It took decades of protests and petitioning the government, but after being continuously ignored, African American activists took over a federal wildlife refuge.
While sites are drawn up in the debate over who is right or wrong in the Bundy militia stand off in Oregon today, it is worth noting that this group of activists did the same thing, decades ago, in a protest against what they considered an unjust land grab by the U.S. government.
The armed protesters today occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Burns was not the first of its kind, but it has had a very different response from law enforcement when compared to the very similar standoff 39 years ago in Harris Neck, Georgia.
The Harris Neck protesters were mostly displaced descendants of West African slaves. The FBI described them as “squatters” – even though they stated from the outset that their intentions were very much political in nature.
The group was called the People Organized for Equal Rights. They set up camp much like the Occupy Wall Street movement later would.
The encampment was on a patch of land stolen by the federal government south of Savannah, back on April 30, 1979.
The group of prominent civil rights leaders, and other activists brought concrete blocks and bags of mortar to build new homes, but they were unarmed.
The Oregonian summarizes that “following the Civil War, a white plantation owner deeded the land on the Georgia coast to a former slave. In the decades that followed, the descendants of slaves moved to Harris Neck to build houses, factories and boats. They fished, hunted for oysters and grazed cattle.”
In time, “Harris Neck evolved into a thriving community. Its members were recognized as a culturally unique group of African Americans called Gullah.”
Finally, in 1942, the U.S. military told Harris Neck residents that they had only three weeks to vacate the land. They cited eminent domain laws, and ordered residents to leave their property so they “could construct an airbase for training pilots and conducting anti-submarine flights.”
African American residents were given an insulting $26.90 per acre. Caucasian residents were given $37.31 for the same amount of land.
“Residents were paid only for the unimproved value of their land, receiving nothing more for houses, barns, or crops in the field, all of which were bulldozed or burned,” The New American reported in 2010.
After World War II, the government held onto the land – never giving it back. They eventually turned it into the 2,762-acre Harris Neck National Wildlife Refuge.
Federal law enforcement eventually got a court order to remove the Harris Neck protesters. They ignored their historical claims to the land, and after only a day of protests, they threatened to violently remove everyone if they did not leave of their own accord.
Edgar Timmons, Jr., Hercules Anderson, Christopher McIntosh and the Rev. Ted Clark stayed and faced the threat head on.
According to the Oregonian, on May 2, 1979, U.S. deputy marshals “forcibly removed” the men. “‘Their bodies taut and motionless,’ the men were dragged out of their tent, handcuffed and hoisted into a waiting van.”
The men were all sentenced to jail, and two years later, in 1981, “a fire destroyed county records with details on the original home sites.”
What do you think accounts for the difference between how both groups were treated when they took over federal wildlife sanctuaries? Is it racism? Or was the fact that the 1979 activists were unarmed the deciding factor law enforcement standing down?
January 17, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Timeless or most popular | FBI, Harris Neck, Human rights, United States |
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Is Victor Orban the ‘Chavez of Europe? (Part 1 of 11)
If aggression against another foreign country means that it strains its social structure, that it ruins its finances, that is has to give up its territory for sheltering refugees, what is the difference between that kind of aggression and the other type, the more classical type, when someone declares war, or something of that sort.
— Sawer Sen, India’s Ambassador to the UN
In an EU press conference on September 3rd, 2015 Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban candidly referred to the current refugee crisis in Europe as “Germany’s problem”. Orban was referring to the fact that refugees amassing at the border of Hungary were heading, for the most part, to Germany. The Hungarian Prime Minister stressed that most of the refugees did not intend to stay in Hungary. Orban has come under criticism for his decision to erect a security fence on the Hungarian/Serbian border in order to stem the flow of migrants entering Hungarian territory illegally.
While most of the European media have portrayed Orban as a xenophobic, far right dictator, the decision to erect a fence was carried out in compliance with EU regulations, which require that all immigrants entering the Shengen zone be registered by the police at the border. Yet, paradoxically, Brussels is criticizing the Hungarian Prime Minister for attempting to comply with EU laws!
France’s daily Le Monde refers to the Hungarian Prime Minister as the man who is attempting to ‘criminalise‘ illegal immigrants. It is indeed a strange country that would criminalize those who break its laws!
So why is Orban coming under fire? Since coming to power in 2010 Victor Orban has implemented domestic, social and political policies that run counter to those dictated by the EU commission. In 2013 Hungary closed down the office of the International Monetary Fund, bringing the country’s finance under state control.
The International Monetary Fund is a key institution of US/Zionist global governance and there are few countries who have escaped its clutches of permanent debt. Therefore, the decision of the Hungarian government to show the IMF the door was nothing short than an act of bold insubordination to US imperialism.
Hungary has also come under criticism for media laws which ban foreign interference from US propaganda outlets such as Voice of America, which the Hungarian government deems to be contrary to the public interest. Consequently, the European Union, which is perfectly happy to ban Iranian television stations, has criticized Hungary for violations of ‘freedom of speech’.
Orban told an audience in Chatham House in 2013 that he believed there was a “leftist and green conspiracy” in Europe against “traditional values”. Orban is no doubt referring to the constant tirades made by war mongering ‘leftist’ zionists such as EU MP Daniel Cohen Bendit against Hungary. Bendit has ironically called Orban the “Chavez of Europe”. This example of ideological name-calling epitomises the meaninglessness of the left/right political paradigm in the post-Soviet era.
Orban’s ‘nationalism’ is not an imperial project. It is, rather, a national philosophy which goes against, and weakens, imperialism. It is nationalism in the sense of national liberation from neo-colonial oppression in the form of international financial institutions and the EU.
Orban’s defense of ‘traditional values’ has brought him ideologically closer to the foreign policy agenda of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who visited the country in 2014. During Putin’s visit to Hungary, Orban praised the Russian leader’s role in attempting to find a peaceful solution to the Syrian war. In 2014 Orban told Hungarian media that the Ukrainian war was caused by the desire of the United States to gain control of Eastern Europe. He also pointed out that the United States wanted to draw Hungary into the crisis.
The Hungarian Prime Minister has made no secret of his desire to pursue an independent domestic and foreign policy. Hungary also has close ties to China and Iran. Therefore, to attempt, as some analysts have done, to portray Victor Orban as part of the reactionary, imperialist, xenophobic right is to oversimplify the complex interplay of ideological and geopolitical forces in the current global political arena and, in particular, the deep forces determining the generation and management of the refugee/migrant crisis. Therefore, to compare Orban’s opposition to immigration to that of British Prime Minister David Cameron is to oversimplify the matter.
British Prime Minister David Cameron plays up his opposition to immigration. But this has nothing to do with the real agenda of the British government. Cameron’s anti-immigration policies are simply the appeal to xenophobia which the Tories require to maintain their electoral votes. Cameron’s regime serves international finance capitalism in its most brutal form and finance capitalism needs constant immigration. Orban’s objections are based more on his conflict with finance capitalism and his criticisms of the liberal ideology driving globalisation.
Victor Orban has proposed that the refugees/migrants be sent back to Turkey until the end of the war in Syria. This is a sensible proposal. The ‘Refugees are Welcome’ slogan and the subsequent marches in favour of immigration served US/Israeli geostrategic objectives. Currently, few people seem to realise that and, as in the Arab Spring of 2011, the bandwagon of US imperialism has no shortage of passengers.
In this sense, Victor Orban of Hungary is, in a very limited way, worthy of the epithet ‘Hugo Chavez of Europe’. While many of Victor Orban’s political policies are far from left-wing, (for example, the banning of communist symbols) his embrace of a traditionalist, dirigiste form of capitalism with strong pro-family social policies and a multi-vectored foreign policy brings his country closer to countries such as Venezuela, Belarus, Eritrea and other nation-states attempting to maintain their sovereignty in the face of imperialism.
A deeply biased and hostile article on Le Monde nevertheless accurately describes Orban’s politics as ‘economically left wing while culturally right wing’. However, qualification is needed here. His policies are ‘left-wing’ from the point of view of global corporate finance but Orban’s economic policies favour the national, patriotic bourgeoisie and are therefore right-wing from the perspective of the working class.
Hungary’s multi-vectored foreign policy has had benefits for the country and especially for other Southern Hemisphere partner countries such as Venezuela. For example, a photo-voltaic energy technology product developed in Hungary and financed by China, was exported to Venezuela in 2013. It is believed that the new Hungarian technology could not only enable Venezuela to become self-sufficient in electricity, it could turn the country into a major exporter of electricity. Venezuela’s cooperation with Hungary is vital to the country’s industrialisation.
What all the countries mentioned above have in common is an attempt to construct a national voluntarism in order to stem the tide of ‘globalisation’ and all its concomitant social and economic ills. This involves a national, patriotic bourgeoisie in alliance with the working class against the ‘internationalist’ compradore bourgeoisie and the ‘New World Order’. It is, in many respects, a reversal of the class dynamics of the Second World War when the Soviet Union led an organised international working class in alliance with the remnants of the democratic bourgeoisie against international fascism.
Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban came to power in a country that had been ravaged by the IMF and a deeply corrupt ‘socialist’ party that had emerged from decades of welfare state capitalism under Janos Kadar. Kadar, a liberal, replaced the communist Rakossi during the counter-revolution in Eastern Europe in the 1950s, when capitalism with ‘socialist ‘ characteristics replaced Cominform socialism. The process was euphemistically referred to as ‘de-Stalinisation’ but was, in fact, an attempt to restore capitalist modes of production.
Hungary’s ideological crisis culminated in the attempted coup of 1956, when the CIA, operating out of Vienna, attempted to overthrow the embattled regime with the help of former Nazi collaborators. The 1956 ‘Hungarian Revolution’ was, in many respects, an intelligence prototype for many US orchestrated regime change operations to follow decades later.
Although, Orban is said to have ‘fought against communism’ as a student, he was, like many others of his generation, a fighter against a particular type of capitalism which he perceived as a “leftist conspiracy” against the people. Marxist Leninists have always considered the triumph of Khrushchevite revisionism in the USSR in 1956 and the subsequent ‘de-stalinisation’ of the USSR and of the Popular Democracies of Eastern Europe to have constituted a counter-revolution against the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Khrushchev’s reforms involved abandoning state-centralised planning, the re-introduction of profit as the regulator of production, combined with a cynical and anti-Marxist foreign policy of ‘peaceful co-existence’ between capitalism and socialism. In order to justify these policies Khrushchev wrote a long mendacious speech slandering Stalin. Every claim against Stalin in Khrushchev’s speech has since been proven to have been a lie. Soviet revisionism killed not only socialism in the USSR but, with the notable exception of Albania, the hope of socialism throughout the world. This destruction of Marxism Leninism by the Soviet and later Chinese revisionists led to a revival of Trotskyism in Western imperial countries. And it is this ‘New Left’ that constitutes the vanguard of contemporary Western imperialism.
In this sense, Orban is correct in his analysis of a “leftist” conspiracy against civilization, for what we see today is the triumph of Trotskyist ideology in the form of Zionism and neo-conservativism, where proletarian internationalism has been subsumed by the ‘human rights’ international on the one hand and ‘islamist jihad’ on the other, a new ‘revolutionary’ alliance waging war against the working class.
One only has to observe the clenched fist of the US colour revolutions and the constant appeal to youthful rebellion to understand how capitalism is now deepening its grip on humanity through the appropriation of leftist, revolutionary symbology. Indeed, contemporary US capitalism is, to employ a phrase of Trotsky’s, ‘permanent revolution’. Or, in the words of US Grand Strategist General Thomas Barnett, “US-style globalisation is pure socio-economic revolution.”
But it is a revolution which wages war on the working class. One of the results of the ‘Arab Spring’ in Egypt was the abrogation of labour laws requiring companies to pay workers during periods of factory closure due to lack of product demand. Many of the strikes that resulted in the overthrow of Mubarak’s regime were led by US funded ‘independent’ labour organisations.
Given Orban’s intransigence on the refugee issue, he is likely to face a US/Israeli backed ‘popular protest movement’ in an attempt to effect regime change. Colour revolutions often involve the transportation of thousands of foreigners to the place of protest by US intelligence agencies operating through NGOS. This happened in Belarus in 2010. Many of the youths attempting to get into Hungary could be used as a battering ram to destablize the Hungarian nation-state.
Since the fomentation of the ‘Arab Spring’ by the CIA and its numerous NGOS in 2011, NATO’s total destruction of Libya and its proxy war against Syria, millions of people have been turned into refugees. That is why they are fleeing to Europe. But it is not the principal reason for the ‘current crisis’, or rather the current phase of an ongoing and deepening crisis.
NATO’s invasion and destruction of Libya in 2011 has led to millions of desperate people attempting to cross the Mediterranean sea. This ongoing crisis has received varying levels of coverage from the mass media. For example, the sinking of a boat in the Mediterranean in July 2015 only received a four line report in the French Le Figaro newspaper, in spite of the fact that a hundred people were drowned!
However, since the publication of a drowned boy washed up on the shores of Turkey in 2015, the refugee crisis has entered a new phase, with the photo of the boy in question being used as an excuse to drum up public support for NATO air-strikes against Syria in order to “stop the massacres”
While no one seems to know just how many Syrians are among the migrants fleeing to Europe, there has been a media fixation on these particular migrants, in spite of the fact that they only represent a minority of the current migrants amassing at the Hungarian border.
The debate about what should be done to manage the refugee/migrant crisis turns on whether or not they should be welcomed into European countries. However, this pro or anti migrant debate masks a new and highly destructive phase in US/NATO geopolitical strategy. Many of the migrants at the Hungarian border are coming from refugee camps in Turkey. Austrian intelligence has reportedly revealed that US government agencies are funding the transfer of these refugees to Europe in an attempt to destabilize the continent. This new geostrategic initiative involves using desperate refugees as weapons for the purposes of US/Zionist divide and rule of the European continent.
France’s Radio Internationale has revealed that over 95 percent of migrants in the current flow into Europe are young males between 20 and 35 years old. Many are said to be fleeing conscription in the Syrian army, which has lost thousands of brave men and women since the start of the Zionist war on their country. The preponderance of young, fit males among the so-called ‘refugees’ has also been confirmed to this author personally by researchers of Russian state television RT. When asked about the refugee issue on France’s BMTV, Russian Ambassador to France Alexandre Orlov said “All I can see are young men fleeing the war instead of defending their country”. So, why are there so few vulnerable women and children among the refugees escaping the war in Syria?
The journey across the Mediterranean to Europe can normally cost up to 11,000 dollars, more money than most European workers manage to save from years of hard labour, yet we are told that millions of war-ravaged Iraqis and Syrians are suddenly able to pay this colossal sum to make the journey to Europe. How is this possible?
The glorification of the young men fleeing conscription in Syria, coupled with the demonisation of the heroic men and women in Syria fighting for their country’s freedom, is deeply indicative of the moral turpitude of our own ruling class for whom disloyalty and cowardice are the principal characteristics.
In September a Hungarian camera woman was filmed tripping a refugee carrying a child at the Hungarian border. The video soon went viral. The camera woman is now taking legal action against the man she tripped as he has changed his story to the police. Petra Laszlo has claimed that she panicked as refugees began to charge towards her. There was much indignation in the politically correct corporate media. But Syrian patriots did some research on Laszlo’s ‘victim’. The man’s name is apparently Osama Abdel-Muhsen Alghadab and he is a member of Japhat Al-Nosra, the Al-Qaida affiliated terrorist group that has massacred thousands of innocents in Syria.
This is not to suggest by any means that all of the refugees attempting to enter Hungary are terrorists. But in the context of a global war involving complex international networks of terrorists operating under the aegis of American, Israeli and European intelligence agencies, this incident is another argument in favour of Orban’s policy of implementing normal immigration regulatory procedures.
In February 2011 Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi warned Europe about the danger of an invasion by migrants and, in particular, Al- Qaeda terrorists if he were to be overthrown. Syria’s President Assad has also warned Europe of the danger of thousands of Al-Qaeda and Islamic State terrorists coming to Europe, disguised as refugees. It is quite possible that a similar scenario is now coming to pass.
January 17, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | European Union, Human rights, Hungary, NATO, Syria, Turkiye, United States, Victor Orban, Zionism |
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Tubas, Occupied Palestine – At 6 am on 14th January 2016 the Israeli occupation army entered Tubas area, with twelve jeeps and two bulldozers, destroying four shelters and a water tank.
In December 2015 the army gave the order for demolition of the shelters, obliging the owners to restore the land to the condition it was in before the construction, within the following 45 days.
While the court process was ongoing and the deadline has not expired yet, the army raided the area and destroyed the shelters. Two of the four shelters were owned by Ali ‘Amabusi and Mahmoud Alidib Mashamani, both of them living in Tubas.
Military forces claimed the area as closed military area, but by law they are not permitted to enter Tubas and give demolition orders as it is Area A under the Oslo accords, and therefore under full control of Palestinian Authority.
In the morning a water tank was also destroyed. It was supplying water to the village of Yarza. The demolition left 100 people without water and with them farms and plantations, which are the main economy of the families.
The water tank was built with the fund of the Italian Christian Solidarity and the volunteers of Jordan Valley Solidarity in 2013-2014. Its purpose was a development project for the area, allowing people to return and help the ones who don’t have access to the water to grow plants and animals.
The water was provided from the city of Tubas and the village of Alibkea, but the pipe going from the tank to the village of Yarza was previously confiscated by the occupation army 8 months ago.
Israeli forces raid area with bulldozers to demolish shelters and destroy water tank.
January 16, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, West Bank, Zionism |
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One of the tasks that we clearly have is to rebuild trust in our political system … it’s about making sure people are in control and that the politicians are always their servants and never their masters.
— David Cameron, First speech as Prime Minister, May 11, 2010
David Cameron has made “transparency” a mantra. In May 2010 he vowed to rip off the: “cloak of secrecy” around government, extending transparency and stating:
Greater transparency is at the heart of our shared commitment to enable the public to hold politicians and public bodies to account.
He was specific, adamant even:
If there’s one thing I’ve noticed since doing this job, it’s how all the information about government – the money it spends, where it spends it, the results it achieves – how so much of it is locked away in a vault marked sort of ‘private for the eyes of Ministers and officials only … By bringing information out into the open you’ll be able to hold government and public services to account.
In early July 2011 he declared: “We are creating a new era of transparency …” Later that month in a speech in Singapore he talked of “accountable and transparent institutions …”
In January 2013 he said one of the main priorities of the UK’s Presidency of the G8 was “transparency.” In November that year at the Open Government Partnership he again delivered a speech stressing the importance of the “transparency agenda.”
In fact, the only transparency is Cameron — you can see right through him.
Holding “government and public services to account?” In your dreams. For example, the UK illegally invading the air space of other countries, murdering people in extra-judicial executions, a pretty massive government undertaking. Questions should surely be asked and have been. “Transparency” and accountability have not only been unforthcoming, they have left the planet.
In August last year two British nationals fighting in Syria were killed in British drone strikes, they were Reyaad Khan and Ruhul Amin, the latter not a “formal” target but killed anyway. Whilst many may be tempted to think “terrorists, serves them right”, this is the thin end of a very dodgy legal wedge. An illegal strike on a sovereign country, killings with no recourse to law – and only the government’s word on who they killed anyway, there will surely never be absolute proof.
Moreover, for all the word juggling, it seems Cameron’s government has followed in the footsteps of their Master, Barack Obama, and had the UK National Security Council draw up a “kill” list.
Defence Minister Michael Fallon denied there was such a list but confirmed in an impressive sleight of words:
… our job is to … identify the terrorists and where we can forestall them. But if you’re asking me would we hesitate to take similar action again today, tomorrow, next week – absolutely not, we would not hesitate.
Assassination whilst illegally in or over another country is now renamed “forestalling.”
It should also be noted that it was not until December 2nd that the UK Parliament voted on Air Force intervention in Syria, a vote and actions anyway in murky legal territory, but the killings were undertaken under Führer Cameron’s auspices without MPs even being consulted, with, it transpires, the “kill” list drawn up “some months” prior to the August action with “a list of targets who would be subject to extra-judicial killing.”
“The Government” has also “refused to publish the advice it received from the Attorney General to justify the attacks.”
Further according to The Independent:
David Cameron said that Khan was involved in “actively recruiting (Isis) sympathisers and seeking to orchestrate specific and barbaric attacks against the West including directing a number of planned terrorist attacks right here in Britain …
However, no further evidence has been provided to substantiate these claims. Downing Street has said it cannot provide this information as it might compromise ongoing operations and legal cases …
Cameron seemingly morphs ever more into his hero Tony Blair – even down to seemingly having a compliant Attorney General in Jeremy Wright, QC. Few will have forgotten Blair’s, Lord Goldsmith, who changed the advice on the Iraq invasion from illegal to legal at a gentle tap on, not even a twist of, the arm.
Wright: “… appearing before the Justice Select Committee said he acknowledged it was important in such exceptional circumstances that MPs should know that legal advice had been given, but insisted that its precise content could not be revealed. Asked why not, Wright said: “In part, it’s an obligation to ensure that legal advice taken by the government is as full and frank as it can be … It’s also important to take collective responsibility under cabinet government.”
So much for holding “government and public services to account.”
That was in September. On January 12th:
Members of the UK’s Parliamentary intelligence watchdog will not be allowed access to all intelligence or defence information relating to the new British practice of targeted killing by drone, the Prime Minister has said.
David Cameron was asked today by Andrew Tyrie MP whether the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) would be allowed to examine the military aspect of the targeted killing programme, and whether he would commit to the Committee’s security-cleared members being able to see all the relevant intelligence.
Mr Cameron refused on both points, stating that the ISC’s job was to examine intelligence, not military affairs, and that he could not give the commitment Mr Tyrie asked for regarding the Committee’s access to intelligence. Mr Tyrie pointed out that what the Committee is allowed to see remains under the control of the Secretary of State, and that its work on targeted killing ‘could be rendered meaningless’ if it were barred from looking at the military operation.
Harriet Harman MP, chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) is currently carrying out an inquiry into the issue. She asked whether he would publish the UK Government’s policy on drone strikes – Mr Cameron responded that he had already set out his position to the Commons, but that publishing a written policy might ‘get us into more difficulties.’
You bet!
In response, Kate Craig legal Director at the international human rights organization Reprieve stated:
In fact, the Government is under a legal obligation to formulate and publish a clear and unambiguous policy, especially when we’re talking about state killing.
Moreover, the Prime Minister’s refusals to share vital information with the ISC raises the disturbing possibility that – much like the controversial US drone programme – UK targeted killing may be beyond accountability and oversight.
Law, national and international, is clearly fast becoming a redundant irritant. Britain and America’s acts of terrorism seem ever more blatant and unaccountable. “Why do they hate us?” bleated George W. Bush. Work it out.
As for Cameron’s “transparency” mantra, having been in mortal danger from the day of its unveiling it is now consigned to that great political cemetery of Prime Ministerial and Ministers’ towering falsehoods and humbug.
January 16, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | David Cameron, Human rights, UK |
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Opposition to the proposed nuclear waste facility by Lake Huron continues to grow. By the end of 2015, at least 182 communities (representing more than 22 million people) on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border have adopted resolutions opposing the plan by Ontario Power Generation to build a deep geological repository (DGR) for storage of low- and intermediate-level radioactive nuclear waste.
A Canadian federal panel approved the nuclear waste dump in May 2015, accepting testimony that Lake Huron would be large enough to dilute any radioactive pollution that might leak from the DGR.
The immediate outcry on both sides of the border prompted the Conservative government of Stephen Harper to postpone any decision until Dec. 1, 2015, after the Oct. 19 federal election – in which they were booted out of office. The new government of Liberal Justin Trudeau then pushed that decision to March 1, 2016, after a dozen members of Michigan’s congressional delegation urged the new prime minister to deny the construction permits necessary for the storage facility to be built.
Meanwhile, American efforts to engage the International Joint Commision (IJC), which oversees boundary waters’ issues, have come to naught. As the IJC’s Public Information Officer Frank Bevacqua told me by email, both the Canadian and U.S. federal governments would have to ask the IJC to intervene on the issue. “The IJC does not review proposals for site-specific projects [like the DGR] unless asked to do so by both governments,” he said.
That means a final decision on the DGR may reside with a small First Nations community.
First Nation Decision
The proposed DGR would be located on the territory of the Saugeen First Nation, which is in the process of evaluating the proposal. The Saugeen First Nation has a promise from Ontario Power Generation to not proceed without their support. As Saugeen Chief Vernon Roote told Indian Country Today Media Network (ICTMN) in December, “Ontario Power Generation had given us their commitment that they will not proceed unless they have community support. That’s a letter that we have on file.” [1]
Saugeen First Nation negotiator (and former Chief) Randall Kahgee told ICTMN that “we are starting to build some momentum on the community engagement process.” The Saugeen leaders are determining how to gauge the community voice, whether by polling or by vote at public gatherings, and have already held some engagement sessions on the issue. [2]
Randall Kahgee told ICTMN, “For the communities, this is not just about the deep geological repository but also about the nuclear waste problem within our territory. We have always insisted that while this problem is not of our own design, we must be part of shaping the solution. Gone are the days when our people, communities and Nation are left on the outside looking in within our own territory. These are complex issues that will force us to really ask ourselves what does it mean to be stewards of the land. The opportunity to be able to shape the discourse on these matters is both exciting and frightening at the same time.” [3]
The Saugeen First Nation is especially concerned about simply moving the proposed facility into somebody else’s backyard. “We might not be the best of friends when we push nuclear waste on our brothers’ and sisters’ territory,” he told ICTMN.
Nuclear Expansion
The proposal by provincial Crown corporation Ontario Power Generation (OPG) is for at least 7 million cubic feet of nuclear wastes from Ontario nuclear power plants to be buried in chambers drilled into limestone 2,231 feet below the surface and under the Bruce nuclear site at Kincardine, Ontario. The waste to be entombed in the DGR would come from the Bruce, Pickering and Darlington nuclear sites in Ontario – currently home to 18 Candu reactors.
The eight nuclear reactors at the Bruce site (the world’s largest nuclear station) are leased from OPG by a private company called Bruce Power, whose major shareholders/partners include TransCanada Corp. – better known for its tarsands pipeline projects. (TransCanada earns more than one-third of its profits from power-generation.) Bruce Power pays OPG for storage of nuclear wastes, which are currently stored and monitored above-ground on site. [4]
In December, Bruce Power announced that it will invest $13 billion to refurbish the Bruce site, overhauling six of the eight reactors on Lake Huron beginning in 2020. [5] Just weeks later, OPG announced a $12.8 billion refurbishment of four nuclear reactors at Darlington, while extending the life of its ageing Pickering nuclear power plant on Lake Ontario. [6] The Pickering move requires public hearings and approval from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, but Ontario’s Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli has voiced his approval and touted the nuclear industry as “emissions-free,” while ignoring the issue of nuclear wastes.
OPG, Bruce Power, and the Ontario government are obviously onside with the Canadian Nuclear Association lobby, whose president and CEO John Barrett is using the COP21 Paris Climate Agreement to push for nuclear expansion. In an op-ed for The Globe and Mail, Barrett declared that “it is time to recognize the contribution – current and potential – of nuclear power in curbing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions worldwide,” and he stated that Canada, with its uranium mining and nuclear reactor technology, is “ready to play an international leadership role on climate change.” [7]
Barrett, in turn, is onside with the billionaires now pushing nuclear energy expansion worldwide: Richard Branson (Virgin Group), Peter Thiel (PayPal co-founder), Bill Gates and Paul Allen (Microsoft co-founders), and Jeff Bezos (Amazon) have all endorsed nuclear energy as the solution to climate change. [8] As well, scientists James Hansen, Kerry Emmanuel, Ken Caldeira and Tom Wigley have recently called for building 115 new reactors per year as “the only viable path forward”. [8] They dismiss nuclear waste as “trivial” and claim that there “are technical means to dispose of this small amount of waste safely.”
In that case, the resulting nuclear waste should be stored in their basements and under the billionaires’ mansions, rather than near bodies of water like the Great Lakes, which provide 40 million people with their drinking water.
Footnotes:
[1] Konnie Lemay, “Saugeen Nation May Be Final Word in Nuclear Waste Storage Next to Lake Huron,” Indian Country Today Media Network, December 11, 2015.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Joyce Nelson, “Nuclear Dump Controversy,” Watershed Sentinel, Sept.-Oct., 2015.
[5] Robert Benzie, “Bruce Power to invest $13 billion to refurbish nuclear station on Lake Huron,” Toronto Star, December 3, 2015.
[6] Rob Ferguson, “Ontario Power Generation to spend $12.8 billion refurbishing four Darlington nuclear reactors,” Toronto Star, January 11, 2016.
[7] John Barrett, “Nuclear power is key to decarbonization, and Canada can lead the way,” The Globe and Mail, December 16, 2015.
[8] Emily Schwartz Greco, “A Big Fat Radioactive Lie,” Other words.org, December 4, 2015.
Joyce Nelson is an award-winning Canadian freelance writer/researcher working on her sixth book.
January 15, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Environmentalism, Nuclear Power, Science and Pseudo-Science | Canada, Human rights, Saugeen First Nation, United States |
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NAZARETH – Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu said that Adhan (Islamic call to prayer) violates Israel’s interior laws as it causes “unbearable noise.”
During a meeting with the Likud bloc in the Knesset, Netanyahu claimed that “Arab towns must abide by the law of the land and fulfill their obligations to the state and society.”
This includes, Netanyahu continued, refraining from polygamy, which is practiced by Muslim-Arabs, stopping the noise caused by the Adhan, voiced five times a day by Muslim-Arab mosques, and halting construction without permit.
“I am not prepared to accept two States of Israel, a state of law for most of its citizens and a state within a state for some of them, in enclaves in which there is no law enforcement.”
There is no religious text that allows disturbing people by loudspeakers, according to his claims.
He also pointed to polygamy in Arab towns, claiming that “women’s rights organizations remain silent over this practice.”
January 15, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Adhan, Benjamin Netanyahu, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Polygamy, Zionism |
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BETHLEHEM – A plan approved by Israel’s cabinet last week to provide half a billion dollars worth of assistance to Israel’s Druze and Circassian minorities has been denounced by leaders of Israel’s Palestinian community as a “divide and conquer” tactic.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the 2 billion shekel ($510 million) multi-year plan “for the development of the Druze and Circassian communities” at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday.
The plans followed the earlier announcement of a 15 billion shekel ($3.8 billion) five-year plan to address the gaps in access to infrastructure and discrepancies in rights between Palestinians with Israeli citizenship and their Jewish counterparts.
While it was not initially clear whether the assistance to the Druze and Circassian communities was included in this larger plan, Netanyahu warned separately on Sunday that the larger plan for the development of other “Arab communities” was dependent on the implementation of a law enforcement plan alongside it.
“I want to make it clear that nothing that has been done in various areas — infrastructure, tourism, education, trade, economy — can move forward if we do not address the question of enforcing the laws of the state of Israel in the Arab sector,” the prime minister said.
The further security measures proposed by Netanyahu would target Palestinian citizens of Israel — who represent an estimated 20 percent of the Israeli population — but would, critics say, do so unequally.
Security measures for ‘good Arabs and bad Arabs’
Palestinian communities in Israel recently came under intense scrutiny from Israel’s security forces after a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship, Nashat Melhem, allegedly killed two Israelis at a Tel Aviv cafe on Jan. 1, before killing a Palestinian citizen of Israel as he fled the scene.
Melhem was killed in a shootout with Israeli forces on Jan. 8 in his hometown of Arara in northern Israel.
Jafar Farah, the director of the Mossawa Advocacy Center For Arab Citizens In Israel, told Ma’an at the time that there had been a high level of incitement against Palestinians with Israeli citizenship on the part of Israeli government officials.
“The atmosphere right now is very heavy and racist — there is a lot of incitement against Arabs,” Farah said. “We know that in these circumstances there is no authority willing to intervene in the media to do anything other than support the (crackdown).”
“This is a period where the extreme right wing is trying to prove that the occupation is not the problem, but the relationship between Jewish and Arab communities is.”
Farah’s sentiments were echoed by Aida Touma-Suleiman, a member of the Israeli’s Knesset representing the left-wing Hadash party of the Arab Joint List coalition, who sees the Israeli government’s recent funding plans as reflective of its discriminatory policy.
Touma-Suleiman slammed the government’s intention to tie development aid for Palestinian communities to law enforcement as an attempt “to create conditioned citizenship.”
This “conditioned citizenship,” she said, was being carried out by the Israeli government with the aim of creating divisions among Palestinians in Israel.
“This has been a tactic from different Israeli governments, even those who claim they are from the left,” she told Ma’an.
“They try to divide and conquer us, either based on geographical locations, religious affiliations, and now between good Arabs and bad Arabs. Those who obey the government, who serve in the military, will benefit from the plan, and those who refuse the government’s oppression will not.
“We are used to the attempted fragmentation of the community, and we’ll always stand against it,” she said.
‘Divide and conquer policy’
Israeli law differentiates between Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel, and forms further distinctions between various Palestinians minorities.
Druze and Circassians are subject to mandatory military service in the Israeli army, whereas Muslim or Christian Palestinian citizens of Israel are not. Israeli identification papers do not recognize Christians, Druze and Circassians as Arabs, unlike Muslims.
These legal distinctions have been criticized by many, including MK Abdullah Abu Maruf, as an attempt to divide the Palestinian population inside Israel.
Abu Maruf, a Palestinian citizen of Israel and, like Touma-Suleiman, a member of the Hadash party, told Ma’an that Israel’s plan — which he said would actually only amount to 1.2 billion shekels — was an attempt to sow divisions among Israel’s Palestinian minorities through preferential treatment.
“As an Arab citizen and a member of Knesset I never oppose allocation of money to the Arab citizens, but we are against a political process of discrimination,” the MK said.
“All members of the Joint List view this plan in the same way,” he added. “We consider it a ‘divide and conquer’ policy. It’s a continuation of the systematic Israeli government policy towards Arabs in Israel.”
Abu Maruf noted that a similar plan to allocate funds to the Druze and Circassian communities was approved by the Israeli cabinet in late 2014, although he pointed out that only 10 percent of the 185 million shekel project had been allocated so far.
A Druze himself, he further pointed to the small size of the Druze and Circassian communities in Israel, which total around 130,000 and 4,000 respectively.
“With all due respect, this is a small number and the Israelis are using this to talk about minorities and enact discriminatory policies,” Abu Maruf said.
‘The rights we deserve’
This is not the only initiative since the beginning of the year to explicitly benefit the two communities. On Jan. 5, less than a week earlier, the Israeli National Planning and Building Council approved an initiative presented by Netanyahu to “build a new Druze town” near the northern town of Tiberias, a press release from the Israeli Prime Minister’s office revealed at the time.
“I ascribe great importance to the establishment of a new Druze town that will advance the Druze sector,” Netanyahu said following the announcement. “The Druze community has bound its fate to the State of Israel.”
According to rights organization Adalah, there are at least 76 Israeli laws that discriminate between Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel.
A 2011 report by the organization stated that “Arab municipalities exercis[ed] jurisdiction over only 2.5 percent of the total area of the state,” adding that no new Palestinian towns had been built in Israel since 1948, compared to 600 Jewish municipalities. Infrastructure in Palestinian-majority towns is notoriously inadequately maintained, and access to public transportation is insufficient.
“This plan is not a favor from anybody, it is only a small part of the rights we deserve,” Touma-Suleiman said.
“We are also worried of the political use of this plan against us,” she added. “Netanyahu’s government needs this plan for international reasons, in order to build an image of Israel as a democratic state at a time when there is international criticism of Israeli policies.”
“Even if this plan is not implemented later on, it will still look like the government is looking after its Arab citizens.”
January 15, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Benjamin Netanyahu, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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Journalist Mujahed al-Saadi
JENIN – The Israeli occupation authorities (IOA) on Thursday extended the detention of a Palestinian journalist for eight days and slapped a travel ban on the Second Deputy-Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC).
A PIC news reporter quoted local sources as stating that the Israeli court at the Jalama lock-up, in 1948 Occupied Palestine, extended the remand of journalist Mujahed al-Saadi for eight days pending further investigation.
Al-Saadi, working as a reporter and photojournalist for the Palestine Today TV Channel, was kidnapped by the Israeli occupation soldiers a couple of days ago from his own family home in the occupied West Bank province of Jenin.
Meanwhile, the IOA banned the PLC Second Deputy-Speaker, Hassan Khreisheh, from travelling to Turkey via the al-Karama border crossing.
Khreisheh was quoted by the Quds Press as saying that the IOA informed him of the ban after he had been detained for four hours at the al-Karama crossing and without specifying the reasons for the ban.
MP Khreisheh was on his way to Turkey to take part in a pro-Palestine event.
He said the IOA has renewed a travel ban to which he had been subjected to over the past seven years.
The MP said such arbitrary bans make part of Israeli attempts to quell anti-occupation voices overseas.
Khreisheh slammed the silence maintained by the Palestinian Authority (PA), chaired by Mahmoud Abbas, over Israeli bans on Palestinian MPs.
January 15, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, West Bank, Zionism |
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Instead of fulfilling his promises to improve the country’s deteriorating economy, provide new job opportunities for thousands of unemployed youth and build at least one million housing units to accommodate young couples, Egypt’s President, Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi has only managed to build more prisons and detention centres to accommodate the growing number of opposition activists.
Less than two months after his election in June 2013, Al-Sisi opened the first maximum security prison in the Dakahlia Governorate.
As many as five new prisons have been constructed since 2013.
Yesterday, the president issued a decree to allocate a plot of state-owned land that spreads over more 103.22 acres to construct a new central prison in Giza.
With the new prison, Egypt will have 42 prisons as well as 382 detention centres in police stations.
A report by the Arab Organisation for Human Rights revealed that the cost of building Gamasa prison was 750 million Egyptian pounds ($95.8 million), adding that the interior ministry did not publish the costs incurred during the construction of the other prisons because they probably cost billions of Egyptian pounds.
According to the organisation, Egypt does not need to build more detention centres to solve a capacity crisis; the problem is imprisoning tens of thousands of innocent people without justification.
Authorities have increased arbitrary arrests because of political opinion and the number of detainees has reached more than 41,000 prisoners, the human rights group said.
January 14, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | Egypt, Human rights |
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A Nigerian Shia group says more than 700 of its members are still unaccounted for a month after the deadly attacks by Nigerian forces against Shia Muslims in the northern city of Zaria.
In a statement released on Thursday, Ibrahim Musa, the spokesman for the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN), whose leader Sheikh Ibrahim al-Zakzaky is in police custody, said about 730 people have gone missing since December 12, 2015.
“These missing people were either killed by the army or are in detention” but their “whereabouts are still unknown and undisclosed,” Musa said.
He further noted that some 220 IMN members were in a prison, located in the city of Kaduna, the capital of the state with the same name, while others were in military custody elsewhere across the African state.
On December 12 last year, Nigerian soldiers attacked Shia Muslims attending a ceremony at a religious center in the northern city of Zaria, accusing them of blocking the convoy of the army’s chief of staff and attempting to assassinate him. The Shias have categorically denied the allegations.
The following day, Nigerian forces also raided Zakzaky’s home and arrested him after reportedly killing those attempting to protect him, including one of the IMN’s senior leaders and its spokesman.
Both incidents led to the deaths of hundreds of members of the religious community, including three of Zakzaky’s sons. There has been no official death toll in the violence, but rights activists have put the number at over 1,000.
Musa said no Nigerian family had received a body for burial in the weeks since the Zaria violence.
The Shia cleric is said to have been charged with “criminal conspiracy and inciting public disturbances.”
The IMN has called for Zakzaky’s unconditional release and for Abuja to respond to the “unjustifiable atrocities committed by the army.”
January 14, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | Africa, Human rights, Islamic Movement of Nigeria, Nigeria |
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U.S. Alliance for Prosperity plan aims to stem Central American migration, but critics say the plan falls far short of addressing underlying causes
The United States’ plan to more than double its aid package to Central America in the name of increasing security and boosting development is likely to open up the region to U.S. corporate interests without tackling underlying problems of poverty and inequality, CISPES Executive Director Alexis Stoumbelis told teleSUR on Wednesday.
U.S. Congress approved over US$750 million at the end of December to roll out President Barack Obama’s strategy for Central America. The package supports the controversial Alliance for Prosperity, a plan touted as a strategy to stem the massive wave of undocumented migrants from the Northern Triangle of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, but slammed by critics for exacerbating key drivers of the crisis.
According to Stoumbelis, the new increased funding plan continues the same development model based on White House priorities of free trade and foreign direct investment that the U.S. has long promoted in the region.
“The U.S. has had an aggressive neoliberal agenda in Central America for the last 20 years, so this doesn’t really come as a surprise,” Stoumbelis told teleSUR by phone, citing the Central America Free Trade Agreement as an example of the U.S.-backed free trade model that has proven to worsen insecurity and inequality in Central American countries.
“The plan continues to push an agenda much more in line with neoliberal economics than programs proven to improve quality of life,” said Stoumbelis.
While the new aid package has been promoted as a bid to address longstanding issues of poverty, insecurity, and violence, the main pillars of the plan pave the way for increased foreign investment, natural resource extraction, privatization, and militarization while raising serious concerns about human rights and inequality, Stoumbelis added.
“The funding provides backing for governments that have proven time and time against putting human rights at the top of the agenda,” said Stoumbelis, adding that the plan ignores calls from many social movements and advocacy groups to cut security aid to the region instead of rewarding human rights-abusing administrations with more funding.
Although the U.S. funding for Central America includes conditions aimed at addressing human rights concerns raised by social movements and advocates, many remain skeptical that the measures will do enough to counteract dismal human rights records and rampant corruption, especially in Honduras and Guatemala.
“It was a victory to condition the aid … and to convince (U.S.) Congress that its support for human rights-abusing governments needs to be addressed,” said Stoumbelis. He went on to say that even if the aid is subject to human rights guarantees, it is ultimately up to the State Department to sign off on whether Central American countries fulfill the conditions.
Many expect that the new plan will uphold the State Department’s historically inadequate standard on human rights, which in the past has seen human rights approval issued despite evidence of systematic and chronic human rights abuses on the ground in Central America.
The US$750-million aid package will spike funding levels from US$120 million to US$300 million for development, from US$160 million to US$405 million for security, and from US$33 million to over US$66 million for the war on drugs. Funds will be administered by the State Department and by USAID, which have proven to support privatization and the interests of U.S. corporations in the region.
The security funding includes doubling the budget for the Central American Security Initiative, a regional plan that has dramatically increased militarization of security forces in the region and in turn raised concerns about increasing human rights abuses, impunity, and corruption without fulfilling its state’s objectives of tackling insecurity.
According to Stoumbelis, militarization in the name of the war on drugs has largely been a “war on the people,” as poor people are the most vulnerable in the face of insecurity and have largely been the victims of rising levels of violence under CARSI and the security initiative for Mexico, Plan Merida.
The plan is expected to pave the way for increased militarization in the name of “stabilization” and border security, which critics fear will result in increased human rights violations and exacerbate the problems underlying social and economic inequality.
Militarization also tends to result in criminalization of protest movements against neoliberal mega-projects that displace communities, rob indigenous peoples of land, destroy the environment, and undermine food security—a development strategy only set to ramp up under the new regional aid plan.
Despite the challenges, Stoumbelis predicts that such resistance movements will redouble their fight against the model the U.S. aid package proposes to push harder.
“There has been a tremendous challenge to the model,” said Stoumbelis, emphasizing the role of cross-border resistance in the region and the importance of international solidarity.
For Stoumbelis, in the face of increased U.S. aid, solidarity with Central American movements is now more than ever key to resisting the “U.S.-backed corporate onslaught in the region.”
January 14, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Corruption, Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | Alliance for Prosperity, Central America, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Human rights, Latin America, Mexico, United States, USAID |
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Former first daughter Chelsea Clinton joined her mother, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, on the campaign trail this week to attack the single-payer healthcare plan proposed by opponent Bernie Sanders.
Even though Hillary asked “since when do Democrats attack one another on universal health care?” during a 2008 speech in response to a mailer from her opponent at the time, Barack Obama, she called the Sanders plan to cover everyone regardless of their ability to pay as a “risky deal”.
The Sanders plan would destroy private insurance and drug companies, who have donated millions of dollars to Hillary’s campaigns for senate and president.
Clinton famously told candidate Obama “shame on you” in 2008, but now she’s defending his legacy healthcare program dubbed Obamacare, which delivered millions of new customers to for-profit insurance companies through its mandatory coverage clause.
Mother Jones described the new attacks as “an abrupt shift” with just a few weeks before the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary.
Chelsea falsely claimed that millions of people would lose coverage under the Sanders plan during a campaign stop on Tuesday in New Hampshire, where Sanders is now leading in the polls.
“Senator Sanders wants to dismantle Obamacare, dismantle the CHIP program, dismantle Medicare, and dismantle private insurance,” she said. “I worry if we give Republicans Democratic permission to do that, we’ll go back to an era – before we had the Affordable Care Act – that would strip millions and millions and millions of people off their health insurance.”
In fact, not only would those Americans currently covered by Obamacare continue to be protected by the Sanders plan, but it would also cover the millions of Americans who still can’t afford insurance under the so-called “Affordable Care Act”.
Sanders believes healthcare should be a human right and available to all, regardless of wealth or income.
Chelsea, on the other hand, married a former Goldman Sachs investment banker, lives in an expensive New York City condo, serves on several boards including her father’s controversial Clinton Foundation and Clinton Global Initiative, and previously worked at a hedge fund.
Sanders voted for Obamacare, but believes it has not gone far enough to provide adequate care for all.
“Deductibles remain much too high for people,” Sanders explained on the MSNBC program Morning Joe. “The question we have to ask is, why are we paying almost three times more per capita than the folks in the UK, 50 percent more than the French, and they guarantee health care to all of their people?”
Sanders proposes Medicare for all, which he says will save taxpayers about $500 billion per year including the initial costs of transitioning from Obamacare.
He also wants to tackle pharmaceutical companies who have been accused by doctors of letting patients die for the sake of profit and donated more money to Clinton’s campaign than any other candidate from either party.
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January 13, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Economics | Bernie Sanders, Chelsea Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Human rights, Obamacare, United States |
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