Category: AA ARTICLES BY ASSOCIATES

Danmark for Fred Med Fredelige Midler

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Af Jan Øberg

Et initiativ til grundlæggende forandring af Danmarks udenrigs- og sikkerhedspolitik

Motivering, formål og debatvejledning
Danmark for Fred med Fredelige Midler
Oprettet 14 February 2012

1) Dansk udenrigspolitik er blevet altfor voldsbetonet

I de sidste 20 år er dansk sikkerheds- og udenrigspolitik blevet orienteret mod voldsanvendelse i en grad, som vi både forundres og forstemmes over. Vi bombede i Jugoslavien i 1999, vi er i Afghanistan til ingen synlig nytte, vi var med endnu en folkeretsstridig krig mod Irak og optrådte som besættelsesmagt i 4 år og senest har hvert eneste medlem af Folketinget stemt for at Danmark deltog i bombningen af Libyen. En ny international opinionsundersøgelse viser at 37% af danskerne synes man skal bombe anlæg i Iran og 27% at der er brug for en troppeinvasion. Hvad er det for mentalitet og psykologi, hvad er det for viden denne militante opinion bygger på?

2) Alle partier for krig

Det var under en socialdemokratisk ledet regering, den “aktivistiske” volds-fremmende politik blev indledt, nemlig i Jugoslavien. Read More »

Iran, Israel and the USA

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How to prevent the war that is becoming more likely?

By Gunnar Westberg
TFF Board member who has visited Iran a number of times the last few years

The threat of a war involving Iran, Israel and USA is discussed with increasing intensity. At this time an attack by Israel is seen as the most likely risk.

Do I, decidedly not an expert, have the right to say that most contributions are lacking in depth and there is little attempt to understand the other parties? I say so, and I hope to be proven wrong.Read More »

Ban the Bomb!

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By Jonathan Power

If in 2012 and 2013 the big nuclear weapons powers and UN Security Council permanent members – the U.S., Russia, China, Britain and France – don’t make significant reductions with their nuclear weapons then an important opportunity will be lost.

Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitri Medvedev appear to be of a mind on this.

One has to go back to the presidencies of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson to get the full picture on the dismal progress on nuclear disarmament. Their Defence Secretary, Robert McNamara, told both presidents nuclear weapons were unusable. Read More »

Help End the Hunger Strike of Khader Adnan

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By Richard Falk, writing from Cairo

I am publishing here my press release of today (February 15) expressing urgent concern about the fate of Khader Adnan, a Palestinian activist, who is near death resulting from his continuing hunger strike that expresses his refusal to accept the humiliating conditions of imprisonment without charges and accompanied by an Israeli court approved denial of visitation rights to his wife. Read More »

Israel-USA vs Iran: Talk Peace!

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By Johan Galtung

The state system at its worst: trading insults and threats, sanctions, readiness to use extreme violence, forward deployment of US troops in Israel as hostages to guarantee US involvement, disregard for common people and the effects of warfare in the Middle East and the world. The options are harder sanctions, or war. The far better option, sitting down, with mediators, talking and searching for solutions, is absent. Polarization, escalation, the material of which wars are made fill the media. What a shame.Read More »

The Menace of Present & Future Drone Warfare

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By Richard Falk

After the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the colossal scale of devastation disclosed, there was a momentary embrace of sanity and rationality by world leaders and cultural commentators. There was a realization that living with such weaponry was at best a precarious journey into the future, and far more likely, an appointment with unprecedented human catastrophe if not apocalypse.

What to learn from the ongoing existence of nuclear weaponry

This dark mood of foreboding did produce some gestures toward nuclear disarmament tabled initially by the U.S. Government, but in a form that reasonably struck others at the time, especially the Soviet Union, as a bad bargain — the U.S. was proposing getting rid of the weapons for the present, but retaining the materials, the technology, and the experience needed to win handily any nuclear rearmament race. Read More »

Turkey’s Foreign Policy: Zero Problems with Neighbors Revisited

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By Richard Falk

Pundits in Europe and North America in recent months have delighted in citing with a literary smirk ‘zero problems with neighbors,’ which has been the centerpiece of Ahmet Davutoglu’s foreign policy agenda since he became Foreign Minister on May 1, 2009. Mr. Davutoglu had previously served as Chief Advisor to both the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister ever since the AKP came to power in 2002, and was known in those years as the ‘architect’ behind the scenes.

Critics of the zero problems approach point to the heightened Turkish tensions with Syria and Iraq, the persisting inability of Ankara to overcome the hostile fallout from Mavi Marmara incident with Israel, and even the revived salience of the long unresolved dispute with the Armenian diaspora sparked by a new French law that makes the denial of genocide associated with the 1915 massacres a crime and has led to a dramatic worsening of Turkish-French relations.

Troubles to be sure, but should these be interpreted as ‘failures,’ and more precisely as ‘Turkish failures’? Read More »

Syrian Repression, the Chinese-Russian Veto, and U.S. Hypocrisy

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By Stephen Zunes

As the Syrian regime continues to slaughter unarmed civilians, the major powers at the United Nations continue to put their narrow geopolitical agenda ahead of international humanitarian law. Just as France shields Morocco from accountability for its ongoing occupation and repression in Western Sahara and just as the United States shields Israel from having to live up to its obligations under international humanitarian law, Russia and China have used their permanent seats on the UN Security Council to protect the Syrian regime from accountability for its savage repression against its own citizens.Read More »

Om King hade levt idag

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– och om likheterna mellan stater och människor i fängelse

Av Martin Smedjeback
Tal på Helsingborgs stadsbibliotek på King-dagen 17 januari 2011

21 år gammal åkte jag till USA för att jobba som au pair. Väl på plats flyttade jag in hos en rik familj i New Jersey för att under ett år ta hand om deras barn. I denna familj med två vuxna och tre barn hade de fyra bilar och sju TV-apparater. De hade ett materiellt överflöd men brist på kärlek. Elaka ord om varandra utdelades ofta i familjen, väldigt sällan ömhetsbetygelser.

“Vi måste snabbt börja gå från ett tingorienterat samhälle till ett personorienterat samhälle” sa Martin Luther King i ett tal. ”När maskiner och datorer, vinstmotiv och äganderättigheter, anses vara viktigare än människor då kan vi inte övervinna de tre enorma problemen: rasism, materialism och militarism.” Read More »