Posts tonen met het label History. Alle posts tonen
Posts tonen met het label History. Alle posts tonen

donderdag 25 februari 2016

A Shameless Worship of Heroes



by Will Durant
the many ideals which in youth gave life a meaning and radiance missing from the chilly perspectives of middle age, one at least has remained with me as bright and satisfying as ever before -- the shameless worship of heroes. In an age that would level everything and reverence nothing, I take my stand with Victorian Carlyle, and light my candles, like Mirandola before Plato's image, at the shrines of great men.
I say shameless, for I know how unfashionable it is now to acknowledge in life or history any genius loftier than ourselves. Our democratic dogma has leveled not only all voters but all leaders; we delight to show that living geniuses are only mediocrities, and that dead ones are myths.
If we may believe Mr. Wells, Caesar was a numbskull and Napoleon a fool. Since it is contrary to good manners to exalt ourselves, we achieve the same result by slyly indicating how inferior are the great men of the earth. In some of us, perhaps, it is a noble and merciless asceticism, which would root out of our hearts the last vestige of worship and adoration, lest the old gods should return and terrify us again.
For my part, I cling to this final religion, and discover in it a content and stimulus more lasting than came from the devotional ecstasies of youth. How natural it seemed to greet Rabindranath Tagore by that title which so long has been given him by his countrymen, Gurudeva – "Revered Master." For why should we stand reverent before waterfalls and mountain tops, or a summer moon on a quiet sea, and not before the highest miracle of all -- a man who is both great and good? So many of us are mere talents, clever children in the play of life, that when genius stands in our presence we can only bow down before it as an act of God, a continuance of creation. Such men are the very life-blood of history, to which politics and industry are but frame and bones.
Part cause of the dry scholasticism from which we were suffering when James Harvey Robinson summoned us to humanize our knowledge, was the conception of history as an impersonal flow of figures and "facts," in which genius played so inessential a role that histories prided themselves upon ignoring them. It was to Marx above all that this theory of history was due; it was bound up with a view of life that distrusted the exceptional man, envied superior talent, and exalted the humble as the inheritors of the earth. In the end men began to write history as if it had never been lived at all, as if no drama had ever walked through it, no comedies or tragedies of struggling or frustrated men. The vivid narratives of Gibbon and Taine gave way to ash-heaps of irrelevant erudition in which every fact was correct, documented, and dead.
No, the real history of man is not in prices and wages, nor in elections and battles, nor in the even tenor of the common man; it is in the lasting contributions made by geniuses to the sum of human civilization and culture. The history of France is not, if one may say it with all courtesy, the history of the French people; the history of those nameless men and women who tilled the soil, cobbled the shoes, cut the cloth, and peddled the goods (for these things have been done everywhere and always) -- the history of France is the record of her exceptional men and women, her inventors, scientists, statesmen, poets, artists, musicians, philosophers and saints, and of the additions which they made to the technology and wisdom, the artistry and decency, of their people and mankind. And so with every country, so with the world; its history is properly the history of its great men. What are the rest of us but willing brick and mortar in their hands, that they may make a race a little finer than ourselves? Therefore I see history not as a dreary scene of politics and carnage, but as the struggle of man -- through genius -- with the obdurate inertia of matter and the baffling mystery of mind; the struggle to understand, control and remake himself and the world.
I see men standing on the edge of knowledge, and holding the light a little farther ahead; men carving marble into forms ennobling men; men molding peoples into better instruments of greatness; men making a language of music and music out of language; men dreaming of finer lives, and living them. Here is a process of creation more vivid than in any myth, a godliness more real than in any creed.
To contemplate such men, to insinuate ourselves through study into some modest discipleship to them, to watch them at their work and warm ourselves at the fire that consumes them -- this is to recapture some of the thrill that youth gave us when we thought, at the altar or in the confessional, that we were touching or hearing God.
In that dreamy youth we believed that life was evil, and that only death could usher us into paradise. We were wrong; even now -- while we live -- we may enter it. Every great book, every work of revealing art, every record of a devoted life is a call and an open sesame to the Elysian Fields.
Too soon we extinguished the flame of our hope and our reverence. Let us change the icons, and light the candles again.

zaterdag 13 februari 2016

International Anarchist Manifesto on the War [1915]

International Anarchist Manifesto on the War [1915]


Europe in a blaze, twelve million men engaged in the most frightful butchery that history has ever recorded; millions of women and children in tears; the economic, intellectual, and moral life of seven great peoples brutally suspended, and the menace becoming every day more pregnant with new military complications – such is, for seven months, the painful, agonizing, and hateful spectacle presented by the civilized world.
But a spectacle not unexpected – at least, by the Anarchists, since for them there never has been nor is there any doubt – the terrible events of today strengthen this conviction – that war is permanently fostered by the present social system. Armed conflict, restricted or widespread, colonial or European, is the natural consequence and the inevitable and fatal outcome of a society that is founded on the exploitation of the workers, rests on the savage struggle of the classes, and compels Labour to submit to the domination of a minority of parasites who hold both political and economic power.
The war was inevitable. Wherever it originated, it had to come. It is not in vain that for half a century there has been a feverish preparation of the most formidable armaments and a ceaseless increase in the budgets of death. It is not by constantly improving the weapons of war and by concentrating the mind and the will of all upon the better organization of the military machine that people work for peace.
Therefore, it is foolish and childish, after having multiplied the causes and occasions of conflict, to seek to fix the responsibility on this or that government. No possible distinction can be drawn between offensive and defensive wars. In the present conflict, the governments of Berlin and Vienna have sought to justify themselves by documents not less authentic than those of the governments of Paris and Petrograd. Each does its very best to produce the most indisputable and the most decisive documents in order to establish its good faith and to present itself as the immaculate defender of right and liberty and the champion of civilization.
Civilization? Who, then, represents it just now? Is it the German State, with its formidable militarism, and so powerful that it has stifled every disposition to revolt? Is it the Russian State, to whom the knout, the gibbet, and Siberia are the sole means of persuasion? Is it the French State, with its Biribi,[1] its bloody conquests in Tonkin, Madagascar, Morocco, and its compulsory enlistment of black troops? France, that detains in its prisons, for years, comrades guilty only of having written and spoken against war? Is it the English State, which exploits, divides, and oppresses the populations of its immense colonial empire?
No; none of the belligerents is entitled to invoke the name of civilization or to declare itself in a state of legitimate defence.
The truth is that the cause of wars, of that which at present stains with blood the plains of Europe, as of all wars that have preceded it, rests solely in the existence of the State, which is the political form of privilege.
The State has arisen out of military force, it has developed through the use of military force, and it is still on military force that it must logically rest in order to maintain its omnipotence. Whatever the form it may assume, the State is nothing but organized oppression for the advantage of a privileged minority. The present conflict illustrates this in the most striking manner. All forms of the State are engaged in the present war; absolutism with Russia, absolutism softened by Parliamentary institutions with Germany, the State ruling over peoples of quite different races with Austria, a democratic constitutional régime with England, and a democratic Republican régime with France.
The misfortune of the peoples, who were deeply attached to peace, is that, in order to avoid war, they placed their confidence in the State with its intriguing diplomatists, in democracy, and in political parties (not excluding those in opposition, like Parliamentary Socialism). This confidence has been deliberately betrayed, and continues to be so, when governments, with the aid of the whole of their press, persuade their respective peoples that this war is a war of liberation.

We are resolutely against all wars between peoples, and in neutral countries, like Italy, where the governments seek to throw fresh peoples into the fiery furnace of war, our comrades have been, are, and ever will be most energetically opposed to war.
The role of the Anarchists in the present tragedy, whatever may be the place or the situation in which they find themselves, is to continue to proclaim that there is but one war of liberation: that which in all countries is waged by the oppressed against the oppressors, by the exploited against the exploiters. Our part is to summon the slaves to revolt against their masters.
Anarchist action and propaganda should assiduously and perseveringly aim at weakening and dissolving the various States, at cultivating the spirit of revolt, and arousing discontent in peoples and armies.
To all the soldiers of all countries who believe they are fighting for justice and liberty, we have to declare that their heroism and their valour will but serve to perpetuate hatred, tyranny, and misery.
To the workers in factory and mine it is necessary to recall that the rifles they now have in their hands have been used against them in the days of strike and of revolt and that later on they will be again used against them in order to compel them to undergo and endure capitalist exploitation.
To the workers on farm and field it is necessary to show that after the war they will be obliged once more to bend beneath the yoke and to continue to cultivate the lands of their lords and to feed the rich.
To all the outcasts, that they should not part with their arms until they have settled accounts with their oppressors, until they have taken land and factory and workshop for themselves.
To mothers, wives, and daughters, the victims of increased misery and privation, let us show who are the ones really responsible for their sorrows and for the massacre of their fathers, sons, and husbands.
We must take advantage of all the movements of revolt, of all the discontent, in order to foment insurrection, and to organize the revolution to which we look to put an end to all social wrongs.
No despondency, even before a calamity like the present war. It is periods thus troubled, in which many thousands of men heroically give their lives for an idea, that we must show these men the generosity, greatness, and beauty of the Anarchist ideal: Social justice realized through the free organization of producers; war and militarism done away with forever; and complete freedom won, by the abolition of the State and its organs of destruction.


Signed by – Leonard D. Abbott, Alexander Berkman, L. Bertoni, L. Bersani, G. Bernard, G. Barrett, A. Bernardo, E. Boudot, A. Calzitta, Joseph J. Cohen, Henry Combes, Nestor Ciele van Diepen, F.W.Dunn, Ch. Frigerio, Emma Goldman, V. Garcia, Hippolyte Havel, T.H. Keell, Harry Kelly, J. Lemaire, E. Malatesta, H. Marques, F. Domela Nieuwenhuis, Noel Panavich, E. Recchioni, G. Rijnders, I. Rochtchine, A. Savioli, A. Schapiro, William Shatoff, V.J.C. Schermerhorn, C. Trombetti, P. Vallina, G. Vignati, Lillian G. Woolf, S. Yanovsky. [2]
This manifesto is published by the International Anarchist movement and will be printed in several languages and issued in leaflet form.
London, 1915

Notes
This manifesto was printed in Freedom and (in Spanish) in Cultura Obrera in March 1915. It was reprinted in Mother Earth in May 1915.
1 Biribi: a reference to the punishment battalions of the French army.
2 Notes on names, with dates for the signatories, and an attempt to pin down their location in 1915.
Leonard D. Abbott (1878-1953, USA), Alexander Berkman (1870-1936, USA), Luigi Bertoni (1872-1947, Switzerland), L. Bersani, G. Bernard, G. Barrett (born Ballard, 1888-1917, UK), A. Bernardo, Édouard Eugène Boudot (1886-1974, possibly in UK), A. Calzitta, Joseph J. Cohen (1878-1953, USA), Henry Combes (1887-1925, UK), Nestor Ciele van Diepen, Fred Dunn (1884-1925, UK), Carlo Frigerio (1878-1966, UK), Emma Goldman (1869-1940, USA), Vicente Garcia (alias Pamiro, 1866-1930), Hippolyte Havel (1869-1950, USA), Thomas Keell (1886-1938, UK), Harry Kelly (1871-1953, USA), Jules André Lemaire (1874-1957, possibly Spain or UK), Errico Malatesta (1853-1932, UK), H. Marques, Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis (1846-1919, Netherlands), Noel Panavich, Emidio Recchioni (1864-1924, UK), Gerhard Rijnders (1876-1950, Netherlands), Iuda Solomonovich Roshchin (born Grossman, 1883-1934, possibly Switzerland), A. Savioli, Alexander Schapiro (1882-1946, UK), William Shatoff (or Shatov, b.1887, USA), Nicolaas J.C. Schermerhorn (1866-1956, presumably Netherlands), C. Trombetti, Pedro Vallina Martinez (1879-1970), G. Vignati, Lillian Gertrude Wolfe (born Woolf, 1875-1974, UK), Saul Yanovsky (1864-1939, USA)

donderdag 11 juni 2015

The Shadowside of the UN Peacekeepers: A story of structural sexual abuse and global human trafficking

Haïti  [2015]   Now:

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Members of a U.N. peacekeeping mission engaged in "transactional sex" with more than 225 Haitian women who said they needed to do so to obtain things like food and medication, a sign that sexual exploitation remains significantly underreported in such missions, according to a new report obtained by The Associated Press.
 
 
 
The draft by the Office of Internal Oversight Services looks at the way U.N. peacekeeping, which has about 125,000 people in some of the world's most troubled areas, deals with the persistent problem of sexual abuse and exploitation.
The report, expected to be released this month, says major challenges remain a decade after a groundbreaking U.N. report first tackled the issue.
 
Among its findings: About a third of alleged sexual abuse involves minors under 18. Assistance to victims is "severely deficient." The average investigation by OIOS, which says it prioritizes cases involving minors or rape, takes more than a year.
And widespread confusion remains on the ground about consensual sex and exploitation. To help demonstrate that, investigators headed to the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.
 
A year ago, the report says, investigators interviewed 231 people in Haiti who said they'd had transactional sexual relationships with U.N. peacekeepers. "For rural women, hunger, lack of shelter, baby care items, medication and household items were frequently cited as the `triggering need,'" the report says. Urban and suburban women received "church shoes,' cell phones, laptops and perfume, as well as money.
 
"In cases of non-payment, some women withheld the badges of peacekeepers and threatened to reveal their infidelity via social media," the report says. "Only seven interviewees knew about the United Nations policy prohibiting sexual exploitation and abuse." None knew about the mission's hotline to report it.
 
Each of those instances of transactional sex, the report says, would be considered prohibited conduct, "thus demonstrating significant underreporting." It was not clear how many peacekeepers were involved.
 
For all of last year, the total number of allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation against members of all U.N. peacekeeping missions was 51, down from 66 the year before, according to the secretary-general's latest annual report on the issue.
 
The draft report doesn't say over what time frame the "transactional sex" in Haiti occurred. The peacekeeping mission there was first authorized in 2004 and, as of the end of March, had more than 7,000 uniformed troops. It is one of four peacekeeping missions that have accounted for the most allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation in recent years, along with those in Congo, Liberia and South Sudan.
 
One of the U.N. staffers who produced the report would not comment Tuesday, saying it was better to wait until it was released publicly. A spokesman for the peacekeeping office didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
 
The U.N. doesn't have a standing army and relies on troops contributed by member states. The states are responsible for investigating alleged misconduct by their troops, though the U.N. can step in if there's no action.
 
In their response to the report's findings, which is included in the draft, U.N. peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous and field support chief Atul Khare point out that while the number of peacekeepers has increased dramatically over the past decade, the number of allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation have gone down.
 
The U.N. prohibits "exchange of money, employment, goods or services for sex," and it strongly discourages sexual relationships between U.N. staff and people who receive their assistance, saying they are "based on inherently unequal power dynamics" and undermine the world body's credibility.
 
But that has led to some confusion on the ground, the new report says, with some members of peacekeeping missions seeing that guidance as a ban on all sexual relationships with local people.
The report says the guidelines need to be clarified.
 
"Staff with long mission experience states that was a `general view that people should have romantic rights' and raised the issue of sexuality as a human right," the report says.

Source : http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/UN_UNITED_NATIONS_PEACEKEEPERS_SEXUAL_EXPLOITATION?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT





The report, which should be released this month, makes no reference to the time frame of the alleged violations, but the 7,000-strong UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti started in 2004. The investigation also does not mention the number of peacekeepers involved.



The report says that the lack of any clear action is "demonstrating significant underreporting," while noting that assistance to those that suffered is "severely deficient." The average investigation by OIOS takes more than a year, according to AP.


Sexual abuse by peacekeeping troops, some 125,000 of which are currently deployed around the world, has undermined the credibility of their missions. A rapid increase in prostitution and abuse in Cambodia, Mozambique, Bosnia, Sudan and Kosovo were documented after UN peacekeeping forces moved in.

Earlier this year it was revealed that UN peacekeepers raped and sodomized starving and homeless boys in the Central African Republic, some as young as nine.

However, the number of documented cases of sexual abuse and exploitation by members of UN peacekeeping missions was 51 in 2014, down from 66 the year before, according to the secretary-general's latest annual report on the issue.

Source :
http://rt.com/news/266179-un-peacekeepers-haiti-sexual/




Then:

Source:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/mar/25/unitednations


The reputation of United Nations peacekeeping missions suffered a humiliating blow yesterday as an internal report identified repeated patterns of sexual abuse and rape perpetrated by soldiers supposed to be restoring the international rule of law.

The highly critical study, published by Jordan's ambassador to the UN assembly, was endorsed by the organisation's embattled secretary general, Kofi Annan, who condemned such "abhorrent acts" as a "violation of the fundamental duty of care".

The embarrassment caused by the misconduct of UN forces in devastated communities around the world - including Haiti, Sierra Leone, Bosnia, Cambodia , East Timor and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) - has become an increasingly high profile, political problem.

Allegations have recently surfaced that troops sent to police Liberia were regularly having sex with girls aged as young as 12, sometimes in the mission's administrative buildings.


In the DRC, peacekeepers were said to have offered abandoned orphans small gifts - as little as two eggs from their rations, says the report - for sexual encounters.

Kosovo&Bosnia [1999]


The presence of peacekeepers in Kosovo is fuelling the sexual exploitation of women and encouraging trafficking, according to Amnesty International.

It claims UN and Nato troops in the region are using the trafficked women and girls for sex and some have been involved in trafficking itself.

Amnesty says girls as young as 11 from eastern European countries are being sold into the sex slavery.

A Nato spokesman said some details of the report seemed out of date.

Lieutenant Colonel Jim Moran said some policies had changed. Peacekeepers were "not allowed" off base in civilian clothing or to go to bars and nightclubs, he said.

"Each nation is responsible for the conduct of their soldiers, and if they find a soldier that is breaking the law, it is up to them to bring them to justice," he added.

There has been no comment from the UN.

Trading houses

Amnesty's report, entitled "So does that mean I have rights? Protecting the human rights of women and girls trafficked for forced prostitution in Kosovo," was published on Thursday.

It is based on interviews with women and girls who have been trafficked from countries such as Moldova, Bulgaria and the Ukraine to service Kosovo's sex industry.

They are said to have been moved illegally across borders and sold in "trading houses," where they are sometimes drugged and "broken in" before being sold from one trafficker to another for prices ranging from 50 to 3,500 euros ($60 - 4,200).

The report includes harrowing testimonies of abduction, deprivation of liberty and denial of freedom of movement, torture and ill-treatment, including psychological threats, beatings and rape.

Instead of getting a proper job the women and girls find themselves trapped, enslaved, forced into prostitution.

The report condemns the role of the international peacekeepers.

Slavery

It says that after 40,000 K-For troops and hundreds of Unmik personnel were sent to Kosovo in 1999, a "small-scale local market for prostitution was transformed into a large-scale industry based on trafficking run by organised criminal networks".

The number of places in Kosovo where trafficked women and girls may be exploited, such as nightclubs, bars, restaurants, hotels and cafes, has increased from 18 in 1999 to more than 200 in 2003.

The report claims international personnel make up about 20% of the people using trafficked women and girls even though its members comprise only 2% of Kosovo's population.

read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3686173.stm


Dynocorp. & The "Kathryn Bolkovac" case


A former United Nations police officer is suing a British security firm over claims that it covered up the involvement of her fellow officers in sex crimes and prostitution rackets in the Balkans.

Kathryn Bolkovac, an American policewoman, was hired by DynCorp Aerospace in Aldershot for a UN post aimed at cracking down on sexual abuse and forced prostitution in Bosnia.

She claims she was 'appalled' to find that many of her fellow officers were involved. She was fired by the British company after amassing evidence that UN police were taking part in the trafficking of young women from eastern Europe as sex slaves.
She said: 'When I started collecting evidence from the victims of sex trafficking it was clear that a number of UN officers were involved from several countries, including quite a few from Britain. I was shocked, appalled and disgusted. They were supposed to be over there to help, but they were committing crimes themselves. When I told the supervisors they didn't want to know.'


DynCorp sacked her, claiming she had falsified time sheets, a charge she denies. Last month she filed her case at Southampton employment tribunal alleging wrongful dismissal and sexual discrimination against DynCorp, the British subsidiary of the US company DynCorp Inc.
DynCorp has the contract to provide police officers for the 2,100-member UN international police task force in Bosnia which was created to help restore law and order after the civil war.


Bolkovac has also filed a case against DynCorp under Britain's new Public Interest Disclosure Act designed to protect whistleblowers.
As well as reporting that her fellow officers regularly went to brothels, she also investigated allegations that an American police officer hired by DynCorp had bought a woman for $1,000.
 
Bolkovac's British lawyers say her evidence will highlight how the underground sex trade in Bosnia is thriving among the 21,000 Nato peacekeepers and thousands of international bureaucrats and aid workers.

Read more : http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/jul/29/unitednations


Congo [1999]

UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 26 -- Sexual exploitation of women and girls by U.N. peacekeepers and bureaucrats in the U.N. mission in Congo "appears to be significant, wide-spread and ongoing," according to a confidential U.N. report that documents cases of pedophilia, prostitution and rape.


The report by a U.N. peacekeeping official who recently visited Congo says that some U.N. personnel paid $1 to $3, or bartered food or the promise of a job, for sex. In some cases, U.N. officials allegedly raped women and girls and then offered them food or money to make it look as if they had engaged in prostitution.


read more:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15363-2004Nov26.html



and a lot more cases:


source:
http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/04/30/nine-times-peacekeepers-have-sexually-abused-those-theyre-supposed-to-protect/


Haiti: U.N. peacekeeping troops have been present in Haiti in some capacity since 1994, and they returned in 2004 to aid in suppressing violence on the island nation. In 2011, a video surfaced of Uruguayan U.N. soldiers seemingly raping a Haitian teenager. In 2012, a court martial convicted three Pakistani peacekeepers serving in Haiti for sexually abusing a 14-year-old boy.

Ivory Coast: According to a 2008 BBC report, a 13-year-old girl told the news network that she was gangraped by 10 peacekeepers in a field near her home. In 2009, Save the Children conducted a poll of ten underaged children, and found that eight had exchanged sexual favors for food or housing with U.N. peacekeepers there.

Burundi: Two U.N. peacekeepers were repatriated after being accused of having sex with prostitutes, one of whom was a minor. U.N. regulations prohibit peacekeepers from patronizing sex workers.

Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone: Interviews with community members in these three neighboring countries revealed that peacekeepers had withheld medical supplies, food, and water from desperate civilians until they offered them sexual favors.

Cambodia: During a mission to Cambodia in 1992 and 1993, U.N. peacekeepers frequented brothels with such frequency that the number of prostitutes there increased from 6,000 to 25,000. This incident gained particular notoriety after a U.N. official defended the peacekeepers’ behavior, saying "boys will be boys."

East Timor: Human rights groups have documented cases of abuse of children and at least 20 babies left behind by peacekeepers who impregnated local women and then left them without financial support, often ostracized from their communities.

Central African Republic: Leaked U.N. documents show that French forces serving in a peacekeeping mission in Bangui — prior to the establishment of a U.N. peacekeeping force there — sexually exploited children living in the camps for orphans and displaced civilians. They offered food and small amounts of cash in return for sex, sometimes with children as young as nine.

Also Watch :



The Whistleblower is based on the experiences of
Kathryn Bolkovac, an American police officer who in 1999 was assigned to serve as a peacekeeper with the United Nations in post-war Bosnia. While there, she reportedly discovered a sex-trafficking ring which served and was facilitated by other peacekeepers. Bolkovac was fired after trying to investigate the ring, but she later won a wrongful-dismissal lawsuit.

maandag 8 juni 2015

The greatest lie ever told - The Holocaust - 2015

 
Full length Holocaust Documentary - Did Hitler systematically murder 6 million Jews? we will be putting some of the mainstream theories under the scope, for the purpose of analysis and revision.
http://www.activist-news.com/