PressInfo 2005

2005 PressInfo 231, December 9, 2005Is the European Union pro-peace?Read the Constitution/Treaty text and you are in for a surprise! Contrary to what you have heard repeatedly, there is no hope for real conflict-resolution and peace there. In this field, the EU is more in need of reform than the United Nations. This PressInfo also includes information about TFF’s work concerning the EU, not the least Johan Galtung’s analysis and Erni & Ola Friholt’s constructive re-formulations of the Treaty. By Jan Oberg. PressInfo 230, December 4, 2005Ending the war on IraqThe solutions proposed in the American political mainstream are not convincing: wait until the Iraq military can bring stability to the country seems like waiting for Godot. We should have learned better from our Vietnam experience. Mobilise the U.S. anti-war opinion, help Iraqi reconciliation and consider the 8 balanced steps that must be taken now to get us out and...

You’ve heard it like a mantra: the EU is an actor for peace in Europe (8 pct of the world’s population) and outside it (92 pct). True, it has made a contribution to heal Europe after 1945.True, as one actor it has done nothing like the US in Iraq. True, it is great that it young people can learn and work in different parts of Europe. True, it gives much more development aid than others. And true, that integration of countries seems to have reduced the risk of future inter-national warfare on European soil. But then there is the famous other side of the coin: it’s Treaty text is devoid of peace philosophy, policies and institutions. Read it and you are in for a surprise! It lacks every strategy to reduce direct, structural, cultural and environmental violence inside and outside Europe. Its basic security “philosophy” is outlined in “A Secure Europe in a...

The American debate on the Iraq War has entered a dramatic new phase. For the first time, a prominent Democrat, Congressman John Murtha, has called for a withdrawal of American forces from the country. Murtha’s words have had a major impact because he was a former supporter of the war, and has had a career distinguished by his consistently pro-military profile. His argument is based on the inability to complete the American military mission in Iraq, making inexcusable the continued killing and loss of life. He also refers to the adverse effects of the unpopular and flawed occupation of Iraq on the wider goals of opposing global terrorism and to the failure of American reconstruction efforts. Murtha’s critique is widely shared by a majority of Americans at this point, and helps explain the declining popularity of the Bush presidency. Vietnam – a precursor but different But there is no sign that...

Again as the Vietnam experience should have made clear, when confronting a nationalist adversary, battlefield victories are difficult, if not impossible to translate into favorable political outcomes. The bloody occupation of Iraq has confirmed this lesson, dramatizing the limits of military superiority in wars associated with foreign occupation, especially of a country previously colonized.   Alternatives: do what seems right – it is not enough to be critical Understanding what has failed in the past and is unlikely to succeed in the present, is not enough. Without a positive alternative the blame game leads nowhere. In my view such an alternative does exist, although it contains big risks and like every proposed line of future policy in Iraq is enmeshed in uncertainty. We cannot know the risks of alternative lines of policy with any precision, but we can do what seems right under the circumstances, and appears to have the...

Tookie WilliamsFrom gang leader to children’s bookauthor and peace activist In 1971, Tookie Williams at the age of 19 is co-founder of the notorious street gang “The Crips” in Los Angeles, California. In subsequent years, the gang becomes a model for tens of thousands of disenfranchised juveniles in the big cities of the United States who now found their own gangs whose trademark is their brutality, which they see as “cool.” In 1981 he is accused of four murders committed during two robberies and sentenced to death. He’s been on death row in San Quentin, California, ever since. While Tookie Williams has never denied his role and participation in the activities of the LA Crips, he has always insisted that he didn’t commit the murders for which he was sent to death row. Behind bars, he renounces his life as a “Crip” and has since then been a committed worker against youth violence,...

  BREAKING NEWS December 1, 2005 CNN State’s high court won’t spare Williams Schwarzenegger could still stop execution of gang founder   Nonviolence But what’s even more important: Stan Tookie Williams’ commitment is a vital impulse for a civil approach to violence. His history, personal chance and initiatives have yielded and will yield more positive results than all correctional institutions in the United States and, by their own example, call for a policy chance that at long last starts to again invest into the education of young people instead of prison expansion.   What you can do • Read the currently two best newspaper article “Dead Man Talking” in The Times and Clemency for a Crip in the International Herald Tribune • Inform yourself and read more: www.tookie.com, www.savetookie.org, www.againstthecrimeofsilence.de Wikipedia   • Sign the petition for clemency to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger Or sign it here: • Mail your own...

Den serbiske provins Kosovo, er befolket af en albansk separatist-sindet befolkningsmajoritet, og har ikke imødekommet de krav om at opfylde grundlæggende menneskerettigheder og politiske standarder, som det internationale samfund satte som forudsætninger for statusforhandlinger. Alligevel begynder i de kommende måneder forhandlinger om provinsens fremtidige status. Denne grundlæggende konklusion findes i den længe ventede rapport fra FNs særlige udsending Kai Eide, som blev godkendt af Kofi Annan og som støttes fuldt ud af EU og USA – men rapporten afmystificerer ikke paradokset. For kun to et halvt år siden bestemte det internationale samfund, at forhandlinger om provinsens status ikke kunne begynde før, der var opnået et bestemt niveau af menneskerettigheder. Siden da er det kun blevet klarere, at Kosovos albanske flertal var uvilligt til at imødekomme kriterierne og at FN ikke var i stand til at gennemtvinge dem. Der har været en permanent udvanding af forudsætningerne indtil man nu med hr....

Den serbiska provinsen Kosovo, huvudsakligen befolkad av den albanska separatistiskt inställda majoriteten, har inte lyckats tillgodose de grundläggande mänskliga rättigheter och den politiska standard som villkorats av världssamfundet, men icke desto mindre ska under de närmaste månaderna påbörjas samtal om dess framtida status. Denna grundläggande slutsats av en länge emotsedd rapporten av FN:s särskilda utsände Kai Eide har godkänts av FN:s generalsekreterare Kofi Annan och fått fullständigt stöd från EU och USA, men paradoxen med detta har man inte lyckats avmystifiera. För bara två och ett halvt år sedan krävde världssamfundet att samtal om Kosovos ställning inte skulle inledas innan man uppnått en viss standard i fråga om mänskliga rättigheter. Men då det sedan dess har blivit allt klarare att den kosovoalbanska majoriteten är ovillig att tillgodose kriterierna och att FN inte förmår genomdriva dem, har förutsättningarna oavbrutet urvattnats tills den proklamerade politiken “standard före status” slutligen begravdes med Eides...

The Serbian province of Kosovo, largely populated by the Albanian separatist-minded majority, has failed to meet basic human rights and political standards set as prerequisites by the international community, but it should nevertheless enter in the months to come talks on its future status. This basic conclusion of the long-awaited report by UN special envoy Kai Eide was approved by the UN secretary general Kofi Annan and fully supported by the EU and the US, but it fails to demystify the paradox. Only two a half years ago, the international community had charged that talks on status could not start before a set of basic human rights standards was achieved. Since then, however, as it became clearer that the Kosovo Albanian majority was unwilling to meet the criteria and the UN unable to enforce them, there was a permanent watering down of prerequisites, until the proclaimed policy of “standards before...

The UN International Day of Peace One half of the population, here and in the Middle East, is barely being used when it comes either to causing terror or preventing it. Ninety seven percent of bombers and suicide bombers are male, as are over ninety percent of those conducting the so-called ‘war on terror’. Maybe it is time to consider what women would do. In fact, most governments have signed up to United Nations Resolution 1325, which is a worldwide agreement that we will include women in preventing and resolving violence. Why? Because all over the world women have shown that they’re good at it. Dekha Ibrahim Abdi is a Muslim woman from the borders of Kenya and Somalia. In 1992 she managed to stop a clan war that had cost 1,500 lives, by getting together with women from the opposing clan. This was not sewing circle stuff. She said...

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On September 11, 2001, nineteen men turned 4 commercial airplanes with passengers into weapons of terror attacking cities in the US, killing more than 3,000 people. “That crystal blue morning,” Craig R. Whitney wrote in the introduction to The 9/11 Investigation (2004), “changed the world, shocking the United States into realizing that it had been drawn into a global war with brutal suddenness.” The US attacked Afghanistan to root out “Islamic fundamentalist Taliban regime”, and then went into Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein, claiming that his regime possessed weapons of mass destruction, among other things. The Taliban were ousted, Saddam Hussein arrested, and no weapon of mass destruction were found in Iraq, yet “the larger war and the terrorist threat to the American homeland continued unabated.” In a way, all this is because at the time of the horrible attack, the US was, and presently continues to be, “led by...