Author Archive
Will China attack India again, and is India ready?
December 10th, 2011 | 
Author: By Shastri Ramachandaran
During my time in Beijing, the days on which India appeared in China’s English dailies or TV were few and far between. Even bilateral exchanges, ministerial visits and official cultural events didn’t make the kind of splash it does in India.
India figures prominently in the Chinese media when the state, party or government wants to send messages without the official stamp. In contrast, there’s much more of China in the Indian media, which is more preoccupied — obsessed even — with China. Read the rest of this entry »
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Terryfying blockage in nuclear disarmament
By Jonathan Power
Some of us believed that at the end of the Cold War in 1991 American and Soviet nuclear rockets would be left to rust and rot in their silos. Indeed, we actually saw the Ukraine, where the Soviets made most of their rockets and based many, calling in American engineers to help dismantle them. Moreover, Ukraine decided to forsake nuclear power status- for which the world should give more praise than it does. Read the rest of this entry »
The 2011 Nobel Peace Prize
By Jan Oberg
Congratulations to the three staunch women!
And then there is the positive and the negative.
Positive:
Women, non-violence, Africa and that the prize was not once again given to war-makers and -criminals. Also, that it was not – as rumoured – awarded the EU.
Negative:
Focus on human rights rather than anti-militarism as embedded in Nobel’s will, two of the women have very strong ties to the United States and are already pelted with awards, there and elsewhere; once again mainly to a politician (who by the way has invited the U.S. to establish its African Military Command in her country) rather than to researchers or people who have had the civil courage to criticise the United States and/or the West in general.It seems unbelievable to me that they have – this very year – avoided Tunisia and Egypt as well as (once again) people like Daniel Ellsberg, Richard Falk, Johan Galtung, Gene Sharp and many others who meet Nobel’s criteria much more clearly.
Read Fredrik Heffermehl’s path-breaking analysis, Nobel’s Will the website of which is here.
Three crises – Three ideas
By Johan Galtung
Speech delivered at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland on 1 Dec 2011
Your Excellencies,
We are celebrating the 50th anniversary of NAM, the Nonaligned Movement; a great success. They were not party to the madness of NATO-WTO (Warsaw Treaty Organization) confrontation and arms race, even nuclear. NAM was headed by two country triads, India-Indonesia-Yugoslavia and Finland-Sweden-Austria, and two high quality leader triads, Nehru-Soekarno-Tito and Kekkonen-Palme-Kreisky. Their in-between roles gave the world some normalcy in the madness. Much needed for West-Islam today; but that quality leadership is missing. Read the rest of this entry »
Arab revolutions and the power of nonviolent action
By Stephen Zunes
While sitting in a Cairo café just a couple blocks from Tahrir Square recently, I couldn’t help but notice the television in the corner broadcasting the evening news. Traditionally, TV news in Egypt and other Arab countries has consisted of the president (or king) giving a speech, greeting a foreign visitor, visiting a factory, or engaging in some other official function. This evening, however, the news was about a labor strike in Alexandria, relatives of those killed during the February revolution protesting outside the Interior Ministry, and ongoing developments in the pro-democracy struggles in Yemen and Syria. Read the rest of this entry »
Taming the financial monster – or Rosa Parks of today
By Jonathan Power
Every so often, but not very often, the tectonic plates in society visibly move. In the last century it was the impact of the Great Recession closely followed by a second massive war in a century that pushed both the victorious and the losers in the direction of a welfare state, albeit the Europeans, Canadians and Japanese moved at a much faster rate than the Americans.
If Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany is right and the present financial crisis is the worst upheaval since then, perhaps we are on the cusp of a major change in the governance of not just Europe, Canada and Japan but of the semi-isolationist US as well. The occupied streets and squares of some major cities suggest it. Never before in my memory have protestors gained such support from non-demonstrators. The liberals and social democrats have supported them, but so have the centrists and even some on the right. Read the rest of this entry »
On (Im)Balance and Credibility in America: Israel/Palestine
By Richard Falk
I could not begin to count the number of times friends, and adversaries, have give me the following general line of advice: your views on Israel/Palestine would gain a much wider hearing if they showed more sympathy for Israel’s position and concerns, that is, if they were more ‘balanced.’ Especially on this set of issues, I have always found such advice wildly off the mark for two main reasons. Read the rest of this entry »
The Arab Revolt – What’s next?
By Johan Galtung
It changes character, like in quantum mechanics, just by watching. The French revolution did that in the late 1780s-early 1790s. However, spring is gone, revolt is in, but so far not revolution. There are layers of rulers and layers of opposition. Unveiling has started.
If seeds from a winter suicide in Tunisia sprouted buds in early spring, then they must have fallen on fertile soil. Events turn into processes when “stability” is unstable, as huge power and wealth gaps are. The trick in the US is to make a person believe in individual mobility; “if you don’t make it that is your fault”. Others see it as a relation: by taking power/wealth from us, they became powerful and rich and we remained powerless and poor. The former is individualist and person-oriented, the latter collectivist and system-oriented. See it that way and revolts follow, like Tahrir Square, like Wall Street. Nevertheless, some resources are needed. Read the rest of this entry »
‘Peace writ large’
By Scilla Elworthy
Time for a strategy for the transformation of conflict worldwide?
Globally, in the 21st century, two unprecedented factors are affecting war: violent conflict is being prevented with the skills of fast-growing localised peace building initiatives, and more wars are ending through negotiation rather than military victory.
Yet military expenditure has increased 45% over 10 years, and only minute amounts are spent on the prevention of conflict. Does this extraordinary situation call for a global strategy to change the way the world deals with war? Read the rest of this entry »