America’s Responsibility for the Global Refugee Crisis

[Octafish]

When refugees from the Indian subcontinent, sub-Saharan Africa, Central and South America and other places risk their lives for a chance at low-wage precarious labor in Europe or the US, it's because of decisions taken at the center of global economic and political power, places like Washington D, London, Brussels and New York.

By Margaret Kimberley
Black Agenda Report, April 30, 2015

“This humanitarian crisis is the direct result of the United States and NATO decision to effect regime change in Libya in 2011.”

All over the world people risk and sometimes lose their lives escaping poverty or war fare in their native lands. Throughout human history migrants have sought out places that are safer or more prosperous but they are seldom greeted with open arms. Xenophobia, racism, and fears of scarcity prevent desperate people from being integrated into societies that might accept them. However, the urge to escape violence or hunger never abates.

The most visible of the world’s refugee crises today is taking place in the Mediterranean sea. Thus far in 2015, it is estimated that 1,724 people have died on unseaworthy vessels as they try to reach southern Europe from Libya. These refugees come from many African nations, from Syria and from countries as far away as Bangladesh. On April 18, 2015 a vessel holding an estimated 850 people capsized with only 28 survivors.

This humanitarian crisis is the direct result of the United States and NATO decision to effect regime change in Libya in 2011. Presumptive democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton infamously said of Libyan president Gaddafi, “We came, we saw, he died.” Not only was Gaddafi killed by the conspiracy between NATO and jihadists in his country, but Libya never recovered from the intervention.

The most well known individual victim was the American ambassador, killed in Benghazi by the same forces which the United States supported. Very few people in this country are aware of their government’s complicity and those who do know don’t want to discuss it. The republicans who were as eager to intervene as the Obama administration want to make embarrassing political hay but don’t want to talk about the ongoing humanitarian crisis which the United States created.

CONTINUED (GRAPHIC PHOTO WARNING)...

http://blackagendareport.com/node/4450



"Money trumps peace." -- George Walker Bush

[Blue_Tires]

1. "Direct result?" Ms. Kimberly is a bit light on her history

But then BAR is kooky anyway, so I'm not really surprised...

[Octafish]

2. Who started the wars on Iraq?

Talking Poppy George Herbert Walker Bush, courtesy of Hill & Knowlton, back in 1991:



The Kuwait ambassador's daughter, committing perjury on behalf of the administration as she tells the US Congress she was a nurse at a Kuwaiti City hospital who saw the Iraqi soldiers take babies from their incubators and leave them on the cold, hard floor so they could steal the incubators for babes in Baghdad.

"If I wanted to lie, or if we wanted to lie, if we wanted to exaggerate, I wouldn't use my daughter to do so. I could easily buy other people to do it." -- Kuwait Ambassador

So. Who's light on history?

[Blue_Tires]

3. If she wants to argue that U.S. policy is

a contributing factor, I could at least entertain that...But to say we're directly and solely responsible is intellectually bankrupt.

Nevermind the fact that not all these refugees are from Libya/Syria, and only a small percentage of those are even headed to Europe...The vast majority of Syrian refugees have settled in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon, and only when those countries said 'no more' and shut the gate did the refugees start heading to Europe...

[Octafish]

4. Good point. Kimberley blames NATO.

Money is more important than peace, prosperity -- and people -- to their leadership, as well.

From her essay:

Then again Libya isn’t much different from Central American countries like Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. US backed coups, interventions, and drug policing have created violence and chaos in those countries. When unaccompanied children began arriving in the United States there was little discussion of our government’s culpability. Political discourse, such as it was, was focused on political battles in congress about immigration policy and not about how this particular crisis was American made.

We now see another sorry spectacle of suffering people and powerful nations who could help but refuse to do so. It is all the more disgraceful because those countries created the problem in the first place. Let the NATO nations take in every refugee fleeing on a leaky boat. It is the least they could do to make restitution for the suffering they created.

It is the least they can do.

[Blue_Tires]

5. She has "America" in her headline

She would also do well to remember it is Assad, not NATO who has killed 300k+ people, even using chemical weapons on occasion.

And NATO nations have been taking everyone in on a leaky boat, but the Med is a big place, and the Italian Navy can't be everyplace at once... So every ideology-fueled blogger shrieking that NATO is being willfully indifferent or negligent in migrant deaths is just wallowing in ignorance...

Maybe if the people traffickers actually gave a shit about their "cargo" and didn't massively overload unsafe boats and then abandon them as "distress" ships to be "rescued", the survival rate might be higher...

[Octafish]

6. Is it because America leads NATO?

Either way, NATO nations need the oil, and the rest that gets looted from Africa and the Middle East.

As for "every ideology-fueled blogger shrieking that NATO is being willfully indifferent or negligent in migrant deaths is just wallowing in ignorance," you are missing a very important point: the Corporate Owned News has largely ignored the question of the cause of the refugee crisis, most of whom are fleeing wars started by the US and the UK.

Former CIA Agent Says Bush to Blame for 9/11

by Chris Gardner
The University of South Florida Oracle, Sept. 22, 2004

Former CIA agent Ray McGovern went over what he considers the failures of the intelligence community and current administration over the past few years. He has 27 years of experience as a CIA analyst to draw upon and has dealt with every administration from Kennedy to Bush Sr.

"It's difficult for people to learn the truth about things like Iraq," said McGovern, a member of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), which is comprised of more than 40 former employees of agencies such as the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, Department of State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Army Intelligence, the FBI and the National Security Agency.

SNIP...

McGovern told a story about CIA officials who gave false information about enemy troop numbers in Vietnam to President Johnson. The lie led to a surprise of U.S. forces by the Tet Offensive in 1968. In this war of attrition, the agency wanted to make it look like the United States was doing better than it really was, McGovern said.

"Picture the Vietnam Memorial in Washington; it's a big 'V' shape. Now picture it with just one side of the 'V'. It might have been that way if some people had told the truth," McGovern said.

SNIP...

He mentioned how the Bush administration wanted to involve the country with the war in Iraq for certain reasons other than fear of weapons of mass destruction, which was just a more media-friendly explanation for the war.

"I have initials for why I think we went to war in Iraq," McGovern said. "O.I.L. O-I-L, O is for oil, I is for Israel and L is for logistics, as in when we have Iraq we have a foothold and a number of bases strategically placed in the Middle East so we can be in control over there and also to protect Israel."

CONTINUED...

http://www.truth-out.org/archive/item/49900-former-cia-agent-says-bush-to-blame-for-911

Who benefits from those wars, Blue_Tires?

[Rex]

7. As long as we decide to stay the World Military Police Force

we will also be the worlds Top Cop when it comes to those pesky resources we keep needing over their own countries needs.

Workers coming to this country must be extremely desperate - they face a hostile nation and doesn't care about their family or if they live or die.

[Octafish]

9. Look what happened to Gaddafi.

One day the guy's our chum.



The next day's he's tossed, a bum.

How Libya Seems to Have Helped the CIA with Rendition of Terrorism Suspects

By Abigail Hauslohner / Tripoli Friday, Sept. 02, 2011
Time

A treasure trove of hundreds of thousands of secret documents uncovered by TIME and several other news organizations in the Libyan capital on Friday apparently reveals that the CIA and Britain's MI6 maintained a close — even intimate — relationship with their Libyan counterparts dating as early as 2002, before the CIA had set up a "permanent" mission in Libya (which, according to the documents, began in 2004). United Nations sanctions were lifted in September 2003. U.S. economic sanctions ended in Sept. 20, 2004.

Binders full of correspondence sent by the CIA and MI6 to Libyan intelligence and, often specifically, Moussa Koussa, who was Muammar Gaddafi's longtime right-hand man, reveal that the western intelligence agencies worked closely with the Libyans on the renditions of terrorism suspects to Libya for questioning between 2002 and 2004. (Correspondence before and after those dates were not immediately available.) According to the documents, the CIA appears to have expressed interest in participating in the interrogations on Libyan soil. A 2004 letter to Moussa Koussa from CIA operative "Steve," regards "setting up a permanent CIA presence in Libya." But the documents seem to make clear that the relationship has already existed for some time. "We are also eager to work with you in the questioning of terrorists we recently rendered to your country," Steve writes. "I would like to send to Libya an additional two officers and would appreciate if they could have direct access to question this individual."

SNIP...

Types of Documents

Among the documents found were rendition proposals, rendition schedules, a speech drafted for Gaddafi by MI6 about making the Middle East "a WMD free zone," lists of terrorist suspect interrogation questions requested by the CIA, wire taps of foreign embassies, Libyan telephone numbers intercepted by and provided by the CIA to Libyan authorities, as well as transcripts of terrorism suspect interrogations — including a 400-page file detailing interrogations of current Libyan rebel commander in Tripoli, and former member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, Abdel Hakim al-Khulidi Belhaj.

The CIA and MI6 apparently trusted their Libyan counterparts enough to offer detailed information on Arabs outside of Libya upon request by Libyan authorities — even when the U.S. and British intelligence agencies did not see the specified individuals as threats. In one note dated Feb. 23, 2004, Libya seems to have requested information on a Kuwaiti individual. The CIA doesn't see him as posing any danger, it says. But it provides detailed information on that man's role in Kuwaiti politics anyway.

CONTINUED...

http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2091653,00.html

Seems to be the case for a long time. Remember Saddam Hussein?



Does Manuel Noriega ring a bell?



And to think we still wonder, on some days, Rex: "Whatever happened to Democracy?"

[Rex]

10. Good question Octa, what the hell did happen to our regulated capitalist/mostly democratic society?

Was it really just that easy to sale off the country and turn into a plutocracy? It is scary how easily it has happened and how easy it was after 9/11 to keep the population fearful and under control.

Think we see signs of that draconian control falling apart as people around the country just won't live in a police state. Of course protesting today is considered a terrorist threat.

What ever happened to a free and open society?

Maybe we never had one.

[moondust]

8. Gaddafi threatened attack on Benghazi.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/18/world/africa/18libya.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

It was argued that NATO acted to prevent a slaughter of civilians. Of course the NATO intervention didn't stop at that.

Some will then blame NATO for NOT acting on behalf of rebels in Syria. Sadly, the rebels themselves apparently anticipated NATO intervention like in Libya but it didn't come. I don't know if it was because of pressure from Putin who didn't want to lose another customer after losing Gaddafi or what. That endless war has led to a quarter million deaths and something like several million refugees.

Sometimes it's damned if you do and damned if you don't.

[Octafish]

11. It is complicated. The guy was "Leader" of Libya when it suited us.

When it no longer was "Right" it was "Good night, Moammar!"

Something important that is never reported in Corporate McPravda:

Gadhafi Remains Popular in Much of Africa's Sahel

Scott Stearns
Voice of America, October 23, 2011 8:00 PM

During the eight-month fight against him, Moammar Gadhafi remained popular throughout much of Africa's Sahel region, south of Libya.

Gadhafi's favored status in the Sahel came from long-running investments in public and private projects, as well as the feeling that he was someone who stood up for Africa.

During the Libyan crisis, Niger allowed several convoys of former Gadhafi officials, including one of his sons, to cross into the country on humanitarian grounds. Burkina Faso briefly offered to give Gadhafi asylum.

Some lament Gadhafi's demise

In the Burkinabe capital Ouagadougou, businessman Marius Navarro said Africa is poorer without Gadhafi.

Navarro said Gadhafi's death is a huge loss for Africa and there is no doubt the continent will miss how much he did. Navarro said Gadhafi helped all of Africa, not only Libya. And because Africa did not support Gadhafi when he needed it, Navarro said Africa will ultimately come to regret losing him.

CONTINUED...

http://www.voanews.com/content/gadhafi-remains-popular-in-much-of-africas-sahel-132453553/147122.html

Now that the back-stop is gone, there is no one with the means and awareness standing in the way of chaos.

Which may be the point, seeing how the BFEE are taking reservations on the Carlyle Lifeboat.

[moondust]

12. Ah, Elysium on Earth.

I'm sure it's only temporary until the permanent version is ready for habitation.