Auschwitz

All over the world, Auschwitz has become a symbol of terror, genocide, and the Holocaust. It was established by Germans in 1940, in the suburbs of Oswiecim, a Polish city that was annexed to the Third Reich by the Nazis. Its name was changed to Auschwitz, which also became the name of Konzentrationslager Auschwitz.

Work Shall set you Free

The direct reason for the establishment of the camp was the fact that mass arrests of Poles were increasing beyond the capacity of existing "local" prisons. Initially, Auschwitz was to be one more concentration camp of the type that the Nazis had been setting up since the early 1930s. It functioned in this role throughout its existence, even when, beginning in 1942, it also became the largest of the death camps.

The first and oldest was the so-called "main camp," later also known as "Auschwitz I" (the number of prisoners fluctuated around 15,000, sometimes rising above 20,000), which was established on the grounds and in the buildings of prewar Polish barracks;

The second part was the Birkenau camp (which held over 90,000 prisoners in 1944), also known as "Auschwitz II" This was the largest part of the Auschwitz complex. The Nazis began building it in 1941 on the site of the village of Brzezinka, three kilometers from Oswiecim. The Polish civilian population was evicted and their houses confiscated and demolished. The greater part of the apparatus of mass extermination was built in Birkenau and the majority of the victims were murdered here;

More than 40 sub-camps, exploiting the prisoners as slave laborers, were founded, mainly at various sorts of German industrial plants and farms, between 1942 and 1944. The largest of them was called Buna (Monowitz, with ten thousand prisoners) and was opened by the camp administration in 1942 on the grounds of the Buna-Werke synthetic rubber and fuel plant six kilometers from the Auschwitz camp. On November 1943, the Buna sub-camp became the seat of the commandant of the third part of the camp, Auschwitz III, to which some other Auschwitz sub-camps were subordinated.

 All information from:
http://en.auschwitz.org

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Beware.... they are watching

Sudan conflict: War is not an option

South's territorial integrity must be respected and region must not be pushed to the brink of desperation

• By Ramzy Baroud, Special to Gulf News
• Published: 00:00 April 25, 2012
• 

• Image Credit: Dana A.Shams and Sharmeen Khan/©Gulf News

In a statement published last July, Amnesty International called on UN member states to control arm shipments to both Sudan and South Sudan. It accused the US, Russia and China of fuelling violations in the Sudan conflict through the arms trade. 

While China was reportedly supplying the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) with conventional weapons, Russia provided Antonov aircraft and Sukhoi SU-25 fighters.

US support of South Sudan is already well-known. “The US reportedly provided $100 million (Dh367 million) a year in military assistance to the SPLA [Sudan People’s Liberation Army],” reported Russia Today on April 19, citing a December 2009 diplomatic cable revealed by WikiLeaks.”

The same cable was used by Amnesty to argue against arming both sides of a potentially volatile conflict.

A day after Amnesty’s call was issued, South Sudan became a sovereign nation, and soon after it became a member of the United Nations and the Africa Union. A hyped sense of achievement was celebrated by the countries that supported the SPLA in Sudan’s long and bloody civil war between 1983 and 2005, which cost an estimated 2.5 million lives. Both Sudanese governments had then promised a new dawn of political freedom and economic prosperity.

Neither the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement nor the January 9-15, 2011 referendum managed to actually redeem the many disputes between both countries. In fact, even before South Sudan gained its independence in July, a conflict in South Kordofan broke out between the Sudanese army and the SPLA. Both sides reportedly committed crimes against civilians.

Various international institutions and media continue to warn of possible starvation in the tumultuous region.

The conflict is, in fact, ripe for further escalation following clashes that began late March around the Heglig area and culminated in South Sudan’s seizure of the town on April 10, followed by a hasty retreat ten days later. Heglig hosts Sudan’s largest oil field and much of its total oil production.

Sudan’s President Omar Al Bashir responded by rallying the public and his troops in the North Kordofan state. Speaking to a large crowd in the state capital, Al Obeid, he effectively declared war. “Heglig isn’t the end, it is the beginning,” he said, as quoted in the Wall Street Journal. “And we shall go all the way to Juba,” he added, in reference to the capital of South Sudan. Barnaba Marial Benjamin, spokesman for the South Sudan government, said rather patronisingly that he considered Sudan a neighbour and “friendly nation”, and claimed that “up to now we have not crossed even an inch into Sudan” (Associated Press, April 19).

Following independence, South Sudan parted with a large chunk of Sudan’s territories and most of the country’s oil wealth. However, being landlocked with a destroyed infrastructure, the country is not capable of exporting its oil for desperately needed funds.

Running out of options

The fact is, both countries are caught in a deadly lock. They can neither part ways completely, nor cooperate successfully without risk of war at every turn.

Although Bashir gleefully insisted that “Heglig is in Kordofan”, he knows he is actually running out of options. Heglig accounts for 50 per cent of Sudan’s oil production, according to some estimates. While Khartoum has already “lost three-quarters of its oil revenue after the secession,” according to Egypt’s Al Ahram Weekly, “now it is poised to lose the rest.”

If ‘peace’ has proved costly to Sudan, its newly independent neighbour is not in a much better situation — especially since oil exports account for over 98 per cent of its total economy. For South Sudan, oil production is needed to refuel a tattered economy. In order to use its well-established oil pipelines to transport South Sudan oil, Sudan demanded compensation of up to a third of the value of each barrel. Its rationale is that its own investment in the oil industry makes it possible for South Sudan to export oil in the first place. The south’s capture of Heglig may be foolish — considering Sudan’s relative military superiority — but it was meant to raise the stakes, and strengthen South Sudan’s position in case of future talks to resolve the crisis. 

However the crisis cannot be resolved by empty gestures and reassuring statements. The conflict in that region has been festering for decades, and war has been the only common language. Powerful countries, including the US, Russia, China, but also regional Arab and Africa players, have often exploited the conflict to their advantage. In a recent analysis, the International Crisis Group in Brussels advised that a “new strategy is needed to avert an even bigger crisis.” The bigger crisis lies in the fact that Sudan’s ruling National Congress Party (NCP) is facing political instability at home, preventing any real commitment previous agreements. The crisis group recommends that the “UN Security Council must reassert itself to preserve international peace and security, including the implementation of border monitoring tasks as outlined by UN Interim Security Force in Abyei.”

Expecting the Security Council to act in political tandem seems a bit too optimistic. Considering that the US is arming and supporting South Sudan, and that Russia and China continue to support Khartoum, the rivalry in fact exists within the UN itself.

While UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon did condemn the South’s seizure of the oil field and also condemned air raids by Sudan on South Sudan, much more is needed. For a sustainable future peace arrangement, Sudan’s territorial integrity must be respected, and South Sudan must not be pushed to the brink of desperation. Rivalries between the US, China and Russia cannot continue at the expense of nations that teeter between starvation and civil wars. And whatever hidden hands continue to exploit Sudan’s woes now need to be exposed and isolated. 

Ramzy Baroud is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story.

Does Russia want the west to fight with them?

As a reset in relations with Russia happens since Obama took the reigns Russia appears to be reaching out.  

Does this mean Putin will fight with the West and will we see a change of thought over Syria and Iran?

Fearing Islamist militancy, Russia urges NATO to stay in Afghanistan beyond 2014

Fred Weir | The Christian Science Monitor | Apr 19, 2012

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov urged NATO to keep its forces in Afghanistan beyond President Barack Obama's 2014 deadline for withdrawing from the decade-old war.

"As long as Afghanistan is not able to ensure by itself the security in the country, the artificial timelines of withdrawal are not correct and they should not be set," Mr. Lavrov said during a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council in Brussels today.

That appeal comes, ironically, just days after Lavrov's boss, President-elect Vladimir Putin, called NATO a "relic of the cold war," and suggested it be disbanded. During his recent election campaign, Mr. Putin leaned heavily on anti-Western rhetoric and even accused the US of seeking "absolute invulnerability" at the expense of everyone else.

Though Russia has a long and painful list of differences with the Western alliance, chiefly US-led plans to install a missile defense shield in Europe, it has grown increasingly anxious about NATO's loss of enthusiasm for the Afghanistan war.

Moscow's main worry is that a precipitous NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan might lead to a Taliban victory, and a return to the turbulent conditions of the 1990's, when Islamist militants infiltrated the neighboring post-Soviet republics of central Asia, mainly Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, and threatened stability on Russia's southern flank.

"Withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan would be a very unfavorable development for Russia," says Andrei Klimov, deputy chair of the State Duma's foreign affairs committee. "It would lead to dramatic worsening of the situation in Afghanistan, and perhaps a repeat of all the turbulence that followed the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan (in 1989). We are watching (the approaching deadline for NATO withdrawal) with deep wariness and perplexity."

Detente

Though Russia has always agreed that the NATO war against the Taliban was in Moscow's fundamental interests, chilly East-West relations during the administration of George W. Bush prevented agreement on material cooperation.

But since 2009, Russia has allowed NATO to use an air transport corridor through former Soviet territory to resupply its forces in Afghanistan with "non-lethal" equipment, and is now offering the use of an advanced Russian airbase in the Volga region of Ulyanovsk as a "transit hub" for supplies moving to and from Kabul. Both NATO and the Kremlin agree that the airfield would remain completely under Russian control and would be used only as a stop-over and refueling point for NATO planes carrying food, medical and other non-military cargoes to Afghanistan.

Lavrov reiterated today that the Ulyanovsk offer is solid, despite the fact that Russian Communists and nationalists have mounted a passionate campaign to block the scheme.

"There has never been a foreign military base in Russia in 1,000 years, and we will not let one appear now," the official RIA-Novosti agency quoted Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov as saying today.

Over the past two years, Russia has also cooperated in the training of about 2,000 Afghan anti-narcotics agents. Last year it signed a $367 million contract – to be paid for by the US Department of Defense – to supply 21 Russian Mi-17 attack helicopters to the Afghan air force.

"There are two basic reasons Russia-NATO cooperation has taken shape in the past few years, after a long period in which nothing much happened," says Yevgeny Minchenko, director of the independent International Institute of Political Expertise in Moscow.

"First, Obama came into the White House and launched the 'reset' of relations with Russia, which showed a change of attitude and real respect toward us on the part of the US leadership," he says.

"Second, Russia is increasingly worried about US forces leaving Afghanistan, and the repercussions of that for security across the entire post-Soviet region of central Asia. The threat of Islamization and an explosion of drug trafficking is very real. We worry about the stability of countries like Kazakhstan, which is very vulnerable to terrorism, and of Islamist insurrection in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and even Turkmenistan. We wish NATO would stay in Afghanistan and finish the job because, frankly, the idea of it leaving too soon is a nightmare for Moscow," he adds

10 years later this article holds true

Just an old article but very true

UNTIL the deaths last week of four Canadian soldiers accidentally killed by a US warplane in Afghanistan, probably almost no one outside their home country had been aware that Canadian troops were deployed in the region. And as always, Canada will now bury its dead, just as the rest of the world as always will forget its sacrifice, just as it always forgets nearly everything Canada ever does.

It seems that Canada's historic mission is to come to the selfless aid both of its friends and of complete strangers, and then, once the crisis is over, to be well and truly ignored. Canada is the perpetual wallflower that stands on the edge of the hall, waiting for someone to come and ask her for a dance. A fire breaks out, she risks life and limb to rescue her fellow dance-goers, and suffers serious injuries. But when the hall is repaired and the dancing resumes, there is Canada, the wallflower still, while those she once helped glamorously cavort across the floor, blithely neglecting her yet again.

That is the price which Canada pays for sharing the North American Continent with the US, and for being a selfless friend of Britain in two global conflicts. For much of the 20th century, Canada was torn in two different directions: it seemed to be a part of the old world, yet had an address in the new one, and that divided identity ensured that it never fully got the gratitude it deserved.
Yet its purely voluntary contribution to the cause of freedom in two world wars was perhaps the greatest of any democracy. Almost 10 per cent of Canada's entire population of seven million people served in the armed forces during the First World War, and nearly 60,000 died. The great Allied victories of 1918 were spearheaded by Canadian troops, perhaps the most capable soldiers in the entire British order of battle.

Canada was repaid for its enormous sacrifice by downright neglect, its unique contribution to victory being absorbed into the popular memory as somehow or other the work of the "British". The Second World War provided a re-run. The Canadian navy began the war with a half dozen vessels, and ended up policing nearly half of the Atlantic against U-boat attack. More than 120 Canadian warships participated in the Normandy landings, during which 15,000 Canadian soldiers went ashore on D-Day alone. Canada finished the war with the third largest navy and the fourth largest air force in the world.
The world thanked Canada with the same sublime indifference as it had the previous time. Canadian participation in the war was acknowledged in film only if it was necessary to give an American actor a part in a campaign which the US had clearly not participated - a touching scrupulousness which, of course, Hollywood has since abandoned, as it has any notion of a separate Canadian identity.

So it is a general rule that actors and film-makers arriving in Hollywood keep their nationality - unless, that is, they are Canadian. Thus Mary Pickford, Walter Huston, Donald Sutherland, Michael J Fox, William Shatner, Norman Jewison, David Cronenberg and Dan Aykroyd have in the popular perception become American, and Christopher Plummer British. It is as if in the very act of becoming famous, a Canadian ceases to be Canadian, unless she is Margaret Atwood, who is as unshakeably Canadian as a moose, or Celine Dion, for whom Canada has proved quite unable to find any takers.
Moreover, Canada is every bit as querulously alert to the achievements of its sons and daughters as the rest of the world is completely unaware of them. The Canadians proudly say of themselves - and are unheard by anyone else - that 1 per cent of the world's population has provided 10 per cent of the world's peace-keeping forces. Canadian soldiers in the past half century have been the greatest peace-keepers on earth - in 39 missions on UN mandates, and six on non-UN peace-keeping duties, from Vietnam to East Timor, from Sinai to Bosnia.

Yet the only foreign engagement which has entered the popular non-Canadian imagination was the sorry affair in Somalia, in which out-of-control paratroopers murdered two Somali infiltrators. Their regiment was then disbanded in disgrace - a uniquely Canadian act of self-abasement for which, naturally, the Canadians received no international credit.

So who today in the US knows about the stoic and selfless friendship its northern neighbour has given it in Afghanistan? Rather like Cyrano de Bergerac, Canada repeatedly does honourable things for honourable motives, but instead of being thanked for it, it remains something of a figure of fun. It is the Canadian way, for which Canadians should be proud, yet such honour comes at a high cost.

This weekend four shrouds, red with blood and maple leaf, head homewards; and four more grieving Canadian families know that cost all too tragically well.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3575633/The-country-the-world-forgot-again.html

Imagine if we had to wait for bureaucrats to help the soldiers....?

I have some pictures of wounded and destroyed Canadian and allied vehicles (LAV3 and RG31's) and I ask the simple question... "what would happen if we let  bureaucrats make the decisions over life and death?"

It may sounds harsh but that's the reality.

Vehicles are not picked because they are the best or offer the best protection or even if they are the right vehicle for the job....

They are picked for what Canadian jobs can be made, what political influence the company has with the current government, what deals and even what corruption can politicians and bureaucrats get for their purchase and many times the decision is not even based in reality.

When equipment is purchased in this way people die.

The upgraded armour on the LAV3 saved lives, the purchase of the RG31 and RG33 has saved lives and yes even the purchase of the Gwagen saved lives... all with zero  bureaucrats and simply the military brass demanding that we as soldiers get protection.

It's the way it should be.