The White House may end a program encouraging Cuban doctors sent abroad to defect and move to the United States.
The program, created under George W. Bush in 2006, is under review as a part of ongoing negotiations to normalize relations with Cuba, reported Reuters on Friday. Cuba considers it a “reprehensible practice” that is designed to “deprive Cuba and many other countries of vital human resources.”
The island sends medical personnel to countries suffering from health crises, including to South Africa in the post-apartheid brain drain and to West Africa to treat patients infected with Ebola.
The dispatches are a significant export and source of income for the country. In exchange for staff Cuba receives 100,000 barrels of oil a year from Venezuela.
Under the Cuban Medical Professional Parole Program, U.S. embassies in over 60 countries have discretionary authority to grant Cuban doctors abroad U.S. visas.
Despite being compared to slaves or prisoners on parole, out of over 40,000 medical workers in third world countries, the program accepted a total of 7,117 applicants. In 2015, 1,663 applicants were approved, a record in its nine-year history.
“It’s not only an issue of quantity, but of the quality of the specialists, the brains that the North American government has been selectively robbing… which is also a source of income for the problems that our people are confronting daily,” Marcos Agustín del Risco, director of Human Capital in the Ministry of Public Health, told Radio Rebelde.
The defectors “seriously affected” Cuba’s own free health care system, causing President Raul Castro to recently announce that the government will re-impose limits on the number of medics leaving the country. Last summer, controversy over Cuban doctors who had fled to Colombia to process U.S. visas became a major question in U.S.-Cuba relations.
“It’s an unusual policy, and I think as we look at the whole totality of the relationship, this is something that we felt was worth being in the list of things that we consider,” Ben Rhodes, a national security adviser that participated in Cuba talks last year, told Reuters.
January 9, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Economics | Africa, Cuba, Latin America, United States |
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Public opinion is increasingly influenced by mixing politics, business and entertainment with good causes. When Mark Zuckerberg announced he was giving away most of his money, people got excited. But charity and good causes are rarely what they seem.
Politics – as the adage goes – is show business for ugly people.
If by ‘show business’ we mean the implementation of a script worked out in advance by people the public never hears about and dressed up to resemble a spontaneous and passable substitute for reality, then I would agree.
What I see, though, is just as all other norms are being redefined and merged with their polar opposites to form a new mush designed to confuse and debilitate, so the beautiful people are being blended with the ugly ones to form a new compound agent.
The first feet over the line appeared in the 1960s. They belonged to JFK who was the first TV president star, and Muhammad Ali, the first major sports star activist.
Since then, the trickle has turned into a deluge, with a lot of the traffic coming from Hollywood and big business.
Just to be clear: I’m not bemoaning the injection of a lack of purity into the political discourse. I have no time for any politician in power of any stripe who does not actively and openly work to wrest power away from international bankers. Outside of Iceland, I’m still waiting.
But today, it is commonplace – almost expected – for a star or an industrial magnate to get behind a cause.
Charities, philanthropies and foundations
Charities and philanthropies have two attractive qualities if you’re in the business of pushing through an agenda quietly. Firstly, they are tax-exempt. Secondly, they are beyond criticism.
People’s naiveté is staggering. They believe that industrial magnates and investors – men who have spent their lives screwing people over – suddenly and for no reason fall under the influence of benevolent fairy dust.
They want to believe that the Warren Buffetts and George Soroses – men whose careers are characterized by reflex ruthlessness – are suddenly compelled to go out and do random acts of kindness.
What, in fact, is happening is that these men are creating foundations: corporations that will never pay any tax and which will continue to advance an agenda none of us voted for – in perpetuity.
A foundation will hire and retire generations of directors and workers, all of whom will be suborned to the Articles governing that foundation at the time it was created. The DNA of the founder is enshrined in a legal entity, given boundless amounts of money, and then allowed to follow an agenda invariably directed towards ‘change’ – change no one ever heard about, never mind voted for.
What foundations (and charities or so-called philanthropies) do not do is give away money. What they, in fact, do is allow money to be released to persons or organizations, which must then do very specific things with it. In short, they subcontract out the implementation of their guiding Articles to the recipients of their ‘charity’.
If it is still hard for you to embrace the notion that what is termed ‘charity’ or ‘philanthropy’ could be anything but benign, I recommend watching Norman Dodd interviewed by the excellent G. Edward Griffin. Norman Dodd was, in 1954, the Staff Director of the Congressional Special Committee to Investigate Tax-Exempt Foundations. He knew how they really work.
Agenda 21
Mainstream media works hard, generally speaking, to defuse criticism of Agenda 21. Similar to philanthropy, it uses warm, fuzzy terminology. It talks, for example, about ‘sustainable development’ – and who could be against that?
Glenn Beck nailed it when he said: “Sustainable development is just a really nice way of saying centralized control over all of human life on planet earth.”
Bill Gates has gone from knowing how to make computer software (which defies any intelligent attempt to use it and now spies on you), to being an expert on the environment (i.e. how all of us should live), which is at the core of Agenda 21.
He couldn’t make an operating system that didn’t crash and turn blue every time you wanted to do something, but he’s got the solution to the problem which was identified by his buddy Al Gore, who went from almost inventing the internet and almost being president of the United States to almost winning the Nobel Peace Prize (he shared it with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and who – like Bill – is an expert on how we all should live.
Bill explains with nerd-like zeal the need to reduce carbon emissions to “almost zero” (which, since humans are carbon-based life forms, would require our virtual extinction), and among his toolkit for achieving this aim is “a really great job on new vaccines.”
Bill Gates also has a tax-free foundation. Knowing how – and, in fact, if – the rest of us should have children is something of a family business for Gates. His father, W. H. Gates, was a director of Planned Parenthood, and also a ‘philanthropist’.
Eye candy
Actors and pop stars get adoration and money – at least the successful ones do. And if you live in a grim area and work in a boring job that can seem like the zenith of all possible joy.
However, the appeal wears off after a while. You don’t just want to speak other people’s words. You want to say something significant yourself. You’ve spent your life scrambling up a greasy pole to get respect, only to find yourself secretly afraid that people don’t take you seriously.
Such people, then, are nothing if not vain. That’s partly why they went into the business in the first place.
So it’s not difficult to utilize both their vanity and their proven skills in delivering dialogue they didn’t write and don’t understand, in order to push forward agendas they could never grasp.
Such people are Bill Gates and Warren Buffett writ small. Very small. Because while they might seem like gods to you, they have no real power. They are only ever one misjudged comment away from never working again, and they are all terrified of having to go back and live with the unwashed masses.
People such as Gates and Buffett and Gore are pretty dull to most people. Joe Public is not accustomed to listening to suits. But he has thousands of hours invested in giving his rapt attention to Hollywood stars and musicians.
This makes them useful to those who really do understand power; who can make where the rubber meets the road – where vanity meets inanity – serve to push forward the agenda the grown-ups came up with.
Pop people are basically used by the system to sell a new weaponized culture to the target audience. It is an obvious move to use those tried-and-tested puppets to sell more of that same agenda.
So Angelina Jolie was gushed over by the Telegraph, in part for her intrepid journey to Darfur and then for lecturing the Council on Foreign Relations (a place where real power resides) on the need to do the things in Darfur – stuff the CFR was planning on doing anyway, but was unable to express in a way that did not send people to sleep.
Bono, for his part, has gone from anthems against the establishment to eulogies in its praise. He is big friends with Bill Gates, for example, and likes to chew the cud with him on the ‘charity’ they are both involved in.
You name the star, they’ll have a cause. From Emma Watson (who at the age of 25 is already an ‘activist’) to George Clooney to Scarlett Johansson – they are all out there treading the boards of seemingly worthy narratives, looking authentic and concerned, and investing dullness with magic.
The fact that few if any of them could write an undergraduate paper unaided on the subject they are supposedly experts in doesn’t matter. People follow the stars. And the people who control the stars know that.
Very occasionally, someone goes off-script; someone claws his way to a position of prominence by sheer grit and talent and then just says what he thinks. Tyson Fury comes to mind.
Then the media is less interested in causes and more interested in damage limitation, wringing its hands at the incongruity of someone capable of Wrongthink being fantastically good at something.
Something tells me Mr Fury isn’t going to be invited to share his thoughts with the Council on Foreign Relations or to hug trees with Bill Gates.
I also wonder how long we’ll have to wait to find a star using the Oscars to speak out in favor of no sex before marriage or tipping buckets of cold water over themselves to highlight the evils of usury.
I’m thinking Hell will freeze over first.
Read more:Gates Foundation focuses $3bn agro-fund on rich countries, ‘pushes GMO agenda in Africa’
January 7, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Africa, Bill Gates, George Clooney, George Soros, Human rights, Mark Zuckerberg, Scarlett Johansson, United States |
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Like children’s fairy tales, foreign policy myths are created, told and retold for a purpose.
The Boy Who Cried Wolf imparts a life lesson while entertaining your five year-old niece. Unfortunately foreign policy myths are seldom so benign.
The tale told about Romeo Dallaire illustrates the problem. While the former Canadian General rose to prominence after participating in a failed (assuming the purpose was as stated) international military mission, he’s widely considered a great humanitarian. But, the former Senator’s public persona is based on an extremely one-sided media account of his role in the complex tragedy that engulfed Rwanda and Burundi two decades ago.
In a particularly egregious example of media bias, criticism of Dallaire’s actions in Rwanda have been almost entirely ignored even though his commander published a book criticizing the Canadian general’s bias. According to numerous accounts, including his civilian commander on the UN mission, Dallaire aided the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which invaded Rwanda with decisive Ugandan support and quiet US backing. Gilbert Ngijo, political assistant to the civilian commander of United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), summarizes the criticism: “He [Dallaire] let the RPF get arms. He allowed UNAMIR troops to train RPF soldiers. United Nations troops provided the logistics for the RPF. They even fed them.”
In his 2005 book Le Patron de Dallaire Parle (The Boss of Dallaire Speaks), Jacques-Roger Booh Booh, a former Cameroon foreign minister and overall head of UNAMIR, claims Dallaire had little interest in the violence unleashed by the RPF despite reports of summary executions in areas controlled by them. RPF soldiers were regularly seen in Dallaire’s office, with the Canadian commander describing the Rwandan army’s position in Kigali. This prompted Booh Booh to wonder if Dallaire “also shared UNAMIR military secrets with the RPF when he invited them to work in his offices.” Finally, Booh Booh says Dallaire turned a blind eye to RPF weapons coming across the border from Uganda and he believes the UN forces may have even transported weapons directly to the RPF. Dallaire, Booh Booh concludes, “abandoned his role as head of the military to play a political role. He violated the neutrality principle of UNAMIR by becoming an objective ally of one of the parties in the conflict.”
Dallaire doesn’t deny his admiration for RPF leader Paul Kagame who was likely responsible for shooting down the plane carrying both Rwandan Hutu President Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira on April 6, 1994. (That event triggered mass killing and an environment of deep instability that facilitated the RPF’s rise to power in Kigali.) In Shake Hands with the Devil, published several years after Kagame unleashed terror in the Congo that’s left millions dead, Dallaire wrote: “My guys and the RPF soldiers had a good time together” at a small cantina. Dallaire then explained: “It had been amazing to see Kagame with his guard down for a couple of hours, to glimpse the passion that drove this extraordinary man.”
Dallaire’s interaction with the RPF was certainly not in the spirit of UN guidelines that called on staff to avoid close ties to individuals, organizations, parties or factions of a conflict.
A witness at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) actually accused Dallaire of complicity in a massacre. A Rwandan national testifying under the pseudonym T04, reported Tanzania’s Arusha Times, “alleged that in April 1994, Gen. Dallaire allowed members of the rebel Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF, now in power in Kigali), to enter the national stadium and organize massacres of Hutus. Several people, including the witness, took refuge there following the assassination of Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana.”
But, criticisms of Dallaire’s actions in Rwanda have been almost entirely ignored by the Canadian media. Le Patron de Dallaire Parle went largely unnoticed, or at least not commented upon. A Canadian newswire search found three mentions of the book (a National Post review headlined “Allegations called ‘ridiculous’: UN boss attacks general,” an Ottawa Citizen piece headlined “There are many sides to the Rwanda saga” and a letter by an associate of Dallaire). Other critical assessments of Dallaire’s actions in Rwanda have fared no better including Rwanda and the New Scramble for Africa and Enduring Lies: The Rwandan Genocide in the Propaganda System, 20 Years Later in which Edward Herman and David Peterson “suggest that Dallaire should be regarded as a war criminal for positively facilitating the actual mass killings of April-July, rather than taken as a hero for giving allegedly disregarded warnings that might have stopped them.”
On the other hand, a Canadian newswire search of “Romeo Dallaire Rwanda” elicited over 6,000 articles that generally provide a positive portrayal of Dallaire. Similarly, a search for mention of Dallaire’s 2003 book Shake Hands with the Devil elicited 1,700 articles.
The complex interplay of ethnic, class and regional politics, as well as international pressures, which spurred the “Rwandan Genocide” has been decontextualized. Instead of discussing Uganda’s aggression against its much smaller neighbour, the flight of Hutus into Rwanda after the violent 1993 Tutsi coup in Burundi and economic reforms imposed on the country from abroad, the media focuses on a simplistic narrative of vengeful Hutus killing Tutsis. In this media fairy tale, Dallaire plays the great Canadian who attempted to save Africans.
While two decades old, the distortion of the Rwandan tragedy continues to have political impacts today. It has given ideological cover to dictator Paul Kagame’s repeated invasions of the Congo and domestic repression. In addition, this foreign policy myth has been used to justify foreign military intervention as is the case with the current political crisis in Burundi. The myth of Dallaire in Rwanda is also cited to rationalize the Responsibility to Protect doctrine, when, in fact the true story illustrates the inevitable duplicitousness of foreign interventions.
Unlike in bedtime stories, in foreign policy making things up is usually harmful.
December 28, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Africa, Burundi, RPF, Rwanda |
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I was brought up in Rhodesia, the country named after Cecil Rhodes, so I’m quite interested in the current controversy about the removal of his statue outside Oriel College in Oxford.
The supporters of Rhodes and other champions of British imperial history, argue that it was people like him who made Britain “great”, and “civilised” the countries they conquered. They talk about the thousands of miles of railways, and imposing colonial architecture. Whilst those things may indeed still be used by the native populations there today, that was never their original purpose. Railways were laid to help transport stolen minerals and other products of slavery as quickly as possible back to Britain, and to move British soldiers efficiently around hostile lands. And the fine colonial buildings were built to facilitate the administration of the plundering and oppression, and provide opulent luxury for the oppressors. None of it was done to help the natives; it was done to exploit and steal from them, and crush any resulting dissent.
If Rhodes and his kind had indeed tried to improve the lives of the people of the foreign lands they looted, the catastrophic revolutions that tore through the British Empire after WW2 may never have happened. In the 1960s, for example, almost nothing was provided by the followers of Rhodes for the natives of Rhodesia. We white-skinned sons of empire, a mere 5% of the population, went to fine schools, had good health care, great sports clubs, public swimming pools and spacious parks – access to which was either wholly forbidden to black-skinned people or severely restricted. I clearly remember the public buses and toilets labelled “whites only”, the fine railways that 95% of the population couldn’t use – except for riding in filthy, overcrowded, rickety third class carriages; I remember the shops, hotels, restaurants and bars that black people could work in but not use.
In the African tribal lands schools and health clinics were few and far between, very basic, and more likely to be run by Catholic missionaries rather than the government. Black-skinned people could only work as labourers, domestic servants or do other menial jobs that white people didn’t want to do. They couldn’t take managerial positions or serve as officers in the police or army. They couldn’t vote or stand in elections. When I worked on Rhodesia Railways, as late as 1979, black people weren’t even allowed to become train drivers because, it was said, they weren’t clever enough. We white people lived in pampered comfort in exclusive leafy suburbs, whilst the black-skinned people who provided our comfort were forced to live out of sight in sheds at the bottom of the garden, or miles away in segregated overcrowded shameful townships. This was the true legacy of Rhodes and his kind.
Tear down his statue, Oriel, and smash it to atoms.
December 28, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | Africa, Cecil Rhodes, Oriel College, Rhodesia, UK |
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More than 600 Tunisian Jihadists have returned to their homes after fighting in Syria, a spokesman for the interior ministry said on Friday.
Speaking to journalists during a conference to discuss the consequences of returning terrorist Jihadists, Waleed Al-Waqini said that more than 3,000 Tunisians have gone to fight against the regime in Syria. While at least 600 have gone back to Tunisia, he pointed out that 800 others have been killed. An unspecified number of those who have returned are being prosecuted, he added, and some are under house arrest.
A previous UN report claimed that at least 5,500 Tunisian Jihadists were active in different conflict areas. Most are members of Daesh in Syria, although some are with Al-Nusra Front and Al-Qaeda. The report also claimed that hundreds of Tunisian fighters are in Libya.
December 26, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Aletho News | Africa, Da’esh, Libya, Syria, Tunisia |
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Regarding the assassination of the martyr Samir el-Kuntar
– After a few days, there will be the anniversary of the birth of Jesus Christ – and on this anniversary, we extend our greetings to all the Christians and Muslims. A few days later, is the anniversary of the birth of Prophet Mohammed, and we extend our greetings to all the Muslims on this occasion and we ask God for the blessings of both these two prophets to extend mercy and security and happiness to all the region and to open the hearts and minds of all to love and mercy that these two great leaders brought to the world.
– Yesterday, we lost one of our brothers who shared in the birth of Hezbollah from its first hours and carried heavy responsibility for 33 years – el Sheikh Mohammed Khatoun. I shall speak more about him at the date of his funeral tomorrow. I extend condolences to his family and loved ones.
– Before I speak about the main event – I want to speak about what happened in Nigeria a few days ago – a massacre in Zariah. Hundreds were killed. Hundreds were injured. Hundreds were detained. We include our voice among the voices of all who condemned this massacre, and we condemn the silence of all those who chose to be silent – a horrific silence. There is talk of up to 1,000 killed. And we call on the Nigerian government and its political parties – to act with strength to hold those responsible and to have a national and humanitarian response. I worry that there are American or Israeli hands or Takfiri hands that are behind this horrific massacre – designed to create more bloodshed in Nigeria.
– Back to our main point of discussion
– The assassination of the General of the Political Prisoners in the Israeli Jails – the brother, the martyr, Samir el Quntar
– (1) The facts. We have no doubt that the Israeli enemy is the one behind the assassination. It was not a covert operation – but an open attack. The assassination was by Israeli jets – against a residential home, that specifically targeted Samir el Quntar and other fighters and civilians. Did the Israeli jets enter Syrian air space or the did the Israeli jets fly over occupied Golan Heights – that is a detail, one that does not change anything, unless the discussion is about Syria and Russia and today that is not our focus. What is clear is that it was an Israeli attack against a residential home in Geramana in the outskirts of Damascus. I extend condolences to all those martyred. Anyone who kills a man like Samir el Quntar does a service to Israel.
– (2) We know and Samir knew and the Israelis themselves did not hide – that Israel would not leave Samir el Quntar alive, from the first day of his release. The threat was alive throughout all the years, months, days. Israel was very open that it would not forgive him for his past nor on his strength and resilience in jail nor on his dedication to the resistance. Israel does not forgive – it is our governments that forgive the murderers of Deir Yassin to Qana. This talk by Israel was before the plan for building resistance in the occupied Golan Heights. We in Hezbollah hold the enemy Israel responsible for the assassination of Samir el Quntar
– (3) In this night I do not want to talk about the characteristics of this great martyr. I shall simply say tonight that Samir el Quntar was a lover of Palestine. Palestine was all his love and filled his heart and mind. Palestine’s destiny and the destiny of Palestine’s people and the future of the resistance was always his first and main focus. In our first visit upon liberation, he and I spoke – and we always leave options open – I told him that he has numerous options – politics, media, and military. He said then what he told others publicly: I left Palestine to return to Palestine. He told me that from this very moment I am ready to participate in any military operation, whether on the border with occupied Palestine or within occupied Palestine. I await my martyrdom, he said. It would be an honor to me to be a fighter, he said. That is Samir, that is his truth that we must say today. Does the enemy Israel imagine that by killing Samir and those like him that they can kill such love and passion and commitment and the vast sacrifice of the people of this nation? Many great leaders have been killed and tens of thousands of people have been martyred – in Palestine and Lebanon and Syria and Egypt and Jordan. And what was the result? Has this nation and these people and these generations given up on Palestine? NO. A generation grew up to inherit resistance and to give it to the next generation. The blood of Samir el Kuntar and those who passed before him – is that the resistance against Israel for liberation is a call that will not be broken, regardless of who will be killed and detained and tortured; this is a call that will not be broken. Look now at the people of occupied Palestine – this is a generation that is as old as Samir el Kuntar was when he went to occupied Palestine (i.e. 17). The youth of Palestine fight death with death. Tens of them have been martyred as they fight with knives – because that is their only option. They have entered terror in the hearts of the enemy. When we see a youth in her prime – such as (martyr) Ashraqat Tamami – and when I speak of her, I speak of all the youth of Palestine, I discovered that this youth (female) had a great deal of awareness and clarity and dedication and deep understanding to the cause that she wants to sacrifice for and to the understanding of the enemy and the friend, and for the calmness of her decision. Ashraqat is today a model for many of Palestine’s youth – who love with a passion the land and freedom. They carry the same passion that Samir el Quntar carried and it remained in his heart until a traitorous Israeli rocket killed him.
– (4) Our position. When Israel attacks, anywhere it chooses and how it chooses and in any time it does, it is the right of the resistance – anywhere, and any way, and in any place, and at any time. Today, I repeat: from now, any member of Hezbollah that is killed, we shall hold the responsibility to the Israelis and we shall consider it is our right to respond at any time, at any location, and in the manner we choose. We said this on the 30th of January 2015. Today, we say, to the enemy and to the friend, Samir el Quntar is one of us, and he is a leader in our resistance, and Israelis killed him, and it is our right to respond to his assassination in the time, place, and in the manner that we choose. That is our right. And I add – we, in Hezbollah, we shall fulfill this right.
– (5) In the same vein, the killing against Hezbollah and this resistance, comes the US actions that seek to target Hezbollah on a number of levels. Since the early 90s, we as a party have been on the terrorism list – as a political party and as individuals. And for decades, the Americans have tried to force this description on other countries; they were not successful. Such a description is not accepted by the UN, and the EU, only lately, considers the military wing on the terrorism list, and China and Russia do not consider us as such. What the Americans decided to do now – even though they support terrorism worldwide — is that they consider us a criminal organization and not terrorism, claiming that we are drug dealers and that we are money launderers and that the US Congress now seeks to investigate the accusation that we are human traffickers. These accusations are false and have no basis in truth. It is our duty to deny them. We are not due to show evidence of our innocence. It is their responsibility to show evidence – if they have any, although they have long made accusations without evidence. Clearly, these accusations are political – and it’s first objective is to show Hezbollah in a bad light. They are the ones who spent millions of dollars, as per their own Ambassador, to create propaganda against Hezbollah for the Arab youth. We have a strong example here: the international organization of nuclear energy presented a report about the Iranian nuclear energy – and they said that the Iranian nuclear energy is peaceful and at the very least, since 2009 until today, there is no evidence of anything military in the Iranian nuclear energy. They presented the evidence, and one of the panel of the international organization is an American and there was a consensus on the report! A full consensus. Let us remember that it was the Americans that accused Iran for years. Also the Europeans. And let’s not forget Netanyahu in many occasions, including his speech at the UN. Netanyahu should be a joke internationally and even for Israel – let’s remember his chart at UN when he said that Iran would have a nuclear bomb in a few months. And now we have this report – with consensus – that there is no evidence of military usage of Iran’s nuclear energy. Let’s remember that they were planning a war against Iran, and they enforced sanctions against more than 80 million people, and they threatened, unfortunately with some of their Arab collaborators. That is just one example of a political accusation. The accusations against us are small in comparison. With the battle against us, they won’t accuse us of getting nuclear weapons. This is what they have to say against – either terrorist or criminal. That is the end of their line. The line of their lie is short. The truth will eventually be exposed. We know, in front of God, in front of our people, in front of many people, this is not who we are. If they think their accusations are a propaganda war, it will fail. From a financial perspective, they have now forced upon international banks to freeze Hezbollah funds – well, this was closed a long time ago. We do not have funds in international banks. Now, they are also putting pressure on Lebanese banks and the Lebanese central bank – to put pressure on any organization that is claimed to be tied to Hezbollah. We also state today, and state it again, we have no funds in Lebanese banks, not in the past nor in the present, nor do we have funds that we put in any banks. Nor do we transfer our funds via Lebanese banks – so there is no need for either the Lebanese central bank or any Lebanese banks to feel fear of being chased by the Americans. Furthermore, as I have stated before and shall say again, we are not a business nor an investment. We do not have companies nor are we partners with any Lebanese merchants. Whatever funds we have, we give to our resistance and to the families of the injured and the martyrs. We do not have an extra penny that we invest or put in any fund.
– Based on this, we have to speak seriously about this – it is the responsibility of the Lebanese Central Bank and the Lebanese banks to protect the Lebanese consumers and merchants! It is enough that one sign come from the Americans for there to be an accusation against an individual, and these banks immediately follow. Does this country not have sovereignty? Not have its own courts? Its own state? There are Lebanese merchants and investors that are hurt. We are not hurt. But now if Americans want to target a particular political current or a particular community, all they do is give the names to the Lebanese banks! These are Lebanese who should be protected by the Lebanese State. I do not ask the Lebanese State to protect any member of Hezbollah – but at the very least, it is the responsibility of the State to protect the men and women of this country. No one is asking the State to declare war on the US, only to ask for evidence for these accusations and to take the evidence to the Lebanese courts. This has already begun — this subservience to the US!
– Furthermore, with regards to the media, whether it is part of our network (Manar and Nour) or accused of supporting us or even empathizing with us – they are being threatened! The US is accusing you and judging you in absentia and charging you and killing you and you are not allowed to speak and if you speak, your voice cannot reach anywhere in the world. That is the freedom and democracy of the United States. Your media is not allowed – and maybe it will reach the stage that any media that shows the truth will be accused of being pro-terrorism, while knowing of course that anyone with a Dish can see hundreds of channels that call for takfiri [intolerance] and for killing and raping and committing terrorism and destruction and occupation and violence; those channels are accepted. But you and your type of the resistance are targeted, and the real reason is Israel, and not our position in Yemen or otherwise, but the real reason is that you are a resistance! The intention is Resistance itself – the discourse, the culture, the knowledge base of Resistance!
– Media is part of the struggle. We will not surrender. We will look for all options and opportunities so that the voice of Resistance and the voice of all who reject the project of Israel and the US in the region – those voices will be heard. This is an ongoing struggle.
– What is more important about all these actions against us, is how we look upon all these actions. You can see the negative, but there is also the positive. The fact that Congress sits and meets and has consensus and continues to think about new ways to fight us – means that we are in the right place. They have given us more faith and strength. It shows that we are in the right struggle, the right battle, the right discourse. Who ever finds himself – knowingly or not – a partner with the US and Zionism, let him re-examine his nationalism and religion and ethics! These actions by the US are also a recognition of us, that we are not a small group with small consequences. It is a recognition that Hezbollah plays a large role in Lebanon and in the region in fighting the Israeli project and the hegemonic project. As part of the Resistance – and we don’t claim to fight alone, just as we didn’t fight alone in 1982 and since – there were many US projects of hegemony, we are part of this battle and not alone. That is why the US Congress needs to take these declarations with clear time lines — they take us seriously. We also say that we understand these actions, see how loving we are. We understand these actions. When we are enemies to each other, and this is a compliment to us – to be enemies to the US and to Israel and enemies to all who want to steal the riches of our people and to all who want to destroy our civilization, we understand that they would want to do all these things, and we also will not surrender in this battle. I say to the US and to Israel and to their allies in the region: all these actions against us, from sanctions and murders, you will not be able to erase us. All the actions against us and are planned against us – will only increase our commitment.
– May God have mercy on our great martyr Samir el Kuntar…
Translation by Rania Masri [not word for word]
December 21, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, False Flag Terrorism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Africa, Hezbollah, Israel, Nigeria, Palestine, Samir el Kuntar, Syria, United States, Zionism |
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Hussainiyyah Baqeeyatullah in Nigeria’s northern city of Zaria before its reported destruction
The Nigerian army has completely demolished a religious center belonging to the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) following the recent massacre of Shia Muslims in the West African country.
The IMN’s website cited a local source as saying that the army bulldozed Hussainiyyah Baqeeyatullah in the northern city of Zaria in Kaduna State on Sunday.
This comes nearly a week after Nigerian soldiers opened fire on the people attending a religious ceremony at the site. Local media said more than a dozen people were killed during the December 12 raid.
The military accused the Shias of stopping the convoy of Nigeria’s Chief of Army Staff Lieutenant General Tukur Yusuf Buratai and attempting to assassinate him. The IMN and its leader Ibrahim al-Zakzaky strongly rejected the assassination accusation.
IMN spokesman Ibrahim Usman also rejected an accusation by local officials that the movement had “blocked roads for four days” during the religious ceremony, which marked Arba’een, the fortieth day to follow the martyrdom anniversary of Imam Hussein (PBUH), the grandson of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and the third Shia Imam.
One day later, Zakzaky was arrested during a raid by the army on his residence and the buildings connected to the Shia community in Zaria. Local sources say hundreds of people trying to protect the cleric, including three of his sons, were killed in the raid.
December 21, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Africa, Human rights, Islamic Movement in Nigeria, Nigeria |
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Nigerian Shia leader Ibrahim al-Zakzaky
Nigerian authorities say Shia leader Ibrahim al-Zakzaky, who has been arrested and whose family and supporters have faced a bloody crackdown, will face prosecution.
On Saturday, Nasir al-Rufai, the governor of Kaduna State in north-central Nigeria, where Zakzaky was arrested in his home city of Zaria last week, said the cleric “will be prosecuted for any crimes that he may have committed,” Nigerian newspaper THISDAY reported on Sunday.
“That is the decision for the federal authorities. There are state and federal crimes,” the official added, making it clear that the case would be brought against the cleric by Abuja rather than local officials. “There is a government and a constitution and we are resolved to follow the constitution and due process.”
Nigerian forces raided the house of Zakzaky, the head of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN), last Sunday and arrested him after reportedly killing individuals attempting to protect him, including one of the movement’s senior leaders and its spokesman.
Nigerian soldiers had opened fire on Shia Muslims attending a ceremony at a religious center in the city the previous day, accusing the Shias of stopping the convoy of Nigeria’s Chief of Army Staff Lieutenant General Tukur Yusuf Buratai and attempting to assassinate him. Zakzaky was planning a speech at the center, and the IMN has strongly rejected the assassination accusation.
The attack on Zakzaky’s residence and the violence during the road incident led to the deaths of hundreds of the members of the religious community, including three of Zakzaky’s sons.
The IMN spokesman, Ibrahim Usman, meanwhile, rejected the accusation by the governor that the movement had “blocked roads for four days” during the religious ceremony, which marked Arba’een, the fortieth day to follow the martyrdom anniversary of Imam Hussein (PBUH), the grandson of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and the third Shia Imam.
“Clearly, this is a deliberate attempt to twist the facts. During the Arba’een symbolic treks, we block only limited part of the road, and this is to protect persons from traffic accidents, control mass movement and avoid chaos on the roads,” Usman said.
“The governor here was trying to give the impression of a complete occupation of a lane for four days. That was not the case. Blocks were only from junction to junction on the roads. The public was informed about these little inconveniences with apologies on public radio and television stations throughout the trek. Road users during the period would be surprised by the governor’s statement,” he said.
Shia Muslims in Nigeria march during a procession marking Arba’een. (File photo)
Rufai has also announced that a judicial commission of inquiry has been set up to look into the attack on the cleric’s residence.
The IMN has said it does not trust any likely findings by the state investigators, adding that authorities have refused to listen to the Shia community about what happened in Zaria and are only focusing on the army’s account.
December 20, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | Africa, Human rights, Ibrahim al-Zakzaky, Islamic Movement of Nigeria, Nigeria |
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© Libyan Air Forces / Facebook
Libya’s air force said in a Facebook post that 20 US commandoes arrived at Wattiya airbase and disembarked “in combat readiness,” only to be told to leave. Pentagon sources confirmed the US had sent a special forces unit to Libya as part of a mission.
The Libyan Air Force said the 20 soldiers arrived at the airbase on Monday, but left soon after local commanders asked them to go because they had no right to be at the base “without prior coordination with protection force base.”
The Libyan air force published a Facebook post on Wednesday which included photographs of the special forces unit. It noted the 20 soldiers had disembarked “in combat readiness wearing bullet proof jackets, advanced weapons, silencers, handguns, night vision devices and GPS devices.”
When questioned by Libyan soldiers, the American troops said they were “in coordination with other members of the Libyan army,” the Libyan Air Force said. The Libyans were unconvinced.
“The response from your heroic army stationed at Wattiya base was to tell them to depart immediately and the group left, keeping their equipment with them,” the post added.
The photographs show three men armed with assault rifles, boarding a blue-and-white-striped passenger plane and driving a yellow dune buggy.
Pentagon sources confirmed to NBC News that the special forces unit was part of a mission sent this week, but it was unclear if the soldiers had left the country. Commandoes have been “in and out of Libya” for “some time now,” unnamed US officials told NBC, but the outlet reported they were there “purely to advise Libyan forces rather than conduct combat operations or training.”
According to the Associated Press, the failed debarkation happened just as Libya’s rival parliaments signed a landmark United Nations-sponsored deal to form a government in the war-torn country. Libya has been in chaos ever since Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown by NATO-backed rebels in 2011.
Read More: Fight against ISIS should be extended to Libya – French PM
December 18, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Illegal Occupation, Militarism | Africa, Libya, United States |
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This year marked the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, which is almost universally seen in Britain as purely a war against the Nazis and their UK-bound warplanes. Unlike the First World War or the wars in Indochina and Iraq, the Second World War is somewhat unique in that it is likely the only modern war whose reputation has remained pristine throughout the decades, being regarded as the ‘Good War’. But the impetus behind Britain’s involvement was as much imperial as it was defensive. At the end of the 1930s, Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden believed Germany to be a significant threat to their empire, and not Britain’s national security. Some of the ruling class entered the Second World War reluctantly, and contrary to many propaganda cartoons, British elites did nothing to aid the Poles; they did, however, evacuate a segment of the Polish army to deploy in their own objectives in 1940.
Even after the Battle of Britain, Whitehall still marginally favoured Hitler. Indeed, its objection to the Hitler-Stalin pact was merely that it gave Stalin too much power. Between the spring of 1940 (the fall of France) and 1943 (the Allied landing in southern Italy), the British army fought the majority of their battles in northern Africa. Churchill was deeply concerned about the safety of Suez Canal and the region’s oilfields, along with Saudi Arabia, which he sought to keep from Roosevelt’s influence.
The traditional view of the war, however, is a picture of democracy versus fascism, good versus evil. But this was not the motivation for the Allied leaders, as Chris Harman wrote in A People’s History of the World (Verso, 2008, p. 536):
The Churchill who demanded a no-holds-barred prosecution of the war was the same Churchill who has been present during the butchery at Omdurman, sent troops to shoot down striking miners in 1910, ordered the RAF to use poison gas against Kurdish rebels in British-ruled Iraq, and praised Mussolini. He had attacked a Conservative government in the 1930s for granting a minimal amount of local self government to India, and throughout the war he remained adamant that no concessions could be made to anti-colonial movements in Britain’s colonies, although this could have helped the war effort.
At the Yalta Conference, Churchill informed Roosevelt and Stalin that ‘While there is life in my body, no transfer of British sovereignty will be permitted’ in India. His stubbornness over the issue was so extreme that in 1942, during the Battle of Stalingrad, instead of pushing back the Nazis thousands of British troops were viciously suppressing demonstrations in India. Churchill’s inflexibility on the issue of sovereignty was so extreme that it led to a famine in Bengal which killed three million.
As historians like Harman and Danny Gluckstein (in A People’s History of the Second World War) have documented, the Second World War was comprised of two wars; one ‘from above’ and one ‘from below’. In a typically hypocritical act of pseudo-internationalist policy formation, during the war ‘from above’ in August 1941 Roosevelt and Churchill pledged to respect, in one of the principles of the Atlantic Charter, ‘the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live’. Applying different standards to his own actions, Churchill later stressed, when presenting the Charter to the House of Commons, that it did ‘not qualify in any way the various statements of policy which have been made [regarding] the British Empire’, since it only applied to ‘the States and nations of Europe now under the Nazi yoke’ (The Times, 10 September 1941). The war was consequently a disagreement between the major world governments about who should dominate, and not a battle against domination itself.
As early as the fall of Singapore in 1942, plans were already being made in Whitehall to reclaim parts of the empire, with the examples of Burma, Malaya, Hong Kong and Nigeria being the most notable. Churchill even drew up a plan, vetoed by the US, of taking over Thailand (covered by P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins in their 1993 study British Imperialism: Crisis and Deconstruction 1914-1990). He also issued a stern instruction to Eden towards the end of 1944: ‘[H]ands off the British empire is our maxim and it must not be weakened or smirched to please sob-stuff merchants at home or foreigners of any hue’. Labour had long confessed a principled opposition to imperialism, though had a change of heart after assuming office in 1945, supporting the renewal of the Colonial Development and Welfare Act and the establishment of a managerial structure run by several generations of educated colonial subjects. As Ernest Bevin modestly put it, ‘our crime is no exploitation; it’s neglect’ – where ‘neglect’ should be understood in its proper sense of ‘more exploitation’ (for discussion, see Robert D. Pearce’s 1982 The Turning Point in Africa: British Colonial Policy 1938-1948).
In 1936, the Greek king appointed General Ioannis Metaxas as a fascist dictator, who sought to bring about a ‘Third Hellenic Civilisation’. A British liaison officer sent to wartime Greece, C.M. Woodhouse, believed Metaxas to be ‘benevolent’, having ‘high-minded motives for undertaking supreme power’ (The Apple of Discord: A Survey of Recent Greek Politics in their International Setting, Hutchinson, 1948, pp. 16-17). Britain supported Metaxas because, as a different liaison officer explained in 1944, three years after the dictator’s death, the Greeks ‘are a fundamentally hopeless and useless people with no future or prospect of settling down to any form of sensible life within any measurable time’. Any remnants of the Atlantic Charter had by now been long discarded from political consciousness. The Allies proceeded to bomb Athens in order to destroy the Greek resistance movement, EAM (the National Liberation Front) and its military arms, ELAS (the National Popular Liberation Army). During the war, zones controlled by EAM underwent large-scale self-government to a level of sophistication rivalling the Spanish anarchists. Residents voted for municipal councilors and judiciaries in mass assemblies, while expensive lawyers were dispensed with and regular justice prevailed.
‘Communist’ Russia also declined to support EAM/ELAS, and ordered the resistance to fuse with the government of the king. In an effort to dominate as much of the country as possible, Churchill’s coup later overthrew the Greek government while also suppressing the communists. Churchill informed General Scobie, in language to match that of any of the century’s great dictators, ‘Do not hesitate to fire at any armed male in Athens who assails the British authority or Greek authority … [A]ct as if you were in a conquered city where a local rebellion is in progress’. He later informed parliament of his view on EAM/ELAS, preferring collaborators to anti-fascists: ‘The security battalions came into existence … to protect the Greek villagers from the depredations of some of those who, under the guise of being saviours of their country, were living upon the inhabitants and doing very little fighting against the Germans’, unlike the ‘security battalions’ deployed by the Greek government who pledged loyalty to Hitler and who, according to Churchill, ‘did the best they could to shelter the Greek population from German oppression’.
Post-war Greek persecutors also worked alongside US counterinsurgency forces. Whereas Russia allowed the Nazis to crush the Polish communist resisters, the AK, Churchill actively sought the destruction of the Greek anti-fascists. In 1947 the American New Republic reported that ‘Churchill’s victory is complete – and neatly underwritten by hundreds of millions of American dollars. It could only be slightly more complete if Hitler himself had engineered it’ (15 September 1947). Like the US, Churchill also thoroughly approved of Mussolini. After visiting him in 1927, Churchill once again picked up his pen to confess how he ‘could not help being charmed, like so many other people have been, by his gentle and simple bearing and by his calm, detached poise’ (Extract from press statements made by Churchill, January 1927, Churchill Papers, CHAR 9/82 B). When Mussolini fell in 1943, Churchill promised that ‘Even when the issue of the war became certain, Mussolini would have been welcomed by the Allies’.
Earlier in the 1920s, Churchill had proclaimed his desire for justice when he confessed that poison gas would be an excellent weapon against ‘uncivilized tribesmen and recalcitrant Arabs’. This tactic was in clear violation of the Hague Declaration of 1899, calling on all adherents to refrain from ‘the use of projectiles the sole object of which is the diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases’, which Britain eventually agreed to sign in 1907. During the Good War, he added that ‘It is absurd to consider morality on this topic when everybody used it in the last war without a word of complaint from the moralists or the Church. On the other hand, in the last war the bombing of open cities was regarded as forbidden. Now everybody does it as a matter of course. It is simply a question of fashion changing as she does between long and short skirts for women’. Expressing his concern for the safety of the British public, he continued in a secret memo:
If the bombardment of London became a serious nuisance and great rockets with far-reaching and devastating effect fell on many centres of Government and labour, I should be prepared to do anything that would hit the enemy in a murderous place. I may certainly have to ask you to support me in using poison gas. We could drench the cities of the Ruhr and many other cities in Germany in such a way that most of the population would be requiring constant medical attention. We could stop all work at the flying bomb starting points. I do not see why we should have the disadvantages of being the gentleman while they have all the advantages of being the cad. There are times when this may be so but not now.
Britain engaged in what Churchill called the ‘absolutely devastating’ tactic of ‘area bombing’ of German cities instead of hitting specific military targets. Because of the power of aerial bombing, as Prime Minister Baldwin had explained in 1932, ‘The only defence is in offence, which means that you have to kill more women and children more quickly than the enemy if you want to save yourselves’. During the later years of the war, Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris took this message to heart more than any other RAF commander. He took pride in the fact that his Bomber Command has ‘virtually destroyed 45 out of the leading 60 German cities. In spite of invasion diversions we have so far managed to keep up and even exceed our average of two and a half cities a month’; that is, in spite of the existence of actual military targets to hit, Harris continued to wreak unnecessary and horrific damage on Germany.
On February 13th 1945, the Allies initiated the bombing of Dresden, an act which only hardened the resolve of the German military and encouraged it to step up its production of armaments. British and US bombers devastated Dresden’s cultural centre, the Altstadt, and destroyed 19 hospitals, 39 schools and residential areas. Meanwhile, core military and transport installation remained unscathed. Between 35,000 and 70,000 people died, and only 100 were soldiers; a civilian:soldier death ratio which would make even Benjamin Netanyahu blush. The only reason the bombing stopped was because Churchill realised that a completely demolished Dresden would leave no spoils, such as ‘housing materials … for our own needs’. Likewise, two years earlier, after the end of the Battle of Britain in May 1941, Churchill had wept over the ruins of the House of Commons, though not, strangely, over the deaths of thousands of Londoners.
After the Siege of Sidney Street in January 1911, in which Churchill, Home Secretary in the Liberal government, directed police to attack two jewelry robbers who had left three policemen dead the previous month in Houndsditch, the building the robbers were hiding in ended up in flames and all three were killed. Lindsey German and John Rees comment in A People’s History of London (Verso, 2012, p. 167).
Churchill reveled in such confrontations, and exploited the furore over the killing and the emerging popular press’s witch-hunt of anarchists to stoke up his own reputation and justify repressive methods overall. In fact the dead men were not anarchists but Latvian social democrats, engaged in what was called an ‘expropriation for the cause’.
Consequently, because of Churchill’s authoritarianism and the media’s assault on anarchists, Latvians, and Russians, one anarchist noted that ‘Anyone who walked along in a Russian blouse was considered a suspicious character and sometimes assaulted’. It’s against this cultural and political backdrop that any histories of Churchill and the Second World War should be assessed – and any judgements of the benevolent claims of present statesmen should be made.
Elliot Murphy teaches in the Division of Psychology and Language Sciences at University College, London.
December 17, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Africa, India, RAF, UK, Winston Churchill |
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A public commemoration of Leopold II in Brussels has sparked indignation in Belgium this week for celebrating a man responsible for the Congolese genocide that left over 10 million dead during colonial rule.
A public-funded parade and meeting at the city hall was meant to take place this Thursday to mark 150 years since the crowning of King Leopold II. Outrage over the event forced its cancellation on Tuesday, however. The commemoration is now to be held behind closed doors.
“A tribute to Leopold II in Brussels is a spit on the Congolese people and its diaspora. It is an insult to all colonized peoples,” the groups New Anti-Colonial Way (JOC) and Intal Congo stated in response to the event, according to RTBF.
“In (his) forty year presence in Congo, the bloody King eliminated more than half of the Congolese population; that is over 10 million people. The consequences of colonization are still felt today. Belgium has its hands stained with blood due to its actions in the past but also in the present. We will not silence the cries of our deaths, we will not silence history. We will not let you walk over our dignity. We believe it is our duty to mobilize for the memory, for the recognition of history and to end the hegemony of colonial thinking,” the groups added.
While the commemoration has been cancelled, protests to honor the victims have been organized at the city council on Thursday, where a statue in tribute to the man responsible for the Congolese holocaust still stands.
“(It’s) an unfortunate controversy” said Geoffroy Coomans Brachène, the organizer behind the tribute, who added it was “only to salute the exceptional mark of Leopold II on urbanism, architecture and regional planning in Brussels.”
For decades, Belgium exploited Congolese natural resources and enslaved its people through detention and forced labor camps, where the local population was subjected to bodily mutilations, torture and executions. The Congo did not achieve independence from Belgium until 1960.
Leopold II has become a symbol of western moral hypocrisy for many marginalized racial and ethnic communities. They see the absence of his crimes and colonial legacy in history books and public commemorations telling of whose lives are considered worthy, and whose lives aren’t.
“You see, when you kill ten million Africans, you aren’t called ‘Hitler’. That is, your name doesn’t come to symbolize the living incarnation of evil. Your name and your picture don’t produce fear, hatred and sorrow. Your victims aren’t talked about and your name isn’t remembered,” Liam O’Ceallaigh noted on the blog Walking Butterfly.
December 16, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | Africa, Belgium, Congo, King Leopold II |
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Any serious analysis of mass migration as a phenomena has to provide an in depth study as to the effects of the process, of who benefits and who gains and whether it is a natural phenomena[i] or an organised movement[ii] which serves the neo-liberal agenda.
Greece once more is in the eye of the storm. During 2015 around 750,000 have passed through Greece on their way to Northern Europe. The borders have essentially become non-existent. Another 3 million are expected to arrive in 2016. Is this a natural phenomena (product of wars or economic displacement) or something more sinister? A new world order agenda to reduce wages in the EU as it is now in stark competition with the USA and China? Replacing a century and a half of unionised labour?
Greece suffered extensively as a result of two decades of wars, in the first half of the 20th century as a consequence of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and World War I and as a result of World War II and the subsequent Cold War (Truman doctrine was inaugurated in Greece) and civil war. As such it has been prone to mass movements of populations from abroad to Greece and vice versa and two examples stand out. The population transfers as a result of the Asia Minor expedition of the early 20’s that saw a couple of million arrive in Athens from Attaturk’s Turkey and the tens of thousands of Greeks that emigrated after the end of the civil war to find work in the factories and mines of Germany, Belgium and France.
From the mid 1960’s to approximately 1990 no large population movements occurred apart from the displacement of Greek Cypriots from Turkey’s invasion into Cyprus. What did occur and what isn’t mentioned ever is the first wave of globalisation created by the Greek merchant ship owners who had Greek flagged crews on their fleet which was mainly used to carry goods East to West and who developed enormously during the period of the embargo on Saudi Arabia in the 1950s.
They were closely linked to the City of London in terms of insurance and financing of loans for developing the merchant fleets and were at the cutting edge of labour reform. With the advent of new technology and the reduction in manning on merchant shipping, alongside the creation of schools for shipping in the Philippines and Central America, Greek flagged ships became a rarity. Most of the personnel were from the ‘third world,’ unless they were the captains or port engineers. Labour costs were driven to the ground way before the fall of the Soviet Union and in the 1990’s this essentially became the blueprint for neoliberal labour relations worldwide.
The military junta of the late 1960’s early 1970’s pioneered the first wave of cheap labour from Pakistan for agriculture but this was regulated and at the time the Drachma wasn’t a convertible currency so the export of currency was minimal and controlled by the government of the day.
Entrance into the EEC
Greece’s entrance into the EEC in 1981 occurred under the guise that it would develop both its agriculture and its heavy industry. Nearly four decades later its agriculture has been decimated and its heavy industry destroyed. Instead of Greek agricultural products being protected in the EU wide market the opposite occurred. Greek supermarkets were taken over by larger chains and they started to import produce the world over. This destroyed agricultural labour costs which led directly to the mass importation of cheap labour. We recently had the odious situation of Asian farmers living with animals to pick strawberries in Greece and being shot for asking for wages. [iii]
Fall of the Soviet Union
When the Soviet Union fell there was a mass wave of illegals that arrived from Albania.
Statements alluded to the recent leader of New Democracy Samaras, made at the time when Greeks had two homes and multiple cars led to a massive wave of Albanians to arrive. Initially they were few but then they kept on coming and the crescendo reached the Olympic Games building projects of the early 2000.
Greek bosses started to prefer and select Albanian immigrant workers for cost as well as hours worked. Insofar as there was a building boom, they were needed and older Greek workers became foremen. Just as mechanisation in shipping led to smaller shipping crews required with more simple instructions, so the changes in building construction led to less workers required with a smaller skill set. By 2000 there were allegedly around 800,000 Albanians alone, but official figures always underestimate. According to estimates by the police there are currently 94 different nationalities present in Greece. In the first decade of the 21st century around 1.5 million Albanians gained legal status in Greece and this year all children born in Greece can gain nationality.
A Greek Parliamentary Committee was set up in 1993 to analyse the issue of mass migration and the demographic crisis. All the major parties signed it (PASOK, New Democracy, KKE and Sinaspismos – Syriza’s precursor[iv]).
Olympics Building Boom
Between 1999 and 2004 a mass building program of works occurred for the Olympic games. Thousands of companies were created and tens of thousands of new immigrant workers came. “The entrance of the new immigrants in the labor movement, which covers now around one third of the total number of laborers who are occupied in Greece,” explained the Greek TUC Report[v] in 2002.
In other words 33% of the working people are immigrants. From this many have concluded that the borders of Greece are hermetically sealed. Greece is a Fortress inside a European fortress! Someone could ask what percentage should the 33% of cheap laborers be, so as to theoretically accept that borders are open? 100% of all laborers, 200%, 500%, an endless figure? Not that we expect a reply to this
question.
‘Whoever continues to talk about open borders is either consciously lying or doesn’t have a consciousness of reality’ was a common refrain at the time alongside what was written on walls all over Athens: ‘Worker, the bosses like racism.’
Just think about it. More than two million (and more) immigrants who live in Greece, a number which represents 20% of the total population, is a ‘conscious lie’! Whilst truth is that Europe closed its borders a long time ago, stopped immigration, became a Fortress. The simple Greek worker who believes in the opposite doesn’t have a consciousness of reality! As this reality isn’t one which is witnessed daily in their journeys on public transport, in factories, on ships, on building sites and public works, but that which exists in the realms of fantasy.
Is there competition for work amongst Greeks and immigrants?
‘No, jobs are not taken by immigrants.’ That is what we are told by the anti-racist globalists. Greek capitalists didn’t bring them to replace the more expensive and demanding Greek workers but for them to do the jobs which the well fed locals refuse to do! The foreign workers who work in Greece apparently occupy positions that are exclusively those of unskilled laborers such as cleaning duties, cleaners or building work and agricultural work for men.
Allegedly new migrant workers were required for work in occupations that were new in the expanding labor market, such as building sites. Even if we assume that was the case, building sites aren’t new occupations and unemployment always existed between 7-10% during the first decade of the 21st century.
As the ‘reality’ for which we don’t all have a ‘consciousness’ is that before the immigrants arrived in Greece there were no house servants, no building workers, fishermen, no one dug any fields or worked in making furniture!
Let us contemplate the ‘logic’ of the ahistorical globalist: that before 1990 the Greek worker didn’t work; he knitted and waited for the arrival of immigrants to stand upright and become a new labor aristocracy. Now he has found a new occupation: ‘managers of consumerism,’ avoiding every labor intensive activity, just like the writers on immigration in the neoliberal era avoid every intellectual activity, with the end result of creating paper-thin arguments, full of contradictions.
Greek labor fought for labor standards. Ship owners destroyed them.
The whole of the history of the Greek labor movement and of every country is based primarily on one-two militant sections of workers with a history and tradition, with a socialist tradition and perspective for another world. The dockworkers and building workers before they were globalised were the advanced guard of class struggle. They were the example to be copied by all the other sections. Whoever sits to read a little history will see that the dockworkers and sailors were the first in Greece during the 2nd world war that created Workers’ Committees which decided and forced the ship owners onto their regime on the ships. They reached such a level of class militancy and dynamism that the bosses couldn’t recruit or sack who they wanted or when they wanted. Their fame spread in all the significant shipping fleets around the world and the dockers and sailors in many countries followed the example of the Greek dockworkers.
Greece occupied around 25% of the shipping fleet of the Western world and it is no coincidence that the ship owners tried to break the power of the dockworkers and ships crews. This was finally achieved by the rise of PASOK in power (in the early 1980’s) and the policies of the KKE who wrote off the leadership of the dockworkers and supported the party of ‘change’ (which is how PASOK called themselves). The ship owners created schools of sailors in the Philippines and slowly but surely started to replace Greek crews with hungry, politically subdued and educationally backward workers so as to escape from the high labor contracts, and the special provisions regarding unhygienic and dangerous labor, pre-determined hours of work and introducing on the ships a regime of the Roman galleys, once more.
The ship owners from their base in the City of London have in store a future identical to the one above for the whole of the working class. With the use of foreign crews they achieved what they hadn’t in four decades. They gained from the paltry wages they paid. More significantly they achieved a significant strategic defeat on the whole labor movement in Greece opening the path to the subjugation of all sectors, using as a lever neoliberal mass immigration. This task will be undertaken when every relationship with militant and revolutionary traditions of the Greek labor movement are broken with the replacement of the natural carriers of these traditions not by the 33% of the Greek TUC report but by 100%, with the support of the ‘leftist’ globalists.
People don’t ask to whom do the jobs belong. To the Greek workers or to their bosses? If the Greek boss had 5 Greek workers on an X wage and he sacks them recruiting 15 immigrants, he didn’t create 10 new positions but divided 5 wages to 15 people. With such logic (if anyone can call it that) they claim with all honesty that unemployment in Greece has remained stable and during certain periods even been reduced!… What a nice picture for Greek capitalism.[vi]
With 1/3 of the labor force being immigrants, with only 2,000 Greek seafarers left out of an estimated 100,000 in 1970, everything is going fine. For whom? This isn’t really the issue. Due to the immigrants the wages on the building sites –as everywhere else in the private sector – are now under the level of the 1980’s. Hours of work have gone through the roof. Thus the beggar became a ‘strong Greece.’ Greece from being at the bottom of the EU, due to the expansion of immigrant labor, is now somewhere in the middle. First among last, great is its glory (but these borders keep on closing whilst the EU keeps expanding).
We are told that the use of immigrants hasn’t occurred due to the profit collapse of gross sales by companies, but because of the expansion of the market. We needed immigrants in booming capitalism. You see, without them the Greek worker would be lazy. He wouldn’t get off the couch to pick a grape (despite doing this for thousands of years) or to clean a hospital.
Foreign workers do not take jobs from Greeks, this is the common refrain, as the market has developed and unemployment remained the same. But if the market truly developed, would unemployment remain the same? The unemployed remain unemployed in a period of growth of the economy? So who takes all the new jobs (if they truly exist) as they aren’t being taken by Greeks? Whilst some economists present a picture of economic boom of capitalism and the appearance of new jobs, unemployment remains static. In other words development doesn’t equal a drop in unemployment. Immigrants don’t then take the jobs of Greeks. Or are they taking the new jobs and therefore a drop in unemployment is impossible, despite development?
Trying to justify the unjustifiable and to state that the presence of immigrants has no social, political or economic consequences in the neoliberal era, but only brings to the surface the racist nature of Greek people, globalists who justify mass immigration are being led by mathematical precision into the camp of the apologists of capitalism, in its greatest crisis of history, which is attempting to survive transforming the planet into an arsenal of racial conflicts and planetary slavery. The industrial bourgeoisies in globalised capitalism will try to replace the hands it uses with cheaper and cheaper pools of labor, using the endless pools of illegal labor wherever it can on the planet. Not to improve the standard of life of the hungry and dispossessed but to destroy whatever was achieved by struggle by Western workers and to globalize immiseration.
Riots over Illegal Immigration
Two areas, one in the central Athenian working class district of Ag. Panteleomonas, and another in the port town of Patras, have finally broken center-stage in political life. Starting off by people living in the areas, they protested against the mass invasion, occupation and enforced ‘multiculturalism’ of the Greek globalist oligarchy whose starting point is the City of London.
Initially unable to know what to do and frightened of being blamed for racism they complained to the official authorities about the squatter camps of hundreds of illegal immigrants camped in town squares, in children’s play areas, outside churches. The mass number of illegals meant that not having any work, crime skyrocketed in these areas, people were frightened of moving about in their areas, local businesses were forced into closure, property prices catapulted downwards and communal areas were being used by people to defecate, take drugs, drink, even have sex in full public view. Globalization had finally arrived.
The press initially started a mass wave of criticism blaming the victims for the crimes. The authorities provided no facilities for the hundreds thousands of illegals. Why should they? They don’t live in working class areas. After all multiculturalism is for the poor, not the rich. Over a sustained period of six months the protestors were vilified by all: by the media, by the government, by the leftists, but not by the Greek people. They stood on their side, in every conversation on the street, in the markets, even by the first large wave of immigrants. There were Albanians who signed petitions against the multicultural wave from Afghanistan, Somalia, Morocco, Pakistan, Nigeria, Chad, Bangladesh etc. The numbers are now currently standing at around 4 million new immigrants in a country of 10 million, in 2009.
The government’s loyal followers in the form of the leftists started a mass campaign to brand the citizens of the central Athens district of Ag. Panteleomonas as ‘racists,’ ‘fascists,’ and ‘Nazis.’ They held demo after demo in the area trying to hound out the hundreds of local protestors.
The focal point was the biggest Orthodox Church in Greece and the children’s play area in its garden. They would not be cowed or browbeaten though. They fought back, with posters, leaflets, petitions leading up to a national protest in Omonia Square central Athens. After 9 months of struggle and after the disastrous Euroelections for the ruling parties of both right and left, they have finally achieved half their aims.
The square has been cleared and the illegal immigrants have been forced to move on. Of course they haven’t gone to the northern rich suburbs of Athens where the businessmen and politicians live, but the whole country has heard about them now. It’s become a national issue where before, it was a side issue. The KKE and the leftists in tow have stood on the opposite side of the class war with the government.
The fake Left has refused to participate or take up any of the issues. They have been forced to admit like the government that there is a problem. The 3,500-strong petition that was gathered (in November 2008) was of course ignored when circulated.
It will be extremely difficult to justify the current mass waves of sustained illegal immigration that currently number around 200,000 a year (2010 onward). When we had Muslim protests in Athens, this further weakened the position of illegal immigration. The Greek working class has no reason to accept wave upon wave of migrants when it itself cannot survive.
By 2009, the percentage of votes going to extreme rightwing parties was minimal and their representation in the Athens council elections (central districts where most of the immigrants congregated) was minor. The arrival of the Troika meant the parties of the extreme centre (PASOK, New Democracy) which adopted the economic genocide of Greece started to fragment and from a high point of combined votes of 85% of the electorate dropped to around 30% (in the 2012 elections) and the political vacuum created meant people voted for parties of the alleged extreme left and right. Retro-fascists in the form of a party called Golden Dawn gained national prominence and the myth created around this party was that it was fighting for state power, when it had no such intentions. It arrived on the scene due to the political vacuum created.
Just as most of the heavy industries of the EU went to Asia due to high labour costs, so the high cost of Greek labour led to the importation of wave upon wave of immigrants who took over whole industries: farming, catering, building, home care, hotel work and so on. Many bosses preferred cash in hand work with no contractual ties and achieved what they always wanted: a labour movement with no history and zero memory. This they achieved in a majority of sectors and wherever there is some industry left, Greeks remain at most 20% of the labour force.
When New Democracy took over the elections in 2012, it was under pressure, due to another round of riots in central Athens after the murder of a Greek by lumpen Afghanis for a video camera as he was taking his wife to give birth. This forced New Democracy to take emergency measures to limit the globalist inflows of migrants who congregated with nothing to do in all the central town squares. This forced Manolis Glezos (historic leader of the Left who helped tear down the German flag from the Akropolis during the occupation) to make a statement against the Left stating it has adopted mass immigration without any criticisms. [vii]
Anyone visiting Athens between 2008 and 2012 would have noticed the total absence of tourist police (they never existed), hundreds of unlicenced immigrant street sellers everywhere, tens of migrants going round in shopping trolleys taking old metal, hundreds involved in daily muggings and in particular many crimes against old people who couldn’t defend themselves, whilst we also had the arrival of teenage prostitutes from Africa pushed by pimps 50 meters from a central police station, just south of Omonia Square.
This in a country that suffered extensively during the German occupation losing around 10% of its overall population, with such violence being unknown against old people by hungry and starving Greeks. These were the social effects of neoliberal globalisation on the immigration side. It would also be absurd to believe that so many people could survive in an era of de-industrialisation just by arriving in Greece. The export of the Euro (hard currency) is of course the pull factor, but this would have a detrimental effect on the actual economy as wages were pinned to the floor and local companies would face the full weight of global competition as was witnessed by the mass importation of low priced goods from Asia. A return to a national currency would reduce the presence of such large numbers of migrants only because the currency of the country would no longer have a global trading status.
Dublin II and Frontex
Throughout the first decade of the 21st century an agreement was reached called Dublin II which stated that all new immigrant arrivals would have to be registered in the first country of arrival. For a decade this was argued against by the parties from the Left. The argument was that Greece could not become a depository of lost souls. In other words, once in, new migrants should be free to travel anywhere within the EU. So why even bother paying fig leaf to borders. Why not just set up direct flights to Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Congo for example, and ask who wants to fly to Europe? There would a lot less stress and a lot less corporate propaganda, but how could the powers that be sell this process?
Brussels has a no pushback policy implying that at anytime one is in the territory of the EU one has to be processed forwards, everything else is illegal. That also implies that the navy of each country which is in the Mediterranean has to accept anyone at sea. As the states don’t want to openly admit they desire the mass movement of populations from Asia and Africa into the EU, they like the fact that this is organised on a for profit basis by smugglers and hundreds drown every now and again. It serves their globalist agenda.
The unregistered process serves big business well, as a section of workers has no papers, and bosses can use them as a way of lowering wages across the board.
At around the same time another organisation Frontex was set up, based in Poland, whose aim was to process and register the hundreds of thousands that would arrive in the EU.
Syriza’s rise to power with Independent Greeks
If Turkey does not accept repatriation Greece cannot be the EU’s reservoir of lost souls. This was the new common refrain. Without officially abolishing Dublin II, Germany gave the green light for millions to arrive in the EU. Syriza complied.
Tens of thousands have arrived and there seems to be no let up in the situation.
What is the real agenda? Solving Germany’s demographic problem or weakening European elites? Evidence exists for both[viii] options.[ix]
There were indications that this was Syriza’s actual program: opening the borders and facilitating the mass importation of labor. It works insofar as tens of thousands don’t stay in Greece. Each new migrant is given a travel document to leave Greece within 30 days. Priority is only given to Afghanis, Iraqis and Syrians. The non-EU countries bordering Greece like the former Yugoslavia, have been targeted perhaps to bring it into the EU. Immigrants could in theory just go to wherever they wanted via Bulgaria as there are no borders with Greece. Merkel wanted Brussels to centralize the mass movement of migrants and for each member state to receive constant flows and for Frontex to decide who is registered as an asylum seeker so individual states lose control of their own territory.
The future will be explosive, just like the past.
One cannot argue the political elite did not understand the issues related to mass immigration and the demographic problems of Greece or the fact that neighbouring states have laid claim to Greek land. A whole parliamentary committee was set up and it produced a report in 1993 signed by all the major parties.
The open borders regime introduced with the election of Syriza has meant around 1 million have entered the EU via Greece (officially 740,000) in 2015. The EU commissioner on immigration who happens to be Greek (another ‘natural’ phenomenon) Dimitris Avramopoulos stated that “the end of the Schengen Treaty will mean the beginning of the end of Europe. We have thrown down the walls and we are seeing that some people are putting them up again,” reported Kontra newspaper on December 4, 2015.
Turkey is expected to receive 3 billion Euros in order to ship across 3 million more migrants in 2016 whilst Greece has agreed to house and feed 50,000 and set up another 4 processing centers on top of the 11 reception centers created in 2012.
The plan is to reintroduce Dublin II whereby migrants are kept in country of arrival for 18 months before being allowed to leave. The expulsion of Greece from Schengen is the new propaganda tool, just like Grexit before it, to force Greece to accept joint naval operations in the Aegean sea with Turkey, to accept sole responsibility of borders to Frontex and lose all rights of national sovereignty.
A weak state with porous borders: a new – found banana republic, without taking into account the host nation. How will they be housed and fed? Various programs are mentioned with respect to this, housing benefits and a minimal food subsidy. So do they have as an aim to house tens of thousands in empty properties that have been abandoned by owners due to the financial crash in Greece. Who will fix up these properties that are in decay? They will house thousands provisionally in old Olympic stadiums or ones still functioning eg. Galatsi, Faliro or the old Olympic Airport in Athens. Four new processing centres are to be set on Aegean islands but only one so far is functioning. No private housing has yet been set up, reported the ProtoThema newspaper on December 6.
The EU is founded on four core principles: freedom of movement of capital services, capital, and goods. Any logjam in any of them implies the EU starts to unravel. This is what the globalist elites want to avoid at all costs and will try their hardest to achieve.
We had before movements of populations into the EU that were related to decolonization, with Algeria and Vietnam being the two most prominent cases at stake.
Over 100,000 Algerians arrived who were part of the security services of occupied Algeria and a similar situation developed when up to 2 million Vietnamese left Vietnam in the mid-70s when the US occupation collapsed there. Parallels with our times exist in the departure of Iraq’s Kurds in the early 1990’s organized by the then Secretary of the Conservative Party of Great Britain Jeffrey Archer. Nowadays for Western imperialism to gain influence in each society it occupies, priority is given to all these local quislings like the campaigns to allow Afghani translators free access to the UK by the British Army. [x]
All these issues are pie in the sky schemes without taking into account local reactions. One cannot relocate Asia and Africa into the EU under ‘humanitarian’ guises or ‘welcome all refugees’ to justify a globalist neoliberal free for all. One can start a process, attempt to control it by using riot police to stop people’s reactions, but in the long term there will be civil wars. The USA is a special case. It was created from scratch as an area whereby each successive wave of migrants replaced another, creating multi-ethnic ghettoes in a period where stability was guaranteed by America’s global status. In declining capitalism only ethnic ghettoes can be created which are in conflict with each other over declining resources and the idea that a new order can be created which doesn’t resemble the old order of the past is indeed a fantasy by those who have given up hope in another world and support the neoliberal order of the current one.
In John Kerry’s recent visit to Athens, his only visit was to an NGO serving mass immigration called Melissa. There were zero protests against his visit.
Sources
[i] George Soros on EU expansion, free trade zones and mass immigration: http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/rebuilding-refugee-asylum- system-by-george-soros-2015-09,
[ii] Hungarian PM blames Soros’ NGOs for refugee crisis: https://www.rt.com/news/320192-soros-orban-hungary-usa/
[iii] Greece’s migrant fruit pickers: ‘They kept firing. There was blood everywhere’ http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/01/greece-migrant-fruit-pickers-shot-they-kept-firing
[iv] Greek Parliamentary Committee on Mass Immigration: http://imfoccupationgreece.blogspot.gr/2013/08/the-left-knewparliamentary-committee-on.html
[v] Debate on State of Greek Labour 2004 http://imfoccupationgreece.blogspot.gr/2015/12/debate-on-state-of-greek-labour-2004.html
[vi] Illegal Immigration and the NWO in Greece
http://imfoccupationgreece.blogspot.gr/2015/12/illegal-immigration-and-nwo-greece-1999.html
[vii] Manolis Glezos: The Left covers the Illegal Low Lifes: http://imfoccupationgreece.blogspot.gr/2014/05/manolis-glezos-left-covers-illegal-low.html
[viii] Report states why population of EU which is 6% of global population has to become around 14% http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publications/ageing/r eplacement-migration.shtml
[ix]Russian politician on EUs alleged refugee crisis: http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/top-russian-politician-explains- who-behind-europes-refugee-crisis-nikolai-starikov-video
[x] Jeffery Archer and Kurds http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/jul/26/iraq.archer 25 years later same * different people… http://kurdistantribune.com/2013/john-major-lord-archer-and-real-story -of-how-british-people-backed-kurds-in-1991/
December 16, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | Afghanistan, Africa, European Union, Germany, Greece, Human rights, Libya, Middle East, Syria |
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