Yes, go beyond, transcend!–that is our message, New Year or not. Take the US school shootings. The National Rifle Association’s vice president on TV: “the only person who can stop a bad person with a gun is a good person with a gun”. That statement struck many cords. There is the deep US culture of Dualism–two kinds of people–and Manicheism–one bad, one good. There is Armageddon in the class room, the teacher or resident police pulling out the gun–bigger, better, more accurate–for the final battle, for the final and only solution. The NRA is riding on this DMA (Dualism/Manicheism/Armageddon) ground…
الكاتب: Johan Galtung
From Frankfurt am Main, Caritas How do social structures and handicaps–mental or physical, spiritual or material–relate to each other? Answer: about the same way as social structures relate to other marginalized, even stigmatized, groups: women and non-whites, younger and older, workers, the physically and mentally ill, the handicapped, and other “deviants”. And at the world level the colonized and the imperialized, the less and the least developed countries, the pariahs. What do they have in common? That somebody is on top of them in a hierarchy. They are different, hierarchies make them unequal, and hierarchies are strong and tend to…
From Grenzach-Wyhlen, Germany The probability of a devastating Third World War is not zero, but very far away from 100%. Let us explore why. The worst case scenario is a world war between the West–NATO, USA, EU with Japan-Taiwan-S. Korea–on the one hand, and the East—SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization), Russia, China, Central Asia, with the observers India, Pakistan, Iran. With 4 vs 4 nuclear powers, and West vs Islam as a major theme. In the center is the explosive mix of a divided territory, and a divided capital, by a wall. We have been there before: the Cold War, Atlantic…
From Grenzach-Wyhlen, Germany Anti-Semitism, AS, is to be against Jews as such; pre-judging all based on some, pars pro toto. Being anti any category humans are born into–woman-man, black-white–is a fatal disease, with prejudice escalating to hatred, leading to discrimination, escalating to war, even genocide. There is linearity; perpetrators to victims. To prevent and cure this disease we must understand its causes, roots, and learn what, and what not, to do. To be against disease is not good enough. With the open mind provided by academic freedom, and freedom of speech as a basic human right, we have explored diseases…
From Washington, DC There is History in the UN 29 November 2012 vote: 138 YES to giving Palestine the UN status as “nonmember observer state”, only 9 NO, and 41 abstentions. Beyond Middle East politics the vote also mirrors the limits to the US global, and the Israeli regional, empires: 138 defy their grip and favor change, 41+9=50 do not, for various reasons. A crucial vote on a crucial issue is a crucial test. Who wants what? First, the OIC-Organization of Islamic Cooperation, Muslim, Arab: none yielding to USA-Israel in spite of the efforts against the Arab awakening. Israel is…
The Glorious Art of Peace by John Gittings, NYC: Oxford University Press, 2012 What a wonderful idea, the history of peace! Something most people want to learn about, the art of peace! Like the history of health, food and love, as opposed to the history of wars, illness and hunger, of generals, kings and empires. This is the history of something that can inspire people, statesmen-women among them, to do better. This is a more adequate textbook for schools than the usual list of kings (and queens, like “divorced-beheaded-died-divorced-beheaded-survived”). Gittings’ historiography covers seven periods: “ancient peace” based on Greece and…
… was the title of the Symposium at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia-USA 17-19 Nov 2012. An example of the blossoming wave of peace studies all over the US; inter-disciplinary and international. Most papers were given by very promising students on most aspects of peace studies. It is inconceivable that this will not have a major impact on US foreign policy in a generation or so, particularly with the demographic shift from the WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) males voting Romney to the negations of all of that, including Blacks, Latins and women voting Obama. And with that shift the idea…
Peace studies matter; same as health studies. We are born with the inclination to reject suffering, be it from violence or disease, and to seek wellbeing, call it peace, call it health. But we are not born with the knowledge and skills, theory and practice. We have found causes and conditions for health in the body-mind-spirit context, as in the World Health Organization’s focus on health as physical, mental and social wellbeing. We rejected illness as divine punishment for the sick person’s Evil and explored pathogens–factors carrying diseases–such as traumas (also from violence, wars), contagious diseases, stress diseases (cardio-vascular, malignant…
Both, of course. Well deserved for EU’s past and for relations within, in the tradition of West rewarding West. But critics are right about relations without and the present; like debt bondage of GIPSI–Greece-Italy-Portugal-Spain-Ireland/EU periphery–to Germany. But first, the arguments in favor. Two French politicians, Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman, declared that Germany had been so atrocious that it had to become member of the family, and then created the family: Genius, peace genius. On 1 Jan, 1958 the European Community embodied the Treaty of Rome, which was signed in 1957 by a horde of men. It certainly fulfilled Nobel’s…
Testimony for Russell Tribunal on Palestine, NYC 7 October 2012. Honorable Members of the Jury: Sociocide is a new concept that has not found its place in positive international law. Genocide, the unspeakable crime of massive killing of members of a genus, a nation, for no other reason than membership, has. Ecocide, the unspeakable crime of killing Mother Earth who nourishes us all, is finding its place via the constitutions of some countries in Latin America. Sociocide, the killing of a society’s capacity to survive, to reproduce itself, should become equally prominent a crime against humanity. A society is a…
Keynote Speech, Istanbul, Hacettepe University, 4 October 2012. Empires come and go. The Ottoman-Muslim Empire was among the better whereas the Iberian-Catholic and the European-Protestant were among the worst. The religions of the Kitab were respected and Turkish language was not imposed. Religious-linguistic entities in the Balkans survived, as opposed to those in Latin-Caribbean America. National independence movements succeeded: Greece in 1829, Serbia and Romania in 1878, Bulgaria in 1908, Albania in 1912. But the nation-states were incomplete. And on October 8, 1912–a century ago—the Balkan League–Serbia-Bulgaria-Greece-Montenegro–declared war on the Ottoman Empire; and won. Then came the Second Balkan war…
There are two key human rights values in this confrontation: [1] The freedom of expression ─ basic, but not alone in the world;[2] The freedom from insult-hurt-harm ─ basic, nor alone in the world. Conflicts between two values-goals-actors have five outcomes: A- The freedom of expression prevails, regardless of insult-hurt-harm to respect for other humans and their dignity. This happens now, as a result of the anti-Islamic Youtube video and the Hebdo article. Comment: This does not justify violence to property and humans, but nonviolent reactions against governments that protect individuals against libel, and Judaism-Christianity, but not Islam. The problem…
Keynote Speech at the UN Human Rights Council Social Forum – Oct 1, 2012 Your Excellencies: The title for this Sixth Social Forum–in the context of the 10 Articles of the UN Declaration on the Right to Development of 4 December 1986–is very well chosen. The focus is on people-centered development–as opposed to system-centered economic growth. And on globalization, a challenging process involving all states and regions, nations and civilizations, humans and nature–as opposed to a globalized market with only three free flows, of capital, goods and services, not labor; increasing the global economic gap. And this in the context…
The Israeli attack seems imminent. Richard Silverstein circulates a leaked “shock and awe” strategy of Netanyahu‑Barak hard zionism to decapitate, paralyze Iran; and Alon Ben‑Meir (an expert on Middle East politics specializing in peace negotiations between Israel and Arab states) says Israel is not bluffing. Israel may prefer an attack with the USA (Romney? Obama after elections?), but may go alone. Some people believe the nuclear bomb story, others believe that the purpose is Israel as a Jewish state from the Nile to the Euphrates, also promoted by Netanyahu’s late father. The two stories do not exclude each other. Iran…
Conspiracies exist. They are a part of social reality, have always been, and will always be; as confirmed conspiracy theories, as unconfirmed conspiracy hypotheses, as suspicions, as allegations. As usually conceived of, conspiracies involve several persons or actors; the plan of action is kept secret or at least not made public, except afterwards if it is successful. Conspiracies are about power[i] – economic-cultural-political-military — and are usually negative for somebody. Let us start by criticizing this definition. Does a conspiracy have to be negative? If some friends come together to prepare a pleasant surprise for somebody who turns, say, 80;…
How do we come to grips, intellectually, with today’s world? Some time ago the geopolitical map was based on the direct East-West conflict, the two superpowers USA/USSR with alliances, and the neutral-nonaligned treated as a residual category. The world was Bipolar. The implosion of the USSR made it Unipolar, “the only surviving superpower”, 2-1 = 1. Or so we were told. Today we have four huge states: the three largest in population, China-India-USA, and the largest in area, Russia. And the EU, a region with five middle-range states: UK-France-Germany-Italy-Spain. But there is one more pole on the geopolitical map: Islam.…
Talk at the Nordic Peoples’ Parliament in Jondal, Norway Let us start with the crisis. It is not a world but a Western crisis. The root is simple: the Rest is catching up, and partly overtaking the West; China is catching up, and partly overtaking the USA–recovering from the blow received around 1500 from the Portuguese and the English destroying 1,000 years of buddhist-muslim trade from East China to Somalia via the rest of Asia; ending in Macao-Hong Kong (there are no Chinese enclaves in Portugal-England). The West is outcompeted. The crisis is partly economic and partly a desperate Western…
And that reality is ambiguous. On the one hand a high level of Muslim immigration, and some conversion to Islam. And high level tolerance of races and faiths, settling, acquiring citizenship, many integrating fully; their Norwegian, and respect for Norwegian laws and regulations, impeccable (with the exceptions of honor violence and female circumcision). On the other hand very little inter-faith dialogue carried by respect and curiosity, let alone mutual learning. The assumption is that immigrants have much to learn. And then Norway as a participant in US-led, NATO-based, coalitions that, even if not called wars, the fact is that Muslims…
He died twenty years ago, the great German statesman. Germany, Europe and the world have much to be grateful about, and much to learn from this master of politics under great tension and polarization. What was his Ostpolitik–new politics toward the East–formula? De-escalation, tension reduction are important aspects, but too general. He managed to present to the East, not only to DDR but to Poland, Czechoslovakia and Soviet Union, a friendly West Germany not filled with aggression and hatred; a member of NATO, but with a human face. There was no doubt about his stand on dictatorships against the will…
The police explores concrete logistic collaborators and-or ideological support; like Peter Mangs in Sweden, the “laser man” who killed what looked like immigrants, wrote a rightwing manifesto and an autobiography; or “Fjordman” with 111 mentions. Breivik was a member of a Norwegian rightwing anti-immigration party, Fremskrittspartiet–a legal stand in a democracy–but left. He also left the Free Masons, with the following Compendium comment: “Being a Free Mason myself I know that /the Freemasons are a Zionist organization/ is not only a false claim but actually quite ridiculous. The Freemasons is not in any way political (I wish the organization was,…
Talk at the Advanced Studies Research Center, Brussels, Belgium The multi-season Arab Spring is the third anti-imperialist Arab revolt in less than a century: against the Ottoman empire, the Western Italian-French-English empire, and now the US-Israel empire. The empires hit back. The Ottomans were weak, but England-France-Israel even invaded Egypt in 29 October 1956–in the shadow of the Hungarian revolt against the Soviet empire that crumbled 23-25 years later. And now it is the turn o USA-Israel to try to maintain an illegitimate structure. So much for the background. In the foreground is class, pitting the powerless at the bottom…