Category: Johan Galtung

Abenomics and the State of Japan

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By Johan Galtung

From Kyoto, Japan

When Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was forced out of office on September 2007 his focus had been on a strong foreign policy, against the peace Article 9 in the constitution, rewriting history and patriotic education, but not on economic improvement. This time Abe has added strong economics, dubbed abenomics; including the hyper-capitalist TPP, Trans-Pacific Partnership. Not to irritate the US, Abe-LDP (Liberal Democratic Party) sees itself as the guardian of Japan’s security against China and North Korea.

On April 4 the Bank of Japan announced a policy of QE, “quantitative easing” – Orwellian for printing money–doubling the circulating money to 270 trillion yen in two years to turn Japan’s 0.3% deflation to 2% inflation. With so much yen around devaluation follows, making Japan more competitive. With the Bank of Japan buying state bonds, public works could follow, for employment. With both, economic growth.

As a consequence the dollar soared, from 76 yen some years ago to 100; the Nikkei market index soared to above 13,000 for the first time since August 2008, and Abe’s approval rating to 70%. So far so good.

And then, what happens? The hope is to regenerate the golden 1960-70-80s Japan. But both the world and Japan have changed.Read More »

USA-East Asia looking in the abyss

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By Johan Galtung

From Kyoto, Japan

It has never been this bad since the 1950-53 Korea war.

October 1962, the Cuba-USSR-USA crisis, comes to mind. There were horror visions of mushroom clouds. A proud Cuba, with a strong leader-dictatorship, a social revolution in the near past, was denied a normal place in the state system, bullied by the USA and some allies with sanctions and boycotts into isolation for now more than 50 years.

Soviet Union shipped nuclear-tipped missiles for deployment as close to USA as the US missiles deployed in Turkey to Soviet Union. And in that was the solution, tit for tat, one nuclear threat for the other, in negotiations kept secret, ultimately revealed by McNamara.

Three countries were involved in 1962; in the current crisis five countries, a pentagon and not two but three nuclear powers:

North Korea China

South Korea Japan

– with the USA-Japan and USA-South Korea alliances pitted against the tacit China-North Korea alliance.

With the unreconciled traumas, of Japan having colonized Korea 1910-45, attacking China and USA during the Pacific War 1931-45; USA using nuclear bombs against Japan 1945; occupying Japan and South Korea; North Korea attacking South Korea; UN-USA counter-attacking, including China (MacArthur), ending in 1953 with an armistice; then 60 years of immensely frustrating quest for unification with the annual USA-South Korea+ Team Spirit exercises close to North Korea.

And, more recently, the USA-China competition for the No. 1 economic world position, the US effort to build economic alliances with the EU and with the Pacific in Trans-Pacific Partnership, and then the Japan-China conflict over the Daiyou-Senkaku islands. To top it: North Korea’s threatening with nuclear weapons, fascist like anybody threatening to turn others into ashes, but so far only verbal violence.

Nonetheless, even against a background like that, there are some ways of defusing this Three against Two pentagon.Read More »

The future after oil: Six proposals

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By Johan Galtung

Keynote Speech – Doha, Qatar – 2 April 2013

Peak Oil: Challenges and Opportunities in the GCC-Gulf Cooperation Council Countries

Distinguished Participants!

The organizers deserve high praise for setting this key, almost existential for some, issue on the agenda for an international conference. Oil and gas being limited there obviously is a peak–in the North Sea some years ago for Denmark, the UK and Norway. But this conference is not only about whether the peak is behind us, right now, in the future, and in that case when; but about and then what. Diagnosis, prognosis, therapy.

However, the peak may be more due to demand than to supply; more due to the problems caused by converting the energy stored in fossil fuels than to the extraction becoming too expensive to pay off. To the contrary, the more expensive the higher the profits as percentage of the costs, and given the oil-gas addiction the richest in a very inegalitarian world can always pay. In a better world energy for daily needs should be as freely available to everybody as walking on a street, or as health and education in a decent welfare state (they still exist). We risk fossil energy for the few only, not a peak.

On the demand side, all over, more or less, there is a turn to the alternative: the many green energy conversions. “The Surgeon General has decided that smoking is bad for you” has a follow up: “fossil fuels are bad for us“. We are not there, but it also took much time for high numbers to give up smoking. A massive shock, and compelling evidence of a causal connection, is needed. The increase in natural disasters and the erratic climate may soon provide that.

The world sees other peaks. Peak US Empire – not USA – with China coming up, Peak West with Rest coming up, headed by BRICS, Peak inter-state wars with inter-nation violence coming up. It’s a very dynamic world.

China burns coal-oil-gas, but is also a massive pioneer in green energies with photovoltaic and solar cells and electric cars, produced in ever greener ways. In the USA highly effective coal-oil-gas lobbies prevent the greening and promotes ecologically bad extraction. Politicians are bought by banks, banks invest in that extraction.

The world is moving East, the East is moving green. And so are millions. Read More »

Why does the West fail to understand reality ?

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By Johan Galtung

Economic power: the West being overtaken by the Rest, with growth rates for the USA, Euro zone and Japan being respectively 0.1, -0.9, -0.2 (Italy -2.8), against Brazil 1.4, Russia 2.9, India 4.5, China 7.9.[i] BRIC.

Military power: the West being defeated by the Rest, now paying dearly for the missing peace treaty and normalization with North Korea; with the Viêt Nam, Afghanistan and Iraq anti-terror wars lost, and Libya and Mali, Syria and Iran immune to “military solutions”;

Political power: the West as minority, the UN General Assembly rejecting 138 to 9 with 41 abstentions the US veto approach to Israel;

Cultural power: non-Western models of development, like Buddhist and Muslim, Japanese and Chinese add to “Western universalism”;

Social power: focused on domestic power and increasing social inequalities expressed as indignation, Occupy and Arab Spring, now focused on the ratio between CEO and average worker income: getting it down to at most 10, from 500. See the Swiss referenda.

We are already far into a world economically dominated by BRIC, Read More »

Iraq – Ten years of stupidity

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By Johan Galtung

Nobody celebrated the 10th anniversary of the 19-20 March 2003 coalition invasion of Iraq (not only the USA was responsible, the stupidity coalesced). Stephen Zunes [also TFF Associate, edit] summarizes the losses in one of his excellent articles in the Santa Cruz Sentinel[i]: “the death of up to half a million Iraqis, the vast majority of whom are civilians, leaving over 600.000 orphans. More than 1.3 million Iraqis have been internally displaced and nearly twice that many have fled into exile. Almost 4,500 Americans were killed and thousands more have received serious physical and emotional injuries that will plague them the rest of their lives. The war has cost US taxpayers close to $1.3 trillion”.

On top of killing 1.3 million in the UN-imposed sanctions.

To use expressions like “humanitarian intervention” or “human security” given such predictable insults to basic human needs and rights beats Orwell’s 1984 Newspeak. With nothing to justify this, the coalition should bow in Confession, Contrition and Compensation: 3C.

Iraq did not become a democracy as a result, Read More »

Pope Francis I – A Jesuit

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By Johan Galtung

The black smoke turned white, a captivating dramaturgy since 1870. And there he was on the balcony, addressing the huge crowd the way St Francis of Assisi did, fratelli, sorelle, brothers, sisters – we are all God’s children. He took to the roles as Bishop of Rome and Holy Father like a fish to water, with a mild voice, becoming a mild face, the first Latin American pope, a part of the world moving South. With dark shadows from Argentinean fascism for reflection, learning.

Fratello lupo, St Francis said, Brother Wolf, the ferocious wolf of Gubbio, eating villagers, taken in by St Francis, persuaded to eat leftovers from meals instead, ends up joining the villagers.

Sorella morte, St Francis said, Sister Death, when time had come, embracing the inevitable as a part of his immense spirituality. But the Gubbio violence was not inevitable; the wolf was starving, nothing to eat, the solution was food. Like wolf, like poor people, people in misery, anywhere, at any time. The Franciscan message.

Cardinal Bergoglio has taken on a heavy inheritance in his choice of name; the forgettable Cardinal Ratzinger was much more modest. He has committed himself not only to the poor, but to peace, the unspoken word in the oceans of commentary, to horizontal peace between killers with teeth and arms, wolves and villagers, and to the vertical violence of starvation and misery, due to the greed of humans.Read More »

Hugo Chavez: A maker of history

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By Johan Galtung

That his life and his deeds had black dots is part of the story; but that should not block seeing the greatness of a maker of history.

First, in his own society, Venezuela, he lifted the bottom people up from misery, into economic wellness, political participation, cultural pride (of their often African, or Indian, blood), social dignity; much beyond Gini coefficients to measure increasing equality. Even the rich human rights language is too bland to reflect all that.

Second, he did the same for Latin America; he helped lift the bottom countries up, also under the name of the iconic Simón Bolívar: Cuba and Nicaragua, Ecuador and Bolivia, Brazil to mention some.

Of course the two policies are related. Colombia with its immense record of violence 1948-2013, is a pariah country and can only be lifted up by lifting its bottom up, attacking flagrant inequality. Chávez and his fellow leaders Castro and Ortega, Correa and Moráles, Lula, are on line. The leadership of the continent, with Kirchner from Argentina, and the Salvador Allende icon from Chile! A formidable team; well beyond the European leaders trying to manage their crises.Read More »

The deep crisis of democracy

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By Johan Galtung

Partyocracy-Technocracy-Autocracy-Bankocracy…?

There is a crisis in the Western or more particularly the Indo-European political system – for reasons to be made clear. The system is referred to as “democracy”, meaning rule with the consent of the ruled; of, by and for the people. In practice this is interpreted as multi-party national elections for a national assembly, and majority rule in its two major forms, presidential and parliamentary democracy. The minority is given the role as “loyal opposition”.

The sovereign, people, are given choices not between positions on issues, but “platforms”, issue-bundles; and not between candidates, but candidate-bundles, “lists”, designed not by the parties, but by executive committees, officers, even by one officer, the boss. And this choice the sovereign can make only once every four years when a power window opens one or two days, 8-10 hours, called elections.

The system is better referred to as partyocracy than democracy, a reason that we often talk about “political class”, “political elites”, etc. Read More »

What’s The Problem With Iran?

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TFF PressInfo 1-2013

On Tuesday February 26, in Kazakhstan, a new round of negotiations are due between Iran and the Five Permanent UN Security Council members + Germany. We’d like to bring the following expert statement to your attention.

Contacts for interviews as well as analytical sources below the statement.

Summary

The problem is not nuclear weapons, essentially. It’s strategic interests such as control of oil and gas and that requires a change of Iran’s ‘obstinate’ and ‘defiant’ regime.



The present US/NATO/EU policy is based on escalating threats without an exit strategy. This increases the risk of war, whether intended or not. If that is not the deliberate purpose, an entirely new Western policy vis-a-vis Iran must be developed.

The Transnational Foundation in Sweden – an independent think tank with 27 years of experience – provides you with the diagnosis, the prognosis and the proposals for improved relations built on trust.
 (See below.)Read More »

The world as seen from Mount Everest

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By Johan Galtung

The Weekly Mirror published Mondays in Kathmandu is a remarkable mirror of the world seen from above. Prem Kumari Pant, the editor, is a Nepali in the country where Buddha was born in Lumbini. Buddhism, now 9% as against hinduism-brahmanism 80%, migrated to India, and was forced south to Sri Lanka where 5th century buddhist monks invented the Mahawamsa doctrine. They were the “chosen people”, by the Buddha, to make Sri Lanka a home for buddhism. They had not only the right but the duty to eliminate Tamil claims on a part of the land: Go home to where you came from; Sri Lanka is our homeland, language, religion; no buddhist nonviolence and compassion.

Prem Kumari Pant is also chairperson of the Nepal-China society. Read More »