October 2007

October 24 marks United Nations Day. But which UN? I would say there are two, or perhaps there are three. The First UN is what happens in the UN building on Manhattan, New York: the diplomats of member governments around the table in the Security Council and in the General Assembly making statements they have prepared on behalf of their countries and going about a business that can be characterised by and large by concepts such as power – including the power to save or destroy human lives around the world – Realpolitik and rhetoric. They play power games with each other; they play with the future of the world. Everything there is not power or powerful. Many – particularly first-timers – in that building are also motivated by idealism, visions of a better world including a globalised democracy that is a founding idea of the UN itself but still...

12. oktober, 2007 For nylig talte jeg med en tidligere canadisk dommer, som sagde at McDonalds måtte misunde domstolene fordi de er i stand til at få folk til at komme tilbage flere gange end McDonalds er. Det var hans ironiske måde at karakterisere retsvæsenet på og hævde, at det i store træk er uegnet til at tage sig af de fleste kriminelle og ikke mindst de kriminelle fra etniske minoriteter – i Canada helt overvejende indianerne. Også i Danmark diskuteres det hyppigt, hvad man skal stille op med ikke mindst de unge kriminelle indvandrere, og som regel afsynges sangen om nul-tolerance, skærpede strafferammer og flere fængsler, uanset at alle – ja jeg tror faktisk det er alle – ved at disse tiltag har den modsatte virkning. Fængsel er formentlig det dårligste middel til at bekæmpe kriminalitet, og, som en klog mand en gang sagde, kriminalitets-bekæmpelse burde høre hjemme under social- og...

October 12, 2007 Jan Oberg Nagoya, Japan, The 2007 Nobel Peace Prize – particularly the part to Al Gore – is a populist choice that cannot but devalue the Prize itself. Alfred Nobel wrote in his will that the Peace Prize should be awarded to “the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” Without diminishing the importance of global warming and the work done by this year’s recipients – the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changes (IPCC) and Al Gore Jr. – it is highly disputable whether it qualifies as a PEACE prize in the spirit of Alfred Nobel – even if interpreted in the contemporary world situation and not that of 1895 when Nobel formulated his vision. The concept and definition of peace should...

Albert Györgi’s sculpture, “Emptiness,” at Lake Geneva TFF Associate In war, there are no unwounded soldiers. —José Narosky War is hell, and today more than ever. Although high-tech weapons make it a videogame for some, those same weapons make it unbelievably destructive for everyone else. Whatever valor was once associated with hand-to-hand combat has long since disappeared due to gunpowder, and the massive slaughters of the twentieth century have made it increasingly difficult to romanticize the death and misery war causes. Nonetheless it continues and we have learned, if not to accept it, to take it for granted. Obviously, not everyone loathes it. The U.S. economy would collapse without the obscene amount spent on the military-industrial complex, now well over $600 billion a year according to some calculations. It’s hard to rationalize such a sum without a war once in a while. That’s why the end of the Cold War...

the unarmed demonstrators certainly demoralised the local Soviet soldiers and the satraps in the Czech administration. They also succeeded in bringing the economy almost to a halt but they did not undermine the hard men in Moscow who simply piled on the pressure until the resistance cracked. But we should be sanguine about the chances of the saffron protestors. They don’t have an invincible force to overcome – or at least one of the muscle of the Soviet Union or China. Differences of opinion have already appeared among the military leaders. Moreover, external pressure has been piling up for years and has succeeded in isolating Myanmar in many important ways. The recent decision of Washington to go for the leaders’ private foreign bank accounts was long overdue. Not least, the Burmese protestors have the non-violent traditions of Buddhism to draw upon. This may be scorned by the generals, indeed by...

Mr Chairperson, Foreign Ministers, Excellencies, Panelists! Gandhi was fighting the UK Empire, meaning UK invasion and occupation.  One invasion, Viceroy Richard Wellesley in 1798 against the Sultan of Mysore, was also clearly anti-Muslim. The same year Napoleon’s mission civilisatrice invaded Egypt to make himself Sultan el-kebir, Great Ruler, but were thrown out in 1801. The English came in 1807 and Egypt was a colony till 1922. Gandhi fought an evil empire as seen by how they reacted to the Sepoy mutiny 150 years ago or to the 1919 Amritsar massacre. Churchill not only referred to him as a semi-naked fakir, but sincerely hoped he would fast himself to death. But in 1947 it was all over: first went India, then the rest of the empire, mainly due to Gandhi’s nonviolence. Today they are both, India and England, blossoming, India with a brilliant linguistic federalism and phenomenal economic growth, England heading the same way but still...