th. If they succeed the euphoria unleashed might save Barak, and save Israel too. A future Israel under the leadership of Ariel Sharon can only be the downward path for both Israel and the Palestinians. It is a future that goes nowhere. For the Israelis it means more years as an occupying power that demands for precarious survival a resort to increasingly brutal tactics to survive, that debilitates Israel as least as much as it does its antagonist. For the Palestinians it means a future in which there is no possibility of economic advance and...

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...

States of Denial: Knowing About Atrocities and Suffering By Stanley Cohen Polity Press, 2001 We all know that there are people dying of starvation in many countries around the globe. We all know that there are brutal dictatorships. We all know that there are numerous wars going on, with millions of refugees. We all know that torture is widely used. We all know about the problems. What are any of us doing about them? Now listen to the responses. That’s someone else’s “problem.” “There’s nothing I can do.” “I have enough problems of my own.” “They brought it on themselves.” The reality is that we can all do a lot to help. Contributions to human rights organisations like Amnesty International make a difference to political freedoms. Contributions to independent aid organisations help save lives. Even a few dollars can make a difference to a child’s life. The sad fact is...

This article is forthcoming in the Gandhi Marg journal, New Delhi Introduction Gandhi’s biographer, Louis Fischer, once said that Gandhi’s greatness “lay in doing what everyone could do but doesn’t.” (1) Gandhi provided a signpost for moral living, he left us with some valuable insights about the way life should be oriented so as not to become dysfunctional to the self, society or planet, and provided valuable guidelines to help us with difficult decisions. For example, his seven social sins warn us against politics without principle, wealth without work, commerce without morality, education without character, pleasure without conscience, science without humanity, and worship without sacrifice. (2) In another place he gives us a test to apply when we are in doubt. This “talisman” asks us to consider the poorest and weakest person we have seen and examine our proposed action in light of the consequences for this person. (3) And of course he is...

The post-Gandhi Gandhian movement in India (1998) La Trobe University, Australia, TFF Associate As the 50th anniversary of Gandhi’s assassination approaches, the question will inevitably be asked – where is the Gandhian movement now? And some will argue that the place to look is not in India at all. Attenborough’s film Gandhi saw a great revival of interest in the Mahatma worldwide – and this included in India. At around this time, many of the older generation, including older Gandhians, lamented the fact that Gandhi was dead in India and now had to be imported from the West. Many of Gandhi’s closest colleagues had become leading politicians or have established well respected Gandhian institutions. To some, who continued to work at the grass-roots, these were called (not always too kindly) “professional Gandhians”. Those who continued to work at the grass-roots by and large maintained seemingly essential symbols – the sacrificial...

In response to an urgent Appeal from all the living Nobel Peace Prize Laureates, the General Assembly of the United Nations, on November 1998, unanimously declared the first decade of the twenty-first century to be The Decade for a Culture of Peace and Nonviolence. While people are naturally concerned about the amount of violence in our world and how it threatens our future, the Nobel Laureates are right to remind us of the potential of nonviolence and our calling to build a culture of peace and nonviolence.  The twentieth century is instructive in the way that the philosophy and practice of nonviolence have begun to flourish and in the way that nonviolent movements have had an exponential growth across the world. Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. are the most famous nonviolent leaders but many have built upon the paths they charted as in country after country, tyrannies and...

Take the longer view, reflect on what we may learn about conflict-management in the 1990s. TFF publications are short with long duration. For students, concerned citizens, media people and humanitarian organisations, course and seminar leaders &endash; everyone searching beyond mainstream and political correctness: May we remind you of three Balkan related publications? Learning Conflict and Teaching Peace in Former Yugoslavia. A Course Report by Peter Jarman and Jan Oberg, 1998. (Catalogue # 60) &endash; about teaching peace in conflict regions. Violence Prevention, Postwar Reconstruction and Civil Society. Theory and Yugoslavia by Jan Oberg, 1998. (Catalogue # 61) &endash; about peace-making with a human and social face. Preventing Peace. Sixty Examples of Conflict Mismanagement in Former Yugoslavia since 1991 by Jan Oberg, 1999. (Catalogue # 62) &endash; about a few things that could have been done differently, and why militarisation of the EU/NATO is not the right lesson to learn. May we also remind...