Category: Ethics

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Paul van Tongeren: Infrastructures for Peace New Network and Website

Advanced Cyber/IO, Ethics, Non-Governmental
Paul van Tongeren
Paul van Tongeren

Dear friends,

It is with great pleasure that I can introduce you to the International Civil Society Network on Infrastructures for Peace (I4P).   The network and website are launched today: www.I4Pinternational.org

Many countries lack capacities and structures to deal adequately with on-going and potential violent conflict. This has emerged as a central obstacle to the attainment of equitable and sustainable development. In recent years, the number of conflicts has been increasing once again. We need comprehensive, inclusive and long-term approaches to peacebuilding, which involves the main stakeholders. Infrastructures for Peace and Local Peace Committees can be important pillars to counter these dangerous developments or substantially reduce their impact.

These months, several interesting articles on I4P are released: in the new Peacebuilding Journal, the Berghof-Handbook Dialogue Series on Peace Infrastructures, in Pensamiento Propio and soon a whole issue on this topic of the Journal of Peacebuilding and Development. Our website will tell you how to find the articles on I4P.

Several local peacebuilding NGOs and practitioners felt the need to exchange experiences and best practices about this approach and make I4P more recognised:the network was born and counts now some seventy members. We have established an Interim Steering Committee with members from three continents.

I invite you to see our website and join our network if you are interested.

Best regards.
Paul van Tongeren

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Paul Craig Roberts: Huge Chavez – Challenging Imperialism

Ethics
Paul Craig Roberts
Paul Craig Roberts

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. His latest book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is now available.

Hugo Chavez — Challenging Imperialism

On March 5, 2013, Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela and world leader against imperialism, died. Washington imperialists and their media and think tank whores expressed gleeful sighs of relief as did the brainwashed US population. An “enemy of America” was gone.

Chavez was not an enemy of America. He was an enemy of Washington’s hegemony over other countries, an enemy of Washington’s alliance with elite ruling cliques who steal from the people they grind down and deny sustenance. He was an enemy of Washington’s injustice, of Washington’s foreign policy based on lies and military aggression, bombs and invasions.

Washington is not America. Washington is Satan’s home town.

Chavez was a friend of truth and justice, and this made him unpopular throughout the Western World where every political leader regards truth and justice as dire threats.

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Eagle: Italy Showcases Movement Getting 25% of the Vote — Pirate Party USA or a Reform Coalition — Could Break the Back of the Two-Party Tyranny

Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics
300 Million Talons...
300 Million Talons…

Maybe Italy’s Politicians Aren’t Crazier Than Ours

The New Yorker, March 5, 2013

The results of the last Italian election are baffling, if not incomprehensible, to most foreign observers: as one American friend put it, a majority of Italians voted either for a comedian (Beppe Grillo) or a clown (Silvio Berlusconi). A center-left coalition won a narrow plurality in the lower house of parliament with about 29.6 per cent of the vote, barely edging Berlusconi’s center-right coalition, with Grillo’s Five Star Movement, a loose collection of citizens organizing over the Internet, gaining an astonishing 25.6 per cent, more than any single party. In all likelihood, the three-sided split spells an ungovernable chaos. It would be a mistake, though, to see Italy as a crazy farce that is entirely different from America. Our two-party system has limited the success of more radical parties, but the Italian experience illuminates phenomena that are at work in the United States, too. Are we really sure that Congress is a saner institution than the Italian parliament?

Read full article.

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Greg Palast: Free Download of the Movie – Otto Reich & Neo-Cons Plan Venezuela’s Next Election

07 Venezuela, Corruption, Ethics, Government, Military
Greg Palast
Greg Palast

Vaya con Dios, Hugo Chàvez, mi Amigo

By Greg Palas – www.gregpalast.com

Tuesday, March 5, 2013 For BBC Television, Palast met several times with Hugo Chàvez, who passed away today.

As a purgative for the crappola fed to Americans about Chavez, my foundation, The Palast Investigative Fund, is offering the film, The Assassination of Hugo Chavez, as a FREE download. Based on my several meetings with Chavez, his kidnappers and his would-be assassins, filmed for BBC Television.  DVDs also available.

Media may contact Palast at interviews (at) gregpalast.com.

Venezuelan President Chavez once asked me why the US elite wanted to kill him. My dear Hugo: It’s the oil. And it’s the Koch Brothers – and it’s the ketchup.

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NIGHTWATCH: China-India-Russia Confer on Afghanistan

02 China, 03 India, 06 Russia, 08 Wild Cards, Ethics, Government, IO Deeds of Peace, Peace Intelligence

China-India: Chinese media reported that India and China have agreed to start a dialogue on Afghanistan. An “in-principle” agreement on official-level dialogue has been reached and dates for the first meeting are being worked out.

Earlier this week, Indian National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon travelled to Moscow for the first three-way dialogue between India, Russia and China on Afghanistan in an effort to build on common security concerns. At present, India has an institutionalized dialogue on Afghanistan only with the US.

Comment: The news commentary noted that China first offered India a wider dialogue on South Asia in general. India declined to hold talks about what it considers its sphere of influence with its primary competitor.

Afghanistan is different because India and China share an interest in preventing the return of the Taliban or another extremist Islamist regime. India was a primary backer of the Northern Alliance tribes that fought the Pashtun Taliban before the US intervention in late 2001.

As for China, Mullah Omar's Taliban regime allowed terrorism training for Uighur Islamic separatists from Xinjiang, China, and rejected Chinese inducements to terminate it. China is Pakistan's most important ally, but Pakistan also did nothing to stop the Uighur training by the very Taliban regime that Pakistan supported.

NIGHTWATCH KGS Home

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Berto Jongman: Duke Conference on Law, Ethics, & National Security — Multiple Short Videos of Key Speakers

Ethics
Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

Duke University Law School’s Law, Ethics, and National Security (LENS) Conference

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Tuesday, March 5, 2013 at 4:52 PM

Duke Law School held its annual LENS conference over the weekend. Its theme this year was “Battlefields, Boardrooms, and Backyards: The New Face of National Security Law.” Here is the conference program, and below are the videos of the various speakers and sessions:

List of videos (click on link above to select and view indivbidually):

A Conversation with Brig. Gen. Mark Martins

Hon. Charles Blanchard, “Contemporary Ethical Issues of National Security Law”

Prof. Michael N. Schmitt, “The Law of Cyberwar: The Tallinn Manual”

MG Robert Scales, “Leadership and Civil-Military Relations: The Contemporary Challenges”

Panel: “The Business of Battle: Law, National Security, and the Global Marketplace”

Panel: “Building the Terminator? Law and Policy for Autonomous Weapons’ Systems”

Panel: “Technology, Privacy and Security”

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Berto Jongman: Peace on Earth? The Future of Armed Conflict

Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Ethics, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence
Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

Peace on Earth? The future of internal armed conflict

Warfare seems endemic to mankind. Nations around the world are driven by conflict. But is the impetus to war decreasing? Håvard Hegre finds statistical grounds for hope.

In my view, perhaps the most evident shortcoming is that our predictions ignore the importance of political systems – the institutions that regulate how leaders are recruited and how they make decisions. We leave this out since we have no credible forecasts for changes to political systems over the next 40 years, but it is evident that many internal armed conflicts are fought over the nature of the political system, in particular in non-democratic middle-income countries.

Read full article (PDF 5 Pages)

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