Category: Political

Pros and Cons of solidarity with the Palestinian people

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By Richard Falk

The posture of solidarity with the struggle of ‘the other’ is more complex than it might appear at first glance. It seems a simple act to join with others in opposing severe injustice and cruelty, especially when its reality is experienced and witnessed first-hand as I have for several decades in relation to the Palestinian struggle.

I was initially led to understand the Palestinian (counter-) narrative by friends while still a law student in the late 1950s. But my engagement was more in the spirit of resisting what Noam Chomsky would later teach us to call ‘indoctrination in a liberal society,’ a matter of understanding how the supposedly objective media messes with our mind in key areas of policy sensitivity, and none has turned out in the West, especially in North America, to be more menacingly stage managed than the presentation of Palestinians and their struggle, which merge with sinister forms of racial and religious profiling under the labels of ‘the Arab mind’ and ‘Muslim extremism.’ Read More »

From Westphalia to World Domestic Policy

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By Johan Galtung

Talk at the Federation of German Scientists – Berlin, Germany

We honor a great German and world citizen, Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, born 100 years ago, and his path-breaking motto, World Domestic Policy, Weltinnenpolitik. What might it look like?

But before that, some words about CFvW in meetings around the world of WOMP, the World Order Models Project, brilliantly conceived and organized by Saul Mendlovitz, who sends warm greetings, and Richard Falk, the European representative with CfvW (and me as non-territorial). And as a board member of the Max Planck Institut; close to 20 years older, a father, brother and colleague.Read More »

The politics and benefits of equality

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By Johan Galtung

US politics has for a long time, since the 1970s, been the politics of inequality. Not only have the indicators of inequality, like the ratio in average income between the top and the bottom 20%, or the salary ratio between a CEO and the average employee in a corporation, increased (from 50 to 1100). But the top 10 or 1 or 0.1 percent, has acquired wealth so far unheard of. And the bottom 90, or 99 or 99.1 percent see the average family income in real terms decreasing; for the lowest down below the poverty line, way down into misery like worrying about where the next meal comes from (from the soup kitchen for very many).Read More »

Waking Up from the Nightmare

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By David R. Loy

Buddhist Reflections on Occupy Wall Street

In a Buddhist blog about Occupy Wall Street, Michael Stone quotes the philosopher Slavoj Žižek, who spoke to the New York Occupiers at Zuccotti Park on October 9, 2011:

“They tell you we are dreamers. The true dreamers are those who think things can go on indefinitely the way they are. We are not dreamers. We are awakening from a dream which is turning into a nightmare. We are not destroying anything. We are only witnessing how the system is destroying itself. We all know the classic scenes from cartoons. The cat reaches a precipice. But it goes on walking. Ignoring the fact that there is nothing beneath. Only when it looks down and notices it, it falls down. This is what we are doing here. We are telling the guys there on Wall Street – Hey, look down!”

As Slavoj and Michael emphasize, we are beginning to awaken from that dream. That’s an interesting way to put it, because the Buddha also woke up from a dream: the Buddha means “the awakened one.” What dream did he wake up from? Is it related to the nightmare we are awakening from now?Read More »

Right wing extremism – or fascism?

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By Johan Galtung

This is about neo-nazis underground killing 140 people–foreigners, police, Jews, since the German reunification–, and a monster in Norway going to war against his own country on 22 July 2011–killing 77, in his view traitors paving the way for an islamic take-over.

And it is about how to understand these phenomena.Read More »