South Sudan’s Kiir to Retain Key Ministries in Transition Period: Official

September 28, 2015 (JUBA) – South Sudan’s leader Salva Kiir will, for purposes of effectiveness, maintain key ministries during the proposed Transitional Government of National Unity (GoNU), the country’s cabinet affairs minister revealed on Sunday.

Martin Elia Lomoro told a local daily that the South Sudan leader would not allow ministries of defence, foreign affairs and interior go to the armed opposition.

“The agreement says the president is the chief foreign relations officer – that means he is the top diplomat,” Lomoro was quoted in Monday’s edition of The Stance newspaper.

“So how can he give the foreign affairs to someone else? The agreement the president is the commander in chief of the SPLA and the head of other organized forces. How can he give the ministry of defence to the opposition forces?” asked the minister.

According to the Agreement for the Resolution of Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan (ARCRSS) signed by President Kiir, rebel leader Riek Machar and Pagam Amum, the head of former political detainees, the executives will be shared among the parties of government (53%), armed opposition (33%), former detainees (7%), and other opposition political parties (7%) under the National Alliance. There thirty ministries are organized into three groups of Governance Cluster, ten (10) Ministries. The ministries are Cabinet Affairs; Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation; Defence and Veterans’ Affairs; Interior; Justice and Constitutional Affairs; National Security; Parliamentary Affairs; Information, Communication Technology and Postal Services; Ministry of Federal Affairs; Minister in the Office of the President.

There is the Economic Cluster, thirteen (13) Ministries of Finance and Planning; Petroleum, Mining; Agriculture and Food Security; Livestock and Fisheries; Trade and Industry; Energy and Dams; Transport; Roads and Bridges; Environment and Forestry; Land, Housing and Urban Development; Water Resources and Irrigation, Wildlife Conservation and Tourism. Then we have Service Delivery Cluster, seven (7) Ministries: Higher Education, Science and Technology; General Education and Instruction; Health; Labour, Public Service and Human Resource Development; Gender, Child and Social Welfare; Culture, Youth, and Sports; Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management.

“There is no government in the world where the president will come and say okay, I will take this ministry [and] you take this [ministry]. A government by definition is a team selected by elected president to serve in his government to achieve his objectives or policies as stated during the elections,” said Lomoro, contradicting what the accord says.

According to last month’s peace deal, signed last month, “each Party shall nominate TGoNU Ministerial portfolios on a rotational basis.” Government will first select its members from any of the clusters before the other parties to the peace agreement.

Lomoro, however, reiterated that government is committed to the peace deal, mediated by the Intergovernmental Authorities on Development (IGAD) and international partners.

The TGoNU is expected by end of December after first vice president, Riek Machar has been sworn in. The selection of ministries is seen as a test for two parties to the accord.

Lomoro said the “hard-liners” in both government and the opposition have a hard choice.

“Generally speaking, the program of our government is peace although you will find some people who are hardliners because they want to achieve the maximum,” he said.

The minister earlier called for dissolution of the mediation team his group, which allied to president Kiir’s government, was blocked from participating in the final round of talks.

OPPOSITION REFUTES INTERPRETATION

But the armed opposition faction, SPLM-IO, led by first vice president designate, Riek Machar, said the president has no power to control selection of the ministries, saying it will depend on whether they will be lucky to select ministries of foreign affairs, defence and interior.

“The peace agreement is very clear on the selection process of the ministries. Definitely, the government will have the opportunity to make the first selection from any of the three clusters of the ministries. If for instance they select ministry of defence first, they will not have power to also retain others such as foreign affairs and interior. The other three factions in their chance may take any of the ministries including the two,” explained Machar’s press secretary, James Gatdet Dak.

Dak predicted that in the first two rounds of selections of eight ministries which will involve the government, SPLM-IO, former detainees and political parties, the government may get two key ministries and lose six to the other three factions.

He also said the government will be a coalition of the four factions but with president and his two deputies, arguing that even if defence of foreign affairs went to one of the opposition factions wouldn’t mean president Kiir will not preside over such institutions.

He said holding some ministries as untouchable in the selection process would be a grave violation of the provision of the power sharing agreement.

(ST)

South Sudan Rival Forces Trade Accusations Over Fresh Clashes in Unity State

September 29, 2015 (JUBA) - South Sudanese rival forces have traded accusations over renewed fighting in Unity and Upper Nile states despite ongoing United Nations summit in New York in support of implementing the peace agreement signed in August by the parties to the 21-month long conflict.

The clashes occurred just hours leading to the meeting due to be addressed by the president Salva Kiir and his main political rival and former vice president, Riek Machar, in New York.

Presidential spokesperson, Ateny Wek Ateny, told reporters on Tuesday that president Kiir, would, through a video link, participate in the meeting in which Machar and Pagan Amum, secretary general of the governing Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), would attend in person in New York.

The purpose of the meeting, according to the presidential aide, is to hear from the rival leaders their plans and commitments to implementing the peace agreement which they have signed and what steps they have put in place to address thorny and challenging matters in the implementation process.

But while president Kiir and his regime, according to Ateny, will express commitment of the government and himself to the full implementation, Unity state minister of youth, culture and sports, Lam Tungwar, told Sudan Tribune on Tuesday that armed opposition forces, allied to the former vice president, Machar, have carried out attacks on the positions held by the government forces in Leer county in Unity state.

“The rebels are now engaged in unruly behaviours. They are attacking our positions in Unity state. They attacked Leer town today. Fighting is going on as I speak to you, which is unacceptable,” said Tungwar during an exclusive on Tuesday.

Tunguar, who speaks for Unity state’s government although he is not the spokesman of the state government, also condemned the rebel activities and commended the action of the government forces for allegedly acting in self-defense to protect lives and properties of the civil population in the area.

“We condemn this barbaric act by the rebels as the government of the state. The motive behind these attacks is to dishonour the agreement in spite of our commitment as the government at all levels to implementing the peace despite our reservations, yet the rebels are carrying out attacks on the position of our forces in a clear violation of the permanent ceasefire agreement, yet nobody talks about it from the region and among the international community,” he added.

He called on IGAD (Intergovernmental Authority on Development), the Africa Union, the neigbouring countries, particularly the government of Sudan to take a stance and hold the rebels responsible for allegedly violating the agreement.

However, the armed opposition faction counter-accused the government forces of murdering a woman in Lelo, Upper Nile state, as they were returning from Malakal town.

“Yesterday [Monday] at 11:00AM, government troops again shot dead a woman and wounded two people at the village near Lelo,” said Colonel William Gatjiath Deng, military spokesman of the opposition group, in a statement he issued on Tuesday.

Sudan Tribune was unable to verify the veracity of the claims from the two parties about the clashes.

Local sources claimed the actions may have been prompted by last week’s renewed clashes between government forces and opposition forces in Duar area, located north of Bentiu.

An indeterminate number of combatants on either side of the conflict were killed in what has been described as one of the biggest violations of the permanent cease-fire agreement which the rival leaders have signed and declared in August.

Observers with considerable security knowledge and information about the activities of the rival forces have warned that resumption of fighting could unravel the deal and worsen humanitarian situation on the ground.

(ST)

Jamaica Calls Britain to Pay Billions for Slavery

September 30, 2015

NEW YORK — David Cameron is facing calls for Britain to pay billions of pounds in reparations for slavery ahead of his first official visit to Jamaica today.

Downing Street said the prime minister does not believe reparations or apologies for slavery are the right approach, but the issue is set to overshadow his trade trip to the island, where he will address the Jamaican parliament.

Ahead of his trip, Sir Hilary Beckles, chair of the Caricom Reparations Commission, has led calls for Cameron to start talks on making amends for slavery and referenced the prime minister’s ancestral links to the trade in the 1700s through his cousin six times removed, General Sir James Duff.

In an open letter in the Jamaica Observer, the academic wrote: “You are a grandson of the Jamaican soil who has been privileged and enriched by your forebears’ sins of the enslavement of our ancestors . . . You are, Sir, a prized product of this land and the bonanza benefits reaped by your family and inherited by you continue to bind us together like birds of a feather.

“We ask not for handouts or any such acts of indecent submission. We merely ask that you acknowledge responsibility for your share of this situation and move to contribute in a joint programme of rehabilitation and renewal. The continuing suffering of our people, Sir, is as much your nation’s duty to alleviate as it is ours to resolve in steadfast acts of self-responsibility.” Professor Verene Shepherd, chair of the National Commission on Reparation, told the Jamaica Gleaner that nothing short of an unambiguous apology from Cameron would do, while a Jamaican MP, Mike Henry, called on fellow parliamentarians to turn their back on Cameron if reparations are not on the agenda, noting that the Jamaican parliament has approved a motion for the country to seek reparation from Britain.

“If it is not on the agenda, I will not attend any functions involving the visiting prime minister, and I will cry shame on those who do, considering that there was not a dissenting voice in the debate in parliament,” he told the newspaper.

Jamaica’s prime minister Portia Simpson Miller called for non-confrontational discussions at the UN in 2013, but Britain has never accepted the case for any compensation payments.

A Number 10 official said: “This is a longstanding concern of theirs and there is a longstanding UK position, true of successive governments in the UK, that we don’t think reparations are the right approach.

“The PM’s point will be he wants to focus on the future. We are talking about issues that are centuries old and taken under a different government when he was not even born. — The Guardian.

The Power of False Narrative

US Army Africa inspecting troops in Sierra Leone.

“Strategic communications” or Stratcom, a propaganda/psy-op technique that treats information as a “soft power” weapon to wield against adversaries, is a new catch phrase in an Official Washington obsessed with the clout that comes from spinning false narratives.

By Robert Parry

In this age of pervasive media, the primary method of social control is through the creation of narratives delivered to the public through newspapers, TV, radio, computers, cell phones and any other gadget that can convey information. This reality has given rise to an obsession among the power elite to control as much of this messaging as possible.

So, regarding U.S. relations toward the world, we see the State Department, the White House, Pentagon, NATO and other agencies pushing various narratives to sell the American people and other populations on how they should view U.S. policies, rivals and allies. The current hot phrase for this practice is “strategic communications” or Stratcom, which blends psychological operations, propaganda and P.R. into one mind-bending smoothie.

I have been following this process since the early 1980s when the Reagan administration sought to override “the Vietnam Syndrome,” a public aversion to foreign military interventions that followed the Vietnam War. To get Americans to “kick” this syndrome, Reagan’s team developed “themes” about overseas events that would push American “hot buttons.”

Tapping into the Central Intelligence Agency’s experience in psy-ops targeted at foreign audiences, President Ronald Reagan and CIA Director William J. Casey assembled a skilled team inside the White House led by CIA propaganda specialist Walter Raymond Jr.

From his new perch on the National Security Council staff, Raymond oversaw inter-agency task forces to sell interventionist policies in Central America and other trouble spots. The game, as Raymond explained it in numerous memos to his underlings, was to glue black hats on adversaries and white hats on allies, whatever the truth really was.

The fact that many of the U.S.-backed forces – from the Nicaraguan Contras to the Guatemalan military – were little more than corrupt death squads couldn’t be true, at least according to psy-ops doctrine. They had to be presented to the American public as wearing white hats. Thus, the Contras became the “moral equals of our Founding Fathers” and Guatemala’s murderous leader Efrain Rios Montt was getting a “bum rap” on human rights, according to the words scripted for President Reagan.

The scheme also required that anyone – say, a journalist, a human rights activist or a congressional investigator – who contradicted this white-hat mandate must be discredited, marginalized or destroyed, a routine of killing any honest messenger.

But it turned out that the most effective part of this propaganda strategy was to glue black hats on adversaries. Since nearly all foreign leaders have serious flaws, it proved much easier to demonize them – and work the American people into war frenzies – than it was to persuade the public that Washington’s favored foreign leaders were actually paragons of virtue.

An Unflattering Hat

Once the black hat was jammed on a foreign leader’s head, you could say whatever you wanted about him and disparage any American who questioned the extreme depiction as a “fill-in-the-blank apologist” or a “stooge” or some other ugly identifier that would either silence the dissenter or place him or her outside the bounds of acceptable debate.

Given the careerist conformity of Washington, nearly everyone fell into line, including news outlets and human rights groups. If you wanted to retain your “respectability” and “influence,” you agreed with the conventional wisdom. So, with every foreign controversy, we got a new “group think” about the new “enemy.” The permissible boundary of each debate was set mostly by the neoconservatives and their “liberal interventionist” sidekicks.

That this conformity has not served American national interests is obvious. Take, for example, the disastrous Iraq War, which has cost the U.S. taxpayers an estimated $1 trillion, led to the deaths of some 4,500 American soldiers, killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and unleashed chaos across the strategic Middle East and now into Europe.

Most Americans now agree that the Iraq War “wasn’t worth it.” But it turns out that Official Washington’s catastrophic “group thinks” don’t just die well-deserved deaths. Like a mutating virus, they alter shape as the outside conditions change and survive in a new form.

So, when the public caught on to the Iraq War deceptions, the neocon/liberal-hawk pundits just came up with a new theme to justify their catastrophic Iraq strategy, i.e., “the successful surge,” the dispatch of 30,000 more U.S. troops to the war zone. This theme was as bogus as the WMD lies but the upbeat storyline was embraced as the new “group think” in 2007-2008.

The “successful surge” was a myth, in part, because many of its alleged “accomplishments” actually predated the “surge.” The program to pay off Sunnis to stop shooting at Americans and the killing of “Al Qaeda in Iraq” leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi both occurred in 2006, before the surge even began. And its principal goal of resolving sectarian grievances between Sunni and Shiite was never accomplished.

But Official Washington wrapped the “surge” in the bloody flag of “honoring the troops,” who were credited with eventually reducing the level of Iraqi violence by carrying out the “heroic” surge strategy as ordered by President Bush and devised by the neocons. Anyone who noted the holes in this story was dismissed as disrespecting “the troops.”

The cruel irony was that the neocon pundits, who had promoted the Iraq War and then covered their failure by hailing the “surge,” had little or no regard for “the troops” who mostly came for lower socio-economic classes and were largely abstractions to the well-dressed, well-schooled and well-paid talking heads who populate the think tanks and op-ed pages.

Safely ensconced behind the “successful surge” myth, the Iraq War devotees largely escaped any accountability for the chaos and bloodshed they helped cause. Thus, the same “smart people” were in place for the Obama presidency and just as ready to buy into new interventionist “group thinks” – gluing black hats on old and new adversaries, such as Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and, most significantly, Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
Causing Chaos

In 2011, led this time by the liberal interventionists – the likes of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and White House aide Samantha Power – the U.S. military and some NATO allies took aim at Libya, scoffing at Gaddafi’s claim that his country was threatened by Islamic terrorists. It was not until Gaddafi’s military was destroyed by Western airstrikes (and he was tortured and murdered) that it became clear that he wasn’t wrong about the Islamic extremists.

The jihadists seized large swaths of Libyan territory, killed the U.S. ambassador and three other diplomatic personnel in Benghazi, and forced the closing of U.S. and other Western embassies in Tripoli. For good measure, Islamic State terrorists forced captured Coptic Christians to kneel on a Libyan beach before beheading them.

Amid this state of anarchy, Libya has been the source of hundreds of thousands of migrants trying to reach Europe by boat. Thousands have drowned in the Mediterranean.
But, again, the leading U.S. interventionists faced no accountability. Clinton is the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, and Power is now U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

Also, in 2011, a similar uprising occurred in Syria against the secular regime headed by President Assad, with nearly identical one-sided reporting about the “white-hatted” opposition and the “black-hatted” government. Though many protesters indeed appear to have been well-meaning opponents of Assad, Sunni terrorists penetrated the opposition from the beginning.

This gray reality was almost completely ignored in the Western press, which almost universally denounced the government when it retaliated against opposition forces for killing police and soldiers. The West depicted the government response as unprovoked attacks on “peaceful protesters.”

This one-sided narrative nearly brought the U.S. military to the point of another intervention after Aug. 21, 2013, when a mysterious sarin gas attack killed hundreds in a suburb of Damascus. Official Washington’s neocons and the pro-interventionists in the State Department immediately blamed Assad’s forces for the atrocity and demanded a bombing campaign.

But some U.S. intelligence analysts suspected a “false-flag” provocation by Islamic terrorists seeking to get the U.S. air force to destroy Assad’s army for them. At the last minute, President Obama steered away from that cliff and – with the help of President Putin – got Assad to surrender Syria’s chemical arsenal, while Assad continued to deny a role in the sarin attack.

Upset over Iran

Putin also assisted Obama on another front with another demonized “enemy,” Iran. In late 2013, the two leaders collaborated in getting Iran to make significant concessions on its nuclear program, clearing the way for negotiations that eventually led to stringent international controls.

These two diplomatic initiatives alarmed the neocons and their right-wing Israeli friends. Since the mid-1990s, the neocons had worked closely with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in plotting a “regime change” strategy for countries that were viewed as troublesome to Israel, with Iraq, Syria and Iran topping the list.

Putin’s interference with that agenda – by preventing U.S. bombing campaigns against Syria and Iran – was viewed as a threat to this longstanding Israeli/neocon strategy. There was also fear that the Obama-Putin teamwork could lead to renewed pressure on Israel to recognize a Palestinian state. So, that relationship had to be blown up.

The detonation occurred in early 2014 when a neocon-orchestrated coup overthrew elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and replaced him with a fiercely anti-Russian regime which included neo-Nazi and other ultra-nationalist elements as well as free-market extremists.

Ukraine had been on the neocon radar at least since September 2013, just after Putin undercut plans for bombing Syria. Neocon Carl Gershman, president of the U.S.-government-funded National Endowment for Democracy, wrote a Washington Post op-ed deeming Ukraine “the biggest prize” and a key steppingstone toward another regime change in Moscow, removing the troublesome Putin.

Gershman’s op-ed was followed by prominent neocons, such as Sen. John McCain and Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, urging on violent protests that involved firebombing the police. But the State Department and the mainstream media glued white hats on the Maidan protesters and black hats on the police and the government.

Then, on Feb. 20, 2014, a mysterious sniper attack killed both police and demonstrators, leading to more clashes and the deaths of scores of people. The U.S. government and press corps blamed Yanukovych and – despite his signing an agreement for early elections on Feb. 21 – the Maidan “self-defense forces,” spearheaded by neo-Nazi goons, overran government buildings on Feb. 22 and installed a coup regime, quickly recognized by the State Department as “legitimate.”

Though the fault for the Feb. 20 sniper attack was never resolved – the new Ukrainian regime showed little interest in getting to the bottom of it – other independent investigations pointed toward a provocation by right-wing gunmen who targeted police and protesters with the goal of deepening the crisis and blaming Yanukovych, which is exactly what happened.

These field reports, including one from the BBC, indicated that the snipers likely were associated with the Maidan uprising, not the Yanukovych government.

One-Sided Reporting

Yet, during the Ukrainian coup, The New York Times and most other mainstream media outlets played a role similar to what they had done prior to the Iraq War when they hyped false and misleading stories about WMD. By 2014, the U.S. press corps no longer seemed to even pause before undertaking its expected propaganda role.

So, after Yanukovych’s ouster, when ethnic Russians in Crimea and eastern Ukraine rose up against the new anti-Russian order in Kiev, the only acceptable frame for the U.S. media was to blame the resistance on Putin. It must be “Russian aggression” or a “Russian invasion.”

When a referendum in Crimea overwhelmingly favored secession from Ukraine and rejoining Russia, the U.S. media denounced the 96 percent vote as a “sham” imposed by Russian guns. Similarly, resistance in eastern Ukraine could not have reflected popular sentiment unless it came from mass delusions induced by “Russian propaganda.”

Meanwhile, evidence of a U.S.-backed coup, such as the intercepted phone call of a pre-coup discussion between Assistant Secretary Nuland and U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt on how “to midwife this thing” and who to install in the new government (“Yats is the guy”), disappeared into the memory hole, not helpful for the desired narrative.

When Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, the blame machine immediately roared into gear again, accusing Putin and the ethnic Russian rebels. But some U.S. intelligence analysts reportedly saw the evidence going in a different direction, implicating a rogue element of the Ukrainian regime.

Again, the mainstream media showed little skepticism toward the official story blaming Putin, even though the U.S. government and other Western nations refused to make public any hard evidence supporting the Putin-did-it case, even now more than a year later.

The pattern that we have seen over and over is that once a propaganda point is scored against one of the neocon/liberal-hawk “enemies,” the failure to actually prove the allegation is not seen as suspicious, at least not inside the mainstream media, which usually just repeats the old narrative again and again, whether its casting blame on Putin for MH-17, or on Yanukovych for the sniper attack, or on Assad for the sarin gas attack.

Instead of skepticism, it’s always the same sort of “group think,” with nothing learned from the disaster of the Iraq War because there was virtually no accountability for those responsible.

Obama’s Repression

Yet, while the U.S. press corps deserves a great deal of blame for this failure to investigate important controversies independently, President Obama and his administration have been the driving force in this manipulation of public opinion over the past six-plus years. Instead of the transparent government that Obama promised, he has run one of the most opaque, if not the most secretive, administrations in American history.

Besides refusing to release the U.S. government’s evidence on pivotal events in these international crises, Obama has prosecuted more national security whistleblowers than all past presidents combined.

That repression, including a 35-year prison term for Pvt. Bradley/Chelsea Manning and the forced exile of indicted National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, has intimidated current intelligence analysts who know about the manipulation of public opinion but don’t dare tell the truth to reporters for fear of imprisonment.

Most of the “leaked” information that you still see in the mainstream media is what’s approved by Obama or his top aides to serve their interests. In other words, the “leaks” are part of the propaganda, made to seem more trustworthy because they’re coming from an unidentified “source” rather than a named government spokesman.

At this late stage in Obama’s presidency, his administration seems drunk on the power of “perception management” with the new hot phrase, “strategic communications” which boils psychological operations, propaganda and P.R. into one intoxicating brew.

From NATO’s Gen. Philip Breedlove to the State Department’s Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy Richard Stengel, the manipulation of information is viewed as a potent “soft power” weapon. It’s a way to isolate and damage an “enemy,” especially Russia and Putin.

This demonization of Putin makes cooperation between him and Obama difficult, such as Russia’s recent military buildup in Syria as part of a commitment to prevent a victory by the Islamic State and Al Qaeda. Though one might think that Russian help in fighting terrorism would be welcomed, Nuland’s State Department office responded with a bizarre and futile attempt to build an aerial blockade of Russian aid flying to Syria across eastern Europe.

Nuland and other neocons apparently would prefer having the black flag of Sunni terrorism flying over Damascus than to work with Putin to block such a catastrophe. The hysteria over Russia’s assistance in Syria is a textbook example of how people can begin believing their own propaganda and letting it dictate misguided actions.

On Thursday, Obama’s White House sank to a new low by having Press Secretary Josh Earnest depict Putin as “desperate” to land a meeting with Obama. Earnest then demeaned Putin’s appearance during an earlier sit-down session with Netanyahu in Moscow. “President Putin was striking a now-familiar pose of less-than-perfect posture and unbuttoned jacket and, you know, knees spread far apart to convey a particular image,’ Earnest said.

But the meeting photos actually showed both men with their suit coats open and both sitting with their legs apart at least for part of the time. Responding to Earnest’s insults, the Russians denied that Putin was “desperate” for a meeting with Obama and added that the Obama administration had proposed the meeting to coincide with Putin’s appearance at the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Monday.

“We do not refuse contacts that are proposed,” said Yuri Ushakov, a top foreign policy adviser to Putin. “We support maintaining constant dialogue at the highest level.” The Kremlin also included no insults about Obama’s appearance in the statement.

However, inside Official Washington, there appears to be little thought that the endless spinning, lying and ridiculing might dangerously corrode American democracy and erode any remaining trust the world’s public has in the word of the U.S. government. Instead, there seems to be great confidence that skilled propagandists can discredit anyone who dares note that the naked empire has wrapped itself in the sheerest of see-through deceptions.

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe Addresses United Nations General Assembly: Africa Not Looking for Handouts

September 29, 2015

Statement by His Excellency the President of the Republic of Zimbabwe and Chairman of the African Union, Cde RG Mugabe, at the 70th Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on September 28, 2015

Your Excellency, Mr Morgens Lykketoft, President of the General Assembly,

Your Majesties, Heads of the State and Government, Your Excellency Mr Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations,

Distinguished delegates,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Comrades and friends.

Allow me at the outset to extend to you, Mr Lykketoft, my warm congratulations on your election to the high office of President of the 70th Session of the General Assembly.

You assume this office at a historic moment when the United Nations has just adopted an ambitious agenda for the future of humankind.

The task ahead needs all hands on the deck and you can count on our co-operation and support during your Presidency.

Mr President,

I wish to commend Mr Sam Kutesa, a distinguished son of Africa, for the dynamism with which he steered this august body over the past year.

We particularly appreciated his leadership in promoting inclusive dialogue and seeking consensus on the many sensitive issues that he presided over during his tenure.

The theme for this session, “The United Nations at 70: The road ahead for peace, security and human rights”, aptly complements the deliberations of the Summit meeting on the Post-2015 Development Agenda. It is our expectation that the United Nations will draw from its seven decades long experiences to give birth to a new era of peace, equality and justice; a new era that recognises and fosters the commonality of our common fate through renewed international co-operation and solidarity.

Mr President,

The African Union welcomes the priorities you have proposed for they are in tandem with our own developmental plan, the Agenda 2063, which recognises the intrinsic and inextricable linkages between peace, security, development, and the full realisation of human rights.

The African Union Constitutive Act recognises that, while peace and security are imperative for our progress, conflict is a major impediment to the socio-economic advancement and integration of the continent.

Consequently, the Common African Position (CAP) on the Post-2015 Development Agenda, designates “Peace and Security” as one of its six key pillars, and a top priority for us.

The prevalence of peace not only creates conducive conditions for development, but also ensures that the maximum possible resources can be dedicated to development programmes and projects.

We welcome and encourage the continued co-operation between the United Nations and the African Union (AU), principally through the latter’s Peace and Security Council, in advancing peace and security in Africa.

Mr President,

In January this year, the leaders of the African Union adopted Agenda 2063 as our continent’s plan to accelerate deepened economic integration of our countries and regions.

Its main objective is to improve the well-being of the continent’s citizenry through sustained and balanced economic growth.

At the AU Summit in Pretoria, South Africa in June this year, we agreed on the Agenda’s first 10-year development plan.

During these initial 10 years, the flagship programmes will include the creation of a Continental Free trade Area, the African Centre for Disease Control, a Pan-Africa University of Science and Technology (to develop skills for the value-addition and beneficiation of the continent’s vast mineral resources), a Single Aviation Market, a High Speed Train, and a Pan-African E-Network.

The successful implementation of Agenda 2063 calls, not just for the commitment of African stakeholders, but also for the support and engagement of partners beyond the borders of our continent.

Africa is not looking for handouts.

Rather, it is looking for partners in massive infrastructural development in creating and exploiting the value chains of its God-given natural resources, and in improving the quality of life of the continent’s citizens.

The entire world stands to benefit from an economically empowered African continent than from one emasculated by deprivation and with an over-dependence on others.

Mr President,

Adaptation to change is the most crucial ingredient for the vibrancy and effectiveness of any organisation, including the United Nations.

While the world has drastically changed since 1945, the United Nations, and indeed the global governance architecture, remains mired in a long bygone era.

This archaic hierarchy among nations threatens to erode the confidence and support that the United Nations commands among the majority — but disadvantaged — of its membership.

We are disappointed that we have lost the opportunity of this anniversary to address this burning issue of the reform of the United Nations Security Council in a manner that satisfies the just demands of the majority among us.

I wish to reiterate our strong attachment to Africa’s common position on the reform of the Security Council, contained in the Ezulwini Consensus and the Sirte Declaration.

I call on all genuine friends of Africa and all those who value justice, fairness and democracy to support Africa’s just and reasonable proposals.

Mr President,

We equally call for the revitalisation of the General Assembly, the sole universally representative and democratic organ of the United Nations, so that it can effectively carry out its Charter-mandated responsibilities.

Accordingly, we fully support the call for inclusivity and transparency in selecting our organisation’s Secretary-General, by ensuring that the General Assembly plays a more significant role in that process.

After all, the Secretary-general is at the service of all the member-states, and not only that of an exclusive, privileged few.

Mr President,

Respecting and upholding human rights is the obligation of all states, and is enshrined in the United Nations Charter.

Nowhere does the Charter arrogate the right to some to sit in judgment of others in carrying out this universal obligation.

In that regard, we reject the politicisation of this important issue and the application of double standards to victimise those who dare think and act independently of the self-anointed prefects of our time.

We equally reject attempts to prescribe “new rights” that are contrary to our values, norms, traditions and beliefs.

Co-operation and respect for each other will advance the cause of human rights worldwide.

Confrontation, vilification and double standards will not.

Mr President,

Self-determination and independence are intrinsic and fundamental rights that should be enjoyed by all peoples everywhere, without distinction.

We are deeply concerned by the continued denial of this basic right to the Saharawi people.

We urge the United Nations to expeditiously finalise what must be done to conclude the decolonisation of the Western Sahara.

In the Middle East, the suffering of the Palestinian people continues unabated.

We reiterate our unwavering support to the just cause of the Palestinian people. We also reiterate that lasting peace in the Middle East can only be achieved through negotiations to achieve a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders.

We are concerned by the increase on tensions in that region, and urge the United Nations to assume its responsibility and bring an end to this senseless conflict.

Mr President,

The promotion of gender equality is critical for the realisation of the Post-2015 Development Agenda. The African Union designated 2015 “The Year of the Advancement of Women Empowerment and Development Towards Agenda 2063” in order to mobilise our individual and collective actions around this key issue.

Gender equality and women empowerment are central to the achievement of human development, progress and the elimination of the scourge of poverty and deprivation.

We must continue to build upon the achievements that have been realised since the 1995 Fourth United Nations Conference on Women and the Beijing Declaration and its Platform for Action.

Mr President,

The growing list of phenomenon that neither respect nor know any borders makes it imperative that we mobilise all mechanisms of co-operation to effectively overcome them.

Terrorism and extreme violence, communicable diseases such as HIV and Aids, tuberculosis, malaria, bird flu and Ebola cannot be overcome single-handedly.

The United Nations and its specialised agencies is the place and mechanism for his indispensable ad necessary co-operation.

For some months now, we have watched heartbreaking and harrowing scenes of desperate refuges seeking to enter Europe in search of safety and shelter from the ravages of conflict in their own homelands.

We have also read of the tragedy and loss of life in the Mediterranean.

The majority of the affected people are from Syria or from other countries devastated by conflict and instability induced, in great part, by the destabilising policies of external forces.

This tragic situation could have been avoided through respect of the independence of other countries and non-interference in their internal affairs.

In the case of Libya, we are witnessing the results of abusing the authority of the United Nations Security Council and ignoring the opinion of regional organisations, in this instance, the African Union (AU), which are supposed to be the United Nations’ partners in the maintenance of international peace and security.

Mr President,

My country, Zimbabwe, is committed to a fair, just and effective United Nations, in which multilateralism, inclusivity and transparency replace unilateralism, exclusion and backroom deals.

The Charter of the United Nations is built on the bedrock of the sovereign equality and independence of its members, without distinction as to their geographical size, economic might, or any other endowments or qualifications.

We are deeply attached to these principles and call on other members of the United Nations to be similarly disposed. The United Nations was set up, among other purposes, to “develop friendly relations amongst nations”.

Zimbabwe desires, and is committed to nurturing friendly relations with other nations.

We invite other countries with which we may have differences of whatever nature to eschew threats, pressures and punitive actions; in favour of reconciliation, friendship and dialogue.

I therefore denounce, in the strongest terms, the illegal sanctions that are imposed on my country by the European Union and the USA and call for their immediate and unconditional removal.

Once more, I put it on record that my country is desirous to live in harmony with all countries, big and small.

Mr President,

The 70th anniversary of our organisation has been marked by the adoption of a far-reaching agenda which has the potential to drastically transform our world in all aspects. We are under no illusion about the challenges that lie ahead but we are not discouraged either. Humankind has, over the epochs, demonstrated an immense tenacity in overcoming inertia and resistance to change.

Now is our time to leave our own positive mark in the history of human development and interaction. Posterity expects no less from us.

I thank you.

African Union to Publish Investigation, Form War Crimes Court for South Sudan

African Union Commission Chair Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.

NEW YORK
(29 Sep.)

The African Union has decided to publish an investigative report about atrocities committed in South Sudan and to establish an 'African-led' court to prosecute those responsible for the atrocities, according to a communique released by the AU Peace and Security Council.

The communique was released by the AU governing body late yesterday following a meeting of the body at the level of heads of state in New York on Saturday, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. The group of African leaders directed the Chairperson of the AU Commission to release the final report of the African Union Commission of Inquiry on South Sudan, “for public information.”

The report consists of two parts, a majority opinion of the Commission members, and a “separate opinion,” expressed by a member of the panel who did not agree with the majority view. Both are to be released to the public, according to the communique.

As of Tuesday morning, the AU Commission report has still not yet been published, but the AU Council summarized some of its findings in its communique.

“The extreme violence that is the focus of the AUCISS report was unleashed in two phases: (a) the first over three days, from 16 to 18 December 2014, in Juba, (b) the second phase covered three states in the provinces and was centered around the towns of Bor, Bentui and Malakal,” reads the communique.

The Commission of Inquiry found evidence of murder, torture, looting, sexual violence and other acts of “inhuman brutality” committed by both parties to the conflict.

“Most of the atrocities were carried out against innocent civilians. Places of religion and hospitals were attacked, humanitarian assistance was impeded, towns pillaged and destroyed, places of protection attacked and children under 15 years old conscripted.”

With this in view, the Council agreed on “the establishment by the AU Commission of an independent hybrid judicial court, the Hybrid Court of South Sudan (HCSS), in accordance with Chapter V (3) of the Agreement reached by the South Sudanese parties, as an African-led and Africa-owned legal mechanism.”

The purpose of the court shall be “to investigate and prosecute individuals bearing the responsibility for violations of international law and/or applicable South Sudanese law, committed from 15 December 2013 through the end of the transitional period”.

The AU Council directed the AU Commission to take steps toward establishing the Hybrid Court, “including providing broad guidelines relating to the location of the HCSS, its infrastructure, funding and enforcement mechanisms, the applicable jurisprudence, the number and composition of judges, privileges and immunities of Court personnel and any other related matters.”

The release of the AU Commission of Inquiry report comes after repeated delays. Although the report was completed many months ago, the AU Council had opted not to publish it.  

Outstanding Cuban Revolutionary Combatant Jorge Risquet Dies

At the time of his death Jorge Risquet held the position of founder of the Communist Party of Cuba. He received various decorations and distinctions for services rendered

Granma | internet@granma.cu
September 28, 2015 17:09:12

On the morning of September 28, outstanding revolutionary combatant Jorge Risquet Valdés-Saldaña died in Havana, victim of a prolonged and serious illness.

He was born on May 6, 1930, in Havana. He joined the revolutionary youth movement in 1943, where he took on various roles in the Socialist Youth and Popular Socialist Party, including Director of the newspaper “Mella,” Organization Secretary and General-Secretary of the National Committee of Socialist Youth, an organization to which he belonged for 15 years. He was arrested and prosecuted on various occasions by the government of the time due to his revolutionary actions.

Jorge Risquet was Cuba’s representative and Director for Latin America in the World Federation of Democratic Youth and completed an internationalist mission in Guatemala in 1954.

He was kidnapped, tortured and imprisoned during the Batista dictatorship. In 1958 he joined the Rebel Army’s Frank País Second Eastern Front.

After the triumph of the Revolution he took on the roles of head of the Policy and Operations departments of the Revolutionary Armed Forces in the former province of Oriente; the United Party of the Cuban Socialist Revolution’s provincial secretary, playing a leading role in the founding of the PCC; head of the Patricio Lumumba Internationalist Battalion in Congo Brazzaville; Labor Minister; Director of the Cuban Internationalist Civil Mission in the People’s Republic of Angola between 1975 and 1979.

He also led the Cuban delegation in four-party negotiations between Cuba, Angola, the U.S. and South Africa in 1988.

Jorge Risquet was a member of the Party Central Committee since its founding: of the Secretariat from 1973-1990; he was elected as a member of the Party Political Bureau from 1980-1991 and Deputy to the National Assembly of Peoples Power from its founding through 1993.

He graduated with a degree in journalism, was founder of various publications and author of numerous articles, he advised in the process of creating and editing important works, particularly those related to African liberation struggles.

At the time of his death Jorge Risquet held the position of founder of the Communist Party of Cuba. He received various decorations and distinctions for services rendered.

His body will be cremated and the ashes will be on display tomorrow, September 29, from 9:00am to 12:00pm, in the Veterans Mausoleum in Colón Cemetery. Later, on a date yet to be confirmed, they will be transferred to the Frank País Second Eastern Front Mausoleum.

Esteban Lazo Receives President of Vietnam

The leader of Cuba’s Parliament thanked the Vietnamese leader for his decision to visit the National Assembly as his first activity on the island

Iramsy Peraza Forte | internet@granma.cu
September 29, 2015 15:09:23

On the morning of September 29, the President of the National Assembly of People’s Power, Esteban Lazo Hernández, received the President of Vietnam, Truong Tan Sang, to whom he expressed thanks on behalf of the Cuban people and government for supporting the island in difficult situations.

Lazo, also a member of the Party Political Bureau, expressed gratitude for the support Vietnam offered during the harsh years of the Special Period and their solidarity in fighting to end the U.S. blockade imposed on the island.

”You represent the heroic people of Vietnam to whom we are united by indestructible ties of fraternity rooted in a common history of struggle. When we meet with you, we do so as brothers,” stated Lazo.

”We admire Vietnam for the extraordinary example of its heroic sons and daughters, their will and resolve, spirit of hard work and tenacity, all of which have led to the construction of a country 10 times more beautiful than the unforgettable Ho Chi Minh could have dreamed,” added the President of Cuba’s Parliament.

In this sense he noted that in 1996 he experienced one Vietnam, and in 2006 he saw a different country, and today and even greater nation, which fills us with satisfaction, he added.

Likewise, he highlighted the support offered the island by Vietnamese government and party authorities with the holding of the 7th Asia Pacific Regional Conference for Solidarity with Cuba.

Lazo made the most of the occasion to congratulate Vietnam on the 70th anniversary of the proclamation of the country’s independence.

He emphasized the Vietnamese people’s spirit of struggle, “fully conscious – as President Ho Chi Minh would say – that nothing is more important than freedom and independence.”

Lazo thanked the Vietnamese leader for his decision to visit the National Assembly as his first activity on the island.
The President of the Asian nation arrived to Cuba on the morning of September 29, and is scheduled to hold official talks with his Cuban counterpart, Raúl Castro Ruz.

During his visit Truong Tan Sang will receive the Order of José Martí, the highest distinction awarded by Cuba’s Council of State and will also pay tribute to the country’s national hero and Ho Chi Minh.


President of Vietnam arrives in Cuba

On arrival the Vietnamese leader sent greetings to the Cuban people and highlighted the excellent state of relations between the two nations

Granma | internet@granma.cu
September 29, 2015 09:09:04

“I come with the aim of strengthening the ties of friendship between Cuba and Vietnam and continuing to work together to build socialism,” the President of Vietnam, Truong Tan Sang, stated upon arriving to the country.

The Vietnamese leader sent greetings to the Cuban people and highlighted the excellent state of relations between the two nations, “engendered by the friendship between Uncle Ho (Ho Chi Minh) and compañero Fidel.”

The head of state, who is in Cuba on an official visit until September 30, was received at the José Martí International Airport in Havana by Deputy Foreign Minister Rogelio Sierra.

Invited by his Cuban counterpart, Army General Raúl Castro Ruz, Truong Tan Sang will be awarded the José Martí Order, the highest decoration awarded by the Council of State of the Republic of Cuba.

Tan Sang, who traveled to the island after having participated in the UN Summit on Sustainable Development, will meet with other Cuban authorities and the President of the National Assembly of People's Power, Esteban Lazo.

The visit coincides with the celebration this year of the 55th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the nations, on December 2, and is part of the frequent contacts between top leaders of both parties to exchange views on their respective socialist processes and contribute to the consolidation of bilateral relations.

Recent examples of these ties include the visit to Hanoi by the Cuban Minister of Finance and Prices, Lina Pedraza, where she was received by Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung.
On September 9, President Truong Tan Sang spoke with participants in the 7th Asia-Pacific Regional Conference of Solidarity with Cuba, including the delegation headed by the President of the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples, Kenia Serrano, and anti-terrorist fighter and Hero of the Republic of Cuba Antonio Guerrero.

Cuba Will Always Raise Its Voice Against Injustice

Speech by Cuban President Raul Castro at the UN General Assembly, September  28, 2015

Esteemed heads of State and Government,

Distinguished heads of delegations,

Mr. Secretary General of the United Nations,

Mr. President,

It was seventy years ago that, on behalf of their peoples, the member States of this organization signed the United Nations Charter. We pledged ourselves to preserve future generations from the scourge of war, and to build a new type of relationship guided by a set of principles and purposes that should bring about an era of peace, justice and development for all of humanity.

However, as from that moment, there have constantly been wars of aggression, and interference in the internal affairs of the States; the ousting of sovereign governments by force, the so-called “soft coups” and the re-colonization of territories; and, all of these upgraded with new ingenious actions employing new technologies, and under the pretext of alleged human rights violations.

The militarization of cyberspace, and the covert and illegal use of information and communications technologies to attack other States is unacceptable, the same as the distortion of the advancement and protection of human rights used with a selective and discriminatory approach to validate and impose political decisions.

Despite the fact that the Charter calls to “reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person”, to millions of people the fulfillment of human rights remains a utopia.

Humanity is denied the right to live in peace, and the right to development. It is in poverty and inequality where the cause of conflicts should be sought out; conflicts generated first by colonialism and the plundering of the original peoples, and later by imperialism and the distribution of spheres of influence.

The pledge made in 1945 “to promote social progress and better standards of life” for the peoples, along with their economic and social development, remains an illusion when 795 million people go hungry, 781 million adults are illiterate, and 17 thousand children perish every day from curable diseases, while annual military expenses worldwide amount to more than 1.7 trillion dollars. Barely a fraction of that figure could resolve the most pressing problems afflicting humanity.

Even in industrial nations the “welfare society”, usually presented as the model to imitate, has practically disappeared. The election systems and traditional parties that rely on money and publicity, are growing increasingly detached and distant from the aspirations of their peoples.

Climate change is threatening the very existence of the human species, and States should assume common but differentiated responsibility for that, in light of the indisputable reality that not every country is equally accountable, and not all of us waste natural and human resources to an irrational and unsustainable consumerism.

The consequences of climate change have a particularly devastating effect on the small developing island nations and bring additional tension to bear on their fragile economies. And, the same is happening in Africa with the relentless advance of desertification.

We stand in solidarity with our Caribbean brothers, and demand that they are treated in a special and differentiated way. We also support African countries and demand fair treatment for them, as well as the transfer of technology and financial resources.

Mr. President,

The establishment of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), and especially the signing by the heads of State and Government in January 2014 of the Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Peace Zone, shows that we can move beyond our differences toward unity and the achievement of common goals while respecting our diversity.

In the Proclamation, we reaffirm our steadfast commitment to the principles enshrined in the United Nations Charter and in International Law to settle disputes by peaceful means, and our belief that full respect for the inalienable right of every State to choose their political, economic, social and cultural system is an essential premise to ensure peaceful coexistence between nations. We advocate the application of these principles in other States’ relations with our region.

We reaffirm our full solidarity with the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela vis-à-vis the attempts at destabilization and subversion of its constitutional order, and the destruction of the work undertaken by President Hugo Chávez Frías and pursued by President Nicolás Maduro Moros for the benefit of the Venezuelan people.

Likewise, our firm and unlimited solidarity goes to the Republic of Ecuador, its Citizens’ Revolution and its leader, Rafael Correa, who has become the target of the same destabilization script enforced against other progressive governments of the region.

We stand in solidarity with the Caribbean nations demanding fair reparation for the horrors of slavery and slave trade, in a world where racial discrimination and repression against communities of African descendants have increased.

We reaffirm our conviction that the people of Puerto Rico deserves to be free and independent, after more than a century of colonial domination.

We stand in solidarity with the Republic of Argentina in its fair claim of sovereignty over the Falkland Islands, the South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands.

We reiterate our support to and solidarity with President Dilma Rouseff and the Brazilian people in the defense of their major social achievements and the stability of the country.

We reaffirm our rejection of the intention to expand the presence of NATO up to the Russian borders as well as of the unilateral and unfair sanctions imposed on that nation.

We welcome the so-called nuclear agreement with the Islamic Republic of Iran, which proves that engagement and negotiation are the only effective tools to settle disputes between States.

We restate our confidence that the Syrian people are capable of resolving their disputes by themselves, and demand the end of external interference.

A fair and lasting solution of the Middle East conflict unquestionably requires the true exercise, by the Palestinian people, of its inalienable right to build their own State within the borders existing prior to 1967, and its capital in East Jerusalem, which we strongly support.

For the past few weeks we have been moved by images of migratory waves arriving in Europe, a direct result of the destabilization actions promoted and executed by NATO in countries of the Middle East and North Africa, and of poverty and underdevelopment prevailing in countries of the African continent. The European Union should take up full and immediate responsibility for the human crisis that it helped generate.

Mr. President,

After 56 years in which the Cuban people put up a heroic and selfless resistance, diplomatic relations have been reestablished between Cuba and the United States of America.

Now, a long and complex process begins toward the normalization of relations that will only be achieved with the end of the economic, commercial and financial blockade against Cuba; the return to our country of the territory illegally occupied by Guantanamo Naval Base; the cessation of radio and TV broadcasts, and of subversion and destabilization programs against the Island; and, when our people are compensated for the human and economic damages they still endure.

While the blockade remains in force, we shall continue introducing the Draft Resolution entitled “Necessity of Ending the Economic, Commercial and Financial Embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba.”

To the 188 governments and peoples that have sponsored our just demand, here and in other international and regional forums, I reaffirm the eternal appreciation of the Cuban people and government for your continued support.

Mr. President,

Cuba is celebrating with profound commitment the 70th anniversary of the United Nations Organization. We acknowledge that efforts have been made throughout these years, although not enough has been done, to save present and future generations from the scourge of war, and to protect their right to sustainable development without exclusions. The United Nations should be saved from unilateralism and deeply reformed to democratize it and bring it close to the peoples.

As Comrade Fidel Castro Ruz, the Historic Leader of the Cuban Revolution, stated in this same hall fifteen years ago: “Anyone understands that the fundamental objective of the United Nations, in this pressing century that is just beginning, is to save the world not only from war but also from underdevelopment, hunger, diseases, poverty and the destruction of the natural resources indispensable to human existence. And it should do it soon before it is too late!”

The international community can always depend on Cuba to raise its honest voice against injustice, inequality, underdevelopment, discrimination and manipulation; and for the establishment of a more equitable and fair international order that really focuses on the human being, his dignity and wellbeing.

Thank you.

Yemen's South Hopes Victory Over Houthis Will Bring Separation

ADEN
 BY ANGUS MCDOWALL

To outsiders, Yemen's civil war looks like a battle pitting Gulf-backed President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi against the Iran-allied Houthi militia with ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh, but there is another important dynamic at play - south versus north.

Even before the shooting started this spring, many southern Yemenis were demanding separation from the north after 25 years of sharing a state, but the destruction inflicted by the northern-based Houthis during their occupation of the port city of Aden has given a big boost to the secessionists.

The roads around Aden's al-Badr military base, which was home to army units loyal to the northerner Saleh, suffered some of the worst damage during the four months of street-to-street fighting that ended in July.

"There was a lot of up-close killing. Men, women, all humans. From all districts around here. They killed everyone. All the north is responsible. We don't want unification," said Ahmed Mohsen al-Awlaki, a laboratory technician turned fighter near al-Badr.

The Gulf-backed forces recaptured Aden in July before pushing north, allowing Hadi to return to his country last week after six months of exile in Saudi Arabia. They are now preparing for a thrust against the Houthi-held capital Sanaa.

For Hadi and his Gulf backers, managing southern ambitions and grievances will prove crucial as they continue to battle the northern Houthis and Saleh's forces in other provinces with the ultimate goal of re-establishing Hadi as ruler of all Yemen.

At stake are not only Hadi's own hopes of regaining control of Sanaa but also a wider struggle being waged against al Qaeda, which has used its strong presence in remote southern areas of the country to plot attacks against international targets.

South Yemen, a former British colony and the only Communist Arab state, united with the north in 1990 after a brief 1986 war between rival factions that wiped out its political leadership.

The collapse of South Yemen's financial patron, the Soviet Union, around the same time also encouraged the unification process.

SOUTHERN DISCOMFORT

It was never a happy marriage: Saleh's north Yemen dominated from the start and when the south tried to break away four years after unification, the president's army quickly won, cementing Sanaa's rule and Aden's decline, feeding southern resentment.

Although most of Yemen's modest oil and gas reserves - an important source of revenue for the impoverished state - are in the south, it is the north that has prospered and many southerners blame Sanaa for widespread poverty and joblessness.

"The north took all the work. Ali Abdullah Saleh took all the work," said Ihab Khamees, 43, a resistance fighter who said he had not worked for years and whose own son was killed in the fighting in July.

Before the latest conflict in Yemen erupted, the southern movement, known as Herak, was a chaotic mess, its leaders disunited and its various factions unsure of whether to push for immediate secession or to seek autonomy within a federal Yemen.

The war, while raising the emotional temperature and giving military experience to thousands of young men who now call themselves the Southern Resistance, has still not managed to unite the movement's leadership or to define its goals.

Still, pass any of Aden's many checkpoints and the sarong-wearing fighters leveling their guns at traffic say they are members of the Southern Resistance. They fly the flag of pre-unification South Yemen and declare enmity with the north.

At one such checkpoint, leading to the Jazirat al-Omal district near the airport where intense fighting left almost every building a wreck, the three scrawny armed men in torn clothes who manned it came from Abyan, another southern region.

Saleh Mohammed Awadh, who sported an afro-like shock of tangled, dusty hair and swung his rifle around at waist-height as he spoke, said many people from his district had come to Aden to fight the Houthis.

"We came to Aden individually. But now we will stay here until the situation is better. So many of us were injured, so many killed. Thousands came," he said.

Abyan is known in Yemen as a particularly wild region where tribal writ trumps central rule and in whose remote ravines and mountain caves al Qaeda has in recent years established a strong presence.

JIHADISTS

In the al-Saada neighborhood, near to where Awlaki and his neighbors had fought Saleh's troops around the Badr military base, a mural on a house wall proclaimed: "The martyr Ahmed al-Darweesh is a Yemeni hero".

People in Aden describe Darweesh as a separatist leader they say Saleh unjustly imprisoned in 2010 on a false charge of being an al Qaeda militant and who was then murdered by his jailers in the security prison in the city's Tawahi district.

Many separatists dismiss suggestions that their movement harbors jihadist elements as a northern slur, and they often accuse Saleh of using al Qaeda as a cat's paw to stir unrest from which he himself benefits.

However, across the street from where Awlaki fought the Badr army units, a red scrawl of graffiti uses the sectarian term "rejectionist" employed by al Qaeda and other Sunni Muslim hardliners to describe Shi'ite Muslims.

"Aden is the graveyard of the rejectionists", it reads.

Al Qaeda has gained control of southern Yemen's other big city, Mukalla, and men with al Qaeda's black flags have staged displays of strength in Aden since it fell, leading to speculation it has followers within the Southern Resistance.

What all Yemeni leaders appear to acknowledge is the risk that if the south's anger is not addressed there is a risk that opposition will coalesce around al Qaeda.

That Yemen should stay as one country is something that both Hadi's government and his Gulf backers still insist upon.

Yemeni Vice President Khaled al-Bahah, himself a southerner, said the south's concerns needed to be addressed, but he also urged patience.

"Until now there is no (progress) visible for people, especially in the south. And that's why it's a kind of pressure until they see something moving towards unity," he said.

(Editing by Gareth Jones)

Yemen Officials: Death Toll From Strikes on Wedding at 131

ASSOCIATED PRESS
SEPT. 29, 2015, 9:15 A.M. E.D.T.

SANAA, Yemen — The death toll from Saudi-led airstrikes that hit a wedding party in Yemen's central Taiz province has risen to 131, making it the deadliest single incident since the start of the country's civil war, medical officials said Tuesday.

The U.N. says at least 2,355 civilians have been killed in fighting since March, when the coalition began launching airstrikes against Shiite Houthi rebels and allied army units, who control the capital and are at war with the internationally recognized government as well as southern separatists, local militias and Sunni extremists.

At least 80 women were killed in the wedding airstrikes, said Yemeni medical officials who work in the province and have been neutral in the conflict that has torn their country apart. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to reporters. Hassan Boucenine, of the Geneva-based Doctors Without Borders, called it the deadliest single incident since the beginning of the conflict.

The Saudi-led and U.S.-backed coalition apparently struck the wedding party by mistake on Monday in al-Wahga, a village near the town of Mokha and the strategic Strait of Bab al-Mandab, Yemeni security officials said.

"They struck a wedding, there were only civilians there and most of them died because the Mokha hospital is closed because of supply -- no drugs, no fuel, no electricity, no nothing, so the staff left," Boucenine said.

Victims were transported to Hodeida province to the north, he said, and most of them died on the road. The provincial capital of Taiz was inaccessible due to ongoing fighting.

He added that there was no heavy military presence in the vicinity of the strikes.

"To be honest it's worse and worse...it's beyond despair," said Boucenine, speaking about the conflict.

Officials from the Saudi-led coalition could not immediately be reached for comment.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon condemned the airstrikes, which he said "killed as many as 135 people" and called on all parties involved in the conflict in Yemen, "from inside and outside the country, to immediately cease all military activities."

The office of the U.N. human rights chief said 151 civilians have been killed in fighting in Yemen over two weeks in September, taking the civilian death toll to 2,355 over the last six months. The figure, which dates to Sept. 24, does not include the casualties from the wedding party strikes.

The office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights cited both sides in the conflict, pointing to coalition airstrikes and "indiscriminate" shelling in residential areas. It called on the Saudi-led coalition and Yemen's government to allow "independent and impartial" investigations.
___

Associated Press writers Jamey Keaten in Geneva and Merrit Kennedy in Cairo contributed to this report.

U.S. Military Launches Airstrike on Kunduz After Taliban Assault on the Key City

By Tim Craig
September 29 at 9:33 AM

KABUL —Afghan forces massed near the besieged northern city of Kunduz on Tuesday, preparing for expected street-by-street battles against the Taliban a day after militants overran the city in a humiliating blow to Afghanistan’s government.

The counteroffensive started shortly before dawn as Afghan army reinforcements poured into the area after the U.S.-led coalition launched an airstrike to help clear the way.

The fight to reclaim Kunduz — Afghanistan’s sixth-largest city and a strategic gateway to central Asia — will serve as one of the Afghan military’s biggest tests in the 14-year war against the Taliban insurgency.

It also unfolds in a new and challenging backdrop: an urban setting where hundreds of thousands of civilians are holed up in their homes.

A spokesman for the international military coalition in Afghanistan said the American air attack sought to “eliminate a threat to the force.” Coalition officials did not specify the target nor whether the airstrikes will be followed up by others in a bid to regain control of the city.

Safiullah Ahmadi, a Kunduz official who is helping to oversee the government response, said in an interview that Afghan forces have already managed to retake control of the Kunduz police station, which the Taliban seized along with other major government buildings on Monday.

Kunduz police reported they had also regained control of the city prison, where more than 600 prisoners escaped during the Taliban blitz.

But Ahmadi said Taliban fighters still control large swaths of the city, which requires “a big operation” to dislodge them. He said warplanes were in the area, but “we would like not to rely on air power in order to avoid civilians causalities.”

The U.S. military still has 9,800 troops in Afghanistan, but it was unclear Monday whether any American personnel were stationed near the fighting in Kunduz, about 150 miles north of Kabul.

Ahmadi said commandos and special forces were ferried in on helicopters. The Afghan defense ministry also said that hundreds of troops were sent to Kunduz.

Defense officials predicted Afghan forces would be able to quickly expel the estimated 500 Taliban fighters who control the city.

“The resistance of the enemy is weak and the advances of our the security are fast,” the defense ministry said.

But many analysts say the Taliban advance demonstrates that Afghanistan still lacks basic command-and-control procedures for managing its 352,000-man military and police force.

Afghan police officers stationed in Kunduz, for example, are believed to have simply abandoned their posts. Questions were also mounting over why more army personnel had not been stationed in Kunduz, which the Taliban had already attacked twice before this summer.

Taliban fighters looted banks and office buildings on Tuesday, according to a local police official. Pictures were circulating on social media showing Taliban fighters riding around in Red Cross vehicles.

The Taliban’s success in seizing the city on Monday was a humiliating setback for Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, who is now struggling to manage the biggest crisis of one-year-old presidency.

“This incident will embolden the Taliban and similar incidents can happen in neighboring provinces because this government is incompetent,” said Sher Mohammad Akhundzada, an Afghan senator for Helmand Province, where the Taliban already controls large swaths of territory. “This government should resign . . . We had warnings about the fall of Kunduz. No one listened.”

At a press conference from Kabul, Ghani defended the military response to the crisis, saying the Taliban had managed to infiltrate the city as civilians over the weekend. They hid in houses, but suddenly burst out early Monday and quickly overwhelmed security officials who struggled to differentiate between militants and residents, Ghani said.

“The problem here is that a traitor enemy had turned the local population into a shield,” Ghani said. “The government of Afghanistan is a responsible government and can’t and won’t bomb its people, its countrymen, inside a city.”

In a sign of the strain facing the Afghan government, the country’s second-ranking leader, chief executive Abdullah Abdullah, announced he was immediately leaving the United Nations General Assembly in New York early to return to Kabul.

In Washington, the fall of Kunduz is also raising new questions about President Obama’s pledge that he will withdraw all remaining U.S. troops from Afghanistan over the next 16 months.

Pentagon leaders have indicated they may ask Obama to slow-down the planned drawdown of American forces.

U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a frequent critic of Obama’s strategy in Afghanistan, issued a statement comparing the fall of Kunduz to rise of Islamic State militants in Iraq.

“It is time that President Obama abandon this dangerous and arbitrary course and adopt a plan for U.S. troop presence based on conditions on the ground,” said McCain, who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The fall of Kunduz was just one of several flash points on Tuesday as the military struggled to combat threats from both the Taliban as well militants aligned with the Islamic State.

In Nangahar Province in eastern Afghanistan, local officials reported that hundreds of Islamic State militants had attacked several outposts.

Afghan security force repelled the attacks, but the assault marked the second time in two days that hundreds of Islamic fighters had massed in the area, according to Afghanistan’s Tolo News.

Meanwhile, there were also reports that Taliban fighters were also threatening numerous small cities in Baghlan Province, which borders Kunduz province. Kunduz city is the provincial capital.

Haroun Mir, founder of Afghanistan’s Center for Research and Policy Studies, predicted that Afghan forces would be able to quickly regain control of Kunduz.

Despite their rapid advance Monday, Mir said the Taliban is still not a fighting force that is equipped to defend ground for extended periods of time. The Taliban already appears to be ferrying looted ammunition, military vehicles and computers out of the city, local officials said

“They are loading up trucks with stolen goods to carry them to their stronghold, because they know they can’t stay in Kunduz city much longer,” said Sultan Arab, a local police commander.

Still, even if the Taliban quickly retreats from Kunduz, Mir said “the damage is already done.”

“Who is responsible for this — the governor, the police chief, military leaders — is still not clear,” Mir said. “But it’s clear what happened in Kunduz, can happen anywhere. It can even happen in a city such as Kabul.”

Mohammad Sharif and Sayed Salahuddin in Kabul contributed to this report. Daniela Deane in London contributed to this report.

Tim Craig is The Washington Post’s bureau chief in Pakistan. He has also covered conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and within the District of Columbia government.

Bruno Boudjelal: Frantz Fanon

2 October - 11 December

Free exhibition

2 October - 5 December 2015

Rivington Place,
London EC2A 3BA

Press enquiries:
E: lois@autograph-abp.co.uk

Autograph ABP present an installation of twenty-three photographs by Bruno Boudjelal that embody the artist’s search for reliable traces of past histories and the imprint of memory.

'This series is based on Frantz Fanon; a Martinique born French-Algerian psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary and writer whose work is influential in the fields of post colonial studies. I felt it was important, at a point where Algeria is celebrating its fiftieth birthday, to consider the thoughts and life story of Fanon, his relation with Algeria, his position as one of the most important post-colonial thinkers, and finally the story of his journey as a human being.'
- Bruno Boudjelal

Boudjelal’s visual journey takes him south of Algiers to Blida, where Frantz Fanon worked as a psychiatrist in a hospital at the time of the Algerian revolution during the 1950s. This is where Fanon developed his most important thesis on racism and colonialism as an intricate web of oppression that was not only economic and political but above all, deeply psychological. Mapping the contours of Fanon’s life through a series of fleeting images, shadowy figures and ghost-like apparitions, Boudjelal travels to Forte de France, Fanon’s birthplace in the Caribbean island of Martinique, and to Aïn Kerma village in eastern Algeria where he is buried. He searches for traces of Fanon in desolate buildings in Tunis, Tunisia - where he lived at the end of his life, after he was banished from Algeria - and visits Nkroful in Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah’s place of birth, where Fanon was sent to as an ambassador by the Algerian Provisional Government in 1960.

The resulting images portray a reflective, personal voyage through haunted landscapes imbued with a sense of post-colonial melancholia and disquiet, one that echoes Fanon’s own existentialist journeys in a world scarred by violence which forced him to endlessly question his sense of self, and the power structures at play.

Boudjelal’s enigmatic photographs are presented together with text excerpts from Fanon’s seminal books, Black Skin, White Mask and The Wretched of the Earth, published in 1952 and 1961 respectively.

Commissioned by Mark Sealy for Autograph ABP. Bruno Boudjelal: Frantz Fanon is curated by Renée Mussai at Autograph ABP.

Communists to Contest United Russia’s “Parliamentary Monopoly” in Constitutional Court

28 Sep, 2015 15:35
Rt.com

The chief lawyer of the Communist Party faction in the State Duma said that his comrades would soon oppose United Russia’s long-term domination in parliament and seek changes that would not allow any party to get a majority of seats.

“We are preparing a quite unique appeal to the Constitutional Court concerning the monopoly of one party in the State Duma,” MP Vadim Solovyov said in an interview with TASS news agency.

He went on to explain that the Constitution provides that there should be no monopoly on power in Russia, including the monopoly on state power and ideology. Communists intend to use this principle and propose a major amendment to the law that would not allow one party to get more than half of all parliamentary seats. He noted that the same law might introduce quotas for parliamentary representation for one political party, for example, of 47 percent.

“Constant holding of over 50 percent of parliamentary seats [by one party] is a trait of a totalitarian state,” Solovyov said.

This is the first time the Communists have brought up the idea of a major parliamentary reform, but previously they have repeatedly proposed to change the principles of forming a government to give the parliamentary opposition a way to share power. The latest motion, which has yet to be considered by the Lower House, makes it obligatory for all parliamentary parties to nominate their candidates for ministers’ posts proportionally to their representation in the State Duma. The parliamentary majority party would get only one guaranteed post, that of prime minister. The candidates for government posts can be MPs or from outside parliament.

The Communist Party of the Russian Federation is the largest opposition party in parliament, holding 92 out of 450 seats. The parliamentary majority party United Russia holds 238 seats.

According to public opinion polls, United Russia’s domination is likely to remain after the next parliamentary elections due in September 2016. In early September, the independent Levada polling agency found out that 41 percent of Russians intended to support United Russia if the elections took place next weekend. United Russia’s popularity among those who had already decided to vote was even higher at 61 percent.

President Putin: It is a Grave Mistake to Not Coordinate With Syrian Government and Army

28 September، 2015
New York

SANA-Russian President Vladimir Putin affirmed on Monday that his country will continue combating terrorism, offering military assistance to Syria and Iraq and other countries which confront terrorism, saying that the danger of terrorism is mounting due to the policies of the West in Syria.

“We are witnessing regions in the Middle East and North Africa where terrorists and extremists flow to, under the motto of the so called the Islamic State… the same developments are seen in Syria through the support offered to the so-called moderate opposition where they are trained and armed, then they shift to the Islamic State which develops and transfers to different regions,” President Putin said in a speech at the UN General Assembly meeting.

He added it is not possible to talk about banning international terrorism from one side, and turning a blind eye to the channels of supplying the international terrorism, from another, including the smuggling of weapons and illegal trade of oil and exploiting those groups for political purposes.

“Russia has always been combating terrorism with all its forms, and today we are offering military and technical assistance to Iraq, Syria and other countries which fight terrorism… I believe there is a grave mistake to not coordinate with the Syrian government and army which confront terrorism,” President Putin said.

He added that all should recognize that there is no other active force that confronts the Islamic State (ISIS) and other terrorist organizations on the Syrian territories except the Syrian army and the Kurdish popular defense groups.

Mazen