26 Jan 2016

US: 237 perish in house fires in the new year

Steve Filips

Since the beginning of the year, 237 people have been killed in house fires in the US as the winter weather, the high cost of housing and heating bills force people to rely upon risky space heaters, stoves and wood burning fires. Expensive and substandard housing conditions, which often lack basic smoke and carbon-monoxide detectors, let alone sprinklers and fire escapes, add to the deadly problem.
Eighteen people died in Alabama alone, including five people spanning three generations who were killed in a single fire on January 2 in Bryant. The home had no working smoke detectors. Low wages and the high cost of housing are increasingly forcing many families to live together, leading to overcrowding.
Fourteen were killed in house fires in California, and 11 died in both Michigan and Illinois. Maryland and Ohio had 10 fire fatalities each, while Texas and Virginia both had nine deaths. In Pennsylvania, eight people died in house fires.
The number of deaths may likely be higher since there is no official reporting and tracking of those killed and injured in home fires. These figures are compiled from press reports by the US Fire Administration, a branch of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
While the number of fire fatalities is both staggering and heart wrenching, many of these tragedies could have been prevented. Most of those killed would likely have survived with existing technologies such as sprinklers, hardwired smoke and carbon monoxide (CO) detectors in adequate quantity, and fireproof housing with proper, efficient heating systems.
On Thursday, January 14, an early morning fire at 330 Bruce Street in Syracuse, New York, took the life of Heather Taylor, 31, the mother of two young sons. A second person upstairs, Christopher Hook Mazzae, 29, was hospitalized with serious injuries. The two-family apartment house had nine people living downstairs and six on the upper floor where the fire started.
Firefighters pointed to the kitchen stove upstairs as the likely cause of the fire and it can be assumed that with temperatures hovering in the teens overnight the stove was being utilized as heating for the older home’s second floor.
There were working smoke detectors in the house, but a working carbon monoxide (CO) detector was needed on the second floor apartment. Those nearest the upstairs kitchen were overcome by CO fumes first and therefore could not be roused by the smoke alarms.
Housing in the area near the fire exemplifies the horrendous conditions that low-income workers are forced to live in. There are six vacant homes within three blocks and a nearby home recently caught fire and sustained heavy damage. The other vacant homes are in various states of dilapidation, a result of the foreclosure crisis.
The US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) defines residence overcrowding as anything less than 165 square feet per person, or conditions where there are more than two people per bedroom. There were 15 people residing in the six-bedroom, two-family home, typical of the housing conditions faced by many workers in Syracuse.
The Bruce Street home was one of three multi-family properties that were sold together in a bundle by Syracuse Diamond Properties LLC of Utica, New York, to a company called International Education, which lists its address as a post office box in a Utica suburb.
A house fire in Rock Falls, Illinois, claimed the lives of a family of five in the early morning hours of January 13. Those who perished include Patrick Hopkins, 61, his wife Mary, 49, and their children Maggie, 26, Donovan, 16, Katie, 13, as well as three family pets.
Officials believe the fire started in the living room. There was a smoke detector found on the first floor but none on the second floor. All five people were found deceased in their bedrooms on the second floor after the blaze was extinguished. The cause of the fire is under investigation, but the probable cause is a space heater due to cold weather conditions.
A house fire in Wilmington, Delaware, on January 12 killed three-month-old Zipporah Carroway and three-year-old Elizabeth Carroway. Their mother, Christine Carroway, 37, escaped with severe burns over half of her body. A passerby and a police officer managed to pull her two-year-old daughter to safety. Mark Carroway, the children’s father, had just left the home to pick up the family’s other four children from school.
Firefighters arrived in less than two minutes after an emergency call was made by a passing ambulance crew. The fire department said the house had no working smoke detectors. The fire is believed to have started in the first floor living room of the two-story home. Temperatures were below freezing on that day. The building was over 100 years old and its balloon frame construction lends to the rapid development of infernos that can overcome inhabitants.
A trailer caught fire around 1 p.m. on January 11 in Montrose, Iowa, taking the lives of three members of a family: Jayden Douglas, 9, Landon Michael Trent, 2, as well as their mother Rebecca Ferrall. Also in the trailer was Jacob Russell, 33, who escaped with serious injuries. The family was living in a trailer home, substandard housing that can become fully engulfed within several minutes, giving occupants little time to escape.
In Huntington, West Virginia, on January 9, a fire took the lives of Ida Thompson, 62, and her grandchildren, Maeshelle, 7, and Nashaya, 4. There were eight people living in the two-story home. Residents were forced to jump from the second floor to escape the rapidly intensifying fire.
In the Fairhill section of North Philadelphia, a row house caught fire on January 8, taking the lives of two people. There were eight people sleeping in the home when it caught fire around 3:45 a.m. Elizabeth Perez initially exited the burning house and reentered to save her two-year-old son Nathaniel Richardson. Elizabeth, who was eight months pregnant, was found holding him. They had been overcome by the thick smoke.
Firefighters pointed to a kerosene space heater as the probable cause of the tragic blaze. There were at least four other portable space heaters found in the home.
According to the US Census, nearly three-quarters of children in Fairhill under 18 years old live in poverty. The overall poverty rate for the 19122 postal ZIP code was 57.8 percent in 2014.

Victorian-era diseases making a comeback in the UK

Alice Summers

Cases of malnutrition, scurvy, cholera and other Victorian-era diseases are on the rise in the UK.
According to National Health Service (NHS) statistics, 3 million people are at risk of malnutrition, with 7,366 of these admitted to hospital with the condition between August 2014 and July 2015—a 51 percent increase since the corresponding period from 2010 to 2011.
Hospital admissions for cholera have quadrupled over the last four years, and cases of scurvy have risen from 82 (2010/2011) to 113 (2014/2015).
As indicated in the report, hospitals are also witnessing a huge resurgence of other diseases widespread in the 19th and 20th century, such as scarlet fever and whooping cough.
Believed by many to be a thing of the past, these illnesses are closely related to poor living conditions, inadequate diet and vitamin deficiencies. With record levels of food insecurity and poverty, their dramatic increase is an indictment of the relentless and draconian austerity measures initiated by consecutive Labour and Conservative governments in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
Malnutrition disproportionately affects working-age females and older people of both sexes. Diana Jeffrey, chair of the Malnutrition Task Force and the charity Age UK, denounced the cuts to UK welfare spending as a key factor in the growing levels of malnutrition, stating, “[M]alnutrition is preventable, so it is totally unacceptable that estimates suggest there are at least one million older people malnourished or at risk of malnourishment. Cuts to social care mean many older people are being left to cope on their own”.
According to Oxfam, one in five people in the UK now live below the poverty line and regularly struggle to feed themselves and their families. Wages have stagnated and welfare benefits have been slashed, leading to unprecedented numbers being forced to rely on food bank charities. The Trussell Trust has documented that 17 times more people received emergency food parcels from them in 2014-2015 than in 2010-2011, statistics that correspond with the soaring levels of these poverty-related diseases.
A separate report by the London Assembly, “Tackling TB in London”, outlines the growing concern over rates of tuberculosis (TB) in the capital. Although tuberculosis levels have gradually decreased across the country as a whole, in London they have remained unacceptably high, giving the city the dubious accolade “TB capital of Western Europe”.
Approximately 2,500 new cases of TB were reported in 2014 in London, making up approximately 40 percent of the UK total. With one third of London boroughs exceeding the threshold of 40 cases per 100,000 members of the population, defined by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as “high incidence”, parts of the capital have higher rates of TB than developing countries such as Rwanda, Eritrea and Guatemala.
Almost eradicated by the introduction of vaccinations in the mid-20th century, TB levels fell to an all-time low of 5,000 cases a year in the late 1980s. Since then, rates of TB in the UK have steadily increased, reaching 9,153 cases in 2009. Although rates began to slowly fall again after this, in the capital TB rates remain beyond the threshold where routine immunisations should be introduced, according to experts from the Health Protection Agency.
However, the schools vaccination programme—by which all school-age children between 10 and 14 would be offered the BCG vaccine against TB—was scrapped as cost-inefficient under the 2005 Labour government in favour of a selective vaccination programme for population groups deemed at “high risk”. As a result, a quarter of London boroughs do not run a universal BCG vaccination programme.
TB affects some of the most vulnerable and marginalised communities in London, with prisoners, the homeless, refugees, migrants and people with substance abuse issues being the most susceptible to the disease. With around 80 percent of TB sufferers in London born outside of the UK, the escalating numbers affected by this disease have been used by far-right organisations such as the British National Party and the right-wing press to whip up xenophobic sentiment, call for tighter controls on immigration and to promote more stringent border screening programmes for those entering the UK from high-incidence areas such as the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
To use the high incidence of TB among migrant populations to assert that migration is to blame for the elevated rates of this disease not only panders to the xenophobic bent of a noxious right-wing, but also flies in the face of the facts. According to the Guardian, rates of TB among immigrants peak 2-5 years after they enter the UK, and a potential migrant must be free of active TB before being granted a UK visa. Therefore, it is extremely improbable that migrants bring active TB into the country, and latent TB poses no immediate threat to public health, with many people having mycobacterium tuberculosis (the bacterium causing TB) present in their body without ever developing active symptoms.
According to the report, while it is “not feasible or cost-effective to screen everybody at the border for [latent TB]”, what is to blame for the higher rates of the disease among migrant communities are factors such as poor housing, chronic ill health and poor nutrition—conditions more likely to affect certain communities across London such as recent migrants, or those who come from ethnic minority backgrounds.
The link between TB and deprivation is clear: the three London boroughs worst hit by TB—Newham, Brent and Ealing (with TB rates of 122.1, 100.3 and 72.3 per 100,000 population respectively)—are three of the four boroughs with the highest levels of poverty as stated by London’s Poverty Profile. All three boroughs have Labour-dominated councils that have not hesitated in carrying out austerity measures.
While the report concludes by imploring London Conservative Mayor Boris Johnson to develop and fund programmes to raise awareness about the causes and symptoms of TB, a more truthful conclusion can be found midway through: “[T]he most effective strategy in the fight against TB is … to reduce levels of poverty and deprivation for all Londoners”.
To combat not only TB, but also the many other illnesses that could easily be eradicated in 21st century Britain, the solution is not simply to increase awareness but to dramatically improve the living conditions of the working class.

Austria closes its borders to refugees

Marianne Arens

Europe is firmly in the grip of winter, and the Balkans are covered in snow with temperatures below freezing. Nonetheless, one government after another is closing its borders and sending hundreds of thousands of desperate refugees back to war zones that they have risked their lives to flee.
The Austrian government closed its borders last Wednesday. Already at the beginning of the week, it made clear its intention to send more refugees back to Slovenia. Then on Wednesday, a conference was held on refugees between leading Social Democrat (SPÖ) and conservative Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) politicians to impose an upper limit for refugees. Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz (ÖVP) justified the decision by stating, “A joint European answer cannot be expected”.
Austria is the first European Union (EU) country to impose an upper limit for refugees. This was in no small part a response to measures taken by Germany. Also on Wednesday, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière (Christian Democrats, CDU) extended border controls for an undetermined period of time. Germany has already refused entry to 2,000 refugees this month at its border with Austria.
In Vienna, Austrian Chancellor Werner Feymann (SPÖ) told the press that in 2016, Austria would only accept 37,500 asylum seekers. Including the 90,000 refugees who remained in the country last year, an upper limit of 1.5 percent of the population would be reached.
The Social Democratic chancellor embraced the arguments of the notorious anti-immigrant ÖVP interior minister, Johanna Mikl-Leitner, announcing a strict review procedure at the border.
“If we undertake more controls, we will find out more”, Feymann bluntly told Austrian broadcaster ORF. If people cannot credibly explain why they want to come into the country, they would not be allowed in. Feymann had ordered a report by the foreign, interior and defence ministries to determine “everything that is legally possible” at the border.
At the Spielfeld crossing on the Austrian-Slovenian border, a 4-kilometre-long border fence is being constructed. Last Sunday, the government deployed 200 soldiers to the Slovenian border. Their task is to examine the refugees and their luggage and deport all of those unable to provide valid travel documents. In the first three weeks of the year, Austria has already deported over 1,000 refugees.
Croatia, Serbia and Macedonia are also in the process of closing their borders. In a rapid domino effect, one country after another is re-establishing posts at its borders. Slovenia closed its borders at the beginning of last week and also announced the introduction of an upper limit for immigrants.
The Serbian government immediately adopted measures to make it more difficult for immigrants to enter the country. A government spokesman stated that Serbia would in the future accept refugees on its territory only if they were seeking to claim asylum in Germany or Austria. “From today onwards … no more migrants can travel through Serbia unless they explicitly state an intention to claim asylum in the territory of Austria or Germany”, Prime Minister Alexander Vulin toold Serbian news agency Tanjug.
Croatia’s interior minister also announced that his country would from now on ask every refugee if they intended to apply for asylum in Germany or Austria. In the Balkan country, the government of Tihomir Orešković has just begun its period in office. Since the highly indebted country is heavily dependent on the EU, it will seek to do everything demanded by the EU, including stricter measures targeting refugees.
Macedonia responded on Wednesday morning by rejecting 600 refugees at the Greek border, including many children. The AFP news agency cited a police spokesman in Skopje, who said that Macedonia was reacting to a request from Slovenia. The blockade was lifted again on Thursday evening, but not for all refugees.
Those people arriving at the border already have behind them the grueling journey of crossing the Mediterranean through Turkey and Greece during the winter. The Greek coastguard reported that on Thursday alone, it had saved 73 refugees from the Aegean Sea. For one young child, help came too late: the child died a few hours after arrival on the island of Lesbos. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 87 people have already drowned in the Mediterranean this year.
The chain reaction of border closures has completely undermined the Schengen agreement between EU states. Introduced in 1985, Schengen is a key element of the European Union and meant that border controls between European countries were eliminated. On Monday, EU interior ministers met in Amsterdam to discuss extending border controls for two years.
EU Council President Donald Tusk warned last Tuesday that the Schengen agreement could fail entirely. He called upon all heads of government to back a joint EU concept before the Brussels conference scheduled for March 16-17. The content of this concept would be negotiations with African states about “repatriation”, military action against so-called smuggler bands, and better securing of the EU’s external borders—all measures that will put the lives of refugees at greater risk.
In addition, “combatting the causes of flight” is being used as a justification for military interventions in the Middle East and North Africa, and the expansion of wars in Syria, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and North African states.
What is to happen to the refugees shut out because of the new upper limits is unclear. The EU has already announced plans to build detention centres and so-called hot spots along the Balkan route and distribute refugees across all EU countries. But Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary have firmly opposed the quota system, and many other countries have silently boycotted it.
The plans are equally bureaucratic as they are inhumane, since refugees often try to travel to countries where they have relatives or friends. They are not only denied this option on organisational grounds: the EU countries, led by Germany, are creating miserable conditions to deter refugees from coming.
On Thursday it was revealed that not only Denmark and Switzerland, but the German states of Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, would search refugees arriving at the border and confiscate money and valuables. This was confirmed by Bavaria’s interior minister Joachim Hermann (Christian Social Union, CSU) to the Bild newspaper, who said, “Cash and valuables can be secured if … a claim for reimbursement exists or is expected against the person”.
In Bavaria, refugees will be permitted to retain €750, and in Baden-Württemberg only €350. Such measures recall the Nazi era, when the National Socialist regime robbed the Jewish population of all their possessions.

France gives €1 billion aid to Tunisia in bid to halt mass protests over jobs

Kumaran Ira

After last week’s mass protests against unemployment and poverty throughout Tunisia, the French government has announced €1 billion aid over the next five years to its former colony.
President François Hollande’s Socialist Party government, which is imposing tens of billions of euros in social cuts against workers at home, did not take this measure to address the basic social needs of Tunisian workers and unemployed. Rather, it feared that—as in 2011, when the uprising in Tunisia sparked revolution in Egypt—this was the only way to prevent an uncontrollable social explosion internationally.
Last week, Tunisia saw a wave of mass protests over unemployment, which broke out in Kasserine province after a youth, Ridha Yahyaoui, was electrocuted on January 16. He was protesting the removal of his name from the list of people to be recruited by a local education committee. Protests erupted and rapidly spread across the country as the workers and unemployed joined the movement demanding jobs.
The Tunisian government has sent army and riot police against protesters, firing tear gas and water cannon as the unemployed gathered outside government offices to demand jobs. On Saturday, the interior ministry announced that 423 people had been arrested across the country for alleged acts of violence. The government also slandered the protests as the work of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terror group in nearby Libya.
The mass protests underscored that none of the issues driving the revolutionary uprisings of 2011 have been solved. Imperialism avoided the coming to power of the working class, working with the Tunisian bourgeoisie, the Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT), the Tunisian Human Rights League (LTDH), and various pseudo-left parties, which insisted that the uprising should end so they could set up “democracy.” The ruling party, Nidaa Tounes, is a thinly disguised rebranding of Ben Ali’s old party.
As the Tunisian government deployed armed forces and imposed a curfew to clamp down on protests on Friday, Hollande and other French officials met with Tunisian Prime Minister Habib Essid in Paris.
After meeting with Essid, Hollande announced, “France will set up a plan to support Tunisia with one billion euros over the next five years. … A major axis of this plan aims to assist underprivileged regions and youth, with an emphasis on jobs.”
An Elysée Presidential Palace statement declared, “Five years after the revolution, Tunisia has succeeded in its democratic transition but still faces important economic, social, and security challenges.” It insisted that the regime in Tunis can count on “France’s support.”
France has broad economic ties with Tunisia. In particular, French and European transnationals seek to use high unemployment to exploit workers in France’s former colonies at rock-bottom wages, effectively using the Tunisian capitalist class and union bureaucracy as cheap-labour contractors.
During his visit, Essid spoke to Prime Minister Manuel Valls and French Senate President Gérard Larcher, as well as with representatives of the French employers’ organisation, the Movement of the French Enterprises (Medef), to examine how to boost French investment in Tunisia.
Essid and Valls signed an agreement to convert a part of Tunisia’s debt to France in investment. Larcher announced that the Senate would also seek to boost investment in Tunisia in the coming period. He said, “Essid informed me of Tunisia’s strategy aimed to develop several economic sectors, such as auto, which will help create jobs for youths.”
What is emerging is not prosperity for Tunisia, however, but a vast expansion of imperialist influence in the former French colony. While seeking to extract more profits from Tunisia, the imperialist powers are also developing their military influence there under cover of the “war on terror.”
According to the Elysée statement, “Tunisia, like France, is threatened and has been grievously hit by terrorism, because it chose democracy. Our two countries confront the same threat, and it is together that we must win the struggle against this scourge, respecting the rule of law.”
The Elysée’s talk of “democracy” and the respect of “rule of law” reek of hypocrisy. Indeed, the most important recent development is that the French government is moving to treat metropolitan France in ways it had previously reserved for its colonies.
After the November 13 terror attack in Paris, the Hollande administration has placed France in a state of emergency—under legislation created and first used during the failed attempt to crush the Algerian independence struggle—and plans to extend it indefinitely. This amounts to a repudiation of the rule of law, scrapping basic democratic rights, banning protests, controlling the press, and giving police broad extrajudicial powers to detain people without charge.
The common fear of the Tunisian proletariat and of social anger in the working class in Europe and America, particularly in French urban estates with large North African immigrant populations, is prompting a joint political response of the capitalist classes.
Already, during the initial uprising in Tunisia in 2011, then-French Foreign Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie proposed to reinforce the Ben Ali dictatorship with French riot police units.
Now, during a visit to Tunis in October, French Defence minister Jean-Yves Le Drian signalled a broad escalation of Franco-Tunisian ties. Declaring that “Tunisia’s security is also that of France,” Le Drian announced that France would provide €20 million in military aid to Tunisia in the 2016-2017 period. This is a quadrupling of French military spending in Tunisia from its current level of €2.5 million per year.
Washington is also more than doubling its military aid to Tunisia, from $40 million a year to $99 million, largely spent on equipment, whereas the French concentrate on training.
These measures underscore growing concern among imperialist powers over the intensification of social opposition in the working class.
The imperialist powers and their Tunisian bourgeois allies have proven incapable of resolving any of the basic social and democratic questions that led to the 2011 uprising. Since the 2011 uprising, unemployment has increased from 12 to 15 percent among adults, whereas among youth the figure is 32 percent, rising to 40 percent in rural areas. These problems will intensify as Tunisia’s economy is set to contract amidst the worsening global slump.

23 Jan 2016

Wells Mountain Foundation Undergraduate Scholarships for Developing Countries 2016

Scholarship Name: Wells Mountain Foundation Empowerment through Education Scholarship Program
Brief description
Wells Mountain Foundation offers the Empowerment through Education Scholarship Program for secondary school leavers to study for Bachelors degree in Developing Countries for 2016 academic year
Accepted Subject Areas?
All fields are eligible although WMF intend to favor helping professions such as health care, social work, education, social justice, as well as, professions that help the economy and progress of the country such as computers, engineering, agriculture and business.
About Scholarship
wells mountain foundation scholarship
Wells Mountain Foundation offers undergraduate scholarship to students from developing countries to study in their home country or any other developing country. The foundation’s hope is that by providing the opportunity to further one’s education, the scholarship participants will not only be able to improve their own future, but also that of their own communities. The foundation believes in the power and importance of community service and, as a result, all scholarship participants are required to volunteer for a minimum of one month a year.
Applicants are only allowed to select a university in a developing country. Applications to study in UK, USA, Europe and Australia will not be accepted
Scholarship Offered Since: 2005
Scholarship Type: undergraduate scholarship
Who is qualified to apply?
To be eligible to apply for this scholarship, applicant must be a student, male or female, from a country in the developing world, who:
  • successfully completed a secondary education, with good to excellent grades
  • will be studying in their country or another country in the developing world
  • plans to live and work in their own country after they graduate
  • has volunteered prior to applying for this scholarship and/or is willing to volunteer while receiving the WMF scholarship
  • may have some other funds available for their education, but will not be able to go to school without a scholarship
  • submits a complete, legible application in English (please proof-read). Incomplete applications will not be considered.

Number of Scholarship Positions: 10 to 30 per year
What are the benefits?
Our maximum scholarship is $3,000 USD.
–          tuition and fees
–          books and materials
–          room rent and meals
Duration: Scholarship will be offered for the duration of the degree programme subject to satisfactory academic performance.
Eligible Countries; Developing Countries including Africa
Application Deadline: from December 15, 2015 to April 1, 2016
Offered annually? Yes
How to Apply
Applicants are required to submit two letters of recommendation written by someone who knows you, but is not a family member, who can tell why you deserve to receive a WMF scholarship. What qualities do you possess that will make you an excellent student, a successful graduate and a responsible citizen who will give back to his or her country? These letters of recommendation may come from a teacher, a religious leader, volunteer supervisor, or an employer.
Visit Scholarship Webpage for details
Sponsors
Wells Mountain Foundation
Important Notes:
  • WMF do not require the applicant to pay an admission or processing fee or to buy a number to have the application reviewed.
  • You must maintain good grades, submit a semester report and your grades each semester to WMF to maintain your sponsorship.
  • A photo is required, which can also be scanned and emailed.
  • You can apply before you receive your official acceptance letter, but you will not be awarded a scholarship until you are accepted. When you receive your acceptance letter, send a copy to the foundation to attach it to your application. In the subject line of the email when you send this or any additions to your application, type “application addition”.
  • WMF scholarship application require an official transcript from secondary school and from any tertiary school classes you have already completed.
  • The scholarship awards are determined by the Board of Directors of the Wells Mountain Foundation and awarded once a year.
  • Applicants will be notified if they have been selected as a WMF Scholarship student by August 1st

How The West Creates Terrorism

Andre Vltchek

Terrorism has many forms and many faces, but the most terrible of them is cold cruelty.
We are asked to believe that terrorists consist of dirty lunatics, running around with bombs, machine guns and explosive belts. That’s how we are told to imagine them.
Many of them are bearded; almost all are “foreign looking”, non-white, non-Western. In summary they are wife beaters, child rapists and Greek and Roman statue destroyers.
Actually, during the Cold War, there were some white looking “terrorists” – the left-wingers belonging to several revolutionary cells, in Italy and elsewhere in Europe. But only now we are learning that the terrorist acts attributed to them were actually committed by the Empire, by several European right-wing governments and intelligence services. You remember, the NATO countries were blowing up those trains inside the tunnels, or bombing entire train stations…
It “had to be done”, in order to discredit the Left, just to make sure that people would not become so irresponsible as to vote for the Communists or true Socialists.
There were also several Latin American ‘terror’ groups – the revolutionary movements fighting for freedom and against oppression, mainly against Western colonialism. They had to be contained, liquidated, and if they held power, overthrown.
But terrorists became really popular in the West only after the Soviet Union and the Communist Block were destroyed through thousands of economic, military and propaganda means, and the West suddenly felt too exposed, so alone without anyone to fight. Somehow it felt that it needed to justify its monstrous oppressive acts in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia.
It needed a new “mighty”, really mighty, enemy to rationalize its astronomical military and intelligence budgets. It was not good enough to face a few hundred ‘freaks’ somewhere inside the Colombian jungle or in Northern Ireland or Corsica. There had to be something really huge, something matching that ‘evil’ Soviet “threat”.
Oh how missed that threat was, suddenly! Just a threat of course; not the danger of egalitarian and internationalist ideals…
And so the West linked terrorism with Islam, which is one of the greatest cultures on earth, with 1.6 billion followers. Islam is big and mighty enough, to scare the shit out of the middle class housewives in some Western suburb! And on top of that, it had to be contained anyway, as it was essentially too socialist and too peaceful.
At that time in history, all great secular and socialist leaders of Muslim countries, (like in Iran, Indonesia and Egypt), were overthrown by the West, their legacy spat on, or they were simply banned.
But that was not enough for the West!
In order to make Islam a worthy enemy, the Empire had to first radicalize and pervert countless Muslim movements and organizations, then create the new ones, consequently training, arming and financing them, so they could really look frightening enough.
There is of course one more important reason why “terrorism”, particularly Muslim “terrorism”, is so essential for the survival of Western doctrines, exceptionalism and global dictatorship: it justifies the West’s notion of absolute cultural and moral superiority.
This is how it works:
For centuries, the West has been behaving like a mad bloodthirsty monster. Despite the self-glorifying propaganda being spread by Western media outlets all over the world, it was becoming common knowledge that the Empire was raping, murdering and plundering in virtually all corners of the Globe. A few more decades and the world would see the West exclusively as a sinister and toxic disease. Such a scenario had to be prevented by all means!
And so the ideologues and propagandists of the Empire came up with a new and brilliant formula: Let’s create something that looks and behaves even worse than we do, and then we could trumpet that we are still actually the most reasonable and tolerant culture on earth!
And let’s make a real pirouette: let’s fight our own creation – let’s fight it in the name of freedom and democracy!”
This is how the new generation; the new breed of “terrorist” was born. And it lives! It is alive and well! It is multiplying like Capek’s Salamanders.
***
Western terrorism is not really discussed, although its most extreme and violent forms are battering the world relentlessly and have for a long time, with hundreds of millions of victims piling up everywhere.
Even the legionnaires and gladiators of the Empire, like the Mujaheddin, Al-Qaida, or ISIS, can never come close to the savagery that has been demonstrated time and again by their British, French, Belgian, German or US masters. Of course they are trying very hard to match their gurus and bread-givers, but they are just not capable of their violence and brutality.
It takes “Western culture” to butcher some 10 million people in just one single geographic area, in almost one go!
***
So what is real terrorism, and how could ISIS and others follow its lead? They say that ISIS is decapitating their victims. Bad enough. But who is their teacher?
For centuries, the empires of Europe were murdering, torturing, raping and mutilating people on all continents of the world. Those who were not doing so directly, were “investing” into colonialist expeditions, or sending its people to join genocidal battalions.
King Leopold II and his cohorts managed to exterminate around 10 million people of Western and Central Africa, in what is now known as the Congo. He was hunting people down like animals, forcing them to work on his rubber plantations. If he thought that they were not filling up his coffers fast enough, he did not hesitate to chop off their hands, or burn entire village populations inside their huts, alive.
10 million victims vanished. 10 million! And it did not take place in some distant past, in the “dark ages”, but in the 20th century, under the rule of so-called constitutional monarchy, and self-proclaimed democracy. How does it compare with the terrorism that is ruling over the territories occupied by ISIS? Let’s compare numbers and brutality level!
And the Democratic Republic of Congo has, since 1995, lost again close to 10 million people in a horrid orgy of terror, unleashed by the West’s proxies, Rwanda and Uganda (see the trailer to my film “Rwanda Gambit”).
Germans performed holocausts in South-Western Africa, in what is now Namibia. The Herero tribe was exterminated, or at least close to 90% of it was. People were first kicked out from their land and from their homes, and driven into the desert. If they survived, the German pre-Nazi expeditions followed, using bullets and other forms of mass killing. Medical experiments on humans were performed, to prove the superiority of the Germanic nation and the white race.
These were just innocent civilians; people whose only crime was that they were not white, and were sitting on land occupied and violated by the Europeans.
The Taliban never came close to this, or even ISIS!
To this day, the Namibian government is demanding the return of countless heads severed from its people: heads that were cut off and then sent to the University of Freiburg and several hospitals in Berlin, for medical experiments.
Just imagine, ISIS chopping thousands of European heads, in order to perform medical experiments aiming to demonstrate the superiority of the Arab race. It would be absolutely unthinkable!
Local people were terrorized in virtually all colonies grabbed by Europe, something that I have described in detail in my latest 840-page book “Exposing Lies of the Empire”.
What about the Brits and their famines, which they were using as population control and intimidation tactics in India! In Bengal at least 5 million died in 1943 alone, 5.5 million in 1876-78, 5 million in 1896-97, to name just a few terrorist acts committed by the British Empire against a defenseless population forced to live under its horrid and oppressive terrorist regime!
What I have mentioned above are just 3 short chapters from the long history of Western terrorism. An entire encyclopedia could be compiled on the topic.
But all this sits far from Western consciousness. European and North American masses prefer not to know anything about the past and the present. As far as they are concerned, they rule the world because they are free, bright and hard working. Not because for centuries their countries have plundered and murdered, and above all terrorized the world forcing it into submission.
The elites know everything, of course. And the more they know, the more they put that knowledge to work.
Terrorist trade and experience are passed on from Western masters to their new Muslim recruits.
The Mujahideen, Al-Qaida, ISIS – on closer examination, their tactics of intimidation and terrorization are not original at all. They are built on imperialist and colonialist practices of the West.
News about this, or even about the terror that has been inflicted on the Planet by the West, is meticulously censored. You would never see them on the programs broadcast by the BBC, or read about them in mainstream newspapers and magazines.
On the other hand, the violence and ruthlessness of the client terrorist organizations are constantly highlighted. They are covered in their tiniest detail, repeated, and “analyzed”.
Everybody is furious, horrified! The UN is “deeply concerned”, Western governments are “outraged”, and the Western public “has had enough – it does not want immigrants from those terrible countries that are breeding terrorism and violence”.
The West “simply has to get involved”. And here comes the War on Terror.
It is a war against the West’s own Frankenstein. It is a war that is never meant to be won. Because if it is won, god forbid, there would have to be peace, and peace means cutting defense budgets and also dealing with the real problems of our Planet.
Peace would mean the West looking at its own past. It would mean thinking about justice and rearranging the entire power structures of the Planet. And that can never be allowed.
And so the West is “playing” war games; it is “fighting” its own recruits (or pretending to fight them), while innocent people are dying.
No part of the world, except the West, would be able to invent and unleash something so vile and barbaric as ISIS or Al-Nusra!
Look closer at the strategy of these group-implants: it has no roots in Muslim culture whatsoever. But it is fully inspired by the Western philosophy of colonialist terrorism: “If you don’t fully embrace our dogmas and religion, then we will cut off your head, slash your throat, rape your entire family or burn your village or city to the ground. We will destroy your grand cultural heritage as we did in South America 500 years ago, and in so many other places.”
And so on and so on! It would really require great discipline not to see the connections!
***
In 2006 I was visiting my friend, a former President of Indonesia, and a great progressive Muslim leader, Abdurrahman Wahid, (known in Indonesia as “Gus Dur”). Our meeting was held at the headquarters of his massive Muslim body Nahdlatul Ulama (NU). At that time the NU was the biggest Muslim organization in the world.
We were discussing capitalism and how it was destroying and corrupting Indonesia. Gus Dur was a “closet socialist”, and that was one of the main reasons why the servile pro-Western Indonesian “elites” and the military deposed him out of the Presidency in 2001.
When we touched on the topic of “terrorism”, he suddenly declared in his typically soft, hardly audible voice: “I know who blew up the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta. It was done by our own intelligence services, in order to justify the increase in their budget, as well as aid that they have been receiving from abroad.”
Of course, the Indonesian army, intelligence services and police consist of a special breed of humans. For several decades, since 1965, they have been brutally terrorizing their own population, when the pro-Western coup toppled the progressive President Sukarno and brought to power a fascist military clique, backed by the predominantly Christian business gang. This terror took between 2-3 million lives in Indonesia itself, as well as in East Timor and (until now) in occupied and thoroughly plundered Papua.
3 genocides in only 5 decades!
The Indonesian coup was one of the greatest terrorist acts in the history of mankind. The rivers were clogged with corpses and changed their color to red.
Why? So that capitalism would survive and Western mining companies could have their booty, at the expense of a completely ruined Indonesian nation. So the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) would not be able to win elections, democratically.
But in the West, those 1965 intensive massacres planned by the Empire were never described as “terrorism”. Blowing up a hotel or a pub always is however, especially if they are frequented by Western clientele.
Now Indonesia has its own groups of “terrorists”. They returned from Afghanistan where they fought on behalf of the West against the Soviet Union. They are returning from the Middle East now. The recent attacks in Jakarta could be just a foreplay, a well-planned beginning of something much bigger, maybe an opening of the new “front” of toy soldiers of the Empire in Southeast Asia.
For the West and its planners – the more chaos the better.
Had Abdurrahman Wahid been allowed to stay as the President of Indonesia, there would, most likely, have been no terrorism. His country would have undergone socialist reforms, instituted social justice, rehabilitated Communists and embraced secularism.
In socially balanced societies, terrorism does not thrive.
That would be unacceptable to the Empire. That would mean – back to Sukarno’s day! The most populous Muslim nation on earth cannot be allowed to go its own way, to aim for socialism, and to annihilate terrorist cells.
It has to be at the edge. It has to be ready to be used as a pawn. It has to be scared and scary! And so it is.
***
The games the West is playing are complex and elaborate. They are murky and nihilist. They are so destructive and brutal that even the sharpest analysts are often questioning their own eyes and judgments: “Could all this be really happening?”
The brief answer is: “Yes it can. Yes it is, for many long decades and centuries.”
Historically, terrorism is a native Western weapon. It was utilized freely by people like Lloyd George, a British PM, who refused to sign the agreement banning aerial bombardment of civilians, using unshakeable British logic: “We reserve the right to bomb those niggers.” Or Winston Churchill who was in favor of gassing the ‘lower grade’ of races, like Kurds and Arabs.
That is why, when some outsider, a country like Russia, gets involved, launching its genuine war against terrorist groups, the entire West is consumed by panic. Russia is spoiling their entire game! It is ruining a beautifully crafted neo-colonialist equilibrium.
Just look how lovely everything is: after killing hundreds of millions all over the Globe, the West is now standing as the self-proclaimed champion of human rights and freedom. It is still terrorizing the world, plundering it, fully controlling it – but it is being accepted as the supreme leader, a benevolent advisor, and the only trustworthy part of the world.
And almost nobody is laughing.
Because everyone is scared!
Its brutal legions in the Middle East and Africa are destabilizing entire countries, their origins are easily traceable, but almost no one is daring to do such tracing. Some of those who have tried – died.
The more frightening these invented, manufactured and implanted terrorist monsters, the more beautiful the West looks. It is all gimmicks. It has roots in advertisement, and in hundreds of years of propaganda apparatus.
The West then pretends to fight those deep forces of darkness. It uses powerful, “righteous” language, which has clear bases in Christian fundamentalist dogma.
An entire mythology is unleashed; it feels like Wagner’s “Ring”.
The terrorists represent evil, not the enormous expenditure from the coffers of the US State Department, the European Union and NATO. They are more evil than the Devil himself!
And the West, riding on the white horse, slightly pissed on wine but always in good humor, is portrayed as both a victim and the main adversary of those satanic terrorist groups.
It is one incredible show. It is one terrible farce. Look underneath the horseman’s mask: look at those exposed teeth; that deadly grin! Look at his red eyes, full of greed, lust and cruelty.
And let us never forget: colonialism and imperialism are two most deadly forms of terrorism. And these are still the two main weapons of that horseman who is choking the world!

Muslim World: The Leaders Who Could Not Lead

Mahboob A. Khawaja

The entire Muslim world is engaged in self-destructive conflicts. Unwarranted wars and sectarian bloodbaths are the order of the day, so unparallel in contemporary history. You wonder, what are they fighting for? Who are the real warriors fighting for human freedom and justice and who are the hired culprits to prolong proxy wars for other hegemonic powers? Both the US and Russia are competing for hegemonic strategic influence, increased sales of weaponry and to acquire direct control over the natural resources of Arab Middle East. West Europeans - the former lords of colonialism prefer their own strategic priorities wherever they could find a gap between the two competing superpowers. People are not the aim for mind control but victims of the interventionist policies and raging wars.
Believe it or not, people are assumed as digits and numbers in police-run states as they could not challenge the Arab authoritarianism for decades. Unthinkable as it was that ideological adversaries like the US and Russia would collaborate to bomb the Arab people, their culture and habitats. The Middle East is not a fertile place for ideological contrasts as the Arab culture and civilization overwhelms the entire landscape. At issues are political change and the aspirations of new age generations for an effective role to shape the present and future. Yet they are denied opportunities by the authoritarian rulers to have any say in the political change. Arab Spring articulated an illusion that was fast replaced by the foreign powers with tyranny and militarization. The Muslim world as a whole is a quagmire of ethnic clichés, linguistic identities and individualistic political diversions. Islam professed a universal message of brotherhood amongst the divided people of Arabia and unity of faith to become One Ummah- One People, all equal in rights and obligations before God. The essence and spirit of this message has been neglected and its imperatives betrayed in the political governance and official policies and practices. No authoritarian Arab ruler will ever admit being part of the problem. Should humans not be moral in our political and intellectual endeavors? Do we have the remedial imagination to cure the incurable ignorance, sectarian resentment and nationalistic bloody rampage - the malice and perfidy out of the sadistic human plans and priorities across the Arabian Peninsula? Can we critically look at ourselves and ask why Muslims have become so stagnated in moral, spiritual and intellectual values that we are on the verge of destroying any hope of freedom, equality and justice for the future? Can Muslims see the mirror with a collective consciousness?
Arab Authoritarianism is a Chronic Problem
The authoritarian puppet Arab-Muslim leaders, propelled by egoistic Western leaders, are engaged in desperate struggle for survival with unknown disastrous consequences for the entire world. None of the self-made kings and dictators will ever surrender to the will of the people and make ways for peaceful transfer of power to the new generations. Deliberate killings of the innocents go unabated across Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Lebanon and Egypt as if there were no human conscience, knowledge, or rational thinking on the part of earth's habitants. The war syndrome represents human madness, the guilt of having plunged the whole of the mankind into cruel abyss. Nobody can imagine what is the way out of the sadistic messy plan for the future of humanity. Individual self interest has replaced the collective goodness of besieged mankind. For sure, wickedness and righteousness cannot be combined in one policy statement and decision maker's mindset. All those possessing absolute political power appear to be moving by cruel indifference towards their fellow human beings.
Americans and Europeans have divided the Arab-Muslim world in sectarian identities, clichés and antagonism. The cruelty of unwanted wars is raging across the Arab- Muslim societies -Shiite-Sunnis fighting daily bloodbaths happening as if it is the normal sacrifices of the religious festival. None seem to have any sense of accountability. The leaders are comfortable and unmoved to see their people pre-occupied by killing and madness. Who is going undue the irretrievable historical mistakes in these leader's judgment? History shall see people and the leaders by their actions, not by their claims. When difficult problems erupt, intelligent and competent leaders are always conscious and open to listening to voices of reason for change and remedial action. This helps all to manage a navigational change and to solve the problems. Borrowed weapons and corrupt and failed rulers do not have the capacity to extend moral or intellectual security to the Arab masses. Most oil pumping Arab countries are merely satellites of the US Empire. Those who plan and wage wars are not innocent belligerents or acting without knowledge. They know well what they are engaged in and its consequences. Those warriors who go to Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and elsewhere to kill innocent people, massacring men, women and children, fully understand what they are doing.
Do the Authoritarian Leaders Listen to Voices of Reason?
Tyranny complements transgression and corruption. The contemporary Muslim world is a living picture of this political stigma. To replace Bashr al-Assad, self acclaimed Arab kings and Princess, Ben Ali, Hosni Mubarak, Ghadaffi and Sadam Hussein millions could be displaced, made refugees and exterminated and nothing will change. What if the Arab leaders had developed public institutions and islamically people-oriented system of governance, could this all be not averted? Surely, the outcome could have been different and more sustainable than the raging sectarian bloodbaths occurring daily across Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Egypt, and Lebanon and soon overlapping to Saudi Arabia. One wonders, why are the oil enriched Arab leaders buying billions of dollars worth of military hardware from America or Europe? How and against whom would it be used? If Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya and Egypt are any example, the militarization is meant to quell the public interest and aspirations for political change and future-building. Imagine if the Arab world had competent armed forces and leadership on the one hand, and were open to common sense diplomacy and dialogue on the other, could peace and normalcy have not been restored in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Libya? Any rational person wonders who is fighting whom and why? Are they not entrapped by the US warmongering in the region? America is fighting to support the failing Shiite regime in Iraq, and it is supporting Saudis so to speak against the Shiite Houtis in Yemen and anti-Assad regime in Syria. There is no sense to be made out of the political and intellectual nonsense. Critical issues call for thoughtful analysis, change, and new ideas to replace the obsolete thinking. It needs to also replace the obsessive values flourishing across the Arabian Peninsula. But the ruling elite have failed to build a foundation that addresses the imperatives of security policies, peace and conflict resolution, and human progress in a global community. Global politics is not fixed but a constantly changing phenomenon of life. Arab leaders do not comprehend the imperatives of political change. But reality will not diminish because nobody is conscious of its presence. The Arab Middle East faces many critical crises. Even a cursory examination of the American-British wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the resulting sectarian bloodbaths predictable crises show that nothing is being tackled in their proper context or by any rational analysis. At the heart of Arab discontent is the freedom of Palestine and how to normalize relations with the State of Israel. All other crises are superficial to subside the focal issue of Palestine. There are no independent public institutions to analyze the political problems and find workable solutions. No proactive thinking exists in any Arab quarter to strive for political unity and to have coherent leadership. How can leaders who cannot think intelligently, or understand the nature of the current crises, lead in any strategic direction? Few sectarian scholars and leaders are engulfed in self-inflicted madness to ensure their survival. The sectarian madness appears to have gone out of control implicating the traditional Arab-Muslim societies into hatred and fear of survival.
How to Change the Role and Perceptions of Sadistic Leaders?
Leaders create leaders and unite the masses when faced with formidable challenges. The contemporary Muslim leaders owe allegiance to foreign masters and lack the rational visions and capacity- to perceive and manage the phenomenon of change in political affairs. When Islam ushered universal message of human unity in faith and tolerance to build bridges across many continents, the conscientious leaders were people-oriented and were open to voices of reason and truth to manage the affairs of the state. Today, ignorance and arrogance make the Iranian leaders to focus on Shia identity contradicting the essence of Islam. The neighboring Arabs from Saudi Arabia to other oil exporting states align themselves with the Sunni sect as claims the terrorism powerhouse, the so called - Islamic State-IS. Were there any sects in the originality of Islam? After all, this all appears to be man-made precepts to further individualistic interests and disharmony in the body of Islam. Do they know how to unite the masses? If they had any sense of the originality of Islam, would be engaged in bloody sectarian warfare and killing the innocents in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere? Would they be hanging religious scholars if they knew the repercussions and the Divine punishment for such heinous crimes? Ironically, The Islamic Revolution in Iran was brought against the Shah of Iran-the infamous authoritarian king but now the Iranian leadership is supporting another dictator- Bashar Al Assad- the destructive force behind the Syrian crisis. How could Saudi hang a religious scholar just for challenging the regime? Do they know how to implement the Islamic jurisprudence and its manifestation? Islam seeks a just balance- ‘al-mezaan’ in human affairs, not extremism. Leaders are crushing the human spirit of rational thinking and opportunities to dispel the disposable differences. The raging conflicts in the Muslim world are nothing other than the sectarian infested madness and horror irrelevant to the values and principles of Islam. The solution must come out of new thinking and new vision for change, dialogue between the sectarian divides and competent leadership to achieve the stated goals. What if they were organized as morally and intellectually conscientious people? What if they knew the complex nature of global politics and the freedom to think, act, and communicate with moral strength to the enemies within the Arab societies? Given the opportunities, educated generations could make the difference when time and history warrant a navigational change. The new generations are proactive and well equipped to think intelligently and compose the differences with knowledge-based creative strategies and decent effective communication to unfold an era of political tolerance, stability and normalization- away from the tyranny of bloody authoritarianism. Is this not the rational remedy much needed to restore peace and stability in the Muslim world?
Recently, Chris Hedges ("The Terror We Give Is the Terror We Get" Truthdig: 2/08/2015) spelled out how the sectarian violence and terror and foreign fetched wars could undermine the future of global humanity:
Terror is the engine of war. And terror is what all sides in this conflict produce in overabundance .......We torture hostages in our black sites and choke them to death by stuffing rags down their throats. They torture hostages in squalid hovels and behead them. We organize Shiite death squads to kill Sunnis. They organize Sunni death squads to kill Shiites. We produce high-budget films such as "American Sniper" to glorify our war crimes. They produce inspirational videos to glorify their twisted version of jihad. The barbarism we condemn is the barbarism we commit. The line that separates us from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is technological, not moral. We are those we fight. ....."From violence, only violence is born," Primo Levi wrote, "following a pendular action that, as time goes by, rather than dying down, becomes more frenzied."