Socialist International's Strange Bedfellows

[heiss93]

I remarked before (http://shaneleavy.blogspot.com/2011/02/imperialism-and-egypt-narrative.html) that until this January the ruling parties of Egypt and Tunisia were members of the Socialist Internation, a global organisation of left-wing parties that includes the Labour parties of Britain, Ireland and Australia, along with a host of mainstream parties in other developed, democratic countries.

Surprised to see moderate centre-left parties sharing an organisation with dictators, I browsed Socialist International's list of parties to see if I could find other odd members.

I did. Côte d'Ivoire's Ivorian Popular Front is a member. This is the party of Laurent Gbagbo, the Ivorian president who rejected as fraudulent the results of the latest election - which were won by his rival (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12045387):



The UN Security Council has urged all parties in Ivory Coast to recognise opposition leader Alassane Ouattara as president and extended the mandate of the peacekeeping force for six months.

Incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo had ordered the 10,000-strong force to leave the country after the UN said he lost November's disputed run-off vote....

There are widespread fears that the election dispute could reignite civil war in the world's largest cocoa producer.

About 50 people have been killed in recent days, according to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay.

She said she had received reports of hundreds being snatched from their homes by people in military uniforms. Some were later found dead.
Presidential terms in Côte d'Ivoire last for five years, Gbagbo managed to extend his without election to ten, and then refused to budge when he appeared to lose. Meanwhile (http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/01/26/uk-ivorycoast-idUKTRE70P02320110126):



Armed forces in Ivory Coast who back incumbent leader Laurent Gbagbo have conducted a campaign of violence that has included execution, kidnapping, torture and rape, Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday.

The New York-based watchdog group said an "in-depth investigation" of allegations of human rights violations in Abidjan, the main city in the world's top cocoa producer, had revealed an "an often-organized campaign of violence."
Then there is Ghana's National Democratic Congress, founded by Jerry John Rawlings (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1050310.stm), who ruled as a military dictator and elected president:



In 1982, three judges and a retired army officer were abducted.

They were killed gruesomely at a military range in circumstances that have led to accusations of complicity being levelled at Rawlings and his wife.

An official enquiry at the time exonerated them, but there are growing calls from families of the victims for fresh investigations.
That is not the only allegation of murder and torture (http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportID=42139) by Rawlings.

So this is puzzling indeed. Tunisia and Egypt's parties were expelled this January when protests were met with oppression; does SI make this decision based only on the extent of news coverage following its autocratic members?



http://shaneleavy.blogspot.com/2011/02/socialist-internationals-strange.html

[ZeroNowhere]

So this is puzzling indeed. Tunisia and Egypt's parties were expelled this January when protests were met with oppression; does SI make this decision based only on the extent of news coverage following its autocratic members? No, that would be unprincipled. They toss a coin.

[RGacky3]

Does the SI really matter as an organization?

[khad]

The UN Security Council has urged all parties in Ivory Coast to recognise opposition leader Alassane Ouattara as president and extended the mandate of the peacekeeping force for six months.

Incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo had ordered the 10,000-strong force to leave the country after the UN said he lost November's disputed run-off vote....

There are widespread fears that the election dispute could reignite civil war in the world's largest cocoa producer.About 50 people have been killed in recent days, according to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay.

She said she had received reports of hundreds being snatched from their homes by people in military uniforms. Some were later found dead.

Presidential terms in Côte d'Ivoire last for five years, Gbagbo managed to extend his without election to ten, and then refused to budge when he appeared to lose.

When your opposition is a neoliberal insurgency backed by the IMF, what would you do?


Alassane Dramane Ouattara (French pronunciation: [alasan wataʁa], Arabic الحسن وطرة Arabic pronunciation: [ælħæsæn uːɑtˤɑrɐ]; born 1 January 1942) is an Ivorian politician and president of the Rally of the Republicans (RDR), an Ivorian political party. As the RDR leader and candidate, he was a candidate in the 2010 Côte d'Ivoire presidential election, where he was one of the top two candidates in the first round of voting. In the second round, he faced incumbent Laurent Gbagbo; Ouattara, as of March 2011, asserts that he won this election and is the elected President of Côte d'Ivoire. Many sovereign authorities outside Côte d'Ivoire accept the validity of Ouattara's claim; however, the other candidate, Gbagbo, had not accepted this claim as of March 2011, leading to a major political crisis in this sub-Saharan African nation.

Ouattara was the unelected Prime Minister of Côte d'Ivoire from November 1990 to December 1993; under the national constitution in effect at that time, he was appointed to the post by the late President Félix Houphouët-Boigny.[1][2][3][4] A technocrat, Ouattara trained as an economist and worked for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO).

It's so easy to see every situation as a morality play of democratic liberal values, isn't it?

[Sasha]

so because your oposition is an "neo-liberal" your entitled to reject the populair discision of the people and start an civilian war? WTF? missed the reports of massgraves and widespread terror?
nice that you are showing your anti-humanist reactionary self in such a clear way. you are fucking disgusting.

[khad]

so because your oposition is an "neo-liberal" your entitled to reject the populair discision of the people and start an civilian war? WTF? missed the reports of massgraves and widespread terror?
nice that you are showing your anti-humanist reactionary self in such a clear way. you are fucking disgusting.
And you're a racist imperialist shithead who doesn't know the first thing about Ivorian politics, and you presume to strut your ignorant liberal opinions where they do not apply and are not wanted.

The Ivory coast has been in a constant state of civil war (look it up in a dictionary since the concept seems alien to you) since 2002 by rebels loyal to the former president Bédié, another IMF douchebag. The rebels were military and were going to install another junta government like the Guéi administration from 1999 to 2000. I don't have much love for military junta governments, but I guess you do.

Here is a video of rebels torturing and humiliating civilians. This is a regular occurrence, but I guess your western media worshiping self would know nothing about it. Sadly, unlike your beloved Libyan rebels, most Ivorians don't have cell phones to document their routines for shits and giggles, or there would be more of these videos (and more graphic ones as well):

VlFft8t8SI4

You love to talk about mass graves. I'll show you a fucking mass grave perpetrated by the rebels you fucking love so much:


Abidjan, 28 February 2003 (IRIN) - Cote d'Ivoire's main rebel group, the Mouvement patriotique de Cote d'Ivoire (MPCI), executed dozens of gendarmes (paramilitary policemen) and some of their children in the central town of Bouake in October 2002, Amnesty
International reported this week. The report was denied by the MPCI, which called it a political diversion.

Amnesty said the victims were among some 60 gendarmes and a number of civilians, including about 50 of their children, who had been detained on 6 October by the MPCI. Some of the victims were executed in a military prison while others were killed at the site of a mass grave after being made to bury their comrades, according to testimonies which Amnesty investigators
who visited Cote d'Ivoire in December obtained from survivors of the massacre.Human rights has never been a strong point of societies in civil war - atrocities are committed on all sides. Even under the comparatively peaceful times of previous governments, there was significant unrest and violence. Ouattara and Gbagbo both led opposition movements linked to insurrections against the former president, only now Ouattara has joined hands with Bédié.

http://www.tdg.ch/depeches/monde/election-ivoirienne-alliance-contre-nature-bedie-ouattara-camp-gbagbo

Gbagbo may be a half ass shitty social democrat, but let's see what Bédié and Ouattara have in store for the Ivory Coast:

http://www.avmaroc.com/actualite/cote-ivoire-bedie-a100114.html


"C'est un véritable traitement de choc qu'il faudra appliquer à notre pays pour son retour à l'Etat de droit, à la démocratie, à la normalité", a déclaré M. Bédié, président du Parti démocratique de Côte d'Ivoire (PDCI, ancien parti unique) devant près de 12.000 personnes lors d'un grand rassemblement dans la ville coloniale de Dabou.I don't think I need to tell you what shock treatment means coming from an IMF banker.

[The Red Next Door]

so because your oposition is an "neo-liberal" your entitled to reject the populair discision of the people and start an civilian war? WTF? missed the reports of massgraves and widespread terror?
nice that you are showing your anti-humanist reactionary self in such a clear way. you are fucking disgusting.
And you're a racist imperialist shithead who doesn't know the first thing about Ivorian politics, and you presume to strut your ignorant liberal opinions where they do not apply and are not wanted.

The Ivory coast has been in a constant state of civil war (look it up in a dictionary since the concept seems alien to you) since 2002 by rebels loyal to the former president Bédié, another IMF douchebag. The rebels were military and were going to install another junta government like the Guéi administration from 1999 to 2000. I don't have much love for military junta governments, but I guess you do.

Here is a video of rebels torturing and humiliating civilians. This is a regular occurrence, but I guess your western media worshiping self would know nothing about it. Sadly, unlike your beloved Libyan rebels, most Ivorians don't have cell phones to document their routines for shits and giggles, or there would be more of these videos (and more graphic ones as well):

VlFft8t8SI4

You love to talk about mass graves. I'll show you a fucking mass grave perpetrated by the rebels you fucking love so much:


Abidjan, 28 February 2003 (IRIN) - Cote d'Ivoire's main rebel group, the Mouvement patriotique de Cote d'Ivoire (MPCI), executed dozens of gendarmes (paramilitary policemen) and some of their children in the central town of Bouake in October 2002, Amnesty
International reported this week. The report was denied by the MPCI, which called it a political diversion.

Amnesty said the victims were among some 60 gendarmes and a number of civilians, including about 50 of their children, who had been detained on 6 October by the MPCI. Some of the victims were executed in a military prison while others were killed at the site of a mass grave after being made to bury their comrades, according to testimonies which Amnesty investigators
who visited Cote d'Ivoire in December obtained from survivors of the massacre.Human rights has never been a strong point of societies in civil war - atrocities are committed on all sides. Even under the comparatively peaceful times of previous governments, there was significant unrest and violence. Ouattara and Gbagbo both led opposition movements linked to insurrections against the former president, only now Ouattara has joined hands with Bédié.

http://www.tdg.ch/depeches/monde/election-ivoirienne-alliance-contre-nature-bedie-ouattara-camp-gbagbo

Gbagbo may be a half ass shitty social democrat, but let's see what Bédié and Ouattara have in store for the Ivory Coast:

http://www.avmaroc.com/actualite/cote-ivoire-bedie-a100114.html


"C'est un véritable traitement de choc qu'il faudra appliquer à notre pays pour son retour à l'Etat de droit, à la démocratie, à la normalité", a déclaré M. Bédié, président du Parti démocratique de Côte d'Ivoire (PDCI, ancien parti unique) devant près de 12.000 personnes lors d'un grand rassemblement dans la ville coloniale de Dabou.I don't think I need to tell you what shock treatment means coming from an IMF banker.

Can we get those article in English?

[OhYesIdid]

I agree with Khad: Gbago is a good guy, I've even read of him as "the Nelson Mandela of the Ivory Coast, only more so". (though kind of innaccurrate a comparison, sounds very dramatic). He founded his socialist party in hiding, and fought against a virtually official governing party for decades.
It is a similar situation to that of here in Mexico 1918-2000, and it does worry me that the SI has aligned with the piece-of-shit PRI. Fuck, the president of the PRI is the fcuking vice-president of the SI. I hope I don't have to make it clear to anyone here, but Lazaro Cardenas was the last leftist to align with the PRI, and the last 70 years have been spent thoroughly undoing his work.

[El Chuncho]

I hope I don't have to make it clear to anyone here, but Lazaro Cardenas was the last leftist to align with the PRI, and the last 70 years have been spent thoroughly undoing his work.

Modern Mexican history is one of my key interests so I agree and feel for you. I hope you can get liberated for good soon. Mexican history has been sad and bloody for too long, it is high time that the Mexican people get what they deserve.

[Sasha]

And you're a racist imperialist shithead who doesn't know the first thing about Ivorian politics,

and maybe you shouldn't so readily assume i don't.
i know the former northen rebels are no sweet bunnys, not by an longs shot. what fucking african "rebel" group ever is, because lets face it, the perpetual bloody civil wars run by the warlords is one of the greatest reasons vast area's of the continent are in such an shite state that they are.
but i also know that they started their rebellion because ghabo denied the countless Ivorians from an immigrant background who toil away in slavery like conditions in the cocoa-bean plantations owned by Ghabo's cronies a political voice, the right to vote.
I know liberal democracy is shite, but A. if you promise to play by those rules you should fucking well adhere to it and B. if you cant even lay claim to an meager 50.1% percent of the popular support, especially if you deny an vast amount of the proletariat an political voice you have even less claim to the power than the other fucker. Then you are quickly leaving the shite of liberal democracy and entering the horrors of tyranny.

[khad]

and maybe you shouldn't so readily assume i don't.
i know the former northen rebels are no sweet bunnys, not by an longs shot. what fucking african "rebel" group ever is, because lets face it, the perpetual bloody civil wars run by the warlords is one of the greatest reasons vast area's of the continent are in such an shite state that they are.
but i also know that they started their rebellion because ghabo denied the countless Ivorians from an immigrant background who toil away in slavery like conditions in the cocoa-bean plantations owned by Ghabo's cronies a political voice, the right to vote.
And as the IMF banker Ouattara now working hand-in-hand with the IMF banker Bédié, the very man who pioneered the disaster of Ivorité nativism, isn't going to intensify that exploitation with their promised shock therapy?

You're really clutching at straws here, dear.

[Viet Minh]

I know dick about the situation so I won't comment on it, but why support either side if (judinging by posts here) both have bad ideologies and human rights abuses? Its the same as the Libya situation, automatically half jump on the rebel bandwagon with no more info than they are staging a revolution, the rest defend gaddafi to the death on the basis that he supposedly hates the USA. Unless any movement shows themselves to be leftist (and especially democratic socialist - not social democrat, fuck them!) then they get f* all support from me.

And stop with the insults guys..

:crying:






I just told two mods to watch their behaviour, awesome! :D