A good interview to explicitly state that US "makes war ostensibly for humanitarian reasons, and when a tragedy ... occurs, it is a blessing to the Pentagon."
As we may all know that US invades a country citing humanitarian reasons, but the real reasons are always clandestinely something else & that invasion usually further destabilize the political & economic situation of that country or region. US invasion makes that country, region, & the world much more worse. Period.
The world has forgotten about these Nigerian school girls & moved on to other disasters. Boko Haram & other groups of its sorts are still operating in the region. 2 years onwards & US has again started bombing Libya to apparently get rid of ISIS there. By the way, Libya is also an oil-exporting country, & similar to Nigeria & Iraq, has a large oil reserve. So the question is once again that just like invasions of Iraq (to get rid of Saddam & his brutal government) & Afghanistan (to get rid of Taliban & Al-Qaeda), & a much-more subdued "invasion" of Nigeria (using Boko Haram as an excuse), is US now trying to invade Libya to control its oil riches & further expand the reaches of its AFRICOM unit?
Nigeria, on the other hand, under its new leader, Mr. Buhari, is spending billions on new arms & weapons, & foreign military trainers to further train its military to get rid of terrorist groups. Those billions, instead of being invested in the country to further improve the infrastructure & living conditions of Nigerians, are flowing through Western military-industrial complex to countries like US & France etc. If poor countries spend those billions on their own people, the so-called "terrorism" would die out by itself. The public join these kinds of groups out of frustration & anger at the political, economic, & social inequality & injustices in their countries.
US & European countries were, & still are, looking at Chinese influence increasing at a fast pace in the whole continent of Africa -- the continent which has always been exploited for its human & mineral riches -- & just couldn't sit on the sidelines. So, using excuses like Qaddafi's brutal government, terrorism, & rebel groups of Kony & the like, US & European countries are trying to "retake" Africa from Chinese hands. In this struggle of power & this wave of neocolonialism, Africans will surely lose big because there's nothing beneficial for them in this struggle, but the Western power elites (political & financial) will make big gains.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
JESSICA DESVARIEUX, TRNN PRODUCER: So, Glen, we've seen a lot of press about the kidnapping of an estimated 276 girls in Nigeria. ...
You recently wrote an article titled "Kidnapped Girls Become Tools of U.S. Imperial Policy in Africa". Can you just walk us through your argument?
GLEN FORD, EXEC. EDITOR, BLACK AGENDA REPORT: Well, you know, this deal with the Boko Haram, this terrible kidnapping of the Nigerian school girls, is for the United States manna from Heaven. It has allowed them to make a huge breakthrough, in terms of penetration of West Africa. Just recently it was announced that a meeting -- which was actually called by France, but France said it was the Nigerians' idea -- a meeting has resulted in an agreement between Nigeria and its four neighbors, who are colonies of the French (Nigeria was a British colony), that these countries will share intelligence and will be provided with training expertise and, we can assume, money by the West. Well, the West means AFRICOM plus France.
So already we're seeing structural changes in the region, bringing it even more tightly into the AFRICOM web. We're seeing structural changes in terms of how tightly the United States and France have become. They at some points were competitors for influence in Africa. Now they work hand-in-glove, AFRICOM working with what is still in effect the French Foreign Legion in Africa after the operation in Niger, now that kind of cooperation deepening in Nigeria. So the noose is tightening.
And when we're talking about new and improved groupings, alliances, configurations in West Africa as a response to this Boko Haram threat, we're really talking about a situation in which Africa is permitted no defense except those defenses that are approved by the Americans and Europeans. And, of course, that is not a defense against European and American neocolonialism, but only a defense against other Africans. Africans can only then defend themselves against each other, but not against their former colonizers and the great danger presented by the United States.
DESVARIEUX: But then, Glen, it's clear that this is pretty horrific. Your heart can't help but want to try to help these nearly 300 girls that were kidnapped before their final exams. How do you think the United States could be of assistance in a more positive way?
FORD: Let's make this real clear. The United States can be of no assistance to Africa. All assistance that would be beneficial is totally theoretical and, in a practical sense, will never be forthcoming. We know what the United States is about in Africa. It is setting up networks of bases and relationships with the military class in order to control the political and therefore the economic destiny of Africa. It does not have good intentions for Africa. So a conversation about what can the United States do to help is counterproductive.
What the United States did do is launch a war against Libya, which as a net result has set the northern part of the continent ablaze, destabilized the region. It has resulted directly in the strengthening of Boko Haram. The weapons that just spilled across Libya's border with the fall of Gaddafi's regime, which was a bulwark against jihadism, are now in all kinds of hands that do pose threats to the stability of governments. And when those governments feel unstable, they run to the Europeans and the United States to bolster their stability and become even more neocolonial in nature.
DESVARIEUX: So, Glen, if I'm understanding you correctly, if the United States can't be of any assistance in a positive way, then how do we resolve this issue? How do we get back these girls?
FORD: Africa has to resolve its own issues. Everyone has compassion for the Nigerian schoolchildren. But remember, this is an internal African affair, a Nigerian affair, and those fighters from Boko Haram are Nigerians. The United States does not have any legitimate interest here. Every human being of course empathizes with children in distress. Africa's full of children in distress. Six million people have died in the eastern Congo since 1996, many, many of them children. The United States is complicit in those deaths. The United States's intentions are not good. If it is able to locate through its intelligence apparatus the location of these girls, that does not mean that the United States will prevent them from being killed. In fact, U.S. and French involvement, this war-making machinery, the pressures that are being put on all the governments, may make it more likely that the girls are killed. We don't know that, but we do know one thing: the United States doesn't really care. It benefits from the almost universal outrage at Boko Haram, because it provides a unique and almost miraculous opening for the further expansion of AFRICOM.
DESVARIEUX: Okay. Let's talk some more specifics here. Like, who are we talking about when we're saying interests are concerned with the U.S. getting more involved in Africa. Who's going to benefit here?
FORD: Oh, the oil companies benefit. And, of course, they are interlocking. Some of them are American. Others are European. They are quite concerned not just about guerilla activity in Nigeria, the golden location for oil in Africa; they're also concerned about Nigerians wanting their legitimate share of oil revenues, and the people in the surrounding regions which also have lots of oil. This is the main concern of big oil companies, and therefore the main concern of the governments that protect them.
And so they want to create domestic situations in Nigeria, in Benin, in Cameroon, in Niger, in which the civil society is unable to make demands of the multinational corporations that exploit their resources. The United States, of course, with AFRICOM, will be there to lend its weight to the multinational corporations. Schoolgirls are really not at the center of U.S. policy in Nigeria today. What's at the center of U.S. efforts today is to weave these five nations, Nigeria and its four neighbors, into a more malleable bloc for manipulation by the Americans and the French.
DESVARIEUX: Now let's talk about the resistance. Is there actually any resistance behind the president's plan to get more involved in Nigeria? Is there any opposition coming from Congress or any political leaders?
FORD: No. And, in fact, the Congressional Black Caucus has made it quite clear through its individual members that President Obama has a blank check as far as they're concerned, that all they're worrying about is the safety of the girls. That is the blank check that the United States government sought in Central Africa when Obama, two years ago, used the mere presence of Joseph Kony and his much-diminished Lord's Resistance Army to justify sending in about 100 special forces troops on permanent duty in Central Africa. Earlier this year he doubled the size of that contingent, all based upon humanitarian grounds. This country makes war ostensibly for humanitarian reasons, and when a tragedy such as with the schoolgirls in Nigeria occurs, it is a blessing to the Pentagon.
A good interview to highlight couple of the points I've been blogging about since last year:
1. When "terrorists" attacked France last year, I blogged that nobody is looking at the real reasons behind the motivations of why these young people became or did what they did. Of course, what they did was wrong, but why did they do it. Just blaming Islam for its "hateful speech towards non-Muslims" is not sufficient enough reason.
The reason I said was these youths were venting their frustrations after watching & suffering injustices, mostly because of discrimination; racial, linguistic, religion, ethnicity etc. They were lashing out at an unjust & unfair society. Of course, their way of lashing out or venting their frustrations was wrong. In the same vein, the "terrorist" groups operating in several other 3rd-world countries are also lashing out after suffering injustices; perceived or otherwise. Be they "terrorist" groups be Boko Haram or ISIS or Al-Nusra or Al-Qaida etc.
As this Nigerian activist explains that there is a huge imbalance of wealth in Nigeria, in the North & the South, & I would add on to it that imbalance, & the perceived injustice growing out of it, drove many to join an amalgam of these groups that are collectively called, Boko Haram.
2. Then, the Nigerian activist goes on to explain how US foreign policy, multinational oil companies, IMF, & World Bank supported corruption in Nigeria or came up with monetary policies which, in effect, further exacerbated the wealth imbalance in the country, which, in turn, created the current conditions of lawlessness & "terrorism".
As I have also blogged previously that the governments of developed countries, through their foreign policies & support of their multinational companies, effectively plunder & rob the developing countries of their natural & intellectual resources, which, in turn, create a wave of cheap labour force for their own countries (immigration) & create more wealth for their own companies.
The Nigerian activist stated how Nigerian economy & politics are heavily dependent & thus "shaped by multinational corporations. ... We are running an economy that is based, basically, on oil rents, collection of royalties and rents from oil production by transnational oil corporations. They have overbearing influence on the political development of the country and on the economy. ... And so right now the oil companies operate above the law, because the government would not do anything ... whatsoever to offend them or to make them lose their profit. And so they break the law with absolute impunity."
He then goes on to explain how the overbearing & devastating influence of IMF & World Bank hobbled & effectively disabled the Nigerian economy & economic development. "... the influence of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank has also been very significant in dislocating the pattern of growth of the Nigerian economy and African economy generally that was visible between--in the early '70s through the early 1980s. And that, of course, happened through the introduction of structural adjustment programs that opened up the economy for dumping of products from the Global North, from North America, from Europe, from Japan, Australia, and then also killing local production, local industries, killing local agriculture, and, making these countries kind of dependent on ... foreign aid and stuff like that. So we've seen a situation where the negative influence of multinational corporation has played a very, very big role in keeping our nation from being on the right path of progress."
Ironically enough, we've seen the devastating impact of these structural adjustment programs within European Union, too, within the past 5 years or so. European Union was effectively made by richer countries of Europe (Germany & France) to basically push their products on to the poorer economies of Europe (Greece, Portugal etc.). So, while Germany enjoyed positive trade balances due to exports to these countries, it also effectively killed the industries of Greece (& negative trade balances due to heavy imports) & made it dependent on German imports. When economy tanked, there was nothing to support Greek economy & it nosedived disastrously.
So, yes, I concede that there are corrupt politicians in developing countries & there is widespread corruption. But, the corruption can be overtaken if developed countries of the Global North stop meddling in the internal affairs of those countries. Political & economic meddling hobbles & destroys any chances of progress developing countries have & effectively push them back further in the hole.
Since, the developing countries keep trying to climb out the hole but the walls are kept out of reach by developed countries, economic development & proper distribution of wealth never takes place. That, in effect, create the perfect conditions for wrong elements of the society to rile up the young population against their own & any foreign influences. Then, the Global North (or developed countries) label those people "terrorists" & try to root them out with any means necessary. That in turn create more chaos & destruction without actually solving the problem, since, the root of the problem was never looked upon, deliberately or otherwise.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Nigeria is in a state of semi-chaos. And the question I have, and I think most people following this story have, is: how did Nigeria get to a point where such events can take place?
Now joining us to help give some historical context to all of this ... is Nnimmo Bassey. He's a Nigerian architect, environmentalist, an author, a poet. He chaired the Friends of the Earth International from 2008 through 2012. He was executive director of Environmental Rights Action for two decades. And he now is the director of the Mother Earth Foundation.
So can you just give us quickly what's happening now on the ground in Nigeria and a little bit about who the Boko Haram is and what they represent?
NNIMMO BASSEY, DIRECTOR, HEALTH OF MOTHER EARTH FOUNDATION: As you said, Nigeria is undergoing very difficult times at the moment. But these had been building up over time. Usually in the past we had incidents of clashes over religious differences between the Muslims and Christians in the northern part of the country, but these were on-and-off incidents. But what we're seeing now is a sustained aggression by a diversity of groups who are generally grouped under the label Boko Haram. Boko Haram does not appear to be one single organization that has a command structure as such, but an amalgam of groups who share perhaps a philosophy of just wreaking destruction in the nation.
Nigeria gained political independence in 1960, but the structure was not perfect. And just as the nation was getting its act together, 6 years into independence, the military struck. ... the year after the military struck, Nigeria faced a civil war ... from a number of reasons. And when the Civil War ended in 1970, Nigeria wealth from oil revenue, crude oil revenue. And then, at that time, the military head of state said Nigeria had the problem of how to spend money, not how to make money. So that kind of settled the philosophy.
JAY: Before you get into the oil politics, 'cause I know it's such a big story, from after independence, 1960s and so on, it's at the height of the Cold War, and much of African politics, as I understand it, was shaped by the Cold War. What was the role of US policy in the development of the military dictatorship in Nigeria?
BASSEY: ... we had military rule in Nigeria from 1966 ... and this went on for about 3 decades, with just a little space of time that they left in 1979 and came back in 1983.
And also in this time, the US has maybe made a few noises against military dictatorship more generally. I believe the US was not really obviously against the governments in power. And, of course, Nigeria was a very strong frontline state against apartheid in South Africa at a time when US was ambivalent, the US was ambivalent about what was going on in South Africa. So it wasn't really a very smooth relationship all through this time.
But the military were not politicians, generally. They were just young man who grabbed power for whatever purpose. And they had to run the country down to the ground. And so what we're seeing now manifesting in the country now is a result of several years of misrule, both by politicians and by the military, and right now have been in meetings where the past military rulers go to great pains to explain that they cannot be to blame, because they always work with politicians. And, of course, with the local politicians, they also work with politicians from the US, from Europe, and from elsewhere.
But we had a situation where wealth has been concentrated in a few hands across the nation. If you look at statistics, right now the ... GDP, gross domestic product, is said to be growing at a rate of more than 6% per year, and just a couple of weeks ago the government announced: by recalculating the gross domestic product, Nigeria is now the biggest economy in Africa, bigger than South African economy.
But at the same time, what is not being told to the world, what is not being announced clearly, is that poverty is increasing rapidly also. So you have a situation where 70% of the population live in poverty, and then wealth is concentrated in a few hands. And in the northern part of the country, this disparity is much more sharper because of years of negligence, especially in educational sector, because some people ... manipulate the poor and the marginalized, children, especially, and the youth, into not obtaining suitable education, but just being put in a state where they have to depend on the rich for daily handouts and occasional days of festivities. And so you find in the northern part of the country very deep and desperate poverty besides incredible wealth here of a few people. And so over the years, this has built up. This has resulted in discontent, especially amongst the poor, young people.
And the problem generally across the nation has been that over--the years of military rule has made even the civilian politicians behave sometimes like--as if they were military overlords. And elections have not been fair and free most of the time. And politicians were very, very readily amenable to using political talks, some of whom have been armed with weapons. And if you look at the crisis that occurred in the South in about--around 2005 in the Niger Delta, in the oil fields, where militancy heightened, you find that some of the young people who were involved in this militancy had worked as help to politicians through elections, but they would not receive what they were promised at the end of the day. And so the politicians used to use and then dump them.
And a similar thing also occurred in the northern part of the country, but we are not in a position to say exactly how what has become the Boko Haram phenomenon grew, from what was the root. What is known is that the amalgam of groups generally operating under this name or under this nomenclature believe that anything Western must be rejected, especially Western education. And so they will fund a lot of attacks on schools, on public institutions, and then on the military, on whatever they feel would hurt the government.
But what has become very reprehensible is that over the past few months, these insurgents (as they're labeled these days) have concentrated on killing defenseless children, some in their sleep in their hostels, in secondary school hostels. They've recently ... abducted over 200 girls from a hostel in a school at Chibok in northeastern Nigeria. In Abuja about two weeks ago they set off explosions in a very densely packed motor park, a public transportation hall on the outskirts of Abuja, killing innocent workers and children who were either on their way to school or to their offices.
JAY: How much has the interests of big Western oil companies shaped the politics of Nigeria? I mean, you're talking about a handful of very, very wealthy, and in the north tremendous poverty, where all these events are taking place. But in terms of over the last decades, how much has Nigerian politics been shaped either by, you know, Western/American oil companies, and even directly with US CIA and such involvement?
BASSEY: Well, let me speak about how the Nigerian economy and politics have been shaped by multinational corporations. They've been very key in shaping the way politics has developed in the country and how the economy has grown. We are running an economy that is based, basically, on oil rents, collection of royalties and rents from oil production by transnational oil corporations. They have overbearing influence on the political development of the country and on the economy. In fact, the national budget of Nigeria has always been about ... what should be the benchmark of the price of crude oil. And so crude oil has been a determinant factor right from the early 1970s, when oil revenue became the major source of foreign exchange for the country. And so right now the oil companies operate above the law, because the government would not do anything ... whatsoever to offend them or to make them lose their profit. And so they break the law with absolute impunity.
...
Now, because of the heavy dependence on oil revenue, as I said, these corporations have very heavy influence on politics. And rich people in the country are rich because they have a slice of oil revenue, not because they engaged in anything productive. And so we run a kind of voodoo economy, something that is more or less maybe beginning to change now because there are other sectors of the economy that are contributing to progress, and that is getting a bit more productive than before.
But as I say this, the influence of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank has also been very significant in dislocating the pattern of growth of the Nigerian economy and African economy generally that was visible between--in the early '70s through the early 1980s. And that, of course, happened through the introduction of structural adjustment programs that opened up the economy for dumping of products from the Global North, from North America, from Europe, from Japan, Australia, and then also killing local production, local industries, killing local agriculture, and, making these countries kind of dependent on ... foreign aid and stuff like that. So we've seen a situation where the negative influence of multinational corporation has played a very, very big role in keeping our nation from being on the right path of progress.
Another one of those articles highlighting how UN "peacekeepers" took advantage of vulnerable people in vulnerable situations. Regardless of who stoops so low in the society, helping someone to gain sexual favours is always wrong. However, if this would've been done by non-UN & some groups in Middle East or Africa, not only that group of people is maligned but the whole religion is dragged through the mud & dirt. But when UN "peacekeepers" do the same thing, it's a back-page news (assuming it's considered news at all in the first place). Western hypocrisy at its peak !!!
When the 2011 movie, "The Whistleblower," showed how UN "peacekeepers" sexually abused girls in war-torn Bosnia, & how UN tried to cover up the whole scandal, the world didn't demand answers from UN for what it has done wrong. UN "peacekeepers" realizing that their actions carry no adverse consequences for themselves or for UN, carried on, business as usual. Now, although, the allegations of sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers have spread out from Cambodia to Central African Republic to Haiti; thanks to Western media, UN & the world public still won't take any substantive corrective measures & punish those who did wrong.
Well, UN "peacekeepers" will keep doing what they do best; sexually abusing women, girls, & boys in countries where they are sent to serve & protect the vulnerable general public. Doesn't it seem like that UN is starting to become better in hiding scandals nowadays than to actually prevent wars & chaos in the world?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
According to a new UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) report obtained by the news agency, a third of alleged sexual exploitation & abuse involved minors under 18.
The shocking conclusions were revealed after investigators interviewed 231 people in Haiti who claimed they were forced to perform sexual acts with UN peacekeepers in exchange for basic necessities.
“For rural women, hunger, lack of shelter, baby care items, medication & household items were frequently cited as the 'triggering need,'" the report says. Those living in the city or in its vicinity had sex in exchange for “church shoes, cell phones, laptops & perfume, as well as money,” report says.
“In cases of non-payment, some women withheld the badges of peacekeepers & threatened to reveal their infidelity via social media,” the report says.
The UN explicitly bans the “exchange of money, employment, goods or services for sex,” & discourages relationships between UN staff & those who are under their care. However, only 7 of the interviewed victims “knew about the United Nations policy prohibiting sexual exploitation & abuse,” the report states.
The report ... makes no reference to the time frame of the alleged violations, but the 7,000-strong UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti started in 2004. The investigation also does not mention the number of peacekeepers involved.
The report says that the lack of any clear action is “demonstrating significant underreporting,” while noting that assistance to those that suffered is “severely deficient.” The average investigation by OIOS takes more than a year, according to AP.
Sexual abuse by peacekeeping troops, some 125,000 of which are currently deployed around the world, has undermined the credibility of their missions. A rapid increase in prostitution & abuse in Cambodia, Mozambique, Bosnia, Sudan & Kosovo were documented after UN peacekeeping forces moved in.
Earlier this year it was revealed that UN peacekeepers raped & sodomized starving & homeless boys in the Central African Republic, some as young as 9.
However, the number of documented cases of sexual abuse & exploitation by members of UN peacekeeping missions was 51 in 2014, down from 66 the year before, according to the secretary-general's latest annual report on the issue.
As I have blogged before that human trafficking, & especially women being trafficked, for the sole purpose of sex slavery is very common around the world; be it from Nepal to India, or South Asia to Dubai, or East Europe to West Europe, or in Latin America, but the sad part is that it has not only increased in the past decades or so, it is not even reported in the news as vigorously as what ISIS is apparently doing with captured Yazidi girls.
I am not saying that what ISIS is doing is correct, but we need to put this human trafficking & sex slavery phenomenon into perspective. What ISIS is doing is definitely abhorrent & should be stopped, but young girls are becoming sex slaves in Western Europe, Dubai, India, & even North America ... countries / regions, which purport to protect women & their rights.
The scope of what ISIS or Boko Haram is doing is rather small compared to how many girls are being forced into prostitution in law-abiding countries/regions. What's happening to girls in Iraq, Syria, or Nigeria is wrong but considering those are warzones, why is this such a prominent practice (sex slavery) in non-warzones, like Dubai, India, US, Canada, UK, Germany etc.?
Halfway through the article below (around paragraph 11), what strikes me as a universal trait of criminal nowadays is that criminals are the community leaders now, who host & fund religious & community gatherings. They all seem so genuine to the public. It's same all over the world. Now, it's becoming in our society, all over the world, that the younger generation wants to emulate the criminals of their communities. What will happen to that society when role models of the younger generations are the people who themselves are devoid of any morals & ethics?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MarÃa Méndez was a live-in domestic worker when she met Ricardo López on her way to the supermarket. She was 15, from a poor family in the state of Mexico, & had been cleaning houses since the age of 8. He was a cocky, charming 16-year-old from Tenancingo, a small town in the neighbouring state of Tlaxcala. He courted her, promising marriage & a home. She desperately wanted it to be true, & within a fortnight moved with him to Tenancingo.
At first López & his family treated her well, but it quickly turned violent. “He sent me to work as a prostitute in Tijuana, Guadalajara, Torreón, Aguascalientes – all over the country to make money selling my body,” Méndez, now 59, told the Observer. “He said the money was to buy land so we could build a little house, but it was all false, even the name he’d given me was false. He made me live a very sad, ugly, desperate life. I was so ashamed.”
Méndez, like thousands of other vulnerable women in Mexico, was hoodwinked by a family of traffickers in Tlaxcala, the country’s smallest state just 2 hours east of Mexico City. This is a deeply religious place, where the indigenous Nahua people united with the Spanish to conquer the mighty Aztecs, but which over the past 5 decades has transformed into an unlikely hub of human trafficking.
In the US, five of the 10 “most wanted” sex traffickers are from Tenancingo, where Mendez’s nightmare began. Trafficking networks rooted in Tlaxcala are the biggest source of sex slaves in the US, the state department has said.
This improbable crime story began in the 1950s after industrialisation, when working-age men returned home from neighbouring states to find few opportunities beyond badly paid factory jobs. Pimping & trafficking, which they had seen while working away, was a way to get ahead, & many set up small, family-run sexual exploitation rings.
Some of the most powerful Tlaxcala families are believed to collaborate with Mexico’s most feared cartels.
In 2008 trafficking was detected in 23 of Tlaxcala’s 60 municipalities. By last year this had increased to 35, according to research conducted by local human rights group the Fray Julián Garcés centre, which has identified six “red zones” where sexual exploitation is most concentrated. (A government official told the Observer there were no red zones in Tlaxcala).
In Tenancingo, population 11,000, the presence of organised crime is breathtaking. Huge, tawdry houses are scattered among rows of ordinary, modest homes. Everyone knows who own the big houses, though, despite pressure from NGOs to improve transparency & target trafficking proceeds, there is no public land registry. The mansions look like fancy multilayered wedding cakes adorned with sculptured eagles, lions & swans. The grandiosity continues into the cemetery, where tombs are ornate & extravagant – not unlike those seen in villages of the northern state of Sinaloa, from where many of the drug cartel leaders hail.
In Tenancingo’s main square, a striking colonial church towers over taco stalls & shoe-shiners, a typical lunchtime scene apart from the new white Mustang & Chevrolet parked beside a bar. Here, a group of men in their 30s & 40s sporting designer jeans & T-shirts knock back cold beers under the piercing afternoon sun. Two police officers are stationed less than 150 metres away.
“These guys are the archetypal padrotes [pimps],” said Emilio Muñoz, a Tlaxcala native & director of human rights & gender violence at the Fray Julián Garcés centre.
“They are the ones who go to other states looking for vulnerable girls to trick – that’s their role in the family business. Everyone knows who the padrotes are, it’s no secret, & it’s the same families who sponsor religious festivals & community events. They operate with almost complete impunity. Trafficking has become so normalised & rewarding that young people look up to them.”
One in 5 children here wants to be a pimp when they grow up, according to a 2010 University of Tlaxcala study. Two-thirds of youngsters surveyed knew of at least one relative or friend working as a pimp or trafficker.
Tenancingo is the most notorious hotspot in Tlaxcala, with some estimates suggesting one in 10 people are actively involved in trafficking. But 16km north in Axotla del Monte, population 2,000, the concentration of garish mansions & flashy sports cars is even more conspicuous. This is another red zone, home to loyal, close-knit communities. In December 2012 the army was drafted in after police officers were almost lynched trying to detain an alleged trafficking family.
The old interstate highway connecting Axotla with Tenancingo is lined with cheap hotels. Official notices indicate a few recent closures, but many more are under construction. Around midday, young women wearing fake leather trousers & platform heels emerge near the hotels to attract the attention of passing motorists.
It is a wretched scene. The women’s features suggest they come from the poor southern states of Chiapas, Oaxaca & Guerrero, where a large proportion of trafficking victims originate, according to the United Nations Office for Drugs & Crime (UNODC). For most, Tlaxcala is only a pit stop until they are sent to more lucrative locations in northern Mexico & the US.
In recent years the modus operandi for trafficking throughout Mexico has shifted from kidnap & brute violence towards psychological deception & fake relationships. Poor, uneducated & often indigenous girls & women are dazzled & lured with the promise of jobs or marriage. Most commonly, as in Méndez’s case, women are initially persuaded to prostitute “for love”, in order to help resolve a financial crisis which the trafficking family feigns. By the time they realise & accept they are victims, their “husbands” use beatings & threats against their parents & children – often fathered by the traffickers – to control them.
“The few successful prosecutions have mainly involved international crime groups, yet most trafficking in Mexico occurs within close family & friends’ circles using rustic methods of seduction which are very difficult to investigate & prosecute,” Felipe de la Torre, UNODC adviser in Mexico, said.
US authorities have prosecuted several powerful Tlaxcala families, most famously the Carreto clan, who between 1991 & 2004 duped, coerced & trafficked Mexican women into prostitution in New York City.
It took almost 10 years for one victim, a woman from Guadalajara, to be reunited with her daughter who was left growing up within the Carreto family in Tenancingo.
“There is a lack of political will & legal sensitivity when it comes to reuniting victims with their children – who are at huge risk of being trafficked or absorbed into the crime family,” said Gretchen Kuhner, director of the Institute for Women in Migration.
The Tlaxcala government told the Observer that it has jailed 14 people for trafficking-related crimes since 2011 – around 10% of the national total. Authorities have rescued 127 trafficking victims, closed down more than 200 bars, nightclubs & hotels, & conducted hundreds of awareness-raising events, it added.
There are an estimated 20,000 trafficking victims in Mexico every year, according to the International Organisation for Migration. Tlaxcala has no refuge for trafficking victims.
Méndez endured 10 years of arrests, humiliation & threats, before finding strength through her faith to stand up to López & stop prostituting herself. “He beat me, threatened to take our children, but I stayed with him because of the shame. I couldn’t bear to tell my family the awful things I had done, or who my husband really was.”
They are still married, & live together near where the girls are forced to prostitute themselves on the highway. López works in a shop, though his extended family continue trafficking. Méndez added: “These men in their nice cars think money is more important than human dignity, but they are monsters, just like my husband. Sometimes when I see the poor girls I can’t breathe. I pray one day this town can come out of this.”
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, that how developed countries of the West & especially, the members of the UNSC (UN Security Council) are largest exporters of arms & weapons around the world, I won't say much here about them.
I will pose couple of questions here, though:
1. How & why do we (primarily, Canadians) still think that Canada still flies the banner of peace around the world?
2. When countries like China, Russia, US, Canada, France, Germany etc. actively hawk their military wares to the developing countries around the world, then how can we expect any peace around the world, & how can we expect developing countries to ever get out of poverty cycle?
In light of my second question above, it seems like the strategy of keeping a majority of countries (& hence, their citizenry) underdeveloped around the world, by the developed countries is working perfectly. Developing countries keep fighting, either each other or rebel groups or multinational terror networks, with the multi-million $$$ of weapons bought from the developed countries.
Besides, owing developed countries money for these weapons, developing countries also borrow & owe lots of loans (infrastructure, development etc.). The same loans that developing countries borrow from developed countries are paid back to developed countries in the form of payments for military wares. But that payment doesn't count towards loans repayments & interests. Developing countries still need to pay developed countries' financial institutions (IMF, World Bank etc.) for those loans & interests.
So, developed countries get repaid twice, while developing countries lose their citizens' money twice. So developed countries always get richer at the expense of widespread poverty in developing countries. Those developing countries can never get out of the poverty cycles.
And if we look at the chaos & social upheavel in the developing countries, we see a common pattern among the groups which are causing that chaos. All those groups (Boko Haram, Al Qaeda, ISIS, Indian Maoist rebels, Joseph Kony's LRA etc.) came into being because of citizenry's poverty, e.g. ISIS came out of discrimination against Sunnis in Iraq, in official government & in getting employment; essentially realizing that their voice will never be heard. (I am not defending ISIS here, but just saying how it came into being).
So, the West wants chaos & upheavel in developing countries. Why?
Two Reasons:
1. Money is power. More money you have in this world, more power you have in this world. If developing countries start using those IMF loans to develop their own countries, by investing in education, infrastructure, industries, economy, healthcare etc., they themselves & their combined power will overwhelm the currently developed countries. Those formerly developing countries will easily take the reins of the world from formerly developed countries.
So, the strategy of developed countries: don't let the developing countries use their own citizen's money (taxes) & international loans in investing in their own countries. Keep these countries indebted to us. Debt is slavery.
2. When these countries have chaos & upheavel in their countries, their citizens, especially the ones who are intelligent & smart, will try to emigrate out of their countries, in search of a better future for themselves & their families. They will then settle in one of these developed countries. This way, the developing countries also lose "brains" of their countries (while also losing finances, as explained above).
Those people who immigrate to a developed country are then treated as inferior in those developed countries, & are discriminated against, based on religion, race, ethnicity, education etc. Those immigrants become similar to compliant slaves of the slavery era. They provide the low-wage workforce, which silently toils away at the bottom of the corporate & social hierarchies, while the native residents of the developed countries enjoy the fruits of their labour (i.e. become rich).
So, the developed countries get multiple benefits from selling weapons of mass destruction to the world:
1. get intelligent people out of developing countries (so they can't develop),
2. get a low-wage compliant labour force,
3. increase their country's tax base,
4. a large, intelligent labour force works in factories, making products to sell, worldwide, which helps exports & national GDP,
5. more exports & an increasing GDP helps boost economy,
6. working immigrants also increase the consumer base of the country, &
7. loans to developing countries are also repaid so money also comes in the country through that way (besides, exports)
On the other hand, you can imagine what developing countries lose (pretty much opposite of those 7 points above). So, developing countries get hit with multiple whammies on financial, economic, & human resources level.
So, more people will definitely fight for a decreasing share of resources in those developing countries, to the point that people start killing each other.
Then, we all say, the residents of those developing countries are so "uncivilized" & "barbaric".
By the way, if someone is thinking those developing countries are poor because of government corruption, then, here's my answer:
A corrupt government is indeed one of the factors why developing countries stay in "developing" mode. But we do have to keep in mind that those corrupt government officials are in power, thanks to the blessings (i.e. constant political interference) of the developed countries.
For instance, the developed countries bombed Libya & Iraq. Didn't invest in them to build these countries. Result is both of these countries became a haven of terror networks. Fractured political landscape is in such a shape thanks to the developed countries' interference. Well, as we can see, residents of these countries are all over the world as refugees & immigrants, while those countries & their neighbouring countries are buying weapons from these same developed countries, which created those conditions from their abhorrent actions, in the first place.
My final questions: who are the real barbarians in this world? Who are the real merchants of death in this world?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
With global arms sales surging, Canadian companies have joined the booming business by selling armoured vehicles to Nigeria & Cameroon for their fight against Boko Haram, a new study says.
Canada is among a growing group of countries selling arms to the West African nations for the military campaign to recapture territory from the radical Islamist militia, according to the report ... by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
Most Western governments have been reluctant to sell weapons to Nigeria because of widespread concerns about well-documented atrocities by the Nigerian military, including the mass murder of civilians & detainees. The US, for example, cancelled the proposed sale of Cobra attack helicopters to Nigeria last year. But those restrictions don’t seem to apply to private companies.
Nigeria & Cameroon, seeking weapons to fight Boko Haram, have in the past year purchased helicopters from China & Russia & armoured vehicles from China, South Africa, Ukraine & the Czech Republic, along with armoured vehicles from Canadian-owned production lines in Nigeria & the United Arab Emirates, the report said.
... Nigeria has spent large sums on major weapons purchases in recent months. Its political leaders say the government went to the black market to buy weapons because the US & other countries would not sell to Nigeria. Hundreds of foreign mercenaries have also reportedly been hired to fight Boko Haram for $400 (USD) in cash per day.
The Nigerian deals are part of a worldwide boom in weapons sales. Global arms sales have jumped by 16% over the past 5 years, compared with the previous five-year period, the SIPRI report said.
The report showed that China is now the world’s third-biggest weapons exporter. China’s arms exports have soared by a stunning 143% over the past 5 years, allowing it to overtake Germany, France & Britain in global sales, although it still remains far behind the two biggest exporters, the US & Russia, which together account for 58% of arms exports. In the past 5 years, US exports have increased by 23%, while Russian exports have risen by 37%, compared with the previous five-year period.
Canada was the world’s 13th-biggest arms exporter over the past 5 years, according to the SIPRI report. In the previous five-year period, it was the 14th-biggest weapons exporter.
The SIPRI database identifies the sale of 40 armoured vehicles to Nigeria from Canadian companies in 2013 & 2014. Streit Group, founded in Canada in 1992, has publicly confirmed that it has recently sold its Spartan armoured vehicles to Nigeria. The company says it has sold 12,000 armoured vehicles worldwide since its foundation.
Peter Wezeman, a senior researcher at the Stockholm institute, said another Canadian-based company, INKAS, has sold light armoured patrol vehicles to Nigeria from a production plant in Nigeria. Retired Canadian general David Fraser, who commanded Canadian troops in Afghanistan, is a director of INKAS.
Mr. Wezeman, in an e-mailed answer to questions from The Globe and Mail ..., said Canada should ensure it “understands the risks involved in arms exports” & should try to help Nigeria to deal with Boko Haram “in a way that involves the minimum amount of violence needed.” He added: “Just allowing the supply of weapons is not enough.” He said he was speaking in his personal capacity, not on behalf of the institute.
