PPI pretends to be an index of positive peace/peaceful society. But is more like an index of “positive for business environment”; by the Institute for Economics & Peace, more economics than peace. To explore this, imagine we want an index of health. Obviously, we need criteria of health to know what we are talking about, like: For negative health: absence of illness from the outside–contagion- shocks–and structural from the inside–cardiovascular-tumors-mental. For positive health: balance in body-mind-spirit and socially; a sense of wellness being alive using body-mind-spirit at work, and in love. Then, the indicators, the index, the forefinger pointing the…
الكاتب: Johan Galtung
The background is the two major communist parties in the world. Russia Communist Party-Bolshevik made the November 1917 revolution; from 1922 the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, CPSU(b). CPC, the Communist Party of China, now celebrating its 95th anniversary, made the 1 October 1949 revolution. World-shaking events; in the world’s biggest state in area and in the world’s biggest state in population. The revolutions cut into the modernity contradictions in the State-Capital-People triangle by conquering State-military and police. Two lasting achievements of CPSU(b): State Planning of the economy–maybe five years at the time, pjatiletka–now found in most countries; and…
Israel’s options shrink, with decreasing legitimacy; Palestine’s options increase, with increasing legitimacy: – UN resolutions, however often vetoed by USA[i] are having a bite; – More important: the UN legitimation of Palestine as a “non-member observer state”, member of UNESCO, maybe soon of UN under a GA Uniting for Peace formula, recognized by Sweden, soon by other Western states; – BDS helped finish South Africa’s apartheid regime and may bring down another, Israel[ii], by being mainly symbolic; – The key US pillar for Israel, AIPAC, is dwindling; Israel overplayed its cards, like bribing US law makers; irritation increasing; – The…
Take the candidate debate about nomination and election, focused on Trump’s buffoonery and Sanders’ ineligibility. Hillary?–on using a private account. Few words wasted on her foreign policy of massive belligerence, warfare. In the tradition, Zoltan Grossman[i] documents: 151 military interventions from Wounded Knee in 1890; and in spite of the war fatigue expressed by Trump, Cruz, Sanders–even by Obama. And US reality? John Pilger[ii]: “Nuclear warhead spending alone rose higher under Obama than under any American president”. The Wall Street Journal (30 May 2016) had a full page on the new Navy railgun projectiles with ultra-speed that can penetrate any…
Except for a dark shadow, all is normal in the land of Japan. The local levels function very well with diligent Japanese working together to lift them up. Except for those with nuclear power plants, particularly one of them, on the coast, hit by a tsunami. Except too for rural communities laid waste, people aging, leaving, empty villages, hit by having to import rice instead of cultivating it. Ride the trains, walk the streets with the Japanese; as brisk and busy as ever. A little older, more canes, fewer bicycles, more cars, better streets and roads, cars run faster. In…
Kyoto An East Asia of 6 states, 5 from the 6-Party Talks + Taiwan. The 6 in East Asia divide into South Korea-Taiwan-Japan in the US-led alliance AMPO+ (USA-Japan Security Treaty+); North Korea; China-Russia with others in SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization). AMPO+ with US “nuclear umbrella”, the other two may acquire nukes; North Korea with nukes; and SCO with two nuclear powers. A nuclear arms race. Arms races may deter, but often end with wars. Wars mean trauma for losers and glory for winners. PTSD-post trauma stress disorder-may lead to thirst for revenge, and PGED-post glory exuberance disorder-to thirst for…
Jeju Peace Forum, Kwangju National University, Seoul; South Korea Like the Israel-Palestine conflict, the world has gotten tired of it, “what, the two Koreas still unable to sort it out”? Also, like Israel-Palestine, the USA is in it; making the situation complicated. Never has the situation been so tense after the end of the war in Korea more than 60 years ago. Not only because of the nuclear bomb with missiles in North Korea, and the hawkish pro-nuke reaction in South Korea and Japan, but because of no moves forward to solve the underlying conflict. And where is that conflict? …
Marinaleda, Spain On a periphery road 108 Km east of Sevilla: one white Andalucian village after the other, traditional, poor; and suddenly this super-modern concrete reality, a utopia in many people’s minds! The basic concept is well known: authorities expropriated land lying fallow in the midst of unemployed starving land labor, and it was transformed into a communal cooperative with very inexpensive housing, kindergarten, schools, clinics. Behind that was the vision, knowledge, skill, will of the mayor for over 30 years, Juan Grillo. With the mind, a reality, and the will to transform that reality. We are dealing with more…
China is changing world geography, or at least trying to do so. Not in the sense of land and water like the Netherlands, but in the sense of weaving new infrastructures on land, on water, in the air, and on the web. It is not surprising that a country with some Marxist orientation would focus politics on infrastructure–but as means of transportation-communication, not as means of production. Nor is it surprising that a country with a Daoist worldview focuses politics on totalities, on holons and dialectics, forces and counter-forces, trying to tilt balances in China’s favor. How this will work…
Antwerpen, Alfaz We are dealing with mass migration, basically into EU, and European nationalisms, many in favor of exits from the EU. Why this mass migration, maybe to the point of Völkerwanderung, mainly into EU–but then what kind of EU–and why the European nationalisms now found one way or the other in many member states? The forecast for migration from Africa into Italy in 2016 is about 100,000; 28,000 already arrived in the first quarter, with 1,000 drowning in the Mediterranean (INYT, 6 May 2016). Big numbers. They knew the risks they were taking, so the push away from Africa…
Dear Members of the Iceland Allthing Foreign Affairs Committee, I have been asked to come to Iceland to answer that question; thanks indeed for inviting me to address you. And to apologize, as a Norwegian, for our occupation of Iceland 1262-1386 instead of sending mediators to help settle your civil war. Our century long colonization does not become better because Denmark colonized you five centuries, 1386-1918; and more deeply. But you are now your own, with a wonderful language and literature; right now with a problematic economy and polity. Reykjavík has a very good name internationally as the venue of…
Alfaz, Spain You are young people on an EU mission exploring good towns that do not generate violence; 50 of you from 11 towns in 10 countries–and Alfaz del Pi is on the list. Rightly so, with 105 nations represented–No. 1 Spaniards, No. 2 English, No. 3 Norwegians–with conflicts over incompatible goals, yes, but hurting and harming each other, violence, no. Remarkable. A simple theory: if a town makes you feel well, at ease–“it is so easy to live here”, many people say–then something seeps into you and makes you nonviolent. If the town, your habitat, a key context in…
Alfaz, Spain Police? The judges have more social status but the police know better the local situation and possible lawbreakers. What is happening right now, for our eyes, for instance in Vila Real, north of Valencia, 13-15 April 2016–“II Ibero-American Conference on Police Mediation” is police revolting against the judges. “We use force to arrest the suspects, deliver them with evidence to the courts, many are found guilty, sentenced to prison, after some time released, presumably born anew–and after some more time we have to rearrest them; old or new crimes, same people. “The theory of individual and general prevention…
School of Conflict Analysis and Resolution – Arlington, VA, USA Classical Realpolitik is the priority in US foreign relations. Let force decide issues, if possible by threat, if necessary by fighting to the end. The two traditional nominees for the US Presidency, Cruz and Clinton, both advocate open violence; Cruz by “carpet bombing” and by patrolling Muslim neighborhoods making use of force credible, Clinton by standing by her past record of bombing Muslim countries. Trump, distancing himself from both Clinton belligerence and Cruz patrolling, deepens underlying conflicts in a most unfortunate way by stirring up prejudice and discrimination against Muslims…
Receiving Gandhi-King-Ikeda Community Builder Prize – Atlanta, 31 Mar 2016 Dear President, dear Dean of Morehouse College, Ladies and Gentlemen, I am deeply honored by the prize from a college in Georgia, in the US South, that has been and is a beacon in the struggle from dominion to dignity in race relations. The civil rights movement is an American Revolution, like the feminist movement it inspired–aiming at parity and dignity for all. To refuse sharing the spoils of exploiting Reds and Blacks and poor Whites with London was far from a revolution. This college shaped Dr Martin Luther King…
Washington, DC The Big View is the West doing badly, euro and pound down with miserable growth rates; US $-growth rate better but erratic; China, India, Islam growing, Latin America (CELAC) getting its act together and probably growing. This matters for essentially bankrupt USA: China, India, Islam, CELAC are huge powers with huge minorities inside the USA: they could move in, take over. Last week’s prediction about Trump’s foreign policy came true the next day (Washington Post 22 Mar 2016): less wars, not affordable, less NATO, let Europe do it, no nation-building, building our own. He was then branded “isolationist”…
Washington, DC Nobody knows. But under US presidentialism presidents matter; close to a dictatorship for one administration. That is where democracy–for, by if not of the delegates, it seems–enters; with a painstaking nomination process, like nothing in the rest of the world. And then the elections in November, after party conventions in July. There are three parties in the USA: Democrats, Republicans; and Democrats in the South, loyal to the party leadership DNC and vice versa, Southern Baptist conservative, traditionally for blacks, women, working class, minorities (Southern Republicans are white Anglo men). Very different from Yankee democrats up in the…
Alfaz, Spain At the two ends of the Mediterranean very similar wars are fought against two Arab-Muslim peoples: Palestinians in Palestine-a former English colony-since 1948, and Sahrawis in Western Sahara-former Spanish colony and still is, since 1975; when Franco was dying. The aggressors are Jewish Israel and Arab Morocco and Mauritania. The former colonies were handed to Israel by England and to Morocco by Spain (both invited to this seminar but did not answer); backed by USA and by USA-France, two UNSC veto powers. Israel claims millennia old rights to the land, Morocco claims centuries. The military conquests were followed…
The first editorial, “50 Years of Fidel Castro” 3 March 2008, celebrated a political revolution that changed the world, and spelt the end of US-Western imperialism. This editorial celebrates a spiritual revolution that may also change the world, spelling the end of Western materialism, and spread from there. We are talking about processes, not events, and of structures and cultures more than of actors. Again, Cuba played a major role, as meeting place between two major parts of Christianity, Catholic and Orthodox. In the Great Schism of 1054 they had excommunicated each other; and the Roman empire had split Catholic/Orthodox…
“Mathematics” comes from Greek mathema knowledge, science and mathesis learning, understanding-Leibniz’ mathesis universalis. Deep knowledge? Mathematics started with numbers (arithmetic) and shapes (geometry).* The concepts were related by “self-evident truths”, axioms, mirroring, inspired by empirical reality, counting, observing. And took on its own life: from primary concepts to new concepts by definition, from axioms to theorems by deduction. An abstract reality with one law: No Contradictions: a theorem and its negation cannot both be true, nor a theorem be both true and false. Forbidden, Streng verboten, Interdit. Many key mathematicians were German and French. Deductive cultures? From the other side…
L’Alfàs del Pi, Spain Two ideas – España Una Grande Libre: Spain One Great Free-status quo and España Una Comunidad de Naciones: Spain a Community of Nations. In addition, one fact: the forces in Catalunya in favor of independence. A vast gap. And a dangerous one: when status quo is maintained, and-or independence obtained, by violence, relations can remain bad for a long time. The Iberian Peninsula’s history provides enough examples. Both sides in the present controversy have important arguments. A separate inner identity in terms of language, shared history and geographical attachment calls for…