February 2001

LONDON – Someone, somewhere had to say it and confirm what the Pentagon always feared would happen if an international war crimes court were established: that the U.S. harboured war criminals of its own and they had served not that long ago at the apex of power in the American government. Last Saturday the renowned journalist, Christopher Hitchens, did just that in an extract from his forthcoming book, “The Trial of Henry Kissinger” published in the London newspaper, The Guardian. Kissinger, who served as President Richard Nixon’s National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, has long known that there is a cottage industry of researchers, journalists, lawyers and academics out to destroy his formidable reputation. For years he has kept them at bay, even if at times he has come near to being nailed, as with William Shawcross’ formidable book, “Sideshow”, which alleged that with the bombing campaign he unleashed on...

LONDON – Sweden, which holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, has launched a drive to speed up liberalization of the EU’s textiles and clothing trade with the Third World. And there are increasing indications that the new Administration in Washington is likely soon to join with Europe and Japan and indicate its willingness to enter a major new trade round, meant to lower tariffs across the board. The trade ship, which seemed to have hit the rocks just over a year ago at its calamitous meeting in Seattle, has been prized free and is once again sailing on the high seas with the wind behind it. And so it should. A year on it appears even more nonsensical than it did at the time that the seasoned diplomats and politicians gathered together for earnest negotiations on freer trade should have allowed their plans to be scuttled by the combination...

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...

LONDON – There are three great current fault lines running through the Middle East: the unsettled, no longer negotiated, issue of the Israeli possession of the Syrian territory of the Golan heights; the now suspended negotiations over the future and nature of a Palestinian state; and the long unresolved threat from Saddam Hussein to both the peace of the Middle East and to the world. By electing Ariel Sharon the Israeli public have in effect decided to tough out all three of these issues, confident that military might will contain them and that even a worse case scenario of a rejuvenated Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction can be kept in its box by Israel’s preparedness, if all else fails, to unleash its nuclear weapons. It is an almighty gamble and the cost of losing is indescribable. If there were a war in the Middle East involving weapons of mass...

My journey in India is coming to an end. I have met Buddhist youth from Tibet and visited historical places and ashrams connected with Gandhi. I have visited Varanasi or Benares, the holiest Hindu town where people seek salvation in the Ganges River’s waters which are crawling with colon bacilli. I have seen the old and sick waiting to die so that their corpses can be burnt in a great fire and the ashes spread over and taken away by the river. I have also visited places of central importance to Buddhism – Bodghaya, where the young Gautama was enlightened under the pipal tree, and Sarnath, where he first spoke to his disciples. I made a trip to Rajgai where Buddha lived for 12 years and I admired the peculiar rock formation, Gridhakuta, where he is said to have given his most important lectures. I have also seen the giant...

LONDON – In the original draft of his best selling autobiography the new U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, wrote, “I believe in the bully’s way of going to war…I’m on the street corner, I got my gun, I got my blade, I’ma kick you’ ass”. In the end Powell deleted the line, deciding “it sounded a little, shall we say, ethnic and a little too Bronx”. At the moment attention is focused on the other side of Powell’s character- his aversion to intervention overseas. This, indeed, is a man who draws lines where others fear to tread- who was prepared to argue to his then boss, president George Bush senior, that the U.S. should not go to war against Iraq to reverse the conquest of neighbouring Kuwait. And who, later in the conflict, exploded right in the face of his immediate superior, Secretary of Defence Dick Cheney, when Cheney intimated...

The death of KFOR soldiers suspected to be caused by the radiation from depleted uranium used by NATO in bombing Kosovo and Serbia, phenomenon wrongly designated as the “Balkan syndrome”, provoked alarm across Europe. Although important, this first wave of public concern remains superficial. It evades fundamental issues. It is the syndrome of global elite’s folly. 1. HUMANITARIAN URANIUM One of the greatest absurdities marking the end of the millennium, a paradigm of irrational surplus of destruction, is the use of depleted uranium as an instrument of humanitarian intervention (i.e. prevention of humanitarian catastrophe). On the one side of that morbid formula we find the sublime rhetoric: NATO intervention was celebrated as an ethical war, an action stemming out of the deepest respect for human rights and justice. (Vaclav Havel) Sovereignty was rightly subordinated to this higher principle that places the protection of life and freedom of the citizens, minorities...

Affärsdynastin Birla’s palatsliknande vita hus ligger några kilometer från turisternas Connaught Place, i det grönaste området av Delhi. Här levde Gandhi sina 144 sista dramatiska dagar. Byggnadens museum speglar hans liv och död. Utomhus kan besökaren följa hans sista vandring. Från dörren i det enkla vita rum med glasveranda där han levde finns cementavtryck av fötter genom parken till platsen där han mördades. Dit går man utan skor, i stillhet. I parken finns enorma gamla träd, ett rikt fågelliv, porlande vatten, ett hav av blommor, stora gräsmattor och skulpturer och en murrelief som speglar Indiens historia och Gandhis gärning. Birla House eller “Gandhi Smriti” är en oas kärleksfullt driven i Gandhis anda. Dess direktör, dr Neelakanta Radhakrishnan, är en av Indiens få riktiga Gandhianer. Som direktör är han regeringsämbetsman, men han är dessutom forskare, aktivist, skribent och ledare för den japanska lekmanna-buddhistiska fredsorganisationen Soka Gakkai. Med sin hustru leder han...

På buss- och taxitorget får alla vända. Dharamsala är bilfritt, fridfyllt, kaotiskt och präglat av en förbluffande nybyggaranda. Gatubilden präglas av munkar i vinrött och påfallande många spetälska tiggare. Här på den farofyllda Himalaya-sluttningen byggs den ena mer fantasifyllda kåken efter den andra, hotell inte minst. De störtar ihop ännu fortare än de byggs när tunga regn eller smältvatten forsar ned. Det är mycket vackert här, utom träden. Det är förbjudet att hugga ned själva stammen, men överallt har man klättrat upp och huggit av alla sidogrenar. Ved behövs. Det är ofta elavbrott eller också är elen ransonerad. Utom när guvernören för delstaten Himachal Pradesh, som Dharamsala tillhör, kommer på officiellt besök. Med följe blir det ett hundratal gamla vita Ambassador-bilar som kommer till stan. Då finns el och vatten dygnet om för han ska inte få en alltför realistisk bild av hur folket har det! Dalai Lama kan man...