Dear Colleagues
I would like to voice concern with a press release by SDI, also posted on Shelter Norway’s website, about the Nobel Peace Prize nomination of Jockin Arputham. It appears below. I am not questioning the nomination, but the arguments put forward in the press release cannot remain unchallenged.
I’ve copied Mike Davis into this e-mail, as he might like to comment on the way one point in his book ‘Planet of Slums’ is used. In the interpretation of the press release, it is Davis’ notion that violence is guaranteed to arise from within the planet’s ‘slums’, which are therefore a threat to western society. The press release uses this (and reference to western military concerns) to justify or at least highlight the importance of SDI’s pacifying strategies of dialogue rather than ‘confrontation’. The press release, in the tradition of SDI tracts and publications, employs a simplistic dualism between ‘dialogue’ and ‘confrontation’, one good, the other bad; one beneficial, the other damaging; one supportive, the other exploitative; one promoted by SDI, the other by ‘middle class rights based activists that “never give anything back”’.
Continue reading →