"[Raising immigration and open borders] would make everybody in America poorer. You're doing away with the concept of a nation state and I don't think there's any country in the world which believes in that. If you believe in a nation state or in a country called the United States or UK or Denmark or any other country, you have an obligation in my view to do everything we can to help poor people. What right wing people in this country would love is an open border policy. Bring in all kinds of people, work for 2 or $3 an hour, that would be great for them. I don't believe in that. I think we have to raise wages in this country, I think we have to do everything we can to create the millions of jobs." (Bernie Sanders)

Ezra Klein: Something that’s in what you said being a democratic socialist, is a more international view. I think if you take global poverty that seriously it leads you to conclusions that in the US are considered out of political bounds. Things like sharply raising the level of immigration we permit, even up to a level of open borders. About sharply increasing
...

Bernie Sanders: Open borders? No, that's a Koch brothers proposal.

Ezra Klein: Really?

Bernie Sanders: Of course. That's a right wing proposal which says essentially there is no United States ...

Ezra Klein: But it would make ...

Bernie Sanders: Excuse me ...

Ezra Klein: It would make a lot of global poor richer, wouldn't it?

Bernie Sanders: It would make everybody in America poorer, you're doing away with the concept of a nation state and I don't think there's any country in the world which believes in that. If you believe in a nation state or in a country called the United States or UK or Denmark or any other country, you have an obligation in my view to do everything we can to help poor people. What right wing people in this country would love is an open border policy. Bring in all kinds of people, work for 2 or $3 an hour, that would be great for them. I don't believe in that. I think we have to raise wages in this country, I think we have to do everything we can to create the millions of jobs. You know what youth unemployment in the United States of America today? If you're white high school graduate, it’s 33%, Hispanic 36%, African American 51%. Do you think we should open the borders and bring in a lot of low-wage workers or do you think maybe we should try to get jobs for those kids?

I think from a moral responsibility we've got to work with the rest of the industrialized world to address the problems of international poverty but you don't do that by making people in this country even poorer.

Ezra Klein: Then what are the responsibilities that we have? Someone who is poor by US standards is quite well off by say, Malaysian standards, so of the calculation goes so easily to the benefit of the person in the US, how do we think about that responsibility? I guess I'm asking for – I agree. You have a nation-state structure. You always are going to, the politics don’t allow anything else.

But I guess philosophically, the question is how do you weight it? How do you think about what the foreign aid budget should be? How do you think about poverty abroad?

Bernie Sanders: I do weigh it. Well first of all, again, as a United States senator in Vermont, my first obligation is to make certain kids in my state and kids all over this country have the ability to go to college, which is why I am supporting tuition-free public colleges and universities. I believe we should create millions of jobs rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and ask the wealthiest people in this country to start paying their fair share of taxes. I believe we should raise the minimum wage to at least 15 bucks an hour so people in this county are not living in poverty. I think we end the disgrace of some % of our kids living in poverty in America. Now how do you do that? What you do is understand there's been a huge redistribution of wealth in the last 30 years from the middle class to the top 1/10 to 1%. The other thing that you understand globally is a horrendous imbalance in terms of wealth in the world. As I mentioned earlier, the top 1% will own more than the bottom 99% in a year or so. That's absurd. That takes you to programs like the IMF and so forth and so on. I think what we need to be doing as a global economy is making sure that people in poor countries have decent paying jobs, have education, have healthcare, have nutrition for their people. That is a moral responsibility, but you don't do that as some would suggest, by lowering the standard of American workers which has already gone down very significantly.

A year ago, like a herd of buffalo being stampeded toward a cliff, people in my neck of the woods were convinced that "we must get rid of Harper" in order to "save the environment." When I asked such people what it was that Harper was doing that was so damaging to the environment, they all spewed the party line. "He's stripped the country of all environmental regulations." It came out like a programmed response. However, when I asked them to give me a specific example, without exception, no one could tell me. No one could name a single one of those environmental "regulations".

Of course, Harper did remove several regulations, and worse than that, muzzled scientists in Environment Canada who might spill the beans as to what was happening in the Canadian north. Canadian scientists were understandably enraged. OK. But the point here is that herd animals are not driven by any intimate knowledge of the issues that animate them, but by the instinct to follow their leaders. In that respect, political parties resemble religious congregations, and their conventions are more like revival meetings than symposiums. None more than the NDP.

My next question went something like this. "Mulcair (leader of the Opposition NDP) vowed that he would, as he put it, "get the oil to market"---but only after the restoration of regulations that would ensure that it was extracted and delivered in an "environmentally responsible" way. But isn't what happens AFTER the oil reaches the market the major issue here? No one buys oil without the intention of BURNING it. So isn't this talk about environmental responsibility just so much Greenwash? Would it not be akin to Goering or Hitler assuring Londoners that V2 rockets would be assembled and delivered in an environmentally responsible manner in full compliance with tough environmental regulations?

Again, no NDP supporter I encountered could answer that question either. Then I tried to drive in another nail. "Thanks to the government's tri-partisan policy on immigration, we have 7 million more consumers today than we did when the Kyoto accord was signed. These extra people are emitting twice the amount of GHG emissions as the whole Alberta tar sands project. And BTW, this population growth has despoiled twice as much land as the tar sands project. We are not talking about boreal forest here, but some of the best farmland in the country."

That's when the conversation ended. It was a show-stopper. In one case, though, it spiralled out of control. On a dark damp October night two days before the federal election, a neighbour down the street yelled at me, "Immigration has nothing to do with it!", and stalked off down his long driveway. Another neighbour to the south, on the other hand, just turned away. She hasn't spoken to me since then, almost a year ago now. That's the more typical reaction. Silence and withdrawal.

Immigration is a no-go zone, and if you press the issue you are a no-go zone. Presenting arguments that they cannot refute only hardens their position. In essence, I have attacked their religious beliefs. There is no greater sin than that.

In fact, Prime Minister Trudeau is rumoured to introduce legislation patterned on Quebec's Bill 51, making criticism of Islam a criminal offence. In other words, he plans to re-establish good old-fashioned laws against 'blasphemy'. Like so many 'progressives', that is, regressives, he is of the view that ideas and ideologies should enjoy immunity from comments, criticisms or depictions that might hurt their adherents' feelings. To do so would be "divisive" and "non-inclusive, and that wouldn't do. Not in today's Canada. "Diversity" and "inclusivity" are central to the catechism of our State Religion. Better include those words on the protected list too.

So it should come as no surprise if any criticism of immigration policy may one day be subject to state punishment to complement the public shaming of blasphemers in social media and the employer sanctions that follow. Especially after Trump's defeat. Opinions that are perceived to be remotely "hurtful" will be excluded by nervous editors. The chilling effect will extend far beyond legal definitions of un-Canadian utterances.

To prepare the ground for this tight constriction of "anti-immigrant" speech, we are now witnessing a number of articles, op-eds and radio commentaries that argue for a spectacular increase in the government's annual immigration intake. It seems like a replay of a similar campaign conducted some 5 or 6 years ago when people like Irvin Studin and Steve Lafleur were given free rein by the CBC or other MSM outlets to promote their vision of a Big Canada. Only this time, we can expect that this "Second Wave" will be wider in scope and more strident in tone. It seems that a belief in open floodgates is destined to become one of those core Canadian “values” that Justin Trudeau talks about.

Thus, a number of pro hyper-immigration articles have been popping up of late. The Globe and Mail recently posted such an article by Tom Milroy, “Immigration: how a bigger Canada benefits us all” http://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/immigration-how-a-bigger-canada-benefits-us-all/article32302399 . But, as retired Canadian diplomat Martin Collacott noted,

"In the past week the Conference Board of Canada also proposed increasing our population to 100 million (see the attached Toronto Star article) – hardly surprising since the Conference Board is funded by corporations and promotes their interests. Immigration Minister John McCallum is mentioned in the article as wanting to “substantially” increase immigration – which indeed he announced some weeks ago was his objective, notwithstanding the admission that work had to be done to convince Canadians this was a good idea. As far back as April 2001, McCallum began touting the idea that we should increase the population to 100 million."

This from one of Justin Trudeau's frontline cabinet ministers. That's Justin Trudeau, the "pro-environment" politician and climate change warrior.

It is amazing what Justin can get away with these days. He can visit a mosque and appear in a Pride Day parade in the same week. He can argue for economic growth and lower GHG emissions and a "clean environment" in the same speech. He can shill for big corporations and at the same time enjoy the support of credulous dupes who regard him as Nature's advocate.

This guy is a better actor than was Ronald Reagan. Proof positive that the Liberal Backroom Boys knew what they were doing when they chose a high school drama teacher to channel the Bay Street agenda while dressing it up in the clothing of social justice, tolerance and environmental sustainability. An airhead who can cloak his ignorance with politically correct platitudes with complete confidence that his adoring flock will not take a look at what is under his glossy, flowing hair---the vacuous mind of a preening charlatan.

He can read the lines. That's enough

We encourage you to join us in a campaign which, if supported by you, has the potential to force the state government to abandon its plans to privatise the public housing sector. This campaign is being co-ordinated by Public Interests Before Corporate Interests (PIBCI www.pibci.net) and is endorsed by PIBCI, Friends of Public Housing – Victoria and the Wednesday Action Group. We expect many more organisations to endorse this campaign over the coming weeks. Let us know if you wish to endorse the Defend and Extend Public Housing campaign: Send mail to Defend and Extend Public Housing

Thank you.
Dr. Joseph Toscano / Joint Convener Defend and Extend Public Housing
Co-Convenors: Dr. Joseph Toscano / Mr. John Tweg
Committee: Ms. Beryl Jarrett, Ms. Julie Jones, Mr. Roger Pereira, Ms. Fae Roth

Not in our time

We understand the Victorian Labor Cabinet has just endorsed a decision to privatise 70% of Victoria’s public housing stock. Under the guise of improving “community”, “social” and “affordable” housing, in Victoria, they have agreed to transfer the management and ownership of the majority of public housing to “community”, “social” and “affordable” housing groups that are privately owned and run. The transfer of taxpayer funded public housing to non-government organisations deals a death blow to the idea access to affordable housing for all Australians who require it is primarily a state and federal government responsibility.

A strong vibrant public housing sector not only ensures all Australians, who cannot access the private housing market, have access to affordable housing, it also places downward pressure on private rents and helps first home buyers to enter the property market as many investors will sell their private rental properties if rents fall.

Having a strong public housing sector that is owned and managed by government helps to decrease crime and family violence as well as provide a stable environment that gives children the opportunity to access educational opportunities they would not normally have access to. A strong public housing sector can be financed by using a proportion of the revenue raised by land taxes and stamp duty to maintain and update existing stock and build new public housing in Melbourne and regional Victoria.

We will be holding public rallies on the steps of the Victorian State Parliament, Spring St Melbourne, between 11:30am – 1:30pm on:

- Thursday 20th October
- Thursday 17th November
- Thursday 15th December

To demonstrate to the government, the Opposition and the cross benchers in the Legislative Council our opposition to governments outsourcing their responsibility to provide affordable housing for all Victorians to a private and not for profit non-government sector that, at best, will only be able to provide for the needs of sections of the community, not all Victorians.

We encourage you to join us in a campaign which, if supported by you, has the potential to force the state government to abandon its plans to privatise the public housing sector.

Dr. Joseph Toscano / Joint Convener Defend and Extend Public Housing

This campaign is being co-ordinated by Public Interests Before Corporate Interests (PIBCI https://www.pibci.net) and is endorsed by PIBCI, Friends of Public Housing – Victoria and the Wednesday Action Group. We expect many more organisations to endorse this campaign over the coming weeks. Let us know if you wish to endorse the Defend and Extend Public Housing campaign.

You can help by coming along to the rallies that have been planned, writing to or emailing your local, state and federal representative, advertising these rallies among your family and friends and using social media to bring this issue to the attention of as many people as possible. This is a campaign Victorians and all Australians can ill afford to lose – JOIN US NOW!!

Here are excerpts from transcripts of Trump's and Clinton's references to Putin and to Syria in the context of the 2nd US presidential debate (Trump vs Clinton). There is complementarity between the Putin references and the Syria ones. We have put the moderator input in black, but Trump in red and Clinton in blue. I think people will find them interesting and get the sense of Trump being better on Syria and Russia than Clinton, by a mile, therefore less likely to start WW3. The debate was less real responses to questions or to the other candidate's arguments than a platform for each candidate. Readers may also be interested in a link to many on-line polls about the debate, collected here: https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2016/10/09/polls-polls-polls-so-who-won-the-second-presidential-debate/. The majority of these polls place Trump squarely as the winner of the debate, whereas Foxnews and one or two others placed Clinton as the winner. The comments under these polls are often interesting to read. We have also embedded the full debate inside the article.

REFERENCES TO PUTIN

MARTHA RADDATZ (Moderator) 9:54 PM

Thank you, Mr. Trump. I want to move on. This next question comes from
the public through the bipartisan open debate coalitions online form where
Americans submitted questions that generated millions of votes. This question
involves Wikileaks release of reported excerpts as Secretary Clinton paid
speeches which she has refused to release and one line in particular in
which you, Secretary Clinton, reportedly say you need both a public and private
position on certain issues. So Tiu from Virginia asks is it okay for
politicians to be two-faced? Is it acceptable for a politician to have a
private stance on issues? Secretary Clinton, your two minutes.

HILLARY CLINTON 9:55 PM

Well, as I recall, that was something I said
about Abraham Lincoln after having seen the wonderful Steven Spielberg movie
called Lincoln. It was a master class watching President Lincoln get the
Congress to approve the 13th amendment. It was principled and it was strategic.

And I was making the point that it is hard
sometimes to get the Congress to do what you want to do and you have to keep
working at it and yes, President Lincoln was trying to convince some people, he
used some arguments, convincing other people, he used other arguments. That was
a great -- I thought a great display of presidential leadership.

But you know, let's talk about what's really
going on here Martha, because our intelligence community just came out and said
in the last few days that the Kremlin, meaning Putin and the Russian
government, are directing the attacks, the hacking on American accounts, to
influence our election. And WikiLeaks is part of that as our other sites, where
the Russians hack information, we don't even know it's accurate information,
and then they put it out.

We have never in the history of our country been
in a situation where an adversary, a foreign power, is working so hard to
influence the outcome of the election, and believe me, they’re not doing it to
get me elected. They're doing it to try to influence the election for Donald
Trump.

Now maybe because he has praised Putin, maybe
because he says he agrees with a lot of what Putin wants to do, maybe because
he wants to do business in Moscow -- I don't know the reasons that we deserve
answers. And we should demand that Trump release all of his tax returns so that
people can see what are the entanglements and the financial relationships --

DONALD TRUMP 9:58 PM

Well, I think I should respond because, so
ridiculous. Look, now she's blaming - she got caught in a total lie her papers
went out to all her friends at the banks, Goldman Sachs and everybody else, and
she said things, WikiLeaks that just came out and she lied.

Now she's blaming the lie on the late great Abraham
Lincoln. That's one that I haven’t - okay Honest Abe never lied. That’s the
good thing that's a big difference between Abraham Lincoln and you. That's a
big big difference, we're talking about some difference. But as far as other
elements of what she was saying I don't know Putin. I think would be great if
we got along with Russia because we could fight ISIS together as an example.
But I don't know Putin. But I notice anytime anything wrong happens they like
to say the Russians we don't know if it's Russian.

She doesn’t know if it’s the Russians doing the
hacking, maybe there is no hacking. But they always blame Russia and the reason
they blame Russia because they think they are trying to tarnish me with Russia.
I know nothing about Russia. I know, I know about Russia but I know nothing
about the inner workings of Russia.

I don't deal there, I have no businesses there have
no loans from Russia.

Have a very very great balance sheet, so great that
when I did the old post office on Pennsylvania Avenue, the United States government,
because of my balance sheet, which they actually know very well, chose me to do
the old post office between the White House and Congress, chose me to do the
old post office, one of the primary things in fact perhaps the primary thing
was balance sheet.

But I have no loans with Russia. You could go to
the United States government and they would probably tell you that because they
know my sheet very well in order to get that development I had to have -- now
the taxes are very simple thing. As soon as -- first of all, I pay hundred of
millions of dollars in taxes. Many of her friends took bigger deductions.
Warren Buffett took a massive deduction. Soros, who is a friend of hers, took a
massive deduction. Many of the people that are giving her all this money that
she could do many more commercials than me gave her took massive deductions. I
pay hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes but but as soon as my routine
audit is finished, I'll release my returns I'll be very proud to. They’re
actually quite good.

REFERENCES TO SYRIA:

MARTHA RADDATZ (moderator): The heartbreaking video of a five -year-old
Syrian boy named Omran sitting in an ambulance after being pulled from the
rubble after an airstrike in Aleppo, focused the world’s attention on the
horrors of the war in Syria, with 136 million views on Facebook alone.

But there are much worse images coming out of Aleppo every day now where
the past few weeks alone four hundred people have been killed, at least one
hundred of them children. Just days ago, the State Department called for a war
crimes investigation of the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad and its allies
Russia for the bombardment of Aleppo. So this next question comes from social
media through Facebook. Diane from Pennsylvania asked, if you were president,
what would you do about Syria and the humanitarian crisis in Aleppo? Isn't it a
lot like the Holocaust when the U.S. waited too long before we helped?
Secretary Clinton, we will begin with your two minutes.

HILLARY CLINTON10:12 PM

Well, the situation in Syria is catastrophic.
And every day that goes by, we see the results of the regime by Assad in
partnership with the Iranians on the ground, the Russians in the air,
bombarding places, in particular Aleppo, where there are hundreds of thousands
of people, probably about 250,000 still left. And there is a determined effort
by the Russian Air Force to destroy Aleppo in order to eliminate the last of
the Syrian rebels who are really holding out against the Assad regime. Russia
hasn't paid any attention to ISIS. They’re interested in keeping Assad in
power. So I, when I was Secretary of State, advocated. And I advocate today a
no-fly zone in safe zones.

We need some leverage with the Russians because
they're not going to come to the negotiating table for a diplomatic resolution
unless there is some leverage over them. And we have to work more closely with
our partners and allies on the ground. But I want to emphasize that what is at
stake here is the ambitions and the aggressiveness of Russia.

Russia has decided that it's all in in Syria.
And they also decided who they want to see become president of the United
States, too. And it's not me. I've stood up to Russia. I've taken on pollutant
and others. And I would do that as president. I think wherever we can cooperate
with Russia, that's fine. And I did at Secretary of State, that’s how we got a
treaty reducing nuclear weapons. It’s how we got the sanctions on Iran that put
a lid on the Iranian nuclear program without firing a single shot. So I would
go to the negotiating table with more leverage that we have now. But I do
support the effort to investigate for crimes -- war crimes committed by the
Syrians and the Russians and try to hold them accountable.

DONALD TRUMP10:15 PM

First of all, she was there as the secretary of
state with the so called line in the sand.

HILLARY CLINTON

No, I wasn’t. I was gone. I hate to interrupt
you but at some point, we need to do some fact checking.

DONALD TRUMP

Excuse me. You were in total contact with the White
House. And perhaps, sadly Obama probably still listened to you. I don't think
he would be listening to you very much anymore. Obama draws the line in the
sand, it was laughed at all over the world what happened. Now with that being
said, she talks tough against Russia. But our nuclear program has fallen way
behind. And they have gone wild with their nuclear program. Not good. Our
government should not have allowed that to happen. Russia is new in terms of
nuclear. We are old. We are tired. We are exhausted in terms of nuclear. A very
bad thing. Now, she talks tough, she talks really tough against Putin. And
against Assad. She talks in favor of the rebels. She doesn’t even know who the
rebels are. Every time we take rebels. Whether it's in Iraq or anywhere else.
We are arming people. And you know what happens? They end up being worse than
the people. Look what she did and Libya with Gaddafi. Gadhafi is out. It’s a
mess. And by the way ISIS has a good chunk of their oil.

I’m sure you probably have heard that. It was a disaster.
Because the fact is that everything that she has done an foreign-policy has
been at the stake and it has a been a disaster. And if you look at Russia -- is
take a look at Russia and look at what they did this week. Where I agree she
was not there, but possibly she was consulted. We sign a peace treaty,
everyone's all excited. Well what Russia did with Assad, and by the way with
Iran who made very powerful with the dumbest deal I have ever seen in the
history of dealmaking with the Iran deal. With the 1.7 in cash, which is enough
cash to fill this room.

But look at that deal. Iran now and Russia are now
against us. So she wants to fight, she wants to fight for rebels. There’s only
one problem. You don’t even know who the rebels are.

And those three have now lined up because of our
weak foreign policy.

MARTHA RADDATZ 10:17 PM

Mr.Trump, let me repeat the question. If you were president, what would
you do about Syria and the humanitarian crisis in Aleppo? And I want to remind
you what your running mate said. He said provocations by Russian need to be met
with American strength and that if Russia continues to be involved with
airstrikes along with the Syrian government forces of Assad, the United States
of America should be prepared to use military force to strike the military
targets, of the Assad regime.

DONALD TRUMP10:18 PM

Okay. He and I haven’t spoken and I disagree.

MARTHA RADDATZ10:18 PM

You disagree with your running mate?

DONALD TRUMP10:18 PM

We have to knock out ISIS. Right now Syria is
fighting ISIS. We have people that want to fight both at the same. But Syria's
no longer Syria. Syria’s Russia and it’s Iran which she made strong, and Kerry,
and Obama made into a very powerful nation. And a very rich nation. Very, very
quickly. I believe we have to get ISIS. We have to worry about ISIS before we
can get too much more involved. She had a chance to do something with Syria.
They had a chance and that was the line.

MARTHA RADDATZ10:19 PM

What do you think will happen if Aleppo falls?

DONALD TRUMP10:19 PM

I think Aleppo is a disaster humanitarian-wise.

MARTHA RADDATZ10:19 PM

What do you think it will happen if it falls?

DONALD TRUMP10:19 PM

I think that it basically has fallen. OK? It
basically has fallen.

Let me tell you something, you take a look at
Mosul. The biggest problem I have with the stupidity of our foreign policy. We
have Mosul. They think a lot of the ISIS leaders are in Mosul. So we have a lot
of announcements coming out of Washington and coming out of Iraq, we will be
attacking Mosul in three weeks or four weeks. All of these bad leaders from
ISIS are leaving Mosul. Why can't they do it quietly why can't they do the
attack, make it a sneak attack. After the attack is made, inform the American
public that we have knocked out the leaders, we’ve had tremendous success.
People leave. Why do they have to say we're going to be attacking Mosul within
the next four to six weeks? Which is what they are saying. How stupid is our
country?

MARTHA RADDATZ10:20 PM

There are sometimes reasons the military does that. Psychological
warfare.

DONALD TRUMP10:20 PM

I can't think of any.

MARTHA RADDATZ10:20 PM

It might be to help get civilians out.

DONALD TRUMP10:20 PM

Look, I have two hundred generals and admirals who
endorsed me. I have twenty one Congressional medal of honor recipients who
endorsed me. We talk about it all the time. They understand why can't they do
something secretively? Where they go in and they knock out the leadership. How
-- why would these people stay there? I’ve been reading now for weeks...

MARTHA RADDATZ10:20 PM

Tell me what your strategy is.

DONALD TRUMP10:20 PM

I have a reading for weeks about Mosul that is the
harbor between Raqqa and Mosul. This is where they think the ISIS leaders are.

Why would they be - they’re not staying there
anymore. They are gone. Because everybody is talking about how Iraq, which is
us with our leadership, goes in to fight Mosul. With these two hundred admirals
and generals, they can't believe it. All they say is this. General George Patton,
General Douglas MacArthur are spinning in their grave at the stupidity of what
we're doing in the Middle East.

You talk about diplomatic efforts, those have
failed. Ceasefires have failed. Would you introduce the threat of U.S. military
force beyond the no-fly zone against the Assad regime, to back up diplomacy?

HILLARY CLINTON10:21 PM

I would not use American ground forces in Syria.
I think that would be a very serious mistake. I don't think American troops
should be holding territory, which is what they would have to do as an
occupying force. I don't think that is a smart strategy. I do think the use of
special forces, which we're using, the use of enablers and trainers in Iraq,
which has had some positive effects, are very much in our interest. And so I do
support what is happening. But let me --

MARTHA RADDATZ10:22 PM

So what would you do differently than the President Obama is doing?

HILLARY CLINTON10:22 PM

Well, Martha, I hope that by the time I -- hope
by the time I am president that we will have pushed ISIS out of Iraq. I do
think that there is a good chance that we can take Mosul. And you know Donald
says he knows more about ISIS than the generals. No, he doesn't.

There are a lot of very important planning going
on. And some of it is to signal to the Sunnis in the area, as well as Kurdish
fighters that we all need to be in this. And that takes a lot of planning and
preparation. I would go after Baghdadi. I would specifically target Baghdadi
because I think our targeting of Al Qaeda leaders, I was involved in a lot of
those operations, highly classified ones, made a difference. So I think that
could help.

I would also consider arming the Kurds. The
Kurds have been our best partners in Syria, as well as Iraq. And I know there
is a lot of concern about that in some circles, but I think that they should
have the equipment they need so that the needs of Kurdish and Arab fighters on
the ground are the principal way that we take Rocco after pushing ISIS out of
Iraq.

Growthist corporations, their peak bodies and other similar organisations have long pushed for a big and continuously growing population in Australia. They have been crowned with success in the past ten years, but will always want more. Towards this, they are in the business of breaking down national borders and national resistance to being overcrowded. Crowding creates demand for land and products and profits for those who control resources and the means of production, whilst the rest of us pay for it. "The cows in the field will always prefer to be fewer than the farmer would want them."[1] We are all just cash cows for the growth lobby, which can buy publicity and speakers, anointing the latter as 'experts' and cementing their grip on academic institutions and the mass media, which have become as one in their investment in property speculation and population growth.

Prominent in the growth lobby, the Committee for Economic Development in Australia, CEDA, is advertising yet another population growth-pushing event: "Migration - the economic debate." This will examine "How the migration program could be reshaped to allow a larger migrant intake to build a greater Australia, How temporary migration has grown to dominate immigration to Australia; and What changes are required to the migration program to maintain broad community support."

The Australian Productivity Commission recently failed to find any evidence of migration increasing wealth or productivity, [2] so it will be interesting to see what economic excuses CEDA manages to concoct as reasons to push for even more people. It is also more and more obvious that Australians are waking up to the costs of mass immigration.

Although Australia has the highest immigration rates ever for permanent invited economic immigrants and various other 'temporary' immigrants, (see ABS-sourced graph below) the industries and individuals that benefit from rapid population growth want even more. One gets the impression that they really have no more interest in democratic or ecological limits than a machine that has no off-switch.

Since I identified the growth lobby in my research thesis of 2002, I have been aware that this lobby is organising at a global level, gaining more and more power. The CEDA conference is funded by "Fragomen Worldwide": "We build bridges that transcend borders. Learn why and how we do it." "Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy, LLP provides immigration services globally in coordination with its affiliates around the world."

Fragoman is part of the massive globalising disenfranchising anti-sovereignty jugganaut

In 2008 Americans were trying to stop this jugganaut. The fact that they did not may be why today so many Americans want to elect Mr Trump, who promises to put some brakes on the import of cheap labour.

Lou Dobbs: 6/24/2008 The federal government is doing an investigation of the biggest immigration law firm -- Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy. Apparently the lawyers have been giving too much coaching to employers on how not to hire qualified Americans. David Huber shows how a job resume he sent to Cisco was reviewed by Fragomen, who coached Cisco on how ignore resumes of Americans in favor of foreign workers on H-1B and green card (PERM) visas.

How did Australians lose so much control over their immigration program?

Wages and Conditions undermined:The right-wing revolution in Victorian industrial law under Kennett in 1993 set the scene for Workchoices under the John Howard government, (11 March 1996 to 3 December 2007). The Howard Government, entering this weakened industrial law and industrial relations situation, went on to widen the use of the corporations clause in the Australian constitution, which exempted corporations from many employer obligations. Up until now Australian employers had not had much to gain by importing immigrant workers because they had been required to employ them under the same industrial awards as native born workers. That meant that there was not the same opportunity to import cheap labour as there was, notoriously, in the United States. Today we are in a situation where the Australian labour market has been greatly deregulated and it is now possible to employ overseas immigrants according to individually tailored employment contracts where they have little or no bargaining power or recourse for legal protection. Coupled with the deregulation of immigration, this has created local pull factors which the Australian growth lobby has been keen both to lobby for and to exploit. (Read more on this here: Sheila Newman: Kennett population policy, numbers and flow-ons: Regional migration and industrial law under Kennett)

Land and housing: After the fall of the Whitlam Government, Australia's foreign ownership laws, including those relating to purchase of land for housing and built housing, were watered down a little bit with each new government, along with our labor laws. There was a push for higher and higher immigration, ballooning with the Howard Government. With the internet, push and pull factors were accelerated and magnified by an order of magnitude. Today we have a legion of small and big operators touting immigration for various enterprises and for Australian property development investment from all over the world. One of the major pull factors is our rapid population growth rates, fueled by mass immigration, for which no government ever sought permission from Australians. Foreign students may purchase established houses if they sell them within a year - creating even more acceleration of turnover. Frequently new suburban developments are presold to people overseas before they are even built. [For more on how this developed, see , The Growth Lobby in Australia and its absence in France, Chapter 8, Globalising the Property Market, Foreign Finance and Immigration from the 1980s. (The full thesis with appendices is available here).]

Open-borders propaganda: In Australia ordinary environmentalists have seen a rising resistance to the protection of our natural environment from the very people they thought we could rely on – The Australian Greens and various big environmental NGOs. Among spokespeople for the Greens, this resistance has manifested as a militant effort to support Lib/Lab policy of massive population growth through planned and commercial immigration by confusing refugees with ordinary immigrants, and calling any attempt to reign in immigration racist. As for the big environmental NGOs, they have become afraid to talk about population growth for fear of being politically stigmatised. Environmental debate on diverse issues has largely been taken over with top-down climate focus. In national policy, a focus on minority groups dominates what we all have in common. Behind this creeping confusion the hacking of multi-billionaire George Soros’s files has recently shown him to be behind the new-age ideology of open borders. Through Open Societies Foundations and a legion of other NGOs, he funds minority causes and flagging political parties as flag-bearers for his ideology. In Australia he has funded various pseudo-socialist groups, and members of the Greens and GetUp, which have cross-pollinated each other and also have links in the ALP, via Bill Shorten. See "Australian democracy swiss-cheesed by George Soros Open Societies Foundations". And that is only the first layer of his influence here. What motivates George Soros, the multibillionaire, to prosecute open borders? See "Population stampedes: Why does Soros push open borders?".

NOTES

[1] A remark attributed to French economist and demographer, Alfred Sauvy, who did indeed write about lean cows and fat cows, although this exact remark remains a rumour.

[2] The material below cites the Productivity Commission, Economic Impacts of Migration and Population Growth, Position Paper, January, Melbourne, 2006, and on Productivity Commission, Population and migration: understanding the numbers, Melbourne, 2010 (December). Direct quotes are in quote marks.

****
From the 2006 report
The following compares a "base case" with a simulated increase in skilled migration of 50% over the "base case", which would have been about 39 000 persons" per year, see pp. xxviii

“By 2024-25, annual income per capita is about $383 (or about 0.71 per cent) higher than it would otherwise have been. Modelling by Econtech for DIMA arrived at somewhat higher figures, using different methodologies”. p. XXXII

[The period of concern is 2003-4 to 2024-25. Details for the base case and the simulated one are in appendix F. Base case assumes migration fixed at 2003-4 level (but they don't specify what number they are using). The simulated case assumes a 50% increase in skilled migration. cf p. 274. The base case leads to a migration induced population increase of 2.89 million, simulated case one of 3.72million. Both assume natural increase of 1.98 million. p. 275]

All the following is from p. 154
“Most of the economic benefits associated with an increase in skilled migration accrues to the immigrants themselves. For existing residents, capital owners receive additional income, with owners of capital in those sectors experiencing the largest output gains enjoying the largest gains in capital income. On the other hand, the real average annual incomes of existing resident workers grows more slowly than in the base-case, as additional immigrants place downward pressure on real wages.

“Other factors more important to productivity and living standards
"The economic impact of skilled migration is small when compared with other drivers of productivity and income per capita. For example, over the same period, growth in income per capita from technological progress and other sources of productivity growth, and long-term demographic changes, could be expected to be about 1.5 per cent per year, or $14 434, by 2024-25 (Commission estimates).

“The relative significance of an increase in skilled migration to overall per capita income growth is illustrated in figure 8.2. This compares projected per capita income over the next 21 years in the base case with that arising from the increased-migration simulation. It can be seen that the impact of migration is very small compared with other drivers of per capita income growth”. p. 154 (figure 8.2 is on p. 155.)

There was also a media release at Economic Impacts of Migration and Population Growth: Media release

*******
From the 2010 report

"Realistic changes in migration levels also make little difference to the age structure of the population in the future, with any effect being temporary." p. 63

"Some have argued that for Australia to reduce the problems associated with an ageing population, it needs to increase its level of immigration or to take measures
to increase the fertility rate. In practice, neither of these can be a panacea." p. 71

“Key points
o While population growth is likely to increase aggregate gross domestic product (GDP) and gross national income (GNI), more relevant measures are per capita income and, ultimately, community wellbeing.
o The impacts of immigration growth on GDP and GNI per head of the existing resident population are ambiguous and depend on the source, composition and context in which the growth occurred.
o Population growth and immigration (its main source) can magnify existing policy problems and amplify pressures on 'unpriced' entities, such as the environment, and urban and social amenity.
o The impacts of population growth and immigration are unlikely to be evenly distributed across Australia's population - there are likely to be both winners and losers.” p. 75

"The impacts of population growth on productivity are also complex and, in many instances, depend on the sources of that growth and the context in which it occurs.
There could be some negative impacts on labour productivity, for example, due to the dilution of available capital across a greater number of workers.
On the other [p. 78] hand, population growth could enable economies of scale (a reduction in the average cost of production) for goods and services produced and consumed
domestically. (Conversely, there could also be diseconomies of scale in some cases.) " p. 79

In Australia ordinary environmentalists have seen a rising resistance to the protection of our natural environment from the very people they thought they could rely on – The Australian Greens and various big environmental NGOs. There has been a similar strange distancing from representing the economic and social interests of ordinary Australians. Among spokespeople for the Greens, this resistance has manifested as a militant effort to support Lib/Lab policy of massive population growth through planned and commercial immigration by conflating refugees with ordinary immigrants, and calling any attempt to reign in immigration "racist". Currency speculator, George Soros, was long suspected to be the source of this creeping political confusion. The hacking of the multi-billionaire’s Open Societies files has recently confirmed him to be the organising force for the new-age ideology of open borders and the illogical stigmatisation of all care for national interests and cohesion.

What motivates George Soros, the multibillionaire, to prosecute open borders? Much has been written about George Soros and his multipronged attempts to subvert national political processes. Many have suggested that he is psychopathic, enjoys chaos, and makes money out of what he does – but, as someone wrote:

“The Soros tentacles reach far and wide thanks to his great wealth and ability to keep himself behind the curtain. It would take an especially gifted forensic accountant to sort out all of the various interconnections among the major foundations and their smaller satellites[…]” [1]

Here are the results of some well-known investigations:

“Convicted in France of insider trading, Soros specializes in weakening or collapsing the currencies of entire nations for his own selfish interests. He is known as the man who broke the Bank of England.” [2]

Soros is a partner in the Carlyle Group.

“The Carlyle Group makes most of its money from weapons expenditures. The money we are talking about is over $193 billion. The more wars we fight, the more profits they make.” [3]

Soros invested millions in moveon.org in the United States. Moveon.org waged a campaign to bring Cheney’s Haliburton shares into disfavour associated with disapproval of the war on Iraq. Soros bought almost 2000 shares of the deflated stock (bringing them to form over 2% of his total stock portfolio). Moveon stopped talking about the war. Haliburton shares regained value, and Soros resold them for nearly $40m profit. [4]

Currency trading and political instability

Soros is a currency trader and currency traders make money out of political instability, which affects currency values.
[Soros] has been blamed for providing funding for several revolutions in which his preferred people took power. See ” Top 5 Revolutions Backed by George Soros”, (2011).

He subsidises a number of ‘humanitarian’ organisations which have taken the ‘rebel’ [fundamentalist] side in Syria. These activities go back a long way and have been monitored for decades.

“Soros is intimately involved in HRW (Human Rights Watch) .. HRW and OSI (Open Society Institute) are close. One of Soros’ most influential institutions is the International Crisis Group, founded in 1986. ICG is headed by individuals from the very center of political and corporate power. Its board includes Zbigniew Brzezinski, Morton Abramowitz, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State; Wesley Clark, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander for Europe; and Richard Allen, former U.S. National Security Adviser. Allen is noteworthy for quitting Nixon’s National Security Council out of disgust with the liberal tendencies of Henry Kissinger.” (Source: Heather cottin article at George Soros: Imperial Wizard/Double Agent, Covert Action Quarterly, December 9, 2003.)

“When Soros gets hold of power in any government, he makes money. It is difficult to find examples of Soros invasions that leave the target country better off.”( Tiz, Joy. It's Not Easy Being God: The Real George Soros (p. 31). Hero's Prose, LLC. Kindle Edition.)

Moveon.org is currently (2016 US Elections) advertising for organisers to push a line that Trump is a racist etc.

You could follow up a myriad of interference patterns and find possible financial outcomes, but why does Soros need to finance failing political parties and insignificant minorities in order to train up salespeople? Why does he need to push open borders, popularise mass immigration, overuse the notion of racism, and make 'islamophobia' a household word?

The real game

Maybe the real game is just open borders and mass immigration. But why would a businessman be so keen to open borders and suppress objections to mass immigration?
Well, the name of the game is population growth. You see, it isn't sufficient just to have a big population. In fact a big population, whilst having intrinsic problems, will ultimately develop steady demand rather than growth in demand. The key to driving growth in demand is to drive population growth, but if you really want to push demand up, you need to stampede populations. You need to bomb people and destroy peoples' economies and dispossess rural populations in one place, then destroy objections to their entry in another place. You need to stuff up the economy here, so that people will move over there. You need to dispossess rural populations and attract them to cities, encourage them to marry and have children until their cities are overpopulated, and then you need people to come and recruit them to somewhere where the grass is greener.

People think that immigration is only about moving people, that the things around them stay the same. But cities, homes, roads and cars do not move with the immigrants; the country they get to has to supply those things. So, if you are a corporation that invests in financing, supplying materials to, or providing infrastructure or a peak-body for such corporations, your mission will be to influence any political process, institution or person that you can to bring about more people-turnover.

Left and Right

Left and right have been accusing eachother of assisting corporatisation, high immigration and environmental destruction for some time now. Most people who identify as left or right won't realise this though, because wedge politics punish anyone from either side that tries to take a look for themselves at what the other side is doing.
However, if you do take a look, you will hear from the Libs that it is Labour that is causing all the environmental destruction, overdevelopment and high immigration. From Labor you will hear that it is a corporatist plot by the Libs to destroy labour laws, bring in cheap labour and dig up the environment. Both are telling a captive audience similar stories while both privatise public goods, invest in land-speculation, property development and mortgage finance.

In fact, Soros covers both Left and Right territory. That is a reason that it is so confusing to try to analyse why the stuff he advocates is all bad. You have to agree with some of it.

The creation of a false-left

It is a problem that most of the literature that exposes Soros comes from the right because people on the left are disinclined to read it. However Soros is just as dangerous for the left. In fact, through his funding he has created a false left by pushing some defensible human rights causes to the exclusion of basic civil rights. This left has become so distracted by Soros’s favorite causes: refugees, multiculturalism, top-down regulation on climate change, same-sex marriage, colour revolutions, that it has become silent on the illegal wars that create the refugees by destroying stable governments, silent about the globalisation of cheap labour and the deterioration of national industrial laws, silent on overpopulation, silent on the paving over of wildlife habitat with new suburbs, silent on citizens rights.

You can see why it is easier for the right to criticise Soros than it is for the left. It is politically problematic for the left to criticise itself publicly. It is also traumatic for members to question it internally, due to the presence of Sorosian guardians who will punish dissenters, such as those who recently expelled one of the Greens for demanding that they deal with population. How does Labor go about criticising Bill Shorten's involvement with the Soros funded organisation, GetUp, when Shorten controls the factions? What about the unions that shared Shorten's board presence at GetUp? See, "Australian democracy swiss-cheesed by George Soros Open Societies Foundations."

SOROS Media influence may rival Murdoch’s

Soros is able to control public debate by controlling major portions of the media.

Soros’s media influence: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/05/11/dont-hear-george-soros-ties-30-major-news-organizations.html
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2011/05/12/which-liberal-billionare-has-ties-to-over-30-news-outlets-george-soros/
https://www.mrc.org/commentary/soros-spends-over-48-million-funding-media-organizations
http://www.mrc.org/special-reports/george-soros-media-mogul
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=977

“Only a small fraction of the media—often referred to as alternative—are willing to examine the actual facts about the mysterious man who became leader of the free world. Talk radio and independent bloggers have become the modern version of Nazi resistors with their chain letters and ham radios. Why is it that without the blogosphere, there would be no discussion of George Soros and his full-scale war on the United States?" Joy Tiz, It’s not easy being God: The real George Soros, 2010, Hero’s Prose, LLC Palm Desert, California 92260 ISBN-13: 978-0-61541-473-7, page 23-24.

Dr. Andrew Leigh MP is a former Professor of economics at the ANU and is now the Labor member for Frazer. During his university career he was awarded the Economic Society of Australia's Young Economist Award which is given to honour that Australian economist under the age of forty who is deemed to have made a significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge. He has published over 50 journal articles in the disciplines of economics, public policy and law, and over 100 opinion pieces. His research findings have been discussed in, amongst others, the Australian, the Australian Financial Review, the Christian Monitor, the Economist, New York Times, the Sydney Morning Herald, Time and Washington Post. He has also written a number of books, perhaps the best of which is titled Battlers and Billionaires, which weaves together vivid anecdotes, interesting history and powerful statistics to tell the story of the growing inequality in this country. It is not as hard hitting as Thomas Piketty's book Capital which has a similar theme but a different conclusion, arguing that increased growth will not prevent the spiral into global inequality. Andrew's book on the other hand tells us that inequality can fuel (economic) growth, almost implying that the end justifies the means.

In other words Andrew is no slouch and is probably the most academically qualified person in the federal ALP, which suggests his ideas will translate into ALP policies. And this is alarming since it appears that someone as obviously influential as Andrew does not have his papers peer reviewed, allowing him to use sources for his arguments that suit his theme but are scarcely very reliable. This is unfortunately not an uncommon practice. There are so many articles produced by the so called think tanks that you can find written justification for almost any absurdity. Don't like wind turbines? Well search around and you will find a paper that tells you the low frequency noise from the blades will make you sick. Ditto for odd ball fetishes like vaccinations, garlic as a cure for AIDS, or the dangers of male circumcision, but most of the think tank literature is written for their paymasters so, while the health benefits of cigarettes are no longer promoted, you can find plenty on stuff defending fast food, alcohol, mining, gambling, and of course, growth.

Faith and overpopulation

Which brings me to a paper Andrew published in 2014 called “The Pro-Growth Progressive”. Growth has been religion for the ALP even before Paul Keating embraced Milton Freedman’s economic ideas and is the weapon of choice for most economists. In his introduction Andrew stated that in relation to population growth,

“he defaulted to an optimistic faith in humanity's ability to innovate”.

But faith is just the default position for those who wish to believe when no evidence is available or, to quote from Hebrews 11.1, faith is the substance for things hoped for. There is a wealth of evidence, (or at least a book load, Why Things Bite Back by Edward Tenner, former executive editor for physical science and history at Princeton University) that humanity's innovations have unintended consequences far beyond what could ever have been contemplated. Just two interrelated examples: the invention of pesticides and antibiotics both lead to the acceleration of the evolution of super bugs. Alarmingly this development of resistant strains became obvious very early but humanity had become too dependent on both to halt or even modify their use, leaving us with a growing number of antibiotic resistant bacteria like MRSA and pesticides that are killing the bees, our food pollinators.

Life expectancy claims

Andrew, in his in praise of growth article, claims that we are living longer and healthier. And while it is true that many diseases have been eradicated or are treatable, obesity has more than doubled in the last 20 years, with 14 million Australians overweight or obese. Obesity is now the biggest single threat to public health. On the basis of current trends, our life expectancy will start to decline because of this disease which is, unlike most other epidemics that plagued humanity, a man-made problem, largely due the food industry's dependency on growth. ( Would you like fries with that?)

Happiness

His next claim is also controversial: he challenges the theory that once incomes reach a certain threshold, more money doesn't buy more happiness. This theory, the Easterlin Paradox, is named after the author, USC professor Richard Easterlin, carried out studies in nine countries on the relationship between happiness and income. Happiness is of course hard to qualify. Apparently frogs are happy in water hot enough to kill them, a bit like some Beijing residents apparently. However Andrew uses a later study done in 2006 that expanded the original Easterly one to 131 countries and concluded that the relationship between satisfaction and GDP was almost linear suggesting that money did buy you more happiness. Like some new age churches he is seemingly enthused by this prospect, linking it to an increased love life and suggesting that Paul McCartney's song should be “money can buy me love”

The argument against this study is twofold. Expanding the study to 131 countries ensured that it included many developing nations where the people on lower incomes would be happier with an increase. The results of this study were presented as graphs which displayed per capita income against levels of reported life satisfaction and the result was indeed a straight line, with satisfaction rising with income. Except that the charts were plotted on a logarithmic scale and, in reality, it meant that an income increase generated a lot more happiness for a poorer person that a rich one - a rather logic conclusion and one that ties into the Easterly theory.

From longevity and happiness, the article moves into environmental concerns, where Andrew argues that we are not running out of non-renewable resources, nor are we making more pollutants. Peak oil is a fantasy and air pollution is reducing. Incredibly, the entire output of the US “weighs” only marginally more than it did a century ago. This, according to his theory, is because most workers, doctors, barristers, don't produce goods from non renewables, so their product doesn't weigh much – its called the weightless world. Well its an extraordinary claim, given the huge growth in metal production to build the cars, planes, machinery that we didn't have a century ago. All those “weightless” people had cars, homes computers, used power and water, took holidays, and someone provided the materials to do all that.

Pollution

When it comes to air pollution, Andrew's claims are refuted by a report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, called "The Cost of Air Pollution: Health Impacts of Road Transport." This report shows Australia has failed to halt the dangerous rise in air pollution. It estimates that the economic cost of that failure has run into the billions. The report shows that between 2005 and 2010, the number of deaths from air pollution in Australia jumped from 882 to 1483, representing a 68 per cent rise, despite cleaner car technology, which was overwhelmed by the growth in the number of vehicles.

And that is just one aspect of the pollution that plagues us.

No one has addressed the plastics in our oceans, or the space junk that clutters the heavens, the disarray of the world's nitrogen cycle or the number of untested chemicals that come on the market every year. In the US the EPA estimated there were not only 62,000 untested chemicals in the market but it was almost impossible to test for the combined impact of multiple chemicals, even though there was grave suspicions that these were linked to many diseases.

Neocon doctrine

Being an experienced and well qualified academic, Andrew provides references to his claims, 12 of them in fact. Arnold Kiling and Nick Sachultz get two mentions, both referring to their co authored book Poverty to Prosperity. Which also gets a wrap from the Cato institute and the former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a duo that should be as politically popular as pornography to the ALP. Nick Schulz is the DeWitt Wallace Fellow at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he serves as editor of AEI's in-house magazine The American, and a columnist for Forbes.com. Schulz has also worked as an editor at Foxnews.com and served as a policy analyst for the now-defunct Empower America, a right-wing pressure group founded by William Bennett.

It would be difficult to cover all the intrigue and skulduggery done by the AEI but here is some : They were one of the leading voices that pushed for a “Regime Change” in Iraq, they helped fund pro tobacco studies, they support climate change deniers ( In February 2007, The Guardian (UK) reported that AEI was offering scientists and economists $10,000 each, "to undermine a major climate change report" from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). AEI asked for "articles that emphasise the shortcomings" of the IPCC report, AEI visiting scholar Kenneth Green made the $10,000 offer "to scientists in Britain, the US and elsewhere, ). Not the sort of people a nice boy like Andrew should be using as his references.

Neocon theory referenced for peak oil

Andrew also refers to Michael Lynch, The "Peak Oil" Scare and the Coming Oil Flood for his thesis that Peak oil isn't peaking.
Which just about says it all, except that his book is full of errors including a claim that the earth has 10 trillion barrels of oil, a figure well beyond any quoted by geologists.

Which leaves the question as to why an intelligent person such as Andrew would be so loose with facts and casual with his choice of references. When incorrect ideas gain widespread acceptance they become false knowledge and are difficult to dislodge. False knowledge gains credence because it suits the religious, political or emotional feelings which have given us climate change deniers. Some other notable examples of spurious ideas that gained acceptance were the conviction that the earth was the centre of the universe and that the world was only about 6 thousand years old. Looking back they seem rather quaint ideas but they weren't dangerous ones as long as you didn't contradict them in public. Which puts them way ahead of the modern day conventional economists.

An alternative view to the growthist one

The alternative view: One of the most profound changes affecting the Australian economy and society over the past 12 years has been the massive lift in Australia’s net immigration, which surged from the mid-2000s and is running at roughly twice the pace of long-run norms.

http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2016/08/the-great-immigration-subterfuge

Update: Problem appears to have been solved. Today 12 October 2016, after about a week, a Telstra tech arrived at our front door and inspected the wiring inside front gate and house. He said that everywhere outside our house checked out, so it must be inside. In fact, it seems that our numerous long telephone extension cords were too old. So we probably cannot blame Telstra this time. We replaced the old cords and the problem seems to have gone away.

This was originally a notice to explain the lack of activity on candobetter.net over the past few days. The Editors have experienced multiple outages with their telstra connection, both phone and internet, to the point that they can usually only use these for minutes at a time. No time to see the international news, read email, or edit articles. We are told that the problem may be fixed tomorrow. We certainly hope so.

Prior to the war Syria hosted millions of refugees from other US-NATO interventions in the region, especially from Iraq. There is also a huge population of Palestinians in Syria since the creation of Israel. More came from the surrounding countries during subsequent displacements. In 2016 UNRWA-registered Palestinians in Syria numbered 560,000 according to the United Nations of which 450,000 remained in Syria. They have their own special status there, receiving free housing, education and health-care like Syrians. All these refugees, who are entirely the result of continuous foreign interference in this region since before the first world war, with many changes of borders and renaming of countries there, have been placed in danger, along with the Syrian-born population, by the US-NATO attempts to dismantle the government by supporting so-called 'rebels' in the pretence that these 'takfiri' (fundamentalists) are fighting for 'democracy'.

People should question the idea that Syrian refugees are running from the Syrian government. No, the majority of Syrians have run to the Syrian government, which currently provides the only safe havens for displaced persons inside the country. It conducts battles and negotiations to liberate people from towns and areas which have been taken over by terrorists. See, for instance, "Good News! Reconciliation, peace and return home of Syrian refugees in two Syrian locations due to Syrian Government efforts" Those parts of Syria that are beyond the control of the Syrian government and army are not safe. They are controlled by foreign-funded fundamentalist forces, such as Isis and Zinki, many of whom are not Syrian. These are the places where the atrocities we hear about that are committed in the name of religion occur. The Syrian Army does not commit religious atrocities. A major tactic of the fundamentalist religious 'rebels' is to capture local populations, live among them, and use them as human shields, refusing to let them flee when the Syrian Arab Army tries to kill the terrorists. The army does conduct aerial bombardments against the terrorists and in these situations where populations are held hostage by the terrorists, civilians do get killed. The reason that the army has to bomb the terrorists is because otherwise they will take over Syria. Reports of the use of poisonous gas have failed to be substantiated. See "Syrian President al-Assad interviewed by CBS News", and other investigations have led to evidence that the terrorists used poisonous gas, notably sarin gas supplied by Turkey, in an attempt to frame the Syrian government. See Hersh Vindicated? Turkish Whistleblowers Corroborate Story on False Flag Sarin Attack in Syria - Article by Peter Lee. Hilary Clinton, when she was US foreign secretary, was gung-ho for the US to invade Syria on the pretext that the Syrian government was using poison gas against its population. Sergei Lavrov, the Russian minister for foreign affairs, was able to get the Syrian government to get rid of all its chemical weapons (which had been supplied by the US, by the way), thus removing the US pretext for invasion. (See "
Review: Hillary Clinton's Hard Choices - the Syria chapter" We also have a report from a resident of Aleppo describing how ISIS had gained control of the chlorine factory in Aleppo.

Refugees in Syria and the Syrian Government

The following article is republished from Iraqi refugees in Syria, Forced Migration Review. Many, probably most of these refugees are still in Syria. Refugee advocates should consider this when they advocate support for the so-called 'rebels' and encourage war. These refugees are the product of US-NATO invasions of Iraq on the dishonest pretext of 'weapons of mass-destruction'. It is astonishing that people continue to trust the mass media and the US-NATO alliances that have produced almost total destruction of Libya, the mass exodus from Iraq described below,which is now being repeated in the war on Syria.

Iraqi refugees in Syria - by Faisal al-Miqdad

Prior to the war Syria hosted millions of refugees from other US-NATO interventions in the region, especially from Iraq. There is also a huge population of Palestinians in Syria since the creation of Israel. More came from the surrounding countries during subsequent displacement. In 2016 UNRWA-registered Palestinians in Syria numbered 560,000 according to the United Nations of which 450,000 remained in Syria. They have their own special status there, receiving free housing, education and health-care like Syrians. See Yamouk and the Palestinians in Syria - Article by Mo Salhi All these refugees, who are entirely the result of foreign interference in this region since before the first world war, with many changes of borders and renaming of countries there, have been placed in danger along with the Syrian-born population. "At the start of 2007 UNHCR estimated that the number of Iraqi refugees in Syria exceeded 1.2 million, a huge influx to a country with a population of. 18 million." (Source: Iraqi refugees in Syria, Forced Migration Review:

"Syria has offered Iraqi refugees care and assistance, and continues to do so, in spite of the limited nature of its material resources. At the start ofUNHCRestimatedthat the number of Iraqi refugees in Syria exceeded 1.2 million, a huge influx to a country with a population of million. This heavy number of arrivals hashad anextreme effecton all facets of life in Syria, particularly on the services which the state offers to citizens. There has been a sharp increase in the cost of livingandthe unexpected weightof numbers has had dramatic impacts on the infrastructure and the economy.

The sudden increase in the population has led to a rise in costs in all areas of life. The prices of foodstuffs and basic goods have gone up by 30%, property prices by 40%and rentals by 150%.

Water consumption has increased by 21%. The additional cost to the Syrian government of supplying Iraqi refugees with drinking water and sanitation alone came to$6.millionlast year. There are so many Iraqi refugees that they have become a burden on the labour market. In Syria’s unemployment rate was 18%.

The human health needs of the Iraqi arrivals are mounting, in particular among women, children and the elderly. The Syrian government is endeavouring, with whatresourcesithas, to meet their needs, including carrying out necessary surgical operations, health care interventions, vaccinations against epidemics andchildhoodimmunisations.

It should be noted that health services and medical care are free of charge in all government hospitals and public clinics.

This has led to a health care crisis and shortage of hospital beds. Teaching hospitals alone estimate the costs of treating Iraqi refugees in 2006 at approximately$163,000.The Syrian Red Crescent spent some $60,000 on providing treatment and surgery to around 730 Iraqis in 2006. There is a pressing need to equip two 200- bed hospitals and to set up clinics to supply the 1.2 million Iraqis with the necessary medicines and equipment.

Basic education in Syria is free and the cost of higher education is usually nominal. As a result there has been a steady rise in enrolment, leading to schoolandclassroomovercrowding which has adverse repercussions on equality of access to learning and education and on the health of students and teachers. Inability toabsorbmorepupils is likely to lead to a rise in school drop-out rates.

Accordingly there is a pressing need to enlarge the existing schools and build about 100 more schools, so that all these students can be assimilated in ordertopreventinstances of drop-out. The total cost is estimated at approximately $60 million.

According to UNHCR, the number of Iraqi refugee families in Syria without a breadwinner is estimated to be around 27%. The situation of female-headed households is grave.
The war in Iraq has resulted in new circumstances never previously common in Syria or Iraq. Conditions have forced some families to work in prostitution or toencouragetheir daughters to work in this field – something offensive to the customs of both Syrians and Iraqis.

Harsh living conditions have also led to the spread of child labour and increased drop-out rates. There is an insufficient provision of cultural and recreationalcentres,nursery schools and playgrounds. There is also an urgent need to provide appropriate care for the elderly and for the very large number of new arrivalswithdisabilities, more than a third of which are attributable to war injuries. There is a pressing need to support these disadvantaged families, and to create homesto carefor the victims of war and displacement, the elderly and children, particularly orphans and people with disabilities.

They need physical, mental and social support to prepare them for return to their original communities once the war has ended and conditions are stabilised.

Overcrowding and the reduced standard of living have brought about a rise in crime of more than 20% in areas with concentrations of Iraqi refugees. We are witnessing kindsof crimes previously unknown in either Iraq or Syria – kidnapping, ransom demands and blackmail, as well as the involvement of organised crime in prostitution, killingsand intimidation. In 2006 the Syrian police and security authorities thus had to spend an additional $15 million on maintaining law and order.

Conclusion Iraqi refugees constitute a numerically enormous mass of humanity in comparison to the number of the inhabitants of the region. Certain agencies estimate thatthe number of refugees in states neighbouring Iraq is greater than the total number of refugees in all the countries of the European Union. Syria’s economy and infrastructureare buckling under the great weight of the burden.

The relief and aid which Syria has offered to Iraqi refugees in its territory over the past two years (2005-06) alone has amounted to $162 million. In light of the continuing rise in incoming Iraqi refugee numbers, it is estimated that the cost of humanitarian, health and education support for Iraqi refugees over the next two years will exceed $256 million.

It is necessary, in our view, that the international community acknowledge the need to find political solutions to the crisis in Iraq the tragic reality that more than four million Iraqis have been displaced and strengthen the international relief effort required to meet the crisis the burdens thrust on neighbouring states the risk that any further deterioration in the situation will lead to even greater number of displaced people with implications for the entire region the urgent need to provide financial support to cover the cost of providing services to Iraqi refugees in Syria and also to build the capacities of governmental and non-governmental organisations such as the Syrian Red Crescent the need to provide necessary financing for UNHCR and other humanitarian agencies working to help migrants and refugees in the neighbouring countries the importance of offering assistance and funding to support the right of Iraqi refugees and migrants to return to their homes and creating appropriate circumstances for them to do so.

The Iraqi authorities and the foreign troops present on Iraqi territory must urgently shoulder responsibilities placed on them under international law to ensure protection, security and services to all residents of Iraq, including those groups that are weakest and most exposed to danger and persecution, such as the Palestinian refugees. "

The writer of the report, Dr Faisal al-Miqdad, is Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister.

Mimi al-Haram (aka 'Syrian Girl')'s shows a very thorough understanding of the conflicts within and from outside Syria and an ability to transmit the complexity in ways that make it possible for most of us to quickly grasp the issues. Her new video, embedded inside this candobetter.net article, explains just how unreasonable, dishonest and merciless the US-NATO policy is towards Syria and the Syrian people. If the Syrians or the Russians had responded in kind to America's acts of aggression on the last day of the ceasefire of the third week of September 2016, it is not hard to see how this action could be taken by the US and its allies to escalate the conflict much further, even to the point of an all-out nuclear war.

Australians need to go outside mainstream press to avoid more war

Australians need to become interested in the war in Syria independently of what they are presented by the mass media. They need to become critical of their government and opposition's support for US-NATO intervention in Syria because that intervention is uninvited, illegal and dangerous - dangerous to Syria and risky for world peace. They should be utterly shocked that members of the Australian Air Force assisted in the US air attack on the Syrian Army at Deir ez-Zor. They need to take note of the obvious contradiction between a so-called 'fight for democracy' and Australia's support of numerous fundamentalist (takfiri) gangs and see this for the war propaganda that it is. The so-called 'refugee movement' needs to ask itself why, if Bashar al-Assad is such a hateful dictator, his army, which is majority Sunni, has not revolted. We need to question the idea that Syrian refugees are running from the Syrian government. No, the majority of Syrians have run to the Syrian government, which currently provides the only safe havens for displaced persons in the country.[1] With the assistance of a de-corticated mass-media we are being conned by a bunch of neo-cons who only want to control access to all the resources in the region, including Russia's.

How did we let the anti-war movement die?

Back in 2003, Australia had the largest anti-war marches since the Vietnam war. This mass movement obviously failed to stop Australia's entry into the Iraq war in 2003 and has since dissipated to almost nothing. How this occurred should be the subject of an investigation.[2] In the meantime, many Australians who were so well informed about the Iraq war have since failed to understand anything about subsequent wars against Libya, East Ukraine and now the wars against Syria and Yemen. We need to refocus on the anti-war movement and get specific about the current wars.

The US elections, war and the Middle East - what Australians should know

The wars in the Middle East are not just some unfortunate side-show. They could well lead to nuclear conflict, something that has been relatively unimaginable since the Bay of Pigs episode during John Fitzgerald Kennedy's presidency. China, India, Pakistan, and North Korea's nuclear weapons are minor concerns compared to the country most likely to start a nuclear war, and the one with the most nuclear weapons - enough to blow the world up - the United States. Because of this, most people who are actually watching the events in Syria and her region as they play out between US-NATO and the rest, hope for a change of regime in the United States, away from the current 'hawk-like' (warlike) one we have. If elected to president, Hilary Clinton intends to continue the dangerously provocative foreign policies she pursued as foreign secretary to Obama. Trump, for all his entrepreneurial brashness, has suggested that the United States does not need to continue to 'police' the world and might seek commonalities with her current enemies, rather than pick fights over differences.

All media should demand detailed public debates between hostile leaders

James Sinnamon, the founder of this website, candobetter.net, has suggested that where world leaders have differences that cause them to want to start wars, they first should debate those differences publicly with each other, and the press should transmit those debates and examine them critically. The Russian President Vladimir Putin and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have shown themselves willing to submit themselves and their policies to thorough scrutiny, even by hostile news media. [3] In comparison, western leaders do not subject themselves anywhere near as much to detailed questioning and critical scrutiny. This needs to change. The people of the west and of those countries threatened by our leaders with war should have the right to require those hostile leaders to present themselves and their arguments for detailed scrutiny by the news media of the countries to which they are hostile. Today it is possible for anyone in the world with an internet connection to follow and publicly criticise such debates via a growing number of digitised international press alternatives. Russia, for instance, has RT, and Iran gives excellent coverage of the region as well as the rest of the world via Iranian Press TV. Both these digital stations have direct news transmission services as well as numerous interview programs in several languages. Notable interviewers on RT, for example, are Peter Lavelle, Afshin Rattansi, Oksana Boyko and Sophie Shevardnadze. Iranian Press TV also conducts interviews and has exceptionally lively and confronting debates in The Debate. Russian and Iranian internet TV give much greater coverage of the so-called 'developing' countries like Africa, South America, and India than the western media, because these reflect their region and their politics.

President Kennedy predicted the problem of media silence and the war industry

US President Kennedy (1961-1963) was very aware of the military industrial complex and its increasing demands for secrecy around the wars it urged upon the world. He felt that the press in his day was already too compliant with notions of national secrecy. Things have deteriorated since then. US President Obama during his term has delivered the harshest punishments on whistleblowers of any US president. Anticipating such problems, Kennedy said on April 27, 1961, in a speech at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, New York City:

"Without debate, without criticism, no Administration and no country can succeed--and no republic can survive. That is why the Athenian lawmaker Solon decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy. And that is why our press was protected by the First Amendment-- the only business in America specifically protected by the Constitution- -not primarily to amuse and entertain, not to emphasize the trivial and the sentimental, not to simply "give the public what it wants"--but to inform, to arouse, to reflect, to state our dangers and our opportunities, to indicate our crises and our choices, to lead, mold, educate and sometimes even anger public opinion.

This means greater coverage and analysis of international news--for it is no longer far away and foreign but close at hand and local. It means greater attention to improved understanding of the news as well as improved transmission. And it means, finally, that government at all levels, must meet its obligation to provide you with the fullest possible information outside the narrowest limits of national security--and we intend to do it."

NOTES

[1] "Good News! Reconciliation, peace and return home of Syrian refugees in two Syrian locations due to Syrian Government efforts"
Prior to the war Syria hosted millions of refugees from other US-NATO interventions in the region, especially from Iraq. There is also a huge population of Palestinians in Syria since the creation of Israel. They have their own special status there, receiving free housing, education and health-care like Syrians. See Yamouk and the Palestinians in Syria - Article by Mo Salhi All these refugees, who are entirely the result of foreign interference in this region since before the first world war, with many changes of borders and renaming of countries there, have been placed in danger along with the Syrian-born population. "At the start of 2007 UNHCR estimated that the number of Iraqi refugees in Syria exceeded 1.2 million, a huge influx to a country with a population of. 18 million." (Source: Iraqi refugees in Syria, Forced Migration Review:

"Syria has offered Iraqi refugees care and assistance, and continues to do so, in spite of the limited nature of its material resources. At the start ofUNHCRestimatedthat the number of Iraqi refugees in Syria exceeded 1.2 million, a huge influx to a country with a population of million. This heavy number of arrivals hashad anextreme effecton all facets of life in Syria, particularly on the services which the state offers to citizens. There has been a sharp increase in the cost of livingandthe unexpected weightof numbers has had dramatic impacts on the infrastructure and the economy.

The sudden increase in the population has led to a rise in costs in all areas of life. The prices of foodstuffs and basic goods have gone up by 30%, property prices by 40%and rentals by 150%.

Water consumption has increased by 21%. The additional cost to the Syrian government of supplying Iraqi refugees with drinking water and sanitation alone came to$6.millionlast year. There are so many Iraqi refugees that they have become a burden on the labour market. In Syria’s unemployment rate was 18%.

The human health needs of the Iraqi arrivals are mounting, in particular among women, children and the elderly. The Syrian government is endeavouring, with whatresourcesithas, to meet their needs, including carrying out necessary surgical operations, health care interventions, vaccinations against epidemics andchildhoodimmunisations.

It should be noted that health services and medical care are free of charge in all government hospitals and public clinics.

This has led to a health care crisis and shortage of hospital beds. Teaching hospitals alone estimate the costs of treating Iraqi refugees in 2006 at approximately$163,000.The Syrian Red Crescent spent some $60,000 on providing treatment and surgery to around 730 Iraqis in 2006. There is a pressing need to equip two 200- bed hospitals and to set up clinics to supply the 1.2 million Iraqis with the necessary medicines and equipment.

Basic education in Syria is free and the cost of higher education is usually nominal. As a result there has been a steady rise in enrolment, leading to schoolandclassroomovercrowding which has adverse repercussions on equality of access to learning and education and on the health of students and teachers. Inability toabsorbmorepupils is likely to lead to a rise in school drop-out rates.

Accordingly there is a pressing need to enlarge the existing schools and build about 100 more schools, so that all these students can be assimilated in ordertopreventinstances of drop-out. The total cost is estimated at approximately $60 million.

According to UNHCR, the number of Iraqi refugee families in Syria without a breadwinner is estimated to be around 27%. The situation of female-headed households is grave.
The war in Iraq has resulted in new circumstances never previously common in Syria or Iraq. Conditions have forced some families to work in prostitution or toencouragetheir daughters to work in this field – something offensive to the customs of both Syrians and Iraqis.

Harsh living conditions have also led to the spread of child labour and increased drop-out rates. There is an insufficient provision of cultural and recreationalcentres,nursery schools and playgrounds. There is also an urgent need to provide appropriate care for the elderly and for the very large number of new arrivalswithdisabilities, more than a third of which are attributable to war injuries. There is a pressing need to support these disadvantaged families, and to create homesto carefor the victims of war and displacement, the elderly and children, particularly orphans and people with disabilities.

They need physical, mental and social support to prepare them for return to their original communities once the war has ended and conditions are stabilised.

Overcrowding and the reduced standard of living have brought about a rise in crime of more than 20% in areas with concentrations of Iraqi refugees. We are witnessing kindsof crimes previously unknown in either Iraq or Syria – kidnapping, ransom demands and blackmail, as well as the involvement of organised crime in prostitution, killingsand intimidation. In 2006 the Syrian police and security authorities thus had to spend an additional $15 million on maintaining law and order.

Conclusion Iraqi refugees constitute a numerically enormous mass of humanity in comparison to the number of the inhabitants of the region. Certain agencies estimate thatthe number of refugees in states neighbouring Iraq is greater than the total number of refugees in all the countries of the European Union. Syria’s economy and infrastructureare buckling under the great weight of the burden.

The relief and aid which Syria has offered to Iraqi refugees in its territory over the past two years (2005-06) alone has amounted to $162 million. In light of the continuing rise in incoming Iraqi refugee numbers, it is estimated that the cost of humanitarian, health and education support for Iraqi refugees over the next two years will exceed $256 million.

It is necessary, in our view, that the international community acknowledge the need to find political solutions to the crisis in Iraq the tragic reality that more than four million Iraqis have been displaced and strengthen the international relief effort required to meet the crisis the burdens thrust on neighbouring states the risk that any further deterioration in the situation will lead to even greater number of displaced people with implications for the entire region the urgent need to provide financial support to cover the cost of providing services to Iraqi refugees in Syria and also to build the capacities of governmental and non-governmental organisations such as the Syrian Red Crescent the need to provide necessary financing for UNHCR and other humanitarian agencies working to help migrants and refugees in the neighbouring countries the importance of offering assistance and funding to support the right of Iraqi refugees and migrants to return to their homes and creating appropriate circumstances for them to do so.

The Iraqi authorities and the foreign troops present on Iraqi territory must urgently shoulder responsibilities placed on them under international law to ensure protection, security and services to all residents of Iraq, including those groups that are weakest and most exposed to danger and persecution, such as the Palestinian refugees. "

"President Bashar al-Assad Interview: “The Refugee Crisis is Caused by Terrorism and Western Policies”""President Assad: The conflict has been, since the beginning of the crisis in Syria, about who wins the support of the people in Syria. Consequently, it doesn’t make sense for us to shell civilians if we want to win them to our side. This is in theory. Practically, while moving around in Syria, you will find that in any area under the control of the state, all sections of Syrian society, including the families of the militants, are being cared for by the state. What is more is that in a city like Raqqa, which is under the full control of Daesh (ISIS), the state continues to pay the salaries of employees and send vaccines for children. So, it doesn’t make sense for the state to shell civilians while doing all the above, unless we are talking about mistakes which happen in every battle. The general rule is that there are innocent victims in every war. This is a rule of thumb in wars, but this is definitely not the Syrian state’s policy.

Question 3: Mr. President, what do you say to those emigrating to Europe? Do you ask them to come back?

President Assad: I would like to ask every person who left Syria to come back. That’s natural but not enough. Emotions are not enough. They would ask: “why should I come back? Has terrorism stopped? Have the basic requirements for life been restored?” Many of those who have emigrated are neither against the Syrian state or with the terrorists, but sometimes there are circumstances which force people to emigrate. So, my answer to this question is: when terrorism recedes, and things are better, they will return of their own volition without any invitation. So, instead of asking these people to return, I’ll call on the European governments, which have been a direct cause for the emigration of these people, by giving cover to terrorists in the beginning, and through the sanctions imposed on Syria, to help in making the Syrians return to their country."

[2] It seems likely that some anti-war energy has been purposely diverted into disconnected pro-refugee movements by people funded by open-borders proponent George Soros (via his organisations, such as Open Societies Foundations) because these movements show almost no interest in the wars that drive the growing numbers of displaced people. This is despite Soros's investment in the weapons industry. We can also see the effect of Soros's ersatz socialism in the naive support of any movement in Syria branded as 'revolutionary' or 'rebel'. Because of their disconnect from the wider reality, these well-funded, almost exlusively refugee-focused movements, have proved a boon to the warmakers and their supporters in government and the opposition here in Australia, in Europe and the United States. They have not helped stem the tide of displaced people from Syria and the Middle East. Their naive support for takfiri 'rebels' is itself the major cause of displacement, death and suffering, destruction of infrastructure, and weakening of government services and protection. Our education system has a lot to answer for in its failure to teach Australians to question rather than to follow leaders.

[3] See for example "Video: SBS interview with Syrian President 1 July 2016" and Syrian President al-Assad interviewed by CBS News and News conference of Vladimir Putin.

The following statement is made on behalf of the U.S. Peace Council and others:
- We respectfully request that the members of the Rights Livelihood Award committee review their award of this prestigious award to the organisation known as the White Helmets.
- We believe strongly that this award has been given in error, perhaps because not enough evidence was presented to the committee. We ask the committee to consider the following, documented, and supported evidence:

We respectfully request that the members of the Rights Livelihood Award committee review their award of this prestigious award to the organisation known as the White Helmets.

We believe strongly that this award has been given in error, perhaps because not enough evidence was presented to the committee.  We ask the committee to consider the following, documented, and supported evidence:

The White Helmets claim to be a neutral, impartial, humanitarian NGO, with no official affiliation to any political or military actor and a commitment to render services to any in need regardless of sect or political affiliation. We will now determine the legitimacy of this claim.

1: They receive funding from UK ( $65m), US ( via USAID $ 23m), Holland ($ 4.5m), Germany ($ 7.87m) and Japan via the Mayday Rescue “foundation” that was set up by the British ex-military trainer of the White Helmets in order to transfer funding to the White Helmets.  The White Helmets also receive equipment and supplies from various EU member states.

2:  The White Helmets were established in Gazientap, Turkey not inside Syria.  They are largely trained in Turkey and Jordan, not inside Syria.

3: The White Helmets are embedded exclusively in areas of Syria occupied by Nusra Front and ISIS, along with various associated “moderate rebels” such as Ahrar al Sham and Nour Al Din Zinki, both of which are responsible for carrying out ethnic cleansing operations and executions of the Syrian people.  Nour Al Din Zinki was recently videoed beheading 12 year old Palestinian child, Abdullah Issa.

4:  During the situation in Madaya in January 2016, the White Helmets in Idlib were photographed attending demonstrations & carrying banners that were calling for the “burning and destruction” of Kafarya and Foua.  These are two Idlib villages under full siege by Ahrar Al Sham & Nusra Front (Al Qaeda in Syria) since March 2015, partial siege since 2012.  The siege ensures the starvation of villagers and daily shelling and sniping by Ahrar Al Sham and Nusra Front has killed over 1750 civilians during this time.

5: There is video and photographic evidence available that clearly shows the White Helmets participating in Nusra Front operations in the areas occupied or taken over by this organisation. There is one particularly damning video taken during the Nusra Front violent and brutal attack on Idlib City in March 2015. In this video White Helmet operatives are seen clearly beating a Syrian civilian prisoner of Nusra Front and circling the prisoner, mingling with heavily armed and hostile Nusra Front militia. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56xTAYp6zz0

6:  The White Helmets have been filmed “clearing up” after a Nusra Front execution of a civilian prisoner in Northern Aleppo.  Although the official statement from the White Helmets claims they arrived after the execution, the speed with which they appear (in video) immediately after the prisoner has been shot in the head, demonstrates clearly that they were on the scene and did nothing to prevent it.

7: Various other White Helmet operatives have posted videos of the torture and execution of Syrian Arab Army prisoners to their social media pages with celebratory comments.  One such operative, Muawiya Hassan Agha, is alleged to have been “sacked” for his participation in such executions.  However, despite various demands, an official statement has never been issued by the White Helmets to this effect. Neither have they publicly condemned the torture and execution of prisoners of war, an act that contravenes the Geneva Convention.

8: The leader of the White Helmets, Raed Saleh, was deported from Dulles Airport in the US, April 2016.  No real explanation was ever given for this decision.  Mark Toner of the US State Department fielded questions from media but did (i) Admit to funding the group with $ 23m and (ii) suggest that Raed Saleh might have “extremist connections”.  Raed Saleh has recently been allowed back into the US in September 2016 and spoke at the UN New York with the Dutch Mission.  However, no explanation has been given for this reversal of the previous decision to deport Saleh.

9: The White Helmets are also known as the Syria Civil Defence. However, there is an existing Syria Civil Defence. The REAL Syria Civil Defence was established in Syria in 1953.  Vanessa Beeley met with crews in Aleppo, Lattakia, Tartous and Damascus during four weeks she recently spent in Syria.  The REAL Syria Civil Defence were founder members of the ICDO [International Civil Defence Organisation] which is affiliated with the UN, WHO, OCHA, Red Cross, Red Crescent.  The REAL Syria Civil Defence are still paying annual subscriptions to the ICDO of 20,000 Swiss Francs.  The REAL Syria Civil Defence do operate in both terrorist and government held areas, they operate with equipment that has been decimated by the war & sanctions and they do not receive up to $ 100 m in funding from the US, UK and EU states. They are recruited and trained inside Syria.

10: During interviews with the REAL Syria Civil Defence, they informed Beeley, that the Nusra Front and associated “moderate rebels “ who invaded areas such as East Aleppo, Raqqa, Deir Ezzor, Idlib, massacred crew members of the REAL Syria Civil Defence and stole the majority of their equipment in those areas, including fire engines and ambulances. Many of these armed groups then became White Helmet operatives.  Testimony from the REAL Syria Civil Defence suggests that the White Helmets are acting as support for Nusra Front, ISIS and other heavily armed militia described as “moderate rebels”. 

11: The White Helmets have been exposed, recycling images of children and incidents from the conflict in Syria, to support their narrative, using images from a previous incident or even fake images altogether.  There are many documented instances of this.

12: The White Helmets have been filmed describing Syrian Arab Army bodies as “trash” and one particular video shows them standing on top of a pile of SAA soldier’s bodies, whose boots have been removed or stolen.  The White Helmets talk about the bodies in pejorative terms and they flick a victory V sign as the truck drives off.

13: There are many images documented, that reveal the White Helmet operatives carrying arms or posing with arms alongside the various armed militia including Nusra Front.  There is also further footage from Idlib showing White Helmet operatives celebrating alongside Nusra Front militia after the massacre of Syrian Arab Army forces and Syrian civilians during this attack.

14: Adulatory publicity about the White Helmets is the result of commercial marketing and social media promotion via a network that is funded by George Soros and various US, UK and Middle Eastern enterprises. The PR network is: Avaaz – Purpose – Syria Campaign – White Helmets.  The funding and connections back to organisations and US state funded entities that have a vested interest in events in Syria is also extensively documented.

15: The White Helmets achieve on average 4 or 5 videos per day, depicting their rescue efforts. The REAL Syria Civil Defence have evaluated these videos and cast doubt as to the White Helmets being true first responders or USAR (Urban Search and Rescue) experts.  They pinpointed various anomalies (i) the equipment used is too heavyweight for the delicate operation of finding bodies beneath collapsed buildings (ii) the treatment of injured bodies is dangerous, they are flung onto stretchers with no back support or neck brace, for example.  Many of the paramedic procedures shown on film are also deemed questionable. The White Helmets rarely travel without a sizeable camera team or crew of mobile phone cameramen. The REAL Syria Civil Defence do not.

16: Vanessa Beeley conducted a video interview with Dr Bassem Hayak of the Aleppo Medical Association, based in West Aleppo. Dr Hayak still has family trapped in East Aleppo.  Dr Hayak told me that his family and the majority of civilians in East Aleppo (occupied by Nusra Front and an estimated 22 brigades of armed militants) do not know who the White Helmets are which begs the question, where are they conducting their much promoted humanitarian work? Dr Hayak also said that UN agencies in East Aleppo who work with the Aleppo Medical Association are not aware of the White Helmets.

In summary, this evidence points to the White Helmets being a US, UK, EU creation established in 2013, not an independent NGO.  It is an organisation with clear affiliation to governments involved & invested in the Syrian conflict. It is not a grass-roots Syrian organisation.  There is an existing Syria Civil Defence that is being ignored.

The evidence demonstrates that the White Helmets are sectarian not impartial.  They are in many instances, armed not unarmed.  The promotional material produced for the White Helmets such as the recent Netflix Movie, is produced outside Syria, usually in Turkey and with footage received from the White Helmets.  Who has verified the authenticity of this footage?

The White Helmets claim to be neutral and non-aligned yet they actively promote and lobby for US/NATO state intervention.  This is in direct violation of the norms of authentic humanitarian work and certainly not deserving of the Rights Livelihood Award.

This organisation, effectively, campaigns for war in Syria.

The White Helmets are feeding images of “humanitarian disaster” and “war crimes” to the western nations who are funding them, and to politicians and media outlets who are using these visual narratives in order to lobby for a US, UK Foreign Office stated policy of a “Safe Zone” or “No Fly Zone” in Syria.  History teaches us that a No Fly Zone policy carries with it the threat of reducing Syria to a Libya style “failed state”.

Many of their “campaigns” have been discredited as “war fiction” yet are being used as justification for increased sanctions, a collective punishment of the Syrian people, and equipping and arming of the various militia on the ground in Syria, including Nusra Front.

This only serves to ensure no end to the suffering and bloodshed inside Syria.

The presentation of the Right Livelihood Award to the White Helmets will ultimately discredit the Right Livelihood Foundation.  More importantly, the awarding of this prize to a suspect and fraudulent organisation serves to perpetuate the conflict in Syria and to delay the possibility of any peaceful resolution.

We call on the leaders of the Right Livelihood Foundation to investigate the evidence presented in this statement and to retract the RLA award, if this evidence is proven sufficient to disqualify the White Helmets. 

Thank you for your consideration of this very important matter.

Vanessa Beeley

US Peace Council member (part of recent US Peace Council delegation to Syria July 2016)

Links:

The Syrian Civil Defence: Wikipedia

Compilation of most important articles and talks on the White Helmets: Who are the Syria White Helmets

The REAL Syria Civil Defence Part I

YouTube video of White Helmets attacking prisoner of Nusra Front, Idlib March 2015

Investigation into the funding sources of the White Helmets, including Avaaz, Purpose, The Syria Campaign

Letter from the Hamilton Coalition to Stop War to the New Democratic Party in Canada ref the White Helmet nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize:

Letter to NDP from Prof. John Ryan protesting White Helmet nomination for RLA and Nobel Peace Prize.

"The world has seen nothing more barbaric in modern history than Iraq and Libya done the Washington way.” (Russian Foreign Ministry's spokesperson Maria Zakharova). The original source of this article is at https://www.rt.com/news/360662-zakharova-power-barbarism-spat/

The US envoy to the UN, who recently called Russia's actions in Syria “barbarism,” is hypocritical, because nothing in modern history is more barbaric than what the US has done in Iraq and Libya, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said in a fiery rebuke.

The American envoy to the UN, Samantha Power, blasted Russia on Sunday at a Security Council meeting, accusing Moscow of civilian deaths in Aleppo in the wake of the collapse of the ceasefire negotiated by the US and Russia.

"What Russia is sponsoring and doing is not counter-terrorism, it is barbarism," the US diplomat said in reference to the renewed hostilities in Syria.

She delivered an emotional speech, accusing Russia and Syria of attacks on aid workers, civilian infrastructure and residential areas, while omitting the fact that armed groups – including Al-Qaeda offshoot Al-Nusra Front – are in control of large parts of Aleppo and are using its population as human shields.

The use of the term 'barbarism' by the American envoy drew sarcastic remarks from Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova.

“Historically speaking... a barbarian is someone not belonging to an empire, and we have only one of those today,” she noted on her Facebook page.

“As for the imagery... the world has seen nothing more barbaric in modern history than Iraq and Libya done the Washington way.”

Zakharova believes that Power's remarks were meant to draw attention from the American attack on Syrian troops near Deir ez-Zor, which happened amid the ceasefire and almost resulted in the Syrian Army's positions being overrun by the terrorist group Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), which the US is supposedly seeking to eradicate.

Moscow blames the US for the failed truce, saying it was incapable of reining in rebel groups who would not commit to it, and would not agree to designating them as legitimate targets for counter-attacks.

Power, who received her current appointment in 2013, was among the most vocal supporters of the concept of “humanitarian interventionalism” – the use of military force on humanitarian grounds.

The invasion of Saddam Hussein's Iraq and the toppling of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya are both examples of such actions. In both cases, interventions meant to prevent human suffering actually caused huge tragedies in the long run.

This is a photo-essay by Eva Bartlett about life in Damascus, the capital city of Syria, today. Some might find it surprising to see that people still walk the streets, smile and dance in discos, that many women go bare-headed and bare-armed. This looks like any European or Australian city. Yes, there is a war on and foreign-backed forces seem determined to destroy Syria, but they have not succeeded yet. There is obviously so much to Syria, so many layers, so many strengths, that contradict the two-dimensional impression conveyed by Australian and other western mass-media. This false impression has been assisted by Soros-financed 'Aid' groups and others who have remarketed Syria as a mere a basket-case of refugees, with no acknowledgement of the Syrian government's successful efforts to protect its people, resettle refugees, and fight back against foreign-backed terrorists. To see this photo-essay is to suddenly realise that Syria is just waiting to spring back to life. Emboldened words have been added to highlight photo-relationship to text. Editor, Candobetter.net

Photo Essay by Eva Bartlett@EvaBartlettGaza | July 20, 2016

Life for many in Damascus, Syria is beginning to regain a sense of normalcy. Once besieged by foreign fighters, the ancient city and it's residents struggle to rebuild their lives, land and livelihood, rejoicing in the simple mundanity of day-to-day life.

The croissant stand in Aamarie district of Thomas Gate is known not only to Damascenes but visitors from other areas of Syria. While prices for most goods have risen all across Syria, the stand keeps its prices low: 125 Syrian pounds per sumptuous croissant. On the first day of ‘Eid celebrations the stand is packed.

Damascus — On prior visits to Damascus, staying in the Old City, the sound of mortars being fired from terrorist-held districts outside of the city was a constant. In recent months, the mortars on Damascus have stopped. Previously, Jebhat al-Nusra (Al Qaeda in Syria), Jaysh al-Islam and the Free Syrian Army, among other terrorist factions, rained mortars daily on residential areas of Damascus, hitting schools, homes, vehicles and pedestrians, killing and maiming indiscriminately, leaving civilians, including children, with critical injuries and amputations.  

With the recent absence of mortars, Damascenes have opened outdoor establishments where before it was formerly too dangerous. Sidewalks cafes and outdoor eateries open at night were unthinkable less than half a year ago, let alone rooftop cafes and lounges. Although Syrians suffer immensely from an economy devastated by war and western sanctions, in Damascus there is a renewed sense of defiance, a refusal to give in, or as a young man in his twenties visiting from Aleppo said: “They have their own war against death by living.”

A snapshot of life in Damascus, June and July 2016:

Wedding procession in the Old City of Damascus. Love and life continue. A newcomer to Syria might be surprised by the vibrancy of life among Damascus residents, who have lived under al-Nusra and Jaysh al-Islam mortars for years, as well as cruel sanctions. “Tawadna” is a phrase that is heard often in Syria: “We got used to it.” Even when mortars rained down, Syrians celebrated their weddings and festivals. Now, in Damascus at least, it is safer to do so outside.Wedding procession in the Old City of Damascus. Love and life continue. A newcomer to Syria might be surprised by the vibrancy of life among Damascus residents, who have lived under al-Nusra and Jaysh al-Islam mortars for years, as well as cruel sanctions. “Tawadna” is a phrase that is heard often in Syria: “We got used to it.” Even when mortars rained down, Syrians celebrated their weddings and festivals. Now, in Damascus at least, it is safer to do so outside.

The book market near the President's Bridge and Damascus University is an institution in Damascus, known to book lovers who can't afford bookstores. It is one Damascus venue which refused to shut down over the years, mortars or not. In addition to its Arabic books, one can find English language books and cookbooks, English literature, popular English-language thrillers and taudry romance novels. The book market near the President’s Bridge and Damascus Univeristy is an institution in Damascus, known to book lovers who can’t afford bookstores. It is one Damascus venue which refused to shut down over the years, mortars or not. In addition to its Arabic books, one can find English language books and cookbooks, English literature, popular English-language thrillers and taudry romance novels.

In the narrow lanes of Old Damascus, a wooden mosaic artisan explains the techniques of his trade. The tediously-crafted and beautiful woodwork is a favourite for tourists. In spite of the dearth of customers in the past five and a half years, craftsmen and women continue to practise their skills in hopes that when peace returns to Syria, so too will tourists.In the narrow lanes of Old Damascus, a wooden mosaic artisan explains the techniques of his trade. The tediously-crafted and beautiful woodwork is a favourite for tourists. In spite of the dearth of customers in the past five and a half years, craftsmen and women continue to practise their skills in hopes that when peace returns to Syria, so too will tourists.

The Abu Zolouf bar is one among many bars and lounges opened in the East Gate quarter of the Old City in recent months. Two years ago, I sat with the adjacent restaurant owner, Nabil, outside his then-vacant restaurant discussing the frequent mortars that Jebhat al-Nusra and the Free Syrian Army were firing on Damascus, from Jobar, less than 1 km to the northeast. As mortars fell in nearby districts of the Old City, Nabil narrated close-calls he had had with such mortars hitting outside his restaurant. He also lamented the loss of customers in recent years. Since their May 30, 2016, opening, the Abu Zolouf bar has nightly from 70 to 150 patrons looking to relax outdoors.The Abu Zolouf bar is one among many bars and lounges opened in the East Gate quarter of the Old City in recent months. Two years ago, I sat with the adjacent restaurant owner, Nabil, outside his then-vacant restaurant discussing the frequent mortars that Jebhat al-Nusra and the Free Syrian Army were firing on Damascus, from Jobar, less than 1 km to the northeast. As mortars fell in nearby districts of the Old City, Nabil narrated close-calls he had had with such mortars hitting outside his restaurant. He also lamented the loss of customers in recent years. Since their May 30, 2016, opening, the Abu Zolouf bar has nightly from 70 to 150 patrons looking to relax outdoors.

Le Visage, also in the East Gate quarter, was among the first outdoor establishment to open after the mortars stopped some months ago. From its rooftop position, one can look down on the historic Straight Street leading up to East Gate, as well as see life on balconies opposite, where months prior they were empty. A display of lighted alcohol bottles gleam in the dark, with Jobar less than 1 km beyond. A Damascus youth noted: “Imagine, ISIS are about 4 km away and we are opening new bars. This is the Syrian people.” Le Visage, also in the East Gate quarter, was among the first outdoor establishment to open after the mortars stopped some months ago. From its rooftop position, one can look down on the historic Straight Street leading up to East Gate, as well as see life on balconies opposite, where months prior they were empty. A display of lighted alcohol bottles gleam in the dark, with Jobar less than 1 km beyond. A Damascus youth noted: “Imagine, ISIS are about 4 km away and we are opening new bars. This is the Syrian people.”

In an artsy restaurant along the Straight Street, stone walls are adorned with the owner's brighly-coloured paintings and a solitary board with the words “Cup of Coffee Pending” at the top. Hekmat Daoud, an artist and prominent costume designer, also the eccentric hospitable owner of Kasida Dimashqia restaurant, employs a tradition he says is common in Naples, Italy. “When paying for their bill, people can pay extra towards free drinks for students or those too poor to afford one.” After a thirsty weekend, only a few promises of coffee remain. “There were more before, but students came and wanted arak and beer,” Daoud laughed.In an artsy restaurant along the Straight Street, stone walls are adorned with the owner’s brighly-coloured paintings and a solitary board with the words “Cup of Coffee Pending” at the top. Hekmat Daoud, an artist and prominent costume designer, also the eccentric hospitable owner of Kasida Dimashqia restaurant, employs a tradition he says is common in Naples, Italy. “When paying for their bill, people can pay extra towards free drinks for students or those too poor to afford one.” After a thirsty weekend, only a few promises of coffee remain. “There were more before, but students came and wanted arak and beer,” Daoud laughed.

A shared meal with local family in the Old City. After over five years of the war on Syria, prices for all basic goods have risen dramatically, while incomes remain the same or shattered. The Western sanctions on the Syria worsen the situation, hurting the Syrian people and social services the most.A shared meal with local family in the Old City. After over five years of the war on Syria, prices for all basic goods have risen dramatically, while incomes remain the same or shattered. The Western sanctions on the Syria worsen the situation, hurting the Syrian people and social services the most.

Behind the Umayyad Mosque in Old Damascus, one of tens of volunteers daily helps prepare the Iftar (fast-breaking) meals that the Saaed Association was serving to impoverished Damascus residents, even delivering to those unable to pick up meals themselves. Starting with 3,000 recipients, by the end of Ramadan, the volunteers were providing 10,000 meals daily in Damascus alone, with another combined 7,000 meals prepared in Hama and Homs. Behind the Umayyad Mosque in Old Damascus, one of tens of volunteers daily helps prepare the Iftar (fast-breaking) meals that the Saaed Association was serving to impoverished Damascus residents, even delivering to those unable to pick up meals themselves. Starting with 3,000 recipients, by the end of Ramadan, the volunteers were providing 10,000 meals daily in Damascus alone, with another combined 7,000 meals prepared in Hama and Homs.

Volunteers from the Saaed Association relax after the second day of 'Eid activities for children. Instead of clothes or money, “we gave children hope and joy,” one volunteer said. In contrast to the sectarianism imposed on Syria by Gulf States and Turkey, Syrians maintain their unity and secularism, emphasized by such volunteers whose allegiance is to humanitarism and helping the less fortunate. Volunteers from the Saaed Association relax after the second day of ‘Eid activities for children. Instead of clothes or money, “we gave children hope and joy,” one volunteer said. In contrast to the sectarianism imposed on Syria by Gulf States and Turkey, Syrians maintain their unity and secularism, emphasized by such volunteers whose allegiance is to humanitarism and helping the less fortunate.

The phenomenon of children begging in the streets was not common in Syria prior to 2011. While some children work to help surpport their families who have been rendered destitute due to various effects of the war on Syria, according to Damascus locals, the majority of these children work in a sort of forced labour for ring-leaders coming from the eastern Ghouta region. Many associations work to provide basic services to these children. One such volunteer organization provides education and meals, teaching children not only the basics of reading and writing, but also works to instill moral values and give opportunities, however briefly in their work-day, for children to be children. The phenomenon of children begging in the streets was not common in Syria prior to 2011. While some children work to help surpport their families who have been rendered destitute due to various effects of the war on Syria, according to Damascus locals, the majority of these children work in a sort of forced labour for ring-leaders coming from the eastern Ghouta region. Many associations work to provide basic services to these children. One such volunteer organization provides education and meals, teaching children not only the basics of reading and writing, but also works to instill moral values and give opportunities, however briefly in their work-day, for children to be children.

Statistics from the Syrian Ministry of Information (November 2015) cite as many as 50 “members of Syrian mass media establishments” killed while at work or reporting. Thaer Al-Ajlani, top left, was killed on July 27, 2015 when hit with shrapnel from a mortar fired by Jebhat al-Nusra, then occupying much of Jobar. Other martyred journalists have been killed by terrorists' sniper attacks, point-blank assassinations, shellings and gunfire while reporting. Corporate media and international associations to protect journalists have largely ignored the deaths of Syrian journalists killed by western-backed terrorist factions. Statistics from the Syrian Ministry of Information (November 2015) cite as many as 50 “members of Syrian mass media establishments” killed while at work or reporting. Thaer Al-Ajlani, top left, was killed on July 27, 2015 when hit with shrapnel from a mortar fired by Jebhat al-Nusra, then occupying much of Jobar. Other martyred journalists have been killed by terrorists’ sniper attacks, point-blank assassinations, shellings and gunfire while reporting. Corporate media and international associations to protect journalists have largely ignored the deaths of Syrian journalists killed by western-backed terrorist factions.

Stopping to buy water in an Old City shop, the owner's only issue with me taking a photograph of his fridge is that he wants to dust off the photos of President Assad a bit first, apologizing that they are old, from well-before the current crisis.Stopping to buy water in an Old City shop, the owner’s only issue with me taking a photograph of his fridge is that he wants to dust off the photos of President Assad a bit first, apologizing that they are old, from well-before the current crisis.

“We are here and will stay here. Our leader and our army is our hope.” The sign speaks the sentiment of Syrians I have met in Aleppo, Homs, Latakia, Sweida, Ma'loula, and Damascus. The popularity of President al-Assad has even been admitted by western sources in recent years as at least 70%, although popular sentiment on the streets would put the figure even higher.

Children on the second day of 'Eid. Although Damascus is largely secure and safe, many living in the city are directly affected by the war on Syria, with many having lost a family member, been rendered financially-insecure, or been displaced from areas of the country. Children on the second day of ‘Eid. Although Damascus is largely secure and safe, many living in the city are directly affected by the war on Syria, with many having lost a family member, been rendered financially-insecure, or been displaced from areas of the country.

About the author


Eva Bartlett

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian activist/freelance journalistst.

More articles by
Eva Bartlett

'With the Kerry - Lavrov agreement having collapsed and the US military ruling out imposition of a no-fly zone, the US can only rage as the Syrian army with Russian backing closes in on the Jihadis in eastern Aleppo.' Here are the first few paras of an excellent opinion article by Alexander Mercuris, who is the editor in chief of The Duran, with a link to the full article. The article gives a good view from the other side of the grandstanding by the United States over Syria.

Russia calls U.S. bluff on Syria, Washington rages

Alexander Mercouris4 hours agoSeptember 26, 2016 4 218

Read more at http://theduran.com/us-rages-russia-calls-syrian-bluff/

Mossad are the secret police of the state of Israel, which has explicitly waged wars of aggression against Syria in the past. Whilst we are aware of other NATO-aligned illegal presences in Syria, this news of the presence of Mossad is particularly shocking, in a series of increasingly shocking incidents. This report directly implicates US-NATO in terrorist activities and it is likely that the western newsmedia will avoid reporting this exposure of its illegal activities, for fear of calling into legitimate question the western presence in Syria.Republished from article of Wed Sep 21, 2016 12:12 on Farsnews (Iran) which cites Sputnick as its source. Inset Video is Russian language news report with summary in English by Lad Rey, from her article here: https://futuristrendcast.wordpress.com/2016/09/23/libya-2-0-west-demands-syria-no-fly-zone-retaliation-russian-kalibr-missiles-strike-us-intel-center/ TEHRAN (FNA)- The Russian warships stationed in Syria's coastal waters targeted and destroyed a foreign military operations room, killing over two dozen Israeli and western intelligence officers."The Russian warships fired three Caliber missiles at the foreign officers' coordination operations room in Dar Ezza region in the Western part of Aleppo near Sam'an mountain, killing 30 Israeli and western officers," the Arabic-language service of Russia's Sputnik news agency quoted battlefield source in Aleppo as saying on Wednesday.

This video is a Russian news report of the incident. Here is Lada Rey's 'summary translation' published at https://futuristrendcast.wordpress.com/2016/09/23/libya-2-0-west-demands-syria-no-fly-zone-retaliation-russian-kalibr-missiles-strike-us-intel-center/: According to Fars News agency, Russian military ships launched three Kalibr cruise missiles; the strike hit the Dar Ezza joint intelligence coordination center for the US coalition, killing 30 Israeli and Western officers. The center, aka, Field Operations Room near Aleppo is staffed with officers from US, Turkey, UK, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Qatar. Canadian researcher Michel Chossudovsky says that the center was hit after US coalition forces bombed the Syrian army. The intelligence center in question provided intelligence and played a leading role in making the bombing happen.

The operations room was located in the Western part of Aleppo province in the middle of sky-high Sam'an mountain and old caves. The region is deep into a chain of mountains.

Several US, Turkish, Saudi, Qatari and British officers were also killed along with the Israeli officers. The foreign officers who were killed in the Aleppo operations room were directing the terrorists' attacks in Aleppo and Idlib. 

Earlier in September, the Syrian army units launched a preemptive strike on the terrorists of the so-called Aleppo Operations Room in their gathering centers near Castello road in the Northern areas of Aleppo and Mallah farms, foiling their plots to attack the region's supply route, a source said.

The source said that the army's artillery units attacked the terrorists' gathering centers near Castello and Mallah farms in Zahra Abdo Rabbah, Kafar Hamra and Hurayatyn which killed and wounded dozens of militants.

Also, the Syrian air force attacked the terrorists' supply route in Northern Aleppo towards Hayyan and Adnan as well as the supply roads in Western Aleppo towards the North and smashed the terrorists' convoys in al-Aratab, Urom Kobra and Ma'ara al-Artiq which thwarted the terrorists' plots and forced many of them flee towards the Turkish borders.

Informed media sources disclosed earlier that the Syrian army has continued its advances in the Southern part of Aleppo, and regained control over several strategic areas in the town of Khan Touman.

"A number of key warehouses of Khan Touman are now under the Syrian army's control," the Arabic-language media quoted an unnamed informed source as saying.

The source noted that the Syrian air force and army's artillery units also targeted the gathering centers and fortifications of the terrorists in Khan Touman.

Syrian President Bashar Assad says that US airstrikes which killed 62 Syrian government troops were “intentional” and they lasted for an hour. He added that the US “does not have the will” to join Russia in fighting terrorists in Syria. Article contains video interview of Bashar al-Assad on this matter. (Article first published on RT on 22 Sep, 2016 11:18 at https://www.rt.com/news/360248-assad-ap-intentional-us-airstrikes/.)

All five ACT electorates to be contested by Sustainable Australia. Sustainable Australia’s first state/territory campaign will see the party contest all five ACT electorates, represented by a diverse range of candidates from an Indigenous Elder to a 20 year old ANU science student.

Sustainable Australia (ACT) president John Haydon is representing the party in Kurrajong, and says he's delighted to have all five electorates covered in the party's first non-federal campaign.

Mr Haydon says, "Our campaign will focus on three key points: Save Canberra from overdevelopment; Lower rates; and Protect our trees."

"We will provide for proper community consultation in all development applications across the ACT.

"By slowing population growth, we relieve the ACT of the need to build and/or retro-fit so much budget-breaking complex infrastructure - like ever more trams, hospitals and schools. This budget relief will achieve lower rates than would otherwise be the case.

"And by saving Canberra from ever more sprawl and infill overdevelopment we are the only party with a sustainable plan to protect our trees and green space."

Ngunnawal Elder Violet Sheridan is standing for the party in the seat of Yerrabi, covering Gungahlin.

Ms Sheridan says, "It is important to provide better education opportunities for Aboriginal youth and all young Australians, as well as housing affordability for first home buyers and renters. I'm also passionate about protecting the ACT's Aboriginal and European heritage from overdevelopment."

The party's Ginninderra candidate Martin Tye obtained a Bachelor of Applied Science in Geography from the University of Canberra, and also has an extensive background in small business, running successful retail outlets for over 30 years.

"My extensive campaigning around Belconnen has told me that many voters are tired of the same old political choices, and want something different. Most voters want a common sense party from the political centre, and support our aim for an economically, environmentally and socially sustainable ACT," said Mr Tye.

Mr Tye's son Oliver is also running for the party, in Kurrajong in which his university sits.

"I'm loving studying science at ANU but would go to part-time study if I had the privilege of representing younger voters in the ACT Legislative Assembly," said Mr (Oliver) Tye.

Full details on the campaign can be found at our website:

http://www.votesustainable.org.au/act

Policy Platform - Sustainable Australia

The nonsense is flowing thick and fast from the mainstream news media. Still haunted by the psychopathic performance of Samantha Powers screaming that Russia was to blame for what America had done in Syria, next I hear that the US is categorically blaming Russia for explosive attacks on aid trucks to Syria. Now I have discovered that François Hollande, possibly the most unpopular French President ever,[1] an undignified, unrepresentative globalist, anti-socialist socialist, and general little fat fraud, has been awarded (not by the French of course) but in New York, the 'World statesman Award' by the Appeal of Conscience Foundation. Dr. Henry A. Kissinger, 1999 World Statesman honoree, delivered an address and the laudation at the Awards Dinner." (See http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/french-president-francois-hollande-honored-by-appeal-of-conscience-foundation-with-world-statesman-award-300330937.html)

This is probably the best that Hollande can hope for before he loses the next election. A prize from world bullies for Hollande's odious actions in depriving his countrymen of their hard-won civil and industrial rights.

Comments from the French about the award demonstrate disbelief. Here is a typical one from Hennir33: "Grotesque! It is as nonsensical as it would be to give the Nobel Peace Prize to the president of North Korea." See http://www.atlantico.fr/pepites/francois-hollande-recoit-prix-homme-etat-mondial-2016-2711962.html

But then, dear me, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Barack Obama, who has gone on to pulverise the Middle East and taunt Russia. So why not to Kim Jong-un, who says, anyway, that he's only responding to the threat from U.S. military bases all around South Korea.

As an indication of Hollande's outrageous perfidy, he was recently spotted slipping a 'legion d'honneur' to Saudi Prince Mohamed ben Nayef, the Crown Prince responsible for the terrible war on Yemmen.

"The awarding by François Hollande two days ago of the Légion d'honneur to the Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed ben Nayef, was roundly criticised by several politicians.

It was condemned particularly by the far right but also by the socialist deputy of Haute-Garonne, Gérard Bapt, who wrote that 'political-commercial realism should not lead to two different speeds on moral positions.' Mediapart journalist, Laurent Mauduit, condemned the award of the medal and, at the same time, new arms deliveries from Paris to Ryad."[2]

Who's Who among the self-appointed world statesmen

"The invocation [for François Hollande's award] was delivered by Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York and the benediction by Archbishop Demetrios, Primate of Greek Orthodox Church. Rupert Murdoch, Executive Chairman of News Corporation, Stephen A. Schwarzman, Chairman and CEO of Blackstone, and Jerry Speyer, Chairman of Tishman Speyer, are the Chairs of this event.

The international event brought together over 800 prominent leaders of business, religious and public life, foreign statesmen and the diplomatic corps in support of the global interfaith activities on behalf of religious freedom, human rights and tolerance for over half a century.

Past recipients of the World Statesman Award include:
German Chancellor, Angela Merkel; Mexican President, Enrique Peña Nieto; and former Prime Ministers, Presidents and Crowned Royalty including: Margaret Thatcher, Gordon Brown and David Cameron of the United Kingdom; Canadian Prime Ministers, Stephen Harper and Jean Chrétien, South Korean President, Lee Myung-bak; Prime Minister of the Republic of India, Dr. Manmohan Singh; French President, Nicolas Sarkozy; Brazilian Presidents, Henrique Cardoso and Ignacio Lula da Silva; Italian Prime Minister, Romano Prodi; Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson; Australian Prime Minister, John Howard; King of Spain, Juan Carlos I; President of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev; and President of the Czech Republic, Václav Havel."

The names read like a list of ... um... deplorables. As two French commented, Who is behind this organisation that has come out of nowhere? Is it Soros again? http://www.atlantico.fr/pepites/francois-hollande-recoit-prix-homme-etat-mondial-2016-2711962.html.

NOTES

[1] On 20 September 2016, only 16 % of people polled considered François Hollande to be a 'good president', against 84% who didn't. These statistics had not changed since June. Source: http://www.lepoint.fr/politique/francois-hollande-chute-encore-dans-un-sondage-20-09-2016-2069723_20.php.

[2]https://www.franceinter.fr/monde/hollande-remet-discretement-la-legion-d-honneur-a-un-prince-saoudien "Cette remise, il y a deux jours par François Hollande de la Légion d'honneur au prince héritier d'Arabie saoudite Mohamed ben Nayef, a été vertement critiquée par plusieurs responsables politiques.

Cette décoration a notamment été dénoncée par l'extrême-droite mais aussi par le député socialiste de Haute-Garonne Gérard Bapt estimant dans un communiqué que "le réalisme politico-commercial ne devrait pas conduire à des postures morales à deux vitesses". Le journaliste de Mediapart Laurent Mauduit dénonce pour sa part la remise de cette médaille et par ailleurs de nouvelles livraisons d'armes de Paris à Ryad."

“It’s completely disingenuous for anyone who is truly concerned about this nation’s sustainability and carrying capacity to continue to ignore the jet engine driving U.S. population growth: immigration.” - Dan Stein, President of FAIR

(September 20, 2016, Washington, D.C.) – One of the most important factors in achieving environmental sustainability in the U.S. is to reduce immigration, finds a new report, “U.S. Immigration and the Environment,” by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).  America’s rapidly growing population is one of the biggest impediments to meeting critical environmental goals, and immigration is by far the largest factor driving U.S. population growth.

“It’s completely disingenuous for anyone who is truly concerned about this nation’s sustainability and carrying capacity to continue to ignore the jet engine driving U.S. population growth: immigration,” said FAIR President Dan Stein. “Immigration fueled more than half of U.S. population growth in the last 50 years, and will generate three-quarters of it in the next 50 years,” he added.

The U.S. has the largest ecological footprint in the world, measured by emissions of greenhouse gases and resource consumption. Adding to that footprint is the growing number of human feet, largely a result of mass immigration, which continues to undermine our efforts to minimize America’s impact on the global environment. All of the gains that have been made through conservation and improved efficiency have been wiped out by continued immigration-driven population growth. 

“It is simply impossible for the United States to address critical ecological challenges while increasing our population by more than 100 million people by the middle of this century,” said Stein. “A high-immigration, high-population U.S. threatens the future successes of the environmental movement, including efforts to fight global climate change and urban sprawl.”

The report makes five recommendations, noting that any delay reducing immigration will make it increasingly difficult to achieve a political consensus to finally bring immigration back to traditional levels.  The recommendations include:

• The government should adopt an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on U.S. immigration policy.  No U.S. government agency has ever produced an EIS assessing the impact of large-scale population growth.

• Set a national goal of population stabilization.  First recommended nearly 50 years ago and then again under President Clinton, the U.S. should adopt the goal of population stabilization.

• End chain migration.  Admission to the U.S. should be limited to the immediate nuclear family of immigrants, including spouse and unmarried minor children.

• Reduce immigration levels.  Immigration should be reduced from its current 1.25 million to roughly 300,000 per year.

• Adopt an immigration policy that lives within an immigration “budget.” Living within an immigration budget will inject some much-needed discipline into the system and address the continued use of “temporary” categories that remain in place long after the crisis that created the need ends.

“In recent years, many environmental groups that had previously taken strong, common sense positions in favor of reducing immigration have abandoned their core principles in favor of other political agendas. Given the existential challenges posed by global warming and other threats to the survival of our planet, these groups need to support commonsense population policies now,” said Stein.  “The only way to buy some time in the race the save the environment is by acting now on immigration.”

Read the full report here.

ABOUT FAIR    
Founded in 1979, FAIR is the country’s largest immigration reform group.  With over 250,000 members nationwide, FAIR fights for immigration policies that serve national interests, not special interests.  FAIR believes that immigration reform must enhance national security, improve the economy, protect jobs, preserve our environment, and establish a rule of law that is recognized and enforced.

The Syria Solidarity Movement unequivocally condemns and denounces the vicious US bombing attack on the Syrian army defending Deir ez-Zour, and we wish to make the following observations.

The attack killed at least 62 Syrian soldiers and wounded more than 100. This is larger than the number of casualties inflicted in any US bombing on any terrorist target in Syria since the US announced its "war on ISIS".

The bombing inflicted no known casualties on ISIS, which the US says was its intended target.

The US has produced no evidence that it notified its Russian counterparts, as required by agreement. In fact, joint action against ISIS was not expected for another two days. This leads to suspicions that the US attack was intended to preempt the provisions of the agreement.

Syrian soldiers report seeing reconnaissance drones the previous day.

ISIS fighters were poised to begin fighting the Syrian army units as soon as the US bombing raids ended. How did they know what constituted the end of the bombing?

Although the Russian military presence in Syria is legal because it came at the invitation of the sovereign Syrian state, the US presence is illegal and was never approved, either by the Syrian government or by the United Nations. All US military actions in Syria therefore constitute an illegal invasion of Syrian territory, and must end now.

We find the US explanation of "unintended" targets, and especially the belligerent performance of Ambassador Samantha Power at the United Nations Security Council, to be false, disingenuous and counterproductive. The only credible explanation is that the US attack on Deir ez-Zour was intentional. The US has never seriously tried to fight ISIS other than to defend Kurdish fighters, with rare and largely ineffectual attacks against ISIS fighters in their strongholds, and none during the ISIS campaign against Palmyra, when they were very vulnerable by air.

We believe that the US intention is to dismember the sovereign Syrian state, and that the Syrian army base at Deir ez-Zour constitutes an obstacle to this plan, and is therefore a US target. In accordance with this plan, the US does not mind if ISIS continues to occupy a large portion of the Syrian Euphrates valley, and in fact prefers to maintain ISIS as a destructive force that weakens Syria and is available as a proxy fighting force for other US regional designs, in partnership with their Israeli allies.

We are doubtful that the US intends to honor its agreement with Russia, and implicitly with Syria. US strategists are seeking to weaken and threaten Russia and not to form cooperative and mutually beneficial agreements. Accordingly, the only option may unfortunately be to make the cost to the US too high to be acceptable, and thereby to force a change in its priorities.

There is another and more constructive alternative, as follows.

The US should immediately issue a formal apology to the government of Syria and offer restitution for damages, both to the Syrian government and to the families of the dead and wounded.

The US should withdraw completely from all Syrian territory and end its support for all fighting forces there.

The US should enforce its end user agreements on the use of its arms supplied to Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and other countries, to prevent their use in non-defensive roles outside their territories, and in particular to prevent supplying them to subversive forces in Syria.

The US should use its influence in international banking and commerce to prevent the transfer of funds to terrorist forces in Syria and to prevent illegal trafficking by terrorists of oil and other Syrian assets from terrorist-held territory.

The US should try to develop a new and cooperative relationship with Russia, and to stop threatening Russia through its subversive actions in Syria, Ukraine and other places, including the stationing of bases and troops in countries on Russia's borders. The US should end its commercial and financial sanctions against Russia and Syria.

The US needs to take action to end the internal bickering within its own government. International diplomacy is impossible when agreements negotiated by diplomats are undermined by other governmental agencies. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and other US government figures should be fired for insubordination and replaced with figures that allow the administration to speak with a single voice and so that negotiated agreements can be assured of implementation.

The Syria Solidarity Movement advocates respect for and compliance with all international law, prosecution of international outlaws, an end to attempts to strengthen one country by destroying others, the use of diplomacy to settle international disputes, and the development of peaceful and constructive relationships among all nations. We hold these goals to be of the utmost priority at the present moment because, given the level of escalation to which the USA has pushed a confrontation with Russia (and China) over Syria, Ukraine, and the South China Sea, the threat to world peace has never been higher since 1939.

On 18 September US-Australian-Canadian-Danish airstrikes killed 80 or more Syrian Arab Army soldiers who were attempting to combat ISIS from a Syrian military base. There seems little doubt that this was a war-crime, but it has already been displaced by media-saturation cover of a single act of terrorism in Manhattan where 29 people were injured. Well, the western media may believe it can hide the truth, but Eastern media and the alternative media cannot let this go. Inside this article there are two video debates on the motives and consequences of the US-Australian-Canadian-Danish airstrikes that killed 80 Syrian Arab Army soldiers two days ago. In the first video, "U.S. Bonus for Terrorists," Press TV conducts an interview with Brian Becker, with the ANSWER Coalition from Washington, and Frederick Peterson, a US congressional defense policy advisor from New York, to discuss these US airstrikes in Syria. This debate was originally published by Iranian Press TV at http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2016/09/18/485337/US-bonus-terrorists on Sunday, September 18, 2016.

In the second video debate, "Tenuous Truce" [see video below] there was another debate on the same matter conducted with Scott Bennett, a military expert and former US army psychological warfare officer from San Francisco, and Michael Lane, the founder of American Institute for Foreign Policy from Washington, to discuss the failed ceasefire brokered by the United States and Russia in Syria. This was originally published at http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2016/09/19/485484/US-Russia-Syria-ceasefire.

How does the international community handle a rogue-state U.S.A.?

What can we do when the United States keeps on pulling more and more shocking stunts in the Middle East. It seems to be proving that it is the maddest and the baddest, and that anyone trying to stop it would risk a nuclear war. And Australia and other countries are stupidly being sucked in. Scott Bennett in the second debate, suggests that the world needs to demand a UN inquiry into the US airstrike as a war-crime and that the alternative media and the non-western media - like Rt and Press TV - have to try to raise the profile of that demand to get through the block of fizz that issues from the mainstream western media, which simply puts any challenge to US warmongering to one side:

SCOTT BENNETT: "Secretary Kerry and Obama and the political powers right now, I think, [...] they're off the chain. I think the military is doing its own thing in its own time in order to create fires that the next administration will have to put out. They're seeding their own future job applications. But the facts are - if you're arguing this in court - if you were arguing this to the United Nations Criminal Court - you simply could say, 'The United States engaged in targeting operations and the Russian intelligence forces will provide the appropriate electronic surveillance that will prove that the United States was engaged in chatter and conversations in targeting that resulted in the murder of 80 Syrian military personnel. In order to roll back the Assad military that was attempting to cleanse the country of foreign invaders that were beheading children and raping women and doing all sorts of war-crime atrocities'.

So, what do you do with war-criminals who commit atrocities? You try them. What do you do with those who give them money and back them and finance them and give them plane cover? You also try them.

So, there should be immediate calls for a United Nations war-criminal tribunal put forth by the coalition of Assad, of Iran, of Russia and China, saying, very simply, that the United States is engaged in criminal activity, war-crimes. It's aiding and abetting, financially and with military personnel, the operations of Syrian revolutionaries that are coming in from foreign countries.

These are not indigenous Syrian personnel.

And the only people, really, who should have any place at the table is Syria, Russia, Iran, Iraq.

All this was launched from Iraq. Iraq should immediately ground every U.S. and foreign plane and forbid them from engaging in these sorts of activities. And the U.S., essentially, should be kicked out. It should have no place in any future conversation, because it cannot be trusted. The American people are very quickly learning that. The European people are learning that. That's why the Brexit occurred. It's because they saw all of this destabilisation.

Then I would say to the other guest [in this debate] The Russians are not the Soviets. The Russians are the Russian people, the Russian culture, that want peace and tranquility and unity and so do the Syrians.

And, for us to go in with this neo-conservative empire agenda that is backed by the Zionist-Israeli-Wahabi nexus to target Iran and Russia, is a war-crime.

And I would testify before the United Nations; I would testify before the criminal court. I know that Senator Dick Black would and I know that there are a lot of us in the community that are stepping up because this is absolute insanity. And it's going to result in a very serious war and I hope and pray that President Putin and the other members of the coalition are very strategic and intelligent and cool-headed.

Yes, they need to decimate the illegal foreign fighters that are coming in, but they also need to do it in a very public-relations information warfare level. They need to write and blanket the American media and the European media with the truth. Because, right now, the American media has no idea - or the American people have no idea - of what's really going on. That's the way to win the hearts and minds of the American people and end this savagery."

Scott Bennett and Michael Lane explore the possibilities in the video, which is well worth watching.

Rally at 1.30pm. This Saturday 24 September 2016, Martin Place (Railway Station outside MLC Centre), Sydney City.

Rally at 1:30pm

This Saturday 24 September 2016

Martin Place (railway station,
outside MLC Centre)

Sydney City

HANDS OFF SYRIA strongly condemn the recent massacre of at least 62 Syrian soldiers (and another 100 wounded) in Deir al Zour, Syria.

US and Australian governments have admitted the soldiers were killed on the 17th of September by a joint operation carried out by the US air force in collusion with the Australian military. The martyred Syrian soldiers were guarding a military fortification
used as a base for repelling attacks by the Islamic State death-squads who completely surround the city.

People across the world are finding it extremely hard to believe that this attack was a "mistake" or an "accident".

Why? Because these actions are entirely consistent with US-led attempts to topple the Syrian government by covertly (or in this case overtly) supporting their enemies - these policies have resurrected Al Qaeda and its offshoots
like ISIS.

Whether the massacre was ‘accidental’ or deliberate should be determined by an independent war crimes tribunal. Assertion by the perpetrators, ‘sorry, we didn’t mean it’, is completely inadequate.

1. We demand that Australia remove itself from the alliance of predatory nations currently waging this proxy-war against the Syrian government.

2. We demand that Australia reestablish diplomatic relations with the Syrian government who by all accounts represent the will of the majority of the Syrian people.

3. We demand that Australia lift the crippling economic sanctions on Syria that are blocking normal trade, finance and the diaspora from supporting their families at home.

SPEAKERS: TBA

WHEN: Saturday, 24th of September, at 1.30pm
WHERE: Martin Place, outside the MLC centre

The Syrian Arab Army is the army of the Syrian state. On 17 September 2016 eighty SAA soldiers were killed in an airstrike by American and Australian forces which did not even have permission to be in Syria. Australia is not at war with Syria. Here is a personal letter, followed by a statement from Hands off Syria, Sydney. Marlene Obeid declares her shock at hearing of Australia's participation in the deaths of Syrian soldiers. She asks for an explanation of the Australian government's condolences, given that Australia is part of a Coalition illegally invading Syria. Tim Anderson, speaking for Hands Off Syria Sydney, asks, "Will the Australian Government hand over to the Syrian authorities or the International Court of Justice those Australians who were accomplices in this atrocity?"

Letter from Marlene Obeid on Australian involvement in the massacre of Syrian soldiers

Dear Ms Bishop

I am appalled and shocked to hear that Australia participated in the massacre of at least 80 Syrian soldiers, and in the maiming and wounding of many more in Deir Zour, Syria.

Eighty young man who have been defending their country from a proxy war carried out by terrorists from all over the world have been murdered by Australian invading forces.

Eighty families who will be morning their beloved sons, brothers, fathers and above all patriots who were carrying their duty in defense of their homeland and their compatriots.

Please explain the meaning of condolences when Australia is part of a Coalition illegally invading the sovereign Syrian nation.

How is the following Australian Defence Department's statement going to mend the hurt, the pain, the suffering, the devastation caused by Australia's aggression to the sovereign nation of Syria?

[“Australian aircraft were among a number of international aircraft taking part in this Coalition operation … Australia would never intentionally target a known Syrian military unit or actively support Daesh (IS). Defence offers its condolences to the families of any Syrian personnel killed or wounded in this incident … While Syria remains a dynamic and complex operating environment, Australia would never intentionally target a known Syrian military unit or actively support Daesh (also known as ISIL).”]

A great shame to Australia now using our tax money to join forces with the US in defence of Daesh and every other brand of terrorist targeting the Syrian people.

The pilots who carried out this massacre and those directing the operations of aggression against Syria must be indicted. Reparations must be paid to the Syrian State.

Australia should immediately withdraw from the US-led Coalition and pay compensation to the Syrian State.

With great pain

Marlene Obeid

Glebe NSW 2037, Australia.

The following is a statement by Hands Off Syria Sydney

Sunday 18 September 2016

Shame on Australian involvement in the massacre of Syrian soldiers.

Hands Off Syria strongly condemns the massacre of 62 Syrian soldiers by Australian Defence Forces.

Australia’s military has admitted involvement in the US-led bombing raids in Deir eZorr, Syria, which killed at least 62 Syrian soldiers and wounded 100 others.

The Syian soldiers were engaged in defending their country from the ISIS terrorist group.

Whether the massacre was ‘accidental’ or deliberate should be determined by an independent war crimes tribunal.

Assertion by the perpetrators ‘sorry, we didn’t mean it’, is completely inadequate. Further, there are many circumstances which suggest the attack was deliberate.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop must explain two things:

- on what legal basis have any Australian armed forces engaged in bombings on Syrian territory, without an invitation from or coordination with the Syrian Government?

- will the Australian Government hand over to the Syrian authorities or the International Court of Justice those Australians who were accomplices in this atrocity?

- to what extent does the USA share intelligence with Australian Defence Forces, when it asks Australian personnel to become involved in assassinations and bombings?

The Deir eZorr massacre of 17 September 2016 is material for an independent war crimes trial, and these are some of the initial questions Australian officials would have to answer.

The anonymous Defence statement (see below) is insulting in its trivialisation of the first major war crime co-authored by Australian forces in Syria.

Statement from the Australia's Defence Dept.

“Australian aircraft were among a number of international aircraft taking part in this Coalition operation … Australia would never intentionally target a known Syrian military unit or actively support Daesh (IS). Defence offers its condolences to the families of any Syrian personnel killed or wounded in this incident … While Syria remains a dynamic and complex operating environment, Australia would never intentionally target a known Syrian military unit or actively support Daesh (also known as ISIL).”

Contact: Dr Tim Anderson.

We are asked by the United States to believe that the murder by the US Airforce of 80 soldiers in the Syrian Arab Army (the army of the elected Syrian government) was simply a 'mistake'. It seems more likely that the US is trying every trick in the book to stuff up all attempts at peace in the region. Is their ultimate aim is to wipe the Middle East clean of any organised peoples, stuff up Russia (using NATO/EU which they are desperately trying to prop up) and take over the petroleum assets? Whilst the US is an uninvited and illegal presence in Syria (whereas Russia is invited) it is also, with cooperation from the Saudis, keeping the price of oil down (by flooding the market with short-term fracking products) to assist promotion of instability in the oil-dependent states in the Middle East and South America/Central America, which the US hopes also to take over. The only hope here is for a Trump win because Hillary will only keep all this going, whereas he has made noises about keeping the US nose out of other peoples' business. As to whether all the American troops and commanders and allies in the Middle East and Syria are in on this, it is possible that they are not, as the following article from RT suggests, which makes the whole thing even more shocking. The following videoed interview and article were published as breaking news on RT news on 17 September at https://www.rt.com/op-edge/359690-us-syria-airstrike-unlikely-unintentional/.

Annie Machon is a former intel­li­gence officer for MI5, the UK Secur­ity Ser­vice, who resigned in the late 1990s to blow the whistle on the spies’ incom­pet­ence and crimes with her ex-partner, David Shayler. Draw­ing on her var­ied exper­i­ences, she is now a pub­lic speaker, writer, media pun­dit, inter­na­tional tour and event organ­iser, polit­ical cam­paigner, and PR con­sult­ant. She is also now the Dir­ector of LEAP, Europe. She has a rare per­spect­ive both on the inner work­ings of gov­ern­ments, intel­li­gence agen­cies and the media, as well as the wider implic­a­tions for the need for increased open­ness and account­ab­il­ity in both pub­lic and private sectors.

‘Unbelievable’ that US strike on Syrian army was mistake – fmr MI5 agent

The US must cooperate with Russia on intelligence matters in Syria, former MI5 agent Annie Machon told RT, expressing doubt over Washington’s explanation for the “unintentional” raid which killed over 60 Syrian soldiers on ISIS’ frontline.

“Russia has better human intelligence on the ground because it is cooperating, it is working with the Syrian authorities. So they have access to proper human intelligence, which is much better than the Americans tend to use, which is satellite surveillance and electronic surveillance,” Machon said.

Cooperation with Russians is “vital” in Syria because of the ever-changing battlefield situation on the ground, which US forces cannot grasp from the air, as they are not working with the government in Damascus. Without this cooperation, Machon fears, the ceasefire achieved by both sides on Monday could falter without securing its main objective.

Commenting on the actual US strikes which killed at least 62 Syrian soldiers and wounded around 100 others near the eastern city of Deir ez-Zor, on the front line of the struggle against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), Machon hinted that Washington’s decision to attack Syrian forces was likely premeditated.

“I find it slightly unbelievable that the Americans could hit this target thinking this was ISIS when in fact ISIS is laying siege to the city. And the Syrian forces for years now have been known to be holed up in that city. So it seems just strange that the Americans are just saying it was a bit of a mistake,” Machon told RT.

The former MI5 agent pointed out that Russian role in Syria is clear while the US policymakers are “divided” over their objectives in Syria.

READ More: ‘Kill Russians and Iranians, threaten Assad,’ says ex-CIA chief backing Clinton

“We have some of the military that say they really need to go after ISIS, that that is the threat to the whole West. They want to work with Russia. Yet there is still this hawkish, neocon political approach which really just still wants to get rid of Assad for other strategic reasons, like supporting the regional American allies like Qatar and Saudi Arabia in the Middle East.”

Machon recalled a PBS interview last month during which former CIA deputy director Michael Morell who told host Charlie Rose that Damascus – as well as Iran and Russia – should “pay a big price” in term of casualties in Syria. Ahead of the US presidential election, Machon wondered if Saturday’s strikes stemmed from Morell’s views, who is a strong supporter of Hillary Clinton.

“He [Morell] was advocating the bombing of Assad, not to kill him, to scare him. So I’m wondering if there are elements within the US power structure that are actually going ahead ... [with] this sort of plan and bombing Assad’s military forces to scare him, to scare the Russians, to just try to make the point. And they are actually carrying this out already, rather than it just being a wish list from the former acting [deputy] director of the CIA.”

Another interpretation of the reasons behind the US strikes on Syrian army positions, Machon believes, could be to “reassure the so-called moderates,” who are funded and trained by the US, that Washington still supports them.

“So if indeed this was a planned air strike and it was indeed there to reassure the so-called moderate groups, that would make sense,” she explained.

If that is the case, Machon says that “Americans are dealing with fire” because the so-called moderate rebels often defect to Jihadist groups along with the military hardware provided by the US to fight against American forces and interests on the ground.

A University of Queensland-led international study released today reports catastrophic declines in wilderness areas around the world over the past 20 years. UQ School of Geography, Planning and Environmental Management and Wildlife Conservation Society in New York researcher Associate Professor James Watson said findings demonstrated alarming losses comprising a 10th of global wilderness since the 1990s. The report discovered that a total of 30.1 million km2 (or 23.2% of terrestrial areas) of the world’s land area now remains as wilderness, with the majority located in North America, North Asia, North Africa, and the Australian continent. An estimated 3.3 million km2 has been lost since the early 1990s (approximately a 9.6% loss in two decades, with the most loss occurring in South America (experiencing 29.6% loss) and Africa (experiencing 14% loss). [1]

Environmentalists are right that things are getting worse

A University of Queensland-led international study released today reports catastrophic declines in wilderness areas around the world over the past 20 years.

UQ School of Geography, Planning and Environmental Management and Wildlife Conservation Society in New York researcher Associate Professor James Watson said findings demonstrated alarming losses comprising a 10th of global wilderness since the 1990s. These findings are published in Watson et al., Catastrophic Declines in Wilderness Areas Undermine Global Environment Targets, Current Biolog.
y(2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2016.08.049

In his press release, Professor Watson noted that the Amazon and Central Africa were hardest hit.

But the paper shows that in Australia, one of the three countries with the most remaining wilderness left. "Australian rangeland and desert ecosystems, the ecological influence of large spatial-scale surface-groundwater hydrological dynamics is pervasive, and losses in one area can degrade habitat quality elsewhere, with significant, long-term implications for biodiversity."[2]

“The findings underscore an immediate need for international policies to recognise the value of wilderness and to address the unprecedented threats it faces,” Dr Watson said.

“Globally important wilderness areas are completely ignored in environmental policy,   despite being strongholds for endangered biodiversity, for buffering and regulating local climates, and for supporting many of the world’s most politically and economically marginalised communities..

“International policy mechanisms must recognise the actions needed to maintain wilderness areas before it is too late. We probably have one to two decades to turn this around.”

Dr Watson said much policy attention had been paid to the loss of species, but comparatively little was known about larger-scale losses of entire ecosystems.

The researchers mapped wilderness areas around the globe, with “wilderness” defined as biologically and ecologically intact landscapes free of significant human disturbance.

They compared their map of wilderness to one produced by the same means in the early 1990s.

The updated map shows a total of 30.1 million km² (more than 20 per cent of the world’s land area) remains as wilderness, with the majority in North America, North Asia, North Africa, and Australia.

Comparisons between the two maps showed an estimated 3.3 million km² (almost 10 per cent) of wilderness area had been lost since the early 1990s, with a 30 per cent wilderness loss in  South America and a 14 per cent loss in Africa.

“The amount of wilderness loss in just two decades is staggering and very saddening,” Dr Watson said.

“We need to recognise that wilderness is being dramatically lost and that without proactive global interventions we could lose the last jewels in nature’s crown.

“You cannot restore wilderness. Once it is gone, the ecological process that underpins these ecosystems are gone, and it never comes back to the state it was.

“The only option is to proactively protect what is left.”

Dr Watson said the United Nations and others had ignored globally significant wilderness areas in key multilateral environmental agreements, but that had to change.

“If we don't act soon, it will be all gone, and this is a disaster for conservation, for climate change, and for some of the most vulnerable human communities on the planet,” Dr Watson said.

“We have a duty to act for our children and their children.”

The research, Catastrophic Declines in Wilderness Areas Undermine Global Environment Targets, is published today in Current Biology.

It involved  UQ PhD candidate James Allan and UQ School of Biological Sciences honorary researcher Oscar Venter.  

Click here to view a PDF of the paper proof and supplemental information including multimedia, an infographic and video.: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/b9yaahssd8jt716/AAAfuEHjDttN0Cwe3CN69c9ha?dl=0 

NOTES

[1] Watson et al., Catastrophic Declines in Wilderness Areas Undermine Global Environment Targets, Current Biolog.
y(2016), , p.1. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2016.08.049.
[2] Op Cit. p.3

"The governance, coordination and oversight of the management of Ramsar sites must improve overall for Victoria to effectively meet its obligations. Monitoring the implementation of management plans also requires improvement. The recommendations are designed to improve gaps in governance, oversight, coordination and monitoring." (Victorian Auditor General)

In a report tabled on 14 September 2016, the Victorian Auditor General summarised:

Wetlands are a critical part of our natural environment and have environmental, cultural, social and economic value. The Ramsar Convention is an international intergovernmental treaty which provides a framework for the conservation and wise use of designated wetland ecosystems throughout the world. Australia is a signatory and has 65 Ramsar listed sites, 11 of which are in Victoria.

This audit reviewed how effectively Victoria’s Ramsar wetlands are managed and whether Victoria is meeting its national and international obligations. We reviewed the Department of Environment, Land, Water & Planning (DELWP) and primary site managers—Melbourne Water and Parks Victoria—who all have a role in conserving and maintaining Victoria's Ramsar sites.
We also reviewed selected catchment management authorities.

The audit found there is limited evidence that all Ramsar sites are being effectively managed and protected from decline. There is also evidence of potential change in the ecological character of some sites and changes at other sites cannot be fully determined due to limitations such as a lack of data. Some projects have improved outcomes for Ramsar sites but these are not clearly linked to a Ramsar management plan.

The governance, coordination and oversight of the management of Ramsar sites must improve overall for Victoria to effectively meet its obligations. Monitoring the implementation of management plans also requires improvement. The recommendations are designed to improve gaps in governance, oversight, coordination and monitoring.

Link to full report

VAGO 2016–17 reports:
http://www.audit.vic.gov.au/reports_and_publications/reports_by_year.aspx

Audits in progress:
http://www.audit.vic.gov.au/audits_in_progress.aspx

On Friday 9th September 2016, Hillary Clinton called people who would vote for Donald Trump, “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic.” Now, where have we heard those words together before? Ah, yes, from Moveon.org, GetUp.org's United States prototype. Moveon.org pretends it is independent and that it survives from small donations from its supporters, but it is actually billionaire George Soros's major propaganda vehicle. He teaches his workers to bring people down politically or shut them up through contrived accusations of racism etc. Hillary Clinton and Soros have had a close relationship for years and Moveon.org is the source of most of the mainstream media's repetitive anti-Trump chorus.

Moveon.org leads anti-Trump beat-up

Currently Moveon.org employs organisers to push a line that Trump is a racist etc out to destroy America. And the only way to save America, is to elect Hillary Clinton. Here are direct quotes from Moveon's website:

"MOVEON.ORG HIRING DOZENS OF ORGANIZERS IN 8 BATTLEGROUND STATES TO DEFEAT TRUMP. In an expansion of MoveOn.org’s United Against Hate campaign to prevent Donald Trump from winning the White House while demonstrating that hatred, racism, misogyny, and xenophobia are a losing strategy, MoveOn is hiring more than three dozen organizers to lead door-to-door volunteer canvassing operations in Arizona, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania." by Brian Stewart, August 26, 2016

"We know that the only way to defeat Donald Trump is by electing Hillary Clinton. And we applaud Secretary Clinton’s commitments to overturn Citizens United — proposing a constitutional amendment within her first month in office — and appointing Supreme Court justices who will “protect Americans’ right to vote over the right of billionaires to buy elections.” (Source: https://medium.com/@MoveOn.org/its-time-to-unite-against-hate-50798df7bdf4#.48i8842sw

It is ludicrous for Moveon.org to pretend that billionaire Soros's puppet, Clinton, a multi-millionaire herself, is anti-billionaire.

Soros is behind Moveon.org

“Wes Boyd [...] was also creator of the radical website MoveOn.org, which he founded during the Clinton impeachment trial to get the nation to "move on" to "more important issues" and since then had made an Internet cash cow for leftwing Democrat candidates. Soros offered Boyd a deal. He and Peter Lewis would match up to $5 million for any new money Boyd raised to expand MoveOn's reach for 2004.” [Source: Perazzo, John; Horowitz, David. From Shadow Party to Shadow Government: George Soros and the Effort to Radically Change America (Kindle Locations 147-150). David Horowitz Freedom Center. Kindle Edition.]

Soros Media Influence, the Australian Press and the ABC

The bulk of the Australian mainstream media is actively avoiding reporting this far reaching scandal and subversion of our political process and the global political process. The quiet from the Fairfax Press and ABC Radio and television is deafening, even though Bill Shorten, the Labor leader, has been shown to be on the board of Soros-financed GetUp, along with Greens members. The Soros influence on our press is however belied by the ubiquitous overuse of Soros words and concepts - "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic" - to the substantial exclusion of any other topics.

Indeed, many tantalising leads to Soros-funded journalism in Australia beckon the researcher. One that immediately struck me was OzProspect fellowships for journalists, an organisation that cropped up early as the push to normalise mass immigration hotted up in Australia. OzProspect was modeled on the New America Foundation and had funding from that Soros foundation. Tim Watts founded OzProspect and he co-edited with Steve Vizard and Hugh Martin Australia’s Population Challenge, a book presenting talks given at the [Victorian Premier] Steve Bracks 'Melbourne Population Summit' 2002. Incidentally, this was an event where journalists frequently replaced academics and which featured Soros-style population booster, billionaire Richard Pratt. Click on the link to see some of the people involved with OzProspect.

Murdoch media and Soros

There is one surprising exception to this media silence on Soros - the Murdoch press. The Australian's recently published a highly informative article by Jennifer Oriel, "Dumped files show influence of George Soros on Western politics," The Australian, August 22, 2016.

Maybe The Australian allowed the recent report by Jennifer oriel of Soros's behind the scenes political machinations because Murdoch feels his media empire may be threatened. Another reason Murdoch might not be sympathetic to Soros is that Israel considers Soros, despite having Jewish origins, as a threat to Israel and the Middle East in general. Many on the other side from Israel would also agree, including people trying to survive in Syria. (Source on Israel's attitude to Soros: http://www.ngo-monitor.org/funder/open_society_institute_osi_/ See report in "Notes" section at end of this article).[2] Another Murdoch media outlet, Fox News, not usually known for its critical reporting, has also done specials on Soros. [1] (Source: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/05/11/dont-hear-george-soros-ties-30-major-news-organizations.html His influence anyway gives itself away though where media adopts those Soros-words that Hillary used to castigate America: "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic."

Here is a rundown on the subject from Forbes: "Billionaires Battle Over Media Influence: Koch Bros./Murdoch Vs. Soros/Buffett/GE" by Larry Bell.

"It’s hard to argue with the notion that money can buy lots of influence. Consider George Soros for example, a big spender with ties to more than 30 predominantly liberal news outlets, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Associated Press, NBC and ABC. Since 2003, Soros has spent more than $48 million funding media properties…often funding foundations which in turn, fund other organizations. This arrangement makes complete outside accounting nearly impossible because the media component of the support is hard to track.

One of those money distribution centers, the Open Society Institute (OSI), funds his Center for Public Integrity (CPI), an organization which is open about its liberal politics. OSI gave them $651,650 in 2009 alone. Among other activities, CPI has conducted detailed investigations into the “web of influence’ of David and Charles Koch. CPI’s board of directors includes prominent ABC journalist Christine Amanpour and Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post and AOL. Amanpour of ABC’s Sunday morning political affairs program “This Week with Christine Ananpour”, has referred to tax cuts as “giveaways”, to the Tea Party as “extreme”, and to Obama as “very Reaganesque”.

OSI is one of several foundations funding the Investigative News Network (INN), a collaboration of 32 non-profit news organizations producing what they claim to be “non-partisan investigative news”. OSI also provided nearly $1 million to the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) from 20003 to 2008 which produces lots of stories on climate change alarmism and evils of big companies. CIR’s board and advisory board members include San Francisco Chronicle President Phil Bronstein, former Washington Post Executive Editor Len Downie (now VP), and CBS News Producer George Osterkamp.

Soros spent $27 million on media programs aimed at defeating President George W. Bush in 2004, and has contributed at least $1.8 million to NPR. Other recipients include The Columbia Journalism Review which bills itself as “a watchdog and a friend of the press in all its forms”, the National Federation of Community Broadcasters, The National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and the Organization of News Ombudsmen (supported by OSI), which has NPR’s Alicia Shepard and PBS’s Michael Getler as directors.

"

Don't you think that Australians deserve better service from their media and governments? Doesn't the world?

NOTES

[1] Soros’s media influence: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/05/11/dont-hear-george-soros-ties-30-major-news-organizations.html
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2011/05/12/which-liberal-billionare-has-ties-to-over-30-news-outlets-george-soros/
https://www.mrc.org/commentary/soros-spends-over-48-million-funding-media-organizations
http://www.mrc.org/special-reports/george-soros-media-mogul
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=977

[2] From NGO Monitor's Reporting (Israel-based):

Activity

Click here to read NGO Monitor’s report, Bad Investment: The Philanthropy of George Soros and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 2013.

• OSF’s declared objective is “to work to build vibrant and tolerant democracies whose governments are accountable and open to the participation of all people.” This is the basis for OSF’s often intrusive activities in both closed and democratic societies, including large scale funding of political NGOs.
• According to OSF’s 2016 budget, $27.8 million is allocated to programs in the Middle East.
• Funding of NGOs is entirely non-transparent. Annual reports do not provide names of NGO grantees or amounts transferred to individual groups. Details below were obtained through independent research by NGO Monitor, based on NGO reporting to the Israeli Registry of Non-Profits or information provided by the groups on their websites. (Note – all the Israeli and Palestinian NGOs also receive funding from European governments.)
• Funding for political advocacy NGOs includes: Adalah (amount unknown), Al-Haq (amount unknown), Al Mezan (amount unknown) Breaking the Silence (NIS330,990 in 2015), B’Tselem (amount unknown), Center for Constitutional Rights ($495,000 in 2015), Mada al Carmel (amount unknown), American Friends Service Committee (amount unknown), Palestinian Center for Human Rights (amount unknown), Mossawa (amount unknown)
• On August 14 2016, leaked documents from OSF were posted anonymously on the DC Leaks website. A number of these as yet unverified documents deal with OSF’s grants to political NGOs through its “Arab Regional Office (ARO) – Palestinian Citizens of Israel” department. Headed by Ammar Abu Zayyad, the ARO is one of a number of funding mechanisms for Israeli and Palestinian NGO’s in the OSF network.
  • The list of ARO grantees (current and discontinued) is located here, and below. The 2013 NGO Monitor report includes a number of Soros funding frameworks that are not included in the leaked documents, meaning that- if they are accurate- the actual funding is significantly higher than indicated by this leak.
  • The US-based New Israel Fund (NIF), funder of such politicized NGOs such as Adalah, B’Tselem, Breaking the Silence and others, received $837,000, including for the advancement of Palestinian legal advocacy.
  • In addition, ARO funds a number of Israeli NGOs in the NIF network, including some recipients that deny the legitimacy of Israel and Jewish sovereignty, and are involved in demonization campaigns. Grantees include Adalah ($2.7 million), Mossawa ($260,000), Mada al Carmel ($700,000), and I’lam ($1.08 million), which criticizes Israeli media for its coverage of the Nakba.
  • Amongst the leaked files are instructions on pressuring the EU to adopt product labeling policies touted by many NGOs as the first step to EU-sponsored BDS, and supporting Palestinian ascension to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
• According to these documents, OSF provided $405,000 to Palestinian media outlet Wattan News from 2012-2014. Wattan has published a series of articles promoting virulently antisemitic content in the form of “anti-Zionism.” After inquiries were sent to OSF by Tablet magazine, the offensive content was removed from Wattan’s website, and OSF issued a condemnation, and claimed that it is “putting in place procedures that such a serious lapse in editorial oversight will not take place again.” OSF did not state that it was withdrawing funding from Wattan.
• OSF has published articles by B’Tselem, Al-Haq, Breaking the Silence, Adalah, and Gisha as part of its “Grantee Spotlight” page.
  • In his article, Shawan Jabarin, the director of Al-Haq, promoted the decision to label all products from Israeli communities built over the 1967 ceasefire line adopted by the EU, ostensibly calling for the eventual boycott of all Israeli products. Al Haq’s General Director, Shawan Jabarin, has alleged ties to the PFLP terrorist organization and as such has been denied exit visas by Israel and Jordan. Click here to see NGO Monitor’s unofficial translation of the ruling by the Israeli High Court of Justice (June 20, 2007).
  • OSF shared a report entitled The Occupation’s Fig Leaf: Israel’s Military Law Enforcement System as a Whitewash Mechanism prepared by B’Tselem. The report claims that “Palestinians have been living under an Israeli military regime that has wrongfully killed, injured, and abused them.”
• In 2010, Soros pledged $100 million to Human Rights Watch (HRW) over the course of 10 years.
• Soros pledged $750,000 over three years to J Street. J Street concealed this funding for many years, until The Washington Times revealed it in 2010. On its website, J Street addresses the “myth” that “George Soros founded and is the primary funder of J Street.” It claims that it would be “very pleased to have funding from Mr. Soros,” but denies this large donation.
• The “Open Society Justice Initiative,” claims to “foster accountability for international crimes, combat racial discrimination… address abuses related to national security and counterterrorism.”
• The Justice Initiative was asked by Adalah to assist in preparing a memorandum for the UN Human Rights Council’s follow-up Fact-Finding Committee (to the “Goldstone Report”). The resulting report alleged that “the Israeli investigations to date have not complied with international or comparative standards,” and that delays “violate[] international law and taint[] the independence and effectiveness of any subsequent inquiry.”

Australia may have the world’s highest debt to GDP ratio. We have the lowest ranking in the region (61st) for income security. Our social expenditure is behind Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy's. The OECD has ranked Australia second last in government funding of public education.

The treasurer, Scott Morrison, has just informed us that we have had 25 years of economic growth and the economy is now growing at its fastest pace in four years, meaning we may well set a new record for the longest period of sustained growth.

Well that’s great for the treasurer, he may even get the coveted treasurer of the year award, but for many people growth, fuelled mainly by population increases and their spending on housing, bears no relation to their wellbeing.

There are almost 2.5 million either unemployed or underemployed. Homelessness increased by 20% in the last 5 years, house prices have risen 147% but incomes have only risen 57%. A whopping 720,000 households spend more than 30% of their income on mortgage payments and 850,000 households are at risk of financial hardship and poverty, creating what is now recognised as “Housing Stress”.

Our major cities have sections zoned for densities far higher than would be allowed in Hong Kong and with open space at 0.1m2 per person. Private debt to the banking system, mainly from mortgages, is $1.7trillion - that's 1.7 followed by 11 zero's - which possibly makes Australia the nation with the world’s highest debt to GDP ratio of 123%.

Those are just the visible signs. Using growth as a means of qualifying economic performance is an absurdity, as it reveals nothing of importance.

In terms of expenditure on research, Australia ranks 18th out of 20 OECD countries. Australia's spending at 0.441 per cent of GDP in 2013 was ahead of only Greece at 0.391 and the Slovak Republic at 0.369. That year Japan's expenditure was 0.754 per cent, the US 0.795, and Germany 0.917% of GDP. Recent funding cuts to the CSIRO will see about 36 agricultural and bio-security researchers at the infectious diseases health unit laid off. This is our only facility capable of handling outbreaks like Ebola or Zika. The cutbacks to climate research coincided with an increase in spending on wind turbine noise and coal seam gas research suggesting government intervention on research priorities.

Our record on education is worse. A report by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) , which looked at government funding of public education, ranked Australia second last, putting Australia among only a handful of countries where less than half the cost of tertiary education now comes from the public purse, with a higher than average amount directed at private schools. The report also singles out Australia for putting more costs onto university students, part of a policy of both coalition and labor governments,[1] which used full fee paying O/S students to bolster University funding. Overseas student numbers were bolstered by the linking of immigration with study, a process that promises the proliferation of “Mickey Mouse” courses and wide spread cheating. Private educational facilities have been described as the biggest rort in Australian history, one that targeted the most vulnerable in our community and created an estimated $16.3 billion in VET FEE loans by students.

Australia also has the highest proportion of international students, with 17.3 per cent of the campus population coming from abroad. In contrast, the US has just 3.4 per cent of overseas students. Almost all these students are full-fee paying. The figures underscore the degree to which Australian universities are hostage to the international student dollar.
The OECD also collects a wide range of data on government and private spending on social programs. Its latest report shows the Australian government's social expenditure (includes age pension, veterans' pension, disability support pension, unemployment benefits, study and carers' allowances, and other payments) is 19.5 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP), which puts it at 13th in the OECD nations behind even Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy, (28%), countries considered to have lower GDP growth than Australia.
We also have the lowest ranking in the region (61st) for income security, which measures older people’s access to money and their capacity to spend it independently and the highest old age poverty rate in the region (35.5 per cent), while our pension coverage (83 per cent) and welfare rates (65 per cent) are below average.
Scarcely anything to be proud of.

[1] Candobetter.net Ed. "both coalition and labor" inserted after clarification with writer on 9 August 2016.

At the recent annual convention of Veterans for Peace, VFP Vice President Jerry Condon said “The US peace movement has been demobilized by disinformation on Syria.”

Disinformation and propaganda on Syria takes three distinct forms. The first is the demonization of the Syrian leadership. The second is the romanticization of the opposition. The third form involves attacking anyone questioning the preceding characterizations.

This article was first published at Counterpunch on 6 August 2016.

There is a recent article which exemplifies all three of these forms. It is titled “Anti-Imperialism and the Syrian Revolution” by Ashley Smith of the International Socialist Organization (ISO). It’s a remarkable piece of misinformation and faulty analysis. Because it is clear and well written, it is likely to mislead people who are not well informed on the facts regarding Syria. Hence the importance of critically reviewing it.

Technique 1: Demonize the enemy … “the Syrian regime and its brutal dictator”

Smith starts off posing the question: Are you with the Syrian revolution or the brutal Assad dictatorship? The way he frames it, it’s not a difficult choice: yay for the revolution!

Like these false options, Ashley Smith’s article is a fairy tale devoid of reality. His bias is shown as he criticizes the Left for ignoring “Assad’s massacre of some 400,000 Syrians”. Included in this death count are 100 – 150 thousand Syrian soldiers and allies. Ashley blames Assad instead of the armed opposition for killing Syrian soldiers!

Another example of false propaganda is the discussion of the chemical weapons attack that took place on August 21, 2013 in outer Damascus. Neoconservatives speak of this event as “proving” Assad’s brutality – “killing his own people” – as well as the “failure” of President Obama to enforce his “red line”. Ashley aligns with the neocons as he says “Barack Obama came under pressure to intervene militarily in Syria after the regime carried out a chemical weapons attack in a suburb of Damascus in 2013, but he backed a Russian-brokered resolution that protected Assad.”

In reality, the Damascus sarin gas attack was carried out by an opposition group with the goal of forcing the U.S. to directly attack the Syrian government. Soon after the event, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity issued a statement reporting “the most reliable intelligence shows that Bashar al-Assad was NOT responsible for the chemical incident”. Later on, Seymour Hersh wrote two lengthy investigations pointing to Jabhat al Nusra with Turkish support being culpable. Investigative journalist Robert Parry exposed the Human Rights Watch analysis blaming the Syrian government as a “junk heap of bad evidence”. In the Turkish parliament, Turkish deputies presented documents showing that Turkey provided sarin to Syrian “rebels”. A detailed examination and analysis of all fact based stories in online at whoghouta.blogspot.com. Their conclusion is that “The only plausible scenario that fits the evidence is an attack by opposition forces.”

Ashley Smith accuses the Syrian government of widespread torture. His main example is the case of Syrian Canadian Maher Arar who was arrested by US authorities in collusion with Canadian authorities, then rendered to Syria for interrogation in 2002. Arar was beaten during the initial weeks of his interrogation in Syria. After ten months imprisonment, Syrian authorities determined he was not a terrorist and sent him back to Canada. Arar received an official apology and $10 Million from the Canadian government.

The most highly publicized accusation of rampant torture and murder by Syrian authorities is the case of “Caesar”. The individual known as “Caesar” was presented as a defecting Syrian photographer who had 55,000 photos documenting 11,000 Syrians tortured by the brutal Assad dictatorship. At the time, among mainstream media only the Christian Science Monitor was skeptical, describing it as “a well timed propaganda exercise”. In the past year it has been discovered that nearly half the photos show the opposite of what is claimed. The Caesar story is essentially a fraud funded by Qatar with ‘for hire’ lawyers giving it a professional veneer and massive mainstream media promotion.

While western media routinely refers to Assad as a dictator, in fact he is elected and popular with the majority of Syrians. Although not wealthy, Syria was largely self-sufficient with a semi-socialist state apparatus including free health-care, free education and large industries 51% owned by the state. You do not see pervasive western fast food, banks, and other corporate entities in Syrian cities. In the wake of protests, the government pushed through reforms which ended the one party system. There are now political parties across the political spectrum. These are a genuine ‘moderate opposition’. The June 2014 election confirmed Assad’s popularity despite the denials of those who have never been there.

Technique 2: Romanticize the opposition … “the Syrian Revolution”

Ashley Smith echoes mainstream media which portrays the conflict as a “civil war” which began with peaceful democratic loving Syrian revolutionaries beaten by a brutal regime.

In reality there was a violent faction from the start. In the first protests in Deraa seven police were killed. Two weeks later there was a massacre of 60 security forces in Deraa. In Homs, an eye-witness recounted the situation: “From the start, the protest movements were not purely peaceful. From the start I saw armed demonstrators marching along in the protests, who began to shoot at the police first. Very often the violence of the security forces has been a reaction to the brutal violence of the armed rebels.” In the first two months, hundreds of police and security forces were killed.

Ashley and company listen to Americans and British citizens and mistakenly believe they are listening to real Syrians. Some of these people left Syria at age 3. Some of them have never lived in Syria. Thus you have fantasy portrayals such as “Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War”. A more realistic picture is given by a Syrian who still lives in Aleppo. He writes under the name “Edward Dark” and describes how he and his friends quickly regretted the take-over of Aleppo by armed groups in summer 2012. He describes one friend’s reaction as the reality was hitting home: “How could we have been so stupid? We were betrayed!”. And another says: “Tell your children someday that we once had a beautiful country, but we destroyed it because of our ignorance and hatred.” Edward Dark is a harsh critic of President Assad and Baath Party. He is also naive regarding the role of US Ambassador Robert Ford. But his description of early protesters and the arrival of armed opposition rings true and more authentic than the portrayal of Yassin-Kassab and Al Shami.

In fact many of the idealized “Syrian revolutionaries” promoted by the authors of “Burning Country” are trained and paid agents of the US and UK. The Aleppo Media Center which produces many of the videos is a US creation. The White Helmets which purport to be Syrian, independent and unarmed first responders are a creation of the US and UK. The banner boys from Kafranbel are another western funded operation. In her book about her time as Secretary of State, Clinton boasts of providing “training for more than a thousand activists, students, and independent journalists” (p. 464).

Why do the enemies of Syria create such organizations? Partly as a way to channel money and support to the armed opposition. Also to serve as propaganda tools to confuse the situation and generate support for the real goal: regime change. For example, White Helmets mostly work in areas dominated by the Syrian Al Qaeda. Unlike legitimate organizations such as the Red Crescent, they never work in areas controlled by the government. And they are also active on the propaganda front, continually pushing for US / NATO intervention via a “no fly zone”. The misinformation of Ashley Smith and ISO confuses unwitting people and helps the enemies of Syria in their drive for regime change.

In contrast with the romanticized delusions of Ashley Smith and the authors of “Burning Country”, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency gave an accurate assessment in August 2012:

“ EVENTS ARE TAKING A CLEAR SECTARIAN DIRECTION. THE SALAFIST, THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD AND AQI ARE THE MAJOR FORCES DRIVING THE INSURGENCY IN SYRIA.”

Technique 3: Attack Those who Question the Dogma … “You’re an Assad supporter!”

Ashley Smith does not criticize the NATO and Gulf states that are violating international law and the UN charter by funding and supplying a proxy army to attack Syria. Instead, he criticizes left groups who oppose the aggression. That is a sign of how far off track ISO is. They did the same thing regarding Libya and have evidently learned nothing from that disaster. Ashley Smith should go and tour Libya now to savor the “revolution” he promoted.

Ashley Smith’s theme with respect to Syria (peaceful popular uprising against brutal dictator) is the same theme promoted by neoconservatives and the mainstream media. When they encounter a different perspective, they cry out, “You are an Assad supporter!”. Never mind that many genuine progressives do not say that. What we say is that it’s for the Syrian people to determine their government, not foreigners.

Smith criticizes the British Stop the War coalition for having “adapted to Assad supporters” and for “giving a platform to allies of the dictatorship”, specifically “regime apologist Mother Superior Agnes Mariam”. Smith is misinformed on this issue also, but it is doubly revealing. In fact, Mother Agnes was hosted on the tour by Syria Solidarity Movement. When she was in London, she was invited to speak at a Stop the War rally. To his great discredit, the keynote speaker Jeremy Scahill, who is closely aligned with ISO, threatened to withdraw from the conference if Mother Agnes spoke. Scahill has done great journalistic work exposing Blackwater and Drone Warfare. However that does not excuse the complicity leading to blackmail regarding a Palestinian Lebanese nun who has shown immense courage in promoting reconciliation and peace in Syria. However, that action is typical of some misguided “socialist” groups, the Muslim Brotherhood and their allies. Mother Agnes was verbally attacked and abused by these groups throughout her tour, which otherwise met with great success. Mother Agnes has lived in Syria for over twenty years. She consistently says that Syria needs reform, but you don’t do that by destroying it.

Ashley Smith goes on to criticize the US Peace Council for recently sending a delegation to Syria and having the audacity to talk with “Assad and his henchmen”. He sounds like the right wing hawks who denounced Jane Fonda for going to North Vietnam in the 1970’s. Smith displays a dogmatic and closed-minded view; what kind of “international socialism” does he represent?

Smith criticizes Green Party candidates Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka for “remaining silent about Putin’s and Assad’s atrocities”. This is another measure of how far off track the ISO is. They evidently are not aware of international law or they don’t care about it. The Assad government has a right to defend itself against terrorist attacks which are sponsored, funded and supplied by foreign governments.

Syria also has a right to request help from Russia and Iran. But with tunnel-vision dogma, Ashley Smith and ISO do not care. They seem to be supporting instead of opposing imperialist aggression, violations of international law, and the death and destruction these have led to.

Ashley disparages the Syrian government and people who have continued to fight against the forces of sectarianism promoted by NATO, Israel and the Gulf monarchies. Ashley and ISO would do well to send some people to see the reality of Syria. They would find it very different than their fevered imagination or what they have been led to believe by fake Syrians and Muslim Brotherhood dogmatists.

Genuine progressives are not “Assad supporters”. Rather, we are opponents of imperialist aggression and supporters of international law–which says it’s the right of Syrians to determine who leads them. That would mean real Syrians, not those raised in or paid by the West.

Ashley Smith’s Inaccurate Overall Analysis

Ashley Smith gives a very inaccurate analysis of the overall geopolitical situation in Syria and beyond.

He says “The US has been seeking a resolution that might push Assad aside, but that above all maintains his regime in power”. He goes on to say ‘U.S. policy from the beginning has been to preserve the core of Assad’s state.” Ashley believes “the U.S. has retreated in general from outright regime change as its strategy in the Middle East”.

This is absurd. In reality the US and allies Israel and Saudi Arabia have been pushing for ‘regime change’ in Syria for over a decade. In 2005 CNN host Christiane Amanpour expressed the situation bluntly:

“Mr. President, you know the rhetoric of regime change is headed towards you from the United States. They are actively looking for a new Syrian leader. They’re granting visas and visits to Syrian opposition politicians. They’re talking about isolating you diplomatically and, perhaps, a coup d’etat or your regime crumbling. What are you thinking about that?”

In 2007, Seymour Hersh wrote about the destabilization efforts in his article “The Redirection”.

In 2010, Secretary of State Clinton spoke of “changing Syria’s behavior” and threatened “President Assad is making decisions that could mean war or peace for the region …. We know he’s hearing from Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas. It is crucial that he also hear directly from us, so that the potential consequences of his actions are clear.”

Secretary Clinton appointed Robert Ford to become US Ambassador to Syria. Ford was previously the chief political officer in Baghdad for Ambassador John Negroponte. Who is John Negroponte? He was Ambassador to Honduras overseeing the Nicaraguan Contras and El Salvador death squads in the 1980’s. Negroponte’s arrival in Iraq in 2004 led to ‘the El Salvador option’ (sectarian death squads) in Iraq.

Since the conflict in Syria began in 2011 the US has spent many billions of dollars trying to overthrow the Syrian government or force it to change policy. The supply of sophisticated and deadly weaponry continues. In April 2016 it was reported that the US recently supplied 994 TONS of sophisticated rocket launchers, anti tank and other heavy weapons to “moderate rebels” who ally with the Syrian Al Qaeda ( Jabhat al Nusra recently renamed Jabhat Fatah al Sham).

Ashley’s theory that the US is intent on “preserving” the Syrian state and the US has “given up” on regime change is not supported by the facts.

Ashley continues the faulty analysis by saying “the U.S. is solely and obsessively focused on defeating this counterrevolutionary force (ISIS) in Iraq and Syria” and “the Obama administration has struck a de facto alliance with Russia”.

This is more theory without evidence. The US coalition was doing little to stop ISIS and looked the other way as ISIS went across the open desert to attack and occupy Palmyra. They were similarly looking the other way as ISIS sent hundreds of trucks filled with oil from eastern Syria into Turkey each day. It was not until Russia entered the scene in support of Syria one year ago, that the US coalition got embarrassed into actually attacking ISIS. As to a “de facto alliance”, this is what Russia has implored the US to do, largely without response. In the past two weeks the U.S. has threatened Russian and Syrian planes not to attack US ground forces inside Syria and refused to come to agreement with Russia that “moderate rebels” working with acknowledged terrorists are not “moderate” and can be targeted.

The Obama administration is trying to prevent the collapse of the regime change project by stalling and delay. Perhaps they wish to keep the project alive for a more aggressive US policy. Hillary Clinton continues to talk about a “no fly zone”. Her allies in Congress have recently initiated HR5732 which will escalate economic and financial sanctions against Syria and assess the implementation of a “no fly zone”.

Ashley Smith suggests that large portions of the US left have been avidly supporting “oppressive regimes” such as Syria and Iran. He mocks those on the left who suggested the Iranian ‘green movement’ was US-influenced. His mockery is exposed as ignorance by none other than Hillary Clinton herself. In her book “Hard Choices” she recounts how they arranged for Twitter to postpone a system upgrade which would have taken the social media giant offline at a critical time, right after the 2009 Iranian election. Hillary and her group at the State Dept were actively promoting the protests in Iran.

Dangerous Times Ahead

Some middle east analysts have made the faulty analysis that Israel is not involved in the aggression against Syria. In reality, Israeli interests are at the core of the US policy against Syria. The Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. was explicit: “Israel wanted Assad gone since start of civil war”. He also said “bad guys supported by Iran” are worse than “bad guys not supported by Iran”. In other words, Israel prefers chaos and Al Qaeda to a stable independent Syria.

Saudi Arabia is the other key U.S. ally seeking overthrow in Syria. With its close connections to the oil industry, military industrial complex and Wall Street, Saudi Arabia has enormous influence in Washington. It has been mercilessly bombing Yemen for the last 18 months and continues funding and promoting the proxy war against Syria.

Both Saudi Arabia and Israel seek the same thing: breaking the resistance alliance which runs from Iran through Syria to Lebanon. They are in alliance with US neoconservatives who still dream of “a new American Century” where the US fights multiple wars to enforce its exceptional and sole supremacy. Along with some other countries, these are the forces of reaction violating international law and promoting the war against Syria.

The tide is turning against the forces pushing for ‘regime change’ in Syria. But they have not yet given up and may even escalate. Now is when progressives in the West need to raise our voices in opposition to this aggression. Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka can hopefully bring much more attention to this critical issue. Bernie Sanders and his supporters need to speak out against Hillary Clinton’s statements and plans.

There are good people in ISO which does good work in many areas. We hope they will re-examine their assumptions, beliefs and actions regarding Syria. In the dangerous times ahead, we need them to be resisting the drive to war in Syria, not condoning or supporting it.

Syria’s ambassador to the United Nations has dismissed as flawed the findings of a UN-mandated investigation blaming Syrian forces for the use of chemical weapons, saying the report is based on “false testimonies.” Amazingly, the conclusions of the report “lack any physical evidence, whether by samples or attested medical reports that chlorine was used.”

Article first published on Iranian Press TV on September 1st, 2016.
Syria’s ambassador to the United Nations has dismissed as flawed the findings of a UN-mandated investigation blaming Syrian forces for the use of chemical weapons, saying the report is based on “false testimonies.”

In an interview with Lebanon-based al-Mayadeen TV, Bashar al-Ja’afari said the allegations against Syrian soldiers have been “fabricated” to put pressure on the government in Damascus.

He said the UN Security Council and the Organization for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) have yet to publish their final findings on the use of banned arms in Syria, adding that Damascus would present its own observations and notes to the world body before the joint report is out.

Last week, a report carried out by the Joint Investigative Mechanism of the UN and the OPCW claimed that Syrian forces had used chlorine in two separate attacks against militants fighting the Syrian government in 2014 and 2015.

The investigation was launched based on the UN Security Council’s Resolution 2235, which called for determining which party used chemical arms in Syria.

Syria rejected the allegations, with Ja’afari saying on Tuesday that the conclusions of the report “lack any physical evidence, whether by samples or attested medical reports that chlorine was used.”

The Syrian diplomat also said the report was “totally based on witnesses presented by terrorist armed groups.”

Russia, which has been backing the Syrian government in its war against the terrorists, also cast doubt on the report.

Moscow’s Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin said he had “very serious questions” over the investigation’s findings and suggested the panel should gather more information.

“There are a number of questions which have to be clarified before we accept all the findings of the report,” Churkin said, while slamming calls on the UNSC by France and the United Kingdom for imposing sanctions on the perpetrators of the alleged chemical attacks.

“There is nobody to sanction in the report… It contains no names, no specifics, no fingerprints,” said the Russian diplomat, adding, “Clearly there is a smoking gun. We know that chlorine was most likely used, but there are no fingerprints on the gun.”

Syria was once accused of using chemicals against civilians and militants in an attack outside Damascus nearly four years ago.

The Damascus government rejected the allegations, but accepted to hand over its stockpiles of chemical weapons to the OPCW-UN joint mission in 2013 when it signed the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention under a deal brokered by Russia and the US.