An Israeli military court approved, Tuesday, an order issued by the Israeli military demanding a Palestinian farmer from Al-Khader town, near Bethlehem, to demolish an irrigation well under the pretext that it is “close to the Annexation Wall”.
Ahmad Salah, coordinator of the National Committee Against the Wall and Settlements in Al-Khader, stated that the Beit El military court, near the central West Bank city of Ramallah, rejected an appeal filed by the well’s owner, Mahmoud Sbeih.
The well was dug by the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committee, and was financed by Holland as part of a project to support Palestinian farmers in the area.
The Israeli court granted Sbeih two weeks to demolish his well; otherwise, the army will demolish it and send the hyped bill to the farmer.
Israel’s illegal Annexation Wall was built in a manner that allows easy settlement construction and expansion at the expense of privately-owned Palestinian lands and orchards.
In July 2004, 14 of the 15 Hague judges of the International Court ruled that the construction of the Annexation Wall in the West Bank violated international law and “constituted illegal annexation.”
The court said Israel should stop the construction immediately, dismantle existing sections and compensate Palestinians harmed by its construction.
Israel ignored the ruling, considered it “irrelevant”, and went on to issue a 170-page response to the ruling protesting it, and claiming that “the court was looking at the wrong, outdated route”.
The Annexation Wall extends on more than 810 kilometers leading to the illegal annexation of thousands of Dunams of Palestinian lands, and isolates thousands of Dunams.
The route of the Wall is planned and implemented in a way that totally isolates several Palestinian villages, and enables the expansion of Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank, and in occupied East Jerusalem.
Related link:
The Annexation Wall – Fact-sheet
August 22, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | al-Khader, Israel, West Bank |
2 Comments
Eirene and Penthesilea Talk War and Empire
A gentle summer day finds two women sitting near the reflecting pool in the shadow of the Washington monument, bright sunshine striking off the rippling water. One is reading something on her iPad, and to make conversation, the other asks what she is reading.
Eirene: You seem very intent on your read. Must be fascinating. May I ask what it is?
Penthesilea (better known as “Penny”): Another very profound opinion piece by Phyllis Bennis, widely circulated on progressive outlets.
Eirene: I know Bennis’s work. She is a leading figure at the Institute for Policy Studies not far from here, right in the heart of Washington. She writes about war and peace.
Penthesilea: Yes, and she is a beacon for the progressive movement.
Eirene: A beacon and perhaps a mirror as well. What does she say these days?
Penny: In this piece she quite correctly opposes military intervention in Syria. Here, I will read you a key excerpt: “Of course the normal human reaction is ‘we’ve got to do something!’ But however dire the situation facing Syrian civilians, the likelihood that any outside military attacks would actually help the situation is very remote.” She then proceeds to show that military intervention will not work. It won’t work; it’s as simple as that. She is brilliant.
Eirene: The “normal human reaction” is “we’ve got to do something,” says Bennis? I am not so sure. Many “normal” people might say that Syria is none of our business. Or they might say, first do no harm.
But more important, you say Bennis claims that Western military intervention will not work. Not work to do what?
Penny: Good question, but Bennis is far too smart to neglect that point. The goal is all. She says in the very next paragraph that the purpose of military intervention would be to bring “democracy, security and stability” to Syria. But, of course, it won’t work.
Eirene: But what if military intervention would work, would it then be OK? The logic of Bennis implies that U.S. military action would then deserve support.
Penny: What you say is confusing.
Eirene: All right. Let’s do a thought experiment. Let’s drop Bennis through a wormhole in space-time to Pol Pot’s Cambodia, plopping her down as a Pot adviser. Pol Pot is at the moment complaining that his people’s paradise, which will bring people’s “democracy, security and stability,” to Cambodia is in jeopardy. He is quite certain he can remedy this by a military action that would kill off another 100,000 Cambodians. Alarmed, Bennis chimes in, “Do not do that, Comrade Pot. It won’t work.”
Penny: I don’t get the point. Pol Pot is very different from Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Pol Pot would have been lying about his aims or at the least deluding himself. So these are very different cases.
Eirene: Perhaps you should think about that.
But let’s turn from that hypothetical for a moment and return to the present. Let’s ask how Bennis would respond if U.S. military action would work, that the U.S. could install a “democratic” regime that would suit the U.S. Like Pol Pot’s plan of action, it is a bloody one; but it would work. Would that make it OK? Usually progressives speak about non-violence, a path of non-violence. Would it be OK to bomb Syria “to save it”?
Penny: Again I find what you say very confusing. It seems wrong to use violence in that way, but I have to admit it follows from the argument that Bennis makes.
But we need a principle of some sort to guide us. Is there no principle on which we can rely?
Eirene: I suggest that the principle is a simple one. An Empire, most especially a global one, seeks worldwide military hegemony and therefore economic hegemony, which alone makes military domination possible. Superiority in arms is, in fact, the official policy of the U.S. Such an Empire is incapable of intervening in a humane or progressive way. It simply is not possible. Why not? The objective of an Empire, above and beyond all else, is to control others. All other goals will be subservient to that one; human rights will be a smoke screen, nothing more. That means that no country will be permitted to take a course not approved by the Empire. An Empire’s very goal is to deny peoples the right to self-determination, to put in place regimes that will obey the dictates of the Empire.
The Empire will seek to rid the world of all regimes opposed to it – no matter their form of government. As an example, the democracies of Mossadegh and Allende had to be overthrown, because they dared defy the U.S. Even a little island like Cuba is under constant political and economic pressure, after the failure of invasion many years ago. To deprive a people or a nation of self-determination is to deny them the most fundamental of freedoms, the right to decide their future for themselves. To accomplish that is a tall order on a global scale, but such is the policy of the U.S. Bennis does not consider this or even mention it. The word Empire never crosses her pen. Her advice is more that of an imperial counselor.
Penny: You make a good point. But is that all there is? Are there other principles that might guide us?
Eirene: Do you know the libertarian argument against intervention?
Penny: Such things are not covered much in The New Yorker or The Nation, which I read faithfully.
Eirene: Well, the libertarian basically takes the stand that violence against another who has not initiated violence is wrong. Similarly a nation may not strike at another except in self-defense. That means no pre-emptive wars, no interventions for “democracy” or “human rights.” Another way to look at it is that the libertarian respects sovereignty. Sovereignty became part of international law to prevent the powerful empires, for example, from preying on the weak. It is crystal clear after the wars of the last decade that the U.S. no longer respects the sovereignty of nations.
Penny: I can relate to the libertarian view. It seems like a powerful principle.
Eirene: Similarly the so-called “paleconservatives,” perhaps better termed genuine conservatives, are well served by their principle that an Empire is not compatible with a Republic, a lesson that the Founders understood from their study of the Classics. Hence, military adventures abroad are to be avoided at all costs. In addition, the idea of a large standing army or military apparatus, which the Founders feared, is essential to an Empire, but a threat to democracy and anathema to the genuine conservative.
I might add to this list the non-philosophical conservative whose principle is simply, “I do not want to pay for all these do-good missions that our elite secular missionaries are bent upon.” Selfishness has its uses and sometimes is the best guide to action.
Penny: Well, I have to go back to work now, but I hope we run into one another again.
Eirene: Likewise. And I will continue to walk. It helps me think.
John V. Walsh can be reached at john.endwar@gmail.com.
August 22, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | Empire, Institute for Policy Studies, Syria |
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I wrote yesterday for Asia Times that in Muslim politics such as the event of the summit meeting of the Organization of Islamic Conference that was held in Jeddah last week over the Syrian crisis, it is invariably the case that the sub-texts turn out to be more important than the narrative.
The narrative in the present case is well-known; it is well-propagated by the Western (especially American) media and it inevitably trickles down to Indian discourses, namely, that the OIC summit in Jeddah was going to be all about the Saudi-Iranian ‘cold war’.
But the devil lies in the details. One point of immense curiosity was about the stance taken by Egypt’s president Mohammad Morsi (who belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood) at the OIC summit. Three reasons could be cited for this. One, this was Morsi’s first appearance on the world stage and it became a poignant moment that an elected Islamist leader in a Middle Eastern democracy was taking to the OIC podium.
Two, Egypt had so far shied away from taking a stance on the Syrian situation and Egypt’s formal stance on the Syrian situation holds a lot of significance for the downstream developments, given the unmistakeable longing of that country to reclaim the leadership of the Arab world — in sum, Egypt could be an ally or a competitor for Saudi Arabia.
Third, Egypt’s Brothers are on the horns of a dilemma. They came to power riding the wave of a ‘regime change’ but they also would be conscious that the MB in Syria has certain unique characteristics, as its secretive dealings with the Western powers and Turkey (and some say, with even israeli intelligence) for creating a militia and resorting to the path of violence to force a ‘regime change’ in Damascus would testify. Egypt’s Brothers had, on the contrary, kept to the strait non-violent path in their march to power through the decades in the political wilderness.
Obviously, there is a keen struggle to sway the Brothers of Egypt. Thus, the stunning decision by Qatar to lend a handsome amount of 2 billion dollars to Egypt to help Morsi tide over the economic crisis was not because Doha has a bleeding heart.
Not a few observers could see that Qatar is creating leverage in Cairo at a juncture when the Saudi and American influence is facing uncertainties. Curiously, the Qatari lovefest with Egypt coincided with the OIC summit in Jeddah.
In the event, Morsi rose to the occasion. The narrative is that he called for a transition in Egypt. “it is time for the Syrian regime to leave”, he said. So far so good. The Western media lapped it up. But then came the sub-texts. Morsi called for a non-violent path. In immediate terms, he sought a ceasefire through Ramadan. Besides, he wanted an Islamic solution.
Then came the bombshell. Morsi proposed that a contact group should be formed to resolve the Syrian crisis through peaceful means, discussion and reconciliation. And, pray, who would form this group? Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey and Iran — he outlined.
In a nutshell, Morsi has rejected the strategm for ‘regime change’ in Syria by the United States in alliance with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar (with Israel standing in the shade for undertaking covert operations). Most important, Morsi’s package is almost exactly what Iran espouses, too.
No wonder, Tehran feels greatly elated. In contrast with the deafening silence in Ankara, Riyadh and Doha, Tehran has scrambled to welcome Morsi’s proposal. Saudis will feel perturbed that Cairo is careering away into the trajectory of an independent foreign policy that may have more commonality with Tehran than the course adopted by the GCC states. Turkey will feel downcast that the new Egypt is not exactly in a mood to adopt the so-called islamist leadership of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan as its role model.
Indeed, we could anticipate that interesting times lie ahead as Egypt’s Brothers carry forward the impulses of their revolution. We are slowly, steadily getting near to an answer to the question raised in great angst by several quarters (Washington, Tel Aviv, Riyadh) : Will the new Egypt orient toward Saudi Arabia or Tehran?
The answer is crystallizing: Morsi intends to follow the middle path. Actually, that is also what his latest decision to attend the NAM summit in Tehran underscores.
So, it is about time we move on to the follow-up question: Whom does Morsi’s (and Egypt’s Brothers’) middle path suit better — Saudi Arabia or Iran? I won’t wager for an answer. It’s Iran, Stupid! All that Tehran ever expected in its regional (Arab) milieu all through these past 34 years since the Islamic Revolution was a level playing field. And Egypt is willing to recognize, finally, that it is a legitimate aspiration to have.
August 22, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Timeless or most popular | Egypt, Iran, Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, Saudi Arabia, Syria |
1 Comment
Egypt has formally requested a $4.8 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund, a spokesman for its president said on Wednesday during a visit to Cairo by IMF chief Christine Lagarde to discuss support for the country’s ailing economy.
Egypt’s finance minister said last week Cairo would discuss the possibility of the bigger-than-expected loan from the fund. Egypt’s previous government had requested a $3.2 billion package but the deal was not finalized.
Lagarde’s presence was requested by Egypt and could signal a fresh determination on both sides to iron out a loan after President Mohammed Mursi, who took office on June 30, appointed his first government last month.
“We have officially requested a $4.8 billion loan from the IMF and talks are currently going on inside about the request,” spokesman Yasser Ali told Reuters as Lagarde held discussions with Mursi. He said any details would be announced later.
An IMF official also confirmed the request had been made.
During 18 months of political turmoil since the overthrow of autocratic leader Hosni Mubarak, successive Egyptian governments negotiated with the IMF to secure emergency funding.
The Muslim Brotherhood was originally skeptical of the IMF loan, which it feared would undermine Egypt’s sovereignty by keeping it indebted to the IMF.
The IMF has a track record of failed policies in a number of developing countries, including Argentina and a number of African countries.
Sections of Egypt’s political and economic elite fear IMF involvement in resuscitating Egypt’s economy might in fact worsen the situation even further, as previously seen throughout Africa.
But Egypt’s fiscal and balance of payment problems have worsened, prompting the Muslim Brotherhood to surrender its opposition to the deal.
An exodus of foreign investors in the wake of the turmoil left local banks shouldering much of the short-term and other lending to the state. The government has also borrowed directly from the central bank.
Foreign reserves have fallen to well under half levels seen before last year’s popular uprising against Mubarak and investors’ reluctance to return is born partly of fears that a sharp currency devaluation could wipe out any returns.
(Al-Akhbar, Reuters)
August 22, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Economics | Christine Lagarde, Egypt, IMF, International Monetary Fund |
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On Wednesday August 22, people will gather at the church in Amatitán Abajo, in San Vicente Department, to commemorate, remember and demand justice for a massacre which happened thirty years ago. It is the anniversary of the El Calabozo massacre, when troops of the US-trained Atlacatl Battalion murdered more than 200 civiliam victims taking refuge along a river’s banks.
The massacre was documented in the UN Truth Commission Report following the signing of the 1992 Peace Accords:
On 22 August 1982, in the place known as El Calabozo situated beside the Amatitán river in the north of the Department of San Vicente, troops of the Atlacatl Rapid Deployment Infantry Battalion (BIRI) killed over 200 men, women and children whom they were holding prisoner.
The victims had converged on El Calabozo from various directions, fleeing a vast antiguerrilla military operation which had begun three days earlier in the area of Los Cerros de San Pedro and which involved, in addition to the Atlacatl BIRI, other infantry, artillery and aerial support units.
There was a major guerrilla presence, supported by the local population, in the area of the operation. Government forces had penetrated the area on earlier occasions, but the guerrillas had avoided combat. This time the operation, which bore the name “Teniente Coronel Mario Azenón Palma”, involved some 6,000 troops and was designed to clear the area of guerrillas. As the troops advanced, the civilian population fled, fearing the shelling and the soldiers’ violence. One of the places where a large number of fugitives congregated was El Calabozo.
According to witnesses, the fugitives were surprised by the Atlacatl Battalion unit. Some of them managed to escape; the rest were rounded up and machine-gunned. The military operation continued for several more days. The Government informed the public that it had been a success: many guerrillas had been killed, camps had been destroyed and weapons and other supplies had been seized.
On 8 September, two weeks after the incident, the massacre was reported in The Washington Post. The Minister of Defence, General José Guillermo García, said that an investigation had been made and that no massacre had occurred. He repeated this assertion in an interview with the Commission….
There is sufficient evidence that on 22 August 1982, troops of the Atlacatl Battalion deliberately killed over 200 civilians – men, women and children – who had been taken prisoner without offering any resistance. The incident occurred at the place known as El Calabozo, near the canton of Amatitán Abajo, Department of San Vicente.
Although the massacre was reported publicly, the Salvadorian authorities denied it. Despite their claim to have made an investigation, there is absolutely no evidence that such an investigation took place.
Families of the victims of the massacre have worked to keep the memory of these events alive and to demand justice. Laura Hershberger wrote on the SHARE Foundation blog about a youth event in 2009 commemorating the slaughter:
None of the youth had lived through the Calabozo massacre that happened by river of Amititan in a place called the Calabazo in 1982, but they had grown up hearing the story from their family. How the army had advanced from the San Pedro hills and how the inhabitants of the region fled their homes in what was known as the “guindas.” How the people had been walking for seven days without food and took refuge by the river to sleep when they were attacked by the Atlacatl and the Ramon Belloso Batallian, it was then that they were massacred in cold blood, over two hundred men, women and children. When the youth group from the Community of El Rincon acted out a play that had written about the massacre, they made sure to include the part where the mothers plea for the soldiers to take their own lives but to spare the lives of their small children.
Those pleas for mercy fell on the deaf ears of the soldier of the Atlacatl Battalion who 9 months earlier had slaughtered 1000 civilians in El Mozote. The forensic anthropologists from Argentina who have conducted the investigations at El Mozote have also exhumed bodies of victims of the El Calabozo massacre. Earlier this year, the online periodical ContraPunto described their recovery of the body of a grandmother and her two granddaughters, ages 5 and 9, from the massacre site. This investigation had been led by Asociación Pro Búsqueda, the NGO which continues the search for children missing from the years of the civil war. As ContraPunto notes, twenty years after the signing of the Peace Accords, many families still face the uncertainty of not knowing where the bodies of their loved ones can be found, or whether they could have survived.
The families of the victims continue to demand justice in the face of the 1993 Amnesty Law which the government interprets to prevent prosecution of such war crimes. There is still no political will in the National Assembly or the president’s office to repeal the law. You can watch this video of a 2009 press conference given by human rights lawyer David Morales and families of victims regarding their petition that the case against those responsible for the the El Calabozo massacre be pursued.
August 21, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Atlacatl Battalion, David Morales, El Mozote, El Salvador, José Guillermo García, San Vicente Department |
1 Comment
A pair of fish captured near Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant have shown to be carrying record levels of radiation. The pair of greenlings are contaminated with 258 times the level government deems safe for consumption.
The fish, which were captured just 12 miles from the nuclear plant, registered 25,800 becquerels of caesium per kilo, according to Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO).
TEPCO says the high levels may be due to the fish feeding in radioactive hotspots. The company plans on capturing and testing more of the fish, as well as their feed, and the seabed soil to determine the exact cause of the high radiation.
The findings were surprising for officials, who had previously seen much lower levels of radiation in contaminated fish.
Fishermen been allowed to cast their reels in the nearby waters on an experimental basis since June – but only in areas more than 31 miles from the plant.
Previously, the highest recorded radiation seen in the captured wildlife was 18,700 becquerels per kilo in cherry salmons, according to the Japanese Fisheries Agency.
The radiation was caused by a meltdown of three reactors at the Fukushima power plant after it was damaged by an earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.
The disaster was so intense that contaminated fish were caught all the way across the Pacific Ocean, on the California coast.
But it’s not only aquatic life that is suffering from side effects of the leaked radiation.
According to researchers, the radiation has caused mutations in some butterflies, giving them dented eyes, malformed legs and antennae, and stunted wings.
The results show the butterflies were deteriorating both physically and genetically.
But the harmful risks don’t stop with butterflies. The radioactivity which seeped into the region’s air and water has left humans facing potentially life threatening health issues.
Over a third of Fukushima children are at risk of developing cancer, according to the Sixth Report of Fukushima Prefecture Health Management Survey.
The report shows that nearly 36 per cent of children in the Fukushima Prefecture have abnormal thyroid growths which pose a risk of becoming cancerous.
The World Health Organization warns that young people are particularly prone to radiation poisoning in the thyroid gland. Infants are most at risk because their cells divide at a higher rate.
August 21, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Environmentalism, Nuclear Power, Timeless or most popular | Fukushima, Fukushima Prefecture, Pacific Ocean, Tokyo Electric Power Company, World Health Organization |
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On August 4, 1946 over one thousand miners assembled in Market Square in Johannesburg, South Africa. No hall in the town was big enough to hold them, and no one would have rented one to them anyway. The miners were members of the African Mine Worker’s Union (AMWU), a non-European union which was formed five years earlier in order to address the 12 to 1 pay differential between white and black mineworkers. The gathering carried forward just one unanimous resolution: African miners would demand a minimum wage of ten shillings (about 1 Rand) per day. If the Transvaal Chamber of Mines did not meet this demand, all African mine workers would embark on a general strike immediately. Workers mounted the platform one after the other to testify: “When I think of how we left our homes in the reserves, our children naked and starving, we have nothing more to say. Every man must agree to strike on 12 August. It is better to die than go back with empty hands.” The progressive Guardian newspaper reported an old miner getting to his feet and addressing his comrades: “We on the mines are dead men already!”[1]
The massacre of 45 people, including 34 miners, at Marikana in the North West province is an inevitable outcome of a system of production and exploitation that has historically treated human life as cheap and disposable. If there is a central core – a stem in relation to which so many other events are branches – that runs through South African history, it is the demand for cheap labour for South Africa’s mines. “There is no industry of the size and prosperity of this that has managed its cheap labour policy so successfully,” wrote Ruth First in reference to the Chamber of Mines ability to pressure the government for policies that displaced Africans from their land and put them under the boot of mining bosses.[2]
Masters and Servants
Mechanisms such as poll and hut taxes, pass laws, Masters and Servants Acts and grinding rural poverty were all integral in ensuring a cheap and uninterrupted supply of labour for the mines. Pass laws were created in order to forge a society in which farm work or mining were the only viable employment options for the black population. And yet the low wages and dangerous work conditions kept many within the country away, forcing the Chamber of Mines to recruit labour from as far afield as Malawi and China throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Sordid deals between Portuguese East Africa and Apartheid South Africa ensured forced labour to be recruited for the mines and by 1929 there were 115,000 Mozambicans working underground. “It has been said,” wrote First in her study of migrant Mozambican miners, “that the wealth of Reef gold mines lies not in the richness of the strike but in the low costs of production kept down by cheap labour.”[3]
When AMWU was formed in 1941 black miners earned 70 Rand a year while white workers received 848 Rand. White miners had been organized for many years, but there was little solidarity between the two groups as evidenced by the 1922 Rand Rebellion led by the whites-only Mine Workers Union. White miners went on strike against management’s attempt at weakening the colour bar in order to facilitate the entry of cheaper black labour into skilled positions. Supported by the Communist Party of South Africa under the banner of “Unite and Fight for a White South Africa!” the rebellion was viciously crushed by the state leaving over 200 dead. The growth of non-European unions in the 1940s was dramatic and for the very first time the interests of African mineworkers were on the table. Their demands threatened the very foundations of the cheap labour system, and so in 1944 Prime Minister Jan Smuts tabled the War Measure 1425 preventing a gathering of 20 or more on mine property. Despite these difficulties the union pressed on and in 1946 they approached the Chamber of Mines with their demand for wage increases. A letter calling for last minute negotiations with the Chamber of Mines was, as usual, ignored.
By August 12th tens-of-thousands of black miners were on strike from the East to the West Rand. The state showed the utmost brutality, chasing workers down mineshafts with live ammunition and cracking down on potential sympathy strikes in the city of Johannesburg. By August 16th the state had bludgeoned 100,000 miners back to work and nine lay dead. Throughout the four-day strike hundreds of trade union leaders were arrested, with the central committee of the Communist Party and local ANC leaders arrested and tried for treason and sedition. The violence came on the cusp of the 1948 elections, which would see further repression and the beginning of the country’s anti-communist hysteria.
National Union of Mineworkers Poster on Fortieth Anniversary of 1946 Strike
While it did not succeed in its immediate aims, the strike was a watershed moment in South African politics and would forever change the consciousness of the labour movement. Thirty years later Monty Naicker, one of the leading figures in the South African Indian Congress, argued that the strike “transformed African politics overnight. It spelt the end of the compromising, concession-begging tendencies that dominated African politics. The timid opportunism and begging for favours disappeared.”[4] The Native Representative Council, formed by the state in 1937 to address the age old ‘native question,’ disbanded on August 15th and ANC president Dr. A.B. Xuma reiterated the demand for “recognition of African trade unions and adequate wages for African workers including mineworkers.”[5]
The 1946 mineworkers strike was the spark that ignited the anti-apartheid movement. The ANC Youth League’s 1949 Program of Action owes much to the militancy of these workers as does the Defiance Campaign of the 1950s and the emergence of the ANC’s armed wing Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation) in the 1960s. It is too early to say what sort of impact the current Lonmin strike will have on South African politics, but it seems unlikely that it will be as transformative as those of the past. The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), arguably the heirs to the 1946 strike are currently engaged in a series of territorial disputes with the breakaway Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU). Meanwhile COSATU’s muted response has echoed the ANC’s line of equal-culpability and half-mast public mourning. The increasingly incoherent South African Communist Party has called for the arrest of AMCU leaders with some of its so-called cadres defending the police action. Former ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema’s plea for miners to hold the line and form a more militant union reek of political opportunism.
Still Dependent on Cheap and Flexible Labour
What no one has dared to say, aside from the miners themselves, is that the mining industry remains dependent on cheap and flexible labour, much of it continuing to come from neighbouring countries. This has historically been the source of most miner’s grievances. A recent Bench Marks Foundation study of platinum mines in the North West province uncovered a number of factors linked to rising worker discontent in the region. Lonmin was singled out as a mine with high levels of fatalities, very poor living conditions for workers and unfulfilled community demands for employment. Perhaps most significant is the fact that almost a third of Lonmin’s workforce is employed through third party contractors.[6] This form of employment is not new in the mining industry. In fact, since minerals were discovered in the 19th century labour recruiters have scoured the southern half of the continent for workers. The continued presence of these ‘labour brokers’ on the mines and the ANC’s unwillingness to ban them – opting instead for a system of increasing regulation – is the bloody truth of South Africa’s so-called ‘regulated flexibility.’
There are a number other findings from the Bench Marks study that are worth mentioning as they illuminate some of the real grievances that have been lost amid photos of waving pangas. The number of fatalities at Lonmin has doubled since January 2011, and the company has consistently ignored community calls for employment, favouring contractors and migrant workers. A visit by the Bench Marks Foundation research team to Marikana revealed:
“A proliferation of shacks and informal settlements, the rapid deterioration of formal infra-structure and housing in Marikana itself, and the fact that a section of the township constructed by Lonmin did not have electricity for more than a month during the time of our last visit. At the RDP Township we found broken down drainage systems spilling directly into the river at three different points.”[7]
In fact, the study predicted further violent protests at Marikana in the coming year. The mass dismissal of 9,000 workers in May last year inflamed already tense relations between the community and the mine as dismissed workers lost their homes in the company’s housing scheme.
Once again, these facts are hardly new in the world of South African mining. Behind the squalid settlements that surround the mine shafts there are immense profits to be made. In recent years the platinum mining industry has prospered like no other thanks to the increased popularity of platinum jewellery and the use of the metal in vehicle exhaust systems in the United State and European countries. Production increased by 60 per cent between 1980 and 1994, while the price soared almost fivefold. The value of sales, almost all exported, thus increased to almost 12 per cent of total sales by the mining industry. The price rose so dramatically throughout the 1990s that it is on par with gold as the country’s leading mineral export.[8] South Africa’s platinum industry is the largest in the world and in 2011 reported total revenues of $13.3-billion, which is expected to increase by 15.8% over the next five years. Lonmin itself is one of the largest producers of platinum in the world, and the bulk of its tonnage comes from the Marikana mine. The company recorded revenues of $1.9-billion in 2011, an increase of 25.7%, the majority of which would come from the Marikana shafts.[9]
For risking mutilation and death underground workers at Marikana made only 4000 Rand, or $480 a month. As one miner told South Africa’s Mail and Guardian newspaper that, “It’s better to die than to work for that shit … I am not going to stop striking. We are going to protest until we get what we want. They have said nothing to us. Police can try and kill us but we won’t move.” These expressions of frustration and anger could be from 1922, 1946 or today. They are scathing indictments of an industry that continues to treat its workers as disposable and a state that upholds apartheid’s cheap labour policies.
Endnotes:
1. Monty Naicker, “The African Miners Strike of 1946,” 1976.
2. Ruth First, “The Gold of Migrant Labour,” Spearhead, 1962.
3. Ruth First, “The Gold of Migrant Labour,” Spearhead, 1962.
4. Monty Naicker, “The African Miners Strike of 1946,” 1976.
5. Dr. A.B. Xuma quoted in Monty Naicker, “The African Miners Strike of 1946.”
6. The Bench Marks Foundation, “Communities in the Platinum Minefields,” 2012.
7. The Bench Marks Foundation, “Communities in the Platinum Minefields,” 2012.
8. Charles Feinstein, “An Economic History of South Africa,” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, 211.
9. Marketline Advantage Reports on South Africa’s Platinum Group Metals, 2011.
•
Chris Webb is a postgraduate student at York University, Toronto where he is researching labour restructuring in South African agriculture. He can be reached at christopherswebb_AT_yahoo.ca.
August 21, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | Africa, ANC, Lonmin, Marikana, Rand Rebellion, South Africa, South African Indian Congress |
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WASHINGTON — A South Sudan presidential adviser had been forced to leave Juba after the disclosure of a letter urging 75 officials to return some four billion dollars they are accused of stealing, a news report unveiled.
According to a report published on Monday by the American McClatchy Newspapers, an Ethiopian-American adviser to President Salva Kiir was forced to flee Juba fearing for his safety following the release of a letter sent to influential officials and individuals close to the government.
Ted Dagne, (L) late Congressman Payne and John Prendergast of ENOUGH at a meeting on Darfur crisis in 2008 (file photo Enough Project)
Ted Dagne, hired by the U.N. to advise Kiir on anti-corruption policy and international relations, played a key role in the preparation of the letter which was put public to embarrass the officials who are accused of stealing the four billion dollars.
On 3 May Kiir asked the 75 officials to return money they allegedly stole and offered amnesty if they deposit it at a foreign bank account.
However the letter, released one month later on 4 June, was contested by many officials who denied the accusation as some others openly disputed the 4 billion figure. The U.N. told the McClatchy it “is not familiar” with how the $4 billion figure was calculated.
Following his departure to Nairobi after the release of the letter, Dagne received a message from the South Sudanese president telling him that “he should remain outside South Sudan. Dagne later tried to return, but was refused entry,” the report said.
However the United Nations said he is still on contract with its mission in South Sudan.
Dagne who has been settled in Juba since January 2012 was named to the coveted position by the head of U.N. Mission in the Republic of South Sudan (UNMISS) the Norwegian Hilde Johnson who was closely involved in the peace talks between Khartoum and the former SPLM rebels.
The influential U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, supported the appointment of the former Norwegian minister at the head of UNMISS.
Dagne, and Rice, were together in a close circle of people who worked during the past years to mobilise American officials and Congress members to support South Sudanese cause. The group narrated in a long story published byReuters last July how they worked to achieve South Sudan independence.
The Ethiopian American researcher and activist told the U.S. newspaper group before leaving Juba that he was very frustrated by the extent of corruption, tribal wars and lack of development in the new nation.
August 21, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Corruption | Salva Kiir Mayardit, South Sudan |
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TEHRAN – Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast emphatically rejected claims on Sunday that Iran engineered a series of suicide bomb attacks earlier this week that killed at least 28 people in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan’s spy agency, the National Directorate of Security (NDS), killed two alleged insurgents and detained three more this week for what they said was their involvement in the bombings this week in Afghanistan’s Nimroz province.
The NDS claimed the five were Iranian citizens, and that they had been trained for suicide bomb missions in Iran, which borders Afghanistan to its west.
August 20, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Afghanistan, Iran, National Directorate of Security, NDS Group, Tehran Times |
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(Photo: Atiaf Alwazir)
The life of fourteen-year-old Ali Alkhadr from Abyan was changed forever on 9 May 2011. Returning from a family visit in al-Mihrab village, Ali was hit by shrapnel from an air-strike that tore his jaw wide open. Air-strikes in the South that target al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) often indiscriminately kill or wound anyone in the surrounding area, including civilians, without a warning.
According to Ali’s father, Alkhadr Ali Hassan, Doctors without Borders/Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) generously conducted 1 million Yemeni Riyal ($4,660) worth of reconstructive surgery. Yet Ali still needs a lot more. The once studious teenager dropped out of school due to depression.
“He refuses to see his classmates because he is disfigured. It’s been eight months and there is nothing I can do to help my son,” said the boy’s father. “He does not want to go to school and one time I hospitalized him because he overdosed on drugs. I believe he wanted to end his life, and it pains me to see that. I don’t know what to do,” he added.
Ali Alkhadr is not alone in a country were civilians are often caught in the middle between militants and the government. These civilians are often ignored in the mainstream media and their deaths denied by governments.
For a decade, US policy in Yemen has centered on counter-terrorism cooperation with Yemeni security forces through the training and funding of counter-terrorism units, targeted assassinations including US citizens, small on-the-ground operation units, and drone attacks.
Terrorism is of grave concern in Yemen, and its consequences are far reaching. On Saturday 4 August 2012, locals in Jaar were the targets of a bombing by militants that killed at least 40 people. The Yemeni and US government’s response to these attacks in Yemen has included arbitrary arrests, homes being demolished, death and injuries, and displacement of civilians.
Since January 2012, there have been over 60 US air-strikes in Yemen, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ), killing approximately hundreds of civilians.
On 15 May 2012, an air-strike, believed to be a US drone, hit a civilian home. People nearby ran to see what had happened and to help the injured inside.
“About 15 minutes later, another plane suddenly struck the same building killing 15 people, including my brother,” said 19-year old Hassan Ahmed Abdullah recounting the incident. “He was wounded by shrapnel in his chest, liver, and neck. He also had burns on 50 percent of his body.”
From scarred people to destroyed buildings, Abyan carries many testaments to the war on terror.
Most of the civilian homes in the impoverished area of al-Kod were destroyed by air-strikes and heavy artillery. This area houses some of the poorest people in Yemen.
Bombs did not only hit homes but also struck schools and even the largest hospital in Abyan, al-Razi hospital.
“The bombing of al-Razi hospital was a tragedy, and I believe we will suffer from it for years to come, especially in light of Yemen’s economic social and political deterioration,” said psychologist and Jaar resident, Wahib Saad who also stressed the psychological trauma of such attacks.
“Today, when I hear a plane I immediately run to the house” said seven-year-old Ahmed. Ahmed’s drawings and the other children’s show images of darkness, death, and destruction, indicating that the generations to come will need much more than financial compensation to recover.
While many residents of Abyan believe that US strikes are more accurate in hitting their desired targets than Yemeni ones, the majority believes that the implications of US bombing are disastrous.
This is seen from the fact that US strikes are seen as an invasion, an occupation and a breach of sovereignty. A citizen journalist who preferred to remain anonymous said to me, “Let’s be honest, I am against US intervention. The Yemeni government has the right to rely on the US for help but not when the US is using Yemenis against their own brothers. As a southern separatist, I believe that we are already under two occupations, by the North and the militants, and I don’t want a third occupation by the Americans,” he said. … Full article
August 20, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Abyan, Abyan Governorate, Bureau of Investigative Journalism, United States, Yemen |
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What’s behind the Jason Puracal campaign?
World champions in arbitrary detention, the United States and the European Union, are now behind a campaign to free a person convicted for drug trafficking in Nicaragua. The US is notorious for its prisons at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and for its global network of secret detention centers. Its overseas accomplice, the EU, is also notorious, for having collaborated in setting up that network as well as for its own detention centers wherein tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants languish. Their support for the Puracal campaign is just one more political ploy, another clear example of the US-EU tandem at work to co-opt and corrupt the entire international human rights system.
“Midnight Express” in Central America
On August 2011, U.S. citizen Jason Puracal Zachary was convicted in a Nicaraguan Court of Justice to 22 years in prison for narcotics trafficking and money laundering along with 10 Nicaraguans, also sentenced to long prison terms.
Nine months earlier, Puracal’s home and office had been raided by Nicaraguan authorities without a warrant, an extraordinary procedure permitted in the country’s criminal code for serious cases in which there is suspicion that the investigation risks having evidence destroyed or concealed. Using the latest technology (provided, incidentally, by the United States) traces of narcotics were found in Puracal’s vehicle along with extensive documentation supporting the investigation, which the Nicaraguan judicial authorities argue justifies the charges against him and the other members of the network in which he participated.
As a U.S. national, Puracal has appealed the sentence and hearings begin this week in the district appeals court in Granada.
Jason Puracal is a former Peace Corps volunteer for the United States in Nicaragua. After having met and married a Nicaraguan, he decided to stay in the country, buying a real estate franchise after his volunteer service tour ended. His arrest has led to an unprecedented international campaign in the form of a petition organized in favour of his release which has gathered more than 90 thousand signatures on the internet.
The sentiment is understandable given the ease with which the situation can be turned into a parallel of the famous film Midnight Express (1978), by Alan Parker, from the screenplay by Oliver Stone. In the film, an American drugs trafficker is sentenced to 30 years in a Turkish prison. Over the decades the film, based on a true story, has become a classic of Islamophobia with all the clichés that portray countries of the non-Western “periphery” as lawless places where whites are exposed to all kinds of torture, including sexual abuse, at the hands of corrupt, ruthless and unpredictable locals. After years of enduring inhumane conditions and abandoning all hope of support from the U.S. government, Billy Hayes, the film’s protagonist, decides to escape from prison on his own.
Puracal’s case has been supported by groups in U.S. such as the Innocence Project and has received support from such influential persons as the former director of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) Tom Cash (who helped prosecute Colombian narcotics kingpin Pablo Escobar) and Irwin Cotler, former Canadian justice minister and Attorney General. Cotler wrote an inflammatory letter to Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega referring to the Puracal case as one of “arbitrary detention” and “a serious abuse of justice”, according to Nicaragua Dispatch. Even the supposedly prestigious UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions recommends the “immediate release” of Jason Puracal.
According to the version of events put forward by the defenders of Puracal, Puracal’s rights were violated by Nicaraguan authorities in their failure to produce a search warrant when entering his home and business office. They also argue that he was denied the right to a proper defense and that his prison sentence is longer than Nicaraguan law allows. Finally they allege that he has been forced to live with seven other prisoners in the same cell, and that at one point he suffered burns from a water kettle used in the prison.
All of these allegations have been rejected outright by the President of the Court of Appeal, Dr. Norman Miranda Castillo, who in turn accused the U.S. Embassy in Managua of interfering in the course of Nicaraguan justice.
“Responsibility to Protect” the Narcos
This past May 24, the Secretary for the UN’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions, Miguel De la Lama, sent a letter in response to a request by Jared Genser, on behalf of the “non-profit organization” Perseus Strategies LLC. In the letter, Lama informs Genser that the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in its sixty-third session issued a “text of opinion”, number 10/2012 on Puracal.
The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention was established by Resolution 1991/42 of the now superseded UN Commission on Human Rights, among other things to investigate cases of arbitrary detention inconsistent with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a task that according to the United Nations should be carried out “with discretion, objectivity and independence.”
The “text of opinion“, sent by the UN Group to the Government of Nicaragua, clarifies that the human rights body cannot comment on the charges against Puracal, nor about the evidence presented against him by the State of Nicaragua. However, given that the Nicaraguan government did not respond to the allegations made by the group within the stipulated period of two months, the Council recommended Puracal’s immediate release, and for a new trial to be conducted if deemed necessary, along with with an indemnity to Puracal for alleged damage to his person. Clearly, this letter from the UN body immediately became a powerful media weapon.
The Working Group’s members are Malick El Hadji Sow from Senegal, Shaheen Sardar Ali from Pakistan, Roberto Garreton of Chile, Mads Andenas from Norway and Vladimir Tochilovsky, from the Ukraine. It is not difficult to discern the influence of the European Union and NATO prevalent in this UN Working Group.
The Working Group chairman Malick Sow, is a Supreme Court judge in Senegal, a strong regional ally of France and a country lauded as a “strong and stable democracy” by the European Union. Senegal ranks 155th of the 169 countries that make up the Human Development Index, and is heavily reliant on EU aid, which exceeds 10% of the national budget. Meanwhile, the Working Group’s Pakistani vice-president is actually a law professor at the University of Warwick in England and at the University of Oslo, in Norway. It is hardly possible to expect actions deviating from the official line by a Chilean representative who, although a recognized human rights defender during the Pinochet era, today represents a state that practices arbitrary detention of indigenous Mapuche of all ages, as if it were a sport. Nor can one expect independent action from a Ukrainian trial lawyer involved in the first stages of organizing the International Criminal Court, widely criticized for its bias against any head of State identified by Washington as an enemy, and for its reluctance to investigate the crimes by allies of the White House.
Lastly, the Norwegian, Andenas is, like the Pakistani Shaheen Ali, a professor at the University of Oslo’s Law Faculty, but he has also been a member of the board of a very exclusive organization, the Association of Human Rights Institutes (AHRI) of the European Union. This group, funded by the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) organization, brings together some 41 universities in Europe to conduct research in the area of human rights. In December 2010, with funding from COST, AHRI conducted the seminar “International Criminal Court and the Responsibility to Protect – Synergies and Tensions.” One of the seminar themes was the suggestive name of “The Way Ahead”, a “discussion of the ways in which the “international community could coordinate their future actions” to implement the doctrine known as R2P.
The Responsibility to Protect, or R2P, is an idea that NATO countries have been promoting for several years within the United Nations. The basic concept of R2P is that when a state fails to protect its population, either deliberately or through being unable to, it is the responsibility of the “entire international community” to intervene, even when this is in contradiction with one of fundamental principles of the United Nations: non-interference in the internal affairs of other States. At the UN World Summit in September 2005, a majority of member states, under pressure from NATO countries accepted the idea of R2P in principle, but recommended a more extensive discussion of the topic. Little more than five years later, that doctrine would be put into practice by NATO forces through a war of aggression against the Libyan people.
Within the stretch of a few days in March 2011, Soliman Bouchuiguir of the Libyan League for Human Rights (LLHR) released a statement to an assembly of more than 70 NGOs for the 15th Special Session of the UN’s Human Rights Council beginning February 25, 2011. The session for the first time in its history decided to expel a member state, Libya, for alleged bombings against its civilian population. A few weeks later would mark the beginning of a NATO slaughter against the North African country.
“To be honest, it’s was not a very difficult undertaking because all these NGOs are known to each other (…) and finally, the session of the UN Human Rights Council made it all come together in Geneva, and so the statement was launched, signed by all members,” said Bouchuiguir interviewed for the documentary film “The Humanitarian War”, directed by Julien Teil.
The figures that Bouchuiguir convinced the other members of the Council of were shocking: March 17, 2011, reported 6,000 dead, 12,000 wounded, 500 missing, 700 rapes and 75,000 refugees. Just two weeks later, Bouchuiguir spoke of 18,000 dead, 46,000 wounded, 28,000 missing, 1600 sexual assaults. It was these figures that were used to justify the “no fly zone” and NATO bombing that resulted in a veritable slaughter. All these figures were invented.
Remember that on March 2, the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S., Mike Mullen, testified before Congress: “we could not confirm that Libyan planes had opened fire on their own population.” Around the same time, the Russian Joint Chief of Staff reported that satellite monitoring over Libyan territory since the crisis’ beginning in mid-February, failed to detect any kind of bombing.
“There is no way to do it”, replied Bouchuiguir to Teil’s question about how to check whether the figures he had given the UN were true. “The Libyan government never, ever, gives information on human rights (…) so you have to do an estimate,” he said. “… his information (on the number of civilian casualties in Libya) I did not receive from just anyone. I received it from The Libyan Prime Minister – on the other side,” added Bouchuiguir referring to the National Transitional Council (NTC) sponsored by the so-called “rebels” in turn supported by NATO.
“It was Mr. Mahmoud… of the tribe Warfallah. It was he who gave me these figures. I used them, though with some caution,” he adds. Bouchuiguir was referring to Mahmoud Jibril, the “Prime Minister” of the “Libyan rebels” designated by NATO and the CIA.
Ali Zeidan, introduced in early March as the LLHR spokesman, would also become spokesman for the NTC. Later, when pressed by Teil, Bouchuiguir recognized that several members of the NTC were also members of the above mentioned “human rights” organization. “You know, these people in the government (the NTC), we are all part of the same group! They are members of the Libyan League for Human Rights! The Minister of Information, for example, the Education Minister, the Minister for Oil, the Finance Minister, all are members of our league! … None occupy positions of responsibility, but are members of our league,” he explains.
The true scale of the slaughter committed against the Libyan people may some day be known. For now, though, through some heavily embellished figures from NATO itself, detailing the use of 7,700 missiles and bombs on some more than 10,000 flights, one can get an idea, one that would very probably pale against the horror of the true facts. As long as those in charge of the task of counting the bodies on the ground continue to show the same unethical behaviour as individuals such as Bouchuiguir Soliman and the officials of the 70 “human rights” NGOs – who without even thinking voted so that others would execute their “responsibility to bomb” the Libyan people – the truth may never be known, simply because there are interests to ensure it never does.
All this begs the question: If these kinds of humanitarian bureaucrats have no qualms about inventing a genocide so as to sanction their own genocide in accordance with the interests of Western powers, why would they refrain from demanding the release of a convicted drug dealer like Jason Puracal?
Many other important cases await attention from the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions, such as the recently passed law by U.S. President Barak Obama in late 2011, which allows for the indefinite detention of persons without charge, and imprisonment without trial, alongside the widely reported cases at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and the many other secret CIA prisons around the world. Or there is the case of the 7,000 Palestinian children that Israel has had behind bars since 2000, or the case of more than 200 immigrant detention centers in which the European Union today detains tens of thousands of people who have not committed any crime, and so on.
What are the chances that the UN Working Group will deal seriously with these issues? None whatsoever, because its members are totally supportive of countries that are known human rights violators. Israel, arguably the closest ally of the United States, and it’s largest recipient of military aid, is also a de facto member of the European Union under generous trade and other agreements of cooperation and association.
Rising stars
Nothing happens spontaneously in the corrupt world of institutional “human rights”, controlled by NATO. As an example, one should ask, who is the person charged with requesting the UN Working Group to investigate the case of Jason Puracal?
Jared Genser, named by the National Law Journal as one of the “40 rising stars under 40 in Washington”, is the manager of Perseus Strategies, LLC and founder of Freedom Now, an “independent”, “non-profit ” organization devoted to defending alleged prisoners of conscience worldwide. Genser worked for the law firm DLA Piper LLP and the famous consulting firm McKinsey & Company, among whose clients are several multinational companies and governments along with their militaries. One detail in this bright star’s career: In 2006-2007 he was a visiting professor at the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), one of whose founders, Allen Weinstein, said back in 1991, “much of what we do today is what the CIA was doing covertly 25 years ago.” Another detail: amongst his official clients are former Czech president Vaclav Havel, Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi, the Chinese Nobel prize winner Liu Xiaobo, South African Bishop Desmond Tutu, and the Hungarian-Jewish Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel. Genser is a graduate from prestigious universities such as Cornell, Harvard and Michigan. Nor should one omit from his curriculum a year spent as Raoul Wallenberg Scholar at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Genser is also the author of “Review and Practical Guide” for the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (to be published in 2013) and co-editor of another work on the R2P doctrine: “The Responsibility to Protect: The Promise of Stopping Mass Atrocities in Our Times “(Oxford University Press, 2012). Who was the editor of that book? None other than the former Canadian justice minister who sent the inflammatory letter to President Daniel Ortega demanding the immediate release of drug trafficker Jason Puracal in the first place: Irwin Cotler. With such a backdrop, it’s not surprising that the Nicaraguan Government has not paid much attention to the Puracal campaign, nor replied to the letter from the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. When a group of influential allies with close contacts within the most powerful circles of the empire begin a campaign of letters and statements to the media, this is not a social movement, but a conspiracy.
One of Genser’s partners in Perseus Strategies, LLC, is Chris Fletcher, more a CIA agent than an idealistic lawyer. Fletcher is an expert on human rights and corporate social responsibility with office experience within the UN, he participated in the trials of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and worked for the NGO Oxfam in the United States among other organizations. Furthermore, Fletcher has been involved in “Tibet Forum, Governance and Practice”, at the University of Virginia. This university is a well-known CIA recruiting ground with professors active in national security and intelligence circles for decades, such as Frederick P . Hitz, at the university’s law school. Other temporary appointments of Chris Fletcher have been at the State Department and the World Bank.
Perseus Strategies, LLC, is a company dedicated to providing legal consulting services to large NGOs, multinational corporations and governments in the field of human rights, corporate social responsibility and the implementation of R2P. Their activities often include the promotion of U.S. interests in various countries, and the preparation of various documents to justify the application of imperialist aggression under the guise of R2P against target, as in the case of North Korea.
In parallel, or indeed as a special division within the organization, Genser and Fletcher operate a sui generis “social movement”, Freedom Now. This organization works to free “prisoners of conscience” from around the world by giving them “pro bono” legal assistance. It is no surprise that the list of Freedom Now defendants fails to include cases such as the Cuban-American citizens René González and his four Cuban comrades unjustly incarcerated in maximum security prisons for working to obtain information in order to prevent terrorist acts against Cuba from Miami. Incidentally, this August 13, within three days of Puracal initiating his appeal in Nicaragua, René González turned 56 years old somewhere in the U.S., unable to be with most of his family still living in Cuba.
These cases are of little or no interest or concern for the UN Working Group, for Genser, or for Fletcher and other individuals like them. They are only interested in cases that promote US government interests: for now, these include Chinese dissidents, Iranian “activists”, perhaps some journalists in some dark nether region of the Third World, or convicted U.S. drug traffickers in countries like Nicaragua, or some other nation being targeted by White House smear campaigns.
Genser is just one member of the Freedom Now board. Another, the president of Freedom Now, is the lawyer Jeremy Zucker, a former law clerk at the International Criminal Court and a member of the influential Council on Foreign Relations, where the elite of American power, both Democrats and Republicans, decide United States and allied foreign policy. In Norway, the Cuban-American Teresita Alvarez-Bjelland, works as a specialist “non-profit” consultant with the directors of the Norwegian-American Association, positioned to exert pressure on the UN Working Group through their strong Norwegian influence there. Peter Magyar, the attorney in charge of expanding the activity of Freedom Now in Europe, is an influential lawyer in the fields of privatization and international capital markets.
Freedom Now does not defend just anybody. Their work is designed “strategically” so as to promote political changes in the countries where they have selected defendants. Nor is their work limited to the courts, but is also devoted to developing public relations and propaganda campaigns with a broad range of agents and actors.
Freedom Now say they only defend prisoners of conscience. But in the case of Jason Puracal, convicted for drug trafficking, it is difficult if not impossible, to use that argument. In short, their activity is merely one more way, under the guise of human rights campaigns, to intervene with political motives in countries targeted by the United States.
Innocence? What innocence?
One of the most influential organizations sponsoring the campaign for Puracal is the group called the Innocence Project, whose mission is to protect the rights of American citizens unjustly imprisoned inside and outside the United States. In addition to media support, the organization has given Puracal legal support through its network of lawyers in the United States. This organization in 2011 received a grant of $ 400,000 for two years for overhead as part of US financial magnate George Soros’ “Open Society Foundations”, belonging to his Open Society Institute.
According to U.S. investigator Eva Golinger, the Open Society Institute has been involved in the destabilization of governments that have withstood the post-Soviet colour revolution offensive. The Open Society Institute was active in Yugoslavia, Ukraine and Georgia, working closely with both Freedom House and the Albert Einstein Institution (AEI) to overthrow governments by financing media and opposition groups. While the area of most interest for the Open Society Institute is Eastern Europe and the Caucasus, it is also very active in Africa and Latin America.
According to Barry C. Scheck in the New York Times late last year, the new director of Soros’ “philanthropic empire”, Christopher Stone, “has a passion to change things and a great vision and understanding of how to build institutions and re-engineer them to endure”. Scheck, co-director of the Innocence Project, is notorious as O. J. Simpson’s lawyer in the highly publicized 1995 case.
Scheck’s organization is just another in the dozens of NGOs and other groups that Soros has co-opted throughout the world to follow the empire’s agenda with his millions, last year alone, some 860 of them. An expert in breaking central banks around the world via speculative attacks on vulnerable national currencies, Soros criticizes the excesses of the financial system and advocates regulation, yet, he says, “not excessive regulation. Regulators are human beings who are fallible and are also bureaucrats who make decisions slowly and are subject to political influence.”
Soros’s speech about open societies, free markets and his criticisms of Bush have made him popular among Democrats, but he is by no means progressive. With respect to the strategy of empire, Soros is a leading player among the global power elite. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Bilderberg, the International Crisis Group and Human Rights Watch, all organizations working to achieve U.S. geopolitical goals, often using “human rights” as a pretext for US and NATO interventions.
The white rags of the DEA
The “recommendation” by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention turned out to be political engineering at the highest levels of the U.S. government’s self-interested, politicized, corrupt “human rights” network. The former Canadian Justice Minister who so severely criticized Commandante Daniel Ortega, turns out to be an old friend of Jared Genser, the network’s orchestrator. Soros provides far-from-innocent funding to the international human rights “Innocence” organization
Likewise, there is more than meets the eye to former DEA chief Tom Cash as regards his support for Puracal. Thomas V. Cash is one of the men who helped prosecute Pablo Escobar. When he left the DEA, Cash went to work at the information and intelligence consulting company Kroll Inc., becoming head of it’s Miami office. Among its services Kroll offers advice to governments of various tax haven countries on how to improve their image and get themselves removed from the anti-money laundering lists of the Organization fro Economic Cooperation and Development.
Kroll hires former intelligence officers when they leave public office to go into the private sector. Kroll assigned Cash to whitewash the tax haven of Antigua by giving it a financial facelift and creating the loopholes through which contemporary Pablo Escobars can continue flushing drug revenues. What made Tom Cash fall from grace, however, was a different matter.
Last June, the fraudster R. Allen Stanford was sentenced to 110 years in prison. An investigation into his Ponzi scheme found that over a period of 20 years he stole $7 billion from 30,000 depositors, promising fabulous interest rates on their deposits at the Stanford International Bank in Antigua. The case first burst open three years ago, in 2009, when federal authorities raided the offices of the Stanford Group to investigate fraud.
In late July of that year, Cash left his position at Kroll. The reason? As a consultant working for Kroll, Cash gave investors the green light to invest in Stanford, but never bothered to report that his company had once been “hired and paid” as a consultant for Stanford. An electricians’ organization which lost more than $6 million in the Ponzi scheme then denounced Cash. Cash never told the electricians that Stanford had been penalized by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. Nor did he inform them that a former Stanford employee had sued the company charging that the scheme was all a scam.
Among Cash’s credentials, according to the New York Post, he has served as chairman of the Fraud Prevention International Bankers Association of Florida. The newspaper adds that the connections amongst the circles between Cash and state police were so large that a judge assigned to the electricians’ demand against Kroll, had to give up the case because he had been a personal friend of Cash for many years.
Blatant interference
On August 16th the appeal hearing begins in Nicaragua in the case of Jason Puracal. The Granada district appeal court will decide whether or not there are enough elements to declare a mistrial in the original trial that ended with his prison sentence of 22 years based on the procedures in Nicaragua’s Constitution and Penal Code. Even so, via their networks of political interference, false US human rights groups are using Puracal’s case for blatant anti-Nicaraguan propaganda. That in its turn does very little to help Puracal’s defense.
The campaign to free Jason Puracal, a convicted narcotics dealer, perfectly illustrates, yet again, the extent of the corrupt manipulation of human rights by the United States and its allies around the world.
* Translated by: Leandro E. Silva and toni solo
August 20, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | Administrative detention, Central Intelligence Agency, Drug Enforcement Administration, European Union, Human rights, Libya, NATO, Nicaragua, Puracal, United States, Working Group on Arbitrary Detention |
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“I’m constantly annoyed that people are distracted by false conspiracies such as 9/11, when all around we provide evidence of real conspiracies, for war or mass financial fraud.” – WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, from the article, “Wanted by the CIA: Julian Assange – Wikileaks founder,” Belfast Telegraph, July 19, 2010.
“The US war on whistleblowers must end.” – Julian Assange, in a speech given from the balcony of the Ecuadorian embassy in London on August 19, 2012.
Since when did WikiLeaks become the tip of the spear in the global war for truth, transparency, knowledge, and freedom? Did I miss something? An organization that rejects the truth that 9/11 was an inside job is not working to promote transparency, free speech, and truth, but more nefarious causes.
Those who seek to marginalize the global 9/11 truth and justice movement are not on the right side of history. Assange lost all credibility when he made the statement in 2010 to the Belfast Telegraph that the 9/11 conspiracy theory is an example of “false conspiracies.” Reality disagrees.
People can choose to reject 9/11 conspiracy theories all they want, but they will not go away because they are based on hard facts and scientific data. The official 9/11 fable does not rest on solid foundations, but on totalitarian propaganda and trauma-based collective brainwashing.
By endorsing the 9/11 fable, WikiLeaks proved itself to be a compromised organization that has no interest in revealing secret truths to the masses of the world.
WikiLeaks is False Advertising
It is very suspicious that WikiLeaks is interested in releasing secret diplomatic cables that should not be aired out in public, rather than in broadcasting open source truths like the one about 9/11 being an inside job.
Assange has the world’s ear and what does he say? He gives empty, generic slogans, and says nothing specific.
On the WikiLeaks pulpit, Assange has never addressed the biggest scandal of modern intelligence operations and espionage, which is the 9/11 fraud and its subsequent cover-up. Objective truth-tellers cannot take such a person seriously.
If the objective is to “embarrass the U.S. government” then WikiLeaks has been victorious. But this is a hollow and dishonorable victory. To me, embarrassing U.S. officials is not a worthy or noble objective. It is childish.
Besides, top U.S. officials like Clinton, Holder, Geithner, and Obama embarrass themselves daily, and they do so just by speaking. You don’t even have to take their words out of context. Examples: all of Clinton’s remarks on the situation in Syria; and all of Obama’s remarks on the Wall Street fraud crisis.
The objective of the global 9/11 truth and justice movement is not to embarrass U.S. officials, but to awaken the international community to its feet and discredit the mythical “clash of civilizations” that has caused the destruction of numerous innocent countries. This movement is educational and it is not at war with any government. It transcends petty loyalty to states and ideologies.
Putting A Hole In The Well-Crafted Mythos of WikiLeaks
It is easy to be deceived by the hype surrounding WikiLeaks. Its founder, Assange, says all the right words, claims to be at war with the American government and the powers that be, and presents himself as a knight in shining armor.
But what kind of Knight of Truth disowns the biggest truth movement in the world and mocks them as chasers after “false conspiracies”?
This is not a knight I can follow and trust in these dark woods.
Assange says the U.S. is engaged in a witch hunt against WikiLeaks. This may be true, but it would be a mistake to believe that WikiLeaks is synonymous with truth-telling and whistleblowing. It is not.
The video of the U.S. pilots who killed Reuters journalists in an Iraqi neighbourhood that was released by WikiLeaks in April 2010 was not an example of real journalism, but a cheap shot at the men in the U.S. military. Real journalism exposes the big lies that lead to war, not the honourable men who fight in them.
In case people need to be reminded, WikiLeaks is not the center of the world. The world of truth-telling and journalism does not revolve around Assange.
The hijacked U.S. government is conducting an idiotic and illegal worldwide witch hunt against the people of the Middle East along with its psychopathic brother-in-arms, Israel, not against Assange and WikiLeaks.
The real victims of this witch hunt are not affiliated with WikiLeaks. The real victims are hazardly defined “terrorists,” and “militants,” who are innocent villagers, many of whom had never heard about 9/11 until Western journalists mentioned it to them.
To understand the true nature of Washington’s post-9/11 witch hunt, read: “The CIA’s Inquisition: How Terrorism And Conspiracy Theory Became The New Blasphemy And Heresy,” and, “The Propaganda Battlefield: Militants Abroad, Conspiracy Theorists At Home.”
The claim made by WikiLeaks that it is defending the interests of those who are being illegally persecuted, jailed, and bombed under the rubric of the “war on terror” is false since it fails to expose the biggest lie told by Washington that justifies this illegal global war: the 9/11 lie.
Has the Wiki-Knight Assange ever brought up the fact in his widely publicized speeches that extremist Islamic terrorists like Al-Qaeda are being funded and armed by Washington, London, and Tel Aviv in Syria and across the region to destabilize it? No? Why is that? Is it because WikiLeaks does not care about the truth? Is that why?
Back in January 2011, historian Webster Tarpley put a big hole in the well-crafted mythos of WikiLeaks, writing, “Assange’s various document dumps tell us nothing of importance about 9/11, the Rabin assassination, Iran-contra, the 1999 bombing of Serbia, the Kursk incident, the various CIA color revolutions, or many of the other truly big covert operations of the past decades.” Also, read Tarpley’s article, “Wikileaks helps West to justify attack on Syria,” that was written last month.
Shining a light on the realities that Al-Qaeda is a child of the CIA and that USraeli state terrorists were behind the false flag 9/11 events should be the top objective of every truth-telling individual, website, and organization. This is a global and non-violent fight for the restoration of truth, freedom, sanity, and peace.
Having mocked and ridiculed 9/11 truth-tellers, WikiLeaks is obviously not part of this historic fight.
August 20, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | al-Qaeda, Assange, Julian Assange, WikiLeaks |
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