Anarchoblogs

Posts tagged sudan

THE ONLY DEMOCRACY IN THE MIDDLE EAST!!!! 1:43 am / 27 May 2012 by ann arky, at annarky's blog.

It is not very often that we hear a criticism of Israel coming from America. As we all know America is Israel's banker and minder, and in return Israel is the US policeman in the Middle East, who refers to itself as, “the only democracy in the Middle East”. So when US state department raise concerns about Israel's treatment African asylum seekers, stating that they are being denied their basic human rights, the situation must be serious. The US annual report on human rights says that many asylum seekers are refused refugee status, so cannot access health care. This report also criticises the Israeli government officials for referring to migrants as “infiltrators”. It is believed that in recent years, approximately 60,000 migrants have entered Israel, mainly from Sudan and Eritrea. The UNHCR states that, last year from 4,603 new asylum applications Israel received, only one was approved. Their figures also show that there are approximately 6,000 previous cases still pending. There is also concern about the fact that Israeli authorities can reject applications and there is no road for appeal, no independent appeal process. All our states are riddled with right-wing politicians, Israel has more than its fair share of those driven by religious extremism. The US state department report criticises some of those right-wing politicians, stating that the are stoking up hatred by referring to “infiltrators” as a cancer, while calling for all migrants to be expelled. There is the usual claim from the Israeli state mouth pieces, stating that the overwhelming majority of migrants are not fleeing war, violence and persecution, but merely seeking a better life, (in state ideology this is a crime). A simple look at the war, violence and persecution taking place in that part of the world makes that kind of statement no more than an utterance blinded by racial and/or religious hatred.

ann arky's home.

Categories: Anarchism

Tagged with: anarchy, eritrea, Israel, Middle East, racilal hatred, religious extremism, sudan, UNHCR, US

FUNDAMENTALIST UPRISING. 2:07 pm / 28 October 2011 by ann arky, at annarky's blog.

Now thatthe Libyan regime has been replace to the satisfaction of the Westernoil companies, the truth is starting to come out. At first we werelead to believe that it was a people's “uprising” against theregime and our heroic peace loving NATO stepped in to save civiliandeaths. However it now seems to be that it was a fundamentalistengineered uprising and Qatar and Sudan have now stated that theysent in forces to help the “uprising”. It is also stated thatLibyan al-Qaeda groups fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq return toLibya to help the “rebels”. What kind of “people's” uprisingis it if it is supported by troops from at least two differentcountries and the force of NATO plus war hardened religiousfundamentalist al-Qaeda groups and takes more than six months tooverthrow the regime? It is obvious that if NATO hadn't stepped in with its, over 10,000 strikes, the "uprising" would have fizzled out. This is in no way to condone the Gadaffi regime, but does show the lies behind the West's talk of protecting civilians in a people's uprising. The last thing the West would do is send in NATO to support is a people's uprising, especially if it was somewhere in the West.

Already the citizens of Sirte are beginning to vent their anger atthe violence that has been heaped upon them, no doubt other divisionswill make themselves clear as NATO, Sudan and Qatar all withdraw andthe Libyan people start to make their real voice heard.

What the West can look forward to is profit from all that oil and allthat re-construction that needs to be done after we blow the place tobits.

ann arky's home.

Categories: Anarchism

Tagged with: Al Qaeda, anarchy, fundamentalist uprising., Libya, NATO, Oil, Qatar, regime change, Sirte, sudan

Change You Can Believe In (Vol. III, No. 10) 5:13 pm / 22 October 2011 by Rad Geek, at Rad Geek People's Daily

From Adam Serwer, in Mother Jones (18 Oct 2011):

Barack Obama Deported More Immigrants This Year Than Any Other President in American History.

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement announced Tuesday that it has reached a new record number of deportations for Fiscal Year 2011: 396,906 removals of unauthorized immigrants.

The numbers should be taken with a grain of salt. Last year ICE miscounted the number of deportations, and the number was revised down to 387,790, still a record. Or at least it was a record, until today. ICE has previously stated it has the resources to deport about 400,000 people a year, which means that Tuesday’s number puts ICE around 3,000 people shy of the total number of people the agency says it has the capacity to deport.

… In the twisted bizarro world of Washington politics, media conventions have obliged journalists to report with equal “balance” the Republican claim that Obama is pursuing a policy of “backdoor amnesty” even as he racks up more deportations than any president ever before… . What you won’t hear about, however, is the human cost to the families, citizen and non-citizen, impacted by the sheer volume and efficiency of the Obama administraton’s immigration removal policy

—Adam Serwer, Open-Borders Obama Sets New Deportation Record, in Mother Jones (18 Oct 2011)

But of course once the U.S. government has stormed your home, locked you in a hellhole detention camp, separated you from your family, and cast you out thousands of miles from your home, they’re not really done with you. Because the United States government hardly stops at United States borders — our Progressive Peace President is a humanitarian and his campaign for peace, democracy and human rights will bring Hope and Change to you in whatever land you may be exiled to. For example, by forcing your former neighbors to subsidize governments that draft child soldiers and send them to kill you:

Barack Obama Forces U.S. Taxpayers To Subsidize Armies That Use Child Soldiers In Conflict Zones

President Barack Obama has decided to waive almost all the legally mandated penalties for countries that use child soldiers and provide those countries U.S. military assistance, just like he did last year.

The White House is expected to soon announce its decision to issue a series of waivers for the Child Soldiers Protection Act, a 2008 law that is meant to stop the United States from giving military aid to countries that recruit soldiers under the age of 15 and use them to fight wars. The administration has laid out a range of justifications for waiving penalties on Yemen, South Sudan, Chad, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, all of which amount to a gutting of the law for the second year in a row.

… In a meeting with NGO representatives on Tuesday afternoon at the White House, State Department officials, led by Deputy Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor Dan Baer, explained this year’s reasons why the White House will continue to give military funding to countries that use child soldiers.^[1]

Fo r South Sudan, State Department officials argued that since the country didn’t exist when the latest report on child soldier abuse came out, that country doesn’t fall under the law. Their reasoning is that the report in question, known as the 2011 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report, came out June 27. South Sudan was declared independent 12 days later on July 9. They will receive $100 million in U.S. military aid this year.

“South Sudan may be a new country, but it’s not a blank slate here,” one attendee at the White House meeting told The Cable. “There’s been two decades of child soldier use and unfulfilled promises by the [Sudan People’s Liberation Army].”

For Yemen, the administration’s argument is simply that counterterrorism cooperation with that country is too important to suspend. Yemen is set to receive $35 million from the United States in foreign military financing. What stunned activists in the room, however, was State Department officials’ admission that they don’t know who actually controls the Yemeni military these days.

“The officials said, ‘We don’t even know day by day who we’re even talking to,’” one attendee reported.

—Josh Rogin, Obama waives penalties on countries that employ child soldiers — again! in Foreign Policy: The Cable (4 October 2011)

But I am sure that their collaboration is vital to defeating terror and safeguarding human rights throughout the world. Whoever the hell they are.

Oh well, close enough for government work, anyway. The more things Change….

Daily Show: America’s Freedom Packages 9:32 am / 25 March 2011 by Don Emmerich, Jr., at Peace, etc.

The Daily Show - America's Freedom Packages
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Tagged with: Bahrain, egypt, Libya, sudan

Work-around’s to get the word out from Egypt 7:51 pm / 31 January 2011 by Royce Christian, at .urbandissent

So while Mubarak has sworn in his new cabinet, it looks like Egypt has been taken completely offline but activists are finding means and methods to work around the government crackdown on communications and get the word out.

@Jan25 Voices is a Twitter feed that gives regular updates based on phone calls made by people on the street.

Even though Western media have largely scaled back their reporting on Egypt, you can access reports given by individuals on the ground.

One recorded audio phone call painted the scene in Tahrir Square on January 30th.

This, no doubt, will hopefully be used to get the word out as a General Strike has been called with huge numbers of people expected to converge on the capital.

Although revolutions like that which have taken place in Tunisia and Egypt are not Anarchist, every little step towards counts. The movements have been largely leaderless, spontaneous and widespread, having utilised New Media and workarounds to continue to communicate and get the word out.

Harsh, authoritarian regimes have been challenged, head on and if an entire country of people wish to throw off a 30-year-old regime that crushes dissent, expression and tortures individuals as a matter of course, then that movement must be supported from the outside whereever possible.

See here for more background regarding Egypt and the efforts of Egypt’s elite to maintain the status quo.

Now there are rumblings in Syria and Sudan.

Update:

Video showing Egyptian security forces trying to run down protesters (1:09) before unleashing a water cannon on people attempting to pray directly in front of the security forces.

Update 2:

Phillip Weiss of Salon.com writes what I’ve been thinking for a while now,

…Racism against Arabs is shutting down the American mind once again. And all my friends must turn to Al Jazeera English to get the soul of the story: that these events are electrifying to Arabs everywhere, a heroic mobilization. And not only to Arabs. When ElBaradei says, I salute the youth for overturning a pharaonic power, lovers of human freedom everywhere must be thrilled. We are seeing a dictator dissolve before our eyes. These are the events we cherished in history books; let us embrace the Egyptian movement.

Why is America so afraid?

However, while his analyses of the American administration’s attitude and approach to Israel is correct and the response by prominent commentators in both Israeli and American media has both been less than supportive of an Egyptian pro-democracy movement, Weiss transitions into a credible analysis of media coverage to, seemingly, hating on “the Jews”. While I agree with some thoughts, such as the quote above, I disagree with and repudiate much of the rest.