Showing posts with label South. Show all posts
Showing posts with label South. Show all posts

Saturday, October 20, 2012

Panama protests against free trade zone land sales (PHOTOS)


 
A police officer runs as a photographer lies on the street as police opened fire during a massive protest against a new government law, which allows for the sale of land in Panama's free trade zone of Colon, in Colon City October 19, 2012 (Reuters / Carlos Jasso)

Source: Russia Today
http://rt.com/news/panama-protests-trade-zone-843/

The Panamanian government’s decision to sell land in the free-trade zone at the Caribbean entrance to the Panama Canal has sparked violent protests. Clashes with police the streets of the sea-port of Colon reportedly left 15 people wounded.

According to Venezuelan state TV channel Venezolana de Televisión, there have been at least 25 protesters detained by police. Information about a 15-year-old person killed in clashes has found no confirmation.

Curfew has been enacted in Colon immediately after the clashes when protesters were burning tires to block the streets.

­Facts about Panama Canal:

Panama Canal was constructed between 1880 and 1914.

Between 1904 and 1913, a total of 56,307 persons were employed during the construction of the Panama Canal. Nearly 20,000 French and 6,000 American workers died during the completion of the Panama Canal.

The length of the Panama Canal is 80 kilometers (50 miles) from the deep waters of the Atlantic to the deep waters of the Pacific.

A ship takes an average of eight to 10 hours to transit the Panama Canal.

At the end of fiscal year 2011, 1,015,721 vessels had used the waterway since its opening on August 15, 1914.

Between 12,000 and 15,000 ships About 40 ships cross the Panama Canal every year.

The Canal transports 4 per cent of world trade
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Demonstrators in Colon believe the government’s decision to sell state-owned land in the Colon Free Zone (CFZ) will hit those who work in the free-trade zone and affect the income of many citizens of the country. The protesters insist the law is unconstitutional.

The head of the Colonense Broad Movement, Felipe Cabezas, told the AP news agency,"We do not want the land to be sold because these are assets that belong to Colon."

President Ricardo Martinelli said those instigating protests are protecting “small-minded interests” of their own and that sale of state-owned land will benefit the country.

The law supposes creation of a “social investments” trust that would manage 35 per cent of the revenues received from the sale of the land just outside the former Panama Canal Zone.

The larger, 65 per cent, share will go to the country’s central government.

he free trade port of Colon is one of the largest in the world. In operation for over half a century now, the port hosts over 2,000 companies doing business in the profitable free-trade zone.

In 1999, the United States passed control over the Panama Canal to the Panamanian state. Since then the waterway linking Atlantic and Pacific oceans is the principal source of the revenues for Panama.

It is expected that in 2014 the works on expansion of the waterway will be over just ahead of the Panama Canal’s centenary.

 
People take part in a massive protest against a new government law, which allows for the sale of land in Panama's free trade zone of Colon, in Colon City October 19, 2012 (Reuters / Carlos Jasso)

 
A family runs for shelter after tear gas was shot by riots police during a massive protest against a new government law, which allows for the sale of land in Panama's free trade zone of Colon, in Colon City October 19, 2012 (Reuters / Carlos Jasso)

 
A police officer positions his gun during a massive protest against a new government law, which allows for the sale of land in Panama's free trade zone of Colon, in Colon City October 19, 2012 (Reuters / Carlos Jasso)

 
A riot policeman fires tear gas during a massive protest against a new government law, which allows for the sale of land in Panama's free trade zone of Colon, in Colon City October 19, 2012 (Reuters / Carlos Jasso)

 

Sunday, August 5, 2012

Zio-Wahhabis plotting against southern Russia


Analyst unveils a tripartite and vicious NATO-Wahhabist-Zionist plan for southern Russia (file photo of a NATO flag)

By: Wayne Madsen

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/08/05/254542/neocons-look-askance-at-southern-russia/

Using the former Soviet republic of Georgia as a base of operation, NATO, the Wahhabists of Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, and the Zionist regime of Israel have a plan to carve up southern Russia, including the Caucasus region, into a group of vassal states that will either be under the influence of Georgia, pan-Turkic nationalists, or radical Sunni regimes owing fealty to Riyadh and Doha.

Moreover, the plans for southern Russia are a carbon copy of Nazi Germany’s failed plans for the region.

Current neo-conservative doctrine foresees the fall of the governments of Iran, Belarus, and, ultimately Russia and China, after the fall of Damascus, to the combined forces of NATO and the Saudi- and Qatari-backed Salafist Wahhabis, who make up a large portion of the Syrian rebel movement. Russia has clearly drawn a line in the sand in Syria and does not want to see yet another Arab nation fall into the clutches of neo-con globalists and radical Muslims. Libya constituted proof of the alliance between the neo-con uber-capitalists, Zionists, and Wahhabists. Even if Russia concedes Damascus and the rest of inland Syria to the rebels, it is prepared, through the use of its Navy and naval base at Tartus in the predominantly-Alavi coastal region of Syria, to offer military protection for Bashar al-Assad, his fellow Alavis, and Syrian Christians who have been protected by the Alavis in an independent salient that includes Tartus and Latakia. The complete fall of Syria to Wahhabists and NATO will move the instability of the Middle East closer to the Russian southern frontier.

The stakes for Russia are immense. One only needs to examine Nazi Germany’s “New Order” (Neuordnung) plans for the occupation of the Soviet Union and Persia to understand what the neo-cons and their Israeli and Wahhabist colleagues have in store for southern Russia and Iran.

Just as with the Nazis, the key to control of the Caucasus and Iran is Georgia, where a virtual dictatorship was installed in 2008 under the leadership of the US-educated George Soros puppet Mikhail Saakashvili. After Saakashvili seized control of the autonomous Georgian republic of Adjaria in the Black Sea, making its port of Batumi available to NATO forces, Russia decided that would be the Georgian leader’s last land grab. Russian forces moved in to protect the autonomous republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia after Georgia decided to reimpose Joseph Stalin’s policy that the two regions would be under Georgian sovereignty.

Saakashvili is actually filling the role, envisaged by Adolf Hitler for his designated Reichkommissar for, what the Nazis called, Reichskommissariat Kaukasus. The capital of the German province was to be in Tiflis, in, what is today known as, Tbilisi, the Georgian capital. The Kaukasus province was to be led by Hitler’s designated Reichskommissar, Arno Schickedanz, a Baltic German, and the Saakashvili of his day. Hitler also assigned the Georgian Generalkommissariat control over the three autonomous regions that Georgic claims today: Adjaria, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia.

One of Schickedanz’s able lieutenants was Prince Dmitry Shalikashvili of the Georgian Legion, which fought with the Nazis against the Soviet Union. Shalikashvili’s legion was later absorbed into the Waffen-SS Georgien, which would have been the enforcement arm for Schickedanz from his headquarters in Tiflis. Shalikashvili’s son, John, became the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO forces in Europe and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The son of one of the key members of Hitler’s program to control the Caucasus for the Nazis actually commanded NATO troops during campaigns against Serbia and Iraq. It was at the beginning of America’s neo-con global push for military domination and a “New American Century.” The plan was not much different from Hitler’s “New Order.” In fact, neo-cons and globalists refer to their “New World Order” to the present day.

NATO’s plans, coupled with the pan-Turkic desires of the Turkish Justice and Development Party and its CIA-linked Fethullah Gulen supporters, and the Wahhabist desires of the Riyadh and Doha regimes, are a mirror of the Nazi plans for the Caucasus and central Asia.

From his opulent palace in Tiflis, Schickedanz would also rule over other areas of the Caucasus through Reichskommissars subservient to him. These sub-commissars would rule over Azerbaijan, Karabakh, and Nakhichevan from Baku, Kuban from Krasnodar, Terek from Stavropol, the Mountain Caucasus (including North Ossetia, Dagestan, Chechnya-Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Adygei, Karachay, and Cherkessia) from Vladikavkaz, Armenia from Yeervan, and Kalmykia from Astrakhan.

In an alliance with the Turks, Nazi Germany considered granting Turkey sovereignty over all of the Caucasus region, as well as the Turkic republics of Central Asia, including Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Tuva, and other Turkic regions. Persia was to become a Nazi puppet state under the primary control of the Germans (as far as oil was concerned), with favorable economic rights, granted to the Axis allies of Italy and Japan. The Nazis would control the Arab lands of Arabia, Palestine, and Iraq through puppets such as former Iraqi Prime Minister Rashid Ali al-Gaylani and, quite possibly, in an alliance with defecting members of the Saud royal family in Arabia.

Instead of the Nazis, the same game plan is being developed by NATO, Israel, and the Houses of Saud in Riyadh and Al Thani in Doha. Already, the Kurds of northern Syria have announced plans to declare autonomy, joining their brethren across the border in Iraq in becoming virtually independent. Turkey can only be satisfied by being compensated for the Kurdish resurgence by being granted control over the Caucasus, as NATO, Israel, and the Wahhabists train their sights on Russia. The big prize for Ankara, which already has political and religious influence in Gulenist schools from Baku to Bishkek and Almaty to Tashkent, is control over the Turkic peoples of Central Asia. Such control was a dream of Kemal Ataturk and the resurgent Turkish nationalists, who have flexed their political muscles in Ankara, whether through the party of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan or through the right-wing nationalists, who remain loyal to the secularist ideals of Ataturk.

The Saudis and Qataris hope to enlarge their own Wahhabist sphere of influence in Syria, but also among the Sunni majorities of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the Sunni minorities of Iran and the Volga region of Russia, especially predominantly-Muslim Tatarstan and Bashkortostan.

Through “Gateway Central Asia,” the NATO-Zionist-Wahhabist alliance has its eyes set on far-flung western China, the restive Uighur Muslim region of the Sinkiang province. The neo-con globalists reason that Russia and China are vulnerable from their Muslim-populated areas.

The future plans of NATO differ from those of the Nazis in only one respect. There is no Asian power like Japan, which the globalist NATO alliance must share with which the spoils of its victory. However, the NATO-Israel-Wahhabist alliance has failed to learn from history. Nazi Germany was defeated when it overreached its military potential and an economically-wracked Europe and North America, along with corrupt allied regimes in Jerusalem (al-Quds), Riyadh, and Doha, will suffer the same fate. The vultures of the steppes of Central Asia will, if NATO continues with its global plans, be picking at the bones of US forces, lying in battlefields from Stavropol, Isfahan, and Dushanbe to Krasnodar, Ashgabat, and Urumqi.

About: Wayne Madsen

Wayne Madsen is a Washington, D.C.-based investigative journalist, author and columnist specializing in intelligence and international affairs. He is the author of the blog Wayne Madsen Report. In 2002 he suggested to the Guardian newspaper that the United States Navy had aided in an attempted overthrow of Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez. In 2003 he said that he had uncovered information linking the September 11 attacks to the government of Saudi Arabia as well as to Bush administration. In 2005, he wrote than an unidentified former CIA agent claimed that the USS Cole was actually hit by a Popeye cruise missile launched from an Israeli Dolphin-class submarine.

More Articles by Wayne Madsen: http://www.presstv.ir/Contributors/249763.html

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Israeli Night of Broken Glass: Africans attacked in Tel Aviv anti-migrant demo


Hundreds of people demonstrate in the impoverished Hatikva neighborhood of the southern Mediterranean city of Tel Aviv on May 23, 2012 (AFP Photo / Roni Schutzer)Israel Out)

Source: Russia Today
http://www.rt.com/news/israel-anti-migrant-demo-061/

Thousands of Israelis, including high-profile politicians, attended an anti-African demonstration in Tel Aviv. The rally turned violent, with attacks on Africans and grocery shop windows being smashed.

The gathering, which took place in Tel Aviv’s Hatikva neighborhood, targeted the influx of African asylum seekers and was organized by Michael Ben Ari, a Knesset member from the National Union party, along with far-right activists Itamar Ben-Guir and Baruch Marzel, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports.

Many protesters also blamed the government, and Benjamin Netanyahu specifically, for inaction.

But the rally was also attended by politicians from the ruling Likud party, including Knesset members Miri Regev and Danny Danon. While Regev described asylum seekers as a “cancer in our body,” Danon said the “infiltrators” had to be immediately expelled from Israel.

“We should not be afraid to say the words 'expulsion now,'” Danon was reported as saying.

The crowd carried signs proclaiming messages such as “This is not Africa” and “Stop talking, start expelling.”

But as the sun set the rally turned violent, with demonstrators attacking at least a dozen African men and women who were unfortunate enough to be near the scene. They also smashed the shop front of a grocery store that served the migrant workers, subsequently looting it. Demonstrators also broke the window of a cab driven by a suspected African migrant worker. A bonfire was also lit up in the street. Seventeen people were reportedly arrested.

The rage of those who attended the rally seems to reflect a growing intolerance of the incoming African asylum seekers and migrant workers, even among those in the highest ranks of power.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his ministers that the phenomenon of “illegal work infiltrators” was “very grave,” and that it “threatened the social fabric of society,” Israel’s national security and national identity. He also warned that unless action is taken, the migrants could “inundate” the country and “cancel out its image as a Jewish and democratic state.”

Netanyahu’s words were strongly supported by Interior Minister Eli Yishai, who called for the deportation of asylum seekers.

Thousands of migrants from Eritrea and South Sudan came to Israel, saying they wanted to escape the poverty and political instability at home. Most of them are headed for Europe, but are unable to use their traditional path through Libya because of the ongoing post-civil war strife in the country. Once in Israel, they are looked after by local NGOs and the UN High Commission for Refugees. Most of them settle in Tel Aviv.

The government has been trying to deport refugees from South Sudan back to their homeland, but the motion was halted by the Jerusalem District Court. The court issued a temporary order prohibiting the deportation until it rules on a petition filed by five human rights organization against the state’s decision to deport the immigrants, arguing that their lives may be endangered if they return home. Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein is set to appear before the court next week to argue that there is no legal obstacle to the expulsion, as individual checks will show that none of the immigrants face any threats to their lives back South Sudan.


Sunday, August 7, 2011

Sudan blocks South's oil shipment


Port Sudan (file photo)

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/192589.html

Sudan has prevented a shipment of oil produced in South Sudan from leaving port after Juba refused to pay customs fees, escalating tensions between the neighbors.

"Sudan has blocked the ship in Port Sudan... When the ship leaves the port, the South has to pay the customs authorities. This is the first time they didn't pay," Sudan Foreign Ministry spokesman Al-Obeid Meruh was quoted by AFP as saying on Friday.

The spokesperson earlier said Juba had refused to pay the north's fees for the use of its oil infrastructure, such as its pipeline, and therefore the cargo of 600,000 barrels had been blocked.

Meruh went on to say that Sudan and South Sudan have not reached an agreement about the transit fees, adding that Khartoum is asking for $32 per barrel.

South Sudan says other states charge a fee of $1.8 per barrel for providing the same facilities, urging the north to consider international standards in setting the fees.

The event intensifies a row between the neighbors in which Juba accuses Khartoum of making efforts to impede its economic growth.

"They want to stop the shipment so that it prolongs the whole [negotiating] process. Khartoum is trying to sabotage the economy of South Sudan," said David Loro, undersecretary for South Sudan's Ministry of Energy and Mines.

Loro added that a southern committee is holding negotiations with Sudanese authorities in Khartoum over the issue of transit fees.

The landlocked South has to use the north's infrastructure to pump oil, which according to the World Bank, accounts for nearly 95 percent of its total revenue.

Thursday, July 21, 2011

UN declares famine in south Somalia


Refugees and children wait to go to a refugee camp in the Ethiopian town of Dolo Ado, about 1 kilometer north of the border with Somalia, July 9, 2011.

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/189948.html

The United Nations has declared famine in two parts of southern Somalia as a severe drought is affecting more than 10 million people in the Horn of Africa.

"The United Nations declared today that famine exists in two regions of southern Somalia: southern Bakool and Lower Shabelle," a statement by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs for Somalia said on Wednesday.

The two regions have been affected by drought, conflict and poverty as tens of thousands of Somalis have already died in the worst hunger emergency in more than half a century.

Tens of thousands of desperate people are trying to flee their country to neighboring Kenya or Ethiopia.

The Kenyan Camp Dadaab has been overflowing with newly-arrived refugees who are forced into the camp due to the persisting drought and famine in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya.

Officials have warned that famine could spread to all eight regions of southern Somalia within two months unless urgent action is taken.

The UK-based charity group Oxfam has criticized the European governments over their slow response to the drought in the Horn of Africa.

Strategically located in the Horn of Africa, Somalia remains one of the countries generating the highest number of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDP) in the world.

The United Nations refugee agency reported in April that the number of Somali refugees arriving in neighboring countries during the first quarter of 2011 has more than doubled in comparison to the same period in 2010.

Saturday, July 9, 2011

South Sudan becomes independent


Citizens of the new country celebrate independence of the South Sudan at midnight in the capital Juba, July 9, 2011

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/188209.html

South Sudan has become independent, making it Africa's newest nation and the world's newest country.

South Sudan became independent several minutes ago, shortly after midnight local time on July 9.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Sudanese President Omar Bashir, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, Egyptian Deputy Prime Minister Yehia al-Gamal, and other prominent political figures travelled to the South Sudan capital Juba on Friday to attend the independence ceremony of the new Republic of South Sudan.

Former US Secretary of State Colin Powell, the US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, and the head of the US military's Africa Command, Gen Carter Ham were also in Juba for the independence day celebrations.

President Bashir, who forged the 2005 peace deal with the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), expressed readiness to work with the “Southern brothers and help them set up their state so that, God willing, this state will be stable and develop.”

“The cooperation between us will be excellent, particularly when it comes to marking and preserving the border so there is a movement of citizens and goods via this border,” he said.

South Sudan becomes the 193rd country recognized by the United Nations and the 54th UN member state in Africa.

Joyful residents of the new nation banged on jerry cans and chanted the name of the world's newest president, Salva Kiir, the Associated Press reported.

“We are brothers and sisters who suffered for a long time, and that is why we are now celebrating, what we will achieve,” said a resident.

“In independence we are going to have hospitals and schools and a lot of development around here. Our mothers and sisters died in the past. Hospitals were very far from us.”

South Sudan's independence comes after decades of conflict with the north in which over 1.5 million people died. The new oil-rich nation is one of the least developed countries in the world, where one in seven children dies before the age of five.

A historic peace agreement between North and South Sudan signed in 2005 paved the way for an independence referendum in January 2011, in which southerners voted almost unanimously to secede. North Sudan has officially recognized southern independence.

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