An article in the Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture entitled "Monstrous Arrogance: Husbands who Choose Murder Over Divorce," by Cynthia Lewis, PhD, examines a dozen convictions in murders where husbands have murdered their wives to save themselves from some consequences of divorce that they perceive as “too costly.” How murder could become a viable alternative to divorce is either an indicator of the collapse of moral compass in our society, or an indication of the need for divorce reform, or perhaps both. The article points out that, instead of the emotional crimes that you expect to see in spousal murders, it was a “practical matter;” so much so that most of the women never had a sense of how much danger they were in. Article also mentions Australian divorce-related murder.
I usually pick an important subject to wrap a story around. This time, I thought that the subject would be a little lighter, but I was very surprised when I did a little Internet research to find just how common spousal murder was.
According to a 2014 article in the Huffington Post, at least 1/3 of all women murdered in the United States are killed by their male partners.
Now, with the baby boomer generation approaching retirement, according to an article in Saultstar.com, divorces in the after-55 crowd often involve fat retirement funds and paid-off houses, making alternative solutions (albeit insane ones like murder) attractive. Hiring a hitman (or woman) becomes an irresistible and economic alternative for some amoral people who feel that they are trapped in long marriages.
The article cites that 3.2% of murders are done on a commercial basis. Citing straightdope.com, the article states that “most contract killings are carried out by small-time freelancers hired by ‘schlubs.’ The perpetrators in these arrangements are often caught by undercover policemen and FBI agents posing as hired killers. The article reports that an Australian Institute of Criminology study estimates the average costs of a hit to be $12,700; which is significantly less than the cost of an attorney in a contested divorce.
According to a 1995 study by the U.S. Department of Justice, husbands are convicted more often than wives of spousal murder, and the convicted men are more likely to receive a prison term than convicted women. In 44% of the cases of husband killing, the husband had assaulted the wife at the time of the killing. Assaulted wives were convicted 56% of the time, compared to 86% in the case of unprovoked wives and 88% in the case of unprovoked husbands.
Another article in the Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture entitled Monstrous Arrogance: Husbands who Choose Murder Over Divorce, by Cynthia Lewis, PhD, examines a dozen convictions in murders where husbands have murdered their wives to save themselves from some consequences of divorce that they perceive as “too costly.” How murder could become a viable alternative to divorce is either an indicator of the collapse of moral compass in our society, or an indication of the need for divorce reform, or perhaps both. The article points out that, instead of the emotional crimes that you expect to see in spousal murders, it was a “practical matter;” so much so that most of the women never had a sense of how much danger they were in.
According to the article, this type of murderer often projects confidence and an ability to win the trust of others, yet is “atypically devoid of feeling,” “icy and calculating,” and self-centered to the point of narcissism.
Statistics from the Department of Justice claim women are the perpetrators in 41% of all spousal murders. The most common method used by the females is cited as poisoning, with hiring a professional killer as second. The third is persuading a boyfriend to do the killing. These last two methods are classified not as a woman killing a man, but as “other killings,” but the fact that there are four times as many husband victims as wives probably indicates that the statistic should be much higher.
Kenneth Eade (http://kennetheade.com) author of the Brent Marks Legal Thriller Series and Involuntary Spy Espionage Thriller Series, has been hailed by critics as “one of the strongest thriller writers on our scene.” His latest novel is “Decree of Finality.”
Newly-discovered images of alleged BBC "napalm victim": In June 2014 a Netherlands resident contacted me, expressing anxiety about being recognised in a frame from 'Saving Syria's Children' which I had posted on Facebook. Although the woman was not among the group of alleged napalm/thermite victims in the frame in question, I subsequently recognised her in a You Tube video shot at Atareb Hospital, Aleppo on 26 August 2013, apparently in the guise of a victim of the same alleged events portrayed in Ian Pannell and Darren Conway's BBC reports. This is the latest report in Robert Stuart's extraordinary investigation into BBC war propaganda.
1. In June 2014 a Netherlands resident contacted me, expressing anxiety about being recognised in a frame from 'Saving Syria's Children' which I had posted on Facebook. Although the woman was not among the group of alleged napalm/thermite victims in the frame in question, I subsequently recognised her in a You Tube video shot at Atareb Hospital, Aleppo on 26 August 2013, apparently in the guise of a victim of the same alleged events portrayed in Ian Pannell and Darren Conway's BBC reports. I have written about this here and here.
A number of images currently viewable on the Facebook account of one of the woman's relatives would appear to make it plainer still that the person who contacted me is indeed the same person who appears in the You Tube footage of the aftermath of the alleged Aleppo incendiary bomb attack. Details here.
2) My attempts to secure documents relating to Saving Syria's Children from the BBC through a Freedom of Information request appear, somewhat inevitably, to have run aground.
Following a decision notice from the Information Commissioner's Office upholding the BBC 's rejection of my request, I had argued in an appeal to the First-tier Tribunal (General Regulatory Chamber) that the evidence set out in my blog:
...clearly demonstrates that the BBC has committed the greatest betrayal of audience trust imaginable by a news broadcaster – the fabrication of an atrocity for the purposes of war propaganda. Such an egregious transgression is quite possibly unique in the history of broadcasting.
I further argued that Saving Syria’s Children and related BBC News reports had breached Article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which states that “Any propaganda for war shall be prohibited by law”.
In response the Tribunal has issued a Case Management Note (3 May) observing that:
"Mr Stuart’s rights under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights may be capable of being litigated and remedy given to him if a Court finds there was a breach of those rights. The question of whether reports are genuine or fabricated may also be capable of being independently investigated."
However the Tribunal "is unable to grant Mr Stuart a remedy for what he says is a contravention of his rights under that Covenant" and directs that I must provide it with reasons why the information I have requested from the BBC was or is “not held for the purposes of journalism, art or literature”.
The deadline for submitting a response is 24 May.
3) A high quality copy of Saving Syria's Children is currently available on Vimeo. The section which forms the focus of my blog commences at 30:38. As BBC Worldwide has long since blocked all You Tube postings of the documentary, please consider downloading the Vimeo copy while it is available. This version is the highest quality I have seen to date and has already yielded a number of interesting new details, such as an apparent glimpse of the Dutch woman pictured above (see update here).
4) Further to my submission of shocking images of a staff member of UK registered charity Hand in Hand for Syria's "flagship medical facility", Atareb Hospital, Aleppo, posing with an array of weapons and munitions, an officer of the Charity Commission's Investigations Monitoring and Enforcement department has responded (12 April):
"I am currently considering the information that you have provided in order to determine what regulatory action, if any, is required. I confirm that I will provide a more detailed response once I have completed my assessment."
5) A reminder of the two sets of graphics highlighting some very startling inconsistencies in accounts of the alleged events of 26 August 2013 by BBC International Correspondent Ian Pannell and BBC 'Trust Me I'm A Doctor' presenter Dr Saleyha Ahsan and my recent presentation on Saving Syria's Children for From Stop War.
Migration is part of our collective history, but Europe’s political leaders are still failing completely to address widespread public concern over the flood of migrants now storming Europe’s borders. The consequences of these pressures will have profound impacts.
Unable to reach rational solutions beyond discussing how many each member state should be obliged to take, bribing African countries to take back their own citizens who don’t qualify as refugees and now paying Turkey to take back illegals bound for Greece, while taking a similar quota of Syrians from Turkey, are inadequate responses. Our leaders are moving into systemic chaos, where the Human Rights Act, has spawned a people-trafficking industry that is endangering our security and running rings around governments at taxpayers’ expense. It is not fit for purpose and needs reform. Without leaving the EU, the UK could suspend and redraw the act with our European partners, who all have much to gain from a more sensible approach.
In Britain, the Government, under Labour, first lost control of immigration and then tried to spin the idea that a large influx of people is vital to our interests. Despite attempts at reforms, the system is still failing. Legal migration in to the UK has hit record levels - up 40 per cent on 2014, according to the Office for National Statistics. Nearly 100,000 illegals were detected trying to enter the UK in 2015, while the EU is receiving thousands of illegal migrants a day – triple the rate last year.
The situation has been escalating for years, but after German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s grand moral gesture to take in 800,000 ‘refugees’ a year in response to the photo of a drowned boy on a Turkish beach and then demand other EU states take their share, it has ignited the hopes of millions more to settle in Europe. Now barbed wire borders are being erected in the heart of Europe, destroying the ideal of free movement.
Described as refugees or just ‘migrants’, as though there has merely been some bureaucratic error in their status, the asylum lobby and much of the media are cheerleading the appeal for public sympathy as a tragic human interest story. But this terrorist infiltrated people-smuggling led invasion, facilitated by EU governments, presents a huge challenge from failing states with exploding populations and self-inflicted turf wars.
Generous policies in Sweden and Germany are enabling thousands of non-EU migrants and illegals to settle legally there and then move to other member states as internal EU migrants. Over 1.2 million have claimed asylum in 2015. Our politicians consistently ignore this back door impact.
Sweden has been receiving up to 2000 unaccompanied minors a week in late 2015, nearly a third of its migrant influx, who can then have their families flown in to join them. Most were males giving their age as 16 or 17 but receiving groups say many appear much older. According to Statistics Sweden, 50 per cent of refugees are not in work seven years after arriving in the country. Even after 15 years, 40 per cent are still on welfare without a job – a major drain on the country’s welfare system.
Refugee lobbyists say it is the moral duty of Western countries to absorb these migrants. Do the media and politicians seriously think that Europe can take in the populations of sub-Saharan Africa and beyond? When will the line be drawn? All UK parties are well aware of the mounting pressures on housing, schools and health services, but don’t like to talk about it. Or the 25-50 per cent of young people in Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece who don’t have a job. So too, they should be aware of the Parliamentary report in 2008 that the large rise in legal immigration to the UK had virtually no net economic gain for the country. Nor do we need high immigration to counter a temporary rise in ageing populations. Ever more migrants also get old and then need support.
The Government talks about skilled immigrants Britain needs, but skilled immigrants account for only 20% of total non-EU immigrants in Britain and many actually do unskilled work when they get here.
Proposals to cap numbers will barely touch the scale of the true problem - a permanent population swelling so quickly by other immigration pathways, including a generous interpretation of family reunion from outside the EU that is adding to the pressures on our environment and food security.
Australia is often cited by UK politicians as a model immigration system, but its population just hit 24 million– 17 years earlier than expected. With net overseas migration contributing 53 per cent to total population growth, the population is now set to double every 50 years. This in an arid continent with only six per cent of the land able to grow crops.
Europe’s growing immigration crisis
In 1950, the countries that later constituted the EU-27 had a population of 370 million. By 2010 it topped 500 million - equivalent to absorbing the inhabitants of another present-day France and Britain combined. By January 2015 Eurostat figures show the population was 508.2 million - up 1.3 million from the previous year, with the majority of 1.1m a result of net legal immigration into the EU.
Add to this the rapidly growing number of illegals – with over 1.2 million detected in 2015 and many more entering undetected, according to the EU borders agency, Frontex.
Today, only Syria currently has an acute refugee crisis, but to avert mounting chaos and retain the fabric of the EU, we have to stop the lure of a gateway to permanent citizenship to millions. People in Europe might be more reassured if irregular migrants eligible for asylum were offered temporary support and then returned to their countries when the crisis resolved. Many of those who claimed asylum from countries like Somalia and Iraq go back for extended holidays, but the claims for asylum continue. Iraqi Airways now operates four flights a week from the UK to facilitate demand for vacations back home. Yet Iraqis are in the top ten asylum applications to the UK in 2015,
Also in the list are Nigeria – touted as Africa’s fasted growing economy and other democratic countries like Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and even Albania – now 25 years since it became a European democracy. Eritrea is top of the list, supposedly linked to harsh national service. What is going on? International pressure should sort this out, not expect resettlement.
Part of the problem is that EU countries don’t have repatriation agreements with many countries involved, but this could be remedied quite simply, as just about all the sender countries in Africa and many in Asia are recipients of generous Western aid. We need to use this leverage. Several countries, like Senegal, condone exporting people in the hope they will reach Europe, find work and send back remittances.
Global leaders need to be focused on real solutions and more effective regional aid in all these fragile states as well as engaging more constructively with Russia, Iran and countries in the region to bring about positive outcomes. You can help far more people cost effectively in nearby protected areas than import millions into high-cost West European countries. Sweden is now having to spend its foreign aid budget on trying to deal with new migrant arrivals.
The current level of UK immigration and increasing birth rates will require building the equivalent of a new Manchester every year. It is little wonder we have a housing crisis. How can we possibly accommodate this and claim it is sustainable?
In 1998, the Office for National Statistics predicted that the UK population would rise to 65m by 2051. We’re already there! Now they say it could reach 80 million by 2040, mostly as a result of immigration.
David Cameron promises a review of welfare benefits for EU migrants but equally, we need to look at the pull factors for illegals – many openly piling up in Calais attempting to cross to the UK. The EU Commission says it is the responsibility of each Member State to set the rules for welfare support.
We need urgent action to address these issues and clear shared rules that would be strict enough to discourage ineligible people from attempting dangerous journeys. The growing cost to communities of accommodating large-scale inflows of people, in a now crowded world, raises many challenging questions. This is not a left or right issue or racist. It is about global social and environmental sustainability.
Doctors without Borders is well regarded and influential. It is appreciated that many good people work for and support MSF/Doctors Without Borders. The need has arisen, however, to inquire about Doctors without Borders' independence and the consequences of its work in Syria. An objective look is likely to reveal that while Doctors without Borders is helping in some areas, it is causing harm in others.
Open Letter to MSF/Doctors without Borders
by Rick Sterling / May 4th, 2016
Dear MSF International President Dr. Joanne Liu,
Your organization is well regarded and influential. I appreciate that many good people work for and support MSF/Doctors Without Borders. However, I need to inquire about your independence and the consequences of your work in Syria. I believe an objective look will reveal that while you are helping in some areas, you are causing harm in others.
Following are questions on this important issue:
(1) As you know, Aleppo is a large city with the government forces holding western Aleppo while other parts of the city are dominated by armed opposition groups, primarily Nusra/Al Qaeda. About 1.5 to 2 million people live in the government areas with about 200 to 250 thousand in the areas controlled by armed opposition. So 80-90 % of the population is in government-controlled areas. This is rarely mentioned but seems important. Given this fact, is it true that you provide aid and support only to the opposition held areas?
(2) On April 21 the Western and Gulf backed “High Negotiations Committee” announced they were quitting the Geneva negotiations. The next day, hundreds of mortars and bombs started being launched into western Aleppo from the zones controlled by Nusra and other terrorist groups. These bombs are powerful, wounding and killing indiscriminately. Syrian journalist Edward Dark noted that western media and groups such as MSF were silent on this even though hospitals were being hit, dozens of children and civilians killed. On twitter he reported day by day …..
— West Aleppo is simply being obliterated by rebel shelling. A city of 2 million people is being butchered.
— Carnage and devastation as ‘moderate rebel’ bombs fall on west Aleppo like rain.
— Terrorist rebel bombs are still falling like rain on west Aleppo. 15 people murdered at a mosque in Bab Faraj after Friday prayers.
— This is the hospital where my son was born. Dabeet Hospital in W.Aleppo completely destroyed by rebel shelling.
Has MSF denounced these killings and attacks on hospitals in western Aleppo?
(3) The unconcern about indiscriminate attacks and killing in government-held areas of Aleppo has also been denounced by Syrian-Canadian physician Dr. Nabil Antaki. He has recently written:
With regards to recent events in Aleppo, I state very clearly that the mainstream media are lying by omission… All of us here in Aleppo are disgusted by their lack of impartiality and objectivity. They only talk about the loss of life in east of Aleppo which is entirely controlled by Al Nusra…. These are their ‘moderate rebels’ …This same media remains silent on the daily losses and suffering endured in the Western areas of Aleppo living under the rain of mortar fire from these terrorist factions. This media never mentions the continuous bombardment and the carnage we have witnessed in western Aleppo where every single sector has been targeted. On a daily basis we see dozens of people murdered….. For three days now, these media outlets have been accusing the “Assad regime” of bombing an MSF hospital to the east of Aleppo and of killing the last pediatrician in the city. This demonstrates that, for these media, the only priority is this pocket of the city where terrorists are embedded. The three quarters of Aleppo under Syrian government control, where numerous pediatricians are practicing, is of no consequence.
Dr. Liu, will you meet with Dr. Antaki? Perhaps he could give you a tour and confirm to you what he says. He is a well known and respected doctor in Aleppo and fellow Canadian citizen.
(4) There are many discrepancies in reports about the April 27 attack on Al Quds Hospital. MSF Middle East Operations Manager Pablo Marco, interviewed the next day on CNN and PBS Newshour, said “there were two barrel bombs that fell close to the hospital …. then the third barrel bomb fell in the entrance of the hospital”. Barrel bombs are only delivered by helicopters. In contrast, your press release the same day says “the hospital was destroyed by at least one airstrike which directly hit the building, reducing it to rubble.” A CBC report continued this version, claiming “An MSF-supported hospital in the northern Syria city of Aleppo is now a pile of rubble. Airstrikes brought down the building on Wednesday.” The hospital photograph indicates it is not a “pile of rubble” and it’s unclear where the damage is. The sandbag reinforcement and damaged car in front indicate it might have been a battle scene but the rest is unclear. Which story is correct and accurate?
The number of fatalities has varied from initial death counts of 14 to later reports of over 50. How are these numbers verified?
(5) MSF representatives Pablo Marco and Muskilda Zancada suggest this was a deliberate and intentional attack on the hospital. In an interview Ms. Zancada says “Al Quds Hospital has been functional for more than 4 years so it was basically impossible that this information was not known… The facts are pointing to this being a deliberate attack.” In contrast with Ms. Zancada’s assertions, most Aleppans have never heard of “Al Quds Hospital”. The “hospital” did not exist before the conflict and the photo shows an unidentified apartment building. Is it accurate to call this facility a “hospital”? Mr. Marco claimed that MSF supported personnel visited the hospital every other week so there must be many reports, documents and photos confirming whether it was a 34 bed hospital. Otherwise, it seems fair to say this was actually a medical clinic in the ground floor of an unmarked and largely abandoned apartment building.
(6) Can Mr. Marco or Ms. Zancada please identify the damage inflicted by the airstrike (or barrel bomb) at Al Quds Hospital on April 27? The Russian Ministry of Defense has released a photograph indicating the building had similar damage in October 2015.
(7) As you know, Nusra/Al Qaeda is considered ‘terrorist’ by all parties including the US, French, and Canadian governments. Does the Al Quds Hospital primarily or significantly serve Al Qaeda and/or other terrorist fighters? If so, are your supporters aware they are assisting fighters who launched bombs attacking western Aleppo as shown here and previously destroyed the once prized Al Kindi Hospital with a huge truck bomb as shown here? I appreciate you have a commitment to the hippocratic oath but given the widespread medical needs, why are you prioritizing assistance to Nusra/Al Qaeda?
(8) Many videos from Al Quds Hospital feature members of the “White Helmets”. Are you aware the White Helmets was established by the US and UK with initial training in Turkey by a UK military contractor? Are you aware the organization is not independent or neutral and has explicitly called for western intervention in Syria? The origins of the “White Helmets” is documented here . There is an online petition denouncing this clever but cynical marketing campaign here.
(9) Can you you please compare and contrast the videos showing attacks at MSF- supported Al Quds Hospital with videos showing attacks in western Aleppo? The videos from Al Quds Hospital are here and here with an animated one here. The attacks in western Aleppo including an attack on Al Dabeet Hospital are here, here and here. Do you see the difference between videos from armed opposition area vs. those from western Aleppo? Some look authentic and some look possibly staged.
(10) We know that many Western and Gulf countries are providing funds to help the armed opposition in Syria. For example in 2012 the Canadian government said: “The reason the $2 million was being channeled through Canadian Relief for Syria instead of the UN or International Committee of the Red Cross was because it was intended for Syrian opposition groups and was not humanitarian aid.” Is MSF directly or indirectly receiving grants or funds from the Canadian, French or US governments to serve Syrian opposition groups?
(11) There has been a wave of media coverage of Al Quds Hospital and the death of Dr. Moaz (sometimes spelled Maaz). Some of the reports are clearly intended to tug at the heart and natural sympathy of people. Unfortunately propagandists can be effective in this area as they seek to manipulate public opinion. There are many examples with the Kuwaiti babies and incubators being one of the most famous frauds as it successfully won public support for Gulf War 1. Both Amnesty International and the International Red Crescent were (unwittingly) part of the fraud. My point is this: Some of the Al Quds Hospital stories are questionable and may be fraudulent.
For example, the letter from a fellow physician acclaiming Dr Moaz was published by “The Syria Campaign” which is the marketing creator of the “White Helmets”. The letter is supposedly from a fellow doctor who might or might not be real. They use a false name yet claim he “manages the Children’s Hospital in Aleppo”. Another questionable piece of ‘evidence’ of the death of Dr. Moaz is the video supposedly taken just before the building was hit by missile or bomb. It’s curious that the building would be destroyed and the CCTV cameras (several of them) survive and be ready for editing. Is this real or is it just another example of the “moderate rebel’ social media propaganda?
(12) Biased media coverage on Syria serves to demonize the Assad government and prolong the conflict. It has made it easier for foreign aggressors to continue funding the proxy armies such as Nusra/Al Qaeda. There is danger of vastly increased conflict and bloodshed if foreign governments or NATO intervene directly. In fact, calls for greater aggression are increasing in the wake of publicity around the attack at Al Quds Hospital. Are you aware that the Foreign Minister of Saudi Arabia seemed to threaten an escalation of the conflict as he said “The world is not going to allow them to get away with this.”?
Dr. Liu, we agree with your insistence that medical personnel and facilities should not be attacked. That is in keeping with the Geneva Conventions on War. There are other international laws, including laws against aggression and the right of self-defense. It is clear that the Syrian government is being attacked by proxy armies funded by a coalition of foreign governments in violation of international law and the UN Charter.
Will you investigate whether the criticisms expressed in this letter are accurate and take appropriate action? It seems that current MSF actions and statements on Syria are biased and effectively serving the coalition of governments waging war on Syria in violation of international law. The bias and propaganda sustain the conflict and threaten to make it even worse.
The occupation of the American mind (4/5/16) is a documentary on shown on the Russian live video streaming channel RT - On air. This documentary is evidently produced by someone other than RT. Due to 'copyright restrictions', this show cannot be found and watched like other RT shows and documentaries. It can only be watched live at times scheduled by RT – 3:29pm, 1:30pm, and 10:28pm GMT on 4 May 2016 and at 3:29pm and 10:29pm on 5 May 2016.
This documentary shows the history of the Palestine/Israel conflict and how the American mass media has been unfairly biased against the original inhabitants of Palestine and in favour of the Israeli settlers in its coverage of some of the critical episodes in that conflict.
However, this program revealed to me little that was not already known to me and, I expect, most people already familiar with that conflict:
After the establishment of Israel on stolen Palestinian land in 1947, more Palestinian land was conquered in the war of 1948 and and again in 1967. Subsequently the Israeli conquerors have attempted to deny Palestinian inhabitants basic democratic rights, stealing their land and allowing imported Jewish settlers to build housing on that land.
This documentary fails to propose a solution to the Palestine/Israel that would bring about peace.
Israel's past and ongoing treatment of Palestinians is clearly a travesty of justice.
However, no less unjust was the conquest of North America by Europeans from the 16th century onwards or the conquest of Australia by English settlers after 1788.
If it were somehow possible for the descendants of the original inhabitants of North America or Australia to take back their unjustly stolen land, it would be a catastrophe for tens of millions of the current inhabitants of those lands. So too would the return to Palestinians of all land stolen from them since 1947 be for the 6,199,000 Israeli Jews now in that land.
This documentary also fails to provide its viewers with any appreciation of the broader context of Israel's wars against its neighbours and its ongoing, subversion of, and military threats against nations in the region. Examples include:
Israel's collusion in the illegal 1956 war by France and Britain against the Egyptian government of President Nasser;
The Six Day war of 1967 against Egypt, Syria and Jordan; and
Israel's support for the invasion of Syria by terrorists since March 2011;
During the Six Day War, Israeli war planes sank the USS Liberty and attempted to kill all survivors. Only the presence of witnesses aboard a nearby Soviet warship prevented the Israeli war-planes from machine-gunning all the survivors in the water.
The only plausible explanation that I can come up with for Israel's attack on the ship and crew of a nation supposedly allied with it and the subsequent attempt by United States' President Johnson to cover it up, is that President Johnson planned to blame Egypt for the sinking of the USS Liberty and use that as a pretext to join Israel's war against Egypt.
Solely through an understanding of this ruthless act by Israel, can its treatment of Palestinians and other countries in the region, including Syria, Iraq and Iran be properly appreciated.
Given that Syria has been the most steadfast supporter of the rights of Palestinians, whom the documentarypurports to support, and given that the current Syrian conflict is close to the centre of current global geopolitics, the failure of this program to mention that conflict is a startling omission.
[...]The evidence presented here is only the tip of the iceberg. No doubt that some Palestinians, like some traitorous Iraqis, Syrians and Lebanese, joined the destabilization scheme, but when we get down to the nitty gritty, like most Syrians, most of Syria’s Palestinian citizens back the Syrian Arab Republic, the only Arab nation that has given them a home, supported their righteous cause and treated them as equals. It is shameful beyond shameful that these truths and more were not only ignored but deceptively covered up by “Palestine Solidarity Movement” activists to push a cookie-cutter propaganda line that meshed with the increasingly toothless nature of “solidarity” speak and praxis, not to mention the worldview of their Jewish and Khaleeji “colleagues”. [...] This publication is an extract only from the original article by Jonahtan Azaziah, published 18 April, 2016 at "Meet The Pro-Syria Palestinians That Electronic “Intifada” Will Never Tell You About."
Notable Palestinian supporters of the Syrian Government [Candobetter editorial heading]
[...]
~ Anwar Hadi, the spokesman of the PLO, who said from day one of the ungodly crisis in Yarmouk that the blame lies squarely at the feet of the Takfiri rebels, who entered the once-vibrant Syrian-Palestinian camp in massive numbers and committed massacres, chased out civilians and looted homes along with businesses. Electronic “Intifada” and company wrote numerous articles attacking the Syrian government for the humanitarian disaster, like Jabhat al-Nusra, the FSA and ISIS were/are mere daydream-constructs “the regime” and its “Shabiha” brought forth from thin air.
~ The Palestine Liberation Army (PLA), the Syrian Arab Army’s Palestinian branch, which has fought on numerous fronts throughout Syria and offered countless martyrs in the struggle against Daesh and its ideological counterparts.
~ Fatah al-Intifada, a Palestinian Resistance group which has been ultra-active in the ongoing fight to liberate Yarmouk. Many volunteers, like Tayseer Mousa and Waleed Suleiman, left their homes in the Damascus countryside city of Jaramana to defend their brethren. Portraits of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah can be found all over their offices.
~ Liwa Al-Quds, the third most powerful Syrian military force after the Syrian Arab Army and the Hizbullah-trained NDF according to Al-Masdar News. Liwa Al-Quds has been a tremendously key part of the battle for the liberation of Aleppo, particularly the camps of Handarat and Nayrab.
~ The PFLP-GC, led by the indefatigable Ahmad Jibril and known for their strong support of the democratically elected government in Damascus, these warriors have also been fighting in multiple arenas, from the capital to Aleppo to Latakia and elsewhere. They played an important role in the historic liberation of the besieged Shi’a towns Nubl and Al-Zahra, showing that there is a united Syrian-Palestinian-Lebanese-Iraqi-Iranian, Sunni-Shi’a, Muslim-Christian front against the usurping Zionist regime’s Wahhabi vassals.
~ Hizbullah moujahid Ali Fawzi Taha ( Haydar al-Hajj Jawad) from Bourj el-Barajneh. Born to a Palestinian father and a Lebanese mother, Ali was martyred during the liberation of the strategic, ancient city of Al-Quryatayn. He participated in many victories across Syria, including game-changers like Al-Qusayr and Al-Qalamoun. Considering he was a member of the Lebanese Islamic Resistance, the only Arab force to ever drive ‘Israel’ out from sovereign Arab lands, is it not significantly newsworthy that this hero had a Palestinian background?! If only he had been a BDS activist or an Amnesty International “researcher”, then Electronic “Intifada” would’ve assuredly profiled him.
~ Muhammad Rafeh, a beloved Palestinian-Syrian actor from the popular TV show Bab al-Hara and outspoken supporter of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Muhammad had lost family members a year before in the Zionist entity’s massacre of protesters in the occupied Golan Heights on Naksa Day and was also known for his strong stance against the ‘Israeli’ enemy. The FSA kidnapped Muhammad and slaughtered him for standing with the Syrian government; very “revolutionary”, wouldn’t you say?
~ Archbishop Atallah Hanna, Palestine’s highest-ranking Orthodox Christian authority and a fiery, BLISTERING vocal backer of the Syrian Arab Republic. Not only has Theodosios of Sebastia spoken in no uncertain terms about the aggression against Syria being a Zionist plot, but he’s also defended Islam and the importance of Muslim-Christian unity in the face of Takfirism at length. The Archbishop is a true Arab hero and is undoubtedly on the path to sainthood.
~ Samer al-Issawi, Palestine’s most epic hunger striker (277 days) and a living legend in every sense of the phrase; the man’s will is of such an unbreakable nature that it will forever echo in history and forever haunt the Zionist enemy. Samer, whose fam goes way back with both the PFLP and the DFLP, supports the Syrian Arab Republic and stands firmly against the war on this sovereign nation. His steadfast anti-Imperialism only adds to his larger-than-life character. Yet, apart from PFLP and DFLP affiliated media, this fact remains largely unknown.
~ Palestinians across occupied Falasteen, not to mention Syrians throughout the Golan Heights, have protested in full support of the Syrian Arab Republic and Hizbullah on too many occasions to make mention of here. And we’re not talking about minuscule rallies but bright, rowdy, militant, BIG demonstrations with seas of Syrian Arab Republic flags waving and portraits of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad standing tall. Not even one of these events was covered by “Palestine Solidarity Movement” mainstreamers.[...]
[...] Simply put, to defend Palestine today is to defend Syria and vice versa, for as Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah declared years ago, the Syrian Arab Republic is the backbone of the Mouqawamah and only a fool or a traitor would sit idly by as his backbone is being broken. So what category do the “activists” of the “Palestine Solidarity Movement” fall under? Fools? Traitors? Or a lil’ bit of both?
Policies that should be put to you at the Australian Federal elections of 2 July
In the Australian Federal elections to be held on 2 July 2015, voters, who support each of the policies listed below, are entitled to know whether each candidate asking for his/her vote will, if elected, support or oppose that policy. We intend to ask each candidate, including the sitting member, his/her intentions should he/she be successful. Each response, or lack of response, will be posted here, to candobetter.net.
#governmentParticipation" id="governmentParticipation">More government participation in the economy to create full employment
Give every Australian a useful job and a living wage by implementing "Creating effective local labour markets: a new framework for regional employment policy" (2008 - download 3.1 Mb pdf file from the University of Newcastle Center of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE) Publications page);
Withdraw Australia from the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement;
Re-build a large Australian manufacturing sector through (1) government enterprise and (2) tariff walls against countries which have unfair advantages;
Encourage the local production and consumption of all food and artifacts;
Expand the government housing sector to provide secure, affordable housing to all Australians who need it;
Acquire or build suitable premises for use by small businesses, retailers and food producers at affordable rents;
Re-establish the Commonwealth Employment Service, which was dismantled by the Howard Government in 1998;
Hold a public inquiry into banking, including an investigation of the feasibility of establishing a public bank;
Commence proper accounting of budget surpluses and deficits. Recognise the worth of government services which cannot be quantified monetarily. Properly account for all losses caused by budget decisions, for example, enforced idleness by the unemployed, their poverty, and the loss to the community caused by the removal of a service and unutilised skill and experience;
Reverse privatisations, corporatisations and deregulation which have been imposed since 1983 as far as is possible. Privatisations include those of Telstra (formerly Telecom), the Commonwealth bank and state banks, public transport, insurance, electricity, water, public land, … ;
Outlaw the sale of Australian land to non-citizens;
Public liability insurance to be established - no-one who has organised a public event and has taken all reasonable precautions, should fear financial ruin as a result of any mishap;
Establish a free social network on the Internet as an alternative to Facebook, Google and Twitter. That social network is to respect the privacy of its users and be free, transparently run and without commercial advertising;
Require that all government and statutory authorities, wherever feasible, use free open-source software, such as the Linux operating system and the Libre Office word processor in preference to expensive proprietary software. School children and university students should be taught to use this open-source software;
Establish a public fund to transparently remunerate producers of open-source intellectual property, including software, literature and music; Producers to be paid according to a formula based on how much their products are used, instead of having to seek remuneration from advertising or subscriptions;
#fullEmployment" id="fullEmployment">Full employment in secure and fulfilling occupations
Reduction of working week to 35 hours as a start; outlaw compulsory overtime; require employers to offer workers, who don't need a full wage, to work reduced and flexible hours;
Re-establish on-the-job training and career progression in all government departments and statutory authorities as an alternative to training at TAFE colleges and tertiary institutions; Encourage private enterprises to do the same;
Abolish sweat-shops. Governments must proactively act to close down factories, which use low-paid workers working for long hours; re-introduce the state award system;
Open government, except where national security may be compromised; No 'commercial in-confidence' contracts to be signed with members of the private sector at the initiative of the government. Discriminate in favour of contractors who do not require 'commercial in-confidence' contracts;
Public newsmedia including the ABC and SBS be required to give all sides of any story where the facts are disputed. All parties to such disputes, whether domestic or foreign, must be given the opprtunity to put their case to the viewing public;
Each parliamentarian be require to attend meetings of his/her constituents during election campaigns, including this election and at regular specified intervals;
In the next term of parliament, put to voters a referendum to adopt Direct Democracy as practised in Switzerland;
Reverse the funding cuts to tertiary institutions and TAFE colleges;
More funding for university arts faculties;
Abolish university fees;
Re-establish the Whitlam Government's Tertiary Education Assistance Scheme (TEAS) so that University students don't have to work part-time to support themselves;
Act to have the full facts of the destruction of flight MH17, in which 28 Australians died, on 17 July 2014 revealed. Demand the Dutch government make the MH17 black box available to investigators. Demand that the United States' government release its satellite surveillance recordings of the flight of MH17 as the Russian government has done;
Recognise the government of President Bashar al-Assad, which enjoys far more popular support than any of the Western governments opposed to it, as verified in the June 1914 Presidential election and the recently concluded Parliamentary elections, as the legitimate government of Syria;
End the sanctions imposed against Syria on the fabricated pretext that the Syrian government had massacred its own citizens at Houla in 2013;
Oppose the illegal proxy terrorist war against the people of Syria which began in March 2011 that war has so far cost the lives of 250,000 Syrians, including 80,000 members of the Syrian Armed forces;
Prosecute any Australian citizen known to have participated in that illegal war. Seek collaboration from the Syrian authorities in bringing those people to justice;
Remunerate the Syrian government for the trouble and expense it was put to for having to care for 1,300,000 refugees who fled to Syria as a result of the illegal wars of 1991 and 2003 and sanctions against Iraq in which Australia participated;
Oppose Israel's illegal seizure of land in the occupied West Bank and the Golan Heights;
Demand that Israel free former Australian resident Mordechai Vanunu, who revealed to the world Israel's illegal possession of nuclear weapons. Demand that the United Nations act to remove the threat to other countries in that region from those nuclear weapons ;
Repudiate the revision of history by which the Ukrainian government installed in the CIA-orchestrated coup of January 2014, justifies collaboration with the Nazi invaders by some Ukrainians;
Recognise the secession of Crimea to Russia from Ukraine in February 2014, after that coup, as a legitimate act of self-determination and self-defence, overwhelmingly supported by the inhabitants of Crimea in a referendum;
Oppose the war by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia against Yemen. Ask that the United Nations take action by against Saudi Arabia to end the war;
Expel the Turkish ambassador until such time as the Turkish government restores free speech and democratic rights to all of its citizens, ceases its war against the Kurds, and ceases its purchase of stolen Syrian petroleum from ISIS;
Offer #asylumToWhistleblowers" id="asylumToWhistleblowers">political asylum to Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and other whistleblowers;
Act to force the UK government to end the arbitrary detention of Australian citizen Julian Assange and allow him to return to Australia;
Act to prevent intelligence agencies, including the United States' CIA and NSA, Britain's GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 and Australia's ASIO and ASIS from dragnet surveillance of Australian citizens. Only allow surveillance where there is reason to fear terrorism or other illegal acts;
As required by law, conduct a coronial inquest into the murder of 35 Australians at Port Arthur in Tasmania on 28 April 1996 - the largest mass murder in Australia's history. The only evidence of the guilt of Martin Bryant for the murders, for which he has never been tried, consists of a supposed confession made after he had been interrogated in solitary confinement for 5 months. This 'confession' is contrary to all other forensic evidence and eyewitness testimony;
#environment">Protection of our environment and life support system
Reduce Australia's net migration to zero at least until such time as we can know that no other native Australian animal is threatened with extinction because of the loss of its habitat to accommodate newcomers;
Outlaw the clearing of native forests. Whether for throw-away paper products or building products, the logging of native forests must end;
End the clearing of bushland and agricultral land for housing estates;
Outlaw the killing of any native Australian wildlife. Re-build destroyed forests and repopulate them with the native species which previously lived in those regions or else similar species if those species are extinct;
What you can do
If you agree with most, or all, of these policies, please consider standing as a candidate yourself. If you know of any candidates who supports the policies listed above, please let us know so that we can promote him/her and lift his/her profile.
Please feel encouraged to also promote these policies and candidates who support these policies on Twitter, FaceBook, other discussion forums or your own web-site. If you can think of any other policies we should promote, or even if you oppose or don't altogether agree with some of these policies, please also let us know by posting a comment below.
Here is an update on current overdevelopment trends in Melbourne, by Mary Drost, of Planning Backlash, with references to height and density, the Property Council of Australia, safety and a new activist group, Victorian Building Action Group.
Well finally the government say they are going to limit building heights in the city. Bit too late as far as I can see. Imagine that we have higher density in our city than New York or Hong Kong!!!!!. And they also say they are going to consult with developers and residents. Can you imagine what the developers will be saying? Let us see if the government has the courage to do it against the wishes of developers. But it seems they are not setting height limits, only density.
The Property Council at it again. They are now demanding that Councils hand over land for development. What a cheek. Peoples rates buy the land that is used for car parking and the land is needed.
Well, banks are stopping lending to foreign buyers - that is good news and in another item, the government are increasing the tax on foreign buyers. Still not high enough tax to be a deterrent. Not like smart Singapore who put on a 20% tax, and that stopped it.
There was recently news of the wall collapse. Now there's another one. Here is the link.You might also like to look at the Facebook of the Victorian Building Action Group, whose issue is the shonky building going on in Victoria and what it is doing to people.
Here is some information on the wall collapse:
These ‘accidents’ are a daily occurrence – here are two on one day!
“When discussing population, let your starting point be about finding the issues that you have in common. It could be about congestion, climate change, loss of heritage, the list goes on. It is not about us pushing our view of the world onto people. Instead it is about helping them to see population in a new light by showing how it connects to the issues that are important to them.” This article is based on Mark Allen's speech to the Victorian Branch of Sustainable Population Australia (SPA) Seminar: Attitudes and communication in population and the environment on 23 April 2016. Videos of the event will be available soon. Mark Allen started Population Permaculture and Planning. He has a background in town planning.
It is nice to be reminded about how well the past year has gone and what a great journey it has been and it wouldn't have happened without a lot of support. I would like to give special mention to Sheila Newman, Jill Quirk, the candobetter.net website and all the folk at the permaculture village at Confest (which is where I held my first workshop during Easter last year). I would also like to thank Michael Bayliss for his unwavering support.
Connecting with these people and others has been invaluable in terms of helping to build the Population Permaculture and Planning movement that began with that first workshop. One of the reasons why I have managed to engage with so many people since then is because I have tried to take a more collaborative approach with no fixed outcome and with no expectations other than a passion to make real change....so far it seems to be working and I will discuss more about that as we go on.
Working in collaboration with people can take you to places where you never expect to go and I mean this in a good way. It can be very constructive if you get it right. You can help to bring the best out in people and they can help to bring the best out in you but if you get it wrong it can have the opposite effect.
I have been involved in activism to a greater or lesser degree for quite a number of years and I have seen a lot of activists come and go along the way. Many have burnt out, many became disillusioned and overall, despite our best efforts and some great wins along the way, the trajectory in terms of making the world a more ecologically and socially sustainable place has generally been downwards......which is quite depressing.
Part of the reason for this is because people have a tendency to bring their agendas and egos into movements. After a while it becomes all about protecting identities and valuable energy that should have been used to create systemic change is wasted in internal fighting. I am sure that you can all relate to this to a greater or lesser degree. For example I have seen animosity between vegans and non-vegans in the animal welfare movement to the point where I sometimes wonder whether the animals would have been better off had we all just gone home and watched TV.
So over time I have learnt that creating real proper decent long-term change requires more than going out and fighting the good fight so to speak. There is also a need to create underlying whole-scale cultural change from within. A great philosopher once said that you cannot overcome an addiction with the same mindset that allowed that addiction to manifest in the first place.
If we want to lift ourselves out of the very real climate emergency that we are currently facing and achieve so much more, we have to change the record; we have to re-examine our approach so that we can achieve real progress with our activism as well as ensuring that what we achieve is effective and durable.
This was my intent when I started Population Permaculture and Planning or PPP as I shall refer to it from now on. For a start...... the fact that I was taking on the issue of population knowing very well how divisive and emotionally fraught this topic can be, I realised that I had to approach it in a way that could make it as accessible to as many people as possible.
I started PPP in part because I could no longer ignore the population issue, especially knowing the impact that it has in terms of how we plan our cities (or not plan as the case may be). I had entered into the town planning profession because I thought that was the best that I could do in terms of contributing towards making the world a better place. Basically I thought that I could change things from within.
Obviously I was a bit naïve but it was worth studying planning because while my education didn't turn out to be of much use to me in a professional context, it did teach me to think critically and to understand that many issues are often more complex than they first appear. Ignoring this complexity can lead us into all kinds of problems.
For example so many planners are caught up in the high density is the solution to suburban sprawl dichotomy that they ignore the fact that high density can actually help to increase sprawl by pricing people out of the inner suburbs. One distinguished professor in WA even went on to say that the answer to this problem is to lower the quality of high density development in order to make it more affordable to people on lower incomes. I think that if we lowered the standard anymore here in Melbourne many new developments would actually start to become uninhabitable but that’s another story........
So because my drive as a planner was to try and create sustainable communities, it became increasingly apparent that we cannot ignore the topic of population growth. With Melbourne increasing in size by more than a thousand people every week, it is becomes impossible to engage in the slower more considered planning that is needed to create long term viable neighbourhoods.
The vicious circle of planning for engineered population growth
It is a case of more hastily built prefab concrete apartments and continuous sprawl beyond the urban fringe. This rapid rate of population growth of course is used to justify this type of development and this type of development is in turn perpetuated by politically engineered population growth. It is a vicious circle spinning perpetually downwards as our potential to create socially and ecologically sustainable communities continues to decrease.
What makes this fact all the more poignant is that there is an urgent need to rapidly reduce our carbon emissions and it is imperative that this starts with town planning. If we get this wrong everything is so much harder, no amount of divestment from fossil fuels will be of help if we continue to build on our food bowls and green spaces and increasingly have to rely upon sourcing our food from further and further away... and that is just the start.
Creating resilient communities is about being flexible and adaptable to changes in society that we cannot even perceive at this point in time and we are living in extremely uncertain times.
It may just be that we will come to value the larger middle suburbs that are currently targeted for subdivision and that we will look towards retrofitting them as permaculture communities. There is good soil out there that has been lovingly enriched over the decades by generations of Greek and Italian migrants and we have the infrastructure already in place to produce a good proportion of our fresh fruit and vegetables from this under-tapped resource. The cofounder of Permaculture, David Holmgren, has a new book coming out later this year that is about all of that....... but I am digressing.
So I came to realise the important interconnection of permaculture and town planning and population in terms of creating long term viable sustainable communities and that by discussing the three in context I could make the issue of population so much more approachable to so many more people.
This inspired me to start running workshops and by doing so I began to draw people in who otherwise may not have been interested in discussing population as a subject in its own right. Importantly this had to be a collaborative effort. When we engage with people about population or indeed any other subject for that matter we must try to connect with their world view, to see it from the prism of their perspective and use that as a starting point.
I always begin by brainstorming ideas with the participants at the beginning of each workshop and that way they are better able to feel as though they are part of the creative process and to share some of the ownership of the outcome. It is not a case of me lecturing to people how they should view a particular topic. Instead it is a step by step process and this always leads to an understanding that our current rate of population growth is something that has to be questioned. I am not saying that everyone comes out of the workshop agreeing that there is an urgent need to reduce population growth but almost all come out knowing that population is an important consideration and that it is ok to discuss it, especially when looking at its importance in a wider context. This means that the next time they hear the population issue brought up in discussion, they will be more open minded.
This is why I believe it is important that we help people to think about population without challenging their values or their political identity. Some people come into a workshop believing in the principle of open borders for example and they come out continuing to believe in that principle. However they also come out agreeing that in the mean time we need to slow our rate of non-refugee migration so that the communities we do create are socially and environmentally viable over the longer term.
They no longer see population as a fixed black and white issue, that it is in fact fluid depending upon the circumstances. A belief in the free movement of people is strong among many young people on the left and if we want to connect with them we must acknowledge these ideals and by doing so they will more likely acknowledge that there are many steps that need to be undertaken before that kind of thinking can be put into practice.
There may come a day when the world is so balanced politically, socially and environmentally that we could have open borders across the world without it leading to sudden influxes of population from one country to another. It doesn't look very feasible at the moment but who is to say that we shouldn't work towards that ideal. It is an ideal that I would like to work towards no matter how out of reach it may feel. We don't have to smash people's dreams in order to persuade them to consider reversing a migration policy that was put in place by John Howard in order to boost gross domestic product.
We need to slow the rate of population growth as it is right now and, for want of a better word, start an intelligent and ongoing national conversation about the rate in which our population should grow (or shrink) and how we should plan for that to happen. Right now that is all we need to be trying to achieve. As population activists, we ourselves need to acknowledge that we all have differing values and that we should be comfortable with the fact that we do not all need to share the same values in order to bring about change.
The important aim of the workshops that I hold is that they do not run to a particular agenda other than to help people connect to the three issues of population, permaculture and planning. This attitude I think needs to form a wider approach in terms of how we work with other activists, that we work towards finding those areas where we can connect and that in turn allows us to feel comfortable with different values and perspectives.
We need to see our work as being part of an ongoing conversation that will always be greater than the sum of one person's perspective. That way we don't get bogged down in internal politics and because our agenda is fluid, our values do not become threatened. In turn, by taking this approach we can have a profound influence on the people with whom we interact. They pick up on this sentiment and they themselves become more open-minded and become more open to challenging assumptions as well as seeing things from other perspectives.
We need to work together to find areas where we can connect rather than focussing on the games of ego that occur through issues that divide us. That is what got us into this mess. We need a different kind of thinking to let us get out of the mess and to stay out of it.
So when discussing population, let your starting point be about finding the issues that you have in common. It could be about congestion, climate change, loss of heritage, the list goes on. It is not about us pushing our view of the world onto people. Instead it is about helping them to see population in a new light by showing how it connects to the issues that are important to them.
This is the kind of thinking we need in order to create a truly sustainable and resilient world. We need to think outside the matrix and to help others do the same.
Thursday 28 April 2016 is the 20th anniversary of the Port Arthur massacre. On 28 April 1996, 35 people were killed and 23 others were injured by a single gunman. Later that day, Martin Bryant, a 26 year old man was arrested at the Seascape cottage, some distance away from the site of the massacre, and charged with the murders. He was never tried before a jury for the crime. Martin Bryant initially pleaded not guilty. Allegedly, six weeks after he was arrested and interrogated intensively, isolated from friends and family, he confessed to the crime. As shown in the article Was Martin Bryant the Port Arthur killer? (3/4/2010), this 'confession' flew in the face of overwhelming forensic evidence and eyewitness testimony which pointed to his innocence.
As the 20th anniversary of the massacre approaches, the same 'news' media, that fed us the 'incubator babies' story of 1990, Iraqi WMDs, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the Warren Commission cover-up of the JFK assassination, claims that the Syrian government had been using chemical weapons against its own people, etc., etc., is trying desperately prevent the broader Australian public from critically examining the Port Arthur Massacre.
On 7 News (linked to from here - second embedded video - Melissa Doyle and Peter Fleck 'report':
Melissa Doyle:Chilling public interviews, with the man responsible for the worst mass shooting, have been shown for the first time by 7 Sunday Night. Martin Bryant laughed and bragged after killing 35 people at Port Arthur in Tasmania. For more, we're joined by Peter Fegan.
Pete, Bryant's lawyer says he's still haunted by this case.
Peter Fegan: John Avery, the man who defended Martin Bryant all those years ago, spoke last night on our Sunday Night program and says he is still haunted by Bryant 20 years on.
Now he ... recalls how Bryant pleaded not guilty to murdering 35 innocent people that day at Port Arthur.
Now, you only had to watch those chilling tapes to understand why he is still haunted. Bryant can often be seen laughing with police. Now here is some of those chilling interviews from that Sunday night program last night.
In fact, only parts of the tapes shown on the Sunday Night program were shown in the 7 news bulletin the next day. On one occasion Martin Bryant is shown smiling, but when asked why by the interviewing officer, Martin responded that he was happy to have been taken out of his prison cell.
Those tapes showed to me a young person who appeared to truly not be aware that 35 people had died and that he had been accused by the police of having killed them.
Whilst Martin demonstrated at length how he practised with his automatic weapons, at not one point in the interview did Martin Bryant admit to having used any of his weapons to harm other people.
The more 'complete' version of those interviews, which total all of 65 seconds, by my measurement, can be found in the embedded Video of Sunday Night at the bottom of the page linked to above.
Australian Politics Professor Tim Anderson recently wrote a book entitled, The Dirty war on Syria. In the embedded video, he describes the alarming ignorance of Australians generally about why the West is so down on Syria. This is a fascinating, humane and intelligent interview with Syrian TV. Among the many subjects covered are how the Australian media treats Anderson, how he became interested in the war in Syria, interpreting the propaganda war against Syria, and the future of Syria.
Tuesday's Syrian election was a vote of confidence by the Syrian people in their government. 5,085,444 voters cast their ballots out of a possible 8,834,994 eligible voters. The overall participation rate of 58% (virtually identical to Canada's last federal election) exceeded the government's expectations in most places but was low in others. For example, it was over 80% in Homs but only 52% in Tartous. What might explain the uneven results is the history of the war. People who suffered the most from the war, for example in Homs, were probably more grateful for their liberation and more motivated to exercise their political rights than people in Tartous who saw no fighting at all (though they lost thousands upon thousands of sons and grandsons in the war).
Ken Stone was an observer at the Syrian elections. He has an M.A. in political science from McMaster University.
Also significant was the fact that over 140,000 refugees returned across the Lebanese border in just one day in order to vote. And the polling hours in Damascus, which suffered a lot from the fighting, had to be extended until 11 pm to accommodate all the voters. There were even polling stations set up by the government in recently liberated Palmyra and Al-Qaryaten, though those polls were largely symbolic because the inhabitants of those towns have not yet been able to return to their homes due to widespread destruction, following liberation by the Syrian Arab Army.
The voter participation rate is key to this election, more important than the individual candidates who were elected. Here's why: you need to understand elections in a constitutionally-created state, in which one party dominates, in terms of a strike vote in a trade union. It demonstrates continuing confidence in the leadership at a turning point in the struggle. A union would not be satisfied with a strike vote of 58%, going into a strike. And probably the Syrian government would have wished for a higher rate going into the negotiations at Geneva. But it knew from the start that holding the elections under the conditions of war and occupation was a gamble, because there are a lot of eligible voters living outside of Syria right now, living in places besieged by the terrorists, and who have died but not yet been accounted for. Taking into account these factors, the participation rate would probably have been much higher.
Among our solidarity delegation, we have been pleased that the Syrian authorities did not try to inflate the figures to make the election results appear better than they actually were: it reinforces our contention that the Syrian government is a credible force in the serious negotiations ahead.
As mentioned, the turning point for Syria is the current round of negotiations taking place right now in Geneva to find a lasting political solution to the crisis. Today, the Syrian delegation took their seats with a mandate from the Syrian people, whereas the opposition delegation of head-choppers cobbled together at the last minute by the USA and Saudi Arabia have no mandate at all from the unfortunate Syrians who suffer under military occupation in “rebel-held” areas. No elections were held there. Western governments, such as the USA, have dismissed the Syrian election out of hand, though the participation rate in the last US election was only 48%.
But that's not to say there weren't any interesting candidates elected. The sister of a Syrian soldier, Noor Al-Shogri, stood for election as an independent in parliament. Her brother, Yahya Al-Shoghri, was filmed as he was being executed by ISIS terrorists in 2014 in Raqa. (If you can stomach the summary execution in cold blood of a prisoner of war, you will find the video brazenly posted by the terrorists on Youtube.) The barbarians demanded that he say, as his dying words, “Long live the caliphate!” He famously refused and declared instead that “It will be erased!” His last words then became a rallying cry in the national resistance against the foreign aggression. Noor Al-Shogri easily won her seat.
I met an independent candidate in the Old City of Damascus, Nora Arissian, a small Armenian woman with flaming red hair. She came up to me in the Greek Melkite Patriarch's procession to the polling station and thanked me for Canada taking in 25000 Syrian refugees and then she pointedly added, “We want them all eventually to come home!” She too won her seat.
The election results were delayed by a couple of days because the Syrian election commission was unsatisfied with the preparedness of eight polling stations in partially-occupied Aleppo. As I understand it, the elections in Aleppo had to be continued on the day following election day.
Some people have asked what is the role of Palestinian refugees in this election. The answer is that Palestinians, ethnically-cleansed in 1948 and after, do not vote in Syrian elections. The political and social status of Palestinians in Syria is the highest of any Arab country but the Syrian government doesn't grant them citizenship or let them vote because it doesn't want to dilute their right under international law, reaffirmed by numerous resolutions of the United Nations, to return to their homes and farms in Palestine. The fact that the Syrian government has been so adamant about this principle, it is one of the main causes of the foreign aggression against the country (and in support of the State of Israel.) So the Syrian government pays a heavy price for its strong support of the Palestinian people. In turn, the vast majority of Palestinian refugees in Syria strongly support their government, even though many have been made refugees a second time by the invasion into their neighbourhoods of the terrorist mercenaries from over 80 countries. For example, a fierce struggle is taking place in Yarmouk right now just a few kilometres from where I write, among Isis, AlNusra, and other terrorist gangs, over control of this former Palestinian neighbourhood/camp, which used to hold a quarter of a million people but is now a devastated ghost town with only a few thousand souls.
It bears repeating that these parliamentary elections were defiantly called by the Syrian government as “an exercise in national sovereignty.” The point was to show the world, especially those western and Gulf states, who have waged the five-year long war of aggression against Syria, that Syrians are united in the belief that Syrians, and only Syrians, will decide the fate of Syria.
It appears that the gamble paid off.
ps. For photos of the last few days of activities of the Second International Tour of Peace to Syria and to find out how to join the third or fourth tour, please go to:
A Patriot's Act is a legal novel by lawyer Kenneth Eades, exploring the impact of Bush's terror laws, based on case histories. In a legal investigation and then a trial, we see how US administrations redefined torture in the light of 'terrorism' and we learn what that could mean to an individual. This clear but sophisticated story dramatises what has been sacrificed for 'safety' and how much less safe it really makes us. This article by the author of the book, gives a history of how we got from there to here. Although the author writes about the United States, Australia has aped that country with its own terror laws.
After the release of the CIA Torture Report, we are reminded once again of the abuses that our own government committed in the so-called “War on Terror.”
Amnesty international has called the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp the “gulag of our time.” Since President Obama’s order to close the camp within one year on January 23, 2009, it has remained open because the president decided to amass political capital to use for his domestic agenda, which included “Obamacare.” On January 7, 2011, Obama signed the 2011 Defense Authorization Bill, which placed restrictions on transferring prisoners to the United States. As of May 2014, there were 149 detainees being held, at a cost to the government of roughly $1.9 million per detainee. Some of them have been held, without trial and without charge, since 2003. 46 of them have been declared by the government to be too dangerous to release, but they cannot be tried for any crime because there is insufficient evidence to try them. Approximately half of the detainees held today have been cleared for release, but may never regain their freedom. Many of their native countries have refused to repatriate them, and, because of the new legislation, they cannot be transferred to prisons in the United States.
Courts have upheld detentions at Guantanamo under the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed by Congress three days after the September 11th attacks. The reasoning behind this is to keep prisoners from returning to the battlefield until the conflict is over. But the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan show no sign of being over, especially with the rise in power of ISIS, which is a direct result of U.S. intervention and destruction of infrastructure.
When the United States military arrested the detainees and threw them into Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp indefinitely, they denied them the right to counsel guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment. They also denied them the right to a speedy trial, to confront the witnesses against them, to a trial by jury, and the right to be informed of what they were was charged with. They denied them the his right to trial by jury, guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment, his right to due process of the law by holding them indefinitely with no charge, and his coerced confession violated his privilege against self-incrimination.
Finally, and most importantly, by beating them, torturing them and treating them as less than human, depriving them of sensory input, overloading their senses, force feeding and torturing them, the Government denied them the Eighth Amendment guarantee to be free from cruel and unusual punishment. Not only were detainees denied the constitutionally guaranteed rights that any person imprisoned in the United States would be entitled to, no matter the heinous crime they may be accused of, they were also denied the rights that any enemy soldier captured fighting against the United States would get pursuant to the Geneva Conventions of 1949. Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions prohibits detention practices that are “cruel, degrading, or humiliating.”
The Government’s position that the Constitution had no effect at Guantanamo Bay has caused enormous separation-of-powers concerns in that the president was not allowed to simply “turn the Constitution off” simply because Guantanamo, which had been under U.S. possession and control for over 100 years, was located in a foreign country.
After September 11, 2001, torture was official U.S. policy under George Bush – authorized at the highest levels of government. Evidence of its continued and systematic practice continues to surface to this day.
On September 17, 2001, George Bush signed a secret finding empowering the CIA to capture, kill, or interrogate al-Qaeda Leaders.” It also authorized establishing a secret global network of facilities to detain and interrogate them without guidelines on proper treatment. Around the same time, Bush approved a secret “high-value target list” of about two dozen names. He also gave CIA free reign to capture, kill and interrogate terrorists not on the list.
On November 13, 2001, the White House issued a Military Order regarding the “Detention, Treatment, and Trial of Certain Non-Citizens in the War on Terror.” It determined that “an extraordinary emergency exists for national defense purposes that this emergency constitutes an urgent and compelling government interest and that issuance of this order is necessary to meet the emergency.” It defined targeted individuals as al Qaeda and others for aiding or abetting acts of international terrorism or harboring them. These individuals were to be denied access to U.S. or other courts and instead tried by military commission with the power to convict by the concurrence of two-thirds of its members.
On December 28, 2001, Deputy Assistant Attorney Generals Patrick Philbin and John Yoo, sent a Memorandum to General Counsel, Department of Defense, and William Haynes II entitled: “Possible Habeas Jurisdiction over Aliens Held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.” It said that federal courts have no jurisdiction over and cannot review Guantanamo detainee mistreatment or mistaken arrest cases. It further stated that international laws don’t apply in the “War on Terror.” This laid the groundwork for abuses in all U.S. military prisons.
On January 18, 2002, Bush issued a “finding” stating that prisoners suspected of being al Qaeda or Taliban members are “enemy combatants” and unprotected by the Third Geneva Convention. They were to be denied all rights and treated “to the extent….consistent with military necessity.” Torture was thus authorized. The 2006 Military Commissions Act (also known as the “torture authorization act”) later created the Geneva-superseded category of “unlawful enemy combatant” to deny them any chance for judicial fairness.
On January 19, 2002 Donald Rumsfeld sent a memo to the Joint Chiefs of Staff entitled: “Status of Taliban and al Qaeda.” It stated that these detainees “are not entitled to prisoner of war status for purposes of the Geneva Conventions of 1949.” It gave commanders enormous latitude to treat prisoners “to the extent appropriate with military necessity” as they saw fit.
On January 25, 2002, Alberto Gonzales issued a memo to George Bush, which called the Geneva Conventions “quaint” and “obsolete” and said the administration could ignore them in interrogating prisoners. He also outlined plans to try prisoners in military commissions and to deny them all protections under international law, including due process, habeas corpus rights, and the right to appeal. In December 2002, Donald Rumsfeld concurred by approving a menu of interrogation practices allowing anything short of what would cause organ failure.
On February 7, 2002, the White House issued an Order “outlining treatment of al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees.” It stated that “none of the provisions of the Geneva Conventions apply to our conflict with al-Qaida or the Taliban in Afghanistan “or elsewhere throughout the world.”
A plethora of similar memos followed covering much the same ground, allowing all measures that had been banned under international and U.S. law, including the 1994 Torture Statute and the Torture Act of 2000, and the 1996 War Crimes Act, which imposes a penalty of up to life in prison or death for persons convicted of committing war crimes within or outside the US. Torture is a high war crime, the highest after genocide.
Two other memos were written by John Yoo, Alberto Gonzales, Jay Bybee (now a federal court of appeals justice in the Ninth Circuit) and David Addington, Dick Cheney’s former legal counsel. One was for the CIA on August 2, 2002. It argued that interrogators should be free to use harsh measures amounting to torture. It said federal laws prohibiting these practices don’t apply when dealing with al-Qaeda because of the presidential authorization to use force during wartime. It also denied that U.S. or international law applies in overseas interrogations. It essentially “legalized” anything in the “War on Terror” and authorized lawlessness and supreme presidential power.
On March 14, 2003, the group issued another memo entitled, “Military Interrogation of Alien Unlawful Combatants Held Outside the United States.” This became known as “the Torture Memo” because it swept away all legal restraints and authorized military interrogators to use extreme measures amounting to torture. It also gave the President as Commander-in-Chief “the fullest range of power….to protect the nation.” It stated he “enjoys complete discretion in the exercise of his authority in conducting operations against hostile forces.” In 2004, the head of the Office of Legal Counsel, Jack Goldsmith, rescinded the Memorandum, saying it showed an “unusual lack of care and sobriety in legal analysis and seemed more an exercise of sheer power than reasoned analysis.”
Nevertheless, other administration documents authorized continued use of practices generally reflecting Yoo’s and Bybee’s views. They authorized the infliction of “intense pain or suffering” short of what would cause “serious physical injury so severe that death, organ failure, (loss of significant body functions), or permanent damage” may result. The President’s July 20, 2006 Executive Order was one such document, entitled “Interpretation of the Geneva Conventions Common Article 3 as Applied to a Program of Detention and Interrogation Operated by the Central Intelligence Agency.” It pertained to “a member or part of or supporting al Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated organizations who may have information that could assist in detecting, mitigating, or preventing terrorist attacks….within the United States or against its Armed Forces or other personnel, citizens, or facilities, or against allies or other countries cooperating in the war on terror….”
It authorized the Director of CIA to determine appropriate interrogation practices. Based on what is now known, they included sleep deprivation, waterboarding or simulated drowning, stress positions (including painfully extreme ones), prolonged isolation, sensory deprivation and/or overload, beatings, electric shocks, induced hypothermia, and other measures that can cause irreversible physical and psychological harm, including psychoses.
In a secret 2007 report, the International Committee of the Red Cross concluded that CIA interrogators had tortured high-level al Qaeda prisoners. Abu Zubaydah was one, a reputed close associate of Osama bin Laden and a Guantanamo detainee. He was confined in a box “so small he had to double up his limbs in the fetal position” and stay that way. He and others were also “slammed against the walls,” waterboarded to simulate drowning, and given other harsh and abusive treatment.
The report also said Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged chief 9/11 planner, was kept naked for over a month – “alternately in suffocating heat and in a painfully cold room.” Most excruciating was a practice of shackling prisoners to the ceiling and forcing them to stand for as long as eight hours. Other techniques included prolonged sleep deprivation, “bright lights and eardrum-shattering sounds 24 hours a day.”
ICRC’s Bernard Barrett declined to comment but confirmed that Red Cross personnel regularly visit Guantanamo detainees, including high-level ones. They also “have an ongoing confidential dialogue with members of the US intelligence community, and we would share any observations or recommendations with them.”
The executive continued to deny all basic rights to detainees, including the constitutional guarantee of habeas corpus, and the Congress went along with it, in passing a series of Acts of Congress attempting to limit this constitutional guarantee. However, in 2004, the United States Supreme Court held, in Rasul v. Bush, that the habeas corpus jurisdiction of United States federal courts extended to Guantanamo Bay. In 2004, the Court also held, in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, that due process mandated that an alleged enemy combatant held on U.S. soil be entitled to a due process challenge of his enemy combatant status.
In June 2006 the Supreme Court, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld threw out section 1005a of the Detainee Treatment Act denying the right of an alien detainee to habeas corpus, and ruled that the structure and procedures of the military commissions established to try detainees violated both the Uniform Code of Military Justice and Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions had been violated. Congress passed and Bush signed into law the Military Commissions Act in October 2006, overriding the Supreme Court’s decision.
In 2008, the Supreme Court threw out the Act’s prohibition of the federal courts’ jurisdiction to hear detainees’ habeas corpus petitions as an unconstitutional suspension of habeas corpus in Boumedine v. Bush.
District Court Judge Aiken threw out two sections of the Patriot Act that modified the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in Mayfield v. United States, but her decision was rendered moot on appeal when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal decided that Mayfield could not pursue his declaratory relief claim after he had settled with the government.
The “War on Terror” is still on, and is still being used as an excuse to broaden or extend the broad brush of governmental power. The USA Patriot Act was designed to be temporary, but has been reauthorized in 2005 and 2006. On February 27, 2010, President Obama signed into law legislation reauthorizing three controversial sections of the Act relating to roving wiretaps, lone wolf surveillance and seizure of property and records. On May 26, 2011, he signed into law the Patriot Sunsets Extension Act to extend key provisions of the Act. On June 1, 2015, the Patriot Act expired, but the next day, Obama signed into law the USA Freedom Act, which restored, in modified form, the most controversial provisions of The Patriot Act.
James Madison said, “The means of defense against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.”
When he said this, he knew that he and Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and all the other statesmen who formed this country made the government to answer to the people, not the other way around. When they set up three branches of government with checks and balances, they did this so that no one branch would get any more powerful than the other. What we are seeing now is an abuse of power by an over-zealous president, and that abuse of power must be stopped. It is making the United States of America, once a beacon for liberty and freedom, and an example for every other democracy to follow, into an aggressive country that does not respect its own laws and does not play by its own principles. This is unacceptable, and we, as citizens of this country, need to send a clear message to your government with this verdict that the United States is a good and humane nation, who does not torture prisoners of war. We are a nation of laws, a nation who respects our fellow humans and the rights of our own citizens, as well as the rights of citizens of other countries.
Kenneth Eade is an attorney and the best-selling author of A Patriot’s Act, the fictional story of a naturalized U.S. citizen, captured in Iraq and held indefinitely at Guantanamo.
“We declare our right on this earth…to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary.” ~ Malcolm X
Yesterday Parliamentary elections were held in Syria. 7000 polling booths were opened across the country. 11, 341 candidates were proposed from across Syria with 250 to be elected to Parliament, including a number of female candidates.
Candidates were spread out as follows: 988 in Damascus, 817 in Damascus countryside, Aleppo 1437, in Aleppo regions 1048, In Idleb 386, in Homs 1800, Hama 700, Lattakia 1653, Tartous 634, Deir Ezzor 311, Hasaka 546, Raqqa 197, Daraa 321, Sweida 263 and in Quneitra 240
Voting centres opened at 7.30 am and were obliged to extend their sessions by five hours to accommodate the high turn out of voters.
Some of the women candidates in Syrian Parliamentary elections.
“The voting centers include over 2,000 centers in Damascus, 17 in Deir Ezzor, 1,047 in Lattakia, 661 in Homs, 347 in Sweida, 741 in Hama, 368 in Hasaka, 816 in Tartous, and 347 in Sweida are receiving voters.
It should be noted that voting centers were opened in Damascus, Damascus Countryside, Hama, Lattakia, Aleppo, Tartous, Hasaka, and Deir Ezzor to receive voters staying in these provinces who are originally from other areas, namely the provinces of Idleb, Raqqa, Aleppo, Deir Ezzor, and Daraa.” ~ SANA
So contrary to spurious claims from western governments and media, efforts were made to open the voting to all Syrian civilians including those who have fled terrorists held areas. We must also bear in mind that over 90% of IDPs [Internally displaced persons] have fled to Government controlled areas, thus further discrediting claims that these elections are non representative.
On an equally positive note, of course ignored in the western and gulf media, 1.7 million of these internally displaced refugees have been able to return home thanks not only to the SAA [Syrian Arab Army] liberation of whole swathes of Syrian villages and towns from US NATO terrorist occupation but also due to the Syrian Governments laudable efforts to rebuild and restore infrastructure in these areas.
Small government loans are being given to impoverished families to enable them to re-establish their lives torn apart by the illegal war of aggression that has been waged against Syria by the US, NATO, GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] and Israel for the last five years.
It is guaranteed that none of these initiatives will be reported in the mainstream media, including the Syrian Higher Committee for Relief’s efforts to facilitate the delivery of Humanitarian aid to the remaining terrorist held civilian areas in Syria.
As Professor Tim Anderson [who is in Syria to observe the elections as indeed he was in 2014] said:
“Syrian democracy needs no outside approval. Repeated outside demands that ‘Assad must go’, or that a Washington-approved executive ‘transition government’ be formed, have become meaningless, since the military tide turned in the embattled country’s favour.”
The Syrian elections proceeded according to the Syrian constitution and law. We see this being enforced in Aleppo for example where it was decided that violations of the voting process had taken place and a re-election was called for.
UNSC [Security Council] resolution 2254 stated clearly that Syria’s future is in the hands of the Syrians and the Syrians are proving that they are doing just that with little fuss but a lot of enthusiasm and determination to deny foreign intervention in their sovereign affairs.
The Syrian “Dictator” goes to Vote
Now lets have a look at the President that western governments and their media minions would have us believe to be a bloodthirsty, butchering dictator as he and his wife Asma head for the polling booths with no security in sight.
Compare this if you will, to the protests being held across Britain demanding that David Cameron aka “Dodgy Dave” resign over the Panama papers scandal, the subsequent police clamp down and the manhandling of protestors.
Perhaps even more laughable in the face of the UK Government’s own deteriorating human rights record at home and abroad, is their statement on the Syrian elections:
Britain said Damascus’ decision to go ahead with the elections in the war-torn nation, where hundreds of thousands cannot take part, shows “how divorced (the government) is from reality.”
With homelessness and child poverty reaching Victorian levels in Britain, legal cases pending for criminal arms sales to the genocidal Saudi coalition conducting wholesale slaughter of Yemeni civilians, and recent reports on the British government clandestine assassination programmes, one would be justified in saying the British government has not only divorced itself from reality but from Humanity in every feasible way.
“Reprieve highlights the fact that Britain conspired in a US-inspired Kill List soon after 9/11. It says quite categorically that “Starting in 2002, working closely with the Americans, Britain had played a leading role in the euphemistic Joint Prioritized Effective List. As with Yemen, the JPEL Kill List was not even limited to a war zone – it spanned over into Pakistan, which was an ally, not an enemy at war.”
What this effectively means is that not only has Britain brought back the death penalty it has done so without public or parliamentary consultation, and carried out these deadly deeds regularly without even a basic trial.” ~ Britain’s Secret Assassination Programme
France takes the hippocritic oath.
France has also hit the deck with cries of illegitimacy regarding the Syrian elections.
“The idea that there could be elections is not just provocative but totally unrealistic. It would be proof that there are no negotiations or discussions [in Geneva].”~ Francois Hollande
This statement comes from the man who crossed an executioners palm with silver to secure a multi billion dollar arms deal with Qatar.
In this photo Hollande is presenting France’s most prestigious award, the Legion D’Honneur to Saudi interior minister, Muhammed Bin Nayef. Bin Nayef is personally responsible for choosing who of the many prisoners in Saudi jails is eligible for execution or crucifixion without trial and usually on trumped up charges.
So one is once more justified to ask, which leg is Hollande standing on when he denigrates Syrian elections while commending one of the world’s most renowned terrorists on his efforts to combat…terrorism.
The award for hypocrisy goes to..
US State Department spokesperson Mark Toner said that the US “would view those elections as not legitimate in the sense that they don’t represent… the will of the Syrian people.
“So, to hold parliamentary elections now, given the current circumstances, given the current conditions in the country, we believe is at best premature and not representative of the Syrian people,” Toner said.
Early last week Toner said that “a political process that reflects the desires and will of the Syrian people is what should ultimately decide the future leadership and the future government of Syria.” ~ RT
Here is the response of the Syrian people to Mr Toner’s comments:
Mohammed Ali of Press TV reports from Damascus
Conclusions
As I said in yesterday’s exchange of messages with ex Ambassador to Syria and alleged death squad creator, Robert Ford:
“History is repeating itself a little too often Mr Ford, be very careful that you don’t bring your own house of cards down around your ears..Syria is denying your agenda time and time again and I can appreciate your Governments frustration but mistakes are being made and your propaganda apparatus is coming apart at the seams due largely to the integrity and unity of the Syrian people.
The day the US or any NATO member can say it had to extend the voting because such huge numbers turned out, is the day you can lecture me about “regimes”. The day your own Government is finally sanctioned and prosecuted as a war criminal for its policy of overtly or covertly butchering the peoples of sovereign nations is the day you can criticise any other duly elected world government.”
The US, NATO, GCC and Israeli agenda has careered into the brick wall of Syrian resistance, integrity and unity. The will of the Syrian people is being listened to by the Syrian government.
Ideologically and spiritually the Syrian people believe in their political and military victory. The Syrian people have said “no” time and time again to foreign intervention. They have endured crippling economic sanctions, invasions by proxy terrorist armies, occupation by mass murderers funded and armed by the US and NATO alliance but their resilience will ensure their self determination against all odds.
To achieve their objectives in Syria, the US and NATO are reliant upon mercenaries, terrorists, rapists and felons who have no vested interest in victory other than lining their own pockets with drugs and oil revenue.
The US and NATO agenda in Syria has no basis in law or even sound ideology, it is based upon pure greed and power sustained by corruption and inhumanity. It shall fail and Syria will emerge unbowed, stronger and ultimately victorious. The Syrian people have redrawn the geopolitical road map with strength of will alone. This is the will you should be respecting Mr Toner, no other.
“The Syrian people are engaged in a war that has been going on for five years, through which terrorism managed to shed innocent blood and destroy much infrastructure, but it failed in achieving the primary goal it was assigned, which is destroying the principle structure in Syria, meaning the social structure of the national identity.” ~ President Bashar al Assad.
***
Author Vanessa Beeley is a contributor to 21WIRE, and since 2011, she has spent most of her time in the Middle East reporting on events there – as a independent researcher, writer, photographer and peace activist. She is also a member of the Steering Committee of the Syria Solidarity Movement, and a volunteer with the Global Campaign to Return to Palestine. See more of her work at her blog The Wall Will Fall.
The voting takes place in areas under the government’s control. More than 7,000 polling stations have been set up. More than 3,500 candidates are competing for 250 seats. President Bashar al-Assad speaks of high voter turnout and says the candidates cover all sectors of the syrian society. Speaking after voting in Damascus, Assad noted that terrorism has been able to destroy much of Syria’s infrastructure, but not its social structure and the national identity. Parliamentary elections are held in Syria every four years. The last vote was held in May 20-12, four months after constitutional reforms were approved by President Assad.
#syrianVote">Syrian vote In Parliamentary elections
Video and text of Sheila Newman's speech at the Animal Justice Party's event, "Policy basis for Kangaroo treatment in the ACT," 5 April 2016: Harvesting, damage mitigation and culling probably actually accelerate population growth in roos because the smaller ones survive and adapt by sexually maturing earlier - which speeds up fertility turnover. Since 2003 DNA studies have shown that ACT and southern NSW roos, both male and female, migrate at significant rates and for longer distances than the ACT model assumes. Migration has probably been mistaken for fertility, rendering ACT roo counts unreliable and invalid. The ACT needs to stop culling and widen its research base to consider various genetically based algorithms that naturally restrain fertility opportunities in kangaroos.
Examples include separate gender pathways, with 'sexual segregation' where male and female populations live apart. It is likely that the stable presence of mature dominant males and females in family and mob organisation inhibits sexual maturity and activity as has been shown in studies of other species, such as macaques and superb fairy wrens (the latter cooperative breeders). In humans, girls brought up with step-fathers who came late to the family were more likely to mature sexually earlier due to absence of Westermarck Effect.)
Planned wildlife corridors need to be made safe and long-term viable to cope with people, car and kangaroo population movements.
Canberra is pursuing a policy of rapid population growth, mostly through invited economic immigration.
Canberra's population problem
In June 2016 ACT - South West Australian Capital Territory was the fastest growing area in Australia and grew by 127.3%. (ABS http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/mf/3218.0)
Canberra’s population could increase to 904,000 by 2061 according to new projections released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. It's not inevitable, but the government would like you to believe it is.
Predicting a population growth of at least 98 per cent within 50 years, ACT population projections for 2061 suggest that the Australian Capital Territory population could exceed Tasmania's population by 2038.
But some think that the ACT's biggest problem is its kangaroo population
It's not the new suburbs, the new roads, the new airport, the additional schools, hospitals, houses, and all the new cars that threaten Canberra's grasslands: it's the eastern grey kangaroos.
It seems that it is better to have cattle in Canberra's nature parks than kangaroos.
Ecological cattle grazing is now being trialed. Cattle can be more easily moved than kangaroos. (Fletcher, Senior Ecologist, communication to P. Machin.)
Although, Fletcher had previously described the devastation cattle made to grass cover in no uncertain terms: "Fletcher Phd: p.37. “70 pregnant cows and four bulls grazed for ten weeks at Tidbinbilla after a bushfire in January 2003 (Section 3.5.1). Prior to their arrival, there had been an atypical abundance of pasture due to the death of almost half of the Tidbinbilla kangaroos in the bushfire, but by the time the cattle were removed, the Tidbinbilla pasture had been reduced to the lowest herbage mass recorded on any site during the study.”
"
ACT Kangaroo Management Policy works on a model that all creatures maximize their population growth and that Canberra's roos are riding an expansive curve which can only be capped by massive frequent culls. A stated fear is that they will otherwise graze and drastically modify biodiversity of Canberra's grasslands. Another is that roos need periodically to be shot so as to save them from starving to death.
Why culling is better than harvesting (ACT Senior Ecologist, Don Fletcher)
"[…] the model indicates that commercial harvesting (currently under trial in the region, at the maximum level allowed, results in a sustainable harvest of kangaroos, but does not increase the herbage mass, and only slightly reduces the frequency of crashes when herbage mass falls to low levels. (To demonstrate this with an ecological experiment would require an extremely large investment of research effort.)
However, an alternative 'national park damage mitigation' formula, which holds kangaroo density to about 1 ha -1 , is predicted to increase herbage mass considerably and to reduce the frequency of crashes in herbage mass, but these effects would be achieved at the cost of having to shoot large numbers of kangaroos." (Fletcher Phd: Population dynamics of Eastern Grey Kangaroos in Temperate Grasslands, 2006, p. vi.)
The model and the reality
The ACT Roo Management model is one of high fertility sedentary populations that rarely migrate, grazing grasslands down to the subsoil. But, in his 2006 thesis, p. 237, Senior ACT Kangaroo management ecologist, Donald Fletcher, tested this model and found, to his surprise, that,
"The study did not provide evidence that high densities of kangaroos reduce groundcover to the levels where erosion can accelerate.
Unmanaged kangaroo populations did not necessarily result in low levels of ground cover. Groundcover had a positive but not significant relationship to kangaroo density, with the highest cover at the wettest site where kangaroo density was highest. Weather has an important influence on groundcover."
"The results from the study as a whole indicate that unmanaged kangaroo populations did not necessarily result in unacceptably low levels of ground cover." (Fletcher Phd: p.231.
The Kangaroo Migration factor
Since 2003 DNA studies have shown that ACT and southern NSW roos, both male and female, migrate at significant rates and for longer distances than the ACT model assumes.
Migration has probably been mistaken for fertility, rendering ACT kangaroo counts unreliable and probably invalid.
DNA studies 2003 show migration a strong factor
Zenger et al (2003)[1] found that mitrochondrial DNA samples indicated about 22.61 individuals per generation migrated with a range of 8.17-59.30. In female immigrants the range was 2.73 with a range of 0.60-12.16. Although females demonstrate smaller migration rates compared to the sexes combined, the values are still comparatively high. Analysis across NSW showed populations separated by up to about 230km had equivalent numbers of close relatives when compared to populations only about 20km apart.
This contradicted field study opinion that migration was low in eastern grey kangaroos, and especially low in females in the ACT. Tidbinbilla (a Canberra nature park studied by Fletcher) featured in the Zenger et al study.
Zenger MtDNA findings contrary to Migration views in Fletcher thesis
"Throughout their lives eastern grey kangaroos are relatively sedentary (Johnson 1989) compared to red kangaroos (Priddel 1987). A partly concurrent study of eastern grey kangaroo habitat use and movements on the Googong and Tidbinbilla sites found the eastern grey kangaroos on these sites were sedentary in all seasons (minimum convex polygon mean size 0.43 km 2 ± 0.06 SE and 0.61 km 2 ± 0.08 respectively; Viggers and Hearn 2005). Kangaroos were not radio tracked at Gudgenby but my observations suggest there is no more movement of eastern grey kangaroos on and off the site there than at Tidbinbilla. Thus it is likely there was little net movement of kangaroos on and off the study sites." (Fletcher, page v.)
Paradoxical impact of Culls, kills and Harvests
Harvesting, damage mitigation and culling probably actually accelerate population growth in roos because the smaller ones survive and adapt by sexually maturing earlier - which speeds up fertility turnover.
"Smaller, earlier breeding genetic stock tend to escape harvesting". See, e.g. J.J. Poosa, A. Brannstrom, U. Dieckmann, “Harvest-induced maturation evolution under different life-history trade-offs and harvesting regimes.” (See note for more literature on this.)[2]
Fletcher, on estimates of biomass consumption per roo allows for large variations in harvested populations vs wild populations.
"How big are eastern grey kangaroos?
The mean live weight of eastern grey kangaroos taken from the unshot population at Tidbinbilla was 29 kg – smaller than the 35 kg mean live weight assumed in the Kinchega kangaroo study (Caughley et al. 1987). Based on the size relationship between shot and unshot populations of kangaroos in South Australia and Queensland (Grigg 2000), the mean size of eastern grey kangaroos in equivalent shot populations was predicted to be 17 kg live weight. The minimum dressed size accepted by operators of commercial chillers is 17 kg, implying that many of the kangaroos in shot populations (on rural properties) in the ACT region are too small to attract commercial shooters."(Fletcher, p.242.)
Culling has a similar effect.
Earlier maturation would contribute to higher population growth rates. What role does harvesting, culling and farm mitigation killing play in accelerating breeding rates?
“Smaller, eat less, more numerous, more fecund", reproduce earlier
“The management implications arising from this study are numerous and a full account would require a separate report. As one example, kangaroos in these temperate grasslands are on average smaller, eat less, are more numerous, and are more fecund, than would be predicted
from other studies (e.g. Caughley et al. 1987). Thus the benefit of shooting each kangaroo, in terms of grass production, is less, or, in other words, more kangaroos have to be shot to achieve a certain level of impact reduction, and the population will recover more quickly, than would have been predicted prior to this study.” (Fletcher, p245.)
Kangaroos shot in Tidbinbilla and low weight in shot populations
“The mean live weight of eastern grey kangaroos in high density populations can be estimated from the weights of a sample of 332 kangaroos shot at Tidbinbilla in June 1997 (Graeme Coulson, personal communication, 2003) to be 29 kg. (That is an adjustment of the actual mean liveweight of the shot sample, 26.4 kg, to allow for seasonal effects, as explained in Discussion. Kangaroos in shot populations, such as on grazing properties, are likely to be smaller due to selective harvesting, also explained in Discussion).”(Fletcher p.242.)
Wider Research Base needed
In my view, the ACT needs to stop culling and widen its research base to consider encouraging various genetically based behaviours that naturally restrain fertility opportunities in roos.
Known examples include
incest avoidance, which limits breeding unless animals can disperse to their own territory. [3] Sexual segregation and gender pathways, where male and female populations live apart.
Incest avoidance as a spatial limiter of breeding opportunity
Many examples of suppressed maturity or breeding in both males and females close by related adults in many species. (Sheila Newman, Demography Territory Law: Rules of animal and human populations, Countershock Press, 2013, chapter 3.) (Paperback edition and Kindle edition.)
In kangaroos male sexual dominance and monopolisation of females is a very obvious trait. (The effect of dominant close females on female maturation is less known and should be investigated as it has been in other species).
Where large males and females are removed from mobs, these limiting population effects are also removed. What happens then?
Kinship rules and incest avoidance
The following diagram is of human kinship rules, however similar patterns of incest avoidance occur in other species, and in kangaroos. The diagram for humans is split into family and in-laws and sets out some typical rules for incest avoidance in low fertility environments - central Australia and mountainous South Korea. The rules for inlaws are reproduced back to front to demonstrate a mirror-like effect. The person in the top left corner, 'You" may not conceive/marry any of the people in the black squares. That leaves only eight possible mates - as long as they are not already married. Imagine how hard it would be to find a wife or husband under these circumstances in a sparsely populated society of small clans that only travelled on foot, without cars, planes or boats. In a more fertile environment, the rules of incest avoidance are usually much less strict, as in Leviticus, where people may marry their first cousins - giving much greater fertility opportunities, even without the benefit of modern transport. For more about this and how it affects human economies see: "Overpopulation: Endogamy,Exogamy and fertility opportunity theory"
The following two diagrams are from Zenger et al (2003).
They show the regions from which their eastern grey kangaroo DNA samples were taken, and they give a 'family tree' of roo DNA diversity, which shows greatly decreased diversity in north NSW and in Queensland. The authors could find no explanation for this.
Possible explanation for decreased Mt DNA in Queensland & Northern NSW
Harvesting has gone on for a long time in these regions. We know it is associated with marked size decrease. It seems likely that it is also associated with earlier sexual maturity. Consider the possibility that, as well as size decrease and earlier sexual maturation in harvested populations, the decrease in genetic diversity present in those populations may be due to inbreeding resulting from loss of family structure and associated incest avoidance, with decreased migration as small early maturing roos settle for their siblings. There seems little will to investigate this. Although there is some literature, it is very limited. (See note [2].)
Sexual Segregation/Gender pathways
Review of Scientific Literature Relevant to the Commercial Harvest Management of Kangaroos http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/resources/nature/110641Kangaroolitreview.pdf
“Sexual segregation is a phenomenon seen in many species, with segregation occurring along behavioural or ecological dimensions. Sexual segregation in western grey and red kangaroos in semi - arid Victoria has been the subject of intensive investigations since the last review.
[…] MacFarlane and Coulson (2005) investigated the effects of mating activity, group […] composition, spatial distribution and habitat selection on sexual segregation in western grey and red kangaroos. The synchrony and timing of mating activity was seen to influence the magnitude and timing of social segregation in these species, with mixed sex groups predominating during the breeding season. …
… Spatial segregation and habitat segregation were also seen. Although the magnitude of these types of segregation were weaker, they were both still significantly influenced by synchrony and timing of breeding.
Coulson et al. (2006) discussed sexual segregation at three levels (habitat, social and dietary) and confirmed that both size and sex influence segregation.
MacFarlane and Coulson (2009) showed that the need for males to maintain contact with other males (perhaps to develop important fighting skills, evaluate rivals and establish a dominance hierarchy) might also promote sexual segregation.
Similarly Nave (2002) reported evidence of sexual segregation in eastern grey kangaroos in Victoria.”
What are the consequences of loss of sex-specific territory?
Years ago a man who had worked in PNG told me that fertility shot up when churches convinced men and women to cohabit, where previously they had separate land and houses.
What effect could reduction of habitat, forced cohabitation, forcibly changed migration routes and wiped out populations have on male/female kangaroo territory and consequently on fertility opportunities?
How do we know that the female bias (recorded by Fletcher) at Tinbinburra, for instance, is not due to that area being female territory?
Female elder kangaroos
Daughters seem to learn from their mothers to look after joeys. Where female kangaroos are early orphaned their parenting skill may increase risks in joey upbringing. The extraordinary rates of joey mortality may have something to do with this. (See Faces in the Mob for a study of success and failure in raising joeys in one mob.)
In conclusion, regarding ACT Kangaroo management:
It seems that ACT Roo Management Policy and Science:
- Fails to monitor family structure (spatial population monitoring)
- Fails to deal with size reduction, fertility increases probably related to culls etc
- Fails to look at behaviour; notably breeding limitations exerted through incest avoidance/dominance and separate male/female territory
- Underestimates immigration (See Zenger et al)
- Fails to use DNA monitoring to help in the above
- Seems excessively presumptive and mechanistic
NOTES
[1] Zenger et al DNA study 2003: (Heredity (2003) 91, 153–162. doi:10.1038/sj.hdy.6800293, K R Zenger, M D B Eldridge and D W Cooper, "Intraspecific variation, sex-biased dispersal and phylogeography of the eastern grey kangaroo (Macropus giganteus)."
http://www.nature.com/hdy/journal/v91/n2/full/6800293a.html)
[2] Harvesting impact literature: Many of these studies arise from fish stocks. Articles quoting studies for kangaroos tend to quote from the same very small amount of literature and to draw equivocal conclusions, frequently paraphrasing each other. Peter T. Hale, "Genetic effects of kangaroo harvesting", Australian Mammalogy 26:75-86 (2004)http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.319.7936&rep=rep1&type=pdf seems to be the main work cited, but relies on studies which Fletcher's Phd calls into question, has little to say about eastern grey kangaroos but seems to infer that they have similar rates of starvation attributed to red kangaroos.
In Review of Scientific Literature Relevant to the Commercial Harvest Management of Kangaroos (2011) http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/resources/nature/110641Kangaroolitreview.pdf, pp.27-28, after flagging the potential impact of harvesting on kangaroos, the study concludes with a mere opinion that the impact of size and other harvesting selection on kangaroos probably would not be great, on the assumption that the harvested populations are not isolated. This is pretty much as Hale's study (above) concludes. However we know that the harvested populations in northern NSW and Queensland are genetically isolated and impoverished according to Zenger et all (2003) cited above. Furthermore, the review showed it was aware of Zenger et al.
"The last two reviews concluded that there was no evidence, or potential, that commercial harvesting could alter the genetic structure of kangaroo populations at current harvesting levels (Olsen and
Braysher 2000, Olsen and Low 2006). It was perceived that kangaroo populations would have to be
reduced to very low levels for genetic impacts to become significant (Olsen and Braysher 2000).
Moreover, at the time of the last review, it was concluded that there was an absence of theoretical,
empirical and modelled evidence of genetic impacts at current levels of harvesting” (Olsen and Low
2006, p50) and there were few, if any,examples of harvest‐induced body size selection in terrestrial
vertebrates. While there have not been any studies specifically investigating the potential genetic
impacts of harvesting kangaroos since the last review, there have been a large number of original
research and review papers addressing this question in a range of other vertebrate species,
highlighting the perception that the potential genetic consequences of harvesting may be significant
The human harvest of wild animals is generally not a random process, with harvesters often
selecting phenotypically desirable animals, e.g. those with a large body size or elaborate weaponry,
such as antlers. This therefore has the potential to impose selective pressure on wild populations,
which may result in an alteration to population structure by reducing the frequency of these
desirable phenotypes and/or an overall loss of genetic variation (Allendorf et al. 2008).
Allendorf and Hard (2009) have termed this process “unnatural selection”, which is defined as undesirable changes in an exploited population due to selection against desirable phenotypes. Cited examples of the
effects of selective harvesting on desirable phenotypes include an increase in the number of tuskless elephants (Loxodonta africana) in South Luanga National Park, Zambia, and a decrease in horn size
of bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) because of trophy hunting (reviewed in Allendrof and Hard
2009). In the case of bighorn sheep, the observed genotypic and phenotypic effects resulted from
selective harvesting of young males with rapidly growing horns a trait linked with high reproductive
success) before they reached an age where they could achieve high reproductive success (Coltman
et al. 2003). This study highlights the importance of understanding age-specific trait size, rather
than trait size per se.
A recent review by Mysterud (2011) discusses the relative importance of various biotic and abiotic
factors that determine the potential for selective pressure from harvesting. In particular, Mysterud
highlights the importance of assessing selective harvesting within the context of management
regulations, hunting methods, animal trait variance, behaviour and abundance. Mysterud argues that in many cultures large mammal harvesting is not expected to produce strong directional
selection in trait size.
Although many of the factors discussed are of greater relevance to traditional
sport hunting, this review highlights the importance of a number of factors relevant to the
commercial harvesting of kangaroos in Australia.
There is certainly evidence for selective harvesting of larger/older animals within kangaroo
populations, primarily because the economic performance of kangaroo harvesting enterprises is
highly sensitive to variations in average carcase weight (Stayner 2007). Between 1997 and 2009 the
total harvest in NSW comprised between 70 and 89% males. In the case of wallaroos, the
commercial take is even more strongly biased towards males (almost 90%), because females rarely
reach the minimum size dictated by licence and market conditions (Payne 2011). Despite the
preference for larger males, it was reported that harvesters target a range of sizes above the
minimum, especially when densities are reduced and there are fewer target animals (Payne 2011).
There average weight of harvested animals supports this assertion [(Table 2)].
As reported in the last review (Olsen and Low 2006), studies on the potential effects of size-selective harvesting in kangaroos concluded that although there was potential for genetic consequences of
harvesting within a closed population (Tenhumberg et al. 2004), the degree of mobility and
geographic range of genetic populations of kangaroos would be sufficient to ensure that any
localised effects could be countered by immigration (Hale 2004). So, the question remains: does the
recent literature on this topic provide any basis for changing the previous conclusions?
Probably not.
In the big horn sheep example referred to above, the extent of selective harvesting pressure was
probably much stronger than occurs in kangaroo populations. In addition, the population was small,
isolated and had restricted potential for immigration (Coltman et al. 2003), thereby exhibiting
characteristics akin to a closed population. As such, this probably represents a more extreme
example, where prevailing management and biological factors combined to create strong selective
pressure."
Penny Olsen and Tim Low, "Situation Analysis Report, Update on Current State of Scientific Knowledge on Kangaroos in the Environment, Including Ecological and Economic Impact and Effect of Culling," School of Botany and Zoology, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT and 6 Henry Street, Chapel Hill, Queensland, Prepared for the Kangaroo Management Advisory Panel, March 2006
Proceedings of the 2010 RSPCA Australia Scientific Seminar: Convergence or conflict: animal welfare in wildlife management and conservation, Tuesday 23 February 2010, CSIRO Discovery Centre, Canberra https://www.rspca.org.au/files/website/The-facts/Science/Scientific-Seminar/2010/SciSem2010-Proceedings.pdf
[3] Family structure/westermarck/incest avoidance/endogamy/exogamy: Sheila Newman, Demography, Territory, Law: Rules of animal and human populations, Countershock Press, 2013, Chapter 3, “CHAPTER 3: The urge to disperse: Why children don’t usually marry their parents.” (Available amazon.com) Examples of incest avoidance citations within:
"Several studies have shown that maternal relatives avoid mating with one another (rhesus macaques: Smith, 1995; red colobus, Procolobus badius temminckii: Starin, 2001; Japanese macaques: Takahata et al., 2002; and see for review: Moore, 1993; van Noordwijk and van Schaik, 2004), 88 but less is known concerning patterns of inbreeding avoidance between paternal relatives (but see Alberts, 1999). In this study, we showed that the probability of paternity by a dominant male decreased when he was related to the dam at R = .5 (the highest possible relatedness coefficient in our study). Smith (1995) showed in rhesus macaques that the intensity of inbreeding avoidance was directly correlated with the closeness of kinship, as in the mandrills studied here. ”
Marie Charpentier, Patricia Peignot, Martine Hossaert-McKey, Olivier Gimenez, Joanna M. Setchell, and E. Jean Wickings., 2005. “Constraints on control: factors influencing reproductive success in male mandrills (Mandrillus sphinx).” Behavioral Ecology 16:614–623]
More reference examples on incest avoidance in multiple species:
Hoier, S., 2003. “Father absence and the age of menarch, A test of four evolutionary models,” Human Nature, Vol. 14, No. 3, pp. 209–233, Walter de Gruyter, Inc., New York.
Cockburn A, Osmond HL, Mulder RA, Green DJ, Douvle MC, 2003. Divorce, dispersal and incest avoidance in the cooperatively breeding superb fairy-wren Malurus cyaneus. J Anim Ecol 185 72:189–202;
Griffin AS, Pemberton JM, Brotherton PNM, McIlrath G, Gaynor D, Kansky R, O'Riain J, Clutton-Brock TH, 2003. A genetic analysis of breeding success in the cooperative meerkat (Suricata suricatta). Behav Ecol 14:472–480;
Mateo JM, 2003. Kin recognition in ground squirrels and other rodents. J Mammal 84:1163–1181;
Pusey A, Wolf M, 1996. Inbreeding avoidance in animals. Trends Ecol Evol 11:201–206;
Stow AJ, Sunnucks P, 2004. Inbreeding avoidance in Cunningham's skinks (Egernia cunninghami) in natural and fragmented habitat. Mol Ecol 13:443–447;
Yu XD, Sun RY, Fang JM, 2004. Effect of kinship on social behaviors in Brandt's voles (Microtus brandti). J Ethol 22:17–22.
Director of Alphadog AnimalArmy, Marcus Fillinger speaks about his research looking at multiphase kangaroo fertility control, undertaken in collaboration with the University of Technology Sydney. Marcus discusses remote delivery (darting) of contraceptives to kangaroos and the kinds of problems which have arisen where people with little training in marksmanship have targeted kangaroos. he also shows photos of clinical consequences of shooting that has failed to make a clear headshot. Marcus shows a number of rescues via tranquillizer dart and challenges as a myth the idea that you cannot relocate kangaroos because they die of stress etc. This talk was given at an event held by the Animal Justice Party on 5 April 2016 in Canberra. The purpose of the event was to look at government policy towards kangaroos.
This paper is about the ACT government’s behaviour in relation to killing kangaroos, not just its treatment of the kangaroos themselves, but the way it has recently been trampling the rights of its own citizens in its zeal to kill kangaroos. This talk was one of three given on 5 April 2016 in Canberra in an event held by the Animal Justice Party, called, "Policy basis for kangaroo treatment in the A.C.T."
The truth about kangaroos in the A.C.T.: Abusing animals and dismantling democracy
1. The First Code of Practice
Very soon after the passage of the ACT Animal Welfare Act in 1992, an Animal Welfare Advisory Committee was formed under the Act, mainly to develop codes of practice for animal welfare.
One of the earliest codes AWAC developed was a Code of Practice for the Humane Killing of kangaroos. This was mainly for local farmers, but it also became clear that it might at some time be wanted by the government itself - if kangaroos ever needed ‘culling’ on public land..
While the Code was not itself mandatory, the legislation was written so that, where there was a code of practice in place, anyone causing pain or distress to an animal in a way that was consistent with the code had a complete defence from prosecution.
On the other hand, anyone causing pain or distress to an animal in a way that was not consistent with the code could be prosecuted.
The Code itself was pretty awful. It recommended bashing to death and decapitation of joeys whose mothers had been killed. But it did at least identify driving and trapping kangaroos as causing pain and distress.
That is the legislative context in which all the ACT kangaroo slaughters before 2014 took place.
2. Googong and BNTS
Not the first slaughter, but the first in which the government’s lack of science came to the attention of the ACT public was at Googong in 2004. FOI material obtained after the event showed that the slaughter was conducted without any scientific studies, or analysis.
Even Don Fletcher, at that time not working for the ACT government, recommended against that slaughter, partly because there had been no ecological studies to determine if it was necessary, partly because (on the government’s own figures) the numbers of kangaroos on the Googong Reserve had already crashed, and partly because of the risk of bush fires if so many of the remaining kangaroos were removed.
The next public slaughter of hundreds of kangaroos was at the Belconnen Naval Transmission Station in 2008.
This was the time first time the power the Animal Welfare Act, combined with the Code of Practice, to protect kangaroos from cruelty was tested in earnest - and failed utterly.
Despite the Code’s identification of driving and trapping as cruel to kangaroos, kangaroos inhabiting the grassland surrounding the decommissioned Naval Transmission Station, were driven into pens by vehicles, trapped there to be darted and killed by lethal injection.
Members of the public watching the whole procedure (except the actual killing which was shielded from the public by a kind of tent) from outside the surrounding fence. They watched mothers separated from their babies, as the mothers were driven into the enclosure. They watched kangaroos bashing themselves against the walls of the enclosure and colliding mid-air, falling to the ground in a tangle of limbs.
The Code which identified this treatment of kangaroos as cruel and therefore unlawful under the Animal Welfare Act was completely ignored, not just by the ACT government but also by the RSPCA, despite numerous calls from members of the public to remind them of the Code.
3. The Current Code of Practice
Perhaps the government realised it had broken its own law with the slaughter at BNTS - as footage of the herding and trapping went to air all over the world. First chance the government got (in 2014), it repealed the Code of Practice which identified driving and trapping kangaroos as cruel, and replaced it with a code (this one not developed by the ACT AWAC) which does not mention driving or trapping. Because it does not mention driving or trapping, the code now ensures that this particular act of cruelty is now entirely lawful.
Meanwhile all the other cruelties that the Code had always permitted continue unabated. Pouch joeys are bludgeoned or decapitated. An entire generation of young at foot every year is orphaned to starve, get mown down by cars, or get taken by predators. No doubt more than one of these young animals has suffered a similar fate to the young male found in one of the government’s burial pits. He was shot, stabbed and bludgeoned before dying either of blood loss or suffocation due to being buried alive.
During a shooting session, whole mobs of kangaroos are panicked into terrified flight, and so we find them crucified on barbed wire fences they could normally clear with ease, drowned in dams they could easily swim out of, or colliding with cars they would normally at least try to avoid.
All this is completely legal under the Animal Welfare Act because the Code of Practice does not identify any of these outcomes as unacceptable.
4. The KMP Bible and the Treatment of Heretics
Another way the ACT government has barricaded itself against criticisms of its kangaroo extermination campaign has been to develop the policy document known as the ACT Kangaroo Management Plan. This has become the unchallengeable authority for all the government’s ongoing kangaroo atrocities.
It has also become the basis for the government to ignore every representation it receives criticising the kangaroo slaughter, even where the criticism relates to breaking Territory law; even when it relates to endangering public safety; and even, believe it or not, when it relates to the government’s failure to adhere to that very same Kangaroo Management Plan.
In an effort to make its position even more unassailable, the government has raised penalties for the trivial offence of trespass on public land to a level high enough to force a low-income person into bankruptcy. It has closed its eyes to reports of shooting taking place when protestors were within spitting distance of the shooters. It ignored the autopsy report on the young kangaroo found in the burial pit.
It has hurled also around wild allegations that kangaroo protestors have committed acts of vandalism, in particular vandalism that hurts other animals, as though they were matters of fact, in spite of the fact the there has never been any evidence to support any of these allegations, nor any charges ever laid.
5. The ACAT Hearings
There have now been three hearings brought to the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal against the ACT’s kangaroo slaughter:
- by Animal Liberation NSW in 2009;
- by the Australian Society for Kangaroos in 2013; and
- by Animal Liberation ACT in 2014.
To demonstrate the sacrosanct nature that the government’s policy document, the Kangaroo Management Plan has attained over recent years, the kangaroos and their advocates have lost the case at all three of these hearings.
In all three hearings the case for opposing the slaughter has shown overwhelming
evidence:
- that the slaughter is cruel;
- that the slaughter is ineffective in terms of reducing kangaroo grazing pressure on reserve because kangaroos are pretty mobile within their ranges, and quickly move in from nearby farms to make use of the empty reserves;
- that the slaughter is unnecessary because eastern grey kangaroos are so slow breeding, have such a high infant mortality rate and manage their own populations effectively;
- that the slaughter is actively harmful to ecosystems because kangaroo grazing ensures diversity of habitat for a great diversity of others specie,s many of which cannot thrive in either ungrazed land or livestock grazed land.
The Tribunals also heard clear evidence that the government’s kangaroo counts are inherently inaccurate, that the KMP’s notion of an ideal number of kangaroos per hectare has no basis in science, and that that eastern grey kangaroos across their entire range seem to be in steep and alarming decline.
6.Why These Outcomes?
So why with all this evidence before them, did the three Tribunals rule in favour of the government?
All three Tribunals made this decision on one very simple and astonishing basis. They chose to accept the scientific evidence of Don Fletcher, over that of the independent expert witnesses who gave evidence.
In 2013, the Tribunal even recognised that Fletcher was not there as an independent scientific expert. On that basis, he was allowed to consult with his colleagues during the breaks, and seek further information and advice from his Department. The independent expert witness was not permitted to talk to anyone during the breaks. And yet the Tribunal ruled in favour of the evidence of a person it had already admitted was a government mouthpiece.
Having won three times at ACAT, the government is now supremely confident that all it has to do is mention the Kangaroo Management Plan and it can - perhaps literally - get away with murder.
7. Endangering Humans and Breaking its Own Laws
In 2015, the police allowed shooting with guns to go ahead in an open public place,
the Rose Cottage Horse Paddocks (RCHP), a place that is frequented by members of the public at all hours of the night and day: cyclists on the Centenary Trail; dog walkers; horse riders; teenagers chilling out; young lovers strolling by moonlight; not to mention kangaroos slaughter protestors quite lawfully out on watch for shooters entering the nearby reserve.
The ACT government did not even bother to warn the public that shooting was going on in the RCHP. The Minister, Rattenbury and the FOI Officer both sanctimoniously claimed that the RCHP paddocks because the licence was issued to a private company. This private company is the contractor engaged by the government to manage the RCHP on behalf of the public. Because it is a private company, the government has to protect that company’s privacy.
So much more important than the lives of its citizens.
It even turned out that the shooting on the RCHP on the night it was reported to the police was not even legal. It was made legal the following day by inclusion of the RCHP in an existing licence for shooting on other nearby blocks.
8. The Arrest of a Protestor and Ensuing Court Case
A week later, the same man who reported the dangerous and illegal shooting on the RCHP was arrested on those very same horse paddocks where he had every right to be - for blowing a whistle.
On the first day of the resulting court case (24 February 2016), most of the observers in the courtroom were there to support the defendant, and everyone in the court knew it. Someone (presumably someone outside the courtroom) alleged three times during the course of the morning that one of the observers in the courtroom was taking photographs. It was a small courtroom, and everyone could see anyone else, so it was unlikely the allegation was true, although obviously not impossible.
The third time the assertion was made, the phones of every observer were confiscated for several hours. This was immediately before the court was adjourned for lunch, so the phones were kept out of their owners’ view for a period quite long enough for their entire contents to be downloaded.
As if that was not outrageous enough, a police officer (although out of uniform and with no ID visible) tried to take all the observers’ names as they left the courtroom.
This police officer was none other than the same officer:
• who had falsely assured the defendant (and another member of the public) on 4 June that no shooting would take place on the Rose Cottage Horse Paddocks;
• to whom the illegal shooting on the RCHP had been reported on 24 June 2015;
• who had, on 24 June 2015, falsely assured the defendant the shooting on the RCHP was (after all) legal; and
• who had arrested him on the RCHP a week later.
It was, even at the time, hard not to assume that the allegation that someone had taken photographs was made for one or more of three purposes: to disrupt the coherence of the court case; to prejudice the magistrate against the defendant’s supporters; or simply to get hold of some protestors phones for sinister surveillance purposes.
On the second day of the hearing (8 April 2016), a fourth and even more likely reason came to light. The government prosecutor asked the magistrate to have the case continue as a closed court (ie observers excluded). She gave as her reason the allegation from the previous day of the hearing that someone had taken photographs, along wild assertions about ‘aggressive activists’ (ie this with a room full of women observers of age, intelligence and education similar to that of the magistrate). Thankfully, the magistrate refused the request.
9. Contemptuous Dismissal of Public Representations
Every success the ACT government has had from trampling on its own laws and its citizens’ rights seems to have bolstered its confidence to do it a bit more and a bit worse next time
A detailed submission to the Chief Minister by the Coalition of Animal Protectors (CAP), about the illegal shooting and risk to the lives of citizens went unanswered for three months. When a reminder was sent, someone in the Chief Minister’s Office sent a short, bizarre response was had nothing to do with the submission.
CAP followed this up with equally detailed submissions to the Ombudsman and Police Operations Standards Monitoring Centre (PSOMC). As yet received no response has been received from PSOMC, but very recently a response was received from the Ombudsman’s Office, claiming that matters of environmental administration are outside the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction.
Apparently it does not matter if a public servant who administers environment policy authorises illegal actions, or actions that put human lives at risk, or actions that are contrary to the government’s environmental management policy itself (as represented by the KMP). That public servant is apparently completely exempt from any responsibility to the public.
10. Summation
We have a government which, in its zeal to massacre kangaroos, is willing to:
- put people’s lives at risk
- break its own laws
- trample on the democratic rights of its citizens.
We seem to have no avenue of protest
- through the executive government
- their bureaucrats
- or even their appointed watchdogs, the Ombudsman and the ACAT
We seem to have no redress through the electoral system because the three parties who share the power, the Liberals, Labor and the Greens, appear to have made an unspoken and unholy alliance to keep the policy of massacring kangaroos unassailable.
The mainstream media has declined to undertake any serious investigative journalism into this issue, has refused to even publish the kangaroo defenders’ side of the story without dumbing it down to incomprehensibility.
The government and the media have also played a dirty tricks campaign, and successfully turned the general public against the kangaroo defenders by hurling about rubbish allegations of vandalism.
Even the power of the tactic of people putting themselves on the reserves to force the shooters to stop shooting has been seriously eroded, partly because people are quite understandably afraid of incurring $8000 fines, and partly because the shooters do not seem to stop shooting even when they are there.
11. So What Can We Do?
The short answer is not give up.
One thing we do have that we didn’t have when all this started is an Animal Justice Party to challenge the three-headed political monster we seem to be facing in the ACT: the Liberals, Labour and the Greens. (Please remember, though, that it is only the ACT Greens who seem to have done this deal with the devil.) Social media has also exploded since 2004, and we need to find imaginative, new ways of breaking through the electronic information overload to use it effectively.
However, we also have to keep using some of the old tools: the submissions, the attempts to engage the mainstream media, and getting out to the reserves during the slaughter. When these actions fail, as they now have repeatedly, we must not just throw up our hands and abandon them. These mechanisms are the very essence of democracy. Without them we have nothing.
We must win this campaign, not just for the kangaroos but also for our entire way of life, our entire political system: our right, as responsible citizens, to demand that government officials are answerable for their actions. Governments and their servants must not be permitted to endlessly lie and evade and dismiss, sure of re-election no matter what they do, who or what they kill.
So we must dossiers, as I am doing, on the government’s ever-increasing abuses of its own laws and its own citizens. We must keep believing that one day, we will be in a position to call this government to account for its crimes.
Most of all, of course, we have to win back the ordinary people of the ACT and indeed the rest of Australia to the side of the kangaroos – and all the other animals.
We are not going to save anything if we just dismiss the general public as apathetic and selfish. Most of them are essentially good people. They are just too busy with their own lives, and it is just so much easier to believe the government when it tells them all is well than to bother questioning anything.
We have to be always on our mettle to show ourselves to be people who are unfailingly rational, who know what we’re talking about, who are undiscriminating in our compassion for both humans and animals, and who are absolutely convinced we will win in the end.
On this overcast Thursday morning in Brussels, the Capital of Europe, rays of bright sunshine are breaking through from the East as the latest results of vote counting in neighboring Netherlands suggest that yesterday's referendum on the EU's Association Agreement with Ukraine passed the 30% quorum requirement of all eligible voters, while those who cast their ballots came out nearly two to one against the Ukraine deal.
On this overcast Thursday morning in Brussels, the Capital of Europe, rays of bright sunshine are breaking through from the East as the latest results of vote counting in neighboring Netherlands suggest that yesterday's referendum on the EU's Association Agreement with Ukraine passed the 30% quorum requirement of all eligible voters, while those who cast their ballots came out nearly two to one against the Ukraine deal.
If validated when the official results are released on 12 April, this marks a resounding defeat for the Brussels-led conspiracy to pursue Russia-bashing policies of sanctions and information war without consulting public opinion at home. To change metaphors and speak in terms of Dutch folklore, it is the crack in the dam many of us have been waiting for, the opportunity for common sense to prevail over the illogic, hubris and plain pig-headedness of those who control the EU institutions in Brussels, and afar from Berlin and Washington.
While the referendum was formally just 'advisory,' both the public statements of parliamentarians and the acknowledgements of the Dutch government ahead of the voting indicated that it will force a new vote in parliament on ratification and likely send Prime Minister Rutte to Brussels hat in hand, requesting a renegotiation of the Association Agreement. As such, it may bring the EU foreign policy machinery to a shuddering halt and open the illogic of all the Union's policies towards its eastern borderlands these past several years to public scrutiny and, hopefully, to revision.
However, whether this was the decisive moment when the EU is brought to its senses or just the first of a series of knock-out blows directed at the political correctness and group think that has been driving policy ever since the coup d'etat in Ukraine on 22 February 2014, its importance cannot be overstated.
We have been hearing for more than a year that the Russia-bashing policies, the sanctions in particular, were opposed by a growing minority of EU member states. Among the dissenters named at one point or another have been Italy, Hungary, Slovakia. Then came Bavaria, within Germany, whose minister-president Seehofer just months ago flaunted the policies of Chancellor Merkel and paid court to Vladimir Putin in Moscow. Just yesterday the president of Austria did the same. And yet, despite all the fine words to reporters about how the sanctions violate the basic economic interests of their countries and of Europe as a whole, none of these statesmen broke ranks when the sanctions repeatedly came up for renewal. The significance of yesterday's event in The Netherlands was that this time the people spoke, not their elected or appointed officials. This was a consultation to remember.
In effect, the referendum played out at two levels. At the domestic level, it was a power struggle between the mainstream centrist parties in The Netherlands who stand for ‘go with the flow' on EU decisions and decision-making, versus the Euroskeptic extremes on the left and especially on the right (Geerd Wilders and his Freedom Party) who want to put a stick in the EU machinery and halt the slow-motion, seemingly unstoppable move towards greater union, indeed towards federalism that have gained momentum ever since the onset of the financial crisis in 2008. In that sense it foreshadows the campaign fight of the parliamentary elections that will take place in The Netherlands in 2017.
At the same time, the referendum had a geopolitical dimension going way beyond the spoils of office, as a proxy battle between pro-US, pro-NATO versus pro-Moscow ideas within The Netherlands.
In both dimensions, the particulars of the EU's Association Agreement with Ukraine that runs several hundred pages long were not the real issue on the ballot. All of which begs the question of what exactly Prime Minister Rutte will eventually be asking the EU Commission to renegotiate.
The signs are multiplying that the EU consensus on foreign policy driven by Angela Merkel is nearing collapse. Within Germany itself, her detractors are becoming ever bolder. Earlier this week the German papers were carrying on their front pages news of former Chancellor Helmut Kohl's invitation to Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban to visit him at his home next week. This is seen as a direct rebuke to Merkel and her policy of open-arms to refugees from Syria and the Middle East, a policy which Orban led a number of new Member States in opposing.
The next big test for the European Union, and the next opportunity to deal a severe blow to its complacent leadership in Brussels will be the Brexit referendum in the U.K. at the end of June. Watch this space.
Saturday April 23 rd at 1.00pm to 4.00 pm. Venue: Hawthorn Arts Centre, 360 Burwood Rd. Hawthorn Vic 3122. Members and non-members are welcome to attend. Speakers are: Mark Allen, Founder, Population, Permaculture and Planning; Dr Katharine Betts, Population Sociologist, Swinburne University; Hon Kelvin Thomson MP, Environmentalist and high profile sustainable population advocate; Rod Quantock, Environmental activist, Much loved comedian. M.C. SPAVicTas President Michael Bayliss. Audience Q&A and discussion will follow(Free parking behind venue or at nearby Glenferrie Station).
All Welcome
All welcome to come and join in this free public afternoon seminar and discussion!
Speakers
Mark Allen, Founder, Population, Permaculture and Planning
Dr Katharine Betts, Population Sociologist, Swinburne University
Hon Kelvin Thomson MP, Environmentalist and high profile sustainable population advocate
Rod Quantock, Environmental activist, Much loved comedian
M.C. SPAVicTas President Michael Bayliss.
Audience Q&A and discussion will follow
Attitudes and communication in population and the environment
Venue: Hawthorn Arts Centre, 360 Burwood Rd. Hawthorn Vic 3122
Members and non-members are welcome to attend (free parking behind venue or at nearby Glenferrie Station) www.population.org.au
Further details: Jill Quirk jillq[AT]optusnet.com.au 0409742927
UPDATE: Faced with the Governor of Virginia's apparent indifference to the execution of apparently an innocent person, the federal 4th Appeals Court has issued an order of stay of execution until 13 April.
Hapless Americans have little idea how broken the criminal justice system is in America. "Freedom and Democracy" America not only has the largest percentage of its population incarcerated than any other country, America also has the largest absolute number. American has more of its citizens in prison than does China, allegedly an authoritarian one party state with four times the American population!!!
Americans are helpless against false prosecutions because so many Americans are gullible and cannot believe that prosecutors and police would be corrupt. They do not give thought to the character of prosecutors. Have you ever asked yourself what type of persons become prosecutors? Most Americans think a prosecutor is a person dedicated to serving justice and punishing criminals for their crimes. There are such people, but there are also ambitious prosecutors who pursue high conviction rates and high profile cases as a path to higher office. For these prosecutors, justice is a subsidiary concern. The worst kind of prosecutors are those who simply enjoy ruining people, whether innocent or guilty.
Prosecutors formerly were restrained by enculturation and a moral environment. Today the only restraint is their own character.
Miscarriages of justice have always occurred, but as Lawrence Stratton and I show in our book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, miscarriages of justice are becoming the norm, not the exception. The Boston Marathon Bombing case is an example of a corrupt prosecution. See: Update on the Boston Marathon Bomb Case – Paul Craig Roberts (29/3/16)
Once a miscarriage of justice occurs, it is almost impossible to reverse it. Public authorities do not readily admit to mistakes or corrupt motives. For example, Ivan Teleguz is set to be executed in a few days despite the fact that two of the three witnesses against him have publicly stated that they lied for prosecutors at Teleguz's trial as their part of deals prosecutors made with them. In other words, the false evidence against Ivan Telguz was created by the prosecutors for the purpose of executing him.
There is a petition sponsored by change.org to Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe that is trying to stop the execution of a wrongly convicted person who appears to be innocent. Here is the petition:
Petitioning Terry McAuliffe
Please Stop the Imminent Execution of Ivan Teleguz, an Innocent Man
The Commonwealth of Virginia plans to execute an innocent man, Ivan Teleguz. We need to make sure Governor McAuliffe knows that there is too much evidence of Ivan's innocence to allow this execution to go ahead. Please join the call for the Governor to intervene.
The government's case against Ivan was based on false evidence. Three men said that Ivan hired Stephanie's killer. But two of those men have since admitted that they lied in court – and sworn under oath that Ivan was not involved. The third, Michael Hetrick, confessed to killing Stephanie. He was offered a deal that spared his own life in return for saying that Ivan hired him to commit the murder.
The prosecutor coerced the witnesses. The witnesses have sworn under oath that they gave false testimony at trial because of threats from the prosecutor and promises she made to improve their sentences.
The prosecution tried to influence the jury by saying Ivan was involved in a made-up murder. At trial, the prosecutor argued that Ivan should be sentenced to death because he was involved in another murder in Pennsylvania, and was highly dangerous. It was later revealed that the testimony about the murder and the prosecutor's argument were completely made up—the murder never even happened.
There is evidence that calls into question every part of the Commonwealth's case against Ivan. There is too much doubt for Governor McAuliffe to allow this execution to go ahead. Please help make sure he knows that The Commonwealth is about to execute an innocent man.
Please help save an innocent man. Join the call for Governor McAuliffe to intervene.
Bahraini people have held an anti-regime demonstration in the Persian Gulf kingdom ahead of the upcoming Formula One Grand Prix.
The demonstrators carried anti-Formula One banners reading, "Racing on Persecution" and chanted slogans against the race during their march in the village of Diraz, west of the capital, Manama, after Friday prayers.
The second round of the Formula 1 season is scheduled to take place in Bahrain this weekend.
Such protests have been held annually in recent years ahead of the major sport event.
Bahrainis slam the hosting of the Formula One race as a failed attempt to restore Manama’s international image.
Manama hopes the event will highlight progress and improvements in the country’s human rights situation.
The 2011 race was canceled amid a heavy crackdown on pro-democracy protests in the kingdom which left many people dead.
On the same occasion, Amnesty International condemned the Bahraini regime on Friday.
"Behind the fast cars and the victory laps lies a government that is tightening its chokehold on any remnant of dissent in the country by stepping up arrests, intimidation and harassment of political opposition, critics and activists," said James Lynch, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa.
"The alarming erosion of human rights in Bahrain in recent years means that anyone who dares to criticize the authorities or call for reform risks severe punishment," he said.
The UK-based rights group also denounced the Bahraini authorities for revoking the nationalities of many Bahrainis, describing it as an "unlawful measure to silence dissent."
It also called on Bahrain to "to mark the Grand Prix by immediately and unconditionally releasing all prisoners of conscience held solely for peacefully expressing their views."
"The modest reforms introduced after the 2011 uprising have demonstrably failed to live up to the hopes and promises they raised to protect and promote human rights," Amnesty said.
Since mid-February 2011, thousands of anti-regime protesters have held numerous demonstrations on the streets of Bahrain, calling for the Al Khalifa family to relinquish power.
Scores of Bahrainis have been killed and hundreds of others injured and arrested in the ongoing crackdown on peaceful demonstrations.
Recent mainstream media articles raise serious questions as to the policy base behind the ACT government policy to kill Kangaroos. Join us and hear about the research base purportedly in support of killing Kangaroos in the ACT. 6.00-7.30pm, Tuesday April 5th 2016, Urambi Village Community Hall, Gateway B, Crozier Circuit Kambah. Speakers: Sheila Newman, Marcus Fillinger, Frankie Seymour.
Keynote speakers:
Sheila Newman –Independent researcher, evolutionary Sociologist and policy advisor for the Australian Wildlife Protection Council. Sheila will speak about kangaroo population numbers, including reference to the ACT Chief Ecologist, Dr Don Fletcher's PhD study of kangaroo populations at densities of 5 or 6 per hectare and their effect on ground cover. She will talk about what is lacking in the way kangaroo populations are described in the ACT and how agendas for the expansion of human population and development in the ACT affect the way the government presents kangaroos and their numbers to the public
Mr Marcus Fillinger - Director of Alphadog AnimalArmy, Marcus will speak about his research looking at multiphase kangaroo fertility control and which is undertaken in collaboration with the University of Technology Sydney and will engage experts in remote delivery, ballistics, neuroscience, zoology, pharmacology, veterinary science, ecology, and reconnaissance drone engineers.
Frankie Seymour – activist, writer and researcher. Frankie brings a powerful background to the debate around Kangaroo Management. From 1996-2013, she served on the ACT government’s Animal Welfare Advisory Committee (AWAC), collectively developing over about 20 codes of practice.
Light refreshments provided
It helps for catering if you can let us know you are attending;
RSVP Animal Justice part ACT: [email protected]
GOLD COIN DONATION APPRECIATED.
The Senate Education and Employment References Committee has released a scathing report entitled A National Disgrace: The Exploitation of Temporary Work Visa Holders, which documents the abuses of Australia’s temporary visa system for
foreign workers.
According to the report, there are over 1.8 million temporary visa
holders in Australia (see Table 2.5 below), with approximately 1.4
million of them having work rights. This means that temporary visa
holders comprise around 10% of Australia’s labour force.
Below is a summary of the Committee’s view of the 457 visa system
for so-called “skilled” foreign workers:
The committee received evidence that a key indicator of the
effectiveness of the 457 visa program in addressing genuine skills
shortages is the responsiveness of the demand for 457 visa workers to
changes in the general rate of unemployment, and to changes in the
supply of skilled labour in particular occupations.
Evidence to the committee indicated that the responsiveness of
the 457 visa program to the upturn in the unemployment rate lagged by
two to three years. Furthermore, the committee received evidence that
the 457 visa program was having a detrimental impact on the employment
opportunities for Australian graduates in specific occupations such as
engineering and nursing.
The committee acknowledges that it received conflicting evidence
regarding the balance between permanent and temporary migration. In
theory, the value of temporary migration is that it allows business to
meet short-term skills shortages. In this respect, there is an
advantage in having some element of temporary migration because
addressing skills shortages solely through the permanent migration
scheme could result in a skills surplus, particularly if a sector that
was booming experienced a sudden down-turn (the resources sector for
example). Addressing short-term skill shortages with the 457 visa
scheme should be a way of moderating these types of rapid
transformations in discrete segments of the skilled job market.
However, the committee is concerned that the broader temporary
visa program, and specifically the 457 visa program, is not
sufficiently responsive either to higher levels of unemployment, or to
labour market changes in specific skilled occupations…
Given the concerns raised in this inquiry, it is therefore
appropriate to review the policy settings of the 457 visa program and
labour agreements at this juncture to ensure they are set correctly…
The Committee recommends that the minimum income threshold for 457
visa holders be indexed to ordinary weekly earnings, so that it is not
eroded over time, along with the implementation of more rigorous,
independent, evidence-based, and transparent processes for determining
the Consolidated Sponsored Occupations List (CSOL), which it sees as ad
hoc and ineffective:
Recommendation 5: The committee recommends that
the Temporary Skilled Migration Income Threshold (TSMIT) be indexed to
average fulltime weekly ordinary time earnings (AWOTE) as at 1 July
2015 and that indexation occur each financial year.
Recommendation 6: The committee recommends that
the Ministerial Advisory Council on Skilled Migration (MACSM) be
re-constituted as a genuinely tripartite, independent, and transparent
body with responsibility and commensurate funding to provide objective
evidence-based advice to government on matters pertaining to skills
shortages, training needs, workforce capacity and planning, and labour
migration (including Designated Area Migration Agreements and the full
range of temporary visa programs with associated work rights). The
committee further recommends that the reports produced by MACSM be made
publicly available.
The Committee also wants stringent labour market testing of all
457 visa nominations to ensure that employers employ locals first
wherever possible:
The committee notes that the vast majority of all occupations
available for sponsorship under the 457 visa program are exempt from
labour market testing… although the extent to which it is occurring is
difficult to quantify, the committee is deeply disturbed by evidence of
workers losing their jobs only to be replaced by 457 visa workers. In
this regard, the committee is of the view that there should be a
prohibition against replacing local workers with 457 visa workers…
Given the current high levels of unemployment and
under-employment amongst Australian professionals, however, the
committee is of the view that the labour market testing should be
further strengthened. In particular, the current exemptions on labour
market testing for ANZSCO skill levels 1 and 2 should be removed, and
labour market testing should be required prior to all 457 visa
nominations.
Further, the committee is of the view that labour market testing
should apply to all positions for which a 457 visa holder is nominated
under labour agreements and Designated Area Migration Agreements.
Recommendation 7: The committee recommends that
the replacement of local workers by 457 visa workers be specifically
prohibited.
Recommendation 8: The committee recommends that
the current exemptions on labour market testing for ANZSCO skill levels
1 and 2 be removed.
Recommendation 9: The committee recommends
that the Migration Regulations be amended to specify that labour market
testing applies to all positions nominated by approved sponsors under
labour agreements and Designated Area Migration Agreements.
Importantly, the Committee also recommends that employers using
457 visas make explicit efforts to employ and train locals:
Recommendation 13: The committee recommends
that employer sponsors of a 457 visa worker (professional) be required
to also employ an Australian tertiary graduate in the same enterprise
on a one-for-one basis.
Recommendation 14: The committee recommends
that employer sponsors of a 457 visa worker (trade) be required to
demonstrate that apprentices represent 25 per cent of the sponsor’s
total trade workforce (with the threshold for this requirement being
the employment of four or more tradespersons).
Recommendation 15: The committee recommends
that the current training benchmarks be replaced with a training levy
paid per 457 visa holder employed in the business. The committee
recommends that the levy be set at up to $4000 per 457 visa worker and
that the levy be paid into existing government programs that
specifically support sectors experiencing labour shortages as well as
apprenticeships and training programs…
The most damning assessments from the Committee were regarding
Australia’s Working Holiday Maker (WHM) and student visa holders, who
were “consistently reported to suffer widespread exploitation in
the Australian workforce”.
The Committee also noted that undocumented foreign workers were
eroding labour standards for Australian employees:
The committee received evidence that undocumented work by
migrant labour has resulted not only in the severe exploitation of
highly vulnerable workers, but also impacted Australia’s labour
markets, including placing downward pressure on the wages and
conditions of Australian workers and undercutting the majority of
legitimate employers that abide by Australian workplace laws.
Looking at the WHM (417 and 462) visa program first, the Committee
noted the following:
A substantial body of evidence to this inquiry demonstrated
blatant and pervasive abuse of the WHM visa program by a network of
labour hire companies supplying 417 visa workers to businesses in the
horticulture sector and the meat processing industry.
It was clear from the evidence that these labour hire companies
have a particular business model. There are a number of labour hire
companies in Australia with close links to labour hire agencies in
certain south-east Asian countries… The scale of the abuse is
extraordinary, both in terms of the numbers of young temporary visa
workers involved, and also in terms of the exploitative conditions that
they endure…
On completion of their ‘training’, the 417 visa workers were
given a job where they were required to work regular 12 to 18 hour
shifts 6 days a week. They were frequently denied proper breaks and
often had to keep working or return to work early after suffering
workplace injuries. The pay rates were appalling. Most received around
a flat $11 or $12 an hour irrespective of whether this was the night
shift, the weekend, or overtime hours. These wage rates are illegal and
clearly breach award minimums…
Poor or non-existent record-keeping was endemic across the
labour hire companies mentioned in this inquiry. This has serious
implications for ensuring compliance with legal minimum conditions of
employment. The 417 visa workers never met the head labour hire
contractor and only had a mobile number to receive texts about the
start time for their next shift. The committee received many documents
including fake timesheets and envelopes with a figure scrawled on it
instead of a proper timesheet. The workers were paid in cash with no
deductions for tax.
When the shift was over, these workers returned to squalid and
overcrowded accommodation with no proper facilities, for which they
were charged exorbitant levels of rent by the labour hire contractor.
The rent payments were deducted straight from the workers’ pay packets,
most of the time in clear contravention of the law…
And regarding the student visa system, the Committee noted:
The hearings into 7-Eleven revealed that undocumented work
performed in breach of a visa condition (as opposed to visa overstayers
and persons in Australia without a visa) is a huge problem in
Australia. International students who were legally allowed to work in
Australia were required to work hours in excess of their visa
conditions precisely so their employers could then exploit the
technical breach of their visa conditions in order to underpay them and
rob them of their wages and other workplace entitlements…
Working (or being required to work) in breach of a visa
condition renders an international student liable to visa cancellation
and deportation and effectively excludes such workers from the
protections of employment law under the FW Act. This further reinforces
the power of unscrupulous employers over their workers and provides a
perverse incentive for employers to breach the law by coercing their
employees to breach the law…
The committee is particularly concerned about the pressure that
certain employers have exerted on temporary visa workers to breach a
condition of their visa in order to gain additional leverage over the
employee. The committee recognises the reality that unscrupulous
employers have exercised their power in the employment relationship and
the employee has been rendered vulnerable to exploitation…
The committee particularly thanks the former employees of
7-Eleven who appeared at the public hearing in Melbourne. Their
accounts of appalling exploitation and intimidation by their franchisee
employers painted a bleak picture of working life in Australia for
substantial numbers of temporary visa workers. Their stories were not
isolated occurrences to be brushed off as one-off incidents caused by a
few rogue employers. Rather, the overwhelming body of evidence
indicated that the problem of underpayment at 7-Eleven was, and may
remain, widespread and systemic.
The Committee makes a bunch of other recommendations around the
rights of temporary visa holders, compliance and enforcement issues,
franchising issues, etc. There are 33 Recommendations in total.
If you have lost faith in western explanations of what is going on in Syria, maybe you have begun to question what you believed about the break-up of Yugoslavia which began in the 1990s and was accomplished with NATO's involvement in 1999. NATO waged war against the Serbian and other governments opposed to Yugoslavia's division into several states - its 'balkanisation'. The way these conflicts were reported in the west was terribly confusing. In the first part of this article, Ken stone suggests why outside forces were so keen to disorganise post-Tito Yugoslavia. In the second part, 'Victors' justice', he criticises the way the the victors rewrote history as they dominated the international justice system and notes how they got away with dismembering Yugoslavia.
The West sought to destroy Yugoslavia for several reasons:
1) Germany has always regarded the Balkans as within its natural sphere of influence. For that reason, its policy has always been to keep the Balkan people balkanized, the better to manipulate, dominate, and exploit them. For this reason, Nazi Germany attacked Yugoslavia during WW2, redivided the country along ethnic and confessional lines and punished the Serbs especially because they led the effort to form a federal republic. Germany played a large role in the 1990’s to split up the former Yugoslavia.
2) The USA sought to dismember Yugoslavia because it was outside of its control until the end of the Cold War and did not have sufficiently compliant economic or political system. In short, US multinational corporations could not just walk into Yugoslavia and set up shop. There were rules and regulations against foreign takeovers that had to be removed. There was also a lot of public control and ownership of the Yugoslavian economy.
3) The USSR had always stood as the protector of the South Slavs. The demise of the Soviet Union gave the USA the opportunity to divide up Yugoslavia, pit one nation against another, sell arms to all sides, dominate the region, privatize the many state industries, and seize the fabulous Trepka mines of Kosovo which were under state control.
4) Although there were no important supplies of oil and gas in Yugoslavia, the US had a plan to bring Qatari gas pipelines into South Europe through Kosovo to undercut the Russian pipelines through Ukraine and into Eastern Europe. The Qatari pipeline was to go through a defeated Syria, which didn’t happen. The US built its super-base, Bondsteel, in Kosovo as the anchor of the new Qatari gas line.
Victors' justice
The problem with the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY) was that it was victors’ justice, set up by the NATO countries that launched the illegal war of aggression against the former Yugoslavia, and targeted the victims of that aggression, mainly Serbs. The military intervention was NOT authorized by the United Nations Security Council. It was a successful attempt to destroy and dismember a country which described itself as a secular, socialist, federalist, pluralistic, and democratic state. After the war, all the claims made by NATO to justify the attack on Yugoslavia – namely that Yugoslavia was conducting a genocide in Kosovo – proved to be false.
The real criminals, who started the war, were never put on trial. I refer specifically to US President Bill Clinton and his Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, but also to all the leaders of NATO countries at the time, including Canada’s Jean Chretien. The NDP originally supported the NATO bombing of the former Yugoslavia, which lasted 78 days, but, under pressure from its own members, reversed its position after three weeks.
NATO countries were content to use the help of terrorist mercenaries from the Kosovo Liberation Army, which was supported by Osama Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda, as their foot soldiers, against the Yugoslavian army. (Does this sound familiar in the context of Syria today?) The KLA was a bunch of drug and human smugglers, which until then, had been on the USA’s own terrorist list. After the defeat and dismemberment of the former Yugoslavia, the KLA conducted a campaign of ethnic cleansing of Serbs from Kosovo and destroyed many historic Serbian orthodox churches and monasteries. The fabulous Trepka mines in Kosovo were privatized. The USA then proceeded to build Bondsteel, its largest military base in the world, nearby.
So Milosevic, the democratically-elected president of the republic, died in custody at the Hague and now Karadzic will spend the rest of his life behind bars while the war-makers/pillagers walk free.
The destruction of the former Yugoslavia was only the first of the post-Cold War western military interventions. After they got away with that crime (because the Soviet Union had collapsed), the US and its allies attacked Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, Libya, and Syria. (Did I miss any?)
I am not impressed with the miscarriage of justice known as the ICTY.
Last month, US secretary of State John Kerry called for Syria to be partitioned saying it was "Plan B" if negotiations fail. But in reality this was always plan A. Plans to balkanize Syria, Iraq and other Middle Eastern states were laid out by former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in a 2006 trip to Tel Aviv. It was part of the so called "Project For a New Middle East". This was a carbon copy of the Odid Yinon plan drawn up by Israel in 1982. The plan outlined the way in which Middle Eastern countries could be balkanized along sectarian lines. This would result in the creation of several weak landlocked micro-states that would be in perpetual war with each other and never united enough to resist Israeli expansionism.
"Syria will fall apart, in accordance with its ethnic and religious structure, into several states such as in present day Lebanon, so that there will be a Shi'ite Alawi state along its coast, a Sunni state in the Aleppo area, another Sunni state in Damascus hostile to its northern neighbor, and the Druzes who will set up a state, maybe even in our Golan… " Oded Yinon, "A strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties",
The leaked emails of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reveal advocates of the Oded Yinon plan were behind the US push for regime change in Syria. An Israeli intelligence adviser writes in an email to Hillary,
"The fall of the House of Assad could well ignite a sectarian war between the Shiites and the majority Sunnis of the region drawing in Iran, which, in the view of Israeli commanders would not be a bad thing for Israel and its Western allies,".
Kerry's plan B comment came right before UN's special envoy de Mistura said federalism would be discussed at the Geneva talks due to a push from major powers. Both side's of the Geneva talks, the Syrian Government and the Syrian National Coalition flat out rejected Federalism. Highlighting the fact that the idea did not come from the Syrian's themselves. The Syrian ambassador to the United Nations, Bashar Al Jaafari, said that the Idea of federalization would not be up for discussion. "Take the idea of separating Syrian land out of your mind," he would say.
But some may not completely understand the full implications of federalism and how it is intrinsically tied to balkanization. Some cite the fact that Russia and the United States are successful federations as evidence that federation is nothing to fear. However the point that makes these federalism statements so dangerous is that in accordance with the Yinon plan the borders of a federalized Syria would be drawn along sectarian lines not on whether any particular state can sustain its population. This means that a small amount of people will get all the resources, and the rest of Syria's population will be left to starve. Furthermore, Russia and the US are by land mass some of the largest nations in the world, so federalism may make sense for them. In contrast Syria is a very small state with limited resources. Unlike the US and Russia, Syria is located in the Middle East which means water is limited. In spite of the fact Syria is in the so-called fertile crescent, Syria has suffered massive droughts since Turkey dammed the rivers flowing into Syria and Iraq. Syria's water resources must be rationed amongst its 23 million people. In the Middle East, wars are also fought over water.The areas that the Yinon plan intends to carve out of Syria, are the coastal areas of Latakia and the region of Al Hasake. These are areas where a substantial amount of Syria's water, agriculture and oil are located. The intention is to leave the majority of the Syrian population in a landlocked starving rump state, and create a situation where perpetual war between divided Syrians is inevitable. Ironically promoters of the Yinon plan try and paint federalism as a road to peace. However, Iraq which was pushed into federalism in 2005 by the US occupation is far from peaceful now.
Quite simply, divide and conquer is the plan. This was even explicitly suggested in the headline of Foreign Policy magazine, "Divide and conquer Iraq and Syria" with the subheading "Why the West Should Plan for a Partition". The CEO of Foreign Policy magazine David Rothkopf is a member of to the Council of Foreign Relations, a think tank Hillary Clinton has admits she bases her policies on. Another article by Foreign Policy written by an ex-NATO commander James Stavridis, claims "It's time to talk about partitioning Syria".
The US hoped to achieve this by empowering the Muslim Brotherhood and other extremist groups, and introducing Al Qaeda and ISIS into Syria. The Syrian army was supposed to collapse with soldiers returning to their respective demographic enclaves. Evidence of this could be seen in the headlines of NATO's media arm in 2012, which spread false rumours that Assad had run to Latakia, abandoning his post in Damascus. The extremists were then supposed to attack Alawite, Christian and Druze villages. The US hoped that enough Alawites, Christians and Druze would be slaughtered that Syria's minorities would become receptive to the idea of partitioning.
Then NATO planned on shifting narratives from, "evil dictator must be stopped" to "we must protect the minorities". Turning on the very terrorists they created and backing secessionist movements. There is evidence that this narrative shift had already started to happened by 2014 when it was used to convince the US public to accept US intervention in Syria against ISIS. The US designation of Jabhat Al Nusra as a terrorist organisation in December of 2012 was in preparation for this narrative shift. But this was premature as none of these plans seemed to unfold according to schedule. Assad did not leave Damascus, the Syrian army held together, and Syrian society held onto its national identity.
It could be said that the Yinon plan had some success with the Kurdish PYD declaration of federalization. However, the Kurdish faction of the Syrian national coalition condemned PYD's declaration. Regardless, the declaration has no legal legitimacy. The region of Al Hasakah where a substantial portion of Syria's oil and agriculture lies, has a population of only 1.5 million people, 6% of Syria's total population. Of that, 1.5 million, only 40% are Kurdish, many of which do not carry Syrian passports. PYD's demand that the oil and water resources of 23 million people be given to a tiny part of its population is unlikely to garner much support amongst the bulk of Syria's population.
Former US National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger understood that the key to dismembering a nation was attacking its national identity. This entails attacking the history from which this identity is based upon. In an event at Michigan University Kissinger stated that he would like to see Syria balkanized, asserting that Syria is not a historic state and is nothing but an invention of the Sykes-Picot agreement in the 1920's. Interestingly, Kissinger is using the same narrative as ISIS, who also claims that Syria is a colonial construct. In fact, ISIS has been a key tool for Kissinger and the promoters of the project of a New Middle East, as ISIS has waged a campaign of destruction against both Syrian and Iraqi historical sites.
In spite of efforts to convince the world of the contrary, the region that now encompasses modern day Syria has been called Syria since 605 BC . Sykes-Picot didn't draw the borders of Syria too large, but instead, too small. Historical Syria also included Lebanon and Iskandaron. Syria and Lebanon were moving towards reunification until 2005, an attempt at correcting what was a sectarian partition caused by the French mandate. Syria has a long history of opposing attempts of divide and conquer, initially the French mandate aimed to divide Syria into 6 separate states based on sectarian lines, but such plans were foiled by Syrian patriots. The architects of the Yinon plan need only have read Syria's long history of resistance against colonial divisions to know their plans in Syria were doomed to failure.
Nowadays, a variety of means are being used in order to implement and extend the “controlled chaos” in the national economies and societies in the geopolitical struggle. The actor, who is using the tool, is maintaining the “controlled chaos” within the opposing country.
Steven Mann, the US foreign policy expert, who took part in the developing of many of the current “controlled chaos” hotspots in various parts of the world, speaks openly of the need to use “increased level strongly-worded criticism”, and causing “controlled chaos” to secure and promote the US national interests.
Steven Mann is a key figure behind the development of the “controlled chaos” theory as a means of furthering US national interests. Mann was born in 1951 and graduated from Oberlin College in 1973 with a B.A. in German. In 1974 he obtained an M.A. in German Literature from the Cornell University and has been a member of the Foreign Service since 1976. He received a Harriman Institute for Advanced Soviet Studies scholarship to obtain an M.A. in Political Science from the Columbia University in 1985-1986. He graduated from the National Defense University in Washington, D.C.
He began his career as a US embassy staffer in Jamaica. Later he worked in Moscow, at the USSR desk in the State Department, and at the State Department Operations Center (a 24-hour crisis center). He served as the acting chief of mission in Micronesia (1986-1988, Mongolia (1988), and Armenia (1992). Between 1991 and 1992 he worked at the US Department of Defense dealing with Russia and Eastern Europe, and in 1992-1994 he was assigned to Sri Lanka as deputy ambassador. Between 1995 and 1998, he was employed as the head of the India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka desk at the State Department. Since 2001, Mann has been a presidential special representative to the Caspian Sea countries acting as the main spokesman for US energy interests in that region and a lobbyist for the Aktau-Baku-Tbilisi-Jeikhan oil pipeline.
Upon graduating from the NDU in 1992, Mann wrote an article titled Chaos Theory and Strategic Thought // Parameters (US Army War College Quarterly, Vol. XXII, Autumn 1992, pp. 54-68). In this article, he lays out the following theses: “We can learn a lot if we view chaos and reorganization as opportunities, and not pursue stability as an illusory goal…” “The international environment is an excellent example of a chaotic system, with “self-organizing criticality” being a useful analytical tool. The world is doomed to be chaotic, because the many human actors in politics have different objectives and values.” “Each actor in politically critical systems creates conflict energy, …which provokes a change in status quo thus participating in creating a critical situation…and any course of action brings the state of affairs into an unavoidable cataclysmic reorganization.”
The main thought which flows from Manns thoughts is to bring the system into a state of “political criticality.” Then the system, given certain conditions, will unavoidably enter chaos and “transformation.” Mann also writes that “Give the US advantage in communications and growing global mobility capabilities, the virus (in the sense of an ideological infection) will be self-replicating and will expand chaotically. Therefore our national security will be preserved.” And further: “This is the only way to establish a long-term world order. If we cannot accomplish such an ideological change in the whole world, we will have only sporadic periods of calm between catastrophic transformations.” Manns words about “world order” are there for the sake of political correctness. Because his article speaks only of chaos which, judging by Manns words, will be the “best guarantee of US national security,” with only the US able to preserve itself as an “island of order” in an ocean of “controlled criticality” or global chaos.
According to the “theory”, dismantling of the already existing nation-states, traditional cultures, and civilizations can be accomplished by:
De-ideologizing the population
Dumping the “ballast” of the already existing values, and replacing them with ones own set
Increasing material expectations, especially among the elite
Loss of control over the economy and its ultimate destruction
Unlawful actions by supposedly spontaneous movements which often have ethnic or religious character
Once implemented, these key policies lead to “color revolutions.”
“Controlled chaos” theory is based on reforming the mass consciousness, worldviews, and the spiritual sphere by subjecting individuals to modern means of manipulation. It amounts to a global psychological operation that is part of globalization and which destroys the culture of solidarity and replaces it with a cult of money and of Social-Darwinist stereotypes concerning the role of an individual in society. The masses ability to offer resistance through self-organization is thus diminished.
Given the effects of such technologies, the “controlled chaos” actors are pursuing two objectives:
Reducing the size of the population by eliminating those who are not of use to the architects of the new world order. Neoliberal reforms bring about a demographic catastrophe by reducing birth rates and increasing death rates. The sexual revolution, propaganda of hedonism, individualism, and consumerism reduce birth rates. Social-Darwinism and indifference to the suffering of close ones deprive people of their will to live and increase death rates. The large number of poor and homeless people amounts to a de-facto euthanasia mechanism, as people in these categories die quickly. Though more people are pulled down to replace them.
The objective of destroying a nation states that imposing control over them is intercepted by transnational corporations, crime syndicates, supranational organizations and institutions, which answer to those who employ controlled chaos technologies. This task combines “soft power” with barbaric military aggression (Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Libya). This process facilitates the aggressors control over the global financial, military, and information resources.
We should note that the US and the EU economies grow not by increasing their output but by reapportioning wealth between the strong and weak states. This is accomplished by weakening the nation-state (usually by drawing it into a debt trap), privatization, and buying up all manner of national assets, including natural ones.
Under the pressure of the financial institutions, the nation-state becomes a tool of this type of globalization by privatizing and reducing expenditures on social needs or on maintaining science and culture. States also organize mass illegal labor migrations which render individual workers much cheaper which deprives them of rights. In combination, the two tasks deprive the target state of its ability to function as an international actor. It is a covert way of eliminating economic competitors. The main symptoms of the loss of ones sovereignty include the inability to perceive and interpret the situation, rise above it, assert ones identity, and the ability to implement bold, breakthrough ideas.
As a result:
The state is no longer self-governing, it does not have a development strategy, and it cannot ensure decent living conditions for its citizens and guarantee constitutional rights.
Corrupt officials play a key role in controlling the economy and society.
The middle class is disappearing, it is being disorganized, and alienated.
Political parties and movements are mere facades.
Societal movements have no actual effect on politics.
Citizens are passive and have major identity problems (state, ethnic, family).
Lets look at a few examples of controlled chaos implementation aimed at depriving foundations of national independence.
1. Neutralizing the drive to develop.
– Destruction of state policy apparatus by seeding it with agents of influence.
– Infection through corruption, promoting a cult of money.
– Government bureaucratization.
– Removing the scientific community from influencing the countrys policies.
– Mythmaking: “the market will fix everything.”
2. Blocking the reaction reflex
– Mass export of cult organizations.
– Use of political technologies in election campaigns.
– Transforming the media into market actors.
– Promoting a primitive mass culture.
3. Destroying communications links
– Individualization through neoliberalism, the atomization of society.
– Destroying community ties.
– Destroying transport networks.
– Promoting ethnic and religious conflicts.
– Class fragmentation into rich and poor class.
– Generational conflict.
4. Reducing the ability to influence events
– Use of manipulative techniques in election campaigns.
– Promoting neoliberal ideologies, such as individualism and atomization.
– Promoting the cult of money and a system of primitive values.
– Shutting down independent media.
– Promoting corruption and criminalization.
5. Reducing the ability to pursue development:
– Destroying domestic science and educational progress.
– Promoting deindustrialization through privatization, bankruptcy, and destruction of professional training system.
– Elimination of capital controls.
– Credit dependence on international financial systems.
– Inability to resist import dependence.
– Preventing the societys active participation in the countrys development.
In conclusion:
The US is currently the main actor using “controlled chaos” tools with the aim of seizing control over a country or region and preventing it from pursuing its own development. Controlled chaos is de-facto neo-colonialism which transforms countries into resource suppliers to the First World. It entails predatory relations in trade and property acquisition.
Using controlled chaos technologies runs against international norms of non-interference in domestic affairs. It means there is a basis for banning and international monitoring over controlled chaos technologies. Over the last several decades, several countries were in favor of ensuring international information security through legal agreements, now they could also initiate similar actions in regard to controlled chaos technologies.
The original source of this article is South Front
Dr Bashar al-Jaafari is the Syrian UN ambassador. In this interview he refutes the ABC-US-NATO line that Tony Jones runs on Syria. Among other things, he says, "Number one, we are not regime. In Syria, there is no regime. There is a government. We are the legitimate government." Bashar al-Jaafari was present when independent international witnesses delivered their (positive) reports on the conduct of the Syrian elections of June 2014 (video included).
ABC Lateline’s Tony Jones speaks with Dr Bashar Jaafari, Syrian Ambassador to the UN in Geneva, as he attends the UN-brokered Syrian peace talks as the lead negotiator for the Syrian government.
TRANSCRIPT:
TONY JONES, PRESENTER: This story is about the conflict in Syria. After five years and more than 250,000 lives lost, a new round of peace talks is under way in Geneva to try to bring an end to the conflict. As the new talks enter their third day, we’ll cross in a moment to the Swiss capital to speak to Syria’s lead negotiator. The talks were made possible by the UN-backed ceasefire which came into effect on 27th February, the first major truce in the five-year war. The peace talks aim to establish a transitional government in Syria leading up to fresh presidential elections. One key stumbling block is the future of Syria’s President Assad. The chief negotiator for the Syrian opposition says the transitional period can only begin with the fall of Assad or his death. Well the Syrian delegation is sticking by their President and refuses to discuss his future, so how will that fundamental difference be resolved?
Dr Bashar Jaafari is the Syrian Government’s representative at the United Nations. He’s also a central figure at the peace talks and he joins us live from Geneva.
Thanks for being there, Ambassador Jaafari.
BASHAR JAAFARI, SYRIAN AMBASSADOR TO THE UN: Thank you so much for having me with you.
TONY JONES: Now with Vladimir Putin withdrawing most of his forces, can President Assad hope to remain in power without Russian military support?
BASHAR JAAFARI: Of course, definitely. We have been fighting the terrorists all over Syria for five years, as you know. The participation and contribution of our allies and friends, the Russians, started just a couple of months ago, as you know. But before that, we were doing the – the Syrian Army was doing the most important part of the mission of combating terrorism on the Syrian territory. But however, just to answer your question, the Russian decision has not been a unilateral decision taken by Moscow at the detrimental of Damascus, as some media anchors try to say. This decision was taken jointly by both President Putin and President Assad and it has, of course, definitely a political motivation, a political reason. The main reason for that is to encourage the process of the national reconciliation process, to give a chance to the talks, indirect talks amongst Syrians in Geneva, but also to give a signal that the biggest part of the mission of combating terrorism has been fulfilled successfully. So what we have here is not a Russian withdrawal. You may call it a partial withdrawal, but you may call it definitely a redeployment of the Russian forces deployed in Syria.
TONY JONES: OK. Well, ambassador, you are there in Geneva to talk peace with your delegation. President Assad in a recent interview said he would one day take back all of the territory that he lost during the conflict. Does your president still believe there is a military solution in Syria?
BASHAR JAAFARI: No, President Assad didn’t say that, actually. He didn’t mean that there is only a political – a military solution to the crisis. He said that there is only a military solution to the issue of combating terrorism. But definitely, President Assad and the Syrian Government are engaged in this – in the political process and this is – this is why we are here in Geneva. So there are two tracks parallel – the military track and the political track. The military track aims at destroying the terrorist and combating the terrorism, the international terrorism, whether you call it jihadist or, you know, mercenaries or pure international terrorist networks. But definitely there is another track which is called the political track and this is why we are here in Geneva.
TONY JONES: OK, I’ll come to that in a moment, but the Russian ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, quite clearly understood what President Assad was saying as being that there will be more fighting in the future, that he would fight to take back all that land and he said quite clearly a message to your President that this was something that Russia would not accept.
BASHAR JAAFARI: No, no, no. I’m sorry to tell you that I think that you are misleading this kind of statements. The point is the following, my friend: the Syrian Government has the constitutional duty to liberate all the Syrian territory from all kind of terrorist – all forms of terrorist active on the Syrian soil. So we are not – we don’t feel ashamed of what we are doing. It is our constitutional duty.
TONY JONES: But ambassador, …
BASHAR JAAFARI: … to get rid of the international terrorism active on the Syrian soil.
TONY JONES: … can I just – can I – sorry, ambassador – ambassador, can I just interrupt you there just for a moment because on this program just last month President Assad’s advisor Dr Bouthaina Shaaban told us that liberating the people of Aleppo was the most important thing, that Aleppo would have to be liberated and brought back under Syrian regime control in order for there to be any peace. Is that still true?
BASHAR JAAFARI: Again, again, allow me to clarify this kind of statements. Number one, we are not regime. In Syria, there is no regime. There is a government. We are the legitimate government and I am representing this legitimate government at the United Nations. So nobody has the right to monopolise or to deform our representativity. We are a legitimate government and everybody should call us a government. We are not regime. Number one. Number two, we have in fact priorities. Yes, Aleppo is more important than other less than important than Aleppo. So we may start with freeing and liberating Aleppo and then Palmyra and then Raqqa. We have the duty to liberate all these important historical cities in Syria. So, whether it is Aleppo or Raqqa or Deir ez-Zor …
TONY JONES: But ambassador, the point about Aleppo – the point about Aleppo is that you regard the opposition forces in Aleppo as terrorists and therefore reserve the right to continue military engagement against them, by the sound of it. Won’t that defeat the whole idea of a peace process with those opposition forces who are occupying half of Aleppo?
BASHAR JAAFARI: My friend, in Aleppo, most of the armed groups are not opposition. They are either mercenaries hired by the Gulf state’s money. They call them jihadist – you know that very well. They call them rebels, they call them revolutionaries, they call them even Syrian moderate opposition while they are foreigners and mercenaries. So most of those armed groups deployed in Aleppo and fighting the Government are nothing but terrorists. There is a slight margin of those people, of those fighters in Aleppo that you may consider opposition and I’m not talking about these people. I’m talking about the big part of those who are fighting the Government in Aleppo and its surroundings and they are nothing but international terrorists coming into Syria through our border with Turkey. So Turkey should be held accountable for facilitating the access of these terrorists to inside Syria.
TONY JONES: OK. The peace plan that’s been signed up to by Russia, Iran, the US and many others puts it forward that there should be an establishment of a transitional government, that after 18 months of that transitional government there should be elections, including for the President. Will President Assad stand aside from the transitional government as the opposition is demanding or will he insist on being a part of it and possibly even leading it as President?
BASHAR JAAFARI: No, I think you are anticipating on the results and outcomes of the Syrian-Syrian talks. We don’t anticipate, number one. Number two, the Resolution 2254 does not say anything about President Assad to be removed or to step down. Number three, the – what you have called Syrian national transitional body, we are not dealing with this kind of terminology anymore because in the 2254 we have the terminology of governance. We are not speaking anymore about what you – about the terminology that you used a few minutes ago. So we are ready to engage into the Syrian-Syrian talks without any foreign interference, without any preconditions or prerequisites to find out or to reach a Syrian-Syrian solution to this – to the Syrian part, Syrian side of the Syrian crisis, because in Syria, you have a huge international war by proxies. The CIA has its proxies, the Pentagon has its proxies, the Israelis have their proxies, the Saudis, the Turks, the Qataris have their proxies, the French have their proxies and all kinds of these international mafia is fighting in Syria, killing the Syrian people for – in favour of foreign agendas. So it is not a Syrian-Syrian war. It is Syria fighting an international war by proxies on the Syrian soil.
TONY JONES: Alright. Well let’s talk about what some Syrians in the opposition are saying and particularly we can point to the head of the High Negotiations Committee, Mohammed Alloush. He says the transitional period can only start after the fall of Bashar al-Assad or his death – or his death. Is the future – is the future – is the future of these peace talks going to depend on whether Assad stays or goes?
BASHAR JAAFARI: Well number one, we – we haven’t yet – we don’t have yet in Geneva all the Syrian oppositions, meaning that the special envoy did not yet fulfil the provisions of Security Council Resolution 2254, which stipulates that the special envoy should gather the broadest spectrum of Syrian oppositions. This, we don’t have it yet in Geneva. This is number one. Number two, this guy you have just named – pronounce his name, is nothing but a terrorist. He’s shelling Damascus, he’s killing students at the university and he’s – he belongs to a terrorist faction called Jaysh al-Islam. And this is why we objected to his participation at the talks in the first round. Now he is, through his statement, through this kind of irresponsible statement, he is inciting to terrorism in violation of Security Council resolution relevant to the issue of combating terrorism. Here I mean 1924, 1989, 2178 and 2199. So he is violating the Security Council resolutions en bloc, en bloc, and nobody is holding him responsible for what he is saying. By calling for the assassination …
TONY JONES: Ambassador, it’s – it isn’t – it isn’t only him, of course.
BASHAR JAAFARI: Give me one minute, please. Give me one minute. Give me one minute.
TONY JONES: Yes, OK. Alright.
BASHAR JAAFARI: Let me finish. Let me finish, please. By calling for the assassination of a head of state, that means he is a terrorist and he is calling – he is presenting himself as a terrorist. You may not be part of political talks aiming at bringing a peaceful solution to the Syrian crisis and at the same time act as a thug and mobs.
TONY JONES: OK. So are you proposing – I mean, you’ve put forward a document entitled Basic Elements for a Political Solution. That is your document, your negotiating team’s document.
BASHAR JAAFARI: Indeed. Indeed.
TONY JONES: Are you proposing in that document that President Assad remain in charge of a transitional government for this transitional period that we’re talking about?
BASHAR JAAFARI: If you jump to this conclusion easily then why we are at Geneva? Why are we here? You are anticipating on everything. We are here to engage into a political process between the Syrians themselves. We don’t need to hear from anybody from outside how to proceed and how to form our national unity government, how to reconcile ourselves with the oppositions in plural. Here we are not talking about one faction. We are talking about all the oppositions in plural. So the future of Syria should be decided by the Syrians themselves. This is what the resolution says: Syrian-led political process without any foreign interference and without any preconditions. Everybody should understand the meaning of this magic sentence in the Resolution 2254.
TONY JONES: So without any preconditions, does that mean that you – your own delegation would, at some point, contemplate the possibility of President Assad stepping aside from the presidency to help create an atmosphere of peace?
BASHAR JAAFARI: Nobody has any right to anticipate on the final outcomes of the Syrian-Syrian talks. Any precondition is in itself a violation of the references of the Resolution 2254. So, nobody has the right to interfere into our domestic affairs and say who should govern Syria and who should be the president.
TONY JONES: So, does that mean you are open to the possibility of President Assad stepping aside?
BASHAR JAAFARI: I am not misinterpreting anything of what I have just said. I am saying that the future, our own future should be decided by the Syrians themselves. President Assad is not part of the resolution – the destiny President Assad is not part of the – of Resolution 2254. There is nothing in this literature and rhetorics and references adopted by the Security Council or the Vienna Declaration or the Munich Declaration that indicates anything about changing the President or changing the Government. Nobody has the right to change anything in Syria but the Syrians by themselves. We are not Somalia, we are not Libya, we are not Iraq, we are not Sudan. We are Syria.
TONY JONES: So does that include – does that include Russia, which of course is probably the most significant player outside of the Syrian delegations at these talks and it appears that there are serious reports now in fact that Russia is unhappy with the Syrian Government’s intransigence over the future of President Assad. They are prepared, so it is said, to offer him safe haven in Russia if he chooses to leave.
BASHAR JAAFARI: Sir, this is a wrong question. With all due respect, you cannot pose any kind of such, you know, question. You are yourself now misleading the public opinion by even providing such a scenario. Any – any scenario aiming at tailoring the future of Syria by foreigners is not acceptable by the Syrians. Number one. Number two, when you say that the Syrian people is – are asking this or that, did you consult the Syrian people? Did you organise a referendum? Did you seek the opinion of the Syrian people? How could you say that you are saying this on behalf of the Syrian people while you are not Syrian and you were not in Syria and you did not consult the Syrian people? Please, let us be responsible while using the terminology. The Syrian people is – is not a foreign – foreign matter. The Syrian people is a domestic matter for the Syrians themselves.Thank you so much.
TONY JONES: As we’ve seen – ambassador, as we’ve seen, the Syrian people are terribly divided. The country itself is split into a number of sections which may never be reconciled. Is one possibility that Syria must inevitably become three separate, possibly more than three separate, nations?
BASHAR JAAFARI: That will never happen, Sir. Take it from me, that will never happen. Once the Europeans and the Americans will leave their sanctions – economic sanctions imposed on the Syrian people, the Syrian people will not leave Syria. Once the so-called international community will take responsible steps to combating terrorism and make – exert pressure on the Turkish Government to stop these flows of terrorists crossing the border from Turkey inside Syria, Syria will be much better. Once the Syrian – the so-called international community will help Syria to overcome the burdens of combating terrorism, Syria will be much, much better. So there are important conditions that we need to fulfil if we really want to help the Syrians and to help Syria not being divided or separated into three or four or five, whatever, mini-states. That will never happen because we are a responsible government and we are implementing the Constitution. We have the duty to protect our country from all these hyenas and thugs and mobs. Thank you.
TONY JONES: Ambassador, you wouldn’t have a civil war in Syria if there wasn’t a significant proportion of your population that believed that President Assad is a dictator who has been repressing them for many years. So I’m asking you simply because I know that you know him: does President Assad personally believe that he can re-establish himself in power after five years of bitter conflict?
BASHAR JAAFARI: My friend, there is no civil war in Syria. I would strongly advise you and refer you to the WikiLeaks documents. The WikiLeaks documents prove that Washington instructed its ambassador in Damascus since 2004 to topple the Syrian Government by force. So please go back to the American documents called WikiLeaks and you will see that what we are suffering from nowadays was concocted since 2004, after the occupation of Iraq. Thank you so much.
TONY JONES: And very briefly – I know you’ve got to go, ambassador. Very briefly, this question about President Assad, does he personally believe that he can maintain himself in power after all this conflict?
BASHAR JAAFARI: The Syrian people will maintain him in power if the Syrian people wish to do so. It is not the business of foreigners to decide for the future of our president. It is a matter that is relevant to the – the will of the Syrian people. Of course it is a Syrian matter that will be decided by the Syrian people. So just give us a chance. Lift the sanctions, stop the terrorists from crossing the border from Turkey and Jordan and Israel, stop this support to the so-called moderate Syrian opposition while they are all foreigners and mercenaries, stop arming these terrorists and you will see that Syria will be much better and we will get back to you in a much better and fresh shape. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.
TONY JONES: Ambassador Jaafari, we know that you need to race off to these talks and to other events.
BASHAR JAAFARI: I need – I need to leave, indeed. I need to leave.
TONY JONES: We thank you very much for taking the time to give us your perspective. Thank you.
It has been an enigma for me and others that Noam Chomsky seems to be blind to the covert war against Syria. One would normally assume that any Chomsky follower could see the US (and allies) hand behind the 'Arab Spring'. Chomsky had described the basic blue print. After investigating, for me, the only possible explanation for Chomsky not joining the dots in regard to Syria relates to his close friendship with Robert Fisk: Is Chomsky deferring to Fisk on matters related to Syria?
My political activism began in the late 1960s when my brother became a draft resister and a founding member of SDS in Melbourne. I also joined SDS. One critical aspect of the anti-war efforts carried out by SDS was the printing and distribution of well-researched articles For example, my brother once wrote a paper on the secret US bombing of Laos, and I remember its long reference list. Noam Chomsky was always referenced.
In November 2011, Noam Chomsky visited Melbourne and he gave a talk at Deakin University (see link here). He spoke about the US game plan for the Middle East and Africa. I had no problem accepting the points Chomsky made in that talk. However, I was very disappointed he didn't acknowledge that the US had been involved in covert action in Syria since 1949, the year the CIA orchestrated its first successful military coup. That covert action continued into the 1950s.
In his talk at Deakin University, Chomsky refers to the problem in the eyes of the US of 'successful independent nationalism' and how it can inspire other countries to pursue the 'same course', so you have 'a virus spreading contagion'. (24 mins onwards) Chomsky went on to explain how the 'virus' was destroyed by the US in Indo-China and South East Asia. He gives Indonesia as the most important case.
With Chomsky's insight into the US actions in Asia and Latin America and with his predictions for future US actions in Africa and the Middle East, I didn't understand why Chomsky couldn't recognise America's hands behind the 'Arab Spring', particularly in Syria. (I was a teacher in Damascus for two years. I arrived in 2003 when Syria was seen by George Bush and the neo-cons as belonging to the 'Axis of Evil', so Syrians were expecting the US to attempt to destroy Syria as it was destroying Iraq, but we weren't sure how it would do it.)
What was a shock to me was that Chomsky supported the so-called 'revolution' in Syria
despite Syria being a successful independent country that the CIA had targeted as early as 1949 (see here for a scholarly reflection on the lessons that should be have been learnt from US covert action in Syria in 1957);
despite the 'revolution' in Syria being supported by hawks in the US, notably John McCain and Hillary Clinton,
despite the 'revolution' being supported by US allies in the ME, particularly Qatar and Saudi Arabia
despite the extremist clerics in Qatar and Saudi Arabia (Sheik Adnan Arour and Sheik Yousef Qaradawi), who issued fatwas directed at the 'regime' and stirred up sectarian hatred, (in his talk at Deakin Uni, Chomsky speaks about how the US and Britain have used radical Islam to undermine 'secular nationalism', the undermining of Nasser, being a key example of this. -54mins. He notes the importance of Israel's role in 1967 and how this shaped US-Israeli relations.)
despite Al-Jazeera's reportage of events in Syria being unreliable; it was owned by the Qatari royal family and reflected the foreign policy of that country (Al-Jazeera reporters started resigning in protest against its biased reporting on the 'Arab Spring' in 2011; Ghassan Bin Jeddo was one of the most prominent, another was Ali Hashem who resigned in 2012. Hashem was outspoken about his reasons for resigning. See here.)
despite the dirty role played by the then US ambassador to Syria Robert Ford (in 2011, a US journalist wrote that he had been involved in recruiting Arab/Muslim death squads, presumably to spread terror much as the US had done in Nicaragua with the Contras. The link between Robert Ford and a key US official involved in clandestine activities in Latin America has been noted. ).
I had to look for an explanation for Chomsky seeming to be blind to the covert war against Syria. I assumed any Chomsky follower could see the US (and allies) hand behind the 'Arab Spring'. Chomsky had described the basic blue print.
For me, the only possible explanation for Chomsky not joining the dots in regard to Syria related to his close friendship with Robert Fisk: Chomsky was deferring to Fisk on matters related to Syria.
Since the beginning of the crisis in Syria, I have asked myself, 'who is Robert Fisk?' I ended up writing a pretty scathing article in response to that question. I still don't know who Fisk is, and so I read anything he writes on Syria with a very critical eye. His close friendship with the Lebanese Druze leader and former warlord Walid Jumblatt may help explain why he can be fickle and cryptic on Syria. Jumblatt's stand on the 'revolution' in Syria conflicts radically with that of the Druze in Syria. (Wikileaks cables reveal Jumblatt's alliance with Saudi Arabia .)
My reference points for understanding events in Syria include Chomsky's basic outlining of the US history of crushing independent nationalism and its game plan for Africa and the ME. My reading of the history of western interference in Syria in the 20th century is also a reference point. I wrote an article about that titled, Anzacs and War - Considering a Syrian Perspective. However, in the end, the people of Syria must be the key reference points for an understanding of their country. I am forever presenting their images on the blogs I manage. See this latest page of photos.
As an anti-war activist these past 5 years, I have noted that there is a very small core (about 3) of Syrian Australians in Melbourne who lobby for the 'revolution' in Syria. They can be recognised for their support for the Muslim Brotherhood because they invariably mention the crack down on the Muslim Brotherhood in Hama in 1982. However, they fail to give any information about the terror that led up to that crack down or information about the backers of that Muslim Brotherhood 'rebellion'. Important US allies in the ME supported the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, for example, Saddam Hussein and the King of Jordan, who later apologised for the role he played. Ref: Patrick Seale, 'Assad;The Struggle for the Middle East', (page 336)
Patrick Seale quotes Hafiz Assad as saying the following about Saddam Hussein:
The hangman of Iraq was not content to kill tens of thousands of his own people. He came to Syria to carry out his favourite hobbies of killing, assassination and sabotage. That man has been sending arms for the criminals in Syria since he took power.
I think people will find that those members of the Muslim Brotherhood who fled Syria in the 1980s and their children are the key Syrian lobbyists for the 'revolution' today. A 1982 CIA report, Syria: Muslim Brotherhood Pressure Intensifies, highlights the critical role played by propaganda, and goes on to conclude:
The Syrian dissidents modus operandi will continue to be terrorism, particularly bombings and assassination. .. The covert war is unlikely to stop.. though there may be periodic lulls in the struggle.
Although one must read a CIA report with a critical eye, it is interesting to note that according to the report the total casualties for the "Hama incident numbered about 2,000" (page 7 of the report). This figure contradicts dramatically with that usually given by supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood.
There is so much to consider when trying to understand Syria. I hope that people will have a chance to hear the views of sober Syrians who maintain support for their secular army and state against the efforts of Syria's enemies to destroy their country. In 2013, I recorded an interview with Syrian dissidents in Damascus, who present common sense reasons for supporting the national army, while at the same time being very critical of the security apparatus.
See also Charmaine Narwani, a modern day 'Noam Chomsky' on the Middle East, which refers to the narratives that have been used to sustain the US-led destruction of Syria.
Newly-discovered images of alleged BBC "napalm victim": In June 2014 a Netherlands resident contacted me, expressing anxiety about being recognised in a frame from 'Saving Syria's Children' which I had posted on Facebook. Although the woman was not among the group of alleged napalm/thermite victims in the frame in question, I subsequently recognised her in a You Tube video shot at Atareb Hospital, Aleppo on 26 August 2013, apparently in the guise of a victim of the same alleged events portrayed in Ian Pannell and Darren Conway's BBC reports. This is the latest report in Robert Stuart's extraordinary investigation into BBC war propaganda.
Doctors without Borders is well regarded and influential. It is appreciated that many good people work for and support MSF/Doctors Without Borders. The need has arisen, however, to inquire about Doctors without Borders' independence and the consequences of its work in Syria. An objective look is likely to reveal that while Doctors without Borders is helping in some areas, it is causing harm in others.
“When discussing population, let your starting point be about finding the issues that you have in common. It could be about congestion, climate change, loss of heritage, the list goes on. It is not about us pushing our view of the world onto people. Instead it is about helping them to see population in a new light by showing how it connects to the issues that are important to them.” This article is based on Mark Allen's speech to the Victorian Branch of Sustainable Population Australia (SPA) Seminar: Attitudes and communication in population and the environment on 23 April 2016. Videos of the event will be available soon. 
Australian Politics Professor Tim Anderson recently wrote a book entitled, The Dirty war on Syria. In the embedded video, he describes the alarming ignorance of Australians generally about why the West is so down on Syria. This is a fascinating, humane and intelligent interview with Syrian TV. Among the many subjects covered are how the Australian media treats Anderson, how he became interested in the war in Syria, interpreting the propaganda war against Syria, and the future of Syria.
An article in the Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture entitled "Monstrous Arrogance: Husbands who Choose Murder Over Divorce," by Cynthia Lewis, PhD, examines a dozen convictions in murders where husbands have murdered their wives to save themselves from some consequences of divorce that they perceive as “too costly.” How murder could become a viable alternative to divorce is either an indicator of the collapse of moral compass in our society, or an indication of the need for divorce reform, or perhaps both. The article points out that, instead of the emotional crimes that you expect to see in spousal murders, it was a “practical matter;” so much so that most of the women never had a sense of how much danger they were in. Article also mentions Australian divorce-related murder.
Tuesday's Syrian election was a vote of confidence by the Syrian people in their government. 5,085,444 voters cast their ballots out of a possible 8,834,994 eligible voters. The overall participation rate of 58% (virtually identical to Canada's last federal election) exceeded the government's expectations in most places but was low in others. For example, it was over 80% in Homs but only 52% in Tartous. What might explain the uneven results is the history of the war. People who suffered the most from the war, for example in Homs, were probably more grateful for their liberation and more motivated to exercise their political rights than people in Tartous who saw no fighting at all (though they lost thousands upon thousands of sons and grandsons in the war).
A Patriot's Act is a legal novel by lawyer Kenneth Eades, exploring the impact of Bush's terror laws, based on case histories. In a legal investigation and then a trial, we see how US administrations redefined torture in the light of 'terrorism' and we learn what that could mean to an individual. This clear but sophisticated story dramatises what has been sacrificed for 'safety' and how much less safe it really makes us. This article by the author of the book, gives a history of how we got from there to here. Although the author writes about the United States, Australia has aped that country with its own terror laws. 
First published on 
Video and text of Sheila Newman's speech at the Animal Justice Party's event, "Policy basis for Kangaroo treatment in the ACT," 5 April 2016: Harvesting, damage mitigation and culling probably actually accelerate population growth in roos because the smaller ones survive and adapt by sexually maturing earlier - which speeds up fertility turnover. Since 2003 DNA studies have shown that ACT and southern NSW roos, both male and female, migrate at significant rates and for longer distances than the ACT model assumes. Migration has probably been mistaken for fertility, rendering ACT roo counts unreliable and invalid. The ACT needs to stop culling and widen its research base to consider various genetically based algorithms that naturally restrain fertility opportunities in kangaroos.
Director of Alphadog AnimalArmy, Marcus Fillinger speaks about his research looking at multiphase kangaroo fertility control, undertaken in collaboration with the University of Technology Sydney. Marcus discusses remote delivery (darting) of contraceptives to kangaroos and the kinds of problems which have arisen where people with little training in marksmanship have targeted kangaroos. he also shows photos of clinical consequences of shooting that has failed to make a clear headshot. Marcus shows a number of rescues via tranquillizer dart and challenges as a myth the idea that you cannot relocate kangaroos because they die of stress etc. This talk was given at an event held by the Animal Justice Party on 5 April 2016 in Canberra. The purpose of the event was to look at government policy towards kangaroos.
This paper is about the ACT government’s behaviour in relation to killing kangaroos, not just its treatment of the kangaroos themselves, but the way it has recently been trampling the rights of its own citizens in its zeal to kill kangaroos. This talk was one of three given on 5 April 2016 in Canberra in an event held by the Animal Justice Party, called, "Policy basis for kangaroo treatment in the A.C.T."
Saturday April 23 rd at 1.00pm to 4.00 pm. Venue: Hawthorn Arts Centre, 360 Burwood Rd. Hawthorn Vic 3122. Members and non-members are welcome to attend. Speakers are: Mark Allen, Founder, Population, Permaculture and Planning; Dr Katharine Betts, Population Sociologist, Swinburne University; Hon Kelvin Thomson MP, Environmentalist and high profile sustainable population advocate; Rod Quantock, Environmental activist, Much loved comedian. M.C. SPAVicTas President Michael Bayliss. Audience Q&A and discussion will follow (Free parking behind venue or at nearby Glenferrie Station). 
Recent mainstream media articles raise serious questions as to the policy base behind the ACT government policy to kill Kangaroos. Join us and hear about the research base purportedly in support of killing Kangaroos in the ACT. 6.00-7.30pm, Tuesday April 5th 2016, Urambi Village Community Hall, Gateway B, Crozier Circuit Kambah. Speakers: Sheila Newman, Marcus Fillinger, Frankie Seymour.
If you have lost faith in western explanations of what is going on in Syria, maybe you have begun to question what you believed about the break-up of Yugoslavia which began in the 1990s and was accomplished with NATO's involvement in 1999. NATO waged war against the Serbian and other governments opposed to Yugoslavia's division into several states - its 'balkanisation'. The way these conflicts were reported in the west was terribly confusing. In the first part of this article, Ken stone suggests why outside forces were so keen to disorganise post-Tito Yugoslavia. In the second part, 'Victors' justice', he criticises the way the the victors rewrote history as they dominated the international justice system and notes how they got away with dismembering Yugoslavia.
Dr Bashar al-Jaafari is the Syrian UN ambassador. In this interview he refutes the ABC-US-NATO line that Tony Jones runs on Syria. Among other things, he says, "Number one, we are not regime. In Syria, there is no regime. There is a government. We are the legitimate government." Bashar al-Jaafari was present when independent international witnesses delivered their (positive) 
It has been an enigma for me and others that Noam Chomsky seems to be blind to the covert war against Syria. One would normally assume that any Chomsky follower could see the US (and allies) hand behind the 'Arab Spring'. Chomsky had described the basic blue print. After investigating, for me, the only possible explanation for Chomsky not joining the dots in regard to Syria relates to his close friendship with Robert Fisk: Is Chomsky deferring to Fisk on matters related to Syria?
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