August 2011

This week Mrs Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is back. Who, you might say? She is the person, in the early 2000s, who as finance minister under Nigeria’s democratically elected president, Olusegun Obasanjo, turned the Nigerian economy around 180 degrees. Before that, under the military dictatorship which had ruled Nigeria, Africa’s most populated country, for 18 years, economic growth, despite the huge oil wealth, had not risen above 3% a year. The economy was badly sick and billions of dollars were skimmed off by the dictator, Sani Abacha, and those around him. Inflation and bank indiscipline brought havoc and instability to the economy. The poor got poorer. With success under her belt she departed Nigeria to be a vice president of the World Bank. Now the new president, an Obasanjo protégé, Goodluck Jonathan, has brought her back, presumably to engineer another surge. On her last watch she killed inflation, paid off Nigeria’s huge...

There are questions that even today the historians don’t seem moved to investigate. Two important ones come to mind. Why was it that Pharonic Egypt never went to war for hundreds of years until Ramesses 11 became pharaoh in 1303 AD? Isn’t it a fact that Jews in Europe were unmolested for most of the first millennium after the death of Jesus? The Egyptian question is a bit of an idle curiosity since an answer probably won’t affect our behaviour today, although it should. Still, it is nice to know that we human beings aren’t constituted to make war and that we don’t have to live like we did over hundreds of years in Europe – going to war at the seeming drop of a hat and making the continent the most war-like place on earth. To learn more about the persecution of the Jews is highly relevant to today’s...

Idag är det 66 år sedan Hiroshima förstördes av atombomben. Tre dagar senare bombades Nagasaki. Fyrtio år senare fanns atomvapen, dessa verktyg för folkmord, med en sammanlagd sprängkraft motsvarande en miljon Hiroshimabomber. Risken för ett stort kärnvapenkrig som skulle kunna utrota mänskligheten är idag mindre än under det kalla kriget, men risken är inte noll. I den senaste versionen av den amerikanska kärnvapendoktrinen Nuclear Posture Review talar man öppet om risken för avfyrande av misttag, t ex genom dataintrång. Det är nödvändigt att avskaffa kärnvapnen innan de avskaffar oss! Det är inte längre bara ”godtrogna aktivister” som tror att kärnvapnen kan avskaffas. De fyra grånade amerikanska statsmännen Shultz, Kissinger, Perry och Nunn har i tre artiklar i Wall Street Journal och vid ett stort antal konferenser uttalat att USA:s säkerhet fordrar att kärnvapnen avskaffas. President Obama deklarerade i sitt berömda Prag-tal att hans mål var en kärnvapenfri värld. Där fanns...

TOKYO, Jul (IPS)  The human spirit has a truly remarkable capacity – the ability to generate hope from the most devastating of crises. This ability to create value can be seen in the response to the earthquake that struck Japan on March 11. Following the earthquake and tsunami, there has been a tremendous response from people throughout the world in the form of aid and relief, as well as countless outpourings of support, both material and psychological. The Japanese people will never forget this heartfelt response: as we embark on the long path to recovery, it will be with a consciousness of our debt of gratitude to the boundless goodwill of people from all around the world. The British historian Arnold J. Toynbee is known for his theory of challenge and response. “Civilisations,” he wrote, “come to birth and proceed to grow by successfully responding to successive challenges.” This struggle...