December 2008

Jerusalem, Wednesday 31 December 2008 Vicky Samantha Rossi On the fifth day of Israel’s aerial assault on Gaza, 374 Palestinians and four Israelis had been killed according to BBC. The number of Palestinians injured was estimated to be 1,600. These figures for the dead and injured rose in the days subsequent to this interview with Ramiz Younis and his wife Sarah, who managed to get out of Gaza on the third day of bombing thanks to the intervention of the United Nations. Ramiz is Palestinian. He has been working, in Gaza, as a Programme Coordinator for Save the Children (Sweden). Previously, he worked for eight years for the Al-Mezan Centre for Human Rights. Ramiz obtained a Presidential Scholarship that enabled him to complete an MA in International Policy Studies in the US. His specialisation was human rights and conflict resolution. His wife Sarah is an American national, who works for the Food and...

December 30, 2008Jonathan Power LONDON – “Is the state an opponent?”, I asked one top Gothenburg lawyer, Christina Ramberg, a former academic and now working in a prosperous private practice. “No it’s a friend”, she replied, although she never votes for the Socialists, the supposed authors of Sweden’s top heavy welfare state. Another, Alexandra von Schwerin, an aristocratic businesswoman paying high taxes, said “No, it’s a father.” Not even Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, leader of a conservative coalition that two years’ ago replaced the habitual governing party, the Social Democrats, is much against the state. He has dropped the old right wing mantra of calling for lowering taxes and wants to see only “a more efficient and less conformist state and society”. In an interview just before Christmas he told me that “We are not asking for a different system, just for better results.” The sense of equality goes deep...

December 23, 2008 Jonathan Power LONDON – Whatever Paul McCartney, says or does is news, sometimes big news. In September, when he went to give a concert in Israel – making up for the Beatles concert that the Israeli government forbad at the last moment, forty three years ago – he was slashed at by some pro-Palestinian critics for “singing to the enemy” (1). No matter the “enemy” audience was perhaps 20% Arab, that he also used his trip to visit the West Bank not only to see Jesus’ birth place but to call in on Edward Said’s music school. When he sang he also in his trademark low key, non-preachy, way pointed his audience in the direction of compromise and healing. One of the prices of the fame he has is to see his honest words and honest thoughts twisted almost out of recognition. I saw this happen close...

December 15, 2008 Jonathan Power LONDON – However tense becomes the relationship between India and Pakistan the government of Manmohan Singh is highly unlikely to initiate or participate in a nuclear war with Pakistan. That would go against the deeply held moral beliefs of the prime minister. Both he and Congress Party chairman, Sonia Gandhi, have told me privately that they both are utterly repelled by such an act. Nevertheless, Singh has had few qualms about supporting the build up of India’s nuclear deterrent, regarding it as an inevitable process given India’s place in the world – and has been a passionate advocate of the new nuclear deal with the U.S., that has resulted in Washington lifting its thirty year-old embargo on nuclear supplies for India. Although, immediately after the Mumbai atrocities, tough talk seem to billow out of quarters of India’s military and foreign affairs establishment, Singh quickly fanned...

December 10, 2008 Chaiwat Satha-Anand I’ve been asked by many, TFF included,  to try to explain the problem we face here in Thailand. Let me do this in the order indicated by the headline: The conflicts we face, the prospects for non-violence, for prognosis and for therapy, i.e. possible solutions as I see them at this point, writing on December 2, 2008. We are faced with at least three major conflicts: 1) Conflict of goals: One side (Red shirt) wants a strong government which could deliver on policy promises; the other side (Yellow shirt) wants a weak government, because they think it is corrupted (Thaksin and his nominees), and therefore what is needed is a strong monitoring measures – hence the conflict between the 1997 constitution (coming out of fighting against a coup for a strong government) and the 2007 constitution (coming out of the Sept.19, 2006 coup for a weak government). 2) Conflict...

With regard to the latest US presidential elections, like many times before, we as a public remain introvert and autistic in Macedonia. The only matters that Macedonians care about consist of the “name issue” (the dispute between Macedonia and Greece over the name), partisan and ethnic divides as well as European integrations. That is where our interest for the rest of the world ends. The presidential elections were followed as far as they concerned the White House’s attitude towards Macedonia. Quite typically for a weak state that turns away from its responsibility to face the ugly truth about its being accomplice in the worst war crimes Bush left behind as his legacy, Iraq for instance. Thus it’s hardly surprising that Macedonia has been spared the wave of Obamamania and the faith in the “new dawn”, which is expected to bless this sad and ugly world. Unlike in the rest of...

December 10, 2008 Jonathan Power LONDON – U.S. President-elect Barack Obama was made to feel uncomfortable on national television last Sunday when an inquisitor attempted to pin him down on the inconsistencies of his non-smoking pledge. Clearly Obama has some trouble in not, as he put it, “falling off the wagon”. But, m aybe, whilst he is at it he should get completely off the wagon- and start walking. It has been reported that in the inauguration parade gas-guzzling SUVs will not be used. But why not go a little bit further and insist that everyone walk? Here is a man who likes to go to the gym every day, but a 45 minutes walk would do the job just as well and set a car-crazed world the example it needs. We have had bicycling heads of state before- look at Queen Beatrix of Holland and today David Cameron, the...

he demonstrated his roguish side. Yet even many of his opponents in Pakistan will concede that since he deposed Nawaz Sharif and assumed power he has been largely a benevolent dictator. Compared with last days of the Shah- and many in the American foreign policy establishment are falsely comparing what happened then with what is happening today in Pakistan- the country remained until this assassination rather stable, except in its lawless frontier provinces that border Afghanistan, a problem area even in British colonial days. Until now Musharraf has rarely cracked the whip. His riot police act with relative moderation. His jails are not full. Executions are rare and never for political offences. When one sits down and talks with Musharraf one get answers rather than bluster. Pakistan today is not Iran of yesterday, neither in the type of leadership nor in its degree of religious fervour: the Islamist parties have...

December 3, 2008 Jonathan Power LONDON – “Those whom the gods destroy they first make mad.” There is a madness about the triangular relationship between India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. They all have resented and often hated each other, made alliances against each other, worked together when it was opportune, supported or, at least, turned too much of a blind eye to terrorists in each other’s countries and became profoundly angry if terrorism was unleashed against them. These cleavages have their roots back to the days of the Great Game of the nineteenth century, the British-Russian struggle for supremacy in Afghanistan and central Asia. But ever since the Red Army invaded Afghanistan in 1979 and was finally defeated by the Taliban aided by American, Saudi Arabian and Indian arms and training, the intensity of the Game has been ratcheted up and extended step by step to now frightening proportions, worsened by...