Lagos – Panicked passengers aboard a flight in Nigeria swarmed on a man who shouted “Allah Akbar,” but he was found to be harmless and authorities called him mentally unstable, officials said on Wednesday.
The incident on Tuesday occurred with Nigerians jittery over waves of bombings and shootings blamed on Islamist extremist group Boko Haram in the country’s northern and central regions.
The flight had left from Maiduguri in Nigeria’s northeast, which has been Boko Haram’s base.
“A passenger on board flight W3 812 from Maiduguri to Abuja caused a scare when he started shouting ‘Allah Akbar’ shortly before the aircraft landed at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja,” a statement from Nigerian airline Arik Air said.
“The frightened passengers on board the flight became suspicious, thinking the man was about to do something sinister.”
Local media reported that passengers rushed the man to restrain him.
Nigeria’s secret police, concerned by the spread of rumours over the incident, issued a statement saying the man was “mentally unstable“.
Nigeria’s Department of State Services (DSS) has blamed today’s incident on an Arik Air flight from Maiduguri to Abuja on a mentally-unstable man whose “condition was triggered off” by turbulence.
Social media reports had claimed a bombing threat on the flight.
In a press statement, Marilyn Ogar, DSS’ Deputy Director for Public Relations, said that when the man, an Abuja interior decorator named Aminu S. Galadima boarded the flight, Airport Management was not informed as had previously been arranged.
Mr. Gladima had travelled to Maiduguri on October 19 with Hajia Yachilla Jidda, wife of the Secretary to the Borno State government, to do some work.
“On arrival in Maiduguri, he was lodged at Greenland Hotel. During the course of his stay, he exhibited unusual behaviour by smashing a window, and ended up with lacerations on his hands,” the statement said.
Following an investigation, it was discovered that Mr. Galadima was in poor mental health, and arrangements were made for him to be returned to Abuja for treatment.
As it would turn out, terrible miscommunication then followed, leading to the lives of passengers being put in danger.
“Unfortunately, when Galadima was taken to the Airport on 23rd October for his return trip, the management of the Airport was not informed, and 10 minutes into the flight, due to slight turbulence, his condition was triggered off,” Ogar said.
Explaining that the clarification became necessary in order “to dispel the unfounded rumours concerning the flight,” she said Mr. Galadima is with the security forces.
She did not explain why he is not in a hospital.
Earlier today, the Ministry of Aviation told SaharaReporters there had been no threat to the Maiduguri-Abuja flight. That means it does not consider a “triggered-off” mentally-unstable passenger who had not been professionally handled a danger.
On their part, an Arik pilot on the flight said that the problem was only as “an unruly passenger who was high on drugs blabbing rubbish.”
Full text of the press statement:
PRESS STATEMENT
This is a brief highlight of the incident that occurred on the Arik Air flight from Maiduguri to Abuja.
On Friday, 19th October, 2012, Wife of the SSG to the Borno State Government, Hajia Yachilla JIDDA, travelled to Maiduguri in company of one Aminu S. GALADIMA, an interior decorator based in Abuja to do some interior decoration work. On arrival in Maiduguri, he was lodged at Greenland Hotel. During the course of his stay, he exhibited unusual behaviour by smashing a window, and ended up with lacerations on his hands.
The SSG was contacted, and in collaboration with the Hotel management, subject was taken to Atal Hospital, also in Maiduguri, where he received treatment. His family in Abuja was contacted and they gave confirmation that GALADIMA has been mentally unstable. In addition, his elder brother who lives in the UK was contacted and he requested that subject be returned to Abuja for medical attention.
On Sunday, 21st October, 2012, he was taken to the airport to be returned to Abuja, but missed the flight. However, the Airport management was informed of his state of health, and they advised that whenever his return is scheduled, the management should be notified. Unfortunately, when GALADIMA was taken to the Airport on 23rd October for his return trip, the management of the Airport was not informed, and 10 minutes into the flight, due to slight turbulence, his condition was triggered off. Meanwhile, GALADIMA is in the custody of security forces.
This clarification has become necessary to dispel the unfounded rumours concerning the flight.
Marilyn OGAR, msi
Deputy Director, Public Relations
Department of State Services
23rd October, 2012
A mentally ill man caused panic on a Nigerian flight, when in mid-air he started screaming “Allah Akbar” which means “God is great”.
Fearing that he could be a terrorist and about to blow up the plane, fellow passengers wrestled him, only to find that he was not carrying any weapons or explosives.
Nigeria’s security services had been trailing the man, Aminu Galadima, for a while and had it confirmed that he was mentally unstable, but a communication breakdown led to the mid air fiasco.
The Nigerian State Security Service (SSS) had followed Galadima from Abuja to Maiduguri where he lodged in a hotel.
“On arrival in Maiduguri, he was lodged at Greenland Hotel. During the course of his stay, he exhibited unusual behaviour by smashing a window, and ended up with lacerations on his hands,” the security service said in a statement.
Galadima’s hotel room was searched but no weapons or suspicious materials were found.
He was taken to Atal Hospital for check-up and treatment, and upon his release, he was put on the Maiduguri flight back to Abuja yesterday.
“His family in Abuja was contacted and they gave confirmation that Galadima has been mentally unstable.”
The airport management was informed of Galadima’s state of health, but were not notified when he was taken to the Airport on 23rd October for his return trip.
Aviation Minister, Joe Obi, dispelled every fear of a terrorist on a Nigerian plane.
“A passenger, Aminu Galadima, an indigene of Minna, Niger State boarded a Maiduguri-Abuja-bound Arik Air aircraft with registration number 5N MJE after going through all mandatory security screening. Nothing incriminating, no explosives or weapons whatsoever were found on him.”
“However, mid-air the passenger began to act strangely, loudly screaming Allah Akbar (God is Great).
“Fellow passengers, alarmed by this behaviour rushed to apprehend him. A thorough search by fellow passengers and crew members revealed nothing dangerous on him.
“The pilot immediately radioed Air Traffic Control and airport security operatives.”
Galadima – employed by the Secretary to the Borno State Government – was taken into custody by security agents Wednesday.
All those links were sent to me on Twitter and I am more than glad to post them,I do beleive I will find more on those people due time.No threats allowed according to the WP policy or the HR declaration. So please stay vigilant of what you are going to post :)I checked all blog categories so that the post can get the most views possible. Regards!
“##Spiros Macrozonaris## IMMIGRANT Golden Dawn Deputy leader in Montreal, Canada” :
Facebook profile :
INTERESTING FACEBOOK POST MR. MACROZONARIS, HE CANNOT EVEN WRITE GREEK! BAD NAZI BAD! :
1. Greek Immigrant who married a “foreigner” >>>>>French-Canadian Doris Morrissette, they bore a son, Nicolas Macrozonaris (World-Class Sprinter – CANADIAN Olympian 🙂 ..who unfortunately is not 100% Pure Greek…
2. Conversations with Nicolas on Twitter, lead to nothing, he is ‘pretending’ that he has NO knowledge of what Golden Dawn supports and believes YET he states that he does not condone his fathers “actions”
Twitter @Macrozonaris TWEETER CONVERSATIONS with Nicolas –>
###### MUST WATCH #####
Video from CBC Montreal, from week of Oct 12th – INTERVIEW with Spiros Macrozonaris – next to him sits LOOSER Ilias Hondronicolas : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-3rbLI4K78
#Ilias Hondronicolas ———> on PHOTO second guy from the left :
#MORE HONDRONICOLAS: (FRIENDS WITH ELENI ZAROULIA SHARING HER PHOTOS!) ( MUST SEE )
Violence Diamonds are supposed to be symbols of love, commitment, and joyful new beginnings. But for many people in diamond-rich countries, these sparkling stones are more a curse than a blessing. Too often, the world’s diamond mines produce not only diamonds – but also civil wars, violence, human rights abuses, worker exploitation, environmental degradation, and unspeakable human suffering. Not long ago, the public started to become aware that large numbers of diamonds are mined in violent and inhumane settings. Consumers are now demanding, with ever greater urgency, that their diamonds be free from bloodshed and human rights abuses. So far, however, the diamond industry’s response has been woefully inadequate. Diamonds with violent histories are still being mined and allowed to enter the diamond supply, where they become indistinguishable from other gems. Violence, human rights abuses, and other injustices remain an everyday aspect of diamond mining. Fueling Civil Wars In just the past two decades, seven African countries have endured brutal civil conflicts fueled by diamonds: Sierra Leone, Liberia, Angola, the Republic of Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Diamonds intensify civil wars by financing militaries and rebel militias. These groups also fight with each other to control diamond-rich territory. The tragic result is bloodshed, loss of life, and shocking human rights abuses – from rape to the use of child soldiers. Diamonds that fuel civil wars are often called “blood” or “conflict” diamonds. Although many diamond-fueled wars have now ended, conflict diamonds remain a serious problem. Civil conflicts in Côte d’Ivoire, the Central African Republic, and the DRC continue to this day. So far, the war in the DRC alone has cost more than 5 million lives. In addition, millions of people are dealing with the long-term consequences of these wars: friends and family members lost, lives shattered, and physical and emotional scars that will last generations. Human Rights Abuses Diamond mining is plagued by shocking violence and human rights abuses. Killings, beatings, rape, torture, child labor, forced labor, and other abuses all too frequently take place in connection with diamond mining. Often, these abuses happen in the midst of civil wars. But human rights violations are also a regular part of diamond mining in countries that are not officially at war. At Brilliant Earth, we believe it is important to break the link between diamonds and all forms of violence. The diamond industry’s attempt to stop violence tied to diamond mining resulted in the establishment of the Kimberley Process, an international diamond certification scheme, in 2003. Unfortunately, the Kimberley Process only places a ban on diamonds that finance rebel movements in war-torn countries. When diamond miners are killed, tortured, raped, or beaten by their own governments – or when children are forced to mine for diamonds – the Kimberley Process does not take action. Instead, it certifies these diamonds as “conflict free” and allows them to be shipped to consumers around the world. Zimbabwe Despite killings, torture, and other outrageous human rights violations in Zimbabwe’s diamond mining operations, the Kimberley Process certifies Zimbabwean diamonds for export and allows them to be sold in jewelry stores worldwide. Human rights abuses in Zimbabwe starkly illustrate how the Kimberley Process is failing to stop the bloodshed that so often accompanies diamond mining. The trigger for these abuses was the discovery of a massive diamond deposit in 2006. The Marange diamond fields in eastern Zimbabwe potentially could produce $2 billion in rough diamonds per year – or over 10% of the global diamond supply. In 2008, the Zimbabwean army decided to seize the Marange diamond fields for itself. In a violent takeover, the army massacred more than 200 local diamond miners, at times shooting live ammunition from helicopters. Since then, the army has forced local adults and children to mine for diamonds on its behalf. Soldiers punish diamond miners who disobey with indiscriminate violence, including killings, beatings, rape, and torture. Profits from this shocking system of mining diamonds are being used to enrich military leaders and help keep President Robert Mugabe, a brutal dictator, in power. In mid 2009, the Kimberley Process finally ordered a review mission to Zimbabwe. The investigation confirmed that Zimbabwe was guilty of serious human rights violations. In response, the Kimberley Process temporarily banned Marange diamond exports. However, the Kimberley Process has since allowed exports to resume. Meanwhile, the army continues to force people to mine for diamonds and even run torture camps for uncooperative diamond miners. Côte d’Ivoire Diamonds are prolonging a bitter civil war in Côte d’Ivoire, also known as the Ivory Coast. Since 2004, the war has been mostly at a stalemate, with the north controlled by rebels and the south by government forces. To prevent diamonds from funding the conflict, the Kimberley Process and the United Nations placed a ban on the export of Côte d’Ivoire diamonds in 2005. Rebels, however, have not abided by the ban. The Kimberley Process has been urged to tighten controls, but has done very little. Every year, rebels smuggle about $20 million worth of diamonds into neighboring countries. Rebels exchange these diamonds for weapons and other supplies. Diamond mining is thus helping to strengthen the rebels and extend the conflict. In 2010, a disputed presidential election led to a constitutional crisis. Rebel soldiers swept southward in support of Alassane Ouattara, their preferred candidate and the rightful election winner. In the five months of fighting that followed, at least 3,000 people were killed and atrocities were committed by both government and rebel forces. These atrocities are still being investigated, but diamond-funded weapons likely contributed to the bloodshed. Angola A decade after the end of a brutal diamond-funded civil war, Angola is now a member of the Kimberley Process and the world’s fifth largest diamond exporter. But a flourishing diamond trade has not made Angola a more responsible diamond producer. Angola’s diamond fields are once again the scene of horrific violence. In recent years, diamond miners from the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have been streaming into northeast Angola to mine for diamonds. Most miners cross the border illegally and do not have legal permission to mine. Angolan soldiers, as well as private security guards for mining corporations, have been brutally cracking down on these foreign miners. Thousands of miners and their families have been beaten, tortured, sexually abused, and even killed. Soldiers routinely demand bribes, beating and killing those miners who do not cooperate. In 2009, the Angolan army launched an operation that, over a seven month period, led to the violent expulsion of 115,000 Congolese miners. In 2011, a United Nations monitor documented 21,000 cases of serious human rights violations – including rape, beatings and torture – among miners who recently had been expelled. The monitor also found evidence that Angolan soldiers are systematically raping Congolese women and girls. Central African Republic A toxic mixture of diamonds, corruption, and ethnic tensions is tearing the Central African Republic apart. This small country in the middle of Africa now has two rebel groups using diamonds to finance their insurgent activities. Rebel groups have been violently seizing control of diamond mines and even fighting with each other to control diamond mining territory. In 2011, diamond-fueled violence flared up near the diamond mining town of Bria, in the eastern part of the country. Clashes between rebels led to the deaths of at least 50 people. It is now clear that diamonds from the Central African Republic are contributing to chronic instability. Nevertheless, the Kimberley Process continues to certify diamonds from the Central African Republic as conflict free. Democratic Republic of Congo Of all the conflicts in the world today, the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is the deadliest by far. Since the late 1990s, rebel armies have been exploiting the country’s gem and mineral resources and funneling the profits toward insurgent activities. To date, more than 5 million people have died as a result of the war. Many more people have been raped, terrorized, and uprooted from their homes. Diamonds helped start this conflict, and they continue to fuel the violence. Partnership Africa Canada, a leading human rights organization, has documented how rebel soldiers are exploiting diamond-rich areas in eastern Congo. These diamonds are sustaining a civil war that, well into its second decade, is still tearing lives apart. Army abuses Zimbabweans to control diamond fields-HRW * Police and army use brutal force, rights group says * HRW says income funnelled to Mugabe party officials * Minister says reports of killings false By Tiisetso Motsoeneng JOHANNESBURG, June 26 (Reuters) – Zimbabwean police and army are using brutal methods to control diamond fields, forcing children and adults to work and beating local villagers, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Friday. In a report on Zimbabwe’s Marange diamond fields, it said the military, which remains under the control of President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF under a power-sharing deal, killed more than 200 people in a takeover of the fields in late 2008. “The police and army have turned this peaceful area into a nightmare of lawlessness and horrific violence,” said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Zimbabwe’s new government should get the army out of the fields, put a stop to the abuse, and prosecute those responsible.” Mugabe’s unity government with Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai is under pressure to create a democracy and improve Zimbabwe’s human rights record to get billions of dollars from Western donors demanding political and economic reforms. The new administration says it needs $10 billion to rebuild a shattered economy and win the confidence of millions of Zimbabweans who have faced years of bare hospitals, potholed streets and staggering unemployment. But foreign investors and donors are likely to remain cautious for months, if not years, piling pressure on old foes Mugabe and Tsvangirai to work together and enact reforms, including greater government transparency. “Some income from the fields has been funnelled to high-level party members of ZANU-PF, which is now part of a power-sharing government that urgently needs revenue as the country faces a dire economic crisis,” the report said. Zimbabwe’s Deputy Mines and Mining Development Minister Murisi Zwizwai told a business seminar that reports of killings in Marange were false and “contrary to allegations, nobody was killed by security”. Industry experts say legal diamond output and sales account for less than 10 percent of Zimbabwe’s mining earnings, but have potential to join gold and platinum among country’s big earners if the government clamps down on smuggling. Foreign investors are looking anew at mining opportunities mineral-producing Zimbabwe, especially deposits of platinum, gold and diamonds. While some have ventured back, others are waiting for the legal framework to be strengthened. Human Rights Watch said it based its findings on more than 100 one-on-one interviews with witnesses, local miners, police officers, soldiers, local community leaders, victims and relatives, medical staff, human rights lawyers, and activists in Harare, Mutare, and Marange district in eastern Zimbabwe. “Those interviewed said that police officers, who were deployed in the fields from November 2006 to October 2008 to end illicit diamond smuggling, were in fact responsible for serious abuses — killings, torture, beatings, and harassment — often by so-called ‘reaction teams’, which drove out illegal miners,” it said. (Writing by Michael Georgy) REUTERS Blood Diamonds From Zimbabwe Human rights observers agree: diamonds from Zimbabwe are blood diamonds. Zimbabwean diamonds are tainted by human rights violations including torture, forced labor, child labor, sexual violence, and murder. They are also helping to keep a brutal dictator in power. Unfortunately, the discovery of a massive diamond deposit is about to make Zimbabwe the world’s leading diamond producer. Unless something is done, blood diamonds from Zimbabwe will soon flood the market. Sadly, the Kimberley Process (KP), the international diamond certification scheme created to halt the blood diamond trade, has failed to put a stop to Zimbabwe’s horrendous mining practices. The KP certifies Zimbabwean diamonds as “conflict free,” allowing human rights abuses to continue and giving its stamp of approval to torture, rape, and murder. As a result, consumers are at a greater risk than ever of buying a blood diamond. 1. Diamond fields in Zimbabwe could be the most valuable ever discovered. In 2006, villagers in the Marange district of eastern Zimbabwe discovered a massive diamond deposit. By some estimates, the Marange diamond fields could produce as much as 40 million carats a year—worth about $2 billion, or over 10% of the global diamond supply. The total value of Marange gems may be as high as $800 billion, making the Marange diamond fields the richest ever found. If predictions are correct, Zimbabwe will become the world’s leading diamond exporter within a few years. Zimbabwe’s astonishing diamond resources could help lift millions of people out of poverty and transform Zimbabwe’s economy. But in Zimbabwe’s case, such vast diamond wealth has led to human misery on an equally grand scale. 2. Zimbabwe’s diamonds are linked to grave human rights abuses including torture, forced labor, sexual violence, and murder. In 2008, the Zimbabwean army seized control of the Marange diamond fields, at times shooting live ammunition from helicopters. More than 200 local miners were massacred. After the takeover, the army began running mining operations itself. Local residents, including children, were forced to mine for diamonds in slave-like conditions. Killings, beatings, torture, and sexual violence were used by the army to keep local residents working and maintain a climate of fear. Despite widespread international attention, little has changed. The military has not withdrawn from the Marange diamond fields. Serious human rights abuses continue, including forced labor, torture, beatings, and harassment. In October 2011, the BBC confirmed that the Zimbabwean military runs secret camps where diamond miners who fail to hand over their earnings are tortured, beaten, and raped. 3. Zimbabwean diamonds are helping to sustain a brutal dictator. Top military officials and political allies of President Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s despotic leader, are smuggling Marange diamonds out of the country and keeping the profits for themselves. Mugabe is depending on diamond revenues to fill the coffers of his political party, ZANU-PF, as national elections near. In power since 1980, Mugabe has used his office to torture, harass, and kill his political opponents. His wrongheaded policies have led to mass impoverishment, the outbreak of epidemics, and the death of thousands of people. In 2010, the United Nations rated Zimbabwe last on its index of human development. Mugabe is considered a target for prosecution for crimes against humanity before the International Criminal Court. 4. The Kimberley Process certifies blood diamonds from Zimbabwe as “conflict free.” In November 2009, the KP placed a temporary ban on the export of Marange diamonds. Zimbabwe was asked to withdraw its army from the Marange diamond fields, end human rights abuses, and curb smuggling. Zimbabwe clearly has not complied with KP demands. To add further insult, in June 2010, Zimbabwean police raided the offices of an organization working directly with the KP to document human rights abuses in the Marange diamond fields. Farai Maguwu, the organization’s director, was arrested and jailed. He was later released, but only after his designation as a “prisoner of conscience” by Amnesty International. Despite Zimbabwe’s complete lack of compliance, the KP has bowed to political pressure. In November 2011, it lifted the ban on Marange diamonds. Zimbabwe is now permitted to export these blood diamonds with “conflict free” certification. As diamond industry veteran Martin Rapaport notes, “Instead of eliminating blood diamonds, the KP has become a process for the systematic legalization and legitimization of blood diamonds.” 5. Zimbabwean diamonds are about to flood jewelers’ inventories. The KP’s decision in 2011 opens the floodgates to blood diamonds from Zimbabwe. Since 2006, Zimbabwe has stockpiled an estimated $1.7 billion in Marange diamonds. These diamonds are now being released into the international diamond supply. In future years, as production ramps up, more blood diamonds worth billions of dollars will be entering the diamond supply chain. Safeguards to prevent U.S. consumers from purchasing blood diamonds remain inadequate. A study of jewelry retailers found that 56% of jewelers do not even have an auditing procedure in place to prevent the retail of conflict diamonds. Those jewelers claiming to sell “conflict free” diamonds almost always rely on the faulty KP certification. In fact, KP certification provides no protection against the purchase of a blood diamond from Zimbabwe. Financial Overhaul Bill Takes Aim at Dirty Gold The financial regulatory bill signed into law by President Obama last month primarily aims to overhaul the guidelines that govern Wall Street. While we will leave it to the political pundits and the economists to provide commentary on the bill’s implications for the U.S. financial system, we would like to highlight a little-noted provision in the bill that affects the market for luxury jewelry. Hidden away in a section entitled “Miscellaneous Provisions” is a measure requiring large, publicly-traded companies to report to the federal government whether certain “conflict minerals” in their products come from the Democratic Republic of Congo or the surrounding region. Since 1998, a civil war in Congo has claimed more than 5 million lives, making it one of the deadliest wars in history. As we wrote in our blog last December, the conflict has been fueled, in large part, by contestation over mineral resources. The goal of the provision is to create a degree of transparency and accountability surrounding minerals in these regions. The provision in the financial bill targets several minerals—including tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold—that are mined in Congo and that have been contributing to the bloodshed. Many of these minerals are typical components of products such as laptops and cell phones. Gold, of course, is a major component of jewelry. However, most major jewelry retailers in the United States are presently unable to say with any certainty whether the gold in their jewelry comes from Congo. We attribute this untenable situation to indifference and lack of initiative, as well as to the difficulties inherent in tracing a fungible metal like gold back to the source. At Brilliant Earth, we use only recycled gold and fair trade gold in our jewelry, allowing us to be certain that none of our gold originates in Congo and that it meets the highest of ethical standards. We, at Brilliant Earth, hope this bill will use government leverage to speed up the process of creating a more transparent and accountable gold supply chain. Although the bill does not ban the sale of gold from Congo, it should give consumers and jewelry retailers the information they need to avoid buying and selling such gold. Potentially just as important, the bill may spur reforms that will make all gold, not just gold from Congo, more easily traceable. In many places, although gold is not contributing to civil wars, it is not being mined in a way that is ethical or environmentally responsible. Jewelry buyers deserve to know where their gold comes from and the conditions under which it is mined so that they can make informed decisions. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has until April 17, 2011 to promulgate regulations that will clarify the meaning of the bill’s measures against Congo gold. Much of the effectiveness of the law will depend on the regulations that the SEC adopts. As the law is implemented, Brilliant Earth will continue to fight for increased transparency in the gold supply chain and to support efforts to develop responsible sources of gold. READ MORE AT:http://www.brilliantearth.com/confict-diamond-trade/
The Obama administration is contemplating broad military, political and humanitarian intervention to stop a slide toward chaos and Islamic extremism in Mali, the top State Department diplomat for Africa said Thursday.
The international but largely U.S.-funded effort to expunge al-Qaeda-linked militants and restore political order in Somalia could present a model for Mali, Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Johnnie Carson said.
Since 2007, the United States has spent more than $550 million to help train and supply an African proxy force of about 18,000 soldiers in Somalia, which has brought a measure of stability to the war-torn country for the first time in two decades.
Although the United States has not committed to replicating that approach in Mali, Carson and others are holding up the routing of the al-Shabab militia and conducting of elections in Somalia as a template for actions elsewhere.
“It’s a model that should be reviewed and looked at as an element for what might be effective in that part of the world,” Carson said in an interview, “but it’s not there yet.”
The Somalia comparison offers the clearest view yet of U.S. thinking about the growing terrorism threat from Mali, a landlocked West African country the size of Texas that has imploded politically since a military coup in March.
As in Somalia, the threat to the United States and other countries from Mali is wrapped in a larger problem of lawlessness, poverty, tribal friction and weak governance.
Somalia adopted a provisional constitution in August, and a new federal government was formed after years of chaos that had fueled terrorism, piracy and famine. Security has slowly improved under the proxy force, which is led by the African Union but bankrolled and trained by the United States, European Union and United Nations.
Carson said the internationally backed plan for Somalia’s political reconstruction was working because the country’s neighbors, the United States, E.U. and United Nations had subscribed to a common set of goals.
He cautioned that a regional and international consensus would be required for the approach to work in Mali. “There needs to be that kind of a clear understanding there as well,” he said.
Mali’s military quickly lost control of the country after the March coup, which was led by a U.S.-trained army captain. Since then, Islamist militias affiliated with al-Qaeda have imposed strict Sharia law in northern Mali and, along with Tuareg rebels, declared an independent state. Hundreds of thousands of refugees have fled their homes.
Last week, the remnants of Mali’s central government, France and west African nations led calls at the United Nations for the creation of an African-led force to help Mali confront the militants.
The Economic Community of West African States has said it is willing to send about 3,300 troops to Mali if it gets the backing of the United Nations and Western countries.
The United States has been leery of a French-backed proposal for quick deployment of an internationally backed African force in Mali, preferring a more comprehensive plan that addresses underlying political problems and tribal divisions.
“We want to make sure that it is an African-led international response, and also be very clear that whatever is done out there should in fact be well planned, well organized and well financed,” Carson said.
The U.S. diplomat has also said that it is important to enlist support from Mali’s northern neighbors, especially Algeria and Mauritania, which share a long border with the troubled country and have also fought their own long-running Islamist insurgencies.
U.S. officials have ruled out sending American combat troops to Mali but have said the Obama administration could help train, equip and transport an intervention force drawn from other African countries.
“There will be a need for some type of security response,” Carson said, adding that the United States could support one if it is drawn up correctly.
Africa: Transcript – Ambassador Johnnie Carson On the Situation in Mali and the Sahel, Somalia and the DRC
document
The top United States diplomat for Africa has acknowledged that military action will be needed to break the control of northern Mali by … ( Resource: U.S. Acknowledges Need for Military Action in Mali
New York,New York — Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson held a briefing at the New York Foreign Press Center during which he discussed the situation in Mali and the Sahel, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo and answered questions from journalists.
MODERATOR: Good afternoon to everyone from the Africa Regional Media Hub of the United States Department of State. And good morning to those joining us from the U.S. I would like to welcome all of our participants. Thank you for joining us. Our speaker today is Ambassador Johnnie Carson, the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs. Ambassador Carson will brief us on U.S. foreign policy in Africa as it pertains to the current situation in Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Mali and the Sahel.
We will begin today’s call with remarks from our speaker and then open it up to your questions. To ask a question, please press *1 on your phone and you will be placed in the question queue. As a reminder, today’s call is on the record and will last approximately 45 minutes. And now, I will turn it over to Ambassador Johnnie Carson.
AMBASSADOR CARSON: Yvonne, thank you very much for the warm introduction, and thank you all for participating in this briefing. I would like this morning to talk about the U.S. participation in last week’s UN General Assembly, where there was significant discussion and debate on issues related to the situation in Mali and the Sahel, Somalia, Sudan, and the Eastern Congo. I’d also like to give you a briefing on some of the Secretary’s activities and some of our own engagement.
Last week was an extraordinarily busy week at the UN on African-related issues. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon hosted no less than four regional conferences on Africa – on Sahel, Somalia, Sudan, and the Eastern Congo. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton participated in two of those sessions, one dealing with Sahel and Mali and a second one dealing with Somalia. The U.S. Government was represented at senior levels in the Sudan discussions and in the Eastern Congo, DRC, Rwanda discussions.
In addition, the Secretary of State met in a trilateral meeting with President Kabila of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and also participating was President Paul Kagame of Rwanda. On Friday afternoon, the Secretary also met with Sudanese officials, including Foreign Minister Ali Karti from Khartoum. The Secretary also participated in sessions on HIV/AIDS hosted by the head of UNAIDS and also a session on food security, where we are also very much engaged.
Let me talk briefly about the four key areas under discussion last week that the Secretary General hosted and talk about where our policy is with respect to each of those four areas. First on Mali and the Sahel, we in the United States are deeply concerned about the ongoing situation in Mali. We think that Mali is an enormously complicated situation, comprising four separate problems that are interrelated. One is an issue of governance and the need for a return to a civilian elected creditable government, which does not exist and has not existed since the coup d’etat that took place in March of 2012.
Second is a political issue related to the Tuareg. That is an issue of political marginalization and a government which has not provided economic and social services to a minority community in northern Mali. The Tuareg feel politically marginalized; this has been a historical problem that dates back prior to Mali’s independence, and it must be resolved politically – not militarily but politically.
Third is a very serious problem, a problem that affects Mali and affects the neighboring states as well, and this is the issue of terrorism – terrorism carried out by AQIM – al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb Ã? as well as another associated group, MUJAO. Both of these groups have been responsible for the desecration of historical writings and buildings and artifacts in Timbuktu. They are responsible for trying to impose Sharia law on various parts of northern Mali. They are responsible for terrorism, for kidnapping, and for robbery. This is an issue that must be dealt with through security and military means.
And the fourth problem in Mali is the issue of the humanitarian situation. Always a food deficit region, it has been further impacted by the failure of rains sufficient this year to meet the needs of the community and by a growing refugee population displaced as a result of the al-Qaida and MUJAO activities in northern Mali. So four very complex problems.
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon proposed that the UN establish a position of special envoy to deal with this issue, to coordinate UN activities, to work with the regional governments, and to work with others in the international community. He also said that there would be a strategy developed by the UN that would take into account strategies being worked on by ECOWAS and others in the region. We support the establishment of a UN Secretary General Special Representative for Mali and the Sahel. We support the coordination efforts that would be under this individual. We support the development of a broad-based and comprehensive strategy. And we support the establishment of some kind of a core group or working group that will integrate the work of ECOWAS, Algeria, Mauritania, and Chad – and those three countries are not a part of ECOWAS but have great interest in the situation – as well as the United States, the European Union, France, Great Britain, and Germany, who also have interests there.
So we’re very much focused on the Sahel. We think that some progress was achieved with this meeting, and we hope that the Secretary General will move swiftly to mount a special envoy for the region.
The second major issues under focus was Somalia. Secretary Clinton also participated in this meeting. Somalia is a good news story for the region, for the international community, but most especially for the people of Somalia itself. Over the past 12 months we have seen the completion of the transitional roadmap ending the TFG and creating a new Somali Government. For the first time in nearly two decades, Somalia has a new provisional constitution. It has a newly selected parliament which is half the size of the former parliament and comprises some 18 percent women and whose membership is comprised of some 60 percent university graduates. There’s been a new speaker selected and a new president elected. Great progress has been achieved in Somalia, and this is in large measure because of the combined efforts of IGAD, the African Union, the UN and the international community, and especially the United States.
At this meeting, we heard from Somalia’s new president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, and it was broadly agreed that the international community would support the new emphasis in priorities of the government.
For our part in Washington, we are determined to do three things. One is to help the new government put in place the infrastructure so that it can run effectively. This means helping to create effective government ministries, have those ministries staffed with effective civil servants and advisors so that they can carry out their government functions.
The second is to help to create a new Somali national army, an army that is subservient to civilian and constitutional control, an army that is able to work alongside of AMISOM and take on increasingly new responsibilities that are much broader than anything AMISOM has been equipped and manned to do. But creating a new strong Somali army, to eventually replace AMISOM is a second priority. And third priority is to provide assistance to the government so that it can deliver services to the people so that it can rebuild and refurbish and re-staff schools, hospitals, and medical clinics, provide assistance so that it can begin to deal with some of its smaller infrastructure issues, providing clean water to populations, helping to restore electrical power and also opening up markets. We also want to help in developing small enterprise and microcredit operations to help the government as well.
So we will be working there. As I said, Secretary Clinton was there. We think Somalia has made enormous progress. We also believe there has been significant military progress against al-Shabaab. AMISOM deserves an enormous amount of credit in driving al-Shabab out of Mogadishu and its environs and also moving against the city of Kismayo. Much credit for the operations in Kismayo go to the Kenyan forces who were a part of AMISOM, but we must praise the leadership of the Ugandan commanders who have led the AMISOM mission over the last four years. But Uganda, Burundi, Djibouti, Kenya all deserve credit, and they will soon be joined by forces arriving literally today and tomorrow from Sierra Leone to help strengthen AMISOM. But the international community has been in unison with IGAD and the AU, and the U.S. has been a significant and major contributor to this effort.
On Sudan, the third issue which was brought up and hosted by Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon – we have seen very great progress there in the last three days. On Thursday evening in Addis Ababa, we saw an agreement signed by President Salva Kiir of South Sudan and President Bashir of Sudan to help resolve a number of outstanding issues related to oil, to revenue sharing, to citizenship, to pensions, and to debt. We recognize that there are a number of issues still outstanding related to Abyei, related to political consultations with respect to Blue Nile and South Kordofan, and to the important issue of humanitarian access to South Kordofan and Blue Nile, particularly in the Nuba Mountains. But progress has been made there in reducing tensions, reopening the borders, and getting those countries back to a position where we can see two viable states living in peace internally as well as with one another. So much discussion on Sudan. We were represented a high level at those meetings by Under Secretary for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman, and we think progress has been forged there.
On the Eastern Congo, the last issue that was of great focus in New York last week, there was a meeting that brought together all of the regional Great Lakes states, including Tanzania, Uganda, Burundi, but most importantly Eastern Congo with President Kabila and the DRC, with – sorry – and with Rwanda with President Kagame. Our objectives and the objectives of that conference were to do everything possible to reduce the tensions that exist between Rwanda and the DRC, and to restore trust and confidence between the leaders there, and to do as much as possible to help in the recurring violence that persists in the Eastern Congo, largely as a result of the incursion and the rebellion of the M23.
There, we are calling on all states not to support the M23 rebels; to denounce their activities publicly and to contribute as much as possible to the resolution of the problems in the DRC. We believe that it is absolutely critical that the countries in the region respect the sovereignty and the borders of their neighbors, that they not engage in supporting rebel activities across the borders, and that everyone take responsibilities for their action, the protection of their citizens and their resources, the protection of those people who are in their countries, and that they not, in effect, undermine the sovereignty and stability of regional states.
IIIÃ ll stop right there and take your questions.
OPERATOR: Thank you, Ambassador Carson. We are now ready for the question-and-answer portion of our call. To ask a question, please press *1 on your phone. Please state your name and affiliation before you ask your question. And our first question comes from Drew Hinshaw with the Wall Street Journal.
QUESTION: Hi, good afternoon. I wanted to ask – I was hoping you could elaborate a little bit on the outcome of the UN summit. You mentioned that the UN is drafting a strategy that will take into account the strategy being drafted by ECOWAS. I was wondering if you could elaborate. Is it fair to say that the UN is now the primary author of the strategy going forward? Are they working with what ECOWAS has already written? Has ECOWAS presented the broad outlines of a strategy yet? But —
AMBASSADOR CARSON: Thank you for the question. I think that the UN will try to coordinate effectively with all of the players in the region. ECOWAS clearly has a very important role to play. Many of its member states are neighbors of Mali. But we also have to recognize that there are other states in the region that have borders with Mali, whose views also need to be taken into account. And we also must recognize that there is an international dimension to this issue, and so there are reasons to make sure that the wider views of the international community are there.
ECOWAS has played a very valuable and important leadership role, but it is important to make sure that the views of Algeria are included. Algeria has a long border and history and relationship with Mali. The views of Mauritania are also critical, valuable, and important. They too share long borders with Mali. And in fact, Libya also is a critical player because they too have shared borders and shared interests there. All three of those countries – Algeria, Mauritania, and Libya – are not a part of ECOWAS. And in addition, countries like Chad have an interest and they are not a part of ECOWAS. The United States, France, the European community also are concerned about the situation there, and their views should be taken into account.
I stress that in the case of Somalia, where we have seen enormous progress over the last 12 months, and in fact, continuously over the last three, three and a half years, there has been a clear commitment by all who were engaged there to follow a common strategy and adopt a set of common views. EGAD and the East African community, who are the most important players around Somalia, the AU, the U.S., the UN and others have all had a common position. And I think that’s why Somalia has achieved so much success over the last 12 months in terms of moving to a more permanent government and making the strides in success against al-Shabaab. We look to try to have the same kind of both regional and international cooperation on Mali.
OPERATOR: Thank you. Our next question comes from the U.S. Mission in Kampala. Please state your name and your affiliation.
QUESTION: I am Julius Odeke from Kampala. I work with The Independent magazine. My question to Assistant Secretary is that initially, America was looking for a base to be stationed in Africa, but they recently they said they will not do that. Is that a sign that America is withdrawing from its military engagement in Africa?
AMBASSADOR CARSON: Julius, thank you very much for your question. I think you are referring to AMISOM, and I can say that there is at this moment no – and I repeat, no – intention to have an AMISOM headquarters located in Africa. AMISOM is located in Germany, and at this point its headquarters is likely to remain – sorry – I’m sorry – AFRICOM. I’m saying AMISOM; I should have said AFRICOM. AFRICOM is located in Stuttgart, Germany, and there’s no intention to move the AFRICOM headquarters outside of Germany at this point. I said AMISOM; I meant to say AFRICOM.
MODERATOR: Thank you. Our next question comes from Tanzania. Please state your name and your affiliation.
QUESTION: My name is (inaudible). I work for the Tanzania (inaudible) newspaper. My question first of all is about the shift of America’s – or U.S. foreign policy. We have seen a lot of attention paid to Africa. We want to know whether there is any serious concern that what is going to be achieved is going to have an impact on the development of the region. Thank you.
AMBASSADOR CARSON: Yes. Thank you very much for the question from Tanzania. The United States has just recently published a new strategy for Africa. It was published in June of this year and is available on both the White House and the State Department website. That strategy for Africa is very clear. It says that we want to develop our friendship with Africa based on mutual respect, mutual interest, mutual responsibility. We want to base it on a partnership and not patronage. We want to elevate Africa’s importance in the international arena and we want to achieve – work with Africa to achieve four strategic objectives.
One is to strengthen democratic institutions and good governance. The second is to spur economic growth, investment, and trade between the United States and Africa. But we also want to help spur economic growth and trade amongst African states as well. Third, we want to help to bring about greater peace and security across the African continent. And in this area we continue to work with the international community – the UN, and others – to bring about greater peace and stability in places like Somalia, Sudan and South Sudan, and the Eastern Congo. And we will continue to work towards promoting peace, security, and stability in Africa. And fourthly, we want to work to help promote development and greater opportunity for all of AfricaaaÃ?s citizens, and there we will continue to focus on a number of priorities under the Obama Administration, including but not inclusive or exclusively working on things like Feed the Future, which is a program to help promote a green agricultural revolution across Africa, to end food insecurity, to grow agro industry.
And we will also work on public health issues through our Global Health Initiative, working to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, cholera, and to help build Africa’s public health institutions so that they are better able to provide services to their people. But we will do this through our USAID missions, we will do this through our centers for disease control, we will do this through the Millennium Challenge Corporation which provides multimillion dollar grants that are used to deal with major economic development and infrastructure challenges. But those are the four things that we will continue to work on.
MODERATOR: Thank you. Our next question comes from Kigali, Rwanda. Please state your name and affiliation.
QUESTION: Thank you very much, Ambassador Carson. My name is Edmund (inaudible). I work for the East African Nation Media Group. My question is about the Congo. I saw in the news in the morning that the U.S. Government has asked Rwanda to denounce M23 rebels. It appears there’s no one asking the DRC Government to address its internal issues, particularly the ones M23 are fighting for. I believe some of the issues they are asking the DRC Government to address are legitimate. So the way forward now, what is the position of the U.S. Government towards the issues inside the DRC? Are we going to see the U.S. Government asking DRC to address the issues now that we see in the papers that (inaudible) speaking Congolese feel that a genocide will happen soon? Thank you.
AMBASSADOR CARSON: Thank you very Ã? Edmund. Thank you very much for that question from Kigali. First of all, our desire is to see peace and security and development in the Eastern Congo just as we see peace and security and development occurring in Rwanda, in Uganda, in Tanzania, and other neighboring states in the Great Lakes. We seek for the people of the Eastern Congo what you enjoy in Kigali, what people enjoy in Tanzania, in Lusaka, in Kampala.
Each of these states in the region have responsibilities, and their leaders have responsibilities. In the DRC, President Kabila clearly has the responsibilities. His challenges are great, but his responsibilities are equally important. President Kabila, amongst other things, must in fact protect all of the Congolese citizens irrespective of their ethnicity and their language, and this includes the large Banyamulenge and Rwandaphone populations that exist there in both South Kivu and in North Kivu. He has that responsibility as the president of his country.
He also has the responsibility to protect women and girls. We know that the Eastern Congo is probably the most violent place in the world for girls and women to live. There must be better protection of the rights of women. He has a responsibility to go after and to eradicate all armed rebel groups operating in his country Ã? the exFARfar, the Interahamwe, the FDLR, and also the M23 as well. They are rebels. They are a dissident group. He has a responsibility to ensure that the minerals of his country are exported and handled in a transparent way and that they are not the source of corruption or misuse. He has the responsibility to improve dramatically his security services so that they protect people and not prey on them. All of these are responsibilities that President Kabila has in his country.
But let me also say that there are responsibilities for the neighboring states as well, and those responsibilities are clear. They are not to support rebel groups operating against the country or a neighboring country. It’s not to train or to politically influence or to ship arms to rebel groups that undermine the security of a neighboring state. And it is not and should not be too much to ask the Government of Rwanda to denounce a rebel group that is preying on the lives of people or undermining the stability of a neighbor. So the call for the Government to reject the territorial and political and rebellious ambitions of the M23 are not and should not be too much. The M23 is led by individuals who are ICC and IT. They’re led by people whoooÃ?ve carried out serious human rights violations. So it should not be too much to ask the Government of Rwanda to do this, to ask that. And that’s a responsibility on that side of the border as well.
There are responsibilities held by all, and it is when everyone exercises those responsibilities appropriately and correctly and transparently that we have peace and stability. It is important that tensions be defused between the regional states, including Rwanda and the DRC, that trust be restored between these two countries, and that confidence be rebuilt. And so each country has responsibilities, and when those responsibilities are lived up to, we have a greater chance for peace, stability, and the harmony that can and should exist throughout that region.
OPERATOR: Thank you. Our next question comes from Jo Biddle. Please state your affiliation.
QUESTION: Good morning. Jo Biddle from Agence France-Presse, phoning in from the State Department. Thank you very much for organizing this call. Last week I was at Ã? I watched the Sahel meeting that was happening in the United Nations, and there were many calls from African countries, supported by France, for a military force to go into Mali and try to flush out the rebels, the Islamic rebels that are spreading terror in that region. You mentioned that you thought the issue of the Tuareg was Ã? should be resolved politically and not militarily, but on the Islamic side of things, is the United States going to support a military ECOWAS-led mission for the Sahel region, and – yeah, could you talk to that, please?
AMBASSADOR CARSON: Let me – thank you very much for the question from Agence France-Presse. The – all four issues that I mentioned earlier are critical, and they must be done simultaneously. It is absolutely critically important for there to be democratic progress in Mali, that there be a restoration of the civilian democratic constitutional government, and that needs to be done as soon as possible. It needs to occur alongside of progress in these other areas.
But let me tell you why I start there, because if you donnnÃ?t have a strong, creditable government in Bamako, the ability to negotiate a political solution with the Tuareg, one that has credibility, one that will be carried out, will be weakened. If you don’t have a strong, creditable government in Bamako, it will be difficult to have a military which is capable of leading as it should the liberation in the northern part of the country. Any ECOWAS military activities in Northern Mali should, in fact, have the Malian military as the lead and ECOWAS fighting alongside of it. But it is not just ECOWAS. It is important that what goes on up there have the support of all of the states in the region. The ECOWAS states, as well as Mauritania and Algeria and others in the area, must also be a part of this policy. After all, the states in the north have long borders with Mali.
But yes, I say that there will have to be, at some point, military action to push the AQIM and the MUJAO out of the north and out of the control that they are exercising over towns like Timbuktu and Kidal and Gao. But any military action up there must indeed be well planned, well organized, well resourced, and well thought through. And it must, in fact, be agreed upon by those who are going to be most affected by it.
So it is not something that should be taken lightly. There were strong calls, including from France, for action to be taken. We, too, in Washington have been appalled by the destruction of many of Mali’s valuable historical texts, by the destruction of mosque and historically important buildings, and by the attempt to impose extremist ideology on the communities. Clearly, some action must be taken. But as I said, it should be well planned, well organized, well executed, and well resourced. I think this is important.
All of these things must be done. They must be done simultaneously. But it is imperative that things move forward democratically in Bamako and that we see a restoration of democracy there. If we don’t have that, it will not – the other activities will not be nearly as effective and strong. All things must be moved simultaneously.
OPERATOR: We now have time for one more question, and that comes from Kevin Kelly with the Nation Media Group.
QUESTION: Yeah, hi. Thanks very much to Ambassador Carson for agreeing to do this, but I actually have two questions. One pertains to his mention before about the United States helping to build a Somali national army. I’m wondering if you could give me details on that, what the timetable and the funding might be for that.
And related to it, do you have concerns, Ambassador Carson, about what will happen next in Kismayo? Do you see that the Kenyan presence there might be interpreted eventually as an army of occupation? As you well know, there’s a lot of nationalist feeling in Somalia that outsiders are not generally welcome in these circumstances. Thanks a lot.
AMBASSADOR CARSON: Thank you very much for those two questions on Somalia. First of all, we applaud the work of AMISOM and what they have done in helping to degrade and defeat and push al-Shabaab out of Somalia’s main cities and towns. We believe that this will help to bring about a return to stability in Somalia and will reduce, over time, the terrorist threat to Somalis and to neighboring states. We believe that the Kenyan role in liberating the south as a part of AMISOM is important and deserves the support of both IGAD, the African Union, and the international community.
We recognize that Kismayo is comprised of a number of clans and sub-clans in Somalia, and that there will be clan competition. We hope that the Kenyan presence there will not be seen as an occupying force, and that the government in Mogadishu, working alongside of AMISOM and the UN, will go in very quickly and establish political stability and a political system that takes into account the various clan and sub-clan interests. The Kenyan presence is not intended to be a military occupation. It is intended to be a part of a temporary – a very temporary liberation strategy that quickly allows Somali leadership to take control. And this leadership should come from Mogadishu, should come from the new government led by President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud.
I think that the Kenyans have no interest in trying to establish political authority there. They simply want to help drive out al-Shabaab, help liberate the country, help create the stability that has been long absent. But we hope that the Somali Government will move in quickly, working with IGAD to restore the political leadership that’s important for running Kismayo. But this has been a major step forward. We should applaud what has been done. And we want to work to encourage the political forces to move in to help stabilize the situation.
On this – on the first question that you asked, we have in Washington been strong supporters of AMISOM, major contributors to the AMISOM effort, largely by training and equipping AMISOM battalions that have gone into Somalia to help fight the al-Shabaab. Going forward, we would anticipate that most of our new and additional resources, as they come to us, will be directed at helping to train and provision a new Somali military, not to continue to expand AMISOM. The focus should be on creating a national Somali army that will take over from AMISOM and will assume the responsibilities of providing national security and defense for the nation.
I do not at this time have any dollar figures that I can share with you on what we would be providing to the Somali Government to train Somali military forces. We have done some of this in the past. We have trained small units of Somali TFG troops in Bihanga, Uganda at a military camp. We would expect that we will, over time, continue to do this and expand it and to make more of the training local in Somalia for both cost effectiveness and for political reasons. But we look at the focus going forward being directed at strengthening the Somali national military and not expanding the AMISOM effort, which has been extraordinarily valuable and important.
MODERATOR: That concludes today’s call. I would like to thank Ambassador Johnnie Carson for joining us, and thank all of our callers for participating in today’s call. I know many of you did not get the opportunity to ask your questions, so if you have any questions about today’s call, you can contact the African – the Africa Regional Media Hub at AFMediahub@state.gov. Thank you.
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GATEWAY TO AFRICA | In Africa the cost of all medications, including generic drugs, exceeds the means of most and many people are faced with a grim choice: purchase counterfeit medications, ingredients unknown, or go without treatment.
With 30% of the total available pharmaceuticals in Uganda believed to be counterfeit, the country, like many others, is struggling to keep control of a business that is both deadly and lucrative.
“A lot of deaths occur. But nobody reports these and nobody is going to investigate,” said Suraj Ali, a partner at the Ugandan legal firm Muwema & Mugerwa.
The situation in Uganda is typical in much of sub-Saharan Africa, and the reasons are economic. In regions of high prevalence of poverty the cost of all medications, including generic drugs, exceeds the means of most. Few people have medical insurance, and they are faced with a grim choice: purchase counterfeit medications – ingredients unknown – or simply go without treatment.
The big pharmaceutical firms are worried. “When you visit a market in Tanzania, you see that they are being sold everywhere,” Ed Wheatley, AstraZeneca’s investigations director for the region, said at June’s Visiongain Pharmaceutical Anti-Counterfeiting conference, in which representatives from major drug makers gathered to deliberate the problem.
This big problem is also a big business – it is widely estimated that counterfeit drugs have an annual turnover of US$75 billion worldwide, with a profit margin of about 70%. This means that the global share of counterfeit medications is 10% of the pharmaceutical market. Around the world 200,000 people die annually due to counterfeits.
Most of the fakes hail from factories in China, India and Pakistan, and counterfeiters are more concerned with matching the packaging than the ingredients of the original. Criminals steal hospital vials with branded labels, print their own hologrammed boxes – even buy tablet-making presses on eBay.
The World Health Organisation estimates that 32.1% of these drugs do not contain any active ingredients; 20.2% have incorrect quantities of active ingredients; 21.4% include wrong ingredients and 8.5% have high levels of impurities or contaminates.
The loss of sales and reputation is significant, as users of the fake drugs may still associate their illness with the genuine article. In some countries, drug makers can also be liable for harm caused by fakes.
In Germany, for example, a company can be called to account if it can be proven that it did not utilise all the possibilities provided by state-of-the-art technology to prevent counterfeiting. In most US states, any part of the manufacturing and sales chain can be liable for damages to the consumer arising from faults in a product’s construction, manufacturing or labelling.
Given this risk it is understandable why pharmaceutical companies are keen to intervene in the African counterfeit market. Some assist local governments with on-the-ground intelligence, leading to raids and prosecutions. This assistance is necessary in countries where awareness is low, resources devoted to the problem are scarce and corruption is high.
“There is a lot of corruption,” Ali said. “A lot of the magistrates are underpaid and they get bribed.
“We have a national drug authority that is supposed to prevent counterfeiting, but it is underfunded,” he added. “There are very few inspectors; they don’t have the equipment to check drugs properly… Things find their way into the country – the borders are very porous.”
Where are oil and gas extraction connected to human rights abuses?
Where isn’t it? Oil extraction is a very capital-intensive undertaking, dominated by large corporations and centralized governments, and usually requiring cooperation between the two. Often, the rights, health, and even lives of the local population are ignored, abused or assaulted.
Environmental degradation is usually one of the major problems with drilling and pipeline projects. Contamination of land and water supplies is an immediate threat to human survival.
When the local populace objects strongly enough, the investing corporation might get nervous about the security of their equipment and pipelines, prompting the cooperating government to crack down on the local population in order to maintain the presence of the corporation.
In other cases, the desire to control oil reserves is just another motivating factor for a repressive government…
ExxonMobil has contributed $5 million to the Tsunami relief efforts. In Aceh, the company operates one of the largest gas fields in the world and they’re being sued for gross human rights violations. We speak with a lawyer who has just returned from Indonesia where he was interviewing witnesses against ExxonMobil from Aceh. [includes rush transcript]
Transcript
“AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined by Bama Athreya, who is the Deputy Director of the International Labor Rights Fund, as well as Derek Baxter, who is a lawyer with that group. He has just returned from Indonesia, where he was speaking with people who are involved in the lawsuit. We want to welcome you both to Democracy Now!, and begin with Derek Baxter. Welcome.
DEREK BAXTER: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us, Derek. I wanted to start off by saying that we did invite ExxonMobil on the program. They said at first they would participate in the program, if we were just talking about their contribution, ExxonMobil’s contribution to the relief efforts. They’re one of the largest corporate contributors to the relief efforts. They have pledged more than — they have pledged $5 million. They did write us an email. They said, “I’m surprised your program would choose to divert attention from the unprecedented outpouring of support and coordination among multinational and local relief agencies in Indonesia, by pursuing an ambush interview with one of the largest corporate contributors to those efforts.” Derek Baxter, can you respond?
DEREK BAXTER: Well, we welcome ExxonMobil’s contribution, but ExxonMobil, we have to remember, has a long debt to the Acehnese people. They are by far the largest corporation operating in Aceh. The amount of profit that they derive from this region is enormous. It dwarfs any other industry in the area. While we’re glad that they’re helping, sadly, all too long, Exxon has been part of the problem in Aceh. As our lawsuit has alleged, Exxon has knowingly operated its facilities, its natural gas facilities on the northeastern coast of Aceh. They have done so by hiring the Indonesian military forces to provide security, knowing all along, as is a matter of public record, that the Indonesian military’s record in that area has been a very difficult one. The military has committed many human rights abuses against the people of Aceh in that area. Their collaboration with ExxonMobil has only worsened the problem.
AMY GOODMAN: Derek Baxter, you recently returned, in fact, what, just a week before the tsunami hit, from Indonesia. Can you talk about what you were doing there?
DEREK BAXTER: Certainly. I was very close to Aceh, and part of the problem in actually going to Aceh is that the Indonesian government has not regularly allowed foreigners, journalists, NGOs, etc., to enter without securing special permission, which is very difficult to get. So I was in North Sumatra, very close to Aceh. I met with numerous people, villagers who lived very close to the ExxonMobil facilities in Aceh, who traveled at great personal risk to themselves to North Sumatra, the area where I was, to meet with me. They told me of continuing human rights abuses. Just on the eve of the tsunami, the human rights situation in that part of Aceh was severe, and if anything, it was worsening. I spoke with people who told me that military assigned to protect the ExxonMobil facilities accosted them, extorted them, asked them regularly for contributions of money, of rice, of possessions, which these people had very little, and if there was any protest, they would often be attacked. They would be hauled away from their families, beaten. I spoke to a very young man who had been shot in the right knee, very gruesome. But these atrocities were commonplace. They didn’t surprise anybody that I was talking to, because sadly, in that area, right by the ExxonMobil facilities, those abuses of that type have been going on for years, for the entire last decade. We have even heard reports, which we’re trying to verify, that five people were killed actually on the liquification plant that ExxonMobil helps to operate. As we have — as the ILRF have noted in the lawsuit which we filed in 2001, the torture and murder, disappearance, sexual assault of people, Acehnese, living close to these ExxonMobil facilities was all too routine over the last years.
AMY GOODMAN: Derek Baxter, if you are talking about the Indonesian military, why do you hold ExxonMobil accountable?
DEREK BAXTER: That’s an excellent question, and we’re not seeking to hold them accountable for everything, obviously, that happens in Aceh. There’s a long, ongoing civil strife in that area, but in this particular area, ExxonMobil has contracted, as we have said and alleged in our complaint, they have contracted with the Indonesian military to provide security just for the ExxonMobil facilities. We have alleged that this relationship with the Indonesian military includes providing money, directly to them, it includes building — constructing buildings on ExxonMobil grounds, which the military has used for the torture and disappearance of Acehnese. It includes providing excavating equipment, which ExxonMobil has provided to the military, in which we have alleged the military has then used to construct mass graves of the victims. It’s a very close, ongoing relationship, and you have to remember that ExxonMobil wields enormous financial power in this region, and if they are choosing to utilize the military force that has been criticized by many human rights groups for their violations, then we believe, and we believe the law will hold us out on this point, that ExxonMobil will be legally liable for these violations.
AMY GOODMAN: Derek Baxter, we have to break. When we come back, we will also talk with Bama Athreya, about the overall region. Today, there’s a piece in the Washington Post that talks about the collaboration between the U.S. military right now and the Indonesian military. Yesterday we went up to the U.N. mission — to the Indonesian mission to the United Nations where there was a gathering of Acehnese refugees who were encouraging international aid organizations not to funnel their money through the Indonesian government. And they were calling on the Indonesian military not to stop the aid going into Aceh.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: As we continue to discuss one of the largest corporate contributors to the relief efforts, ExxonMobil — $5 million they say they are giving, we wish we could have them on the program. They declined to participate, but we are talking about an ongoing lawsuit that involves ExxonMobil and its running of one of the largest gas fields in the world in Aceh. I believe that its facility there was not actually damaged by the tsunami. We’re joined in Washington studios by two members of the International Labor Rights Fund. We’re joined by the Deputy Director of the International Fund, Bama Athreya, as well as Derek Baxter, who is the lawyer who’s just returned from Indonesia, a week before the tsunami, interviewing people who are participating in the lawsuit against the — against ExxonMobil. I was wondering, Bama Athreya, if you could put this in the context of Indonesia, which you have worked on for many years, and in the context of what’s happening right now, the massive — well, the cataclysm that has taken place and what is taking place in Aceh.
BAMA ATHREYA: Sure. That’s a big question, Amy, and I’ll try and focus it a little bit on the things that you just mentioned. You had mentioned that there has been a call from a number of activists to insure that the aid that people are so very generously giving to the victims of the tsunami is not all funneled through the Indonesian military. And, on context, I think it’s important for people here, who are, you know, giving very generously on a personal level to recognize the political context in Aceh. The Indonesian military has been operating basically a war against a separatist movement in Aceh for decades now. And that has had a lot of fallout in terms of human rights violations against innocent civilians throughout Aceh. It’s also important to remember that the Indonesian military itself are an extremely corrupt institution. It’s estimated that only about 40% of the military’s basic operating costs are paid for by the Indonesian government. That means they get the other 60% through extortion. You mentioned that ExxonMobil’s given $5 million to the relief effort. Well, we would sure love to know how much ExxonMobil’s has given to the Indonesian military over the years. We know they’ve paid them. We know they’ve given them logistical support. We know they’ve housed them. I’m just guessing that their donations, if you’d like to call it that, to the Indonesian military over the years have been far in excess of the $5 million they’re now giving to the poor victims in Aceh. So, we’re looking at a context where we’ve got a very corrupt institution, the Indonesian military, which has been extorting local Acehnese villagers, which has been running drug operations and prostitution rings in Aceh, which has been involved in illegal timber operations in Aceh; and now we’re going to trust this same institution to be the folks who deliver the aid to the Acehnese victims? It’s not a great idea, Amy, and I think that’s one of the reasons why we share the position of some of our human rights colleagues here in the U.S. that there have got to be some transparent systems in place to deliver aid to make sure those people in Aceh that have suffered the most really, truly get the food and the medicine that people are donating.
AMY GOODMAN: As you mentioned, Bama, Acehnese and human rights groups have been protesting the funneling of aid to the Indonesian military. Yesterday outside the Indonesian mission to the U.N., a gathering of Acehnese refugees took place. They marched from the U.N. to thank them for supporting huge relief efforts in Indonesia, but then marched over to the Indonesian Mission to the U.N., condemning what they called the Indonesian government’s haphazard response to the tsunami. They accuse the Indonesian armed forces of continuing their military operations in Aceh, and of preventing the delivery of aid to victims of the earthquake and tsunami. The refugees charged that rather than helping the people, in a number of areas the troops are intimidating villagers, scaring away —them away from their villages, looting their homes, stealing food. They called on the military to implement an immediate cease-fire.”
Today, as the United Nations puts the confirmed death toll from the Asian Tsunami at more than 150,000, we are going to continue our special coverage of the devestation in the hardest hit area, the Aceh region of Indonesia where the death toll is expected soon to rise above 100,000. In a few moments we are going to be joined by two Acehnese activists who were out in front of the Indonesian Mission to the UN protesting yesterday against the Indonesian military regime. But first, we turn to a story that has gotten almost no attention and that is the story of the oil giant Exxon-Mobil, a corporation that has a massive investment in Aceh. According to some estimates, ExxonMobil has extracted some $40 billion from its operations in Aceh, Indonesia.
According to human rights groups, ExxonMobil has hired military units of the Indonesian national army to provide “security” for their gas extraction and liquification project in the region. Members of these military units regularly have perpetrated ongoing and severe human rights abuses against local villagers, including murder, rape, torture, destruction of property and other acts of terror. Human rights groups further charge that ExxonMobil has continued to finance the military and to provide company equipment and facilities that have been used by the Indonesian military to commit atrocities and cover them up through the use of mass graves.
For years, the Washington DC-based International Labor Rights Fund has fought a series of legal battles to hold ExxonMobil responsible for its record in Aceh. One of the group’s lawyers was in Aceh interviewing witnesses just days before the Tsunami hit.
Derek Baxter, a lawyer for the International Labor Rights Fund in Washington, D.C.
Bama Athreya, Deputy Director of the International Labor Rights Fund in Washington, D.C.
”When, in November 2001, the French publishing house Denoel published Ben Laden, La Verite Interdite, (Bin Laden, the Forbidden Truth), the French daily Le Monde predicted “this book will create sensation!” On the contrary, no sensation was created, since no publisher in the United States or any other English speaking country was interested in touching this hot iron. Fortunately, Europe is different. The Swiss publisher Pendo published the book in German under the title Verbotene Wahrheit. The only difference is the subtitle: Entanglement of USA with Osama Bin Laden. Allegedly, The Forbidden Truth will appear in an English edition in July of this year.
For political observers with a little sense of smell, the second Bush administration has had, from its first day in office, the strong odor of oil. The Bush family’s association with oil-related industries; George Jr.’s role as founder and executive director of Arbusto Energy Inc. and later Harken Energy Inc., both partly financed by some suspicious Saudi Arabian figures; his insistence on exploring for oil in Alaska, in spite of the negative environmental impact; and the members of his administration-all smell of oil.
Vice President Dick Cheney was, until his settlement in the White House, Chief Executive of the world’s largest oil-service company, Halliburton. With such a background, it was hardly strange that his first activity as Vice President was the creation of the Energy Policy Task Force. This was the bridge between government and the energy industry. The result of the cooperation between Washington and power producers and traders is now well known. Cheney’s involvement with the Enron corporation and his various meetings with the principals of this best-known player of the power privatization game, has dominated the business pages for months.
Congress finally invited the officials of Enron to a congressional hearing. The hearing became a senseless show, as Enron executives refused to answer any question. By revealing the corrupt policies of Enron, such as creation of a false energy crisis in California, a more thorough investigation became necessary, in spite of White House resistance. Since the repeated requests of congressional investigators remained without response, on May 24, 2002, Senator Joseph Lieberman (Dem.Conn.), chair of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, subpoenaed the White House for an array of Enron-related documents. That evening, the committee received a bunch of papers. Senator Lieberman said, “in many cases, they’ve left out details the committee asked for, such as who attended meetings or took part in communications and when all of the communications occurred.” Points of interest revealed by the documents include:
Portions of the chronology document the deep ties between the Bush administration and Enron, including three phone conversations between former Enron chairman Kenneth L. Lay and Bush’s senior adviser, Karl Rove. Enron’s top executives were some of Bush’s earliest and most generous supporters, and pursued a broad agenda with the administration that ended only after its huge losses and accounting irregularities became public. Robeff McNally a special assistant to Bush on energy policy met with Enron representatives several times and received at least one e-mail from Enron’s Chief Washington lobbyist. Enron officials briefed members of Cheney’s energy task force about a liquefied natural gas project in Venezuela. The chronology does not say why the company felt it necessary to inform the White House about the project.
Let us return to Forbidden Truth: Many names in this administration are worth mentioning that will highlight the Bush people’s oil connection, but let it suffice to point out the star of Bush’s cabinet, Ms. Condoleezza Rice. The mainstream media of the country present Bush & National Security Adviser as a Russian specialist with credentials from Stanford. But the media gloss over other known facts. For instance, the media seldom mention that Ms. Rice, from 1991 to 2000, served on the Board of Directors of the Chevron Group, one of the world’s largest oil conglomerates. She was, before everything, responsible for the areas of Kazakhstan and Pakistan.
The question is, how do Rice’s current activities differ from her past efforts on the Board of Directors of Chevron? And this question is naturally not restricted to her, since in the case of other Bush administration members, it appears that only their office address has changed. Again Brissard and Dasquie: “The men and women who settled on January 26, 2001 in the White House were not as isolationist as one could assume, since their international relations easily smell of oil.”
Bush’s close connection with energy markets, and the undeniable involvement of Dick Cheney in the Enron scandal are the inescapable background to the sudden upheaval in Venezuela which resulted in the incarceration of President Hugo Chavez. This country on the northern rim of South America within a short distance from the U.S. shores, is fourth in international oil production, with a daily export of approximately two million barrels to the United States.
A NIGHTMARE RESURRECTED
For me, and I believe for many politically aware people around the world, those headlines of the U.S. press, gleefully reporting the forced resignation of the Venezuelan President by a military coup, awakened a past nightmare. That nightmare was the overthrow of the popular and democratically elected government of Prime Minister Dr. Mohammad Mossadeq by a coup, organized by the CIA 50 years ago in August 1953. By closely reading the reports of different phases of the Venezuelan event, one finds many similarities with what happened in Iran half a century ago.
The Wall Street Journal’s man in Caracas, Marc Lifsher, reported on April 12, under the headline “Venezuelan Crisis Deepens, Cutting Oil Flow and Threatening Chavez.” The first two paragraphs reported “a prolonged national strike and violent demonstrations…choking off…oil exports to U.S….” the rumors that “President Hugo Chavez had agreed to leave the country” and a clash between the demonstrators and supporters of the President. The clues and motifs of the event are given in the next paragraph:
The demonstrations and a crippling strike across this nation of 24 million threaten to loosen Mr. Chavez’s grip on power. The protests are the fruit of an unusual alliance between big business and labor, led by a burly 56-year old former refinery cleaner named Carlos Ortega…. The actions have bottled up oil output, jolted global oil markets and stunned a government that Washington considers a political pariah. U.S. officials dislike the Venezuelan ruler for his national oil policy.
NOW AND THEN
Chavez’s national oil policy is the same crime for which Dr. Mossadeq was punished with the first covert action of the CIA. Let’s not forget that the CIA success in Iran became a model later used in Guatemala, Ghana, Congo, Chile and many other places in the world. Marc Lifsher described Chavez’s policy as follows:
Mr. Chavez’s prickly nationalism has made him a big irritant for Washington and a bit of a wild card on the global oil scene. He has increased royalties charged to foreign oil investors and shifted Venezuelan’s traditional high-production, low-price oil policy by aligning with OPEC in an effort to push prices higher. Apart from that, there’s evidence that Mr. Chavez has consorted with Marxist guerrillas in neighboring Colombia, where the U.S. is backing the government in a $1.3 billion assistance program. Mr. Chavez has also maintained warm relations with a host of leaders whom the U.S. considers pariahs, including Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein and Muammar el-Qaddafi.
In the 1950s, except for the Soviet Union, not many “pariahs” existed. In his book Countercoup, Mr. Kermit Roosevelt, “field commander” of the coup, asserted that, at the time of the CIA coup in Iran, Dr. Mossadeq “had formed an alliance of his own with the Soviet Union to achieve the result he wanted.” This was not true.
A clearer picture of Dr. Mossadeq can be found in the carefully documented book The Eagle and the Lion:
… Mossadeq was no more stubborn than the British… Besides his personal convictions in these matters, Mossadeq’s unyielding position was essential within the context of the social forces then at work in Iran. The communist left, the growing nationalist middle, and the xenophobic religious right exerted continual fierce pressure…. In a secret meeting of the Majlis [Iranian parliament] Oil Commission in 1951, he argued that in order to defeat communism, reforms were necessary. In order to implement reforms, money was essential. In order to obtain money nationalization was vital…
Based upon those facts, the previous administration of Truman/Acheson hesitated to interfere in the controversies between Iran and the U.K. For the Republican administration of Eisenhower/Dulles, with their so-called concern about communism, the logical reasoning of Mossadeq did not have any validity. Consequently, his oil policy, focused on the nationalization of Iranian oil, sufficed to make him accused of being a communist who consorted with the Soviet Union. Fifty years ago, Iranian oil was very important for the United States-important enough to make it ready to overthrow a democratic government. When we understand that most Venezuelan oil is consumed by the U.S., and some Texas refineries are actually dependent upon this source, the current U.S. position toward Venezuela becomes similarly clear.
The importance of Venezuelan oil for the U.S. was reported by the Wall Street Journals man in Caracas:
Venezuela…has long been a strategic source of crude oil of the U.S. and is only a few days tanker run to refineries in Louisiana and Texas. Petroleos De Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA) wholly owns Citgo, a Tulsa, Oklahoma-based company that operates a number of refineries and 14,000 service stations…. Venezuela regularly ranks among the top four foreign sources of U.S. oil and usually shipped to the U.S. about 1.7 million barrels a day of crude oil and refined products like gasoline. Many of the U.S. refineries are specially engineered to handle heavy Venezuelan crude and could find themselves facing shortage in the coming weeks if Venezuela doesn’t resume full production and exportation.
The reaction of the administration in Washington and the corporate media to the Venezuelan event was practically identical. Here, the Washington Post can serve as a sample of the American press. On April 13, 2002, the paper had three reports and one editorial about Venezuela. The report of Scott Wilson from Caracas under the headline “Leader of Venezuela Is Forced To Resign” informed the readers in the first two paragraphs:
…President Hugo Chavez, the former paratrooper whose leftist politics roiled this oil-rich country for three years, resigned this moming hours after military leaders seized control of the country. His resignation followed anti-government protests that left more than a dozen people dead…. An interim government headed by Pedro Carmona, leader of the country’s largest business group, was sworn in at the presidential palace this afternoon in a ceremony attended by a cross section of Venezuela’s civil society Backed by the country’s top generals, who will join him on the governing junta, Carmona declared Chavez’s two-year-old constitution invalid, dissolved the Chavez-controlled legislature and Supreme Court, and pledged to hold new presidential and legislative elections within a year.
LEGALITY OR LEGITIMACY?
The second report of Scott Wilson was titled “Chavez’s Gloomy Legacy for The Left.” Wilson presents Chavez as a man “…superimposed between the guerrilla heroes of old-the face of a new generation of leftist Latin American leaders ready to antagonize the United States,” with a bleak legacy for the radical left of Latin America, “…now pushing against the prevailing political current of free trade, capitalism and a general nod to U.S. interest.” Two citations in that analysis which sound like music to Washington’s ears are very revealing. The first is from an official of the state oil company who said “Cuba would not get one more drop of Venezuelan oil,” and the second is from Anibal Romero, professor of political science at Simon Bolivar University. Professor Romero, like Francis Fukuyama or Dinesh D’Souza, is the sort of ideologue much in demand at Washington think-tanks. His lecture about the Venezuelan event:
The lesson here is that charismatic demagogues can still win elections in poor countries. The economic and social instability is still with us. The field is still open to the successful appearance of these figures that, by distorting reality and securing the hearts and minds of the uneducated, win election….Chavez showed what was wrong with a U.S. policy that endorses democratic government regardless of how it is carried out. Democracies operate differently in each country and should be treated differently as a result. It is a great improvement that the U.S. is committed to democracy and the rule of law in Latin America, and it’s a big change from the past. But this is not a policy that should be implemented indiscriminately Legality is one thing, legitimacy is another.
The White House was apparently familiar with the opinion of Professor Romero, as becomes clear from the statement of Scott Wilson:
The emerging response to Chavez’s forced resignation, which he tendered to three generals this moming, highlights how fragile democracy is in an Andean region that has had three presidents ousted by coup or popular protest in the last three years. U.S. officials declined today to call Chavez’s removal a coup, even as the leaders from 19 Latin American nations condemned ‘the constitutional interruption in Venezuela.
U.S. CONTACT WITH THE OPPOSITION
According to Wilson’s first report, some members of the opposition contacted the U.S. Embassy in Caracas in the weeks before the event. They were seeking U.S. support for toppling Chavez. One U.S. official confirmed the contact: “The opposition has been coming in with an assortment of… what if this happened? What if that happened? What if you held it up and looked at it sideways? To every scenario we say no. We know what a coup looks like, and we won’t support it.”
The third article, by Peter Slevin and Karen DeYoung, has one purpose: washing the administration’s hands. This is reflected in the headline: “Chavez Provoked His Removal, U.S. Officials Say,” which repeats what Ari Fleisher said the previous day: The Bush administration yesterday blamed former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez for the events that led to his forced resignation and arrest, calling his toppling by the nation’s military a “change of government” rather than a coup. Officials said Chavez’s departure was the will of Venezuela’s people. Wonderful how the will of Venezuela’s people so closely parallels the designs of the Bush administration.
Chavez lost his job ‘…as a result of the message of the Venezuelan people,’ said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer… [He] said the Chavez government tried to suppress peaceful demonstrations, ordered its supporters to fire on unarmed protesters and blocked media broadcasts of the events.
In addition to such reporting and analysis, the Washington Post felt it necessary to clarify the paper’s position in the case of the Venezuelan change of government. The Post published an editorial that tries to demonstrate the paper’s patriotism without compromising its so-called liberal face. The opening paragraph is a masterwork of hypocrisy.
Any interruption of democracy in Latin America is wrong, the more so when it involves the military. The region’s history of military coups is too long and tragic, and the consolidation of democracy too recent, for any unconstitutional takeover to be condoned.
This is a beautiful opening for an editorial. Unfortunately, its validity is not always guaranteed, and under some circumstances there is legitimate reason to ignore the consolidation of democracy. The editorial presented the difference between legality and legitimacy in the following sentence:
But first facts from Venezuela suggest that the violation of democracy that led to ouster of President Hugo Chavez Thursday night was initiated not by the army but by Mr. Chavez himself. Confronted by tens of thousands of peaceful demonstrators protesting his increasingly destructive policies, Mr. Chavez forced television stations off the air and allegedly ordered snipers and other armed loyalists at the presidential palace to open fire. More than a dozen people were killed and scores wounded. It was only then the military commanders demanded the president resignation; they would not, they said, tolerate his attempt to stop his opposition with bullets.
The editorial admits that “There is no question that democracy brought Mr. Chavez to power three years ago.” But it tries to rationalize his removal by military means by proclaiming:
Along the way Mr. Chavez seriously compromised the integrity of democratic institutions such as Congress and the Courts And unfortunately for the poor, who make up 80 percent of the population of an oil-rich country, Mr. Chavez was a terrible leader. l 8
The jubilant atmosphere in Washington and the corporate media was short-lived. The next day’s headlines were unexpectedly sober. Many dailies in the U.S. followed the Post’s lead and joined in the White House jubilation by repeating Ari Fleischer’s daily statements. On April 16, the New York Times, at least, confessed the error of its editorial of April 14.
Scott Wilson of the Washington Post gave a precise picture of the event. In his previous report, he called “…the media, labor unions and the Catholic Church…” enemies of the Chavez government. In the subsequent report, he informed the readers that in the Fall, two officers, Pedro Soto and Carlos Molina from Air Force and Marines respectively, began to organize a group of officers for a plot to topple Chavez. The plot was discovered and the two officers were forced out of service. But their idea was supported by two high-ranking officers, General Rafael D. Bustillos of the army, and Vice Admiral Hector Ramirez of the navy. After the coup, Hector Ramirez became defense minister, and Rafael Bustillos became interior and justice minister in the interim government of Pedro Carmona. Scott Wilson found out later that Soto and Molina received $100,000 each from a Miami Bank. The New York Times, under the title “Bush Officials Met With Venezuelan Who Ousted Leader” quoted a Pentagon spokesperson saying that U.S. military officials were not discouraging coup plotters, and were sending informal signals that they don’t like Chavez.
TUMULTUOUS 48 HOURS IN 2002
According to the official story of the interim government, on Thursday, April 11th, about 3:00 p.m., demonstrators opposing Chavez arrived at the presidential palace. Chavez, concerned about the loyalty of some high-ranking military officers, called directly the commander of 3rd division in Caracas, asking for 30 tanks to defend the palace, Miraflores. As Chief of the Armed Forces Lucas Rincon received the order, he stopped it and sent only seven tanks. About one hour later, Hector Ramirez, as the new minister of defense, accompanied by a group of officers, appeared on television, denounced Chavez as dictator and demanded his resignation. On Friday, April 12th, the military named Pedro Carmona interim President, claiming that Chavez had resigned. Carmona immediately dissolved the Congress and Supreme Court. The United States, unsurprisingly, endorsed the interim government. Latin American leaders refused to support the coup. As the coup was stimulating harsh international criticism, the supporters of Chavez took to the streets surrounding the presidential palace demanding his return to office. The insistence of Chavez supporters day and night around the palace forced some part of the military to reconsider their position. A series of rebellions among army units warned the Carmona clique and cooperating officers.
Mark Lifsher’s report in the Wall Street Journal, cynically titled “In Under 48 Hours, Venezuelans Have Enough of a Coup,” describes the events as follows:
When a group of military men and the head of Venezuela’s main business association ousted leftist President Hugo Chavez last week, the coup-plotters denounced the former paratrooper as a dictator….But once in power the plotters revealed that they too were undemocratic-and lacking in Mr. Chavez’s flair with Venezuela’s aggrieved working class. The brief government, headed by business leader Pedro Carmona, immediately issued a decree shutting down the Congress, suspending the Supreme Court and authorizing the firing of elected officials, including state governors and mayors.
Both the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal interviewed Anibal Romero, professor of political science. After Chavez returned to power, the professor said he has been . . . immensely strengthened both domestically and internationally he is a martyr who’s come back from the grave. This is not simply a setback but is a tragedy and it’s going to take the opposition a long time and enormous effort to rebuild.
TUMULTUOUS 48 HOURS IN 1952
The fact is that the 16th parliament of Iran generally supported the view of Mossadeq. But the election for the 17th parliament was a great risk, since all his opponents such as the Shah, the military and the clerics (including Ayatollah Khomeini) were mobilized to destroy his legislative support. The loyalty of high-ranking officers of all branches of the military to the Imperial Court, and their broad influence over regional governments was a well-known fact. To encounter such sabotage, Dr. Mossadeq did not have any other choice than to break this cycle. In this light, Amir Arjomand analyzes the situation at that time:
Furthermore, Mossadeq also sought to restrict the neo-patrimonial powers of the Shah and to reduce him to a constitutional monarch and a ceremonial figurehead. To achieve this constitutional goal, he forced a showdown with the Shah in July 1 952.
As the Shah refused the Prime Minister’s demand, Mossadeq resigned. For this the British and the Shah had waited a long time. The Shah immediately nominated Ahmad Ghavam as prime minister. This was clearly against the existing Iranian Constitution at that time, and was demonstrably a coup d’etat. Much as it happened in Venezuela in April 2002, mass demonstrations in Tehran and other major cities, forced the Shah to dismiss Ghavam and invite Dr. Mossadeq back. This spontaneous demonstration of the people was a real countercoup.
CONCILIATORY COMEBACK
In spite of condemnation by 19 Latin American leaders, the White House stuck to its position. The day Chavez reclaimed the presidency, the White House released the following statement:
The people of Venezuela have sent a clear message to President Chavez that they want both democracy and reform. The Chavez administration has an opportunity to respond to this message by correcting its course of governing in a fully democratic manner.
Although Chavez’s first speeches were conciliatory, the relationship between the two countries has been damaged. On the first day of his return to power, Chavez made the following appeal: “Organize yourselves, members of the opposition! Engage in politics that is fair, just and legal!” Three weeks later, on May 3, Chavez gave an interview primarily focused on future relations between the two countries. He discussed not only the role of the U.S. in the coup, but also the existence of a plan to assassinate him. The indirect message in this interview was to Washington, where political assassination has been outlawed for thirty years.
The evidence includes information collected from a coastal radar installation that tracked a foreign military ship and aircraft operating in and over Venezuelan waters a day after his ouster. The ship, helicopter and plane-identified by their transponder codes as military-disappeared from the radar the moming he returned from his imprisonment on the island of La Orchila, he said….ln addition, Chavez said, an American was involved in what he characterized as an assassination plot against him uncovered in Costa Rica four months ago. He said the details of the plan revealed at the time essentially predicted what transpired on April 11, when a protest march on the presidential palace turned violent and led to his arrest by senior military officers.
The revelation of the alleged assassination plan occurred as Chavez and his family were vacationing in January 2002. Chavez received a phone call from his foreign minister, urging him to return to Caracas. On his arrival, discovery of the plot was disclosed. The unexpected breakdown of interim government was very puzzling. But, having knowledge of such a plan; observing the mutiny of some officers; and knowing about the contact of the opposition members with U.S. officials, in Caracas as well as in Washington; the Chavez administration was fully aware of the threat of a coup, and prepared a thorough defense.
On May 13th the Guardian corroborated this by publishing an investigative report. The Guardian had reported one month earlier that a former U.S. intelligence officer claimed that the overthrow of Chavez has been considered by the U.S. for nearly a year. The report did not find any echo, although it revealed that the Chavez administration received an advance warning of a coup attempt from the Venezuelan Ali Rodriguez, the secretary general of OPEC. This advance warning, first reported on the BBC program “Newsnight” allowed the Chavez administration to counter the coup by an extraordinary plan.
Mr. Rodriguez, a former leftwing guerrilla, telephoned Mr. Chavez from the Vienna headquarters of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries…several days before the attempted overthrow in April. He said OPEC had learned that… Libya and Iraq, planned to call for a new oil embargo against the United States because of its support for Israel.
The sudden collapse of the coup was for a time a mystery. According to Chavez insiders, several hundred Chavista troops were already hidden in the basement of the presidential palace. At the time of coup, Mr. Juan Barreto, a Chavista member of the National Assembly was trapped along with Chavez in Miraflores. Mr. Barreto said that Jose Baduel, chief of the paratroop division loyal to Mr. Chavez, had waited until Mr. Carmona was inside Miraflores. Mr. Baduel then phoned Mr. Carmona to tell him that, with troops virtually under his chair, he was as much a hostage as Mr. Chavez. He gave Mr. Carmona 24 hours to return Mr. Chavez alive. Escape from Miraflores was impossible for Mr. Carmona. The building was surrounded by hundreds of thousands of pro-Chavez demonstrators who, alerted by a sympathetic foreign affairs minister, had marched on it from the Ranchos, the poorest barrios.
COUP AND COUNTERCOUP
According to an interview with President Chavez on BBC’s “Newsnight,” his administration has
… written proof of the time of the entries and exits of two U.S. military officers into the headquarters of the coup plotters-their names, whom they met with, what they said-proof on video and on still photographs.
Here lies the key difference between the first American coup in August 1953, in Iran, and the last in April 2002, in Venezuela. Apparently, based upon early warning, the Chavez administration had a precise plan, not only to counter the coup, but also to document it.
Dr. Mossadeq also had such information, and somehow was prepared to counter the coup and ordered the arrest of a senior coup plotter. But he did not believe that the plot would continue after that arrest. One American researcher in the field of U.S. policy toward Iran gives the following picture of the first phase of the coup:
Well, the coup was supposed to take place on the night of August 15-16. The main plan was that selected military units would take certain actions and in particular certain officers would go and arrest Mossadeq, and so they did. But the Prime Minister had learned about this, apparently through Tudeh party informants in the U.S. Embassy who had passed the word to their party and the Tudeh passed it on to Mossadeq. This is apparently how it happened, although this is not certain. Anyway Mossadeq somehow knew; he was expecting visitors and he knew that they were coming to arrest him. So when the officer arrived, he had him arrested, and then a number of other things didn’t work out very well. There were military units that were supposed to occupy certain locations in Tehran, but officers got cold feet. So the initial coup plan which was scheduled to occur on the night of August 15-16 quickly fell apart 26
Although at that time, Mossadeq could have unmasked the coup plotters, and used his enormous popularity to mobilize people against them and enhance his national movement, he didn’t do anything. The reasons for Mossadeq’s inconsistency are both personal and historical.
Like many politicians of the l9th century (this year marks the 120th anniversary of his birth), Mossadeq viewed politics as an inescapably moral enterprise. He was one of the rare Iranian politicians who opposed Reza Khan, founder of Pahlavi dynasty and father of Mohammad Reza Shah, who was key to the plot against him. During the reign of Reza Shah, Mossadeq was for many years under house arrest until the occupation of Iran during World War II by the allied forces and the subsequent expulsion of Reza Shah from Iran.
On September 17, 1941, Mohammad Reza Shah’s inauguration began with his oath before parliament to be faithful to and supportive of the Iranian constitution. Mossadeq was now freed, and soon elected to parliament. He once told the young Shah that he had sworn to be faithful to the Iranian monarchy. For him it was immoral to break this oath, although the Shah was breaking his oath to be faithful to the constitution.
Mossadeq took a positive view of the United States. (Even Ho Chi Minh believed the Truman administration might help free his nation from the yoke of French colonialism.) In contrast to European countries like England, France, Netherlands, Belgium, and Portugal, in Mossadeq’s view the United States never had any colony. For Dr. Mossadeq’s hope of ending the dominance of England and nationalizing Iranian oil, the U.S. appeared to be a helpful ally. Because of this viewpoint and despite copious evidence, Mossadeq did not want to believe that the U.S. would assist in a coup in favor of British oil interests. In the end, the fact is that Mossadeq’s passivity resulted in the continuation of the coup in its second phase by CIA man Kermit Roosevelt, as described by James A. Bill:
The first act of Operation Ajax failed when Mossadeq got word that he was to be ousted. Colonel Nimatullah Nassiri, the officer who tried to serve him with political eviction orders signed by the shah, was arrested on the spot, and the shah made a hasty flight out of the country on August 16, 1953. Rather than cancel the operation at this point, Roosevelt took it upon himself to move forward with plans to call into the street his paid mobs from south Tehran along with the royalist military officers led by Gen. Fazlollah Zahedi… After much confusion and street fighting, the royalists won the day and on August 19, Muhammad Mossadeq was forced to flee his residence and was arrested soon thereafter. On August 22, the shah flew back to Iran in triumph.
To justify the second phase of the initial coup, which crumbled, Mr. Roosevelt coined the name “Countercoup” for its followup. Unfortunately, James A. Bill and others have followed his lead.
According to the pre-coup Iranian constitution in place in l953, the prime minister could resign, or his government might fall upon a no-confidence vote of parliament. In either case, parliament alone had the right to nominate his successor. The Shah would then invite the nominee to appoint the next government. This was a pro forma role for the Shah. He did not have the power to veto the nomination of parliament. In the first phase of the coup, the officer who was designated to arrest Mossadeq carried a decree with him signed by the Shah, dismissing Dr. Mossadeq as prime minister, and appointing Gen. Fazlollah Zahedi-who was on the payroll of the CIA. This act by the Shah was an outright violation of the constitution, and a real coup d’etat. Hence the arrest of the officer sent to arrest Dr. Mossadeq, was a real countercoup. Referring to Kermit Roosevelt’s overthrow of Mossadeq as a “countercoup” is nothing but a public relations fraud.
The resistance of Hugo Chavez’s administration and the Venezuelan people can be legitimately called a countercoup. Organizing a coup today is not as easy as it was in 1953 Iran, where most participants were paid only thirty cents for their destructive role. Kermit Roosevelt professed amusement that he had a million dollar budget to overthrow Mossadeq but spent only $100,000. The reaction of most Latin American leaders showed respect for democratic principles and national rights. Some of today’s leaders of the hemisphere were former partisans of democracy who are now practicing it. As an example, it is interesting to note that the man who gave warning of the Venezuelan coup, Mr. Ali Rodriguez, secretary general of OPEC, was a former active guerrilla. The political sharpness of such people cannot be compared to the sincere belief of a 19th century social democrat like the late Dr. Mossadeq. In spite of all that, one should not take the victory of the Chavez administration as a fully guaranteed matter. As mentioned before, the first attempt against Mossadeq, a joint project of the Shah and the British in June 1952 was defeated by the people on the streets of Tehran and put Mossadeq back in power within 48 hours. But he was not immune against the subsequent attempt, in August 1953, which unfortunately succeeded. There are still many Pinochets in Latin America who would not mind going through one or more blood baths to serve their master. The recent demonstrations by black shirt wearers in Caracas on May 11 and 23, very similar to fabricated demonstrations in Mossadeq’s time should alert the Chavez administration.
The warning should not be treated as a prediction of gloom and doom, but an appeal for alertness. The Venezuelan people can and must utilize the historical experience of the millions of victims of other CIA coups around the world. Planners of a coup do not easily renounce their plans. They postpone their work only to find other ways to pursue the initial plan. They do not hesitate to use all possible avenues to reach their goal. Let us refresh our memory by a fast review of the different episodes of the British against Mossadeq.
The British knew Mossadeq very well, as a law-abiding democrat. They first took the case of nationalization of Iranian oil to the Security Council of the UN. The Council supported Mossadeq’s argument that the case was between Iran and a private company and not between two nations or governments. Britain next went to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Mossadeq argued Iran’s case. On July 22, 1952, the majority of the Court acknowledged Iran’s rights to nationalize its own resources as a sovereign nation. Even the British judge ruled in Iran’s favor. As the British judicial arguments were exhausted, the tactics shifted to more political intrigues for overt actions inside Iran, and diplomatic initiatives to win American support for covert actions. The British were encouraged by Mossadeq’s opponents-the Shah, the military and the clerics were ready for cooperation. In this instance:
[T]he British indicated openly and frequently that no negotiations were possible with him, and that they would prefer to do business with his successor. Mossadeq’s only hope was to maintain the momentum of nationalist movement, with its built-in anti-British stance, in order to minimize his government against orchestrated parliamentary machination and other activities sponsored by the British and the Court.
History tells us that Dr. Mossadeq was not alert enough. Today, when Mr. Pedro Carmona openly boasts of backing from the United States, and eventual future attempts, it is clearly still high noon for President Chavez and his administration.
Coups do not occur in a vacuum, so the CIA has typically relied on black propaganda as a preparatory measure in every coup since l953. Disinformation, planted through news agencies or hired journalists is a very effective and important way to create the necessary social tension. Typical of such propaganda is the Washington Post characterization of Chavez’s presidency as “unfortunate for the poor who make up 80 percent of the population of an oil-rich country.” Chavez’s response to such charges was printed in Le Monde Diplomatique, but never showed up in the Washington Post:
We have lowered unemployment… created 450,000 new jobs… Venezuela moved up four places on the Human Development Index. The number of children in school has risen 25 percent. More than 1.5 million children who didn’t go to school are now in school, and receive clothing, breakfast, lunch and afternoon snacks. We have carried out massive immunization campaigns in the marginalized sector of population. Infant mortality has declined. We are building more than 135,000 housing units for poor families. We are distributing land to landless campesinos. We have created a Women’s Bank that provides micro-credit loans. In the year 2001, Venezuela was one of the countries with the highest growth rates on the continent, nearly 3 percent… We are delivering the country from prostration and backwardness.
Such a balance of achievements rarely finds the smallest reflection in the main stream media of the United States. But Mr. Stephen Johnson from the Heritage Foundation has the opportunity, as “Policy Analyst for Latin America,” to use the opinion page of Wall Street Journal to criticize President Chavez:
In October 2000, Mr. Chavez signed an agreement with Fidel Castro to provide Cuba with a sizable chunk of its oil needs in exchange for welcoming Cuban experts to train Venezuelan teachers and help develop new school curricula. In March 2001, some 10,000 parents and teachers gathered in various cities across the nation to protest what they perceived as an effort to indoctrinate their children.
The history of U.S. covert operations in the Third World shows clearly that such operations are seldom planned as one-shot deals. Coups are generally the last resort in a series of multifaceted covert operations, implemented only when all other methods have failed. Once the advantage of surprise is lost, coup planners must resort to other clever tricks as they mount their second, third or fourth attempts. One such trick is a smokescreen of saturation media coverage on a simultaneous overt operation in another part of the world. Once international attention is focused elsewhere, a blitzkrieg is unleashed. As long as the U.S. continues to rely on covert operations to achieve its goals, eternal vigilance is essential to preserving democratic gains anywhere around the world.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Mahmoud Gudarzi was born in Tehran, Iran in 1932 He studied in West Germany and the U.S., taking degrees in Journalism and Education. In 50 years of journalism, he has published over 1,000 articles on Iran and problems of the Middle East He writes regularly for the weekly Shahrvand (Toronto and Dallas).”
Tar Sands 101
The Tar Sands “Gigaproject” is the largest industrial project in human history and likely also the most destructive. The tar sands mining procedure releases at least three times the CO2 emissions as regular oil production and is slated to become the single largest industrial contributor in North America to Climate Change.
The tar sands are already slated to be the cause of up to the second fastest rate of deforestation on the planet behind the Amazon Rainforest Basin. Currently approved projects will see 3 million barrels of tar sands mock crude produced daily by 2018; for each barrel of oil up to as high as five barrels of water are used.
Human health in many communities has seriously taken a turn for the worse with many causes alleged to be from tar sands production. Tar sands production has led to many serious social issues throughout Alberta, from housing crises to the vast expansion of temporary foreign worker programs that racialize and exploit so-called non-citizens. Infrastructure from pipelines to refineries to super tanker oil traffic on the seas crosses the continent in all directions to allthree major oceans and the Gulf of Mexico.
The mock oil produced primarily is consumed in the United States and helps to subsidize continued wars of aggression against other oil producing nations such as Iraq, Venezuela and Iran.
The Assumption Parish website update this morning verified Texas Brine’s exploratory well finding that Oxy Cavern #3 had failed but disagreed with the preliminary conclusion that failure was due to “regional-scale seismic activity.(earthquakes)” A portion of the update can be found below:
Assumption Parish officials have been advised by DNR that their exploratory well observers have confirmed that brine cavern #3 has failed. Per Texas Brine’s press release, “The tool used to measure cavern depth bottomed out at approximately 4,000 feet – a point estimated to be 1,300 feet higher than the floor had been measured prior to the cavern closure in 2011. This preliminary finding indicates that some type of dense material has fallen to the bottom of the cavern. A sample of the material has been retrieved from the cavern floor and will be analyzed. The retrieved material does not appear to be consistent with material normally found in brine cavern operations. We expect that the sonar inspection that is currently being conducted will provide a more detailed image of the cavern’s interior conditions and the possible source of the material at its base.” This statement confirms the suspicions of parish officials: Texas Brine Oxy Cavern #3 had failed.
It has come to our attention that Texas Brine’s press release was released to the media at 10:31 p.m. last night, prior to consulting with parish and state officials. Parish officials are not in agreement with Texas Brine’s preliminary conclusion that their well was damaged by “regional-scale seismic activity” (earthquakes). Given the confirmation of the failure of Texas Brine’s cavern, the parish will continue to look to Texas Brine for accountability and evacuee assistance. – read the full text hereread the full text here
Citizen Concerns have led the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality(DEQ) and the Assumption Parish Sheriff's Office to conduct indoor air monitoring. Monitoring is focused on Lower Explosive Limit(LEL), Volatile Organic Compounds(VOCs) and Hydrogen Sulfide(H2S).
Oil spill stretches for miles near Exxon Nigeria field
Saturday, 01 September 2012 13:08 Reuters
An oil spill near an ExxonMobil oilfield off the southeast coast of Nigeria has spread along the shore for about 15 miles, and locals said it was killing fish they depend on to live.
Mobil Producing Nigeria, a joint venture between ExxonMobil and the state oil firm, said this month it was helping clean up an oil spill near its Ibeno field in Akwa Ibom state, though it did not know the source of the oil.
This Reuters reporter saw that water along the coast was covered with a rainbow-tinted film of oil for miles.
Exxon officials in Nigeria and in Houston could not immediately be reached to provide comment.
Oil spills are common in Nigeria, where enforcement of environmental regulations is lax and armed gangs frequently damage pipelines to steal crude.
In the Iwuokpom-Ibeno fishing community, village elder Iyang Ekong held up one of a load of crabs that a fisherman had caught that morning, only to find they were soaked in toxic oil.
“When I got I home, I realised we can’t even eat them because they smell so badly of chemicals. So we’re just going to leave them by the waterfront,” he said.
Decades of oil production in Nigeria’s swampy Niger Delta, where Africa’s second-longest river empties into the Atlantic, have turned parts of it into a wasteland of oily water and dead mangroves. Thousands of barrels are spilled every year.
The companies say oil theft by criminal gangs is responsible for most of it.
“Our fishermen noticed the oil on an outing, but the sea has started depositing crude oil along the coast, and it has filled the water,” said Samuel Ayode, chairman of the fishermen’s association of Akwa Ibom, as he repaired his fishing net on the beach. He added that it started around Aug. 10.
“No one’s done any fishing since. The fish have migrated away from the pollution.”
A landmark U.N. report in August last year slammed the government and multinational oil companies, particularly Shell , for 50 years of oil pollution that has devastated the Ogoniland region. One community is suing for compensation in a London court.
The government and oil majors have pledged to clean up the region and other parts of the delta, but locals say they have seen no evidence of action yet.
Market trader Grace Eno said fish were scarce since the spill and that fishermen were selling at much higher prices. Shrimps have doubled in price, she said, “so how can I make a profit?”
Source
AUSTRALIAN SBS-TV ‘DATELINE’: MR TSVANGIRAI HAS IN FACT, TOGETHER WITH THE CIA/MOSSAD – BEEN PLOTTING TO KILL PRESIDENT ROBERT MUGABE.
Henk Ruyssenaars
October 13th 2010 – Zimbabwe is in the mainstream propaganda press again: president Mugabe named six ambassadors and did not inform his prime minister Tsvangirai, it says. That’s – according to Tsvangirai ‘illegal’ – so he sends letters protesting this to the United Nations, the European Union, South-Africa, Italy, Sweden and Switzerland. Asking those not to acknowledge the new ambassadors because they are supposed all to belong to Mugabe’s party, ZANU-PF.
Concerning ‘justice’ and Africa one has to read it on Internet too: in many articles Zimbabwe and Mugabe are by the MSM described as too bad and as lawless, but when, how and why did it start?
Personally I don’t think any info in the MSM is correct at all. The problems in Zimbabwe in full strength began when Mugabe told the multinationals, IMF, World Bank – and especially Monsanto and its vile products – that he was throwing them out of the country.
Any country or people – not fully complying with the criminal multinational industrial/financial clan’s usurers – is attacked, demonized like Mugabe, and possibly destroyed.
In Africa (I lived there for ten years too, as many know by now) the predators have already been at work a long time, and so have their ‘economic hit men’ and errand ‘secret’ services like the CIA/NED etc. As well as global criminal organisations like the International Murder Fund (IMF) and the World (robbing) Bank. – Url.: http://tinyurl.com/6chyze
And of course the compliant propagandists in the warmongers media don’t mention it, but Australian TV in 2002 showed Tsvangirai preparing to kill Mugabe with some (fake?) Canadians, which most probably was a CIA/Mossad killing team.*
“Mr. Tsvangirai has in fact, been plotting to kill President Robert Mugabe,” the SBS-TV presentation of its documentary said. Which – as I said – also is kept out of the mainstream propaganda/information as well:
ZIMBABWE: TSVANGIRAI ACCUSED OF HIGH TREASON.
BY AFROL ZIMBABWE.
Afrol News, 25 February – 2002 – Morgan Tsvangirai, favourite to Zimbabwean presidential elections on 9-10 March and leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), today was informed he would face charges of high of treason when he was questioned at Central Harare Police Station. Tsvangirai today was brought to the police station and was interrogated for two hours, but later released.
The MDC leader’s lawyer, Innocent Chagonda, said his client was to face charges of high treason over his alleged plot to “eliminate” President Robert Mugabe. High treason is punishable by death in Zimbabwe. Tsvangirai however said he had reason to believe police would not proceed with a prosecution before the election.
A special edition last week of Australian SBS-TV’s program ‘Dateline’ titled ‘Killing Mugabe – The Tsvangirai Conspiracy,’ claimed to “present evidence that the opposition leader has had no intention of letting the electoral process take its course. While parading his supposed democratic credentials, Mr Tsvangirai has in fact, been plotting to kill President Robert Mugabe,” the SBS presentation of its documentary says. Tsvangirai rejected these accusations, claiming the video showing himself and several Canadian consultants discussing what is to happen in Zimbabwe after “the head of state has been eliminated” had been a trap set up by the Zimbabwean government.
DISCUSSION AROUND THE ISSUE OF THE ELIMINATION OF MUGABE
Indeed, the Canadians suddenly “from nowhere introduced discussion around the issue of elimination,” moving him to “burst out of their meeting,” Tsvangirai declared last week. The MDC later found the Canadian company had contacts with ZANU-PF, Zimbabwe’s ruling party.” – [end excerpt] – You can read the rest, and make up your own mind about Zimbabwe and Africa at Url.: http://tinyurl.com/6grol6
The multinationals do in Africa what they’ve done – and are doing – elsewhere too: stealing and killing if they don’t immediately get what they want. – HR & Africa – Url.: http://tinyurl.com/5mj7sj
I’VE SAID IT BEFORE: FIRST WE ROB THEM BLIND FOR AGES.
AND THEN WE ACCUSE THEM OF NOT BEING ABLE TO SEE!
This is what president Mugabe and many other Africans are utterly angry about too: the inhuman Rothschild empire’s financial usury system does to countries and continents the worst in its quest for power and profit; at any cost to the others. No wonder they see red now and then.
The worst picture depicting African reality, symbolizing everything going on, is this picture of the vulture waiting for a child to die. No wonder photographer Kevin Carter committed suicide some time after taking the picture. For which he – while still alive – got a Pulitzer Prize as well. Then he killed himself. – Url.: http://tinyurl.com/6x59ms
Look at what the day and night do to people all around the world, and in Africa too: according to a UNICEF report, which did not get any publicity and at first was hard to find:
Five million children die in Africa yearly, and more than 10 million children around the world: Nigeria – The Tide – Sunday, Jun 1, 2008 – More than 10 million children around the world die before their fifth birthday every year, according to a new report by UNICEF, the United Nations Children Fund.
10 MILLION CHILD DEATHS ANNUALLY
The report, titled ‘The State of Africa’s Children 2008’ which was launched on May 28 at the Fourth Tokyo International Conference on African Development in Japan, which looked at the successes and failures of governments regarding the health and survival of the children of Africa, is complementary to a broader UNICEF report on the health of the world’s children.
Although Africa accounts for only 22 percent of births globally, half of the 10 million child deaths annually occur on the continent. Africa is the only continent that has seen rising numbers of deaths among children under five since the 1970s.
Many of these children die of preventable and curable diseases. UNICEF’s report says malaria is the cause of 18 percent of under-five deaths in Africa. Diarrheal diseases and pneumonia “both illnesses that thrive in poor communities where sanitation is severely compromised, and where residents are often undernourished and exposed to pollution” account for a further 40 percent of child deaths. Another major killer is AIDS.” – [end excerpt]
The multinationals and their financial criminal cartel, rape humanity.
Empire you said? Vultures! That’s what they are!
DEMOCRACY FROM THE BARREL OF A GUN
Concerning Africa and many other continents, the US/UK junta and its financial cartel tries to take more and more, still via their propaganda lying it’s ‘helping’ people, or, a still worse threat: ”We want to come and spread democracy.”
They spread their brand of ‘democracy’ from the barrel of a gun, killing millions of human beings.
As an independent former Africa correspondent during ten years, I can only confirm that the multinational predators even try to get the last bit of meat on the cadavers. And globally the criminal banking cartel kills for profit and power. Until we people stop them.
Looks like we have to ‘neutralize’ them, before they kill us all.
We here at the ranch know how to deal with pests. Specifically, flies. Flies can be a major source of discomfort to both animals and humans, and the larger the fly population gets, the more miserable your existence around them. These insipid pests buzz around and bother you until you either get rid of them or simply give up and leave until they are gone.
Flies are not only pests, but they carry disease. They feed on just about any type of food, digested or not, and are so persistent that they quickly monopolize any food anywhere. They lay eggs in wounds, which hatch into maggots that eat necrotic flesh. Think of Monsanto as just such a pest. The difference being that the maggots know when to stop, Monsanto does not. Think of the times that Monsanto has destroyed organic farms, laid its genetically modified “eggs” in the field, then stuck around to feed on the desperation and devastation its products cause.
When flies become a serious problem, then eradication is necessary – not only for health’s sake, but sanity as well, and it’s high time we got out the flyswatter and started eradicating some pesky, disease-ridden flies aka Monsanto. How? At the ranch remove all things that they are attracted to – clean out the stalls, rotate and drag the pastures, and keep the manure piles down to a minimum because that is where they like to hatch their eggs. You also starve them until they no longer come around by removing food sources. In the case of one of the biggest pests around, Monsanto, you clean out your cupboards, rid your house of all biotech products, and keep your contact with them at a minimum. You starve the company until it no longer can make a dime off of you.
A Monopoly is a Monopoly is a Monopoly…
All species that feed off of others want a monopoly, and Monsanto and Goldman Sachs are no different. They don’t like to share their food supply, and we are on the table, dressed up like Thanksgiving turkeys. They feed off our ignorance, and if we do not recognize the deceptions they use, we can run out of precious life blood in no time. Make no mistake about it, these bloodsuckers will drain you dry until you drop dead, with smiles on their faces.
Monsanto is doing to our food supply what Goldman Sachs is doing to finances. And just how is that working out for us so far? Not too well you say?
They both have monopolies – one on seeds, the other on finances, and they have joined forces. Together, they are working hard at monopolizing both our natural seeds and finances, taking us to the brink of genetic extinction and leaving us to climb up, sick and penniless, out of the primordial ooze created by a deadly combination of pseudo-science and greed and topped off with an unhealthy dose of pure narcissism. To put it bluntly, we are living in a cesspool of genetically engineered garbage, the long term effects of which are just now being exposed, and we are being force-fed these abominations through stealth. They are not labeled, and these corporations don’t want them to be. While Goldman Sachs strangles the economy, throwing more and more people into low-income food assistance programs, people who have received the brunt of these destructive agendas eat what they can get, and what they get is processed GMOs, courtesy of Monsanto and all the other biotech firms following closely on the heels of the swarm leader.
A More Profitable Union
Not only does it appear that Monsanto and Goldman Sachs have a similar business ethic or lack thereof, but Goldman Sachs is currently taking a big interest in corn as well as promoting Monsanto. A marriage made in…. well, you know.
All throughout the epic surge in corn prices, the big Kahoona, Goldman Sachs, where buy means sell, and sell means Goldman’s traders are buying everything its clients have to dump, was quiet. That is no longer the case: “we recommend a short May-13 CBOT wheat position vs. a long May-13 CBOT corn position.” In other words, Goldman will now be selling May 13 corn.
And just who has a monopoly on corn via its genetically modified (GMO) corn seed? Why, Monsanto, of course! And just how much of the corn grown in the U.S. is GMO?
More than 90 percent of all soybeans grown in the United States are genetically modified (GM) for herbicide resistance and are consequently sprayed with massive quantities of those toxic chemicals. Fully 85 percent of all corn grown in the country is also genetically engineered, either for herbicide resistance or to produce pesticides within its tissues. Since farmers sell their corn and soy to large distributors who mix the product together for processing, this essentially means that 100 percent of non-organic corn and soy products on the US market are GM.
I get all warm and fuzzy inside when I think of Monsanto and Goldman Sachs flying wing in wing to their next victim, don’t you? Just think of the possibilities…. Then get serious about getting out of the system and into a more independent lifestyle.
What’s It Gonna Take?
Many local community gardening projects are springing up all over. One such project is LA Green Grounds. Elon writes, “LA Green Grounds volunteers design and build the new gardens, generally in front yards, teaching volunteers along the way and fostering community”.[read more]
The headlines of an article in yesterday’s Market Watch says, IMF Bombshell: Age of America Nears End (see story below).
This article covers a report by the International Monetary Fund that predicts the end of what they call “The Age of America.” The IMF says that China will overtake the American economy in 2016.
The fact of the matter is that the data and statistics cited by the IMF are flawed.
But this does not dismiss the fact that the Chinese economy is growing at a much more rapid rate than the American economy; and if we do not change the way in which we are operating our economy, and stop the annual trillion dollar budget deficits, the Chinese economy will indeed surpass that of America.
But that is not the point of this blog post. No, the point of this post is that this story is IMF black propaganda about the U.S. The point of Crisis by Design the Untold Story of the Global Financial Coup is that the financial crisis was created in order to take down the US and the US dollar as the stable point in international finance and to replace them with a “Global Monetary Authority.”
Those of you that have followed my writings and/or this blog, know that in fact a Global Monetary Authority was put in place in April of 2009. That’s a done deal. But America still clings to economic leadership.
The significance of this statement issued by the IMF is not the phony facts and figures. No, it’s that the article is consistent with the IMF’s jihad, along with the Bank for International Settlements, to destroy the dollar and America as an economic power by putting out this kind of black PR.
And that’s what it is. This is Black Propaganda that aimed at driving home the message that America is on her way out.
Let be honest here, we have brought this on ourselves. We cannot continue to enjoy any semblance of economic prosperity or, for that matter, be the strongest economy in the world with trillion-dollar-per year budget deficits. But the point I am making here is that the IMF is doing everything it can PR-wise to create the impression that America’s best days are behind her. We need to restore fiscal sanity to Washington government to ensure that that is not the case.
Keep your powder.
John Truman Wolfe, author of America the Litigious, Mind Games, and The Gift has released his latest stunning bestseller – Crisis By Design: The Untold Story of the Global Financial Coup and What You Can Do About It. Wolfe draws on experience as a senior credit officer in two banks, and co-founder of a prestigious Los Angeles based business management company, where as a registered investment adviser he oversaw the financial and investment matters of some of the biggest names in Hollywood.
IMF Bombshell: Age of America Nears End
Commentary: China’s economy will surpass the U.S. in 2016
MarketWatch
April 25, 2011
The International Monetary Fund has just dropped a bombshell, and nobody noticed.
For the first time, the international organization has set a date for the moment when the “Age of America” will end and the U.S. economy will be overtaken by that of China.
And it’s a lot closer than you may think.
According to the latest IMF official forecasts, China’s economy will surpass that of America in real terms in 2016 — just five years from now.
Put that in your calendar.
It provides a painful context for the budget wrangling taking place in Washington, D.C., right now. It raises enormous questions about what the international security system is going to look like in just a handful of years. And it casts a deepening cloud over both the U.S. dollar and the giant Treasury market, which have been propped up for decades by their privileged status as the liabilities of the world’s hegemonic power.
According to the IMF forecast, whomever is elected U.S. president next year — Obama? Mitt Romney? Donald Trump? — will be the last to preside over the world’s largest economy.
Most people aren’t prepared for this. They aren’t even aware it’s that close. Listen to experts of various stripes, and they will tell you this moment is decades away. The most bearish will put the figure in the mid-2020s.
But they’re miscounting. They’re only comparing the gross domestic products of the two countries using current exchange rates.
That’s a largely meaningless comparison in real terms. Exchange rates change quickly. And China’s exchange rates are phony. China artificially undervalues its currency, the renminbi, through massive intervention in the markets.
The comparison that really matters
The IMF in its analysis looks beyond exchange rates to the true, real terms picture of the economies using “purchasing power parities.” That compares what people earn and spend in real terms in their domestic economies.
Under PPP, the Chinese economy will expand from $11.2 trillion this year to $19 trillion in 2016. Meanwhile the size of the U.S. economy will rise from $15.2 trillion to $18.8 trillion. That would take America’s share of the world output down to 17.7%, the lowest in modern times. China’s would reach 18%, and rising.
Just 10 years ago, the U.S. economy was three times the size of China’s.
Naturally, all forecasts are fallible. Time and chance happen to them all. The actual date when China surpasses the U.S. might come even earlier than the IMF predicts, or somewhat later. If the great Chinese juggernaut blows a tire, as a growing number fear it might, it could even delay things by several years. But the outcome is scarcely in doubt.
This is more than a statistical story. It is the end of the Age of America. As a bond strategist in Europe told me two weeks ago,
“We are witnessing the end of America’s economic hegemony.”
We have lived in a world dominated by the U.S. for so long that there is no longer anyone alive who remembers anything else. America overtook Great Britain as the world’s leading economic power in the 1890s and never looked back. And both those countries live under very similar rules of constitutional government, respect for civil liberties and the rights of property. China has none of those. The Age of China will feel very different.
Victor Cha, senior adviser on Asian affairs at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, told me China’s neighbors in Asia are already waking up to the dangers.
“The region is overwhelmingly looking to the U.S. in a way that it hasn’t done in the past,” he said. “They see the U.S. as a counterweight to China. They also see American hegemony over the last half-century as fairly benign. In China they see the rise of an economic power that is not benevolent, that can be predatory. They don’t see it as a benign hegemony.”
The rise of China, and the relative decline of America, is the biggest story of our time. You can see its implications everywhere, from shuttered factories in the Midwest to soaring costs of oil and other commodities. Last fall, when I attended a conference in London about agricultural investment, I was struck by the number of people there who told stories about Chinese interests snapping up farmland and foodstuff supplies — from South America to China and elsewhere.
This is the result of decades during which China has successfully pursued economic policies aimed at national expansion and power, while the U.S. has embraced either free trade or, for want of a better term, economic appeasement.
“There are two systems in collision,” said Ralph Gomory, research professor at NYU’s Stern business school. “They have a state-guided form of capitalism, and we have a much freer former of capitalism. What we have seen, he said, is “a massive shift in capability from the U.S. to China. What we have done is traded jobs for profit. The jobs have moved to China. The capability erodes in the U.S. and grows in China. That’s very destructive. That is a big reason why the U.S. is becoming more and more polarized between a small, very rich class and an eroding middle class. The people who get the profits are very different from the people who lost the wages.”
The next chapter of the story is just beginning.
U.S. spending spree won’t work
What the rise of China means for defense, and international affairs, has barely been touched on. The U.S. is now spending gigantic sums — from a beleaguered economy — to try to maintain its place in the sun. See: Pentagon spending is budget blind spot .
It’s a lesson we could learn more cheaply from the sad story of the British, Spanish and other empires. It doesn’t work. You can’t stay on top if your economy doesn’t.
Equally to the point, here is what this means economically, and for investors.
Some years ago I was having lunch with the smartest investor I know, London-based hedge-fund manager Crispin Odey. He made the argument that markets are reasonably efficient, most of the time, at setting prices. Where they are most likely to fail, though, is in correctly anticipating and pricing big, revolutionary, “paradigm” shifts — whether a rise of disruptive technologies or revolutionary changes in geopolitics. We are living through one now.
The U.S. Treasury market continues to operate on the assumption that it will always remain the global benchmark of money. Business schools still teach students, for example, that the interest rate on the 10-year Treasury bond is the “risk-free rate” on money. And so it has been for more than a century. But that’s all based on the Age of America.
No wonder so many have been buying gold. If the U.S. dollar ceases to be the world’s sole reserve currency, what will be? The euro would be fine if it acts like the old deutschemark. If it’s just the Greek drachma in drag … not so much.
The last time the world’s dominant hegemon lost its ability to run things singlehandedly was early in the past century. That’s when the U.S. and Germany surpassed Great Britain. It didn’t turn out well.
IMF and the World Bank Destroying Countries
The IMF/World Bank are systematically tearing nations apart. It’s not privatization. They steal from the people and hand it over to themselves. The World Bank/IMF pays off politicians to transfer a nation’s water systems, railways, telephone companies, nationalized oil companies, gas stations, etc. to IMF-backed transnational companies, which they later destroy after transferring the assets to dummy corporations.
By Richard Salbato, UnityPublishing.com
March 22, 2002
The World Bank/IMF is owned and controlled by NM Rothschild and 30 to 40 of the wealthiest people in the world. For over 150 years they have planned to take over the world through money.
The former chief economist of the World Bank, Joe Stiglitz, was fired recently. He pointed out to top executives that every country in which the IMF/World Bank is involved has ended up with a crashed economy, a destroyed government, and sometimes in flames with riots.
Before Joe Stiglitz was fired, he took a large stack of secret documents out of the World Bank. These secret documents from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund reveal that the IMF required nations:
to sign secret agreements of 111 items
in which they agreed to sell off their key assets — water, electric, gas, etc.
in which they agreed to take economic steps which are really devastating to the nations involved
in which they pay off the politicians billions of dollars to Swiss bank accounts to do this transfer of a countries fixed assets
If they do not agree to these steps they are cut-off from all international borrowing. Today no one can survive if they can’t borrow money in the international marketplace, whether you are people or corporations or countries. If that does not work, they overthrow the government and plant lies about the former government and/or even rewrite history.
The Argentina Plan
Inside documents from Argentina show the secret Argentine plan. This is signed by Jim Wolfensen, the president of the World Bank. Argentina has had six presidents in five weeks because their economy is completely destroyed. This happened because they started out in the end of the 80s with orders from the IMF and World Bank to sell-off all their assets, public assets, like their water system. Then they taxed the people.
They created big government and big government handed it off to the private IMF/World Bank. They pay off the politicians billions in Swiss bank accounts.
The Enron Connection
The water system of Buenos Aires was sold off for a song to a company called Enron. A pipeline that runs between Argentina and Chile was sold off to Enron.
Then the globalists blew out Enron after transferring the assets to another dummy corporation.
They come in, pay off politicians to transfer the water systems, the railways, the telephone companies, the nationalized oil companies, gas stations, etc. — the politicians then hand it over to the IMF for nothing. The Globalists pay off politicians individually, billions a piece in Swiss bank accounts.
The plan is total slavery for the entire population. Enron is a dummy corporation for money laundering, drug money, etc.
IMF Planed Riots
The IMF/World Bank are systematically tearing nations apart, whether it’s Ecuador or Argentina. It’s not privatization. They steal it from the people and hand it over to the IMF/World Bank.
They hand it over, generally to the cronies — like Citibank grabbed half the Argentine banks. British Petroleum grabbed pipelines in Ecuador. Enron grabbed water systems all over the place.
The problem is that they are destroying these systems as well. You can’t even get drinking water in Buenos Aires. It is not just a question of the theft. You can’t turn on the tap.
It is more than someone getting rich at the public expense.
And the IMF just got handed the Great Lakes. They have the sole control over the water supply now.
The IMF and the World Bank is 51% owned by the United States Treasury.
Every country IMF/World Bank has meddled in, they have destroyed and the economies ended up in flames.
They even plan the riots. They know that when they squeeze a country and destroy its economy, you get riots in the streets. And they admit that it an IMF riot. Because you have riot, all the capital runs away from your country and that gives the opportunity for the IMF to then add more conditions.
California Utilities & Enron
It is really an imperial economy war to implode countries, and now they are doing it here with Enron.
They are getting so greedy — they are preparing it for America. The chief investigators of Enron for the State of California said that that it’s not just the stockholders that got ripped off. They sucked millions, billions of dollars out of the public pocket in Texas and California in particular.
Where are the assets? See, everybody says there are no assets left since Enron was a dummy corporation — from the experts I’ve had on — and they transferred all those assets to other corporations and banks.
According to the investigations, they are telling me that California’s electric bills were pumped up unnecessarily by 9 to 12-billion dollars. California’s paid, but I don’t know who they are going to get it back from now. Well they actually caught the Governor buying it for $137 per megawatt and selling it back to Enron for $1 per megawatt, and doing it over and over and over again.
Enron’s Auditor – Lord Wakeham
The men who designed the system in California for deregulation then went to work for Enron right after.
Lord Wakeham, who was on the audit committee of Enron, is the head of NM Rothschild. There isn’t anything that he doesn’t have his fingers in. He’s on something like fifty Boards. And he was supposed to be head of the audit committee watching how Enron kept the books. In fact, they were paying him consulting fees on the side. He was in Margaret Thatcher’s government, and he’s the one who authorized Enron to come into Britain and take over power plants in Britain.
Enron owned a water system in the middle of England. This is what Lord Wakeham approved and then they gave him a job on the board. On top of being on the board, they gave him a huge consulting contract. Lord Wakeham is supposed to be in charge of the audit committee to see how they were handling their accounts, but he is also the head of the board to regulate the media.
Lord Wakeham is trying to pass laws in England where you can’t own your own water. He can’t be touched because he regulates the media.
Rothschild and the Illuminati
Burrow into NM Rothschild, you’ll find it all there: The IMF/World Bank implosion, how they bring down a country and destroy the resources of the people.
First you open up the capital markets. That is, you sell off your local banks to foreign banks. Then you go to what’s called market-based pricing. That’s the stuff like in California where everything is free market and you end up with water bills no one can pay. Then open up your borders to trade — complete free marketeering. Its like the opium wars. This isn’t free trade; this is coercion trade. This is war.
They are taking apart economies through this. China has a 40% tariff on the USA, but the USA has a 2% on them. That’s not free and fair trade. It’s to force all industry into a country that the globalists fully control, and they control China.
Wal-Mart
The Illuminati owns Wal-Mart and Wal-Mart has 700 plants in China. There is almost nothing in a Wal-Mart store that comes from the United States of America, despite all the eagles on the wall. They have big flags saying “Buy American” and there’s hardly anything from America in their stores.
What’s even worst is they will hire a factory and right next to it will be the sister factory which is inside a prison. You can imagine the conditions of these workers producing this lovely stuff for Wal-Mart.
Briberization
Sell off the water company and that’s worth, over ten years, let’s say about 5 billion dollars, ten percent of that is 500 million. A Senator from Argentina said that he got a call from George W. Bush in 1988 saying ‘give the gas pipeline in Argentina to Enron.’ Enron was going to pay one-fifth of the world’s price for their gas. The Argentine Senator asked ‘how can you make such an offer?’ The answer was that if they only pay one-fifth that leaves quit a little bit for you to go in your Swiss bank account. This is the same George W. Bush who said he didn’t get to know Ken Lay of Enron until 1994. Now they are having these white-wash hearings.
Bill Clinton, to get even with Bush’s big donor, cut Enron out of the California power market. He put a cap on the prices they could charge. They couldn’t charge more than one-hundred times the normal price for electricity. That upset Enron. So Ken Lay personally wrote a note to Dick Cheney saying get rid of Clinton’s cap on prices. Within 48 hours of George W. Bush taking office, his energy department reversed the clamps on Enron.
Step Two
Argentina is an example of step two of the IMF. A fifth of the population of Argentina is unemployed, and they said cut the unemployment benefits drastically, take away pension funds, cut the education budgets.
Now if you cut the economy in the middle of a recession (created by the IMF), you absolutely demolish the nation.
You don’t start cutting the budget in a recession: you start spending money to stimulate the economy. You don’t raise taxes, you cut them. But they tell these countries you’ve got to cut, and cut, and cut. Why? Well, according to the inside documents, it’s so you can make payments to foreign banks — the foreign banks are collecting 21% to 70% interest. This is loan-sharking. If fact, it was so bad that they required Argentina to get rid of the laws against loan-sharking because any bank would be a loan-shark under Argentine law.
Part 3 and Part 4
Then they open up the borders for trade; that’s the new opium wars. They destroy an economy so that it can not produce anything, and then open the borders to sell their own goods.
They force nations to pay horrendous amounts for things like drugs, legal drugs. That’s how you end up with an illegal drug trade. What’s there left to survive on except sell us smack and crack?
And so, drive the whole world down, blow out their economies, and then buy the rest of it up for pennies on the dollar.
What’s Part 4 of the IMF/World Bank Plan?
In Part 4, they take apart the government by the coup d’etat and they install their own corporate government. In Venezuela where they have an elected president of the government, the IMF has announced that they would support a transition government if the president were removed. They are not saying that they are going to get involved in politics — they would just support a transition government.
What that effectively is saying is: we will pay for the coup d’etat if the military overthrows the current president, because the current president of Venezuela has said no to the IMF. He told those guys to go packing. They brought their teams in and said you have to do this and that. And he said, I don’t have to do anything. He said what I’m going to do is double the taxes on oil corporations because we have a whole lot of oil in Venezuela. And I’m going to double the taxes on oil corporations and then I will have all the money I need for social programs and the government — and we will be a very rich nation.
Well, as soon as he did that, they started fomenting trouble with the military. And watch this because the President of Venezuela will be out of office in three months or shot dead. They are not going to allow him to raise taxes on the oil companies.
Bush Administration Signals End to Open Government
1) The Bush administration invoked executive privilege to keep Clinton-era documents secret. The move shocked Republican lawmakers. Why would Bush want to cover up for Bill Clinton? Representative Dan Burton, who is the Chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, even threatened to hold Bush in contempt of Congress unless he releases several sets of subpoenaed Justice Department documents that he has hidden. It does not matter. Bush promises to never comply with congressional investigators. Bush is determined to keep Clinton’s crimes concealed.
2) Bush flatly refuses to hand over records of internal energy task force meetings. These records could either incriminate or exonerate Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney regarding allegations of conflict of interest in the Enron scandal. Even the General Accounting Office is suing the White House (a first) to obtain the records. Again, Bush refuses to comply. The president is even willing to ignore court orders demanding the release of documents.
3) Just this week, the United States Government’s top lawyer told the U.S. Supreme Court that officials have the right to lie to American citizens. No, he did not explain how that assertion jives with Bush’s Christian testimony.
4) Two days ago, the White House ordered all federal agencies to delete their web sites of all “sensitive information.” The White House did not say what information it considered “sensitive.”
5) Vice President Cheney is already the stealthiest Vice President in U.S. history. Seldom does anyone know where he is or what he is doing.
6) President Bush admitted to forming a mysterious “shadow government” comprised of unknown persons who are living in underground bunkers at secret sites outside Washington, D.C. Not even top legislators know who these people are or what instructions have been given them. Furthermore, how does a “shadow government” mesh with the U.S. Constitution? These questions have never been (and never will be) answered.
When asked by a reporter about these and other matters, Bush said,
“I have a duty to protect the executive branch from legislative encroachment.”
Congress, for the most part, only learns of Bush’s clandestine carryings-on as brief sketches leak out in the press.
However, none of this seems to bother the American people or members of the press. Bush is a wartime president (even though no one officially declared war) and, therefore, can do anything he pleases with total impunity. In truth, the Bush administration signals the end to both open government and constitutional government — and few people seem to even notice.
Christians cannot comment on Government in USA
Congress has decided to silence you, me, and any other Christian who dares express a moral view that may impact a political campaign! The U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate have both passed a so-called “campaign finance reform” bill … and now President Bush has said he will sign it into law! In spite of all the propaganda in the media, this legislation actually silences Christian and conservative organizations — banning them from commenting on key moral issues during election campaigns … while allowing the liberal media to speak out freely.
This new law is a SLAP IN THE FACE to our right to free speech. It is absolutely, blatantly UNCONSTITUTIONAL!
This legislation effectively strips church and conservative leaders and organizations of religious free speech during elections.
For me or any other conservative spokesperson to comment and inform you with a Christian perspective would be illegal … and the threat of jail a reality!
Even your own pastor cannot inform you on key political and moral issues when it comes time to vote!
So where will you get all your information about the political and moral views of candidates? FROM THE BIASED, SECULAR MEDIA!
From The Wilderness Publications, http://www.copvcia.com, see a related article on how scientists and academics are viewing the possibility of reducing the world’s population by more than four billion people and doing so selectively with DNA biological weapons. See how hundreds of microbiologists are being assassinated world-wide to keep this plan in the hands of only a few people. [www.rense.com, http://www.narconews.com]
The G20: The New Ruling Aristocracy of the World?
Share the World’s Resources
November 2007
The finance ministers and reserve bank governors of the G20 countries gather with leading International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank officials. They tell us that these politicians come to create a better world for us. The biggest joke of all is that they will expect us to believe this lie. Of course, if you look past the superficial pomp, glitz and sheer propaganda that are part of their gatherings, you will find that a better world is not being created for us; a better world is being created for the global elite and their transnational companies to our detriment.
The G20 only cares about economic growth for the richest companies on earth; they really don’t care about us — we are inconsequential to them until we rise up in protest. Indeed, at their meetings the G20 will be formulating plans to further exploit the workers and poor of the world to produce more wealth for transnational companies and their greedy capitalist owners.
The G20’s Composition and Agenda
The G20 comprises of the 20 biggest economies in the world, in the form of the US, the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Canada, Russia, Japan, South Africa, China, Brazil, Australia, Argentina, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and Turkey. Together these countries account for 90% of the world gross product and over 80% of world trade. Added to this, with their combined voting power in the IMF and the World Bank, these countries completely dominate these institutions. Indeed, the President of the World Bank and Managing Director of the IMF are required to attend all the G20 meetings.
The G20 was established by the G8 in 1999 in the wake of the Asian economic crisis. At the time of the Asian financial crisis, some of the largest economies in the South came under speculative attack, for which neo-liberal policies such as financial liberalisation had created the space. When the crisis initially broke, billions of dollars were wiped out in a matter of hours and it threatened to spread to the countries of the North.
Indeed, the Asian economic crisis shook the most powerful countries and economic institutions, such as the IMF and the World Bank, to their core. It actually endangered the entire neo-liberal global project that had been formulated to supposedly overcome the crisis that capitalism had first began to experience in the 1970s, which was and is based on the problem of over-accumulation of capital.
To shore up the neo-liberal system, the giants of the G8, led by the United States, realised that they needed to further draw in the biggest countries of the South, such as South Africa, India, China, and Brazil into the global financial governance system. The G20 was one attempt to do this and in effect rescue the global neo-liberal agenda, which had been — and still is — so favourable to the interests of transnational companies.
The G20’s self-stated purpose is to meet annually to discuss policies that will promote continuous high economic growth for transnational corporations across the world, whilst at the same time attempting to limit any possible financial crisis that may pose a threat to high economic growth. To do this, the G20 has opted to promote neo-liberal globalisation even further.
The most important document that has been produced by the G20 so far is the Accord for Sustained Growth. It outlines the policies that the G20 countries aim to promote in order to create an environment in which the largest companies in the world can maintain high growth.
One of the most important pillars of the G20’s Accord for Sustained Growth is financial liberalisation. As such, the G20 has called for countries across the world to further open up their economies to capital flows. The goal of this is to increasingly allow companies to move money in and out of any economy in the world.
Thus, the G20 wants to entrench an environment where corporations can look for countries and areas of investment that offer the highest rates of return. This includes allowing companies to buy assets in any country and speculate on any stock market in the world.
Of course, financial liberalisation has already spawned speculation on currencies and stock markets on an unprecedented scale, which in turn has created financial volatility and increased the likelihood of another financial crisis. Due to the fact that the G20 believes in financial liberalisation, their answer to this increased financial volatility is not for countries to impose financial controls to stop speculation but rather for countries to build up their currency reserves and strengthen their capital markets.
The G20 countries, including South Africa, believe that countries could use these reserves to defend their currencies and stock markets when they are attacked by speculators. Building up reserves means that countries have to divert money away from social spending. Thus, the G20 countries believe that speculation should be allowed to continue, and its negatives effects, such as currency and stock market crashes, should be borne by the poor, who will lose further social services so that vast reserves can be built up to defend currencies and stock markets when the corporate speculators descend on them.
Through the Accord for Sustained Growth, the G20 has also called for all countries to advance the privatisation of state-owned assets and public services. This creates further investment opportunities for transnational corporations, who can now swoop into the countries of the South and buy up the ex-state owned assets that offer the best possibilities for future profiteering.
In fact, under South Africa’s chairmanship, the G20 has been pushing countries to privatise state assets at an increasingly rapid rate in order to use the money received from this to service debts to the IMF, the World Bank, and private Northern banks. Since much of the debt owed by the South is illegitimate, this call for the countries of the South to sell their public assets to pay the IMF, the World Bank and Northern private banks is especially sickening.
It will translate into a situation where people across the globe will lose the few remaining social services that they still have so that the Northern private banks can grow richer.
The G20 countries have also sought to assist the largest transnational corporations to increase their profits in a variety of other ways. The G20 has promoted policies to create a flexible labour market on a global scale. In other words, the G20 are promoting policies that strip workers of their few remaining rights so that corporations can pay them less and less and thereby drive up their profit rates.
Along with this, the G20 has implemented policies that are aimed at protecting the intellectual property rights (IRPs) of corporations, including patents on medicines. In doing so, the message being sent by the majority of the G20 countries is that the interests of transnational corporations are more important than people’s lives.
Through the Accord for Sustained Growth, the G20 countries have also committed themselves to implementing and furthering trade liberalisation. Indeed, all of the G20 countries are firm believers in free trade because it is the transnational companies that are based within their territories that benefit from free trade regionally and globally. For this reason, the G20 countries have used the G20 meetings as a forum to discuss how they could collectively kickstart the stalled WTO negotiations. In fact, the G20 countries are the driving force within the WTO: they are the ones that have driven the entire WTO process through the exclusive green room meetings in which they participate to the exclusion of smaller countries of the South.
At their meetings, the G20 will also be discussing the possibility of implementing a number of reforms within the World Bank and the IMF. However, the reforms that have been suggested by the G20 countries are only superficial. The largest countries of the South involved in the G20, such as South Africa, Brazil, China, and India, want to reform the World Bank and the IMF in order to receive greater voting rights for themselves within these institutions. They have, however, not called for equal voting rights for all countries in IMF and the World Bank, which is significant. In effect, this means that South Africa, Brazil, China, and India are still willing to deny larger voting rights for smaller nations within the IMF and the World Bank.
It, therefore, appears as if these G20 countries wish to use the G20 to push for greater voting rights for themselves in the IMF and the World Bank so that they can join the older imperial powers in using these institutions to promote the expansionary agendas of their own capitalist elite. Certainly the reforms that are proposed by the G20 countries regarding the IMF and the World Bank have not extended to questioning the neo-liberal policies these institutions have forced upon poorer nations of the South. This is because all of the G20 countries are firm believers in neo-liberal economics.
In fact, the G20 countries have openly stated that as part of the proposed IMF and the World Bank “reform” process, the control that these institutions have over smaller countries’ economies should be strengthened. This would entail the further imposition of neo-liberal economic policies on smaller countries.
It is telling that the G20 countries, especially South Africa, India, and Brazil, wish to extend the powers and reach of the IMF and the World Bank at the very moment that these institutions have lost much of their power and credibility in the South. Indeed, the IMF and the World Bank, and the neo-liberal agenda that they push, are being openly challenged by countries such as Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, and Ecuador. The defence that G20 countries, such as South Africa and Brazil, have mounted on behalf of the IMF and the World Bank clearly demonstrates that these countries are far more aligned with the older imperial powers than they are with progressive countries, such as Venezuela and Ecuador.
The Consequences of the Policies Pushed by the G20
The consequences of the neo-liberal policies that have, and are, being pushed by the G20 countries are familiar: the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. While most of the G20 countries are now richer than ever under neo-liberal globalisation; as many as 80 other countries are now poorer than they were in the 1970s.
Although trade has increased under the global neo-liberal ‘free’ trade regime, it has only been an elite who have benefited. The portion of exports from the poorest countries has declined markedly. In fact, the poorest 48 countries now only account for 0.4% of global exports. This is because the industries in these countries have been destroyed by imports flooding in under the banner of ‘free’ trade. All of this translates into a world of growing inequality: a world where the richest 400 people, the new global capitalist aristocracy, now have more money than the poorest 3 billion people combined.
While companies have made massive profits due to neo-liberal policies that are promoted by the G20 countries, the people of the world have suffered. Due to privatisation, billions of people have lost all access to social services, such as education, water, sanitation, and healthcare. This is because, in most countries, these services are now being sold by private companies as commodities: if you can’t afford to pay for such services, you don’t get them! The macabre result: over 1 billion people have lost access to clean drinking water; 2.6 billion people lack basic sanitation; over 1 billion people are illiterate; 820 million people suffer from malnutrition; over 1 billion people lack access to any form of healthcare; and 30 000 children die every day from poverty.
This takes place in a world where the amount of money spent by American and European companies on entertainment each year could give every person in the world access to enough food, proper healthcare, basic education, and clean water.
The Reasons Why the G20 Emerged
The event that led to the formation of the G20 was the Asian financial crisis. However, the actual reasons why the G20 was formed are more systemic and relate to the steady decline of US imperial power and the growing breakdown of US hegemony — the Asian crisis was simply the catalyst for the formation of the G20, not the reason why it was formed.
Since the early 1970s, and the beginning of the global capitalist crisis, the US’s global economic dominance and hegemony has been on the decline. In 1950, the US supplied 50% of the world’s gross product; by 2003 this had dropped to 20%. In 1950, 60% of all manufactured goods were produced in the US, today only 20% of manufactured goods derive from the US. Non-US companies now dominate most of the industries in the world. For example, 9 of the 10 largest electronics companies, 8 of the 10 largest car manufacturing companies, 7 of the 10 largest oil companies, and 19 out of the 25 largest banks in the world are non-American. Since 2002, the US has also been paying out more to foreign investors than it has received from its investments abroad. This, along with declining exports, has seen its current account deficit balloon.
As early as the mid-1970s, the global position of the US state and capital was declining and that they were losing market share and economic power to other imperial countries, such as France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Japan. Certain sections of US capital realised that the growing importance of countries such as Japan and Germany, along with decline of the US, could spark inter-imperial rivalry on a global scale, which would be detrimental to the capitalist system as a whole.
Some of the most important sections of the US capitalist class have been firm believers that the largest capitalists across the globe have a common interest in ensuring that there is a stable global environment that favours capital accumulation, even though they may compete with one another as individual capitalists. Thus, these influential US capitalists believe that the most powerful capitalist states should work together to create a global environment that favours the interests of the most powerful corporations in the world.
The influence that this section of US capital exerted over the US state led to the US forming the G7 in 1978. The formation of the G7 was aimed at persuading Western Europe and Japan that the US was willing to work with other capitalist powers to create a global environment that would favour the interests of all of the most powerful capitalists. On this basis, and through the G7, a collective imperialism was formed, which was headed up by the US, but included lesser imperial powers like the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, and Japan.
By the 1990s a number of countries in the South had also begun to emerge as regional imperialists. For example, since the 1990s, sections of Brazilian capital, with the assistance of the Brazilian state, have been rapidly expanding into other Latin American countries. In East Asia, China has emerged as a major player and now looks set to rival the US globally. Similarly, South Africa has emerged as a regional imperialist in Africa. The South African state has been working hand in glove with South African corporations to assist them to expand into other African countries. This has seen South Africa becoming the largest foreign direct investor in Africa.
With countries such as South Africa, Brazil, India, Australia, and China emerging as regional powerhouses, the US was faced with a further devolution of its power in the regions where these countries were and are acting as imperialist powers. Again the US indicated to these countries that it would be willing to cooperate with them. In doing so, the US co-opted South Africa, Brazil, and India into the collective imperial system that it had created with lesser imperial powers like the UK, Germany, France, etc. It did this in a number of ways. For example, South Africa, China, Brazil, and India were welcomed into the inner circles of the World Economic Forum.
The World Economic Forum has been one of the central institutions through which capitalists and leaders from the South have been inducted into the emerging global capitalist aristocracy. Along with this, regional emerging imperialists, such as South Africa, were drawn into the centres of power in the WTO, the IMF, and the World Bank. Similarly, the G20 was established to entice the emerging regional imperial powers into the global collective imperial system. The aim of this was to ensure global stability so that a climate which favours capital accumulation globally could be assured. Of course, the new regional imperial powers like South Africa have not joined as equal partners; they are lesser partners in the global collective imperial system. This can be seen by the fact that the G20 is not yet a highly formal structure like the G8.
Despite acting as a collective globally, through such institutions as the G20, each of the powers involved in the collective imperial system has its specific region of the world in which it operates as the prominent imperialist power to further its own capitalist entities interests. For example, the US’s main strategic imperialist spheres are Latin America, the Middle East, parts of Africa, and parts of Asia; while Britain’s imperialist ambitions are mainly restricted to some of its ex-colonies.
Similarly, South Africa’s imperialist sphere covers much of sub-Saharan Africa. As a result, where two or more imperial powers’ interests clash in a certain region or country, they will compete in that region or country, even though globally they will remain aligned through institutions such as the G20 and the World Economic Forum. Hence, although not in conflict globally, in certain areas in Africa, South African, British, and US interests do clash. This, however, does not preclude South Africa, Britain, and the US from working together in other areas of Africa where they have common interests.
Within the collective imperial system, the various countries continuously jostle to increase their powerbases. Specifically, under George Bush Jr, the US has acted unilaterally on a number of occasions to strengthen its leadership position within the global collective imperial system. It has targeted strategically located countries such as Iraq, Iran, North Korea, and Zimbabwe through military actions and sanctions. Such actions were not just directed at these countries — they were actually warnings to the regional and global imperial powers located close to these countries or with interests in these countries, such as the EU, Russia, China, and South Africa.
For example, the US invasion of Iraq was aimed at seizing oil interests in Iraq for US companies to the detriment of European oil companies. Added to this, the military attack on Iraq was also meant as a veiled warning to the European powers not to openly challenge the US’s leadership role in the global imperial system.
Such action by the US has even extended into a bid to gain global dominance as the sole imperial power. However, because of its declining economic and political power, the US has failed dismally in these actions. It has become bogged down in a war in Iraq, which it is losing. It has also failed to intimidate North Korea into submission and thereby undermine China’s power. Similarly it has also failed to get rid of the ZANU-PF in Zimbabwe, which was aimed at curbing South Africa’s imperial influence and power in sub-Saharan Africa.
By undertaking these actions, and failing to reach its goals, the US has found itself in a serious crisis. Due to these failures its leadership position in the global collective imperial system has been further eroded.
As a result of the costly wars it is waging, the US is now borrowing at an unprecedented rate: its debt now stands at over $9 trillion. Most of this debt is owed to countries such as China, Russia, India, Brazil, and South Africa. If the dollar continues to weaken, there is a real danger for the US that these countries will withdraw the money that they have invested in US bonds. If this happens, the US economy will be in severe crisis and may even experience an economic meltdown, which will have knock-on effects globally.
At this point the US is at a crossroads. It can try and maintain its leadership position through military might: abandon initiatives such as the G8, the G20, and the World Economic Forum, and attack the emerging regional and global imperial powers militarily and/or economically. This is an unlikely option. Iraq has proved that despite all of its high tech weapons the US is militarily over-stretched. It could not fight wars on multiple fronts like the British Empire of old.
Added to this, a global imperial war — along with the trade barriers that would accompany it — are not in the interests of the biggest US transnational companies. The largest transnational companies, and their global capitalist owners, want a global neo-liberal free trade regime. They need such a global free trade regime to function as truly transnational companies and maximise their profits.
The other option that the US has — to deal with its declining power — is to further broaden and strengthen the global collective imperial system. This would perhaps involve replacing the G8 with the G20 and granting the reforms in the IMF and the World Bank that have been demanded by China, South Africa, India, and Brazil. This would also further undermine the US’s power, but it would further bind the global elite in the G20, and their project, together. Such an option is actually favoured by some sections of the US capitalist elite, and seems the most likely path the US will follow.
Even if the G20’s power is increased, and the global collective imperial system is strengthened, there are no guarantees that capitalism will not experience a massive crisis in the future. Neo-liberalism has created a form of capitalism that is volatile, highly unstable, and susceptible to crises. Added to this, capitalism has created an unprecedented environmental crisis.
Conclusion
The meetings of the G20 are meetings of the global elite. Despite the rivalries between the countries involved, they have proven and continue to prove a willingness to work together to force neo-liberal economic policies on the people of the planet.
The aim of such policies is to maximise the profits of the largest transnational corporations in the world. Like the US, the people of the world also face a choice. We can sit by and watch the G20 — along with the other forums that the collective imperial powers use — push through neo-liberal policies, or we can join together and resist.
We can join hands with the movements that have emerged across the world, like the Zapatistas, to struggle against neo-liberal capitalism and the collective global imperial system. We can also join with the countries — like Venezuela and Ecuador — that have used the decline of the US to embark upon a path away from capitalism.
The choice is ours: we can choose to struggle to make another world possible or we can sit in silence and let the likes of Trevor Manuel and his allies in the G20 do what they want.
Building the NWO by Stealth
BibleBelievers.org.au
Once the City of London (the financial sector within London) used British Military Forces to carve out a physical empire for the British East India Company and the bankers. Nowadays the ruling Venetian oligarchy and its Khazar Monarchy is dividing and conquering the world by a different form of imperialism. Globalization.
It has been estimated that the Monarchy presently dominates over 90% of the present international financial system. The money-power has long been transferring its wealth from paper to hard assets in order to position itself to rule following the complete collapse of the financial structure. Control of resources, trade, financial markets, currency and commodity prices have enabled asset-stripping, sometimes by destroying national economies as in Russia and Asia, or through commanding debt-reduction strategies involving privatization of state assets like banks, airlines and water utilities as in Australia.
The final objective in globalization is world depopulation and a return to serfdom as directed by UN and national policies in place since at least the 1980’s.
The UN is an agency for legitimizing and enforcing the designs of the City of London for their planned NWO. By dividing a nation so as to gain a foothold in some strategic area they can destabilize that nation, bringing it under economic restraint or blackmail by the IMF and World Bank. Then UN “peacekeeping” troops can occupy the troubled region indefinitely, making as it were, a UN colony defended by “the rest of the world” team in behalf of what Benjamin Disraeli called the “Hidden Hand”.
The IMF is “bag man” for the International Bankers. It assembles guarantees and collateral from nations like Australia, whose leaders are controlled by the City, in order to salvage the bad debts of private banking consortia when nations default. And it ensures collection of usury by enforcing “conditionalities,” which, if ignored, can mean the boycott of international credit.
The Australian League of Rights stated in their weekly Newsletter, On Target (Vol.35, No.37 – September 24, 1999),
“East Timor is merely the most recent of a long list of countries destroyed by the apparent inaction of the United Nations. And it is not the first time Clinton has stood by and refused to commit Combat Troops that could have prevented the slaughter of thousands of innocent people. Populations the length and breadth of Africa have been decimated with exactly the same treatment.”
(Half of all newborn babies in Africa have AIDS, a disease made by the USDOD and distributed in Africa by WHO vaccinations. Average life expectancy for these newborn babies will be 25 years, the continent will be depopulated as planned and control or resources will revert to the oligarchy through their presence and geopolitical predominance).
“Another independent nation threatened by the actions of the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization (formerly GATT), both part of the United Nations and the evolving ‘World Government’, is Taiwan.”
“The purpose of the UN force currently taking control (in East Timor) is explained by UN spokesman David Wimhurst: “that mission includes as everybody knows the eventual formation of transmission of administration which would allow at some point East Timor to become independent.”
“Independent” in this context means independent only of Indonesia. The UN is the political and military arm of the World Bank. The essential criterion for East Timor to achieve independent nation status is that it submits to becoming a subsidiary of the World Bank. The people were allowed a referendum on whether they wanted to be free from Jakarta, but they will never be allowed a say in their relationship to the debt merchants.
“ABC news reports that the World Bank says it is ready to “offer” financial help to rebuild East Timor. “Bank president James Wolfensohn says a team will be sent to the territory as soon as it is safe. Mr. Wolfensohn continues ‘the people that will be running the (reconstruction) program… will be the UN, but subject to what the UN decides, I think we will certainly be trying to work with and embrace the East Timorese. And I would expect that representatives of the potential East Timorese government will in fact be in Washington in the next several days and we will be ready to talk to them.'” They are currently talking to East Timor’s independence leader, Xanana Gusmao.”
“In scenes reminiscent of John Howard’s first days as Prime Minister, if Mr. Gusmao says what the UN wants to hear, and signs the fledgling state into eternal debt bondage, he will be allowed to become head of state. If not, agreeable replacements will be swiftly and professionally vetted. Nothing will be left to chance on this issue. Disraeli wrote over 100 years ago that the world is run by people very different to those that most people are aware of.”
“It is an illusion also that East Timor is reliant on the World Bank for its reconstruction. The reconstruction of East Timor is reliant on the physical amount of the natural resources and technology available to it. The finance system is a man-controlled one which should not be allowed to restrict these physical realities” (end of On Target quote).
US Secretary of Defense, William Cohen said in Jakarta today, that unless Indonesia disarms the militia, prosecutes those responsible for the violence and stops the massacres in East Timor, the US will do severe damage to Indonesia.
We should view events in East Timor as a continuation of what has happened in Kosova. The City of London created the situation in East Timor to splinter Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous nation, and in the process pick-up the vast oil, gas and mineral riches of the Timor Sea as they position themselves to maintain power following the collapse of world currencies.
Until the Asian Economic Meltdown was inflicted in 1997, Indonesia was prospering, with a national oil, industry, manufacturing, forestry and mining development and a poverty rate lower than the US. Within six-months the economic gains achieved in the previous 25 years were lost when at the insistence of lackies of the City of London in the Australian government, and the pro-IMF oligarchy installed through US efforts in 1965, the nation capitulated to the IMF.
It now becomes clear that the Timor Gap Treaty, whereby one man, ex-Foreign Minister Gareth Evans, granted Indonesia sovereignty over hundreds of billions of dollars worth of proven oil and gas reserves, was a conspiracy. We see now the Senator’s loyalties lay with the City of London who plan to hold the world’s resources in a NWO. Doubtless he has purchased the reward he has long coveted, of high office with the UN (at US$300,000.00) following his resignation from the Australian Parliament last week (with a A$2.3 million Superannuation payout).
And Prime Minister John Howard’s complicity as an agent of the City is demonstrated by Australia’s call for a referendum in East Timor after helping to make it an economic cripple by enticing it into IMF conditionalities following the Asian Economic Meltdown.
Small wonder Indonesian troops inflicted a scorched earth policy in East Timor. Their government know they have been betrayed by Australia. When Indonesia accepted IMF help it destroyed their economy and their society. By withstanding ex-Prime Minister Paul Keating’s bullying tactics, Dr. Mahathir rejected the IMF and Malaysia has prospered. On the other hand, Kosova was destroyed and given to drug lords and criminals because Yugoslavia was independent of the IMF and refused to privatise state assets. As with World War II, the strategy behind the aggression against Serbia is for the break-up of Russia.
There was more than altruism behind John Howard’s guaranteeing a bankrupt Indonesia to the IMF with Australian surety. If would be drawing a long bow to suppose John Howard was unaware of his part in this plan to break-up that nation for the benefit of the City. Now he is supervising — with the lives of Australian soldiers as surety.
The current edition of The Philadelphia Trumpet compares Australia’s army with “Dad’s Army” of the 1970’s British TV comedy series. It exposes Australia’s defense unpreparedness and the dismantling of the Australian Security and Intelligence Organization (ASIO) by successive Fabian socialist governments since 1972 and quoting The Bulletin (August 3), rehearses “a decade of disastrous intelligence and economic judgments at bureaucratic and academic levels” with intelligence bungling and constant failure to foresee situations before they arise.
According to On Target, Australia’s Defense spending has averaged 1.9% of GDP whereas ABC Radio National today estimated that Australians spend 1% of GDP purchasing marijuana.
Keep listening to see if International Narcotics, a common denominator associated with recent conflict in Kosova, Colombia, Chechynia, Turkey, Afghanistan, Kurdistan and Dagestan turns out to be an important factor in the East Timor situation. Drug money laundering through City of London-controlled banks provides an important sounce of physical cash (as distinct from electronic funds) is big business, and when you say IMF think drugs.
Strauss-Kahn Screws Africa
By Greg Palast, The Guardian
May 20, 2011
Now that I’ve dispensed with the obvious and obnoxious teaser headline, let’s drop the towel and expose Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s history of arrogant abuse. The truth is, the grandee of the IMF has molested Africans for years.
On Wednesday, the New York Times ran five – count’em, FIVE – stories on Strauss-Kahn, Director-General of the International Monetary Fund. According to the Paper of Record, the charges against “DSK,” as he’s known in France, are in “contradiction” to his “charm” and “accomplishments” at the IMF.
Au contraire, mes chers lecteurs.
Director-General DSK’s cruelty, arrogance and impunity toward African and other nations as generalissimo of the IMF is right in line with the story told by the poor, African hotel housekeeper in New York City.
Let’s consider how the housekeeper from Guinea ended up here in New York. In 2002, this single mother was granted asylum. What drove her here? It began with the IMF rape of Guinea.
In 2002, the International Monetary Fund cut off capital inflows to this West African nation. Without the blessing of the International Monetary Fund, Guinea, which has up to half the world’s raw material for aluminum, plus oil, uranium, diamonds and gold, could not borrow a dime to develop these resources.
The IMF’s cut-off was, in effect, a foreclosure, and the nation choked and starved while sitting on its astonishing mineral wealth. As in the sub-prime mortgage foreclosures we see today, the IMF moved quickly to seize Guinea’s property.
But the IMF did not seize this nation’s riches for itself. Rather, it forced Guinea to sell off its resources to foreign corporations at prices much like the sale of furniture on the lawn of a foreclosed house.
The French, Americans, Canadians, Swiss (and lately, the Chinese) came in with spoons out and napkins tucked in under their chins, swallowing the nation’s bauxite, gold and more. In the meantime, the IMF ordered the end of trade barriers and thereby ruined local small holders.
As a result of the IMF attack, Guineans who could, fled for freedom and food. This week, then, marked the second time this poor African was molested by the IMF.
Now we have the context of how these two, the randy geezer of globalization and the refugee ended up, in quite different positions, in that New York hotel room.
Since taking over the IMF in 2007, erstwhile “Socialist” Strauss-Kahn has tightened the screws in an attempt to maintain the free-market finance mania that ruined this planet in the first place. [That’s worth a story in itself – and that’s coming. Our team has a stack of inside documents from the IMF that we will be releasing in my new book in the Fall.]
DSK’s lawyers say the relationship with the housekeeper was “consensual.” But DSK says that about all IMF agreements with nations over whom it holds life and death powers. That’s like saying a bank robbery is consensual so long as you don’t consider the gun.
Whether it was agreed-upon sex or brutal rape, it could only have been “consensual” in the same way that the people of Guinea consented to IMF-ordered financial rapine.
The Times article quotes an IMF crony of Strauss-Kahn saying DSK gets his way by “persuasion” not “bullying.” Tell that to the Greeks.
It was DSK who, last year, personally insisted on brutal terms for the so-called bail-out of Greece. “Strong conditionality” is the IMF term. Strauss-Kahn demanded not just a devastating cut in pensions and a deliberate increase in unemployment to 14%, but also the sell-off of 4,000 of 6,000 state-owned services. The DSK IMF plan allowed the financiers who set the financial fires of Greece to pick up the nation’s assets at a fire-sale price.
The Strauss-Kahn demands were not “tough love” for Greece: The love was reserved solely for the vulture bankers who received the IMF funds but were not required to accept one euro in lost profit in return. DSK, despite the advice of many, refused to ask the banks and speculators to reduce their usurious interest charges that were the root of Greece’s woes.
Requiring Greece to sell assets, drop trade barriers, and even end the rule that Greek ships use Greek sailors has nothing to do with saving Greece, but everything to do with DSK’s commitment to protect every banker’s balance sheet from unwanted violations.
I do not consider it a stretch to say that a predator in the bank boardroom suite assumes his impunity applies to the hotel suite.
Forensic economist and journalist Greg Palast, author of the New York Times bestsellers, Armed Madhouse and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, has investigated the IMF and World Bank for BBC Television Newsnight and the Guardian Newspapers (London) and Democracy Now! (New York).
Former IMF Chief (and sexual predator) DSK gets the boot at a protest rally of more than 100,000 in Greece on May 29th
Flashback: The Big Privatisation Debate – African Experiences (Excerpt)
With the intensified push for economic liberalization by the IMF, World Bank and other creditor institutions, more and more African leaders are agreeing to privatize. Over the past decade, African governments, often under pressure from creditor institutions to act quickly, have sold off thousands of state-owned enterprises. – Privatization shifts gears in Africa, African Recovery, April 2000
Africa Policy E-Journal
November 13, 2002
…Beginning in the 1970s, and gaining momentum throughout the 1980s and 1990s, has been the global trend away from state ownership and control towards privatisation.
Recent studies on privatisation in several African countries have shown that:
Privatisation led to the loss of over 60,000 jobs in Zambia while several hundred thousand workers were retrenched in Ghana.
Privatisation led to increases in the price of services. In Zambia, a privatised bus company dramatically increased the bus fares and closed down unprofitable — mostly rural — bus routes. As a result many Zambians now walk many kilometres to their workplaces and schools because they can no longer afford the bus fares or because the buses no longer service the areas where they live.
In Nigeria the prices for Kerosene increased by 6,000% between 1985 and 1995. Postal and telecommunications services increased their prices by 2,500 – 5,000% during that period while electricity prices increased by 883%.
In Ghana the introduction of cost recovery programmes were part of privatisation and resulted in increased fees for health and education services. As a result, they became unaffordable for the poor.
In Zimbabwe, privatisation also led to retrenchments and increased prices for services. The Cotton Company of Zimbabwe, for example, reduced its workforce from 3,000 to 500 after privatisation.
Flashback: IMF Forces African Countries to Privatise Water http://www.afrol.com
February 8, 2001
A review of IMF loan policies in forty random countries reveals that, during 2000, IMF loan agreements in 12 countries included conditions imposing water privatization or full cost recovery. In general, it is African countries, and the smallest, poorest and most debt-ridden countries, that are being subjected to IMF conditions on water privatization and full cost recovery.
Ironically, the majority of these loans were negotiated under the IMF’s new Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF), says Sara Grusky from the Globalization Challenge Initiative [http://www.challengeglobalization.org]. The reform was announced with great fanfare in 1999 when IMF officials claimed that the new loan facility would re-focus the IMF’s controversial structural adjustment measures on activities that borrowing government’s would identify as leading to poverty reduction.
An example is tiny Sao Tome and Principe. The island government has been put under pressure to pursue the implementation of a public enterprise reform through privatization and liquidation of nonperforming public enterprises for which buyers cannot be found. Nine public enterprises will be privatised, including the water and electricity utility and the national airline (Air Sâo Tomé).
The objective is said to be “to increase access to safe drinking water through rehabilitation of the waterworks system,” according to the IMF.
Some 20 percent of the population does not have access to safe water at present, but this number could rise if market prices are set on the service.
Rather than contributing to poverty reduction, water privatization and greater cost recovery make water less accessible and less affordable to the low income communities that make up the majority of the population in developing countries. The alternative is to revert to unsafe water sources or more distant sources.
The most immediate impact of reducing the accessibility and affordability of water falls on women and children. Worldwide, more than five million people, most of them children, die every year from illnesses caused from drinking poor quality water.
“When water become more expensive and less accessible, women and children, who bear most of the burden of daily household chores, must travel farther and work harder to collect water — often resorting to water from polluted streams and rivers,” says Sara Grusky.
This is confirmed by Ghanaian activist, Rudolf Amenga-Etego of the non-governmental Integrated Social Development Centre (ISODEC), who was in Washington recently highlighting the implications of having the poor pay “market rate tariffs” for water in Ghana. The World Bank has been pushing decentralisation in Ghana since 1988 and Ghana’s Water Sector Restructuring Project is expected to be approved by the Bank’s Board of Directors this year.
“Where cost-recovery becomes the underlying policy, water will become unaffordable for many poor people in Ghana,” Amenga-Etego told the news agency IPS.
The significance of finding such a high number of conditions relating to water privatization and water cost recovery in IMF loans is twofold. First, in the hierarchy of international financial institutions the IMF is at the top. Compliance with IMF conditions enables governments to receive the “seal of approval” that permits access to other international creditors and investors. Thus IMF conditions weigh especially heavily upon borrowing governments.
Second, it is quite common that World Bank loans have, as their first condition, compliance with certain IMF conditions. This is known as “cross conditionality.” In the division of labor between the two institutions, it is the World Bank that has primary responsibility for “structural” issues such as the privatization of state-owned companies.
Therefore, it can be presumed that in every country where IMF loan conditions include water privatization or full cost recovery, there are corresponding World Bank loan conditions and water projects that are implementing the financial, managerial, and engineering details required for such ‘restructurings’, says Sara Grusky.
In Ghana, civil society has announced its intention to resist the privatisation pushed for by the World Bank. Figures from the Government of Ghana have shown that only 36 percent of the rural population have access to safe water and 11 percent have adequate sanitation within the existing system. Water is also scarce in the capital, Accra. In typical working class areas of Accra such as Medina, it would cost a family 3,000 cedis to use 10 buckets of water a day if prises were to follow market rate tarrifs. Yet, the minimum wage per day is 7,000 cedis.
Also in South Africa, protest is spreading. The South African Anti-Privatisation Forum, a collective of community based organisations and labour unions, has mobilised against the privatisation of local government services, including water. Various strikes over social issues have marked the last year. The recent spread of cholera in South Africa is directly linked to the poor water quality in many working class areas. More expensive water could exclude even more people from clean and safe water.
The table identifies 8 African countries and paraphrases the specific IMF loan conditions relating to water privatization or water cost recovery, as mapped by the Globalization Challenge Initiative. In most of the countries, the IMF conditions require some form of privatization, and in several countries the conditions require both privatization and greater cost recovery…
1. Gulf War Oil Spill
Tons spilled: 1,360,000-1,500,000
In January 1991, Iraqi forces deliberately released more than 240 million gallons of crude oil into the Persian Gulf in an attempt to thwart an amphibious landing by the U.S. Marines. The resulting oil slick ravaged the area’s marine ecosystem, killing thousands of seabirds and endangering other wildlife. To date, it remains the worst disaster of its kind.
2. Ixtoc I
Tons spilled: 454,000-480,000
The exploratory oil well Ixtoc I exploded in the Gulf of Mexico on June 3, 1979, spewing 140 million gallons of oil into the open sea. It took control experts more than nine months to cap the spill and begin cleanup. Thousands of endangered sea turtles were airlifted to safety when the oil slick encroached upon their nesting site.
3. The Atlantic Empress and the Aegean Captain
Tons spilled: 287,000
On July 19, 1979, two gigantic supertankers collided off the Caribbean island of Little Tobago during a tropical rainstorm. The accident killed 26 crew members and dumped millions of gallons of crude oil into the sea.
4. Fergana Valley
Tons spilled: 285,000
In March 1992, 88 million gallons of oil spilled from a well in Fergana Valley, a densely populated industrial and agricultural zone in Uzbekistan. It remains the largest inland oil spill in history.
5. Nowruz Oil Field
Tons spilled: 260,000
On February 10, 1983, at the height of the Iran-Iraq War, an oil tanker collided with the Nowruz platform in the Persian Gulf. The slick caught fire when Iraqi planes attacked, and it took Iranian workers more than six months to cap the well. Eleven people died in the process.
6. ABT Summer
Tons spilled: 260,000
The Liberian supertanker ABT Summer exploded off the coast of Angola on May 28, 1991, killing five crew members. Millions of gallons of oil leaked into the Atlantic Ocean.
7. Castillo de Bellver
Tons spilled: 252,000
On August 6, 1983, a fire broke out aboard the Spanish tanker Castillo de Bellver, causing a massive explosion that spilled 78 million gallons of oil off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa. A shift in winds pushed the oil offshore, minimizing the disaster’s environmental effects.
8. Amoco Cadiz
Tons spilled: 223,000
On March 16, 1978, the Amoco Cadiz supertanker wrecked off the coast of Portsall, France. Ultimately, 240 miles of France’s Brittany coast suffered oil damage, with millions of dead mollusks and sea urchins washing ashore. This was the first time images of oil-coated sea birds were seen by the world.
9. M/T Haven
Tons spilled: 144,000
The M/T Haven, a Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC), suffered a huge explosion off the coast of Genoa, Italy, on April 11, 1991. Six crew members were killed, and the Mediterranean coasts of Italy and France remained polluted for the next 12 years.
10. Odyssey
Tons spilled: 132,000
In November 1988, the American-owned Odyssey drilling rig burst into flames and split in two off the coast of Novia Scotia. The accident killed one person and poured 43 million gallons of oil into the sea.
CRIME DOES NOT PAY... PLUS, THE BUTLER DID IT! AND REMEMBER: WHAT DOESN'T KILL YOU, WILL -MOST LIKELY- TRY AGAIN... AND DON'T FORGET: TODAY IS A GOOD DAY FOR SOMEONE ELSE TO DIE.
1rex22
Insomniacs II 