February 2004

By LONDON – As recently as mid November the U.S. was ignoring the UN despite it being obvious to the outside world that it was increasingly bogged down in Iraq. On November 15th , when the Coalition Provisional Authority and the Iraqi Governing Council signed an agreement that set up a transition plan, the UN was not even mentioned. But a short two months later Washington is on its knees before the UN, its transition plan in tatters.  It’s revealing how in a real crisis- and Iraq is but the latest example- the big powers can run to it to chew the cud and find a solution short of war or revolution. When the antagonists have either talked or fought themselves into a corner they tend often to crawl back to the body that they were not long ago denouncing to find an exit from the horrors that confront them. But...

Keynote, Sophia University/ICU, Tokyo, 14/12/2003; and Regional Studies Association, Tokyo, 10/01/2004 1. Human needs and the life expectancy of concepts and words Concepts come and go; they do not stay around forever. “Human security” is in, “humanitarian intervention” is on its way out. This applies to science, to politics in general, and to world politics and the UN community in particular. The total human condition has many facets and they all have a justified claim on our attention. A human condition, like the plight of misery, stays on, but “poverty elimination” may retire from the front stage like “community development”, “self-reliance”, “new economic world order” did, and even “women in development” will do. Cruel, but such is the life cycle of concepts. Why? In science there is Thomas Kuhn’s[1] epistemological answer: because the paradigm underlying the concept has been exhausted. The paradigm has been squeezed for whatever it is worth,...

LUND, SWEDEN – Immigration, we are belatedly beginning to realize, has enabled western industrial societies to put on hold problems it should have been forced to confront earlier. In particular it has postponed the re-organization of economic life in the most humdrum parts of the economy, putting off the day when menial jobs would have to be reshaped to attract unemployed locals. It has also delayed the day when a lot of businesses should have packed up thirty years ago and relocated in lower cost, emigrant-producing countries. And it has postponed a re-think of our antiquated attitudes to older workers. Even in America, which for now accepts, if not always as uniformly as it once used to, that it will continue to be a country whose vitality partly comes from immigration and where the process of social adopting and adapting is more smooth than in Europe and Japan, economists find it...

In the post 9/11 world there has been strong concern about nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists or “rogue” states. The pretext for the initiation of the US war against Iraq was the concern that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, including a suspected program to develop nuclear weapons, posed an “imminent threat” to the United States. While it turned out that Iraq had neither such weapons nor programs, the United States continues to maintain a large nuclear arsenal as a matter of long-standing national policy. Whether US nuclear weapons policies serve to promote prospects for world peace and national security, or conversely to undermine them, is a question that begs for serious public debate. US nuclear weapons policy should be a subject of concern to every American. Yet there exists some kind of taboo that prevents the subject from being debated in public forums, in the media, or...

Det har blitt mørkt før vi får ordentlig fyr på bålet denne påskeaften 1996. Vi er nærmere tjue personer som får oss litt varme i kroppen. Veden er i bygningsmateriale fra et hus som er helt ødelagt av russiske bomber. Våren er kall og snøen ligger fortsatt flekkvis i Kaukasus. De som har overlevd Jeltsins krig de siste to årene klarer ikke å glede seg over at krokusen blomstrer og trærne igjen blir grønne. Ved hjelp på av en tolk får jeg god kontakt med en eldre mann som har i bodd i et hus i nærheten. På samme måte som nærmere nitti prosent av alle hus i Tjetjenia er også hans barndomshjem bombet og ubebolig. Han forteller at det er tungt å innse etter over sytti år at det meste han “har lært seg” gjennom et langt liv har vært løgner. Sovjetiske skolebøker og medier fortalte ikke sannheten om...

LONDON – When last week Pakistan’s chief nuclear weapons’ scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, admitted his role in sharing nuclear weapons’ technology with rogue regimes he not only highlighted the wilful blindness of his own government to his activities but in effect that of the U.S. as well. It is the old, sad story, of the powers-that-be in Washington not seeing the big picture, of trying to take short cuts for the sake of political expediency and, in the Cold War days, of having an ultra-reactive reflex to all and everything Moscow did. In April 1979 the Carter Administration, convinced that Pakistan was secretly building a nuclear weapon, suspended military aid. But that December it reversed itself, following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and persuaded Congress to authorize a large arms aid program. For the next decade, in return for Pakistan’s help in building up the mujahadin fighters in Afghanistan, who later...

Av Doris Kruckenberg 16 februari 2004 World Social Forum, 2004. Mumbai, Indien For mig at se var hovedbudskabet i årets WSF det at den aktuelle økonomiske verdensorden er i dyb krise. Det er desperation der præger den hidsige jagt på profit, hvori også terroristjagten og de dermed begrundede krige har sin del. På en workshop om “Udenlandsk kapital til U-lande??”, som Attac-Tyskland afholdt, udtalte Riaz K.Tayob, sydafrikansk økonom, specialiseret i “FDI” (Foreign Direct Investments): “Tro ikke at det bare handler om at DE er grådige, det vil de gerne have os til at tro for at dække over den egentlige årsag. Den hidsige profitjagt der siden 70-erne har opfundet stadig nye veje at udnytte (der er nemlig ikke flere reelle tilgange penge kan produceres på), bunder i at kapitalismen er i krise, en krise der hele tiden fordybes. Derfor er DE desperate, derfor bliver verden et stadig farligere sted at...

By Uri Avnery February 16, 2004 Do you want to make the deal of a lifetime?Go to Gaza! The government has kindly laid on armored vehicles for this purpose. Once there, you can obtain the villa you have dreamt about all your life, with two floors and a green lawn, for next to nothing. The State is rich. You can put up greenhouses and produce flowers or vegetables. Once upon a time you could engage Palestinian workers, who would work for a pittance. They had no alternative, because their land was taken away from them. Now this is too dangerous, so you will engage workers from Thailand, who get even less. There are no legal problems, such as a minimum wage, annual vacations, dismissal indemnities or any of that nonsense. Israeli law does not apply. The prevailing law is a relic of the pre-1967 Egyptian occupation, and the conditions are...

Av Poul VillaumeProfessor, dr. phil. 16 ferbuar 2004 På attende måned raser med uformindsket styrke debatten, både internationalt og herhjemme, om grundlaget for krigen mod Irak. For de af os, som fra starten påpegede, at den amerikanske (og den britiske) regerings motiver for at vælge krigen havde meget lidt med eventuelle irakiske masseødelæggelsesvåben eller graden af efterlevelse af FN-resolutioner at gøre, er dette ikke overraskende. Trods den omfattende debat er imidlertid nogle afgørende pointer om det nære historiske forløb, som blev fremført af nogle af os, der talte imod krigen, stort set blevet overset eller glemt: 1) I december 1998 beordrede præsident Clinton FNâs våbeninspektører (UNSCOM) trukket ud af Irak, fordi USA og Storbritannien havde besluttet – uden om FNâs Sikkerhedsråd og i øvrigt med aktiv dansk støtte – at gennemføre en bombekampagne mod Irak som “straf” for manglende samarbejde med FN. I sin sidste rapport konkluderede UNSCOM imidlertid dengang,...

BUSHS OKÄNDA VÄRLDAv Eric LaurentÖversättning Ingvar RydbergAlhambra Det stundande presidentvalet i USA är inte minst en uppgörelse mellan olika maktgrupperingar. Sören Sommelius har läst en bok om Georg Bush och den amerikanska ultrahöger som i dag leder landet. “Hans Blix är en inkompetent tönt” skrev förre folkpartiledaren Per Ahlmark i den konservativa amerikanska tidningen Washington Times i november 2002. Ahlmark, en med åren alltmer ultrakonservativ tyckare i den svenska debatten, gick hårt åt sin förre partikamrat, som han karakteriserade som en “lättlurad narr” (citaten ur Aftonbladets referat 3.11.02). I dag ger ju krigets historiska förlopp nya förutsättningar för att avgöra vem som var mest “tönt”, Ahlmark eller Blix. Men vad var det för tidning han skrev i? Washington Times startades 1982 som en konservativ motvikt till inflytelserika Washington Post. Bakom den nya tidningen stod framförallt pastor Sun Myung Moon (med koreansk bakgrund), grundare av sekten Enhetskyrkan. Moon satsade 100 miljoner...

Kapitel 3: Fremtiden – problemer der skal løses Kapitel 4: Mulige fremtider i USA og Europa: Kan de bidrage til løsninger frem til 2025? Mulige udviklinger for USA (1) Mulige udviklinger for Europa/EU (2) Mulige udviklinger i forholdet mellem dem begge (3) Mulige udviklinger i forholdet mellem de to og resten af verden (4) Diskussionstema 8 Kapitel 5: Efterord Forslag til litteratur Kapitel 3: Fremtiden – problemer der skal løses Hvis vi bruger vores viden og forestillingsevne kan vi måske “se” ind i fremtiden. Vi véd ikke med sikkerhed hvordan den bliver, men hvis vi tænker rigtig meget på fremtidige muligheder, tendenser og begivenheder, så står vi bedre rustet overfor det, der rent faktisk sker. Den, der tænker – og lever – sig ind i mulige fremtider, bliver lidt mindre overrasket end andre og vil i processen også ofte få idéer til hvorledes vi kan og bør handle i nuet...

LONDON – If it is time to review the procedures that persuaded President George Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction then it is surely time overdue to examine the impact of sanctions. The assumption seems to be that they are a good thing, a softening up of the enemy before war in some cases, as with Iraq and Serbia, and even an alternative to war in others, as with Iran, Libya and Cuba. But, frankly, we are in a muddle about the worth of sanctions. They didn’t appear to work with Saddam Hussein. After Iraq President Woodrow Wilson, when trying to sell America the League of Nations, argued that sanctions were better than war: “A nation that is boycotted is a nation that is in sight of surrender. Apply this economic, peaceful, silent, deadly, remedy and there will be no need for force”.  Yet,...