 |
| President John Mahama |
President
John Dramani Mahama will open the 8th Pan African Congress at the International
Conference Centre in Accra on March 5, this year.
The
congress will focus attention on factors which have acted as breaks on
Pan-African unity and celebrate Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, founder of the
Republic of Ghana.
It
will be attended by delegates and individuals from all the continents of the
world and it is expected that at least 1000 Pan Africanists will converge in
Accra.
Atleast
10 African Heads of State have confirmed their participation in the congress
which has been adopted as an African Union event. Sources close to the Local
Organizing Committee say the congress will be preceded by a meeting of the
International Preparatory Committee (IPC) and the General Council of the Pan
African Movement in Accra.
As
part of the congress there will be five commissions on The African Economic Situation,
Youth And Students, Culture, the Trade Unions and Gender.
The
Pan African movement is chaired by Major General Kahinde Otafire, Minister of
Justice of Uganda whose President has served as patron for the last 20 years.
The
chairperson of the local organizing committee is Comrade Kwesi Pratt, Jnr.
Managing
Editor of The Insight and a Member of The
Socialist Forum of Ghana (SFG).
The
fifth Pan-African congress which was held in Manchester in the United Kingdom
was credited with the acceleration of the decolonization process in Africa.
It
was attended by such Pan African stalwarts as Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, George
Padmore and W.E.B du Bois.
In
its final resolution, the fifth Pan African Congress called for the unification
of Africa under a socialist government.
The
four day event is seen as a platform for mass organisations on the African
continent and in the diaspora to discuss and collectively formulate plans for
the future development of Africa.
Editorial
A MAJOR TASK
Ghana
will be playing host to the 8th Pan African Congress from March 4 to
7 this year.
It
is expected that as many as one thousand Pan Africanists from all the
continents of the world will converge in Accra to discuss the problems of the
African people and to find solutions to them.
The
congress will be held under the broad theme “The Pan African World We Want”
It
is important to recognize that Ghana’s history is inextricably linked to
history of Pan Africanism.
The
founding father of Ghana, Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah was the secretary of the
fifth Pan African congress in Manchester in the United Kingdom.
Indeed,
after Ghana’s independence, leading Pan Africanist like George Padmore and
W.E.B du Bois actively participated in the reconstruction of Ghana.
Ghana
cannot fail the Pan African movement and it is important that all Ghanaians
contribute to the success of this event.
Corporate
bodies may want to contribute even their widow’s mite to a great event.
ANNOUNCEMENT
 |
| KB Mensah |
NANA
Amoa Mensah Buahi, Akyem-Pemhene; Nana Akosua Yeboaa Akyempemhemaa (Awua
Domase) Nana Kofi Amoasko, Ankobea Abusua Panyin,Fiapre Hon. J.H Mensah (Father ) Nana
Gyau,Ankobeahene, Fiapre Dzaasetse Dodoo, Head of the Dodoo ;Family Mr. Charles
Ofei Dodoo; Mr. John Jeffrey
Nettey,Acting Head of Asafoatse Nettey Family ;and Madam Mercy Sarkor Nettey
announces with heavy hearts the sudden death on Wednesday 31st
December 2014,at the age of 56, of their beloved
KWABENA BUAHIN MENSAH
(KB)
FUNERAL ARRANGEMENTS ARE
AS FOLLOWS:
THERE
WILL BE NO WAKE –KEEPING
LYING IN STATE: Friday 30th
January 2015 at Christ the King Catholic Church, Cantonment, Accra from 7: 30am
to 9:00am
FUNERAL SERVICES: Friday 30th
January 2015 At The Christ the King Catholic Church Cantonments, Accra at 9.00
INTERMENT: Friday 30th
January 2015 at Osu Cemetery, Accra
Final Funeral Rites will follow soon after at Christ The King Church
Hall, Cantonment, Accra .
FATHER: Hon. J.H Mensah
MOTHER: Mrs. Elizabeth Mensah
(nee Dodoo) (Deceased)
CHILD: Elizabeth Nana Esi
Abokuma Mensah (Alsyd Academy, Accra)
WIDOW: Ms. ANGELA CARSON (GHANA
GAS, Accra)
BROTHERS AND SISTERS: Mr. Papa Kwa Mensah
(MAP Consult And ILC Services, Accra): Mr. Kwabena Amoah Awuah Mensah (IT
Consultant, Accra) ,Ms .Nana Yaa Mensah (New Statesman London).
UNCLES AND AUNTIES: Dr. Peter Mensah; Mrs.Cecilia
Frimpong;Mrs Theresa Kufour ;Nana Mensah, Akyempemhene of Awua-Domase ,Sunyani
; Madam Esther Mensah; Madam Mary Mensah.
COUSINS: ;Angela Quist-Arcton
and Sisters ;Dr Clement Osei,Brothers &Brothers and Sisters ;Mr.Kojo
Roberts Mensah and brothers and sisters ;Mr. Yaw Frimpong, brothers and sisters
,Mr. Chief Kuffuor Brothers and Sisters ,Ms.Rose Mensah,Brothers and Sisters
,Mrs.Adwoa Asamoah; Edina Wiredu; Mrs. Joana Bannerman, Brothers And Sisters
;Mrs Vida Lamptey ,Brothers And Sisters Mrs.Victoria Thompson;Sheila,Robert and
Betty Okyne , Mr. Alfred Cole (Canada) and Sisters Mr.Robert Willams; Mr Hubert
Mensah, Brothers and Sisters ,Mr. Nii Lartey Opintan and Sisters; Rev.Fr.Ocquaye-Mensah.
IN-LAWS: Lawyer Gilbert Carson
(Takoradi):Mrs.Angelina Ama Tutuah Mensah(EPA,Accra).
NEPHEWS & NIECE:Master Nicolas Kwabena
Abew Mensah(Ghana International School,Accra) Mrs.Agnes Yaa Mensah Amoh
(Accra).
CHIEF MOURNERS;
NANA Amoa Mensah Buahin.Akyem-Pemhene; Nana
Akosua Yeboaa Akyempemhemaa (Awua Domase) Nana Kofi Amoako, Ankobea Abusua
Panyin,Fiapre , Hon. J.H Mensah (Father ) Nana Gyau,Ankobeahene, Fiapre
;Dzaasetse Dodoo, Head of the Dodoo Family Mr. Charles Ofei Dodoo; Mr. john
Jeffrey Nettey,Acting head of the Asafoatse Nettey Family ;the Royal Attafuah
Family Of Akyem Oda; the Nii Doku family of Sonne Naa ,Gbesethe Sonne and
Engmann Families of Osu ;the Mensah,
Boahen Hamilton and Allied Families of Elmina ,Takoradi ,Accra ,Kumasi and
Sunyani ,Current and past staff of BBC World Service
Adieu,K
.B. Mensah!
Letter From Afar
|
| KB Mensah |
By
Cameron Doudu
The
cryptic message that I received on New Year ’s Eve was hard to believed.
It
just asked:”Have you heard that our friend and BBC colleague, K .B Mensah, has
passed away? So sad!”
“What?
K.B Mensah dead? Impossible!”I said to myself.
K
B Mensah, I regret to tell you was the son of one of our more admired politicians,
Mr. J.H Mensah, Dr K. Busia’s Finance Minister (1969-72) and President J.A
Kufuor unusually –denominated “Senior Minister” during the latter’s administration .
I
called a mutual friend to try and confirm the news. He didn’t answer his phone-it
was New Year’s Eve!
I
emailed a friend in Accra. He said he hadn’t heard of it. That’s one of the
risk one takes in situations like that-being the bearer of bad news.
Eventually,
the news was confirmed. KB had died in hospital in Accra. The cause of death as
baffling as you like ,was said by the autopsy to be pneumonia !
Now,KB
was not a close friend of mine .Nevertheless ,every time I’d seen him or spoken
to him on the phone ,the warmth between us was as if we were bosom
friends.
I’d
last seen him –cheerful and oozing good
humor –in Accra during president Barak Obama visit to Ghana in 2009.We’d
exchange pleasantries and had agreed to meet later. But life in Accra being
what it is ,that was the last time I saw him .
KB’S
voice will, however, remain in my ears for years to come –and in the ears of
the millions Africans who depend on BBC for news about Africa. For KB was, if you n the 1980s-9os,one of the announcers
whose voices brought Africans ,both at home and in the Diaspora ,news and
analyses of what was going on in Africa .
If
you heard ;’BBC World Service.
Its’s
1709 Greenwhich Mean Time .This Kwabena Mensah With Focus on Africa ,’it would
be KB using the next 25 minutes to try and make you feel that wherever you
happened to be , Some-one was keeping you in the loop about the continent.
Now,
do not be fooled: the Focus on Africa of those days was not for weak stomachs.
Africa was full of murderous dictators and thievish one at that. They
controlled the media at home. But they could not touch the BBC.
And
the BBC knew how to get the news. And once it got the news, it put the facts to
the dictators and their minions, to confirm or deny them.
The
programme’s star was its editor, Robin White, whose gravelly voice appeared as
if it had been created especially for hectoring.
Without
asking for someone’s permission Robin White assumed the position of “Head
Master” in what George Orwell might have called Africa’s ‘Political House of
Cards”.
But
in sharp contrast to Robin’s interviewing will be KB’s introduction of the
item: calm, insouciant, suave-bearing the marks of pronunciation “received” at
Dulwich College, in London, and Oxford University.
I
personally felt that KB must have been pained by some of the items he had to
introduce in Focus on Africa. Its long-term principal announcer of the time,
Chris Bickerton, who was British, once volunteered to me, in the Bush House
canteen, that he had “just pissed on the continent again!” I did not think he
was being funny.
To
KB, therefore, constantly being made to “piss” on his own continent may have
been soul destroying at times.
It
was the “Mama” of the BBC African Service, Dorothy Grenfell-Williams, who, in
excited tones, told me of the Beeb’s acquisition of KB Mensah and his
inimitable voice.
I’d
gone to the Bush House to do an interviews and Dorothy, one of the most
personable and knowledgeable radio Producers I’ve ever come across, told me,
“We’ve just acquired a young man from your country. He’s called KB Mensah. He’s
the cleverest African we have ever employed.
You
may know that we have something here called “The Sub-Editor’s Test”.
Well
almost everyone we send to take it flunk it. We interview them, they appear
good to us, but when we send them to BBC newsroom to take the test, more often
than not they fail it. But not KB- he just sailed through it!
In
fact, KB’s voice alone was such an asset that even if he hadn’t had an
excellent head to go with it, he would have become a star at Beebs. After
announcing on Focus on Africa the Beeb paid him the supreme compliment of
making him one of the presenters of its flagship news programme on the World
Service, Newshour.
Here
again ,he displayed unflappable professionalism and must have won thousands of
listeners for the BBC. He was clever to use his full Ghanaian name, “Kwabena
Mensah” for had he styled himself barely as “KB Mensah”, there would have been
some BBC listeners around the world who would have thought he was some
Englishman called Kaybee Mensa!(actually being called “Mensa” would probably
not have been much of a misnomer, given the number of “eggs” that seemed to have been laid inside that small
head of his!) .
KB
Mensah was born in Accra on 30th September 1958 and died 31st December. His father was Mr. Joseph Henry Mensah, a
noted economist who a working for the United Nations in New York at the time
Kwabena was born. J .H moved to Ghana in 1961, where he became one of the
authors of President Kwame Nkrumah’s seven year development plan, at the
National Planning Commission.
Kwabena’s
mother was the late Elizabeth Mensah, a teacher and granddaughter of Asafoatse
Nettey. KB was her second child ,having been proceeded by an elder brother PK
Mensah (who was born 1955)
A
second brother, Kwabena Amoah Awuah- Mensah, was born in 1961. They have a
sister, Nana Yaa Mensah ,who is also a high –flier in journalism, and is
currently working in London.
KB
attended the then university Demonstration school, Legon (now University
Primary );the UN school in New York (when his father Mr J.H Mensah was working
at the UN;then skippers Hill Manor (at
MayField, East Sussex); followed by Dulwich College, London (where PG Wodehouse,
the acclaimed humorist writer ,was educated); and Oxford University (where he
took a Bachelors Degree in Politics ,Philosophy & Economics ).
After
graduating from Oxford KB moved to Ghana and worked with friends on a fish
farming venture and another farming project with his father.He next moved back
to London in the Rawlings years, where he helped to compile register of victims
of Rawlings regime.
This
was followed by his stint at the BBC in the 1980s and 90s, presenting focus on
Africa . He later worked at a Human Right watch. His later years were spent
working mainly for the magazine, Africa Report.
KB
is survived by his partner Angela Carson, with whom he has a daughter, Nana
Esi, who was born 2006.
You
can have an inkling of who and what KB was by reading this quotation from a
tribute sent to KB’s brother, PK ,by Mandy Reuben ,who worked with KB at the
BBC.
“Dearest
PK,
When
I think of KB I recall his voice. I hear KB’s voice so clearly.
The
way , as he said hello, he ended with a warm chuckle. Then I see KB peering
through his glasses, searching.
And
that was what brought us close together –having someone else to research –and
develop ideas for television progammes –with.
“KB
transformed my life as I adopted to being at home with a young daughter,
between 1992 and 2000 he galvanized me to write. When KB went back to Accra in
2001 we promised to pursue our TV project.
He
was intriguingly well informed and an insightful interpreter of events, with
strong personal opinions that he was able to balance with a professional
objectivity.
More
than that, KB cared about the people whose stories he reported. He seemed made
for radio and reporting, his compelling voice, cogent analysis, his
intelligence …
“I
remember listening to him on BBC World Service Focus on Africa with my family
in Kenya. My dad used to tell me he’d been listening to my friend!
Again,
it was his unmistakable voice. Whether during filming for C4 in Ghana, when KB
also happened to be in Accra, or when collaborating in London, he was
unhesitatingly supportive and generous, both with his time and sharing his
contacts. After all the words we wrote together, now I am struggling to find
the words to write about losing KB”.
Boko Haram
The
government plans to expand Germany’s military engagement in Africa. Earlier
this week, Chancellor Angela Merkel announced Germany would be supporting the
fight against Boko Haram.
Germany
is prepared to offer financial aid in the struggle against the terrorist
militia, Merkel declared following a meeting with the Ghanaian president John
Dramani Mahama on Monday in Berlin. The West African country wants to fight
Boko Haram with a regional military force. “Ghana can provide troops for this”,
explained Mahama. The plans for the operation will be discussed at the next
summit of the African Union.
Merkel
promised financial support for the planned troop deployment, and spoke of
“terrible, brutal crimes that are being conducted against the civilian
population in Nigeria, but also in Cameroon.” However, there were no current
plans for a direct military intervention by the European Union, Merkel said.
Since
the beginning of the year, Boko Haram has brought large areas of northern
Nigeria under its control and has penetrated into neighbouring Cameroon. On
January 4, militia fighters took over a military base of the Multinational Task
Force in Baga, in the Nigerian state of Borno.
According
to media reports, the city was completely destroyed and up to 2,000 people
killed. Baga was the last district in the northeast of the country still
controlled by the central government and has repeatedly been the scene of
bitter fighting. The Nigerian army was responsible for a massacre of the
civilian population in Baga in 2013, which left more than 200 dead.
In
addition to Baga, many other towns in the region are no longer under the
control of the Nigerian government of President Goodluck Jonathan, including
Damasak, Gubio, Kukawa, Mafa, Bama and Konduga. The area at least partially
under the control of Boko Haram reportedly covers more than 50,000 square
kilometres and extends from Machena on the border with Niger to Damaturu and up
to Yola on the Cameroonian border.
Merkel’s
support for the fight against Boko Haram sends a signal. Following the
terrorist attacks in Paris, Berlin is preparing to pursue Germany’s imperialist
interests in Africa with increasingly military means. The Bundeswehr (Armed
Forces) is already working closely with the Ghana Armed Forces and is
supporting them in building a Pioneer Regiment as part of a task force of the
African Union.
The
German offensive in Africa has been planned long beforehand and is part of the
return of Germany to an aggressive foreign policy. In mid-May last year, the
cabinet approved the “government’s African policy guidelines”, which read like
a strategy paper regarding the exploitation of the resource-rich continent by
German imperialism in the twenty-first century.
When
presenting the paper, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier declared, in the
best German great power manner, that Germany must raise its gaze to Africa and
“adapt its political instruments to the diversity of Africa”.
In
the first section of the guidelines, under the heading “Current situation:
Africa’s growing relevance to Germany and Europe”, it states:
“Africa’s
potential stems from its demographic development and the fact that it is a huge
market of the future with strong economic growth, rich natural resources, a
great potential for increasing agricultural production and food security by its
own efforts…. African markets are developing dynamically and—beyond the
extractive industries—will be of growing interest to German business.”
The
second section, “Our engagement in Africa”, demands “Germany’s engagement in
Africa in the spheres of politics, security and development policy has to be
strengthened in a targeted fashion”. The federal government “aims to act early
and swiftly, in a decisive and substantive manner which is based on values and
human rights.” This also includes military interventions. The government wants
“to use the whole spectrum
of means available to it in the fields of politics, security, development and
regional policy, business, academia and culture” (emphasis in original).
The
German government officially rejected the NATO bombing of Libya in 2011, but
since then, under the guise of fighting terrorism, is increasingly returning to
the traditional areas of influence of German imperialism in Africa. In early
2013, the German parliament agreed to support the French military intervention
in Mali and to send soldiers to the country. In 2014, the mission was expanded.
More German contingents are currently in Senegal, in Central Africa, in the
Horn of Africa, the Western Sahara, Sudan, South Sudan and Somalia.
The
return of the Bundeswehr to Africa, like the confrontation with Russia last
year and the intervention of Bundeswehr in the Middle East, is in keeping with
the traditions of German great power politics.
When
the Kaiser’s German Empire, in pursuit of a new world policy as a nation that
had apparently “come too late”, for the first time sought its own “place in the
sun” (according to the later Reich Chancellor von Bülow on December 6, 1897,
before the German parliament), it was above all a matter of possessing colonies
in Africa.
Although
Germany was never able to match the leading colonial powers of France and
England, the so-called German protectorates at the beginning of the First World
War formed the fourth largest colonial empire on earth. This included German
Southwest Africa (today’s Namibia), German West Africa (today’s Togo, the
eastern part of Ghana, Cameroon, the eastern part of Nigeria, parts of Chad,
the Central African Republic, the Republic of Congo and Gabon), German East
Africa (today’s Tanzania and Rwanda) and German Witu (today’s southern Kenya).
After
Germany lost its colonies following defeat in the First World War, the German
elite under Hitler dreamed anew of a German colonial empire in Africa. It would
serve as a “tropical extension” to a Europe dominated by Germany.
In
a memorandum dated July 1940, the then director of the Deutsche Bank and
director of the Nazis’ Colonial Policy Office, Kurt Weigelt, summarised the war
aims of the Third Reich as follows:
“Seen
economically, the countries on the Guinea coast are of the highest worth. Based
on our old local possession (Togo and Cameroon), the Gold
Coast-Togo-Dahomey-Nigeria-Cameroon form the ideal central element of Germany’s
African possessions. With well over 30 million inhabitants, this area is not
only the optimum of the tropical extension but with a few exceptions (copper),
provides all the nationally important economic needs of the homeland.”
He
continued:
“With
the inclusion of French Congo, it is completed from a forestry products
perspective, whereby it also extends to the Belgian Congo, which would also
meet the need for copper. On the way to this area lie the iron ore reserves of
Conakry and phosphates of French Marocco (special arrangements), as well as air
and marine bases at Bathhurst and Dakar.”
As
in the past, the new “scramble for Africa” threatens not only to bring terrible
suffering to the African masses but also to intensify conflicts between the
imperialist powers.
Early
last week, an article in the political weekly Die Zeit left no doubt that the German elites
are increasingly prepared to engage in confrontation with their nominal allies
in order to pursue their own geo-strategic and economic interests. Under the
headline “We need more Germany in Africa”, the paper asked: “Is it really
enough to just contribute enough so that Paris is not annoyed? Certainly not,
and there are good reasons for a stronger engagement in Africa on our own
part.”
Source:
Global Research, World
Socialist Web Site
Who Is Going to
Auschwitz?
 |
| Adolf Hitler |
Global
Research,
General-Lieutenant
(two stars) Vasily Petrenko was in charge of 107th infantry division at
the time. He remembers what he saw when Auschwitz was liberated, «There
were seven and a half people remaining alive on the day I came to Auschwitz on
January 18. I saw no normal people. Germans made leave everyone who could walk,
only disabled inmates were left. I saw children… what a terrible view! Swollen
abdomen, wandering eyes, hands waving uselessly in the air, thin legs, huge
heads – other parts of the body did not look real – they appeared to be sown to
bodies. Children never produced a sound as they were showing individual inmate
identification numbers tattooed on their hands».
People
of different nationalities perished in great numbers. The death rate was
estimated in dozens of millions. But the triumph of German Nazism happened to
be short-lived. Those days are remembered as the most terrible events in
European history.
The
death camps covered Central and Eastern Europe like bubonic plague sores.
Even according to official data of German Ministry of Interior, the
fascist regime built 1634 concentration camps. Besides, there were many other
structures created to find the final solution to the problem of «second
rate» people or «lower races». Located 70 km from Krakow, Auschwitz
was the largest (around 40 square km) network of concentration and
extermination camps built and operated by Nazi Germany during WWII. It
consisted of Auschwitz I (the original camp), Auschwitz II – Birkenau (a
combination concentration/extermination camp), Auschwitz III – Monowitz (the
largest sub-camp of Auschwitz) and satellite camps. The first prisoners came
there in June 1940, and there were over 100,000 inmates by 1944. The camp was
the place of people’s mass extermination, especially of the Jews. There were
inmates from Poland, USSR, Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, France,
Greece, Netherlands, Yugoslavia, Norway, Romania, Italy and Hungary. For a long
time the number of victims was believed to be at least 1, 1 million. In
2010 the Russia’s Federal Security Service declassified the data which showed
that more than four million inmates were killed by Nazi.
There
were four crematoriums and two provisional gas chambers. Soviet prisoners and
weak inmates were the first to undergo the Zyklon B gas trials in the spring of
1942. At first bodies were buried, then eliminated in crematories and ditches
specially dug for the purpose. Inmates underwent medical experiments. The
factory of death killed 150 thousand inmates a month. Crematories and fires
burning all night eliminated 270 thousand bodies monthly.
The
Soviet Supreme Command knew about the existence of the death camps. It ordered
the 1st and 4th Ukrainian fronts to liberate Auschwitz during the Vistula–Oder
offensive operation. The 100th infantry division led by General Fyodor Krasavin
took Auschwitz on January 27, 1945 to save the lives of remaining 7 thousand
inmates. The reality was shocking. The machine of extermination was perfect and
smooth-running. Here is some evidence provided to Smersh counterintelligence by
imprisoned fascist punishers. Elizabeth Gazelow (superintendent in Ravensbrück,
Majdanek and Auschwitz) says, «There were 40-45 thousand inmates of
different nationalities: Russian, Ukrainians, Poles, Czech, French. It was a
camp of extermination. It had crematorium, gas chambers…Children were put into
the chambers in front of their parents».
Willie
Steinborn (SS-Rottenführer, a guard) remembers, «A large group of Poles,
Russians and other nationalities was to be exterminated. The inmates offered
resistance. SS guards let dogs attack them. They enjoyed the picture as live
people separated from each other were torn and mangled by dogs».
Alfred
Skchipek (in charge of barack N8), «There was a punishment called
«steinbunker». 20-30 people were put into a small cell. With such little space
they could only stand there. No windows, there was only a few millimeters wide
crack in the wall. With no air coming inmates were suffocating. Transported in
winter to be exterminated prisoners were made work outside without shoes and
clothes on till they died of cold. There were 200-300 victims at a time».
There
were thousands of such testimonies weird enough to give one the creeps. I’m
afraid all these evidence is not enough to make a single tear drop from the
eyes of those who today are mourning the dead in Washington, London,
Brussels and Warsaw. They say that this is the time to commemorate the victims
of gas chambers, but in reality they take the side of punishers, not the
victims. In Europe and overseas they speak the right words to remember
those who suffered from Holocaust while turning a blind eye on the SS marches
that regularly take place in the Baltic States for already 20 years. They
nod their heads upon hearing the delirium about the Soviet occupation of East
Europe and even Germany and say that the fascist coup in Kiev is nothing else
but the expression of people’s will. They say that the Moscow’s support for the
compatriots shelled in the Donbass is an aggression. The egregious political
intrigue and maneuvering mixed with stone age Russophobia makes Western elite
unable to discern the revival of the global evil which would have ruled the
world today, if it had not been the Soviet Union and its Red Army which demonstrated
unparalleled prowess 70 years ago. Being connived at the evil enjoys the proper
environment to make it thrive today.
Vladimir
Putin can put up with the fact that he is not invited to the major event at
Auschwitz marking 70 years since inmates of the Nazi death camp were liberated
by the Red Army. No great pleasure to meet the sycophants who gather
millions to take part in the Paris march to protest the death of
journalists-provocateurs and watch indifferently as the Khatyn massacre is
repeated in Odessa. They have chutzpah to say they don’t want to see in
Auschwitz the head of state who ordered the attack against Ukraine. The
sponsors of Ukraine’s Neo-Nazi regime believe it’s not expedient to invite the
head of state claiming to be the successor of the Soviet Union – the country
that liberated Auschwitz and a half of Europe. But they find it expedient to
invite the Chancellor of Germany who supports the Nazi regime in Ukraine to
prove that it’s too early to affirm that Germans have successfully gone through
denazification. They find Nazism unacceptable on their soil but put up
with its presence in other countries…
The
organizers want to commemorate the victims of Auschwitz standing side by side
with the leaders of Ukraine’s fascist regime (as it was in Paris).
The
organizers want to commemorate the victims of Auschwitz standing side by side
with the leaders of Ukraine’s fascist regime. Could it be any other way?
All those kapos (a kapo – a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp assigned by
the SS guards to supervise other inmates) and «block-eltesters» (a
block-eltester – the eldest man of the block in a concentration camp) – the
Banderites and their successors – are spiritual mentors of such gentlemen as
Poroshenko, Yatsenyuk, Turchinov and Yarosh. Just ask them and they will
willingly tell you a story how they defended the civilized Europe from the
hordes coming from the East. They will also tell you how to operate the
furnaces of Auschwitz, use people as guinea pigs for experiments with Zyklon B
and torture unarmed inmates. Especially in the view of the experience that
is remembered as Ukraine conducts the so-called «anti-terror operation» in the
east.
The
participation in the events of Western leaders who head the states that were
the USSR’s allies during WWII is a special case for consideration. The words
they say about democratic standards on the territory of Auschwitz sound like
mentioning rope in the house of a man who has been hunged. Especially if one
remembers how their predecessors – Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston
Churchill – reacted to the information about what happened in Nazi
concentrations camps.
British
doctoral student Barbara Rogers has discovered a 20-page document in the Foreign Office
archive proving conclusively that Britain and the United States knew about the
gas chambers at Auschwitz as early as December 1942. The information was
contained in a memorandum passed to the British government and handed to U.S.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt by Jewish leaders at a White House meeting
on Dec. 8, 1942.
While
it has been known that the Allies knew then about the «Final Solution» – and
even about gas chambers – this is the first time it was demonstrated that the
Allies knew in 1942 about the crematoria at Auschwitz. It informed Roosevelt
that «centers have been established in various parts of Eastern
Roosevelt
was informed about concentration camps in Central and Eastern Europe but he did
nothing.
Europe
for the scientific and cold-blooded mass murder of Jews. Polish Christian
workers, eyewitnesses, have confirmed reports that concrete buildings, on the
former Russian frontiers, are used by the Germans as gas chambers in which
thousands of Jews have been put to death.
The
memorandum also specifically informed Roosevelt: «The slaughter of trainloads
of Jewish adults and children in great crematoriums at Ozwiencim [Auschwitz]
near Krakow is confirmed by eyewitnesses in reports which recently reached
Jerusalem». There is no information the allies ever reacted. The find
reignites debates about why the Allies took no action, such as bombing, to
disrupt the operation of Auschwitz. The researcher made precise the reasons why
London did not contact Berlin on the matter. The British feared a
flood of Jewish emigration from Europe to Palestine (Palestine was then part of
the British Empire). The other reason is that they were anxious to avoid a
popular backlash if they were perceived to be fighting a «Jewish war».
In
other words the whole nations were sacrificed in the interests of the British
Empire. Even after the Second Front was open and Anglo-America forces moved to
the east and their aviation could easily reach Auschwitz nothing was done to at
least interrupt transport routes to the camp and thus complicate the
continuation of heinous crimes committed by Germans. No wonder the contemporary
successors of Roosevelt and Churchill are prone to hypocrisy.Meeting in
Washington on January 16 Barack Obama and David Cameron agreed to keep
sanctions on Russia until it stops its «aggression» in Ukraine, «We agree
on the need to maintain strong sanctions against Russia until it ends its
aggression in Ukraine, and on the need to support Ukraine as it implements
important economic and democratic reforms,» Obama said after talks in
Washington with the UK Prime Minister. What a striking similarity: some
believe that crematoria and gas chambers serve as instruments of purification
while others use napalm and multiple launch rocket systems against civilians in
the Donbass as the means of implementing «democratic reforms». Don’t get
surprised, ladies and gentlemen, if the smell of new crematorium will be felt
again in Europe.
Prof.
Yuri Rubtsov is the Ph.D. (History) who lectures at the Military University
(Moscow).
Freedom, Where are you?
The stock markets are bubbles blown
by central bank money creation.
By
Dr Paul Craig Roberts
When
the former Goldman Sachs executive who runs the European Central Bank (ECB) announced
that he was going to print 720 billion euros annually with which to purchase
bad debts from the politically connected big banks, the euro sank and the stock
market and Swiss france shot up. As in the US, quantitative easing (QE) serves
to enrich the already rich. It has no other purpose.
The
well-heeled financial institutions that bought up the troubled sovereign debt
of Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain at low prices will now sell the bonds to
the ECB for high prices. And despite depression level unemployment in most of
Europe and austerity imposed on citizens, the stock market rose in anticipation
that much of the 60 billion new euros that will be created each month will find
its way into equity prices. Liquidity fuels the stock market.
Where
else can the money to go? Some will go into Swiss francs and some into gold
while gold is still available, but for the most part the ECB is running the
printing press in order to boost the wealth of the stock-owning One Percent.
The Federal Reserve and the ECB have taken the West back to the days when a
handful of aristocrats owned everything.
The
stock markets are bubbles blown by central bank money creation. On the basis of
traditional reasoning there is no sound reason to be in equities, and sound
investors have avoided them.
But
there is no return anywhere else, and as the central banks are run by the rich
for the rich, sound reasoning has proved to be a mistake for the past six
years. This shows that corruption can prevail for an indeterminable period over
fundamentals.
As
I demonstrated in my book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism, first
Goldman Sachs deceived lenders into over-lending to the Greek government. Then
Goldman Sachs former executives took over Greece’s financial affairs and forced
austerity upon the population in order to prevent losses to the foreign
lenders.
This
established a new principle in Europe, one that the IMF has relentlessly
applied to Latin American and Third World debtors. The principle is that when
foreign lenders make mistakes and over-lend to foreign governments, loading
them up with debt, the bankers’ mistakes are rectified by robbing the poor
populations. Pensions, social services, and public employment are cut, valuable
resources are sold off to foreigners for pennies on the dollar, and the
government is forced to support US foreign policy. John
Perkins’ Confessions of an Economic Hit Man describes the process
perfectly. If you haven’t read Perkins book, you have little idea how corrupt
and vicious the United States is. Indeed, Perkins shows that over-lending is
intentional in order to set up the country for looting.
This
is what Goldman Sachs did to Greece, intentionally or unintentionally.
It
took the Greeks a long time to realize it. Apparently, 36.5 percent of the
population was awoken by rising poverty, unemployment, and suicide rates. That
figure, a little over one-third of the vote, was enough to put Syriza in power
in the just concluded Greek election, throwing out the corrupt New Democracy
party that has consistently sold out the Greek people to the foreign banks.
Nevertheless, 27.7 percent of the Greeks, if the vote reporting is correct,
voted for the party that has sacrificed the Greek people to the banksters. Even
in Greece, a country accustomed to outpourings of people into the streets, a
significant percentage of the population is sufficiently brainwashed to vote
against their own interests.
Can
Syriza do anything? It remains to be seen, but probably not. If the political
party had received 55% or 65% or 75% of the vote, yes. But the largest vote at
36.5% does not show a unified country aware of its plight and its looting at
the hands of rich banksters. The vote shows that a significant percentage of
the Greek population supports foreign looting of Greece.
Moreover,
Syriza is up against the heavies: the German and Netherlands banks who hold
Greece’s loans and the governments that back the banks, the European Union
which is using the sovereign debt crisis to destroy the sovereignty of the
individual countries that comprise the European Union, Washington which backs
EU sovereign power over the individual countries as it is easier to control one
government than a couple of dozen.
Already
the Western financial presstitutes are warning Syriza not to endanger its
membership in the common currency by diverting from the austerity model imposed
from abroad on Greek citizens with the complicity of New Democracy.
Apparently,
there is a lack of formal means of exiting the EU and the euro, but
nevertheless Greece can be threatened with being thrown out. Greece should
welcome being thrown out.
Exiting
the EU and the euro is the best thing that can happen to Greece. A country
without its own currency is not a sovereign country. It is a vassal state of
another power. A country without its own currency cannot finance its own needs.
Although the UK is a member of the EU, the UK kept its own currency and is not
subject to control by the ECB. A country without its own money is powerless. It
is a non-entity.
If
the US did not have its own dollar, the US would be of no consequence
whatsoever on the world scene.
The
EU and the euro were deception and trickery. Countries lost their sovereignty.
So much for Western “self-rule,” “freedom,” “democracy,” all slogans without
content. In the entire West there is nothing but the looting of people by the
One Percent who control the governments.
In
America, the looting does not rely on indebtedness, because the US dollar is
the reserve currency and the US can print all the money needed in order to pay
its bills and redeem its debt. In America the looting of labor has been through
jobs offshoring.
American
corporations discovered, and if they did not they were informed by Wall Street
to move offshore or be taken over, that they could raise profits by moving
their manufacturing operations abroad. The lower labor cost resulted in higher
profits, higher share prices, huge managerial bonuses based on “performance,”
and shareholder capital gains. Offshoring greatly increased the inequality in
income and wealth in the US. Capital succeeded in looting labor.
The
displaced well-paid manufacturing workers, if they were able to find
replacement jobs, worked part-time minimum wage jobs at Walmart and Home Depot.
Economists,
if they are entitled to the designation, such as Michael Porter and Matthew
Slaughter, promised Americans that the fictional “New Economy” would produce
better, higher-paying, and cleaner jobs for Americans than the “dirty
fingernail” jobs that we were fortunate our corporations were moving offshore.
Years
later, as I have proven conclusively, there is no sign of these “New Economy”
jobs. What we have instead is a sharp decline in the labor force participation
rate as the unemployed cannot find jobs. The replacement jobs for the manufacturing
jobs are mainly part-time domestic service jobs.
People have to hold 2 or 3 of these jobs to make ends meet. These part time jobs offer no medical or pension benefits.
Now
that this fact, once controversial believe it or not, has proven completely
true, the same bought-and-paid-for spokespersons for robbing labor and
destroying unions claim, without a shred of evidence, that the offshored jobs
are coming home.
According
to these propagandists, we now have what is called “reshoring.” A “reshoring”
propagandist claims that the growth of “reshoring” over the past four years is
1,775 percent, an 18 times increase.
There
is no sign whatsoever of these alleged “reshoring” jobs in the monthly BLS
payroll jobs statistics.
What
reshoring is all about is propaganda to counteract the belated realization that
“free trade” agreements and job offshoring were not beneficial to the American
economy or its work force, but were beneficial only to the super-rich.
Like
people throughout history, the American people are being turned into serfs and
slaves because the fools believe the lies that are fed to them. They sit in
front of Fox News, CNN, and whatever. They read the New York Times. If you want
to learn how badly Americans have been served by the so-called media, read
Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States and Oliver
Stone and Peter Kuznick’s The Untold History of the United States.
The
media helps the government, and the private interests that profit from their
control of government, control the brainwashed public. We have to invade
Afghanistan because a faction there fighting for political control of the
country is protecting Osama bin Laden, whom the US accuses without any proof of
embarrassing the mighty US with the 9/11 attack. We have to invade Iraq because
Saddam has “weapons of mass destruction” that he surely has despite the reports
to the contrary by the weapons inspectors. We have to overthrow Gaddafi because
of a slate of lies that have best been forgotten. We have to overthrow Assad
because he used chemical weapons even though all evidence is to the contrary.
Russia is responsible for Ukraine problems, not because the US overthrew the
elected democratic government but because Russia accepted a 97.6% vote of
Crimeans to rejoin Russia where the province had resided for hundreds of years
before a Ukrainian Soviet leader, Khrushchev, stuck Crimea into Ukraine, at the
time a part of the Soviet Union along with Russia.
War,
War, War, that is all Washington wants. It enriches the military/security
complex, the largest component of the US GNP and the largest contributor, along
with Wall Street and the Israel Lobby, to US political campaigns.
Anyone
or any organization that offers truth to the lies is demonized. Last week the
new chief of the US Broadcasting Board of Governors, Andrew Lack, listed the
Russian TV Internet service Russia Today as the equivalent of Boko Haram and
the Islamic State terrorist groups. This absurd accusation is a prelude to
closing down RT in the US just as Washington’s puppet UK government closed down
Iran’s Press TV.
In
other words, Anglo-Americans are not permitted any different news than what is
served to them by “their” governments.
That
is the state of “freedom” in the West today.
This
article originally appeared on paulcraigroberts.org.
Reprinted with permission from the author.
Contradiction in Action:
The Eulogies for A Saudi King
 |
| Late King Al saud |
What
a spanner in the works of international relations he proved to be. The late
King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al Saud of Saudi Arabia was always the spoiler in
the morality plays of Western powers keen to back him. Oil was always the
greatest deterrent against getting on his wrong side, but it also meant the
most intolerable of inconsistencies. For most governments, however, these were
tolerated.
Those
inconsistencies were there for all to see in the eulogies for the monarch. US
President Barack Obama gave a description of someone who was distinctly
different from a member of the House of Saud. Abroad, he pursued the Arab Peace
Initiative. “At home, King Abdullah’s vision was dedicated to the education of
his people and to greater engagement with the world” (Politico, Jan 22).
It
was precisely such behaviour that gave David Pryce-Jones room for a vital
observation. “The world will remember one thing only of King Abdullah, the late
king of Saudi Arabia” ventured Pryce-Jones, “and that is how President Barack
Obama bowed before him in obeisance. Democracy was seen paying dues to absolute
monarchy” (National Review
Online, Jan 23).[1]
Such
a prostrate position was similar adopted by other US officials. US Secretary of
State John Kerry used his twitter account to suggest that he was a “man of
wisdom & vision. US has lost a friend and Kingdom of #Saudi Arabia, Middle
East, and world has lost a revered leader.” Former US Defence Secretary Chuck
Hagel seem to be channelling another spirit in describing Abdullah as, “a
powerful voice for tolerance, moderation and peace,” having advanced “the lives
of his people at home as well as his country’s leadership abroad.”
Former
British prime minister, Tony Blair, added the predictable icing sugar, claiming
that Abdullah was “loved by his people and will be deeply missed” while the
British incumbent, David Cameron, mystified with his statement that the late
monarch would be remembered “for his commitment to peace and strengthening the
understanding between faiths.”[2] The cynics were certainly getting their fill,
and even publications such as the New
York Times would strive to find a streak of modernity lurking
somewhere in that being which had governed Saudi Arabia as essentially a tribal
CEO.
The
Guardian’s
editorial found room to admire the late sovereign’s efforts to curb the export
of Wahhabism, minor moves towards democratisation in introducing elections to
municipal councils, and proved “good, if slow” in his efforts to court the
growing grouping of “educated commoners” needed to keep Saudi Arabia stable.[3]
The editorial had to also concede to the Saudi ability, not merely to weather
the stormy onslaught of the Arab Spring, but turn it against itself in various
Middle Eastern states.
It
did not take long for various news agencies to pick up that Saudi Arabia, prior
to a 2013 law banning terrorist financing, had been at the forefront of Sunni
funding for a colourful assortment of so-called enemies of the free world. A US
cable from the WikiLeaks Public Library of US Diplomacy, titled “Terrorist
Finance: Action Request for Senior Level Engagement on Terrorism Finance” (Dec
30, 2009) is illuminating on that precise point.[4]
“General
talking points for all Embassies” are noted, including the theme of, “Cutting
off the flow of funds to terrorist organizations and achieving stability in
Af/Pak [Afghanistan and Pakistan]” as “top US priorities.” Specific countries
mentioned in connection with terrorist funding include Saudi Arabia, whose
donors “constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist
groups worldwide.” Recipients include al-Qa’ida, the Taliban, LeT, and Hamas,
“which probably raise millions of dollars annually from Saudi sources, often
during Hajj and Ramadan.”
The
cable further conveys a certain meekness in dealing with the Saudi government.
The Treasury attaché office in Riyadh was meant to provide a “robust
interaction and information sharing on the issue.”
It
is hard to imagine what the appearance of such robustness could have been –
another US cable (Apr 20, 2008) made available by WikiLeaks revealed the
sentiments of the monarch as conveyed by the Saudi ambassador to the US, Adel
al-Jubeir.[5] Riyadh was getting tetchy over Iran, which it was itching to
strike. “[Abdullah] told you to cut off the head of the snake.” The Iranian
head remained in tact, though a few others may well have rolled.
The
gender side of the commemorations were also somewhat skewed. Head of the
International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, was a test case that silence
can, indeed, prove golden – when exercised with judiciousness. Instead, she
decided to volunteer a view that King Abdullah had been “a strong advocate for
women. It was a very gradual, appropriately so probably for the country.” The
great moderniser was, after all, averse to letting his daughters out, keeping
them under lock and key for taking issue with stifling, and overwhelming male
guardianship.
It
all proved a bit much for the former British MP and conservative Louis Mensch,
who made a few ripples with a resounding, albeit social media driven “F***K
YOU” to Cameron’s ingratiating behaviour to the House of Saud.
“It
is so unacceptable to offer deep condolences for a man who flogged women,
didn’t let them drive, saw guardian laws passed, & STARVES THEM” (emphasis
in original).
As
for the issue of preventing women from driving in the kingdom, The Independent found it
fitting to publish a story taken from former Saudi Ambassador Sherard
Cowper-Cole’s memoir, Ever the
Diplomat. When visiting Balmoral as a Crown Prince in September
1998, Abdullah was greeted to an astonishing spectacle: the Queen of England
taking the wheel of a Land Rover.[6]
While
it would be remiss to point out that no single leader can dictate the entirety
of a political system, it remains difficult to call King Abdullah, by any
stretch of the imagination, a great, let alone subtle “moderniser”. Public
beheadings, the sentencing of Raif Badawi to a thousand lashes and ten years in
prison for being critical of the state, and injunctions on the construction of
non-Islamic places of worship within the country, suggest the workings of a
distinctly anti-modern entity rooted in firm tribalism.
The
most striking contradiction of all came in how sworn enemies could also share
similar, commemorative ground on the subject of the grovelling eulogy. The Pan-Arabia Enquirer (Jan
23) noted the similarity between the official statements of both the US and
ISIS. Abdullah was praised for having “vision and leadership”; he “had the
courage of his convictions” and “constantly strived for unity across borders in
the Middle East.” Unnamed sources claim that ISIS has requested that its
representative not be seated next to Joe Biden.[7]
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth
Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University,
Melbourne. Email: [email protected]
Url
of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/contradiction-in-action-the-eulogies-for-saudi-king-abdullahbin-abdulaziz-al-saud/5426655
http://www.globalresearch.ca/contradiction-in-action-the-eulogies-for-saudi-king-abdullahbin-abdulaziz-al-saud/5426655
Notes
[1] http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/397037/king-abdullah-and-bow-seen-round-world-david-pryce-jones
[3] http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/23/guardian-view-saudi-arabia-king-abdullah-death?CMP=twt_gu
[5] http://www.wikileaks-forum.com/cablegate/7/wikileaks-cable-saudi-king-abdullah-and-senior-princes-on-saudi-policy-toward/25476/
[6] http://i100.independent.co.uk/article/the-best-story-about-the-queen-and-king-abdullah-you-will-read-today–eJYX859rsl
[7] http://www.panarabiaenquirer.com/wordpress/embarrassment-us-isis-tributes-king-abdullah-almost-identical/
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