April 2003

Comments about Operation Iraqi Freedom and about the mediaBy TFF’s Iraq Conflict-Mitigation team & Associates “It is enough that a lie is believed for three days – it has then served its purpose.”Marie de Medici, 1573-1642, queen consort and queen regent of France  # 3 April 28 till now. Start at bottom   # 1 March 27 – April 8 # 2 April 9 – April 27 54. Kill the looters, says Ambassador Bremer and echoes the colonial mantra: Exterminate all the brutes… Day 57 – May 15, 2003 – Day 57 – May 15, 2003 – Contrary to all the propaganda, a rule can now be established: war criminals and other “bad guys” are not found and brought to justice for two reasons. First, they could tell embarrassing things about the US and other Western governments. Second, they are needed as symbols of the terrible threat against which we must permanently...

Efter bönen i fredags marscherade åtskilliga tiotusen genom Bagdad i protest mot USA:s närvaro. CNN:s Jim Clancy rapporterade att det enda som tänkbara kommande irakiska ledare kan samla folk med är kravet “US go home”. Jag tänker tillbaka på de många irakier på alla nivåer som jag själv och Christian Hårleman talade med under två resor i Irak, senast i januari. Vi diskuterade kriget som då för dag kom närmre. Vi undrade hur folk skulle försvara sig. Det vanligaste svaret var att irakiska soldater och civila skulle kämpa till sista man. En diplomat sa att det enda Irak USA skulle kunna erövra var ett folktomt Irak. Han förtydligade med att det inte innebär att alla kommer att ha flytt, men att “amerikanerna måste döda oss innan de kommer in här”. Detsamma sa de flesta, i ministerierna och på caféerna, “vi kommer att kämpa och om det inte förslår ligger våra...

What kind of education will Iraq’s children get under US occupation? We’ve heard it time and again and we know it’s an old truth: our kids are the future. These weeks, the media focus almost exclusively on the war, on military people who “rebuild” Iraq (after having destroyed it) and they focus on politics. But together with security, no aspect of post-war reconstruction, reconciliation and development is more important than the education system in a broad sense. It certainly deserves more media attention than it gets. What the US occupation administration does these very weeks is intended to have a long-term impact on the Iraqi society – that is if they succeed. Naturally, therefore, I get very curious when, a few days ago, a friend sends me an e-mail asking whether I have seen that Washington-based Creative International Associates Inc, CAII, has been awarded a contract worth US$ 62 million to re-build...

By Roula ZoubianeMiddle East CommitteeWILPF – Lebanon April 22, 2003 “The only thing we need to kill is the thought of killing”-BUDDHA Forty years ago, in 1962, the year of the Cuban missile crisis, the world was brought closer than it has ever been before or since to a nuclear war. Forty years later, in 2002, those who have witnessed those fearsome days, when the world held its breath and the fate of all the human kind hung in the balance, cannot but recall the year 1962. When America’s charismatic young President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, with a grasp of international realities, stood eyeball – to – eyeball, with the Soviet Union’s older but unpredictable leader, Nikita Khrushchev, who finally took the wise decision to withdraw the missiles, with their nuclear warheads, which he had rashly installed in Cuban bases less than 150 kilometres from the southern coast of the United...

LONDON – Flying at 30,000 feet with President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria can be a nerve wracking experience – nothing to do with the pilots from the Nigerian air force. They are more than competent. No it was the man himself, the gruff, ex-general, veteran of Nigeria’s terrible civil war when the emerging province of Biafra was ruthlessly crushed. Now poised to win a second term in Nigeria’s return to democracy his campaigning relies much on his natural warmth and good heartedness. But the rough, tough side is also there. “I will throw you out of this plane”, he said in a moment of anger at one of my questions. “That’s what we do in Africa with people who need to be punished.” “Right now!”, he added, to make sure there was no question of the plane landing first. Luckily I have known Obasanjo for over 20 years and count him...

With these words, Mr. Bush sought to reassure the American people that his war plan is working, moving us closer to “victory.” As the United States continues its heavy and unrelenting bombing of Baghdad and other Iraqi cities, inflicting death and suffering on the Iraqi people who we are supposedly liberating, we would do well to explore the meaning of victory. Thus far, few journalists, at least in the corporate mainstream US media, appear ready to do so. Those concerned with the path the war is taking might have added the following observations to Bush’s statement. Day by day we are killing more Iraqi civilians. One day US forces bomb a marketplace, killing 62 civilians. Another day a car carrying women and children is fired on by US troops, killing seven. An Iraqi mother describes watching her young children’s heads severed from their bodies. According to news reports, some 500...

Så har regimen fallit. Den förhatlige Saddam har försvunnit och folket jublade, statyer drogs omkull, butiker plundrades och anarki härskade i vissa områden. De eforiska scenerna som presenterades i media var inte helt oväntade men sanningen var kanske inte så eforiska som de framställdes. Den berömda sekvensen med statyn föreställande Saddam Hussein som drogs omkull med en hjälp av en stridsvagn bevittnades endast av ett hundratal Irakier och skedde på Paradistorget vilket ligger i lämplig närhet av hotell Palestina, centrat för den samlade världspressen. Media var också väl representerat. Plundringen fick oanade konsekvenser och kanske långt utöver den brittiske försvarsministern Hoons uttalande som ansåg det förståeligt att människor efter år av terror sparkade in några dörrar – ett påstående som torde var årets understatement bl. a. mot bakgrunden av ett plundrat Nationalmuseum och ett utbränt Nationalbibliotek. Ansvaret för vad som hänt dessa två institutioner som ingår i det så kallade...

Lurades och manipulerades vi av bilderna när Saddamstatyn fälldes i Bagdad, undrar Sören Sommelius. Var det hela iscensatt “reality-TV” snarare än ett folkligt uppror? I onsdags föll Bagdad. Inför jublande folkmassor störtades statyn av Saddam Hussein på Fardustorget i centrala Bagdad. Lars-Eric Jönsson skrev om den symbolladdade händelsen här på kultursidan i lördags. Glädjerusiga Bagdadbor stormade regimens institutioner och plundrade de förhatliga symbolerna för dess makt. Det var som när Berlinmuren föll för snart fjorton år sedan. Var det så det gick till? Saddams staty har dragits omkull åter och återigen i televisionens nyhetssändningar. Bildsekvenserna kommer att gå till historien över detta korta krig. Vi har sett de jublande människorna och deras tacksamhet mot de amerikanska befriarna. Eller? Vad var det vi såg? Jag försöker rekapitulera. Amerikanska marinkårssoldater klättrade upp på statyn. Man täckte först över Saddams huvud med en amerikansk flagga, sedan med en irakisk. Därefter drog man med...

Lurades och manipulerades vi av bilderna när Saddamstatyn fälldes i Bagdad, undrar Sören Sommelius. Var det hela iscensatt “reality-TV” snarare än ett folkligt uppror? I onsdags föll Bagdad. Inför jublande folkmassor störtades statyn av Saddam Hussein på Fardustorget i centrala Bagdad. Lars-Eric Jönsson skrev om den symbolladdade händelsen här på kultursidan i lördags. Glädjerusiga Bagdadbor stormade regimens institutioner och plundrade de förhatliga symbolerna för dess makt. Det var som när Berlinmuren föll för snart fjorton år sedan. Var det så det gick till? Saddams staty har dragits omkull åter och återigen i televisionens nyhetssändningar. Bildsekvenserna kommer att gå till historien över detta korta krig. Vi har sett de jublande människorna och deras tacksamhet mot de amerikanska befriarna. Eller? Vad var det vi såg? Jag försöker rekapitulera. Amerikanska marinkårssoldater klättrade upp på statyn. Man täckte först över Saddams huvud med en amerikansk flagga, sedan med en irakisk. Därefter drog man med...

There is an agreement over the Iraqi war. It seems as if everybody prefers virtual to real reality: it applies equally to military experts, politicians and even the public! It is said that truth is the first victim of every war, but I am wondering why it has to be the case in Macedonia nowadays. Why do people prefer not to hear the truth? Is it possible that the majority can calmly consent to the deceit and misinformation about this war in which Macedonia is an “honourable member of the Alliance of the Willing”? How is it possible in a country whose population recently declared over 80 percent disagreement with the war in all public opinion polls? Are people honest only in their protected anonymity, or are there very few who dare say something which is not politically correct and desirable, or maybe even risky? Or perhaps our petty souls...

An essay by SGI President Ikeda which summarized the key themes of the January 26, 2003 Peace Proposal, “A Global Ethic of Coexistence: Toward a ‘Life-Sized’ Paradigm for Our Age.” Citizens everywhere today are demanding that their leaders make choices to advance the cause of peace. Having seen the end of the Cold War, they are deeply concerned that our world seems poised on the edge of a new and even more ominous “clash”-one based on cultural and religious difference. They are disturbed by the grotesque imbalance between our powers of destruction and our failing ethical capacity for empathy and self-restraint. They recoil at the bizarre sight of million-dollar missiles flying over the heads of people subsisting on one or two dollars per day. They sense that such a world is dangerously askew. But I firmly believe that such a clash of civilizations is not inevitable. It can and must...

SAN JUAN de la RAMBLA, Spain – U.S. policy “has weakened a civilisation that is also its own” wrote Juan Luis Cebrian, the founding editor of Spain’s principal newspaper, El Pais, the other day. Everywhere one goes here one runs headlong into what the polls say, that over 85% of the population is against the decision by Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar to support George Bush in his war against Iraq. Since the demise of Franco, with the savage civil war behind it, Spain has been in a mood of relatively quiet politics, intent on healing division rather than provoking it. Politics has not been, as in its Mediterranean Latin sister, Italy, either a subject for bitter party contest or over heated conversation. No more perhaps. I go up to the police station to report the theft of my car papers and all the policeman wants to talk about are his...