Posts
Welcome to 9-11 Movies
-
The idea behind this site is to present the most rudimentary, simplified,
common-sense information about the anomalies that fuel our doubts about the
offic...
Showing posts with label Africa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Africa. Show all posts
Friday, January 4, 2013
Saturday, September 29, 2012
Dollar Hegemony in the Empire of the Damned
Global Research
Colin Todhunter
Many commentators and economists wonder if the US is able to turn its ailing economy around. The reality is that it is bankrupt. However, as long as the dollar remains the world currency, the US can continue to pay its bills by simply printing more money. But once the world no longer accepts the dollar as world reserve currency, the US will no longer be able to continue to pay its way or to fund its wars by relying on what would then be a relatively valueless paper currency.
And the US realises this. Today, more than 60 per cent of all foreign currency reserves in the world are in US dollars, and the US will attempt to prevent countries moving off the dollar by any means possible. It seems compelled to do this simply because its economic infrastructure seems too weak and US corporate cartels will do anything to prevent policies that eat into their profits or serve to curtail political influence. They serve their own interests, not any notional ‘national interest’.
Pail Graig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury, notes that much of the most productive part of the US economy has been moved offshore in order to increase corporate profits. By doing so, the US has lost critical supply chains, industrial infrastructure, and the knowledge of skilled workers. According to Roberts, the US could bring its corporations back to America by taxing their profits abroad and could also resort to protective tariffs, but such moves would be contrary to the material interests of the ruling oligarchy of private interests, which hold so much sway over US politics.
So, with no solution to the crisis in site, the US is compelled to expand its predatory capitalism into foreign markets such as India and to wage imperialist wars to maintain global allegiance to the dollar and US hegemony. And this is exactly what we are seeing today as the US strategy for global supremacy is played out.
Over the past two decades, the US has extended its influence throughout Eastern Europe, many of the former Soviet states in central Asia and, among other places, in the former Yugoslavia, Libya, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria and Pakistan. But with each passing year and each new conflict, the US has been drawing closer and closer to direct confrontation with Russia and China, particularly as it enters their backyards in Asia and as China continues to emerge as a serious global power.
Both countries are holding firm over Syria. Syria plays host to Russia’s only naval base outside of the former USSR, and Russia and China know that if the US and its proxies topple the Assad government, Tehran becomes a much easier proposition. Ideally, the US would like to install compliant regimes in Moscow and Beijing and exploiting political and ethnic divisions in the border regions of Russia and China would be that much easier if Iran fell to US interests.
A global US strategy is already in force to undermine China’s growth and influence, part of which was the main reason for setting up AFRICOM: US Africa Command with responsibility for military operations and relations across Africa. But China is not without influence, and its actions are serving to weaken the hegemony of the US dollar, thereby striking at a key nerve of US power.
China has been implementing bilateral trade agreements with a number of countries, whereby trade is no longer conducted in dollars, but in local currencies. Over the past few years,China and other emerging powers such as Russia have been making agreements to move away from the US dollar in international trade. The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China,South Africa) also plan to start using their own currencies when trading with each other. Russia and China have been using their own national currencies when trading with eachother for more than a year.
A report from Africa’s largest bank, Standard Bank, recently stated:
“We expect at least $100 billion (about R768 billion) in Sino-African trade – more than the total bilateral trade between China and Africa in 2010 – to be settled in the renminbi by 2015.”
Under Saddam, Iraq was not using the dollar as the base currency for oil transactions, neither is Iran right now. Even Libya’s Muammar Gadhaffi was talking about using a gold backed dinar as the reserve currency for parts of Africa. Look what happened to Libya and Iraq as a result.
In 2000, Iraq converted all its oil transactions to euros. When U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, it returned oil sales from the euro to the dollar. Little surprise then that we are currently watching the US attempt to remove the Iranian regime via sanctions, destabilization, intimidation and the threat of all out war.
In the meantime, though, Iran is looking east to China, Pakistan and central Asia in order to counteract the effects of US sanctions and develop its economy and boost trade. In order to sustain its empire, US aggression is effectively pushing the world into different camps and a new cold war that could well turn into a nuclear conflict given that Russia, China and Pakistan all have nuclear weapons.
The US economy appears to be in terminal decline. The only way to prop it up is by lop-sided trade agreements or by waging war to secure additional markets and resources and to ensure the dollar remains the world reserve currency. Humankind is currently facing a number of serious problems. But, arguably, an empire in decline armed to the teeth with both conventional and nuclear weapons and trapped in a cycle of endless war in what must surely be a futile attempt to stave off ruin is the most serious issue of all.
Originally from the northwest of England, Colin Todhunter has spent many years in India. He has written extensively for the Deccan Herald (the Bangalore-based broadsheet), New Indian Express and Morning Star (Britain). His articles have also appeared in various other publications. His East by Northwest website is at http://colintodhunter.blogspot.com
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
Mysterious fatal crash offers rare look at U.S. commando presence in Mali
Washington Post
Craig Whitlock
In pre-dawn darkness, a Toyota Land Cruiser skidded off a bridge in North Africa in the spring, plunging into the Niger River. When rescuers arrived, they found the bodies of three U.S. Army commandos — alongside three dead women.
What the men were doing in the impoverished country of Mali, and why they were still there a month after the United States suspended military relations with its government, is at the crux of a mystery that officials have not fully explained even 10 weeks later.
At the very least, the April 20 accident exposed a team of Special Operations forces that had been working for months in Mali, a Saharan country racked by civil war and a rising Islamist insurgency. More broadly, the crash has provided a rare glimpse of elite U.S. commando units in North Africa, where they have been secretly engaged in counterterrorism actions against al-Qaeda affiliates.
The Obama administration has not publicly acknowledged the existence of the missions, although it has spoken in general about plans to rely on Special Operations forces as a cornerstone of its global counterterrorism strategy. In recent years, the Pentagon has swelled the ranks and resources of the Special Operations Command, which includes such units as the Navy SEALs and the Army’s Delta Force, even as the overall number of U.S. troops is shrinking.
At the same time, the crash in Mali has revealed some details of the commandos’ clandestine activities that apparently had little to do with counterterrorism. The women killed in the wreck were identified as Moroccan prostitutes who had been riding with the soldiers, according to a senior Army official and a U.S. counterterrorism consultant briefed on the incident, both of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
The Army’s Criminal Investigation Command, which is conducting a probe of the fatal plunge off the Martyrs Bridge in Bamako, the capital of Mali, said it does not suspect foul play but has “not completely ruled it out.” Other Army officials cited poor road conditions and excessive speed as the likely cause of the 5 a.m. crash.
U.S. officials have revealed few details about the soldiers’ mission or their backgrounds, beyond a brief news release announcing their deaths hours after the accident.
In many countries, including most in Africa, Special Operations forces work openly to distribute humanitarian aid and train local militaries. At times, the civil-affairs assignments can provide credible cover for clandestine counterterrorism units.
But in Mali, U.S. military personnel had ceased all training and civil-affairs work by the end of March, about a week after the country’s democratically elected president was overthrown in a military coup.
The military’s Africa Command, which oversees operations on the continent, said the three service members killed were among “a small number of personnel” who had been aiding the Malian military before the coup and had remained in the country to “provide assistance to the U.S. Embassy” and “maintain situational awareness on the unfolding events.”
Craig Whitlock
What the men were doing in the impoverished country of Mali, and why they were still there a month after the United States suspended military relations with its government, is at the crux of a mystery that officials have not fully explained even 10 weeks later.
At the very least, the April 20 accident exposed a team of Special Operations forces that had been working for months in Mali, a Saharan country racked by civil war and a rising Islamist insurgency. More broadly, the crash has provided a rare glimpse of elite U.S. commando units in North Africa, where they have been secretly engaged in counterterrorism actions against al-Qaeda affiliates.
The Obama administration has not publicly acknowledged the existence of the missions, although it has spoken in general about plans to rely on Special Operations forces as a cornerstone of its global counterterrorism strategy. In recent years, the Pentagon has swelled the ranks and resources of the Special Operations Command, which includes such units as the Navy SEALs and the Army’s Delta Force, even as the overall number of U.S. troops is shrinking.
At the same time, the crash in Mali has revealed some details of the commandos’ clandestine activities that apparently had little to do with counterterrorism. The women killed in the wreck were identified as Moroccan prostitutes who had been riding with the soldiers, according to a senior Army official and a U.S. counterterrorism consultant briefed on the incident, both of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
The Army’s Criminal Investigation Command, which is conducting a probe of the fatal plunge off the Martyrs Bridge in Bamako, the capital of Mali, said it does not suspect foul play but has “not completely ruled it out.” Other Army officials cited poor road conditions and excessive speed as the likely cause of the 5 a.m. crash.
U.S. officials have revealed few details about the soldiers’ mission or their backgrounds, beyond a brief news release announcing their deaths hours after the accident.
In many countries, including most in Africa, Special Operations forces work openly to distribute humanitarian aid and train local militaries. At times, the civil-affairs assignments can provide credible cover for clandestine counterterrorism units.
But in Mali, U.S. military personnel had ceased all training and civil-affairs work by the end of March, about a week after the country’s democratically elected president was overthrown in a military coup.
The military’s Africa Command, which oversees operations on the continent, said the three service members killed were among “a small number of personnel” who had been aiding the Malian military before the coup and had remained in the country to “provide assistance to the U.S. Embassy” and “maintain situational awareness on the unfolding events.”
Monday, April 23, 2012
AMERICA'S AFRICA: Hollywood Celebrities Provide "Mood Music" and "Star Appeal" for US "Humanitarian Wars"
Global Research
Finian Cunningham
It’s a sign of the times: Hollywood heart-throbs, pop divas and TV chat show celebrities are turning on the mood music for America’s never-ending global war.
In a world of lawlessness, state terrorism, rank mendacity and war criminals masquerading as government leaders, what better than to engage the glamor of reassuring celebrities to add a certain “star appeal” to otherwise barbaric endeavours?
George Clooney, Rihanna, Oprah Winfrey are just some of the big names lending their faces and voices to a script worthy of Hollywood – only the script is coming out of the Pentagon.
Perhaps unwitting agents, these consumer-culture icons are ironically lending cover and justification to crimes and human suffering that they claim to be opposed to.
Take actor George Clooney. Last month, he caused a media stir when he was arrested for his part in a demonstration outside the Sudanese embassy in Washington protesting against Khartoum’s alleged violations in neighboring South Sudan. The day before his arrest, Clooney had a private meeting with President Barack Obama in the White House to discuss the Sudanese conflict.
Two weeks later, Obama hosts Salva Kiir, the president of South Sudan, the newly formed North African state which broke away from Sudan last July after decades of civil war. Media reports claimed that Obama urged South Sudan to not engage in conflict over border disputes with its northern neighbour.
Another two weeks later, South Sudan’s army dramatically escalates conflict by invading northern Sudan and seizing its vital oil installations in the district of Heglig. The attack triggered much sabre-rattling by Khartoum with President Omar Bashar all but declaring war on South Sudan. Fears of all-out war have subsided in the past few days after South Sudan’s forces withdrew across the border. This may be just the first of many renewed skirmishes to come.
Finian Cunningham
In a world of lawlessness, state terrorism, rank mendacity and war criminals masquerading as government leaders, what better than to engage the glamor of reassuring celebrities to add a certain “star appeal” to otherwise barbaric endeavours?
George Clooney, Rihanna, Oprah Winfrey are just some of the big names lending their faces and voices to a script worthy of Hollywood – only the script is coming out of the Pentagon.
Perhaps unwitting agents, these consumer-culture icons are ironically lending cover and justification to crimes and human suffering that they claim to be opposed to.
Take actor George Clooney. Last month, he caused a media stir when he was arrested for his part in a demonstration outside the Sudanese embassy in Washington protesting against Khartoum’s alleged violations in neighboring South Sudan. The day before his arrest, Clooney had a private meeting with President Barack Obama in the White House to discuss the Sudanese conflict.
Two weeks later, Obama hosts Salva Kiir, the president of South Sudan, the newly formed North African state which broke away from Sudan last July after decades of civil war. Media reports claimed that Obama urged South Sudan to not engage in conflict over border disputes with its northern neighbour.
Another two weeks later, South Sudan’s army dramatically escalates conflict by invading northern Sudan and seizing its vital oil installations in the district of Heglig. The attack triggered much sabre-rattling by Khartoum with President Omar Bashar all but declaring war on South Sudan. Fears of all-out war have subsided in the past few days after South Sudan’s forces withdrew across the border. This may be just the first of many renewed skirmishes to come.
Monday, October 24, 2011
NATO Prepares Global War – Russian and Chinese Military on Highest Alert
NSNBC
Dr. Christof Lehmann
At the International Security Conference (ISC) in Munich, 2007, Vladimir Putin warned western leaders, that the unprecedented aggressive expansion of NATO has brought the world more close to a third world war than it has ever been before. This stern warning came years before NATO´s aggression against Libya and it´s undeclared war in Syria and Pakistan. Following the recent deployment of US troops to Uganda, and military threats directed against Pakistan, the armed forces of NATO, Russia and China have never been as close to open and all out conflict as today.
A recent and sobering report of the Russian Intelligence Service FSB, details the fact that the USA and NATO are currently planning and actively preparing for all out war on all continents. After the recent meeting between Russian P.M. Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Huan Jintao, both Russian and Chinese military forces have been placed on highest alert.
The speech of Russian President Vladimir Putin at the 43rd International Security Conference in Munich in 2007, and Putin´s statement, that the aggressive expansionism of NATO has brought the world more close to a third world war than it has ever been before, was sobering in 2007. That an all out conflict has been prevented until now however, is not based on the fact that NATO has changed it´s aggressive policy of military expansionism. Putin´s speech from 2007 was sobering then, and few understood it´s full implications. The developments of recent months, however, are eliciting the urgent need to stop a cycle of aggression that can only be described as megalomaniacs insanity.
Since the middle of September 2011 Russian politicians at Russia´s State Duma began discussing that NATO must significantly reduce it´s military footprint in the former Soviet Republics. By early October, those calls had developed into demands that Russia should assert it´s interests in the former Soviet republics, and especially in the South. Since the discontinuation of the USSR, and NATO´s war on Afghanistan, it has significantly increased it´s military footprint in Russian and Chinese neighbor states such as Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and not least in Georgia. The fact that Russian and NATO troops came into open armed conflict when Georgi attacked Ossetia, and not least the US backed armed insurgency in Chechnya are eliciting the fact that Russia is increasingly threatened. A clear response by Vladimir Putin to the State Duma´s demands for policy changes came on 3 October, after Putin had received the sobering Intelligence Report, that warned of US and NATO preparations of a global war. On 3 October, only days before his meeting with Jintao, Putin announced his plans for a Eurasian Union.
When Russia´s Prime Minister, and most likely winner of the next presidential elections, Vladimir Putin, met Chinese President Huan Jintao on 12 October, the official narrative elicited mutually beneficial friendship and treaties, trade and other relations. The most important reason for the sudden visit however, did not make the headlines. Before leaving for Beijing, Putin received a sobering report from the Russian Intelligence Service FSB. The FSB report to Vladimir Putin supported reports from the Chinese Intelligence Service and China´s Ministry of State Security, MSS, which were among other based on intelligence received via the former Blackwater operative Brian Underwood.
Underwood is currently held in the US on charges of espionage. According to reliable sources, China has attempted to warn Russia of US and NATO plans to initiate a global armed conflict. This conflict has reportedly moved from the drawing board to an activation stage.
According to both Chinese and Russian Intelligence Sources, the US and NATO plans include among other, the deliberate implosion of the US- and EU Economies, destroying the worlds financial systems, and the launching of a massive conventional war throughout North America, Africa and Asia, as well as the Middle East. The war plans include the release of biological warfare agents designed to kill millions if not billions of people. The NATO strategists rely on their ability to sue for peace when the coming conflict is at it´s highest, to call for the establishment of a “New World Order” under the pretext of preventing the destruction of the planet and civilization as we know it. One of the preparatory stages was reportedly doctrinal and strategy changes wherein the training of it´s soldiers shifted from counter insurgency to more conventional warfare and tank on tank battles.
The FSB Report states that the activation of the conflict is to be expected sooner rather than later, since the US and NATO have pre-deployed 2000 M1 Abrams Battle Tanks in Iraq, and another 2000 in Afghanistan. In the area between the Middle East and Asia, tens of thousands of other armored vehicles are deployed. The FSB evaluates the situation as so threatening, that it explains in it´s report, that the only thing needed to activate the war plan is a call for the full mobilization of 1.5 Million US Reserves. Their activation can come at moments notice, and needs no further authorization by the US Congress.
Dr. Christof Lehmann
At the International Security Conference (ISC) in Munich, 2007, Vladimir Putin warned western leaders, that the unprecedented aggressive expansion of NATO has brought the world more close to a third world war than it has ever been before. This stern warning came years before NATO´s aggression against Libya and it´s undeclared war in Syria and Pakistan. Following the recent deployment of US troops to Uganda, and military threats directed against Pakistan, the armed forces of NATO, Russia and China have never been as close to open and all out conflict as today.
A recent and sobering report of the Russian Intelligence Service FSB, details the fact that the USA and NATO are currently planning and actively preparing for all out war on all continents. After the recent meeting between Russian P.M. Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Huan Jintao, both Russian and Chinese military forces have been placed on highest alert.
The speech of Russian President Vladimir Putin at the 43rd International Security Conference in Munich in 2007, and Putin´s statement, that the aggressive expansionism of NATO has brought the world more close to a third world war than it has ever been before, was sobering in 2007. That an all out conflict has been prevented until now however, is not based on the fact that NATO has changed it´s aggressive policy of military expansionism. Putin´s speech from 2007 was sobering then, and few understood it´s full implications. The developments of recent months, however, are eliciting the urgent need to stop a cycle of aggression that can only be described as megalomaniacs insanity.
Since the middle of September 2011 Russian politicians at Russia´s State Duma began discussing that NATO must significantly reduce it´s military footprint in the former Soviet Republics. By early October, those calls had developed into demands that Russia should assert it´s interests in the former Soviet republics, and especially in the South. Since the discontinuation of the USSR, and NATO´s war on Afghanistan, it has significantly increased it´s military footprint in Russian and Chinese neighbor states such as Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and not least in Georgia. The fact that Russian and NATO troops came into open armed conflict when Georgi attacked Ossetia, and not least the US backed armed insurgency in Chechnya are eliciting the fact that Russia is increasingly threatened. A clear response by Vladimir Putin to the State Duma´s demands for policy changes came on 3 October, after Putin had received the sobering Intelligence Report, that warned of US and NATO preparations of a global war. On 3 October, only days before his meeting with Jintao, Putin announced his plans for a Eurasian Union.
When Russia´s Prime Minister, and most likely winner of the next presidential elections, Vladimir Putin, met Chinese President Huan Jintao on 12 October, the official narrative elicited mutually beneficial friendship and treaties, trade and other relations. The most important reason for the sudden visit however, did not make the headlines. Before leaving for Beijing, Putin received a sobering report from the Russian Intelligence Service FSB. The FSB report to Vladimir Putin supported reports from the Chinese Intelligence Service and China´s Ministry of State Security, MSS, which were among other based on intelligence received via the former Blackwater operative Brian Underwood.
Underwood is currently held in the US on charges of espionage. According to reliable sources, China has attempted to warn Russia of US and NATO plans to initiate a global armed conflict. This conflict has reportedly moved from the drawing board to an activation stage.
According to both Chinese and Russian Intelligence Sources, the US and NATO plans include among other, the deliberate implosion of the US- and EU Economies, destroying the worlds financial systems, and the launching of a massive conventional war throughout North America, Africa and Asia, as well as the Middle East. The war plans include the release of biological warfare agents designed to kill millions if not billions of people. The NATO strategists rely on their ability to sue for peace when the coming conflict is at it´s highest, to call for the establishment of a “New World Order” under the pretext of preventing the destruction of the planet and civilization as we know it. One of the preparatory stages was reportedly doctrinal and strategy changes wherein the training of it´s soldiers shifted from counter insurgency to more conventional warfare and tank on tank battles.The FSB Report states that the activation of the conflict is to be expected sooner rather than later, since the US and NATO have pre-deployed 2000 M1 Abrams Battle Tanks in Iraq, and another 2000 in Afghanistan. In the area between the Middle East and Asia, tens of thousands of other armored vehicles are deployed. The FSB evaluates the situation as so threatening, that it explains in it´s report, that the only thing needed to activate the war plan is a call for the full mobilization of 1.5 Million US Reserves. Their activation can come at moments notice, and needs no further authorization by the US Congress.
Friday, October 21, 2011
Obama, The Son of Africa, Claims a Continent’s Crown Jewels
Global Research
John Pilger
On 14 October, President Barack Obama announced he was sending United States special forces troops to Uganda to join the civil war there. In the next few months, US combat troops will be sent to South Sudan, Congo and Central African Republic. They will only "engage" for "self-defence", says Obama, satirically. With Libya secured, an American invasion of the African continent is under way.
John Pilger
Obama’s decision is described in the press as "highly unusual" and "surprising", even "weird". It is none of these things. It is the logic of American foreign policy since 1945. Take Vietnam. The priority was to halt the influence of China, an imperial rival, and "protect" Indonesia, which President Nixon called "the region’s richest hoard of natural resources ...the greatest prize". Vietnam merely got in the way; and the slaughter of more than three million Vietnamese and the devastation and poisoning of their land was the price of America achieving its goal. Like all America’s subsequent invasions, a trail of blood from Latin America to Afghanistan and Iraq, the rationale was usually "self defence" or "humanitarian", words long emptied of their dictionary meaning.
In Africa, says Obama, the "humanitarian mission" is to assist the government of Uganda defeat the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), which "has murdered, raped and kidnapped tens of thousands of men, women and children in central Africa". This is an accurate description of the LRA, evoking multiple atrocities administered by the United States, such as the bloodbath in the 1960s following the CIA-arranged murder of Patrice Lumumba, the Congolese independence leader and first legally elected prime minister, and the CIA coup that installed Mobutu Sese Seko, regarded as Africa’s most venal tyrant.
Obama’s other justification also invites satire. This is the "national security of the United States". The LRA has been doing its nasty work for 24 years, of minimal interest to the United States. Today, it has fewer than 400 fighters and has never been weaker. However, US "national security" usually means buying a corrupt and thuggish regime that has something Washington wants. Uganda’s "president-for-life" Yoweri Museveni already receives the larger part of $45 million in US military "aid" – including Obama’s favourite drones. This is his bribe to fight a proxy war against America’s latest phantom Islamic enemy, the rag-tag al Shabaab group based in Somalia. The RTA will play a public relations role, distracting western journalists with its perennial horror stories.
However, the main reason the US is invading Africa is no different from that which ignited the Vietnam war. It is China. In the world of self-serving, institutionalised paranoia that justifies what General David Petraeus, the former US commander and now CIA director, implies is a state of perpetual war, China is replacing al-Qaeda as the official American "threat". When I interviewed Bryan Whitman, an assistant secretary of defence at the Pentagon last year, I asked him to describe the current danger to America. Struggling visibly, he repeated, "Asymmetric threats ... asymmetric threats". These justify the money-laundering state-sponsored arms conglomerates and the biggest military and war budget in history. With Osama bin Laden airbrushed, China takes the mantle.
Friday, October 14, 2011
Obama sending troops to central Africa to aid fight against rebels
President Obama has deployed troops to central Africa to aid in the fight against the Lord's Resistance Army. In a letter to Speaker of the House John Boehner, Obama says 12 troops with "appropriate combat equipment" were deployed on October 12 and approximately 100 in total will be deployed including a second combat team and headquarters, communications and logistics personnel. The forces will provide information and advise and assist "select partner nation forces," Obama explains. The troops will not fight except in self-defense. The full letter is after the jump.
TEXT OF A LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT
TO THE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
AND THE PRESIDENT PRO TEMPORE OF THE SENATE
October 14, 2011
Dear Mr. Speaker: (Dear Mr. President:)
For more than two decades, the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has murdered, raped, and kidnapped tens of thousands of men, women, and children in central Africa. The LRA continues to commit atrocities across the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and South Sudan that have a disproportionate impact on regional security. Since 2008, the United States has supported regional military efforts to pursue the LRA and protect local communities. Even with some limited U.S. assistance, however, regional military efforts have thus far been unsuccessful in removing LRA leader Joseph Kony or his top commanders from the battlefield. In the Lord's Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act of 2009, Public Law 111-172, enacted May 24, 2010, the Congress also expressed support for increased, comprehensive U.S. efforts to help mitigate and eliminate the threat posed by the LRA to civilians and regional stability.
In furtherance of the Congress's stated policy, I have authorized a small number of combat-equipped U.S. forces to deploy to central Africa to provide assistance to regional forces that are working toward the removal of Joseph Kony from the battlefield. I believe that deploying these U.S. Armed Forces furthers U.S. national security interests and foreign policy and will be a significant contribution toward counter-LRA efforts in central Africa.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Are "Democracy Now" Correspondents in Libya Feeding Us the State Department and Pentagon Line?
Global Research
Bruce A. Dixon
Have Democracy Now's correspondents in Libya, Anjali Kamat and Sharif Abdel-Kodous minimized or avoided reporting upon the persecution of black Libyans and sub-Saharan African migrants by US-backed Libyan rebels?
Have they reported massacres that may not have happened, and mercenaries who might not have existed?
Have they ignored or minimized the impact of US and NATO bombing and the presence of Saudi, Qatari and other foreign forces on the ground in Libya, also in support of the US-backed Libyan rebels?
Have they simply embedded themselves with US-backed forces in Libya to pass the views of the Pentagon and State Department to us as “independent, unembedded news”?
Bruce A. Dixon
Is the independent media movement's flagship radio-TV show Democracy Now! pushing the State Department and Pentagon line on Libya instead of “going where the silence is” and telling the truth without fear or favor? Are its Libyan correspondents embedded with the US-backed Libyan rebels to such an extent that they have minimized and failed to follow up persistent reports of ethnic cleansing in Libya or investigate whether alleged “mercenaries” ever existed or Khadaffi's “massacres” ever took place?
Have Democracy Now's correspondents in Libya, Anjali Kamat and Sharif Abdel-Kodous minimized or avoided reporting upon the persecution of black Libyans and sub-Saharan African migrants by US-backed Libyan rebels?
Have they reported massacres that may not have happened, and mercenaries who might not have existed?
Have they ignored or minimized the impact of US and NATO bombing and the presence of Saudi, Qatari and other foreign forces on the ground in Libya, also in support of the US-backed Libyan rebels?
Have they simply embedded themselves with US-backed forces in Libya to pass the views of the Pentagon and State Department to us as “independent, unembedded news”?
It's hard to know all of this for certain. We're over here, they're over there, and Libya is very much a war zone.
I'm not in Libya and never have been, but people who have say the country is anywhere from a quarter to half what we would call “black” in the US. It's hard not to notice that Anjali Kamat can't find any black Libyans to talk to, and that none are visible among the US-backed Libyan rebels.
There have been many persistent reports from too many sources have pointed to widespread persecutions of black Libyans and migrants from sub-Saharan Africa. There are reports of all-black towns in Libya which have been wiped off the map by the Libyan rebels and their allies. Our own Cynthia McKinney has visited the families of some who were lynched --- hanged by jeering mobs who used their cell phones to record the ghastly spectacle. Some of the videos of these lynchings were still on YouTube as late as last week.
Make no mistake, Democracy Now is one of the few places that have reported the persecution of migrants and black Libyans. But a careful search of Democracy Now stories from the past six or seven months reveals that of this handful of mentions of ethnic cleansing in Libya, all except one on March 7, 2011, [7] in which Anjali Kamat interviewed migrants from several countries awaiting transport out of Libya originated from Democracy Now studios stateside.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Libya and the Big Lie: Using Human Rights Organizations to Launch Wars
Global Research
Mahdi Darius Mazemroaya
Mahdi Darius Mazemroaya
 |
| NATO attack on Libyan war ships |
The war against Libya is built on fraud. The United Nations Security Council passed two resolutions against Libya on the basis of unproven claims, specifically that Colonel Muammar Qaddafi was killing his own people in Benghazi. The claim in its exact form was that Qaddafi had ordered Libyan forces to kill 6,000 people in Benghazi. These claims were widely disseminated, but always vaguely explained. It was on the basis of this claim that Libya was referred to the U.N. Security Council at U.N Headquarters in New York City and kicked out of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.
False claims about African mercenary armies in Libya and about jet attacks on civilians were also used in a broad media campaign against Libya. These two claims have been sidelined and have become more and more murky. The massacre claims, however, were used in a legal, diplomatic, and military framework to justify NATO’s war on the Libyans.
Using Human Rights as a Pretext for War: The LLHR and its Unproven Claims
One of the main sources for the claim that Qaddafi was killing his own people is the Libyan League for Human Rights (LLHR). The LLHR was actually pivotal to getting the U.N. involved through its specific claims in Geneva. On February 21, 2011 the LLHR got the 70 other non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to sent letters to the President Obama, E.U. High Representative Catherine Ashton., and the U.N. Secretary-General Ban-ki Moon demanding international action against Libya invoking the “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine. Only 25 members of this coalition actually assert that they are human rights groups.
The letter is as follows:
We, the undersigned non-governmental, human rights, and humanitarian organizations, urge you to mobilize the United Nations and the international community and take immediate action to halt the mass atrocities now being perpetrated by the Libyan government against its own people. The inexcusable silence cannot continue.
As you know, in the past several days, Colonel Moammar Gadhafi’s forces are estimated to have deliberately killed hundreds of peaceful protesters and innocent bystanders across the country. In the city of Benghazi alone, one doctor reported seeing at least 200 dead bodies. Witnesses report that a mixture of special commandos, foreign mercenaries and regime loyalists have attacked demonstrators with knives, assault rifles and heavy-caliber weapons.
Snipers are shooting peaceful protesters. Artillery and helicopter gunships have been used against crowds of demonstrators. Thugs armed with hammers and swords attacked families in their homes. Hospital officials report numerous victims shot in the head and chest, and one struck on the head by an anti-aircraft missile. Tanks are reported to be on the streets and crushing innocent bystanders. Witnesses report that mercenaries are shooting indiscriminately from helicopters and from the top of roofs. Women and children were seen jumping off Giuliana Bridge in Benghazi to escape. Many of them were killed by the impact of hitting the water, while others were drowned. The Libyan regime is seeking to hide all of these crimes by shutting off contact with the outside world. Foreign journalists have been refused entry. Internet and phone lines have been cut or disrupted.
There is no question here about intent. The government media has published open threats, promising that demonstrators would meet a “violent and thunderous response.”
Accordingly, the government of Libya is committing gross and systematic violations of the right to life as guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Citizens seeking to exercise their rights to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly are being massacred by the government.
Moreover, the government of Libya is committing crimes against humanity, as defined by the Explanatory Memorandum to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. The Libyan government’s mass killing of innocent civilians amount to particularly odious offences which constitute a serious attack on human dignity. As confirmed by numerous oral and video testimonies gathered by human rights organizations and news agencies, the Libyan government’s assault on its civilian population are not isolated or sporadic events. Rather, these actions constitute a widespread and systematic policy and practice of atrocities, intentionally committed, including murder, political persecution and other inhumane acts which reach the threshold of crimes against humanity.
Responsibility to Protect
Under the 2005 World Summit Outcome Document, you have a clear and unambiguous responsibility to protect the people of Libya. The international community, through the United Nations, has the responsibility to use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means, in accordance with Chapters VI and VIII of the Charter, to help to protect the Libyan population. Because the Libyan national authorities are manifestly failing to protect their population from crimes against humanity, should peaceful means be inadequate, member states are obliged to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the Security Council, in accordance with the UN Charter, including Chapter VII.
In addition, we urge you to convene an emergency Special Session of the UN Human Rights Council, whose members have a duty, under UNGA Resolution 60/251, to address situations of gross and systematic violations of violations of human rights. The session should:
Call for the General Assembly to suspend Libya’s Council membership, pursuant to Article 8 of Resolution 60/251, which applies to member states that commit gross and systematic violations of human rights.
Strongly condemn, and demand an immediate end to, Libya’s massacre of its own citizens.
Dispatch immediately an international mission of independent experts to collect relevant facts and document violations of international human rights law and crimes against humanity, in order to end the impunity of the Libyan government. The mission should include an independent medical investigation into the deaths, and an investigation of the unlawful interference by the Libyan government with the access to and treatment of wounded.
Call on the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights and the Council’s relevant Special Procedures to closely monitor the situation and take action as needed.
Call on the Council to remain seized of the matter and address the Libyan situation at its upcoming 16th regular session in March.
Member states and high officials of the United Nations have a responsibility to protect the people of Libya from what are preventable crimes. We urge you to use all available measures and levers to end atrocities throughout the country.
We urge you to send a clear message that, collectively, the international community, the Security Council and the Human Rights Council will not be bystanders to these mass atrocities. The credibility of the United Nations — and many innocent lives — are at stake. [1]
According to Physicians for Human Rights: “[This letter was] prepared under the guidance of Mohamed Eljahmi, the noted Libyan human rights defender and brother of dissident Fathi Eljahmi, asserts that the widespread atrocities committed by Libya against its own people amount to war crimes, requiring member states to take action through the Security Council under the responsibility to protect doctrine.” [2]
The letters signatories included Francis Fukuyama, United Nations Watch (which looks out for Israel’s interests), B’nai B’rith Human Rights Commission, the Cuban Democratic Directorate, and a set of organizations at odds with the governments of Nicaragua, Cuba, Sudan, Russia, Venezuela, and Libya. Some of these organizations are viewed with hostility as organizations created to wage demonization campaigns against countries at odds with the U.S., Israel, and the European Union. Refer to the annex for the full list of signatories for consultation.
LLHR is tied to the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), which is based in France and has ties to the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). FIDH is active in many places in Africa and in activities involving the National Endowment for Democracy. Both the FIDH and LLHR also released a joint communiqué on February 21, 2011. In the communiqué both organizations asked for the international community to “mobilize” and mention the International Criminal Court while also making a contradictory claiming that over 400 to 600 people had died since February 15, 2011. [3] This of course was about 5,500 short of the claim that 6,000 people were massacred in Benghazi. The joint letter also promoted the false view that 80% of Qaddafi’s support came from foreign mercenaries, which is something that over half a year of fighting proves as untrue.
According to the General-Secretary of the LLHR, Dr. Sliman Bouchuiguir, the claims about the massacres in Benghazi could not be validated by the LLHR when he was challenged for proof. When asked how a group of 70 non-governmental organizations in Geneva could support the LLHR’s claims on Geneva, Dr. Buchuiguir has answered that a network of close relationship was the basis. This is a mockery.
False claims about African mercenary armies in Libya and about jet attacks on civilians were also used in a broad media campaign against Libya. These two claims have been sidelined and have become more and more murky. The massacre claims, however, were used in a legal, diplomatic, and military framework to justify NATO’s war on the Libyans.
Using Human Rights as a Pretext for War: The LLHR and its Unproven Claims
One of the main sources for the claim that Qaddafi was killing his own people is the Libyan League for Human Rights (LLHR). The LLHR was actually pivotal to getting the U.N. involved through its specific claims in Geneva. On February 21, 2011 the LLHR got the 70 other non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to sent letters to the President Obama, E.U. High Representative Catherine Ashton., and the U.N. Secretary-General Ban-ki Moon demanding international action against Libya invoking the “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine. Only 25 members of this coalition actually assert that they are human rights groups.
The letter is as follows:
We, the undersigned non-governmental, human rights, and humanitarian organizations, urge you to mobilize the United Nations and the international community and take immediate action to halt the mass atrocities now being perpetrated by the Libyan government against its own people. The inexcusable silence cannot continue.
As you know, in the past several days, Colonel Moammar Gadhafi’s forces are estimated to have deliberately killed hundreds of peaceful protesters and innocent bystanders across the country. In the city of Benghazi alone, one doctor reported seeing at least 200 dead bodies. Witnesses report that a mixture of special commandos, foreign mercenaries and regime loyalists have attacked demonstrators with knives, assault rifles and heavy-caliber weapons.
Snipers are shooting peaceful protesters. Artillery and helicopter gunships have been used against crowds of demonstrators. Thugs armed with hammers and swords attacked families in their homes. Hospital officials report numerous victims shot in the head and chest, and one struck on the head by an anti-aircraft missile. Tanks are reported to be on the streets and crushing innocent bystanders. Witnesses report that mercenaries are shooting indiscriminately from helicopters and from the top of roofs. Women and children were seen jumping off Giuliana Bridge in Benghazi to escape. Many of them were killed by the impact of hitting the water, while others were drowned. The Libyan regime is seeking to hide all of these crimes by shutting off contact with the outside world. Foreign journalists have been refused entry. Internet and phone lines have been cut or disrupted.
There is no question here about intent. The government media has published open threats, promising that demonstrators would meet a “violent and thunderous response.”
Accordingly, the government of Libya is committing gross and systematic violations of the right to life as guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Citizens seeking to exercise their rights to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly are being massacred by the government.
Moreover, the government of Libya is committing crimes against humanity, as defined by the Explanatory Memorandum to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. The Libyan government’s mass killing of innocent civilians amount to particularly odious offences which constitute a serious attack on human dignity. As confirmed by numerous oral and video testimonies gathered by human rights organizations and news agencies, the Libyan government’s assault on its civilian population are not isolated or sporadic events. Rather, these actions constitute a widespread and systematic policy and practice of atrocities, intentionally committed, including murder, political persecution and other inhumane acts which reach the threshold of crimes against humanity.
Responsibility to Protect
Under the 2005 World Summit Outcome Document, you have a clear and unambiguous responsibility to protect the people of Libya. The international community, through the United Nations, has the responsibility to use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means, in accordance with Chapters VI and VIII of the Charter, to help to protect the Libyan population. Because the Libyan national authorities are manifestly failing to protect their population from crimes against humanity, should peaceful means be inadequate, member states are obliged to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the Security Council, in accordance with the UN Charter, including Chapter VII.
In addition, we urge you to convene an emergency Special Session of the UN Human Rights Council, whose members have a duty, under UNGA Resolution 60/251, to address situations of gross and systematic violations of violations of human rights. The session should:
Call for the General Assembly to suspend Libya’s Council membership, pursuant to Article 8 of Resolution 60/251, which applies to member states that commit gross and systematic violations of human rights.
Strongly condemn, and demand an immediate end to, Libya’s massacre of its own citizens.
Dispatch immediately an international mission of independent experts to collect relevant facts and document violations of international human rights law and crimes against humanity, in order to end the impunity of the Libyan government. The mission should include an independent medical investigation into the deaths, and an investigation of the unlawful interference by the Libyan government with the access to and treatment of wounded.
Call on the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights and the Council’s relevant Special Procedures to closely monitor the situation and take action as needed.
Call on the Council to remain seized of the matter and address the Libyan situation at its upcoming 16th regular session in March.
Member states and high officials of the United Nations have a responsibility to protect the people of Libya from what are preventable crimes. We urge you to use all available measures and levers to end atrocities throughout the country.
We urge you to send a clear message that, collectively, the international community, the Security Council and the Human Rights Council will not be bystanders to these mass atrocities. The credibility of the United Nations — and many innocent lives — are at stake. [1]
According to Physicians for Human Rights: “[This letter was] prepared under the guidance of Mohamed Eljahmi, the noted Libyan human rights defender and brother of dissident Fathi Eljahmi, asserts that the widespread atrocities committed by Libya against its own people amount to war crimes, requiring member states to take action through the Security Council under the responsibility to protect doctrine.” [2]
The letters signatories included Francis Fukuyama, United Nations Watch (which looks out for Israel’s interests), B’nai B’rith Human Rights Commission, the Cuban Democratic Directorate, and a set of organizations at odds with the governments of Nicaragua, Cuba, Sudan, Russia, Venezuela, and Libya. Some of these organizations are viewed with hostility as organizations created to wage demonization campaigns against countries at odds with the U.S., Israel, and the European Union. Refer to the annex for the full list of signatories for consultation.
LLHR is tied to the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), which is based in France and has ties to the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). FIDH is active in many places in Africa and in activities involving the National Endowment for Democracy. Both the FIDH and LLHR also released a joint communiqué on February 21, 2011. In the communiqué both organizations asked for the international community to “mobilize” and mention the International Criminal Court while also making a contradictory claiming that over 400 to 600 people had died since February 15, 2011. [3] This of course was about 5,500 short of the claim that 6,000 people were massacred in Benghazi. The joint letter also promoted the false view that 80% of Qaddafi’s support came from foreign mercenaries, which is something that over half a year of fighting proves as untrue.
According to the General-Secretary of the LLHR, Dr. Sliman Bouchuiguir, the claims about the massacres in Benghazi could not be validated by the LLHR when he was challenged for proof. When asked how a group of 70 non-governmental organizations in Geneva could support the LLHR’s claims on Geneva, Dr. Buchuiguir has answered that a network of close relationship was the basis. This is a mockery.
Monday, September 26, 2011
British Corporation Mass Murdering Ugandans in UN Sanctioned Land Grab
Activist Post
Tony Carlucci
Beneath fraud, media spin, & UN stamps of approval, awaits an unfolding nightmare for the people of Africa and the world.
The New York Times recently reported in an article titled, "In Scramble for Land, Group Says, Company Pushed Ugandans Out," that the British "New Forests Company" has evicted over 20,000 people from their land in Uganda to make way for tree plantations. Homes were burnt, people, including women and children, were brutalized and murdered during the long eviction process. However, the New York Times states that in this case "the government and the company said the settlers were illegal and evicted for a good cause: to protect the environment and help fight global warming."
The "group" the New York Times is referring to is Oxfam, which published a report titled, "The New Forests Company and its Uganda plantations," detailing the activities of New Forests in Uganda and the evictions the New York Times gingerly describes in its article.
Who is The New Forests Company?
Meet "New Forests," a UK-based firm that claims to be a "sustainable and socially responsible forestry company with established, rapidly growing plantations and the prospect of a diversified product base for local and regional export markets which will deliver both attractive returns to investors and significant social and environmental benefits." Their corporate website is not short of the color green, nor of African people smiling and prospering, so apparently, we are left to believe, New Forests has made good on their mission statement.
Image: Taken from New Forests' website, they proudly display the swath of destruction their company is responsible for, of course, instead of depicting the displacements, murders, and thuggery they are committing against the people of Africa, they place images of thriving trees.
....
Meet Robert Deveruex, chairman of New Forests, one of the founding shareholders of The Virgin Group and former chairman of Soho House Group. He has spent a great deal of time and energy making what his corporation is doing in Africa appear to have a philanthropic spin. In an August 2010 Guardian article titled, "Robert Devereux donates £4m of art collection to set up African charity," Devereux claims of his New Forests company that it "has a huge community development programme. It's not philanthropy. We go to the community and we say, 'We want to co-invest with you. If you provide what labour and materials you can, we'll provide money for things that you can't get.'" Devereux, however, never mentioned what happens if the community says, "no thanks."
Photo: Robert Devereux, a long time investor, a long time con-artist spinning his company's despoiling of Africa as some sort of cutting-edge investment strategy that makes money and "helps" people. Even as Devereux made his disingenuous statements in 2010 regarding New Forests, the villagers in Uganda he was "helping" had already filed a court case a year earlier protesting the British company's encroachment on their land.
...
Meet New Forests executive director and CEO Julian Ozanne, who previously worked for the Financial Times, advised US and European investment banks on business and political risk in Africa and worked for the global corporate-fascists nexus, the World Economic Forum. Also serving as a New Forest director is Jonathan Aisbitt, chairman of the investment firm, The Man Group, and previously a partner and managing director at the now notorious Goldman Sachs.
There is also Avril Stassen, who is not only a director at New Forests but is also currently a principal at Agri-Vie Investment Advisers, which claims to be "focused on food and agribusiness in Sub-Sahara Africa with a mission to generate an above average investment return, as well as demonstrable socio-economic development impacts through its equity investments in food and agribusinesses." In other words, buying up land in African nations people depend on to live, to instead broaden foreign investors' portfolios and profits, all under the cover of feel good rhetoric and pictures of smiling Africans pasted all over their website and annual reports. A good website that seems to be keeping watch on Agri-Vie is Farmlandgrab.org, which in one short URL explains exactly the game Agri-Vie is playing.
And finally, meet Sajjad Sabur, also a director at New Forests, as well as a managing director at HSBC, heading the mega-bank's "Principal Investments Africa" branch which targets African businesses with management buyouts, growth capital and recapitalization "opportunities." Sabur's HSBC invesment arm has actually invested in New Forests.
Quite clearly, this looks more like the profile of a Wall Street-London corporate-fascist hit team than anything at all involving humanitarian, environmental, or social concerns. And judging by Oxfam's report and the subsequent attempt by the New York Times to mitigate the gravity of what the largest banks in the world are doing to Africa, it seems like a corporate-fascist hit is just what is unfolding in Uganda at New Forests' hands.
Globalization is Modern Day Imperialism by Anglo-American Bankers
Backtracking to New Forests' mission statement, apparently "social responsibility" equates to murdering or displacing tens of thousands of Ugandans in their own nation, and "attractive returns" equates to the extraction and exportation of Ugandan resources for a corporation's shareholders 4,000 miles away. What we are told is of significant "benefit" to society and the environment looks more like a textbook case of imperialism, perpetrated by British, surely new to being socially and environmentally responsible, but certainly not to imperialism nor gimmicks used to mask it behind noble causes.
Tony Carlucci
Beneath fraud, media spin, & UN stamps of approval, awaits an unfolding nightmare for the people of Africa and the world.
The "group" the New York Times is referring to is Oxfam, which published a report titled, "The New Forests Company and its Uganda plantations," detailing the activities of New Forests in Uganda and the evictions the New York Times gingerly describes in its article.
Who is The New Forests Company?
Meet "New Forests," a UK-based firm that claims to be a "sustainable and socially responsible forestry company with established, rapidly growing plantations and the prospect of a diversified product base for local and regional export markets which will deliver both attractive returns to investors and significant social and environmental benefits." Their corporate website is not short of the color green, nor of African people smiling and prospering, so apparently, we are left to believe, New Forests has made good on their mission statement.
Image: Taken from New Forests' website, they proudly display the swath of destruction their company is responsible for, of course, instead of depicting the displacements, murders, and thuggery they are committing against the people of Africa, they place images of thriving trees.
....
Meet Robert Deveruex, chairman of New Forests, one of the founding shareholders of The Virgin Group and former chairman of Soho House Group. He has spent a great deal of time and energy making what his corporation is doing in Africa appear to have a philanthropic spin. In an August 2010 Guardian article titled, "Robert Devereux donates £4m of art collection to set up African charity," Devereux claims of his New Forests company that it "has a huge community development programme. It's not philanthropy. We go to the community and we say, 'We want to co-invest with you. If you provide what labour and materials you can, we'll provide money for things that you can't get.'" Devereux, however, never mentioned what happens if the community says, "no thanks."
Photo: Robert Devereux, a long time investor, a long time con-artist spinning his company's despoiling of Africa as some sort of cutting-edge investment strategy that makes money and "helps" people. Even as Devereux made his disingenuous statements in 2010 regarding New Forests, the villagers in Uganda he was "helping" had already filed a court case a year earlier protesting the British company's encroachment on their land.
...
Meet New Forests executive director and CEO Julian Ozanne, who previously worked for the Financial Times, advised US and European investment banks on business and political risk in Africa and worked for the global corporate-fascists nexus, the World Economic Forum. Also serving as a New Forest director is Jonathan Aisbitt, chairman of the investment firm, The Man Group, and previously a partner and managing director at the now notorious Goldman Sachs.
There is also Avril Stassen, who is not only a director at New Forests but is also currently a principal at Agri-Vie Investment Advisers, which claims to be "focused on food and agribusiness in Sub-Sahara Africa with a mission to generate an above average investment return, as well as demonstrable socio-economic development impacts through its equity investments in food and agribusinesses." In other words, buying up land in African nations people depend on to live, to instead broaden foreign investors' portfolios and profits, all under the cover of feel good rhetoric and pictures of smiling Africans pasted all over their website and annual reports. A good website that seems to be keeping watch on Agri-Vie is Farmlandgrab.org, which in one short URL explains exactly the game Agri-Vie is playing.
And finally, meet Sajjad Sabur, also a director at New Forests, as well as a managing director at HSBC, heading the mega-bank's "Principal Investments Africa" branch which targets African businesses with management buyouts, growth capital and recapitalization "opportunities." Sabur's HSBC invesment arm has actually invested in New Forests.
Quite clearly, this looks more like the profile of a Wall Street-London corporate-fascist hit team than anything at all involving humanitarian, environmental, or social concerns. And judging by Oxfam's report and the subsequent attempt by the New York Times to mitigate the gravity of what the largest banks in the world are doing to Africa, it seems like a corporate-fascist hit is just what is unfolding in Uganda at New Forests' hands.
Globalization is Modern Day Imperialism by Anglo-American Bankers
Backtracking to New Forests' mission statement, apparently "social responsibility" equates to murdering or displacing tens of thousands of Ugandans in their own nation, and "attractive returns" equates to the extraction and exportation of Ugandan resources for a corporation's shareholders 4,000 miles away. What we are told is of significant "benefit" to society and the environment looks more like a textbook case of imperialism, perpetrated by British, surely new to being socially and environmentally responsible, but certainly not to imperialism nor gimmicks used to mask it behind noble causes.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
From Barbarism to Barbarism? Outrage and the Fight for Justice
Global Research
Cynthia McKinney
After Georgia was forced by the United States Supreme Court to abandon its scheme to deny Black people the right to an undiluted vote and representation, Leroy Johnson became the first Black person elected to the Georgia State Senate since Reconstruction.
The year was 1962. During his tenure, Johnson used his considerable influence inside the body to become the Senate's Chair of the Judiciary Committee. From this position, he was able to bottle-up legislation that was bad for the State of Georgia, especially its Black residents. Outside and inside the State Senate, Leroy Johnson practiced the art of leadership and engaged in the fight for justice. He produced solid results for a people who were hungry for justice.
Who among our elected officials today exercises the art of leadership in an engaged struggle for justice? Sadly, the numbers are way too small. It is more expedient to exchange silence for merely "being there," in the end exercising no leadership at all and becoming a spectator to power in abandonment of those who need the effective use of power the most. The art of the struggle has veritably been abandoned for merely occupying a seat at the table when the purpose of the struggle for the seat at the table was to empower the struggle for justice. The only reason we send people to occupy that seat is to leverage the power of the community where power is exercised, on behalf of those who need it the most.
As I was commiserating over the Troy Davis situation with a former member of the Georgia Legislature who rose to the highest possible position within that body for his party, he lamented that for all of his years in the Legislature, he had not introduced a single death penalty bill. I quickly interjected that he was so busy putting out other fires and sticking his fingers in all the holes of the leaky dikes and schooling his colleagues on the effective use of the power of their elected positions that he couldn't do everything. It will be interesting to see what legislative actions his former colleagues will initiate in the face of this clear act of barbarism by my state.
Occupying these "seats at the table" is important. Engaging in the struggle for justice is important. And contrary to what many would have us believe, leadership is important. That's why so much effort is spent on co-opting or marginalizing the leaders of conscience that we do have and preventing authentic representatives of our values to occupy those seats at the table.
Therefore, more is required of us. We must hone the skill of discernment. We must not give our vote to just anybody to occupy these positions of power. We must not allow "posers" to represent us. Posers are those who wear the jackets of authority, who are put in positions of power by us, but who do not engage in the artful use of that power on our behalf. Discerning who is friend and who is poser has been difficult. But, is being made more possible by the arrogance now of those who do not have the interests of the people at heart. They seem not to care that their "neanderthal" is showing. But we can look at them and clearly see that they ain't us. Their actions are a clue that they do not share our values.
Unfortunately, posers exist all around us: and in the media, too. The job now of people of conscience is to make sure that we don't enable these posers by our own supportive behavior. My friend reminded me that Leroy Johnson, alone in the Georgia State Senate, was more powerful in the 1960s than are the 55 Black members of the Georgia Legislature now. We need to stop and think about that.
More is less? What role have we all had to play in such a circumstance? Is our leadership more of a reflection of who we are than we have acknowledged? What can we do differently in order to get a better result?
Abu Ghraib has its antecedents right here in the United States. The violence sponsored by the United States abroad has its origins inside the United States. As the United States and NATO drop bombs on unsubmitting African people in Libya, the United States kills an innocent Black man in Georgia. There is more to come unless we affirmatively take steps to stop it. Republican voters cheered at the prospects of more executions at a recent Presidential debate. In a recent article, Africom brags on its lessons learned from Libya:
"The command had to define what effects it needed, and what specific targets would contribute to achieving those effects – a precise endeavor, Ham said. If attacking a communications node, planners must ask themselves what does that particular node do? How does it connect to other nodes? What’s the right munition to use? What’s the likelihood of collateral damage? What’s the right time of day to hit it? What’s the right delivery platform? And finally, how to synchronize attacks." http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=65344
“That level of detail and precision ... was not something the command had practiced to the degree that we were required to do in Odyssey Dawn,” Ham said. . . . If we were to launch a humanitarian operation, how do we do so effectively with air traffic control, airfield management, those kind of activities?” he said.
The United States has to craft those practices with African partners, he added.
U.S. allies in Libya are as barbaric as their sponsors. Despite youtube's efforts to dissuade it from being seen, please watch this video sent to me from France:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00LBdf1uy2E&feature=player_embedded&skipcontrinter=1
As committed Libyans valiantly resist the entire NATO arsenal of modern and old-fashioned killfare, a new kind of perverse global plantation is being created. There is a clear and present danger that Africa and Asia will become U.S. killing fields for the next decade or more while the United States, itself, becomes a police state--unless we stop this poser leadership that really stopped representing us a long t. If we fail to stop them, watch that video again--and welcome to the new America, hauntingly familiar to a place we never left.
Cynthia McKinney
After Georgia was forced by the United States Supreme Court to abandon its scheme to deny Black people the right to an undiluted vote and representation, Leroy Johnson became the first Black person elected to the Georgia State Senate since Reconstruction.
The year was 1962. During his tenure, Johnson used his considerable influence inside the body to become the Senate's Chair of the Judiciary Committee. From this position, he was able to bottle-up legislation that was bad for the State of Georgia, especially its Black residents. Outside and inside the State Senate, Leroy Johnson practiced the art of leadership and engaged in the fight for justice. He produced solid results for a people who were hungry for justice.
Who among our elected officials today exercises the art of leadership in an engaged struggle for justice? Sadly, the numbers are way too small. It is more expedient to exchange silence for merely "being there," in the end exercising no leadership at all and becoming a spectator to power in abandonment of those who need the effective use of power the most. The art of the struggle has veritably been abandoned for merely occupying a seat at the table when the purpose of the struggle for the seat at the table was to empower the struggle for justice. The only reason we send people to occupy that seat is to leverage the power of the community where power is exercised, on behalf of those who need it the most.
As I was commiserating over the Troy Davis situation with a former member of the Georgia Legislature who rose to the highest possible position within that body for his party, he lamented that for all of his years in the Legislature, he had not introduced a single death penalty bill. I quickly interjected that he was so busy putting out other fires and sticking his fingers in all the holes of the leaky dikes and schooling his colleagues on the effective use of the power of their elected positions that he couldn't do everything. It will be interesting to see what legislative actions his former colleagues will initiate in the face of this clear act of barbarism by my state.
Occupying these "seats at the table" is important. Engaging in the struggle for justice is important. And contrary to what many would have us believe, leadership is important. That's why so much effort is spent on co-opting or marginalizing the leaders of conscience that we do have and preventing authentic representatives of our values to occupy those seats at the table.
Therefore, more is required of us. We must hone the skill of discernment. We must not give our vote to just anybody to occupy these positions of power. We must not allow "posers" to represent us. Posers are those who wear the jackets of authority, who are put in positions of power by us, but who do not engage in the artful use of that power on our behalf. Discerning who is friend and who is poser has been difficult. But, is being made more possible by the arrogance now of those who do not have the interests of the people at heart. They seem not to care that their "neanderthal" is showing. But we can look at them and clearly see that they ain't us. Their actions are a clue that they do not share our values.
Unfortunately, posers exist all around us: and in the media, too. The job now of people of conscience is to make sure that we don't enable these posers by our own supportive behavior. My friend reminded me that Leroy Johnson, alone in the Georgia State Senate, was more powerful in the 1960s than are the 55 Black members of the Georgia Legislature now. We need to stop and think about that.
More is less? What role have we all had to play in such a circumstance? Is our leadership more of a reflection of who we are than we have acknowledged? What can we do differently in order to get a better result?
Abu Ghraib has its antecedents right here in the United States. The violence sponsored by the United States abroad has its origins inside the United States. As the United States and NATO drop bombs on unsubmitting African people in Libya, the United States kills an innocent Black man in Georgia. There is more to come unless we affirmatively take steps to stop it. Republican voters cheered at the prospects of more executions at a recent Presidential debate. In a recent article, Africom brags on its lessons learned from Libya:
"The command had to define what effects it needed, and what specific targets would contribute to achieving those effects – a precise endeavor, Ham said. If attacking a communications node, planners must ask themselves what does that particular node do? How does it connect to other nodes? What’s the right munition to use? What’s the likelihood of collateral damage? What’s the right time of day to hit it? What’s the right delivery platform? And finally, how to synchronize attacks." http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=65344
“That level of detail and precision ... was not something the command had practiced to the degree that we were required to do in Odyssey Dawn,” Ham said. . . . If we were to launch a humanitarian operation, how do we do so effectively with air traffic control, airfield management, those kind of activities?” he said.
The United States has to craft those practices with African partners, he added.
U.S. allies in Libya are as barbaric as their sponsors. Despite youtube's efforts to dissuade it from being seen, please watch this video sent to me from France:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00LBdf1uy2E&feature=player_embedded&skipcontrinter=1
As committed Libyans valiantly resist the entire NATO arsenal of modern and old-fashioned killfare, a new kind of perverse global plantation is being created. There is a clear and present danger that Africa and Asia will become U.S. killing fields for the next decade or more while the United States, itself, becomes a police state--unless we stop this poser leadership that really stopped representing us a long t. If we fail to stop them, watch that video again--and welcome to the new America, hauntingly familiar to a place we never left.
Friday, June 3, 2011
NATO operation in Libya is “piracy on an international scale”
A soldier looks at a map representing the Libya's war theatre during a media briefing at the NATO's Southern Europe headquarters in Naples
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
'US To Recoup Libya Oil From China'
Interview with Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, former assistant secretary of US Treasury
by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
Press TV has interviewed Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, former assistant secretary of US Treasury from Panama City, who gives his insight on the revolution in Libya and why US President Barack Obama needs to overthrow Qaddafi when no other US presidents did.
Press TV: Russia has criticized NATO for going far beyond its UN mandate. In other news a joint Op Ed is going to be written by Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy who have said that “leaving Qaddafi in power would be an unconscionable betrayal to the Libyan people”.
We do know that the mandate does not call for regime change; the Obama administration has been saying they are not in there for regime change; but things seem a little different now don't they?
Roberts: Yes they do. First of all, notice that the protests in Libya are different from the ones in Egypt or Yemen or Bahrain or Tunisia and the difference is that this is an armed rebellion.
There are more differences: another is that these protests originated in the eastern part of Libya where the oil is - they did not originate in the capital city. And we have heard from the beginning credible reports that the CIA is involved in the protests, and there have been a large number of press reports that the CIA has sent back to Libya its Libyan asset to head up the Libyan rebellion.
In my opinion, what this is about is to eliminate China from the Mediterranean. China has extensive energy investments and construction investments in Libya. They are looking to Africa as a future energy source.
The US is countering this by organizing the United States African Command (USAC), which Qaddafi refused to join. So that's the second reason for the Americans to want Qaddafi out.
And the third reason is that Libya controls part of the Mediterranean coast and it's not in American hands.
Press TV: Who are the revolutionaries. The US say they don't know who they're dealing with, but considering the CIA is on the ground in contact with revolutionaries - Who are the people under whom Libya will function in any post-Qaddafi era?
Roberts: Whether or not Libya functions under “revolutionaries” depends if the CIA wins - we don't know that yet. As you said earlier, the UN resolution puts constraints on what the European and American forces can achieve in Libya. They can have a no fly zone, but they are not supposed to be in there fighting together with the rebels.
But of course the CIA is. So we do have these violations of the UN resolution. If NATO, which is now the cover for the “world community,” succeeds in overthrowing Qaddafi, the next target will be Syria. Syria has already been demonized.
Why are they targeting Syria? - Because the Russians have a very large naval base in Syria. And it gives the Russian navy a presence in the Mediterranean; the US and NATO do not want that. If there is success in overthrowing Qaddafi, Syria is next.
Already, they are blaming Iran for Syria and Libya. Iran is a major target because it is an independent state that is not a puppet of the Western colonialists.
Press TV: With regards to the expansionist agenda of the West, when the UN mandate on Libya was debated in the UN Security Council, Russia did not veto it. Surely Russia must see this expansionist policy of the US, France and Britain.
Roberts: Yes they must see that; and the same for China. It's a greater threat to China because it has 50 major investment projects in eastern Libya. So the question is why did Russia and China abstain rather than veto and block? We don't know the answer.
Possibly the countries are thinking to let the Americans get further over- extended, or they may not have wanted to confront the US with a military or diplomatic position and have an onslaught of Western propaganda against them. We don't know the reasons, but we know they did abstain because they did not agree with the policy, and they continue to criticize it.
Press TV: A sizeable portion of Qaddafi's assets have been frozen in the US as well as some other countries. We also know that the Libyan revolutionaries have set up a central bank and that they have started limited production of oil and they are dealing with American and other Western firms. It begs the question that we've never seen something like this happen in the middle of a revolution. Don't you find that bizarre?
Roberts: Yes it's very bizarre and very suggestive. It brings back the fact of all the reports that the CIA is the originator of this so-called revolt and protest and is fomenting it and controlling it in a way that excludes China from its own Libyan oil investments.
In my opinion, what is going on is comparable to what the US and Britain did to Japan in the 1930s. When they cut Japan off from oil, from rubber, from minerals; that was the origin of World War II in the pacific. And now the Americans and the British are doing the same thing to China.
The difference is that China has nuclear weapons and it also has a stronger economy than do the Americans. And so the Americans are taking a very high risk not only with themselves, but with the rest of the world. The entire world is now at stake on American over-reach; American hubris - the drive for American hegemony over the world is driving the rest of the world into a World War.
Press TV: In the context of America's expansionist policies, how far do you think the US will stretch beyond the UN mandate? Are we going to see boots on the ground?
Roberts: Most likely - unless they can find some way of defeating Qaddafi without that. Ever since we've had Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and now Obama, what we've learned is law means nothing to the executive branch in the US. They don't obey our own laws; they don't obey international law; they violate all the civil liberties and buried the principal of habeas corpus, no crime without intent, and the ability for a defendant to be legally represented.
They don't pay any attention to law so they're not going to pay any attention to the UN. The UN is an American puppet organization and Washington will use it as a cover. So, yes, if they cannot run Qaddafi out they will put troops on the ground - that's why we have the French and the British involved. We're using the French elsewhere in Africa also; we use the British in Afghanistan - they're puppets.
These countries are not independent. Sarkozy doesn't report to the French people - he reports to Washington. The British PM doesn't report to the English people he reports to Washington. These are puppet rulers of an empire; they have nothing to do with their own people and we put them in office.
Press TV: So these other countries would welcome having NATO troops on the ground?
Roberts: Of course. They are in the CIAs pocket. It's a CIA operation, not a legitimate protest of the Libyan people. It's an armed rebellion that has no support in the capital city. It's taking place in the east where the oil is and is directed at China.
Press TV: Where do you see the situation headed? There seems to be a rift between NATO countries with Britain and France wanting to increase the momentum of these air strikes, but the US saying no, there is no need.
Roberts: The rift is not real. The rift is just part of the cover, just part of the propaganda. Qaddafi has been ruling for 40 years - he goes back to Gamal Abdel Nasser (before Anwar Sadat) who wanted to give independence to Egypt.
He (Qaddafi) was never before called a brutal dictator that has to be removed. No other president has ever said Qaddafi has to go. Not even Ronald Reagan who actually bombed Qaddafi's compound. But all of a sudden he has to go. Why?
Because he's blocking the US African Command, he controls part of the Mediterranean and he has let China in to find its energy needs for the future. Washington is trying to cripple its main rival, China, by denying China energy. That's what this is really about; a reaction by the US to China’s penetration of Africa.
If the US was concerned about humanitarianism, it wouldn't be killing all these people in Afghanistan and Pakistan with their drones and military strikes. Almost always it's civilians that are killed. And the US is reluctant to issue apologies about any of it. They say we thought we were killing Taliban or some other made-up enemy.
Press TV: Who will benefit from all of this other than the US? The other countries that comply with US wishes - What do they stand to gain from this?
Roberts: We are only talking about NATO countries, the American puppet states. Britain, France, Italy, Germany, all belong to the American empire. We've had troops stationed in Germany since 1945. You're talking about 66 years of American occupation of Germany. The Americans have military bases in Italy - how is that an independent country? France was somewhat independent until Washington put Sarkozy in power. So they all do what they're told.
Washington wants to rule Russia, China, Iran, and Africa, all of South America. Washington wants hegemony over the world. That's what the word hegemony means. And Washington will pursue it at all costs.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Silent Coup: UN Takes Over Africa?
The Daily Bail
UN Security Council urges Côte d'Ivoire to form all-inclusive government ... United Nations Security Council on Wednesday urged President of Côte d'Ivoire Alassane Ouattara to form an all-inclusive, broad-based Government to restore peace to the nation. Ambassador Néstor Osorio of Colombia, which holds the Council's rotating monthly presidency, called on all Ivoirians to abstain from any reprisals, revenge or provocation and to exercise maximum restraint. Following the surrender of former President Laurent Gbagbo, Ambassador Osorio urged the North African nation to unite in order to "promote national reconciliation and restore sustainable peace through dialogue and consultation." – News Wires
Dominant Social Theme: The removal of Laurent Gbagbo from the tiny Ivory Coast is a big victory for freedom everywhere.
Free-Market Analysis: In the modern age, with the power elite pressing hard for world government, it is sometimes difficult to note turning points, but the more we see of the tiny Ivory Coast affair the more we tend to believe this is another watershed moment. It is truly a big deal. Though we have covered this unfolding story with regular articles now, we believe it deserves additional coverage.
What is the underlying message? That the UN is evidently and obviously not just in charge of elections but of results as well. This presumably was necessary as Africa is about to be convulsed by no less than 30 top-level elections and the Western powers-that-be want to make sure that appropriate controls are in place so no unpleasant surprises (unexpected and anti-Western results) take place. No longer will the top powers refuse to act when one believes another is engaged in "abuses." Instead interference is the order of the day. We see in the results in the emergent agony of the Ivory Coast.
What has been engineered, in fact at the very least, is not merely a local coup but a pan-African one. The murderous results of the contented Ivory Coast election are a banner, a bloody flag that Western powers have planted in the tortured soil of sub-Saharan Africa. The UN and France have sent a message to all of Africa that the UN itself will not merely supervise elections but determine the winners. And if the winners are not amenable to Western interests, they will be thrown out, overthrown, forced to the sidelines. If they resist as Laurent Gbagbo did, they may be hauled into The Hague.
This is not idle speculation. The Western media ignores it, but a continental coup has just taken place. It is the direct result apparently of an "R2P" UN resolution that has changed the way the world's governments relate to one another. In 2005, while the West's confused populations concentrated mostly on buying and selling overpriced real estate, something of the utmost import took place: the UN's great powers engineered the overthrow of The Pact of Westphalia, a 400-year-old pact that had been the foundation of whatever peace was to had in this miserable world.
It is truly remarkable. People know the ins and outs of the scandalous behavior of their favorite movie stars and singers and the endless security measures implemented against imaginary terrorists, but they still do not know that one of several building blocks of Western civilizations has just been deliberately blasted away. While the Peace of Westphalia was never entirely effective – observed more in the breach than in fact – the results initially ended wars that had simmered in Europe for decades and presented the principal that the nation state itself was impregnable within its own boundaries. Not anymore.
Now we live with the results, a "new world order." In both the Ivory Coast and Libya, France has attacked with force using 2005's R2P as the rationale. If citizens are seen to be under threat by their governments, then those who run the UN (the Anglo-American elite and its Gallic ambit, to sure) have an affirmative obligation to respond in force. R2P is not merely a statement of modern civility and governmental responsibility – which is what it has been dressed up as – but a significant justification for violent, renewed neo-colonialism. It is truly another watershed moment for the world.
France under Nikolas Sarkozy has used R2P to great effect (if great effect is taken to mean the initiation of great violence). In Libya a war will simmer on infinitely as a result. In the Ivory Coast the results have been immediately horrific; millions are displaced and an elected government has been overthrown in what can only be described as a Western coup (not that the mainstream media would ever explain it that way).
Alassane Ouattara, a former International Monetary Fund official will do what the nationalist Gbagbo will not; He will bring the Ivory Coast into the technocratic embrace of the larger military and economic superstructure that is being erected for Africa – which is destined to be the next China, a continent whose underpaid workers will busy themselves constructing trinkets that will be sold to the West. (Money shall flow to Africa and then back to America, as cowed African leaders purchase the Treasuries that in turn fund continued US's military adventurism abroad.)
Yet sometimes it is not that neat. Now the UN panics and France's military slips away from the crime scene. Sarkozy has hastily announced France is cutting its military presence in the Ivory Coast by half, to 900 or so troops and airlifting out (or otherwise removing) heavy military equipment such as tanks, big guns, etc. The UN, meanwhile has moved beyond calling for the removal of the "tyrant" Laurent Gbagbo (he was likely no such thing in the strict meaning of the word) to openly advocating the astonishing position of a government of joint-political interests. This was what Gbagbo himself had advocated for the last four months without success. Irony is piled atop of bloodletting.
No doubt the sudden change of heart stems from (Muslim) revenge killings sweeping the Ivory Coast that include reports of cold-blooded street side executions, machete-wielding exterminations, rape, torture and general mayhem in pro-Gbagbo Christian strongholds. Could it be said that the Anglo-American elites in their hypocritical insistence that they must act in such instances to prevent "another Rwanda" have now given rise to one – writ small but occurring nonetheless? Here's something from a Christian Network that is borne out by other reports from the area:
An Associated Press reporter witnessed Ouattara's troops beating a man for not giving them the right answers. The man turned up dead a few minutes later. Another reporter also saw pro-Ouattara soldiers pull five men from a minibus and drag them into some thick brush at a road block. A woman at the cathedral who was too scared to give her name said her neighbor, the headmaster of the Catholic primary school, was killed Monday night at his home because he belonged the wrong tribe.
"We have a very toxic and explosive mix here of political, ethnic, religious, and land rivalry," the priest said. "The recent tumultuous events have brought long-simmering conflicts to a head. Who knows where this will end." No one knows how many people have been killed. A week ago when the United Nations was reporting more than 400 deaths throughout the country, the International Federation of the Red Cross Society said thousands had been killed and wounded. The U.N. is launching an investigation. (-CBN)
Gbagbo, who fought for a decade to remove the Ivory Coast from France's grasp was supposed to go quietly. But "the baker" – who rolls people in flour and then pops them in the oven before they know it – would not concede to the evident high-handedness of UN "electoral supervision." He objected to being displaced and eventually was driven out of office by the combined might of UN and French forces.
Gbagbo had demanded a joint government along the lines of what had emerged in Kenya after the electoral violence in that country in 2008. In Kenya, the two main tribes that spilled blood as a result of close elections agreed to share power and the electoral crisis was finally resolved. Today of course The Hague has interfered and threatens to undermine the fragile truce by putting various Kenyans on trial for "crimes against humanity."
But in the Ivory Coast, Gbagbo wanted to use the Kenyan resolution as an example. He wanted to remain as president and Ouattara could presumably serve as the country's Prime Minister. The facts are seemingly not in dispute and the reality of what has occurred in the Ivory Coast is being reported mostly by African publications, though only in a somewhat patchy presentation. Here is an excerpt from something we found yesterday in Ghana's Joy Online News entitled: "Gbagbo's 'girl' screams: Release Gbagbo, he's still the president:"
A proponent of the discredited Ivorian leader Laurent Gbagbo, claims peace could return to Ivory Coast only if the international community prevails on his captors to free him. Nathalie Nyamba, a top business executive from Ivory Coast, maintained that Mr Gbagbo's life was under threat due to the maltreatment being meted out to him after his capture, insisting that "Mr Gbagbo is still the President of Ivory Coast."
"The way forward for me would be, first of all, Mr Gbagbo must be freed; Mr Gbagbo is in danger, he was mutilated, he was beaten up, his wife was beaten up, it was shown on TV, this is the president of Cote d'Ivoire and he must be freed. "Then the French army must leave Cote d'Ivoire and then we shall sit down and have a dialogue ... It is not a civil war, it is an electoral crisis, so lets deal with it," she argued on Joy FM's Super Morning Show on Wednesday. Ms Nyamba described the circumstances under which Gbagbo was seized as a coup, contesting that the only way a president could be disposed would be through a constitutional means, insisting that it is the reason why his captors did not say he has been arrested.
The Joy article also sources a BBC report from Amnesty International that armed men in uniforms "were conducting house-to-house searches in Abidjan looking for Laurent Gbagbo's supporters." And Ms. Nyamba finally penetrates to the heart of the UN's electoral fraud when she "wondered why nobody raised an alarm when the [Ivory Coast] Constitutional Council announced a runoff after the general election failed to produce a winner, but, when this same body overturned the Electoral Commission's decision and declared Mr Gbagbo the winner of the runoff, the international community started crying foul."
According to Ms Nyamba, Gbagbo's determination to maintain power was "absolutely" right. Ouattara cannot hold himself out as the president because the Constitutional Council body has already declared Gbagbo as the president. The country's Electoral Commission that said Mr Ouattara won November's election – she pointed out – lacked credibility because it was fully packed with "90% supporters and men of Mr Ouattarra."
The results, illegitimate or not, surely haven't been pleasant for Gbagbo and his family. Gbagbo's wife was the subject just yesterday of a New Yorker article, which commented on the strangeness of a photograph that had been released of her. In the photo, no less than six armed, uniformed men surround
her. Her eyes are wide. Some of the soldiers hold her hair and braids, tipping her head back. Her clothes are well ripped and do not entirely cover her nakedness. The New Yorker commentary uses its trademark sophisticated language to imply – sorrowfully but resignedly – that she has possibly just been raped. Presumably if she were a more popular person there would be more of an outcry. Her husband, meanwhile, is nowhere to be seen, but there are dark rumors about his health and safety.
An article posted by BNO news entitled "UN Security Council urges Côte d'Ivoire to form all-inclusive Government seems to recognize what is actually taking place. The illegitimacy of Gbagbo's overthrow remains, and the current UN position likely recognizes that fact. While barricaded in his presidential bunker, he remained cognizant of the law and as a history professor would not be pressured into signing a French-composed letter acknowledging that Ouattara was the legitimate president of the Ivory Coast. This was perhaps the incident that precipitated his removal by force. Here's more from the weird article featuring the UN's sudden reversal excerpted at the top of this analysis :
Critical challenges in Côte d'Ivoire following the surrender of recalcitrant former President Laurent Gbagbo, include restoration of order, prevention of further human rights abuses, national reconciliation and rebuilding and completion of the peace process," said Y. J. Choi, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General. Choi also remarked that despite all the challenges Ivoirians organized impressive elections, resolved the post-election crisis largely by themselves, and allowed the will of the people to prevail. The Special Representative called for national reconciliation and reconstruction as the ways for restoring peace and stability.
Choi, who is also the head of the UN Operation in Côte d'Ivoire (ONUCI), assured the support of the international community for this transition. "Reconciliation will not be accomplished without meaningful accountability, which has been lacking in Côte d'Ivoire over the past decade," said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay. "To achieve peace and reconciliation, the cycle of impunity must be stopped, perpetrators must be brought to justice, and victims must be rehabilitated in their rights and dignity." UN aid officials have estimated that up to 1 million Ivorians have been displaced by the violence, with some internally displaced and others forced to flee into neighboring countries, particularly Liberia which is hosting 135,000 Ivorians.
It is the UN itself, with France's help, that has spawned this latest "genocide." Those who should be "brought to justice" surely are those who provided the fuel and lit the match. Instead, Gbagbo may face a Hague trial unless his nemesis Ouattara – who apparently while briefly in power a few years ago tortured him and his wife – is discouraged. Judging by the backpedaling the UN is doing now, various pressures will be brought on Ouattara to be at least a little less vengeful, at least cosmetically.
In the meantime, the larger message has been sent: The UN shall do as it pleases, ignore results that are not in line with Western interests and will even use overwhelming force when necessary to abrogate sovereign electoral results. We are no fans of regulatory democracy but what has taken place in the Ivory Coast is noteworthy. We highly doubt that Ouattara's "conciliation" will be effective. The results of this deliberate disaster will likely spawn yet another undeclared civil war between the Muslim North and the Christian South.
Was it necessary? The 21st century is not the 20th as we often point out and as France's hasty retreat from the Ivory Coast shows us. Given the prevalence of electronic communication and a rising knowledge of how Western powers actually operate, the new Pax-UN may not hold despite the passage of R2P. The warning has surely been sent to African leaders that they are to be obedient within the larger context. But the results are not clear cut; the UN overreached and may now regret at leisure. If Gbagbo is tried in an international court, he shall surely be gagged.
Conclusion: Gbagbo, reviled and beaten, his wife perhaps raped (both under UN protection not less), may yet emerge on the right side of history. The actions that have taken place in the little Ivory Coast may have big ramifications indeed, just not the ones the West expects.
 |
| Laurent Gbagbo |
Dominant Social Theme: The removal of Laurent Gbagbo from the tiny Ivory Coast is a big victory for freedom everywhere.
Free-Market Analysis: In the modern age, with the power elite pressing hard for world government, it is sometimes difficult to note turning points, but the more we see of the tiny Ivory Coast affair the more we tend to believe this is another watershed moment. It is truly a big deal. Though we have covered this unfolding story with regular articles now, we believe it deserves additional coverage.
What is the underlying message? That the UN is evidently and obviously not just in charge of elections but of results as well. This presumably was necessary as Africa is about to be convulsed by no less than 30 top-level elections and the Western powers-that-be want to make sure that appropriate controls are in place so no unpleasant surprises (unexpected and anti-Western results) take place. No longer will the top powers refuse to act when one believes another is engaged in "abuses." Instead interference is the order of the day. We see in the results in the emergent agony of the Ivory Coast.
What has been engineered, in fact at the very least, is not merely a local coup but a pan-African one. The murderous results of the contented Ivory Coast election are a banner, a bloody flag that Western powers have planted in the tortured soil of sub-Saharan Africa. The UN and France have sent a message to all of Africa that the UN itself will not merely supervise elections but determine the winners. And if the winners are not amenable to Western interests, they will be thrown out, overthrown, forced to the sidelines. If they resist as Laurent Gbagbo did, they may be hauled into The Hague.
This is not idle speculation. The Western media ignores it, but a continental coup has just taken place. It is the direct result apparently of an "R2P" UN resolution that has changed the way the world's governments relate to one another. In 2005, while the West's confused populations concentrated mostly on buying and selling overpriced real estate, something of the utmost import took place: the UN's great powers engineered the overthrow of The Pact of Westphalia, a 400-year-old pact that had been the foundation of whatever peace was to had in this miserable world.
It is truly remarkable. People know the ins and outs of the scandalous behavior of their favorite movie stars and singers and the endless security measures implemented against imaginary terrorists, but they still do not know that one of several building blocks of Western civilizations has just been deliberately blasted away. While the Peace of Westphalia was never entirely effective – observed more in the breach than in fact – the results initially ended wars that had simmered in Europe for decades and presented the principal that the nation state itself was impregnable within its own boundaries. Not anymore.
Now we live with the results, a "new world order." In both the Ivory Coast and Libya, France has attacked with force using 2005's R2P as the rationale. If citizens are seen to be under threat by their governments, then those who run the UN (the Anglo-American elite and its Gallic ambit, to sure) have an affirmative obligation to respond in force. R2P is not merely a statement of modern civility and governmental responsibility – which is what it has been dressed up as – but a significant justification for violent, renewed neo-colonialism. It is truly another watershed moment for the world.
France under Nikolas Sarkozy has used R2P to great effect (if great effect is taken to mean the initiation of great violence). In Libya a war will simmer on infinitely as a result. In the Ivory Coast the results have been immediately horrific; millions are displaced and an elected government has been overthrown in what can only be described as a Western coup (not that the mainstream media would ever explain it that way).
Alassane Ouattara, a former International Monetary Fund official will do what the nationalist Gbagbo will not; He will bring the Ivory Coast into the technocratic embrace of the larger military and economic superstructure that is being erected for Africa – which is destined to be the next China, a continent whose underpaid workers will busy themselves constructing trinkets that will be sold to the West. (Money shall flow to Africa and then back to America, as cowed African leaders purchase the Treasuries that in turn fund continued US's military adventurism abroad.)
Yet sometimes it is not that neat. Now the UN panics and France's military slips away from the crime scene. Sarkozy has hastily announced France is cutting its military presence in the Ivory Coast by half, to 900 or so troops and airlifting out (or otherwise removing) heavy military equipment such as tanks, big guns, etc. The UN, meanwhile has moved beyond calling for the removal of the "tyrant" Laurent Gbagbo (he was likely no such thing in the strict meaning of the word) to openly advocating the astonishing position of a government of joint-political interests. This was what Gbagbo himself had advocated for the last four months without success. Irony is piled atop of bloodletting.
No doubt the sudden change of heart stems from (Muslim) revenge killings sweeping the Ivory Coast that include reports of cold-blooded street side executions, machete-wielding exterminations, rape, torture and general mayhem in pro-Gbagbo Christian strongholds. Could it be said that the Anglo-American elites in their hypocritical insistence that they must act in such instances to prevent "another Rwanda" have now given rise to one – writ small but occurring nonetheless? Here's something from a Christian Network that is borne out by other reports from the area:
An Associated Press reporter witnessed Ouattara's troops beating a man for not giving them the right answers. The man turned up dead a few minutes later. Another reporter also saw pro-Ouattara soldiers pull five men from a minibus and drag them into some thick brush at a road block. A woman at the cathedral who was too scared to give her name said her neighbor, the headmaster of the Catholic primary school, was killed Monday night at his home because he belonged the wrong tribe.
"We have a very toxic and explosive mix here of political, ethnic, religious, and land rivalry," the priest said. "The recent tumultuous events have brought long-simmering conflicts to a head. Who knows where this will end." No one knows how many people have been killed. A week ago when the United Nations was reporting more than 400 deaths throughout the country, the International Federation of the Red Cross Society said thousands had been killed and wounded. The U.N. is launching an investigation. (-CBN)
Gbagbo, who fought for a decade to remove the Ivory Coast from France's grasp was supposed to go quietly. But "the baker" – who rolls people in flour and then pops them in the oven before they know it – would not concede to the evident high-handedness of UN "electoral supervision." He objected to being displaced and eventually was driven out of office by the combined might of UN and French forces.
Gbagbo had demanded a joint government along the lines of what had emerged in Kenya after the electoral violence in that country in 2008. In Kenya, the two main tribes that spilled blood as a result of close elections agreed to share power and the electoral crisis was finally resolved. Today of course The Hague has interfered and threatens to undermine the fragile truce by putting various Kenyans on trial for "crimes against humanity."
But in the Ivory Coast, Gbagbo wanted to use the Kenyan resolution as an example. He wanted to remain as president and Ouattara could presumably serve as the country's Prime Minister. The facts are seemingly not in dispute and the reality of what has occurred in the Ivory Coast is being reported mostly by African publications, though only in a somewhat patchy presentation. Here is an excerpt from something we found yesterday in Ghana's Joy Online News entitled: "Gbagbo's 'girl' screams: Release Gbagbo, he's still the president:"
A proponent of the discredited Ivorian leader Laurent Gbagbo, claims peace could return to Ivory Coast only if the international community prevails on his captors to free him. Nathalie Nyamba, a top business executive from Ivory Coast, maintained that Mr Gbagbo's life was under threat due to the maltreatment being meted out to him after his capture, insisting that "Mr Gbagbo is still the President of Ivory Coast."
"The way forward for me would be, first of all, Mr Gbagbo must be freed; Mr Gbagbo is in danger, he was mutilated, he was beaten up, his wife was beaten up, it was shown on TV, this is the president of Cote d'Ivoire and he must be freed. "Then the French army must leave Cote d'Ivoire and then we shall sit down and have a dialogue ... It is not a civil war, it is an electoral crisis, so lets deal with it," she argued on Joy FM's Super Morning Show on Wednesday. Ms Nyamba described the circumstances under which Gbagbo was seized as a coup, contesting that the only way a president could be disposed would be through a constitutional means, insisting that it is the reason why his captors did not say he has been arrested.
The Joy article also sources a BBC report from Amnesty International that armed men in uniforms "were conducting house-to-house searches in Abidjan looking for Laurent Gbagbo's supporters." And Ms. Nyamba finally penetrates to the heart of the UN's electoral fraud when she "wondered why nobody raised an alarm when the [Ivory Coast] Constitutional Council announced a runoff after the general election failed to produce a winner, but, when this same body overturned the Electoral Commission's decision and declared Mr Gbagbo the winner of the runoff, the international community started crying foul."
According to Ms Nyamba, Gbagbo's determination to maintain power was "absolutely" right. Ouattara cannot hold himself out as the president because the Constitutional Council body has already declared Gbagbo as the president. The country's Electoral Commission that said Mr Ouattara won November's election – she pointed out – lacked credibility because it was fully packed with "90% supporters and men of Mr Ouattarra."
The results, illegitimate or not, surely haven't been pleasant for Gbagbo and his family. Gbagbo's wife was the subject just yesterday of a New Yorker article, which commented on the strangeness of a photograph that had been released of her. In the photo, no less than six armed, uniformed men surround
her. Her eyes are wide. Some of the soldiers hold her hair and braids, tipping her head back. Her clothes are well ripped and do not entirely cover her nakedness. The New Yorker commentary uses its trademark sophisticated language to imply – sorrowfully but resignedly – that she has possibly just been raped. Presumably if she were a more popular person there would be more of an outcry. Her husband, meanwhile, is nowhere to be seen, but there are dark rumors about his health and safety.An article posted by BNO news entitled "UN Security Council urges Côte d'Ivoire to form all-inclusive Government seems to recognize what is actually taking place. The illegitimacy of Gbagbo's overthrow remains, and the current UN position likely recognizes that fact. While barricaded in his presidential bunker, he remained cognizant of the law and as a history professor would not be pressured into signing a French-composed letter acknowledging that Ouattara was the legitimate president of the Ivory Coast. This was perhaps the incident that precipitated his removal by force. Here's more from the weird article featuring the UN's sudden reversal excerpted at the top of this analysis :
Critical challenges in Côte d'Ivoire following the surrender of recalcitrant former President Laurent Gbagbo, include restoration of order, prevention of further human rights abuses, national reconciliation and rebuilding and completion of the peace process," said Y. J. Choi, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General. Choi also remarked that despite all the challenges Ivoirians organized impressive elections, resolved the post-election crisis largely by themselves, and allowed the will of the people to prevail. The Special Representative called for national reconciliation and reconstruction as the ways for restoring peace and stability.
Choi, who is also the head of the UN Operation in Côte d'Ivoire (ONUCI), assured the support of the international community for this transition. "Reconciliation will not be accomplished without meaningful accountability, which has been lacking in Côte d'Ivoire over the past decade," said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay. "To achieve peace and reconciliation, the cycle of impunity must be stopped, perpetrators must be brought to justice, and victims must be rehabilitated in their rights and dignity." UN aid officials have estimated that up to 1 million Ivorians have been displaced by the violence, with some internally displaced and others forced to flee into neighboring countries, particularly Liberia which is hosting 135,000 Ivorians.
It is the UN itself, with France's help, that has spawned this latest "genocide." Those who should be "brought to justice" surely are those who provided the fuel and lit the match. Instead, Gbagbo may face a Hague trial unless his nemesis Ouattara – who apparently while briefly in power a few years ago tortured him and his wife – is discouraged. Judging by the backpedaling the UN is doing now, various pressures will be brought on Ouattara to be at least a little less vengeful, at least cosmetically.
In the meantime, the larger message has been sent: The UN shall do as it pleases, ignore results that are not in line with Western interests and will even use overwhelming force when necessary to abrogate sovereign electoral results. We are no fans of regulatory democracy but what has taken place in the Ivory Coast is noteworthy. We highly doubt that Ouattara's "conciliation" will be effective. The results of this deliberate disaster will likely spawn yet another undeclared civil war between the Muslim North and the Christian South.
Was it necessary? The 21st century is not the 20th as we often point out and as France's hasty retreat from the Ivory Coast shows us. Given the prevalence of electronic communication and a rising knowledge of how Western powers actually operate, the new Pax-UN may not hold despite the passage of R2P. The warning has surely been sent to African leaders that they are to be obedient within the larger context. But the results are not clear cut; the UN overreached and may now regret at leisure. If Gbagbo is tried in an international court, he shall surely be gagged.
Conclusion: Gbagbo, reviled and beaten, his wife perhaps raped (both under UN protection not less), may yet emerge on the right side of history. The actions that have taken place in the little Ivory Coast may have big ramifications indeed, just not the ones the West expects.
Israeli town rallies against African refugees
Al Jazeera
Eilat is home to thousands of refugees and their lives in the small town are often marred by open hostility.
James Anei was a 16-year-old boy when he witnessed a massacre carried out by militias loyal to the government in Khartoum, Sudan's capital. Terrified, he fled his village in South Sudan.
"You see someone dying in front of you and you know this guy and you know his parents and so you run ... because you fear that you will be killed too," Anei said.
"I find myself in another place," he added, explaining that he was so frightened that he did not know he had been running until he stopped.
Once he realised he had escaped, Anei headed north. That year, 1999, he arrived in Khartoum. There, he managed to scrape together a living and go to school. Anei remembers crying sometimes when he saw his classmates with their mothers and fathers - not knowing whether his own parents had survived the massacre.
Eventually, Anei went on to Egypt. But, because he did not feel safe there, he crossed into Israel in 2007.
With a smile, Anei recalls the difference between Egypt and Israel he felt the moment he entered the country. "We received water and blankets," he said. "They made us feel at home."
But Anei was one of the earliest African migrants to arrive in Israel, and things have changed dramatically since then.
The shift is most obvious, perhaps, in Eilat, the small city in the south where Anei and several thousand African asylum seekers live. Here, refugees find their children barred from municipal schools. And in a move that has alarmed both human rights organisations and the local branch of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the municipality has hung red flags throughout the city as part of a municipal campaign against African migrants - initiated by employees of the state of Israel and financed with public funds.
The flags are part of a campaign called "protect our homes", hung by residents under the auspicies of local solidarity against the migrants.
Job and rape issues
I visited Eilat in the wake of several media reports that the 1,500 red flags had been taken down. I found that they were not removed but reduced; some were replaced by Israeli and municipal flags.
And the sentiments that gave rise to the campaign are still running high.
Shimon Hajiani, the 19-year-old son of Jewish immigrants who came to Israel from Morocco and France, remarks that the state needs to "throw" African refugees out.
"They make problems," he says.
When asked what those problems are, Hajiani answers: "Rape and robbery. Also they work in the hotels instead of Israelis."
Eilat's economy is dependent on tourism. While many African asylum seekers are employed in local hotels, the commonly held idea that they have "stolen" jobs is untrue. These are jobs that Israelis do not want - which is one reason why government initiatives encouraging Israelis to move to Eilat and work in this sector have failed.
Other interviewees repeated Hajiani's claim that African refugees are robbing Israelis and raping Jewish woman. But according to statistics compiled by the Knesset, asylum seekers have a lower crime rate than Israelis. And in fact, as the community of asylum seekers grows, their crime rate goes down.
Misinformation abounds
I conducted dozens of interviews with Israelis who live in Eilat, and not a single one had their facts straight; each and every Israeli I spoke with is a victim of misinformation.
Ester Ederi, a 72-year old immigrant from Morocco, told me it would be fine if Israel took in 100,000 asylum seekers and then closed its doors.
In reality, Israel is home to only 30,000 asylum seekers.
A 29-year-old man, who preferred to remain anonymous, told me that asylum seekers should be sent back to Africa because "the Filipinos" took his mother's job as a caregiver. He does not know that a tremendous majority of Filipinos arrive legally, holding visas issued by Israel.
He added that if the Africans were here "within a legal framework," he would have no problem with them.
"But there is a legal framework. There's an application that would give African migrants refugee status," I replied. "The government just ignores these applications."
He was visibly uncomfortable. "Really?" he asked.
"Yes. Did you know that?"
"No."
Like other interviewees, he calls them "infiltrators". This is a word he has picked up from the Israeli government and media, not knowing that when Israel speaks to the UN about the issue, it admits that 90 per cent of these "infiltrators" are, indeed, refugees.
Every interviewee parrots the government lines, including those of Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, who calls "the flood" of African migrants a "threat" to the state. Some repeat the words of Eli Yishai, the interior minister, who claims that foreigners bring diseases into the country.
Refugee status in question
Anei is now a man of 28. We sat on a half-broken picnic table outside a small classroom where Sudanese children study English with a European volunteer. In a few minutes, the class Anei teaches - also on a volunteer basis - would begin.
The municipality's treatment of the children, most of whom are barred from local schools, is a rare soft spot among some Eilat residents.
Itzik Moshe, the owner of a falafel stand and the son of Moroccan immigrants, remarked that Israel needs to respect the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
"We signed this international agreement and we have to honour it," Moshe said, adding that if the government does not want to be responsible for the asylum seekers, it should tighten up the porous southern border.
Some Jewish critics of Israel's treatment of African asylum say that their history as refugees - Biblical and historical, ancient and modern - means that the Jewish people have a special responsibility to help those who face discrimination and genocide.
But many Eilatis do not want to help others. And some, like Simon Ben David - who is organizing a small grassroots organization called "The War against the Infiltrators from Africa" - simply deny that these African asylum seekers are indeed refugees.
Ben David added: "I believe, as I see in the newspaper, that some of them are from al Qaeda and they're from Hamas and Islamic Jihad," referring to several unsubstantiated reports that have appeared in the Israeli press.
Asked if he considers the city's campaign against Africans to be racist, Ben David simply answered, "Jews cannot be racist."
Open hostility a way of life
While African refugees and their children have been targeted in isolated incidents of violence throughout the country, Eilat remains relatively quiet.
But as I stood on a sidewalk interviewing Deng Wol, a 37-year-old refugee from South Sudan, a Jewish Israeli pushes past us. He hit Wol's leg with a bag of groceries so hard that my recorder caught the slapping sound.
Wol looked shocked. He called after the man. "Aiii!" he said, grabbing his calf.
The man turns around. He didn't apologize. Rather, he said that there wasn't space on the sidewalk for all of us. Wol accepted the explanation, even though it's not true. "Okay, fine," he said, waving at the man.
Wol gave a nervous laugh and turned to me. "This is not my country," he said, shrugging.
Many Israelis consider Eilat - a faraway town at the southernmost tip of the country - an isolated issue. But it seems that the xenophobic sentiments which have taken root there, with the encouragement of both the local and national governments, are spreading.
I have seen several red flags hanging from balconies in south Tel Aviv, an area home to low-income Jewish Israelis, African refugees, and migrant workers. Jewish Israelis here have held protests against the presence of foreigners.
The most recent march came in early April, just weeks before the Jewish holiday that celebrates the ancient Hebrew exodus from slavery and persecution in Egypt. Protesters, who screamed at Africans that they should "Go home," held signs that read: "Return [deport] the 200,000 infiltrators and illegals now."
Mya Guarnieri is a Tel Aviv-based journalist and writer.
 |
| African refugees, and the misconceptions that come with them, have become a major issue in the Israeli town of Eilat, inspiring the "red flag" campaign against the newcomers [Mya Guarnieri] |
James Anei was a 16-year-old boy when he witnessed a massacre carried out by militias loyal to the government in Khartoum, Sudan's capital. Terrified, he fled his village in South Sudan.
"You see someone dying in front of you and you know this guy and you know his parents and so you run ... because you fear that you will be killed too," Anei said.
"I find myself in another place," he added, explaining that he was so frightened that he did not know he had been running until he stopped.
Once he realised he had escaped, Anei headed north. That year, 1999, he arrived in Khartoum. There, he managed to scrape together a living and go to school. Anei remembers crying sometimes when he saw his classmates with their mothers and fathers - not knowing whether his own parents had survived the massacre.
Eventually, Anei went on to Egypt. But, because he did not feel safe there, he crossed into Israel in 2007.
With a smile, Anei recalls the difference between Egypt and Israel he felt the moment he entered the country. "We received water and blankets," he said. "They made us feel at home."
But Anei was one of the earliest African migrants to arrive in Israel, and things have changed dramatically since then.
The shift is most obvious, perhaps, in Eilat, the small city in the south where Anei and several thousand African asylum seekers live. Here, refugees find their children barred from municipal schools. And in a move that has alarmed both human rights organisations and the local branch of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the municipality has hung red flags throughout the city as part of a municipal campaign against African migrants - initiated by employees of the state of Israel and financed with public funds.
The flags are part of a campaign called "protect our homes", hung by residents under the auspicies of local solidarity against the migrants.
Job and rape issues
I visited Eilat in the wake of several media reports that the 1,500 red flags had been taken down. I found that they were not removed but reduced; some were replaced by Israeli and municipal flags.
And the sentiments that gave rise to the campaign are still running high.
Shimon Hajiani, the 19-year-old son of Jewish immigrants who came to Israel from Morocco and France, remarks that the state needs to "throw" African refugees out.
"They make problems," he says.
When asked what those problems are, Hajiani answers: "Rape and robbery. Also they work in the hotels instead of Israelis."
Eilat's economy is dependent on tourism. While many African asylum seekers are employed in local hotels, the commonly held idea that they have "stolen" jobs is untrue. These are jobs that Israelis do not want - which is one reason why government initiatives encouraging Israelis to move to Eilat and work in this sector have failed.
Other interviewees repeated Hajiani's claim that African refugees are robbing Israelis and raping Jewish woman. But according to statistics compiled by the Knesset, asylum seekers have a lower crime rate than Israelis. And in fact, as the community of asylum seekers grows, their crime rate goes down.
Misinformation abounds
I conducted dozens of interviews with Israelis who live in Eilat, and not a single one had their facts straight; each and every Israeli I spoke with is a victim of misinformation.
Ester Ederi, a 72-year old immigrant from Morocco, told me it would be fine if Israel took in 100,000 asylum seekers and then closed its doors.
In reality, Israel is home to only 30,000 asylum seekers.
A 29-year-old man, who preferred to remain anonymous, told me that asylum seekers should be sent back to Africa because "the Filipinos" took his mother's job as a caregiver. He does not know that a tremendous majority of Filipinos arrive legally, holding visas issued by Israel.
He added that if the Africans were here "within a legal framework," he would have no problem with them.
"But there is a legal framework. There's an application that would give African migrants refugee status," I replied. "The government just ignores these applications."
He was visibly uncomfortable. "Really?" he asked.
"Yes. Did you know that?"
"No."
Like other interviewees, he calls them "infiltrators". This is a word he has picked up from the Israeli government and media, not knowing that when Israel speaks to the UN about the issue, it admits that 90 per cent of these "infiltrators" are, indeed, refugees.
Every interviewee parrots the government lines, including those of Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, who calls "the flood" of African migrants a "threat" to the state. Some repeat the words of Eli Yishai, the interior minister, who claims that foreigners bring diseases into the country.
Refugee status in question
Anei is now a man of 28. We sat on a half-broken picnic table outside a small classroom where Sudanese children study English with a European volunteer. In a few minutes, the class Anei teaches - also on a volunteer basis - would begin.
The municipality's treatment of the children, most of whom are barred from local schools, is a rare soft spot among some Eilat residents.
Itzik Moshe, the owner of a falafel stand and the son of Moroccan immigrants, remarked that Israel needs to respect the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
"We signed this international agreement and we have to honour it," Moshe said, adding that if the government does not want to be responsible for the asylum seekers, it should tighten up the porous southern border.
Some Jewish critics of Israel's treatment of African asylum say that their history as refugees - Biblical and historical, ancient and modern - means that the Jewish people have a special responsibility to help those who face discrimination and genocide.
But many Eilatis do not want to help others. And some, like Simon Ben David - who is organizing a small grassroots organization called "The War against the Infiltrators from Africa" - simply deny that these African asylum seekers are indeed refugees.
Ben David added: "I believe, as I see in the newspaper, that some of them are from al Qaeda and they're from Hamas and Islamic Jihad," referring to several unsubstantiated reports that have appeared in the Israeli press.
Asked if he considers the city's campaign against Africans to be racist, Ben David simply answered, "Jews cannot be racist."
Open hostility a way of life
While African refugees and their children have been targeted in isolated incidents of violence throughout the country, Eilat remains relatively quiet.
But as I stood on a sidewalk interviewing Deng Wol, a 37-year-old refugee from South Sudan, a Jewish Israeli pushes past us. He hit Wol's leg with a bag of groceries so hard that my recorder caught the slapping sound.
Wol looked shocked. He called after the man. "Aiii!" he said, grabbing his calf.
The man turns around. He didn't apologize. Rather, he said that there wasn't space on the sidewalk for all of us. Wol accepted the explanation, even though it's not true. "Okay, fine," he said, waving at the man.
Wol gave a nervous laugh and turned to me. "This is not my country," he said, shrugging.
Many Israelis consider Eilat - a faraway town at the southernmost tip of the country - an isolated issue. But it seems that the xenophobic sentiments which have taken root there, with the encouragement of both the local and national governments, are spreading.
I have seen several red flags hanging from balconies in south Tel Aviv, an area home to low-income Jewish Israelis, African refugees, and migrant workers. Jewish Israelis here have held protests against the presence of foreigners.
The most recent march came in early April, just weeks before the Jewish holiday that celebrates the ancient Hebrew exodus from slavery and persecution in Egypt. Protesters, who screamed at Africans that they should "Go home," held signs that read: "Return [deport] the 200,000 infiltrators and illegals now."
Mya Guarnieri is a Tel Aviv-based journalist and writer.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
