Historian Jacques Pauwels applies a critical, revisionist lens to the two great World Wars, offering readers a fresh interpretation that challenges mainstream thinking. As Pauwels sees it, war offered benefits to everyone, across class and national borders. For European statesmen, a large-scale war could give their countries new colonial territories, important to growing capitalist economies. For the wealthy and ruling classes, war served as an antidote to social revolution, encouraging workers to exchange socialism's focus on international solidarity for nationalism's intense militarism. And for the working classes themselves, war provided an outlet for years of systemic militarization -- quite simply, they were hardwired to pick up arms, and to do so eagerly. To Pauwels, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June 1914 -- traditionally upheld by historians as the spark that lit the powder keg -- was not a sufficient cause for war but rather a pretext seized upon by European powers to unleash the kind of war they had desired.
But what Europe's elite did not expect or predict was some of the war's outcomes: social revolution and Communist Party rule in Russia, plus a wave of political and social democratic reforms in Western Europe that would have far-reaching consequences. Eventually, the profound social dislocation caused by the First World War and the ravages of an unresolved capitalism (triggering the Great Depression and a multitude of other ills) would create the next big crisis for the capitalist elites opening the road for their recourse to fascism.
They didn't fight fascism, but the German Reich—a competing imperialist power
Pauwels
Another important aspect of Pauwels analysis is his reminder that, contrary to propaganda, "fascism" was not the enemy of the "capitalist democracies", it certainly was not to the Western elites, many of which openly supported and collaborated with the fascist movement. The enemy of the allies—chiefly Britain, France, and the US—was the German Reich, which represented a competing politico-industrial power liable to challenge the established spheres of Western imperialism. The proof of the puddling is that right after the war the "capitalist democracies" had no trouble opening their arms to thousands of prominent Nazis, handpicked to run the new "Western Germany" (where "denazification" was a farce); in fact Gen.Reinhard Gehlen, a prominent Nazi intelligence officer with an extensive network of Nazi spies, not only became a CIA spymaster, but was put in charge of Western Germany's own security bureau. This is admitted by Wikipedia itself: "Gehlen was instrumental in the negotiations to establish an official West German intelligence service on the basis of Gehlen Organization from the early 1950s. In 1956, the Gehlen Organization was transferred to the West German government and formed the core of the Federal Intelligence Service, the Federal Republic of Germany's official foreign intelligence service, and Gehlen served as its first president until his retirement in 1968." Meanwhile the new German army received numerous recycled Nazi generals, many joining NATO over Soviet objections. Via Werner von Braun and his associates, the Americans also had no trouble importing a hefty chunk of the German missile research community to work on US rockets, at the time openly designed to "contain" the Soviet Union.
Addendum The Reinhard Gehlen Organization (1984)
Nothing shows the hypocrisy and true ideological nature of the Western elites as their blatant affiliation with unrepentant Nazi Reinhard Gehlen and his crew. The man went from chief of Hitler's intelligence on the Eastern Front to top spymaster with the CIA, and chief of intelligence for the newly created German Federal Republic (West Germany).
On General Reinhard Gehlen (1902-1979) and his network within the Wehrmacht, the Soviet Union during Nazi Germany's Operation Barbarossa, the CIA, NATO, Martin Bormann's & Otto Skorzeny's ODESSA (Organisation der ehemaligen SS-angehörigen), the Mossad, the Egyptian Secret Service, BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst), Radio "Free" Europe Propaganda, The JFK Assassination, The Bay of Pigs Invasion, Council On Foreign Relations, J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, Zbigniew Brzezinski's White House Staff, The Vatican, Chase Manhattan Bank, The Ronald Reagan Administration, etc, etc.
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The mainstream media ignored Trump’s efforts to attack Iran after he lost
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James North
MONDOWEISS
Mondoweiss reminds us that the Trump mafia was pushing for an attack on Iran even in the waning days of the administration, but the mainstream journos simply ignored the story. The hostility toward Iran, however, is fully bipartisan.
The New Yorker just reported that Trump nearly attacked Iran after he lost the election. But the threat was obvious, why wasn't it reported back then?
Trump's "proud" face at CPAC: Hiding his colossal ignorance and venality. (PHOTO: GAGE SKIDMORE)
Afrightening report in the New Yorker has just revealed that Donald Trump nearly started a war with Iran after he lost the election — a story the mainstream media mostly missed back then.
This site ran at least 4 different warnings at the time.
The New Yorker’s source is apparently General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who seems to be leaking all over the place. Susan B. Glasser reports that after the November 3 election “Milley believed that the nation had come close — ‘very close’ — to conflict with the Islamic Republic.” She writes that Milley’s “running concern” was “the prospect of Trump pushing the nation into a military conflict with Iran.”
Glasser, surely relying at least partly on Milley himself, says the general feared Trump would stage a “Reichstag moment.” In February 1933, Adolf Hitler, the newly installed German Chancellor, used a mysterious fire that destroyed the German Reichstag, or Parliament building, as the pretext to crack down. Hitler, blaming the fire on the German Communist Party with no evidence, suspended civil liberties, including freedom of the press and habeas corpus, banned publications, and jailed thousands of Communists, whose party was technically still legal.
Gen. Milley: No taste for more imperial adventures?
Glasser reports that Milley attended another high-level meeting, this time without Trump, at which his foreign policy advisers again “pushed military action against Iran.” She says that he later asked Vice President Mike Pence why they were so eager to attack Iran. “Because they are evil,” Pence responded.
To her credit, she does, at least briefly, also include Israel’s role in the warmongering. She reminds us that Trump
was close with the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who was also urging the Administration to act against Iran after it was clear that Trump had lost the election.
It sounds like this kind of White House saber-rattling was an open secret. So why is the mainstream only telling us about the danger now — especially when alternative outlets were printing regular warnings?”
An unhinged Trump could still unleash violence against Iran — but the U.S. media downplay the danger.
Mondoweiss had no sources at high government levels. But we do know how to read — and analyze. An article in that day’s New York Times buried a single chilling sentence in paragraph 8 of its story about how Trump had just fired his Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper:
. . . Defense Department officials have privately expressed worries that the president might initiate operations, whether overt or secret, against Iran or other adversaries in his waning days in office.
But after that one sentence, the Times dropped the subject, and rattled on about the personnel changes at the Pentagon that might follow Esper’s firing, with all the urgency of a sportswriter covering a trade between two baseball teams.
Six days later, this site did another post. Our headline:
Trump was planning to attack Iran — and the mainstream media missed it until now.
But the mainstream continued sleepwalking though what could have become the worst crisis in many decades, arguably even more dangerous than the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. Thomas Friedman, the Mideast expert and twice-weekly Timescolumnist, ignored the war threat entirely, although his high-level contacts in both Washington and Tel Aviv must have told him about it.
The cable news networks barely said a word. We haven’t pored over the transcripts of Rachel Maddow’s show, for instance, but we don’t remember that she spent any time on the danger.
Why did the U.S. mainstream fail so badly — especially as it is clear in retrospect that military insiders, probably including General Milley himself, were leaking away? The clubby groupthink atmosphere among the Washington press corps is surely part of the explanation. The chronic reluctance to report on Israel’s efforts to instigate an American attack is another.
Whatever the reason, the mainstream failure is yet another reminder that you often have to turn to alternative media to learn important truths.
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The lies have never been so blatant: Media Play Up Protests, Play Down Effect of US Sanctions in Cuba
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This is an article from our series on septic media
If anyone still harbored doubts about the cynical disinformation role of US media, the latest campaign against Cuba should convince them once and for all.
From armies of bots crowding Twitter, to massive protest pictures that never happened in Cuba, but did happen in Egypt, or other countries, or the shameless attribution of a big demonstration in support of the Cuban government to its opponents, the cases of chicanery can fill volumes. The empire obviously pulled all the stops. Indecency rules.
A wave of protests in Cuba became the somewhat unlikely focus of global attention earlier this week, the events becoming the worldwide No. 1 trend on Twitter for over 24 hours, as celebrities, politicians and even the president of the United States weighed in on the action. A statement from Joe Biden’s office read:
We stand with the Cuban people and their clarion call for freedom and relief from the tragic grip of the pandemic and from the decades of repression and economic suffering to which they have been subjected by Cuba’s authoritarian regime.
Media, too, were quick to focus on the story, giving the protests front and center coverage, something extremely unusual for demonstrations in Latin America. Far larger and more deadly movements in Chile and Ecuador were mostly ignored by the corporate press (FAIR.org, 12/6/19). Meanwhile, the political situation in Haiti, which has seen three continuous years of nationwide protest, was overwhelmingly ignored (FAIR.org, 10/26/19) until the assassination of US-backed President Jovenel Moïse last week.
Downplaying the blockade
However, while giving the protests a great deal of coverage, the corporate press across the political spectrum consistently downplayed one of the primary causes of unrest: the increasingly punitive US blockade.
“In a country known for repressive crackdowns on dissent, the rallies were widely viewed as astonishing,” wrote the New York Times (7/11/21), presenting the movement as a laudable action against an authoritarian government that had brought little but “misery” to its people. Only 11 paragraphs into the story did it mention the sanctions, and even then, it put the information in the form of an accusation from the Cuban government, a source the Timeshad already cued the reader to be skeptical of.
But this was actually among the most balanced coverage from corporate media. NBC News (7/12/21) waited until the last of 24 paragraphs to note that “the Cuban government attributes the economic crisis to US embargo against Cuba and sanctions, which former President Donald Trump intensified.” The story had previously claimed that Cuba was effectively choking itself by refusing to allow humanitarian aid into the country.
The Wall Street Journal (7/12/21) did the same thing, only mentioning the sanctions in the final paragraph, and only in the mouth of President Miguel Díaz-Canel, the head of an “authoritarian regime,” a media codeword reserved for governments the US does not like (FAIR.org, 8/20/18). None of these articles went into any detail about the sanctions or their demonstrable effects.
Devoting such little time to sanctions, relegating them to the final paragraph and framing them as accusations rather than facts, has the result of conveying that they are of little importance. If this was not clear enough, the Washington Post’s editorial board (7/12/21) made it explicit, claiming that Díaz-Canel was reacting with “predictable thuggishness,” conveniently “blaming everything on the United States and the US trade embargo,” when, in fact, it was largely the fault of the “aging dictatorship” itself.
Socialism doesn’t work. Maybe bombing will
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Fox News(7/13/21) did not mention the sanctions at all, putting the blame for Cuba’s economic malaise on the Communist Party entirely. It even gave time to Miami Mayor Frances Suarez to call for the US to bomb Cuba. We must put together a “coalition of potential military action in Cuba,” Suarez told Fox, receiving little pushback.
What is particularly galling about the refusal to take seriously the idea that an economic attack from the world’s sole superpower is at least a major factor in Cuba’s troubles is that this is the US’ explicitly stated goal. Official documentsgoing back to 1960 note that, by “denying money and supplies to Cuba,” the US hopes to “decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and [the] overthrow of [the] government.”
Last month, the United Nations declaredfor the 29th year in a row to condemn the sanctions against Cuba. The vote in the General Assembly was 184 to 2, the sole votes against being the United States and Israel. The sanctions mean that Cuba is unable to trade freely with other nations, causing acute shortages of goods—including medicines—that cannot be made on the island. In 2014, the UN estimated that the sanctions had caused $1.1 trillion worth of damage to the island’s economy.
Photo switcheroos
Despite being limited in size and immediately met by substantial counter-demonstrations, corporate media were keen to present the weekend’s actions as widespread and momentous. As one Miami resident insisted to NBC News (7/12/21), “The whole country is in the streets.” Videoevidence seems to suggest otherwise, and that the counter-demonstrations were at least as well-attended.
Nevertheless, many outlets explicitly stated the opposite. Reuters (7/11/21), for example, reported, “Thousands took to the streets in various parts of Havana on Sunday, including the historic center, drowning out groups of government supporters waving the Cuban flag and chanting Fidel.” Meanwhile, Voice of America (7/12/21) claimed that despite Díaz-Canel’s demands, he could only muster “smaller pro-government demonstrations.”
If this was the case, it is ironic indeed that a host of outlets resorted to using images of pro-government demonstrations to illustrate how large and impressive the anti-government movement was. The Guardian(7/12/21), Fox News (7/11/21), Boston Globe (7/11/21), Financial Times (7/12/21), Yahoo! News (7/11/21) and NBC’s Todayprogram (7/13/21) were among that used an image of masses of government supporters gathering in central Havana to show the extent of the anti-Communist demonstrations. To anyone with knowledge of Cuba, the giant red and black flags emboldened with the words “26 Julio” (Fidel Castro’s political party) should have been a dead giveaway. (The Guardian and FT updated their stories after my tweetpointing out the false attribution went viral.)
Meanwhile, CNN (Instagram, 7/11/21) used a photo of an impressively attended rally in Miami to promote an article headlined “Cubans Take to Streets in Rare Anti-Government Protest Over Lack of Freedoms, Worsening Economy.” (The post has since been deleted.) National Geographic (7/13/21) pulled a similar trick, although they at least included a caption informing eagle-eyed readers that the image was taken in Florida. Pictures of anti-government demos in Cuba showing similar numbers of people appear not to exist.
There is every reason for Cubans to be discontent. In recent times, prices for increasingly scarce foodstuffs have risen, and there are shortages of some basic goods and medicines, leading to increased deprivation, long lines and waiting times. Yet by refusing to frame these as intentional consequences of US foreign policy, corporate media consumers are less prone to critique their own government’s actions and more likely to support the very measures that are partially responsible for keeping Cuba in the state that it is in. A skeptical reader might wonder if that is exactly the point.
Featured image: CNNphoto labeled “Cubans take to streets in rare anti-government protest”—but actually taken in Miami. (Note sign for Eighth Street in the background.)
—The Editor, The Greanville Post
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The Pacific Northwest heat wave that shattered temperature records in the western United States and Canada in late June would have been “virtually impossible” without human-caused climate change, and will become “a lot less rare” according to a report from the World Weather Attribution Group, a worldwide group of climate scientists.
Record-breaking heat wave strikes Pacific Northwest, causing power outages
Scientists from the US, Canada, the UK, the Netherlands, France, Germany and Switzerland collaborated to assess to what extent human-induced climate change made this heat wave hotter and more likely to occur.
Multiple cities in Oregon and Washington and the western provinces of Canada recorded temperatures far above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), including setting a new all-time Canadian temperature record of 49.6 degrees Celsius in the village of Lytton, British Columbia. Shortly after setting the record, Lytton, a town of 250 people with 1,000 more in nearby Indigenous reserves, was substantially destroyed in a wildfire, the report observed.
The report explains “The heatwave considered in this study is linked to a slow-moving strong high pressure system, sometimes called Omega-blocking or “heat dome,” which brings descending and thus warm and dry air, as well clear skies, further heating the near-surface air.
“Recent research suggests that climate change increases the chances for such stagnant high pressure systems in summer through weakening of the summer jet stream.
“An important feature of this extreme heatwave is that it occurred following a very dry spring over the Western U.S… Overall, it is difficult at this stage to assess the extent to which these factors either in isolation or combined provide a good explanation of why the observed temperatures were so much higher than anything ever recorded in this part of the world. Hence, more research is needed to understand the processes as well as potential influence of human-caused climate change on them.”
The human impact in a region largely unprepared for such an extreme heat event cannot be overstated. The report points out that “The exceptionally high temperatures led to spikes in sudden deaths, and sharp increases in hospital visits for heat-related illnesses and emergency calls. Heatwaves are one of the deadliest natural hazards … Currently available mortality estimates of at least several hundred additional deaths are almost certainly an underestimate. The full extent of the impact of this exceptional heat on population health will not be known for several months.”
Paramedics Cody Miller, left, and Justin Jones respond to a heat exposure call during a heatwave, Saturday, June 26, 2021, in Salem, Ore. (AP Photo/Nathan Howard)
Among the main findings in the report was the determination that “the occurrence of a heatwave with maximum daily temperatures as observed in the study area was virtually impossible without human-caused climate change.”
And even though it was a rare event, as warming continues, it will become a lot less rare.
The researchers' findings presented two likely scenarios that caused the extreme jump in peak temperatures.
First: “This is a very low probability event, even in the current climate which already includes about 1.2 degrees Celsius of global warming — the statistical equivalent of really bad luck, albeit aggravated by climate change.”
Second: “Nonlinear interactions in the climate have substantially increased the probability of such extreme heat, much beyond the gradual increase in heat extremes that has been observed up to now.”
Even without the dreadful, perhaps terminal climate change crisis, the damage done to the environment by the capitalists is indisputable.
The researchers warned that “We need to investigate the second possibility further, although we note the climate models do not show it.” This event would have been “at least 150 times rarer without human-induced climate change.”
Looking into a future with 2 degrees Celsius of global warming (0.8 degrees Celsius warmer than today, which at current emission levels would be reached as early as the 2040s), this event would have been one degree warmer. An event like this, currently estimated to occur only once every 1000 years, would occur roughly every 5 to 10 years in that future world with 2 degrees Celsius of global warming.
The researchers warned, “Based on this first rapid analysis, we cannot say whether this was a so-called “freak” event (with a return time on the order of 1 in 1000 years or more) that largely occurred by chance, or whether our changing climate altered conditions conducive to heatwaves in the Pacific Northwest, which would imply that “bad luck” played a smaller role and this type of event would be more frequent in our current climate.
“In either case, the future will be characterized by more frequent, more severe, and longer heatwaves, highlighting the importance of significantly reducing our greenhouse gas emissions to reduce the amount of additional warming.
“The latest heat-related death numbers are alarming, yet they are likely a severe undercount and the real toll will only become clear after mortality statistics are reviewed for the role of heat in exacerbating underlying conditions.”
The report concludes: “Our results provide a strong warning: our rapidly warming climate is bringing us into uncharted territory that has significant consequences for health, well-being, and livelihoods. Adaptation and mitigation are urgently needed to prepare societies for a very different future. Adaptation measures need to be much more ambitious and take account of the rising risk of heatwaves around the world, including surprises such as this unexpected extreme.”
While the federal and state governments tinker around with free market, capitalist “solutions” to climate change, such as the much-hyped Green New Deal, little to nothing has been done to prepare the infrastructure for the oncoming extreme heat waves that are already occurring and will become much more frequent in the very near future.
Extreme weather (both heat waves and deep freezes) affects millions of people and entire communities who are in most cases wholly unprepared to survive such recurring events.
Governments have not focused on preparing the infrastructure to help people survive, but rather, on “marketing new technologies” that enrich already massively wealthy corporations and individuals, such as Tesla, the maker of electric cars, which can only be purchased by an elite few.
Human-caused climate change could be re-named “Capitalist-Caused Climate Change,” a more apt description given the science as we now understand it. Massive multi-national oil companies such as Exxon-Mobil even admit they knew their industry would be causing an extreme global warming problem, as was widely reported in 2015, but covered up the information and kept pumping out fossil fuel filth anyway, harming people and the entire planet.
Adria French works with wsws.org, a socialist publication.
ADDENDUM
Another report by wsws.org, on Jul 16, notes that the cause for the recent floods in Germany and Belgium is definitely capitalogenic.
Flooding in Germany and Belgium leaves over 100 dead
Severe thunderstorms and heavy rainfall have led to severe devastation and at least 93 fatalities so far in the German regions of Rhineland-Palatinate (50) and North Rhine-Westphalia (43). At least nine people have also been killed in Belgium.
The actual death toll could be much higher. According to reports, 1,300 people are currently missing. On Friday morning, the Interior Minister of Rhineland-Palatinate, Roger Lewentz (Social Democratic Party), said, “One must say at present, while clearing basements we keep coming across people who have lost their lives in these floods, so I can’t say anything at all about the number where we will end up in the end.” It is a catastrophe, he said, and the situation remains dramatic.
Destroyed houses are seen in Schuld, Germany, Thursday, July 15, 2021. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)
After days of rain, the levels of the Rhine, Ruhr, Moselle and other small rivers and streams rose. Some of them turned into raging rivers and flooded entire towns and cities. In some cases, the water rose so quickly that residents were unable to escape to safety.
The district of Ahrweiler in the Eifel region of Rhineland-Palatinate was particularly hard hit. The town of Schuldei has been devastated. Four houses were swept away by the water, many more have been damaged and are in danger of collapse.
The typically small Ahr, a tributary of the Rhine, became a raging torrent due to the rain. Hundreds of houses along the riverbed were damaged. At least 19 people died in the Ahrweiler district. More than 30 people are still missing. It is not yet known whether they have travelled or found accommodation elsewhere, or whether they, too, were swept away.
Many people had to hold out for hours on the roofs of their houses until they could be rescued from the air. Power outages and disruption of phone networks exacerbated the situation for those affected. Relatives, friends and acquaintances have had difficulty finding out what has happened to their loved ones. At times, even the emergency phone line numbers were unreachable.
There were either no warnings from the authorities or they came so late that the residents could not get to safety in time.
One affected person from Ahrweiler told the WSWS that he and his family were warned only two hours before the floods. The sandbags they received contained no sand. Due to the approaching flood it was too late for them to find sand themselves. Within a short time, the basement and the lower area of the house were completely flooded.
While the German weather service warned of renewed heavy rain in many areas, thousands were evacuated. In the Ehrang district of Trier, 2,000 people were evacuated, including from a hospital and a retirement home.
At least 20 fatalities have been reported so far from the Cologne-Bonn area in North Rhine-Westphalia. Several people died in flooded basements. In Cologne, firefighters found a 72-year-old woman and a 54-year-old man in a basement flooded with water. In the Euskirchen district alone, there were 15 deaths. Three more fatalities were reported by police from Rheinbach.
The Steinbach Dam is located near the town of Euskirchen. It is threatening to overflow, endangering numerous towns in the vicinity.
Jul 16, 2021 / The CBC notes: Heavy rainfall has caused extreme mudslides and flooding in the western part of Germany and Belgium. At least 120 people have died and hundreds are missing. The Netherlands, Luxemburg, and Switzerland have also been affected by floodwaters.
There were also numerous fatalities in Solingen and in the Unna district. The cities of Hagen in the Ruhr region and Wuppertal in the Bergisches Land region are badly affected. In the Hochsauerlandkreis district, virtually the entire town of Altena is flooded. In Altena, a firefighter involved in rescuing people died. He was swept away by the floods. Another firefighter lost his life during an operation in Werdohl.
Neighbouring Belgium was also affected by the flood. The army has been deployed in four out of 10 provinces to participate in evacuations and search and rescue operations. Nine people have been confirmed dead so far, all in the east of the country near the German border. One person was killed in the town of Eupen, five in Verviers, and one in Pepinstar.
There were numerous evacuations in the province of Limburg, including the border town of Roermond, where 5,000 residents were reportedly brought to safety. Further south in Maastricht, thousands of people were also evacuated. The Belgian National Water Authority warned of record flooding of the Meuse River, which would inundate large parts of the province of Limburg with nearly 900,000 inhabitants.
Authorities have also issued an evacuation order to inhabitants of the city of Liege, which, as of 2013, had a population of over 195,000 people. They urged those “who still have the possibility of evacuating to do so if they find themselves in a zone floodable near the Meuse” river.
The peak of the flooding is not expected until Friday morning. The flood in Liege has been caused in part by the malfunctioning of the Monsin dam bridge in the town. First built in the 1930s, it has been under construction for a year, and only two of the gates out of six are currently operational. This meant the dam was unable to release a sufficient quantity of water, which instead flooded the centre of the town.
There are major fears that a construction crane in the area will be pulled away by the flooding, and that if it falls it could cut a power cable which powers multiple water pumping stations. The power distributors preventively cut the current in this line on Thursday.
The Wallonian water association warned the population not to consume tap water, “even boiled,” in seven communes of the Wallonian region. The electricity and gas networks are experiencing “disturbances on an unprecedented scale,” Resa, the main energy distributor in the province of Liege, announced.
The immense extent of the damage and the high number of fatalities, which will certainly increase in the following days, have several reasons. It is a result of the climate crisis created by capitalism, which leads to increasingly stark weather fluctuations—extreme heat and drought on the one hand, extreme rain and flooding on the other. At the same time, it is a result of decades of neglected and dilapidated infrastructure.
In recent years and decades, insufficient or no investment has been made in dam safety and flood protection, despite the fact that severe flooding has occurred repeatedly. Instead, hundreds of billions of euros have been given to corporations and banks, and spending on the military has increased enormously in Germany and throughout Europe.
The same politicians who are responsible for this policy are now feigning sympathy. The Minister President of North Rhine-Westphalia and CDU candidate for chancellor, Armin Laschet, is travelling to Altena and Hagen on Thursday, to hold out the prospect of financial aid from the state. These are familiar empty promises. Many people are still waiting for promised aid from previous disasters.
The SPD Minister President of Rhineland-Palatinate, Malu Dreyer, also visited Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, which was particularly hard hit, together with Federal Finance Minister and SPD candidate for chancellor Olaf Scholz. Scholz, who cut his holiday short, expressed his shock at the “tremendous destruction wrought by nature.”
As a sign of mourning, Dreyer announced that flags on public buildings in Rhineland-Palatinate would be flown at half-mast on Friday. “The damage of this disaster is unprecedented,” she said. Many people had lost everything and, unfortunately, the number of dead was also rising. “A first glimmer of hope in this dire hour,” however, was the promise by the federal government to quickly help the affected people. She thanked Scholz “for the strong signal of solidarity.”
Where the solidarity of Scholz and the entire ruling class really lies is well known. In the course of the so-called Corona bailout packages, hundreds of billions were transferred to the accounts of big corporations and the super-rich, which are now to be squeezed out of the working population. The military budget has also been increased by more than €10 billion in the last four years alone and is set to rise further after the federal elections in September.
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JULY 9, 2021—The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) condemns the arrogance and illegality of United Nations Special Envoy for Haiti Helen La Lime’s July 8 statement that Haitian Prime Minister Claude Joseph will be the new president, just one day after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.
The decision was announced to the press after a closed-door UN Security Council meeting had been called on Haiti. But BAP asks: Who gave the United Nations special envoy the power to make that kind of determination for the people of Haiti?
The abysmal poverty of Haiti—and its manufactured backwardness—are both products of nonstop colonialist intervention.
This sounds like a play right out of the old regime-change book. As BAP stated in its July 7 press release, BAP smells a rat.
BAP is concerned the political situation the United States created by supporting a dictatorship in Haiti is quickly replicating the moment when the United States swept in to colonize the predominantly African/Black country after the 1915 assassination of Haiti’s president, Vilbrun Guillaume Sam.
“The Black Alliance for Peace remains steadfast in our call against foreign intervention and occupation of Haiti,” says Jemima Pierre, BAP’s Haiti/Americas Coordinator. “We call on all anti-imperialist and Black internationalist forces to stand with the Haitian people and oppose U.S. and European interventions deployed under the guise of the ‘Responsibility to Protect.’”
What Haiti needs is authentic national sovereignty and self-determination.
“When people say Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, they fail to understand it is the Pan-European colonial powers that have kept Haiti with its hands tied behind its back,” says BAP National Organizer Ajamu Baraka. “We say time out on white Western powers causing destruction in the global South.”
Shortly after Democrats wrung their hands over the possibility of Donald Trump staying past his term in office, Biden came into office and immediately lent his support to Moïse to stay beyond the February 7 term limit. That decision sent thousands of Haitians protesting in the streets week after week.
“The Haitian people clearly understood that the United States, the United Nations, and the Organization of American States were behind this,” says Chris Bernadel, a member of BAP’s Haiti/Americas Committee. “During these massive protests, they called for all of these Western powers to exit Haiti.”
While Biden expressed support for Black Lives Matter and for democracy during his campaign for president, true support would have meant ending U.S. meddling in Haiti’s affairs. This assassination relieves the Biden-Harris administration of the embarrassment of having to reconcile the contradiction between pretending to respect Black lives and democracy and supporting a dictator who had reigned after his term had ended on February 7.
That is why for BAP, it doesn’t matter who pulled the trigger to kill Moïse because the Pan-European colonial-capitalist powers are responsible for the suffering of the Haitian people.
BAP vigorously opposes any and all foreign institutions and structures intervening in Haiti. The Haitian people must be allowed to exercise self-determination and address their internal political situation without interference, as BAP noted in its July 6 press release.
Banner photo: Haiti’s President Jovenel Moïse and first lady Martine Moïse sit during his swearing-in ceremony in Port-au-Prince on February 7, 2017. (Dieu Nalio Chery/AP)
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