Challenging China

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By Jonathan Power

The West, the US especially, has got itself into a fretful mood over the rise of China. Quite unnecessarily so. The Chinese growth rate is slowing. As a BBC commentator said today, reviewing this week’s government-issued statistics, China never will hit double digit growth again. Glitzy Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu and their like, where growth is still well over 10% a year, make up only a part of China’s economy.

Much of the country has an income per head more akin to Ecuador. Read More »

The economy looks bad

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By Johan Galtung

Sometimes a look at the basics is needed. They are reproduction of the nature on which we all depend, and reproduction of humans. Formulas like renewability and recycling, to avoid depletion and pollution, and well-being, meeting basic needs for all to avoid suffering and misery, are good guides. With them guaranteed, let us extract, produce, distribute, consume, and enjoy! Sounds rational.

But the basics are not guaranteed, not built into the system.

From the economy comes many products but also ecocrisis, misery, death, guided not by rationality but by the opposite. How come?Read More »

Selected links to a better understanding of Iran

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By Farhang Jahanpour and Jan Oberg

These are the links mentioned in TFF PressInfo of January 20, 2014. There are literally hundreds of websites that one could list but we have put together some of the ones that we find to be the most useful and that we regularly consult ourselves. They range from the media run by the Iranian government, as well as the BBC Persian, VOA in Persian, some opposition websites and one on Iranian music and the massive Encyclopaedia Iranica; further there are some dailies and agencies, sites with political analyses sites and some video documentaries.

We sincerely hope this you’ll find something useful in this collection. Please share this page with anybody who wishes to know more about Iran. And let’s emphasise that the best way to learn about Iran is to go there and see for yourself.

Al-Monitor Iran Pulse

IRNA – Islamic Republic News Agency

Iran Review
It is a web site, which calls itself “leading independent, non-governmental and non-partisan website.” It provides translations of articles by some leading Iranian journalists and political analysts, and some of them are very informative and thought provoking.

Payvand
It is a website run by Iranian-Americans but is generally non-partisan and publishes good articles about Iran, some pro-Iranian government and some opposed to it. The articles provide good information about some of the leading current developments in Iran.

Campaigns Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII)
This is a website run by a professor of computer studies at the University of London. It defines itself as follows: “CASMII is independent of all political groups and governments, including the Iranian government, and does not adhere to any particular religion or ideology. We strive to bring together the broadest possible spectrum of forces, on the basis of democratic principles and decision making structures.” However, it tends to publish articles that are generally-speaking pro-Iranian government and in any case opposed to military action or sanctions against Iran.

Press TV
PressTV is the official English language TV station of the Islamic Republic of Iran and naturally takes a pro-Iranian stance in most of its reporting. Its satellite channel beamed to Europe was banned as part of the sanctions against Iran, but it is available online.Read More »

The West contracting to “Middle Ages”? Fine!

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By Johan Galtung

Alfaz, Spain

An optimistic prediction held by some; but what does it mean?

Let us define that “middle” as thousand years, 250-1250, from the start of the West Roman Empire declining (completed in 476 – 500), to the rise of the Hanseatic League transalpina as another Europe (completed around 1500 with protestantisms, Luther-Zwingli-Calvin; Anglicans).

Apart from the Crusades, 1095-1291, an early introduction to the “Modern Period”, this was a peaceful time in Europe due to the integrative forces of the “Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation” – not Holy, not Roman, not German they say – and the Vatican – Holy? – hm; Roman? Yes. 217 of the 266 popes Italian, so far; No. 2: 16 French.

The Kings ruled by intermarriages, and the Popes by theocracy, in harmony till the 11th century investiture conflict: who appoints the bishops!? The war on Islam, the Crusades 1095-1291 (Pope Urban II) was also used to unify Church and State; and also against Orthodox Christians after the schism in Christianity in 1054 (Pope Leo IX).

Europe contracting into about 500 smaller entities, duchies etc., self-centered, self-reliant, self-sufficient, living lives centered on Afterlives through salvation. “Middle”, between what and what?Read More »

The emergent Palestinian imaginary

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By Richard Falk

[Prefatory Note: this text is based on my presentation at the conference listed below, which brought together a wide array of scholars, media people, and persons concerned with the future of Palestine]

Second Annual Conference of Research Centers in the Arab World, Doha, Qatar, 7-9 December 2013, THE PALESTINIAN CAUSE AND THE FUTURE OF THE PALESTINIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT.

A preliminary remark: A sacrifical peace

It is a welcome development that the theme of such a major conference as this one should have as its theme ‘the future of the Palestinian movement,’ so well articulated in the opening address by Azmi Bishara.

It is often overlooked that as early as 1988, and possibly earlier, the unified Palestinian leadership has decisively opted for what I would call a ‘sacrificial’ peace. By sacrificial I mean an acceptance of peace and normalization with Israel that is premised upon the relinquishment of significant Palestinian rights under international law. The contours of this image of a resolved conflict consist of two principal elements: a Palestinian sovereign state within the 1967 ‘green line’ borders and a just resolution of the refugee problem. This conception of a durable peace is essentially an application of Security Council Resolution 242, 338, and is the foundation of the initiative formally endorsed by the Palestine National Council is 1988.

It is sacrificial in both dimensionsRead More »

New sanctions will backfire

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By Farhang Jahanpour

Despite strong opposition by the White House and the States Department and despite the pleadings of some of the most prominent bipartisan US foreign policy luminaries who have warned that additional sanctions would jeopardize ongoing diplomatic efforts, (1) many US senators are pushing forward with a new resolution that is supported by the same neocons that brought us the Iraq war. (2)

It seems that the majority of Congressmen and Senators know very little about Iranian history or what is going on in Iran at present. Read More »

Who was Ariel Sharon?

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By Jonathan Power

The Middle East has been living a nightmare, partly because of a man of Russian origin who became Israel’s greatest general and, later, prime minister of Israel: Ariel Sharon. What were the inner thoughts of this man? This is what Amos Oz, an acclaimed Israeli journalist, writer and novelist, with a world-wide reputation, helped us to discover in an interview published by the Israeli daily, Davar, in December 17, 1982.

“Call Israel by any name you like, call it a Judeo-Nazi state. Better a live Judeo-Nazi than a dead saint. I don’t care whether I am like Gaddafi. I am not after the admiration of the gentiles. ….I will destroy anyone who will raise a hand against my children, I will destroy him and his children, with or without our famous purity of arms…..

“We’ll hear no more of that nonsense about the unique Jewish morality, the moral lessons of the Holocaust or about the Jews who were supposed to have emerged from the gas chambers pure. As for Eyn Hilwe [Lebanon’s largest refugee camp] it’s a pity we did not wipe out that hornet’s nest completely.”

Sharon first stirred up controversy with the massacre at Qibiya, a Palestinian village. Read More »

Reconciliation and agitation in Macedonia: Success or failure of the RECOM initiative?

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By Biljana Vankovska

Biljana Vankovska has decided to resign from the post of public advocate due to the obstacles she has faced as described below.

Strangely enough, it appears that the Republic of Macedonia, once the southernmost and poorest republic of the former Yugoslavia, has always lagged behind the rest, in weal or woe. If one considers the achievements of the states in the region, when success is measured by the degree of their integration into the EU, one gets the impression that, while the rest of them, including Kosovo, are making steps forward, Macedonia is retrogressing.

The violent conflict in 2001 was the last episode in the succession of wars and internal armed conflicts on the territory of the former common state. It was an unusual conflict by Yugoslav standards: in terms of duration, number of casualties and degree of destruction, as well as of the rapidity of the recovery.
When violence broke out in this former ‘oasis of peace’, as Macedonia was called in international circles during the bloodshed in Croatia or the genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina, some observers were alarmed and feared that an escalation without precedent would involve neighbouring states too (i.e. those that were not part of the SFRY).

Others, who looked at things with a cooler head, soon came to the conclusion that the conflict was the “biggest set-up in these parts since the war in Slovenia”. Be that as it may, its consequences for the people and the society in general are not negligible even today, although they have never been the subject of any serious public debate and concern. Read More »

Capucine Riom’s CV

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Capucine Riom became a TFF Associate in 2013

capsriom@gmail.com

Education

2013 – UC Berkeley – Exchange Abroad Student. Economics classes (“Public Economics”, “Macroeconomic Policies”) as well as Law and Development and Philosophy classes GPA: 3.85 Read More »

Ten conflicts, solutions and conciliation

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By Johan Galtung

2014: there are conflicts old and new crying for solution and conciliation, not violence; with reasonable, realistic ways out.

Take the South Sudan conflict between the Nuer and the Dinka. We know the story of the borders drawn by the colonial powers, confirmed in Berlin in 1884. Change a border by splitting a country – referendum or not – and what do you expect opening Pandora’s Box? More Pandora.

There is a solution: not drawing borders, making them irrelevant. The former Sudan could have become a federation with much autonomy, keeping some apart and others together in confederations-communities, also across borders. Much to learn from Switzerland, EU and ASEAN.Read More »