17/07/2009
O “lobby” golpista aposta tudo em Hillary
No domingo o Los Angeles Times alegou que a derrubada do presidente Manuel (Mel) Zelaya é diferente – “exemplo de uma rebelião de novo tipo na luta da América Latina, no qual os líderes da esquerda desafiam o status quo e testam os limites da democracia”. Afirmou ainda: “naquela noite os militares de Honduras desligaram telefones para não ter de falar com autoridades dos EUA”. Será? Na verdade até o truque de fingir que nada tem a ver com o golpe pode ser repetição de ações passadas dos EUA. A análise é de Argemiro Ferreira.
Argemiro Ferreira
Bastaria um mínimo de atenção às fotos da situação em Honduras (com repressão de protestos, ataque a jornalistas e reza de marchadeiras) para qualquer um concluir que o golpe militar em nada difere de outros da tradição imposta ao continente para servir aos EUA – desde os tempos da United Fruit, que deu origem à expressão “república de banana” e nas últimas décadas tem mudado de nome (foi também United Brands, mas agora virou Chiquita Brands).
No domingo o Los Angeles Times alegou que a derrubada do presidente Manuel (Mel) Zelaya é diferente – “exemplo de uma rebelião de novo tipo na luta da América Latina, no qual os líderes da esquerda desafiam o status quo e testam os limites da democracia”. Afirmou ainda: “naquela noite os militares de Honduras desligaram telefones para não ter de falar com autoridades dos EUA”.
Será? Na verdade até o truque de fingir que nada tem a ver com o golpe pode ser repetição de ações passadas dos EUA (como em 1964, quando o cínico embaixador Lincoln Gordon jurou que o golpe tinha sido “100% brasileiro”). Em Honduras outra semelhança foi a ação precipitada de grupelhos: como a de um general e dois coroneis que invadiram a casa de Zelaya de madrugada, arrancaram-no da cama e tornaram o golpe fato consumado ao enfiá-lo de pijama no avião militar.
Um golpe igual aos outros
Ao contrário do que disse o Times californiano, nada se inovou, foi “golpe no velho estilo” – expressão usada por outro jornal americano em 1964, para qualificar o que acontecia então no Brasil. Os ingredientes estão no próprio relato do diário de Los Angeles: elite indignada com gastos em programas sociais, coro da mídia golpista e a palavra piedosa de figurões da Igreja pagos pelos bushistas do National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
Observem o que ocorre agora. Pelo menos mais dois líderes de movimentos populares foram assassinados. Roger Bados (do Bloco Popular e da Resistência Popular, além de membro da coalizão do governo Zelaya), foi baleado e morto em San Pedro Sula. Ramon Garcia foi retirado por militares do ônibus em que viajava e executado. Anunciou-se a suspensão do toque de recolher, mas ele continua em vigor.
Essas e outras informações estão no website “Postcards from the Revolution” de Eva Golinger, advogada venezuelana que atua em Nova York e publicou, entre outros livros, The Chávez Code – Cracking US Intervention in Venezuela (O Código Chávez – Destroçando a intervenção dos EUA na Venezuela), sobre o golpe fracassado de 2002. Ela citou ainda a prisão e expulsão de jornalistas estrangeiros da agência espanhola EFE e de dois canais da Venezuela, Telesur e VTV.
Um jornal de Tegucigalpa citou com ligeireza o fato, atribuindo as prisões insolitamente a “roubo de carro”. Os veículos hondurenhos adotam uma linha golpista semelhante à da mídia brasileira. Filiam-se todos, como a nossa grande imprensa, à notória Sociedade Interamericana de Imprensa (SIP), que se diz defensora da liberdade de imprensa mas tradicionalmente aplaude os golpes apoiados pelos EUA – como o de Pinochet no Chile em 1973.
O lobista e as marchadeiras do cardeal
O golpe trouxe ainda a versão hondurenha da “marcha da família com Deus pela liberdade”. Como os golpistas foram incapazes de obter reconhecimento em qualquer país (até Israel repudiou a idéia), o cardeal Andrés Rodriguez (beneficiário de verbas do NED, a organização dos EUA que patrocina golpes a pretexto de defender a democracia) faz concentrações e rezas em vários países implorando a Deus pelo sucesso do golpe.
O dado mais preocupante, revelado pelo New York Times, é sobre uma ofensiva de relações públicas lançada pelos golpistas nos EUA. Segundo o jornal, já trabalha nesse sentido junto à secretária Hillary Clinton (de quem foi conselheiro na campanha presidencial de 2008) o lobista Lanny J. Davis, ex-advogado pessoal do presidente Bill Clinton na Casa Branca. Outro ligado a Clinton que já estaria a serviço dos golpistas é Bennett Ratcliff, da Califórnia.
A ofensiva golpista nos EUA pode revelar-se decisiva. Se Barack Obama declarou-se no primeiro momento pelo imediato retorno ao poder do presidente legítimo (Zelaya), sua secretária de Estado tem sido ambígua. Agora, destacou Golinder, Hillary pode até já ter concordado com cinco condições (exigidas pelos golpistas) que ameaçam reduzir Zelaya a mera figura decorativa:
1. Zelaya teria a presidência mas não o poder;
2. Ficaria proibido de insistir no plano de reforma da Constituição ou mesmo de realizar referendos ou votações de qualquer natureza;
3. Seria obrigado a se distanciar do presidente venezuelano Hugo Chávez;
4. Compartilharia a governança com o Congresso e os golpistas até o fim do mandato;
5. Assumiria o compromisso de anistiar os envolvidos no golpe.
“El negrito que no sabe de nada”?
Também nisso o golpe de Honduras imita o Brasil – de 1961, quando militares golpistas exigiram que se retirasse os poderes de João Goulart antes de empossá-lo. Nada destoa do figurino clássico do golpe latino-americano, até por ter nascido em Honduras a expressão banana republic. Só o que difere é a reação inicial de Obama, enfático no repúdio. Terá ele depois deixado a bola para o Departamento de Estado que herdou de Bush?
Ali dois veteranos do golpe venezuelano de 2002, Thomas A. Shannon e Hugo Llorens, podem tentar sob a liderança da secretária Hillary desconstruir Obama. Shannon está onde Bush o colocou – é secretário assistente para assuntos hemisféricos, o mesmo posto no qual seu ex-chefe cubano Otto Reich encaminhara o outro golpe (revertido em 48 horas). E em Tegucigalpa está Llorens, enviado no ano passado por Bush.
Quadro perfeito para o contágio no continente, onde a mídia parece atraída por modelito “diferente” – a new kind of coup, na expressão do Los Angeles Times – para responder ao que a elite latino-americana teme como ameaça a séculos de sua perversidade social. Só não faz sentido ver Obama metido no papel de um Bush obcecado por Chávez, já que sua promessa foi o contrário: mudança.
Estará nos planos do presidente americano, a reboque da secretária de Estado, tal confraternização promíscua com a insaciável elite branca, tão bem representada na figura grotesca de Enrique Ortez Colindres, ministro do Exterior do golpe, que escancarou o racismo ao reagir ao repúdio de Obama? “Ele é só um negrinho que não sabe de nada”, disse. Colindres, claro, teve de cair fora. Mas o resto da turma golpista, de igual linhagem nobre, confia na loura Hillary.
Blog de Argemiro Ferreira
Carta Maior - 17.07.09
Entreprise JLG à Tonneins: les salariés obtiennent "gain de cause" sur les indemnités
Les salariés de l'entreprise JLG de Tonneins (Lot-et-Garonne), qui avaient menacé de détruire des nacelles élévatrices produites par leur société, ont obtenu "gain de cause" sur le montant des indemnités de licenciement, a indiqué vendredi le comité d'entreprise.
"Notre proposition était une indemnité supra-légale de 30.000 euros pour les 53 personnes qui doivent être licenciées. Nous avons obtenu gain de cause", a indiqué vendredi Christian Amadio, le secrétaire du CE. Un accord a été signé avec la direction et un médiateur au cours d'une réunion qui s'est terminée dans la nuit de jeudi à vendredi, a-t-il précisé.
Mercredi, pour faire pression sur la direction, des salariés avaient placé cinq nacelles, prêtes à être livrées, sur le parking de leur entreprise et les avaient entourées de "bouteilles de gaz" - vides selon les gendarmes - ainsi que de "palettes avec du produit inflammable", menaçant de "les faire sauter".
La menace avait été levée jeudi soir après l'annonce de la réunion avec la direction.
Les salariés sont en grève depuis trois semaines pour obtenir une meilleure prime "supra-légale" pour les employés devant être licenciés dans le cadre d'un plan social annoncé en avril et prévoyant la suppression de 53 des 163 emplois de cette entreprise rachetée par un groupe américain en 2007.
Le travail doit reprendre lundi sous réserve que l'accord conclu dans la nuit de jeudi à vendredi soit approuvé par vote vendredi matin par les salariés, a précisé M. Amadio.
"C'est un peu dommage quand on voit tout ce qu'il a fallu faire pour en arriver à ce résultat. On aurait pu y arriver sans cette perte de temps et tout ce qui s'est passé. Heureusement, il ne s'est rien produit de grave", a-t-il par ailleurs commenté au sujet du recours à la menace des bouteilles de gaz.
Le site JLG de Tonneins appartient à JLG Europe, filiale du groupe américain Oshkosh, qui se présente sur son site internet comme "le premier fabricant au monde de nacelles élévatrices de personnes" principalement destinées au sociétés de location.
AFP - 17.07.09
GUARDAS PRISIONAIS: Greve com adesão de 91%
A greve dos guardas prisionais está a ter uma adesão de 91 por cento e um quarto das 48 prisões regista uma adesão total, informou hoje a Direcção-Geral dos Serviços Prisionais (DGSP)
Segundo um comunicado daquele organismo do Ministério da Justiça, "a greve está a decorrer com normalidade, sem alterações da ordem e disciplina dos estabelecimentos prisionais" e os serviços mínimos estão a ser assegurados, como foi acordado entre o Sindicato Nacional do Corpo da Guarda Prisional e a DGSP.
Segundo os dados da direcção-geral, regista-se uma taxa de adesão que ronda os 91 por cento e um quarto dos 48 estabelecimentos prisionais regista uma adesão de 100 por cento.
"A DGSP lamenta eventuais transtornos que possam vir a ser causados à população reclusa e familiares, por não ser possível assegurar todas as actividades que habitualmente têm lugar", pode ler-se no mesmo comunicado.
Os guardas prisionais começaram hoje às 8:00 um segundo período de três dias de greve, depois de ter falhado segunda-feira uma tentativa de acordo com o governo sobre um regime de aposentação mais favorável.
A aposentação aos 60 anos, um estatuto profissional digno e uma remuneração ajustada são algumas das reivindicações dos 4 200 guardas prisionais efectivos, que já tinham feito greve por três dias, entre 06 e 09 de Julho.
Tal como no anterior período de greve, não haverá saídas dos estabelecimentos, excepto em casos de saúde ou emergência "ou que envolvam os direitos dos reclusos", não havendo igualmente visitas, disse à Lusa Jorge Alves, presidente do Sindicato Nacional do Corpo da Guarda Prisional (SNCGP).
O primeiro período de greve teve uma adesão de 95 por cento, segundo o sindicato, enquanto a Direcção-Geral dos Serviços Prisionais (DGSP) apontava para 90 por cento, salientando que não houve "alterações da ordem e disciplina" nos 48 estabelecimentos prisionais existentes no país.
Destak.pt - 17.07.09
“European Inequalities: Social Inclusion and Income Distribution in the European Union”
Documento analisa um conjunto de tendências associadas à distribuição da riqueza e ao risco de pobreza nos países da União Europeia (UE). Países mais pobres são os que tendencialmente apresentam maiores níveis de desigualdade de rendimento.
Portugal é dos países da UE no qual o efeito dos impostos e dos benefícios sociais menos contribuiu para amenizar as desigualdades de rendimento, no intervalo temporal 2001-2005. Tal como em Itália e na Irlanda, estes mecanismos de redistribuição da riqueza diminuíram em 0,15 pontos a desigualdade de rendimento em Portugal (desigualdade aferida através do Coeficiente de Gini, que, neste caso, varia entre 0 e 1). Apenas a Holanda regista um resultado menos expressivo, enquanto na Hungria e na Bélgica essa diminuição foi de 0,27 e 0,24 pontos, respectivamente (ver pp. 154 e 155 do relatório).
O país apresenta também resultados negativos no que diz respeito à capacidade de consumo da sua população: em 2006, cerca de 7,0% dos portugueses que não tinham capacidade económica para comprar uma televisão a cores, um telefone ou uma máquina de lavar a roupa; em nenhum dos países da UE-15 o valor deste indicador superou os 2,0%. Apesar de tudo, a porção da população portuguesa que não tem capacidade económica para efectuar uma refeição de carne, frango ou peixe (ou equivalente vegetariano) de dois em dois dias é relativamente baixa, em especial se comparada com os valores registados nos países que aderiram à UE após 2004.
Link para relatório
Ver valores do risco de pobreza e do coeficiente de Gini na UE-27 em 2007. Já são conhecidos, para Portugal, valores provisórios destes indicadores referentes ao ano de 2008.
Observatório das Desigualdades - 17.07.09
Low-Wage Capitalism - A review of Fred Goldstein's book
Kéllia Ramares - Global Research, July 17, 2009
Fred Goldstein,
http://www.lowwagecapitalism.com//Low-WageCapitalism-lores.pdf
With the corporate capitalist economy falling apart as it is, some people are looking at socialism with a less jaundiced eye. Of course, there are some people for whom socialism was never the spawn of Satan that banksters and other corporate cutthroats and their political minions would have us believe. One of these people is Marxist author Fred Goldstein, who was inspired as a college student to become a Marxist by the Cuban revolution. Goldstein, a contributing editor to Workers' World newspaper, has demonstrated, in the book Low-Wage Capitalism, that Marxist economic theory is alive and well in the post-Soviet era. In fact, Marxist theory provides an excellent analytical tool for explaining the failures of globalized capitalism to provide a decent way of life for the world's people.
The book looks at major developments in the past three decades which have led us to the current crisis. In considering the growth of the available world labor force, Goldstein shows that 19th Century Marxist theory can be applied to a world very different from that in which the theory was born. A world in which more women and people of color are in the labor force still operates according to Marx's law of wages. Just add sexism and racism to the various ways the bosses exploit labor.
The essence of this book, however, is Goldstein's analysis of the role that technology plays in the exploitation of labor. Technology has its own chapter in the book, but it is a recurring theme in other chapters. Technology, which should make life and work easier and safer for workers, is instead used to reduce the labor force, so that the unemployed and underemployed compete with the employed, thus keeping a downward pressure on wages. Technology is also used to “de-skill” jobs, making workers more fungible. This way, workers who are being too “troublesome” in their demands for higher wages or union representation can be more easily replaced.
Economic conditions have gotten desperate, says Goldstein, despite the fact that more families have at least two earners. He explains the decline as inevitable, given the way capitalism works. Goldstein amply demonstrates the decline with statistics, graphs and reports without getting overly academic. This is a book one could easily read on the train or bus to work.
Goldstein believes that the workers need to do something on the political front to change things. He argues for more understanding on the part of workers of the existence of class differences and the need for class struggle. This is where the book left me a bit dissatisfied because the argument is for an old way of doing things: a class struggle or “war”, if you will. There are definitely class differences in this country, and the overwhelming majority of workers end up in the class in which they were born or lower, despite the myth of upward mobility. Goldstein makes an excellent point in saying that people who believe that they are in the owning class because they own a business or are middle managers in a large corporation have to realize that they have more in common with the employees under them than with the bosses above them. (Owners of Chrysler dealerships that were recently terminated, even if they were profitable, should take heed!)
Workers would be will served by having a greater understanding of labor history, including the recent history of resistance to the demands for cutbacks and concessions, because the study of history is useful to any political movement. But people like me, who are having trouble with the idea that the paradigm of struggle rather than cooperation is still useful as a change mechanism--struggle is still a necessary defensive tactic--may have problems digesting the last part of the book.
Perhaps I am having trouble with this approach because I believe that our environmental crises will force everyone, even the bosses, to understand that we have only one planet, we all live on it together and even gated communities will not protect the ultra-wealthy from environmental devastation. The book makes no mention of environmental issues, and for me, that was a glaring omission. I don't believe that any serious political change can be made without factoring the environment into the economic analysis. In a radio interview I conducted with Goldstein several months ago, he expressed concern for the environment, explained how socialism was the answer to our environmental problems, and wondered how capitalists could devastate the environment as they have; after all, ecology and economy come from the same root. I wish he ad brought that viewpoint to bear in the book.
Germany: First New Post-Cold War World Military Power
Rick Rozoff - Global Research, July 17, 2009
The reemergence of Germany as an active military power in Europe and increasingly worldwide occurred entirely under the auspices of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which West Germany joined in 1955 and the East was brought into with reunification in 1990. The citizens of the former German Democratic Republic were given no opportunity to discuss much less vote on the issue.
The first post-World War II deployment of German military forces outside its borders - and outside of NATO's self-defined security zone - in active military roles rather than in multinational exercises and United Nations missions was fostered and initiated under the chancellorship of Christian Democrat Helmut Kohl in the first half of the last decade.
But it was the Social Democrat-Green Party coalition government of Gerhard Schroeder and Joschka Fischer, what the Western press regularly referred to (with no tincture of irony and less understanding of political history) as a Red-Green alliance, that involved Germany in its first wars since the fall of Berlin in 1945. In fact two wars in less than two and a half years.
Chancellor Schroeder and his foreign minister Joschka Fischer provided Tornado warplanes for the 78-day bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in the spring of 1999 and troops for the post-invasion occupation of Afghanistan after October, 2001. Both were NATO operations and the second was in response to the first-ever activation of the Alliance's Article 5 mutual military assistance clause.
Humanitarian Intervention: 1939 And 1999
Writing in his memoirs years after the event, Schroeder justified his participating in the first unprovoked military assault against a European nation that had not threatened any other country since Hitler's blitzkrieg campaigns of 1939-1941 by describing his motivations at the time, 1999:
"Now, on the cusp of the 21st century, the real challenge seemed to me not just to douse the most recent fire in the Balkans, but to bring peace to the region....The goal was exclusively humanitarian."
Sixty years before the war upon which he reflected a predecessor of Schroeder as chancellor of Germany said:
"I ordered the German Air Force to conduct humanitarian warfare....In this campaign I gave an order to spare human beings."
The latter is from Adolf Hitler's speech in Danzig/Gdansk on September 19, 1939.
It's also worth noting that one of the main justifications Hitler used for the invasion of Poland eighteen days before that speech was the alleged abuse and persecution of ethnic minorities. ("More than 1,000,000 people of German blood had in the years 1919-20 to leave their homeland. As always, I attempted to bring about, by the peaceful method of making proposals for revision."}
In an interview with an American television station during the war against Yugoslavia German Foreign Minister Fischer said, "I think tradition and historical experiences, historical fears are very important. And for us now we have to find our role. And this is, on the military level, a very difficult one, but we are taking part in the air campaign. We have ships in the Adriatic."
The air campaign wreaked death and destruction from the skies for 78 days, not sparing factories, bridges, refugee columns, passenger trains, religious processions, apartment complexes, hospitals and the Chinese embassy.
Weakening United Nations, Strengthening NATO
The aggression Fischer endorsed and help to direct, malicious and cowardly as it was, was also conducted without UN authorization and in flagrant violation of the principles upon which the United Nations Organization was formed.
Article 33 of the United Nations Charter states:
"The parties to any dispute, the continuance of which is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security, shall, first of all, seek a solution by negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies or arrangements, or other peaceful means of their own choice."
The mediation indicated is to be conducted as a last resort in the UN Security Council and not unilaterally at NATO Headquarters in Brussels.
The Nuremberg Tribunal convened after the defeat of the last European power that arrogated to itself the right to attack other nations on the continent and to redraw its borders and defined crimes against peace as the worst violation of international law.
Principle Vl of the 1950 Principles of the Nuremberg Tribunal characterized crimes against peace as the "Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances" and as the "Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under."
From The Balkans To South Asia And Middle East: Air War Followed By Ground War, Naval Blockades
Although the tool employed to pry open the door barring the resumption of military aggression in Europe was so-called humanitarian intervention, that rationale would be discarded immediately after 50,000 NATO troops marched into the Serbian province of Kosovo. Few wars in moderns times have not hid behind the pretext of defending the national security and safety of the citizens of the aggressor and of protecting innocents from harm and mistreatment.
The Schroeder-Fischer administration put Germany back into the business of waging war from the skies and on the ground and the country has continued to travel the same route ever since. Troops, armored vehicles and Tornados were transferred to South Asia and warships to the coasts of Lebanon and Somalia.
Humanitarian intervention was an ad hoc ruse employed to launch NATO as an active 'out of area' warfighting machine and a political body to circumvent and replace the United Nations. Once the first part of that objective had been achieved it was dropped as quickly as it had been concocted and wars could then be conducted for traditional reasons: Territorial designs, the acquisition of resources, control of vital transport routes including sea lanes, punishing recalcitrant adversaries, revenge.
In the process Germany became the first major post-Cold War international military power. So much so indeed that even Time Magazine couldn't ignore the transformation - the Transformation as will be seen later - and in January of this year ran a feature entitled "Will Germany's Army Ever Be Ready for Battle?"
In two sentences the Time report summed up how much territory has been traversed since what many in the world thought was the end of German militarism in 1945.
"The German army as it stands today is a relatively young creation, born after a period of demilitarization following the end of World War II. [T]he Bundeswehr has become increasingly engaged in international missions and is coming under pressure to step up its involvement in out-and-out warfare."
The turning point was, of course, 1990.
"Since the 1990s, after reunification, German forces have become more involved in military missions abroad....There are currently 247,000 soldiers enrolled in the Bundeswehr and German troops are now serving all over the world, in places such as Afghanistan, Kosovo, Bosnia and Lebanon." [1]
Why Wars Are Really Launched
By 2006 "Germany [had] about 9,000 soldiers deployed in German missions around the world, a level [that] could increase to...14,000 troops in five theaters of operation." At the time Defense Minister Franz-Josef Jung identified a main purpose of such missions and humanitarian intervention was conspicuously not mentioned:
"Eighty percent of our trade occurs on the seas, which naturally includes the security of energy supplies and raw materials."
The exact words could have been used in 1914 and 1941.
In discussing the White Paper his ministry had just released, one which highlighted the transformation of the Bundeswehr into an international intervention force, Jung reiterated that NATO relations "remain the
basis for Germany and Europe's shared security" and that Germany's alliance with the United States was of "paramount importance" to the nation. [2]
Jung added that "the government needs the ability to use the Bundeswehr inside of Germany...." [3]
Later that year Chancellor Angela Merkel initiated the next step in Germany's expanding militarization and demanded an end to caps on defense spending. "You cannot say that the planned defense budget for the next 20 years is sacrosanct. A German government cannot say, 'Please, don't take part in any new conflicts in the next decades, because we can't afford it.'" [4]
As she spoke German armed forces were deployed on eleven international military missions and would soon begin a twelfth by sending warships and troops to enforce the naval blockade of Lebanon's Mediterranean coast.
The Transformation
A German news report in the autumn of 2006 revealed that "An official plan to modernize the Bundeswehr - to turn it from an unwieldy behemoth created to defend its own borders into a lithe organization ready to take on asymmetric threats around the world - has been underway for several years.
"Known in policy circles simply as 'the transformation,' it is due to be completed by 2010." [5]
That conversion process included acquiring 600 Taurus air-launched cruise missiles. "Taurus is a 1,400–kilogram, all-weather guided missile with a range of more than 350 kilometers. The system will equip Tornado, Eurofighter and F-18 aircraft of the German and Spanish air forces." [6]
It also, in 2006, included plans to spend six billion euros on "new navy frigates, submarines, helicopters and armored personnel vehicles."
In relation to Defense Minister Jung's earlier comments, "Germany's military leadership has especially focused on modernizing the country's navy fleet." [7]
At roughly the same time it was announced that Germany would acquire 405 Puma tanks, "the most modern infantry tank on the market," comparable to the US Abrams tank used in Iraq. This month Berlin formally placed an order for the Pumas and a spokesman for its manufacturer said "NATO countries already equipped with the Krauss-Maffei Wegmann's Leopard tanks - such as Spain, Turkey, Greece and Australia - would be ideal customers." [8]
The Puma, which "sets new global standards for armored vehicles," was first unveiled at the Bundeswehr's fifty-year anniversary celebrations in Munster in 2006. "New types of missions...require a highly mobile weapons system that is ready for international deployment...." [9]
The preceding autumn Germany acquired two new submarines to add to eleven already in the Baltic Sea which then Defense Minister Peter Struck described as "a milestone" for his nation's navy. [10]
The Tornado multirole warplane first used against Yugoslavia in 1999 and since deployed to Afghanistan is reported to be capable of delivering nuclear warheads, including the twenty the US maintains at the German air base at Buechel.
Since 1989 German Tornado fighter-bombers have been based at the Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico in the Southwestern United States. The American base "is the only location where the German Air Force trains aircrews in Tornado aircraft operations and tactics." [11] Last year the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency advocated the continuation of the arrangement, stating that it would "contribute to the foreign policy and national security objectives of the United States by improving the military capabilities of Germany and enhancing standardization and interoperability with U.S. forces." [12]
Bundeswehr In South And Central Asia
In 2006 NATO first requested that the Luftwaffe send Tornado planes to Afghanistan where Berlin has stationed 3,700 troops, the third largest contingent in NATO's International Security Assistance (ISAF) force, with the only the US and Britain providing larger numbers of troops. Germany has its own base in Uzbekistan near Termez and as such has the only foreign forces left in that nation since the US and other NATO forces were expelled in 2005. As of three years ago Germany had transported over 125,000 troops through the base. [13] Last year the German military announced plans to build a 67-kilometer railway line from Uzbekistan to Northern Afghanistan, complementing the air bridge it already operates.
In 2007 Germany delivered the first six Tornados to the war front in Afghanistan even though "More than three-quarters of Germans - 77 percent - said the country shouldn't comply with NATO's request to send Tornado jets to Afghanistan...." [14]
Plans for the warplanes were that they "would operate across the entire country, taking aerial pictures of Taliban positions and passing the information on to other NATO partners who would carry out strikes." [15]
A German defense official at the time finally acknowledged that "What happens in Afghanistan is combat. Our troops have already been engaged in that, also in the north." [16]
Though a year earlier a Defense Ministry spokesman, with no reference to alleged peacekeeping and certainly not to humanitarianism, admitted that "German military aircraft are seeing action in the volatile southern region of Afghanistan" and that "German military aircraft are supporting NATO operations in volatile southern Afghanistan." [17]
No More 'Humanitarian' Bombs
In a Der Spiegel feature called "Slouching Towards Combat," a warning was issued that "He who spies targets, contributes to later bombing attacks with all the consequences that go along with them, including the ominous collateral damages previously known from the war in Kosovo." [18] The admonition fell on deaf ears in Berlin.
The same source had earlier sounded another alarm, one worth quoting in length.
"Now it's Tornado surveillance jets, equipped with cameras - and cannons. The Germans are allowing themselves to get deeper and deeper involved in the Afghanistan conflict, and there is no end in sight.
"Between Christmas and New Year [2006], US C-17 transport planes will unload heavy German Marder tanks at the German military's central headquarters in Mazar-e-Sharif.
"German Tornado jets were already deployed in combat situations about eight years ago - in order to 'avert a humanitarian catastrophe' in the Kosovo conflict, as the Bundestag resolution...stated then. It was the first time that German troops were deployed in combat since World War II. This time the Tornados are meant to fly as reconnaissance planes - but that can of course be changed at any time. They fire armor-shattering uranium munitions from their cannons and drop laser-guided precision bombs on the farms where the Taliban take refuge.
"But they also drop so-called 'general purpose bombs' - regular explosives of the kind commonly used for carpet bombing during World War II and in Vietnam." [19]
In 2007 Germany additionally sent several Kleinfluggeraet Zielortung drones to the war theater, a type "much better suited to relay target information for artillery used by the Dutch troops in their fight against the Taliban...." [20]
At the same time former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, who had first sent German combat troops to Afghanistan and for the first time ever to Asia, urged the current government to "widen its military operation into the southern part of the war-afflicted country." [21]
Early in 2007 Germany signaled its intent to send its most sophisticated battle tank, the Leopard 2A6, to Southern Afghanistan, although German troops are stationed in the until recently comparatively peaceful North.
Last year Germany assumed command of NATO's Rapid Reaction Force in Afghanistan. A news report on that development added that "When the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) deployed in Afghanistan in
early 2002, some 850 German troops were in its ranks.
"That number has increased more than fourfold.
War Of West, NATO, Civilization: From Afghan Capital To North To Southern War Zone
"Confined at first to Kabul, the Germans' mission was widened to the northern part of the country, where they took command in 2006....A few days ago the German Defence Ministry announced it was raising the ceiling on its troop deployments in Afghanistan from 3,500 to 4,500. And the next escalation is due on Monday as Germany takes over the [Rapid] Reaction Force in the north." [22]
Earlier in the year an American presswire report titled "Germany enters Afghan war" said that "Germany...will now send battle forces to Afghanistan.
"NATO has for the second time requested that the German government deploy a unit of 250 battle soldiers to Afghanistan as part of a rapid-response force.....The unit would have to enter bloody combat if needed...." [23]
Der Spiegel reported last October that Germany, which has disguised its role in the war in Afghanistan behind the mask of so-called provincial reconstruction and other civilian projects, had spent over 3 billion euros on the Afghan War and that "Germany's military expenditures in Afghanistan are nearly four times as high as its civilian aid." [24]
This year, as part of Washington's and NATO's massive escalation of the war in Afghanistan, German troop strength is to be boosted from 3,700 to 4,400 no later than next month and Berlin has agreed to send four AWACS for the war effort in South Asia.
As German combat deaths increased to 35 late last month, Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung demonstrated no reservations about sacrificing more soldiers and to any who had misgivings about a war that will soon be eight years old and that is only intensifying he blustered: "My answer is clear: we are in Afghanistan because we have to protect there the security of citizens in Germany." [25] A decade before some reference to the well-being of the local population would have been invoked, however disingenuously.
A week before, Jung, casting aside all use of peacekeeping, reconstruction and other euphemisms, told a German public television station: "If we are attacked we will fight back. The army has the necessary answers. In recent battles we have done well and we will continue to do so in the future." [26]
Former defense minister Volker Ruhe, in referring to the fact that the Bundeswehr is conducting the largest and longest military operation in its history, said: "It is delusive if the Government pretends that the
Afghanistan operation is a sort of armed development assistance. It is a war of NATO, of the West, of civilisation...." [27]
Afghanistan and Central Asia are not the only places where the German military is waging a "war of NATO, of the West, of civilisation."
Battle Duty: Germany Returns To Middle East
After Israel's war in Lebanon in the summer of 2006 NATO nations began a naval blockade of the country's coast. It was announced shortly thereafter that "Germany is to take the lead in patrolling the Lebanese coast and the German parliament is expected to vote next week on the historic deployment of the German army in the Middle East.
"Up to 3,000 troops and some 13 vessels are then planned to be sent to the troubled region. They are to prevent sea-based arms smuggling mainly from Syria to Hezbollah militants." [28]
That is, the German military returned to the Middle East for the first time since World War II.
Describing the mission as it was being planned, Defense Minister Jung stated, "German soldiers have to be prepared against the will of ships' captains to board ships suspected of smuggling weapons. In this regard, one can speak of battle duty." [29]
In late 2008 there were 1,000 German troops stationed on eight ships off the Lebanese coast.
By February of last year "Germany contributed 2,400 personnel, including 625 soldiers, to the naval mission and led the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) for 17 months, with a maritime force consisting of among others two frigates and two supply ships. The multinational force also includes ships from France, Spain and Portugal." [30]
Two years later a Lebanese news report, "German Tanks to Lebanon to Control Border with Syria," said that "Germany has decided to provide Lebanon with 50 Leopard tanks in addition to other military equipment to upgrade its border control with Syria" and that "a German military delegation is expected to arrive in Lebanon early in 2009 for discussions with Lebanese military officials regarding providing the Lebanese army with more military supplies." [31]
Since the early 1990s Germany has not so much sold but given Israel six Dolphin submarines capable of launching nuclear-tipped missiles. One of those submarines recently crossed the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean in what Reuters characterized as a "signal to Iran."
Germany has military personnel assigned to NATO in Kuwait, Jordan and Iraq, where in the latter instance they are part of the NATO Training Mission - Iraq in Baghdad.
Beginning in 2006 major German news sources revealed that the foreign intelligence agency BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst) during the Schroeder-Fischer years had provided the US information on bombing targets in Iraq leading up to and during the attack against the nation in 2003.
If so, it would represent nothing new. More than two years before, in February of 2001, the BND released a report which stated it possessed "evidence" that "Iraq has resumed its nuclear programme and may be capable of producing an atomic bomb in three years" and was working on chemical and biological weapons. [32]
Berlin also trains Iraqi and Afghan officers and troops on its own soil.
Germany Military Returns To Africa And Targets Gaza
Germany has provided troops for the NATO mission in the Darfur region of Sudan and the European Union deployment in Congo as well as a nominal force for the EU's military role in Chad and the Central African Republic in the conflict-ridden triangle of those two nations and Sudan.
In 2005 the government of Togo, a former German colony, accused Berlin of complicity in plotting its overthrow. Three years earlier Germany sent troops to join French, British and American allies in Ivory Coast after an invasion of and coup attempt in that nation.
Late last year Germany joined the European naval deployment in the Horn of Africa to complement its involvement with the NATO mission there. The Cabinet authorized "as many as 1,400 German Navy soldiers and one warship go to the Gulf of Aden off the coast of Somalia as part of a joint EU effort" which "together with German soldiers involved in Enduring Freedom and NATO's Allied Provider missions, could be moved back and forth at will...." [33]
Before the deployment was authorized defense chief Jung said "German warships should be used against pirates wherever German interests are threatened." [34]
During and immediately after the Israeli offensive in Gaza from December 27, 2008-January 18 2009 it was announced that "Germany plans to send experts to detect Gaza tunnels" [35] and that "Technical experts from Germany are to travel to Egypt in the coming days to help secure its border with the Gaza Strip." [36]
In the middle of the war Chancellor Angela Merkel "suggested German
peacekeepers be sent to Gaza" and Eckart von Klaeden, a foreign policy spokesman for Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, said "the use of German troops was feasible but they must have 'robust' powers." [37]
In January a meeting was held in London of the Gaza Counter-Arms Smuggling Initiative (GCASI) and was followed up last month in Ottawa, Canada.
It was reported in a story called "Canada hosts a summit of NATO countries participating in the Israeli siege of Gaza Strip" that the second meeting of the Gaza Counter-Arms Smuggling Initiative was held with the "declared goal of tightening the Israeli siege and blockade of the Gaza Strip." [38]
The GCASI members are Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, the United Kingdom and the United States.
While the assault on Gaza was still underway a feature called "Israeli unilateral ceasefire to pave the way for deployment of NATO forces" offered this analysis of the role that the Gaza Counter-Arms Smuggling Initiative was intended to play:
"Germany, Great Britain and France already offered to send their naval forces to guard the Gaza Strip coastal waters. With the naval forces of leading European NATO powers already deployed off the coast of Lebanon and – allegedly to thwart pirates – off the Somali coast, the extension of NATO presence to the coastal waters of the Gaza Strip is designed to create a permanent hold on the entire area from the Horn of Africa and beyond, through the Suez Canal and up the eastern Mediterranean coast." [39]
Training Armed Forces For New Caucasus Wars
A German Defense Ministry envoy visited the Georgia capital of Tbilisi this January and met with Deputy Defense Minister Giorgi Muchaidze, who said that "Georgia approaches closer to NATO standards” in large part because "Germany has been helping Georgia’s Defence Ministry for a long time" and "Up to 2,000 officers were trained in Germany." [40]
Germany conducts comparable military training for the armed forces of Azerbaijan, like Georgia which fought a war with Russia last August a nation that may resume armed hostilities any day over so-called frozen conflicts in the South Caucasus.
In late May of this year Georgian Deputy Defense Minister Giorgi Muchaidze paid a three-day visit to Berlin where "The sides held military and political negotiations in the framework of the cooperation of Defense Ministries of Georgia and Germany in 2009. The parties also discussed the situation in Georgia after the August war...." [41]
Article 5 War Clause: Defending NATO Members, Allies From Baltic To Black Sea
In June Defense Minister Jung was in Lithuania preparatory to Germany resuming its command of the NATO Baltic air patrol and he and his Lithuanian counterpart "agreed on the need to implement the commitment on Ukraine and Georgia's future membership of the alliance."
As to what support for Ukraine's and Georgia's "NATO aspirations" entailed, Jung said "this process must involve all new members of the alliance, whereas NATO itself must ensure collective defence and strengthen its military response forces so that it can give an immediate response when the need arises." [42]
Defending Berlin With Warships Off Cape Town
In 2006 Germany led 19-day joint military maneuvers in South Africa where Berlin has long-standing ties to the defense establishment going back to the longstanding cooperation between West Germany and the former apartheid regime there. The exercises off Cape Town included an estimated 1,300 soldiers and sailors, warplanes and warships.
A description of the war games said "Two of the world's most advanced warships, South Africa's SAS Amatola and Germany's FGS Hamburg, together with fighter aircraft were protecting a virtual Berlin from attack.
"Berlin was successfully defended." [43]
A year later NATO held naval exercises in South Africa in which warships from the navies of Canada, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal and the United States participated.
The drills marked the "the first time that South Africa engage[d] its newly acquired frigates as well as its submarines in a training exercise with foreign forces in local waters.
"South Africa's new warships were acquired from a German company." [44]
....
The road from Bosnia and Kosovo has been a long one for the Bundeswehr. It has crossed four continents and no less than fourteen war and conflict zones. It has permitted a military buildup unimaginable a generation ago and has led to German military forces being dispersed to many nations and regions they had never been to before.
It has also permitted Germany to become the third largest arms exporter in the world and the supplier of advanced weapons - tanks, warplanes, submarines - to scores of nations.
Part I
New NATO: Germany Returns To World Military Stage
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/message/40658
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14332
http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2009/07/12/new-nato-germany-returns-to-world-military-stage-part-1-by-rick-rozoff/
Part II
From WW II To WW III: Global NATO And Remilitarized Germany
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/message/40691
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14377
http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2009/07/14/from-ww-ii-to-ww-iii-global-nato-and-remilitarized-germany-part-ii-by-rick-rozoff/
Notes
1) Time Magazine, June 27, 2009
2) Deutsche Welle, October 25, 2006
3) Ibid
4) Deutsche Welle, September 7, 2006
5) Ibid
6) Defense News (US), November 10, 2005
7) Die Welt, August 25, 2006
8) United Press International, July 8, 2009
9) Agence France-Press, May 8, 2006
10) Xinhua News Agency, October 19, 2005
11) Defense Security Cooperation Agency, July 18, 2008
12) Ibid
13) Der Spiegel, Febuary 8, 2009
14) Deutsche Presse-Agentur, February 7, 2007
15) Ibid
16) Ibid
17) Pakistan Tribune, October 5, 2006
18) Der Spiegel, December 22, 2006
19) Der Spiegel, December 21, 2006
20) United Press International, March 12, 2007
21) Islamic Republic News Agency, August 19, 2007
22) Deutsche Presse-Agentur, June 29, 2008
23) United Press International, January 31, 2008
24) Der Spiegel, October 12, 2008
25) Associated Press, July 2, 2009
26) Agence France-Presse, June 24, 2009
27) Defense Professionals (Germany), June 26, 2009
28) Deutsche Welle, September 8, 2006
29) Deutsche Presse-Agentur, August 26, 2006
30) Deutsche Welle, February 29, 2008
31) Naharnet, December 23, 2008
32) BBC News, February 25, 2001
33) Deutsche Welle, December 10, 2008
34) Der Spiegel, November 21, 2008
35) Deutsche Presse-Agentur, January 19, 2009
36) Deutsche Presse-Agentur, January 14, 2009
37) Deutsche Presse-Agentur, January 7, 2009
38) Al-Jazeerah, June 11, 2009
39) Arab Monitor, January 17, 2009
40) Trend News Agency, January 14, 2009
41) Trend News Agency, June 2, 2009
42) Interfax-Ukraine, June 10, 2009
43) Xinhua News Agency, March 14, 2006
44) BuaNews (South Africa), August 28, 2007
The reemergence of Germany as an active military power in Europe and increasingly worldwide occurred entirely under the auspices of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which West Germany joined in 1955 and the East was brought into with reunification in 1990. The citizens of the former German Democratic Republic were given no opportunity to discuss much less vote on the issue.
The first post-World War II deployment of German military forces outside its borders - and outside of NATO's self-defined security zone - in active military roles rather than in multinational exercises and United Nations missions was fostered and initiated under the chancellorship of Christian Democrat Helmut Kohl in the first half of the last decade.
But it was the Social Democrat-Green Party coalition government of Gerhard Schroeder and Joschka Fischer, what the Western press regularly referred to (with no tincture of irony and less understanding of political history) as a Red-Green alliance, that involved Germany in its first wars since the fall of Berlin in 1945. In fact two wars in less than two and a half years.
Chancellor Schroeder and his foreign minister Joschka Fischer provided Tornado warplanes for the 78-day bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in the spring of 1999 and troops for the post-invasion occupation of Afghanistan after October, 2001. Both were NATO operations and the second was in response to the first-ever activation of the Alliance's Article 5 mutual military assistance clause.
Humanitarian Intervention: 1939 And 1999
Writing in his memoirs years after the event, Schroeder justified his participating in the first unprovoked military assault against a European nation that had not threatened any other country since Hitler's blitzkrieg campaigns of 1939-1941 by describing his motivations at the time, 1999:
"Now, on the cusp of the 21st century, the real challenge seemed to me not just to douse the most recent fire in the Balkans, but to bring peace to the region....The goal was exclusively humanitarian."
Sixty years before the war upon which he reflected a predecessor of Schroeder as chancellor of Germany said:
"I ordered the German Air Force to conduct humanitarian warfare....In this campaign I gave an order to spare human beings."
The latter is from Adolf Hitler's speech in Danzig/Gdansk on September 19, 1939.
It's also worth noting that one of the main justifications Hitler used for the invasion of Poland eighteen days before that speech was the alleged abuse and persecution of ethnic minorities. ("More than 1,000,000 people of German blood had in the years 1919-20 to leave their homeland. As always, I attempted to bring about, by the peaceful method of making proposals for revision."}
In an interview with an American television station during the war against Yugoslavia German Foreign Minister Fischer said, "I think tradition and historical experiences, historical fears are very important. And for us now we have to find our role. And this is, on the military level, a very difficult one, but we are taking part in the air campaign. We have ships in the Adriatic."
The air campaign wreaked death and destruction from the skies for 78 days, not sparing factories, bridges, refugee columns, passenger trains, religious processions, apartment complexes, hospitals and the Chinese embassy.
Weakening United Nations, Strengthening NATO
The aggression Fischer endorsed and help to direct, malicious and cowardly as it was, was also conducted without UN authorization and in flagrant violation of the principles upon which the United Nations Organization was formed.
Article 33 of the United Nations Charter states:
"The parties to any dispute, the continuance of which is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security, shall, first of all, seek a solution by negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies or arrangements, or other peaceful means of their own choice."
The mediation indicated is to be conducted as a last resort in the UN Security Council and not unilaterally at NATO Headquarters in Brussels.
The Nuremberg Tribunal convened after the defeat of the last European power that arrogated to itself the right to attack other nations on the continent and to redraw its borders and defined crimes against peace as the worst violation of international law.
Principle Vl of the 1950 Principles of the Nuremberg Tribunal characterized crimes against peace as the "Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances" and as the "Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under."
From The Balkans To South Asia And Middle East: Air War Followed By Ground War, Naval Blockades
Although the tool employed to pry open the door barring the resumption of military aggression in Europe was so-called humanitarian intervention, that rationale would be discarded immediately after 50,000 NATO troops marched into the Serbian province of Kosovo. Few wars in moderns times have not hid behind the pretext of defending the national security and safety of the citizens of the aggressor and of protecting innocents from harm and mistreatment.
The Schroeder-Fischer administration put Germany back into the business of waging war from the skies and on the ground and the country has continued to travel the same route ever since. Troops, armored vehicles and Tornados were transferred to South Asia and warships to the coasts of Lebanon and Somalia.
Humanitarian intervention was an ad hoc ruse employed to launch NATO as an active 'out of area' warfighting machine and a political body to circumvent and replace the United Nations. Once the first part of that objective had been achieved it was dropped as quickly as it had been concocted and wars could then be conducted for traditional reasons: Territorial designs, the acquisition of resources, control of vital transport routes including sea lanes, punishing recalcitrant adversaries, revenge.
In the process Germany became the first major post-Cold War international military power. So much so indeed that even Time Magazine couldn't ignore the transformation - the Transformation as will be seen later - and in January of this year ran a feature entitled "Will Germany's Army Ever Be Ready for Battle?"
In two sentences the Time report summed up how much territory has been traversed since what many in the world thought was the end of German militarism in 1945.
"The German army as it stands today is a relatively young creation, born after a period of demilitarization following the end of World War II. [T]he Bundeswehr has become increasingly engaged in international missions and is coming under pressure to step up its involvement in out-and-out warfare."
The turning point was, of course, 1990.
"Since the 1990s, after reunification, German forces have become more involved in military missions abroad....There are currently 247,000 soldiers enrolled in the Bundeswehr and German troops are now serving all over the world, in places such as Afghanistan, Kosovo, Bosnia and Lebanon." [1]
Why Wars Are Really Launched
By 2006 "Germany [had] about 9,000 soldiers deployed in German missions around the world, a level [that] could increase to...14,000 troops in five theaters of operation." At the time Defense Minister Franz-Josef Jung identified a main purpose of such missions and humanitarian intervention was conspicuously not mentioned:
"Eighty percent of our trade occurs on the seas, which naturally includes the security of energy supplies and raw materials."
The exact words could have been used in 1914 and 1941.
In discussing the White Paper his ministry had just released, one which highlighted the transformation of the Bundeswehr into an international intervention force, Jung reiterated that NATO relations "remain the
basis for Germany and Europe's shared security" and that Germany's alliance with the United States was of "paramount importance" to the nation. [2]
Jung added that "the government needs the ability to use the Bundeswehr inside of Germany...." [3]
Later that year Chancellor Angela Merkel initiated the next step in Germany's expanding militarization and demanded an end to caps on defense spending. "You cannot say that the planned defense budget for the next 20 years is sacrosanct. A German government cannot say, 'Please, don't take part in any new conflicts in the next decades, because we can't afford it.'" [4]
As she spoke German armed forces were deployed on eleven international military missions and would soon begin a twelfth by sending warships and troops to enforce the naval blockade of Lebanon's Mediterranean coast.
The Transformation
A German news report in the autumn of 2006 revealed that "An official plan to modernize the Bundeswehr - to turn it from an unwieldy behemoth created to defend its own borders into a lithe organization ready to take on asymmetric threats around the world - has been underway for several years.
"Known in policy circles simply as 'the transformation,' it is due to be completed by 2010." [5]
That conversion process included acquiring 600 Taurus air-launched cruise missiles. "Taurus is a 1,400–kilogram, all-weather guided missile with a range of more than 350 kilometers. The system will equip Tornado, Eurofighter and F-18 aircraft of the German and Spanish air forces." [6]
It also, in 2006, included plans to spend six billion euros on "new navy frigates, submarines, helicopters and armored personnel vehicles."
In relation to Defense Minister Jung's earlier comments, "Germany's military leadership has especially focused on modernizing the country's navy fleet." [7]
At roughly the same time it was announced that Germany would acquire 405 Puma tanks, "the most modern infantry tank on the market," comparable to the US Abrams tank used in Iraq. This month Berlin formally placed an order for the Pumas and a spokesman for its manufacturer said "NATO countries already equipped with the Krauss-Maffei Wegmann's Leopard tanks - such as Spain, Turkey, Greece and Australia - would be ideal customers." [8]
The Puma, which "sets new global standards for armored vehicles," was first unveiled at the Bundeswehr's fifty-year anniversary celebrations in Munster in 2006. "New types of missions...require a highly mobile weapons system that is ready for international deployment...." [9]
The preceding autumn Germany acquired two new submarines to add to eleven already in the Baltic Sea which then Defense Minister Peter Struck described as "a milestone" for his nation's navy. [10]
The Tornado multirole warplane first used against Yugoslavia in 1999 and since deployed to Afghanistan is reported to be capable of delivering nuclear warheads, including the twenty the US maintains at the German air base at Buechel.
Since 1989 German Tornado fighter-bombers have been based at the Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico in the Southwestern United States. The American base "is the only location where the German Air Force trains aircrews in Tornado aircraft operations and tactics." [11] Last year the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency advocated the continuation of the arrangement, stating that it would "contribute to the foreign policy and national security objectives of the United States by improving the military capabilities of Germany and enhancing standardization and interoperability with U.S. forces." [12]
Bundeswehr In South And Central Asia
In 2006 NATO first requested that the Luftwaffe send Tornado planes to Afghanistan where Berlin has stationed 3,700 troops, the third largest contingent in NATO's International Security Assistance (ISAF) force, with the only the US and Britain providing larger numbers of troops. Germany has its own base in Uzbekistan near Termez and as such has the only foreign forces left in that nation since the US and other NATO forces were expelled in 2005. As of three years ago Germany had transported over 125,000 troops through the base. [13] Last year the German military announced plans to build a 67-kilometer railway line from Uzbekistan to Northern Afghanistan, complementing the air bridge it already operates.
In 2007 Germany delivered the first six Tornados to the war front in Afghanistan even though "More than three-quarters of Germans - 77 percent - said the country shouldn't comply with NATO's request to send Tornado jets to Afghanistan...." [14]
Plans for the warplanes were that they "would operate across the entire country, taking aerial pictures of Taliban positions and passing the information on to other NATO partners who would carry out strikes." [15]
A German defense official at the time finally acknowledged that "What happens in Afghanistan is combat. Our troops have already been engaged in that, also in the north." [16]
Though a year earlier a Defense Ministry spokesman, with no reference to alleged peacekeeping and certainly not to humanitarianism, admitted that "German military aircraft are seeing action in the volatile southern region of Afghanistan" and that "German military aircraft are supporting NATO operations in volatile southern Afghanistan." [17]
No More 'Humanitarian' Bombs
In a Der Spiegel feature called "Slouching Towards Combat," a warning was issued that "He who spies targets, contributes to later bombing attacks with all the consequences that go along with them, including the ominous collateral damages previously known from the war in Kosovo." [18] The admonition fell on deaf ears in Berlin.
The same source had earlier sounded another alarm, one worth quoting in length.
"Now it's Tornado surveillance jets, equipped with cameras - and cannons. The Germans are allowing themselves to get deeper and deeper involved in the Afghanistan conflict, and there is no end in sight.
"Between Christmas and New Year [2006], US C-17 transport planes will unload heavy German Marder tanks at the German military's central headquarters in Mazar-e-Sharif.
"German Tornado jets were already deployed in combat situations about eight years ago - in order to 'avert a humanitarian catastrophe' in the Kosovo conflict, as the Bundestag resolution...stated then. It was the first time that German troops were deployed in combat since World War II. This time the Tornados are meant to fly as reconnaissance planes - but that can of course be changed at any time. They fire armor-shattering uranium munitions from their cannons and drop laser-guided precision bombs on the farms where the Taliban take refuge.
"But they also drop so-called 'general purpose bombs' - regular explosives of the kind commonly used for carpet bombing during World War II and in Vietnam." [19]
In 2007 Germany additionally sent several Kleinfluggeraet Zielortung drones to the war theater, a type "much better suited to relay target information for artillery used by the Dutch troops in their fight against the Taliban...." [20]
At the same time former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, who had first sent German combat troops to Afghanistan and for the first time ever to Asia, urged the current government to "widen its military operation into the southern part of the war-afflicted country." [21]
Early in 2007 Germany signaled its intent to send its most sophisticated battle tank, the Leopard 2A6, to Southern Afghanistan, although German troops are stationed in the until recently comparatively peaceful North.
Last year Germany assumed command of NATO's Rapid Reaction Force in Afghanistan. A news report on that development added that "When the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) deployed in Afghanistan in
early 2002, some 850 German troops were in its ranks.
"That number has increased more than fourfold.
War Of West, NATO, Civilization: From Afghan Capital To North To Southern War Zone
"Confined at first to Kabul, the Germans' mission was widened to the northern part of the country, where they took command in 2006....A few days ago the German Defence Ministry announced it was raising the ceiling on its troop deployments in Afghanistan from 3,500 to 4,500. And the next escalation is due on Monday as Germany takes over the [Rapid] Reaction Force in the north." [22]
Earlier in the year an American presswire report titled "Germany enters Afghan war" said that "Germany...will now send battle forces to Afghanistan.
"NATO has for the second time requested that the German government deploy a unit of 250 battle soldiers to Afghanistan as part of a rapid-response force.....The unit would have to enter bloody combat if needed...." [23]
Der Spiegel reported last October that Germany, which has disguised its role in the war in Afghanistan behind the mask of so-called provincial reconstruction and other civilian projects, had spent over 3 billion euros on the Afghan War and that "Germany's military expenditures in Afghanistan are nearly four times as high as its civilian aid." [24]
This year, as part of Washington's and NATO's massive escalation of the war in Afghanistan, German troop strength is to be boosted from 3,700 to 4,400 no later than next month and Berlin has agreed to send four AWACS for the war effort in South Asia.
As German combat deaths increased to 35 late last month, Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung demonstrated no reservations about sacrificing more soldiers and to any who had misgivings about a war that will soon be eight years old and that is only intensifying he blustered: "My answer is clear: we are in Afghanistan because we have to protect there the security of citizens in Germany." [25] A decade before some reference to the well-being of the local population would have been invoked, however disingenuously.
A week before, Jung, casting aside all use of peacekeeping, reconstruction and other euphemisms, told a German public television station: "If we are attacked we will fight back. The army has the necessary answers. In recent battles we have done well and we will continue to do so in the future." [26]
Former defense minister Volker Ruhe, in referring to the fact that the Bundeswehr is conducting the largest and longest military operation in its history, said: "It is delusive if the Government pretends that the
Afghanistan operation is a sort of armed development assistance. It is a war of NATO, of the West, of civilisation...." [27]
Afghanistan and Central Asia are not the only places where the German military is waging a "war of NATO, of the West, of civilisation."
Battle Duty: Germany Returns To Middle East
After Israel's war in Lebanon in the summer of 2006 NATO nations began a naval blockade of the country's coast. It was announced shortly thereafter that "Germany is to take the lead in patrolling the Lebanese coast and the German parliament is expected to vote next week on the historic deployment of the German army in the Middle East.
"Up to 3,000 troops and some 13 vessels are then planned to be sent to the troubled region. They are to prevent sea-based arms smuggling mainly from Syria to Hezbollah militants." [28]
That is, the German military returned to the Middle East for the first time since World War II.
Describing the mission as it was being planned, Defense Minister Jung stated, "German soldiers have to be prepared against the will of ships' captains to board ships suspected of smuggling weapons. In this regard, one can speak of battle duty." [29]
In late 2008 there were 1,000 German troops stationed on eight ships off the Lebanese coast.
By February of last year "Germany contributed 2,400 personnel, including 625 soldiers, to the naval mission and led the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) for 17 months, with a maritime force consisting of among others two frigates and two supply ships. The multinational force also includes ships from France, Spain and Portugal." [30]
Two years later a Lebanese news report, "German Tanks to Lebanon to Control Border with Syria," said that "Germany has decided to provide Lebanon with 50 Leopard tanks in addition to other military equipment to upgrade its border control with Syria" and that "a German military delegation is expected to arrive in Lebanon early in 2009 for discussions with Lebanese military officials regarding providing the Lebanese army with more military supplies." [31]
Since the early 1990s Germany has not so much sold but given Israel six Dolphin submarines capable of launching nuclear-tipped missiles. One of those submarines recently crossed the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean in what Reuters characterized as a "signal to Iran."
Germany has military personnel assigned to NATO in Kuwait, Jordan and Iraq, where in the latter instance they are part of the NATO Training Mission - Iraq in Baghdad.
Beginning in 2006 major German news sources revealed that the foreign intelligence agency BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst) during the Schroeder-Fischer years had provided the US information on bombing targets in Iraq leading up to and during the attack against the nation in 2003.
If so, it would represent nothing new. More than two years before, in February of 2001, the BND released a report which stated it possessed "evidence" that "Iraq has resumed its nuclear programme and may be capable of producing an atomic bomb in three years" and was working on chemical and biological weapons. [32]
Berlin also trains Iraqi and Afghan officers and troops on its own soil.
Germany Military Returns To Africa And Targets Gaza
Germany has provided troops for the NATO mission in the Darfur region of Sudan and the European Union deployment in Congo as well as a nominal force for the EU's military role in Chad and the Central African Republic in the conflict-ridden triangle of those two nations and Sudan.
In 2005 the government of Togo, a former German colony, accused Berlin of complicity in plotting its overthrow. Three years earlier Germany sent troops to join French, British and American allies in Ivory Coast after an invasion of and coup attempt in that nation.
Late last year Germany joined the European naval deployment in the Horn of Africa to complement its involvement with the NATO mission there. The Cabinet authorized "as many as 1,400 German Navy soldiers and one warship go to the Gulf of Aden off the coast of Somalia as part of a joint EU effort" which "together with German soldiers involved in Enduring Freedom and NATO's Allied Provider missions, could be moved back and forth at will...." [33]
Before the deployment was authorized defense chief Jung said "German warships should be used against pirates wherever German interests are threatened." [34]
During and immediately after the Israeli offensive in Gaza from December 27, 2008-January 18 2009 it was announced that "Germany plans to send experts to detect Gaza tunnels" [35] and that "Technical experts from Germany are to travel to Egypt in the coming days to help secure its border with the Gaza Strip." [36]
In the middle of the war Chancellor Angela Merkel "suggested German
peacekeepers be sent to Gaza" and Eckart von Klaeden, a foreign policy spokesman for Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, said "the use of German troops was feasible but they must have 'robust' powers." [37]
In January a meeting was held in London of the Gaza Counter-Arms Smuggling Initiative (GCASI) and was followed up last month in Ottawa, Canada.
It was reported in a story called "Canada hosts a summit of NATO countries participating in the Israeli siege of Gaza Strip" that the second meeting of the Gaza Counter-Arms Smuggling Initiative was held with the "declared goal of tightening the Israeli siege and blockade of the Gaza Strip." [38]
The GCASI members are Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, the United Kingdom and the United States.
While the assault on Gaza was still underway a feature called "Israeli unilateral ceasefire to pave the way for deployment of NATO forces" offered this analysis of the role that the Gaza Counter-Arms Smuggling Initiative was intended to play:
"Germany, Great Britain and France already offered to send their naval forces to guard the Gaza Strip coastal waters. With the naval forces of leading European NATO powers already deployed off the coast of Lebanon and – allegedly to thwart pirates – off the Somali coast, the extension of NATO presence to the coastal waters of the Gaza Strip is designed to create a permanent hold on the entire area from the Horn of Africa and beyond, through the Suez Canal and up the eastern Mediterranean coast." [39]
Training Armed Forces For New Caucasus Wars
A German Defense Ministry envoy visited the Georgia capital of Tbilisi this January and met with Deputy Defense Minister Giorgi Muchaidze, who said that "Georgia approaches closer to NATO standards” in large part because "Germany has been helping Georgia’s Defence Ministry for a long time" and "Up to 2,000 officers were trained in Germany." [40]
Germany conducts comparable military training for the armed forces of Azerbaijan, like Georgia which fought a war with Russia last August a nation that may resume armed hostilities any day over so-called frozen conflicts in the South Caucasus.
In late May of this year Georgian Deputy Defense Minister Giorgi Muchaidze paid a three-day visit to Berlin where "The sides held military and political negotiations in the framework of the cooperation of Defense Ministries of Georgia and Germany in 2009. The parties also discussed the situation in Georgia after the August war...." [41]
Article 5 War Clause: Defending NATO Members, Allies From Baltic To Black Sea
In June Defense Minister Jung was in Lithuania preparatory to Germany resuming its command of the NATO Baltic air patrol and he and his Lithuanian counterpart "agreed on the need to implement the commitment on Ukraine and Georgia's future membership of the alliance."
As to what support for Ukraine's and Georgia's "NATO aspirations" entailed, Jung said "this process must involve all new members of the alliance, whereas NATO itself must ensure collective defence and strengthen its military response forces so that it can give an immediate response when the need arises." [42]
Defending Berlin With Warships Off Cape Town
In 2006 Germany led 19-day joint military maneuvers in South Africa where Berlin has long-standing ties to the defense establishment going back to the longstanding cooperation between West Germany and the former apartheid regime there. The exercises off Cape Town included an estimated 1,300 soldiers and sailors, warplanes and warships.
A description of the war games said "Two of the world's most advanced warships, South Africa's SAS Amatola and Germany's FGS Hamburg, together with fighter aircraft were protecting a virtual Berlin from attack.
"Berlin was successfully defended." [43]
A year later NATO held naval exercises in South Africa in which warships from the navies of Canada, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal and the United States participated.
The drills marked the "the first time that South Africa engage[d] its newly acquired frigates as well as its submarines in a training exercise with foreign forces in local waters.
"South Africa's new warships were acquired from a German company." [44]
....
The road from Bosnia and Kosovo has been a long one for the Bundeswehr. It has crossed four continents and no less than fourteen war and conflict zones. It has permitted a military buildup unimaginable a generation ago and has led to German military forces being dispersed to many nations and regions they had never been to before.
It has also permitted Germany to become the third largest arms exporter in the world and the supplier of advanced weapons - tanks, warplanes, submarines - to scores of nations.
Part I
New NATO: Germany Returns To World Military Stage
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/message/40658
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14332
http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2009/07/12/new-nato-germany-returns-to-world-military-stage-part-1-by-rick-rozoff/
Part II
From WW II To WW III: Global NATO And Remilitarized Germany
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/message/40691
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14377
http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2009/07/14/from-ww-ii-to-ww-iii-global-nato-and-remilitarized-germany-part-ii-by-rick-rozoff/
Notes
1) Time Magazine, June 27, 2009
2) Deutsche Welle, October 25, 2006
3) Ibid
4) Deutsche Welle, September 7, 2006
5) Ibid
6) Defense News (US), November 10, 2005
7) Die Welt, August 25, 2006
8) United Press International, July 8, 2009
9) Agence France-Press, May 8, 2006
10) Xinhua News Agency, October 19, 2005
11) Defense Security Cooperation Agency, July 18, 2008
12) Ibid
13) Der Spiegel, Febuary 8, 2009
14) Deutsche Presse-Agentur, February 7, 2007
15) Ibid
16) Ibid
17) Pakistan Tribune, October 5, 2006
18) Der Spiegel, December 22, 2006
19) Der Spiegel, December 21, 2006
20) United Press International, March 12, 2007
21) Islamic Republic News Agency, August 19, 2007
22) Deutsche Presse-Agentur, June 29, 2008
23) United Press International, January 31, 2008
24) Der Spiegel, October 12, 2008
25) Associated Press, July 2, 2009
26) Agence France-Presse, June 24, 2009
27) Defense Professionals (Germany), June 26, 2009
28) Deutsche Welle, September 8, 2006
29) Deutsche Presse-Agentur, August 26, 2006
30) Deutsche Welle, February 29, 2008
31) Naharnet, December 23, 2008
32) BBC News, February 25, 2001
33) Deutsche Welle, December 10, 2008
34) Der Spiegel, November 21, 2008
35) Deutsche Presse-Agentur, January 19, 2009
36) Deutsche Presse-Agentur, January 14, 2009
37) Deutsche Presse-Agentur, January 7, 2009
38) Al-Jazeerah, June 11, 2009
39) Arab Monitor, January 17, 2009
40) Trend News Agency, January 14, 2009
41) Trend News Agency, June 2, 2009
42) Interfax-Ukraine, June 10, 2009
43) Xinhua News Agency, March 14, 2006
44) BuaNews (South Africa), August 28, 2007
US Strategy of Total Energy Control over the European Union and Eurasia - Nabucco Turkey EU and Obama Geopolitics
F. William Engdahl - Global Research, July 17, 2009
Russia Washington
One of his first foreign visits as new President took Barack Obama to
Nabucco is an integral part of a
Leading Republican Party foreign policy figure, Senator Richard Lugar, went as the Obama Administration’s representative to
The Nabucco project when and if finished would take gas from the Caspian region, Middle East via
Until the Obama-Erdogan talks Nabucco had been stalled largely by Turkish lack of interest. Now that all appears to be changing and
Sensitive geopolitics
The importance of Nabucco to
At their hearing in
What the Democrat Senator did not mention is that those countries were on the “faultlines of our geopolitics” because
Gas for Nabucco?
The major problem with Nabucco now is not the willingness of
Until now the main gas supply for Nabucco should be
But now
The Gazprom-Azeri deal states that other purchasers must outbid Gazprom, giving Russia a possible lever to stall or even to kill the Nabucco project, (which is intended to decrease Europe’s reliance on Russia’s gas), by pushing the price of gas from Shah Deniz up too high to make Nabucco profitable on commercial terms as a rival to Russia’s South Stream.
To keep hopes alive for the completion of a viable
One possible answer is
Senator Lugar, just back from his trip to
The second option, which also happens to hold the world’s second largest reserves of identified natural gas next to
Uuuuuuhaaa. Ouch! That doesn’t quite fit into the geopolitically correct map used in
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan invited both
For its part, Teheran is enjoying the cat-and-mouse game: "European companies understand the fact that the project will be economically justified in case Iran is the supplier,"" Seyyed Reza Kasaiizadeh, National Iranian Gas Export Company’s managing director told press on the day of the Ankara Nabucco signing. He claimed, rightly, that supplying the Nabucco pipeline with
Richard Morningstar, the State Department's Special Envoy for Eurasian Energy, told the Senate that
Why
The natural route to bring Iranian gas to Europe via Nabucco goes through
It seems Obama’s advisers are playing a far more subtle geopolitical game than did Cheney and Bush. By holding out several juicy financial carrots, to Turkey, to Armenia, even to Teheran if it were to abandon its nuclear ambitions, Washington hopes to throw a giant monkey wrench into the attempt of Moscow to retain a significant control over Eurasian energy supplies to the EU, a major lever to ensure more stable EU-Russian relations amid growing threats to Russia’s security from Washington’s misnamed missile defense shield being built in Poland and the Czech Republic.
Honduras : L’idéologie au service du Putsch
Serge Charbonneau
Des faits
Quelques semaines avant le Coup d’État en Amérique centrale, il y a eu l’élection présidentielle iranienne. Ahmadinejad était donné favori dans les sondages et plusieurs analystes sérieux le donnaient gagnant, même au premier tour.
Malgré sa victoire prévisible, dans les secondes qui ont suivi les premières lueurs du résultat, les médias occidentaux ont crié au loup et se sont indignés à en déchirer leur chemise, d’une présumée fraude.
La fraude, un magnifique prétexte pour ébranler la dictature religieuse islamique et perturber ce pays qu’on aimerait bien envahir.
Nos soldats de l’information idéologique globale ont rapidement pris leurs armes médiatiques pour donner toute l’eau possible au moulin de l’opposition pour parvenir à déstabiliser le régime des mollahs.
Une remarquable campagne d’acharnement médiatique d’une intensité frénétique, constante et soutenue fut rapidement enclenchée.
Encore aujourd’hui, plus d’un mois après (l’élection en Iran a eu lieu le 12 juin) ce résultat électoral contesté (surtout par nos médias-moraux), l’acharnement médiatique se poursuit quotidiennement. [1].
Radio Canada qui n’est pas en reste côté lutte pour l’idéologie globale, nous présente « À la Une » depuis un mois, dans sa page internationale, le dossier Iran « Le régime contesté ». Habituellement, même pour des causes importantes, le dossier ne se trouve pas à la Une, il est plutôt relégué en bas de page parmi les dossiers importants et méritant plus de profondeur (sic). L’Iran a depuis plus d’un mois, une côte de faveur exceptionnelle [2]. Même les carnets de Radio Canada font une place de choix pour l’Iran. Carnets qui changent de sujet généralement à toutes les semaines, tiennent à l’affiche l’Iran :
Brousseau depuis le 15 juin : « La gifle iranienne » (changé hier) a tenu le coup pendant un bon mois. Globensky depuis le 16 juin : « Iran au féminin » et Szacka depuis le 23 juin : « L’Iran et le tsunami vert ». Trois carnetiers pour l’Iran. Jamais un sujet n’a été tant choyé (on dira sûrement que c’est à cause des vacances...).
Combien de carnet et de dossier pour le Honduras sur la page internationale de Radio Canada. Aucun (jusqu’à hier).
Il a fallu près d’un mois avant que le soldat Brousseau ponde un carnet s’intitulant : « Honduras : un putsch réussi ? »
Dans nos médias favorisant l’idéologie globale néolibérale, le Honduras a été un sujet à éviter le plus possible. En comparaison avec l’Iran, c’est un contraste frappant.
L’acharnement médiatique soutenu de nos soldats de l’information morale pour la cause iranienne qui s’est enturbanné des valeurs de la démocratie et de la liberté (valeurs nobles s’il en est) a été spectaculaire.
Et pourtant considérant ces nobles valeurs (démocratie, liberté), le Honduras aurait mérité autant d’égards que l’Iran. On pourrait même dire, sans exagérer, que le Honduras méritait cent fois plus une lutte médiatique. La fraude électorale (chose courante, en Algérie, en Égypte, en Arabie saoudite, au Kenya, au Congo, au Burkina Faso, au Gabon, même aux USA) n’est tout de même pas une atteinte à la démocratie d’une gravité équivalente à celle d’un Coup d’État.
Pour le Honduras, où sont donc passés nos soldats de la moralité en information ?
La cause hondurienne ne correspond pas aux valeurs de l’idéologie globale dont nos soldats des médias-moraux défendent avec tant d’acharnement.
Pour nos soldats de l’information d’idéologie globale, le Coup d’État au Honduras s’explique.
Les médias-moraux considèrent que le Honduras a vécu un salutaire Coup d’État « démocratique » (sic). On nous explique que les militaires au service du Congrès et de la "justice" hondurienne deux institutions qui elles sont totalement au service de la Constitution inaltérable et surtout « démocratique », ont préservé la Constitution du pays contre la scélératesse autorité du Président ÉLU Zelaya.
Nos soldats de l’information morale n’ont à peu près pas réagi face au renversement par les armes d’un Président ÉLU.
Nos soldats de l’information morale ne se sont pas indignés devant la fermeture de plusieurs médias favorables au gouvernement Zelaya.
Aucune indignation non plus face à la coupure d’internet, des lignes téléphoniques et des cellulaires.
On s’indignait de ladite censure d’internet en Iran pendant que Twitter faisait des ravages et qu’on nous montrait la mort en direct.
On s’indignait à en pleurer de la censure des médias en Iran alors que des dizaines de reporters internationaux faisaient des "stand-up" dans les rues de Téhéran.
Aucun journaliste (autre que ceux de TeleSur) à Tegucigalpa. Notre brave Radio Canada guidée par son idéologie n’a pas cru bon de dépêcher le moindre reporter en Amérique centrale. La soldate Lamarche est restée bien peinarde dans son hôtel de Rio et s’est faite haut-parleur du dictateur Micheletti et du régime putschiste. Jean-Michel Leprince nous a fait un reportage de diversion en Jamaïque (sur le taux de criminalité plus que légendaire de ce pays) et il y a trois jours, notre expert de l’Amérique latine nous parlait de la publicité au Brésil (il faut le faire !).
Pendant que l’on parle de criminalité en Jamaïque et de publicité au Brésil, la population hondurienne subit la dictature d’un Coup d’État militaire. Les libertés civiles sont en bonne partie abolies, les assassinats deviennent un danger constant, la censure est sévère et les règles les plus élémentaires de la démocratie sont bafouées d’une façon flagrante et totalement inacceptable. D’ailleurs depuis trois semaines un concert unanime de protestations sans précédent pour condamner ce Coup d’État (qui est une attaque flagrante contre la démocratie en Amérique latine) se fait entendre.
Aucun journaliste pour la réunion urgente des pays de l’ALBA.
Aucun journaliste et aucune couverture médiatique de la rencontre importante et urgente du groupe de Rio.
Aucun journaliste et aucune couverture notable des réunions importantes de l’OEA.
Aucune retransmission de la résolution urgente de l’assemblée générale de l’ONU regroupant 192 pays qui ont voté unanimement contre le régime dictatorial de Micheletti.
Aucune reprise de l’excellent discours du Président Zelaya à l’ONU [3].
Autant les médias au service de l’idéologie globale donnèrent de l’eau au moulin des opposants iraniens pour ce quasi non-événement, autant les médias-moraux ont participé par leur silence éloquent à la réussite du Coup d’État hondurien.
Isis Murillo n’aura pas eu la chance de Neda. Sa mort n’aura pas servi la cause. Tout le monde connaît Neda, pratiquement personne ne sait comment est mort Isis. Nos médias-moraux n’ont pas les mêmes barèmes pour la démocratie iranienne que pour celle du Honduras.
Mourir pour la cause en Iran suscite un intérêt presque indécent tandis que la mort au Honduras (pays qui s’est rangé dans l’axe du mal de l’ALBA) ne vaut pas plus qu’un chien écrasé [4]
Bien que le Honduras ne fasse plus les manchettes, la lutte du peuple dans les rues ne cesse pas pour autant. Il faut prendre notre information sur les réseaux de « l’axe du mal » de Chávez pour être au courant [5].
DÉSINFORMATION
Le silence complice de nos médias-moraux est flagrant.
Mais ce qui est encore plus "vicieux", c’est la subtile désinformation.
Si on demande pourquoi donc y a-t-il eu un Coup d’État au Honduras, la majorité répondra que Zelaya voulait continuer de gouverner "illégalement" le pays.
PURE DÉSINFORMATION
Le Coup d’État a eu lieu parce que Zelaya voulait consulter la population.
Si on demande quel était le but de la consultation, on répondra que Zelaya demandait que son mandat soit prolongé (ou qu’il puisse se représenter une fois de plus à la prochaine élection présidentielle).
PURE DÉSINFORMATION
Le but de la consultation était de savoir si la population voulait une 4e urne aux prochaines élections générales prévues en novembre 2009.
Qu’est-ce que la 4e urne ?
Le président Zelaya a très bien expliqué devant l’assemblée générale de l’ONU (lors de son discours de plus d’une heure), la consultation qu’il prévoyait faire le jour de son renversement par les militaires [6].
Qu’est-ce qu’une 4e urne ?
La possibilité pour les citoyens honduriens de voter sur 4 points différents le jour des élections générales de novembre prochain.
1- Élection pour le Président
2- Élection législative
3- Élection des Alcadias (municipales)
Et en ajout :
4- Vote référendaire pour la possible création d’une assemblée constituante
QUATRE urnes différentes pour quatre choix distincts.
La 4e urne consiste à un vote référendaire [7] sur la création d’une assemblée constituante. Assemblée qui étudierait certains ajustements ou amendements à la constitution.
Donc, la consultation du 28 juin ne parlait pas du tout de prolongation de mandat présidentiel, ni d’abolition du nombre limite de mandats présidentiels consécutifs (comme nous avons au Canada) et encore moins de l’abolition des élections afin d’établir une « présidence à vie ».
La consultation qui a causé le renversement du Président ÉLU Zelaya ne demandait aux citoyens que s’ils voulaient pouvoir se prononcer sur la possible création d’une assemblée constituante. Rien de plus.
Bien sûr, en fin de compte, il était possible que la constitution soit modifiée afin de permettre plusieurs mandats présidentiels successifs (comme ici, au Canada, ou encore en France ou en Angleterre et dans plusieurs pays totalement démocratiques [8]), mais le but réel de la révision de la constitution est de la rendre plus favorable aux simples citoyens.
L’objectif est de rendre la démocratie hondurienne plus participative. C’est-à-dire donner plus de pouvoir à tous ces citoyens laissés pour compte ainsi qu’à toute cette population indigène considérée depuis toujours comme étant des citoyens de seconde zone.
De dire que Zelaya travaillait à sa propre réélection est de la pure désinformation.
Même si la population acceptait la 4e urne, c’est-à-dire d’être consulté pour accepter ou pas la création de l’assemblée constituante lors des élections générales de 2009, Zelaya ne pouvait pas se présenter à ces élections. De plus, l’acceptation de la 4e urne ne garantit en rien la création d’une assemblée constituante. La création d’une assemblée constituante ne pouvait se faire sans le consentement de la population qui aurait eu à se prononcer pour sa mise en place en votant dans la 4e urne lors des élections générales de novembre (4e urne s’ils avaient dit OUI à la consultation du 28 juin).
Si la population l’acceptait, l’assemblée constituante aurait alors travaillé à remodeler la Constitution pour rendre la démocratie hondurienne plus participative, garantissant ainsi le pouvoir des simples citoyens tout en les protégeant contre les abus de la démocratie représentative, démocratie dont la majorité des pauvres citoyens ont toujours subi les choix sans jamais avoir voix au chapitre. Depuis toujours, les démocraties (sic) d’Amérique latine n’ont servi que la riche bourgeoisie et favorisé la mise au pas de 60 à 80% de laissés pour compte (tous ces habitants des nombreux bidonvilles, favelas, barrios, ainsi que tous ces pauvres paysans et ces populations indigènes).
Après ces mois d’études et de travaux pour en arriver à une Constitution plus équitable, la population aurait eu à se prononcer pour l’acceptation finale de la nouvelle Constitution.
Il est clair que la réalité est à des lieues de la DÉSINFORMATION que nous offrent nos médias-moraux qui disent que Zelaya a été renversé « démocratiquement » (sic) par les armes parce que celui-ci voulait prolonger « illégalement » sa présidence.
On peut observer le bulletin de vote prévu pour la consultation du 28 juin :
http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/2605/encuestan.jpg
On peut y lire la question qui a causé le renversement par les armes du Président ÉLU Zelaya :
¿Está de acuerdo que en las elecciones generales de 2009 se instale una cuarta urna en la cual el pueblo decida la convocatoria a una asamblea nacional constituyente ?
Sí ó No.
Qui se traduit par :
« Êtes-vous d’accord qu’aux prochaines élections générales de 2009, une 4e urne soit installée pour permettre au peuple de se prononcer sur la convocation (création) d’une assemblée nationale constituante ? OUI ou NON » [9]
Un Coup d’État réussi ???
Comme le titre le carnet du soldat radio canadien Brousseau : « Honduras : un putsch réussi ? » Il semble que le Coup d’État ait, pour l’instant, de facto, réussi.
Malgré l’unanimité internationale contre ce régime dictatorial qui vient de s’installer au Honduras, il semble que les putschistes sont bien en selle. On constate alors la force de l’arme médiatique. L’ALBA, le groupe de Rio, l’OEA, l’UE et même l’ONU unanime ne font pas le poids face aux médias.
Les médias nous présentent de facto la situation et nous imposent en quelque sorte son acceptation. Dans l’esprit de plusieurs, le cas hondurien est réglé. Le Honduras a un nouveau Président (sic) : Roberto Micheletti.
Quel triste constat !
Nous avons une fois de plus la démonstration [10] que nos médias guidés par l’idéologie globale néolibérale font du deux poids deux mesures face à ces valeurs nobles que sont la démocratie, la liberté et les droits humains.
Pour contrer l’arme médiatique, il faut une politisation constante des citoyens (ce que s’évertuent à annuler les médias d’idéologie néolibérale. On constate leur succès par le taux décroissant de participation aux élections) ainsi qu’une solidarité totale des populations (ce que peuvent aussi facilement saper nos soldats de l’idéologie globale).
Le sort du Honduras (comme de tous les pays) est dans les mains de sa population. Par contre, l’ingérence médiatique peut favoriser (comme en Iran) ou détruire (comme en Amérique latine) l’effort des populations pour accéder à un monde plus équitable, à une meilleure démocratie ou tout simplement à plus de dignité humaine.
Le Grand Soir - 17.07.09
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