Category: OPINION

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – The most peaceful countries in the world are Iceland, Portugal, Austria, New Zealand and Denmark, according to the new Global Peace Index, in a new 136-page report, published by the Institute for Economics and Peace in Sydney, Australia. The most violent are Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and South Sudan.

Seen from a spaceship the most violent ones appear more or less clustered in a corner of the earth. It’s not that the rest of the globe is at peace but even where there is fighting there is not the wholesale destruction of cities that we see every day on TV, as, for example, when the cameras follow the multi-sided civil war in Syria. Indeed, violence away from these five countries is localised. Nowhere else does it consume whole societies. The fickle eye of television needs to show more peace and less conflict if it is to project a balanced picture.

Viewpoint by the Venerable Dr Omalpe Sobhitha Mahathera*

This article is the 16th in a series of joint productions of Lotus News Features and IDN-InDepthNews, flagship of the International Press Syndicate.

ENBILIPITIYA, Sri Lanka (IDN) – There will be many answers to the question: which is the country where the happiest people live? In response many famous, developed nations will come to mind, but you will be surprised that the name of a little-known country could be the right answer to this question. It is Bhutan, the wonderful and amazing country that beats all others on the happiness index.

Bhutan has been so identified following a worldwide survey on Gross National Happiness (GNH) – not Gross National Product (GDP). Its capital is Thimpu, which reminds us of the peace talks held there between the Sri Lanka Government and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) separatists in 1985.

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – China, since the days in 1793 and the mission of Earl Macartney, emissary of King George 11, has kept its distance from the West, preferring to be “as self-contained as a billiard ball”, to quote the great historian Alain Peyrefitte.

It was Peyrefitte who argued in “The Collision of Civilizations” that Macartney’s decision not to kowtow to the emperor gave the Chinese the impression that their civilization was denied. They withdrew into their bunker and have remained for the last two centuries prickly, ultra-sensitive, quick to take offence and too ready to assume the worst of West’s motives.

Viewpoinrt by Esad Duraković

Professor Esad Duraković is a well-known academic and a member of three Arab Academies of Art and Science.

SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina (IDN) – In late June 2017, four Arab countries (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain) adopted a decision to isolate the “brotherly” Qatar for several reasons, the main being “Qatar’s support for terrorism”.

In the subsequent ultimatum, they demanded of Qatar to close down Al-Jazeera, which, without doubt, embodies the greatest value of the Arab world in general today, and as such poses a threat to totalitarian regimes that want to rule in media darkness.

Viewpoint by Sugeeswara Senadhira*

COLOMBO (IDN-INPS) – While there is much written about China’s jittery relations with many of its neighbours these days, there is hardly anything written about equally jittery relations between India and its smaller neighbours in South Asia.

The scorching summer of 1987 saw the relations between Sri Lanka and India plummeting to a lowest ever ebb. New Delhi’s decision to airdrop supplies over Jaffna had opened up a diplomatic Pandora’s Box. New Delhi tried to justify this blatant violation of Sri Lanka’s sovereignty as an act of humanitarian necessity. But the world knew it as a hegemonic political action entangled directly in the ethnic crisis in Sri Lanka.

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

MOSCOW (IDN-INPS) – Here I am in Moscow standing in front of a statue of Presidents Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev to celebrate the unveiling of a statue crafted by the master sculptor, Alexander Bourganov.

I’m the only journalist invited to speak – and after I go with the others to drink Russian champagne. I talk to a group of students and a younger member of the Russian media contingent. I’ve also invited along a journalism student I met late at night on an almost empty street when I stopped to ask the way. She insisted on walking me to my hotel. To my surprise she accepted my offer of a drink and we spent an hour talking about her course and the Russian press. At the airport in the Aeroflot lounge I talked to one of the hostesses. It turned out she was a journalism graduate. On the plane I sat next to a Russian student studying in America.

Analysis by Pier Francesco Zarcone*

ROME (IDN) – We know that international legality goes no further than pious aspirations, so all that counts is force and tactical-strategic capacity of its use.

The Syrian crisis

Well, the United States edged its way into Syria on its own account – that is, without the Damascus government having called on it – in order to achieve two interrelated goals.

First, to save the self-styled anti-Assad Syrian Democratic Forces which had suffered blows from both ISIS and the Syrian Arab Army – to the extent that it was necessary to link it up with the Kurdish militia of Syria to give a semblance of existence.

Second, to break the potential territorial continuity between Syria, Iraq and Iran – that is, the so-called “Shiite corridor”.

By Amina J. Mohammed, UN Deputy Secretary-General

Following are extensive excerpts from Amina J. Mohammed’s remarks on July 3 as prepared for delivery to the African Union Summit (June 27 to July 4) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, with Harnessing the Demographic Dividend through Investments in Youth as thematic focus. She was Minister of Environment of Nigeria from November 2015 to December 2016. Prior to this, she served as Special Adviser to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, where she was instrumental in bringing about the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, including the Sustainable Development Goals. – The Editor

ADDIS ABABA (IDN-INPS) – Our organizations are embarking on two extremely ambitious agendas – Agenda 2063 and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development – along with the Addis Ababa Action Agenda and the Paris Climate Agreement.

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – The United Nations is often scapegoated for the falling short of its peacekeeping troops and deployments. Why are they not in Syria or Yemen, Libya or along the Palestinian/Israeli border? Why did the U.S. and the UK make it impossible for the few UN troops present at the onset of the genocide in Rwanda to have their numbers significantly augmented? As a result those few on the ground had no choice but to withdraw when some of their members were killed and their genitals stuffed in their mouths.

All good questions if not easy to answer. In Syria, for example, where exactly would they be deployed? But a better question is why didn’t they go in at the beginning of the civil war when things weren’t so complicated and Al Qaeda and ISIS were not around?