Nonviolence -
forgiveness
• We
must learn from touching human stories about the will to
abandon hate.
The
road to forgiveness
In South Africa's Western Cape there is a rapidly growing
bakery with the unusual brand name: "Amy's bread - the
bread of hope and peace." The local communities know its
significance. Amy Biehl was a Fulbright Scholar who was
murdered in the Western Cape in the run-up to the 1994
elections. The bakery, run by the Amy Biehl Foundation,
exists because her parents, Peter and Linda Biehl, from
California, decided to walk the road of forgiveness. By
Michael Henderson.
• How
actually did the old Cold War end - and what does it tell
about the new emerging Cold War now?
How
We Ended the Cold War
John Tirman reflects in The Nation. "The dominant view of
the right and center is that military intimidation was
the root of victory, a dangerous axiom then and just as
foolish today and tomorrow. Second, the history
demonstrates the ability of popular movements to effect
change, a lesson that sharply diverges from the habits of
historians and news media alike, which generally give far
more attention to the actions of elites."
Failed
peacebuilding in Kosovo
•
Here is an article on why things are going so wrong for
the UN, KFOR etc. in
Kosovo.
Chaos
and Intolerance Now Reign in Kosovo Despite U.N.'s
Efforts
The United Nations' special representative on
human rights in the former Yugoslavia, Jiri Dienstbier, a
former Czech dissident and foreign minister, reported
this month that "the spring ethnic cleansing of ethnic
Albanians accompanied by murders, torture, looting and
burning of houses has been replaced by the fall ethnic
cleansing of Serbs, Romas, Bosniaks and other
non-Albanians accompanied by the same atrocities." "Our
problem," he continued, "is that now this is happening in
the presence of UNMIK, KFOR and the O.S.C.E." The
organizations behind those missions here -- the United
Nations, NATO and the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe -- represent nations that for years
criticized President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia for
his harsh repression of Kosovo's Albanians. (New York
Times).
•
What you don't hear about
Kosovo
The
Real Kosovo
"As two of the principal achievements of his brief
tenure, Gen. Jackson cited "the successful
demilitarization" of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and
"the establishment of law and order." Sadly, none of what
the general said is true. Today, Kosovo is in a state of
near anarchy, and that's exactly the way the KLA wants
it" - an analysis from the Cato Institute. "The whole
thing is a very bad joke," explains a candid intelligence
officer with the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). (The CATO
Institute)
• TFF
PressInfos have been skeptical about the international
handling of Kosovo all the time. Here is an analysis from
The Daily Telegraph in London - even more devastating
UN
squanders Nato's victory
The United Nations mission in Kosovo, responsible for
setting up and running the civil administration in the
war-ravaged province, has become bogged down by
bureaucracy and incompetence and almost all its major
projects are far behind schedule.
•
What is really happening in Orahovac?
Serbs
and Gypsies feel trapped
They have a single idea on their minds -- to leave the
province and seek shelter somewhere in Serbia. More than
3,000 Serbs and Gypsies, the remnants of some 12,000 who
lived in the area alongside about 38,000 ethnic
Albanians, say they "are prisoners in Orahovac," and that
they are unable to flee.
•
So, why does the United States build the
biggest military base since Vietnam in Kosovo?
Camp
Bondsteel - Clinton's
visit
The camp President Bill Clinton visited in
Kosovo is Brobdingnagian in scale: It's the equivalent of
775 football fields or about 1,000 city blocks. Big
enough to raise questions about its continuing strategic
value in Balkan geopolitics There could be many reasons.
Read some of them - and those which Western diplomats
deny, too.
• Here
is another article on the failure-in-the-making of the
international community's 'peace' efforts in Kosovo. They
could win the war and finance it. It seems they can't win
the peace - as they don't finance it:
Kosovo--and
U.N.--Flail in the Dark
But the power failures are also symbolic of the United
Nations' inability in the past five months to overcome
some of the most basic problems that have beset Kosovo's
citizens since the conflict broke out among Yugoslav
government forces, ethnic Albanian rebels and NATO air
power enforcing a Western demand that Yugoslavia withdraw
its troops. Only a fraction of the estimated 125,000
homes damaged in the conflict have been rebuilt even
partially by aid worker (Washington Post).
• And
here is a third article on the Kosovo peace quagmire.
What nobody seems to want to say is this: if you ignore
violence-prevention and destroy one side to make peace,
peacebuilding on the ground afterwards will have no
chance to succeed. What could be more pathetic than
President Clinton appealing to the Albanians to forgive
and practice co-existence when their more or less legal
leaders - that the West have supported - have already
seen to it that Kosovo/a is virtually ethnically
homogenous?
Dreams
fade as it gets cold in Kosovo
Could it be that there will be no real civil society?
(Boston Globe).
• And a
fourth...also from the American press. They all tell you
that it is all the fault of the UN. How come that 234.000
non-Albanians, according to the UNHCR, could be forced
out or chose to leave under the eyes of 45.000 heavily
armed soldiers?
Kosovo
still short of governance and human
rights
Five months after the mission began, not one of the
hundreds of criminals who have been arrested has been
brought to trial, authorities concede. And Albanian
analysts say that organized crime is on the rise and a
mood of anarchy has fostered a rising tide of what they
refer to as "Albanian fascism." A senior U.S. official
back from a trip to the province last week said he was
"extremely disappointed" with the inability of the U.N.
mission to get a handle on its mandate to improve
stability and protect minorities. A senior analyst for
the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch went further, saying
the United Nations' stated efforts to create a
multiethnic Kosovo are already headed for complete
failure. "The key moment was in the first months of the
international mission, but that [opportunity] has
passed," said Freddy Abrams, a Human Rights Watch
official who is now visiting Pristina to assess the
situation. (Washington Times).
• And
more...
Loose
ends in Kosovo vex the United States
Experts question the whole operation in this analyses in
the Christian Science Monitor
This newspaper also helps you to
Navigate
through Kosovo's chaos
Five months after NATO air strikes halted Serbian "ethnic
cleansing," the place is a mess. Still legally the
southern province of Yugoslavia, it is now a UN
protectorate. But it's wracked with violent crime,
lawlessness, and revenge killings of Serbs, plagued with
daily power and water outages, and saddled with 70
percent unemployment. A tour of the province also reveals
a landscape scarred with mass graves and land mines, and
littered with burned homes and businesses.
•
Refugees - a rapidly growing population:
suffering through the winter because big powers ravage
their region, destroy for billions but can't find the
money to what is a real humanitarian need: helping them
through the coming winter.
For
700,000 Europeans, Winter's Dreaded Misery
Arrives
- a front pages heading on International
Herald Tribune...a forgotten 'European' group is, of
course, the refugees hosted by Yugoslavia, some 900.000,
just mentioned at the end...
• The
Independent's Robert Fisk also returned recently to
Kosovo
The
Reckoning
Fisk studies the issue of killing and massacres in
Kosovo. (The Independent)
Globalisation &
WTO
•
Seattle - World Trade Organization - do you
want to know a lot which you didn't see in your local
newspaper?
Here
are the Last Updates from the fantastic OneWorld
megasite
All the links, all the critical analyses - and read TFF
adviser Jonathan
Power's columns under Forum on this site...
Turkey's increasing
importance
• Here
is an innovative, thought-provoking analysis of Turkey's
strategic role
Replotting
the Eastern Hemisphere's
Pivot
Draw a circle with a thousand-mile radius around Ankara,
Turkey. That circle is the pivot of the Eastern
Hemisphere. It is the crossroads of Europe, Asia and
Africa, and the place where empires are made and broken.
What would be minor elsewhere can be of enormous
significance within this pivotal circle. During the
1980s, ancient feuds between tiny Lebanese clans had
global significance. Today, hatreds in Kosovo trigger
major powers to massive exertion. Following the retreat
of the Russian empire, the area of significant
instability has shifted to the west and north of Turkey.
The Golan Heights has become globally insignificant. The
futures of Grozny and Sarajevo have become vital.
Understanding this is the key to policy making today.
From Stratfor - again!
• If
the West is concerned about human rights in Turkey where
the OSCE just met, who helped Turkey to get all the
weapons?
US
Arms for Turkey's Abuses of Human
Rights
To date, Turkey's 15-year war against the PKK has claimed
over 30,000 lives, displaced 2 million people, and
destroyed 3,000 Kurdish villages - with the help of U.S.
supplied armored personnel carriers, fighter planes, and
attack helicopters, according to Human Rights Watch.
On his way to a major international summit in Istanbul
this week, President Clinton stopped off on Monday to
tut-tut the Turkish parliament over its country's dismal
human rights record and ongoing repression of its Kurdish
minority. Apparently, it slipped his mind that the number
one source of weapons for Turkey's overzealous security
forces is the U.S. itself. (Mother Jones).
Media in war and
peace
• These
facts about the Global Media Moguls should make us ask:
Who decides what we shall know and how - and what we
shall NOT know...
The
New Global Media, the ever increasing media
concentration
Who are the media moguls? Who owns the news bureaus, who
owns the movies and the music?
• Kofi
Annan advocates preventive journalism
U.N.
explores how TV could further peace, development
The United Nations brought together hundreds of
television and broadcast experts for a two-day conference
starting yesterday to discuss ways that television can
bring peace and development to the world, saying the
media can be a galvanizing force for change.
• The
media aspects of the Kosovo crisis deserves
attention
Serb
ministry of truth study artful lies of
war
Robert Fisk of The Independent, one of the
hardest critics of NATO's bombing policy discusses the
failure of Yugoslavia's media strategy. (The Independent)
Militarism versus
development
• But
they do have money for nuclear weapons, arms races and
war...
India's
malnutrition crisis
The World Bank report "Wasting Away - The Crisis of
Malnutrition in India" blames poverty and low status of
women for some of its most shocking statistics - half of
all India's children under four are malnourished, it
says, and 60% of women are anemic.
WIRE Editor
Jan Oberg with TFF
Associates
