September 2003

Kanske var vapenvilan under juldagarna 1914 en av 1900-talets potentiellt viktigaste händelser skriver den amerikanske historikern Stanley Weintraub. Sören Sommelius har läst en infallsrik och tänkvärd bok om en soldaternas vapenvila som hotade de krigförande högkvarterens planer. BokenSTILLA NATT. När vapnen tystnade julen 1914Av: Stanley Weintraub[Marker][Marker]Översättning Margareta EklöfUtkommer i dag (tisdag 2.9) Julen 1914 var förstavärldskriget några månader gammalt. De stridande parterna hade grävt ner sig i Västfrontens oändliga skyttegravar, från Engelska kanalen till schweiziska gränsen. Sedan augusti hade kriget krävt hundratusentals döda, sårade och saknade. Förhållandena i skyttegravarna var vedervärdiga. Här slaktades under ett drygt fyra år långt blodbad en generation unga män till ingen som helst nytta. På sina håll var det mindre än hundra meter mellan de tyska soldaterna å ena sidan och de brittiska och franska å den andra. Krigets första jul inträffade något mycket märkligt, en soldaternas vapenvila, genomförd av meniga i skyttegravarna i direkt...

ISTANBUL – No country prevaricates so much unless it has something to hide. The more the Iranians dodge and weave the clearer it becomes that an important faction in its divided ruling class wants to keep open the option to build a nuclear weapon. Yet at the same time it is also apparent that another powerful faction regards this as a mistaken policy that will set back all the enormous effort that has gone into mending fences with both Europe and America. It takes no great effort to understand that Iran has reasons for wanting nuclear weapons. Not least because Israel has them. It is not so much that Iran believes it could engage in nuclear brinkmanship to force Israel out of Palestine. Nor does it believe it could use its own nuclear armory to neutralize Israel’s and then seek to engage it with conventional forces. All these would be too...

Published in the Journal of Future StudiesVol 8, No 1, August 2003, pp. 107-110 Few people have the opportunity to make daily decisions at the international level concerning war and peace. But most of us are intimately familiar with another environment prone to conflict: road traffic. Comparing today’s prevailing national security policies with the measures we have taken to reduce collisions on the road can help us devise more sensible strategies to maintain international security in the future than the outdated military concepts that are still applied today. Until about 1880, there were essentially no traffic laws. Carriages passed each other on the left or right, as pedestrians still do today on a sidewalk, and whoever was more aggressive crossed an intersection first. But with the invention of motor vehicles, collisions became more frequent and more dangerous, sometimes fatal, and something had to be done. The solution adopted was to...

Sätt klackarna i backen. Propagandaångvälten för minnet av den 11 september är tillbaka igen för att kväsa oppositionen mot USA:s krigs- och imperiepolitik. Här några punkter som hjälper dig att fortsatt hålla kursen stadig. Vi lägger fram dem i djup respekt för de oskyldiga som dog den 11 september och de lika oskyldiga som dog i anfallen mot Afghanistan och Irak under kriget mot terrorismen. Utnyttja dessa punkter – särskilt om du är lärare, journalist eller annars en medborgare som bryr dig. Lär och minns 11-07-20 Innan dessa punkter radas upp, är det några saker som bör nämnas. Under hundratales föredrag, tal och intervjuer har jag frågat åhörare i många länder om de vet vad den 11 september är för något. Naturligtvis gör de det och några kanske också nämner den av USA understödda omstörtningen av den folkvalda regeringen Salvador Allende i Chile 1973 för 30 år sedan. Som av...

September 20, 2003 – 6 months after the US started the war on Iraq “I want to share with you three recent poems written with the second anniversary of 9/11 and our frightening leadership in mind.”David SEPTEMBER 11TH Each rising of the sun begins a day of awe, destinedTo bring shock to those who can be shocked. This day began in sunlit beauty and, like other days,Soon fell beneath deathís demon shadow. The darkness crossed Manhattan and the globe,The crashing planes, tall towers bursting into flame. The hurtling steel into solid steel endlessly playedOn the nightly news until imprinted on our brains People lurching from the burning towers, plungingLike shot geese to the startled earth beneath. The shock was painted on faces on the news,That such sudden death could be visited on us. But such death is not extraordinary in our world of grief,Born anew each brief and scarlet sunlit...

“En livräddares försvarstal”Av: Borislav PekicÖversättning från serbokroatiska av Djordje ZarkovicGavrilo förlag Den ex-jugoslaviske författaren Borislav Pekics roman “En livräddares försvarstal” är både en uppsluppen skröna och en politisk satir över det Jugoslavien som inte längre finns. Romanen, publicerad 1977, skildrar livräddaren Andrija Gavrilovic, som år ut och år in med stor nit fullgör det arbete vilket han betraktar som ett kall. Men han har otur. Den enda gång han behöver gripa in är för att rädda en hund, annars inte en enda incident. Men vem kan vara domare om det inte finns några skyldiga, vem kan vara läkare utan patienter? Efter femton år utspelar sig dramatiska förändringar i landet. Stora starka karlar kommer till hans strand för att bada, goda simmare. Tyskarna har ockuperat landet. Nu ockuperar de också Andrijas strand. “En livräddares försvarstal”är skriven som ett förklarande brev”att öppnas efter min död”. Brevet/berättelsen har inspirerats av “Sokrates försvarstal”, av...

Originally posted on the ‘AALS Section on Minority Grps. mailing list’ It is now a matter of public record that immediately after the terrible tragedy of 11 September 2001, U.S. Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld and his pro-Israeli “Neoconservative” Deputy Paul Wolfowitz began to plot, plan, scheme and conspire to wage a war of aggression against Iraq by manipulating the tragic events of September 11th in order to provide a pretext for doing so.(1) Of course Iraq had nothing at all to do with September 11th or supporting Al-Qaeda. But that made no difference to Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, their Undersecretary of War Douglas Feith, Undersecretary of State John Bolton, and the numerous other pro-Israeli Neo-Cons inhabiting the Bush Jr. administration. These pro-Israeli Neo-Cons had been schooled in the Machiavellian/Nietzschean theories of Professor Leo Strauss who taught political philosophy at the University of Chicago in its Department of Political Science. The best...

LONDON – If Europe and the rest of the world want to save the UN as an institution that counts and Iraq from the disintegration that confronts it they must let the U.S. back into the UN – and into the driver’s seat. As Dag Hammarskjöld, the UN’s most revered ex secretary general, once said, the UN was created not to get us to heaven but to save us from hell. It is tempting – and I have been very tempted – to let the U.S. and Britain stew in their own mess in Iraq. They created this pickle and for a few months it has seemed right to let them soak in it, so that next time they might more openly listen to those many critics who warned them that war would probably end up, as it has, creating a worse situation that the one that existed before. But the...

Originally posted on the ‘AALS Section on Minority Grps. mailing list’ It is now a matter of public record that immediately after the terrible tragedy of 11 September 2001, U.S. Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld and his pro-Israeli “Neoconservative” Deputy Paul Wolfowitz began to plot, plan, scheme and conspire to wage a war of aggression against Iraq by manipulating the tragic events of September 11th in order to provide a pretext for doing so.(1) Of course Iraq had nothing at all to do with September 11th or supporting Al-Qaeda. But that made no difference to Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, their Undersecretary of War Douglas Feith, Undersecretary of State John Bolton, and the numerous other pro-Israeli Neo-Cons inhabiting the Bush Jr. administration. These pro-Israeli Neo-Cons had been schooled in the Machiavellian/Nietzschean theories of Professor Leo Strauss who taught political philosophy at the University of Chicago in its Department of Political Science. The best...

På toårsdagen for terrorangrebet i USA, den 11. september 2003, bragte Japan Times en artikel af SGIs præsident Daisaku Ikeda. Japan Times er et stort og indflydelsesrigt, internationalt dagblad, og det vakte derfor opsigt og stor glæde blandt de japanske Soka Gakkai medlemmer at Ikeda Sensei kunne få sine meninger bragt ud til en stor offentlighed. The Japan Times: 11. september 2003Eksklusivt for Japan Times “På toppen af den pyramide som vi kalder civilisation, befinder krigens virkelighed sig stadig. Vi kan ikke kalde os fuldt civiliserede mennesker sålænge muligheden for krig eksisterer og oveni købet tages for givet.” Disse stærke ord stammer fra John Kenneth Galbraith som var vidne til det 20. århundredes krige og vold. Professor Galbraith og jeg har en dialog kørende hvori vi bl.a. åbenhjertigt udveksler synspunkter angående den 11. september 2001. Vi er alle direkte eller indirekte blevet påvirket af denne rædselsvækkende forbrydelse og dens eftervirkninger....

The Iraq debacle is providing a historic opportunity to implement long sought, widely supported reforms needed for the UN – to assure its independence and its vital role in this new century. The breakdown in the Security Council over the US war on Iraq illustrated its obsolete aspects. An anachronism of the post-World War II era, its permanent five members: the USA, Britain, France, China and Russia with their veto power, finally demonstrated all its dysfunctional aspects. Most reformers agree on the indispensability of the Security Council – and the shape and direction of needed reforms. The Council needs to dispense finally with the veto – a relic nod to the winners of World War II. Then the permanent seats can be rearranged to accommodate important new world players, including India, Brasil, Japan, South Africa and newly democratic Indonesia with the world’s largest Muslim population. To keep the Council’s size...

ABUJA, NIGERIA – If you want to find opposition to the elected administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria open any newspaper any day. Last week, for instance, almost the entire press was up in arms against his vice president, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, who too calmly turned away as his bodyguards beat into unconsciousness a photographer whose crime was to get too close at a ceremony to crown the new Oba of Lagos, or so the reporters present unanimously say. The state governor shouted himself hoarse begging them to stop but to no avail. Cruelty and cold feelings remain part of Nigerian political and social culture 5 years after the fall of the ruthless military regime of General Sani Abacha who purged and pillaged until there was practically nothing left in the treasury, and those that prospered were the most corrupt. It became a dark satanic society more in the mould...