Category: AA ARTICLES BY ASSOCIATES

PressInfo # 347 – The world beyond global disorder

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By Johan Galtung

Johan Galtung turns 85 on UN Day 2015

The global nation-state based system is in deep crisis. The West’s relative decline is obvious, except to the West itself. This multi-dimensional crisis will, of course, give way to something new – but what?

Lack of vision – sometimes even of knowledge and empathy – among those in power seems a defining characteristics of our times.

Individually as well as nationally, we are living in iTimes, not weTimes. Add to that blowbacks from history and Western knee-jerk militarist responses – and the next few years will be tough.

The creativity and innovation we find in commercial and social entrepreneurship and in the arts, seem frighteningly absent in the world of politics.

Who would get elected anywhere on having an exciting vision for the the world the next 25 or 40 years? No, you must know about national affairs and economy – while, by the way, national economy doesn’t exist anymore.

Few young people, including students or young scholars, find it attractive to join party politics.

But can humanity survive with only criticism, negative energy, bad news and no vision?

Will we work for a better world if we can’t see it?

Dr. Johan Galtung has devoted his life to the vision of a less violent, more peaceful world – from the local to the civilisational level – implementing the norm of the Charter of the UN – turning 70 on October 24, 2015 – that peace shall be established by peaceful means.

Galtung – one of a handful of peace visionaries with a macro perspective – himself turns 85 on UN Day. He has mediated in more than 100 conflicts since 1957 and published 164 books. And he still travels the world speaking and writing. More about him here by Antonio. C. S. Rosa.

He is one of the youngest and most innovative minds in world affairs, always asking the essential, healing question: What can be done?

That’s what the good doctor does – helps conflicting parties address their problems, reduce their violence and develop a vision of a better future – together or side-by-side with respect.

Making the seemingly incompatible more compatible through creativity, dialogue, vision.

Here is his latest column – which TFF publishes every week. It synthesizes where we stand and ought to go.

As humanity.

And with humanity.

– Jan Oberg

And now Galtung himself…

Keynote, 13th Session World Public Forum “Dialogue of Civilizations” – Rhodes, Greece, 9 Oct 2015

The strength of this forum is its civilization focus; let us use it for analysis and remedies. Major forms of disorder use violence; war is state organized violence. The most belligerent states are the United States of America and Israel, both with civilization roots.

National Evangelism, the US Protestant Christian civilization – more national than evangelical – justifies US warfare as exceptionalism of a people chosen by God, with a manifest destiny to run the world. Orthodox Judaism justifies Israeli warfare to conquer and expand from Nile to Euphrates as a religious right and duty to the Eternal One.

The third most belligerent country, the UK, no longer believes it is God-chosen but chosen by the USA; not quite the same but something.

The root causes – and soften the ideas

But the root cause of global disorder lies in the Occident – with Islam – seeing itself as the single, universal civilization valid for all at all times, all others being mistakes. Missionary activity, slavery, colonialism, exploitative trade, robbery capitalism, follow.

The USA got from Judaism the idea of Chosen People-Promised Land. Yet Israel is Read More »

Regime change in Saudi Arabia?

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By Jonathan Power

October 13th 2015

Is Saudi Arabia a house built on sand? If so are the sands shifting? Even Hillary Clinton, the candidate for US president, until recently a staunch ally of the House of Saud, has publicly criticized the appalling human rights record of Saudi Arabia. Mrs. Clinton also made the point that over the years it wasn’t just rich Saudi individuals who had sent donations to Islamist militant fighting groups it was also the government itself.

Moreover, Saudi Arabia’s current military intervention in Yemen appears to have led to thousands of unnecessary civilian deaths, and done with a motivation that seems questionable – that its rival, Iran, is supporting the Houthi rebels.

There has been outrage in Britain when The Guardian reported recently how leaked documents reveal that the UK conducted secret vote-trading deals with Saudi Arabia to ensure both states were elected to the UN Human Rights Council.

In the time of the last Labour government Prime Minister Tony Blair used his office to halt a Serious Fraud Squad investigation into bribes paid to high-ranking Saudis to smooth the sale of British fighter jets. The reason given was that a prosecution would harm the UK’s security interests. Saudi Arabia is Britain’s largest arms market by far.

In the US it has not been forgotten that in the hours after 9/11 when all US aircraft were grounded there was a significant exception – a group of top Saudis were given permission to use their own plane to fly home, even though there was already evidence emerging that the majority of the 9/11 culprits were Saudi. The Bush family, in particular its two presidents, has long had more than friendly relations – one might call them intimate – with the Saudi royal family.

How long do we have to wait for regime change in Saudi Arabia? Read More »

School shootings in the USA: 10 points

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By Johan Galtung

The Oregon community college was “the 45th school shooting this year in America; the 142nd school shooting since the Newton massacre in 2012”, Matthew Albracht–Peace Alliance–who adds: 25% of women experience domestic violence, 6 million children witness it every year, 28% of children are bullied during the year and they are 2 to 9 times more likely to commit suicide.

What can be done? Here 10 points:

Gun control, of course.
But the point is not only sales control but possession control with very strict laws for possession and making illegal possession a federal crime. With an average of at least one lethal weapon per citizen, there are enough arms to continue shootings; sales control is insufficient. States and municipalities can endorse this ahead of time for Weapons Free Zones in America, as places where life is safer. There will still be armed police around.

Less violent foreign policy, of course.
Believing that serious change in domestic violence is possible without serious change from violent to solution-oriented foreign policy is unspeakably naive. “If my government can kill whoever stands in our way so can I; if we think we are exceptional, above the law, so am I, as a US citizen” is a psycho-mechanism that can only be beaten by destroying the premise. A government solving problems instead of bombing their way through will have an equally strong effect on the citizens, but this time positive.

Less violent media, of course.
The point is not only less violence, with copycat danger. The point is deeper: media that focus on solutions; journalists who systematically ask politicians “what is Read More »

The ugly American?

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By Jonathan Power

October 6, 2015

American foreign policy makers often wonder aloud why it is that much of the world has such an anti-American reflex. Why the “Ugly American”? Graham Greene would never have written a novel entitled the “Ugly Russian” or even the “Ugly German”. It is not just Iran that considers the US as the “Great Satan”. Remember that day at the UN General Assembly when the late Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, accused President George W. Bush of belching sulphureous fumes, and most of the chamber chuckled.

When the Russian government denies that they switched their publicly announced mission of deploying planes to Syria to fight ISIS and have instead concentrated on bombing the redoubts of groups engaged in the civil war against the government of President Bashar al-Assad a majority of the world’s governments seemingly accepts the denial, despite the contrary evidence.

When the US bombs a hospital in Afghanistan killing many staff members of “Doctors Without Borders” this confirms the opinion of those who are always convinced that America does things like this on purpose after careful planning and will do it again as soon as the opportunity offers itself.

There are two reasons, I think, for the image of the Ugly American. The first is America’s standing as the world’s number one economic and military power. The second is the CIA, the notorious Central Intelligence Agency. The British have their MI6 and its special agent, the glamorous James Bond. But the CIA only has its reputation as the master of the black arts of corruption, torture and assassination.

Tragically for America its bad reputation is largely deserved. Read More »

PlayforRights Celebration on International Artists Day

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By Elías Abraham-Foscolo with Jan Oberg

We would like to count on your presence as well as people you may know interested in our activities.

PlayforRights Celebration on International Artists Day

PlayforRights organizes this event (see poster below) to raise awareness and consciousness about the following statement: “The arts contribute to the field of human rights by making visible the human dimension”.

Why do we do this in a celebrative way? 25th of October can be seen as any other ordinary day but for members of PlayforRights it is not. This date is very important moment of the year where we all, the civil society, shall meet together and raise awareness about the potential of the art expressions within processes of social change.

For this, we need to recognise that the arts are ways of nurturing love, that art is Read More »

The Columbia Peace Accords

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By Johan Galtung

Bogotá, 30 Sep 2015

The accords were signed a week ago with still much work to do this coming half a year. 23 March 2016 is the deadline.

However, are they peace accords? Or absence of violence eliminating “that other army”, for Weber’s state monopoly on ultima ratio regis, even strengthening the government’s army? That Western concept of peace practiced recently in Sri Lanka and Nepal, against LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) and Maoists? Leaving untouched the problems that brought them into being unsolved?

And the word “peace” violated, as “conflict”, saying “post-conflict”, as if nothing more to solve. Words matter; handle them with care.

In all the Colombian conflict complexity, the focus is on only one conflict, between the violent parties: Read More »

Obituary – Dietrich Fischer 1941-2015

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By Christina Spännar & Jan Oberg

Our dear friend and TFF Associate since 1985, professor Dietrich Fischer, died today, October 18, 2015.

We met Dietrich through another dear friend Johan Galtung and, together with then West German lieutenant-colonel Wilhelm Nolte, Dietrich became the first scholar-in-residence at TFF in Lund in 1986. That lead to Fischer, Nolte and Oberg’s “Winning Peace. Strategies and Ethics for A Nuclear-Free World published in 1989.”

The two scholars came and worked for periods at TFF, went back home to re-write and then back to Lund – no emails and Dropbox at the time. We met, worked, ate, drank, did excursions and played with our children together. That’s how we did it.

And here’s the local newspaper from January 8, 1986:

Wilhelm Nolte, Jan Oberg and Dietrich Fischer

Dietrich was a genius in defensive defence thinking, Read More »

The Axis of Evil

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By Johan Galtung

Do you remember the Axis of Evil – Iraq-Iran-North Korea?

George W. Bush, or his speechwriter rather, concocted that axis in 2002 as focus for a global war on terror. The key term is “evil”–not “enemy”, “hostile”–the connotation being “possessed by Satan”. The proof is opposition to a USA chosen by God, as God’s Own People, as “In God we trust”. To exorcise Satan only violence works.

In 1953 North Korea under Kim Il Sung did not capitulate to the USA, only cease-fire, the first US non-victory since 1812. Very evil.

In 1978-79, Iran, by the Khomeini Islamic revolution, decolonized Iran from US dominance and evicted the shah, who had been installed by a US-UK (CIA-MI6) coup in 1953; in fact undoing 1953. Very, very evil.

On 17 May 1987 Saddam Hussein, used by the USA to fight Iran with no gains for Iraq, fired on a US vessel (USS Stark incident). Very, very, very evil.

However, for a USA, never questioning bringing US style democracy and US free market to all countries in the world, this was not seen as others having their own goals. It was seen as exactly that, evil.Read More »

Islam and the West: Roads to peace

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By Johan Galtung

Alfàs del Pi, Spain – International Center for Conflict Solution – Seminar 11-13 September

The prospects are dim. Both focus on the worst in the Other, not on the best. Islam justifies terrorist violence – bombs, decapitation – as revenge with moderation; West justifies state terrorist violence – bombing, droning, sharp-shooting all over – as preventive violence. Killing ratio: like 1:99. Both are escalating in a violence race.

West is Christian-secular with secularisms–humanism, liberalism, marxism–sharing with Islam and Christianity occidental singularism and universalism, the only truth, valid for all, at all times. A miracle that we have had only the terrible Crusades 1095-1291.

One reason was geographical, in space: Islam in deserts and on islands, Christianity in the temperate zone; today both are all over. Another reason was historical, in time: Christianity in Antiquity, Islam in the Middle Ages, Christianity-secularism-colonialism-West in Modernity. Enters post-Modernity: Islam’s turn to be predominant.

Empty cathedrals and churches in Western societies with much loneliness and alienation; in Islam overfilled mosques with intense togetherness and direct sharing. The contradiction is bridged by massive conversion to Islam, more so the more loneliness; and by turning against one’s country if it joins the USA killing Muslims.

The predictable emergence of an Islamic State, Read More »