War cost money and at the end somebody has to pay. In the 17th, 18th,
19th centuries the vanquished or defeated usually paid either in cash
or by loss of territories. Germany had been asked to pay punitive
damages after the First World War which it did for a while. As recently
as a few weeks ago, Greece called on Germany to pay war reparations to
Greece for Germany’s World War ll activities to enable it settle its
present debts.
In 20th century Germany was supposed to have paid reparations for Second World War but the experience of the aftermath of the the First World War may have deterred the victors from seeking full war reparations. After the world war the Marshall plan was executed. It was aimed at bringing Europe back from the heavy pounding and massive destruction of nearly all of Europe by both sides. Cities like Hamburg, Stuttgart, Berlin, Frankfurt were more or less flattened.(Not many people bothered about women and children when the allies pulverized Germany and Japan)!!! Whatever else the Marshall plan was, it was also an admission by the US that it will be responsible for returning Europe back to its feet and on the way of prosperity.
In Iraq, there was no such commitment. The first invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent expulsion of Iraq from Kuwait were paid for by Kuwait.
The US attack on Iraq (the second time), the cost of that war has not been calculated and no one will have the temerity to ask Iraq to pay, not after the sub sequent activities of the allies. But who will pay? When the allies destroy a country’s infrastructure, its civil institutions, all that is achieved is a ready made ground for extremist propaganda thus creating easy radicalized recruitment cadres. This is the reason for success of ISIS.
In Libya, the US, France and Britain pulverized that nation, cut off the heads of the political elite and left it with a naïve belief that a democratic middle class will some how miraculously succeed Ghadafi. Well, that did not happen and it is not going to happen. Instead Libyan territory has been tilled for the seeds of extremist radical Islamic propaganda. Who will pay for the irresponsibility of the West in Libya?
I have a rather whimsical view of these immigrants wanting to go to Europe. That is how it should be. Throughout history the twentieth century is the most settled and sedentary century and there is something wrong in that statement. Man has always moved when necessity pushed him. It was necessity that pushed people to move to Nile Valley, to the Valleys of Tigris and Euphrates and thus began the road blocks of modern civilization. Social scientists like Arthur Young, David Ricardo, Karl Max Darwin Charles Malthus, Noan Chomsky and nearly all those who study power and how it is used to move and conquer people, or the accumulation of wealth and the social pressure caused thereby inequality can never be surprised that “immigrants” are moving into Europe. Some even believe that plagues, wars etc are essential curbs to population explosion. Others believe that the next war would be about access to portable water.
Several centuries ago Europeans arrived in Africa uninvited. No visas, no passport. They said they came to trade, that there was a new world wide doctrine of Free Trade. The Africans replied that they knew of no such doctrine and did not want to trade with them; from then on Europe began a new claim that they had a manifest destiny to “civilize” Africa.
The Europeans carried the free trade Doctrine to India, China, and Japan. When China and Japan saw the deleterious effects of the so called Free Trade, they baulked. The Europeans established Houses, “consulates”, a legal system that exempted their goods, mostly heroin and themselves, from obeying local laws. Heroin devastated China and Japan. Today Syrians, Armenians, Druz etc are refugees and feel it is right to go to Europe.
The Italians made a right travesty of Somalia, Eritrea etc leading these countries to their failed states status; where should people from Djibouti, Eritrea, and Somalia go? The Europeans conquered Africa, colonized it, settle in East, South and South West Africa, not as friends or equal citizens but as exploitative masters, carrying gold, diamonds, copper, uranium, coal, coltan etc to the factories of Europe. In Africa, they used the indigenes for cheap labour to work in their farms, mines etc., while running away from Europe because of persecution (Dutch Huguenots) or poverty or running away from the Law; i.e. they were criminals.
As for Africans, I do not have any apology if they went to Europe. As stated earlier Europeans came to Africa unbidden. They went to America, Saudi Arabia, the United State etc, who invited them? What visa did they have? The Red Indians who presumably owned the land were cajoled, captured, bribed, killed and and conquered. Till to-day they remain the poorest group in the richest country.
The British Penal Colony having failed in Virginia, the British had to find a new one in Australia. On whose invitation? The attitude of the Australians to Immigrants must be the most morally reprehensible. First kill as many of the aboriginal inhabitants as possible. Then develop the country to the exclusion of the aborigines except when they want to make a film of Crocodile Dundee and Evoyne Goola-gong. When Indians or Polynesians or Melanesians want to go to Australia they are put in detention centers. Why bother? Just gas them as Hitler did!
No nation has travelled more than the Irish in the world. And understandably so.
The Americas are full of the surplus of Europe, French, Spanish, Portuguese, English, Irish, Danes etc. their language, their colour, their food; in less than 300 years the white people of Europe had done what even one billion Chinese have done been unable to do, turn the Americas into an out post of Europe. Whatever the Pope thought he was doing in 1492 when, through a Papal Bull, he divided the new world between Spain and Portugal, he was wrong and owes the world an apology. If Europe had not gone to Australia, North and South America, where do you suppose there would be a war of xenophobia today? Just imagine a programme where all Australians, New Zealanders, white South Africans, white North and South Americans were to be returned to Europe!!! Those in Europe who preach against Immigration and the return of immigrants to their home countries should be warned.
What would a Syrian, a Somalian or Eritrean do in his country? When the West was bombing Libya to smithereens, praising a non existence democratic spring, what did they expect to happen? The trek across the Sahara is more dangerous than the sea journey across the Mediterranean. And when you have finished that trek what do you see in Africa- Nigeria, Ghana, Chad, Niger, Guinea, and Cote d’ivoire- countries exploited, admittedly with local cooperation accomplices, beyond endurance by the West? Are these stable Governments for the Immigrants to live in?
I remember one of our more soporific melodies about being in love in one world. The immigrants across the Mediterranean are bringing that one world nearer. To some the above is just air, it has no solutions. I believe the problem to be serious enough to engage the African Union and the European Union (EU). Careful records should be made of all those who arrive at the European ports, their agents hunted down and jailed. The Ecowas countries should have their representatives as in Libya, at the ports, gathering vital information, every African embassy in Europe should be engaged in tracking down these disgraceful people whose images on national television merely emphasis the thesis of white racists that black people are coming to take over their jobs in Europe. Those who are returned should be given vocational training so that they could find jobs at home.
Europe is not the paradise in these people’s dreams and many of them end up disillusioned and radicalized. The bill for this should be paid largely by the US, France and the UK for removing two of the best safety values they had Ghadafi and Mubbarack. It would cost a lot but means have to be found to prevent that money ending in the pockets of politicians and generals. The regional organizations of ECOWAS, EAC, SADAC and Magreb Union should be energized for this work.
The African countries these people come from are not intrinsically poor; some of their poverty is due to corruption freely engaged in by the West China, and the shadow governments they encourage in Africa. A commission should be set up to bring back these misguided and unfortunate people. Some in the Western press and Government will fall into the sympathy cauldron of lesbian, homosexual and others who would claim that they run to Europe to escape homosexual persecution, or female circumcision, now popularized, as female genital mutilation. (By the way, why is male circumcision not described as “male genital mutilation?”) If this is a standard the West wishes to approve for refugee status that commission should be able to sort this out and asylum could be given to these categories of people in Europe and the United States.
The above is merely a first step. When we next meet for trade talks then a simple question to ask is why most cocoa profit does not stay in Ghana, Nigeria, and Cote d’ ivoir etc. If these countries owned Nestle, Hershley, Cadbury etc then perhaps there would be less economic migrants to Europe. Just compare the wealth of Hershley, Cadbury, and Nestle with the people who farm cocoa in Africa. T he answer to this cannot be mere good corporate responsibility.
Finally France, Great Britain aid the United State brought this debacle on themselves, the immigrants and Europe. By removing Ghadafi and unleashing tribal tensions which have no where to go but to implode within it or to explode into some irrational radicalized notion of Islam, draped in black, with the ubiquitous AK 47. It sounded fine that you were removing a dictator. How many have died since? It sounded alright to bring the price of oil down, there were western nations who were buying Libyan oil as low as US$10 a barrel to fill up strategic reserves: they paidUS$10 but paid that amount in guns.
One last question, apart from Iran and Turkey, Egypt, Iran which Islamic state is making arms? Where are all these arms which fortify ISIS coming from? The AU should hold a conference on the disgrace of Africans dying in an attempt to reach Europe, to an uncertain future in an uncertain adventure. Nigeria should send officers to Libya to trace the traffickers. This work would be done in collaboration of other countries.
AU should demand reparation for Libya- help restore confidence. AU to take action in Eritrea, Somalia, etc. The money from reparations would be used in a program to help the-would-be refugee to develop at home and avoid this horrible immigration.
There are three United Nations Protocols- Human trafficking; Treatment of Refugees. There is little problem with the first one, except the provision that a refugee must seek asylum at the first port of call. Many countries deliberately flout the second protocol – treatment of refugees.
But people are exposed to danger in crossing the Sahara- Bedouin or Surwa Arabs or Puels tribes are the middlemen: the starting price of the journey is US$5.000. – then the price goes up to US$ 10,000, and possibly the sale of human body parts- Kidneys, Liver, Cornea, then the would be refugee is left to die. Such trade routes must be traced and the trade stopped at the source of trade. Routes to be policed. Women- start the journey to Libya from Eritrea, Somalia, Nigeria, Ghana etc with US$5,000. One set of human traffickers then hand over these people to another set of traffickers who demand double. If the would be refugee is a woman, she is sold into slavery or used as a prostitute until debt is discharged.
Then, on to a boat to another set of traffickers take over the helpless woman to prostitute for the same journey, which takes 6 – 10 years of stop and go. In 1999- 2010, OBJ repatriated 13000 women back from Italy. This was done quietly to avoid shame to the families if exposed.
Protocols should be awakened, institutions built – robust campaign in the home countries must be carried out.
Most work has to be done in the home countries. None of these “refugees” spend less than US$ 7- US$ 10,000. What would a person who is able to raise such money in Africa want to go and do in Europe? He or she may end up as traffic warden, car wash attendant, house boy or house maid Etc. We must produce programmes where if you can raise such an amount here you are better off investing it in Africa.
In 20th century Germany was supposed to have paid reparations for Second World War but the experience of the aftermath of the the First World War may have deterred the victors from seeking full war reparations. After the world war the Marshall plan was executed. It was aimed at bringing Europe back from the heavy pounding and massive destruction of nearly all of Europe by both sides. Cities like Hamburg, Stuttgart, Berlin, Frankfurt were more or less flattened.(Not many people bothered about women and children when the allies pulverized Germany and Japan)!!! Whatever else the Marshall plan was, it was also an admission by the US that it will be responsible for returning Europe back to its feet and on the way of prosperity.
In Iraq, there was no such commitment. The first invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent expulsion of Iraq from Kuwait were paid for by Kuwait.
The US attack on Iraq (the second time), the cost of that war has not been calculated and no one will have the temerity to ask Iraq to pay, not after the sub sequent activities of the allies. But who will pay? When the allies destroy a country’s infrastructure, its civil institutions, all that is achieved is a ready made ground for extremist propaganda thus creating easy radicalized recruitment cadres. This is the reason for success of ISIS.
In Libya, the US, France and Britain pulverized that nation, cut off the heads of the political elite and left it with a naïve belief that a democratic middle class will some how miraculously succeed Ghadafi. Well, that did not happen and it is not going to happen. Instead Libyan territory has been tilled for the seeds of extremist radical Islamic propaganda. Who will pay for the irresponsibility of the West in Libya?
I have a rather whimsical view of these immigrants wanting to go to Europe. That is how it should be. Throughout history the twentieth century is the most settled and sedentary century and there is something wrong in that statement. Man has always moved when necessity pushed him. It was necessity that pushed people to move to Nile Valley, to the Valleys of Tigris and Euphrates and thus began the road blocks of modern civilization. Social scientists like Arthur Young, David Ricardo, Karl Max Darwin Charles Malthus, Noan Chomsky and nearly all those who study power and how it is used to move and conquer people, or the accumulation of wealth and the social pressure caused thereby inequality can never be surprised that “immigrants” are moving into Europe. Some even believe that plagues, wars etc are essential curbs to population explosion. Others believe that the next war would be about access to portable water.
Several centuries ago Europeans arrived in Africa uninvited. No visas, no passport. They said they came to trade, that there was a new world wide doctrine of Free Trade. The Africans replied that they knew of no such doctrine and did not want to trade with them; from then on Europe began a new claim that they had a manifest destiny to “civilize” Africa.
The Europeans carried the free trade Doctrine to India, China, and Japan. When China and Japan saw the deleterious effects of the so called Free Trade, they baulked. The Europeans established Houses, “consulates”, a legal system that exempted their goods, mostly heroin and themselves, from obeying local laws. Heroin devastated China and Japan. Today Syrians, Armenians, Druz etc are refugees and feel it is right to go to Europe.
The Italians made a right travesty of Somalia, Eritrea etc leading these countries to their failed states status; where should people from Djibouti, Eritrea, and Somalia go? The Europeans conquered Africa, colonized it, settle in East, South and South West Africa, not as friends or equal citizens but as exploitative masters, carrying gold, diamonds, copper, uranium, coal, coltan etc to the factories of Europe. In Africa, they used the indigenes for cheap labour to work in their farms, mines etc., while running away from Europe because of persecution (Dutch Huguenots) or poverty or running away from the Law; i.e. they were criminals.
As for Africans, I do not have any apology if they went to Europe. As stated earlier Europeans came to Africa unbidden. They went to America, Saudi Arabia, the United State etc, who invited them? What visa did they have? The Red Indians who presumably owned the land were cajoled, captured, bribed, killed and and conquered. Till to-day they remain the poorest group in the richest country.
The British Penal Colony having failed in Virginia, the British had to find a new one in Australia. On whose invitation? The attitude of the Australians to Immigrants must be the most morally reprehensible. First kill as many of the aboriginal inhabitants as possible. Then develop the country to the exclusion of the aborigines except when they want to make a film of Crocodile Dundee and Evoyne Goola-gong. When Indians or Polynesians or Melanesians want to go to Australia they are put in detention centers. Why bother? Just gas them as Hitler did!
No nation has travelled more than the Irish in the world. And understandably so.
The Americas are full of the surplus of Europe, French, Spanish, Portuguese, English, Irish, Danes etc. their language, their colour, their food; in less than 300 years the white people of Europe had done what even one billion Chinese have done been unable to do, turn the Americas into an out post of Europe. Whatever the Pope thought he was doing in 1492 when, through a Papal Bull, he divided the new world between Spain and Portugal, he was wrong and owes the world an apology. If Europe had not gone to Australia, North and South America, where do you suppose there would be a war of xenophobia today? Just imagine a programme where all Australians, New Zealanders, white South Africans, white North and South Americans were to be returned to Europe!!! Those in Europe who preach against Immigration and the return of immigrants to their home countries should be warned.
What would a Syrian, a Somalian or Eritrean do in his country? When the West was bombing Libya to smithereens, praising a non existence democratic spring, what did they expect to happen? The trek across the Sahara is more dangerous than the sea journey across the Mediterranean. And when you have finished that trek what do you see in Africa- Nigeria, Ghana, Chad, Niger, Guinea, and Cote d’ivoire- countries exploited, admittedly with local cooperation accomplices, beyond endurance by the West? Are these stable Governments for the Immigrants to live in?
I remember one of our more soporific melodies about being in love in one world. The immigrants across the Mediterranean are bringing that one world nearer. To some the above is just air, it has no solutions. I believe the problem to be serious enough to engage the African Union and the European Union (EU). Careful records should be made of all those who arrive at the European ports, their agents hunted down and jailed. The Ecowas countries should have their representatives as in Libya, at the ports, gathering vital information, every African embassy in Europe should be engaged in tracking down these disgraceful people whose images on national television merely emphasis the thesis of white racists that black people are coming to take over their jobs in Europe. Those who are returned should be given vocational training so that they could find jobs at home.
Europe is not the paradise in these people’s dreams and many of them end up disillusioned and radicalized. The bill for this should be paid largely by the US, France and the UK for removing two of the best safety values they had Ghadafi and Mubbarack. It would cost a lot but means have to be found to prevent that money ending in the pockets of politicians and generals. The regional organizations of ECOWAS, EAC, SADAC and Magreb Union should be energized for this work.
The African countries these people come from are not intrinsically poor; some of their poverty is due to corruption freely engaged in by the West China, and the shadow governments they encourage in Africa. A commission should be set up to bring back these misguided and unfortunate people. Some in the Western press and Government will fall into the sympathy cauldron of lesbian, homosexual and others who would claim that they run to Europe to escape homosexual persecution, or female circumcision, now popularized, as female genital mutilation. (By the way, why is male circumcision not described as “male genital mutilation?”) If this is a standard the West wishes to approve for refugee status that commission should be able to sort this out and asylum could be given to these categories of people in Europe and the United States.
The above is merely a first step. When we next meet for trade talks then a simple question to ask is why most cocoa profit does not stay in Ghana, Nigeria, and Cote d’ ivoir etc. If these countries owned Nestle, Hershley, Cadbury etc then perhaps there would be less economic migrants to Europe. Just compare the wealth of Hershley, Cadbury, and Nestle with the people who farm cocoa in Africa. T he answer to this cannot be mere good corporate responsibility.
Finally France, Great Britain aid the United State brought this debacle on themselves, the immigrants and Europe. By removing Ghadafi and unleashing tribal tensions which have no where to go but to implode within it or to explode into some irrational radicalized notion of Islam, draped in black, with the ubiquitous AK 47. It sounded fine that you were removing a dictator. How many have died since? It sounded alright to bring the price of oil down, there were western nations who were buying Libyan oil as low as US$10 a barrel to fill up strategic reserves: they paidUS$10 but paid that amount in guns.
One last question, apart from Iran and Turkey, Egypt, Iran which Islamic state is making arms? Where are all these arms which fortify ISIS coming from? The AU should hold a conference on the disgrace of Africans dying in an attempt to reach Europe, to an uncertain future in an uncertain adventure. Nigeria should send officers to Libya to trace the traffickers. This work would be done in collaboration of other countries.
AU should demand reparation for Libya- help restore confidence. AU to take action in Eritrea, Somalia, etc. The money from reparations would be used in a program to help the-would-be refugee to develop at home and avoid this horrible immigration.
There are three United Nations Protocols- Human trafficking; Treatment of Refugees. There is little problem with the first one, except the provision that a refugee must seek asylum at the first port of call. Many countries deliberately flout the second protocol – treatment of refugees.
But people are exposed to danger in crossing the Sahara- Bedouin or Surwa Arabs or Puels tribes are the middlemen: the starting price of the journey is US$5.000. – then the price goes up to US$ 10,000, and possibly the sale of human body parts- Kidneys, Liver, Cornea, then the would be refugee is left to die. Such trade routes must be traced and the trade stopped at the source of trade. Routes to be policed. Women- start the journey to Libya from Eritrea, Somalia, Nigeria, Ghana etc with US$5,000. One set of human traffickers then hand over these people to another set of traffickers who demand double. If the would be refugee is a woman, she is sold into slavery or used as a prostitute until debt is discharged.
Then, on to a boat to another set of traffickers take over the helpless woman to prostitute for the same journey, which takes 6 – 10 years of stop and go. In 1999- 2010, OBJ repatriated 13000 women back from Italy. This was done quietly to avoid shame to the families if exposed.
Protocols should be awakened, institutions built – robust campaign in the home countries must be carried out.
Most work has to be done in the home countries. None of these “refugees” spend less than US$ 7- US$ 10,000. What would a person who is able to raise such money in Africa want to go and do in Europe? He or she may end up as traffic warden, car wash attendant, house boy or house maid Etc. We must produce programmes where if you can raise such an amount here you are better off investing it in Africa.
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