News stories by Johan Galtung, page 3

ALFAZ, Spain, Jun 18 (IPS) - The United States and Colombia are the leaders in mental anxiety in the Americas.

Both have good reasons: Colombia has witnessed the longest lasting violence in any contemporary country: from 1949, with some interruptions, then on again from 1964 with the notorious guerilla group, the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia).

KYOTO, Apr 15 (IPS) - It has not been this bad since the 1950-53 Korean War.

October 1962, the Cuba-USSR-U.S. crisis, comes to mind. There were horror visions of mushroom clouds. A proud Cuba, with a strong leader-dictatorship, a social revolution in the near past, was denied a normal place in the state system, bullied by the U.S. and some allies with sanctions and boycotts into isolation, which has lasted more than 50 years.

ALFAZ, Spain, Mar 08 (IPS) - That his life and his deeds had black dots is part of the story but should not prevent us from seeing the greatness of a maker of history. First, in his own country, Venezuela, Hugo Chávez lifted those at the bottom up from misery, into economic wellness, political participation, cultural pride (in their often African, or Indian, blood), social dignity – going far beyond Gini coefficients to measure increasing equality.

LIVERPOOL, Feb 20 (IPS) - ­That Liverpool was once the uncontested centre of the world slave trade, accounting for 40 percent, is well documented in the International Slavery Museum in the port where slave ships.

LIVERPOOL, Feb 04 (IPS) - The Middle East-North Africa – MENA -- is Arab-Muslim with a growing Jewish island in its midst. It was colonised for over four centuries by the Sunni Ottoman Turks and for the last half century by the secular West, England-Italy-France -- and is now under Jewish colonialism and U.S. imperialism.

OSLO, Jan 02 (IPS) - A Third World War is not impossible, but fortunately is rather unlikely. Let us explore why, and what can be done to prevent it.

WASHINGTON, Dic 04 (IPS) - On Nov. 29, 138 member states of the United Nations General Assembly voted in favour of giving Palestine "non-member observer state" status. Only nine voted no, 41 abstained. Beyond Middle East politics, the vote also mirrors the limits of the U.S. global, and the Israeli regional, empires: 138 defy their grip and favour change, 41+9=50 do not for various reasons. Who wants what?

WASHINGTON, Nov 12 (IPS) - The media did their best to make the U.S. presidential election look important, the altar on which democracy is built. But there has been a problem ever since the Supreme Court legalised unlimited campaign spending (six billion dollars this year), thereby authorising one more freedom of expression, called "commercial speech" even though much of this speech is libellous, often neither true nor relevant.

It is in our own interest to understand the causes of violence so we can prevent it in the future, writes Johan Galtung, professor of Peace Studies and rector of the TRANSCEND Peace University.

In this analysis, the author writes that critiques of Israel's disastrous current foreign policy, which advocates an attack on Iran that would plunge the whole region into a mutually destructive war, have been labelled "anti-Semitism". But who is a better friend to a person walking blindfolded towards an abyss: the one who says, "Go right ahead" or the one who says, "Stop, turn around, you are in grave danger!"