Category: US politics & security

Cultures of war, cultures of peace

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By Johan Galtung

We have war and peace, theory and practice. And deeper down cultures of war and peace, notions of what the world is or could be. The latter is not necessarily peace, could also mean removing obstacles to war.

Timothy Snyder, “Hitler’s World” (NY Review of Books, 24 Sep 2015) and Greg Grandin, “The Kissinger Effect: The relentless militarism of the national-security state and its perverse justification begin with Henry Kissinger” (The Nation, 28 Sep 2015) are both on that line.

Hitler’s World derives from Darwinist struggle for niches, with survival of the fittest. His niche is not the whole world but what is needed to feed the German people, and here Ukraine plays a major role. The food chain is key to the image, with humans on top, eating animals and plants, but not eaten by them. So also for the human species, divided in races with the Aryan race on top, “fittest” as evidenced by domination all over; never slaves. On top of them are the Germans; their state not an end but the military arm obliged to be strongest.

To Hitler that world is natural, and inherently stable. Values, equality, human rights, equal right to life, Christianity, capitalism, communism, are anti-natural. For Hitler such ideas…

Continue here…

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 »

The Pope’s challenge to white America.

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By Jonathan Power

September 22nd 2015.

The pope will cause waves in America during his visit this week. Invited to speak before Congress by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner, he’ll arrive right at the time that the Republican candidates for president are touting ideas that are anathema to Pope Francis.

He detests the cruder aspects of capitalism and the consumer life style so rife in America. The culture of Wall Street and its banks, in particular their performance in precipitating the crash of 2007 and their rush to avoid culpability, he finds distasteful.

Nor has he much time for those who turn their back on the needs of the poor, the unemployed, the discriminated against, those unnecessarily imprisoned or the migrant.

Nor will American political leaders find him giving any support for the kind of wars fought by the US since 9/11. The Republicans will find him way to the left, except on the issue of abortion.

The Pope is unlikely to rattle through the statistics but I’m sure he knows what the facts are.

The US now ranks lowest among affluent nations in how it spreads its wealth. It has the worst poverty, the lowest life expectancy, the highest rate of infant mortality and the shortest (or non-existent) maternity leave among the world’s richest 21 nations.

It is nearly the worst in its mental health provisions, the degree of child poverty and its numbers of obese.Read More »

Our 30 years with peace – And what happened to world peace? Part II

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By Christina Spannar and Jan Oberg, TFF founders

Part 1 here

TFF was established on September 12, 1985. We think that it’s 30th Anniversary is a fitting occasion to reflect on what has happened in the big world and in our lives with the foundation.

It is also a piece of Lund’s research history in general and of peace research and education in particular.

Part 2

Weak aspects of TFF

• Being outside many networks and institutions – it has become more and more difficult to influence the world if you are small, independent and don’t accept governmental and corporate funds.

• A perception that the interest/commitment of TFF is out of sync with the sentiments of times, of the Zeitgeist. In spite of that we maintain the fundamental belief that peace is essential and that we can forget about the rest if major wars or nuclear exchanges take place.

• Too ‘academic’/theoretical to forge deeper, permanent links with public opinion and movements.

• Too ‘radical’ or ‘idealistic’ to be interesting to governments and most mainstream media.

• A constant very hard work load – resting on a small international group and on the founders in Sweden – vulnerability also in the perspective of us having gotten 30 years older.

• The struggle for funds getting more and more tough and we are much more vulnerable than, say, ten years ago. Being all-volunteer, we still have to pay the bills for what enables us to do things: the Internet, computers, travels to conflict areas, insurance, bank fees, fund-raising, phones, sending out mails, using social media, etc. 
The generosity of yesterday has been replaced by a ”stingy” attitude of being entitled to get things free in the affluent Internet-based society. This attitude implies that it is not my responsibility to finance peace, somebody else does (and the somebody else is never me). Few citizens seem to recognise that they are the taxpayers who de facto finance all the weapons and wars. 
The far majority of those who support us are idealists without particular means – while wealthy people for peace a far and few between.

TFF’s stronger sides

• We are still here, operating with amazing TFF Associates around the world who share the commitment to ‘peace by peaceful means’.

• We have remained faithful over all these years to the original ideals, not succumbing to go mainstream/politically correct to achieve more funds or appearing acceptable to the masters of war, i.e. government – neither by the way in Sweden nor Denmark.Read More »

Our 30 years with peace – And what happened to world peace? Part I

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By Christina Spannar & Jan Oberg, TFF founders

Part I

TFF was established on September 12, 1985. We think that it’s 30th Anniversary is a fitting occasion to reflect on what has happened in the big world and in our lives with the foundation.

It is also a piece of Lund’s research history in general and of peace research and education in particular.

Motivation

The 1980s was a decade of gross changes in Europe, the struggle against nuclear weapons in particular.

Lund University was predominantly about education and single research projects – while TFF could be more of an experimental playground. We wanted to do truly free research and not negotiate with higher levels at, say, the university what to do where, in which countries to work and what to say to the media.

Peace has always been controversial and there were – and remain – enough examples of places that become ‘mainstream’ and routine – rather than experimental and radically ’alternative.’

What we did not know back in 1985 was that Lund University wanted to get rid of all inter-disciplinary academic endeavours – women, environmental, human rights and peace studies – and closed down the Lund University Peace Research Institute of which Jan had been the director since 1983, in November 1989.

Being a private undertaking

The HQ is the first floor of a two-family house in a villa area of Lund. Visitors, board members etc. have held seminars there, eaten and often stayed with us. Board members were colleagues and personal friends and new board members were recruited from Associates who were also personal friends, like-minded colleagues or mentors one way or the other.
Our children and other friends were often involved in the things TFF did – including printing newsletters in the basement, gathering them, putting them in envelopes and fix address labels.

Goals

The permanent top priority has been to promote the UN Charter norm that ‘peace shall be created by peaceful means’ (Article 1).
This was promoted through traditional book-based research and later field work – i.e. conflict analyses and mediation and peace plans – in conflict zones, but also through intense public outreach/education such as newsletters, media participation, press releases – and, from 1997, the Internet and then social media.

Secondly, we wanted to integrate theory and practice. While it is good to do basic research in the laboratory, what is peace research really worth if it is never applied to real life’s tough situations?

The first five years we did book projects like everybody else in the trade. But in September 1991 TFF went on its first peace mission to former Yugoslavia. It is safe to say that we were among the first to embark on that in-the-field philosophy and practice it – with all the problems and risks that it entailed.

Foundation and management

The word ‘foundation’ does not mean that we had an endowment to start out with – and funding has been a constant problem every day and year ever since. And getting worse over time.
But it meant flexibility and – being and remaining small – quickly adapting to a changing world.

Being our own and not part of Lund University was another advantage – and a drawback in terms of finding funds. TFF had to build its own reputation from scratch rather than piggyback on that of the university’s. It was quite tough but also more rewarding in the long run.Read More »

Reading Claudia Rankine on race

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By Richard Falk

We white people have lots to learn about racism in America no matter how progressive our attitudes toward race. I realized this some years ago when I found Toni Morrison’s Beloved so grimly illuminating in depicting the cruelty experienced after the abolition of slavery by our African American fellow citizens left in a malicious shadow land of unknowing, a reflection of white indifference.

It made me abruptly realize that I had never effectively grasped the intensities of hurt and pain of even close black friends afflicted or threatened with affliction as a result of societal attitudes of hatred and fear that lie just below the surface, behavior socially conditioned to be ‘politically correct.’

White consciousness was preoccupied with the condemnation of hideous events that capture national attention, but remain largely unaware of the everyday racism that is the price African Americans of talent and privilege pay for ‘success’ when penetrating the supremacy structures of society that remain predominantly white.

I recall some years ago being picked up at the airport in Atlanta by a couple of white undergraduates assigned to take me to the University of Georgia where I was to give a lecture. On the way we got onto the subject of race, and they complained about tensions on their campus. I naively pointed out that the stars of their football and basketball teams were black, and since white students were fanatic collegiate sports fans at Southern universities, wouldn’t this solve the problem. I assumed that these black athletes who won games for the college would be idolized as local heroes.

The students taking me to the lecture agreed with my point, but claimed that the black athletes refused to socialize with whites, displaying an alleged ‘reverse racism’ that the white student body resented. In explaining this pattern of multi-culturalism to me, whether accurate or not I have no idea, these young Southerners did not pause to wonder whether this reluctance by campus blacks, including the sports stars, to mingle socially might have something to do with the history of race relations in the South, and not just the history but an of nasty earlier experiences of racism as well, and not just in the South, but throughout whole of the country, and that this was their reason for choosing to be racially aloof!

It is with such thoughts in mind that reading Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric (Greywolf Press, 2014) became for me a revelatory experienceRead More »

TFF PressInfo # 335 Greek debt and West-Russia-China-Japan

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By Johan Galtung

The game is dirty and has lasted 70 years. It came with the idea of development as imitating, but not catching up, with the West, for all states, including the deluge of states due to decolonization.

The formula for big profit is simple: give credit to a country poor enough not to be able to pay it off quickly, yet not so poor that it cannot go on servicing the loan for years. To be worthwhile the project must be capital-intensive, like (air)ports and highways to the (air)ports for import-export, assembling cars–something for the rich. Investment to lift up people in misery, or ravished nature, makes no sense: the poor need very little capital and can only pay back in labor, whereas nature pays back but is not capitalized.

Ideally, the country asks for more credit to service the first, and a second, third loan is then offered at higher interest. Till the debt is non-sustainable; the debtor country is then squeezed dry.

Then comes the time for debt relief, provided the profit made on investment in debt exceeds the debt forgiven.

From Agence France Presse comes a study: Germany made € 100 billion on the Greek crisis since 2010 – amounting to 3% of the GDP – on the difference between interests paid to German banks and the interest they paid; from German banks to ECB 1%, to German banks from debtors, say, 6%.

Germany’s share of the total bailout package to Greece – with the latest for payment due August 20 – is € 90 billion, meaning a € 10 billion profit if Greece cannot be squeezed further. The money flowing into Greece is to keep banks, not people, afloat. And to benefit USA, France and the Netherlands, but to a lesser extent than Germany.

This is the way the Third World has been treated by the USA-based IMF and the World Bank; what is new is EU treating a fellow EU member like a Third World country (or worse).

Next in line is Ukraine, Read More »

Hiroshima and the Dangers of a New Cold War

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By Farhang Jahanpour

On the anniversary of the first use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki it is important to look back at the reasons for those barbaric acts and to look forward to what needs to be done.
The First and the Second World Wars were the most devastating wars ever waged in history. Nevertheless, although those wars killed tens of millions of human beings and destroyed many cities, the end of the Second World War witnessed the use of a new category of weapons by the United States that have the potential to end human civilization as we know it.

Grotesquely called ‘Little Boy’, the bomb that flattened Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, was a uranium bomb that killed between 130,000-140,000 civilians instantly, and many thousands later. ‘Fat Man’ that blasted Nagasaki three days later, was a plutonium bomb and killed about 70,000 people instantly.

There has been a great deal of debate about whether the use of those bombs was necessary to force Japan’s surrender and to end the war. While these debates seem archaic and a part of history, nevertheless, it is important to see whether those weapons were necessary from a military point of view, or whether they had other purposes, something that would have relevance for us today.

First of all, it is remarkable that those two bombs were dropped on two non-military targets, and the vast majority of those killed were civilians.

The two bombs were of two different types, one was a uranium and the other a plutonium bomb. They constituted the two most horrendous single instances of mass slaughter in the history of the world, yet they have not received the attention that they deserve and appropriate lessons have not been learned. It is important to point out these facts to American citizens who have been kept mainly in the dark regarding their past history.

The Germans have apologized to the Jews and to the Poles for Nazi atrocities. The Japanese have apologized to the Chinese and the Koreans, and even to the United States for failing to break off diplomatic relations before attacking Pearl Harbor. The Russians have apologized to the Poles for atrocities committed against civilians, and to the Japanese for abuse of prisoners.

The Soviet Communist Party even apologized for foreign policy errors that “heightened tension with the West.” Pope John Paul II apologized for the Catholic Church’s past behavior towards the Jews. Britain has apologized for slavery. The Australian prime minister has apologized for the treatment of the aborigines.

Yet up till now there has not been an American apology for those two horrendous acts of genocide in Japan. Read More »

TFF PressInfo # 333 – Look at nuclear weapons in new ways!

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By Jan Oberg

It’s absolutely necessary to remember what happened 70 years ago in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, see the movies from then, listen to the survivors, the hibakusa. But it isn’t enough for us to rid the world of these crimes-against-humanity weapons. And that we must.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki is history and it is also the essence of the age you and I live in – the nuclear age. If the hypothesis is that by showing these films, we create opinion against nuclear weapons, 70 years of every more nuclearism should be enough to conclude that that hypothesis is plain wrong.

There is a need for a frontal attack on not only the weapons but on the nuclearism – the thinking/ideology on which they are based and made to look ‘necessary’ for security and peace.

Nuclear weapons – only for terrorists

At its core, terrorism is about harming or killing innocent people and not only combatants. Any country that possesses nukes is aware that nukes can’t be used without killing millions of innocent people – infinitely more lethal than Al-Qaeda, ISIS etc. Since 9/11 governments and media have conveniently promoted the idea that terrorism is only about small non-governmental groups and thus tried to make us forget that the nuclear ‘haves’ themselves practise state terrorism and hold the humanity hostage to potential civilizational genocide (omnicide).

Dictatorship

No nuclear state has ever dared to hold a referendum and ask its citizens: Do you or do you not accept to be defended by a nuclear arsenal? Nuclear weapons with the omnicidal -kill all and everything – characteristics is pure dictatorship, incompatible with both parliamentary and direct democracy. And freedom.

Citizens generally have more, or better, morals than governments and do not wish to see themselves, their neighbours or fellow human beings around the world burn up in a process that would make the Holocaust look like a cozy afternoon tea party. In short, nuclear weapons states either arrange referendums or must accept the label dictatorship.

The idea that a few hundred politicians and military people in the world’s nuclear states have a self-appointed right to play God and decide whether project humankind shall continue or not belongs to the realm of the civilisational perverse or the Theatre of the Absurd. Such people must run on the assumption, deep down, that they are Chosen People with a higher mission. Gandhi rightly called Western civilisation diluted fascism.

Unethical

Why? Because – simply – there can be no political or other goal that justifies the use of this doomsday weapon and the killing of millions of people, or making the earth uninhabitable.

Possession versus proliferation

The trick played on us all since 1945 is that there are some ‘responsible’ – predominantly Christian, Western – countries that can, should, or must, have nuclear weapons and then there are some irresponsible governments/leaders elsewhere that must be prevented by all means from acquiring them. In other words, that proliferation rather than possession is the problem. However, it is built into the Non-Proliferation Treaty, NPT, that those who don’t have nuclear weapons shall abstain from acquiring them as a quid pro quo for the nuclear-haves to disarm theirs completely.

That is, the whole world shall become a nuclear-weapons-free zone (NWFZ).

Those who have nuclear weapons provoke others to get them too. Possession leads to proliferation.

The recent negotiations with Iran is a good example of this bizarre world view: the five nuclear terrorist states, sitting on enough nukes to blow up the world several times over and who have systematically violated international law in general and the NPT in particular, tell Iran – which abides by the NPT and doesn’t want nuclear weapons – that it must never obtain nuclear weapons. Simultaneously, they turn a blind eye to nuclear terrorist state, Israel’s 50+ years old nuclear arsenals.

And it is all actively assisted by mainstram media who seem to lack the knowledge and/or intellectual capacity to challenge this whole set-up – including the racist belief structure that “we have a God-given right and are more responsible than everybody else – particularly non-Christians…”

But what about deterrence?

You’ve heard the philosophical nonsense repatedly over 70 years: Nuclear weapons are good to deter everyone from starting the ‘third world war’. That nukes are here to never be used. That no one would start that war because he/she would know that there would be a mass murder on one’s own population in a second strike, retaliation. But think! Two small, simple counterarguments:

a) You cannot deter anyone from doing something unless you are willing to implement your threat, your deterrent. If A knows that B would never use his nukes, A would not be afraid of the retaliation. Thus, every nuclear weapons state is ready to use nukes under some defined circumstance; if not there is no deterrence whatsoever.

b) The United States has long ago done two things (as the only one on earth): 1) decided on a doctrine in which the use of small nukes in a conventional role is fundamental, thus blurring the distinction between conventional and nuclear weapons; 2) its missile defence (that it also wants in Europe) is about preventing a second strike back – shooting down retaliatory missiles – so it can start, fight and win a nuclear war without being harmed itself. Or so it can hope.

There are many other aspects – but let’s mention just one more:

Nuclear weapons have already caused wars

The war on Iraq is a good example. If Iran will be bombed – which can’t be excluded at all – it’s about nuclear weapons. Ukraine is about expanding nuclear-based NATO and nuclear-based EU right up to the border of Russia. The enemy image of North Korea – where war can also not be excluded in the future – is mainly about it being a nuclear weapons state. The conflicts surrounding Israel are intimately connected with its nuclear weapons threatening everyone – non-nuclear – around it.

Hope

No, let’s rid the world of this civilisational mistake. Nuclearism and nuclear deterrence is the world most dangerous ideology comparable to slavery, absolute monarchy and cannibalism that we have decided – because we are humans and civilised and can think and feel – to put behind us.

There is no co-existence possible between nuclear weapons on the one hand and democracy, peace and civilisation on the other.

It’s time to regai hope by looking at all the – civilised – non-nuclear countries and follow their example. Thus, 99% of the southern hemisphere landmass is nuclear weapons free. 60% of the 193 states, with 33% of the world population, are included in this free zone.

And here are the countries which have contemplated to obtain – but decided to abstain from – nuclear weapons (including those who have had them and gotten rid of them): Sweden, Switzerland, Yugoslavia, South Africa, Libya, Austria, Mongolia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Japan, Antartica, the Seabed, Outer Space. Finally, dozens of countries have the technical capacity but would not dream of joining the nuclear club.

The West, the U.S. in particular, that started the terrible Nuclear Age should now follow the far majority of humanity, apologise for its nuclearism and move to zero.