Kofi Anna's UN Day message

This is from a
Kofi Annan speech at UN day concert

Happy United Nations Day, everyone! What better way to celebrate this day than through the universal language of music?

First of all, let me say a special welcome to the Kuwaiti National Orchestra and the Kuwait Television Band. I am grateful that they are here to share with us Kuwait’s musical heritage.

Learning about, and from, one another’s cultures is fundamental to the work and ideals of the United Nations.

That has never been truer than it is today. Never has there been a more important time to celebrate our diversity as well as our common humanity. Never has it been more crucial to heal divisions and promote greater understanding among the peoples of the world.

Fifty-nine years ago, the United Nations was founded as an instrument of peace, human rights and development. The world is a better place because of the United Nations. But too many people today are still victims of violence and oppression, poverty and hunger, illiteracy and disease.

We can and must do better. All people deserve to live free from fear and want. They must have hope that tomorrow will be better than today.

And we all need an effective United Nations -- one that reflects the world we live in today, and can meet the challenges we will face tomorrow.

I believe we can build a better United Nations. That’s why I have appointed a High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, which will very soon give me its report.

And that is why, only next year, I will be proposing measures to renew the Organization. I hope world leaders will respond with vision, courage and goodwill when they meet here next September -- five years after they adopted the Millennium Declaration.

Friends, on this United Nations Day, let us unite in the hope that we may make this indispensable instrument as effective as it can be, in the interests of the people it exists to serve.

I thank you all for your commitment, and wish you a splendid evening. Thank you very much.

Arun Gandhi on nonviolence in the current political age

Arun Gandhi, in a foreword to a book written by another author last year, on nonviolence in the current political age:

Arun Gandhi
As I write this foreword the people in the United States of America are awaiting President Bush's statement announcing the conclusion of the battle with Iraq but not the war. It may be that the war will never end and that once more the United States will realize that violence is not always the best way to resolve conflicts. The result of this action and the lessons to be learned may take many months to realize.

For the present, there is a sense of jubilation among those who supported the war because Saddam Hussein, seen as the personification of evil, has finally been eliminated and we are told the world is now a safer place to live in. What is remarkable is the depth to which humanity allows itself to be exploited generation after generation. The one logical question that we need to ask and answer honestly is one that we keep pushing under the rug. The question is: which of the two is a greater threat to humanity - Saddam Hussein or the culture of violence?

We are told, and we accept this explanation meekly, that the Saddams and the Hitlers of the world are born evil and when they are eliminated the world becomes safer. In societies all over the world we have adopted the same system to deal with criminals. Lock them up or eliminate them and crime will be reduced. For generations we have been doing that but see very little impact on crime anywhere. Why is it that we blindly accept a system of dealing with conflicts that we know does not work and when it does it is just temporary? Is it because we do not want to accept the reality that true civilization of society means a radical transformation in our thinking, our behavior and our attitudes? The world successfully eliminated Hitler but was not able to eliminate the hate and prejudices that he represented. Now the world has successfully eliminated Saddam Hussein but the inhumanity that he represented will live on because we have attacked the symptom and not the malady.

The alternative to the culture of violence is, obviously, the culture of nonviolence but before we baulk at the idea let us try to understand what "nonviolence" means. A few weeks ago an American publisher sent me an out-of-print copy of "Mahatma Gandhi's Ideas" by the Rev. C. F. Andrews, which, like Prof. Ranada's book, is one that must be read widely for a better understanding of ahimsa or nonviolence.

There is a long and poignant letter by Count Leo Tolstoy, the Russian philosopher, to my grandfather, Mohandas K. Gandhi, in which Tolstoy confesses the urgent need to spread the wisdom of "passive resistance" to save the world from certain disaster. Tolstoy laments that he is on his deathbed and expressed the hope that Gandhiji who was then embarking on a vibrant political life would still be able to make the world understand and accept ahimsa or nonviolence. To both Gandhiji and Tolstoy ahimsa represented "nothing else than the teaching of love uncorrupted by false interpretations." They had both concluded that the "Philosophy of Nonviolence" is, quite simply, the "Philosophy of Love."

It is only through love that we can bring about a "union of human souls" and create a climate and relationships between people where conflict would be reduced, if not eliminated altogether. I know, some of you will ask: How can anyone love people like Hitler and Saddam? We should not love what they do but we must respect them as human beings. Therefore, we ought not to attack the human being but analyze and resolve the issues that make people do bad things so that others are not forced into similar actions.

In the letter under review Tolstoy's arguments echo what Gandhiji also has said that we humans have abandoned the Law of Love because it evokes in us the positive feelings and attitudes of compassion, respect, understanding and commitment. Such positiveness in a materialistic society in anathema. The only way we can protect our greedy acquisitions is by the "Law of Force." It is this pervasive attitude that compels us to build weapons of mass destruction and create power-crazy despots dreaming of dominating the world.

Tolstoy argues it is because we need to justify the all-pervasive Culture of Violence that we deliberately corrupted the Divine Law of Love and replaced it with the Law of Force. This corruption of the Divine Law has taken place in every Faith tradition and, therefore, we find it necessary to discuss and debate theories of "Just Wars" and "necessary violence" so that we can justify the pursuit of a life style that by no stretch of anyone's imagination can be regarded as civilized.

Tolstoy goes on to say: "…as soon as violence is permitted, in which ever case it may be, the insufficiency of the law of love is acknowledged, and by this the very law of love is denied."
If there is Truth in what Gandhiji and Tolstoy said then humanity is at the crossroads - to turn right would mean accepting the Law of Love and proceeding to work towards creating a compassionate and committed world or we could choose to continue the leftward course and consolidate the Culture of Violence and the brutal life-style that never ceases to amaze us.

Iran and Bush

Find out why Iran supports four more years of Bush.

The president got an unusual endorsement Tuesday; Hasan Rowhani, the head of Iran's security council, told local media that Tehran's best interest is served by the re-election of George W. Bush. Does it seem strange that a member of the "axis of evil" would support our current administration? Not if you understand the circumstances surrounding our attack on Iraq.

When future historians write about this war, I suspect they will sum it up like this: In the year 2003, neoconservatives within the Bush Administration were duped by an Iranian double agent into attacking Iraq and removing Saddam Hussein in order to pave the way for a pro-Iran, Shia-controlled Iraq. It was one of the greatest acts of espionage ever perpetrated against the superpower.

Who is this Iranian double agent? His name is Ahmed Chalabi, the founder of the anti-Saddam Iraqi National Congress (INC). The CIA now knows that the INC was either a front for, or had deep links to, Iranian intelligence and that Chalabi was passing U.S. secrets to Tehran. How was Chalabi getting ahold of our secrets? The neocons in the Bush Administration were giving our secrets to him!

Who were these neocons? Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Dick Cheney, to name a few. Their plans for the invasion of Iraq did not begin after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks or even when they took office in 2001. It began in 1997 when they founded the nonprofit organization Project for the New American Century.

The neocons laid out their vision for "American global leadership" (i.e. world domination) in their Statement of Principles on June 3, 1997. They wrote: "It is important to shape circumstances before crises emerge" (i.e. military preemption); to "promote freedom abroad" (i.e. occupy totalitarian regimes); and to institute the "Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity" (i.e. kill Muslims).

In January 1998, members of the Project wrote to President Clinton, urging him to "remove Saddam Hussein's regime from power." They argued that he was responsible for a destabilized Middle East that was putting American troops, Israel, moderate Arab states and oil in jeopardy.
Clinton rejected their argument, choosing a policy of containment over regime change.

Containment was effective in keeping WMDs away from Saddam, but sanctions were helping to keep him in power by weakening resistance movements. This angered the neocons. Once they realized that the Project couldn't be achieved with Clinton in power, plans were set in motion to steal the 2000 election.

Or so I suspect. There is no smoking-gun proof of this, but if you look at that list of Project signatures back in 1997, you will find Jeb Bush's name right next to Dick Cheney. Could it only be a coincidence that the voter fraud, which ultimately won Bush (and more importantly Cheney) the White House and ensured the implementation of the Project, occurred in the state headed by Jeb Bush, a signatory to the project? Maybe. But I doubt it.

Even before the neocons hijacked America, Ahmed Chalabi was their handpicked, pro-U.S. puppet leader primed to assume power through "democratic" elections after Iraq's liberation. Chalabi was the primary, if only, source for the administration's false claims that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction and connections to al Qaeda. He was feeding the administration (and The New York Times, it turns out) the disinformation they wanted to hear. Bush, the neocons and the media took Chalabi's chum like a bunch of chumps, ignoring our own intelligence officers who were suspicious of Chalabi and his claims from the very beginning.

Chalabi's lies became the uncontested truth after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The United Kingdom's The Guardian newspaper reports that an Iranian spy (not Chalabi) warned the United States of the impending attacks but was not believed. If true, that means Iran knew about the attacks and, perhaps, even helped to plan and/or finance them. The 9-11 Commission confirmed that Iran has had connections to al Qaeda since 1991.

Iran might have foreseen that the attacks would provide a catalyst for the invasion of Iraq. And now Iran has exactly what they wanted: Saddam is gone and Iraq is up for grabs. If you are afraid Bush will send us to war against Iran, I've got news for you: We already are. The majority Shia population of Iraq is attacking our troops everyday. They are being supported by Iran -- which is 90 percent Shia -- because Tehran wants an ally in the Middle East to help them spread their version of fundamentalist Islam and increase international terrorism.

To summarize: Bush's foreign policy decisions were actually being controlled by Iran through Chalabi. Bush allowed an Iranian spy to access high-level U.S. secrets that more than likely ended up in the possession of al Qaeda terrorists. Hundreds of our troops died doing Iran's dirty work, and now they are killing more Americans everyday without consequence in a power struggle over Iraq.

Is there any wonder why Iran supports the re-election of George W. Bush?

Uganda

Let's be mindful of the "most meglected humanitarian crisis in the world," according to the BBC.

The Ugandan crisis rivals that in Darfur, SudanNorthern Uganda is suffering the most neglected humanitarian crisis in the world with 20,000 children caught up in a war, the United Nations has warned.
The UN's head of humanitarian affairs, Jan Egeland, urged countries to do more to end what he called a "litany of horrors" stretching back 18 years.
The conflict has displaced about 1.6 million people, said Mr Egeland.
However, Uganda's ambassador to the UN said his country was winning the war, adding: "We don't need the UN."
Frances Butagira said many commanders of the rebel militia known as the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), which has been fighting government forces in the area since 1986, had been captured or killed.
EIGHTEEN YEARS OF HORROR
100,000 deaths
20,000 children abducted and used as fighters or sex slaves
1.6m people displaced
40,000 "night commuters" - people who flee their homes by night to avoid raids
Sources: Jan Egeland, news agencies
Uganda's invisible war
"We shall win the war and soon," he told BBC News.
He added: "We don't need peacekeepers. We just want assistance as we wind up the [rebel] camps."
Mr Egeland was briefing the UN Security Council on the Uganda conflict.
He said that peace in neighbouring Sudan might have a positive effect.
"There is a peace process in Sudan which can have a positive spill over because the war in Sudan had a negative spill over earlier on the conflict in northern Uganda," Mr Egeland told reporters after the briefing.
Driven from homes
The LRA has been replenishing its ranks with abducted children and the International Criminal Court is investigating alleged war crimes committed by the rebels, thought to have used bases in Sudan.

Thousands leave their homes at night to escape rebel raids
Their leader, Joseph Kony, says he is fighting for the rights of local people but observers say he has won little support in a war which has seen mass abduction and rape.
Mr Egeland took heart at the fact that the Security Council had "devoted so much time" to the crisis when he addressed it at a closed hearing on Thursday.
However, the UN's emergency relief coordinator stressed that world governments had to pay greater attention, provide more aid and put more pressure on the parties to end the conflict.
Some 80% of LRA fighters are children and about 90% of the local population have been driven from their homes, he said.
"We hope that... we are now seeing a beginning of an end to this endless litany of horrors where children are the fighters and the victims in northern Uganda," Mr Egeland said.
But Mr Butagira said the timing of Mr Egeland's words was unhelpful given the government successes in the war.
Peace efforts
On Thursday, President Yoweri Museveni described the rebels as a crushed force.
But the attacks on innocent civilians have not ended and each night, tens of thousands of children walk long distances into urban centres to sleep the night to avoid abduction by the LRA.
The BBC's Will Ross in Kampala says that most people living in northern Uganda call for a peaceful resolution to the conflict, partly because the military option has failed before.
But they also want their abducted sons and daughters back home alive, whatever crimes they have been forced to commit.
Attempts to hold peace talks have been made before but with so little trust between the two sides, they have broken down.
Our reporter says that with the LRA under military pressure, now is perhaps the best time to try and talk the rebels out of the bush.
But despite Mr Egeland's call, for now the government seems determined to fight on.