Mortify

Just some thoughts on the war in the closing moments of 2009 -



Peace.

Iran's New Voice?

This is exactly why I make videos - a meaningful discourse even when a concrete consensus cannot be reached (at least initially).

These are comment excerpts from my YouTube channel (youtube.com/user/kazukiseirei)and the related vid:

Important Discourse in Comments Section (Please Read and Weigh-in):

rageunderground: I agree with Irans regime being tough on its people, but one has to question this green revolution agenda being pushed by mainly western media combined with Israels and the US stand on Irans civilian nuclear program, both countries have stated that if its nuclear program is not stopped by the end of this year, all options are on the table. and we all know what that means...

i smell propaganda playing the people to support another war in the name of freedom.

spinalfluidontap: So I'm not the only one. I should have known you would have caught this as well. It would be interesting to know just how many CIA and Moassad operatives are in STILL at work in Iran.

It all reaks of propaganda. "How can anyone in this day and age trust the MSM, and the psy-ops that are perpetrated by foreign nations.

rageunderground: another thing that smeels fishy about this, is the western medias interest in the Iran protests, Yes a few people got killed and dozens got arrested, but people died in the G20 in London, 100s of thousands protested at the capital, why is it that none of this gets on the main stream media? while Iran protests is almost feverish in reporting.

I support the Iranian people if they want a regime change, but i dont want it to be under the bombs of American fighters

kazukiseirei: There is no doubt that the media is manipulating this in that the Iranian people's interest coincide with that of their own (their own being the corporatists wishes). G20 fallout did not coincide with what they wanted and thus, was silenced, as unfortunate as that was.

Rage, your sentiments almost exactly match my own, I support the Iranians, should they want change, but "not under the bombs of American fighters." Exactly bro =D

Peace

spinalfluidontap: Speaking of media... Saw some protesters whom were getting beat up by the "Green side" as these protesters were in support of the government. But the reporter talking over this scene had it backwards. I fucking doubt that was accidental. Wasn't the Orange revolution strikingly similar? I think this will make a good topic for my psy-op discussion tomorrow.

northpal2: @rageunderground exactly!
Zbigniew Brzezinski
THE GRAND CHESSBOARD
The CIA/NGO color revolution is not meant to produce a regime change.
It's actually supposed to FAIL.
It's true purpose is to produce a synthesis,
in the old Hegelian tradition.
The Iranians are being played.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did win that election,
Ziggy laid this out in his book
THE GRAND CHESSBOARD.

kazukiseirei: I thought a lot about that too, actually I am in agreement with you. However, I still find myself thinking that a.) I am not too comfortable with our military basically "sandwiching" Iran and itching for a conflict (which would be disastrous based on conversations I've had with friends in China) - speculations of the "World War III" type. and b.) All geopolitics aside, we should be looking at this as something of a "model" to be followed. When you are upset with your government, when you feel that they are not serving your interests, than you should do something other than turn the TV on.

I agree, somethings fishy here, but my question would be to everyone, what are the alternatives?

Thank you as always for the comment Rage =D

Peace.

2010

A channel update of sorts...

Thank you all so very much, you all, are such an inspiration.

Peace.

Patriot Act Revisited - The Civil Liberties "Monster"

Obama Quietly Backs PATRIOT Act Provisions

by William Fisher, November 24, 2009

With the health care debate preoccupying the mainstream media, it has gone virtually unreported that the Barack Obama administration is quietly supporting renewal of provisions of the George W. Bush-era USA PATRIOT Act that civil libertarians say infringe on basic freedoms.

And it is reportedly doing so over the objections of some prominent Democrats.

When a panicky Congress passed the act 45 days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, three contentious parts of the law were scheduled to expire at the end of next month, and opponents of these sections have been pushing Congress to substitute new provisions with substantially strengthened civil liberties protections.

But with the apparent approval of the Obama White House and a number of Republicans – and over the objections of liberal Senate Democrats including Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Dick Durbin of Illinois – the Senate Judiciary Committee has voted to extend the three provisions with only minor changes.

Those provisions would leave unaltered the power of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to seize records and to eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mail in the course of counterterrorism investigations.

The parts of the act due to expire on Dec. 31 deal with:

National Security Letters (NSLs)

The FBI uses NSLs to compel Internet service providers, libraries, banks, and credit reporting companies to turn over sensitive information about their customers and patrons. Using this data, the government can compile vast dossiers about innocent people.

The "Material Support" Statute

This provision criminalizes providing "material support" to terrorists, defined as providing any tangible or intangible good, service, or advice to a terrorist or designated group. As amended by the PATRIOT Act and other laws since Sept. 11, this section criminalizes a wide array of activities, regardless of whether they actually or intentionally further terrorist goals or organizations.

FISA Amendments Act of 2008

This past summer, Congress passed a law that permits the government to conduct warrantless and suspicion-less dragnet collection of U.S. residents’ international telephone calls and e-mails.

Asked by IPS why committee chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont and other Democrats chose to make only minor changes, Chip Pitts, president of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, referred to "the secret and hypocritical lobbying by the Obama administration against reforms – while publicly stating receptiveness to them." White House pressure, he speculated, "was undoubtedly a huge if lamentable factor."

He added that some committee members were cautious because of the recent arrests of Najibullah Zazi and others.

Zazi , a citizen of Afghanistan and a legal U.S. resident, was arrested in September as part of a group accused of planning to carry out acts of terrorism against the U.S. Zazi is said by the FBI to have attended courses and received instruction on weapons and explosives at an al-Qaeda training camp in Pakistan.

Leahy acknowledged that, in light of these incidents, "This is no time to weaken or undermine the tools that law enforcement relies on to protect America."

Pitts told IPS, "Short-term and political considerations driven by dramatic events once again dramatically affected the need for a more sensible long-term, reasoned, rule-of-law approach."

"In the eight years since passage of the original PATRIOT Act, it’s become clear that the escalating political competition to appear tough on terror – and avoid being accused of being ’soft on terror’ – brings perceived electoral benefits with few costs, with vital but fragile civil liberties being easily sacrificed," he added.

In contrast to the Senate, the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee approved a version of the legislation containing several significant reforms. In a 16-10 party-line vote, the committee’s version curbs some of the government’s controversial surveillance powers.

The PATRIOT Act, passed by a landslide after the 9/11 terrorist attacks to provide law enforcement and intelligence agencies additional powers to thwart terrorist activities, was reauthorized in 2005.

The legislation has been criticized by many from across the ideological spectrum as a threat to civil liberties, privacy, and democratic traditions. Sections of the original act have been ruled unconstitutional, with certain provisions violating protected rights.

Judiciary Chair John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, said the goal of the new legislation was to "craft a law that preserves both our national security and our national values."

The proposed new legislation would permit the so-called "lone wolf" provision to sunset. This authority removed the requirement that an individual needed to be an agent of a foreign power to be placed under surveillance by intelligence officials and permitted surveillance of individuals with a much lower evidentiary threshold than allowed under criminal surveillance procedures.

It was intended to allow the surveillance of individuals believed to be doing the bidding of foreign governments or terrorist organizations, even when the evidence of that connection was lacking.

The Justice Department maintains that the "lone wolf" authority is necessary, even though there is no evidence that it has been used. Its opponents believe that existing authorities are sufficient to achieve the goals of the lone wolf provision while more effectively protecting the rights of innocent citizens.

The proposed new House legislation would also restrict the use of national security letters. According to a Congressional Research Service report, "National security letters (NSL) are roughly comparable to administrative subpoenas. Intelligence agencies issue them for intelligence gathering purposes to telephone companies, Internet service providers, consumer credit reporting agencies, banks, and other financial institutions, directing the recipients to turn over certain customer records and similar information."

Under current law, intelligence agencies have few restrictions on the use of NSLs, and in numerous cases, have abused the authority. An FBI inspector general report in 2007 "found that the FBI used NSLs in violation of applicable NSL statutes, Attorney General Guidelines, and internal FBI policies." The reform provisions seek to create greater judicial scrutiny of NSL use.

The bill approved in the Senate contains much more modest reforms. It would retain the lone wolf provision, and is, in general, much more in line with the wishes of the administration. Should both bills pass and go into conference to be reconciled, it is unclear which approach would prevail.

House and Senate versions still need to be voted on by each body separately and then reconciled into a single bill to send to the president for signature.

Pitts told IPS, "President Obama’s flip-flop on PATRIOT Act issues does as much damage as did his flip-flop on the FISA Amendments Act and telecom immunity last year. But it’s imperative that we fight, while we still can, to comprehensively reinsert requirements for fact-based, individualized suspicion, checks and balances, and meaningful judicial review prior to government intrusions."

In a report on the PATRIOT Act, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said, "More than seven years after its implementation there is little evidence that the PATRIOT Act has been effective in making America more secure from terrorists. However, there are many unfortunate examples that the government abused these authorities in ways that both violate the rights of innocent people and squander precious security resources."

(Inter Press Service)

http://original.antiwar.com/fisher/2009/11/23/obama-quietly-backs-patriot-act-provisions/

House Delays Patriot Act Spy Vote

By David Kravets, December 16, 2009

The House of Representatives tabled on Wednesday legislation to reform U.S. surveillance law. The two-month delay puts off a collision with a competing Senate version.

The move automatically extends provisions of the Patriot Act that would otherwise expire at year’s end. The Senate is likewise expected to delay the matter.

The act, hastily adopted six weeks after the 2001 terror attacks, greatly expanded the government’s ability to spy on Americans in the name of national security.

A key difference between the House and Senate packages concerns the standard by which the FBI may issue so-called National Security Letters — although Wednesday’s vote prolongs the time for more backroom negotiations. Reforming NSL powers is a key bone of contention in the Patriot Act debate, even though it is not one of the three Patriot Act provisions that was scheduled to expire Dec. 31.

NSLs allow the FBI, without a court order, to obtain telecommunication, financial and credit records relevant to a government investigation. The FBI issues about 50,000 NSLs annually, and an internal watchdog has found repeated abuses of the NSL powers.

A House version permits NSLs in cases concerning terrorism or spy activities of an agent of a foreign power. If it became law, such a plan would vastly reduce whom the government could target. The Senate version generally would leave NSLs under the status quo.

Under Wednesday’s action, the NSL-reform vote is also delayed until the New Year. And the three expiring provisions will remain in force at least through February. The extension came as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) balked at a Senate plan to include Patriot Act amendments into a $636 billion Pentagon funding measure, saying doing so would create “revolt on the left.”

One of the Patriot Act provisions that was set to expire concerns the FBI obtaining wiretaps from a secret court — known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court or FISA court — without having to identify the target or what method of communication is to be tapped.

Another provision in question is the so-called “lone wolf” measure that allows FISA court warrants for the electronic monitoring of a person for whatever reason — even without showing that the suspect is an agent of a foreign power or a terrorist. The government has said it has never invoked that provision, but that it wants to retain the authority to do so.

The third and final provision concerns one of the more controversial provisions of the Patriot Act — Section 215. The section allows the secret FISA court to authorize broad warrants for most any type of record, including those held by banks, libraries and doctors without requiring the government to show a connection between the items sought under a Section 215 warrant and a suspected terrorist or spy.

A Senate version and a House version require such a connection when it comes to library records.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/12/spy-vote-delayed/all/1



Peace

"Sinking Ship"

Watch...

And then discuss...

sinking ship (new animated version) - http://www.youtube.com/user/bbbleaver



I agree, if we spend to much time and attention on the "smaller" (and I hate to call them "smaller") issues, where in does the larger issue blur itself. I watched this vid and it reminded me of the whole "ClimateGate" issue - since the notion of global warming is now potentially tainted (I say "potential" because I continue to investigate the ordeal), it would seem that the blanket of "taint" is spreading to a great many other, and much more verifiable, environmental concerns. Anthropogenic environmental degradation and change is occurring, no doubt.

Further, I would state that conflicts in terms of goals, desires, and sovereign entities can sometimes breed prosperity and advance. There is nothing wrong with a conflict of interest, it's how we pursue a solution to the said conflict wherein I sometimes have an issue i.e. a war (negative pursuit) as opposed to faithful negotiation (positive pursuit). Differences are what create a colorful picture, all I plead is the avoidance of the reddest of reds...bloodshed.

Do I cast in entirely with the message this video attempts to transmit..."no." Do I agree the general overtone of - "lets not forget that we all have problems and that these problems are all part of a larger web and that ultimately this web is rooted in how we can sustain ourselves and more importantly the world."

Spread the word!

Start the discussion!

Peace.

Who Turned Off The Rights For The Residents Of Crow Creek?

Los Angeles, CA (Issues Wire / PRWEB) December 9, 2009 -- Award-winning disaster relief agency CAN-DO, as highlighted on Oprah’s Big Give, proudly announces the launch of their Ride for Lights Campaign to raise awareness and the funds needed to put an end to the abuses and human rights violations taking place today on the Crow Creek Reservation.

Right now people are forced to live without power in sub-zero temperatures on the Crow Creek Reservation. This is a situation CAN-DO has continued to bring to light for more than two years and for 13 days this December, Eric Klein, Founder of CAN-DO, will participate in the "Mankato Ride" to honor those 38 who were killed on December 26, 1862 in Mankato, MN.

From December 13th-26th, Klein will ride alongside others to raise awareness and establish a fund for those devastated by overly inflated electricity bills in our Nation's poorest county. CAN-DO is putting out a urgent call to action to gain pledges for every mile Klein rides to help restore the rights - and lights - for the people of Crow Creek.

Klein will ride 330 miles in sub-zero temperatures while broadcasting LIVE on VirtualVolunteer.tv.

“Our Ride for Lights", is more than a fundraising campaign, it is a critical call to action to our nation and our nation’s leaders to put an immediate end to this cultural genocide that continues on our American soil,” said Eric Klein. “These abuses must stop and we must unite to build a better future for these communities that are at the heart of our American heritage. With annual incomes averaging less than $5,000 per household, this community knows suffering far beyond what most of us can image – that paired with having their power illegitimately shut off in sub-zero temperatures. We must address these unfathomable abuses.”

These abuses today mirror those that occurred on December 26, 1862 when 38 Dakota men were marched in single file to a scaffold guarded by 1,400 troops. The pull of a single lever ended the lives of 38 Dakota men, while a crowd of citizens witnessed the largest mass execution in the history of United States. In addition to the mass execution, 265 Dakota men were sent to Prison near Davenport Iowa while 1,300 Dakota men, women, and children were exiled to a concentration camp known today as The Crow Creek Reservation in South Dakota.

CAN-DO has continued to with the Crow Creek community to meet their immediate survival needs while promoting long-term sustainability, improved quality of life, and community revitalization through comprehensive, community-led solutions. Together, Brandon Sazue, Crow Creek Tribal Chairman, Peter Lengkeek and the Crow Creek Reservation in coordination with CAN-DO are working tirelessly to help bring the ongoing abuses to light and together have developed their Five Point Revitalization Plan focused on sustainable solutions to promote energy independence, economic development, and most importantly, cultural preservation.

CAN-DO’s Five Point Revitalization Plan was recently distributed at the White House Tribal Conference hosted by President Barack Obama. At the week long conference, Klein and Lengkeek presented the Crow Creek Revitalization Plan to more than 37 government leaders including members of the Senate, House of Representatives, and others.

In addition to these abuses brought to light by CAN-DO, just this week the Associated Press’ highlighted yet another blow the residents of Crow Creek. This past week, “The Internal Revenue Service on Thursday auctioned off a large swath of land owned by an impoverished Indian tribe to help pay off more than $3 million in back taxes, penalties and interest - a sale the tribe says is illegal under federal laws protecting Indian land. The 7,100 acres, or 11 square miles, of Crow Creek Sioux tribal land in central South Dakota sold for almost $2.6 million, less than the $4.6 million it was appraised at, said IRS spokeswoman Carrie Resch…The tribe filed a lawsuit Monday in U.S. District court in Pierre seeking to block the sale. Judge Roberto A. Lange declined their request but promised to schedule a trial to hear the tribe's arguments.”

Appalled by such continued abuse and neglect, US Marine and Crow Creek resident Peter Lengkeek has continued to take action to publicize this exploitation. Two years ago, using a hand-held video recorder, Lengkeek documented Central Electric physically cutting electricity lines and removing meters in the peak of winter and joined forces with CAN-DO.

“In the past, there have been people who have come to here to help, but have had ulterior motives, and nothing ever came of it,” said Peter Lengkeek. “CAN-DO is coming here and working beside us. They have given us a voice we've never had before. What I can see in the future is a beautiful community where people have their pride, respect and dignity…I can see self-reliance again. CAN-DO is providing hope in a place where there is no hope."

“Do not let these abuses continue on our own soil, take Peter’s lead and DO something,” stated Klein. “We can make a difference. We can make this right. Help put an end to these abuses. Make Human Rights a priority here at home.”

About CAN-DO:

Founded by Eric Klein, CAN-DO has set a new standard for humanitarian aid and is changing the face of philanthropy. CAN-DO's successful missions to bring immediate and direct relief to areas in need have captured the attention of renowned philanthropists including Oprah Winfrey and former president Bill Clinton. The organization was recently awarded the Global Compassion Award at the United Nations for its global impact, unparalleled transparency and accountability.

Video footage, photographs and the web site offer documentation of the organization's efforts at every phase. For further information, please visit www.can-do.org. To schedule media interviews or to get involved, please contact Alissa Sears of Christie Communications at 805-969-3744 or by email at alissa(at)christiecomm(dot)com.

Sign the online Petition:

http://www.petitiononline.com/CrowCrek/petition-sign.html

Live video from the horseback ride protest:

http://issueswire.com/releases/CAN-DO/CROWCREEK/prweb3310674.htm

More information on how you can help

http://twincities.indymedia.org/2009/dec/call-action-crow-creek-land-not-sale

Peace.

A Case Study of Blog Personality

Originally posted by Zeng Jinyan on MSN Spaces Blog.

Translation provided by EastWestSouthNorth (http://www.zonaeuropa.com/weblog.htm)

Zeng Jinyan (曾金燕) is the wife of dissident Hu Jia (胡佳). When her husband was detained, Zeng began to maintain a MSN Spaces blog. I find this blog to be interesting to read, not necessarily because of any strong emotional strength or sweeping intellectual arguments. Rather, Zeng Jinyan has the kind of Eastern European deadpan humor about the absurd situation that she finds herself in. Here is the translation of the entry of July 23, 2006.

(in translation) The Person Known as 'Knight Errant' Peng

Yesterday, I went with 'Knight Errant' Peng to check out the bookstores in the Xidan district. I was followed by two Volkswagens whose license plate numbers were Beijing GGR936 and Beijing AJ7753 respectively.

'Knight Errant' Peng wore the "Save Chen Guangcheng" t-shirt and strolled around the busiest commercial streets of Beijing in his slippers. Several people asked him: "Who is the man in the photo on your chest?" 'Knight Errant' Peng patiently explained just who Chen Guangcheng is.

Reportedly, 'Knight Errant' Peng has even given the t-shirts away to street side vendors and asked them to wear them everyday. They are allowed to change them once every three days and he will come and check every day. The vendors were quite happy to do so, because they save the money for buying summer clothes and they wore the t-shirts to play cards and chat in the tree shades. The only exception was the watermelon vendor who said: Since I sell watermelons, the white t-shirts get soiled very quickly. Everybody who heard that laughed heartily.

Several days ago, 'Knight Errant' Peng returned from Guilin to Beijing. Due to the floods, the railroad service was interrupted. When 'Knight Errant' Peng changed trains at Changsha, he was only able to purchase a hard-seat ticket. So he walked back and forth the train wearing his 'Save Chen Guangcheng' t-shirt and he hung around wherever he found university students. The young people asked: "Who is the person printed on the chest of your t-shirt?" So 'Knight Errant' Peng explained, and that was how the monotony of the train ride was broken.

Several years ago, 'Knight Errant' Peng was often detained by the National Security people or closely followed. But he has so many tricks that the National Security people no longer dare to follow or detain him.

One day, he was riding a bicycle on Chang'an Avenue and the National Security vehicle was tailing him. 'Knight Errant' Peng headed to the meridian and then suddenly reversed directions. The pursuers could do nothing because this was Chang'an Avenue where the traffic was separated by barricades. While a bicycle can go in the opposite direction on the pedestrian sidewalk, a sedan could not.

When he was taken to the police station for note-taking, if the police officer was "Zhang Shan", for example, he would say, "Zhang Shan is a dog." If "Zhang Shan" did not write down on the notebook that he was a dog, then Peng would refuse to sign his name on the notes.

If police forbade him to go out because they want to keep him under house arrest, he would take a chopper and implement his 'two-off' policy -- he was going to hack off those with two legs and knock off those with four legs. Have you ever seen the police being chased all over the street by a chopper-wielding "rioter" but could do nothing except to flee?

The National Security people talked to him and he started off by saying, "You are obviously someone with two legs, so why do you insist on being a four-legged dog? You should elect a representative and let me cut off two of his legs."

The only time that the police got some consolation was when 'Knight Errant' Peng saw people fighting in the street and attempted to mediate. Instead, he got bloodied by the combatants because he was a pacifist mediator.

Every day at 11am, 'Knight Errant' Peng would bring a book and proceed to the local restaurant to sit on the stool and read. At 12noon, the National Security people wanted to eat and ordered food. As soon as the first dish was brought up, Peng would immediately sprint off. The National Security people had to abandon their delicious food to chase him. Afterwards, 'Knight Errant' Peng would bring a book to read in a restaurant, or else he ate with his wife at a restaurant until 2pm. The National Security people could only look at him but they dared not order food. Obviously, nobody from National Security wants an assignment in which they cannot have meals.

In the evening, 'Knight Errant' Peng went downstairs. The National Security people said hello and asked, "Old Peng, are you going out?" 'Knight Errant' Peng said without any hesitation: "Yes, I'm going to walk the dog." The National Security person asked: "Where is the dog? I don't see any dog." 'Knight Errant' Peng said with a straight face: "Look, isn't it following me?"

At night, everybody was ready to go to bed. The National Security people were still stationed downstairs and keeping watch. Peng opened the window and poured a bucket of urine downstairs. The National Security were mad but they could not say anything. They asked the local security people to come and clean up the mess. As soon as the cleaning was done, Peng poured another bucket of urine downstairs. This went on over and over until the National Security people abandoned the scene.

The National Security people were engaged in illegal, immoral and unjust activities. When the individual human rights of these National Security people are violated, they are not protected by the law and they will not be supported by society. 'Knight Errant' Peng was doing something that represented the refusal to submit while causing isolation, despair and shame among the individuals who were carrying out the orders.

Who is 'Knight Errant' Peng anyway? 'Knight Errant' Peng is a graduate of Peking University and makes a living from translation and odd jobs. He claims to be an unemployed vagabond who fights for justice. He has been bloodied N times without receiving any rewards.

We were eating lunch yesterday and I was having a good laugh. 'Knight Errant" Peng said: "You can't learn my tricks because you have to remove your psychological inhibitions first."

I have my own methods. On many commercial streets, there are shops that produce customized t-shirts on demand. Young people like to do that sort of thing. For example, to commemorate the first anniversary of your romance, you can get your photos taken at some store (or else you can just bring your own photo), you add the words that you want and you can get your own customized t-shirt in less than one hour. The only drawback is that the price is quite expensive: a pure cotton t-shirt with one-sided printing is 80 RMB, plus another 50 RMB for two-sided printing. Lycras cost another 10 RMB.

An awesome, but slightly older post, by Zeng Jinyan.

'Knight Errant' Peng and I went into a custom t-shirt shop at Xidan 77th and we ordered three t-shirts. Two of them are like those lovers' t-shirts and another one is a birthday present for my husband. After about one hour, I walked out wearing a t-shirt that said "House Arrested Again" (in English) in front and "Follow, Surveillance, Shameful" (跟踪, 梢, 可耻) in the back. The National Security men who were following saw me coming out of the women's restroom in a new shirt and they were stunned.

When I got to the courtyard at home, the National Security man and woman told me that their superior said that I was placed under house arrest because "she is the same as Hu Jia." They were hoping to initiate a conversation and then they asked me why I wanted to wear such a t-shirt to fight back. I shook my head and went inside my home. I am the same like Hu Jia? My heart choked a beat. Does this mean that whatever my husband did is the same as me doing it? Zeng Jinyan = Hu Jia? I don't want to speak to the National Security people because I want to maintain our oppositional stances. I am too soft-hearted. As soon as I start talking to individual people, I will begin to take pity on them. My husband, 'Knight Errant' Peng and other friends all laugh at me for being kind-hearted and unprincipled. I will not put myself into a dilemma because I take pity on the National Security people.

Peace.

Remember, you can follow Hu and Zeng on twitter.com/freehujia

YouTube Censorship Reform

Target: Google/youTube

Sponsored by: The users of YouTube

"YouTube's System for removing videos is being abused and many users with opposing views have resorted to false flaging, votebotting (running software that auto votes one star on videos) and filing false DMCA notices on users in an effort to silence them."

"Many people who have been unfairly censored have tried many things (email, mirroring videos, phoning...) to try and get google to reform their broken system but to no avail..."



Sign the petition here -

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/StopYouTubeCensorship

Peace.

Ben Bernanke - TIME Person of the Year!?!

You seriously have to be kidding me!?! This has to be some kind of a sick joke...right?

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1946375_1947251,00.html

Ben Bernanke

By MICHAEL GRUNWALD Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2009

A bald man with a gray beard and tired (and evil) eyes is sitting in his oversize Washington office (bought with your dollars), talking about the economy (and how he's destroyed it). He doesn't have a commanding presence (just a cold one). He isn't a mesmerizing speaker (true, look at any one encounter he's had with Representatives Paul or Grayson). He has none of the look-at-me swagger or listen-to-me charisma so common among men with oversize Washington offices (Why? He's got our money). His arguments aren't partisan or ideological (they're all about lining the pockets of the rich); they're methodical, grounded in data and the latest academic literature. When he doesn't know something, he doesn't bluster or bluff (He says, "I don't know exactly which banks the money went to). He's professorial, which makes sense, because he spent most of his career as a professor.

He is not, in other words, a typical Beltway power broker (He's a Wall Street broker). He's shy. He doesn't do the D.C. dinner-party circuit; he prefers to eat at home with his wife, who still makes him do the dishes and take out the trash (hah!). Then they do crosswords or read. Because Ben Bernanke is a nerd (and a thief).

He just happens to be the most powerful nerd on the planet (scary, but true).

Bernanke is the 56-year-old chairman of the Federal Reserve, the central bank of the U.S. (contrary to popular belief, the Federal Reserve is not part of the government - it's an independent bank), the most important and least understood force shaping the American — and global — economy (making the rich richer and the poor poorer). Those green bills featuring dead Presidents are labeled "Federal Reserve Note" for a reason: the Fed controls the money supply (and the outflow of money to foreign banks and investors). It is an independent government agency that conducts monetary policy, which means it sets short-term interest rates — which means it has immense influence over inflation, unemployment, the strength of the dollar and the strength of your wallet (it can do far more than that). And ever since global credit markets began imploding, its mild-mannered chairman has dramatically expanded those powers (again, scary, but true) and reinvented the Fed.

Professor Bernanke of Princeton was a leading scholar of the Great Depression (and has brought to the doorstep of perhaps our next Great Depression). He knew how the passive Fed of the 1930s helped create the calamity (history is repeating itself) — through its stubborn refusal to expand the money supply and its tragic lack of imagination and experimentation. Chairman Bernanke of Washington was determined not to be the Fed chairman who presided over Depression 2.0. (but he not only is doing so, but also aided in its design) So when turbulence in U.S. housing markets metastasized into the worst global financial crisis in more than 75 years, he conjured up trillions of new dollars and blasted them into the economy; engineered massive public rescues of failing private companies (and foreign banks); ratcheted down interest rates to zero; lent to mutual funds, hedge funds, foreign banks (yup), investment banks, manufacturers, insurers and other borrowers who had never dreamed of receiving Fed cash; jump-started stalled credit markets in everything from car loans to corporate paper; revolutionized housing finance with a breathtaking shopping spree for mortgage bonds; blew up the Fed's balance sheet to three times its previous size; and generally transformed the staid arena of central banking into a stage for desperate improvisation. He didn't just reshape U.S. monetary policy; he led an effort to save the world economy (and managed to blow the American dollar out of the water).

No wonder his eyes look tired (he's been up late spending all that money).

The last Fed chair, Alan Greenspan, inspired an odd cult of personality. Bernanke hoped to return the Fed to dull obscurity (secrecy, don't let him fool you). But his aggressive steps to avert doomsday — and his unusually close partnerships with Bush and Obama Treasury Secretaries Henry Paulson and Timothy Geithner (Wall Street pals) — have exposed him and his institution to criticism from all directions. He's Bailout Ben, the patron saint of Wall Street greedheads, or King Ben, the unelected czar of a fourth branch of government. He's soft on inflation, bombarding the country with easy money, or soft on unemployment, ignoring Main Street's cries for even more aggressive action. Bleeding-heart liberals and tea-party reactionaries alike are trying to block his appointment for a second four-year term. Libertarian Congressman Ron Paul is peddling a best seller titled End the Fed. And Congress is considering bills that could strip the Fed of some of its power and independence.

So here he is inside his marble fortress, a technocrat in an ink-stained shirt and an off-the-rack suit, explaining what he's done, where we are and what might happen next.

He knows that the economy is awful (he should, again, he designed it), that 10% unemployment is much too high (you think?!?), that Wall Street bankers are greedy ingrates (you can smell your own), that Main Street still hurts (Main Street doesn't even exist anymore - F*!& Walmart!!!). Banks are handing out sweet bonuses again but still aren't doing much lending (A "great" use for bank bailouts). Technically, the recession is over, but growth has been anemic and heavily reliant on government programs like Cash for Clunkers, not to mention cheap Fed money. "I understand why people are frustrated (No you don't!). I'm frustrated too," Bernanke says. "I'm not one of those people who look at this as some kind of video game. I come from Main Street, from a small town that's really depressed. This is all very real to me" (nowhere near as real as it is for us!).

But Bernanke also knows the economy would be much, much worse if the Fed had not taken such extreme measures to stop the panic (...). There's a vast difference between 10% and 25% unemployment, between anemic and negative growth. He wishes Americans understood that he helped save the irresponsible giants of Wall Street only to protect ordinary folks on Main Street (how has it helped Main Street?). He knows better than anyone how financial crises spiral into global disasters, how the grass gets crushed when elephants fall (how does sending money to foreign banks help?). "We came very, very close to a depression ... The markets were in anaphylactic shock," he told TIME during one of three extended interviews (You keep trying to tell people, "everythings ok now."). "I'm not happy with where we are, but it's a lot better than where we could be."

Bernanke also has thoughts about the economy's future — and we'll get to them soon. First, though, we should explain why his face is on the cover of this issue. The overriding story of 2009 was the economy — the lousiness of it, and the fact that it wasn't far lousier. It was a year of escalating layoffs, bankruptcies and foreclosures, the "new frugality" and the "new normal" (but that's improvement, right!?!) It was also a year of green shoots, a rebounding Dow and a fragile sense that the worst is over. Even the big political stories of 2009 — the struggles of the Democrats; the tea-party takeover of the Republicans; the stimulus; the deficit; GM and Chrysler; the backlash over bailouts and bonuses; the furious debates over health care, energy and financial regulation; the constant drumbeat of jobs, jobs, jobs — were, at heart, stories about the economy. And it's Bernanke's economy (ain't that the truth as unfortunate as that may be).

In 2009, Bernanke hurled unprecedented amounts of money into the banking system in unprecedented ways, while starting to lay the groundwork for the Fed's eventual return to normality (the Fed's economic coup). He helped oversee the financial stress tests that finally calmed the markets, while launching a groundbreaking public relations campaign to demystify the Fed (by denying congressional investigation and obliterating Federal Reserve transparency!?! - see H.R. 1207). Now that Obama has decided to keep him in his job, he has become a lightning rod in an intense national debate over the Fed as it approaches its second century.

But the main reason Ben Shalom Bernanke is TIME's Person of the Year for 2009 is that he is the most important player guiding the world's most important economy. His creative leadership helped ensure that 2009 was a period of weak recovery rather than catastrophic depression, and he still wields unrivaled power over our money (and greedy)(scary but true once and again), our jobs, our savings and our national future (how do you all feel about that?). The decisions he has made, and those he has yet to make, will shape the path of our prosperity, the direction of our politics and our relationship to the world (and the possible destruction of our future).



Peace.

1:100 - A ratio to think about (peace or war?)

Just a little something more on science and it's complex role in today's world.



Peace.

Is Free Peace Research Possible? (A Must Read!!!)

Impossibility of funding peace research that refuses to be intellectually "embedded"

by Jan Oberg

Global Research, December 11, 2009

The Transnational Foudation for Peace and Future Research - 2009-12-06

Reflections on the increasing impossibility of funding peace research that refuses to be intellectual ‘embedding’ in power.

SUMMARY

This analysis has come about for four reasons:

1. Over the last couple of decades, it has become virtually impossible to do research that is truly free. This applies particularly to smaller organizations which, if they do obtain money, seldom have the capacity to both conduct the product meaningfully and satisfy grant-makers’ bureaucratic rules and regulations which increasingly borders on the bizarre and sabotage.

2. We want to offer insights to anyone who is not part of the research community – insights seldom revealed to the lay persons outside the research community. The article gives concrete evidence and examples.

3. We fear that open societal debate, dialogue, a vibrant democratic exchange is being sacrificed day by day due to the insatiable urges of bureaucrats and increasingly we-know-best authoritarian politicians who only benefits from critical, independent research being suffocated. The corporative research model militates against fundamental research principles and potentially paralyzes democratic debate.

4. The trends we have seen over the 24 years TFF has existed are deeply discouraging. There is no reason anymore to not go public with them.
We want to tell you how difficult it therefore is to survive for an organisation like TFF.

People-financing is the only method to maintain focus on the public interest and further research that is truly independent from the war-mongering state. If that also drops or comes to halt, the ‘masters of war’ will win and peace will lose the final battle.

And battle it is – of quite some relevance for humanity’s existence in the future!

The article gives examples of why free peace research – if not social research in general – is becoming increasingly impossible. It starts out with an exposé of the funds being available worldwide for peace and for the military – about 200 times more for the latter. The ratio of peace researchers to military researchers is probably 1:100+. It may both be true that (government-financed) peace research is booming and that scores of institutes have been closed down.

Today’s funding situation in Denmark and Sweden for peace-oriented research is then described and comparative flashbacks made to the situation in the 1980s and 1990s. If you think of Scandinavia in general as liberal and generous in this field, it’s time for a reality check.

Then, how must you act to obtain funds? You must be politically correct and adapt to the corporate model, even to the extent of knowing your words are not commensurable with what you actually wanted to do. The funding agency calls the shots.

But what if you do manage to obtain funds? Then new problems begin and less and less of the energy devoted will benefit peace; it will, rather, benefit bureaucracies. Small organisations simply do not have the funds nor the staff to meet the requirements of larger funding-agencies – apart from not liking being treated as a potential criminal most of the time.

Here we offer an example from a recent project managed by TFF. Christina Spännar, TFF co-founder and project responsible, writes her story as to how it was to be funded by the European Refugee Fund and the Swedish Immigration Authority and stand in the middle between them and two municipalities in which project was partly located. She spent 75% of the project time satisfying the grant-makers requirements and only 25% on helping improve the lot for foreigners who have come to Sweden as refugees. Her conclusion is – “never again.”

We offer some conclusions and draw up the consequences for TFF’s future – if it shall have one.

Hypothesis and point of departure

It’s a credo of Western culture, political and otherwise, that democracy, freedom of opinion and dynamic social development requires freedom to challenge old knowledge and develop new – i.e. to search and re-search. Research is impossible without funds – project funds, grants, scholarships – provided by private and public institutions or individual donors. It is part of the credo that that funds are made available without strings attached, i.e. embody the essential right and duty to freely seek knowledge and truth without considering what interests there may be, including those of financiers and power-holders, in particular outcomes of the research.

Over the 30+ years I have been engaged in research, first at Lund University and, since 1985, at the Transnational Foundation I’ve seen these features of our society slowly but surely being undermined by a variety of factors. Whatever has been liberal in a philosophical sense – defending the right to have many, diverging and competing opinions – is rapidly fading throughout the presumed liberal Western culture; this has become rather conspicuous in the aftermath of the end of the Cold War.

We tell each other that we live in an information and knowledge society; however, it seems to me that genuinely free knowledge is increasingly marginalized by the marketing of constructed thought patterns and pseudo truths at one end of the spectrum and a convenient, self-censoring or self-complacent lack of the fundamentally important challenging of old knowledge, at the other. In other words, intellectualism is squeezed out of virtually every mainstream discourse, in the parliaments, media and elsewhere, in the age of purposefully manufactured knowledge production.

Another feature is the remarkable “commodification” of knowledge; what is promoted by states and corporate interests is research that can be sold, meet a market “demand” rather than what, according to some higher-level judgement, humanity may need in a longer time perspective.

Researchers must become entrepreneurs rather than seekers and market themselves in supposedly intellectual enterprises. Social science in general and the humanities in particular – which are not based on or aiming at any market - have already suffered for decades from this development.

This said, it deserves mention perhaps that in some senses free research was always an illusion. For instance, a researcher who has attended a state school, then a state university, then becomes a professor at a state university and obtains research funds over several decades from the National Research Council and ends his academic career with a state pension is unlikely to have been a highly independent thinker and a creative mind driven by thinking ‘out of the box’; but of course there may be exceptional cases here and there.

We find little discussion of issues such as these and of their likely consequences in each society and for humankind’s future. ‘Money makes the world go ‘round’ and state and corporate funders are loath to discuss the ways they call the shots over intellectual production. Politicians traditionally do not mind value-based research as long as it supports their own thinking and ideology and can be presented as ‘objective science’. And most researchers will tell you that they don’t really feel that there are any restrictions, they feel free and – if not quite – where else would they find the funds to pursue their interests?

Before I elaborate on these - perhaps provocative - perspectives, I admit that the arguments and analysis in this article are limited to the field(s) I can talk about, namely conflict-resolution, peace, security, development, world order, global governance and democracy (Insert from Kaz, this effect is very much institutionalized in the Criminal Justice field as well). And my examples are picked in the Nordic/Scandinavian setting that I know best.

The global resources – gross imbalance

Let’s begin with what is in fact not particularly new but still a fact hidden to most citizens: the tremendous imbalance between funds available for peace research and violence research.

In a recent study, TFF Associate Scilla Elworthy offers these 2005 figures for the global society based on OECD statistics:

Global military expenditures	US 1200 billion
OECD development aid	US 106 billion
Peace work	US 6 billion
Conflict prevention	US 0.6 billion

The definition of ‘peace’ may vary so a connoisseur may doubt the figure US$ 6 bn for peace work, but let us stay with this generous estimate here. It means that the world community invests roughly 200 times more in the sector of violence than in peace. (The 2008 military expenditures figure is 1464 billion).

One may add that the UN's Millennium Project has estimated that the annual costs of meeting the Millennium Development Goals by the target date of 2015 is around US$ 135 billion per year, little more than 10% of the money currently allocated to the military sector. In the larger perspective, the United Nations’ annual budget for all its agencies and funds amounts to US $ 27 or 1,8 % of the members states’ military investments.

In terms of knowledge production, even a broad definition of ‘peace research’ would result in a ratio of 1 peace researcher to 100-200 researchers and engineers being paid by military institutions and industries for developing new weapons and doctrines on a daily basis.

Years ago, there was an estimate of 400,000 military researchers and engineers worldwide, at a time when the two leading peace research associations would number 4,000-5,000 worldwide (there may be quite a few researchers whose work is relevant to an understanding of peace but who are not members of those associations). If we estimate the number of peace researchers today to be around 15.000 (see the New York Times article mentioned below), the proportions are, in all probability, about the same, i.e. 1:100+.

Most countries around the world train their young men in various aspects of killing on the basis of either conscription or contract. Likewise, virtually all have military academies, colleges and university departments while extremely few have established peace academies or provisions for the teaching of peace and non-violence at primary or secondary school levels.

There are indicators to the effect that peace and conflict research is booming. The New York Times of October 14, 2008 mentioned that there are now 800+ peace research institutes, 15.000 researchers and 450 academic peace studies programs worldwide

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/14/world/americas/14iht-redpeace.1.16931708.html.

Some of us, however, have also had experiences over the years of -

1. The closing down of respected peace research and educational institutes or

2. Their transformation into mainstream ‘international relations’, ‘security’ or ‘political science’ institutes.

The author has witnessed the closing down of three peace and conflict institutes (research and/or educational efforts) in Denmark, the latest being the Copenhagen Peace Research Institute, COPRI, under director Håkan Wiberg’s very able leadership.

In 1989 the Lund University Peace Research Institute (LUPRI) was closed down by its social science faculty

without consulting this author who happened to be its director since 1983.

The attempts at Umeå University (Sweden) and Tromsø University (Norway), IUPIP in Rovereto, Italy, and EPU in Schlaining, Austria – are further examples that I have been related to one way or the other.

Added to that could be, depending on criteria and personal values, the transformation of a number of state and university peace research institutes in the direction mentioned under b) above. There seems to be a rather significant correlation between becoming highly institutionalized and well-funded on the one hand and loss of radical, or alternative, non-mainstream thinking on the other. Those invited to be advisers or do projects with and for, say, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, tend to decrease in will to criticize that government.

Theoretically one could argue that liberal society should invest equally in understanding violent and peaceful behaviour, or even that the latter should in fact be given priority. It is true that the research carried out inside what could be called the global MIMAC – the Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex – has, almost by definition, to be more capital-intensive and thus expensive. But even so, the global imbalance is mind-boggling and, if anything, getting worse.

Consequently, young student’s decision to devote him- or herself to a life-long engagement in peace rather than violence research today requires an extremely high level of idealism and moral conviction as well as a deliberate renunciation of several job opportunities and job security, not to speak of a high income. (Insert from Kaz, the Social Justice major/minor were becoming more and more popular at my last campus, they were introduced the year before I graduated, but hopefully this is a step in the right direction - we have a long way to go for sure, and it still takes a tremendous amount of idealism and moral conviction on behalf of the student as well).

Diminished funding for peace and non-violence research – examples from Sweden and Denmark

First of all, there is less funding available for peace, conflict and non-violence research than, say, 20 years ago. As the director of LUPRI, I remember how the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Stockholm commissioned - that is, paid - our scholars to write background analyses of a more theoretical, conceptual nature; this not only helped finance the institute’s activities; it also established a kind of dialogue between theory and practise, between power and research that I continue to consider fundamentally important for democracy.

Those were the days when there existed, among decision-makers, an intellectual curiosity and a will to know the basics about concepts and theories of peace, security, deterrence, East-West relations and conflict-resolution.

Those were also the years when Sweden was neutral and not a member of EU or a stealth member of NATO as today’s Sweden is; it needed to develop its own views and interpretations of world events to shape its often independent-minded policies. Sweden took international initiatives with smaller, like-minded countries and had a high profile concerning international law and commitment to the UN, and it had a disarmament minister. It was within that tradition, too, one must see the publishing of the Palme Commission’s common security report, in hindsight one of the most innovative and clearheaded documents that presumably contributed substantially to ending the Cold War structure.

No more so today. While the same ministry gave TFF a small grant for our first war-time missions to former Yugoslavia in 1991, it never once showed any interest in what TFF’s team knew about all the parts of that country and about places there that no Swedish diplomat could set foot on. While our first report “After Yugoslavia – What?” was distributed and sold in 3,000 copies and UN envoy Cyrus Vance spent hours reading and discussing it, the then Swedish ambassador to Belgrade had little else to say that the report had a very nice layout.

With Sweden’s unreserved support for the US/NATO bombing of ex-Yugoslavia in spring 1999, the last remnants of Sweden’s special foreign and peace policy profile was gone. And not only that; so was TFF’s annual support by the Ministry – undoubtedly for getting too far around the world with solid arguments against the bombing before it actually took place.

During the 1970s and 1980s there were other smaller funding possibilities, private foundations as well as the Nordic Co-operation Committee to mention two. In Denmark there was the Danish Government Commission for Security and Disarmament (Danish abbreviation, SNU) where an ongoing exchange took place among politicians, experts, bureaucrats and media people and decent studies – albeit never radical in any sense – were published and caused public debate. (The author was a member for about a decade.)

Nothing similar exists today. There is no interest among security policy elites or defence politicians in promoting general public debate about peace issues; further, there is little perceived need at the individual level for solid knowledge. In addition, the number of politicians in the Swedish and Danish Parliament whose political vocation and career is built on specializing in security, defence and/or peace policies is only a mere fraction of what it was 20-30 years ago.

These developments have to do with the overall change of Danish foreign policy whether under the Social Democrats or the right-wing neo-liberal coalition. Denmark has become a bomber and occupation country; it endorsed and bombed (at least a couple of nights) Serbia, it has been in favour of and military engaged in the war on Afghanistan, the occupation of Iraq (for 4 years) and fully in solidarity with the Bush administration’s ‘war on terror’.

In Denmark there are private foundations for social research but only the Plum Foundation is specialized in peace and human rights, and since 2008 it is inactive due to financial troubles and internal conflict. The Danish Institute for International Studies, DIIS, conducts research, seminars and publishing activities but all its research in the field of defence and security is finance by the Danish Ministry of Defence. Given the overall profile of the institute, the present author would not even consider sending a project proposal to DIIS; peace including non-violence is not on its agenda.

What about Sweden’s peace funding? Well, you probably have heard of the Stockholm Peace Research Institute, SIPRI, and that there are peace research institutes in Uppsala and Gothenburg. That’s of course much better than the situation just described in Denmark which has neither a state institute nor any other peace research outfit.

However, if you look for Swedish funds today, you’ll probably turn first to the Folke Bernadotte Academy. It has taken over the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ portfolio and contributes organizational support to Swedish NGOs of about US$ 750,000 a year and about the same in project support, the latter however with an important self-financing limitation (see later).

This is by and large the situation in two countries – Denmark and Sweden - most people around the world would (still but mistakenly) look to as the most promising, liberal and open-minded in the field we focus on here.

One must indeed hope the peace funding situation is much better elsewhere.

Knowing how to write a funding proposal

Today’s research is a macro-undertaking growing increasingly similar to corporate behavior. The small, intimate and innovative research group that works day and night on a problem is a creature threatened with extinction for a variety of reasons. Research is no longer a 24/7 vocation, it’s a 9 am-4 pm job.

An increasing proportion of researchers find themselves - or like to characterize themselves – as managers. They manage funds, staff, colleagues and projects. Nowadays it is normal to meet researchers at a state institute or university (or an NGO leader for that matter) who’ll tell you that he or she is now funded by a grant from this and that source, at such and such a huge amount and what the projects structure is. Content comes second in such presentations.

Much less frequently do you meet researchers who explain with intense commitment that they are curious about ways to understand X problem and find some new solutions before it is too late for our world – or something similar. With the former, you ask yourself what the real motivation is, if any, beyond money, job security and fame in the peer group. With the latter you will be able to have an intellectually rewarding exchange on matters of substance.

Today’s clever operator in the research world is one who, of course, knows his or her trade but also knows the buzzwords of grant-makers. If there is a new, politically correct term such as, say, humanitarian intervention, human security or terrorism, surprisingly many project descriptions will suddenly mention those concepts. But buzzwords come and go; ‘humanitarian intervention’ is by and large gone now 10 years after it was in vogue with the bombing of former Yugoslavia.

To obtain funds after 2001, it is imperative that you must shape you research application to be relevant for the “war on terror” and, thereby, implicitly accept mainstream definitions of terrorism. (President Obama may allegedly have struck “war on terror” out of the lexicon of his administration but still uses ‘terrorism’ as his main reason for e.g. his military surge in Afghanistan). Another phrase is conflict prevention – although conflicts in and of themselves is a sine qua non of the good society and hat we should focus on is violence prevention. One wonders when words like peace by peaceful means, non-violence, reconciliation, non-military defense become buzzwords, if ever?

Next, to be successful as fund-raiser, your project description must not only use the right words, contain a noble motivation, establish that what you intend to do is path breaking; it must also fairly precisely indicate what the expected results will be. Funders do not appreciate that their money successively goes in other directions than stipulated and stated in the grant proposal; thus the typical question about the expected research results. Most funding agencies will tell you that the rules of the game is either no change in the project or, if change must be made, consult with them in advance and risk paying back what you have received.

This militates against every creativity and innovation, against the fundamentally important idea that research is about finding the yet unfound, to stumble upon new interesting problems, to see openings through a creative trial-and-error, etc. All this is the opposite of the corporate-like process characterizing today’s research mode.

Anyone in our field has met scores of researchers jokingly telling you that a) they had to adapt their project to what the likely grant-makers wanted to see, and b) that they had to conduct most of the research work before they could submit the actual project with their budget.

So to get your project funded, you must know what funders want and either for real turn your research in that direction or make it look like this is what you have already done (in spite of facts to the contrary). In addition, you must know by and large what the results of your search and re-search is likely to be.

This being so, it is conveniently overlooked by both grant-seeker and grant-maker, that it is the latter who calls the shots and shapes what is being researched, not the genuine search, creativity or the individual research processes by individuals alone or in small groups, not to mention certain global problems the urgency of which ought to justify much larger funding than research that benefits violence.

Many important problems and their solution, about which we know rather little, will remain starved for as long as these funding priorities prevail.

If you obtain funds, then what?

Let’s assume that you obtain a grant for your project. That’s where another set of problems emerges. One is that it all becomes pretty boring for the researcher and structurally inflexible. The project is already half-ways done, the rest is about keeping on track, certain data have to be “stuffed in” to fit the predicted conclusions; research managers are loath to open up discussions with the funding agency; that could potentially put future funding at risk. Thus changes, new knowledge – searching for the unpredicted – is implicitly if not explicitly discouraged.

Another is project administration. Large-scale funders like, say, the European Union today require so comprehensive and frequent reports and accounting that it requires staff exclusively to feed the funder’s insatiable appetite for such paper work. And not only that, you must adhere to their methods, use the software they require (purchase and educate yourself in it as you are not likely to have it available because you are a researcher, not a bureaucrat).

A third factor to be reckoned with is the trend that the project-owner must first conduct parts of the work before being reimbursed by the funding agency; that is, the institute must, out of its own pockets, finance at least parts of

the project first, then hand in all the activity and economic reports and accounting sheets and then get compensation – 100% or less – depending on whether or not the strict administrative and economic rules of the funding agency have been met. Imagine they have not and what you think were outlays are now converted to your institute’s expenses: if not very big and able to absorb such economic blows, your institute could well face bankruptcy.

A fourth is overhead versus self-financing. Two-three decades ago when I used to write project proposals, it was perfectly normal to add 15-25 per cent on top of the project sum as overhead, i.e. paying the natural day-to-day extra costs that your institute had to carry due to the project being conducted there – typically, telephones, faxes, copying, rooms, insurance and the like.

But times have changed. One of the latest grants TFF has received (for its project on peace education and reconciliation with the Amahoro Youth Club in Burundi) was from the mentioned Folke Bernadotte Academy. Although we received much less than we applied for – a not uncommon fact of this type of life - we were happy that we did secure some funding.

However, the sum transferred to our bank account was the total grant sum we had been informed about minus 10%. It turned out that:

1. Funding required that the foundation itself financed 10% of the project costs;

2.The savings that would be made from the fact that I myself in the role of unpaid project director over two years could not be accepted as self-financing;

3. Self-financing was defined as expenses documented by receipts to the amount of 10 per cent of the grant sum-total, and d) overheads defined as in the good old days were not accepted in any way

In most cases, the costs for auditing – in the interest of only the grant-maker – must be borne by the project-maker, not the grant-maker. If you obtain, say, 50% of the funds you applied for and must cut down a series of items and activities, this is not one you can scrap. You are obliged to hand in, as part of the reporting, the accounts with the auditor’s signature. For smaller projects, this can be a non-negligible sum.

What are the consequences of such structures and rules?

One is that smaller research organizations such as TFF simply can neither afford nor take the risks of committing themselves to paying parts of a project for which there is no prior budget, particularly if donations make up an important part of the economic basis.

Secondly, some will learn how to circumvent such rules and fake costs. Third, bureaucratic considerations will, sooner or later, take the upper hand and will shape the content of the project and its implementation. There goes freedom…

Countless are the times when the researcher can see the benefit of doing things one way – simple - but has to do it in complicated ways much less benefiting to partners and the search for knowledge itself because one thing cannot be discussed, much less changed: the rules of the funding game.

At the slightest questioning by the researcher, the funding agency will tell you that it has these rules, that they in turn are object of ever stricter inspection by higher-up authorities and can not give you any special treatment or accept deviation (even if they would). You may of course freely decide to follow them or look for funds elsewhere.

Given certain features of the grant-seeker, the type of projects being conducted in the field of peace, security, non-violence etc. and, not the least, the comparatively tiny-tiny sums involved, it is possible to distinguish between common sense control and bizarre excessive control, reporting and administration – bordering on obsession and treating any researcher as a potential cheater. In addition, there is a considerable self-regulation in this community since every grant-recipient is fully aware that it will prevent him or her from ever applying for funds in the future if funds are mismanaged.

Where such excessive control moves in, creativity, the compassionate wish to do something good for the world, the personal, human impulse goes out. The next section illustrates some of these feature of real research life: 75 % of the project time spent on satisfying bureaucratic regulations, 25 % left to ease the integration process of asylum seekers an refugees into the Swedish society.

And then there is this factor: After the terrorist concern – some may say hysteria - in the wake of September 11, 2001, many funding agencies particularly in the U.S. are hesitant to give money for international projects or

organizations abroad in the field of international policy. They would rather not give than risk that research funds fall into the hands of ‘terrorists.’

That this is totally bizarre in the case of research on peace, peace-making, non-violence and forgiveness does not prevent it from being part of today’s reality. And this is even truer for those whose funding proposals deal with studies of conflicts and war zones and include conducting field studies in such places.

Finally – and perhaps more regrettable than anything else: The typical major funding agency that devotes all its energy to bureaucratic control and reporting work seldom show even the slightest interest in the results of the research or responds to publications submitted as part of the result.

Where bureaucracy and politics occupy the whole floor, intellectualism and substance has long walked out the door.

An project illustrating the malaise

We have given you small examples here and there. Now follows a short description of our experience with a recent “never-again” project directed by Christina Spännar, PhD and co-founder of TFF, together with Vibeke Bing, social worker, author and TFF Associate entitled Integration Into Sweden: How can we improve it for refugees and immigrants? What promotes and what hampers it? You can read about it here:

http://www.transnational.org/SAJT/forum/meet/2006/Spannar_Eslov-EnglishSum.html

Christina Spännar writes:

Project Frozen Feet – an illustrative example

“Frozen Feet” took its point of departure in our project “Integration into Sweden: How can we improve it for refugees and immigrants? What promotes and what hampers it?” funded by ERF, the European Refugee Fund.

One of its conclusions was that so-called ‘warm places’, where genuine human encounters can take place help promote integration. The intention of “Frozen Feet” was to analyse a few of these ‘warm places’ in depth and find out what was happening there and how more immigrants could find their way into them.

Preparations for the new project took about year. This included finding co-financiers mostly amongst the local authorities in the nearby city of Malmoe and the small town of Esloev, where the first project was conducted. Financing by these authorities was in the form of employees’ working-time spent on “Frozen Feet”, the so called specially financed costs. The economic value of this generated cash money from ERF through the Swedish Migrationsverket (the Migration Authority) to pay for the direct costs of the project, such as salaries for the two project leaders, travel costs etc.

Maximum 50 % of the project’s total costs could be covered by ERF. Should the total costs become lower due to less than promised co-financing, so would the ERF funding to pay the direct costs for salaries etc. This is understandable. But I find it absurd that the same applies if the co-financing become higher than promised. As if the value of working time at one place of work could pay the salaries at another. The whole thing becomes even more grotesque when the project runs over two years, financed from ERF money-bags from different years. Thus, you are not allowed to balance for example a deficit from the first year of the project with a surplus the second year.

Unfortunately, as project co-director I didn’t fully realize the extent of the sharpening of the rules of administration and control that was put into practice for ERF II compared to ERF I. During our first project, also running over 20 months, the obligation was to render accounts and a report at half-time. During this second – and definitely last – ERF- funded project accounts should be rendered and reports written four times plus a balancing report between the two years.

Another new invention was the time reporting; every participant had to fill in for every half hour on what activity they spent time on the project! Since neither the size of the project nor of TFF allowed a special project administrator, this work fell on me as the only full time project leader.

My calculation reveals that I spent 75 % of my work time on administration and reporting, rather than on improving the lot for immigrants into Sweden.

During ERF I the economic value of work done by the project owner was approved of as idealistic work, but not so during ERF II. Had it been, we could have done a lot more, since the value of my unpaid work was more than 200 000 SEK (US $ 26.500) during the 20 months and could have generated the same amount of funding from ERF. But this would have increased the problem of not being reimbursed until 3-4 months after the end of the project. Thus, another discouragement from ever applying for funds again.

To me the rules of ERF/EU represent one big hindrance to projects instead of support to them. It is as if they have thought of the Sicilian mafia when making them – since you are systematically treated as a potential criminal by all authorities.

This also strikes Migrationsverket where at no point there was even a hint of interest in the substance of the projects, only a concentration on accounting and reporting technicalities and details. Also, during the first project, the Migration Authority had a project person who could always be consulted during the course of the project. Due to its re-organisation and budget cuts, there was no such person available during “Frozen Feet”.

Neither I myself nor TFF as a small independent research foundation will ever again embark on such a bureaucratic project where those who should benefit from its results are effectively prevented from doing so, no matter how hard both they and we tried.

Conclusions for more debate - and a word about TFF’s future

The absurd imbalance in global funds available for peace and for violence research has been bad enough and, regrettably, also shows no movement towards even a reasonable balance. If those in control understood and wanted peace, it would look differently.

What we witness is political priorities and an attitude that militates fundamentally against the liberal ethos of freedom of knowledge, competition on good arguments and “may the best man win”.

It’s a generalised truth – thus with a few exceptions – that people in power thrive from citizens not knowing too much, having their attention diverted to lesser matters and entertainment if possible and to not being challenged in any fundamental sense.

Thus, peace research in a militarized world is by definition – and ought to be, we may add – a controversial thing. But less so, one would believe, in a liberal than in an authoritarian system. Is the West becoming authoritarian, an inflexible colossus permitting increasingly only one paradigm rather than pluralism?

The framework surrounding modern research funding agencies, research institutes and projects and their features amount to an increasingly insurmountable, preventive barrier against the essentials meanings of search and re-search.

We have limited the exposé to the field of peace research described here and offered some concrete examples admittedly based on our own experience with a small, independent research outfit such as TFF over a period of about a quarter of a century.

Imagine that the trends described above are let to continue unabated and free research will disappear. No research is possible without funding, and funding policies and structures in the field of peace – and other fields? – are largely an impediment to the search and re-search itself.

The desired, imagined liberal society has already fallen prey to the authoritarian ethos of Western culture in the post-Modern, post-Cold War era. It doesn’t believe that it needs knowledge, perspectives or solid research about peace, it doesn’t seem to be aware of the need to learn. The West teaches everybody – about democracy, human rights, economy, etc. However, it seem that its self-understanding is completely embedded in the MIMAC, the Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex. Worse, it doesn’t seem to see it.

TFF was established in 1985. We have survived and continued only in spite of all these trends. We would not dare start TFF with the rules of the game that exist today, 24 years later. Neither will the foundation be able to continue for long unless civil society – people – step in to a much larger extent. Perhaps as many as 99,9% help finance the military over the tax bill. It doesn’t make sense to be pro-peace and only support the military and never peace.

TFF has survived only because we are small, privately housed, all-volunteer (i.e. no one gets any salary or honorarium) and a bunch of hard-headed idealists having made our careers through other systems and our income by related activities such as teaching, writing and consulting.

We will be extinct too one day. The moment will largely depend on our human energy and on donations made by people worldwide, citizens who believe we are needed precisely because they believe in free research for free speech and in peace – and because they know that we will never embed TFF in corporate models and political correctness or waiver in our commitment to peace by peaceful means.

In spite of the writing on the wall, we at TFF hope to be supported enough to stay around for some more years.

Global Research Articles by Jan Oberg

Vid on topic coming soon!

Peace.