Category: Johan Galtung

Memories – conscious and subconscious

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By Johan Galtung

Gernika-Basque Country, Spain, 28 April 2012

75 years ago Germany-Italy bombed this sacred Basque-Spanish town, adding state terrorism to the destruction of arms factories. Picasso made the atrocity enter world collective memory forever. As a testimony to the power of art, and memory, the painting was ordered covered when USA tried to make the case that Iraq was producing mass destruction weapons for the UN Security Council.

Two kinds of memories serve politics: glories and traumas. Read More »

US-Pakistan-Afghanistan – A global perspective

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By Johan Galtung

Washington, Carnegie Endowment, 18 April 2012

Ladies and gentlemen,

First, thanks to the American Muslim Association Foundation for organizing a forum on this controversial topic in the heart of Washington!

You have given me the global perspective on this panel, taking into account much space and time; kind of einsteinian. Seeing the world from above, five trends are talking as backdrop, context, for the theme: the fall of the US empire; the de-development of the West; the decline of the state system in favor of nationalisms from below and regionalisms from above; the rise of the Rest; and the rise of China.

And then, spiraling down toward the ground, Read More »

Continuities in U.S. history

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By Johan Galtung
From Appomattox, VA – USA

The Civil War ended 147 years ago with General Robert E. Lee of the CSA, Confederate States of America, capitulating to General Ulysses S. Grant of the USA, United States of America. Ended? Not quite. Grant accepted the capitulation of the Army of Northern Virginia; the others capitulated one by one (like Army of Tennessee 26 April, Trans-Mississippi June 2 and finally, November 6, Confederate cruiser Shenandoah surrendered).

The Washington Post (Apr 1, 2012) celebrated the opening of the Appomattox branch of the Museum of the Confederacy the day before, quoting the museum curator: “it is one of the great turning points, if not the great turning point, in American history–when we kind of decided once and for all exactly what it means when we say, ‘liberty and justice for all.’”

Turning point? Not quite. Grant could not accept surrender of the CSA as that would recognize the Confederacy. One rebel at the time. Soldiers within 20 miles of Appomattox, no actor!, were generously given US Army rations as they were starving, and free passage on federal means of transportation on their way home.

We sense a theme: no recognition of collective actors with a cause. Read More »

What do you want, USA? Go up or down?

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By Johan Galtung
Washington, DC

One wonders what the US political leaders want. The incumbent lives in this world, playing an ultra-realist game: extra-judicial executions in maybe 70 countries, drone attacks; minimizing US losses, maximizing direct hits at what he sees as the problem, concrete identified individuals, not concrete unidentified conflicts. He has neither the moral nor the intellectual courage to do that.

The challengers, with one exception, are focusing on one issue: down with the welfare state. Ron Paul, the libertarian, adds: down with the warfare state. He has registered Vietnam-Afghanistan-Iraq and the next in line, Iran-Syria, as unwinnable and unaffordable for a bankrupt economy. Young Republicans and others flock to him, but his discourse is too unusual. Warfare, not welfare makes sense. This has to do with the relation to conflict, a three-headed problem: attitude, behavior, contradiction. The USA wants an attitude of love for the USA, military response to evil people who do not and act on that, and contradiction, incompatibility are outside the thinkable. The deep culture of good vs evil and Armageddon for the latter take over.

Well, does it? The reader is invited to look at the scheme below.Read More »

The face of the crisis – and some alternatives

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By Johan Galtung

From Madrid, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia-UNED, Foro Los Nuevos Problemas Sociales, 24 Mar 2012

Here is one of the hidden faces of the economic crisis:

(¶C/¶t) + (¶C/¶S)rS + (1/2)(¶2C/¶S2)q2S2 = rC

The famous Black-Scholes equation to find the “correct price” for financial derivatives. Based on partial derivatives over time, this is classical calculus for continuous change; useful within a zone of stability, but not at the edge of that zone, the tipping points explored in René Thom’s catastrophe theory years earlier.

Black-Scholes is intellectually like calculating increasing speed of an accelerating car heading for a wall or an abyss. But, with warnings, no 1997 “Nobel Prize in Economics” (actually a Swedish State Bank’s prize honoring Alfred Nobel)? And one year later their company “Long Term Capital Management” had lost $100 billion and collapsed. The trade in derivatives is now at $1 quadrillion a year (15 zeros), ten times the industrial economy of the whole 20th century. Many got rich, but the system collapsed. Maybe prison would have been more adequate for intellectual sloppiness?Read More »

Syria – here are some solutionS and roadS to them

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By Johan Galtung

We all feel desperate watching the horrible killing, feeling the suffering of the bereaved, the whole people. But, what to do?

Could it be that the UN, and governments in general, have a tendency to make the same mistake, again and again, of putting the cart before the horse? The formula they use is generally:

[11 Get rid of No. 1 as key responsible, using sanctions; then

[2] Cease-fire, appealing to the parties, or intervening, imposing;

[3] Negotiation among all legitimate parties; and from that

[4] A political solution as a compromise between the positions.

It looks so logical. There is a key responsible, President Assad, ordering the killing; get rid of him by all means. Then the cease-fire, the fire ceasing; then negotiation, and then the solution emerges. Logical, yes; but maybe not very wise.Read More »

Peace mathematics – does it exist?

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By Johan Galtung

It does, even in print; pardon some publicity! You may start at the end with the table of contents, then, here is the book epilogue:

Epilogue: Enthusiast E and Skeptic S: Dialogue at a Higher Level

E: Well, where are we now? How do you feel?

S: A little exhausted. But greatly relieved at one major point.

E: Any particular chapter, branch, part of peace theory?

S: No, the whole thing. I worried that you would put something belonging to all of us, peace, into a big machine with parameters and then the machine would produce outputs about what to do. Like economists do with something belonging to us, our own livelihood. I liked your distinction between equations and formulas, between mathematics and mathematese.

E: Is your worry that reality is so complex that no set of equations can ever mirror it? Like linear equations being inadequate, non-linear equations being more promising?Read More »

The U.S. – from Empire to Global Fascism?

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By Johan Galtung

In The Fall of the US Empire-And Then What?[i] a subtitle is US Fascism or US Blossoming? Of blossoming there seems to be none, with the Dow Jones crossing the 13,000 border, the real economy still mostly in bad shape, the Republican candidates embracing the economic system that produced the crisis, and Obama running the progressive rhetoric trick that brought him into power in 2008. By midterm 2010 the bluff was called, with a landslide. The OWS, Occupy Wall Street, is in the first three stages, consciousness-formation, mobilization and some confrontation; but not yet in the real struggle with massive nonviolent practice of alternatives.

Fascism? There is a domestic and a global variety and the latter is Obama’s foreign policy, with domestic elements. Read More »

Japan’s spiritual crisis

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By Johan Galtung

From Kyoto, Japan: A grey, cold Sunday morning, fitting the sad theme.

The Japan Times, an excellent middle wing newspaper, came in the middle of the night, with four typical stories, for a starter.

We approach the 3/11 anniversary. The earthquake struck on 11 March 2011, followed by the tsunami and the near meltdown of Fukushima No. 1 nuke plant. On 11 March 2004, terrorism struck the Atocha train station in Madrid. A bad date; may inspire somebody.

We read: “Worker at No. 1 nuke plant died from ‘overwork’. He was dispatched by a subcontractor, a construction firm based in Shizuoka, and started working at Fukushima No. 1 on May 13. On his first day he engaged in piping and other work in a waste disposal facility at the complex, but complained of not feeling well the following morning. He was immediately taken to a hospital and died shortly afterwards–radiation still high around Fukushima No. 1–640 km off the coast of Fukushima.” A private construction firm.Read More »

Ten questions for coming Chinese and US leaders

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By Johan Galtung, writing from Kyoto, Japan

Japanese media make it look as if China attacked Japan in the 1930s-1940s, massacred a major city, with a concentration camp beating Auschwitz in cruelty. And, Japan fears a repetition. Well, Japan fears something, probably what Western aggressors fear too: Of course, we never did anything wrong, but one day they may come and treat us the way we treated them.

In 2012 the power will/may change in both superpowers, and we have a right to know how the power-wielders look at some basic issues. Read More »