Veröffentlicht am Oktober 31, 2011 von Daniele Puccio
First of all let me say that i was happy to join all those people at Saturday’s #Occupy Frankfurt march. Police claimed it to be 2500 people, the organizer 5000.
The march started at the so called “Hauptwache” where we first headed towards a shopping spree and more and more people then started to join us. The march stopped several times so that the organizers could read/speak to the crowd. During the march the people were more quiet than i had expected. “Who’s streets? Our streets!” was the only slogan that was repeatedly chanted among most of the demonstrators.
Yet i haven’t seen anyone of the so-called 1% yet and the streets, that have been closed by the police in advance of course, felt empty to me although there were thousands of people. Finally we arrived at the banking district with all its skyscrapers, filled with the world’s corporate ownership. Before entering we stopped and the Guy-Fawkes-masked organizers wanted everyone to shout as loud as they can to tell the 1% that the 99% are here.
Up to that point i was still very curious about what’s going to happen when we arrive in the banking district. Will there be vast police brutality as seen in Oakland or Denver? Will there be a very angry crowd willing to take direct action and maybe enter one of those buildings? And the most important question to me, how would the occupation at the European Central Bank look like?
With all respect to this worldwide movement and the idea behind it, i have very significant criticisms to make when it comes to Frankfurt. I was in daily contact with the Frontline at #Occupy Wallstreet so i am very familiar with the events taking place there. I’ve seen pictures & videos from Oakland and Chicago and i stood and still stand in solidarity with them and this movement because i agree with their declaration.
But allow me to make my points.
So, after entering the banking district the next stop was set to be at the ‘Commerzbank’ building. The steps to the main entrance were crowded by the demonstrators within seconds so we decided to walk all the way up to get an idea of how many people we actually are. Finally, with most of the people standing in front of the Commerzbank building they started to play their (i guess) self-titled “Revolution Song” and the people started singing, dancing, clapping and some seemed to be having the fun of their life there. (watch the video to see it for yourself) There were two unarmed guards protecting the entrance of the bank’s building, with several hundred people directly in front of them, but nobody even thought of entering a building or at least demanding the leadership to come out and justify their actions. I am very well aware that to most people this may sound unrealistic or utopian but when we actually get people to come out and raise their voice, it must conclude with more than singing, dancing and laughing in front of the eyes of those people that are being protested against. Also, you can’t be seen as a real threat to the establishment, when the establishment knows every single step of you in advance. There was absolutely nothing i saw that one could actually call “police presence”. The cop’s i saw during the whole event can be counted with both hands.
Then the march came to an end and we finally arrived at the European Central Bank, where you could see the tents of those estimated 200 people that are occupying the ECB for over two weeks now. There were several stands that offered detailled information about the #Occupy movement and others selling buttons, books, Che Guevara shirts and alike but again, it felt really empty despite a high number of people actually being there so i went over to the convoy where several people held speeches about this movement I heard some students speak about the communal injustices in Frankfurt, about several cuts in the social sector and about how overcrowded our Universities are because of the cuts in this sector.
At that point i really started to think about the purpose of all this and suddenly, what Attorney Malik Zulu Shabazz, head of the New Black Panther Party recently wrote about the #Occupy movement, came to my mind.
“First, I feel vindicated because all year some looked at me twisted when I called for 3 National-International Day of Action’s and Unity. We had to beg-and beg Black people just to stand up for ONE day. Now the white left has spearheaded organizing in the streets for several weeks in over 100 cities. Well, I guess the white left is suffering more than the Black’s.”
I started wondering how many people coming out to protest here were aware of what this corporate/banking system just did to the people of Libya, the Ivory Coast, what they did to Iraq & Afghanistan and in the words of Immortal Technique, that “slavery was the capital for capitalism”?
I listened to more speeches, talked to different people, read all those signs and i came to the conclusion that our white middle class, despite all efforts and the willingness to protest & demand changes, is still trapped in a eurocentric mindset. The speeches didn’t go far beyond Germany. Some showed their solidarity with Greece, but i didn’t hear anyone speak out against the latest imperial devestations of other countries. The white middle class cannot lead a struggle against a system to which they aren’t the main targets & losers. The system needs to face the people their dirtiest policies produced, all the oppressed and colonized people abroad, the black & brown people in the United States, the immigrants in Europe whose countries our people formerly colonized & are trying to re-colonize and those people whose leadership allows their resources & wealth to be literally stolen by the west, all over the world.
The last person i met there was this 75 year old american, who stood up against police brutality in the USA and he told me that he attended several marches in Frankfurt now and the police here are saints compared to the states so we discussed it and i told him the thoughts i have now written down. He agreed on most issues, but was nonetheless happy to see so many people come out to peacefully protest. He told me that he served the so-called 1% until he read Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” and became aware of what was really going on. Suddenly he went over to a guy holding the flag of a socialist organization and told him that socialism isn’t the answer so i needed to start a serious discussion. He was very kind and gave me all the time i needed to raise my points. After saying that he rejects any form of governing and is mainly focussing on domestic politics i gave him a short overview of the Libyan Jamahiriyah and how this system works. He got interested and asked me to tell him more about Libya & Gaddafi since he didn’t know too much about it, despite the mainstream media’s reports. After finishing my points his short but direct reply was “Damn, this guy was a serious threat then”. After recognizing my Hugo Chavez shirt we went on talking about Venezuela & Cuba. Just before exchanging our email adresses, he revealed that he’s also an alternative medium and that he believes that those changes around the world have something to do with a new kind of energy going around.
What i want to say is that we need to get people, whether 16 or 75 to see the bigger picture. To make them see that it is not just about us, having to pay higher student loans or taxes, but about the lives of black & brown people all over the world. We must show more solidarity to the people that are being oppressed by this system, because only they can put an end to it. The system makes 1% extremely rich because it holds 99% poor. But the system also killed and continues to kill millions of people from Afghanistan to Latin America, to Iraq, Libya, South Asia and most of Africa. The system only has the power to oppress our people at home because it got rich from enslavement, colonization and mass murder of non-white people all over the world. It is not only a unjust system, but a racist system and WE, the white middle class can never ever be the centre of this struggle. It’s our part to support those who really suffer under this current system and we have to think globally. The word revolution is all over the place, with little understanding of its real meaning. A revolution comes from below and as long as the needs of those below the white middle or working class aren’t put in the centre of this struggle it will impose no real threat to the system. Bridges need to be built and then the “people united can never be defeated”. But the people can’t be united if the poorest & most oppressed are only a part of the 99%. They must be the centre, and i’m not even talking about those at home.
While we were outside protesting against the system that imposes higher taxes/fees on us, we kept quiet about what the same system did, when it bombed Libya back into the stone age.
To perfectly understand and then be able to fight the system, the little boy/girl in Somalia, Iraq or Palestine must be the centre of our struggle because criticizing and fighting our system without putting those children’s future & their countries past & present situation into context makes us political active but naively egocentric at the same time.
Despite all criticisms of the march in Frankfurt, i believe that the #Occupy movement has the power to be transformed into something bigger if some of the points i made are being considered in the future and i am open to discuss my thoughts on any occasion if you are willing to build bridges, not break them.
Veröffentlicht am Oktober 27, 2011 von Daniele Puccio
The young Muammar Gaddafi with his mentor, the late Gamal Abdel Nasser
The reports from exactly one week ago that the NTC rebels captured libyan revolutionary leader Col. Muammar Gaddafi shook the world. Not only the libyan people’s reaction, wheter they cheered for or mourned his death, but also the mainstream media – the maybe most important tool to demonize him and turn this aggressive & illegal war on Libya into a legitimate revolution – was all over it. But what does the martyrdom of the libyan leader mean for Libya, the Global South & especially Africa?
Re-Colonization of Libya planned a long time ago
On February 15th an armed & brutal rebellion arised in the city of Benghazi. Only six days later, libyan justice minister Mustafa Abdul-Jalil resigned to set up his own government. Later on February 27th he set up the Transitional National Council, and on March 5th the TNC declared itself as the “sole representative of all Libya” with – of course – Mustafa Abdul-Jalil as its head. France & Britain didnt need more than a few days to recognize them as the legitimate government of Libya. The west’s democracy promotion in other regions only counts when everything has been prepared to be able to set up a “democratic leader”, meaning a western puppet president through “democratic elections”. Not only do the United States directly fund opposition movements as the NTC in Libya, the Green Movement in Iran, the venezuelan oligarchy opposed to Chavez etc but the leading figures of those movements have always had a history that ties them closely to the corporate or political body of empire. When they tried to topple Chavez, only a few hours later Pedro Carmona, head of Venezuela’s largest business owners’ association, was named president, also without a people’s election or revolutionary movement that would legitimize his presidency. So their methods aren’t new to the Global South.
In Libya, Mustafa Abdul-Jalil led the release program of the anti-Gaddafi fighters, the LIFG (Libyan Islamic Fighting Group – the libyan branch of Al-Qaeda) along with Muammar’s son Saif al-Islam, who now deeply regrets what he had done then. The same people that have been released were now paving the way for this armed rebellion in Libya. Yet we hear voices calling the imprisonments of those fighters unjust and an act of authoritarian dictatorship, wanting to silence its enemies. Now imagine the United States released all Black Panthers, members of the Black Liberation Army and all other political prisoners. Again something no western government can equal, yet they’re pointing the finger at others.
To understand more about the role of Mustafa Abdul-Jalil & Mahmoud Jibril please go on reading this article.
Libya & the media
“If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing” – Malcolm X
The media was playing the major role from the beginning. Not only by showing the world a false one sided story of the events in Libya but whenever reliable reports of NATO or/and “rebel” atrocities against the civilian polulation showed up, the media blackout exceeded even their parallel blocking of the #Occupy movement. Now it is pretty clear that this war on Libya, which many people ironically still put in context of a so called “arab spring” was carefully planned a long time ago and has absolutely nothing to do with a revolution.
The american and european corporate owned media were closely working together, if not giving direct orders (as Wikileaks revealed) with/to Qatar-based Al-Jazeera and Saudi-owned, US-funded and UAE-based Al-Arabiyah in their campaign to distract people from the events and eventually falsifying and manipulating reports, so that their illegal war on Libya gained the wide acceptancy not only in the west, but also in the arab world, as their media monopolies cooperated with the western ones.
We saw falsified reports, such as news that Gaddafi had fled to Venezuela, as british foreign minister William Hague lied to his citizens. We saw Al-Jazeera montaging footage, falsify reports that Gaddafi troops had bombed a civilian area, when in fact it was the shelling of a farm, most likely by NATO bombs of course. On one occasion a video where they claimed Gaddafi troops were raping women, it later turned out to be the audio source of a libyan porno movie, which means that they were actually montaging footage & audio reports they claim to be original sources. The news channels reached a new stage of bias reporting when they only showed armed rebel groups demonstrating against Gaddafi, but when on July 1st, 700.000 – 1.3 million people in and around Tripoli demonstrated in support for their leader Muammar Gaddafi and their system, the Jamahiriyah there was absolutely no equal, if no reporting about it. Those channels were also the first ones to report about african mercenaries hired by Gaddafi with no factual evidence, that led to the rounding up, beating, torturing and lynching of black africans in Libya. ITN reporters witnessed this at first hand. The population of the black down of Tawerga completely disappeared from libyan soil. Several thousand africans disappeared and to date, there is no investigation on it. Al-Jazeera played a major role selling this never proven story and thereby participated in a genocide. Yet where there is no investigation there is no justification. Those channels reported the death of Khamis Gaddafi several times, always just a few days before Khamis Gaddafi was filmed being alive. I checked his Wikipedia page and before anyone could even prove his death, Wikipedia announced him as dead – and later changed the status again.
To read more about the media role in Libya, especially by the left go on reading this article.
Supporting TNC means supporting neo-colonialism & racism
The people of Benghazi in 1911 and 2011 welcoming the colonialists
The media role is very clear now but there is another very important geopolitical issue to the events in Libya & now the death of Muammar Gaddafi that has been kept dead quiet. Libya is in Africa.
Before Muammar Gaddafi led the al-Fatah revolution in 1969 to overthrow western puppet King Idris, Libya was among the poorest countries on the whole planet. In 2011, before NATO bombed their infrastructure & key cities Libya has had the highest HDI (Human Development Index) in all of Africa. There was free healthcare, free education at home or abroad, government funded housing, just to name a few threats to western understanding of democracy. The life expectancy grew by a remarkable amount of years, the illiteracy rates decreased drastically and his “Great Man Made River” project provided water to build cities & agricultural facilities in the Sahara. Gaddafi successfully proved to the world that his third universal theory works and his african country had a higher living standard than Portugal for example. Tell anyone in Europe that there is an african country that has a higher living standard than a country in western europe and wait for the reaction. The United Nations were working on a report that would have honored and rewarded the religious, social & human rights standards in Libya. The report can still be read, but unfortunately the events in Benghazi started just some days before they were set to being awarded by the international community.
So what has he done for Africa? He was the one calling for a United States of Africa and also a great Arab Nation. He, himself is an arab, born in a tent in Sirte, but he always understood that his country is on african soil. He set up an african satellite so that Europe lost 500 million dollars a year and people could directly call Africa without paying extra money the EU. He gave african countries & institutions money at no interest rates so that they didn’t have to beg the economical terrorists IMF or World Bank for money at high interest rates plus having to accept structural adjustment programs (that include privatization of your countries wealth/natural resources). In 2009 he called for a million strong pan-african army to defend any african country from a fate that he and his country have now faced. He also invited thousands of african guest workers to Libya in order to work there. Whenever, wherever he could, he promoted african unity & funded steps towards it.
With the not only arab but african leader, Muammar Gaddafi being chased down and lynched by racist arabs, that were so happy and comfortable to be the slaves of NATO and doing their dirty work on the ground, the west did not only manage to get rid of key personalities of the Gaddafi family, but they can factually pretend to be innocent of the serial killing of a whole family. They also did not only manage to create friction between black africans and arabs, but they initiated a civil & tribal war in Libya. Tribes were now forced to choose on which side they are on, when under the Jamahiriyah dozens of major tribes could live peacefully and didn’t even have to get involved in other tribes businesses.
The NTC rebels’ (which me and others referred to as “NATO slaves”) only common ground is opposing Gaddafi. Today, the best evidence so far for the correctness of using the term “NATO slaves” appeared when british defence secretary Hammond said “It’s certainly not the way we do things” referring to the lynching of Muammar and Moutassim Gaddafi. This could be the first of many betrayals that the NTC rebels will have to face. They have done the dirty job for the west and their only reward will be immunity before international law. Who else could chase down a whole family, shoot at them, torture them, lynch them and then parade with their and other black africans dying/dead bodies on a pick-up truck while the whole word prints pictures of those atrocities on the front page of the major newspapers and calling it a victory for Libya or a victory for democracy?
British MC Akala pointed out the west’s racism best when he tweeted “If South Africa executed all those still alive who murdered and raped under Apartheid would there be this cheering?”. Think about it. Racism is not just the N-word or acting hostile towards coloured people, racism is also silently and sometimes comfortably accepting the racism that other people are practising. Desmond Tutu once said “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor”.
The death of Muammar Gaddafi is clearly a defeat for Africa. He knew he was dying a martyr. “Now, I am under attack by the biggest force in military history, my little African son, Obama wants to kill me, to take away the freedom of our country, to take away our free housing, our free medicine, our free education, our free food, and replace it with American style thievery, called “capitalism”, but all of us in the Third World know what that means, it means corporations run the countries, run the world, and the people suffer.”, that’s what he said when the war on Libya started.
He held strong ties to anti-imperialist resistance groups & governments all over the world. Before Burkina Faso’s president, General Thomas Sankara faced a pro-empire conspiracy that led to his death (by the same people that conspired against Gbagbo in Cote d’Ivoire earlier this year btw. Look it up) Gaddafi called his system the world’s second real Jamahiriyah. He held strong ties to several other african leaders, that have been the west’s enemies for many years. Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe has been the west’s enemy for many years because of his strong stand and his unwillingness to compromise with people that impose sanctions on his country that – at the end of the day – only reach the civilian population. When Sarkozy came to Algeria in 2007 Bouteflika demanded an apology for what the french had done to Algerians in 132 years of colonial rule and especially between 1954-1962 in their war of independence. Sarokzy refused to do so but that’s another story. Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser was Gaddafi’s mentor and his vision, the vision of Kwame Nkrumah, the vision of Marcus Garvey was started to be taken into action by Libya under Gaddafi’s Jamahiriyah. Gaddafi already set up an african development bank to prevent many african states to be enslaved by the IMF or World Bank debt. He also urged african leaders to not give their resources to the west, whose products that were made out of that resources, were then sent back to Africa and sold at exorbitant prices.
In 2002, John Bolton handed over a plan to France and Britain, that considered the parallel overthrowing of Libya’s and Syria’s legitimate governments. The third country that fulfilled his vision of what the “axis of evil” is was North Korea. Now, what’s the difference between North Korea and Libya/Syria? Nuclear Weapons. As much as i am against the right of any country to possess or build nuclear weapons i must recognize that these weapons are the only vaccine to prevent an invasion or military coup against your sovereign nation. So Ali Abunimah was on point when he tweeted that “Kim Jong Il would be a fool to ever give up his nuclear weapons”. The reason they didn’t attack Iran yet, and in my opinion won’t do by military force in the future, is that one the one hand they know very well about their military power and strategic partners in the region and on the other hand, in order to keep the myth of Iran seeking nuclear weapons alive they must portray themselves as the victims that are hated and directly threatened by Iran, so that similar to the preparation of the Afghanistan and Iraq invasion following 9/11, the facts lose priority in the people’s judgment once they fell for the government’s agenda to spread fear among them.
So what future for Libya & Africa?
TNC rebels tearing down pictures of great african anti-colonialist leaders as Gamal Abdel Nasser or Kwame Nkrumah
In his interview with Russia Today’s Libya correspondent Maria Finoshina, Voltaire Network founder Thierry Meyssan, who has been working on & investigating the events in Libya provided a different story of the events in Libya this year, when he said:
“First of all, it’s quite obvious that the USA wanted to enter the war at the same time with Libya and Syria. That wish was made public by John Bolton in 2002. The plan was passed over to France and Britain who decided to bring it to life in November last year. Secondly, it was neccessary to verify wheter an attempt to a coup had been made before that. A coup that could be organized by France or Britain. The attempt failed in October. After this failed attempt, another coup was planned. It envisaged killing all the heads of the libyan National Congress if they got together all in a place for a big celebration. That changed tho, after situation in the region changed, after the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt. At that moment, France and Britain decided to carry out a PR operation and present this coup attempt as a people’s rebellion.”
He went on saying that “However, in terms of basic goals (of the coup in Libya) it is worth noting changes that have started in Africa like those that began in large areas of the middle east. There are already two zones being created. First of all it was decided to create a westafrican zone with Ivory Coast as its centre.” … “block. In case all states are divided … a conflict will have to be created. Not between Shiites and Sunnis as was attempted in the Middle East but between Arabs and Berbers. This is where the real source of the events in Benghazi is.”
“The initial goal of this strategy was to overthrow the people’s government that was in power and to establish western authoritarianism in that country. I believe tho, that they had actually given up the plan because the military resistance proved stronger. Therefor it was decided to act in a different direction. We saw its western TV channels don’t speak of repression and rebellion anymore but it was still a war. Thus trying to prepare public opinion for a declaration that there is a need to divide the country into two parts. Cyrenaica on one side and Tripolitania on the other, with UN forces in between to separate the conflicting parties. They will say the were protecting the civilian population and that is enough and now they are deploying forces to separate the conflicting sides. Then they will declare Cyrenaica ‘s independence, set up the biggest regional U.S. military base, saying it is neccessary, you know, because they decided to start conquering Africa. They are planning to set up a military base in Benghazi to land and deploy their troops there and in about ten years to start conquering Africa. The reason even more serious problem NATO has begun a campaign on destroying the psychological resistance of the countries leaders.”
“What is interesting in this affair is to see that the operation in Syria and the operation in Libya had been designed exactly the same way and should normally have ended with the same war on both sides, but they let go off Syria and i think that some states, Russia included, thought better of it and prevented the course of those operations. So that is why, at the moment, there is no war in Syria. Even if some western leaders repeat almost every day that neccessary to go to war, one of the characteristics of the system is to have islamistic extremists on this part. Let us see networks, known as being those of Al-Qaeda, and i use this term on purpose as there are some chiefs of those units we see here for having fought in Afghanistan, in Bosnia-Herzegowina, in Chechnya, in Iraq, now in Syria or Libya. Some of them in the meantime had been detained for years in Guantanamo, freed by the United States and brought on spot to continue the fight.”
Now that’s a very important point because when Gaddafi gave an interview to the BBC right after the events started where he was accusing those “rebels” as being Al-Qaeda and the world started laughing and calling him insane. The english language Al-Qaeda newspaper “Inspire” painted him as a clown and tributed a whole page of demonization to him. They claim to be the west’s enemy but what is it worth when the facts are exposing you as a worthy servant to them. In nearly November now, we know that Gaddafi was right and those laughing were wrong. As wrong as ICC chief prosecutor Esteban Moreno-Ocampo (about whom there is actually a complaint from 2007 that accuses him of rape) when he claimed that Gaddafi’s troops had killed 6000 people, which had a significant influence on the agreement of UN Resolution 1973. “Later he was building up his evidence on 208 victims instead of 6000. Several more inspections will turn out that there were no victims at all. What happened in Benghazi is quite different from what we were told. In fact it was a staged event.” as Professor Thierry Meyssan found out. Now the TNC announced that there will be the “sharia law” in Libya once they hold official power over internal affairs. What’s interesting is, that the main character in the destruction of Libya & the assassination of Muammar Gaddafi, french president Nicolas Sarkozy was fighting domestically against the sharia in his own country. He criminalized not only those still dressing under the rule of sharia but also the Sinti and the Roma and other religious/social/cultural minorities, which led to a hatred towards him that doesn’t allow him to go to the “slums” around Paris anymore because in some areas the people were even calling for his head. Now the same man that is radically fighting the sharia in France is supporting, funding and promoting a libyan government that imposes the sharia on its women?
All African People's Revolutionary Party's solidarity march for the Libyan Jamahiriyah on Dr. Kwame Nkrumah's birthday in Accra, Ghana.
Thierry Meyssan was not the only one pointing out that the war on Libya is actually a war on Africa and a direct message to China. Award-winning journalist and filmmaker John Pilger said – in context of Obama’s announcement that the U.S. will now sent U.S. special forces to Uganda and later to South Sudan, Congo & the Central African Republic – that “with Libya secured, an American invasion of the African continent is under way.”
“However,” he went on pointing out “the main reason the US is invading Africa is no different from that which ignited the Vietnam war. It is China. Where the Americans bring drones and destabilisation, the Chinese bring roads, bridges and dams. What they want is resources, especially fossil fuels. With Africa’s greatest oil reserves, Libya under Muammar Gaddafi was one of China’s most important sources of fuel. When the civil war broke out and NATO backed the “rebels” with a fabricated story about Gaddafi planning “genocide” in Benghazi, China evacuated its 30.000 workers in Libya.”
“For more than a decade the US has tried to establish a command on the continent of Africa, AFRICOM, but has been rebuffed by governments fearful of the regional tensions this would cause. Libya and now Uganda, South Sudan and Congo, provide the main chance.” he wrote.
When they tried to continue their crusade in Syria and wanted to achieve the same there as with UN Resolution 1973 in Libya, the russian and chinese governments used their veto in the United Nations Security Council. After not using their veto for UN Resolution 1973, they have now witnessed with their own eyes, that on what they agreed in the Security Council, “protecting civilians” did not match at all with the reality that happened to Libya and its civilian population after the west’s “humanitarian intervention” started, so blaming Russia or China for not being loyal to the Global South by not vetoing the resolution on Libya has very little reliability because if actually the UN Resolution would have been respected, the “rebels” and NATO would now face trial at The Haugue. Once again the west betrayed not only its own people but it comitted Genocide, Serial Killing, destruction of civilian homes and institutions, they violated the UN Resolution by not protecting but targeting civilians and they paved the rebel’s way to chase down, overthrow and legitimate government officials, including the widely known and accepted targeted murder of several grandchildren of Muammar Gaddafi, innocent little girls. Even Human Rights Watch, which shut its eyes and ears whenever they could during the war on Libya, reported a few days ago, that 53 pro-Jamahiriyah civilians had been executed in a hotel in Tripoli. This happened right after the pro-NATO slaves tortured Moutassim and later lynched him and his father, Muammar. They even filmed their lynching and parading of the dying body in a manner the Ku-Klux-Klan in the 30′s would have been deeply in awe. This brutal, disrespecting as criminal footage was shamelessly printed on the front page of nearly every major newspaper and yet most likely nobody will ever have to justify, let alone standing trial for this lynching.
Meanwhile, in the “civilized world”, Troy Davis had been executed with no evidence, right before police and special forces were attacking peaceful protestors that occupied the main locations of the world’s corporate and banking leadership that oppresses the working class and non-white races at home to have more investment money to fund wars in their ancestors foreign homelands. It’s about time to deeply re-think about what we are being sold as “democracy”. It takes some courage to acknowledge that the western needs and values that have been indictrinated into us for decades, if not centuries always brought enslavement, barbarism, destruction, death and misery to nearly all other places on this planet. It takes courage to accept that our white race carries more racism than we are willing to acknowledge. It takes courage to accept that being silent when we know about our government’s crimes makes us to an important part of the oppression. It takes some courage to point the finger at yourself and start with the man/woman in the mirror. And it takes a lot more courage to engage in the struggle to end this racist, destructive empire which robs and kills the 99% to serve the 1%.
Veröffentlicht am September 6, 2011 von Daniele Puccio
Che Guevara:
“We have declared ourselves to be within the group of non-aligned countries, although we are Marxists-Leninists, because the non-aligned countries, like ourselves, FIGHT IMPERIALISM.”
Malcolm X:
“Look at the American Revolution in 1776. That revolution was for what? For land. Why did they want land? Independence. How was it carried out? Bloodshed. Number one, it was based on land, the basis of independence. And the only way they could get it was bloodshed. The French Revolution — what was it based on? The land-less against the landlord. What was it for? Land. How did they get it? Bloodshed. Was no love lost; was no compromise; was no negotiation. I’m telling you, you don’t know what a revolution is. ‘Cause when you find out what it is, you’ll get back in the alley; you’ll get out of the way. The Russian Revolution — what was it based on? Land. The land-less against the landlord. How did they bring it about? Bloodshed. You haven’t got a revolution that doesn’t involve bloodshed. And you’re afraid to bleed. I said, you’re afraid to bleed.”
“The Congolese have been killed year after year after year, and whatever the United States gets in the Congo, she is getting what she asked for; the Congo killings is like the chickens coming home to roost.”
Thats very interesting regarding Palestine & Hezbollah
“You don’t have a peaceful revolution. You don’t have a turn-the-other-cheek revolution. There’s no such thing as a nonviolent revolution. The only kind of revolution that’s nonviolent is the Negro revolution. The only revolution based on loving your enemy is the Negro revolution. … Revolution is bloody, revolution is hostile, revolution knows no compromise, revolution overturns and destroys everything that gets in its way. And you, sitting around here like a knot on the wall, saying, “I’m going to love these folks no matter how much they hate me.” No, you need a revolution. Whoever heard of a revolution where they lock arms, singing “We Shall Overcome”? You don’t do that in a revolution. You don’t do any singing, you’re too busy swinging. It’s based on land. A revolutionary wants land so he can set up his own nation, an independent nation. These Negroes aren’t asking for any nation—they’re trying to crawl back on the plantation”
Huey P. Newton
Huey P. Newton even asked William Buckley on what side he would have stood on in 1776, wheter he would have been on the side of the colonizers or on the side of George Washington so there is no need for a debate on what side Huey would have stood regarding the orchestrated imperial counter-revolutions trying to overthrow Hezbollah, Hugo Chavez, Muammar Gaddafi, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Laurent Gbagbo, Robert Mugabe & now Bashar al-Assad. It’s not a matter of domestic affairs, Che, Malcolm, Huey declared a war on imperialism and clearly stated that there is no place on earth where you could call something a revolution that is backed & financed by the United States.
“We feel that the white students should relate and pay more attention to the colonized situation here of the blacks first, because after all, this is home. This is not to say that they should not denounce Americas treacherous actions abraod. I think that can be done at the same time. It’s just a matter of placing emphasis upon the criminal activities of America here in the homeland.”
Veröffentlicht am September 5, 2011 von Daniele Puccio
First of all, to prove the necessity of the following article. Did you know about this?
or about this?
Media bias has reached a new level of insanity. If you didn’t know about this, you definitely need to take the time and read the following.
Syria, a religious melting pot.
A cultural & religious approach. Although 87 per cent of the syrian population are muslims one of Bashar al-Assad’s main policies is to uphold Syria as a secular state. Around 75 per cent of them are sunni. The remaining 25 per cent include shia, alevi and others. Although it is a predominantly muslim (sunni) state there aren’t any religious minoroties that are being oppressed or even prosecuted by the government as in other countries in that region. Actually Syria is a cultural & religious melting pot in which everyone can follow & practice their religion as free as in no other arab state. One reason for that may be that the syrian president, Bashar al-Assad himself is a religious minority, an alevi. Christians, jews and other religions can aswell practice their religion without the fear of being oppressed. Unlike in other muslim states, practically, punishment for homosexuality doesn’t exist anymore in Syria. Article 520 of the penal code considers it as an illegal act, but unlike in Saudi Arabia e.g. there is no remarkable prosecution anymore. That’s only one reason why Assad has gained much popularity and can easily be described as the most popular contemporary arab leader. The fundamentalist opposition in contrast is known for its homophobia.
In conclusion one has to agree that there is no religious & cultural freedom in the middle east as there is in Syria and from the narrative of muslim arabs, who strongly believe in Islam and don’t live in a “westernized” or western country it is pretty remarkable how his government managed to bring and uphold that kind of tolerance into an arab country.
“Also, a parallel can be made between Colonel Gaddafi’s authority and that of Hafez al-Assad (Bashar’s father). They rose to power during the same period and both made use of their intelligence and brutality to hold sway. Bashar al-Assad, on the contrary, did not seize power nor did he expect to inherit it. He accepted to fill the office of president when his father died because his older brother had perished in an accident and because only his family heritage could have prevented a power struggle among his father’s generals.
Although it was the army who went to look for him in London, where he was quietly practicing his profession as an ophthalmologist, it is his people who be-knighted him. He is undeniably the most popular political leader in the Middle East. Up to two months ago, he was also the only one who moved around without armed guards, and felt comfortable in a crowd.”
No doubt that Bashar al-Assad is far from perfect and Syria is far from what we could consider a model. No doubt that there are authentic demonstrations going on, pro-Assad aswell as anti-Assad. The main question we have to ask ourselves is why are there such protests, why pro & contra, why do we only hear about contra and what did the Assad rule since 1970 do for its people? Therefor the maybe most important part of this article is to understand Syria’s history. The best approach to understand the Assad rule i came across, is this one.
“Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said yesterday that Iran, Libya and Syria should be stripped of weapons of mass destruction after Iraq. “These are irresponsible states, which must be disarmed of weapons mass destruction, and a successful American move in Iraq as a model will make that easier to achieve,” Sharon said to a visiting delegation of American congressmen.
Bolton said in meetings with Israeli officials that he had no doubt America would attack Iraq, and that it would be necessary thereafter to deal with threats from Syria, Iran and North Korea.
Bolton said the United States was striving to get a new UN Security Council resolution regarding Iraq and that the result of the vote would affect the U.S.’s relations with Western Europe and Russia, after the war in Iraq.
Bolton also met with Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Housing and Construction Minister Natan Sharansky.”
A year earlier, on May 6 2002, John Bolton, Undersecretary of State under George W. Bush came up with a project to simultaneously break up Libya and Syria. He called both states along with Cuba “The Axis Of Evil”. On a FOX News appearance in 2011 he said that the United States should have overthrown the syrian government right after they overthrew Saddam Hussein.
So obviously the plans to interfere in syrian internal affairs weren’t made yesterday. Now you have the so called “arab spring” which started with two revolutions that were based upon the masses & majority of people revolting against the regime. Ben Ali in Tunisia, aswell as Mubarak in Egypt have been very friendly towards the west, if not to say they were U.S. puppet states. Then the arab spring apparently reached Libya. The major difference between those “uprisings” was that in Egypt for example you could see the “made in USA” logo on the weapons used against the demonstrators. After Israel, Egypt was issued with more U.S. military aid than any other country . In Libya the so called rebels were issued by the west not only with weapons and other military equipment but they also had the largest army in the world, NATO, to bomb their way, killing thousands of civilians during the “revolution”. But that’s another story. The point is that the “syrian uprising” has absolutely nothing to do with the majority or even a notable minority of the syrian population being upset with Assad’s “authoritarian regime” or “brutal regime” as the western media tries to portray it. The people engaged in overthrowing Assad are – of course – backed by the west but not to bring “democracy” but to destabilize Syrias stable cultural,religious & more or less political landscape.
From a United States’ imperialistic and hegemonic viewpoint there are several reasons why Assad’s Syria needs to be overthrown.
1. Close relations to Iran, Hezbollah and the palestinian resistance
2. Refusal of peace treaty with Israel, unlike Jordan & Egypt
Syria and the delusions of the western press
Here are several articles debunking the reliability and exposing the bias media reports on the so called massacres against his own people.
1 ) On April 15, Peter Lee wrote this for Counterpunch:
“On April 10, a mysterious and bloody incident occurred near the seaside town of Banyas, in Syria.
Nine members of a Syrian army patrol were shot to death and twenty five were wounded—the single bloodiest incident in the Syrian uprising to date.
Western news services largely ignored the incident and concentrated on reports of the army’s move to encircle and pacify Banyas.”
He then goes on:
“By a remarkable coincidence, the events in Banyas attracted the close attention of one of America’s chief Syria watchers: Dr. Joshua Landis of the University of Oklahoma.
Dr. Landis’ wife is Syrian, and her cousin, Lt. Colonel Yasir Qash`ur , was one of the two Syrian army officers who died in the incident.
An amusing example is the case of the blog “Gay Girl in Damascus”, created on 21 February 2011. Edited in English by 25 year-old Amina, the website became a source of reference for Western media. Therein the author described the plight of a young lesbian under Bashar’s dictatorship and the day-to-day unfolding of the terrible repression unleashed against the revolution. As a gay woman, she garnered the protective empathy of Western web surfers who mobilized as soon as her arrest by the secret services of the “regime” was announced.
However, as it happened, Amina was a fiction. Betrayed by his IP address, a US 40 year-old “student” was discovered to be the real author of this masquerade. This propagandist, who was allegedly preparing a PhD in Scotland, recently participated in a pro-Western opposition conference held in Turkey, urging for a NATO intervention. He quite obviously did not attend in his capacity as a student
“Reality reversal is a principle being applied on a large scale. We may recall the United Nations reports on the humanitarian crisis in Libya alleging that tens of thousands of immigrant workers were fleeing the country to escape from violence. The conclusion drawn and spewed by the Western media was that the Gaddafi “regime” had to be toppled in favor of the Benghazi rebels. And yet, it was not the government of Tripoli who was responsible for this tragedy, but the so-called revolutionaries in Cyrenaica who were hunting down black Africans. Stirred by a racist ideology, they accused them of being at the service of Colonel Gaddafi and lynched whoever they could get their hands on.
In Syria, the images of armed groups perched on the rooftops and firing at random into the crowd or on police forces were broadcast on national television networks. Yet, these same images were relayed and used by Western and Saudi television channels to attribute these crimes to the government of Damascus.“
Who are the syrian opposition and who backs/supports/funds them?
The following will show & expose the clear war agenda against sovereign Syria, orchestrated by the U.S. , Israel, Saudi Arabia in collaboration with the western media outlets and Al-Jazeera + Al-Arabiyah of course.
Anna Haq, for Counterpunch published an article called “The Complexities of Syrian Violence“, in which she also points out the syrian government’s mistake and does not defend the treatment of the few “peaceful” protestors at all, but she points out something very important.
“Peaceful demonstrators are on the streets of different Syrian cities. They demand freedom, but they do so in the name of a majority that is not on those streets. Until April 22nd, these demonstrations did not exceed about fifty people at a time (in most cases, fifteen to twenty people would gather bravely). Mainstream journalists, perhaps buoyed by the Arab Spring, exaggerated the number of demonstrators (and perhaps tampered with pictures taken from pro-government demonstrations to make them seem anti-government gatherings) led the Syrian government to exclude all journalists. This was a bad decision. It meant that the reports coming out of Syria are mystifying; with the government’s own accounts always seen as suspicious while the anti-government accounts generally taken as truth.”
More Media Falsification & Manipulation
There is evidence of gross media manipulation and falsification from the outset of the protest movement in southern Syria on March 17th.
The Western media has presented the events in Syria as part of the broader Arab pro-democracy protest movement, spreading spontaneously from Tunisia, to Egypt, and from Libya to Syria.
Media coverage has focussed on the Syrian police and armed forces, which are accused of indiscriminately shooting and killing unarmed “pro-democracy” demonstrators. While these police shootings did indeed occur, what the media failed to mention is that among the demonstrators there were armed gunmen as well as snipers who were shooting at both the security forces and the protesters.
The death figures presented in the reports are often unsubstantiated. Many of the reports are “according to witnesses”. The images and video footages aired on Al Jazeera and CNN do not always correspond to the events which are being covered by the news reports.
Without evidence, the reports suggest authoritatively that the police is shooting at the soldiers and vice versa the soldiers are shooting on the police. In a April 29 Al Jazeera report, Daraa is described as “a city under siege:
“Tanks and troops control all roads in and out. Inside the city, shops are shuttered and nobody dare walk the once bustling market streets, today transformed into the kill zone of rooftop snipers.”
“Unable to crush the people who first dared rise up against him – neither with the secret police, paid thugs or the special forces of his brother’s military division – President Bashar al-Assad has sent thousands of Syrian soldiers and their heavy weaponry into Deraa for an operation the regime wants nobody in the world to see.”
“Though almost all communication channels with Deraa have been cut, including the Jordanian mobile service that reaches into the city from just across the border, Al Jazeera has gathered firsthand accounts of life inside the city from residents who just left or from eyewitnesses inside who were able to get outside the blackout area.”
“The picture that emerges is of a dark and deadly security arena, one driven by the actions of the secret police and their rooftop snipers, in which soldiers and protestors alike are being killed or wounded, in which cracks are emerging in the military itself, and in which is created the very chaos which the regime uses to justify its escalating crackdown. (Daraa, a City under Siege, IPS / Al Jazeera, April 29, 2011)”
The Al Jazeera report borders on the absurd. Read carefully.
“Tanks and troops control all roads in and out”, “thousands of Syrian soldiers and their heavy weaponry into Daraa”
This situation has prevailed for several weeks. This means that bona fide protesters who are not already inside Daraa cannot enter Daraa.
People who live in the city are in their homes: “nobody dares walk … the streets”. If nobody dares walk the streets where are the protesters?
Who is in the streets? According to Al Jazeera, the protesters are in the streets together with the soldiers, and both the protesters and the soldiers are being shot at by “plain clothes secret police”, by “paid thugs” and government sponsored snipers.
The impression conveyed in the report is that these casualties are attributed to infighting between the police and the military.
But the report also says that the soldiers (in the “thousands”) control all roads in and out of the city, but they are being shot upon by the plain clothed secret police.
The purpose of this web of media deceit, namely outright fabrications –where soldiers are being killed by police and “government snipers”– is to deny the existence of armed terrorist groups. The later are integrated by snipers and “plain clothed terrorists” who are shooting at the police, the Syrian armed forces and local residents.
These are not spontaneous acts of terror; they are carefully planned and coordinated attacks. In recent developments, according to a Xinhua report (April 30, 2011), armed “terrorist groups” “attacked the housing areas for servicemen” in Daraa province, “killing a sergeant and wounding two”.
While the government bears heavy responsibility for its mishandling of the military-police operation, including the deaths of civilians, the reports confirm that the armed terrorist groups had also opened fire on protesters and local residents. The casualties are then blamed on the armed forces and the police and the Bashar Al Assad government is portrayed by “the international community” as having ordered countless atrocities.
The fact of the matter is that foreign journalists are banned from reporting inside Syria, to the extent that much of the information including the number of casualties is obtained from the unverified accounts of “witnesses”.
It is in the interest of the US-NATO alliance to portray the events in Syria as a peaceful protest movement which is being brutally repressed by a “dictatorial regime”.
This article , although it had only been confirmed by Syrian state TV, reveals that two terrorists confessed that they fabricated news for Al-Jazeera & received money to buy weapons in order to attack security forces in Hama.
U.S. secretely funding syrian opposition, Wikileaks cables reveal
“the State Department has secretly financed Syrian political opposition groups and related projects, including a satellite TV channel that beams anti-government programming into the country, according to previously undisclosed diplomatic cables.
The London-based satellite channel, Barada TV, began broadcasting in April 2009 but has ramped up operations to cover the mass protests in Syria as part of a long-standing campaign to overthrow the country’s autocratic leader, Bashar al-Assad. Human rights groups say scores of people have been killed by Assad’s security forces since the demonstrations began March 18; Syria has blamed the violence on “armed gangs.” “
Saudi / Zionist involvement
Bassam Abu Abdulla, from the Al Watan news agency in Damascus’ reply to PressTV’s question “How’s the situation in Syria compared with other events taking place in the region?”
“Now, about the role of the foreign factors. Yesterday, I think, The Washington Post newspaper published that the United States Department of State supported the Al-Barada TV channel, a TV channel in opposition of Syria, paying them USD 6 million to secretly support some so-called opposition leaders.
I don’t trust these kinds of people who are living in Washington, Paris, or London.
The real situation is that because the Syrian position is against the American plans in the region and against Israel, and because Syria is supporting the resistance movements — generally, Hezbollah and Hamas [that are] against the American plans — the conspiracy against the US is continuing.
We are talking about different parties participating in these conspiracies. We can watch these different groups. The first group is the corrupted people inside Syria.
The second group is the Salafi group who is being supported by [Saudi Arabia's] Bandar bin Sultan, the American CIA and [Israel's] Mossad.
The third group is composed of some regional parties against Syria.
The fourth group is the Muslim brothers in London, and now they are in Saudi Arabia.
All these groups, besides the TV channels war, are working against Syria now. The Syrian government will soon face this situation because we are not talking about severe demonstrations, but we are talking about the Salafi group – those who speak a very strange language in the Syrian society and who want to divide the Syrian nation, which is a redline for all Syrians. Because of that we will soon see the Syrian government deal with them in another way.“
Personal thoughts
The manufactured consent, especially the leftists & progressives support for western aggression against a sovereign country has dramatically changed since Libya. While the same people that opposed the complete operation against Iraq in 2003 were shockingly quiet about the NATO attacks on Libya and the violation of UN Resolution 1973 that called for the protection of civilians, not for regime change.
It was no secret that Saddam Hussein’s troops used terrible weapons in the war against Iran, aswell as against the kurds in his own country. Nonetheless the left & progressive completely opposed not even the NATO attacks on Iraq, but also the sanctions imposed that caused at least several hundred thousand civilian casualties. There was no question about wheter one has to decide to stand with Saddam or with the west. It appeared pretty obvious that the west’s interests had nothing to do with even caring about one single Iraqi, so the question was more to dedice wheter we let Iraq be imperfectly theirs or if it is going to be imperfectly ours. Ironically enough that we in the west claim to have the moral/political decision to make regarding what’s good or bad for a foreign, sovereign nation. Not only was it the west that issued Saddam the weapons & more or less forced him & his military to use them against Iran, but it was again us not only arresting him, bringing him to court & hanging him on a muslim holiday for exactly those crimes but all of this happened in context of the bloodiest & inhumane invasion since Vietnam.
Now the west is on a hunt for Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, obviously trying to kill him & his family as they did to Saddam. There’s not only no evidence that troops loyal to Gaddafi commited some kind of a mass murder or genocide against its own people, speaking of directly targeting ‘innocent civilians’ but there’s far more evidence, admitted & confirmed by the west and their media that NATO killed thousands of civilians in context of UN Resolution 1973. Furthermore we didn’t see a third to half of the Iraqi population getting out on the streets in solidarity & loyalty to their leader, as libyans did for Muammar Gaddafi & their system, the libyan arab Jamahiriya. The western media treats those people as unequal as their own people at home. While there were no remarkable reports on the 1.7 million people on Green Sqare on July 1st of 2011, the media only reported some small ‘rebel’ protests where – taking a closer look – you can hardly find any notable civilian support for the rebels, even in the videos & pictures provided by the corporate media. The same bias took place in the United States. When Minister Farrakhan & others spoke on the Millions March in Harlem in support for Gaddafi & libyan arab Jamahiriya no notable media outlet reported about it. Then again, when the Tea Party is holding a rally with a few thousand supporters it is all over the media, newspapers & magazines.
Now the west, along with his corporate media, with the support of Al-Jazeera & Al-Arabiyah is preparing for eihter a massive destabilization, if not even a war against Syria. President Assad now tries not to let any foreign, private media into his country. On first sight this may sound harsh for our understanding of democracy but – assuming Assad is an intelligent man – we, aswell as his government know what foreign media can do to you if the agenda is clear, which it obviously is. So, let me address the people in the west, who, like myself have the power to make other people aware of the current situation in Syria. Let’s for one second assume that those attacks on protestors have taken place, which i would totally condemn of course. Now, we must ask ourselves several questions.
Do we really want our tax money being spent on another war on a country in the middle east?
Why are we funding & therefor creating opposition movements all over the world, from Venezuela over Iran until Syria, and if the state fights back we try to call it “mass murder/genocide against its own people”?
Only imagine what happened in London if Syria or Iran would have issued the rioters/protestors with money & weapons to create chaos & destabilization in the streets of the UK. Regardless wheter you believe in the necessity of the people rioting there or not, the state has the right to – lawfully & righteously – prosecute the people who broke the law during the riots. So now, even in London, UK, the streets where David Cameron, Sarkozy’s partner in bringing “democracy” to the arab world is the current president, people have been killed, injured and in the outcome many were unlawfully jailed & prosecuted. One man even faces a 4 year prison sentence for a comment he made on Facebook encouraging people to riot. Only imagine if such happened in Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Syria etc.
Although undeniably, there is a need for reforms it is pretty obvious that there is absolutely no need for a regime change in Syria. The “freedoms” or “democratic changes” the peaceful protestors (which are only a small number compared to the US-backed salafists & other fundamental groups) demand will not at all be taken seriously by any possible oppisiton right now, so the syrian demonstrators should actually be very careful what they wish for, going out in the streets and demanding regime change instead of reforms. Bashar al-Assad should have used his large popularity to address his people and introduce reforms earlier than he did. No doubt there are some authentic demonstrations going out on the streets, but yet, neither any media outlet can prove wheter Assad is giving the orders or the combined Alawite dominated Security, Military, Ba’ath Party and the Shahiba thugs. Since he’s head of state he will be held accountable. The people who jump on the bandwagon of the syrian demonstrations similar to those in Libya should be very careful since we know way better now, now when it’s too late. Personally, i call upon the BRICS states to mediate & try to get a dialogue in that region, but the first premise would be complete western withdrawal, and by that i mean the western media bias, the intelligence, the Saudi, Qatari & of course turkish influence. There will never be an authentic revolution – backed by the west. If we learned one lesson from Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Lebanon, Ivory Coast, Venezuela etc then to NEVER TRUST THE WEST, and as sad as it may sound, when people die, people die but then the BRICS states or the ALBA states should make demands and call upon Assad. How can you call for empire, which killed millions of arabs only in the first decade of the 21st century, to help you? Western double standars reached a point of insanity and we in the west must acknowledge that we don’t care about any Syrian, nor do we care about any protestor who may have been shot, nor do we care about the level of freedom the syrians enjoy. It’s mainly about destabalizing the country & destroying the religious freedom, to once again promote fundamentalist religion in the region to cause & directly fund friction among muslim people. I’m actually not sure if the plans are to invade or bomb Syria. In my opinion the west will mainly focus on managing to get regime change & establish an eliteist, fundamentalist religious government as Saudi Arabia to prevent a real arab uprising, based on unity against western imperialism. Iran, Syria & the Hezbollah are the remaining powers in the middle east that will never back down from their strong supporting & funding of the palestinian resistance to one day see the liberation of Palestine, the end of the zionist regime and the establishment of a state in which muslims, christians, jews, blacks, browns & whites can peacefully live together. Nonetheless an attack on Syria is very likely to happen. There is already an oil embargo and voices are calling louder and louder for a no-fly zone, what always led to air strikes or/and a ground invasion. The difference between Syria and Iran/Lebanon is that Syria won’t be able to defend themselves against NATO or Turkey as western proxy. The zionist regime already lost its war against Hezbollah in 2006 and, in my opinion, the west will never attack Iran by a military strike, not even a NATO attack because they know very well that Iran has the power to strike back and aswell attack the western metropolies as direct answer. So it is pretty obvious that empire’s next target is Syria.
The media-blocked protests in Israel are also an indicator of people recognizing the dirty war games their government is playing together with the west, the Saudis & their support from Al-Jazeera. I believe that israelis do not necessarily support their zionist regime, they are just being indoctrinated with fear and hatred against the palestinians which causes them to rather be quiet about their own governments crimes against the palestinians. The real revolution doesn’t start on the streets, but in the minds of the people, especially the young generation. If the majority of the “arab spring protestors” were aware of the geostrategic plans of the west and their real agenda in the region, not Libyans, Syrians or Iranians would see a necessity to rise up, but first of all the people in the gulf states would then see the dramatic need of getting rid of their western puppets in power when their natural resources make them the richest nations on earth. Only then, when Iran, the Hezbollah & Syria don’t face threats from the west anymore, there can seriously be talks about more democratic freedoms in those countries and if people outside of the Global South should be involved in it or not.
In the following days i will cover & write down some important issues about Turkey’s role as US proxy, the underestimation of the religious meaning of the Assad’s & the syrian opposition, reports from people who have visited the refugee camps in Syria and report what some voices directly from Syria & the Hatay region in Turkey, which formerly belonged to Syria, in which lots of Syrians live say.
Veröffentlicht am August 9, 2011 von Daniele Puccio
Priority
While the british government rather focusses on bombing Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia etc. the whole 3rd world’s anger unleashes in their own YOUTH. Black and White are uniting against an oppressive system towards both races. The non-white community in the UK doesn’t only fight a corrupt regime which spends their tax money on bombing their brothers and sisters in occupied countries all over the world, but also also a government that is using vast police brutality against “its own” citizens.
The Guardian reported that “a total of 333 people have died in or following police custody over the past 11 years, but no officer has ever been successfully prosecuted, according to a watchdog’s report. Prosecutions were recommended against 13 officers based on “relatively strong evidence of misconduct or neglect”, but none resulted in a guilty verdict.”
Demonization – a lovestory
In the meantime the corporate media from all over the world not only tries to demonize the protesters as some kind of violence-lusty anarchists that only seek for loot & destruction in the “developed” areas of London but also reduce the anger that led to those actions as overreaction to the killing of Mark Duggan. What they want you to forget is that the last riots – where even the Tory HQ had been stormed – started less than 10 months ago. While, in my humble opinion, the education cuts riots were a direct response to direct action, the situation is different right now.
“Since the coalition came to power just over a year ago, the country has seen multiple student protests, occupations of dozens of universities, several strikes, a half-a-million-strong trade union march and now unrest on the streets of the capital (preceded by clashes with Bristol police in Stokes Croft earlier in the year).”
The cause of violence is clearly the result of miscommunication. Miscommunication in the sense that the british government does not even ‘listen’ to their youths’ demands, not to mention that they would “hear” them if they listened.
This scene between protestor and ITV reporter couldn’t encapsulate the desperate attempts to ‘be heard’ by the people & the arrogant, racist responses by the government (= no response at all) any better.
-
Is rioting the correct way to express your discontent?
“Yes,” said the young man. “You wouldn’t be talking to me now if we didn’t riot, would you?”
The TV reporter from Britain’s ITV had no response. So the young man pressed his advantage. “Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press.
Last night a bit of rioting and looting and look around you.”
-
In context to the campaign of demonizing the protesting/rioting youth we also have to ask us WHO is protesting there?
Those arent “mad criminals”, those are also the same young people that were rioting months ago after the announcement of the education cuts. The ghetto/black London youth isn’t on its own in being oppressed, brutalized & hardly taken seriously. Black, white, middle-class & working class uniting against the government. I mean those are – amongst others – the people that will attend the elite universities of their country, people that may dominate UK’s politics one day and you want us to believe that those are violent criminals that just wait for a reason to riot?
I will not advocate the looting of houses in any way & seriously believe that the youth should only target their enemy, an enitity of racism, capitalism & imperialism. Why do you think the police is protecting Tesco while the small businesses get looted?
On Violence
“Violence can thus be understood to be the perfect mediation. The colonized man liberates himself in and through violence (Frantz Fanon). Is the clear mirror of violence not something of a mirage in which the dispossessed see their reflections but from which they cannot slake their thirst?” (Homi K. Bhaba)
Reactions:
On the first sight it seems pretty obvious that we should denounce the violent looting and many leftists, artists, etc. did but none of us asked them to loot either so aren’t we doing the governments dirty work then? There’s a people’s demand and to be ‘heard” it took some looting & rioting. Now it’s the governments turn to address the people and every condemnation from within towards the protesting voices only serves the governments agenda of demonization.
If the government cares about all of its people it will address the protesters’ demands. If not, everyone that’s now “in fear” has the chance to join them and show the government that it should fear the people, not vice versa. If anyone still pretends it doesn’t has anything to do with him or is happy how politics in Britain are being run he/she has all the right to do so. . . the same right as the protestors have to find him/her guilty of co-operating with a racist & imperialistic government that disregarded the people’s demands for months & years now.
To me, this is clearly another baby step towards the global revolution where the “wretched of the earth” due to white supremacy/imperialism/capitalism/racism/neo-colonialism stand up to their oppressors and are ready to take over the 1st world and the expired justification & morality of “our” values.
Veröffentlicht am Juni 28, 2011 von Daniele Puccio
Those days, the name Luis Moreno-Ocampo repeatedly appears in the mainstream media. He is the ICC’s chief prosecutor, known for the arrest warrant against sudanese head of state Omar Al-Bashir.
But yesterday it wasn’t about the Sudan but about Libya. Muammar Gaddafi was his next target. He accused him of “ordering the use of rape as a weapon of war” with no evidence provided.
Despite the fact that even the US-based human rights organization Amnesty International questioned the accusations the ICC issued an arrest warrant against Gaddafi.
To The Presidency of the International Criminal Court
Complaint against ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo concerning serious misconduct
1. This complaint, submitted to the Presidency of the ICC under
Regulation 119.1 of the Regulations of the Court and Rule 23 of the
Rules of Procedure and Evidence, alleges that Prosecutor Luis Moreno-
Ocampo on 28 March 2005 committed serious misconduct, either in
the course of his official duties, which is incompatible with official
functions, and causes or is likely to cause serious harm to the proper
administration of justice before the Court or the proper internal
functioning of the Court1; or of a grave nature outside the course of his
official duties that causes or is likely to cause serious harm to the
standing of the Court2, by committing the crime of rape, or sexual
assault, or sexual coercion, or sexual abuse against [NAME], a citizen
of South Africa, and that for this reason he should be removed from
Office by the Assembly of States Parties. The crime was committed in
a guest suite of Lord Charles Hotel in the town Somerset West in the
Western Cape Province of South Africa in the afternoon of 28 March
2005. [NAME], a leading reporter with the [NAME] newspaper [NAME],
had traveled to Cape Town for a pre-agreed interview with Moreno-
Ocampo on this day.
2. The following narrative will describe the events of 28 March 2005
and the crime committed by Moreno-Ocampo. As evidence and other
information in support of the allegation the following documents and
audio files are annexed to the complaint:
Let’s start with one of the first myths about the imposed No-Fly-Zone over Libya. On March 12, 2011 Aljazeera reported that: “Foreign ministers from the 22-member bloc also appeared to leave Gaddafi increasingly isolated, saying his government had “lost its sovereignty”. That’s a vast lie. Of the 22 full members, only 11 were present at the voting. Six of them were Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members, the US-supported club of Gulf kingdoms/sheikhdoms, of which Saudi Arabia is the top dog, Asia Times reported. Syria and Algeria voted against it, so 9 out of 22 Arab League members, of which 6 are GCC called for a No-Fly-Zone over Libya. What the so-called pro-arab, pro-palestinian Al-Jazeera hadn’t reported was that on April 10, 2011 the Arab League called for a No-Fly-Zone over Gaza.
Let’s hear Mumia-Abu-Jamal
As pro-revolution they were during the egyptian turmoil as pro-empire did they serve in their reporting on Libya and Syria. Be aware that Al-Jazeera has his headquarters in Qatar, a puppet state of the United States and close ally to Saudi-Arabia. They don’t represent the people but the oligarchy. Mubarak was just a different one of them, but Gaddafi was not shy to question all of his Arab-League colleagues and to put them in their place when needed. Let’s take a look.
Gaddafi’s speech in front of the other Arab League leaders
I want you to watch the video, so i just state the issues he raises.
- Hypocrisy of Arab States in the Palestinian Struggle
- Rejects the hostility between Arab States and Iran, Turkey e.g.
- Tells them they share nothing beyond this hall
- Calls for investigation of the “Saddam Hussein hanging”
- Warns that one of them might be next.
- Calls for unity among Arabs
On September 23, 2009 Muammar Gaddafi spoke in front of the United Nations.
He questioned the “equality” of all states in the United Nations. “The preamble says, “Nations large and small, are equal in rights” .. Such a preamble, and this is that we have approved. Then veto the Charter, the permanent seats against the Charter, and this we do not recognize and does not accept it.”He goes on then, calling for a reform after having analyzed the hypocrisy of what’s written in the charter and what’s happening on the ground. “Reform the United Nations – Ladies and gentlemen – not to go towards increasing the seats.” … “So what is the solution? – “… replace the union membership, and democracy equality among Member States, and the transfer of the powers of the Security Council to the General Assembly.” He also proposes to have Unions in the Security Council, as the EU, the United States, the Latin American Union, the African Union and so on. He addresses issues like Vietnam, Panama, Yugoslavia, Somalia, Abu Ghraib, Sabra et Chatila, and the role of the United Nations. Further he speaks about the assassinations of Martin Luther King, JFK and Patrice Lumumba and calls for investigations. Then he addresses the Gaza Massacre : The perpetrators are alive, and must turn to the International Criminal Court. Or that does not turn only “lying wind” for the International Criminal Court, but the small third world countries, and those not protected are turning to the Criminal Court.” … “If it is not international, we also do not recognize them, but if everyone was an international subject.As long as the International Court of Justice does not respect its provisions are not implemented, and the IAEA is not for all countries, and the General Assembly are now none, and the Security Council like a personal fiefdom monopolist security So what is the United Nations? . Nothing. Who is the United Nations? There is no United Nations.”
Watch or read the full speech to know every detail he addressed. We heard similar words from Hugo Chavez in front of the UN. Gaddafi is not a brutal, crazy dictator but a man that established the most developed state in whole Africa over the last 40 years.
He might not portray himself as a socialist like Chavez does but his domestic politics speak a clear language. I’m trying to show reasons for the NATO attacks and the constant demonizing of Gaddafi in the mass media. This speech may have had a huge impact on his relations towards western states. But there are more reasons, so let’s continue.
Nationalization of Libyan Oil
On January 25, 2009, Muammar Al Gaddafi announced that his country was studying the nationalisation of foreign companies due to lower oil prices.
“The oil-exporting countries should opt for nationalisation because of the rapid fall in oil prices. We must put the issue on the table and discuss it seriously,” said Gaddafi.
“Oil should be owned by the State at this time, so we could better control prices by the increase or decrease in production,” said the Libyan leader.
On February 16, 2009, Gaddafi took a step further and called on Libyans to back his proposal to dismantle the government and to distribute the oil wealth directly to the 5 million inhabitants of the country.
“Do not be afraid to directly redistribute the oil money and create fairer governance structures that respond to people’s interests,” Gaddafi said in a Popular Committee.
Gaddafi proposes 1 million strong pan-africanist army
“African nations should join forces to create a one-million-strong army to protect the continent and confront outsiders like NATO and China” … “National militaries alone cannot save countries. Africa should have one army with one million soldiers,” Gaddafi said in a speech in the Senegalese capital.”
Gaddafi has been pushing for an African unity government for years, saying it is the only way Africa can develop without Western interference.
“International bankers have reportedly wasted billions of dollars invested by Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi. The Financial Times says giants like Goldman Sachs were dealing with the dictator’s investments when it needed to plug a hole during the economic crisis. Most of the money has been lost, but with what’s going on in Libya any repayment seems unlikely.”
No intentions to raise any thoughts of conspiracy but let’s face reality. Goldman Sachs used Gaddafi’s investments as a plug during the economic crisis and many “investors” got their money back, even made more money off the crisis, thanks to the huge bailouts that got the U.S. over the 14 trillion dollar debt mark. So honestly, i would be surprised if there was nobody in those economic world forums and meetings during the crisis that proposed a dehumanization campaign against Gaddafi to make sure the money has not to be repaid. Fact is that they ripped him off and the propaganda campaign to demonize him will make it impossible to claim the repayment of any “stolen money”.
Also look up “The Great-Man-Made-River Project” and the recent release of rebels. The facts speak another language than the media propaganda, so choose your sides.
Global Civilians For Peace In Libya, racist “black-people lynching” rebels and NATO casualties
Sukant Chandan and Lizzie Cocker are currently in Tripoli with the only peace delegation for Libya called “Global Civilians For Peace In Libya”.
Sukant Chandan interviewing a hospital worker at NATO bombing site in Libya
Sukant Chandan reporting from NATO bombing site of Saif Al-Arab’s home
Sukant Chandan interviewing a black libyan medical student
Sukant Chandan reporting from primary school damaged by NATO bombing
Lizzie Cocker interviewing italian resident of Tripoli
Watch a summary of mass media propaganda on Libya here. Big up Russia’s First Channel to report this.
Racist libyan rebels lynching black people
While much of the world’s attention is focusing on crude oil prices and the Libyan pipelines in the east of the country– human right groups say rebels are committing crimes against humanity.
In east Libya, African hunt began as towns and cities began fall under the control of Libyan rebels, mobs and gangs. They started to detain, insult, rape and even executing black immigrants, students and refugees.
In the past two weeks, more than 100 Africans from various Sub-Sahara states are believed to have been killed by Libyan rebels and their supporters.
Cynthia McKinney’s statement on Libya and the lynching of black people by the pro-NATO contras.
Libyan pro-NATO contras and the CIA
For better than two weeks there had been a virtual ban in the US media on reporting the name of Khalifa Haftar, the long-time CIA collaborator who was appointed chief rebel commander March 17, on the eve of the US-NATO bombing campaign against Libya. Only the regional McClatchy Newspapers chain reported Haftar’s appointment, and ABC News ran a brief interview with him on March 27. Otherwise, silence prevailed.
The Independent column, headlined “The Shady Men Backed by the West to Displace Gaddafi,” described the Libyan rebel commanders as follows: “The careers of several make them sound like characters out of the more sinister Graham Greene novels. They include men such as Colonel Khalifa Haftar, former commander of the Libyan army in Chad who was captured and changed sides in 1988, setting up the anti-Gaddafi Libyan National Army reportedly with CIA and Saudi backing. For the last 20 years, he has been living quietly in Virginia before returning to Benghazi to lead the fight against Gaddafi.”
Nothing can persuade me that Gadhaffi’s fate wasn’t decided months ago, when Chevron and Occidental Petroleum took their whining to Capitol Hill, complaining that Gadhaffi’s nationalism interfered with their oil profiteering. From that moment, military intervention was on the drawing board as surely as the Patriot Act got stuck in a drawer waiting for 9/11.
The message is simple: Challenge the oil corporations and your government and your people will pay the ultimate price: Give us your oil as cheaply as possible. Or die.
Don’t kid yourself. Nobody gives a damn about suffering in Libya or Iraq. You don’t bomb a village to save it. The U.S., Britain and NATO are the bullies of the neighborhood. The enforcers for Big Oil.
Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan have something in common. They have vast and extraordinary oil and mineral riches. As such, they are all victims of what I call the Vampire Wars. The Arab Princes get paid off, while the bloodsuckers pull the life blood out of the people. They’re scarcely able to survive in their own wealthy societies. The people and the domestic economy are kept alive to uphold the social order, but they are depleted of the nourishment of their own national wealth.
Today President Barack Obama spoke at AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Comittee), one of the most influential lobby groups in the United States. I will quote what he said and try to give a reflection and analysis on what his rhetoric really means for Israel, for the U.S. and for the Palestinian, Lebanese & Iranian people, which have all been directly or indirectly adressed by Obama in this speech.
“On Friday i was joined to the White House by Prime Minister Netanyahu and we reaffirmed … “the bonds between Israel and the United States are unbreakable.”
He begins.
“A strong and secure Israel is in the national security interests of the United States not simply because of strategic interests” … “not simply because we face common dangers although there can be no denying that terrorism and the spread of nuclear weapons are great threats to both of our nations” … “Americas commitment to Israel’s security flows from a deeper place and thats the values we share, that’s two people who have struggled to win our freedom against overwhelming odds”
There’s no real hidden truth behind those few sentences, but some kind of hypocrisy or even irony. A western hegemony ruled by the United States is Israel’s strategic interest because of the “tough neighbours”, as Obama calls the geographical placement of Israel, that’s no secret and in return the United States are happy to have a – by western double standards defined – “democracy” as its ally with Nuclear Weapons and the strongest military in the Middle East region.
Two people who have struggled to win their freedoms against overwhelming odds is some kind of irony to me. The only common so-called struggles he mentions are that both Israel and the U.S. are two people that brutally took away other peoples homeland, killed or displaced them and then built their own state on other peoples land. A high cost, if that’s supposed to be the framework of a democracy.
“I’ve seen it firsthand”, he goes on. What? The displacement of palestinians? The white phosphorus bombs that are being dropped on Gaza? The daily struggles of palestinians under siege, curfews, checkpoints, home demolitions, the collective punishment policy etc..? No, I didn’t think so, but read for yourselves.
“Where i touched my hand against the western wall and placed my prayer between its ancient stones I’ve thought of all the centuries and all the children of Israel that long to return to their ancient homeland”
“When i went to Sderod i saw the daily struggle to survive in the eyes of an 8-year old boy who lost his leg to a Hamas rocket”
“And when i walked among the hall of names in Yad Veshem i was reminded of this existencial fear of Israelis when a modern dictator seeks nuclear weapons and threatens to wipe Israel off the face of the map – face of the earth”
No doubt, a 8-year old Israeli boy that lost his leg due to a Hamas rocket is morally not sustainable and i distance myself from any claim that i don’t see the suffering of several Israeli citizens that were victims of a terrorist attack.
But regarding the number of casualties of this conflict from 2000 -2011 it‘s a shame to speak about an Israeli boy that was hit by a rocket to express the struggle and the fear that the citizens of Israel go through and not even mention one single palestinian that been killed by Israeli attacks. The numbers should not legitimize Israeli casualties but the several thousands palestinian civilian casualties that have been killed under siege and in “crimes against humanity” as called by the United Nations aren’t even worth a word?
Let me make a little excursion at this point.
“when a modern dictator seeks nuclear weapons and threatens to wipe Israel off the face of the map – face of the earth”
The “modern dictator” he’s talking about is the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The original clarification about the false media claims can be read here, in persian tho.
I will not go deeply into the “nuclear weapons” claim. To this day there is absolutely no evidence for it. Watch this video by Jürgen Elsässer, a german author who wrote the book “Iran – Facts against western propaganda”, although it’s just my translation of the german title, the only language it’s available so far.
In addition to his, that’s what he said regarding Iran.
“You also see our commitment to our shared security in our determination to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Here in the United States, we’ve imposed the toughest sanctions ever on the Iranian regime. At the United Nations, under our leadership, we’ve secured the most comprehensive international sanctions on the regime, which have been joined by allies and partners around the world. Today, Iran is virtually cut off from large parts of the international financial system, and we’re going to keep up the pressure.”
Excuse me, but this statement is just poor. We all know that sanctions only hurt the population, not the leadership. Further, saying “At the UN under our leadership” is a) a contradiction in itself but sadly the bitter truth regarding the U.S. abuse of their Veto and b) a shameless and power-mad statement which can surely be seen as a result of Israeli Lobby pressure.
What he calls “allies and partners around the world” were mainly Nicolas Sarkozy and Gordon Brown that “presented a united front last September at the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh, when the three confronted Iran and gave them until the end of 2009 to halt its nuclear program.” … “The president blamed the lack of unanimous support on other countries that have oil interests in Iran. Russia and China, the other two permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, have resisted tougher sanctions on Iran.”
“Because we understand the challenges Israel faces I and my administration have made the security of Israel a priority. It’s why we have increased cooperation between out militaries to unprecedented levels. That’s why we’re making our most advanced technologies available to our Israeli allies. That’s why we despite tough fiscal times we’ve increased our military financing to record levels and that includes additional support beyond regular military aid for the Iron Dome anti-rocket system”
“We will maintain Israel’s qualitative military edge”
Let’s check what “regular military aid” means. Take a look at this scene from the documentary “Occupation 101″. You can check the numbers for yourselves since the U.S. makes no secret out of it.
“And it is precisely because of our commitment to Israel’s long-term security that we have worked to advance peace between Israelis and Palestinians.”
“Now, I have said repeatedly that core issues can only be negotiated in direct talks between the parties. And I indicated on Thursday that the recent agreement between Fatah and Hamas poses an enormous obstacle to peace. No country can be expected to negotiate with a terrorist organization sworn to its destruction.”
“Every year, the United Nations General Assembly votes on a resolution entitled “Peaceful Settlement of the Palestine Question.” And every year the vote is the same: it’s the whole world on one side; Israel, the United States and some South Sea atolls and Australia on the other side. The vote this past year was 164-to-7. Every year since 1989—in 1989, the vote was 151-to-3, the whole world on one side, the United States, Israel and the island state of Dominica on the other side.”
The president calls this international concensus an “effort to single Israel out” and he made the U.S. position very clear.
“No vote at the United Nations will ever create an independent Palestinian state. And the United States will stand up against efforts to single Israel out at the United Nations or in any international forum.”
“We have the Arab League, all twenty-two members of the Arab League, favoring a two-state settlement on the June 1967 border. We have the Palestinian Authority favoring that two-state settlement on the June 1967 border. We now have Hamas favoring that two-state settlement on the June 1967 border. The one and only obstacle is Israel, backed by the United States. That’s the problem.”
“Well, the record shows that Hamas wanted to continue the ceasefire, but only on condition that Israel eases the blockade. Long before Hamas began the retaliatory rocket attacks on Israel, Palestinians were facing a humanitarian crisis in Gaza because of the blockade. The former High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, described what was going on in Gaza as a destruction of a civilization. This was during the ceasefire period.”
“Let me repeat what I actually said on Thursday — not what I was reported to have said. And since my position has been misrepresented several times, let me reaffirm what “1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps” means.”
“I said that the United States believes that negotiations should result in two states, with permanent Palestinian borders with Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, and permanent Israeli borders with Palestine. The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states. The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves, and reach their potential, in a sovereign and contiguous state. … “By definition, it means that the parties themselves -– Israelis and Palestinians -– will negotiate a border that is different than the one that existed on June 4, 1967.”
“Mutually agreed swaps” was the keyword in his last few speeches concerning Israel and Palestine. Let’s take a look at those swaps that could eventually be mutually agreed on
This is the map with the original 1967 borders.
“From 1967 to mid-2010, Israel established 121 settlements in the West Bank that were recognized by the Interior Ministry as “communities.” In addition, some 100 outposts (settlements built without official authorization but with support and assistance of government ministries).” reports B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.
So let’s talk realistically. In 2009, “Close to 500,000 Jews live in more than 100 settlements built since Israel’s 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem.” says this BBC article, and the BBC is not known to claim or falsify numbers in favor of palestinian interests. In 2007, according to the UNRWA population cencus 3,767,126 people lived in the West Bank.
Let’s look at the 2002 map now to be aware what “mutually agreed swaps” could possibly be. Note: Between 2003 and 2006 the number of settlers increased from around 400.000 to 450.000 (including East Jerusalem) and under the Likud administration the “under international law illegal” settlements were continued to being built at an extremely fast pace.
“And we once again call on Hamas to release Gilad Shalit, who has been kept from his family for five long years.”
Then, coming to the end he mentions one israeli soldier that has been captures by Hamas in a cross-border raid in 2006. He calls for the immediate release. Nothing wrong about this at the first glance but what does he say about the palestinians kept in “Administrative Detention“, which is legal under certain ristrictions. But B’Tselem points out that “Israel’s use of administrative detention blatantly violates these restrictions.” To this day, Israel keeps yet 217 palestinians in Administrative Detention. No comments on this either by Obama.
I will close this article with two statements that i don’t want to comment, but just let people decide for themselves.
Look out for two words: Peace & Hypocrisy…
“For if history teaches us anything, if the story of Israel teaches us anything, it is that with courage and resolve, progress is possible. Peace is possible.”
“As I said on Thursday, the Iranian government has shown its hypocrisy by claiming to support the rights of protesters while treating its own people with brutality.”
Yesterday, speaking May 16th the republican host of the “O’Reilly Factor” Bill O’Reilly invited democrat Jon Stewart, host of the “Daily Show” to a debate.
The reason for this debate was that Michelle Obama invited rapper Common to White House.
Now, all of us will ask ourselves what gives the invitation of a black conscious rapper to the White House the importance to have a debate on it?
According to Bill O’Reilly “when a president invites someone, in this case the First Lady invites him, the résumé has to be put in front of them and they have to select people who are almost unimpeachable because they are getting the honor to go to the White House. This guy is controversal all day long with this stuff, not only did he support this cop killer or celebrate a cop killer (while showing a picture of Assata Shakur), he celebrated another cop killer in Philadalphia (while showing a picture of Mumia Abu-Jamal)”
Not only does Bill O’Reilly make the most eliteist statement i’ve ever heard by saying that someone that’s invited to the White House has to be a “almost unimpeachable” person, in my opinion meaning someone that does not challenge or criticize power or the law. He also demonized the fact that he went to Cuba to visit her. O’Reilly’s answer to Common’s respect for her by saying “Damn, this was someone who fought for my freedom” was “Common wasn’t even born when this crime took place”.
Regardless of what you think about Jon Stewart, his answer is brilliant. He asks his ‘opponent’ if he is familiar with the Leonard Peltier case. After getting a “yes” he points out that Bono from U2, a white singer wrote a song about him, a man who was convicted and sentenced in 1977 to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment for first degree murder, in O’Reilly’s words a “cop killer”. Bono was also invited to the White House.
Then he brings up Bob Dylan, a white singer who wrote a song about Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, a later released – but at the time the song came out – convicted “killer”.
“Now we’re going on to Wounded Knee” … on Stewart’s statement that those cases are “similar” he only replies “no it’s not because you are pettifogging the issue”
Jon Stewarts conclusion:
“That is exactly the same. Why are you drawing the line at Common? There is a selective outrage machine here at Fox that pettifogs, only when it suits the narrative that suits them. This guy is in the crosshairs in a way that he shouldn’t be. You may think he’s ignorant in believing that Assata Shakur is ignorant. You may think he’s ignorant in believing that Mumia [Abu-Jamal] is. But then guess what? Bono can’t go to the White House, [Bruce] Springsteen can’t go the White House, Bob Dylan can’t go to the White House. You’ve got a lot of people, that aren’t allowed to sit in the White House, because they’ve written songs about people convicted of murder.”
but please watch it
My thoughts:
We all know it but Bill O’Reilly never fails to prove it. He is a passionate racist and white supremacist. His opinions have nothing to do with being conservative or republican.
Everytime a black person “achieves” anything, let it be a huge contract as in the Ludacris’ Pepsi case, or the black ownership of the restaurant Sylvia’s where he had dinner with Al Sharpton and afterwards saying “I couldn’t get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia’s restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it’s run by blacks, primarily black patronship.” … adding “”There wasn’t one person in Sylvia’s who was screaming, ‘M-Fer, I want more iced tea.’ or now the case about Common’s invitation to the White House.
To be fair, he also attacks white people that doesn’t support his reaganomic beliefs, but that does not ease the fact that he is consistantly attacking black/asian/latin-american people, demonizing socialists and socialism, making a rapper like Kanye West and a president like Ahmadinejad “pinheads” on his show. It only shows that he tries to dehumanize every person that challenges his egocentric white supremacist opinion, which are predominantly people with non-white roots whose anscestors fought in a struggle he denies. He proved it once again by denying the fact that Assata Shakur and Mumia Abu-Jamal fought for equality and against racism. He only calls them “copkillers” or just, like in Assata’s case “member of the Black Liberation Army” as if they fought without a justified agenda and had equal rights and chances.
Yesterday on May 15th the major news agencies reported that Dominique Strauss-Kahn, chief of the IMF (International Monetary Fund) had been arrested by the New York Police. NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said he was charged with a criminal sexual act, unlawful imprisonment and attempted rape.
Soon after the news appeared, his lawyer Benjamin Brafman told Reuters “his client will plead not guilty”.
Since we are no lawyers let’s not focus on the rape charges but on the other significant issues that made the news along with them. The first thing that attracted my attention was the recurring synonym for him and his work. I’m talking about the word “socialist”. Then in nearly every newspaper the fact that he is Sarkozy’s main opponent appeared. Let’s take a look at those 2 claims, on who profits from this and the irony that someone who’s the chief of the institution that consistantly rapes Third World Countries might himself be a rapist when proven guilty.
Strauss-Kahn, the socialist?
In the mainstream media Dominique Strauss-Kahn is widely recognized for being a socialist. Why? Mainly, because he belongs to the “parti socialiste“, the socialist party in France. The famous french president that belonged to the socialist party in France was Francois Mitterand from 1981-1995. But lets look at the earlier policy within the socialist party. In 1997 Jacques Chirac had to accept a cohabitition under which Lionel Jospin (also a “socialist” cause he belonged to the socialist party) held office as the french prime minister.
On May 29th of 2005 the socialist party showed how deeply divided the party supporters are. After the referendum on the European Constitution Francois Hollande, the chief of the socialist party at that time accepted it while Henri Emmanueli and Laurent Fabius refused to accept.
That’s how the french cartoonist Georges Million portrayed the socialist party on November of 2004.
In the meanwhile the socialist party is divided into four “courants” with different political agendas.
1. Courant Nouveau Parti Socialiste
2. Courant Nouveau Monde
3. Courant Socialisme et Démocratie (to which Strauss-Kahn belongs to)
4. Courant Réformer
To conclude it:
The past shows that the french socialist party has nothing to do with real socialism as its being practised in Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador etc…
When Hugo Chavez became president of Venezuela in 1998 one of his first missions was the nationalization of the oil industry. When Evo Morales became the first native indian president of a latin-american country in 2005 he nationalized the oil-, gas- and ore industry so that the wealth of bolivian national resources had a chance to be spread among their people and not mainly among the U.S. industry. That’s practising the ’21st century socialism’ on one hand (Evo Morales, Hugo Chavez) and hijacking the terminology to push through free market interests under the pretence of socialism on the other hand (French Socialist Party).
Sarkozy’s opponent?
The mainstream media reported that Strauss-Kahn is the main opponent of Nicolas Sarkozy and the “hope for France”. Indeed he might have been his “opponent” in the presidential elections next year. In fact his popularity grew, but what do you expect when Nicolas Sarkozy is the guy on the other side? He was calling for the aggression against Libya, he supported and backed the violence in the Ivory Coast, where the socialist Laurent Gbagbo was the political opponent of Alassane Outtara before he got arrested after not accepting the outcome of the elections of high Non-Transparency. Outtara, by the way was the groomsman to Nicolas Sarkozy and worked from 1968 until 1990 for an institution called the IMF.
Back to Strauss-Kahn. In 2007 after Nicolas Sarkozy’s election it was him that “formally endorsed putting a prominent member of the Socialist Party opposition, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, in charge of the International Monetary Fund” as the German Spiegel reported.
“It is seen as another potential blow for the French Socialist Party, which has already had other leading figures from its ranks cherry-picked by Mr. Sarkozy to help run his new, reformist administration. Among other things, it would possibly remove Mr. Strauss-Khan, a strong centrist candidate, from the running for a party leadership position.”
May it be one way or the other. Do you really endorse your “enemy” for becoming IMF chief when the IMF is one of the most important institutions for western capitalist states’ foreign policy. In addition to this importance, do you really endorse him as the French President, which runs a major former colonialist state? The operative word is ‘former’.
Conspiracy against Strauss-Kahn?
The french socialist party smells conspiracy as those news appear at a time where his popularity grew, and as we all know you don’t have to be proven guilty to ruin your image. But let’s also take a look at this.
“Tristane Banon was in her 20s and writing a book when she approached Strauss-Kahn for an interview in 2002. In a TV programme in 2007, in which Strauss-Kahn’s name had been bleeped out, Banon allegedly described him as a “rutting chimpanzee” and described how she was forced to fight him off. “It finished badly … very violently … I kicked him,” Banon said. “When we were fighting, I mentioned the word ‘rape’ to make him afraid, but it didn’t have any effect. I managed to get out.”
Banon consulted a lawyer, but did not press charges. “I didn’t want to be known to the end of my days as the girl who had a problem with the politician.”
Banon’s mother, Anne Mansouret, told journalists on Sunday night she had dissuaded her daughter from legal action because she believed Strauss-Kahn’s behaviour had been out of character and because of close links with his family. “Today I am sorry to have discouraged my daughter from complaining. I bear a heavy responsibility,” she said.”
Then, 6 years later in 2008 this article appeared on the Sunday Times.
“The case began in January when Mario Blejer, a senior Argentine economist, alleged that Piroska Nagy, his wife, had been seduced by her boss at the Davos international forum. His complaints led to an investigation by a law firm in Washington in August. Ms Nagy, who worked in the Africa department of the IMF, took redundancy and now works in London at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).
Mr Strauss-Kahn denied that he had abused his position as managing director, either by giving Ms Nagy preferential conditions for leaving the IMF or helping her to get the job in London. The EBRD said that there was nothing irregular about the recruitment of Ms Nagy.”
You can make up your own mind now, but to call three allegations by different women in 9 years a conspiracy is the real conspiracy to me.
Final Thoughts
As i said before I did not write this article to try to prove that Dominique Strauss-Kahn is a rapist. I was just focussing on the issue of him being a socialist and the relation to Nicolas Sarkozy. In France the Socialist Party has as much to do with Socialism as the British Labour Party has to do with Labour.
In the words of Mumia Abu-Jamal:
“And homeland security is a governmental phrase that is as oxymoronic, as crazy as saying military intelligence, or the U.S Department of Justice. They’re just words that have very little relationship to reality.”
If there is to find a definition for hypocrisy I propose to use : “Calling yourself a socialist but working for the IMF”
If you don’t know exactly how the IMF works i suggest to read this resignation letter by Davison L. Budhoo, former IMF economist which accuses the International Monetary Fund of manipulating data to compel countries to undertake devastating structural adjustment programs.
Thanks to Dan Langley who made me think about this issue and focus on the hypocrisy.
