Showing posts with label Tunesia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tunesia. Show all posts

Thursday, August 2, 2012

Oh, How We Love Our Oriental Rulers!



Now, the West loves brutal dictators - as long as they keep their cruelties secret and as long they play by the rules - OUR rules, or - to be more precise - the rules of big business. We loved when crazy Gaddafi  resided in a tent on Donald Trump's property in New York and was eager to supply oil, we loved when the Trabelsi Clan provided us with cheap labor slaves and hotels to serve us Western tourists on Tunesia's golden beaches; we loved the outsourcing, the money laundering and the weapon deals with the Mubarak Clan in Egypt, we loved Yemen's Saleh and offered him refuge just as we liked the Shah of Persia and Saddam, and we still love the Gulf states - especially Saudi Arabia - because we can make such a good business with them and they really manage to keep their fellow citizens down and torture in the dark. And we all know: Syria is next. Assad was good, but he couldn't keep his people effectively under control. So don't wonder why "Obama authorized covert support for Syrian rebels"! This is just the "Syrian war of lies and hypocrisy" as one of the last remaining journalists said. Don't you worry, we'll find another dictator for Syria and then we apply democracy there!

Monday, February 21, 2011

Our Man in Romania

For all the Russians who didn't believe that Nicolae Ceausescu, the cruel dictator of Romania from 1974 to 1989, maintained warm relations to the USA (and the West in general) during the cold war era – as mentioned by Noam Chomsky in a previous post (see "Egypt Uprising ..."): You may want to take a look at Alina Stefanescu's blog


Like Egypt or Tunesia, Romania under Ceausescu
  • was a tourist destination (Ceausescu eagerly welcomed tourists to the Black sea bringing foreign exchange),
  • the dictator displayed an Israel-friendly Middle-East Politics,
  • he proved his willingness to offer Romanians as cheap wage slaves for joint-ventures with Western firms,
  • he had his torturing and killing secret police ("Securitate") between him and the ordinary people
  • finally lost (financial) reality and left Romanians starving and 
  • fled from the demonstrating crowd by helicopter (before he was finally killed).


Well, and the Queen gave him the Knight Grand Cross - don't forget!

from http://www.vivid.ro


Friday, January 28, 2011

The Socialist International Didn't Know?


While today Tunesia's citizens are still struggeling to get rid of any remaining member of the Trabelsi clan and friends in the new interim government (9 of them are still left), it should be noted that the Socialist International has announced 10 days ago the expulsion of the RCD – the Rassemblement constitutionnel démocratique*



A decision has been taken by the President together with the Secretary General, in accordance with the statutes of the Socialist International, to cease the membership of the Constitutional Democratic Assembly (RCD) of Tunisia.
This decision, in extraordinary circumstances, reflects the values and principles which define our movement and the position of the International on developments in that country.

RCDs long-standing party leader was former President of the Tunesian Republic, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, fled to Saudia-Arabia on January 14, 2011, where he and a major part of his clan is still residing. The RCD was well known to have established the epitome of a police state, relentlessly persecuting labor unionists "through harassment, intimidation, detention, and even torture" - so reported by Human Rights Watch only in October 2010. The Report (available here) mentions the word 'torture' 33 times.

It's left to ask how many "socialist" parties around the globe using torture the International is still counting as its members? How about the NDP in Egypt?