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Russian Chief Rabbi Berl Lazar has asked Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev to stop anti-Semitism from spreading among politicians.
“The Russian Jewish community is shocked by an anti-Semite escapade by a candidate in the United Russia primaries in the Chelyabinsk Region, Vladislav Vikhorev, who announced ‘a conspiracy of the Jews against Russian people’. But we are even more astounded by the fact that the organizing committee to hold the primaries, has just made a formal ‘warning’ to the anti-Semite and left him among the hopefuls for a place in the election list of the party led by you,” Lazar said in a statement, cited by his press service on Friday.
The Jewish community is well aware of Medvedev’s personal constructive stance on the national question, and also values President Vladimir Putin’s stance, as the latter “has repeatedly stressed the need for zero tolerance for any manifestations of xenophobia and anti-Semitism.”
“Thanks to a wise policy of the country’s leadership, at first, anti-Semitism was on the decline in Russia, but then has been completely marginalized. But, for that same reason, any anti-Semite escapade draws heightened attention. In particular, when it is an incident, in which an activist from the ruling party is involved,” the address said.
“I frankly hope that you, as the United Russia chairman, will react to the current situation, and will take effective measures to cleanse the Russian political scene from anti-Semites and from those, who hold a reconciling stance towards them, once and for all,” the rabbi said.
Vikhorev was speaking during primaries debates on Sunday, April 10. The gist of his speech was that Russia’s main problem and security threat were the Jews. A “Jewish coup” had occurred in Russian under President Boris Yeltsin, said Vikhorev, and since then the Jews had been systematically destroying ethnic Russian culture, the state, and the financial system.
“We Russians are being killed for standing in the way of the Yids,” said Vikhorev.
Vikhorev is still listed as a candidate on the primaries website. The Chelyabinskh regional branch of the party decided to leave him in the race, letting him off with a warning that ethnic slurs were unacceptable.
The seizure of 20,000 new military uniforms—destined for ISIS in Syria—by police in Valencia, Spain, last month, has revealed the full extent of the ISIS support network amongst nonwhite invaders already legally resident in Europe.
The uniforms—five tons in all—were hidden under secondhand clothes in two supply containers seized at the city’s port, on their way to Syria.
According to transit documents, the uniforms had been sent from Saudi Arabia to Spain, but their appearance suggested they had originated in a NATO country.
In addition, a quantity of fertilizer, which can be used to make explosives, was also found at another location. Seven nonwhites were arrested.
The destination on the containers was Turkey—first to the port of Mersin near Cyprus, and then, via road, to Bad al Hawa, on the other side of the Syrian border.
The seizure, ordered by Spanish High Court Judge Eloy Velasco, was the continuation of an operation launched on February 7, when authorities arrested seven suspected members of a support group for ISIS in Ontinyent (Valencia), Ceuta, and the Alicante municipalities of Crevillent, L’Alqueria d’Asnar, Muro d’Alcoi, and Alicante.
The head of the network was Ammar Termanini, born in Aleppo (Syria) in 1972, and who arrived in Spain in 2012 after having lived in the Netherlands, Belgium, and the United Kingdom.
Once in Spain he set up a company, Tigre Negro S.L. (Black Tiger Ltd.), of which he was the sole administrator. The company was dedicated to the import and export of textile goods.
Under cover of providing humanitarian aid, he sent a number of packages to Syria, where he traveled frequently.
The financier behind Termanini was Mohamed Abu El Rub Karima, born in Jordan in 1960 and a resident of Ontinyent, Valencia, Spain.
Inside his warehouse in the L’Altet industrial park, police found uniforms similar to those later discovered in the Valencia container.
Karima raised funds and made payments through hawala, the traditional Muslim system based on trust, and which allows for money to be moved around different countries without leaving any trace of bank transfers.
The network did not just send uniforms to Islamic State, but could also manage any other kind of request. One example was the type of fertilizer that is not sold in Spain and can be used to make explosives.
The problem of legally resident nonwhite invaders in Spain supporting ISIS is also apparent from statistics released in November last year by the Real Instituto Elcano think tank. That report showed that 45 percent of the 120 nonwhites arrested for terrorism-related offences in that country from 2013 to 2015 had Spanish citizenship.
“There has been a boom in homegrown jihadism in Spain, in tandem with the global jihadist mobilization that has been affecting Western European countries for the last four years,” reads the report, which was presented at the Third Forum on Global Terrorism, held in Madrid.
Geographically, Ceuta and Melilla are the biggest sources of jihadist activity on Spanish territory. The exclave cities, which are physically located along the northern coast of Africa, are the birthplace of 75.8 percent of all detainees arrested for jihadist activities since 2013.
Barcelona and its metropolitan area are the preferred grounds for jihadists living in Spain, with some 29 percent of all arrests being made there.
The West’s controlled media ignored yesterday’s commemoration of the 1940 Massacre at Katyn, despite the presence of the Prime Minister of Poland, senior government figures, families of the victims, and the Polish military—because the atrocity perpetrators were Communists and not Nazis.
The Katyn Massacre saw 22,000 Polish officers executed in a forest outside Smolensk, Russia, by the Soviet Secret Police after being held in captivity since the Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939.
Marta Krzysztalowicz, granddaughter of Captain Henry Tadeusz Narozanskiego, who was murdered by the Soviet secret police in Katyn, lays a wreath at the murder site.
The commemoration service—held in Russia at the massacre site, in full cooperation with the Russian authorities, saw Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo; Law and Justice Party Senator and Polish Foreign Minister Anna Maria Anders; the Polish ambassador to Russia, Catherine Pelczynska; family members of the victims, and a delegation of Polish army officers—take part in a moving service for the murdered soldiers.
Polish ambassador to Russia Katarzyna Pelczynska Nalecz, and Foreign Minister Anna Maria Anders, at the moving ceremony in Katyn.
According to a Polish radio report on the event, more than 180 people took part, including the representatives from the Council for Protection of Memory of Struggle and Martyrdom, the Federation of Katyn Families, representatives of the Ministry of Culture, as well as social organizations and cultural institutions such as the Katyn Museum, clergy, scouts, and schoolchildren.
The senior bishop of the Diocese of Drohiczyn, Dydycz Antoni, said in his service that the massacre was a “victory of blood which led to freedom. This forest was the last resting place on earth for these victims of the sword, but their blood shed here created freedom for their descendants.”
“We are surrounded here by a couple of thousand names. These are the ones who gave their lives for Poland, and they direct vision to other souls further away, to all nations where there are graves of Polish soldiers, to all Tombs of the Unknown Soldier.”
The ceremony began with prayer and the placing of wreaths in the Russian part of the cemetery. Half an hour later, a tolling bell started the ceremony at the Polish part of the cemetery. The Polish national anthem was sung and Mass was celebrated by the participants amid a sea of red and white carnations, flags and wreaths—all in the Polish national colors.
The ceremony ended with the laying of wreaths and the lighting of candles in front of the Katyn Cross and the plaques which contain the names of all the victims.
The Russian delegation was represented by the head of the management board for International Relations of the Smolensk Oblast, Yevgeny Zacharienkow. The ceremony was attended also by the accredited defense attachés in Russia from several NATO and EU countries.
Anders told Polish radio that the visit to Katyn was an “incredibly moving moment” that she would never forget.
“I heard about Katyn as a child. It was to know what happened here which was something that my father set out as his purpose of life. From the outset, he insisted that the Soviets were responsible,” she added. Her father was commander of the Polish Army in the East, under whom the murdered soldiers served.
Anders said that she was happy at being offered the chance to chair the delegation. “I am here not only on behalf of the people who died here, but also on behalf of my father. I think he’s glad that I’m here.”
The complete lack of coverage of the ceremony is in marked contrast to the almost constant coverage given by the controlled media to any atrocity committed by German forces during World War II, whether real or imagined.
This coverage blackout of Katyn is, of course, because the controlled media is largely made up of far-leftists whose primary purpose is not to report news, but to espouse far left communist ideologies.
* The Katyn massacre was ordered on March 5, 1940, in a directive proposed by the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) chief Lavrentiy Beria, and signed off personally by Joseph Stalin. The massacres were started during the first week of April 1940, and carried on until May.
German troops discovered the mass graves in the Katyn Forest in 1943, and allowed an international commission consisting of twelve forensic experts and their staffs from Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland, France, Italy, Croatia, the Netherlands, Romania, Sweden, Slovakia, and Hungary to witness the exhumations and post-mortems.
The Soviet Union claimed that the executions had been carried out by the Nazis, and, to “prove” this, even forced a confession from several senior German prisoners of war “admitting” to the massacre. These Germans were hanged by the Soviets after making their “confessions,” and the Katyn Massacre was also used as “evidence” against the Germans at the Nuremberg Trials.
Left: The December 1945 announcement of the execution of German army officers after they “confessed” to the Katyn Massacre, and right, the March 1940 memo from Beira to Stalin, which proposed the massacres. The original was found in the Soviet archives in 1990.
It was only in 1990, when the Soviet archives were opened up, that it was formally admitted that the NKVD had carried out the murders. An investigation conducted by the office of the Prosecutors General of the Soviet Union (1990–1991) and the Russian Federation (1991–2004) confirmed Soviet responsibility for the massacres but refused to classify it as a war crime or an act of genocide.
In November 2010, the Russian State Duma approved a declaration blaming Stalin and other Soviet officials for having personally ordered the massacre.
Video : Extract from the 2007 Polish film, Katyn—which all the major movie distribution houses in the West refused to show.
Eygló Harðardóttir welcomes a Syrian mother and baby. Iceland Monitor/Styrmir Kári
Four Syrian families arrived in Iceland yesterday and were welcomed by the Minister of Social Affairs and Housing, Eygló Harðardóttir.
“We care about your wellbeing in Iceland, and wish for you to take part in our society,” said Harðardóttir, warmly welcoming the people. One family will be moving to Kópavogur and the other three to Hafnarfjörður.
They have all stayed at refugee camps in Lebanon and were flown from there via Paris.
Representatives of the Icelandic Red Cross also welcomed the families and gave them gifts.
“Without a doubt many things will come as a surprise to you over the next few days, weeks and months, whether its our customs or habits, the weather or our nature, but hopefully soon you will feel like Icelanders and find out that we’re probably very similar to you. “
The sort of alliance that Majorityrights advocates between European peoples and Asia(ns) is Happening. We envisage a coordinated effort to protect our peoples, secure our lands, access to vital resources and to maintain our channels of commerce. Allying our peoples and military stations along that line come with the broader purpose of securing our people against Islamic, Arab and African populations, Abrahamic/Judaic and Jewish populations, power and influence.
A home to military bases for the US, France and soon China, Djibouti may be the most important tiny African state you’ve never heard about.
At the close of another hot day on the coast of Djibouti, a tiny country on the Horn of Africa, workers are clambering over huge concrete cubes beneath a red crane. One by one, the 2,500-tonne blocks are being submerged in the water: part of a plan to stun the shoreline into submission and create a vast new port at the heart of global trade.
“We’re going to fill in the sea,” Abdo Mohammed, the logistics manager for the $590m project, tells me with quiet glee.
Thirty per cent of all shipping in the world passes this point on the north-east edge of Africa, where the water narrows to a few kilometres opposite Yemen. A former French colony that became independent only in 1977, Djibouti sits at the southern entrance to the Red Sea, en route to the Suez Canal — a waypoint between Africa, India and the Middle East. Over the past 15 years, the country has set about capitalising on its location at the nexus of international trade: once completed, the Doraleh Multi-Purpose Port will be the largest of eight ports that together will handle containers, livestock, oil, phosphates and more.
But the geostrategic ambition of the small, authoritarian state — which at 23,200 sq km (8,950 sq miles) is only slightly larger than Wales — does not stop there. The US, several European countries and Japan have all pinned global military ambitions on Djibouti. Now China is set to do the same.
Construction began on the new port in 2013. “But then [last year] we had to change things around,” says Mohammed. He gestures with his phone in the direction of the arid land behind us. “We had to make a new section over there, beside the mountain, inside the port. That’s where the Chinese military base will be.”
The sun, by now a giant orange disc, slips behind the sea. Mohammed’s nonchalant disclosure marks the culmination of the search that brought me here. China is planning its first overseas military base at Doraleh, within a few kilometres of America’s largest military outpost in Africa. As superpowers jostle for strategic influence, this impoverished state, home to fewer than a million people, is helping to shape a new world order.
Djibouti first came to the attention of France when the French navy commandeered its coastline in 1862 as a stop to refuel and restock coal steamers en route to French Indochina. French Somaliland, as the colony became known soon after, opened up the landlocked African hinterland to international trade; in the 1910s, a new railway from Addis Ababa to Djibouti linked Ethiopia to the sea. Djibouti is a barren land of mountains and desert, and its location has always been its most precious resource. Even now, it is more port city than country: by far the majority of the population lives in the seaside capital of the same name.
A military and trading entrepôt that welcomes all comers, Djibouti today oozes espionage chic. It is home to pirate-hunters, soldiers, spies and Arab traders. Conservative Somali culture mixes with the legacy of flamboyant French Legionnaires.
“Djibouti is really experiencing a boom,” says Ahmed Osman Guelleh, the 56-year-old chief executive of GSK Group, a family logistics company that has forged its fortune through shipping. Yet the baking heat makes it remarkable that anything much gets done at all. One US soldier who served here describes it as “a hot hell box in the armpit of Africa”. Temperatures reach into the mid-40s for nearly half the year. Government offices shut down at 12.30, and an entire nation of men, and many women, take up the national pastime: chewing for hours on khat, a bitter leaf so renowned for its amphetamine-like properties that it is banned in Britain and the US.
The drug gives its wired adherents a daily buzz — and mollifying fuzz — they cannot be without. I watched market traders, government officials and on-duty police officers chew khat. Even the 49-year-old finance minister Ilyas Moussa Dawaleh admitted to me that his family has shares in the largest khat importer.
“If Djiboutians stopped chewing khat for seven days, they would overthrow the government,” says one port worker. He is only half joking. Eccentric and appealing as it is, Djibouti is authoritarian and brittle too. President Ismaïl Omar Guelleh, a former head of the secret police who has run the country since 1999, will seek re-election for his fourth term on April 8, having altered the constitution in 2010 to allow him to extend his rule. The opposition complains regularly of illegal security crackdowns and the impossibility of free and fair elections.
Flanked by Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia, Djibouti is viewed as a haven in the unstable Horn of Africa and hosts armed forces from around the world. “There’s no country with so many military bases. You can throw stones from one end to the other of Djibouti and find military bases all the way, right next to each other,” says one senior official. France pledged to protect its former colony as part of a post-independence deal; after 9/11 it was joined by the US, which chose Djibouti as its base for rooting out emerging Islamist terror networks in the region. Initially, US troops were stationed on a navy ship but in 2003 they set up in Camp Lemonnier, a rundown French Legionnaires’ base beside the airport. The site has since expanded from 88 acres to 500. In 2014 a 10-year lease nearly doubled the annual rent the US pays Djibouti to $63m, with an option to extend for another 10 years.
In the past decade piracy has increased the tiny state’s strategic importance; as Somali pirates took hundreds of crews and vessels captive, costing global trade an estimated $7bn at a 2011 peak, several nations contributed to anti-piracy missions in Djibouti, including Germany, Italy and Japan.
Russia may also be interested in establishing a base. Djibouti’s foreign minister Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, an articulate 50-year-old with a reputation as the most competent minister in the government, tells me that while Djibouti turned down a request from Iran to host its military here — “because we think that Iran’s policy in the region is not a peaceful one” — it has not declined a similar recent request from Moscow. “Russia is a key player, it is a permanent member of the Security Council,” he tells me in his office. “For Russia we have no problem.”
The country is already so full of military personnel that its small, sandy capital city at times resembles a sprawling garrison. US fighter jets share the same airport runway as commercial airlines at the civil airport. French soldiers in impossibly skimpy, neon-hued shorts jog past brightly veiled women and mosques. The five-star Palace Kempinski hotel, a bubble of exclusivity in the otherwise poor city, serves $5 Cokes and popcorn tossed in truffle butter to crewcuts in uniform. Battle tattoos flash on the biceps and backs of Speedo-wearing soldiers in the infinity pool. Special-forces operatives sip Moscow Mules on the pontoon. International spies and drones operate daily. One western spy told me they enjoyed Djibouti because it is “quirky”.
Despite the multi-force troop presence, when rumours started circulating early last year that China was not only going to build its first overseas military base but that it was going to build it in Djibouti, rival powers were taken by surprise. Western countries and their allies view the prospect of China’s military arrival at a global chokepoint for trade and security with alarm. An anti-piracy mission in the Gulf of Aden in 2008 was the first time China had sent naval ships on a mission outside its territorial waters in more than 600 years.
For two fundamental reasons, I welcome China‘s outreach to African states (and believe any sane person should, though I must admit that sanity is not a commodity in great supply in the US these days). First, Africa needs all the help it can get and the Chinese have lots of stored up capital. Second, when the Chinese try to attach strings to their aid, before or after, the Africans smell it out rather swiftly. So far, the Chinese have been less than stellar in camouflaging such strings.”
Since then, Beijing has gradually shifted its foreign policy to embrace a more assertive military posture, moving to a strategy it calls “active defence”. Its pursuit of a Djibouti base has been cloaked in secrecy, with public statements short on detail. Some diplomats speak darkly of China’s “100-year horizons”. One senior western diplomat, with a more immediate timeframe in mind, says, “The worst-case scenario is that they [China] develop this web of bases to give them a kind of control over strategic waterways all the way into the Med.”
In financial terms, China is already what one official in the region describes as the “major show” in town. Following the model it has employed throughout Africa — offering billions of dollars in financing in exchange for access to resources — China is helping to bankroll a targeted $12.4bn of spending on huge infrastructure projects including the Doraleh port and a new railway to Ethiopia. Amid the boom in construction, Djibouti’s growth rate is likely to surpass 7 per cent this year. But the investments are having “limited trickle-down effects”, according to the International Monetary Fund. Nearly two-thirds of the population lives in poverty, and half the labour force is unemployed. In the absence of many skilled domestic workers, Chinese labourers have been flown in.
Loans from China for a water pipeline and the new railway from Ethiopia — agreed before talk of a military base — come to $814m, half of the country’s annual GDP. In 2013 the IMF suspended discussions with Djibouti because of its concerns over debt vulnerability; last year it warned of “elevated solvency risks”. Finance minister Dawaleh tells me he recently travelled to Beijing, seeking to negotiate easier repayment plans. Djibouti’s public and publicly guaranteed debt burden is likely to reach 81 per cent of GDP next year, mostly as a result of Chinese financing.
“We don’t want the Americans to leave but the Chinese invest billions of dollars in our infrastructure; that’s what the Americans are not doing,” foreign minister Youssouf explains. “So we are trying to keep the balance to see where our interest lies, as a small country with very limited resources.”
In early 2014, Djibouti and China signed an agreement to allow the Chinese navy — which contributes to international anti-piracy operations — to use its port. Beijing made no official comment when President Guelleh said, last May, that Djibouti was in talks with China to establish a military base. In November, China confirmed only a naval “support facility” destined for Djibouti, with a spokesperson saying, “It will help China’s military further carry out its international responsibilities to safeguard global and regional peace and stability.” Even in February this year, announcing the start of work on the project, China referred only to “logistical facilities” for naval rest and resupply. The Chinese embassy in Djibouti turned down my requests for an interview with the ambassador.
But when I speak to Youssouf, he is candid and happy to provide details of the deal he and President Guelleh have struck with China. “The terms of the contract and agreement are very clear and they are the same for each and every country that requested military presence in Djibouti,” he tells me in his office in the capital.
China will, he says, pay $20m a year for a 10-year lease for the military base, with an option to extend for a further 10 years. There will probably be “a few thousand” troops and military staff at the site, along with its own naval berth at the new port. It would use the base to protect its national interest — monitoring its merchant vessels passing the Bab el-Mandeb Strait that leads to the Suez Canal, and for its navy to refuel and restock — much as the French did more than 150 years ago. Youssouf also says that China, which is slated to build a second major airport in the country, would have as much right to use drones as the US and French. China’s foreign ministry declined to respond to faxed questions from the FT about the terms of the new base.
“The Americans have enough technology, enough fighter aircraft, enough drones [here] to control each and every piece of this land and even beyond,” says Youssouf. “Why should the Chinese not have the right to also use those materials . . . to preserve and protect their interest in the Strait of Bab el-Mandeb. Why?”
Official comments from those potentially affected are clipped: “We follow the situation about the Chinese base very closely,” says Tatsuo Arai, Japan’s ambassador to Djibouti. Youssouf admits that both Japan and the US have “expressed their worries” to both him and President Guelleh about the arrival of a Chinese military presence so close to their own, and its potential capabilities.
“Those preoccupations and worries expressed by the Americans and others are groundless, for us at least,” Youssouf tells me, deriding the west’s “hypocritical vision of our common interest”.
“We can host Chinese bases as we can host American bases . . . They might have conflicting interests elsewhere but here they cannot have conflicting interests, because the strait of Bab el-Mandeb is vital for each and everyone in the world,” he says. “There is no conflict of interest when it comes to global peace. China has no interest in doing anything [bad]. Everybody knows that nobody can take any action that could jeopardise the maritime traffic . . . This is a vital lifeline for the whole of international trade.
“We tried to reassure [the Americans and Japanese ], saying don’t worry, the same agreement we signed with them is the one we signed with you. So there is no reason to worry.”
That sense of equivalence may be precisely what is worrying the US. America, after all, is undertaking in Djibouti what Ambassador Tom Kelly tells me is “the biggest active military construction project in the entire world . . . It’s number one of everything we’re doing.” In his office at the US embassy, a monolith in sand-blown Haramous (what counts as the city’s upmarket district), the 54-year-old Kelly is unambiguous about the country’s vital role, describing Djibouti as “at the forefront of our national security policy right now”.
Geography is important (most who use the term ‘geopolitical’ don’t even know what they are implying by it). From Djibouti, Aden is just across, as is its state, Yemen, where al-Qaeda abounds. The narrowest part of the Red Sea route, south, is there. Jeddah is just up the opposite coast and Mogadishu, another haven for al-Qaeda, is the other way across the landmass. Moreover, the government of Djibouti, unlike most other African states, seems to be either sufficiently worried about its own security or lusting for hard currency, or both, to be one of the few African states willing to host a US troop presence.”
“The greatest threat to the US is terrorism, and we’re right on the front lines here,” he says. “It is an extremely important counterterrorism platform for the United States; within striking distance of two active affiliates — AQIP [al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula] and al-Shabaab in Somalia.”
The US runs special ops across the continent as well as drones from Djibouti, protects 16 embassies in the region and fights al-Qaeda affiliates in Somalia, Yemen and further afield. The country is also a key point for monitoring and securing trade routes. At Obock, a sleepy fishing port at the mouth of the Bab el-Mandeb Straits, the US has installed a surveillance centre.
From here, Djibouti can monitor southern access to the Suez, track seafaring traffic, patrol coastal waters and protect maritime borders. The US built a naval pier here in 2009 and conducts counterterrorism training and houses radar equipment in the nearby Ras Bir lighthouse.
The US presence is growing; $1bn is being spent on expanding its base, bulking up its presence for the long term. While the drone site has been moved to Chabelley, 10km south-west of the capital, the main US base in the city still has what operatives call a “secret side”, with a covert compound dedicated to special operations, targeting not only AQIP and al-Shabaab but also the main branch of al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, the Lord’s Resistance Army and Isis. As US troops withdraw from Afghanistan, Djibouti is now the active centre for what US soldiers at the camp refer to as “g-wot”: the global war on terror.
“Guys who come back can’t believe how much bigger it’s got,” one of the 4,500 troops and contractors living inside the base tells me. Unlike the French, they are allowed to leave the base only rarely during their downtime. Camp conditions approximate to, in the words of one resident, “adultday caree”. US forces eat at Combat Café, watch films at the Oasis Movie Theatre, play ping pong, poker and Xbox 360 in the gaming room, go to the gym and crack gags instructing each other to “have a Djiboutiful day”.
Japanese troops, whose anti-piracy mission numbers several hundred, sometimes visit for a game of soccer or touch rugby to alleviate what one Japanese soldier described to me as a dismal time coping with heat and boredom. Japan’s base also finds ways to remind cooped-up soldiers of home: I was treated to a tour that included a room filled with manga comics, traditional Japanese communal hot baths and the rare prospect of sushi.
The confines of the camp are in contrast to the freer life downtown. My own interest was piqued when a Somali friend described Djibouti as “Mogadishu meets Las Vegas”. The country, which a diplomat calls “one of the sentinels of moderate Muslim societies”, goes more or less by the secular French penal code, a leftover from colonial days. Compared with neighbouring Somalia’s practice of sharia, it is relatively liberal. Women rarely wear the full niqab, some shirk a headscarf completely. They meet for late-night sheeshas, guava juice and gossip beside the quay in the hot night air. Many have boyfriends, even if they shield it from their families.
“You can have your private life in Djibouti. That’s why we’re not like Somalia,” an impassioned 30-year-old woman tells me, saying it was down not to French influence but to “the Djiboutian mentality”. “We are much more open, more free. We don’t talk about sex ever but it goes on out of marriage. As long as you don’t bring shame on your family, your private life is free.”
Djibouti’s nightclubs stay open until 4am, with police carefully shepherding revellers to avoid clashing with the call of the muezzin as worshippers attend morning prayers. I watch a group of five Frenchmen — all swagger, sleeves rolled up, hands in pockets — rolling out of l’Historil, a bar-restaurant, heading for the bright lights of the disco zone. Another group of French soldiers passes through the metal detectors to enter Shams, a nightclub rammed with revellers lit by disco balls. The outlines of the Statue of Liberty and a bare-breasted woman hang on the walls; 13 waitresses stand elbow to elbow serving drinks at the red-lit bar.
While parts of the city and many Muslims are dry, drinking is common. “Everyone here drinks and if they don’t, they drink in private,” one Djiboutian jokes to me over his whisky. Alcohol is sold in bars and the state licenses a clutch of tightly controlled booze importers.
Larry Modi is among them. The Christian son of an enterprising Indian runaway and an Ethiopian woman, the 67-year-old has run a supermarket in Djibouti City for many years. Warm and avuncular, with soft features, big round eyes and greying hair, he greets me at 11.30am with an offer of “champagne?”, pouring glasses for us both. His shop features floor-to-ceiling shelves of beer, gin, vodka and more. He is beloved by generations of soldiers and his office has the military memorabilia — gifts from soldiers serving out their time in this peculiar way station — to prove it; the French made him an honorary Legionnaire.
The cultural quirks of a country that appears to welcome all belie Djibouti’s repressive political climate. A London judge last month, ruling on a corruption case brought by Djibouti, painted a picture of President Guelleh’s regime as “capricious”, “cavalier” and on occasions “reprehensible”. Diplomats whose troops rely on the president’s welcome describe him as the crafty, powerful and impressive leader of a centralised autocracy, one stop short of dictatorship.
Human-rights activists decry a series of abuses. The government routinely suppresses the opposition, “harassing, abusing and detaining government critics”, says the latest report from the US state department, published last year, which also censures Djibouti for conducting torture, arbitrary arrest and detention of demonstrators, opposition members and journalists.
In 2011, the state put down a series of protests that hinted at the beginnings of Arab Spring-like uprisings. In December last year, police clashed with the opposition, killing at least seven and wounding dozens. Today the opposition protests against vote-rigging and harassment.
“There’s a lack of freedom, people are desperate, poor — it creates a lot of discontent. People are patient but there’s a limit,” Daher Ahmed Farah, spokesman for the opposition coalition group Union for the National Salvation, tells me.
Opposition figures such as Farah, a 54-year-old who goes by his initials “Daf”, have been followed, arrested and tortured. They meet and speak with the furtive glances and low voices borne of well-informed paranoia. Daf himself has been arrested more than 25 times since 2013, he says.
When I meet him one afternoon, we go to an empty café until a lone man comes and sits right next to us and, Daf feels, listens in. We lower our voices, move tables, and finally we leave.
That evening, I receive a call from reception to my hotel room. “There are some visitors here to see you.” I was not expecting any. I go downstairs to see a man wrapped in a skirt, wired on khat, and his adjunct dressed in a camel flannel uniform. “Come with us,” says the man in the skirt.
“Hello. Greetings. How can I help?” I ask, attempting a smile. “Police. Come with us.” I say I do not think it wise for us to have this conversation — or perhaps it is an arrest — at night, in the dark, in an unknown location, and could we pursue this tomorrow. They insist.
I manage to alert my back-up contacts before the police take me to what turns out to be the city’s central commissariat. Along with two other men, a colonel questions me at length, asking why I met with the opposition, what Daf said and who introduced us. I demur.
He directs the same questions to me again and again, especially the last, in a bad comedy of repetition, peppering his inquisition with the admission that it is perfectly legal for me, an accredited journalist with the right visa, to meet the perfectly legal opposition. The whole thing lasts four hours.
Back in my hotel room, I do not sleep for what is left of the night. I relate the tale the next day to a diplomat. “It’s intimidation,” he tells me.
In May 2014, Djibouti’s assumption that it was a well-protected island of peace in a troubled region was shaken when al-Shabaab launched a double suicide attack on a downtown restaurant popular with locals and westerners. One person was killed and dozens wounded.
Being targeted not only for sending troops to fight al-Shabaab in Somalia but also for hosting foreign bases — the attack took place in the same month that Djibouti signed its extension agreement with the US — was a shock to a country that had until then considered itself off-limits.
“Djibouti is calm, peaceful — a Djiboutian can never do that, they like peace too much — but, if someone is prepared to die, you can’t stop them,” says a member of the government’s antiterrorism group, which comprises 160 security officers and 600 civilians linked into a reporting network. “It was a wake-up call,” says the agent. “We have totally reorganised policing and protection along the border. Now we pick up communications — we see the value in talking to people and we’re much more alert.”
Djibouti’s belief that it stands to benefit from being the linchpin for an international coalition against terrorism clearly brings its own risks. But foreign minister Youssouf insists that the country has not wavered “from our belief that globalisation means everything”. Djibouti’s security role also helps establish a modicum of leverage distinct from populous, landlocked Ethiopia, on which it has always been seen as dependent. “Everyone said Djibouti would be swallowed by Somalia or Ethiopia but in the end we are the umbilical cord for Ethiopia, and now they and the Chinese see us as that,” says Youssouf, concerned to dispel the notion that Djibouti exists solely to service the Ethiopian economy.
The US has tried to enlist China as friend not foe in the military field in Africa, suggesting integrated operations in areas such as landmine clearance and peacekeeping training. China turned down a request for a joint demining programme but it participates in international anti-piracy missions and some naval exercises. The US hopes to encourage greater co-operation. Djibouti could, if it goes well, become a catalyst for what one observer calls “a joint globalised security architecture”. But the flipside augurs ill: well-armed superpowers jostling in a city of closely guarded secrets, raising the stakes on the militarisation of trade routes and security chokepoints. Managing the existence of both a US and a Chinese military base in the same country “will be a challenge for all involved”, says ambassador Kelly.
For Djibouti, the answer is clear. “For many years Japanese, Italians, Germans, French and Americans are just coexisting in this very small land,” says Youssouf. “So why should it be different in the future?”
Posted by DanielS on Saturday, 09 April 2016 09:21.
Pardon the source, but this article not only well explains the draconian anti-abortion law that Poland’s PiS party is set to pass, but also prompts the question as to what other insane laws the new Polish government will institute.
An additional danger for White Nationalists is to be anticipated by Jewish commandeering of the inevitable popular backlash.
Poland’s Catholic Church and conservative government may have figured a draconian new “pro-life” law would have general acceptance. They were wrong.
When Catholic priests issued decrees during morning mass last Sunday calling for the country to institute a complete ban on abortions, Poland erupted in protests. The initiative was not unexpected, but the surge of opposition caught many by surprise as men and women took to the streets waving wire coat hangers, symbols of the deadly “back room” abortions that take place when all legal means to terminate a pregnancy are exhausted.
The purpose of the priests’ coordinated speeches was to launch a petition and gather churchgoers’ signatures that could then be used to begin a legislative campaign in the country’s parliament, the Sejm. A “pro-life” organization called Fundacja Pro quickly gathered the required 1,000 signatures. But when the group made its intentions known during the course of the previous week, many Poles started organizing opposition on Facebook.
In just two days, they drew together over 65,000 concerned activists and laid the groundwork for Sunday’s protests, but stopping the momentum of the draconian legislation is going to be a long, tough fight.
Current law in Poland allows abortions only in three drastic situations: when the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest; when the life of the pregnant woman is in danger; or when the fetus is severely damaged. This is already one of the most restrictive abortion laws in all of Europe, forcing many women to seek out underground abortions or travel outside of Poland to countries like Slovakia. But in the eyes of Poland’s Catholic Church, this policy is too lackadaisical.
The draft of the new legislation was written by an organization called Ordo Iuris (Rule of Law), whose stated aim is to “promote a legal culture based on respect for human dignity and rights.” The draft was promptly endorsed by the Polish Episcopal Conference, which acts as the central organ of the Catholic Church in Poland. The conference’s widely disseminated notice on the new law explained that it supports it because the 5th Commandment specifically states “Thou shalt not kill,” and thus life must be protected from beginning—from the moment the sperm fertilizes the egg—to its natural end.
The wording of the law itself is simple but the implications are sweeping: “Every human being has the inherent right to life from the moment of conception,” reads its article I. “The life and health of the child from conception remain under protection of the law.”
On April 4, the Polish television network TVN reported that the law would lead to prison terms of up to three years for causing the death of a child once conceived. The same would apply to anyone who assists with or encourages the termination.
Critics looking at the possible legal ramifications were appalled. Pawel Kalisz of the Polish website Natemat wrote that the wording of the law could include as accomplices the woman or girl’s doctor; the friend driving her to the clinic; the dad who wrote her the sick note for the day off from school; the friend who brought her medication from abroad. Everyone.
Others noted that, in theory at least, rape survivors and children will be forced to give birth; women who might die due to their pregnancy will have no way to terminate it legally; a miscarriage might be punished with a sentence, as fetal murder will enter the criminal code;
Also, the state will have the right to bypass a person’s constitutional rights in order to protect unborn children; since prenatal testing is connected to a very small risk of miscarriage, it will be banned and doctors performing it might face criminal charges; and the morning-after pill will be categorized as an early abortion tool and thus completely banned (as will IUDs).
As one protester pointed out as well, women who discovered early on that their fetus had zero chance of surviving the pregnancy would be forced to live with the misery of carrying the baby for months and months until the inevitable conclusion.
The punishment would escalate to up to eight years of jail time for abortions undertaken without the consent of the woman. Furthermore, prison sentences of up to 10 years would be on the table for abortions undertaken while the fetus has the capacity for life outside the womb.
There are some loopholes, but they are narrow and unreliable. The draft law would not make it a crime for a doctor to end the life of a conceived child during the course of a procedure essential to saving the life of the mother. Furthermore, in exceptional cases the court would be able to reduce the jail sentence of a mother who had deliberately caused the death of a conceived child, or waive it altogether.
Although Polish values generally are Catholic and conservative, many Poles marched out of mass on Sunday in disgust when priests read the decree. A video of a woman openly admonishing her pastor went viral across the country. In it, the priest interrupts the woman’s tirade to ask if she has finished with her “political statement.” The irony of this remark was not lost on social media users, with one woman commenting, “Well, yes, because in church, political statements can only be made from the priest’s pulpit.”
The country’s right-wing media, meanwhile, called these protests a provocation against the state.
Although, formally, nothing has yet been codified, the wheels of change have been put into motion says Polish journalist Michał Szułdrzyński. “Now that Fundacja Pro have done their initial signature gathering, they will take it to the Sejm, which will verify the 1,000 signatures and then give the group three months to collect another 100,000 signatures. If successful, this next step would force the Sejm into taking a serious look.”
That’s not nearly as difficult as it sounds.
In 2011, a civic initiative to ban abortion gathered nearly 500,000 signatures and was introduced into the Sejm. At that time however, the lower house was run by the more left-leaning Civic Platform, which rejected the idea. When it was put to a vote, the more liberal Civic Platform party held 208 seats while Law and Justice (known by its Polish acronym PiS) controlled 157. The result of the vote was 178 for and 206 against.
Now, however, the PiS controls 235 seats against the Civic Platform party’s 157, and has embarked on a systematic campaign to stifle and marginalize opposition. PiS could pass the bill on its own, and it’s also got a parliamentary ally, with the third biggest party Kukiz’15, run by musician turned right-wing populist Pawel Kukiz. The Kukiz party holds 40 seats in Sejm, and its leader has also been an outspoken opponent of abortion in the past. With these numbers, the bill will almost assuredly pass.
All of this poses a very real and terrifying prospect for women across the country who fear that the coat hangers they’ve been holding as symbols of resistance might soon become their only recourse against unwanted and unsafe births.
When asked why he believes this is happening again, Szułdrzyński says it’s quite simple. “In the opinion of the Catholic Church abortion is wrong in every circumstance and they feel that as a Catholic country, Poland should pass a law to reflect the church’s position.”
Earlier in the week, Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo was asked on public radio what she thought about this issue, and she said that as a Catholic she supports the proposal. Her remarks sparked outrage and she has now backtracked a bit to say that she was merely giving her opinion as a private person and not making a statement as prime minister.
Her flip-flop sparked ridicule online, with many women questioning why the PM was so personally interested in the wombs of Polish women. Several went on Szydlo’s Facebook page. One, Malina Prześluga-Delimata, decided to notify her, sarcastically, that she wasn’t pregnant: “Madam Beato, I write to inform you that my cycle runs fine. I received my period on time (the cycle lasts 31 days).” She went on to thank the PM for being so interested in her and in her reproductive potential. “It is fantastic to know that for the moment I will be able to shift responsibility for my breeding to someone else. I will keep you up to date.”
The greatest display of anger, however, was on Poland’s streets, in what might be called the coat hanger rebellion.
Szułdrzyński believes that the ruling PiS party was caught off guard by the backlash. “This has driven great controversy because if you look at recent polls, although most people are against abortion, the overwhelming majority supports the three exceptions as they stand now,” he said.
Here is the organization behind this. Aren’t Abrahamic religions so nice? If some Arab or African converts to Catholicism, he can rape your daughter, be forgiven in confessional, while she is forced to bear the beast soon to be baptized into your biological people’s replacement.
It has emerged that Israel racially segregates its maternity wards by race, with one Israeli Member of Parliament saying that this is done because “Arabs are my enemies and that’s why I don’t enjoy being next to them.”
Like many other racial segregation measures in Israel, the Jewish state has kept news of the segregated hospital wards secret until now—an incredible feat given that most Jews in that state will have had contact with the hospital system for decades.
According to a report in the Times of Israel, the revelations started with a report on Israeli Radio saying that hospitals have been separating Arab and Jewish mothers in maternity wards “when the mothers request it.”
Then, a Knesset member, Bezalel Smotrich, took to Twitter to support the racial segregation measure.
“My wife is truly no racist, but after giving birth she wants to rest rather than have a hafla”—a mass feast often accompanied by music and dancing—“like the Arabs have after their births,” the Knesset member tweeted.
After his tweet received negative replies, Smotrich went a step further, writing: “It’s natural that my wife wouldn’t want to lie down [in a bed] next to a woman who just gave birth to a baby who might want to murder her baby twenty years from now.”
He then added that “Arabs are my enemies and that’s why I don’t enjoy being next to them.”
His wife, Revital, later told Israel’s Channel 10 that she had “kicked an Arab obstetrician out of the [delivery] room. I want Jewish hands to touch my baby, and I wasn’t comfortable lying in the same room with an Arab woman.”
“I refuse to have an Arab midwife, because for me giving birth is a Jewish and pure moment,” she said.
Smotrich in the Knesset.
The resultant publicity has forced the Israeli Health Ministry to quickly back down from its segregation policy, and issue a statement saying that such a practice was “not allowed.”
Despite the official condemnation, the reality remains that there has been—and most likely still is—such segregation “upon request.”
The real issue is, once again, not if Jews in Israel want to be segregated from Palestinians or not. From their point of view, there are possibly good reasons for doing so in order to preserve their identity and culture.
However, it is when Jewish activists in Israel and other nations start agitating against any Europeans who dare to suggest that they also have a right to protect their identity, that the problem comes in.
For, if Europeans dare to suggest that they should have a right to a European state—in the same way that Jews have the right to a Jewish state—then these same Jews are the first to attack them as being “Nazis” and “haters.”
Proof of this can be seen in the complete silence by the Anti-Defamation League and other Jewish organizations about Smotrich and his wife’s public comments. Any European politician who had dared say anything similar—about non-Europeans or Jews, for example—would immediately have been condemned by the ADL and lambasted in the Jewish-dominated media in the West.
But, as usual, that media remains silent on outbursts by Jews and racial segregation measures in Israel.
There always seems to be one rule for Jews, and another rule for Europeans.
Israel’s Education Ministry has formally banned a book about an interracial affair between a Jew and a Gentile because, the Jewish state’s government says, the book “threatens Jewish identity” and does not deal with the “significance of miscegenation” between “Jews and non-Jews.”
Israeli Education Minister Naftali Bennett, and the book banned for promoting “miscegenation” in Israel.
At the same time, the organized Jewish lobby in America and Europe —which fanatically supports Israel—demands of Europeans that they accept miscegenation and mixed marriages in order not to be “racist.”
According to an article in the Israeli Haaretz newspaper, titled “Israel Bans Novel on Arab-Jewish Romance From Schools for ‘Threatening Jewish Identity‘” (December 31, 2015), Israel’s Education Ministry has “disqualified a novel (called “Gader Haya,” or “Borderlife”) that describes a love story between an Israeli woman and a Palestinian man from use by high schools around the country.”
An official statement released by the ministry said that the book had been banned from schools because of the “need to maintain the identity and the heritage of students in every sector,” and that “intimate relations between Jews and non-Jews threatens our separate identity.”
The Education Ministry added that “young people of adolescent age don’t have the systemic view that includes considerations involving maintaining the national-ethnic identity of the people and the significance of miscegenation.”
The book tells the story of Liat, an Israeli translator, and Hilmi, a Palestinian artist, who meet and fall in love in New York, until they part ways for her to return to Tel Aviv and he to the West Bank city of Ramallah, where Israel’s racial segregation laws force them apart.
The decision to ban the book was endorsed by Education Minister Naftali Bennett’s office, which issued a statement saying “The minister backs the decision made by the professionals.”
In a separate article, Haaretz columnist Alon Idan frankly admitted that the reason why the book was banned was so that Israel could “maintain purity of blood.”
Alon said that the decision meant simply that “Jews and Arabs are forbidden to have sex with one another; Jews and Arabs are forbidden to love one another; Jews and Arabs are forbidden to marry one another; Jews and Arabs are forbidden to have families with one another; Jews and Arabs are forbidden to live together.”
No one with any clear-thinking mind would dispute the right of Jews to maintain their identity in their own country.
However, the organized Jewish lobby in America and Europe—which is one of Israel’s strongest supporters—demands of Europeans that they adopt exactly the opposite policy to that which they support in the Jewish state.
The ADL, for example, which describes itself as “the world’s leading organization fighting anti-Semitism through programs and services that counteract hatred, prejudice, and bigotry,” has an entire section of its website devoted to boasting about the Jewish role in dismantling anti-miscegenation and anti-mixed marriage laws in America.
For example, an ADL press release from March 2015, dealing with the promotion of homosexual marriage (something else which is illegal in Israel), titled “ADL Urges Supreme Court to Overturn State Marriage Bans” quotes Christopher Wolf, ADL Civil Rights Chair, as saying that “Marriage bans unconstitutionally enshrine one particular religious view of marriage into law.”
The ADL goes on to quote Deborah M. Lauter, ADL Civil Rights Director, as saying that “Discriminatory laws targeting disadvantaged groups have long been justified by religious and moral disapproval, but time and time again, the Supreme Court has rejected these arguments. The Court needs only to look at its decisions ending slavery, segregation, interracial-marriage bans, and laws restricting women’s roles in public life to reach the right conclusion.”
The ADL was joined in this demand by The American Jewish Committee; Bend the Arc — A Jewish Partnership for Justice; The Central Conference of American Rabbis and the Women of Reform Judaism; Global Justice Institute; Hadassah — The Women’s Zionist Organization of America, Inc.; Jewish Social Policy Action Network (JSPAN); Keshet; The National Council of Jewish Women; Nehirim; Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and Jewish Reconstructionist Communities; Society for Humanistic Judaism; T’ruah: Rabbis for Human Rights-North America; and Women’s League for Conservative Judaism.
In addition, the ADL was joined by a host of Christian, Asian, and Sikh organizations—but none of them were being hypocritical about their public stance, unlike the Israel-supporting Jewish groups.
The ADL has a special section of its website devoted to explaining to its supporters how to defend Israel. Titled “Israel: A Guide for Activists,” the ADL page provides detailed instructions on every aspect of the Jewish state, and how to answer accusations made against it.
In addition, the ADL—and all the other organized Jewish organizations—set up formal visits to Israel, engage in lobbying on behalf of the Jewish state, and ensure that their controlled media never reports negatively on Jewish political manipulations or their control of Western governments.
It is clear that the Jews know and understand perfectly the principles of race and the need to preserve racial homogeneity in order to maintain Jewish cultural identity.
In Israel, this understanding takes practical effect through the banning of mixed marriages, the outlawing of non-Jewish immigration, racial segregation in schools and living areas, and their ultimate goal—a separate Jews-only state.
Yet, in America, Europe, and anywhere else where there are large numbers of Europeans, the Israel-supporting Jewish lobby actively promotes policies which are the diametric opposite to the policies which their state enforces.
The facts are inescapable: the Jewish lobby knows perfectly well that miscegenation and mixed marriages will lead to the destruction of Jewish identity and the Jewish nation-state.
They therefore also know that promoting miscegenation and mixed marriages among non-Jews will lead to the destruction of European identity, and the destruction of European nation-states.
This “hypocrisy” is too obvious to be an accident: it can only be the result of a conscious, deliberate decision, aimed at bringing about the destruction of non-Jews.
Lazar shows Medvedev lesson from bible.
