(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Almost nine out of ten Norwegians say in opinion polls that they are in favor of Norwegian arms deliveries for the war in Ukraine. It is a uniquely high number. IN The US rightly supports almost two out of three arms deliveries, but in other European NATO countries shows the opinion polls a far more divided population, from the UK's 63 per cent supporting arms deliveries, via 48 per cent in Germany to 30 per cent in Italy. Outside the West, you will hardly find anyone who believes that more arms deliveries to Ukraine can end the war. Norway has thus become a nation at war – with Jens Stoltenberg as a national icon. How did we end up there?
The labor movement's tradition of international solidarity has been replaced with a one-sided emphasis on national redistribution policies.
"It is typically Norwegian to be good", said then Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland in his New Year's speech in 1992. This self-righteousness has since spread like a plague throughout the Norwegian political landscape, including to the parties on the left wing. Both SV and Red has put aside study and information work, and the labor movement's tradition of international solidarity has been replaced with a one-sided emphasis on national redistribution policy. Norwegians are hardly less intelligent than other peoples, but the absence of public dissent has made us unaware, among other things, that the massive Norwegian support for arms deliveries is unique. Most Norwegians seriously believe that the Norwegian attitude represents "world society".
Peace movement without party
Cross-political freds organizations have played an important role in Norwegian history because they can be used to unite everyone who opposes the war policy on different grounds, regardless of which party they vote for. But the fact that they should be broad also makes them unsuitable for taking the lead in breaking down the imaginary world that underlies the politics of war. Without SF and later SV as a spearhead in the fight against NATOs nuclear weapons strategy during the Cold War, it is unlikely that the No to Nuclear Weapons organization could have gained as wide support as it did. It was also NATO resistanceare the parties on the left who openly confronted the lies that were presented to justify the invasion, who led the organization and created the basis for the large and broad mobilization against the Iraq war in 2003.
We must and must work to rebuild a strong cross-party peace movement in Norway. But in order to succeed in that, we must also establish a new party that can take up the peace fight that SV and Rødt themselves have chosen to put aside.
Today fails the peace movement by mobilizing more than a few dozen protesters behind unifying slogans such as "the conflict should be resolved through negotiations". Putin is not a new Hitler, but for those who believe he is, it is obvious that negotiations cannot be the solution. We therefore need a party that dares to contradict NATO's cartoonish representations of conflicts.
The great power conflict that unfolds in Ukraine, but also in Syria and several countries in Africa, if it breaks out into open direct war, it will probably wipe out humanity. The fight for peace is therefore not one of many, but the the overall, existential, political question. At the same time, it also affects many other main political issues, which are also part of FOR's preliminary 14-point platform.
Democracy, welfare and climate
In order to maintain support for the war policy, the degree of censorship is ever higher. Julian Assange and Edward Snowden is charged with having informed us that Western countries are committing serious war crimes and breaking their own laws by conducting mass surveillance. The fight for their freedom is therefore a fight that concerns much more than the human rights of two men.
The massive Norwegian support for arms deliveries to Ukraine is unique on a world scale.
The resources spent on war and military rearmament, cannot be used for other purposes at the same time. The fight for peace and welfare are therefore linked, as we formulate it in the slogan "Arm up welfare – not the weapons stockpiles".
We also say "stop". warone – not the war refugees". Countries in the West have no moral right to close their borders to those fleeing poverty created by war and centuries of colonial plunder. What we need is a policy for peace together with the building of welfare and infrastructure in the countries most people are fleeing from.
Next to war, global warming is the biggest threat to humanity. If we are to avoid this, we must phase out the use of olje, and thus also extraction of oil. This must begin in the richest producer countries, such as Norway. We must instead turn our attention to a different way of life with other benefits than just the material, non-renewable ones, such as more leisure time.
Defense budget halved
A four-day normal working week and two years of parental leave is something we can afford as a society if we do not waste as much of the earth's resources as the consumer society we have been socialized to prefer. We can also afford welfare reforms that give us more leisure time and a better life, since we do not want to pump up the Norwegian defense on the scale that all other parties in this country are in favor of.
A halving of the defense budget based on a close doubling of today's, as the Defense Commission pointed out, will free up to NOK 65 billion for other good purposes. FOR also wants to gradually reduce the military orienteringone on which our society is ideologically built. Instead, we want i FOR to put Norway on a lasting track – as a society of peace.
Leerand is chairman of FOR. The board of FOR, which has signed
the chronicle is also Marika Lejon, Sjur Cappelen Papazian,
Torgeir Salih Holgersen, Peter Eisenstein and John Y. Jones.
Se fredogrettfällde.no
