ENEMY AT THE DOORS

vol. 2, no. 5, May 2009



si vous voulez lire en français, : http://www.laviereelle.blogspot.com/



NOTA BENE: Special thanks to Tim Pelzer, tpelzer@shaw.ca, for his precious help in editing this newsletter. Furthermore, dear readers, you will find at the end the link to L'Humanité in English which will allow you to read a selection of this french daily newspaper published in Paris.





According to Moldavia’s Central Electoral Commission, the Communist Party led by president Vladimir Voronine won the legislative elections with almost 50% of the vote, reported Associated Press on April 7th. This election took place in one of the 15 former republics of the late Soviet Union. However some refused to accept the election results and demonstrations followed.

Agence France-Presse reported on April 12th that “a large number of those who demonstrated in Chisinau (i.e. the capital city) were activists from the main opposition parties which did not win the elections. The young people, pretty much involved in the first days of the protest were very few […] The Commission approved on Saturday the final results giving 60 of the 101 seats in Parliament to the Communists […] Social difficulties in Moldavia, the poorest European country with a quarter of its population working in Europe or Russia and the lack of work opportunities for youth appear to be the main catalyst of the troubles.”

“Thousands of demonstrators gathered Saturday in Tbilissi for the third consecutive day to protest and call for Georgian president Mikheïl Saakachvili’s resignation […] His detractors, which include many former supporters, accuse Saakachvili of persecuting opponents, silencing the media and not doing enough to reduce poverty.”

As discussed at the Strasbourg meeting in April, western imperialist organizations would like to include Moldavia and Georgia in their efforts to isolate Russia as well as eliminate communist influence in each of these republics. In the case of Moldavia, there is a trend to push it towards the European Union while NATO would be more than delighted to capture Georgia.

At the same time in France, l’Humanité reports, in regards to the situation in the Middle-East, that “the surge in anti-Semitic hate crimes observed in January 2009 is a fact, but it does not mean that “anti-Semitism is back”. It has a specific circumstantial cause: the war in Gaza.” The newspaper explains that “those more hostile to Israel’s policies are often the less anti-Semitic.” It goes further in saying that both communities in France, Jewish and Muslim, should “work together to fight against prejudices and bigotry [and] the inalienable right of these two peoples to have their own land and sovereign State.” Forum Palestine testifies that at the end of January 2009, in Paris alone « 25 000 people (according to the organizers) took the street shouting “Stop the massacres. Sanctions against Israel”, “Gaza, we all stand with you” and “Israel is a murderer”.

What about the future?

Writer William Blum in his Anti-Empire Report, (April 2009) reports that in 1994, Mark Brzezinski (son of Zbigniew), a Fulbright Scholar teaching in Warsaw, wrote: “I asked my students to define democracy. Expecting a discussion on individual liberties and authentically elected institutions, I was surprised to hear my students respond that to them, democracy means a government [with the] obligation to maintain a certain standard of living and to provide health care, education and housing for all. In other words, socialism.”

It is not without irony that we observe that, even Barack Obama has fallen into the anti-communist trap. Let’s bear in mind that before the Organization of the American State’s Summit in April, he said, as mentioned by l’Agence France Presse, that the US would only normalize relations with the Cuban government if it frees all political prisoners and allows Cubans to freely express themselves, travel and attend church. “The U.S. administration has said that Mr. Obama was going to Trinidad and Tobago with the intention to rally the leaders to pressure Cuba.” But not a word about the Cuban 5, including Antonio Guerrero who corresponds with La Vie Réelle on a regular basis. Guerrero has rotted in prison on false charges for the last 10 years, in the United States.

However, this does not mean that all of Barack Obama’s policies are wrong. The People’s Weekly World reports that: “Obama’s budget allocates $ 115 billion next year in federal aid to education, nearly three times more than ex-President George W. Bush’s budget. For health care reform fund, Obama allocates $ 634 billion, and for alternative energy and green jobs, $ 150 billion.”

To conclude, I would like to remind readers what the third president of the USA, Thomas Jefferson once said: “I believe that banks are more dangerous to our liberties than whole armies ready to fight.” This was said in 1802.

L'Humanité in English

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