April 2010

The lies and misrepresentations by the British ex-prime minister Tony Blair led the nation into the long and destructive war with Iraq. Now we all know that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction. The evidence that he had was bent almost out of recognition to the true facts. The cost in lives torn asunder in Iraq was immense, and only a handful of Iraqis thought they were better off with the war than without it. There may have been a dictatorship that was cruel to those that opposed it but most people, if fearful on occasion, had a peaceful life, law and order, food in the shops and functioning schools and a health service. That unnecessary carnage is on many people’s minds as Britain prepares to vote in its general election. Blair led the charge but his cabinet (with one major exception, Robin Cook, the leader of the...

One of the troubles with all the current emphasis on health care and nuclear weapons in American politics is that other issues are being given less attention. Human rights, supposedly one of President Barack Obama’s copper bottomed commitments, has taken if not a back seat at least one far from the front. And don’t ask the Europeans to take over the show. In the current general election campaign in Britain human rights abroad rarely gets a mention, even though the country is the birth place of Amnesty International. Quite a few European countries got badly compromised by the Bush Administration’s policy of rendition – sending a terrorist suspect off to a country which didn’t have scruples about harsh interrogation techniques. Even today, when you think they might be hanging their heads in shame for this outrage, there is not much effort to respond to Obama’s plea to take in released...

Could Hitler have been defeated somehow if non-violent resistance had been more systematically mobilised? An “eternal” and highly interesting discussion. See also Brian Martin, The Nazis and Nonviolence Read more.

I have spent eight months now in the glorious city of Kolkata. You wouldn’t think it is glorious from those who still pedal the story of “The Black Hole” and quote Kipling. Paul Theroux, an exceptional novelist, in his new book, “A Dead Hand, A Crime in Calcutta”, continues the myth. The city “went on growing, yet it still looked rickety and ruinous, and in areas of faded elegance and dramatic misery a bad smell lingered, haunted and human”, he writes. But it is glorious in many ways. At its centre is a park larger than New York’s Central Park, full of boys and men playing cricket, and gardens with well tended flowers. In the midst of it sits the Victoria Monument, one of the finest buildings built in the nineteenth century that housed the central government of the British Asian empire. Right through the city are fine mansions. Some...

Assuming for the sake of argument that Iran builds itself a nuclear weapon what should the U.S. do? Two senior members of the top foreign policy think tank, the Council on Foreign Relations, James Lindsay and Ray Takeyh, have no doubts. In Foreign Affairs magazine, they write: “Washington should be explicit in what it demands of Iran: no initiation of conventional warfare against other countries; no use or transfer of nuclear weapons, materials or technologies; and no stepped up support for terrorist or subversive activities. It should also make it clear that the price of Iran violating these three prohibitions could be U.S retaliation by any and all means necessary, up to and including nuclear weapons.” It is difficult to believe that this could be written in today’s post Cold War world. Tell this to President Barack Obama and you would be pushed out of the door. Under no circumstances...

På norsk på Arne Hansens hjemmeside. 43 min samtale på norsk Taler om international ikkevoldelig styrke til Sri Lanka og om verdens gang

By Jonathan PowerApril 1, 2010 During the height of the Cold War it was commonly said that the science of war had now advanced to the point where it could threaten, if not the whole planet, certainly whole societies. The new nuclear arms accord between Russia and the U.S. has not changed that. Nuclear arms are still plentiful. The cuts agreed are only on strategic, long range, super armed rockets. Smaller missiles, so called battlefield nukes, are still deployed in their thousands, mainly in Europe and aboard surface ships. (Even anti-nuclear countries like Sweden and Japan harboured them during the Cold War.) The only place to be is zero. Only that would give the U.S., Europe and Russia the credibility to persuade Iran, North Korea, India, Pakistan and Israel to forsake theirs. This is the conclusion of such Cold War warriors as former U.S. secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and...