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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

About the author


Eva Bartlett

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian activist/freelance journalistst.

More articles by
Eva Bartlett

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

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

Alexander Mercouris4 hours agoSeptember 26, 2016 #disqus_thread">4 218

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Policy Platform - Sustainable Australia

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who's Who among the self-appointed world statesmen

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

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

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

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

NOTES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read the full report here.

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

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

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

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

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

Syrian soldiers report seeing reconnaissance drones the previous day.

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

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

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

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

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

There is another and more constructive alternative, as follows.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

These are not indigenous Syrian personnel.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rally at 1:30pm

This Saturday 24 September 2016

Martin Place (railway station,
outside MLC Centre)

Sydney City

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SPEAKERS: TBA

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

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

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

Dear Ms Bishop

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With great pain

Marlene Obeid

Glebe NSW 2037, Australia.

The following is a statement by Hands Off Syria Sydney

Sunday 18 September 2016

Shame on Australian involvement in the massacre of Syrian soldiers.

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

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

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

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

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

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop must explain two things:

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

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

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

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

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

Statement from the Australia's Defence Dept.

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

Contact: Dr Tim Anderson.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Environmentalists are right that things are getting worse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NOTES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#0000ff" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Link to full report

VAGO 2016–17 reports:
#0000ff" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">#0000ff" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">#0000ff" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">http://www.audit.vic.gov.au/reports_and_publications/reports_by_year.aspx

Audits in progress:
#0000ff" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">#0000ff" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">#0000ff" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">http://www.audit.vic.gov.au/audits_in_progress.aspx

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

Moveon.org leads anti-Trump beat-up

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

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

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

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

Soros is behind Moveon.org

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

Soros Media Influence, the Australian Press and the ABC

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

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

Murdoch media and Soros

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

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

Here is a rundown on the subject from Forbes: #739de665183e">"Billionaires Battle Over Media Influence: Koch Bros./Murdoch Vs. Soros/Buffett/GE" by Larry Bell.

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

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

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

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

"

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

NOTES

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

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

Activity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ashley Smith’s Inaccurate Overall Analysis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dangerous Times Ahead

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Singer and keyboard player, Michael Bayliss writes about this song from the digital album he performs with Scott Andrews, Shock Octopus: The purpose of writing "In A Box" was to juxtapose the 'reality' in the verses of urban life becoming ever denser, smaller, claustrophobic, compartmentalised, and restrictive, to a chorus that is is the polar opposite. That is, expansive, never-ending, full of possibility, free, and I guess beautiful. I wanted to juxtapose the difference literally in the music, from a hard sharp verse to a lilting chorus. Shock Octopus will be doing a live to air gig at 3CR 855 am at 2pm on the Burning Vinyl program.

In A Box

Play this song.

I live in a small white box
It is in a larger box
I live here with other people
They all live in boxes too
Our little box has no garden
Just a thyme plant in a pot
It looks boxed in
Just like me
So hard these days to buy some space
We work all week for our envclave
With a box above my head
With a box below my bed
And it goes right down the street
Box on box, box after box
I find it hard, so hard to breathe
With the whole world closing in

This house I live in
It has so many rooms
It would take many years
To wander through every hall
And nobody else
Lives with me in this house
It’s just me on my own
To get lost in my thoughts

I feel boxed in

I leave my box to go to work
I drive to work in a box
And share the road with other boxes
The radio blares from a box
My work is up a tall white box
I travel up a small grey box
I feel boxed in!
My office space, compartment box
I stare all day at a box
Excel’s full of little boxes
Lunch break go back down the box
And lunch today is a Bento Box
Tea tonight in front of box
My mind’s not here my mind has flown
To dream of bigger better things

This house I live in
It opens to a yard
It’s so large and so lush
And it goes on beyond horizon
And nobody else
Can find me way out here
It’s just me in the garden
To get lost in my thoughts

And I could walk all corners of my mind
And reach the edge, and I know, that here too I’m confined

I lost my job, I lost my box
I now work in a smaller box
I lost my home, I lost my box
I Live in a smaller box
Closing in, closing in
My whole damn world in closing in
Closing in, closing in
My whole damn world is closing in

I Feel boxed in

Background to this song.

Michael Bayliss is an environment and population activist who lives in Melbourne.

The purpose of writing In A Box was to juxtapose the 'reality' in the verses of urban life becoming ever denser, smaller, claustrophobic, compartmentalised, and restrictive, to a chorus that is is the polar opposite. That is, expansive, never-ending, full of possibility, free, and I guess beautiful. I wanted to juxtapose the difference literally in the music, from a hard sharp verse to a lilting chorus.

There are a number of influences in the song. Foremost is Talking Heads, who made an early career of putting urban anxiety to funky rhythms, 'Cities' is definitely one song people should check out. I was also moved by attending a Reconciliation Rally a while ago where an aboriginal activist equated western lifestyles to a series of boxes. Finally, I was really moved as a child by the book 'The Secret Garden' where there is an empty mansion with vacant hallways and rooms just waiting to be rediscovered, and an untamed garden that went on forever. That always touched me in a really profound way.

I think music has traditionally been a very powerful tool for expressing emotional reaction against oppression, it was a tool that always moved a generation in the 60s, 70s, and perhaps a lesser extent the 90s, and is something I would really like to see more of. That the urban space of our cities influences so much of our lives, moods, happiness, sense of space etc, I'm surprised that there aren't more of these kind of songs.

You are deep in an enjoyable conversation when suddenly a loud blustering person arrives, diverting all the attention of your group to her. She shows no curiosity as to what you were discussing before she arrived, relating a story about herself as though assuming everyone had been waiting for her arrival to come alive ..

Has this ever happened to you? It’s a summer Saturday afternoon and you are sitting restfully in the backyard with friends, enjoying a conversation roaming from cinema, music, the local park, and local to international politics. One of your friends is in the midst of relating something exciting, when in bursts another person to the group. He is already talking loudly as he approaches. He turns everyone’s attention to himself, drowning out the previous conversation and taking over with a description of his perilous trip across town which hindered his progress,making him late. He offers a bottle of wine, apologizing fulsomely and flamboyantly for not bringing what he intended because he was held up with work prior to his traffic woes. He then notes aloud that things look as though they need some livening up and requests some loud music. The mood is broken.

Alternatively, it is a winter evening and everyone is seated around a table deep in conversation about the pressures of work and house payments and explorations as to why we never got our universal 3 day week. Suddenly a woman blusters in the front door, her penetrating voice, complaining of the cold echoes up the hallway to the dining area. The conversation at the table has reached a certain level of interest and consensus but with a jolt it is brought back to the mundane as this woman inserts herself, with the aid of the weather and her inability to predict it in order to dress adequately for the temperature. Suddenly all the attention is on this latecomer. She takes over. The conversation now revolves around the way this woman looks, her clothes , her hair, her life. It turns out that she is a last minute invitee and an extra chair and setting is brought in to accommodate her. Everybody moves up closer to their neighbour and the main course is served. The conversation never returns to where it was.

It occurred to me today that this is how I feel on a national scale about the way migration is treated by the media and by migrant advocacy groups in Australia . The reason I feel like this is that I cannot listen to any media without hearing about migrants to Australia. There seems to be nothing else to talk about except perhaps gay marriage. The airwaves are stuffed full of the migrant experience of Australia, be it a refugee experience a skilled migrant experience, be it a recent experience or one dating back to the 1950s. Nothing else seems to matter now in this country apart from migration. There is no other ongoing conversation .

I really don’t mind if people want to come and live here, but I am irritated with hearing about what they think of me and my compatriots day in and day out and how their expectations, somehow have not been met. Every interview with visiting luminaries on the ABC seems to light on the well -worn subject of immigration. It’s as though we had nothing to talk about before they started coming. Anyone who has just tuned to local media would think that this IS the only topic- that this is IT!

I’m also tired of hearing that we were not “vibrant” before the tide of migrants (I actually can’t remember a time when there were not migrants but their numbers have grown enormously in the last 10 years). The imposition of "vibrancy" is like the man who asks for loud music when people are enjoying a quiet conversation.

Come in if you wish but please just take a vacant seat and listen for a while to the conversation you have just joined.

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

Article first published on Macrobusiness at http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2016/08/the-great-immigration-subterfuge/

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

With much of this immigration flowing into the two major cities – Sydney and Melbourne – whose populations have ballooned:

It is this massive increase in population that is the key reason why many of us living in the major cities are stuck in traffic, cannot get a seat on the train, are experiencing crowded hospitals and schools, and cannot afford a home.

The population influx has simply overwhelmed our cities’ infrastructure and services. And the plan from all sides of politics – the Coalition, Labor and the Greens – is to continue the policy of high immigration without commensurate investment to cope with the influx.

For a major commodity exporter like Australia, which pays its way in the world by selling-off its fixed endowment of resources, ongoing high immigration is self-defeating from an economic standpoint. That is, continually adding more people to the population year after year means less resources per capita. It also means that Australia must sell-off its fixed assets quicker just to maintain a constant standard of living (other things equal).

The net result of this “Big Australia” policy is that living standards are being eroded as the capacity of the economy and infrastructure to absorb all of the extra people is overwhelmed, and the country’s natural resources base is diluted among more people.

Despite these inconvenient truths, there are still many commentators that champion Australia’s word-beating immigration program.

We got a taste of this view this week by The ABC’s Tom Switzer, who penned a piece in Fairfax claiming that John Howard deserves praise for cracking down on refugees as it allowed him to significantly ramp-up economic migration into Australia:

The facts reveal the Pacific Solution has done more for immigrants and refugees than open door advocates ever imagined…

Simply put, tough border protection not only discourages people from making perilous journeys on the high seas. It also, crucially, boosts public confidence in a large-scale, non-discriminatory migration program…

Implicit in Howard’s advocacy of border controls was a truly sound belief that mass migration is conditional on government control over “who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come”, as he put it in 2001…

Just look at the record. With Howard’s policy of offshore processing, unauthorised boat arrivals largely stopped. At the same time, the rate of legal, non-discriminatory immigration doubled…

Let’s get a few things straight.

First, it was the sleight of hand by John Howard that originally mislead the Australian people on immigration. Howard effectively performed a ‘bait-and-switch’ on the Australian people whereby he slammed the door shut on the relatively small number of refugees arriving into Australia by boat all the while stealthily shoving open the door to economic migrants arriving here by plane.

Howard never explicitly mentioned that he was in favour of high immigration because he knew the electorate would be against it. Instead, he scapegoated refugees to give the impression that he was stemming the migrant inflow while proceeding in secret with his ‘Big Australia’ plan.

Unfortunately, rather than being honest with the electorate, the Rudd/Gillard Governments and the Abbott/Turnbull Governments continued the subterfuge. There has never been any community consultation, any national discussion, nor any mandate to proceed with turbo-charged levels of immigration.

This comes despite an Essential Research opinion poll released in May revealing that the overwhelming majority of Australians (59%) believed “the level of immigration into Australia over the last ten years has been too high”,  more than double the 28% of Australians that disagreed with that statement.

Second, the claim that the Australian Government has control over “who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come” is questionable.

Skills shortages “remain low by historical standards”, according to the Department of Employment, whereas there is a huge surplus of underutilised labour, thus undermining the rationale behind the large-scale importation of foreign workers.

The system surrounding so-called skilled and student visas has been corrupted, with widespread rorting and fraud revealed by the recent joint ABC-Fairfax investigation (see Australia’s hidden people smuggling scandal), leading to claims the system has been overtaken by “crooks and criminals”.

When combined with the Turnbull Government’s policy allowing 6 year-olds and their guardians visa entry into Australia’s primary schools (and conveniently allowing them to purchase established property), along with the proposal to allow migrants to bring into Australia their elderly parents (thus further ageing the population and straining Australia’s healthcare system and infrastructure), it is clear that Australia’s purported “skills-based” immigration system is a farce.

Worse, because of this dysfunctional policy, Australia is on track to nearly double its population by 2050 to more than 40 million people, despite virtually no discussion nor mandate for this dramatic change, nor any plan on how to cope with this growth.

It would be nice if politicians examined the facts, and gauged the community’s views, before pursuing the current high population (immigration) growth strategy. This way, Australia might not have been left with an “infrastructure emergency”, housing affordability problems on a grand scale, and falling livability.

Australia desperately needs a frank and honest national conversation about population policy, which focuses on whether or not large-scale immigration is benefiting the living standards of the existing population. Not the current ‘smoke and mirrors’ approach that conflates immigration with refugees, or the divisive “Hansonites vs progressives”.

[email protected]

"Apeman" by The Kinks - from the album "To The Bone" (With Lyrics) inside. Today we had a chance meeting with another population activist and we got to talking about music and songs about overpopulation. Here is one he reminded us of. We hope to talk about this subject more and introduce more songs. Please write in with your ideas. Music and lyrics are a way of conveying political messages but the mainstream media screens out almost everything except love songs and most of them don't even mention contraception. ;-)

Apeman was first written in 1971, when you could still talk about overpopulation without Mr Soros and his mob shutting down your fair comment. Maybe some young people today will wonder at this idea that the world was suffering from overpopulation in 1971, but yes, we were all very aware of the problem. Since the war the world's population had exploded. People had been told that wealth would be redistributed and everywhere would be 'developed' and then there would be no hunger and no injustice. We still hear this today, but all the problems are much worse. In 1973 the oil producing nations of the Middle East got together and formed OPEC to protect their rights and wealth. Many became republics, after years of colonisation. But today, the west has reacted by destroying the Middle East and OPEC. Now we have ISIS and the biggest population in the world that has ever existed.

When Ray Davies of the Kinks was born in 1944 the world's population was less than 2.5 billion. He was the seventh of eight children! (Britain was the first country to have massive population growth.) When Apeman was written, in 1971 the world's population was 3.4 billion. Today it is over 7 billion. When Ray Davies was born, Britain was a very poor country, recovering from war and the decline of its slave empire. Davies grew up in a country with a huge rich/poor divide, where there were few jobs and many people lived in poor conditions.

For a brief period, coinciding with oil possessions being found in the North Sea in the 1970s and manufacturing, as well as becoming a center of music production, Britain was comparatively wealthy. Today, Britain's population is still growing fast, but the oil has gone and poverty is back. Property is being sold off to the wealthy from all over the world, but ordinary British cannot afford to rent or buy in the large towns. But the property developers and the banks who form the majority of the political class like that situation. And that's the situation in much of the developed world, supposed to be so sophisticated, as the song suggests.

"Apeman" lyrics

I think I'm sophisticated
'Cos I'm living my life like a good homosapien
But all around me everybody's multiplying
Till they're walking round like flies man
So I'm no better than the animals sitting in their cages
In the zoo man
'Cos compared to the flowers and the birds and the trees
I am an ape man
I think I'm so educated and I'm so civilized
'Cos I'm a strict vegetarian
But with the over-population and inflation and starvation
And the crazy politicians
I don't feel safe in this world no more
I don't want to die in a nuclear war
I want to sail away to a distant shore and make like an ape man
I'm an ape man, I'm an ape ape man
I'm an ape man I'm a King Kong man I'm ape ape man
I'm an ape man
'Cos compared to the sun that sits in the sky
Compared to the clouds as they roll by
Compared to the bugs and the spiders and flies
I am an ape man
In man's evolution he has created the cities and
The motor traffic rumble, but give me half a chance
And I'd be taking off my clothes and living in the jungle
'Cos the only time that I feel at ease
Is swinging up and down in a coconut tree
Oh what a life of luxury to be like an ape man
I'm an ape, I'm an ape ape man, I'm an ape man
I'm a King Kong man, I'm a voo-doo man
I'm an ape man
I look out my window, but I can't see the sky
'Cos the air pollution is fogging up my eyes
I want to get out of this city alive
And make like an ape man
Come and love me, be my ape man girl
And we will be so happy in my ape man world
I'm an ape man, I'm an ape ape man, I'm an ape man
I'm a King Kong man, I'm a voo-doo man
I'm an ape man
I'll be your Tarzan, you'll be my Jane
I'll keep you warm and you'll keep me sane
And we'll sit in the trees and eat bananas all day
Just like an ape man
I'm an ape man, I'm an ape ape man, I'm an ape man
I'm a King Kong man, I'm a voo-doo man
I'm an ape man.
I don't feel safe in this world no more
I don't want to die in a nuclear war
I want to sail away to a distant shore
And make like an ape man.

George Soros funded and orchestrated the refugee crisis in Europe, opening the gates to allow refugees and terrorists into the continent. Soros’s agenda has always been about destroying national sovereignty and national borders. See also, "Australian democracy swiss-cheesed by George Soros Open Societies Foundations."

David Galland and Stephen McBride at http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-08/how-george-soros-singlehandedly-created-european-refugee-crisis-and-why report:

The refugee crisis is not a naturally occurring phenomenon. It coincided with OSF donating money to the US-based Migration Policy Institute and the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants, both Soros-sponsored organizations. Both groups advocate the resettlement of third-world Muslims into Europe.

In 2015, a Sky News reporter found “Migrant Handbooks” on the Greek island of Lesbos. It was later revealed that the handbooks, which are written in Arabic, had been given to refugees before crossing the Mediterranean by a group called “Welcome to the EU.”

Welcome to the EU is funded by—you guessed it—the Open Society Foundations.

Soros has not only backed groups that advocate the resettlement of third-world migrants into Europe, he in fact is the architect of the “Merkel Plan.”

The Merkel Plan was created by the European Stability Initiative whose chairman Gerald Knaus is a senior fellow at none other than the Open Society Foundations.

The plan proposes that Germany should grant asylum to 500,000 Syrian refugees. It also states that Germany, along with other European nations, should agree to help Turkey, a country that’s 98% Muslim, gain visa-free travel within the EU starting in 2016.

Political Discourse

The refugee crisis has raised huge concern in European countries like Hungary.

In response to 7,000 migrants entering Hungarian territory per day in 2015, the Hungarian government reestablished border control in order to keep the hordes of refugees from entering the country.

Of course this did not go down well with Soros and his close allies, the Clintons.

Bill Clinton has since come out and accused both Poland and Hungary of thinking “democracy is too much trouble” and wanting to have a “Putin-like authoritarian dictatorship.”

Seeing through Clinton’s comments, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán responded by saying, “The remarks made about Hungary and Poland … have a political dimension. These are not accidental slips of the tongue. And these slips or remarks have been multiplying since we are living in the era of the migrant crisis. And we all know that behind the leaders of the Democratic Party, we have to see George Soros.”

He went on to say that “although the mouth belongs to Clinton, the voice belongs to Soros.”

Soros has since said of Orbán’s policy toward the migrants: “His plan treats the protection of national borders as the objective and the refugees as an obstacle. Our plan treats the protection of refugees as the objective and national borders as the obstacle.”

It’s hard to imagine that he could be any clearer in his globalist intentions.

The Profit Motive

So why is Soros going to such lengths to flood Europe with hordes of third-world Muslims?

We can’t be sure, but it has recently come to light that Soros has taken a large series of “bearish derivative positions” against US stocks. Apparently, he thinks that causing chaos in Europe will spread the contagion to the United States, thus sending US markets spiraling downward.

Posted on July 10, 2016 by Sean Adl-Tabatabai in News, World Read more at YourNewsWire.com but originally published at zerohedge.com

http://dcleaks.com/ have revealed that billionaire, George Soros, has used billions of dollars to try to bring about open borders by funding NGOs all over the world to harass people who do not want mass immigration. Tactics taught are to equate all immigrants with refugees and to accuse people who want control over immigration numbers of racism.

Hackers have revealed that Australia's GetUp, like its U.S. counterparts, MoveOn and Avaaz, have massive financial support from Soros and that their agendas conform to those of Soros. Labor Leader Bill Shorten is linked to Soros-funded activities as is Greens Sarah Hanson-Young.

Bill Shorten, Australia's opposition leader and GetUp.

"GetUp! was established by ­activists Jeremy Heimans and David Madden with funding from Soros. The Labor-affiliated Construction Forestry Mining Energy Union donated $1.1 million to the group. Bill Shorten and John Hewson are former board members. A major funder listed on its 2014-15 Australian Electoral Commission expenditure return is Avaaz, the US GetUp! ­affiliate that has received copious amounts of funding from Soros networks."[1]

Now we have some idea why Bill Shorten refuses to reduce immigration. How many politicians have been influenced this way by Soros's money - either as recipients of awards, and positions or through funding? (We also know that every recent prime minister and opposition leader has become a member of the Australian Multicultural Foundation, which seems to have similar mass immigration values and leadership program links but no apparent affiliation with Soros. The Scanlon Foundation has mass immigration and opinion shaping agendas but no apparent links.)

Soros's money has influenced 'Leadership programs' in many areas, university grants and journalism in Australia. Google "Open Society Foundations". [2] Consider the impact of this on the formation of Australian politicians, researchers, academics, journalists, presenters, teachers, 'ethnic leaders' etc. Emily's list, for women aspiring to get ahead in politics, is financed by Soros, so we know now why the women who get ahead in Australian Labor have nothing serious to say about population or the natural environment.

The Australian Greens

Greens Leader Sarah Hanson Young was named a 'World economic forum young global leader' for 2016. George Soros is the chairman of that forum. [3] The Greens have, over the past decade or so, changed from a conservation platform to an open borders one employing the tactics of unfairly stigmatising people as racist and xenophobic when they call for limits on economic immigration in order to protect our natural environment.[4] Who or what changed so many of them?

"They attack democratic states by advocating a porous border policy, ­reframing illegal immigrants as refugees and degrading critics of totalitarian tendencies such as ­Islamism in orchestrated campaigns of PC censorship. Documents uncovered by Soros leaks reveal a pattern of funding for programs that prosecute porous borders, mass immigration into the Wes­t nations from Islamist regions, and overt campaigns against dissenters. OSF has provided several million to the Centre for American Progress, whose programs ­include the explicit targeting of free­thinkers critical of Islamism. A recent program grant described a strategy to target six critics of ­Islamism and the “right-wing media” in an “audit of Islamophobic activities”." [1]

Need to list Australian organisations and people linked to Opens Societies Foundations

There is a list available of United States organisations funded by Soros, but none available of Australian ones. Nonetheless, the U.S. list is very informative of the kinds of organisations that Soros has used to undermine national sovereignty.

'Independent' on line newspaper,New Matilda, praises South Africa's Mail and Guardian, calling for more papers like these and noting approvingly that they are backed by the Open Foundations Society.

"The twist, with South Africa’s Mail and Guardian, is revealed inside its front cover: its investigative reporting is supported by the Open Society Institute. To justify that, of course, it has to be clear that journalism is worth having, and capable of fulfilling a socially useful function as a civic tool in democracy." https://newmatilda.com/2012/06/19/journalism-we-really-need/

NOTES

[1] Jennifer Oriel, "Dumped files show influence of George Soros on Western politics, The Australian, August 22, 2016, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/dumped-files-show-influence-of-george-soros-on-western-politics/news-story/937a225e62420ea3807bd8308b0dad83
[2] For example: https://blogs.adelaide.edu.au/rb-bulletin/2015/05/26/open-society-foundations-open-society-fellowship-20152016/, http://www.uq.edu.au/uqadvantage/robert-walter, http://findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/display/person460793#tab-research, International journalism grants: https://www.icij.org/about; Leadership programs: https://cpd.org.au/author/phil-lynch/ and Open Society Foundations: https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/press-releases/open-society-foundations-launch-worldwide-fund-support-nonprofits-navigating; and so on - just keep googling. So many of our academics, researchers, politicians, journalists, have received funding from The Open Society Foundations (George Soros) and to get this funding they had to conform to its values and tactics.
[3] http://greens.org.au/news/sa/sarah-hanson-young-named-world-economic-forum-young-global-leader-2016
[4] "Greens members harassed for expressing valid views on environment and population" and "Greens population activist threatened with expulsion"

Inside see Syrian Girl's excellent video report on how the media has played reporting on Syria, using children's photos. She really explains the details well and her video contains footage that I have not seen before and new information.

Suspicious circumstances have been denied by the police but this very successful lawyer, John Jones, QC, who has been involved in trying to save Gadaffi's son from execution as well as in protecting Assange, who is promising to reveal evidence that will see Mrs Clinton behind bars, somehow was struck and killed by a train - at the age of 45. There is very little information about this. "Disturbing news since the DNC made a public TV announcement that Julian Assange should be assassinated! Julian plans to leak a Hillary CLinton email in October before the US presidential election, that aims to put Hillary CLinton behind jail bars," writes MLordandGod.

"He was part of a team of lawyers acting to prevent the extradition of Julian Assange - holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy for four years - whose case is currently being heard by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.

Mr Jones was also working with his colleague Amal Clooney to try and halt the execution of Colonel Gaddafi’s son Saif and Libyan spy chief Abdullah-al Senussi.

Earlier in his career, he helped bring to justice some of those responsible for genocide in the former Yugoslavia as part of the UN’s International Criminal Tribunal, working to establish procedures that were used in the historic trials.

As well as his criminal law work, Mr Jones acted as a human rights lawyer, saving a 19-year old from the death penalty in Singapore, fighting on behalf of journalists for free speech in Africa, and making representations to the UN to prevent torture." Read more here.

Lists have recently been published in the alternative media claiming to record the names of people who found themselves on the wrong side of the Clintons, who subsequently died suspiciously. See this article: http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/

When your party is going off the rails, don't you have the right to shout out the windows for help? Geoff Dowsett is a member of the Hornsby Kur-in-gai Greens' Population and Sustainability Reference Group. He has been growing increasingly concerned about the failure of the Greens to take the issue of environmental sustainability seriously and make positive changes to their population policy. Geoff’s resulting activism on the issue of population numbers in Australia has been received by some Greens members with hostility. He is not the first and will not be the last Green to suffer for his convictions at the hands of party members. A threat of expulsion relayed by Greens candidate for Eden-Monaro, Tamara Ryan, is now in train, scheduled for the August Ordinary General Meeting to be held on Monday 12 th September 2016 at 6:30pm at Hornsby Central Library, 28-44 George St Hornsby NSW 2077. (Entrance in Hunter Lane). We publish the motion about this that was sent to Geoff and we report on Geoff’s reaction in this article.

The motion

"The Motion is:

That, Mr. Geoff Dowsett’s membership of the Hornsby Ku-ring-gai Greens should be cancelled on the grounds that the member has, as outlined clause section 6.5.3 of our constitution, "placed herself or himself outside of the Group" acted in contravention of clause 6.5.3.2 of our constitution, in that he demonstrated repeated disruptive behaviour within the Group and behaved in a manner that brought the group into disrepute.

Due to the confidential and personal nature of specific incidents underlying this motion, the details of these events will only be discussed at the meeting."

Geoff says that he rarely attends meetings, so he doesn't think that his alleged 'disruptiveness' could be about disrupting meetings. He says that he thinks that the objections are probably about his energetic, persistent lobbying, using emails and Facebook posts, addressed to Greens members and MPs. He has sometimes received responses indicating that some Greens see his population policy activities as insulting and counter to their ‘safe speech’ rules.

The motion above cites Section 6.7 of the Greens NSW constitution. Geoff believes this has to do with sharing information to people such as Jane O`Sullivan and Sheila Newman who are not Greens members. At this stage he thinks this concerns sharing Mercurius Goldstein's response to a question he circularised to candidates and encouraged others to send similar questions about candidates’ attitudes on Australian population policy.

Other Greens candidates who responded to Geoff’s question did so on Facebook so their comments were in the public domain, but Mercurius responded to the NSW Greens Population Working Group. Geoff told Mercurius that he was forwarding Mercurius' response to Sheila Newman (candobetter.net) and Mercurious wrote,

“It's nice of you to share my responses with Sheila Newman and I appreciate her interest in the NSW preselection -- is she a Greens NSW member? As an author I'm sure Sheila can speak for herself without your assistance and I'd urge her to contact me directly if she's interested in following up on any matters.”

It is hard to believe that there is a valid case against Geoff, but three members have apparently asked the secretary to arrange for Geoff's dismissal.

Geoff says that he has frequently been abused by some Greens members who don’t like his views on population numbers. (We published Tamara Ryan’s response to Geoff here:http://candobetter.net/node/4935.) A few Greens members have persistently described him as a racist, xenophobe and, more recently, as sexist, publicly breeching Greens safe speech protocols but without reprimand within the party, he says.

Greens candidates lack qualifications to make decisions on environment and population

Geoff has distributed an email to hundreds of NSW Greens MPs and members suggesting that none of the candidates for John Kay's now vacant Upper House seat are sufficiently qualified to represent the environment, quality of life, fauna and flora, or habitat of NSW. He came to this conclusion from their poor responses or failure to respond to a relevant question he sent to candidates [see below]. He said that the responses to this email 'displayed no knowledge, interest or inclination to admit that the Turnbull Government's record, high, excessive, unsustainable 457 Visa and middle class immigration intake should be returned to the long term average of about 50,000 net per annum from the current excessive 500,000 net per annum.’ With regard to the move to expel him, he has said that the Greens should read his message rather than shoot the messenger.

Text sent to candidates

This is the text he sent to the candidates:

As a candidate for John Kaye's Upper House seat how about a strong statement and policy improvement suggestion from you to address the desperate need to stabilise Australia`s population growth? The current "economic" middle class so called skilled (non refugee) immigration rate of 500,000 per year including 457 Visa (a world record high intake) is not sustainable. Sydney's population is growing by 83,000 net per a under the Liberal Govt's Immigration scam. It is causing excessive impact on inadequate infrastructure, impact on natural eco-systems through urban growth and consumer demand. Increased traffic congestion in our major cities - sky rocketing housing prices. Of course the immigration rate is just what big business wants, particularly the housing industry, while our quality of life, natural environment and urban environment goes down the gurgler. The immigration rate is also closely linked with the insane growth economy which is addicted to continuing growth in consumption. It is HYPOCRISY of the Greens to have a policy of sustainable economy without a policy for a substantial reduction in immigration. Priority should be humanitarian i.e. for political and environmental refugees NOT wealthy middle class business migrants. When will the Greens members such as yourself bite the bullet on population ? I won't vote for you unless you make a statement indicating a clear commitment to reducing Turnbull's excessive Immigration and 457 Visa intake."(Geoff Dowsett. Member. Hornsby Kuringai Greens. Population/Sustainability Working Group Member. Statement above does not represent the views of all of the working group.)

Shooting the messenger

We will be watching with interest and concern to see whether Mr Dowsett suffers injustice for his environmental activism. As noted in other articles on this site, e.g. ”Greens members harassed for expressing valid views on environment and population”, he is not the first Green to be pushed around for sounding the alarm on how rapid population growth and the intensification and expansion of human activity is threatening native animal habitat and quality of life in Australia. Geoff runs eco-bushland tours around Sydney national parks which are threatened by encroaching population density and its associated infrastructure and footprint. His blog on candobetter.net is at http://candobetter.net/blog/324.

Geoff Dowsett and the Greens, why and when he joined

Geoff says that he thinks he actually joined Hornsby Kuringai Greens about 10 years ago, but it could be more. He had been a supporter – letter-boxing – for instance and doing polling booth work for about 20 years.

He was friendly with an old Greens stalwart, Mervine Murchie, a Scotsman with trade union background--- who convinced him to join.

He finds that the Greens have changed a lot since then. They are very different. There were many more conservationists in the early days.

Geoff says that he has attended many community meetings organised by Greens and only one State Delegates Conference. He has placed Greens candidate placards in his front garden during elections and he has two Greens placards permanently in his front garden. One is high up in a tree and the other in ground. Have letter boxed----and handed out at polling booths. Meeting is 12th Sept 6.30 pm.