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August
26, 2000
Peace,
nonviolence & other good news and thoughts
UK
going to support a world
court
The British government will formally break ranks with the
US on Friday by supporting the creation of an
international criminal court to prosecute those
responsible for genocide and other crimes against
humanity. (The Guardian).
Towards
a peace agreement in Burundi ? - and what Clinton should
do
At the August 28 signing ceremony for a Burundi peace
accord, President Bill Clinton should pledge U.S. support
for prompt, effective justice to punish serious crimes
committed during the war, Human Rights Watch said today.
Clinton is scheduled to appear at a signing ceremony to
mark the end of a civil war that has pitted Hutu against
Tutsi in Burundi, and that has cost the lives of well
over 100,000 people in the last six years. From All
African.com. And the mediator, Nelson
Mandela, proposes
Burundi's Assembly speaker as interim
president.
Toward
a new internationalism
"What has really disappeared is the kind of
middle-ground, mixed economy often lauded in the Cold-War
years. Social democratic and Keynesian strategies,
supposedly the result of a class accord, are no longer
viable under today's global neoliberalism. But all of
this merely points to the need for a much more radical,
universal, internationalist strategy, rooted in national
realities and struggles as the only way forward for the
movement" - say the editors of Monthly Review.
Truth
and reconciliation commissions - can South Africa export
them?
When the fighting in Burundi stops, Ntsebeza believes
that the devastated nation should use South Africa's TRC
as a model to begin healing rifts in a peaceful way. "No
experience of any one country can be exported to any
other country, but there is something to be said for
South Africa" and its relatively peaceful transition,
Ntsebeza says. (From The Christian Science Monitor)
Armament,
the new Cold War & militarism
The
Kursk affair - are you sure you got the whole
truth?
"There can hardly have been a better example of the media
acting as adjuncts of government than their coverage of
the sinking of the Russian submarine Kursk. From the
start, there was to be little deviation from the
storyline &endash; as familiar as it is comforting. A
decrepit submarine manned by a worthy but incompetent and
underpaid crew went down to the bottom of the Barents
Sea. The cause of the accident was almost certainly the
shoddy level of maintenance.." - writes George Szamuely
at Antiwar.com.
China's
hand in Africa's wars
In a bid to develop a market for its arms industry, China
has dispatched four military delegations to sub-Saharan
Africa in the last few months. South Africa and the
United Nations have worked to resolve the region's
conflicts. But China's new policy &endash; really
intended to get the People's Liberation Army out of the
Chinese economy &endash; threatens to create a miniature
but destabilizing arms race in southern Africa.
(Stratfor).
Israel
may have as many as 200 nuclear
weapons
New satellite photographs published on the internet
indicate that Israel could have made enough plutonium for
up to 200 nuclear weapons, US scientists say. (From BBC).
See also the Christian
Science Monitor
on this. But where else did you see the first-page story
about that?
The
US assesses the world reaction to
BMD
A classified U.S. intelligence report predicts that if
the United States deploys a national missile defense
system, China would likely add to its nuclear arsenal as
a deterrent while Russia would continue reductions in its
nuclear force, U.S. government sources said on Tuesday.
(From Muzi.com).
World
(dis)order, globalization - imperialism
UN
strapped for cash
According to the reports that have leaked so far, the
U.N. mission to Kosovo (UNMIK) faces both a power
shortage and a security crisis due to depleted funding.
The European Agency for Reconstruction, which has paid
for Kosovo's electricity since the end of NATO's bombing
campaign last year, expects that UNMIK's accumulation of
unpaid power bills will lead to a power crisis this
winter. From July to January, the KPC will not receive
funding at all, reported London's The Times.
(Stratfor).
Clinton
to visit Nigeria and
Tanzania
President Bill Clinton will, sometime this month, pay a
state visit to Nigeria. Much is being made of this trip
and the chance it holds out to restore the country on to
the global diplomatic map. After the benighted years of
military rule, and the concomitant alienation of the
country from the comity of nations, a visit from the
American president is welcome. From Tempo, Lagos. And
the
assistant secretary for African
Affairs explains
the significance of the President's visit to Nigeria and
Tanzania. From AllAfrica.com
The
Balkans and Kosovo/a
NATO's
takeover of smelter in Mitrovica, foreseen by Diana
Johnstone in February
Comparison of two documents, a November 1999
International Crisis Group (ICG) paper on the Trepca
mining complex, and a February 2000 article in the
Toronto Star by ICG consultant Susan Blaustein, provides
an exceptionally clear glimpse into the workings of the
"international community" (Emperor's Clothes).
Figures
on Serb killings put too high, the West admits -
now
Nato officials
conceded last night that their wartime estimates of the
number of Kosovo Albanian civilians massacred by Serb
forces might have been too high. They were reacting to
findings by forensic experts for the International
Criminal Tribunal in the Hague who are preparing to
complete their work in Kosovo after exhuming about 3,000
bodies. (Guardian).
What
was the truth then, what is it today? The
media...
Newsinsider
Reports on Korea, Kosovo, NATO propaganda, truth and lies
- and spies. Numerous stories here.
Media
and the US elections - critical
analyses
The rlationship between media and politicians is the
hidden disease of American electoral democracy.
Advertising - money paid to the media poutlets - is the
single highest campaign expence.
The
US as a world order problem
Why
Pentagon and State Department hate peace in
Korea
The problem is that peace in Korea upsets the Pentagon's
applecart. For years, North Korea has been the Pentagon's
dream come true, a perfect bogeyman to drum up support
for obscene defense spending. Tiny, impoverished,
technologically backward North Korea was built up into a
threat so insidious it could be used to justify the
additional $60 billion the Pentagon plans to spend on a
National Missile Defense (NMD) shield over the next
fifteen years. But the accord has already helped take the
steam out of Star Wars (as did the recent missile test
failure). From The Progressive.
The
US 'Plan Columbia' - disturbing questions about real
agenda
Clinton visits Columbia. He promotes "Plan Colombia",
which many observers see as a vehicle his State
Department has devised to permit the US to enter the
counter-insurgency war against the FARC guerrillas under
the cover of "counter-narcotics". Plan Colombia is the
biggest aid package every offered to a Latin American
country. Yet it is opposed by many in Colombia who have
no sympathy with the guerrillas, because they believe it
will provide no exit from the quagmire of 30 years of
conflict. Far from bringing peace, they believe it will
drag the country deeper into bloodshed. (From The irish
Times/Common Dreams).
US
weapons exports soaring
No wonder some use these weapons and no wonder we then
'need' to intervene to stop the killing! (From
Muzi.comNews).
Human
rights, "humanitarian" intervention &
peacekeeping
US
elections - what's in it for
women?
Women's votes -- not our rights -- are key on the
campaign trail. First and foremost, the definition of
"Woman" that informs most discussions of "the women's
vote" is profoundly limited. When candidates or reporters
speak of the gender gap, they're speaking of white women
-- and especially young, white, middle-class mothers, the
"soccer moms" who've garnered so much ink in recent
years. But soccer moms aren't the voters primarily
responsible for the gender gap--women of color, often
invisible in these discussions, are. (From
FAIR).
Independent
panel looks at UN peacekeeping in the future - and
changes UN philosophy
The Panel concurs that consent of the local parties,
impartiality and the use of force only in self-defence
should remain the bedrock principles of peacekeeping.
Experience shows, however, that in the context of
intra-State/transnational conflicts, consent may be
manipulated in many ways. Impartiality for United Nations
operations must therefore mean adherence to the
principles of the Charter: where one party to a peace
agreement clearly and incontrovertibly is violating its
terms, continued equal treatment of all parties by the
United Nations can in the best case result in
ineffectiveness and in the worst may amount to complicity
with evil. No failure did more to damage the standing and
credibility of United Nations peacekeeping in the 1990s
than its reluctance to distinguish victim from aggressor.
(From the UN)
Underdevelopment,
alternative economics and sustainability
20
million lives at stake - but who talks about
'humanitarian
intervention'?
"As you can see from the fact sheet that was handed out,
we still believe that over 20 million people are at risk
if this crisis is allowed to spiral into a true famine.
The US Government is treating this crisis as the highest
priority humanitarian emergency in the world currently.
So far, USAID and the Department of Agriculture have
committed over $575 million in humanitarian assistance to
the relief effort..." says USAID deputy assistant
administrator, Leonard
Rogers.
The
coming water shortage
The number of people living in countries facing severe or
chronic water shortages is projected to increase more
than four-fold over the next 25 years, from an estimated
505 million people today to between 2.4 and 3.2 billion
people by 2025, according to Population Action
International (PAI). (From IPS/OneWorld).
The Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future
Research
Vegagatan 25, S - 224 57 Lund, Sweden
Phone + 46 - 46 - 145909 Fax + 46 - 46 -
144512 http://www.transnational.orgE-mail:
tff@transnational.org
