February 2005

LONDON – Fifteen white Zimbabwean farmers, their land taken from them in one of the most badly conceived land reform programs ever enacted, announced recently that they have been invited to start farming in Nigeria where land is both plentiful and, by tradition, reasonably fairly distributed. Land reform has been given a bad name in Zimbabwe where the most modern and productive farmers have been summarily stripped of their titles for no other reason than the color of their skin. In Venezuela, likewise, a typical Latin American country still mired in its feudal division of land, its mercurial president, Hugo Chávez, is stirring the issue of land seizures, a policy that is more beholden to his short term electoral needs than to any long term thought-out policy for diminishing rural poverty and inequality. Yet careful land reform is an absolute must in many countries – in Nepal where a dangerous...

LONDON – Credit should always be given where credit is due: Bush/Blair have come to terms with the Shiite ascendancy in Iraq. This was never on their agenda. At the outset of their war they naively believed that the secular émigrés would grab the reins. Gracefully, they are bowing before the results of democracy. The Shiites of Iraq too are now facing the consequences of democracy. Unlike in Shiite Iran where democracy plays second fiddle to the religious authorities, the Shiite religious leaders of Iraq, in particular Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, seem ready to take a back seat. Like Bush and Blair the Shiites are being compelled by the Iraqi voters to come to conclusions they may not at first have contemplated. They have won at the polls, but they have to deal with their rivals if it is to mean anything for the long run. Islamic democracy gets a...

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Öppet brev till Statsrådsberedningen ifrånTFF-rådgivare om EU:s säkerhets- og fredspolitik Mottagare av Sveriges Fredsråds “Lilla Fredspriset” 2005  Denna artikel finns också på engelska TillStadsrådsberedningenoch särskilt till Göran Persson,Bosse Ringholm och Leni Björklund Hej! Er arbetsbörda är stor, och ni missar säkert det mesta av allt som rör sig i folkdjupet. Hatet mot manipulationerna i EU-frågor är enormt. Men få människor finner det meningsfullt att fördjupa sig i konstitutionen när de inte får en chans att yttra sin mening i en folkomröstning. Men det gäller trots allt en konstitution vi ska leva med resten av våra liv. Vi har gjort ett försök att granska ett enda avsnitt: det säkerhets- och försvarspolitiska. Resultatet av detta och av det vi uppsnappat på vägen överlämnar vi nu till er. Vi hoppas personligen slippa leva med en konstitution för nittonhundratalet, med allt dess eländiga makt- och våldstänkande. Något land måste ta itu med detta. Det...

LONDON – In seeking to lift its arms embargo of China the European Union has picked on the worst kind of issue at the worst possible time. The roles of Europe – the good guy over Iraq – and the U.S. – the bad guy – have been reversed. And to what point? To earn a few more euros for the arms’ export industry which, although it earns a high marginal rate of return, employs relatively few people. (130,000 in the UK for example.) Is this worth passing up the opportunity of mending some fences with Washington? And there is no evidence that this change in policy is one that the European electorate- the one that with its protests fashioned its own common European foreign policy during the run up to the war with Iraq- is actually desirous of. Over the decades, since President Richard Nixon engineered a grand rapprochement...

The first time I met Zurab Zhvania was at a Conference for Green Parliamentarians in Stockholm in 1990. He came from a distant and unknown country and told us that he had formed a successful Green Party – in the Soviet Union. We thought that was impossible – but Zurab did it! To overcome the impossible became his personal brand. However, at last, if available information is correct, he fell victim to one of the most mundane everyday aspects of the crisis of Georgia – the energy shortage. Nothing works as planned; everyone has to “make it for oneself”, amateurish, with what is at hand. So it seems that Zurab Zhvania tragically died by a leaking gas fuelled heating device. Thereby becoming a symbol for the paradoxes of his country in life as well as in death. Relations with Shevardnadze Next time I saw him was in 1993. Georgia was...

On its resolute road towards NATO membership, via Afghanistan and Iraq, and with the blessing of its mighty ‘ally’ and ‘lobbyist’, the Macedonian Government has frequently demonstrated its cooperative spirit. One question remains surface: is there any limit that should not and will not be crossed on that road? The small Macedonian contingent in the Operation “Freedom for Iraq” is supposed by its Government to be a bargaining card for entering NATO, on top of the – rather cosmetic – security reforms. The new Minister of Defence recently announced quite an original way to support its ‘Ally’: in Skopje (and/or in neighbouring states to Iraq) Iraqi citizens will be trained for three months in rescue operations, medical help and crisis management. That’s something for a country like Macedonia in which a mere ‘crisis’ would be bliss! These training periods are to be given “as long as there is a need for them” – which...

LONDON – The sixtieth anniversary of the Red Army’s liberation of Auschwitz is barely over when we are reminded of Russia’s determination to make the 60th anniversary of the Soviet conquest of German-occupied Eastern Europe into another world event. Hard on its heels during the summer will be one other important 60th anniversary – the first and only use of nuclear weapons on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And this year will mark the fortieth anniversary of the opening of the negotiations on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the twentieth anniversary of the ice-breaking summit in Geneva of presidents Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev that laid the ground for their subsequent summit in Reykjavik when the two of them drove their advisors to the brink of despair with their intimate discussions on how they might get rid of all nuclear weapons. In May there will be a review meeting of...

Much valuable stuff is left unread or forgotten just because it was written some time ago and, thus, we may lose our sense of history and of a pattern or logics to what happens around us.Each of the articles in this TFF Collection is relevant for an understanding of the conflict, the war and the occupation.They are analyses, viewpoints and comments with lasting qualities; they should not be put in the archives before we have witnessed the end of this crisis. They offer perspectives on what to learn and what to remember when they build up the next crisis… TFF produces Feature Collections to assist public awareness and education. You may search for more facts and analyses from these links. However, TFF accepts no responsibility for the content of these articles. On the resistance to the occupation Wikipedia – The Free EncyclopediaThe Iraqi resistance M. Junaid Alam, CounterPunchDo the Iraqis...

Much valuable stuff is left unread or forgotten just because it was written some time ago and, thus, we may lose our sense of history and of a pattern or logics to what happens around us.Each of the articles in this TFF Collection is relevant for an understanding of the conflict, the war and the occupation.They are analyses, viewpoints and comments with lasting qualities; they should not be put in the archives before we have witnessed the end of this crisis. They offer perspectives on what to learn and what to remember when they build up the next crisis… TFF produces Feature Collections to assist public awareness and education. You may search for more facts and analyses from these links. However, TFF accepts no responsibility for the content of these articles. On the resistance to the occupation Wikipedia – The Free EncyclopediaThe Iraqi resistance M. Junaid Alam, CounterPunchDo the Iraqis...