Saudis appear to be using Canadian-made combat vehicles against Yemeni rebels

Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, is famous around the world for his humanity-loving & peace-loving stature & acts. But those are only words. When it comes to words, then this is Canada for you; selling weapons to those countries, which are proven to be habitual human-rights abusers. After all, what would you expect from selling $15 billions worth of weapons & Light-Armoured Vehicles (LAVs) to Saudi Arabia; that they use those vehicles to help Syrians or Iraqis or Yemenis?

Saudi Arabia gets correctly blamed for its bombing of Yemeni civilians but what about the "drug-dealer" who provided those "drugs" to the "drug-addict" in the first place? Canada & other G7 countries are developing or substantially supporting their economies through sales of weapons to the world, & especially to those countries, which are embroiled in wars in hot zones. But they don't get blamed for selling arms & weapons; users of those weapons get blamed for using those weapons.

This is the media for you. Canadian media & social media shows the face of Liberals & Trudeau to the world that shows how peace-loving & humanitarian Canadian government is, & they don't show how that same government is causing so much pain in the world, too.

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https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/saudi-arms-used-against-yemeni-rebels-seem-to-match-canadian-lavs/article28846678/

Canadian-made armoured vehicles appear to be embroiled in Saudi Arabia's war against Yemeni-based Houthi rebels – caught up in cross-border hostilities that critics say should force Ottawa to reconsider a $15-billion deal to sell Riyadh more of these weapons.

The Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthis – who are aligned with Iran – has already been accused by a United Nations panel of major human-rights violations for what its report called "widespread and systematic" air-strike attacks on civilian targets. Along the Saudi-Yemen border, constant skirmishes pit Houthi fighters against Saudi ground forces such as the Saudi Arabian National Guard.

The Saudi Arabian National Guard, a buyer of many Canadian-made light armoured vehicles (LAVs) in the past decade, has published photos on its official Twitter account showing how in late 2015 it moved columns of combat vehicles to Najran, a southwestern Saudi town near the border with Yemen that is in the thick of the conflict.

A significant number of vehicles in the photos have the triangular front corners, the eight wheels and the headlamps fixed above these triangles that are familiar features in earlier LAV models made in Canada.

Neither the Liberal government nor LAV-maker General Dynamics Land Systems in London, Ont., would confirm these are Canadian machines.

But a retired Canadian general consulted by The Globe and Mail, who spoke on condition of anonymity, identified the LAVs being transported to Najran as fighting vehicles made by General Dynamics Land Systems. Stephen Priestley, a researcher with the Canadian American Strategic Review, a think tank that tracks defence spending, also identified the LAVs as Canadian-made.

Critics say having Canadian-made arms enmeshed in a conflict that has claimed more than 2,800 civilian lives should prompt Ottawa to rethink the recent $15-billion deal to sell hundreds or thousands more to the Saudis.

Canada's export control rules for weapons shipments are supposed to require Ottawa to restrict arms exports to countries such as Saudi Arabia, that have "poor human-rights records." Saudi Arabia, regularly ranked among the "worst of the worst" on human rights by Freedom House, qualifies for special scrutiny.

The same federal weapons export controls also say Canada should "closely control," or be very discriminating, about shipments to countries "that are involved in or under imminent threat of hostilities."

Foreign Affairs ... department refused comment Monday when pressed on whether it is concerned about the armoured vehicle shipments, saying it's bound to secrecy on anything to do with arms sales to the Saudis.

"In regards to your request, please see our response: For reasons of commercial confidentiality, specific contractual details cannot be shared," Tania Assaly, a spokeswoman for Global Affairs said in a prepared statement.

The Trudeau Liberals keep trying to dissociate themselves from the increasingly controversial deal. Last week, Mr. Dion argued his government merely inherited the contract and that cancelling it would cost taxpayers huge penalties. Pressed on this, Mr. Dion's department refused to provide details to back up the Foreign Minister's assertion, citing the need to keep the commercial pact with Riyadh secret.

General Dynamics Land Systems Canada of London, Ont., which employs about 2,100 people, did not respond to a request for comment about whether it is concerned about the LAVs caught up in the Saudi-Yemen conflict.

Ken Epps with the anti-war group Project Ploughshares, which tracks arms sales, said the Liberal government should rethink the latest $15-billion contract with Saudi Arabia. Ottawa, not General Dynamics Land Systems, is the prime contractor in this deal, which was also brokered by the federal government.

The Trudeau government still has power over the deal. It can suspend exports of these combat vehicles.

"Given a UN report accused the Saudis of war crimes because of their bombing of civilians, then clearly our concern must be that since they are involved in war crimes there, it should give the Canadian government additional pause in shipping these kind of weapons to them," Mr. Epps said.

The $15-billion Saudi LAV deal will provide Riyadh with weaponized armoured vehicles in what is the largest manufacturing export contract in Canadian history – but one that doesn't garner significant public support. A recent Nanos Research poll found nearly six out of 10 Canadians surveyed feel it is more important to ensure arms exports go only to countries "that respect human rights" than it is to sustain some 3,000 jobs by selling combat vehicles to Saudi Arabia.

A new report says Saudi Arabia was the second-largest arms importer in the world between 2011 and 2015 after India as Mideast countries upped weapons purchases significantly. Shipments to Saudi Arabia rose 275% in those years, by value, compared with the earlier 2006-10 period, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said.

At least one wartime footage video posted on YouTube on the Houthi-Saudi conflict also shows what appears to be a disabled Canadian-made LAV, presumably abandoned by Saudi troops as their enemies approached.

Mr. Priestley said this December, 2015, video, purported to be shot near the southern Saudi town of Al Raboah, shows a National Guard LAV-AG model, made in London, Ont., being looted by combatants.

Iran: A victim of terrorism

Another great opinion piece by Belen Fernandez. With the help of international traditional media & social media, the world has been brainwashed to blame the victims for their actions, while praising & wholeheartedly supporting the actions of oppressors.

As my prior blog posts have stated multiple times, double standards & lies are the norm of Global North / developed economies of North America & Western Europe. One of their citizens get hurt, the world has to come to a standstill, but thousands upon thousands of Iraqis, Syrians, Afghanis, Yemenis, Somalis, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Japanese, Palestinians, Nigerians, Nicaraguans, Iranians etc. can die but nary a peep from the media or governments. To add insults to injuries, those countries & those victims get blamed for their deaths.

While the permanent members of UN Security Council sells arms & ammunition around the world, like US did to Israel while it was relentlessly bombing Gaza, which is also known as, "the largest open-air prison in the world," or how UK & Canada are selling their arms & weapons to Saudi Arabia, which is using them to bomb innocent civilians in Yemen, but when Pakistan shared its nuclear technology with Libya & Iran, its top nuclear scientist was house bound & restrictions were placed on the country. While Iran has to pretty much "take off its clothes in public" to keep its nuclear technology & to get rid of economic sanctions, UN Security Council members are trying to out-sell each other in terms of selling their military technology to the whole world, just so more & more innocent civilians die each & every day around the world.

How do you think an Iraqi father would regard an American when he comes to hear Madeleine Albright saying that killing one / most / all of his children was "worth it" due to Iraqi economic sanctions of 1990's? Although, harming / killing an innocent person is wrong everywhere in the world, regardless of where that person lives, but showing no empathy, & even blaming the victims, for actions which he / she didn't commit in the first place, is far more worse. No compassion & empathy would lead to seething anger & then that anger would find a violent outlet & then that outlet would be called "terrorism".

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http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2015/09/iran-victim-terrorism-150906053617492.html

"One should have a single, not a double, standard."

These were the (translated) words of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, speaking at a conference I recently attended in Tehran. His observation was in reference to the habit of the United States & Co of decrying terrorism but then applauding terroristic behaviour when it serves their interests.

US mastery of the double standard means that, for example, the word "terrorism" is dutifully applied to situations in which planes are flown into US buildings, but not to ones in which US warships shoot down Iranian passenger jets, killing everyone on board.

A look at reality

While Iran is portrayed in Western & Israeli circles as a relentless supporter of terrorism worldwide, the conference focused on a less politically convenient reality: that of Iran as a victim of terror.

According to Iranian calculations, more than 17,000 persons have perished as a result of terrorist operations in the country since the Islamic revolution of 1979. The majority of these were perpetrated by the anti-government Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK).

Casualties have included three-year-old Fatima Taleghani, who burned to death when MEK members set fire to her room, teenager Zeynab Kamayee, who was reportedly suffocated with her veil, and 35-year-old Dariush Rezaeinejad, one of five Iranian scientists assassinated in recent years - apparently with the help of the Israelis.
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'Material support'

The US government has also demonstrated sympathy for select Iranian terrorists, albeit in a far less noble fashion. In 2012, the US state department delisted the MEK as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), despite reports of continuing terroristic activities.

Prominent journalist & constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald described the delisting as "more vividly illustrat[ing] the rot and corruption at the heart of America's DC-based political culture than almost any episode I can recall".

While still on the FTO list, Greenwald wrote, the MEK had thrown large sums of money at an array of Democratic & Republican personalities, journalists, & other opinion shapers, who then became advocates for the organisation.

Along with previous training sessions in the US for MEK operatives, Greenwald argued that such collaborative arrangements seemed to constitute "material support" for terrorism - a felony under US law.

But the US justice system prefers to reserve this crime for hapless Muslims, like Syed Fahad Hashmi, a US citizen & Brooklyn College graduate sentenced to 15 years in prison - following several years of pre-trial solitary confinement - for allegedly providing material support to al-Qaeda.

What was the exact nature of Hashmi's "support"? Having once provided temporary accommodation in London to a man who happened to supply al-Qaeda members with socks & rain ponchos.

The US on trial

Again, the term "double standard" comes to mind.

And it returns with a recent Wall Street Journal article titled: "Terror Victims Eye Thawing with Iran", which explains that "[o]ver the past two decades, terrorism victims have filed about 100 lawsuits against Iran in US courts", alleging Iranian sponsorship of attacks ranging from the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Beirut to 9/11.

Citing testimonies from the victims' lawyers, the article notes that "lifting just the nuclear sanctions [against Iran] could free up billions of Iranian assets in Europe and elsewhere that victims may attempt to seize as part of their judgements".

The barracks bombing is regularly attributed to the Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah - which didn't officially exist at the time. If we follow the above line of reasoning, however, it appears that the US is eligible for a fairly infinite number of lawsuits - in Lebanon & beyond.

Not only did the US rush shipments of weaponry to Israel during its assault on Lebanon in 2006 - an affair that dispensed with approximately 1,200 human lives, most of them civilian - it also contributed financially & morally to Israel's sustained terrorism in Gaza via billions of dollars in annual aid & ceaseless repetitions of the mantra that Israel is engaged in self-defence.

Standard operating procedure

Other US hobbies, like drone strikes & imperialist wars, can also be pretty terroristic in nature. Furthermore, as California-based independent researcher Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich remarked during her presentation at the conference in Tehran: economic sanctions against Iran constitute a form of "UN-sanctioned terrorism" given their detrimental effects on the well-being of innocent civilians.

One of the more glaring examples of the ruthlessness of sanctions is, of course, Iraq. Reports in 1996 that half-a-million children had so far died as a result of the policy elicited the following response from then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: "We think the price is worth it."

Indeed, when it comes to terrorising people, the "land of the free" beats the Islamic Republic, hands down. But the victory goes largely unreported in mainstream circles because double standards have become standard operating procedure.


Belen Fernandez is the author of The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work, published by Verso. She is a contributing editor at Jacobin Magazine.

‘West creates refugees by destroying Islamic nations’ – Chechen leader

In some of my blog posts last year [2015], I also wrote in detail how Western countries try to create chaos in so-called developing / third-world countries, & especially so-called Islamic countries, to destroy their economies while getting cheap educated labour for themselves.

So, I wholeheartedly agree with Ramzan Kadyrov's statement about the West ruining Muslim countries, destroying their economies, provoking conflicts, & making thousands of refugees. But, I also want to add my disclaimer here that Ramzan Kadyrov is the "installed" leader of Chechen Republic by Putin & hence, he is saying what Putin thinks of the West. Regardless, Mr. Kadyrov is still correct.

To make Ramzan's point (& my point) hit home, let's take the example of current conflict going on in Yemen. American military brain is helping Saudis kill thousands of Yemenis & making thousands others refugees. British & Canadians are also supplying Saudis with weapons, arms & ammunitions, which will, & are being used, against Yemenis & to quell any internal unrest, like peaceful protests for human rights.

Then, these same countries will make a big noise for Saudi government to work towards instituting human rights in its country. Muslims, all over the world, are of course, completely brainwashed by "white idiots". Nobody is going to blame why UK, Canada, & US supplied Saudis with the same weapons that they are using to kill their fellow Muslim brethren but put the blame squarely on the shoulders of Saudi government. I am not excusing Saudi government for its actions, but you cannot ask for harsh punishment for the drug dealer to facilitate drugs for youths & then turn around & blame youths for using drugs, & absolve the drug dealer for all its heinous actions.

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https://www.rt.com/politics/314350-chechen-leader-blames-west-for/

The head of Russia’s Chechen Republic claims the current asylum seeker crisis in European countries originated in the aggressive policies of the USA & the EU. He also called upon all Muslim nations to jointly fight the root of the problem.

“If today no one rises against the inhumane policies of the Western countries, tomorrow the disaster may come to any Muslim country. I call upon you to urgently discuss this problem, to develop a unified position and to save the lives of thousands of people,” Ramzan Kadyrov wrote on his Instagram account (Kadyrov uses Instagram as a social network for public statements).

“Tens of thousands of Muslims are dying. Women, old people, children and young people as well. Under such conditions the leaders of Islamic countries has no right to remain silent, to stand aside and remain simple observers,” he added.

Kadyrov also explained in his post that in his opinion the West must be blamed for tragedies that are currently taking place in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Libya, Yemen, Algeria & other Muslim nations.

Europe & the USA are not simply refusing to act, they instigate the tragedies of millions of people by destroying the economy of Islamic countries & starting wars in Muslim regions of the world, he added.

“The problem cannot be solved by fighting its consequences, by silencing the reasons that caused it. But this is what Europe and the United States are currently doing. The USA and Europe have ruined these countries, destroyed their economies, provoked lingering internal conflicts and forced the desperate people into becoming refugees,” the Chechen leader wrote.

In February this year [2015], Kadyrov openly accused the US & other Western nations of “spawning” Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) in order to incite hatred towards Muslims all over the world.

Kadyrov also suggested the West was backing IS in order to distract public attention from numerous problems in the Middle East, in the hope of destroying Islamic nations from inside.

Prior to this, Kadyrov had told reporters that he possessed information that the IS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, had been recruited to work for the US personally by General David Petraeus, the former director of the CIA & former commander of coalition forces in Iraq & Afghanistan. At that time, Kadyrov claimed IS “was acting on orders from the West and Europe.”

The Resegregation of American schools

I used to, & still do, love TheRealNews network. I used to post their stories & my thoughts on their stories on my personal Facebook page, but since last year, when I started this blog, I haven't been able to go through any of the stories of TheRealNews network. But now, I am finally going through them.

Anyway, this news story / analysis didn't surprise me that much. The developed / Western world is becoming that much racist, & in general, discrimination of all kinds are increasing. Now, this story only explores how the American schools are re-segregating students based on skin colour. But, this re-segregation, & the story alludes to it a little bit, is symptomatic of larger & deep-seated socioeconomic problem.

That problem is centuries old. That problem is ingrained in the minds of leaders, & the general public, of the Western world. The general public is not generally racist or discriminatory but it discriminates unconsciously. The white leaders & a large proportion of the general public, who is white, think they are superior to other races.

Let me show this with an example. Let's take the example of a segregated school &, as the story explains below, how adversely it impacts a child of a minority or discriminated public.

When a poor African child studies in a segregated school, he/she is pretty much slated to be poor all his/her life. Reason being is that poor people of all walks of life, with all different skin colours, enroll their kids in these urban schools. These schools lack sufficient funding from government. Even if they are getting funding from governments, which are usually insufficient, they have parents with such socioeconomic backgrouds that these schools cannot even fundraise on their own. The parents of these poor students then grow up & make friends which are going through similar situations; homelessness, poverty, drugs, gangs, crime, broken families, etc.

Even if a child goes through all these social problems, which are going around him / her, unscathed, he / she graduates from a university or college but lacks those vital connections, which can land him / her in a job from where he / she can meaningfully improve his / her future.

All the while, white or wealthy children of other races, which are usually not that many, attend schools which have more than enough resources to give them a "complete" education & prepare them for a good, & perhaps even private, universities, where they themselves & their parents make those vital connections, from where they can land those financially-rewarding jobs & careers.

That's how the wealth & achievement gap starts to appear & keeps widening. And the cycle, or history, repeats itself & it goes around again with their children.

That's the same case with immigrants & their children in the Western world. African populations in Western world came to these countries by force, but immigrants were shown a world where, if they themselves won't be able to achieve a good life, then at least, their children will. That dream is generally coming apart for most children of the immigrants. Why people immigrate & how the West is complicit in that regard, too, is a topic for another blog post & has been blogged earlier.

Good / financially rewarding jobs are going to the wealthy children because of their own & their parents' connections. Of course, the well-connected rich parents can easily pass down their rolodex or connection lists to their children. Some prime examples are current Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, using his father's vital connections to eventually become a leader of a country, or the Bushes, Clintons, Obamas, & multiple other children of the politicians becoming politicians themselves, with the help of their parents' connections or children of famous celebrities becoming celebrities themselves. Whenever I come across a personality who is successful, I first go through his / her past & try to find that one piece of connection that must have created that first big opportunity for them. I usually find one easily. Nowadays, there are very few people in this world who get to the top without anyone's help, whatsoever.

So that dream or expectation of achieving greatness with education when never materializes hurts the children a lot. Hence, those children, then lash out at the society through violence, because that's the only method they know how to vent their frustration at the injustice & false dreams / promises of the society. That violence can be in the form of being involved with trafficking of all kinds, big or small crimes, or even moving to another country to join terrorist groups like ISIS or Boko Haram.

So, as we can see, that the impact of discrimination is huge. I always say that slavery / serfdom hasn't actually died, yet. It has merely taken a different shape. White people, all over the world, are still at the top, for example, if you go visit Dubai, you will find all the rich & glamourous downtown Dubai residences are taken up by wealthy white people from Europe, UK, Canada, US, & Australia. Of course, they are living in those expensive residences with the help of big fat tax-free paycheques they are getting because of their high & influential positions in companies over there. Immigration, or even refugee asylum, in the West is due to the fact that these Western countries need workers for the jobs for which their own white populations is voluntarily unavailable, for example, for agricultural work.

So, this discrimination starts from segregated school & go all the way up to employment, & immigration in the public arena. Consequences of this discrimination are one of the worst but governments don't want to do anything substantive because this discrimination on all levels is all planned & not an effect of unplanned & haphazard policy making.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0f0jyvdl98

JAISAL NOOR, TRNN PRODUCER: There's a brand new story out detailing how one of desegregation's success stories in the South has become one of the nation's most racially & economically segregated schools. Today, a third of black students attend schools in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, that look like the 60-year-old Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision that said separate schools for black & white students is unequal never happened.

Writing for ProPublica, Nikole Hannah-Jones writes, quote:

"Tuscaloosa's school resegregation--among the most extensive in the country--is a story of city financial interests, secret meetings, & angry public votes. It is a story shaped by racial politics & a consuming fear of white flight. It was facilitated, to some extent, by the city's black elites. And it was blessed by a US Department of Justice no longer committed to fighting for the civil-rights aims it had once championed."
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NOOR: So, Nikole, you really get into this story by talking about Central High in Tuscaloosa. It was an all-white school before Brown v. Board of Education. It was desegregated over ... a fairly decent, long period of time, & it became, when it was desegregated, one of the top schools in the whole state. Tell us the story of how it went from being desegregated to re-segregated now & what the impact has been on the students.

NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES, REPORTER, PROPUBLICA: Well, Central High School was actually created by a federal court order. Before Central existed--came to existence in 1979, there were two high schools in Tuscaloosa. One had been the historic black high school, & one had been the historic white high school. And even in 1979, 25 years after Brown v. Board, they were still segregated. So a federal judge ordered the merger of the two high schools into one, & they created Central High School.

So Central High School became a city-wide high school, meaning any public high school in the city, no matter their race, no matter where they lived, all went to the same school. And it became a true powerhouse in the state. It was the second-largest high school in the state. It was a school that swept up academic competitions, math competitions, just as easily as athletic competitions. And it really became the pride of the town & kind of a story of how integration in the South could be successful.

But what happened is there were white parents who had been turned off by desegregation. And as we've seen across the country, there was white flight from the school district. And city officials decided that the court order that had created this school was the problem & that they needed to break this school apart in order to bring white parents back to the district. So in 2000, when a federal judge dismissed Tuscaloosa from its federal desegregation order, immediately the school board voted to break apart Central High School. It created three new high schools, & it turned Central High School into a 100% black, almost entirely poor high school.

NOOR: And so talk about what that impact is for the students that go there.

HANNAH-JONES: Well, I think, one, we should make it clear that black kids don't have to sit with white kids in order to learn. But what we also know is never in the history of this country has separate been made equal. So, in Tuscaloosa, once these kids were separated off from the rest of the kids in the district, they were then kind of ignored. These kids spend their entire education, starting in kindergarten through graduation, in entirely segregated schools. These schools were once called the dumping ground for bad teachers. A teacher could be let go from a school that was an integrated school & could be hired on to work at Central or the other all-black schools in Tuscaloosa. Or, until last year, Central High School didn't even offer physics to the students. There were many years where it didn't offer advanced placement courses. So the most integrated high school in the city offered 12. So these kids were not given the same education opportunity as other kids, & they suffered for it.

NOOR: And this story of resegregation is not just happening at Central High or Tuscaloosa; it's really happening all over the South. Talk about its broader impacts.

HANNAH-JONES: Okay. I mean, first I think we should note that the reason that I focus on the South was in 1954 the South was completely segregated, & it was the most segregated part of the country, but because of these court orders, by the early '70s the South had become the most integrated part of the country, far more integrated than the Northeast or the Midwest, & it actually remains the most integrated part of the country. So I wrote about the South because the South has the most to lose. It educates more black students than anywhere else in the country. And because it had actually desegregated, where, as we know, many northern cities never have, this is the one place we got traction.

And what we're seeing is, as hundreds of school districts have been released from their court orders to integrate in the last 10 to 20 years. And as they release, within a few years these districts almost always start to take actions that resegregate black students. And so we're seeing a rise in the number of black students that are attending intensely segregated schools, which are schools that are less than 10% white. And a large number of students, black students, are now attending what some scholars call apartheid schools. And those are schools that are 1% or less white. And as a result, we're seeing the achievement gap that had started closing during the height of desegregation has widened, & it has remained wide.

NOOR: And as you mention in your story, this is not limited to the South. In fact, the Northeast has a really high number of schools. And according to a new report out by the UCLA's Civil Rights Project, it's actually New York State & New York City itself that has the highest number of these apartheid schools that you just mentioned. And I worked at a Museum in New York & I taught at public schools across New York City, & it'd be an ordinary experience for me for one day, for example, to teach in the upper West side, often children of investment bankers, people that worked on Wall Street, very wealthy, & the next day I'd teach at a school in West Harlem, just a few miles away, where all the families there were African-American & lived in the projects. And you could see the resources were different. In New York City each school gets the same amount of funding, but for example, the schools in the Upper West Side, the parents of those students would raise $1 million every year for extra resources & extra funding, & even extra teachers. So I would teach kids as young as kindergarten, but then all the way up to high school & college, & you could see what the long-term impact of the lack of resources & the isolation & segregation are.

HANNAH-JONES: Absolutely. And I think even outside of additional funding that these schools are able to raise, you have to look at--districts make very clear which students they prize, & those students tend to be middle-class students, & they also tend to be white students, I think largely because people believe that their parents are more influential in the community.

So what happens is black schools & Latino schools, not just in terms of additional resources, but they don't get the same quality of teachers. They tend to get the least experienced teachers. For instance, I live in Bedford-Stuyvesant & Brooklyn, which is an almost entirely black neighborhood, & there's not a single talented & gifted program in the schools in my neighborhood. So these kids aren't even getting access to the same types of courses, the same types of rigor. And those are resources that school officials are providing, & it has nothing to do with the wealth of parents.

NOOR: Right. And ever since No Child Left Behind, & now Race to the Top, teachers in schools are evaluated by their student performance. And we know that the biggest predictor of student performance is your socioeconomic background, so there's no incentive for teachers to really teach in the most challenging schools, because they know that they'll be held accountable for their students' performance.

HANNAH-JONES: That's right. Teachers will be penalized for the way that school districts have allowed high poverty to be concentrated in certain schools. So there is a disincentive. That's why you tend to see young teachers right out of college teaching in these schools. And once they get experience, they move on to more integrated schools.

NOOR: But what's being done in places like Alabama, & even in New York City, to challenge these policies, if anything? And do you see any hope of re-segregating these schools? You know, we're talking about 60 years after Brown v. Board of Education.

HANNAH-JONES: I mean, to be honest, very little, very little is being done. I think we've seen very little national will to deal with this issue. Even President Obama, while the administration says that they support integration, if you look into how they fund school, they offer no financial incentive & really no larger incentive for districts to voluntarily integrate. And, in fact, some of the biggest incentives are for charter schools, which, of course, research shows in many places are more segregated than traditional public schools.

So I think we don't have a lot of will about this. I think we're still trying to make separate equal. That's what No Child Left Behind does, that's what Race to the Top does, is it tries to say, okay, we have these high-poverty black & Latino schools, let's bring them up to par, instead of doing what everyone knows can have a great impact on achievement, which is: why don't you break up the racial & economic isolation of these schools? But we're not really willing to talk about that.

NOOR: Worth mentioning: all these policies are supported by Democrats & Republicans.

HANNAH-JONES: That's right.

The Interview: Nobel laureate & economist Joseph Stiglitz

What I liked from this interview is about a little discussion on economic & financial inequality among the public. Politicians & economists of the world are trying to increase demand, & hence, GDP, but they are not trying to resolve the root problems of the recession & slow recovery, & keep trying to put in place harsh austerity measures for the poor public & tax cuts for the rich. These measures are counter-intuitive & decrease the national demand & hurt the national & international economies even further.

The tax cuts for the rich doesn't entice the rich to take that extra cash & increase the minimum wages or provide more benefits to their workers, & instead, they invest in their private yachts, sports arenas, sports clubs, racing animals, real estate, stock portfolios, or simply horde it all away in tax havens. The harsh austerity measures, coupled with more taxes in some cases, for the poor public reduce the free cash available to them, for discretionary purchases, & in many cases, even for needy purchases, which in turn, reduces aggregate demand in the country.

These measures create economic, financial, & social inequality. People cannot move up the social ladder, since they don't have enough money, but they can definitely move down, which is happening all over the world. The young populations of the world are seeing their dreams crush after spending a fortune on their education & building that dream where they would be owning their own homes, have families, build up their wealth, & finally, retire to a relaxing future. Instead, they are seeing their degrees pretty much worthless & jobs that pay so little that owning homes & building up wealth is becoming a very far-fetched dream. All the while, these same poor youths are also seeing people with no discernible talent making a lot of money, for instance, celebs like the Kardashian family or the rich billionaire kids of new billionaires in Europe, China, India, & Russia.

That inequality starts to breed hatred in these young minds. That hatred then tries to find an outlet in terms of violence; be it gun violence in America or Canada or gang warfare in Latin America or refugee crisis of Europe or ranks of terrorist groups like ISIS & Al-Qaeda in Middle East & Africa swelling up with young Westerners.

So, the root problem of violence in Middle East, Latin America, Europe, & in North America are all due to inequality all over the world. If only politicians & economists try to resolve this one major problem, we won't be having these fears of recessions hounding us all the time, & violence would definitely be down all over the world, which in turn, would save billions in arms & weaponry purchases, safety & security apparatus, & of course, millions of lives around the world. Those billions of money can then be used towards helping students in post-secondary institutions with their tuitions, improving infrastructure, creating more companies with subsidies, for instance, for green economies, which in turn, create more well-paying jobs, which in turn, would increase aggregate demand & reduce inequality. If only ... !!!

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http://www.amazon.com/Great-Divide-Unequal-Societies-About/dp/0393248577/

Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, a professor of economics at Columbia University, has written extensively about inequality in America, including his latest book, The Great Divide: Unequal Societies and What We Can Do About Them. He’ll be a visiting scholar in the new Lind Initiative U.S. Studies at the University of British Columbia this fall.
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Q: You’ll be lecturing at UBC on global inequality. Why should people be worried about inequality?

A: Inequality is very related to the problems we’re talking about. People at the top spend less money than those at the bottom so when you have redistribution toward the top, aggregate demand goes down. Unless you intervene, you’re going to have a weak economy unless something else happens. That something else could be a bubble. The US tried a tech bubble & a housing bubble, but those were not sustainable answers. So I view inequality as a fundamental part of our macroeconomic weakness. There have always been two theories about inequality. One is that it reflects just deserts. The other is that there are large elements of exploitation & inequality of opportunities. The evidence is overwhelmingly that the increase in inequality is associated with those negative factors. If it were all social contribution, then when the top did better, they would be contributing to everybody’s well-being. That trickle-down hasn’t happened. We’ve seen median income, people in the middle, actually worse off than they were 25 years ago.

Q: You’ve said that inequality is fraying the bonds that hold the US together. That sounds scary. Is it that bad?

A: Oh, I think it is. [It’s behind] a lot of what you see as dysfunctional behaviour & extremism. Particularly, young men are angry. You know, how can people like Donald Trump be so politically successful, running ahead in the Republican primary with no policy other than a sense of anger? What he’s been doing is pointing out the corruption in our system. I mean, Jeb Bush has Florida put $250 million of pension funds into Lehman Brothers & then when he leaves as governor he gets a job at Lehman at a salary of $1.3 million—those things resonate with Americans. The system looks broken.

What I argued in The Great Divide is that societies can’t function without trust, both politically & economically. And in the context of politics, what you see increasingly is young people not voting. The voter turnout in the last election was the lowest it’s been since the Second World War, when a lot of people were off fighting. In 2010, voter turnout among young people was 20%. Americans like to say we’re fighting for democracy, & yet young Americans have come to the view that democracy doesn’t deliver.

Q: It’s been 4 years since you wrote, “Of the one per cent, by the one per cent, for the one per cent,” which gave the Occupy movement its slogan “We are the 99 per cent.” Is inequality getting more attention now?

A: Very much so. You see Hillary Clinton has emphasized it in her campaign, but even the Republicans have said inequality is the major issue. To me that’s one of the optimistic things, that it’s finally moved to the top of a political agenda. The other optimistic note is that you see, across the country, 70% support for increasing the minimum wage. Congress can’t get it through because it’s dysfunctional & so we’re having strong grassroots movements to raise it, in Seattle, Los Angeles, New York. The grassroots people are saying our national government is broken; we have to do something about it.
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Q: What about Canada? Do you think we have an inequality problem?

A: Oh, yes, clearly. But it’s in the middle of the OECD pack. It’s not as good as the Scandinavian countries. It’s not been doing as good a job as it did in the past in taking inequality of market income & reducing it. Also, you are a natural resource economy, & natural resource economies, with a couple of exceptions, tend to be very unequal. You can, in principle, tax the natural resource rents at very high rates & use that to create a more equal society. The country that’s been most successful at that is Norway. The more typical countries are those in the Middle East where a small group seizes those resources, uses it to buy arms to make sure that they can oppress the remainder, & you get these great inequalities. So Canada is among the better performing of the natural resource economies, but it’s still not up to the best performing.

Q: In Canada the share of income going to the rich has been falling for several years. We have better social mobility than in the US. Why is Canada better on inequality?

A: You have a more egalitarian education system, & I think your health care system is so much better than ours. A third aspect that clearly is part of American history is our racial issue. But the problems of inequality are even within the white group. 20% of American children grow up in poverty, & that means they get inadequate nutrition, inadequate health care, & because we have a very local education system, they get inadequate access to education. With those as a starting base, you perpetuate inequality. That’s why, here in New York, Mayor de Blasio has made a big deal of trying to focus on preschool education, because by 5 years old, there are already huge differences. We’ve finally begun to recognize it.
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Primary reasons for violence spike in Malmo, Sweden

Although, the article is a few months old, the only reason I liked it, is because it shows how social & economic inequality among the public is dangerous to us all.

Governments, especially Western ones, keep saying for the past couple decades that they are working hard to root out "terrorism". Whenever there are violent incidents, government officials issue statements with words like "unnecessary" & "senseless", & outline how they will root out the terrorism problem from their societies & the world. But the violence has only increased.

So, the common sense says that the root cause analyses done by these government officials' advisors are useless. One of the major root cause of modern terrorism is social & economic inequality, & hidden & open discrimination.

In one of my prior blog posts from last year (2015), the article mentioned was a Daily Mail article mentioning how Charlie Hebdo attackers were born-&-bred French citizens. Those attackers / "terrorists" grew up in Parisian suburbs, which are full of immigrants or even "foreign" citizens, & who are excluded from the economic development of France, Paris, & its general public. They have been left out in the metaphorical cold outside, while the Caucasian French natives are enjoying the fruits of immigrants' hard labour.

Now, those "foreign" citizens are from former French colonies & have been living in France for generations. But they are still considered as "foreigners". This similar problem has permeated other countries in EU; from Spain to UK to Belgium to Sweden. The root problem is still same, though; immigrants are welcomed wholeheartedly because they are discriminated against in the upper echelons of the labour market & they are only given hard labour jobs, at minimum wages & benefits, if any, while the natives of the country enjoy becoming rich on the backs of those immigrants.

As the professor of social science clearly explains in the article that these violent incidents in Sweden are not senseless but have major social problems like discrimination & high unemployment among immigrant families are their root causes. The unemployment rate for youths is about 25%, & most of those unemployed are “not Swedes.” He further affirms my points that “in the last 15 years the gap between the rich & the poor has grown enormously & ... you find very rich people that are white people & the poor people are non-white people.”

Problem is that Western governments & other non-Western governments will not solve the root cause of these violent incidents. Solving root causes will involve stop interfering with the internal sovereign matters of other developing countries, stop selling arms & weapons to developing countries, putting in policies in their own countries to judge every job applicant on merit & not on personal & professional networks, & end discrimination in labour market & education. Some of these are much easier to do but unachievable because it will hurt them economically. Some others are much harder to do, perhaps impossible, because human nature cannot be changed (we like people who are like us & hence, we readily will help them).

But if Western governments want these violent incidents to stop, then they have to take the first steps to carefully examine themselves & correct their own actions first. We can't blame others for their actions until we take a hard look at ourselves & correct our own actions first. Why give an excuse to others to harm us?

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https://www.rt.com/news/310757-sweden-malmo-blasts-crime/

On Sunday, the southern Swedish city of Malmo saw the fourth grenade attack in under a week as the a hand grenade was detonated in a car park in the district of Värnhem in the morning, local media reported.

The attack came after a blast on Friday in the Solbacken neighborhood, which occurred less than 12 hours after another explosion in the residential area of Limhamn in the west, & 2 days after a car bomb attack that injured a man outside a community center in the south.

“It is the thirtieth explosive attack since the New Year. We have a situation that is serious,” said the Malmö police chief, Stefan Sintéus, about the explosion on Friday, as quoted by the Local.se on Saturday.
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This week’s unrest continues a series of numerous shootings, explosions & arsons that have occurred since the beginning of the year in Malmo, infamous for high crime rates, multi-ethnic & gang-related violence.

Since the beginning of 2015, 18 explosions rocked the city prompting the Swedish police's national bomb squad (NSB) to be called in. Over the whole 2014 a total of 25 explosions took place which shows a significant increase, Goran Mansson, head of NSB Malmo, told regional newspaper Sydsvenskan on Friday.

Police said they believe this week’s explosions are linked with the court sentencing of 3 young men on July 10 for their roles in the Christmas Eve bombing in Rosengard – the city district which has been dubbed by media as Sweden’s “most notorious refugee ghetto.” The Financial Times reported that 9 out of 10 in Rosengard have a foreign background.
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Rosengard, a district in Malmo, was built in the 1960s & has long been associated with immigrants. Over 80% of residents there are immigrants, hailing from the Middle East, Africa & Eastern Europe. Only 38% of residents in the district are employed, according to the Economist, prompting restive youth to take to rioting & crime.
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Forstell told RT that there are 30 to 40 people with criminal background & weapons in the city. He explained that criminal activity is connected with internal conflicts between different gangs or ethnic groups.

“Some of these people are involved in selling drugs and some of them are in other kinds of economic relations with each other and are not happy with the way things work out. It’s more of a business-like conflict,” he said.

According to statistics provided by local authorities, 31% of the city’s 300,000 population were born abroad & nearly 41% of the residents have a foreign background. The main countries from which immigration takes place are ones which have been recently plagued by conflicts – migrant groups from Iraq, Syria, the former Yugoslavia & Somalia are among them. The data also says that the Muslim population constitutes about 20% of Malmo’s population; this is one of the most significant percentages in Scandinavian cities.

Adrian Groglopo, professor of social science at the University of Gothenburg said that the conflicts are fueled by racial & economic tensions.

“People growing up in different areas segregated racially and economically are trying to keep their own business, protect their own areas and sometimes create a very violent climate,” he told RT.
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Groglopo believes that the young population is being hit the hardest by the “racism and segregation in Sweden.”

“We have living conditions which are not good for the youth, that’s one of the problems,” he explains.

He also pointed to the problem of unemployment in Sweden which is “about 8-9 percent and for young people it’s about 25 percent.” He stressed that one of the main problems is ethnic discrimination in the labor market as most of the unemployed are “not Swedes.”

“In the last 15 years the gap between the rich & the poor has grown enormously & of course it has racial connotations – you find very rich people that are white people & the poor people are non-white people,” he added.

He urged the Swedish government to implement political measures for non-discrimination. There have been controversial incidents involving security forces & refugees ... .
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“Sweden is going through political period very complex and bad,” Groglopo said. “We [are witnessing] a raise of fascism and Nazism in Sweden…they are getting political power.”
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World's refugee population hits all-time high of 60 million, half of them children – UN

Unsurprisingly, what else to expect from the report. To help these refugees, peace has to be instituted in the developing countries, but then that would mean that developed countries of the West (US, Canada, UK, Germany, France) and even new economic powers like China & Russia have to stop selling arms & weapons to these developing countries. These developing countries where these refugees are coming from don't have any resources of their own to manufacture these deadly arms & weapons.

Secondly, developed countries of the West have to stop installing their own puppet governments in these developing countries. They need to stop interfering with the negative development of the countries. It's well known how US constantly interfered in the internal affairs of Latin American & Middle Eastern countries. US interfered with Japan to the point that Japanese PM Shinzo Abe changed the constitution to make the country more militaristic. That's not exactly a positive step towards creating peace in the world.

Thirdly, aside from covert & political interference by the developed West, the West also needs to stop with the military interference in the shape of active invasions. Recent examples of Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan & some old examples of Cambodia, Vietnam, Philippines etc. by the American, British, French, & other forces would provide ample evidence of this interference.

In one of my prior blog posts, I mentioned that one of the primary reasons the developed countries of the West do all these interferences in the developing world is to create active chaos in developing countries. This chaos & anarchy helps developed countries to keep a strong control over financial, mineral, energy, & human resources of the developing countries.

Developing countries keep themselves embroiled in these messes, & spend their valuable resources in resolving these matters. Developed countries provide loans to developing countries, take out resources from the grounds of developing countries for their own use, & let the bright minds of the developing countries move to developed countries, where they are mostly used for menial labour.

Developing countries, which are embroiled in wars or not, are left to shoulder all the burden of either suffering from internally displaced refugees or provide for refugees who have sought refuge in their lands from foreign lands. Developed countries, on the other hand, cause the problem & then get out of the picture.

The primary reason this problem of refugees is keep getting worse with no sign of any improvement is that developed countries actually want more chaos & anarchy in developing countries. Hey, it's not happening in their corner of the world, so why bother resolving it. They actively cause it & prefer to keep it that way. When there is a problem in their corner of the world (problems arising from the dissolution of former Yugoslavia), then they are on the mission of resolving it asap & actually successfully achieve it, too. After all, when there's a will (to resolve a problem), there's always a way.
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https://www.rt.com/news/268144-un-report-refugee-increase/

The annual “Global Trends Report: World at War” was released ... by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

It stated that worldwide displacement is at the highest level ever recorded, adding that the number of people forcibly displaced at the end of last year had reached 59.5 million – compared to 51.2 million a year earlier, & 37.5 million a decade ago. 14 million people were displaced in 2014 alone.

According to figures detailed in the report, over half of those refugees are children.

The year 2014 also hit a 31-year low for the number of refugees who were able to return to their home countries, at just 126,800.

"We are witnessing a paradigm change, an unchecked slide into an era in which the scale of global forced displacement as well as the response required is now clearly dwarfing anything seen before," said UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres.

The figures show that one in every 122 people on the planet is now either a refugee, internally displaced or seeking asylum. If these people had a country of their own, it would be the world's 24th largest.

Every day last year, approximately 42,500 people became refugees, asylum seekers or internally displaced, the report said.

And those numbers – which represent the biggest leap ever seen in a single year – are likely to worsen, according to the agency.

Causes of displacement

Since 2011, the main reason for the surge has been the war in Syria – now the world's largest driver of displacement, surpassing Afghanistan for the first time. A total of 7.6 million Syrians are internally displaced, & 3.9 million are outside the country.

The report noted that at least 15 conflicts have erupted or reignited worldwide in the past 5 years: 8 in Africa, 3 in the Middle East, one in Europe & 3 in Asia.

"Few of these crises have been resolved & most still generate new displacement," the report stated.

Meanwhile, continuous instability & conflict in Afghanistan, Somalia & other areas has led millions to be constantly on the move, stranded as long-term internally displaced or refugees.

The report also drew attention to the current Mediterranean refugee crisis – the result of instability in North Africa.

It added that countries housing the majority of refugees are part of the global poor. Almost 9 out of every 10 refugees were in regions or countries considered less economically developed. One-quarter were in nations among the UN's list of least developed nations.

In the face of the rising displacement numbers, Guterres warned that people in need of “compassion, aid & refuge are being abandoned.”

"For an age of unprecedented mass displacement, we need an unprecedented humanitarian response & a renewed global commitment to tolerance & protection for people fleeing conflict & persecution,” he said.

The UNHCR report comes just 3 days after an Amnesty International report said the world is facing the “worst refugee crisis since World War II.”

The report, called 'The Global Refugee Crisis: A Conspiracy of Neglect, accused governments of effectively letting thousands of people die by failing to provide them with basic human protection.

It paid particular attention to the situation in Syria, Mediterranean, Africa & Southeast Asia.

Amnesty is urging world leaders to call an international summit on tackling the refugee crisis, & for all countries to ratify the UN Refugee Convention. This gives displaced persons legal rights & status in the nations where they have sought refuge.

Red Cross promises houses for 130,000 Haitians, builds only 6

These kinds of news stories, exposing fraud & corruption, within North American & European NGOs are common, but not reported so often. Reason being that the news media & the general public doesn't want to know about these corruptions, frauds, & scandals.

The general public in North America & Europe desperately wants to feel good by donating cash & kind to NGOs. Other than a few, major ones seemed to be always embroiled in corruption scandals. People like to think that since, I've donated my money, or time, everything is good. I did my share & it's time to move on to some other things. For instance, Syrian refugee crisis is on the public radar right now. Everyone has forgotten about Haitians who are still "enduring sub-standard conditions" in Haiti.

As I blogged previously, people today have ADD (attention deficit disorder). One crisis for a few weeks tops the charts of social media & then it's forgotten until something disastrous happens there again.

American Red Cross is celebrating their successes. The public is still donating in big numbers to American Red Cross. There's no notion of any checks to be done, by the public, on American Red Cross. Such a well-known NGO feeds the public garbage through their marketing campaigns & the public gobbles it up. The public keeps donating without ever asking tough questions to these NGOs. The public thinks that since, it's a NGO, they can do no wrong.

The hiring practices of these NGOs are also deplorable. Like it says in the article that expat project managers are being flown in from US, who are being paid 6-figure salaries (who obviously don't have any compassion towards humanity, since he/she is still earning 6-figure salary with all the standard perks), while nothing substantial was taking place on the ground. Everyone who is hired is through networks, which means that the person hired for a given job is not necessarily the right person.

In the end, who is actually suffering? Not the people who are working in American Red Cross. Not the people who donate to American Red Cross. But the Haitians are suffering who are not only helped in any way, but worse still, they have been completely forgotten by the North American & European public.

Once again, as I always say, corruption exists all over the world. In developing world, it's the main headline in the morning news. In developed world, it's not even reported in the media & while the public focuses on the latest crisis being reported on social media.
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http://www.rt.com/usa/264933-red-cross-haiti-money/

When a devastating earthquake struck the Western hemisphere’s poorest country in 2010, the American Red Cross was one of the organizations at the forefront of the humanitarian effort to rebuild it a year later, launching a multi-million-dollar effort.

The main program – LAMIKA (a Creole acronym for ‘A Better Life in My Neighborhood’) – was to build hundreds of permanent homes to house some 130,000 people living in abject poverty after the quake.

Now, in 2015, the Port-au-Prince neighborhood of Campeche is as dilapidated as ever, with hardly any new buildings, trash strewn around, animals walking the streets, & people enduring sub-standard conditions in self-made shacks.

“Many residents live in shacks made of rusty sheet metal, without access to drinkable water, electricity or basic sanitation. When it rains, their homes flood & residents bail out mud & water,” an introduction to a report says.

An investigation by NPR & ProPublica gained access to “confidential memos, emails from worried top officers, & accounts of a dozen frustrated & disappointed insiders” familiar with how the NGO broke its promises, misspent millions of dollars, & then issued self-congratulatory progress statements.

The ensuing report reveals very different results to the ones outlined in CEO Gail McGovern’s project plan for Haiti, which promised “brand new communities” that would make “donors proud” & “help the people in Haiti.” She claimed her experience had made her more “flexible during emergencies.”

The investigation pointed to a series of systematic blunders & untruths surrounding the Haiti effort, however.

The Red Cross’s internal proposal put the number of houses to be built at 700 by January 2013. In reality, only 6 houses were actually constructed.

“We asked the Red Cross to show us around its projects in Haiti so we could see the results of its work. It declined,” the report reads.

Part of the reason behind the failure is that the Red Cross “didn’t have the know-how” & “they had no development experience,” former employees said.

In some cases, the NGO would give millions to other groups. Poor supervision & lack of proper oversight allowed these subcontractors to rack up inordinate bills for management & overhead costs.

Another issue that could have hindered the Red Cross’s work in Haiti is trouble with the country’s “dysfunctional” land title system.

Other groups, which the report does not name, had similar problems but, according to the data, “ultimately built 9,000 homes compared to the Red Cross’s six.”

Another possible reason for the dismal results, pointed out by current & former employees, was “an overreliance” on expats who could not speak French or Creole. The Red Cross’s statement, however, said that over 90% of people hired were Haitians. That didn’t seem to be reflected in the top positions, however, according to the authors of the report.

According to the report, the NGO displayed an arrogant attitude to national staff – some of the very few people who could speak French & the local Creole. In some cases, the Red Cross actively discouraged their participation. This led to poor communication with the local population &, ultimately, to the failure of the outreach project.

“Going to meetings with the community when you don’t speak the language is not productive,” one Haitian who worked on the project in Campeche said, adding that meetings would be skipped altogether at times.

Some $140,000 was spent on housing, food, & R&R for a foreign project manager, who also enjoyed 4 paid leaves a year. That comes to more than $100,000 more than would have been spent on a local equivalent.

“A lot of money was spent on those people who were not Haitian, who had nothing to do with Haiti. The money was just going back to the US,” one Haitian who coordinated expat housing for the Red Cross confessed.

At the same time, Red Cross officials focused more on programs which would generate good publicity than those providing the most homes, according to testimony from Lee Malany, the project manager of the shelter program.

He recalled a Washington meeting where top officials had no idea what to do with the millions they’d been given for housing projects.

The organization would not provide details on how it spent the almost $500 million that it received, nor give specific details of how its projects were carried out. However, various promotional statements estimated that the initiative had repaired some 4,000 homes, erected temporary shelters for thousands of families, & donated $44 million for food aid & hospital construction.

“The Red Cross’s public reports offer only broad categories about where $488 million in donations has gone,” according to the authors of the report.

5 years since the quake, a report by McGovern says: “Millions of Haitians are safer, healthier, more resilient, & better prepared for future disasters thanks to generous donations to the American Red Cross.”

The organization claimed that it had helped 4.5 million Haitians, but according to reporters “there is reason to doubt” that.

Asked if there was any truth to the Red Cross’s claims, Haiti’s Prime Minister didn’t seem to know how the numbers could add up: “No, no… it’s not possible,” Jean-Max Bellerive said, stressing that the country’s entire population is only about 10 million.

“What the Red Cross told us is that they are coming here to change Campeche. Totally change it,” the report cites Jean Flaubert, the head of a community group set up by the Red Cross, as saying. “Now I do not understand the change that they are talking about. I think the Red Cross is working for themselves.”

The Red Cross had already been embroiled in several scandals following 9/11 & Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, but that did not matter to the many people, organizations & US celebrities who continued to support it.

The Haiti earthquake was touted as “a spectacular fundraising opportunity” within the organization, according to one former official involved with the program.

A great number of high-profile people & organizations donated to the cause, including Michelle Obama, many Hollywood A-listers, & the NFL.

It later turned out that the organization continued to collect funds for emergency relief projects even after it had hit its targets. The extra money was found to have been put toward eradicating the American Red Cross’s own debt, which exceeded $100 million.