(My guess is that Mr. Vltchek (below) hadn’t chosen the above photo, but as it was on the page, I’ll use it, although I’ve added all the other images. I wouldn’t mind having one of those rugs, smile.).
From Andre Vltchek’s ‘Why are Anti-Migrant Arguments Pure Hypocrisy?’, July 12, 2019, journal-neo.org (Creative Commons with attribution)
“In this essay, let us be as concrete as possible. Let us be brief.
I declare from the start, that every African person, every Asian, every citizen of the Middle East and every Latin American (how perverse this very name “Latin” and “America” is, anyway) should be able to freely enter both Europe and North America. Furthermore, he or she should be then allowed to stay for as long as desired, enjoying the free benefits and all those goodies that are being relished by Westerners.
To back this statement, here are several (but not all) basic moral and logical arguments:
First of all, Europe and North America do not belong to their people. They belong to the people from all corners of the globe. In order to build the so-called West, close to one billion (cumulatively, according to my friends, the UN statisticians) had to die, throughout modern and the not so modern history. Virtually everything, from theatres, schools, hospitals, parks, railroads, factories and museums, have been built, literally, on the bones and blood of the conquered peoples. And nothing much has really changed, to these days. Europe and later North America invaded almost the entire planet; they looted, killed, enslaved and tortured. They robbed the world of everything, and gave back nothing, except religion and a servile and toxic bunch of ‘elites’, who are continuously plundering their countries, on behalf of the West. Therefore, Europe and North America were built on credit, and now this credit is due.
Secondly, the Western culture, without any competition, is the most violent civilization on earth. I repeat, without any competition. It cannot be defeated militarily, without further losses; losses which could be easily counted in billions of human lives. Therefore, the only possibility of how to reduce the scale of further global tragedies, is to ‘dilute’ the West and its fundamentalist culture of racial and cultural superiority. The fact that Westerners are now in minority in such cities like London or New York, has not fully stopped the UK and U.S.A. from committing monstrous crimes, attacking and pillaging foreign countries. But were Europe and North America still homogeneous, there would hardly be any free, independent country left anywhere in the world. Migration to the West is helping, at least to some extent, to save the world. Migrants, from the first and oldest generations, demand that the voices of non-westerners, would be listened to, at least some extent.
Furthermore, and this is of a course well-known argument: the only reason why people from previously wealthy countries like Iraq, Libya, Venezuela, Iran or Syria are forced to emigrate, is because their nations were either bombed back to the Stone Age, or destroyed through sadistic sanctions. Why? So, there would be change of the government, and instead of local citizens, the profits from natural resources would benefit Western corporations. Also, of course, in order to prevent the “Domino Effect”. The West hates the idea of the “Domino Effect”: read, the regional or global influence of Communist, socialist or progressive governments which would be determined to improve the lives of their people.
(The) West needs obedient, frightened slaves, not great heroes and bright thinkers! To stop the “Domino Effect”, millions had to die in the 1965 coup in Indonesia, in Indochina (Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia), in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, to name just a few unfortunate nations. If you come to a rich, socially-balanced nation, rob it of everything, overthrow its government, and reduce it to a ‘failed state’, in order for your own nation and people to prosper, would you be shocked if some of its people were to decide to try to follow the resources that you have stolen; meaning, moving to your own country? [snip]
“In the U.S.A., the situation is not much better. Wall on the Mexican border? Study your history! The United States robbed half of Mexico, through expansionist wars. “
“Most of (the) migrants who are crossing the border illegally, are actually not Mexicans (Mexico is, with all its social problems, an OECD country), but from impoverished Central American nations. And why are these nations impoverished? Every time they democratically elect their progressive governments which would be ready to work on behalf of the people, the US immediately applies its fascist dictatorial “Monroe Doctrine”, overthrows the government, injects right-wing death-squads, forces privatization, and strips the country of everything, like a locust. Don’t the people from Guatemala, Salvador, Honduras or Dominican Republic, have the full right to follow the loot, too, and settle near it, in the United States?”
Loot, Mr. Vltchek? Perhaps ‘subsistence’, maybe ‘existence’…
“Oh, North America, where predominately first but also second and other generations of Europeans hunted down local native people like animals. Where the great majority of the First Nation died horrible deaths. Where the native people, in the U.S.A. and Canada, are often forced to live, to this day, in total destitution. North America, but also Australia – the same culture, same pattern, same ‘logic’.
“And after murdering native people, what came next? Millions of Africans, in chains, brought as slaves by the Europeans, to build “the new world”. Men tortured and robbed of their dignity. Women tied in the fields and raped, day after day, by white plantation owners. Democracy. Freedom. Western-style.”
‘U.S. Economic Warfare and Likely Foreign Defenses’, Michael Hudson, July 22, 2019, counterpunch
“U.S. officials bear a special hatred for countries that they have injured, ranging from Guatemala in 1954 to Iran, whose regime it overthrew to install the Shah as military dictator. Claiming to promote “democracy,” U.S. diplomacy has redefined the word to mean pro-American, and opposing land reform, national ownership of raw materials and public subsidy of foreign agriculture or industry as an “undemocratic” attack on “free markets,” meaning markets controlled by U.S. financial interests and absentee owners of land, natural resources and banks.
A major byproduct of warfare has always been refugees, and today’s wave fleeing ISIS, Al Qaeda and other U.S.-backed Near Eastern proxies is flooding Europe. A similar wave is fleeing the dictatorial regimes backed by the United States from Honduras, Ecuador, Colombia and neighboring countries. The refugee crisis has become a major factor leading to the resurgence of nationalist parties throughout Europe and for the white nationalism of Donald Trump in the United States.” [large snip]
“The first existential objective is to avoid the current threat of war by winding down U.S. military interference in foreign countries and removing U.S. military bases as relics of neocolonialism. Their danger to world peace and prosperity threatens a reversion to the pre-World War II colonialism, ruling by client elites along lines similar to the 2014 Ukrainian coup by neo-Nazi groups sponsored by the U.S. State Department and National Endowment for Democracy. Such control recalls the dictators that U.S. diplomacy established throughout Latin America in the 1950s. Today’s ethnic terrorism by U.S.-sponsored Wahabi-Saudi Islam recalls the behavior of Nazi Germany in the 1940s.”
When you have the time and inclinaion, do read it all. The depth and breadth of it is simply breathtaking, the best thing he’s ever written, in my opinion. It’s long, but in plain-speak, and covers a lot of history of the increasingly blistering blowback of the unipolar Western hegemon’s economic warfare, and the many economic realignments in response to it. Most of what’s been published at his own site have been interviews, no transcripts. This piece seriously rocks! Oddly, his website’s offline right now: michael-hudson.com
‘The mass drownings off Libya and the fight to defend refugees’, 27 July 2019, Alex Lantier, wsws.org
“The ongoing wave of atrocities against refugees demonstrates that it is impossible to defend immigrants without a mass, international movement against the capitalist system. Despite mounting outrage at crimes committed against refugees by the world’s wealthiest states, these governments are determined to continue anti-immigrant policies condemning tens of thousands of innocent people to death.
On Thursday, a ship carrying 270 to 300 refugees fleeing Libya capsized and sank in the Mediterranean, en route to Italy. Fishermen who spotted the boat called the Libyan coast guard, who rescued around 140 refugees from the waves. The remaining are missing and presumed drowned.”
“The refugees who survived the shipwreck are still in grave danger. Like all refugees delivered to Libya’s coast guard—a force built and funded by the European Union (EU), after the 2011 NATO war against Libya destroyed that country’s government and armed forces—they risk internment in EU-funded concentration camps. There, they face assault, rape, being sold into slavery, or murder, as the United Nations, human rights groups and major media have repeatedly documented.
Responsibility for refugee drownings in the Mediterranean, which have claimed 14,000 lives since 2016, lies with the European Union (EU) and the capitalist system.”
‘US liberals self-destruct over migrant crisis, guaranteeing Trump 4 more years in power’, Robert Bridges, July 26, 2019
(sorry, but I can’t get rid of the underlines)
“It would be very difficult to argue that Americans are natural born racists. Over the years, they have graciously thrown open their door to millions of migrants with only isolated episodes of racism rearing its ugly head. At the same time, however, Americans are deeply imbued with a fierce sense of fairness and equality. Thus, when they see images of thousands of desperate immigrants streaming towards their flimsy border – not with the intention of applying legally for entrance through official channels, mind you, but rather with the intent of gaining entrance illegally and even violently – this incites the greatest revulsion. There is no cutting in line at an American supermarket, right? So why should there be cutting in line at the border? Yet it seems the liberals greatly underestimated this fundamental characteristic of ‘fair play’ that is inherent to the American mindset.”
“Today, the Democrats, together with the ‘progressive’ freshman wing of their party – comprised of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib, otherwise known as ‘the Squad’ – have taken sides with the illegals, practically arguing that to deny them a free pass into the United States is tantamount to being affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan. At the same time, high-ranking members of the party, notably Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, have obstructed Trump’s efforts to build a wall on the Mexican border every step of the way, once again calling such measures ‘racist.’ [snip]
“And that is exactly why Donald Trump is happy to continue stoking the embers of immigration, keeping the American people in a suspended state of fright and paranoia with each news report that describes the situation in the most harrowing ways – by the liberal-leaning media, no less. It may also explain why Trump has not built the promised wall, as well as why he will most likely be re-elected in 2020. Once again, the Democrats will have nobody else to blame for their imminent failure except themselves. I am guessing they are already hatching a way to blame it all on Russia.”
And Bridge is correct: the Dems are getting trounced in polls on the issue, see gjonsit here, although he’s assuming that most USians are single-issue voters. Too bad the D team spent so much time and political juice on Russiagate. Oopsie. Bridge brings as facts things that may or not be so, but I’d offer that many of the D ‘brands’ have virtue signaled one thing, then voted ‘to fund’ the opposite way, but no, I wouldn’t want to have to bring evidence of that. There may even be some true facts in his diatribe, but nonetheless, given confirmation bias, belief is just a swallow away.
Next, a self-explanatory but depressing narrative:‘If Left Unchecked, Trump Will Obliterate the Right to Asylum’, Marjorie Kohn, July 21, 2019, truthout.org
Yes, Mount Rushmore might have looked far different had it not been for the European invasion forces…of what they’d deemed ‘an uninhabited land’.
(cross-posted at caucus99percent.com)
café babylon 