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‘CIA killed prisoners, made it look like suicide’ – Guantanamo guard

RT | January 15, 2015

A former Guantanamo Bay prison guard and Marine has spoken to the press for the first time about what he claims were the CIA murders of three problematic detainees, covered up as a triple suicide.

Army Staff Sergeant Joseph Hickman was on duty at the notorious prison camp when the three men died, and insists the official version of events is “impossible,” he told Vice News.

The three men were Salah Ahmed Al-Salami, 37, from Yemen, Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi, 30, from Saudi Arabia, and Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani, 22, also from Saudi Arabia. None of them had been charged with any crime.

He explained in an incendiary interview with Vice News that the three men would have had to have committed suicide at exactly the same time in a cellblock where guards check on detainees every four minutes.

“They would have had to all three tie their hands and feet together, shove rags down their throats, put a mask over their face, made a noose, hung it from the ceiling on the side of the cellblock, jumped into the noose and hung themselves simultaneously,” he said.

Hickman added that an inspection of the detainees’ cells just a few hours before they supposedly killed themselves revealed nothing that they might have used to kill themselves – such as nooses, rags, or shoelaces.

The former Marine, who first joined up in 1985 and for a while was in a unit attached to the NSA, has been trying to put the nightmare of working at Camp Delta behind him. But when he saw on TV that another inmate had hung himself, he decided to face up to what he had witnessed. He has written a book, ‘Murder at Camp Delta,’ which he hopes will eventually lead to the truth.

Hickman was careful not to name any of the alleged murderers by name in the book, but he still hopes it may trigger a proper investigation into what really happened that night.

“I can’t name names. I keep it vague at the end for that reason. I say it was murder, this is the reason why,” he said.

On June 9, 2006, Hickman was on guard duty at Camp Delta when he saw a paddy wagon arrive at the high security Alpha Block three times – each time picking up a prisoner and taking them out of the camp.

He saw the police wagon turn left at checkpoint ACP Roosevelt onto a road which only leads to two places – the beach or a CIA holding center, which Hickman and his colleagues nicknamed ‘Camp No.’

After this, between 11:00 p.m. and 11:30 p.m., the paddy wagon came back to Camp Delta – but instead of going to Camp I, it went straight to the medical detainee clinic.

“About 10 minutes later, all the lights come on, like a stadium, and sirens are going off — it’s chaos,” he said.

All three detainees were dead.

Hickman believes he knows why the authorities at Guantanamo would have wanted to get rid of the three men.

The three men were regular hunger strikers who incited other detainees to do the same – and when prisoners were on hunger strike, camp policy said they couldn’t be interrogated.

“They had a policy that if a detainee is hunger-striking, he cannot be interrogated. In 2006, they were doing roughly 200 interrogations a week, so any massive hunger-strike would, what they consider, cripple the intelligence value. I believe the number-one mission in JTF-GTMO (Joint Task Force Guantanamo) at the time was, stop the hunger strikes at all costs,” said Hickman.

The ex-sergeant said that after the deaths, there were no hunger strikes for a long time.

Hickman first approached the US Department of Justice in 2009. His claims and those of others at the camp were reported in Harper’s magazine in 2010. The authorities issued a hasty denial, claiming that Hickman was stationed outside the perimeter and wouldn’t have been able to see the entrance to Alpha Block.

But Hickman says that half of his duties were inside the perimeter and half were outside, and that “both positions give me a pretty good view of what happened.”

Since then, the truth of what went on at Guantanamo has begun to trickle out. A recent Senate report – which the CIA tried to repress – found that the CIA regularly used torture, violence, and degrading treatment in its interrogation techniques. The report also claims those tactics rarely produced any decent intelligence.

But just after the supposed triple suicide, Rear Admiral Harry Harris attacked the three detainees for daring to take their own lives.

“They are smart. They are creative. They are committed. They have no regard for life, either ours or their own I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us,” Democracy Now quoted him as saying.

Hickman’s interview comes just days after Republican senators proposed that a moratorium should be placed on the release of all medium- and high-risk detainees, citing danger to the US and its allies, adding that any transfers to Yemen should be barred for two years.

January 15, 2015 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | 2 Comments

Baghdad 1950. Paris 2015?

False Flag Attacks by Zionists Against Fellow Jews…

giladiisrael

Left: Zionist agent in Iraq, Naeim Giladi, circa 1947; right: Iraqi Jews arrive in Israel 1951

By Richard Edmondson | Fig Trees and Vineyards | January 14, 2015

It is said that there is nothing new under the sun.

Jewish leaders talking up the threat of “anti-Semitism” in order to induce Jews to immigrate to Israel is of course not new. Such talk emanating in the immediate aftermath of what appear to have been false flag attacks by Zionists against fellow Jews–this also is not new.

“To all the Jews of France, all the Jews of Europe, I would like to say that Israel is not just the place in whose direction you pray, the state of Israel is your home,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said over the weekend in the wake of the attacks in Paris.

Netanyahu is certainly up on his Jewish history, but for those of the rest of us who may not be quite as well-versed, here is a little primer.

In the years 1950-51, the city of Baghdad was hit by a series of explosions targeting Iraqi Jews. The attacks caused property damage, injuries, and deaths, creating panic in the Jewish population. At the time the bombings were blamed upon Arab nationalists, raising fears of anti-Semitism and giving rise to a desire by Jews to immigrate to Israel–which of course, at precisely that same time, was in the process of displacing Palestinians and attempting to expand its Jewish population.

What follows is a timeline of events in Baghdad excerpted from a book written and published in the 1990s by an Iraqi Jew named Naeim Giladi. I’ll say a little bit more below about who Giladi was, but for right now just consider the timeline as he presents it:

Six months later-the exact date was March 19, 1950-a bomb went off at the American Cultural Center and Library in Baghdad, causing property damage and injuring a number of people. The center was a favorite meeting place for young Jews.

The first bomb thrown directly at Jews occurred on April 8, 1950, at 9:15 p.m. A car with three young passengers hurled the grenade at Baghdad’s El-Dar El-Bida Café, where Jews were celebrating Passover. Four people were seriously injured. That night leaflets were distributed calling on Jews to leave Iraq immediately.

The next day, many Jews, most of them poor with nothing to lose, jammed emigration offices to renounce their citizenship and to apply for permission to leave for Israel. So many applied, in fact, that the police had to open registration offices in Jewish schools and synagogues.

On May 10, at 3 a.m., a grenade was tossed in the direction of the display window of the Jewish-owned Beit-Lawi Automobile Company, destroying part of the building. No casualties were reported.

On June 3, 1950, another grenade was tossed from a speeding car in the El-Batawin area of Baghdad where most rich Jews and middle class Iraqis lived. No one was hurt, but following the explosion Zionist activists sent telegrams to Israel requesting that the quota for immigration from Iraq be increased.

On June 5, at 2:30 a.m., a bomb exploded next to the Jewish owned Stanley Shashua building on El-Rashid street, resulting in property damage but no casualties.

On January 14, 1951, at 7 p.m., a grenade was thrown at a group of Jews outside the Masouda Shem-Tov Synagogue. The explosive struck a high-voltage cable, electrocuting three Jews, one a young boy, Itzhak Elmacher, and wounding over 30 others. Following the attack, the exodus of Jews jumped to between 600-700 per day.

Zionist propagandists still maintain that the bombs in Iraq were set off by anti-Jewish Iraqis who wanted Jews out of their country. The terrible truth is that the grenades that killed and maimed Iraqi Jews and damaged their property were thrown by Zionist Jews.

The paragraphs above come from Giladi’s book, Ben Gurion’s Scandals: How the Haganah and the Mossad Eliminated Jews, originally published in 1992. An except from the book can be found here, and includes details about the Baghdad bombings as well as a number of other interesting items, including Giladi’s own immigration to Palestine and what he witnessed there. You’ll note, in the timeline, his reference to leaflets being distributed on the same day of the April 8 bombing. That leaflet read in part, “Call to the Jews: To all the tribe of Zion living in Babylon.” It goes on to encourage an exodus out of Iraq:

“For the second time in the history of the diaspora, we have an opportunity to leave. We encourage you to hurry and leave. Today the Jews are in a new era of the history of the diaspora.”

Giladi was born in Iraq in 1929 and became a committed Zionist in his late teens. Later in life he disavowed Zionism, renounced his Israeli citizenship, and moved to the US. His change of heart began when, as a young Jewish immigrant, shortly after arriving in Israel, he encountered “institutionalized racism,” against both Palestinians as well as Arabic or Mizrahi Jews.

The principal interest Israel had in Jews from Islamic countries was as a supply of cheap labor, especially for the farm work that was beneath the urbanized Eastern European Jews. Ben Gurion needed the “Oriental” Jews to farm the thousands of acres of land left by Palestinians who were driven out by Israeli forces in 1948.

At the time in question, the early 1950s, Israel was ethnically cleansing the Ashkelon area and forcing Palestinians who lived there into the Gaza Strip. Farms were indeed taken over, and so, yes, there was a need for cheap labor, and Jews from Iraq provided a good source. And to make sure that the new arrivals were wholly dependent upon their earnings as laborers, Israel saw to it that they were forced, for the most part, to leave their property and possessions behind in Iraq. According to Giladi:

…the pro-British, pro-Zionist puppet el-Said [Nouri el-Said, the Iraqi prime minister–ed.]saw to it that all of their possessions were frozen, including their cash assets. (There were ways of getting Iraqi dinars out, but when the immigrants went to exchange them in Israel they found that the Israeli government kept 50 percent of the value.) Even those Iraqi Jews who had not registered to emigrate, but who happened to be abroad, faced loss of their nationality if they didn’t return within a specified time. An ancient, cultured, prosperous community had been uprooted and its people transplanted to a land dominated by East European Jews, whose culture was not only foreign but entirely hateful to them.

Giladi passed away in 2010, but his conclusions–that the Baghdad bombings were perpetrated by Zionist Jews–are shared by a number of modern historians and writers, including Uri Avnery, who wrote that, “After the disclosure of the Lavon Affair… the Baghdad affair became more plausible.” But perhaps most interesting was the assessment given by career CIA officer Wilbur Crane Eveland:

In attempts to portray the Iraqis as anti-American and to terrorize the Jews, the Zionists planted bombs in the U.S. Information Service library and in synagogues. Soon leaflets began to appear urging Jews to flee to Israel. . . .

Although the Iraqi police later provided our embassy with evidence to show that the synagogue and library bombings, as well as the anti-Jewish and anti-American leaflet campaigns, had been the work of an underground Zionist organization, most of the world believed reports that Arab terrorism had motivated the flight of the Iraqi Jews whom the Zionists had “rescued” really just in order to increase Israel’s Jewish population.

The above is quoted by Giladi and is derived from Eveland’s memoir, Ropes of Sand: America’s Failure in the Middle East, published in 1980.

An Iraqi court went on to find 20 people, all members of the Iraqi Zionist underground, guilty of carrying out the bombings. Two were sentenced to death, and the rest received lengthy prison terms. But by this time the Jewish population of Iraq had been greatly reduced. Giladi says that 125,000 Iraqi Jews ended up immigrating to Palestine, leaving just 6,000 remaining. It also resulted in a split in Giladi’s own family; while Giladi himself made the journey, his parents, he says, were not fooled by the false flag events and remained behind in Iraq.

***

While a good many analysts have concluded that the recent attacks in Paris were a false flag operation, carried out most likely by Israel, others have expressed dubiousness on the matter. Certainly Israeli false flag operations are well documented, but a line would surely be drawn at targeting Jews in such attacks–this seems to be the reasoning. The events in Baghdad 65 years ago, however, would apparently refute this notion. If something is “good for the Jews” collectively, as a whole, then it can apparently be justified even should it be brought about at the expense of individual Jews–that at least seems to be the thinking on the matter by some Jews or Jewish leaders at any rate. Maybe, though, this should come as no surprise, and here I’m reminded of the words of Caiaphas, the chief priest at the time of Jesus: “You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.”

I highly recommend Giladi’s book excerpt in its entirety, if you have the time, for it makes for fascinating reading. You can also click here to see a video featuring an interview with the author that was conducted in 1994.

Meanwhile Israeli officials continue urging French Jews to make “aliyah” to Israel.

“Due to the impossible security situation [for French Jews], Israel has a responsibility to allocate all necessary resources to facilitate the aliyah and absorption of Jews from France,” said Knesset member Yoni Chetboun.

Other Israeli officials have also spoken out.

“Your place, Jews of France, is with us,”  said Rabbi Eli Ben-Dahan, Religious Affairs minister, speaking at a Jewish Home party rally.

“We are all shocked at the recent wave of anti-Semitic attacks in France,” said Knesset member Motti Yogev. “To all our Jewish brothers in France we call: Come and make Aliyah to Israel! Here is your home – our home.”

Another Israeli politician, Yair Lapid, seemed to be going out of his way to push the alarm  buttons.

“I don’t want to speak in terms of Holocaust, but…” he said, “European Jewry must understand that there is just one place for Jews, and that is the State of Israel.”

All of this is obviously having an effect. The leader of a Paris synagogue is predicting that between 14,000 and 15,000 French Jews will immigrate to Israel in 2015, and indeed hundreds are reported to have flocked to an “aliyah fair” held on Sunday.

aliyahfair

French Jews attend an “aliyah fair” held in Paris on Sunday, Jan. 11, just two days after an attack on a kosher market. A series of such fairs are scheduled as part of an Israeli policy called “France First.”

Is not the holding of an “aliyah fair” just two days after an attack on a kosher market pretty much the equivalent or on a par with the aforementioned leaflets printed by the Zionist underground in Baghdad 65 years ago?

Is there anything new under the sun?

By the way, additional aliyah fairs are scheduled this week for Marseilles and Lyon, with more to come in February and March. The organizing of such events is said to be part of a new Israeli policy–overseen by the Ministry of Immigration Absorption–called “France First.” The implications of such a policy are somewhat alarming. If France is “first,” who’s next? Will attacks similar to the ones last week begin to occur in other countries with large Jewish populations?

No word on whether Netanyahu dropped by the fair in Paris on Sunday, although he was in the city participating in the giant anti-terrorism march–this of course despite the fact that he had been specifically requested by the French government not to come. One person who did pop into the fair, however, was Natan Sharansky, chairman of the Jewish Agency, who had accompanied the prime minister to Paris from Israel.

In his remarks, Sharansky assured the potential immigrants that “the Jewish Agency embraces the French Jewish community at this difficult time and is extending its full support by helping provide for the physical security of Jewish communities across France, increasing our assistance to any individual who wishes to immigrate to Israel, and working to ease immigrants’ integration into the Israeli workforce and Israeli society.”

Translation: don’t worry. The United States will pay for it.

The calls for Jewish immigration today are, of course, motivated by different needs from those of 65 years ago. Recently the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics released figures showing that the number of Palestinians throughout historical Palestine will exceed the Jewish population by the end of the year 2020. The figures have been challenged by Israeli academics, who insist the Palestinian statistics are flawed, although certainly the “demographic threat” has been an ongoing Zionist concern.

But prompting an upswing in Jewish immigration probably would not have been the only, and maybe not even the prime, consideration in carrying out the Paris attacks–that is assuming the attacks were a false flag. Other writers have suggested a number of other motivations including payback for France’s support for Palestinian statehood at the UN. (One wonders: was Israel’s “France First” policy adopted before or after the UN vote?)

What is clear, of course, is that terrorist organizations and terrorist armies are being supported by some of the most powerful nations on earth, and that these forces are being used to advance certain geopolitical objectives. The likelihood that such elements will be mobilized in some way in future false flag attacks in Western cities has to be considered high.

January 15, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | 1 Comment

Those who aren’t Charlie

By Richard Seymour | Lenin’s Tomb | January 15, 2015

Unfortunately, there are a few troublemakers in our midst, people who aren’t Charlie, who need to be rooted out and dealt with.  As explained by Nathalie Saint-Cricq, chief political editor of France 2 (state-owned TV channel):

« C’est justement ceux qui ne sont pas “Charlie” qu’il faut repérer, ceux qui, dans certains établissements scolaires ont refusé la minute de silence, ceux qui “balancent” sur les réseaux sociaux et ceux qui ne voient pas en quoi ce combat est le leur. Eh bien ce sont eux que nous devons repérer, traiter, intégrer ou réintégrer dans la communauté nationale. Et là, l’école et les politiques ont une lourde responsabilité. »

“It is those indeed who are not “Charlie” who must be identified; those who in certain schools refused to observe the minute’s silence, those who “spout off” on social networks, and those who don’t  see that this struggle is theirs. Well, they are the ones that we have to identify and treat, integrate or reintegrate into the national community. Schools and the politicians bear a heavy responsibility in this regard.”

In fact (a correspondent tells me, referring to this article), the provisions of recent legislation (13.11.2014) on the monitoring and reporting of school pupils’ speech and behaviour appear to have been put into effect for the first time as the names of children who failed to observe the minute’s silence were reported by teachers or supervisors to the head, then to the rectorat – the regional education administration – and on to the police and prosecuting authorities, to be analysed by the intelligence services, who decide whether the facts in question are serious enough to warrant formal investigation of the pupil and his/her family and social network.

More widely, there are a series of arrests and sentences being handed down for “justification/glorification of terrorism”, including that of a 28 year old man diagnosed with learning disabilities.

If you are not Charlie, would you please speak up so that we can have you arrested and flung in jail, or re-educated?

January 15, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | 2 Comments

Charlie Hebdo: “Je Suis White People”

By Margaret Kimberley | Black Agenda Report | January 14, 2015

Don’t kill white people. After all is said and done, the Charlie Hebdo outrage, the hashtags, and the million person marches amount to that simple but very powerful dictum. In the eyes of the governments that do most of the killing on the planet and the corporate media who act as their scribes, there is nothing worse than targeting even a handful of white people for death.

Charlie Hebdo is a supposedly satirical magazine published in Paris, France. It was little known to Americans until January 7, 2015 when two gunmen attacked its offices and killed twelve staff members. Charlie Hebdo was well known for intentionally violating the Islamic prohibition of depicting the prophet. According to survivors, the killers announced themselves as members of al-Qaeda and said they were avenging the prophet Muhammad. A policewoman and four more people were killed the following day when another gunman took hostages in a kosher supermarket.

One look at Charlie Hebdo cartoons shows that the word satire is being used very loosely. The depictions of cabinet minister Christiane Taubira as a monkey, and the kidnapped Nigerian school girls as pregnant welfare recipients make a mockery of the world satirical. Regardless of how many French politicians are skewered in its pages, it must be pointed out that Charlie Hebdo indulges in racist hate speech.

Their reputation for insult and offense was quickly forgotten and the call to unquestioningly identify with the victims was immediate. Within a few days, #Jesuischarlie was tweeted more than one million times. The propaganda onslaught created an awkward example of hypocrisy for world leaders who are always the worst killers of all.

Barack Obama trotted out tired denunciations, calling the attacks “cowardly” as he claimed to stand up for the rights of a free press. These were strange words coming from a man who on seven occasions has used the discredited Espionage Act to prosecute whistleblowers who leak to the media.

Americans were not alone in hypocritically condemning murder. The convenient selective amnesia of the French people is as stunning as their sense of feeling more aggrieved than anyone else in the world.

France was a party to every atrocity and genocide committed by Europeans in history. France played a major role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, kidnapping approximately 1,250,000 Africans and sending them to work under barbaric conditions in their American territories.

After being forced out of Haiti by the world’s most successful slave rebellion, France then held that nation hostage under threat of re-enslavement and demanded a payment of $60 million francs which were paid from 1838 to 1947. Haiti remains poverty stricken to this day as a result.

France was at the table during the 1884 Berlin Conference which chopped Africa up into European spheres of influence. France engaged in mass slaughter again and again as it attempted to prevent colonies such as Vietnam and Algeria from gaining independence.

After NATO murdered Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, French president Nicolas Sarkozy traveled to Libya to personally gloat over the country he helped to destroy. He was joined by UK prime minister David Cameron, who was also among the killers-in-chief who arrived in Paris looking solemn. France and the UK are part of the NATO effort to destroy Syria and turn it into a chaotic ruin as they have done to Libya.

The corporate media determines who is and who isn’t a worthy victim and people with dark skin rarely make the cut. The thousands of Palestinians killed by Israel in Gaza included members of the press. Seventeen journalists were killed in Gaza in 2014 alone, yet Israeli president Netanyahu was allowed to join the “unity march” in Paris as if he too were an innocent.

There is enough horror in the world to cause outrage but the level of outrage seems to depend on who is being treated horribly and who is carrying out the atrocity. The worst acts of terror are committed by heads of state who don’t kill seventeen people as these attackers did in Paris. They kill in the thousands yet are still treated with respect.

It doesn’t say much for the state of human advancement that killings committed by individuals still create so much more concern than those committed by governments. They get away with mass murder because the same corporate media which saturated coverage of Charlie Hebdo say little or nothing about Gaza or Libya or Somalia or Syria or Iraq or Haiti. Instead of pointing out that Barack Obama is a killer too, the pundits criticize him for not being among the sanctimonious liars who gathered in Paris. The group photo should have been a perp walk to the Hague instead of a photo opportunity for the seriously blood thirsty.

Murder is wrong when committed by individual gunmen with grudges and it is still wrong when it comes from a drone strike. A unity march should denounce human rights abuses, of which warfare is the worst. The next time 1 million gather to denounce terror, the anger should be directed at those people who carry it out the most.

January 15, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | 1 Comment

Watch Your Language!

(Even when speaking the undeniable truth)

By Stuart Littlewood | Dissident Voice | January 14, 2015

Poor Tim Willcox, now terrorised for doing a professional job at the Paris anti-terror march.

In a live TV report the BBC’s Willcox was interviewing people in the crowd and talking to a Jewish woman about her fears of persecution. She said: “The situation is going back to the days of the 1930s in Europe.”

Willcox replied: “Many critics, though, of Israel’s policy would suggest that the Palestinians suffer hugely at Jewish hands as well.”

She countered: “We can’t do an amalgam.”

Willcox said: “You understand everything is seen from different perspectives.”

The reporter’s remarks were widely criticised by viewers, with some calling for his resignation.

According to the Express, historian Simon Schama accused Willcox of “appalling hectoring” before tweeting: “Then he had gall to patronise her at the end – ‘you see people see it from all sides’. That Palestinian plight justifies anti-semitic murder?”

Uh?

Anyway, poor Tim has had to apologise. Why? Did he say something untruthful? Was it indecent?

BBC Watch commented, without explaining the conversational context, by quoting from the EUMC Working Definition of Antisemitism: “Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel” and implying that this was what Willcox had done. But Willcox was talking about the Israeli regime’s policy, right? Not the collective responsibility of Jews worldwide.

BBC Watch is linked to CiF Watch, which is “dedicated to monitoring antisemitism and combating the assault on Israel’s legitimacy”. And to CAMERA. All three have the same two editors.

Hadar Sela is Managing Editor. She “has lived in Israel for over three decades… and has written pre-emptive reports on several anti-Israel campaigns, including the flotillas and the Global March to Jerusalem in March 2012”. Funny, I thought the flotillas were bringing humanitarian aid to the desperate civilians cruelly imprisoned, blockaded and bombarded in the tiny enclave of Gaza. How is that deemed to be anti-Israel unless you’re a paranoid Zionist or one of the mindless criminal thugs imposing the blockade?

The other is Adam Levick, also Managing Editor of CiF Watch. He “made aliyah” in 2009. Aliya is moving your home to Israel. Since when did we or our national broadcaster take orders from a couple of Israelis?

The Board of Deputies of British Jews, the self-styled “voice of British Jewry”, can usually be relied on to jump in on these occasions, and they obliged. Quoting the same antisemitism definition they go on to say: “Not only was this remark irrelevant – after all the target of Friday’s attack were not Israeli but French Jews – it also conflates Middle Eastern politics with the murder of innocent French Jews, and implies that there was some kind of justification for the attack. This was bad, biased reporting and an attempt to misrepresent the events of Friday afternoon… Please take the opportunity to complain about Tim Willcox. You can use the the BBC’s complaints procedure…”

This is so confusing. Israel demands to be recognised as the Jewish State and has just passed laws to that effect. It claims to speak and act for Jews worldwide. Inevitably Israel’s behaviour influences how Jews are regarded locally.

Tim Willcox will remember what happened to another good BBC man, Jeremy Bowen, who was put through the mangle a few years ago by the Zionist mafia, and his caved-in bosses, for honest reporting. No doubt they have tried to “re-educate” and re-program him. .

A kindly member of our group sent Tim a word of encouragement:

Thank you very much for saying publicly that Palestinians also suffer at the hands of Jews. I am sorry you have had to apologise; in my view those who need to apologise are those who do NOT say this at every opportunity.

I added:

I second Elizabeth’s remarks. Truth doesn’t count for much at the BBC any more, sadly.

Came the reply:

It’s been quite a heavy few days.
Thank you for your support.
Best wishes,
Tim

If you wish to tell the BBC what you think, here is the link  .

“Playing fast and loose with the language of the Holocaust”

All this is reminiscent of the flurry of outbursts early last year. The head of the Holocaust Educational Trust, Karen Pollock, succeeded in wringing an apology from a British MP for remarks in a parliamentary debate about what happened to Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe and what is happening now to Palestinians in Israeli-occupied Gaza and the West Bank.

Yasmin Qureshi, MP for Bolton South East, told the House that the suffering in Gaza was intolerable.

The state of Israel was founded because of what happened to the millions and millions of Jews who suffered genocide. Their properties, homes and land — everything — were taken away, and they were deprived of rights. Of course, many millions perished. It is quite strange that some of the people who are running the state of Israel seem to be quite complacent and happy to allow the same to happen in Gaza.

The issue is not just about Gaza; let us think about the West Bank and Jerusalem as well. Many Palestinians are being turfed out of their homes in Jerusalem. The Israelis are the occupying power in the West Bank, where they have got rid of Palestinian homes and replaced them with hundreds of thousands of settlements, recognised by the United Nations as illegal…. The policy pursued by the state of Israel is not helping to lead to a two-state solution…  Let us face it: if what is happening to Gaza, done by Israel, were happening to any other nation, the whole world would be up in arms, and rightly so.

Fair comment? Or something to apologise for?

As reported in The Guardian Ms Pollock accused the MP of making “offensive and inappropriate comparisons” about the Middle East. “We expect our politicians to speak responsibly and sensitively about the past and about events today. These lazy and deliberate distortions have no place in British politics… It is astonishing to think that anyone could visit Auschwitz-Birkenau, learn about the industrial nature of the Nazis’ murderous regime, even walk through a gas chamber – and then make these offensive and inappropriate comparisons.”

In the Jewish Chronicle Labour Friends of Israel director Jennifer Gerber strongly condemned the comparisons between the Holocaust and the situation in Gaza. “In her remarks, she [Qureshi] directly links Israeli policies towards the Palestinian people to the Nazis’ efforts to exterminate world Jewry. This is both deeply offensive to the memory of the Holocaust and its millions of victims, but also wilfully ignorant of the actual situation in Gaza. We would ask Ms Qureshi to apologise for her remarks, and to cease using such upsetting and offensive comparisons.”

Has Ms Gerber been to Gaza to see the “actual situation”? Ms Qureshi replied that she had not intended to draw a direct parallel especially as she had visited one of the most notorious death camps. “The debate was about the plight of the Palestinian people and in no way did I mean to equate events in Gaza with the Holocaust. I apologise for any offence caused.” She didn’t withdraw the remark, however.

Two years ago Liberal Democrat MP David Ward was in hot water for his “use of language” in condemning the Jewish state’s atrocities against the Palestinians while the horrors of their own suffering at the hands of the Nazis were still fresh in memory. He wrote on his website a few days before Holocaust Memorial Day: “Having visited Auschwitz twice — once with my family and once with local schools — I am saddened that the Jews, who suffered unbelievable levels of persecution during the Holocaust, could within a few years of liberation from the death camps be inflicting atrocities on Palestinians in the new State of Israel and continue to do so on a daily basis in the West Bank and Gaza.”

The sky immediately fell on him. Karen Pollock and Jon Benjamin, chief executive of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, launched a vicious attack with Pollock claiming that Ward “deliberately abused the memory of the Holocaust” and his remarks were “sickening” and had no place in British politics.

Benjamin said he was outraged and shocked by Ward’s “offensive” comments. They demanded the party withdraw the whip. Such was the pressure that wobbly LibDem bosses appointed a team to lay down language rules, determine whether Ward was “salvageable” and then “re-educate” him.

After that, in Brighton, the Sussex Friends of Israel turned on MP Caroline Lucas. During a pro-Israel lobby day in Parliament Lucas accused Israel of “blocking humanitarian aid” and “humiliating” the people of Gaza. Simon Cobbs, a founding member of the Sussex Friends of Israel, told The Algemeiner: “The problem we have with Caroline Lucas is that she’s taken a side over and above her own constituency needs.”

Ms Lucas’s remarks were perfectly valid and there was no way Cobbs could deny it. He should have put his point to the 80 percent of Conservative MPs and MEPs who have signed up with Friends of Israel, an organisation that flies the Israeli flag in the British parliament and promotes Israel’s interests. Such activities are not only “above the needs” but very probably detrimental to the interests of their constituencies.

Then Colchester MP Sir Bob Russell, speaking during a debate on the national schools curriculum, put a question to Education Secretary Michael Gove about world history lessons, saying: “On the assumption that the 20th century will include the Holocaust, will he give me an assurance that the life of Palestinians since 1948 will be given equal attention?”

“These remarks are a shocking piece of Holocaust denigration,” said Jewish Leadership Council chief executive Jeremy Newmark. “There is simply no comparison between the two situations. It is worrying that so soon after the David Ward affair another MP thinks it is acceptable to play fast and loose with the language of the Holocaust in this context.”

Prickly Ms Pollock also pounced on Russell: “To try to equate the events of the Holocaust – the systematized mass murder of 6 million Jews – with the conflict in the Middle East is simply inaccurate as well as inappropriate.”

But, as everyone and his dog knows, it isn’t a “conflict”. It’s a brutal occupation and blockade in which millions of innocent civilians have been dispossessed at gunpoint and put to flight, or collectively punished for decades by a military force armed to the teeth with high-tech weaponry, and unable to move freely in their own country. BBC Watch should note that Israel is especially good at collectively punishing Gazans for the alleged crimes of Hamas.

As for the atrocities carried out in Nazi-occupied Europe and Israeli-occupied Palestine there is no equivalence in terms of scale. But some similarities are inescapable to those who go and see for themselves. The crucial message of the Holocaust, that such cruelty must never be allowed to happen again, seems lost already among those who are supposed to promote it.

And it’s that time of year again. Holocaust Memorial Day in the UK is 27 January. Stand by for more  prickliness, more ructions and more “re-education”.

Postscript

As I was signing off, news came in that MP David Ward had landed himself in hot water again  . The Israeli ambassador Daniel Taub has written to Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg expressing “abhorrence” at “offensive and shocking” comments made by Ward about Netanyahu’s presence at the solidarity march in Paris on Sunday.

Ward had tweeted: “#Netanyahu in Paris march – what!!! Makes me feel sick”.

Taub writes: “At a time when leaders were united in condemnation of extremist atrocities, Mr Ward’s statement is a disgraceful attempt to politicise suffering, delegitimise Israel, and justify acts of terror.” He also said that “more shocking still is the continued impunity that [Ward] seems to enjoy from his party”.

Taub himself would do well to curb his language. Israel is in no position to lecture on extremist atrocities or impunity.  Many people, besides Ward, watching the march and Netanyahu’s antics must have kept a sick bag in reach. It was widely reported how the Israeli prime minister, who arrived uninvited (and, I hear, was actually asked to stay away), has been widely criticised for pushing his way to the front of the parade, positioning himself centre-stage, linking arms with the invited guests and waving inappropriately on such a solemn occasion to real or imaginary ‘admirers’ in the crowd.

On past form the LibDems will buckle and prostrate themselves before the Israeli bullies. Their spokesperson has already said the MP ‘s tweet was “clearly in bad taste”.

Poor David can look forward to more loony “re-education” in the LibDems’ house of correction, assuming they consider him “salvageable”. The party, however, isn’t. It’ll likely be wiped out at the coming general election.

January 15, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | 2 Comments

China-UK nuclear power deal details hidden for ‘national security’

RT | January 15, 2015

The UK government has refused to reveal whether the National Security Council approved or discussed China’s investment in a proposed £24.5 billion nuclear power plant in the UK, Hinkley Point C, citing “national security.”

Despite a BBC Freedom of Information request for information regarding China’s expected 30-40 percent stake in the new nuclear site in southwest England, the government denied further disclosure.

Cabinet Office official Roger Smethurst told the BBC: “There is a general public interest in disclosure of information and I recognize that openness in government may increase public trust in and engagement with the government. There is a definite public interest in members of the public being able to understand decisions taken on investment in critical national infrastructure.”

“I have weighed these public interests against a very strong public interest in safeguarding national security.”

The National Security Council’s job is to review and debate foreign investment projects and then to approve or deny them.

Derek Smith, head of communications for the NSC, told the BBC: “The government has put in place an approach which enables it to assess the risks associated with foreign investment and develop strategies to manage them.”

“The NSC brings together the economic and security arms of the government and is the forum that ultimately balances the risks and opportunities of inward investment decisions.”

In June last year, the government announced the civil nuclear agreement signed by the UK and China, which could be “worth hundreds of millions of pounds to British companies over several years.” This paved the way for Chinese companies to invest in Hinkley Point C.

Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Davey said at the time: “China and the UK stand united in our plans for more collaborative working that will help to achieve long lasting energy security in our own countries.”

The plant would be the first overseas venture for the China General Nuclear Power Corp.

Meanwhile, the French nuclear power developer EDF is expected to sign an investment agreement with Chinese partners for the new reactor at Hinkley Point by the end of March, to secure investment for the project.

According to the World Nuclear Association, the UK has 16 operational reactors generating around 18 percent of the country’s electricity. All but one of these will be retired by 2023.

China is reportedly negotiating plans to build four new reactors in Turkey. One-third of the nuclear reactors currently under construction worldwide are in China.

The nuclear plant is not the only UK energy project that China co-finances. The state-owned China General Nuclear Corporation is reportedly prepared to pay £100 million for an 80 percent stake in three UK wind farms.

January 15, 2015 Posted by | Economics | , , , | 1 Comment

Kerry to Bulgaria: End energy dependence on Russia

Press TV – January 15, 2015

US Secretary of State John Kerry has called on Bulgaria to end its dependence on Russia for energy.

Kerry made the remarks on Thursday in meetings with Bulgaria’s president, prime minister and foreign minister in the capital Sofia.

Bulgaria must move toward “diversifying supplies and distribution and increasing connectivity with neighbors,” Kerry told a news conference with Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov.

He said Washington is interested in helping the country take “practical steps to enhance energy security in Bulgaria and across Europe.”

Kerry also talked about the possible construction of a natural gas pipeline from Greece and moving ahead with a stalled contract with Westinghouse Electric Co. to build a nuclear power plant.

“We hope very much that the issues that (the government and Westinghouse) are discussing can be quickly resolved,” Kerry said.

Kerry, however, stressed that the US push is not aimed at Russia.

“That is not directed against any one country,” Kerry said. “It is simply a reality. No country in the world should be totally dependent for its energy supply on one other country. We need diversified supplies across the world.”

He said the US will send its special energy envoy to Sofia to look into how the US Export-Import Bank could finance the country.

Bulgaria relies on Russia for 85 percent of its gas and 100 percent of its nuclear power.

On security issues, Kerry said the US is determined in its commitment to defend NATO member Bulgaria if it is attacked.

The US would increase joint military exercises with Bulgaria and also help the country modernize its defenses, Kerry said.

January 15, 2015 Posted by | Economics, Nuclear Power | , , , | 1 Comment

Dude, Where’s My Peace Dividend?

By Robert Ted Hinds | CounterPunch | January 14, 2015

In the 1970s and 1980s, Americans were conditioned with the idea that the extraordinary growth in military expenditure for the U.S. to “win the arms race” with the USSR would somehow lead to a “peace dividend.” That’s what the elected officials of the United States and its NATO allies called it. Eventually the Soviet Union did collapse under the weight of its own economic dysfunction and hyper-militaristic bureaucracy. When the Berlin Wall came down on November 9, 1989, compelled by massive nonviolent noncooperation with the dictatorial regime, it seemed that the leaders of the world might finally declare the peace dividend we had all been expecting. Mankind as a whole seemed to have hope that the specter of nuclear war had vanished and that a constitutional democracy could operate as a benevolent superpower.

It wasn’t long before President Bush Sr. replaced the old war with a new one. The New York Times disclosed official transcripts of a conversation between US Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, and Saddam Hussein where she said, “We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts like your border disagreement with Kuwait. James Baker (Secretary of State) has directed our official spokesmen to emphasize this instruction.”

Soon after, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and America’s action toward war was swift. King Hussein of Jordan, one of America’s strongest allies in the region (and whose wife was American), told the New York Times that the day of the invasion, Bush gave him 48 hours to negotiate a withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait.

The Jordanian king secured a promise from Saddam to withdraw all of his forces within a week to avert war. King Hussein could not understand why the deal was undermined by the Bush Administration. The US and its Allies proceeded to annihilate the Iraqi army it had supported for 10 years during the Iran-Iraq War which ended in 1988. George Bush had been able to maintain diplomatic relations with Saddam when Saddam was waging war against Iran, but not when he was offering to withdraw from Kuwait. Thus began the Gulf War in 1991 and a process of political destabilization in the Middle East that has been a pretense for ongoing military intervention to this day.

Harvard public policy professor Linda Bilmes published a study in 2013 estimating that the true cost of the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will run between $4 trillion and $6 trillion, including ongoing healthcare for veterans and interest on the war debt. A similar study by Brown University put the price tag at $4 trillion, but both of these studies preceded the rise of ISIS and do not account for rising tensions with Iran and Syria, or Russia in the Ukraine.

Where’s the peace dividend we were promised throughout the Cold War, that payback for defeating the evil superpower that prevented America from spreading peace and democracy by way of its “benevolent hegemony?” Where’s our $4 trillion? The war hawks and politicians in Washington D.C. will tell you it is being reinvested to defeat terror and secure American interests abroad; that the elusive dividend payment is just another war or two away. In an October 2014 interview with USA Today to promote his book Worthy Fights, President Obama’s former Secretary of Defense and CIA Director, Leon Panetta, stated that “we can expect kind of a 30-year war” that would need to include Nigeria, Yemen, Libya and other threats. Those who profit from the military-industrial complex will continue to recognize a return on their investments.  The American people will only realize a peace dividend when their government begins to practice peace instead of war as a means to foreign policy.

Robert Ted Hinds is an activist, journalist, and professional analyst.  He holds a Master of Business Administration from Washington State University and Bachelor of Science degrees in Psychology and Finance from the University of Oregon.

January 15, 2015 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , | 1 Comment

FARC says killed 8 Colombia soldiers in ‘defensive response’

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File photo shows militants belonging to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
Press TV – January 14, 2015

The FARC rebel group says it has killed eight army soldiers in a “defensive response” to the recent attacks carried out by the Colombian army.

“As a result of the defensive response, we lament that eight military personnel lost their lives, unnecessarily,” read the statement issued by the guerrilla group on Wednesday, adding, “These are all casualties that could have been avoided if the government had been less small-minded.”

According to the statement, the FARC forces killed the soldiers in retaliation for the Colombian army’s mortar attacks on rebels’ positions in the central province of Meta earlier this week.

The rebel group called on the government to put an end to its “senseless” offensives, “because they could provoke the end of the unilateral ceasefire and disturb the climate of confidence that should prevail at the negotiating table.”

Back on December 20, 2014, the FARC declared a unilateral ceasefire in an alleged attempt to boost the peace talks that have been held in Cuba since two years ago. However, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos rejected the move, saying the guerrillas’ condition for an international verification of the ceasefire cannot be accepted.

Earlier in the month, the Colombian government and the FARC resumed the latest round of peace talks, suspended in November 2014, over the abduction of an army general.

The peace talks were launched in the Cuban capital of Havana in 2012, aimed at ending a half-a-century-old conflict between the rebels and the US-backed government.

Bogota estimates that 600,000 people have been killed and more than 4.5 million displaced due to the fighting.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) is Latin America’s oldest insurgent group and has been fighting the Colombian government since 1964.

January 15, 2015 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Uruguay Discovers ‘Extremely Encouraging’ Oil Deposits

teleSUR | January 14, 2015

Australian company Petrel Energy has announced that it has found and certified the existence of 20 potential oil deposits in the north of Uruguay, the only country in the region that imports all the hydrocarbons that it consumes.

Uruguayan state petrol enterprise ANCAP said that the certification includes “20 conventional explorations,” with an estimation of risk-free resources “of up to 1.8 billion recoverable barrels which implies 5.6 billion barrels originally in the sub-soil.”

ANCAP emphasized that there may be more oil yet to discover, for which “more exploratory work is required, like various drillings, in order to determine the existence of significant hydrocrabon accumulations.”

The results are “extremely encouraging,” the company said, adding that the Australian company Schuepach confirmed that it will drill four exploratory wells in the zone between 2015 and 2017.

In recent years, Uruguay set itself the task of trying to find oil in its territory, sparking several offshore projects in 2009 and 2012.

January 15, 2015 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | | Leave a comment

Poroshenko the “Civilized”

By HALYNA MOKRUSHYNA | CounterPunch | January 14, 2015

President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine stated in Paris on January 11 that the Charlie Hebdo tragedy has united all civilized countries. He marched proudly at the front line of the huge crowd of “civilized people” who were expressing their solidarity with freedom of speech against terrorism. Poroshenko’s participation in the march presumably qualifies Ukraine as one of the “civilized countries”. He is outraged by the terrible attack on Western values, in whose name the Ukrainian army is bombing and shelling its own citizens in the Donbas region in the east of the country.

Over 4,800 civilians have died since the Ukrainian government launched an “anti-terroristic operation” against Donbas in April 2014. Donbas did not want a nationalist parliament and nationalist ideology which refuse to Russian-speaking citizens the right to have their language recognized as the second official language of Ukraine. Donbas rejects the anti-Russian and anti-Soviet interpretation of history which the extremist parties making up the majority of the Parliament are imposing on Ukraine. Donbas takes pride in its Soviet past. Donbas is different from the rest of Ukraine first of all in these two features.

It is an industrial region in which 75% of the population considers Russian to be its mother tongue–even though over half of the residents of the region (57%) are ethnic Ukrainians, according to the Ukrainian census of 2001. In Donetsk city, the dominance of Russian language is even higher – 88% versus 11% of people for whom Ukrainian is a mother tongue. The ethnicity of Donetsk’s residents is split roughly evenly – 47% Ukrainian versus 48% Russian.

One of the first steps of the new, right-wing government that seized power in Kyiv in late February of last year largely thanks to nationalistic, paramilitary units of the ‘Euromaidan’ movement, was an attempt to abolish Ukraine’s law on languages. This law, adopted in 2012 in an effort to quell tensions being created by right-wing nationalists, granted the right to use Russian and other minority languages in regions where this minority constitutes at least 10% of the local population. Minority language services would be provided and used in public administration, education and cultural activities. This attempt to abolish the law on languages sent a clear signal to Donbas: the new Ukrainian regime will continue to implement their nationalist agenda. Donbas rebelled.

A series of pro-Russian demonstrations took place in major cities of South- Eastern Ukraine – Odessa, Kharkiv, Mariupol, Donetsk. It was a response to the nationalist discourse coming out of Kyiv. A discourse in which Soviet Union was portrayed as an “occupant” which suppressed the Ukrainian language, Ukrainian culture and a Ukrainian quest for independence. In this discourse, the Soviet Union was an empire, a direct heir of the Russian tsarist imperialism. How were people for whom being Soviet is a significant part of their identity to react to such a discourse?

Donbas people have a strong regional identity, built on the Cossack freemen spirit, proletarian pride, and internationalism. According to a recent poll conducted by the Institute of Sociology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, residents of Donbas identify themselves as citizens of Ukraine (34%), people of Donbas (27%), residents of a town/city (19%), and former Soviet citizens (14%). To compare, in the rest of the country the national component of self-identification (citizen of Ukraine) is much stronger than in Donbas (60% in the South, 67% in Eastern Ukraine, 70% in the West and 76% in Central Ukraine).

Donbas has been asking for regional autonomy and the recognition of Russian as a second official language of Ukraine since 1994. On March 27, 1994, concomitantly with the elections to the Verkhovna Rada (‘Supreme Council’, or Parliament), a local referendum was held,in Donetsk and Luhansk regions in which the vast majority of people voted in favor of the federalization of Ukraine (decentralization of central government powers), the use of Russian language as a second official language, and Ukraine joining the Commonwealth of Independent States (an association of former Soviet republics led by Russia).

Kyiv has consistently refused to hold a national referendum on these vital issues for Ukraine. According to the Constitution of Ukraine, even the holding of such regional referendums is illegal. All of this supposedly because Ukraine’s political elites were afraid of the “imperialistic” ambitions of Ukraine’s big brother – Russia. Ukraine’s elites preferred to ignore voices coming from Eastern Ukraine.

In 2013, the Communist Party of Ukraine proposed to hold a referendum on the political future of Ukraine—whether to seek closer relations with the European Union or retain close ties to Russia. The party collected more than three million signatures in favor of such a referendum. Then-President Viktor Yanukovych declared such a referendum illegal.

From Kyiv’s perspective, any request by a region to have more administrative and financial autonomy is an encroachment on Ukrainian sovereignty. The word “federalization” provokes panic and fear. Kyiv prefers killing its own citizens instead of negotiating and accommodating.

Kyiv claims that the rebellion in Donbas (Donetsk and Luhansk regions) is purely a product of Russian support. It is said that Russia encouraged anti-Maidan protests, Russian troops are fighting against the Ukrainian army and Russians are destroying the Donbas infrastructure, while at the same time, in some kind of a twisted logic, Russia is acknowledged and condemned for sending one humanitarian convoy after another to help Donbas residents.

It is true that Russia is involved in Donbas. The majority of the population of Donbas has consistently expressed its desire to have closer ties with Russia, not with the European Union. The overwhelming majority of Donbas residents saw in the Euromaidan movement a coup d’état–orchestrated either by the West (51%) or by the opposition (21,5%), according to a poll conducted in October 2014 by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology and the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiative Fund. This perception coincides with the interpretation of the Euromaidan revolution by the majority of citizens of Russia, including President Vladimir Putin.

Russia could not remain indifferent to events, particularly to Kyiv’s decision to seek close military ties with NATO, if not eventual membership of the aggressive military alliance. And volunteers from Russia went to Donbas to defend the people they perceive as their brothers and sisters. As for the regular Russian military fighting in Donbas, no convincing evidence has been presented so far in Ukrainian or Western media. If Russia really decided to send troops, any resulting war would be over in a couple of weeks and the Donbas insurgency would not be complaining about lack of military support from Russia.

As for political and financial support, how is Russia’s defending the rights of Russian-speaking Ukrainians any different from the NATO governments’ involvement in Ukraine? The West spends huge amounts of money supporting NGOs which promote so-called European values. Ukrainian parties, such as UDAR, have direct financial support from the German government and the Conrad Adenauer Foundation. How about the famous visits to Maidan Square of Victoria Nuland, John McCain and other Western politicians declaring openly their support for the political goals of protesters? Is this not interference in a country’s internal affairs? Ah yes, we know the answer–they were supporting Ukrainians in their fight for democracy and human dignity, against the corrupt, kleptomaniac regime of the dictator Yanukovych.

Today, after the “bloody dictator” fled and democracy reigns, why is the new regime in Kyiv fighting a war against its own citizens instead of sitting down at the table of negotiations in a truly democratic spirit? Why is Kyiv still refusing to hear a different opinion? Why is national history being rewritten to suit one nationalist narrative instead of offering a plurality of perspectives? Why is the Ukrainian government imposing a war tax of one and a half per cent on impoverished Ukrainians and waging a nationalist, propaganda war in national and international media, trying to convince Ukrainians they are fighting a war against Russia?

This war has already killed thousands of Ukrainians. Many more thousands of Ukrainian families have been split over the issue of relations with Russia. The economy and infrastructure of Donbas are ruined. Is it better to kill and destroy or take a chance and negotiate? Ukraine is not a mono-ethnic, mono-cultural country. It will never fit into this mold, no matter how hard the current Kyiv regime tries to squeeze Ukraine into it by suppressing dissenting opinions.

Democracy, which Kyiv so much adores and venerates together with the “civilized countries”, as President Poroshenko puts it, is about learning to live with differences, by respecting and accommodating it. I do not see any sign of if coming from Kyiv. Joining a march to commemorate the writers of Charlie Hebdo is not enough to make of Ukraine a democratic country. What Ukraine really needs is a President and a government that listens to all Ukrainians and respects their right to be different. Yes, the majority of Ukrainians want to be part of Europe. But there is also the other Ukraine that wants to keep close ties with Russia. Any political project of state-building in Ukraine will succeed only if this other Ukraine is heard and accommodated.

Halyna Mokrushyna is currently enrolled in the PhD program in Sociology at the University of Ottawa and a part-time professor. She holds a doctorate in linguistics and MA degree in communication. Her academic interests include: transitional justice; collective memory; ethnic studies; dissent movement in Ukraine; history of Ukraine; sociological thought.  Her doctoral project deals with the memory of Stalinist purges in Ukraine. In the summer of 2013 she travelled to Lviv, Kyiv, Kharkiv and Donetsk to conduct her field research. She is currently working on completing her thesis. She can be reached at halouwins@gmail.com.

January 15, 2015 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment