February 2011

Maj Britt Theorin, former Ambassador Lecture given at the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs  15/11 2010 To understand why there is such a strong critique in Sweden of the war in Afghanistan, one must look some decades – yes even some centuries back. Sweden has been out of war for 200 years now. Before 1809 and centuries back Sweden was a conqueror in Europe; fighting Russian, Polish, German, Danish and other people. When the Russian 1809 suddenly defeated Sweden the time of war was over. Sweden started to search for other solutions than war. In World War II Sweden declared itself neutral and non-aligned. When the attempt to create a Nordic Defense Alliance brook down after that war and Norway and Denmark joined NATO, Sweden remained neutral and non-aligned.But neutrality and non-alignment did not mean passivity. On the contrary Sweden was very active in the United Nations. The security...

Lecture given at the New Zealand Parliament  15/11 2010 Ladies and gentlemen. As a former college it gives me a special pleasure to visit your parliament again. It was long ago in the 1980s and much has happened in between. Last time I was not only a parliamentarian but also as ambassador responsible for Swedish peace and disarmament policy. In order to answer the question if a small country can have impact on peace and disarmament  I have to go back to 1930s  before the Second World War. The Europe women´s movement was deeply involved against war.  In 1935 a conference on “Women´s unarmed rebellion against war” was organized. Alva Myrdal was elected to take part and demanded stop for all weapon´s trade and proposed peace education at schools. Inga Thorson, the second women as chair of the Swedish disarmament delegation after Alva, brought then up conversion to civil production. ...

Non-violence works! This is one of the important messages of the revolution in Egypt – just as it was when the Soviet bloc collapsed, just as it was when Indonesia threw off its dictatorship and just as it was when Gandhi drove the British out of India. Yet for thousands of years violence has too often been the tool of politics and political change. All the major religions of the world have accepted war and violence but it is Christianity, whose founder besought us “to turn the other cheek”, that has the worst record of going to war. Moslem countries haven’t gone to war as half as much. Islamic countries have never been tolerant of Nazism, fascism and communism. The Christian countries spawned all three. Today countries with a Christian heritage have the most violent crime, the Muslim the least. Of course it is true that that the Arab world...

By Jonathan PowerFebruary 1, 2011 The late Walter Lippmann, the greatest of all American newspaper columnists, mocked America’s efforts to broadcast overseas. The broadcasts, he wrote, “were no more than singing songs, cracking jokes, entertaining the kiddies”. No influential voice, to my knowledge, has made such a criticism of the BBC’s World Service. No one has derided it as an “Orwellian Ministry of Truth”. It has evolved over the years as an institution that, while not promoting an official ideology, has been able to project to the outside world the best of British journalistic talents – informed analysis, variety of comment and sharpness and accuracy of reporting. It entertertains too, with discernment. We can see it at its best now, covering the events in Egypt and Tunisia. Along with its television counterpart, BBC World, it is reporting the turbulence with a detached but well informed eye. Unlike Al-Jazeera, the ebulent,...