On SyrianaAnalysis, marking the 13th anniversary of the CIA-engineered dirty war in Syria, two Syrian journalists - Kervork Almassian and Hekmat Aboukhater discuss the appalling machinations of the anti-Syria lobby in Washington DC and the ignorance of the US public.
Australia for UNHCR is calling for urgent Australian support for people in Libya devastated by flooding in recent days. At least 5,300 people have been killed and more than 10,000 remain missing after floods burst two dams, swept away buildings and wiped out entire neighbourhoods in the city of Derna.
Recently the right-wing governor of Texas, who just happens to be named Abbott, announced that the state will install a barrier made of buoys along a section of the Rio Grande to deter migrants from entering the US. As is so often the case his measures, which also included a commitment to spend $5.1b on other border security measures, was met with howls of indignation by immigration advocates who argued that this deprives migrants of the right to seek asylum from persecution. Those supporti
Any new inquiry into Australia’s migration program needs to assess the full costs and benefits of population growth, especially the costs to our environment and the risks of collapse. I wish I had a dollar for every pro-population-increase article I have read that begins by telling the reader that Australia is a nation of immigrants, with some 25% born overseas and about 50% with at least one parent born overseas.
Oksana Boyko (pictured right) in US vs UN? Ft. Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations her Worlds Apart interview of Sunday 24 June, generally discussed how the United Nations should handle conflicts between the United States and Russia its two most powerful members . The discussion included at least two issues which are of concern to this site, candobetter.net : 1. Border control in the United States and Europe, and 2. Syria.
Antonio Guterres attempted to put all the arguments by proponents of open borders and they were all effectively rebutted by Oksana Boyko. At one point in the discussion, after she stated that the United States as well as European countries, have the right to control their borders Oksana was accused of listening to Fox News, that is the station which features Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and other outspoken advocates for the effective control of the United States border with Mexico. The video, embedded below, is easily worth the 28 minutes of your time required to watch it.
Later in the program Oksana Boyko put to Antonio Guterres that the United Nations should oppose the United Sates' schemes to partition Syria and preserve Syria's territorial integrity. [1]
[1] The partitioning of Syria is also supported by the group Australians for Kurdistan. The group absurdly maintains that, with up to 20 U.S. military bases in Syria's Kurdistan (acccording to RT on 1 Mar 2018 and other sources) the YPG (an acronym for "People's Protection Units") is building a communist or anarchist society which is also a beacon of women's liberation. The convenor of "Australians for Kurdistan" is John Tully. In Hitler of the Middle East (6/2/18) | Tasmanian Times, ostensibly an attack on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Tully smears the popularly elected President of Syria, as "the Syrian dictator". Nowhere in his writings does Tully show any concern for the fate of Syria, including the 80,000 soldiers of the Syrian Arab Army, amongst the 400,000 citizens of Syria, who have been killed in the war against Syria since March 2011 in which which Erdogan has been complicit. That would come far closer to justifying Tully's emotive likening of Erdogan to Hitler than any of his actions against Kurdish secessionists in recent years.
In case you haven’t heard, Canada has a border crisis on its hands. To all but the wilfully blind, the deceitful deniers and the dangerously delusional, it is blatantly evident that growing numbers of migrants are deliberately and flagrantly in contravention of Canadian border law and international treaties.
It is clear that where Roxham Road in Champlain, NY meets Quebec, our laws are not being enforced, our generosity is being abused and our border is wide open to anyone who wants to walk in and avail themselves of the friendly assistance of the Royal Canadian Mounted Bellhop Police. It is also obvious that the offending migrants knew the drill coming in.. They knew that if they crossed the border in defiance of explicit do-not-enter signs, they would be arrested and detained, but by mere virtue of declaring refugee status on Canadian soil, they would also be given a hearing, something that under the terms of the Safe Third Country agreement, they wouldn’t get had they chosen an official port of entry. Last year, most Roxham Road refugee claimants were Haitian residents who feared deportation after the protected status they enjoyed in the United States following the 2010 earthquake expired. But this year, most were Nigerians who had been granted a visa to enter the United States with the dishonest intention of using it to travel to an unguarded section of the Canadian border. For them, the United States was just a transit point, a stepping stone to the hospitable welfare state to the north.
Numbers and facts can tell the story concisely. Consider this:
• More asylum claims were made last year than at any time in modern Canadian history. The total number of RCMP-intercepted asylum claimants (i.e., “irregulars”) in 2017 was 20,593, and the total number through air, land, and marine ports of entry and inland offices was 22,185, so that total of irregular and “regular” entries was 42,778. https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/refugees/asylum-claims-2017.html
• The RCMP intercepted 1,890 illegal border crossers in the first three months of 2017. In the same period this year (2018), that number soared to 5,052, compared to the 4,475 people who filed claims at legal ports of entry.
• Since the beginning of 2017, more asylum-seekers have crossed the border than the 25,000 Syrian refugees who were accepted in 2016. There were 18,644 refugee claimants in the queue at the start of 2017, but as of the end of March this year, there some 48,974---more than a doubling in 15 months.
• Understandably, this has placed an unsustainable strain on the refugee system. When Canada rejects an immigrant, the decision is final. For refugee claimants in Canada, however, rejections are subject to lengthy appeals, removal orders, and in some cases, Canada-wide-arrest warrants. Since the Immigration and Refugee Board can only process 1,000 to 2,000 claims per month, they can’t keep pace with the flood. In March, the board was able to complete a record 2,587 claims, but 4,078 new refugee claims came through in the same month. The backlog is out of control.
• As the backlog grows, it is taking longer and longer to process claims. Last October the wait time was 16 months. If border crossings continue at the current rate, the wait time could be 11 years by 2021. Thus, a 19 year old illegal border crosser could be a 30 year old father with three kids in Canada by the time his case was heard. Time enough to put down roots that would be very hard to pull up. These delays will amount to de-facto amnesty, and serve as incentive for more potential claimants to make an illegal crossing. Not to worry. The Trudeau government has injected an extra $173 million on processing illegal immigration. But speeding up “processing” does not add up to border security.
• 96% of asylum-seekers have come via Quebec, which operates only four shelters for asylum-seekers, 1,850 spots in total. In Toronto in 2016, asylum-seekers accounted for 11.2% of the people using shelters. Today that number stands at 37%. The Mayor estimates that at current arrival rates the city will be housing 4,485 asylum seekers by November, occupying 53% of shelter beds when the system is already in an emergency state. Quebec and the City of Toronto are crying “uncle”. Quebec is demanding that federal government fork over $146 million, while Toronto is calling for $64.5 million.
• Each asylum seeker costs federal taxpayers between $10,000 and 20,000 per year in entitlements. In addition to the housing, social welfare, education and health care which they gain access to, under the Interim Federal Health Program asylum seekers are covered by dental and pharmaceutical care that provincial health care plans do not provide for Canadians. This in a country where “hallway medicine” and long surgery wait times are a fact of life in all jurisdictions.
• Both RCMP and Canadian Border Security Agency officials have been muzzled by the Trudeau government, and explicitly told not to speak to the media about the shocking surge in illegal migration. Oddly, Trudeau supporters who reacted with righteous rage against Conservative Prime Minister Harper’s muzzling of scientists are strangely silent about this gag order.
These facts and stats are by no means exhaustive, but I think you get the picture. We have a massive problem, and the Trudeau government shows no signs of solving it. Some cynics would argue that they have no intention of doing so. But that is not the case. Liberals are getting nervous, and even Trudeau has been moved to back pedal. There is now an understanding that the government risks alienating Liberal voters who couple their naivety about welcoming migrants with a sincere belief that there have to be rules and these rules must be preserved and respected. It’s all about optics and partisan positioning. Liberal strategists are playing catch-up, as they try to shift to the right to adjust to the changing public mood and thwart the Conservative surge registered by recent polls.
The outrageous spectacle of brazen law-breaking at the border is highly combustible fuel for a popular rebellion, which so far only manifests itself in relatively modest demonstrations at Roxham Road and the angry, bitter comments that follow pro-immigration online newspaper articles. One senses that there is a subterranean rage out there in search of a leader. Therein lies the danger for nationalists. So desperate is our need for a parliamentary voice that we are prone to vest unwarranted hope in the proven liars and opportunists of establishment parties, determined to ignore their past betrayals and globalist inclinations.
We don't seem to understand that astute conservative politicians like Australia's Malcolm Turnbull or John Howard before him, or our very own (Immigration critic) Michelle Rempel--- take a hard line position against lax border control precisely because they are rabidly pro-immigration. They rightly fear that the violation of borders undermines public support for their sky high immigration agenda. They realize that angry people often conflate refugees with immigrants. They notice that for some reason, voters are more exercised by a few hundred migrants who arrive by boat than the tens of thousands who arrive from camps. They observe that voters develop an intense hostility to "queue jumpers" (and “border jumpers”) and that this hostility often boils over to include animus toward migrant applicants who jump through all the proper hoops. That is exactly what they want to prevent. They want to appear "tough" on asylum seekers and illegal border crosses to appease public anger and lead it. By manipulating and exploiting popular anti-refugee sentiments, they can not only win elections, but out-flank opponents in their own parties. As noted in the Sydney Morning Herald (April 24/2018)
"Turnbull understands the necessity of tough border protection…. a firm and controlled process of entry selection acts as a declaration that the nation state is in charge of its destiny. Tough border protection boosts public confidence in a non-discriminatory migration program, which includes an orderly, humanitarian refugee intake. It benefits immigrants and asylum seekers who go to a nation fairly and legally. It helps avoid the kind of chaos that lax border controls deliver. And it helps dampen down anti-immigrant prejudice."
Smart Conservatives like Howard, Turnbull and Rempel make a clever calculation. If they fan the flames of public outrage against asylum-seekers---whose numbers are but a fraction of our total migrant intake---they can turn the illegal border crossings into a lightening rod, and thereby decoy the angry mob away from what is most important: continual hyper immigration. Refugee-bashing is a small price to pay to ensure that the real invasion continues on an epic scale. Burka bans and references to “barbaric practices” and unwillingness to “integrate” serve the same purpose: Make mass immigration palatable by pretending that everything will be hunky-dory if only migrants check their tribal values at the door and embrace ours. Population overshoot is fine if everyone is “assimilated” and English signage can co-exist with Chinese.
As is the case with Australia, the number of refugee claimants who enter Canada is peanuts compared to our annual immigration intake. So far, in 2018, the number of asylum-seekers who walk across our southern borders each day is but 10% of the number who stream through our airports. If, as informed sources fear, 400 illegals will be coming across the border every day during the summer, this would still constitute less than half the number of migrants than come through legally at official ports of entry. If reporter Faith Goldy’s worst case scenario of 219,000 illegal border crossers came to pass, it would still constitute only half of the roughly 400,000 immigrants and ‘temporary’ visa holders who arrive here legally. Perspective people. Put things into perspective.
We are running out of time. Our window of opportunity is closing. Changing demographics promise to erode our cultural and natural heritage beyond recovery if we don’t soon mount strong political opposition. Unabated mass immigration will bury us.
If we are to see an abrupt uprising against the government's bipartisan immigration agenda, we should hope that Canadians see the images of not 400 but 4000 Nigerians and Somalis streaming through Roxham Road each day. We should hope that TV viewers will be seized by panic, not by relative complacency--- as is the case now---- notwithstanding the still token number of brave, patriotic demonstrators that make their way to the border.
The very worst thing that could happen, at this point, would be for the Liberal government to yield to Rempel's crusade and do as she demands. Declare the entire border as an official port of entry. We shouldn't want the Liberal government to get a handle on things. We should pray that they completely loose the handle, as they show signs of doing.
According to Rempel, our refugee/immigration system is "broken", and that she wants to "fix it." We don't want to "fix" it, we want to demolish it. Notice as well that Rempel is positioning herself as a "Compassionate Conservative", so as to undercut the Trudeau Liberals self-depiction as 'caring', 'welcoming' governors. As she has clearly stated, it is not about volume but "processing". She does not want to cut back in-migration. On the contrary. She just wants to properly “manage” it. Managed national suicide. That pretty well sums up the Conservative project. A project fully embraced by Rempel, as evidenced by this bold confession:
“Most Canadians are like me. We want immigration. I want high levels of immigration. Our previous Conservative government had high levels of immigration. What we are seeing today is just a complete breakdown of immigration such that legal immigration is…. 7 ½ years to come to Canada as a privately sponsored refugee from Djiboute. That’s unconscionable. I want to go back to having a debate about how we process people. How we support them when they come to Canada. Plans for that. We shouldn’t be talking about whether we have a border along the Quebec-US side.” Michelle Rempel CTV News clip May 24/2018
In our desperation to look for champions, I fear that many of us are following her banner with the same enthusiasm that we rallied behind Conservative Party leadership candidate Kellie Leitch. We don't want to face the fact that these people have a different end game than ours. They want to re-capture office. That's it. And to do that, they will even throw some of their own under the bus just to get the liberal media hounds off their tail. Lynn Belak a case in point.
To Canadian nationalists I say this. Beware of the Pied Pipers of Fake Populism. Beware of tough talking Conservatives who mask their globalist goals with the rhetoric of patriotism. Take in the big picture. And make them understand that we don’t really have a border crisis as much as we have an immigration crisis. Tell them that ‘fixing’ illegal immigration doesn’t cut it. Tell them that if they won’t commit to substantial immigration reduction, we will not commit to them.
Don’t be played.
Tim Murray
June 7, 2018
Propaganda is how they got people to go along with the so called 'revolution' in the first place.
What if armed men came to town and the cable TV news stations broadcast that there is a revolution and if you want a place in the new society you have to join now? What if you were poor and living in the ghetto when the announcement arrived and they told you that this was your chance to participate in the government and to become empowered in society? Then, armed checkpoints were set up everywhere, some operated by local people who might be armed and trigger happy, but at least they recognize you; others by strangers who are part of the national army, and they aren't in a good mood. Both sides believe that some of their members have been killed by the other for no good reason and they are angry. You weren't at the protests so you don't really know what happened. You've seen some very polarized 'news' on TV. and a call to battle. What do you do now?
[In North America]I have been introduced to a refugee family from Daraa. They are a young couple with three children between four and eight years old. They are having a hard time here for a number of reasons. They weren't really ready to be in a context with no family support. Mohammed, the husband, is deaf and, so far as I can tell, none of their relatives were killed. Wishan said that religious extremists are haram. She likes to listen to recordings of a man chanting the Quran, but she doesn't wear a hijab. She said that is a small thing in the eyes of Allah. I am pretty sure they were not directly involved in the war or the events that lead to the outbreak in 2011. She complained that her brother had been hassled at checkpoints, but he is alive and well in Europe somewhere at present. Most of the family is still in Daraa.
Wishan showed me photos of her destroyed home in a block of bombed out houses. But she also showed me a photo of the bruised and bloated corpse of an adolescent boy with what looked to be a 22 caliber bullet wound in the area of his heart. Her English isn't good but I think she was trying to tell me that was one of the boys who wrote anti-Assad graffiti and were abused by the government at the beginning of the war. The first thing I thought when I saw the picture is that I'm sure lots of boys have died in this war but there is no evidence in a naked corpse of who shot him, when, where, or why. I also thought that there is a whole world of Internet propaganda out there targeting Syrian civilians in the Arabic language news from the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia.
Its funny how stories spiral out in different directions. The government fired the governor responsible and sent a delegation to chill things out. According to our sources, they didn't come up with any hard information, which makes sense because if people had already got their kids back they might not want to risk any more attention to them. A year ago, Al Jazeera ran an article that focuses on one of the boys supposedly abducted and tortured by the government in Daraa. It was called "The boy who started the Syrian revolution". The article didn't specify the fate of any other boys involved though they noted that several were originally arrested, like maybe three or four. It seems to imply that they were released. This boy, however, is identified as currently a member of the Free Syrian Army and shown sitting at a low table before a laptop computer. An image tailored to liberal western tastes.
But this civilian refugee from the area is still carrying around a horrific photo of a boy she believes to be one of the boys who were tortured and killed by the Syrian government at the beginning of the war. This event has reduced her life to chaos. The eight year old said that he wants to go to Syria and fight against Assad when he grows up. When I told him the war is pretty much over, he was incredulous. I suggested he can go and help rebuild.
It's all very sad. Every war leaves the seeds of another war. And the propaganda is more toxic to those directly affected by the war in every way.
I am still working with Wishan and her family. Mohammed is a carpenter from a relatively well off family. They have gone from being respected members of a community to being beggars here. I am going to give some carpenter work to Mohammed and see if he can get a start building and selling furniture here. I'm thinking that over time we can become friends. Right now they are frightened and rather desperate but hopefully they can become more self sufficient.
I asked about Daraa today and Wishan said that things are calm there but very expensive to live. It is one of the cities where a reconciliation program has been negotiated by the government. There are local people controlling some basic services and running a Sharia court while the government controls the outside parameters and provides power, clean water, salaries for government employees and whatever aid they can. Of course there is little money for rebuilding at this point and Daraa was kind of a working class city to begin with.
The family of a child with appendicitis is in Daraa where they had to pay $500 for his surgery. Apparently medical services there are scarce and costly. He received his surgery in time to survive but he is now partly paralyzed. I don't know if it is from the toxins that must have been released into his abdomen when his appendix ruptured or something went wrong in the surgery. Perhaps the paralysis will improve with time. We can only hope.
This week, congress failed to renew the CHIPS program that has for provided health care for 2 generations of children in families living below the poverty level. They were busy passing a monstrous military budget and a tax bill that provides 'relief' for corporate behemoths already on the government dole. Meanwhile Wishan and Mohammed's children remain at risk due to lack of medical care here in the land of plenty. I think they kind of understand this but they are too desperate to consider it. There is no turning back for them.
War is terrible thing regardless of which side you are on. The physical war kills people and destroys resources while the propaganda war is waged to divide people against their neighbors and fuel hatreds. Refugees come to the United States, or Europe, or to Turkey, all countries who have fed the war with weapons and propaganda, countries that have profited, or at least hoped to profit, from the war that has beggared a relatively stable nation and disrupted an ancient culture built on religious and ethnic diversity. Unfortunately, refugees who come to the US from US engineered war zones face continued poverty, isolation and confusion.
About Judith Bello: Judith is a member of Administrative Committee at United National Antiwar Coalition, the Middle East Task Force at Fellowship of Reconciliation and Webmaster at Upstate Coaltion to Ground the Drones and End the Wars. She lives in New York and has visited Syria on anti-war projects.
Neighbours squabbling over the back fence. The english language NYT newspaper reports sham dogfights daily between Greek Mirage fighters and Turkish F-15s. A NATO wargame and cyber-wargame around Lesbos was cancelled due to a Greek-Turkey squabble. Turkey still claims all the Aegean islands slap-bang up against their coast. No-one remarks on the irony of 50,000 muslim economic migrants camped up on Lesbos and Samos. "Inhuman racist treatment" scream the UN & liberal left cosmopolitans. But there is silence on the million or more criminal invaders, aka undocumented aliens, camped up in Turkey, in far worse conditions. My. Refugees in Turkey don't even have access to a lawyer! The shame of it!
A lot of people like Europe, but I feel uncomfortable as a grey tourist. Long haul Muslim airlines. How to enjoy yourself with dreadful coffee, the country bankrupt, and everyone spending all day & night, sitting around in cafes. Kalamata.
DESPERATE for a newspaper fix I found the only shop in this city to sell foreign language papers -(including Charlie Hebdo). I bought a paper New York Times with Greece supplement. I like the NYT long format thoughtful articles. The richest city on earth can afford to have progressive liberal feelings towards refugees and the downtrodden.
Unemployment in Greece officially 28.5%, youth rate way higher. Local people want to go back to their own Drachma, but liberal cosmopolitan elites and left politicians are resisting. The next ECB, IMF bailout coming up. Basic wage to be reduced to 680 eu per mth, in reality local people here say 200 lower.
NYT reports USA unemployment rate lower at 4.7%. Unemployment claims near 44-year low.
"At the same time, a broader measure of unemployment - which includes the millions of Americans who have given up looking for work or who are working part-time but would prefer full-time jobs - dropped to 9.2% last month but is still high given how tight the labor market looks otherwise."
So similar to Australia.
The old yacht (needs TLC) I came to see is lovely and thoughtfully designed. Not sure I want to restore, and spend, spend just to be a lazy expat cruising the islands. Although thats what I'm pretending to be.
Huge mountains ring Kalamata. The highest 7200 ft. Migration. Illegal migration. Seems equally impenetrable. Europe, The Med, the Middle East so vast, complex, historic. How can a little putt-putt engine yacht tow the refugees back to Libya?. Or patrol the narrow 10km straits between Samos and Lesbos and Turkey? ? ? I am a dimwit to think an old Forrest Gump can have the slightest effect.
I'm on a ferry fetish from the tiny mainland port of Kilini.
One Ionian Island one day.
Another the next. Yo-yoing back and forward on daffodil yellow, blue, and black ferries.
Eating pistichios. Happy as larry.
Reading the Greek edition of the NYT on the aft deck.
In Athens, Eu Central Bank and the IMF want the Lignite (brown coal) power stations privatised. And company tax rates reduced. How original.
NYT Rich cosmopolitans still dummy spitting over Trump.
NYT Wailing that Greece is not looking after refugees, (when Greece can't pay nurses and doctors, and the schools are falling down).
Mendicant Greece was given Eu750 for every refugee that "passed through", by a cartel of international donors. Surely they couldn't make a profit at that. Now the fences have gone up.
With 90 mins to kill in Zakynthos (maybe Xantra in english ?) I wandered amongst the fishing boats.
Two browner blokes were using power tools on a tradional shaped wooden boat. No boots, gloves, safety glasses, or earmuffs.
They told me they were from Egypt. Probably illegals I guess. Painting the hull with red lead - a great marine paint, but banned as too poisonous in most of the first world.
Kefalonia Island rip-off at E40 for one night. That island deserted. No other tourists. No open B&Bs. My private, all-too-friendly hostel now back in Kalamata costs E17 per night. I paid Stavros lump sum for 7 nights (I was away for 4 of those nights). Just to have somewhere to leave wheelie suitcase, and on blink laptop. Back on charger Acer charge light is blinking, when usually it glows continually. Base is almost sealed. Not that easy to take out and replace battery like earlier laptops.
Landlord "has friend with computer shop" of course. Has friends with young girl for jiggy-jig probably too. No thats not fair. With 60% plus youth unemployment, I was expecting girls & boys for rent on every corner. Expect we have the conservative grip of the Greek Orthodox church to thank for that.
I think making cars smaller is the way of the future. Sorry Commodore owner!
99% of cars here are small to tiny. Lots of SMART from Mercedes. Toyota has a Smart-size AVGO that seems pretty new. Kia has PICCANTOs, and earlier models than the new one in Aus. That tiny Daewoo MATIZ we used to have in Aus is branded CHEVROLET. Hyundai here has a i10, smaller than the i20 that didnt sell very well, or had too small a profit margin in Aus. FIAT utes, SKODA utes, GOLF utes. Nearly everything needs a wash at a minimum. Repairs and panel beating at worst.
Except the BUSES. Spotless, shining and new. Bus drivers are highly skilled saints - navigating narrow streets, and chaotic parking with calm aplomb. They leave exactly on time, but arrive late. nb Mussolini.
Millions of cafes everywhere, islands, villages, towns, cities. Full of young, middle and old men doing nothing. But all with SPOTLESS toilets. Five stars for that.
Tomorrow is NATIONAL FREEDOM CELEBRATION day. The armed Revolution that eventually kicked out the Muslim Ottomans, started here in Kalamata, 23 March, 1821. As they say, one person's terrorist, is another person's freedom fighter. Council workers, previously invisible, have appeared today, planting flowers in all the pots. No glarey sunshine today. There is a damp, cold wind flowing down from the giant mountains - adiabetic - like political correctness.
Neighbours squabbling over the back fence. The english language NYT newspaper reports sham dogfights daily between Greek Mirage fighters and Turkish F-15s. A NATO wargame and cyber-wargame around Lesbos was cancelled due to a Greek-Turkey squabble. Turkey still claims all the Aegean islands slap-bang up against their coast. No-one remarks on the irony of 50,000 muslim economic migrants camped up on Lesbos and Samos. "Inhuman racist treatment" scream the UN & liberal left cosmopolitans. But there is silence on the million or more criminal invaders, aka undocumented aliens, camped up in Turkey, in far worse conditions. My. Refugees in Turkey don't even have access to a lawyer! The shame of it!
If I was a posturing, testosteronish, nationalist, islamist, dictatorish prime minister I might be tempted to push new waves of the human plague across to Greece. And blackmail Europe (again) for more billions of Euros to stop it. More. Much more birth control for muslim failed states everywhere would be a fraction of the cost of Erdogan blackmail. But it seems to be such a 1970s kind of idea. Global Human Rights says that all women can have as many children as they like. All children can have a smart phone. And all brown teenagers can freely enter any country they like. Except white christians who have to pay for their colonial past sins, by needing passports, visas, and return tickets.
David Z H
Kalamata Mall, in a computer games shop,
beside H&M, Zara, Nike, Columbia, etc.
"The door to Australia is closing" says Nick McKim of the Australian Greens. Many people reading this might be alarmed, wondering how their relatives overseas can visit them in future. But no, this heading is misleading. It is only the little door at which asylum seekers arriving by boat appear. The big door to Australia is still wide open for others.
"The Door to Australia is closing. Breaking: Early yesterday Malcolm Turnbull stood in front of the press and announced new policy that would impose a lifetime ban for asylum seekers coming to Australia by boat. Senator Hanson immediately stated her full support. We have less than a week to prevent this heinous policy from being implemented by convincing Labor and the cross-bench to oppose it – but we need you to stand with us."
Thus Nick McKim of The Greens communicated with his friends and members of the Greens Party in Australia.
McKim refers to the latest draconian proposed policy from the Federal Government. I suspect this announcement is in advance of a further increase in Australia's very large economic migration numbers of which the Australian public appear to be unaware. This was John Howard’s ploy when he virtually doubled the NON- refugee immigration program during his term as Prime Minister. Paraphrasing Howard's own words, he figured that the Australian public would accept high immigration if they believed that the borders of the country were secure. A hard line on asylum seekers, and intense interest and reporting by the media sent Howard's message unmediated straight to the Australian people. Measured debate on immigration and population, even by environmentalists for whom population is critical, was well and truly highjacked by the asylum seeker issue.
This highjacked debate has been an ongoing thorn in the side of environmental scientists and other concerned people. It has captured the energies of activists for well over over a decade. Those involved in refugee activism are on the whole socially aware and politically engaged people who might have otherwise concerned themselves with the effects of population pressures on democracy and their own environments.
Australia has reached the stage now where those who put the asylum seeker issue as first priority will hardly engage with those who are environment and population focused. Successive governments have made rational discussion about Australia’s population all but impossible by driving this cruel wedge right through the rest of us. Educated discourse both in the private and public domains has been strangled. The Australian public has been manipulated by government and the press. The victims of these narrowly defined polemics are the asylum seekers and the Australian public whose freedom of speech and determination of their future have been stolen.
The major parties sustain this confusion to their audiences whilst maintaining the hard line on asylum seekers arriving by boat. The Australian Greens who do take up the asylum seeker issue, in opposition to the other two major parties, have done nothing to help educate the Australian people. They should have told the Australian public how it is being duped and that, far from the door to Australia closing, only a small door is being slammed shut, whilst huge gates have been thrust wide open, admitting completely unprecedented numbers into the country.
The population is growing so fast that net overseas migration (the total numbers arriving minus the total numbers leaving) is now making up more than half of Australia’s population growth! (See graph, "Components of population growth Australia 1990-2015").
On ABC’s Q and A 17th October 2016, One of the panelists, lawyer and asylum seeker advocate Shen Narayanasamy “exposed” the deception that our politicians and media perpetuate, a clever blurring of the issues of immigration in total and the virtually insignificant numbers of unfortunate people who arrive by boat, seeking asylum but who make up 90% of the national discourse on immigration. She revealed that 800,000 overseas visa holders enter Australia every year, a figure (including visas issued under categories such as family reunion, skilled workers, a special eligibility category, student visas, 457 temporary workers visas and 417 working holiday visas) that totally dwarfs the figures for Australia's humanitarian intake and the numbers of asylum seekers arriving by boat . Ms. Narayanasamy said “.... I think there is an alternative because when you understand that we take 800,000 people a year and we have done so since Prime Minister John Howard, the highest intake in history, it’s because we know it turbo-charges our economy and contributes to our society.” 1 Of course the number was not news to those who take an interest and research the facts, but it was important that this person revealed this stark fact to the poorly informed general public on a popular television program .
While 1,469 once 'boat people', now mostly meeting the criteria of refugees, have awaited their fate on Manus Island and and Nauru , approximately 800,000 other kinds of immigrants arrive in Australia each year in the form of hairdressing, business, and other students, investors, families, 457 workers, bakers, cooks, labourers, mines workers, backpackers, foreign doctors, nurses, accountants, town planners, sundry religious leaders, millionaires, billionaires, with few questions asked. Most would pay far less for their passage than any asylum seekers arriving clandestinely by boat, with or without real or fake passports. Around 12,000 humanitarian applicants are admitted each year.
Eight hundred thousand (800,000) is almost one fifth (1/5th) of fast growing Melbourne's current population, whilst the total number of asylum seekers on Manus Island and Nauru equates more to the population of a couple of small villages villages https://www.humanrights.gov.au/immigration-detention-statistics
That is how totally out of proportion the narrative is Australia.
It makes you wonder why the Greens don't simply encourage asylum-seekers to obtain false passports and apply to become foreign students in Australia and buy air tickets. It would be so much cheaper and far less life-threatening. No-one would probably notice since we already have many people who have overstayed their visas in Australia. We also encourage many who have obtained a qualification in this country to convert to permanent immigrant whilst onshore. Australia has so many overseas immigrants now that they contribute around sixty per cent of our total population growth.
The Australian Greens' exclusive focus on asylum seekers is just too convenient for the Liberal and Labor parties, because it keeps the public eye away from the explosion of immigration that is negatively affecting every aspect of our quality of life and cost of living, with the possible exception of variety in restaurants, for those who can afford them. Around 200,000 permanent immigrants and an uncapped number of temporary entrants (in the realm of 600,000 per annum) are overwhelming Australia's capacity to provide infrastructure, to protect our urban environment and it is devastating our natural environment. Dwindling numbers and extinctions of Australian native animals are the collateral damage of habitat lost to ever advancing additional freeways, tollways, and new suburbs. One cannot help but notice that the similarity between the approximate number of temporary migrants in Australia at any one time and the numbers for fluctuating local unemployment.
For years professional population growth marketers and governments have worked to desensitise the Australian public to large numbers. For instance, I used to tell people that Melbourne would be 6 million by mid- century and people would tell me that I was exaggerating . Now they tell me it will be 7 million as though that is just normal. And the other day I read in the Financial Review that we are heading for 8 million!
Ms. Narayanasamy was of the opinion that we are coping so well with all these immigrants, whom she believes are 'turbo-charging' our economy, that we should take in even more. The reality is that the discipline of economics is so narrow that it is completely inadequate to frame the actual problem.
How is it that someone living in Melbourne cannot be aware of the problems this high immigration is causing us? Democracy is being overturned simply to accommodate this influx and the rest of us badly. In Melbourne, an important example of how destructive this is for democracy is the greatly protested (but little reported and little investigated) changes to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT's) planning appeals rules. See articles re public dismay about VCAT changes. VCAT was created to provide the Victorian public with free access to appeal decisions on planning. It was intended that no-one would need a barrister to represent them at VCAT and that any resident might raise a planning objection. The rules have now changed, whereby it costs a fortune just to lodge a planning objection and community groups don't dare to attend the tribunal without a barrister. Even so, the rights of appeal have been constricted to superficialities. Local government no longer has the power to decide the size of its population by restricting subdivisions and refusing building permits. The state has taken over and the state is in the business of population growth and property development, encouraging people to migrate to Victoria, collecting the stamp duty from continuous housing construction to accommodate them, and passing laws to stop Victorians from protecting their quality of life by resisting over-development.
Other states seem to operate similarly.
Many believe that a population of 24 million is quite small for a continent as large but Australia is a very infertile, dry continent with erratic rainfall, unique, fragile ecosystems and a low human “carrying capacity”. We are pushing our environment beyond its limits, expecting it behave like places many times more fertile, such as Europe. It will never be Europe. We should love it for what it is. This worked for the original human custodians who lived here sustainably for a proven nearly 50 thousand years.
The Victorian State of the Environment Reports 2008 and 2013 showed that Victoria’s fragile environment, especially around our coasts and waterways is deteriorating through population pressure and it is clear from this that continued high population growth is environmentally irresponsible. Ultimately we humans depend on that environment. It does not look as though the next report due in 2018 is likely to show any improvements with an anticipated half a million added to Australia's population.
Victoria has an expensive desalination plant which will for the first time be put to use this summer even after very good winter rain as, according the Premier Daniel Andrews, the dams are not at a level to sustain the current population in Melbourne. The desal plant, estimated to cost taxpayers $20 billion was constructed over multiple objections. In another blow to democracy, the community group,Your Water Your Say, was bankrupted by court-costs and had to abandon its fight.
With such rapid and continuing population growth, ever more land is taken up by housing for the additional population. Established houses and gardens are being destroyed to accommodate more people and precious farm land on Melbourne's fringes is given over to housing development.
City traffic in Melbourne is now so bad that one always re considers a trip across town by car even outside peak times.
The demand for housing is so fierce that un-affordable housing is constantly featured in our media with the blame shifted to peripheral issues such as negative gearing or "empty nesters" preferring to remain in the family home rather than downsizing. (Negative gearing in property is really only a consequence of the level of population growth feeding demand. If the prices of houses were not constantly rising it would be pointless to purchase and negatively gear! See "Are the Greens on the right track with respect to negative gearing?")
Local politics and media are saturated with arguments over new roads and railway crossings, building projects to densify our suburbs, loss of trees, and pressure on both private and public land.
The prospect of ever more disruptive projects to cater for socially engineered rapid population growth is economically motivated. It benefits the few, dis-advantages the many and has absolutely no existential purpose or end point.
Damascus, SANA – President Bashar al-Assad blamed some Western leaders for the terrorism and refugee problems facing Europe.
During a meeting on Sunday with the visiting delegation of the European Parliament headed by Vice-President of the Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs Javier Couso, the President discussed the situation in Syria, the terrorist war waged on it and the growing destructive impacts of the spread of terror to world regions.
President al-Assad said it is normal that what is happening in Syria and the Arab region would greatly affect Europe given the geographical vicinity of the two regions and the cross-cultural communication.
[Article first published at Syrian Arab News Agency on 10 July 2016, as "President al-Assad: European parliamentarians should work to correct their governments’ policies that caused problems"..]
He held the leaders of some Western states responsible for the problems of terrorism and extremism and the refugee flows currently facing Europe for having adopted policies that are against the interests of the peoples of these states.
The President slammed those Western leaders for providing the political cover and support to the terrorist organizations in Syria.
Striking a relevant note, President al-Assad said the European parliamentarians could play a significant role to correct the wrong policies of their governments that have caused terrorism to spread and led to worsening the living conditions of the Syrian people due to the economic blockade they imposed on them, forcing many Syrians to leave their country and seek refuge in other states.
For their part, the European delegation members said their visit to Syria and the suffering of the Syrian people they have seen firsthand would make them put effort to the effect of correcting the policies of the European governments and pressuring them into lifting the sanctions.
The European parliamentarians affirmed the need to keep Syria’s sovereignty intact, stressing that the Syrians alone should decide their country’s future without any foreign interference.
On March 27th, President al-Assad received a French delegation that included parliamentarians, intellectuals, researchers and journalists and said during the meeting that such visits by parliamentary delegations and having these figures inspect firsthand the situation in the Syrian cities could be useful for them to efficiently work to correct the wrong policies adopted by some governments, including that of France, towards what is happening in Syria.
In a statement to SANA, Javier Couso said that the meeting with President al-Assad was an opportunity to discuss several issues and ask questions about the situation in Syria, and that at the end of the meeting it was affirmed that dialogue is the only way to resolve the crisis in Syria without any foreign interference in its affairs.
He also talked about the delegation’s visit to Damascus, lauding the coexistence he witnessed in the Syrian society.
For her part, delegation member and Member of the European Parliament Tatjana Zdanoka stated that President al-Assad presented during the meeting “precise formulas” about what is happening in Syria, and that the meeting was very friendly and open.
On a relevant note, the delegation met with Grand Mufti of the Republic Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun, who called upon European parliamentarians to stand up to US arrogance and hegemony.
H. Said / Hazem Sabbagh
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On 23 June, just prior to the vote on whether Britain should leave the European Union (referred to as 'Brexit'), Paul Craig Roberts (pictured right) put the case for Brexit in a 30 minute interview with Richie Allen (pictured left). |
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The interview is embedded below as a YouTube video. This 30 minute interview, provides clear, compelling arguments as to why it is urgently necessary for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union, not only to preserve its national sovereignty, but to prevent the war against Russia planned by the rulers of the United States. In the interview Paul Craig Roberts also confronts, and thoroughly demolishes, claims by those arguing for Britain to remain in the European Union, that those advocating Brexit are racist and xenophobic.
He puts clearly and succinctly the arguments that everybody has the right to control the numbers of people entering their community. It is not unreasonable for a community to object to large numbers of people from a different culture suddenly moving into their midst.
Paul Craig Roberts argues that while the British and other Europeans are right to object to as sudden high influx of refugees and immigrants, they should remember that these people are fleeing their own countries because of wars that the rulers of Europe and Britain have inflicted upon their countries.
Migration is part of our collective history, but Europe’s political leaders are still failing completely to address widespread public concern over the flood of migrants now storming Europe’s borders. The consequences of these pressures will have profound impacts.
Unable to reach rational solutions beyond discussing how many each member state should be obliged to take, bribing African countries to take back their own citizens who don’t qualify as refugees and now paying Turkey to take back illegals bound for Greece, while taking a similar quota of Syrians from Turkey, are inadequate responses. Our leaders are moving into systemic chaos, where the Human Rights Act, has spawned a people-trafficking industry that is endangering our security and running rings around governments at taxpayers’ expense. It is not fit for purpose and needs reform. Without leaving the EU, the UK could suspend and redraw the act with our European partners, who all have much to gain from a more sensible approach.
In Britain, the Government, under Labour, first lost control of immigration and then tried to spin the idea that a large influx of people is vital to our interests. Despite attempts at reforms, the system is still failing. Legal migration in to the UK has hit record levels - up 40 per cent on 2014, according to the Office for National Statistics. Nearly 100,000 illegals were detected trying to enter the UK in 2015, while the EU is receiving thousands of illegal migrants a day – triple the rate last year.
The situation has been escalating for years, but after German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s grand moral gesture to take in 800,000 ‘refugees’ a year in response to the photo of a drowned boy on a Turkish beach and then demand other EU states take their share, it has ignited the hopes of millions more to settle in Europe. Now barbed wire borders are being erected in the heart of Europe, destroying the ideal of free movement.
Described as refugees or just ‘migrants’, as though there has merely been some bureaucratic error in their status, the asylum lobby and much of the media are cheerleading the appeal for public sympathy as a tragic human interest story. But this terrorist infiltrated people-smuggling led invasion, facilitated by EU governments, presents a huge challenge from failing states with exploding populations and self-inflicted turf wars.
Generous policies in Sweden and Germany are enabling thousands of non-EU migrants and illegals to settle legally there and then move to other member states as internal EU migrants. Over 1.2 million have claimed asylum in 2015. Our politicians consistently ignore this back door impact.
Sweden has been receiving up to 2000 unaccompanied minors a week in late 2015, nearly a third of its migrant influx, who can then have their families flown in to join them. Most were males giving their age as 16 or 17 but receiving groups say many appear much older. According to Statistics Sweden, 50 per cent of refugees are not in work seven years after arriving in the country. Even after 15 years, 40 per cent are still on welfare without a job – a major drain on the country’s welfare system.
Refugee lobbyists say it is the moral duty of Western countries to absorb these migrants. Do the media and politicians seriously think that Europe can take in the populations of sub-Saharan Africa and beyond? When will the line be drawn? All UK parties are well aware of the mounting pressures on housing, schools and health services, but don’t like to talk about it. Or the 25-50 per cent of young people in Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece who don’t have a job. So too, they should be aware of the Parliamentary report in 2008 that the large rise in legal immigration to the UK had virtually no net economic gain for the country. Nor do we need high immigration to counter a temporary rise in ageing populations. Ever more migrants also get old and then need support.
The Government talks about skilled immigrants Britain needs, but skilled immigrants account for only 20% of total non-EU immigrants in Britain and many actually do unskilled work when they get here.
Proposals to cap numbers will barely touch the scale of the true problem - a permanent population swelling so quickly by other immigration pathways, including a generous interpretation of family reunion from outside the EU that is adding to the pressures on our environment and food security.
Australia is often cited by UK politicians as a model immigration system, but its population just hit 24 million– 17 years earlier than expected. With net overseas migration contributing 53 per cent to total population growth, the population is now set to double every 50 years. This in an arid continent with only six per cent of the land able to grow crops.
Europe’s growing immigration crisis
In 1950, the countries that later constituted the EU-27 had a population of 370 million. By 2010 it topped 500 million - equivalent to absorbing the inhabitants of another present-day France and Britain combined. By January 2015 Eurostat figures show the population was 508.2 million - up 1.3 million from the previous year, with the majority of 1.1m a result of net legal immigration into the EU.
Add to this the rapidly growing number of illegals – with over 1.2 million detected in 2015 and many more entering undetected, according to the EU borders agency, Frontex.
Today, only Syria currently has an acute refugee crisis, but to avert mounting chaos and retain the fabric of the EU, we have to stop the lure of a gateway to permanent citizenship to millions. People in Europe might be more reassured if irregular migrants eligible for asylum were offered temporary support and then returned to their countries when the crisis resolved. Many of those who claimed asylum from countries like Somalia and Iraq go back for extended holidays, but the claims for asylum continue. Iraqi Airways now operates four flights a week from the UK to facilitate demand for vacations back home. Yet Iraqis are in the top ten asylum applications to the UK in 2015,
Also in the list are Nigeria – touted as Africa’s fasted growing economy and other democratic countries like Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and even Albania – now 25 years since it became a European democracy. Eritrea is top of the list, supposedly linked to harsh national service. What is going on? International pressure should sort this out, not expect resettlement.
Part of the problem is that EU countries don’t have repatriation agreements with many countries involved, but this could be remedied quite simply, as just about all the sender countries in Africa and many in Asia are recipients of generous Western aid. We need to use this leverage. Several countries, like Senegal, condone exporting people in the hope they will reach Europe, find work and send back remittances.
Global leaders need to be focused on real solutions and more effective regional aid in all these fragile states as well as engaging more constructively with Russia, Iran and countries in the region to bring about positive outcomes. You can help far more people cost effectively in nearby protected areas than import millions into high-cost West European countries. Sweden is now having to spend its foreign aid budget on trying to deal with new migrant arrivals.
The current level of UK immigration and increasing birth rates will require building the equivalent of a new Manchester every year. It is little wonder we have a housing crisis. How can we possibly accommodate this and claim it is sustainable?
In 1998, the Office for National Statistics predicted that the UK population would rise to 65m by 2051. We’re already there! Now they say it could reach 80 million by 2040, mostly as a result of immigration.
David Cameron promises a review of welfare benefits for EU migrants but equally, we need to look at the pull factors for illegals – many openly piling up in Calais attempting to cross to the UK. The EU Commission says it is the responsibility of each Member State to set the rules for welfare support.
We need urgent action to address these issues and clear shared rules that would be strict enough to discourage ineligible people from attempting dangerous journeys. The growing cost to communities of accommodating large-scale inflows of people, in a now crowded world, raises many challenging questions. This is not a left or right issue or racist. It is about global social and environmental sustainability.
Population is a big issue happening in the world today, with our numbers having increased massively from around 1 billion in 1850 to what now looks like 11 billion at the end of the century. Right now, the numbers of the world’s poor increase by 80 million each year and the number of unwanted pregnancies are 210 million per annum. Considering that human population predicts 88% of impact to other animal and plant species (according to the International Union for the Conversation of Nature) human population remains a huge, yet very controversial concern. (This article was written by Michael Bayliss as part of an information booklet with Mark Allen (founder, Population Permaculture and Planning) entitled: 'Why We Need To Talk About Population.' This booklet is designed to engage with a younger, left leaning generation including environmentalists and activists. It will be available at the Sustainable Living Festival Big Weekend at Federation where Mark Allen will also present on town planning and population issues. To find out more, click here.
It almost seems absurd to extend these world population concerns to Australia. Australia's a population of just under 24 million (at time of writing) and a density of around 3 people per square kilometre seems minuscule when compared to the demographics of other (mostly densely overpopulated) countries. Surely with miles and miles of free uncharted space, Australia could take its fair share of the world’s load? Isn’t Australia one of the highest per capita fossil fuel guzzling and carbon emitting countries in a society awash with consumerism and materialism? Couldn’t we all consume less, replace those coal industries with renewables, and open up our borders to take in our fair share?
The problem is that when you look at our continent more closely, our vast land of plenty starts to look a bit wanting. Only around 6% of our soil is arable by world standards, with 80% of the land-mass arid or semi-arid. This means that we have an incredibly fragile ecosystem with a very low carrying capacity that has struggled with white occupation for the last 200 years and it is about to get another wallop through climate change. There is every good reason why the south-east coast of Australia is populated and the central and north-west are nearly vacant, and that having large numbers of people live in the interior of Australia makes almost as much sense as populating the Sahara.
The Australian Academy Of Science has suggested that our capacity to sustain ourselves will be maximised by not exceeding 23 million (whoops, we’ve just done that!) with Jared Diamond and Tim Flannery, painting a bleaker picture - that Australia can only support around 8 million people in the long term for our society’s current level of per capita footprint. This means that to be sustainable, we need to find ways of reducing our per capita and overall consumption by 1/3 at our current population to be sustainable, according to these predictions. However, our population is also growing at a rate of an Adelaide every 3 years, and at this rate our population will double in 35 years time. This will mean reducing our per capita output by 1/6 of current levels in a very short amount of time. What happens after then?...
The topic of population has become a taboo in Australia over the past 20 years, partly due to the ongoing perception of us living on an empty continent, and partly due to the mass media promoting the social-demographic arguments of Pauline Hanson, One Nation and others to drown out rational ecologically-based discussion. While there are educated people with no xenophobic agenda currently championing for a sustainable population such as Kelvin Thomson and Dick Smith, there is still confusion in many people's minds between population numbers concerns and racial prejudice. When I ask my friends in the environment movement why they don’t think more about population, the typical reply is: ‘Every time we discuss it, it always ends up with a white guy in his 60s ranting about immigrants.’
I would like a rational discussion about population to return to the conversations of progressive and socially minded people. Population numbers are intrinsically linked to our economy, and manipulated by our government to fast-track GDP growth (as I shall explain soon) so it is really difficult to talk about the end of neo-liberal capitalism without talking about population numbers at some point. It is hard to talk about cooperative self-resilient communities and eco-villages as the way of the future whilst our town planning system is trying to keep up with an Adelaide’s worth of growth in our major cities every few years. It is hard to share our environment with our native plants and animals for much longer if an end point to our population growth is never debated and if our only option to reduce our per capita footprint infinitely lower is unrealistic. Finally, higher population growth does not automatically mean greater diversity and better outcomes for refugees and asylum seekers. Under our currently societal structure, it can even be the other way around!
Below are three models of possible population growth in Australia, representing three ideologies, where I want to table the pros and cons with each model. The first is the ‘business as usual’ approach of our current system. The second is an open borders policy, and the third is a sustainable population model.
Business as usual with ~1.5% growth per annum, majority of growth policy regulated to raise GDP, and with a current tax system that allows people to pay less tax from owning property (negative gearing).
As can be seen from the chart, our current model of population growth is beneficial for government to raise money through more people paying tax. It is also very beneficial for employers, as it allows an environment for more applicants for jobs, placing downward pressure on wages and conditions. It is most certainly of benefit for those in the property and construction industries, especially for those who invest in property, where a growing customer base ever drives up the demand for the price of properties in established suburbs (for now).
Unfortunately, things become pretty much worse for everyone else. Whilst it is easy enough to deduce the negative effect of this kind of population growth policy has on young job seekers (for example) and in raising general costs of living, it may be surprising to note that refugees, both past and present, are adversely affected by this type of population growth. For example, past generations of migrant market gardeners have been priced out of their area as the urban boundaries of Melbourne and Sydney expand. Likewise, refugee immigrants are being pushed out due to the increased gentrification that comes with high density living in inner city Melbourne suburbs such as Footscray, Carlton, and Richmond that have traditionally been very viable hubs of strong migrant communities. In recent years, new arrivals through the humanitarian program have tended to settle in areas around Broadmeadows, Deer Park, Heidelberg Heights and Dandenong. A far cry from (say) Victoria Street in Richmond, current generations of refugees face social isolation and difficulties in accessing essential services, which makes establishing community or assimilation more difficult. The Multicultural Development Association has reported that refugees in current times are lacking access to essential information, such as what the swimming flags mean on Australian beaches! The fact that Broadmeadows has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country is telling.
Most people are surprised to find out that our humanitarian intake has gone DOWN since the Howard Era, as proportion of our intake, from 25% prior to 1996 down to current levels of around 5-10%. As Howard himself said on 2014 on live radio:
“One of the reasons why it’s so important to maintain that policy is that the more people think our borders are being controlled the more supportive they are in the long term of high levels of immigration. Australia needs a high level of immigration. I’m a high immigration man. I practiced that in government. And one of the ways that you maintain public support for that is to communicate to the Australian people a capacity to control our borders and to decide who and what people and when come to this country.”
In other words, the asylum seeker fiasco during the Howard Government era, Tampa crisis et al, was politically engineered so that people would be complacent to another kind of population growth that the government (and big business) prefers!
Imagine if we traveled to another planet and witnessed and alien society where the government, swayed by big business, had an immigration policy that was based almost entirely on making money for small sectors of society. Imagine this was at the expense of refugees, or people in desperate need from other countries. Imagine the government engineered a border crisis so that refugees were seen as a huge problem so that, once a tough stand seen to be taken towards them, the government used that ruse to bring in population growth policies from other avenues. Imagine, in this society, the the former leader could basically state this word for word and pull the wool over everyone’s eyes. Imagine, in the society where the left were disinclined to call the government out on these policies, for fear of sounding anti-refugee and xenophobic, even when the population policies themselves are discriminatory towards asylum seekers. Imagine if keeping silent perpetuated this growth as a component of the neo-liberalist growth-at-all-costs agenda and if keeping silent on this was a liability on environmental objectives. From an outsider point of view, I’m sure the whole situation would seem more than a little illogical and farcical.
Population has been a very prickly issue for us on the left, particularly in recent decades, with the shadow of Pauline Hanson and One Nation/Reclaim Australia, and particularly when population growth is generally equated in our minds to refugees and open borders policies. However, if we choose to not debate population at all, then our current social and politically engineered population growth policy will continue, the same one that unfairly disfavours refugees and asylum seekers in favour of migration programs that generate short term increases in GDP. This is, to my mind, a very cynical neo-liberalist ideology. We, on the left, have the obligation at the very least to be educated on population policy as it currently stands, and at very least, lobby for a change in policy in favour of the humanitarian program again, even for those of us who are pro-growth. There is also a strong argument that it is very important to support the anti-war movement to prevent the formation of refugees in the first place and that refugee crises are generated by arms manufacture, neo-colonialism and global conflict.
Even if one were recipient to the short-term benefits of this kind of population growth, it must be recognised that the positives are just that - short lived. Eventually, property becomes so expensive that it is not worth investing in anymore. This is called a housing bubble, and has happened to Japan in the late 80s early 90s and currently China and the USA. Coupled with an infrastructure deficit and environmental overshoot, this can only affect everyone in the long term.
So if the current model sounds unfair to most, one might consider a more egalitarian open borders approach. Let’s explore that below, with its associated pros and cons.
Open borders policy, no cap on humanitarian intake, no policy to mitigate natural birth rate or GDP fuelled migration (This is in spirit the policy of the Greens Party). This model assumes growth of 600 000 per annum (250 000 humanitarian, 250 000 GDP, 100 000 natural growth).
This model is conducive to the ideal for many who identify with the social left, as an open border policy provides an unbiased avenue of entry into Australia regardless of race, religion, socio-economic status etc. An opens border policy means that industralised countries such as Australia can play a more definite role in accommodating displaced people from abroad and the idea that everyone is free to move wherever they wish to worldwide. The idea of border restriction or control can be uncomfortable for many as this implies an exclusion from those living in the majority world from the relatively privileged position of Australia. From the political field, many Labor-Left and Greens politicians support this ideology, with perhaps Sarah Hanson-Young of The Greens being the most vocal and well-known advocate of this position.
However, in trying to write the above table objectively, I tried to come up with tangible Pros that were practical rather than ideological. This proved to be more difficult than I was anticipating, and had to put in a few question marks in the pros column as the practical benefits are either tenuous or are a double edged sword with associated cons.
Speaking of the Greens, I’ve observed that many Greens policies cry out for more and more infrastructure (trains, trams, social services, public housing etc). At the same time they generally do not support environmentally destructive mining practices, not least unconventional mining such as fracking. But then, where will all our infrastructure come from? Trains lines, schools, public housing, plumbing - these all require raw materials that need to be dug up from the ground, and processed into tram lines by use of fossil fuels. There really is no way around this unless we learn a way of making train lines out of renewable resources, which isn’t likely. So much of Australia’s per capita consumption is embedded within the town planning system - suburbia and high density apartment living are both inherently resource hungry. Separation of homes and workplaces, and our physical and economic separation from our food sources result in a reliance of our earth’s resources that no amount of wilful reduction of our per capita consumption will mitigate, unless our town planning system changes substantially. If it doesn’t, there is no way we can really put much of a brake on our dependency on resources, and with model 2’s annual growth rate at 600 000 per annum, this could only escalate within our current town planning system. Instead of being able to plan to change the town planning system to accommodate more people in a sustainable way, any government would probably be doomed to play an endless cycle of infrastructure catch up under our current system - at the environment’s expense, even more-so than under our currently system.
I doubt an open borders policy would be practical for any government in the long term. Without an opportunity to transition large scale to a better town planning system, the housing, services and infrastructure costs would be huge. This means either a steep decline in quality of life for residents, or huge taxes or government debt (most likely a combination of all the above). Voters tend to not like those things. Voters on the left would also feel alienated and lied to by a government that would be forced to continue to mine for resources to build the infrastructure with, even if the economy was completely powered by renewable energy. Finally, the huge population growth would have a massive and unavoidable impact to the environment, particularly habitats and water supplies near to the large urban conurbation, even if our per capita footprint were to go down. Any government being elected on an environmental platform would soon let down many of their voters. This is probably a realistic prediction of the Greens if they won government on an open borders platform - they’d soon be shot down. This is also a conundrum that I’m sure many of the left deep down struggle with. That environmental, as well as anti-capitalist objectives, are at odds, at some point, with a human population growth that is not sustainable. Government would survive better, in the long term, if there was some compromise and balance between open borders ideology and the realities of environmental objectives.
Open borders policy only works in the long term if we can work with the world to address the root causes of conflict and displacement that generate high numbers of refugees and asylum seekers. Without this, an open borders policy is great at helping individuals in immediate need for asylum, but can only serve to diffuse the larger problem into the long term. One example is the island of Tuvalu, which made a strong case for evacuating many of its people to Australia and New Zealand in 2003, due to land loss as sea levels rose. New Zealand now has a relocation policy which is very reasonable in those circumstances, however their population is expected to more than double from 12 000 to 28 000 in by 2050. This will mean an endless cycle of relocating people, unless there is a way for Tuvalu to be sustainable in its population growth. Fortunately, according to the UN, non-coercive population sustainability strategies work if women are empowered and educated, and when there is access to family planning and contraceptive strategies (often at odds with the predominating patriarchal religions in host countries). No need for one-child policies or for coercion by the west to the majority world! Mostly grass-roots foreign aid and proactive international cooperation is key.
One final concern with an open borders policy is consideration of the original custodians of our land. My instinct is that any policy to promote population growth without consultation of aboriginal people can be easily argued as more unsolicited colonization of Australia. This belief was certainly shared by some my Noongar identifying friends and community back when I lived in WA, many of whom would be very welcoming to a generous refugee intake, if only their people were consulted on policy. If aboriginal perspective on population issues is hard to find, I imagine this can be attributable to the many other uphill battles that their communities are fighting daily, and poor representation of both aboriginal perspective and the population issue in Australian society. For those willing to search however, there are references in the literature, perhaps most poignantly expressed in the Deaths In Custody Watch Report (1994):
‘Since 1788 the non-Aboriginal powers within our lands have taken upon themselves to increase the population by many millions, meanwhile our population became near to extinction...Australia’s population is bearable at this point in time but further ecocide of this country will leave nothing for no one...Ecologically our land is on its knees: with help it can survive and resuscitate itself, but with any major increase in population this land will die, and we will die with it.’
A medium term sustainable population numbers policy that promotes (1) fiscal policies that do not encourage large family sizes and (2) promotes policies where immigration = emigration (e.g. Between 70 - 80 thousand per annum), with priority given to the humanitarian program (intake of at least 20 000 per annum, with flexibility in times of crisis). An emphasis on foreign aid funding would go to empowering women to make their own life choices, including career decisions, earning capacity and family size.
No model is perfect, and although it is probably self-evident that I advocate for this third model, it would not be objective of me if I did not acknowledge the cons associated with the model. However I would like to highlight that most of the negatives are either risks arising from poor management of the model, or from short term changes as our society goes through adjustments. On balance, this model of population sustainability strikes me as one that allows for the best balance of long term economic objectiveness, environmental and pollution goals, town planning goals, whilst allowing for a defined but generous humanitarian intake. Keep in mind that refugees and asylum seekers would be better off adjusting to a country that had the capacity to provide them with the services that they required to participate fully in their new home. They would not need so much the additional burdens of suburban sprawl, un-affordable housing, and an unforgiving job market that many refugees, along with other disadvantaged groups, face in today’s growth-at-all-cost system. That’s not to say that these problems will disappear, but they will be less and so much easier to address and manage. Currently, many migrants who come to Australia in recent times report feeling very socially isolated in the outer suburbs and miss the greater sense of community that they had back home.
Not that immigration is the only way to a sustainable population - far from it. I envision a future where families with no children are seen as societal norms just as much as families with children, and where adoption is seen as a viable and accessible alternative to couple of all sexual and gender identities. The key, as always is through education, empowerment, and allowing people to make their own choices. High schools, for example, should educate young people into the pros and cons of having children, and with consideration of the environmental impacts of having children, and the implications for future generations with worsening environmental conditions. I do not advocate fiscal policies that reward large family size, instead this money should be spent on children’s services, such as schools and and medical subsidies.
With a sustainable population, more money and energy could go into grass-roots foreign aid instead of more and more infrastructure and more investment could go into transitioning our society and economy into one that less focused on growth and more focused on social and environmental resilience. If our town planning system were to reflect the ideals of eco-villages, intentional communities, and permaculture principles, we would be in a better position to accommodate our current population longer term. We may also be in a better position to assist people in need of asylum or refuge into the future.
I hope this article has helped to disentangle some of the confusion and assumptions that have been barriers for further discussion on population issues for Australia and abroad. Although my own views are currently for population sustainability at this stage, I acknowledge that there will be many differing views and ideas on this topic and I hope my ideas may help to stimulate further thoughtful discussion and debate. I have not yet heard a successful argument for long term high rates of population growth that can also account for positive outcomes for our cities, towns, environment and asylum seekers, however that does not mean that one doesn’t exist! Please let me know if you have any ideas =).
Inside is the text of the public statement issued by the UN expert panel on Arbitrary Detention, which you will not find in most mainstream publications, which are seeking to obfuscate the UN opinion and its importance, with their own opinions. Julian Assange is a Victorian-born Australian citizen and asylum-seeker, recognised as a refugee by the UN. The Ecuadorian Embassy in London granted him refugee status, but the UK government stopped him from going to Ecuador by taking his passport and surrounding the embassy with police, day and night. What did Assange do? Assange famously published, on his Wikileaks, authentic film of US soldiers hunting down civilians with helicopters and machine guns as if they were in a video game. (Film: 'Collateral Damge' inside this article.) The US was so furious at this (and other very relevant exposures of its criminal secrets) that it mounted an international persecution of Assange. The mass media helped the criminal US by defaming Assange and they are still doing it because their owners support war and propaganda. Assange has been openly threatened with assassination by at least two US politicians. It is clear that in the biased US justice system, he does not stand a chance. To their great shame, successive Australian Governments have done nothing to help Assange. To my knowledge, only Senator Scott Ludlam in South Australia has criticised this abject failure to defend a great leader in the fight to stop wars by forcing transparency in government. (Please let me know of any other politician who has spoken up.)
GENEVA (5 February 2016) – WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been arbitrarily detained by Sweden and the United Kingdom since his arrest in London on 7 December 2010, as a result of the legal action against him by both Governments, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention said today.
In a public statement, the expert panel called on the Swedish and British authorities to end Mr. Assange’s deprivation of liberty, respect his physical integrity and freedom of movement, and afford him the right to compensation (Check the statement: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=17012&LangID=E)
Mr. Assange, detained first in prison then under house arrest, took refuge in Ecuador’s London embassy in 2012 after losing his appeal to the UK’s Supreme Court against extradition to Sweden, where a judicial investigation was initiated against him in connection with allegations of sexual misconduct. However, he was not formally charged.
“The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention considers that the various forms of deprivation of liberty to which Julian Assange has been subjected constitute a form of arbitrary detention,” said Seong-Phil Hong, who currently heads the expert panel.
“The Working Group maintains that the arbitrary detention of Mr. Assange should be brought to an end, that his physical integrity and freedom of movement be respected, and that he should be entitled to an enforceable right to compensation,” Mr. Hong added.
In its official Opinion, the Working Group considered that Mr. Assange had been subjected to different forms of deprivation of liberty: initial detention in Wandsworth Prison in London, followed by house arrest and then confinement at the Ecuadorean Embassy.
The experts also found that the detention was arbitrary because Mr. Assange was held in isolation at Wandsworth Prison, and because a lack of diligence by the Swedish Prosecutor’s Office in its investigations resulted in his lengthy loss of liberty.
The Working Group established that this detention violates Articles 9 and 10 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, and Articles 7, 9(1), 9(3), 9(4), 10 and 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Check the Working Group’s Opinion on Julian Assange’s case (No. 54/2015), adopted in December: http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Detention/A.HRC.WGAD.2015.docx
NOTE TO EDITORS:
The Opinions of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention are legally-binding to the extent that they are based on binding international human rights law, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The WGAD has a mandate to investigate allegations of individuals being deprived of their liberty in an arbitrary way or inconsistently with international human rights standards, and to recommend remedies such as release from detention and compensation, when appropriate.
The binding nature of its opinions derives from the collaboration by States in the procedure, the adversarial nature of is findings and also by the authority given to the WGAD by the UN Human Rights Council. The Opinions of the WGAD are also considered as authoritative by prominent international and regional judicial institutions, including the European Court of Human Rights.
ENDS
Mr. Seong-Phil Hong (Republic of Korea) is the Chairman-Rapporteur of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. Other members of the Working Group are Ms. Leigh Toomey (Australia); Mr. José Antonio Guevara Bermúdez (Mexico); Mr. Roland Adjovi Sètondji (Benin) and Mr. Vladimir Tochilovsky (Ukraine). Learn more, log on to: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Detention/Pages/WGADIndex.aspx
The UN Working Groups are part of what is known as the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. Special Procedures, the largest body of independent experts in the UN Human Rights system, is the general name of the Council’s independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms that address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world. Special Procedures’ experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent from any government or organization and serve in their individual capacity.
The Universal Declaration on Human Rights: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Library/Pages/UDHR.aspx
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights:
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CCPR.aspx.
Videos inside: These films are dated 21 January 2016. They show successful attempts by the Syrian government to make Syria safe again. The government has been able to reconcile with 'rebel groups' that recognise that war is tearing their country apart. Refugee activists please take note. Nearly the biggest problem that Syrians continue to face is the refusal by US-NATO and its allies, such as Australia, to recognise that we must all work with the Syrian Government to make Syria safe. Because of these evil US-NATO policies, it is most unlikely that these positive developments will be promoted in the Australian media, if they are transmitted at all. So, please send these films round to everyone you know, to help end this war and place pressure on western governments to stop intervening.
Getting back to a normal life in Al-Hussinieh
Al-Hussinieh was the first quarter in Damascus and its countryside to witness a reconciliation which allowed its residents to return and live there.
The reconciliation process took 3 months to be achieved, and it followed a bloody three-year war in the village which led locals to evacuate it, because of the clashes between the Syrian army and armed groups, but now, after the reconciliation, life is gradually getting back to normal.
Hundreds of displaced Syrians have been able to return to their homes in a district in southern Damascus. This comes as part of a reconciliation deal between the Syrian government and foreign-backed militants. Press TV’s Mohamad Ali has more on the story from the Syrian capital. [1]
As mentioned in the first paragraph, nearly the biggest problem that Syrians continue to face is the refusal by US-NATO and its allies, such as Australia, to recognise that we must all work with the Syrian Government to make Syria safe.
Unfortunately there are many signs that US-NATO actually wants to completely destroy Syria in crimes that would, without exaggeration, dwarf Hitler's 'final solution'. Despite US-NATO's irreversible destruction of Iraqi and Libyan society, the Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, has recently agreed with the criminally destructive US-NATO desire to subdivide secular Syria into many different religious and ethnic models.
To her credit, shadow foreign affairs minister, Tania Plibersek has said what a bad idea this is, that:
"The prospect of of partitioning Syria or Iraq, or redrawing its boundaries to reflect the sectarian divisions already consuming the country, was easier said than done and would likely result in fresh fighting.[...] “There are generations of people who have grown up with an identity as a Syrian or an Iraqi,’’ Ms Plibersek said. “Recent polls confirm many people feel a sense of national identity and feel the conflict is soluble.’’ For that reason, Ms Plibersek said, talk of redrawing borders was unhelpful at this stage of the conflict. “While the borders are reasonably modern constructs, opening the possibility of redrawing borders is not likely to reduce conflict,’’ she said. “New conflicts would emerge about where these borders were drawn.’’ Source:"Tanya Plibersek rejects Bob Carr’s Syria plan."
[2]
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Previously published (3/11/15)) on Russia Insider
An anonymous correspondent of ClubOrlov blogspot Alex claims that the current influx of refugees and migrants into Germany and other north European countries looks like a well organized endeavour. Neither politicians, nor society are prepared to cope with the crisis that may eventually lead to the disintegration of Europe as we had known it for millennia.
Do you remember the last time you saw a man with wild eyes, strange clothes and a giant sign around his neck saying “The End Is Nigh”? “How ridiculous and pathetic!” you might have thought. Now, imagine the reality of your country changing within weeks to a point where you come to the same conclusion as him, suddenly feeling that his approach might be ever so reasonable. When a large part of your fellow-humans catch a strange sort of illness, one which leads to complete insanity faster than in the worst zombie outbreak, you might find yourself out of more viable strategies.
This exactly is happening to me, as well as most people I know, right now, right here in our export-champion, model-democracy Germany. Sane people are finding themselves isolated and helpless amid insane politicians, an antagonistic press, paralysed communities and a large inert populace unable to even fathom what’s happening. I am of course talking about the so-called “refugee crisis,” but because even this name is working against us, I will call it what it really is—a war against Europe by means of invasion. It is now vitally important to call things by their right name, because this distinguishes friend from foe.
But it is even more important is to understand why this is a war rather than a crisis caused by refugees. Everything about this development bears the hallmarks of a military/intelligence operation.
First of all, look at the timing and the scale. It really took off around September, and within less then two months it is already threatening the stability of Europe as a whole, to a point where even the European “Leaders” are talking about the end of the European Union. Credible numbers are not available, but the German government estimates the number of “refugees” that have already arrived somewhere between one and two million, so the real number is probably much larger. Almost all the camps are crammed with far more people than is claimed. Some towns are being forced to cope with more “refugees” than they have citizens, some double as many. The estimates for next year amount to something between two and five million more “refugees.”
Ask yourself, why would millions of men (the overwhelming majority are young men) suddenly and collectively decide to leave their families behind, leave their country, travel thousands of miles and head for either Germany, Austria or Sweden, ignoring all the other safe countries on the way? Who told them that this would be worth it? Where did they all get the money to pay for it? Why was there absolutely no effort at any border to stop them? Why did this not start earlier? After all, the middle east has been a war zone for years—ever since the USA exploited 9/11 to start “spreading democracy.” How could this happen within days, weeks at most. Did the first hundred thousand send a message to the rest that it was OK for them to come too? If so, how?
Secondly, look at the character of the average “refugee.” Why are they all well-fed, well-clothed, self-confident young men showing no signs of stress or hardship? Why are they leaving their families behind? Do they know their wives and children can follow them later? If so, how? Why do these men not want to stay behind and try to rescue their countries? Why do they all own high-quality mobile phones charged with seemingly endless minutes? It is clear that the “refugees” have been briefed on exactly what kinds of social benefits they can demand, and how to go about doing it, and so they are audacious and become violent if met with resistance. They even demand expensive medical treatments, which are granted and taken for granted. Why? There are no background checks for any of these people—naturally, because there is no time to do ten thousand-plus background checks every day. For all we know, these people could be criminals, mercenaries and terrorists. An unknown number have serious diseases, such as hepatitis, TB and even the plague. No one keeps track of that, no one registered them, no one limits their freedom of movement. Those who register do so mostly with forged Syrian passports, which Turkey hands out like candy, even to black Africans who look nothing like the Syrians. Tens of thousands of “refugees” have “disappeared” from their camps, some even stopped the special trains midway to their destinations by pulling the emergency brake and ran off into the wilderness. Where to and why—no one knows. No one asks questions, but what is clear is that we have completely lost control over European territory.
Thirdly, there is the little matter of collaboration and treason. Even if this is a genuine refugee crisis, why is that none of the policies of the German/European government make any sense? And why is the press acting continuously and uniformly in favour of their policies, and is downright hostile toward the European populace? If millions of people have to flee immediate peril, there are a lot of different ways to care for them without endangering the integrity of Europe and ruining several national budgets. But instead of discussing what to do, how to do it and how to pay for it, the plan seemed to be predetermined, decided and fixed long ago.
The political “solution” is to soak every city and town in Germany, Austria and Sweden with people of unknown origin and intention. Flanked by a press hailing the process, underestimating their numbers and suppressing reports of crimes committed by the “refugees,” damning and demonizing every form of opposition. Every branch of government, all authorities and parties, in concert with the press, stand shoulder to shoulder in pushing this agenda against the overwhelming indignation of their citizens and closing their eyes to the fact that this is against the law. Censorship, propaganda, hate speech, defamation and open rejection of basic democratic rights against any opposition, are simply exploding right now. A prime example of this is Germany's vice chancellor Sigmar Gabriel, who called an undefined but large part of the German populace who dare to oppose this insanity “Pack” (vermin).
Everyone who takes a stand in Germany now, opposing any refugee-related policy by the government, is subjected to insults is labelled as a right-wing extremist, a hateful criminal and a danger to society. Some get singled out and persecuted in public using extensive defamation campaigns. The author Akif Pirinçci became the latest victim after giving a speech at the PEGIDA demo, the accusation against him based on a shameless misrepresentation of the facts.
Even the most peaceful protest is immediately threatened with a ban (but most are still granted permission anyway). Every speech or publication mentioning treason or comparable accusations is instantly subject to investigations under the charge of demagoguery or threat of violence. Current examples can be found daily in the major mainstream outlets such as Der Spiegel, Die Welt, Bild and the like. If this situation came about by chance, such a spontaneous consensus would have been extremely unlikely. But from day one this has been an obvious propaganda/defamation campaign against the truth and against the interests of the European populace.
The German press even earned itself a new name that sticks: “Lügenpresse” (the lying press) is a word that can be heard on every corner. In private, the politicians are being called traitors all the time.
The national railroad company is ordered to offer special trains free of charge for the “refugees,” bringing them into every corner of Germany the fastest way possible while delaying regular trains.
Vacant houses and apartments are confiscated by force and given over to the “refugees” free of charge. Every “refugee” given rental housing is paid for by the communities, as much as 500 Euros per person per month. This is a big opportunity for some scumbags to make money really fast, by making ill and elderly Germans homeless.
The police and the press have been ordered to suppress reports of any crimes the “refugees” commit, and so you will not find any in the press, nor even in police reports. But if you ask around, you will hear plenty of stories about rampant assaults and rapes in every city and many towns in Germany. Some “refugee” camps burned down, but most were burned down by their inhabitants, mostly in protest or because of minor disagreements. Police sirens are heard in every city every hour now.
When the “refugees” started shoplifting, then raiding supermarkets, the government told the retailers to keep quiet about this, and has been paying for everything that was damaged or stolen ever since. The only exceptions are alcohol and cigarettes—all other retail goods are free, no questions asked.
The small business sector has declared the “refugees” unemployable, due to zero qualifications, unwillingness to work and lack of language skills. However, the experts in the press somehow see a “big opportunity” to grow the economy. There is no critical discussion and no plan for the future. The only advice Chancellor Merkel gave to Germany was “Wir schaffen das” (We will do it), not elaborating exactly what we will do, nor how. But anyone brave enough to think for themselves can easily guess.
To keep it short, any political common sense and human instinct would prohibit such reckless, potentially irreversible, not to mention illegal behaviour. Its end result is clearly visible: it is either the ruin of Europe—mainly the countries targeted by the “refugees,” which are Germany, Austria and Sweden—or war. Since I don’t believe that either coincidences or stupidity of this magnitude is possible, this is either treason or high treason. At least two charges have been filed against the current government, one for organized immigration crimes, and just recently for high treason. About 400 people became party to this action afterward. They are unlikely to succeed, because the judiciary is complicit. But if it isn’t obviously high treason now, it will become so within weeks &emdash;called out by everyone, because there is no end in sight.
The rest of organized society is equally treasonous. The press has openly declared itself an enemy of democracy and the general public, and at best a collaborators. The church, even while immediately threatened by violent Islam, prays for more immigrants, damning people who dare to utter doubts. The intelligentsia is either silent or applauds our altruism. The treason is complete. Police and the military are completely overwhelmed. The military was reduced in size long ago to the point of utter ineffectiveness and has been stressed out by international missions. The police is simply not equipped to handle millions of potential enemies fanned out all over Europe, awaiting the order to attack.
For foreign observers, this may sound far fetched and exaggerated. But consider this: in some areas of Germany, when you call the police now, no one will answer the phone. When they do, they are unable to do anything. A friend of mine called the police hotline (not the regular local emergency number) and was advised to form some sort of militia to solve the problem. A town of 600 has a dozen policemen at most, but often around a thousand “refugees” to handle. No one will come to their help if these “refugees” decide to take what they seem to believe is theirs already—because someone told them so, I guess. We are adrift in a sea of enemies, and the front-line in this war will run along the welcome mats at our front doors.
I find myself in a nightmare unable to wake up. Most people feel helpless and unwilling to accept the sad truth: we have been betrayed by everyone (except perhaps the police and the military) we entrusted with our safety and our hopes for the future. Even though the end of the global economy in its current form seemed a given to me, this kind of treason and ill intent to bring it all down took me by surprise. Among the twenty or so people I talked to about this in confidence, absolutely everyone is convinced that this is heading toward civil war&emdash;and fast! The only question remaining is whether the Germans start it, or the “refugees,” or some other party. We are one major terror attack away from sheer chaos. I have heard from several people connected to European security circles that the illegal weapons market is completely sold out, with many dealers holding on to their weapons for their own personal use. This is a rumour, but since we have been forced to depend on hearsay for any real information right now, I tend to believe it.
There is a small protest movement making headlines in Germany and even internationally. The PEGIDA movement has been gathering every Monday in Dresden to protest European immigration policy for a whole year now. They have had plenty of support since bad immigration policy has given rise to this manufactured “Völkerwanderung” (mass migration). On the October 19—the one-year anniversary gathering&emdash;around 35-40 thousand people came to protest peacefully, only to be attacked by several thousand violent “protesters” from the Antifa movement. An allegedly anti-fascist group, so violent and fascist in their behaviour they would make for excellent recruiting material for the actual fascists of the SA or the NSDAP. One of the PEGIDA followers was beaten and severely wounded with a metal pole even before the gathering started. Several hundred policemen had to fight for their lives for hours. The Antifa, which is known to many as the second executive of the government, is nothing but an effective mobile force to quell resistance, exactly like the SA, only without the nice uniforms. Wherever demonstrations are announced, the Antifa members will travel there to express their opinion with “hard-hitting” arguments.
Unsurprisingly, PEGIDA is a prime target for hatred and defamation right now. As small as it is, the establishment seems to consider it as real danger, since their complete press gag order against it during the last year did not choke it off. But as important as they might be locally, the outcome seems to be irreversible. The invasion has succeeded already. With each passing day the numbers turn more and more against us. By now the best outcome is a civil war within months, reversing this development. The worst outcome is complete disintegration of European nations within the next few years, rendering large parts of the continent ungovernable. The divorce between the government and the people is almost complete by now. No sane person believes the press or the politicians. The ones who do retreat into fantasies of hate and self hatred. Never before was it more visible to me that this society is completely broken, with every key element, acting against both individual and collective interests, seemingly following orders while digging their own graves.
Once again, unquestioning obedience has taken over German society, but this time without the consent by the masses, because this time the final solution concerns them. The chaos that will follow will by no means be an accident: it is engineered and ordered.
Once again, yet another generation will have to answer to their grandchildren: How could you let this happen?
It seems that the current mass migration invasion of Germany was organised from the US and the UK, via tweets. A Russian group have analyzed net traffic to ascertain why the mass migration crisis to the EU started and why now. Apparently there were large spikes in social media just before the current big migrations to Europe took off and thousands of men packed and left for the EU. The Russians also anaylzed the content of tweets. Their analysis points to a social media driven event, a call, to come to the EU. There were, in fact, BOTs, that tweeted and re-tweeted. Most bot servers emanated from the USA and the UK, inviting people to Germany.
(Article by Eugene Black, first published in KP RU Daily on 18 September 2015. )
The text below is a slightly edited version from an automatic translation service at http://www.kp.ru/daily/26434.4/3305391/ You can check the original Russian text and the translation below: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http://www.kp.ru/daily/26434.4/3305391/&edit-text=&act=url
We are publishing this imperfect translation because of the interesting content, which we assume is likely to be true.
After reading an article in "Komsomolskaya Pravda", the Russian scientist Vladimir Shalak conducted its own investigation into the Internet
- I read a very interesting article Uliana Skoybedy in "Komsomolskaya Pravda" - "Chronicles of the death of Germany", - says Vladimir Ph.D. Shalak. - It struck me. I wanted to check what was really going on, whence the flow of migrants. I used the microbloggin network, Twitter.
Question to researcher: - Why, Vladimir?
Vladimir: - Twitter most quickly responds to all events in the world. Just a minute after the incident. It presents a lot of different points of view. And a lot of additional information. Who exactly wrote, where, etc. [...] The content analysis method was used.
- One thing is to simply read the text. Different people have different ways they assess, understand.
- Really, there are still heated debates around the "German Chronicle" Skoybedy. Some of our former citizens write that things are quiet in the Fatherland. It's Russian media hysteria, Kremlin propaganda. Although the head of the UN response, Chancellor of Germany, other European leaders is clear that it smells like kerosene ...
- There is quite a rigorous analysis method based on the frequency of words or phrases in body text, titles, etc. I've been doing this for 22 years. Logician by profession, after graduation, I worked for seven years at the Research Center for Artificial Intelligence in Pereslavl there and became interested in the content analysis of the texts. Including the Internet. To do this, set up special computer programs. Content analysis - rigorous method. If someone suddenly have questions, you can always refer to specific sources and to prove that it was not my imagination, but the harsh reality.
With the help of a computer system SKAI launched search and collection of messages at the request of «refugees» (refugees). I searched for Twitter only the original message. It was necessary that a person really had written the tweet, use that word. For the purity of the original investigation it is important. If you take more and retweets will be hundreds of thousands of messages that only stir up the picture.
Quickly gathered more than 19 thousand texts in Twitter. So I wonder what the name of the European countries most frequently mentioned in the messages. I chose to analyze the countries Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Great Britain, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Sweden. Well, and Ukraine.
It turned out that Germany is in the same context with the refugees mentioned in half of all messages. Ie two and a half times more likely than its neighbor Austria, and almost five times more likely than Hungary, through which tens of thousands of transit travel of refugees. England with a modest 6% - in fourth place. On the rest of the world and say no.
So what is going on with Germany? If we restrict tweets that mention only she, the vast majority of them - 93% - admiration for the hospitality and humane policy on refugees Germans.
• Germany Yes! Leftists spray a graffiti on a train sayin "Welcome, refugees" in Arabic
• Lovely people - video of Germans welcoming Syrian refugees to their community
• Respect! Football fans saying "Welcome Refugees" across stadiums in Germany.
• This Arabic Graffiti train is running in Dresden welcoming refugees: (ahlan wa sahlan - a warm welcome).
• 'We love Germany !,' cry relieved refugees at Munich railway station
• Thousands welcome refugees to Germany - Sky News Australia
• Wherever this German town is that welcomed a coach of Syrian refugees with welcome signs and flowers -thank you.
• Germany Yes! Graffiti on train "Welcome" to refugees in Arabic.
• Lovely people (video), the Germans invited Syrian refugees into their communities.
• Respect! Football fans will say "Welcome" to refugees in Germany.
• Thousands welcome the refugees in Germany, etc.
I drew attention to the extraordinary popularity of the slogan «Welcome, refugees», «Welcome, refugees!" I decided to repeat the collection of information already specifically with this invitation. Sobral 5704 original, emphasize tweets that contained the phrase «Welcome, refugees». Again, the exclusion of all retweets, which would be a tremendous increase in the volume of data being analyzed, but did not clarify.
The first three places in Germany - 76.8%, Austria - 12.4%, while Britain only 4.6%.
- So there was my suspicion that Germany is not all right. As my friend likes to joke Mikhail Dymshits, even if you are paranoid, does not mean that you have no one pursues.
- Of course, in Germany, life secure, high benefits for the workers, but there are other rich countries in Europe. Same England, France, Sweden, Norway ...
- But Twitter is inviting mostly in Germany! Intrigued. To continue to investigate, without leaving your computer. Estimates on public accounts published posts «Welcome, refugees» and references to Germany. Select only those accounts, which contains regional identity, built rating. The following chart shows the percentage of the eight leading countries that invite the refugees to visit inviting Germany.
Percentages of eight leading countries that invite the refugees to visit inviting Germany
Oddly enough, but the Germany with 6.4% turned out to be only the third place. The first two places divided between her loyal friends - Britain and the United States and 19.2% from 17.0%.
Interestingly, when the initial study, the interest of England and the US were nearly two times less than it is now.
The moral is that Germany itself is not particularly committed to ensuring that it captivated hordes of miserable refugees. But the rest of the world led by the US and Britain tearfully persuades them to take advantage of traditional German hospitality.
What a remarkable discovery you have made, Vladimir, congratulations! [...] a humanitarian catastrophe of migrants in Europe.
- Through analysis, it became clear to me that the current invasion of refugees already called the 'Great Migration' - was a deliberate campaign.
Digging Deeper!
- Sami these figures glow in Twitter, of course, will not. But the interesting artists who clearly on someone's team started at the same time entice refugees to the Germans.
1) August 30 at 10:25:11 in the film account was taken @ LotteLeicht1 message «Wonderful" #REFUGEES WELCOME ". Banners draped across football stadiums in #Germany this weekend. Via @ markito0171 http://t.co/8Nhyi7Ujfy »(" Great "# REFUGEES, welcome." Banners at football stadiums in Germany this weekend. ") It soon gained over 2000 retweets. Now they are much more.
Lotte Leicht - the lady is not easy. Director of the European Office of the famous human rights organization "Human Rights Watch» (HumanRightsWatch, HRW - Human Rights Watch), headquartered in the United States. Office of the Lotte - in Brussels, the capital of the European Union. But the refugees, as we see, not beckoning to Belgium - Germany.
Lotte Leicht
2) on August 30 at 8:08:37 in the tape posted accountJfxM message «" REFUGEES WELCOME ". Banners draped across Germany's football stadiums this weekend. (@ markito0171) http://t.co/fJYq0xXrXe », (Lotte Leicht similar message), who scored more than 1,600 retweets.
This is Jack Moore, a journalist from England. World ReporterNewsweekEurope. FoundedWorldOutline. Formerly at The Times / King's College. London, England.
3) On August 31, 23:59:06 in the film account was takenWashingtonPost message «In Germany, tabloids welcome refugees. In Britain, they propose sending the army to keep them out. http://t.co/gKMdQX4UDt ». (In German tabloids welcome refugees. In the UK, offer to send an army to keep them). The newspaper "Washington Post" is known throughout the world. Washington, you know, across the ocean.
Such messages, each of which gathers hundreds of thousands of retweets in recent weeks is very, very much.
- Further analysis showed that individual enthusiasts is not limited to, - continues the story of Vladimir Shalak. - On the whole battalions of reinforcements came bots. There are different methods to determine whether the owners of the accounts from which the messages are, real people or a computer program, managed from outside. The so-called bots.
- But he is good.
Here are just a few examples.
1) August 27, forty-botschanging_news, @ changing_news1, ..., @ changing_news39 US simultaneously in 8:00:33 - the working day has begun! - Publish the message «A new welcome: Activists launch home placement service for refugees in Germany and Austria http://t.co/jA3MX1J6ak #News #Change #Help» (Welcome: Activists launch service home placement of refugees in Germany and Austria) . All forty-tweets are gone in one second!
Belongs to the group of bots resource «Your News Will Never Be The Same» («Your news will never be the same!") The most amazing thing, despite its name five days later, on September 1, at 22:30:37, the bots send the same message, changing only the beginning of the word lowercase to uppercase. To look like a new tweet: «A New Welcome: Activists Launch Home Placement Service For Refugees In Germany And Austria http://t.co/C2J4QiTvoY #News #Change #Help».
2) Another group of 50 bots, which are united by the fact that they were created February 14, 2014 in the time interval from 6:02:00 to 6:24:00, published on August 31 at 17:26:08 the same Message «#hot Football Fans in Germany Unite with 'Refugees Welcome' Message http://t.co/aNfawL0Ogd #prebreak #best». (Football fans in Germany support the slogan "Refugees Welcome"). Their mestoracpolozhenie could not be determined.
Two Anglo-Saxon Allies deliberately invited the refugees last week to ... Germany!
Photo: REUTERS [Image not included in this republication]
3) 95 bots, September 1 at 07:29 publish the message "German Soccer Fans Welcome Refugees Amid Ongoing Crisis: As Europe faces the challenge of a wave of migration ... "http://t.co/9F74YFGPyJ. "German football fans: Welcome Refugees! "
All these bots come from United States, Texas, Dallas. It belongs to a very interesting resource «Media for Social and Cultural Impact» - Media for the social and cultural impact.
4) August 29 at 23:02, another group of 80 bots publish the same message «Thousands Welcome Refugees to Germany at Dresden Rally: Thousands of people took to the streets of the German city of Dresden on Satu ...». Identify regional nature of this group of robots is not possible.
Examples bots again goes on and on. The most curious readers of "Komsomolskaya Pravda" can test their detective skills in Twitter.
It is important to note that each original tweet Refugee exponentially immediately acquires a large number of retweets. As the nuclear reaction. Thread a masthead as kindly tells the same Twitter!
There is an illusion that Twitter harmless. Well, think of just 140 characters that can I say ?! This is a big misconception. Twitter - a serious impact on people's arms. It is massively used in the "color revolutions" in the same "Arab Spring" to raise people, especially young people, to overthrow the government. And in Tunisia, and Egypt, Yemen, Libya ...
- In Libya, by the way, NATO has used Twitter to coordinate military action against Gaddafi. It was created by a number of special accounts where they sent the information. Goes nondescript man on a camel, he sees several government tanks Gaddafi. Immediately send tweets with geo-referenced to within a few meters. And go home. And the tanks of NATO missiles hit soon.
This time, Twitter is used as a tool for the mass withdrawal of people in other countries. Arrange with the help of a new Great Migration.
Braking German locomotive
- What a great suit, "relocation", "invasion"?
- Here it is difficult to give a definite answer. I can only assume.
On the one hand, the Germans, who still suffer guilt for World War II. Wishing to atone for the sins of parents and grandparents create hothouse conditions for truly unfortunate of the hot spots in Africa and the Middle East. To once again prove to the world community, they say, they - not the Nazis.
- Refugees should not be confused with migrants, as are different categories of people. On the subject of refugees simplified registration form, receipt of social benefits and housing.
On the other hand, social networks and media used in order to direct the flow of refugees is in Germany, which is already groaning from this disaster, and even threatened to suspend the Schengen agreement.
In short, enjoy the German guilt complex.
Against the background of this blatant mockery looks posts that «US to admit 1,500 Syrian refugees by end of September» (US let in 1500 Syrian refugees by the end of September) or «US to Accept 5,000 to 8,000 Syrian Refugees Next Year» (the US takes from 5000 to 8,000 Syrian refugees in the next year). After all, today, every day of the German border crossing several thousand refugees.
The newly arrived claim their rights. Requires the provision of comfortable housing. Refugees well exist on benefits paid to them and do not tend to get a job and integrate into German culture.
There is a growing crime - rape, theft, murder, robbery, distribution of drugs. Along with the wave of refugees arriving and Adventure LIH ...
No need for a highly developed imagination to extrapolate this trend into the future.
From Germany, we knew it, we can say goodbye forever. None of those who came there and began to receive benefits, will never return to Libya, Syria, Iraq, and the list goes on.
- This will inevitably lead and already leads to the growing influence of right-wing parties. A growing number of their supporters begin burning placement of refugees being beaten. Since the refugees - it's mostly young people who are good, much better than German natives, speak with knives and other weapons, they will resist. Already, they blocked the road and claim their rights. Further more. You can expect to destabilize the internal situation in Germany. Inevitable conflicts on religious, ethnic or cultural grounds. How not to recall the prophetic books of Helena Chudinova "The Mosque of Notre Dame."
Germany called the locomotive of the European Union, which is going through hard times. The destruction of Germany - is the destruction of the EU and all of Europe. Is not this is the purpose of the hegemon of the ocean and its loyal ally - Britain, which, though in Europe, but on the island? Finally, the weakening of the United States of Europe is advantageous, as would lead to capital flows, will support its economy and for some time to retain world leadership. At the same time it will be a blow to Russia, as soon as a gamble with Ukraine failed.
One can only wish that the forecasts have not come true, but it hurts all converge at one point.
Shalak Vladimir Ivanovich, Doctor of Philosophy. Senior Researcher, Institute of Philosophy. Creator and leader of Baal. For 20 years, participates in the content analyzes of various issues.
Shalak
September 23, Vladimir Shalak speaking at a seminar at the Institute of Philosophy Academy of Sciences report "Social networks as a tool for the design of migration." Beginning at 17.00. Free admission. Address: Str. Volkhonka d.14.str. 5. 2nd floor. M. "Kropotkinskaya".
The former head of the Australian Defence Force, Retired General Peter Gration, has signed an open letter to the Prime Minister opposing bombing raids in Syria. The open letter suggests bombing IS targets could strengthen the organisation and divide the Australian community, while increasing refugees and civilian casualties.
Transcript of Interview by David MarkOriginally published on ABC World Today, here on 4 September 2015: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-04/retired-adf-general-blasts-strategically-dumb-move/6750164. a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-04/retired-adf-general-blasts-strategically-dumb-move/6750164">Podcast interview also available
DAVID MARK: The former head of the Australian Defence Force, retired General Peter Gration, has signed an open letter to the Prime Minister Tony Abbott, opposing bombing raids in Syria.
Australia is considering a request by the US to join its bombing campaign against the so-called Islamic State in Syria.
The open letter suggests bombing IS targets could strengthen the organisation and divide the Australian community.
I spoke to retired General Peter Gration a short time ago.
PETER GRATION: The central issue is that I believe this would be a strategically bad decision; in fact I would call is strategically dumb and I can give you the reasons for this.
To commit us to what is complex and confused war with a century's old religious conflict between the Sunnis and the Shias, the underlying issue, I think is really inviting disaster.
The second point is that the Americans have already been doing extensive air strikes for some months, and it hasn't stopped IS, and if we add our contribution to this it would be at best, a marginal increase and I think the inevitable thing, if we are seeking some sort of victory there, is that the conflict would have to escalate to get ground operations into Syria.
And, if we're already committed to air strikes, we would be part of that escalation.
DAVID MARK: Is that why you say it would be inviting disaster, because the natural conclusion would be a ground war?
PETER GRATION: Yeah, if we want to win, whatever that means in Syria, I think it's essential that, eventually there has to be ground operations and we would be drawn into that.
DAVID MARK: The Prime Minister, as you know, refers to IS as a death cult and he says they've committed some appalling atrocities and that we have a moral obligation to stop them. So how would you respond to him?
PETER GRATION: I think there's no doubt that IS have committed atrocities and altogether a very bad lot, but conceding that fact, that in itself is not an issue requiring Australian contribution halfway around the world, and I think the balance off between a moral imperative to do something about IS and the downside for Australia, the downside is much stronger.
The humanitarian issue is a significant one. If we escalate the air war, there are undoubtedly going to more civilian casualties; there'll be more refugees generated; there'll be more infrastructure damage, and eventually getting Syria back on its feet will be quite difficult.
DAVID MARK: We heard just the other day that the former commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, David Petraeus said Australia should join the campaign. He said there would be a military advantage in bombing IS targets in Syria.
How can it be that a former general of such high standing has got it wrong?
PETER GRATION: Ah well, it's a matter of opinion. I'd just point to the fact that the Americans have been having, been carrying out air strikes now for some months and it certainly hasn't produced any decisive effect.
DAVID MARK: Your letter to the Prime Minister also cites potential legal issues. What are they?
PETER GRATION: There are two things: first of all there is no direct threat form IS to Australia and secondly there is no UN cover for that particular operation.
I believe that will give them a strong indication that it would be illegal.
DAVID MARK: The Government might take issue with you about that issue of whether the IS poses any direct threat to Australia; they might argue that it does.
PETER GRATION: Yeah, I'm aware of that. What I think they're talking about is that IS will urge Muslims in Australia to carry out more terrorist acts, but the scale and the likely outcome of that is minute compared to the effort that we are contemplating putting into Syria.
DAVID MARK: We heard on AM this morning, General Gration, that there is evidence that civilians may have been exposed to Australian bombing raids in Iraq. If the Australian Air Force did take part in bombing raids in Syria, would they be adequately able to investigate any potential civilian casualties?
PETER GRATION: Ah well, it would be very difficult unless we were on the ground in Syria. It would be more difficult than it is in Iraq but I'm sure they would do their level best to carry, to do proper investigations.
DAVID MARK: General Gration, as a former commander of the Australian Defence Forces, do you expect the Federal Government will listen to your counsel?
PETER GRATION: Well, I do hope they listen and I do hope they listen to the points that we're making, but I'm not terribly confident.
I think there are some indications that the Prime Minister's mind is already made up, but I do urge the Prime Minister and the Government to consider these issues.
DAVID MARK: General Gration, we're seeing a humanitarian crisis in Europe at the moment as asylum seekers flee Syria and other countries in the region. Would bombing raids on IS targets in Syria have any effect on that exodus?
PETER GRATION: I think the only effect it could have would be to increase it. If we step up, increase air strikes, it will not only generate more casualties inside Syria, but will increase the flow of refugees from Syria outwards, to Europe. I can't see any other way it could happen.
DAVID MARK: Retired General Peter Gration, was the Commander of the Australian Defence Force from 1987 to 1993.
As has been quite obvious to most of us, the motivation and intention of the whole Western campaign in the Middle East remains the removal of Assad and the subsequent moves against Iran and Russia. IS is a Trojan horse, and the Great Refugee Crisis is the most egregious false flag yet devised to dupe the Western support base of the criminals in power.
Australia’s entry into the war on Syria has passed under our radar, thanks to manipulation of the refugee supporters – who are the main group who would be protesting against another US war in the M/E. My local paper published a letter today, (the third on this page) which explains for me – and probably almost me only – ‘no war in my name’.
But at the same time there was this report on the ABC from longtime ‘Friend of Syria’ Liz Jackson, interviewing former ambassador Ross Burns.:-
Saturday, September 12, 2015 08:03:0
ELIZABETH JACKSON: A former Australian ambassador to Syria says it's possible Australia could play a significant role in the ultimate removal of Bashar al-Assad.
Australia's Foreign Minister Julie Bishop is reportedly working with US secretary of state John Kerry on a political solution to oust Assad without promoting Islamic State.
I asked Dr Ross Burns, who was Australia's ambassador in Syria in the 1980s, whether the ambitious plan had any chance of success.
ROSS BURNS: I would think it might have some chance. I mean, it has more chance than any of the other moves which have taken place so far. It's very interesting that we are part of the stimulus behind it - if all this is confirmed, of course.
ELIZABETH JACKSON: Why do you say that it's interesting that we would be part of the stimulus?
ROSS BURNS: Well, I think our part is that - I mean, A: we're in the coalition on the air strikes; but B: we've also had this rather interesting relationship with the Iranians over the years. So we have - I mean, the Americans are not in Tehran; we are. So we can be a useful channel in that direction.
And I'd think the fact is that Julie Bishop was there a few months ago and seemed to get a lot out of the visit. So it doesn’t surprise me at all that she sees this as a bit of a challenge, where we can help out a bit.
ELIZABETH JACKSON: So do you see this as America directly using its ally, Australia, to achieve what it wants to achieve in the Middle East?
ROSS BURNS: Well, I think it's probably casting around for anything which can help at the moment. If you put together the hints from Kerry, the stuff which is coming out of Lavrov and the quite interesting statements from the Russian ambassador in Canberra, (NB this is pernicious fantasy...) I think you get a picture of a situation where people are beginning to realise this has gone on too long.
It's gone through many crises, many permutations and combinations. But we're now at a point where it's simply threatening to become a crisis of mammoth proportions.
If you - The way I read the Russian concern is that they're trying to bolster whatever effort the Syrian official army can still make to protect the Alawite heartland along the Syrian coast.
There really is a new strategic picture developing and I think everything has to be thrown into it from the Syrian side in order to prevent what could be the endgame. Now, when I say "endgame", I mean an endgame which might be a very slow endgame. But I think we know a bit more now about how the final configuration of this conflict might look.
ELIZABETH JACKSON: Well, how will that process of removing Assad actually unfold?
ROSS BURNS: What you have to set in place is to get all the players who have been backing various components of the crisis over the last four or five years to back off from their support of their - I wouldn't say "proxies" - but support of the groups that they've favoured over this time and just get across to them that the danger now is of ISIS grabbing more of Syria, getting further into western Syria where the greater part of the population is, where the greater number of minorities are and, of course, where the regime heartland has always been: in those coastal mountains.
ELIZABETH JACKSON: Is there anyone within his regime who looks like an attractive alternative?
ROSS BURNS: I can't think of too many in the family, I must say.
ELIZABETH JACKSON: I mean, it is a problem, isn't it? There aren't many contenders?
ROSS BURNS: Yeah. There are presumably some generals still around who might have a little less blood on their hands than the others. You know, that's what I think the Russians will be looking for.
And of course, the people who emerge in these situations in the past in Syria are people you've never, ever heard of before. That's how Bashar al-Assad's father came to power in 1970.
ELIZABETH JACKSON: Is there any successful precedent for this sort of transition in the Middle East at all?
ROSS BURNS: Ah, that's a good question. probably not in the Middle East, no. (latin America?...)
ELIZABETH JACKSON: So it would be a tremendous victory if they were able to remove him in this way?
ROSS BURNS: Oh, it'll be a terrifically difficult process; tremendously difficult.
ELIZABETH JACKSON: That's Dr Ross Burns, former Australian ambassador to Syria.
http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2015/s4311256.htm
There was more to this interview in the earlier broadcast of the program on national radio, which included Jackson’s comments about the removals of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qadhafi ‘not going so well’ – or some similar, which is why she says ‘so it would be a tremendous victory....’
Sometimes you hear something which makes you sit bolt upright, at 7am, and choke on the first sips of the morning tea...
Last week I received the final rejection from Julie Bishop, of my latest call for a parliamentary inquiry into Australia’s position on Syria, and the role of the state media, ABC and SBS in fostering and supporting the illegal and covert behaviour of our government.
What more can we do?
And I might say, that after a couple of days when barely anything has been said or discussed about the dangers of our intervention in escalating into a global war, on Saturday when there is nothing open for comment – no-one to abuse over the phone – we have this! By monday we’ll have moved on, or moved back to the tried and tested social issues that monopolise our ABC.
Courage!
See also: Engineered Refugee Crisis to Justify "Safe Havens" in Syria (7/9/15) by Tony Cartalucci | Land Destroyer and other articles listed below.
The article below is formed from the start of Germany is 'exploiting' refugee suffering to recruit 'slaves' via mass immigration - Marine Le Pen (7/9/15) | RT. The remainder of the original article consists of stories about appeals by European pro-refugee-rights to let in untold numbers of refugees. 1
As Germany welcomes thousands of refugees, with industries seeking ways to integrate newcomers into country's workforce, Berlin's move to temporarily bypass EU-wide regulations has met strong criticism from France's Marine Le Pen who accused Germany of recruiting "slaves."
The German drive to open its doors to refugees, as well as debated plans to resettle asylum seekers across the EU has been met with strong criticism from a number of politicians, including the leader of right-wing French party National Front, Marine Le Pen who accused Germany of imposing its immigration policy on the EU.
"Germany probably thinks its population is moribund, and it is probably seeking to lower wages and continue to recruit slaves through mass immigration," Marine Le Pen said in Marseille, refusing to admit that pure benevolence was Germany's only motive. 2
Le Pen criticised European politicians for "exploiting the suffering of these poor people who cross the Mediterranean Sea."
"They are exploiting the death of the unfortunate in these trips organized by mafia, they show pictures, they exhibit the death of a child without any dignity just to blame the European consciences and make them accept the current situation," the National Front leader said.
Following days of chaos and uncertainty, thousands of refugees – mostly Syrians – were bused from Hungary to Austria, and then brought by train to Germany, after the countries agreed on allowing migrants access, bypassing the Dublin Regulation.
READ MORE: Thousands of refugees reach Germany after Hungary and Austria surrender to exodus
By Sunday night almost 11,000 migrants arrived in Germany, authorities in Munich said. Germany in August registered more than 100,000 asylum seekers with some 800,000 refugees overall expected to come to Germany in total this year – four times the level of last year.
Footnote[s]
1. ↑ I have yet to see one of these pro-refugee-rights activists speak up against the West's attempt at regime-change in Syria, as Marine Le Pen has. This proxy war, overtly supported, since March 2011, by France, the United Kingdom, Turkey, the United States, Israel and the dictatorships of Saudi Arabia and Qatar has, so far, cost the lives of over 220,000 Syrians and is the principle driver of the refugee crisis. See YouTube Video of 3/1/13, Marine Le Pen and Alexander Lukashenko on Syrian Crisis, Marine Le Pen France's new Joan of Arc for Russians (22/3/12) | Live Leak, Le Pen says French government hiding true number of jihadists (20/11/14) | rfi English, Europe's Migrant Crisis Caused by West's Destabilization of Syria – Le Pen (29/8/15) | Sputnik News.
2. ↑ How the RT author can know that Marine Le Pen is wrong about the motives of Angela Merkel and the German corporate interests she represents, is not explained in this artcle.
See also: Marine Le Pen: migrants flee from death, brought by French (4/9/15) | Pravda.ru, Stephen Harper Promotes War in Syria as a "Solution to the Refugee Crisis": Canadian Government Is to Blame for the Death of Aylan Kudri (6/9/15) | Global Research, Enhanced US-NATO Military Action in Syria is Contemplated as a "Solution to the Refugee Crisis" (5/9/15) | Global Research, The Guardian: "bomb Assad and save the refugees" (4/9/15) | OffGuardian, Germany is 'exploiting' refugee suffering to recruit 'slaves' via mass immigration - Marine Le Pen (7/9/15) | RT, Europe has to deal with refugee disaster caused by US - Nicolas Maduro to RT (7/9/15) | RT, US to blame for Europe's refugee crisis: Venezuela president (/9/15) | PressTV
Below is a quote from Obama before he became president, counselling a completely opposite foreign policy to the warmongering one he now heads.[1] He calls for cooperation with Russia, a vigorous enforcement of nuclear non-proliferation, shutting down of the financial networks that support terrorism, pressure on the Saudis and Egyptians to stop oppressing their own people, and for an energy policy alternative to Big Oil's. Addressing the Bush government of eight years ago, he recognised the inflammatory and unfair process set in train by the United States in the Middle East. Yet now he pursues the same policy even more aggressively and dishonestly than Bush. He effectively heads a global coalition of war-criminals. Australia is a stooge in that coalition and so is the ABC, CBC, BBC, European Press, notably French mainstream press, and the Murdoch and Fairfax Press in Australia. Currently their greatest war-crime is to fail to reveal that President Bashar al-Assad is not an 'unelected dictator' but won overwhelmingly in a fair election in 2014 and currently offers protection to his people, but the Western allies and their corrupt Middle Eastern stooges - Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey - are driving the exodus from the Middle East by sponsoring terror-militia.
Speech by Sen. Barack Obama delivered in Chicago on Oct. 2, 2002:
"So for those of us who seek a more just and secure world for our children, let us send a clear message to the president today. You want a fight, President Bush? Let's finish the fight with bin Laden and al-Qaida, through effective, coordinated intelligence, and a shutting down of the financial networks that support terrorism, and
a homeland security program that involves more than color-coded warnings.
You want a fight, President Bush?"
"Let's fight to make sure that the U.N. inspectors can do their work, and that we vigorously enforce a non-proliferation treaty, and that former enemies and current allies like Russia safeguard and ultimately eliminate their stores of nuclear material, and that nations like Pakistan and India never use the terrible weapons already in their possession, and that the arms merchants in our own country stop feeding the countless wars that rage across the globe.
You want a fight, President Bush?"
"Let's fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality, and mismanaging their economies so that their youth grow up without education, without prospects, without hope, the ready recruits of terrorist cells.
You want a fight, President Bush?
Let's fight to wean ourselves off Middle East oil, through an energy policy that doesn't simply serve the interests of Exxon and Mobil." (Excerpt from speech delivered by Sen. Barack Obama delivered in Chicago on Oct. 2, 2002.)
[1] http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=433x33800 This speech is cited in many places and recently discussed in a new book, Lloyd Gardner, Killing Machine: The American Presidency in the Age of Drone Warfare.
Boatloads and planeloads of refugees are fleeing the globalist tradewars that are destroying their countries and the European Union wants Europe to accept refugee quotas. Everyone is worried about how Western countries are going to deal with refugees. But why doesn't anyone mention that all these wars the West is involved in are producing these exoduses?
"Migrant quotas are out of the question" in Europe, François Hollande has stated. After the French Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, it was François Holland's turn to voice his opposition to the European Commission's proposition of imposing migrant quotas on the member states of the European Union.
"Migrant quotas are out of the question because we have our rules" on "border control and policies for immigration control," said the French Head of State on Tuesday 19th of May at a press conference in company with the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel.[1]
Why the increasing influx of refugees, which are lately just being called 'migrants'? Although many come by plane or road, the most spectacular arrivals are by boat. Bigger and bigger boatloads of displaced people are currently floating in various seas and candobetter.net gets press releases daily on the subject from organisations like the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).
These migrants or refugees are all fleeing wars that have destroyed their homes and their jobs or are about to. Most of those wars are globalist trade wars led by the US and NATO, purporting to be humanitarian interventions, in the Middle East and Africa. You only have to see where US/NATO are sending money or soldiers to be able to pick the origin of the most recent refugees.
For instance, on 19 May 2015 (yesterday) the IOM informed us that "IOM Iraq's Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) has recorded 40,608 individuals (6,768 families) displaced by violence in Ramadi since 15 May. Of these, over 39,500 individuals (some 6,600 families) are displaced within Anbar governorate." This is the result of battles with ISIS, which is itself a product of the breakdown of Middle Eastern order through Western invasions based on non-existent "weapons of mass destruction."
But Iraq is not the only disrupted place. A huge proportion of Syria's population were stably settled refugees who are now without shelter and certainly in fear of persecution and death from the super sectarian so-called 'rebels and freedom fighters that US/NATO and Australia are supporting, of which the most spectacularly organised are ISIS, which the West now disowns because it has publicly turned against the West.
And ISIS is itself an army that people join because they need wages. It is a brutal and rudimentary organising and pirate economic force in countries that have lost much of their infrastructure and administrative systems, and where the people cannot even rely on family and clan anymore because the populations of whole villages and cities have been displaced.
Yemen, the poorest country in the region, is now being gutted by Saudi Arabia which appears to have gone on a rampage because it is furious with the United States for talking to Iran, whom it considers a religious enemy.
The IOM wrote on 7 May (the most recent report):
"The conflict in Yemen has now entered its second month. 19 out of Yemen’s 22 governorates are affected by airstrikes or ground fighting. The death toll continues to rise, with nearly 1,300 deaths reported since the beginning of the conflict in March. More than 300,000 people are estimated to have been displaced, while thousands remain trapped by the fighting, unable to flee to safety. [...]The availability of fuel and other supplies, particularly food and medicine, has severely diminished. Where available, these essential supplies are obtainable at exorbitant prices."
So, as long as Australia remains allies with US/NATO which is making a total mess of this region on a variety of flimsy pretexts, but really wants to dominate the oil production there, we can expect more refugees and economic migrants in search of actual economies. In fact it looks almost as if the US/NATO want to destroy the peoples of the Middle East in order to get at the oil. Excuse me for this observation, but it does look like that. The 'migrants' who survive long enough to take boats and planes to Europe and further away have only managed to escape the general destruction.
For the European Union - which is heavily influenced by the United States - to suggest that Europe now take quotas of refugees - economic and traditional - rather than suggest that NATO and the US all back off and out of the region, seems frankly ridiculous. The whole situation is a grotesque indictment of globalism and all the leaders of all the 'great powers' who have combined to destroy Libya, suppress Bahrain, and who persist in demonising and attacking Syria's government, supporting Saudi and Qatar aggression, stirring up sectarianism and occupying and privatising the wealth of countries where they have no business.
And of course, our interference in Ukraine will also produce refugees, although so far Russia has taken in the majority.
Then again, the neo-con influence in European Union is not above hoping to reduce wages in Europe by deploying refugee/migrant quotas. For them it is probably like making lemonade out of lemons or something. Unfortunately the same predatory attitude is apparent in Australian industrial relations.
NOTES
Translated from the French below from Francetvinfo media releases, Tuesday 19th May, 2015:
"Pas question qu'il y ait des quotas de migrants" en Europe, déclare François Hollande.
Après Manuel Valls, c'est au tour de François Hollande de marquer son opposition à la proposition de la Commission européenne d'imposer des quotas d'accueil de migrants aux Etats membres de l'Union européenne. "Il n'est pas question qu'il y ait des quotas d'immigrés parce que nous avons des règles" sur "le contrôle des frontières et des politiques de maîtrise de l'immigration", a déclaré le chef de l'Etat, mardi 19 mai, lors d'une conférence de presse commune avec la chancelière allemande, Angela Merkel.
See also: SANA, VoltaireNet | Bashar al-Assad interview with France2 (21/4/15) and
Full unedited video of President al-Assad’s interview by Charlie Rose of 60 Minutes (31/3/15).
Damascus, SANA – President Bashar al-Assad described in an interview with the Swedish Expressen Newspaper the outcomes of Moscow talks as a breakthrough and said that the UN envoy’s Aleppo plan, which is supported by the government, was spoiled by external intervention, renewing his warning that the terrorism imported to Syria will "bite" its backers whenever it has the chance. He also called on Sweden to influence the EU to lift the economic sanctions imposed on the Syrian people. President Assad also answers (yet again) re-posed questions about chemical weapons and talks about contradictions in US policy and treatment of terrorism since 9-11. The following is part of the full text of the interview, which was first published by Al-Masdar News on April 17, 2015. (The 22:59 minute video and part 1 and part 2 of the full transcript of the original interview 1 can be found in the Swedish Expressen magazine.)
Question 1: Mr. President, I would like to offer my most sincere thanks on behalf of Expressen for giving us this interview. Thank you so much. While we are sitting here, doing this interview, the terrorist organization ISIS and even al-Nusra is overrunning al-Yarmouk refugee camp. At the same time, al-Nusra is controlling the Syrian-Jordanian border and have taken control over Idleb. How serious would you describe the situation now?
President Assad: Whenever you talk about terrorism, it’s always serious, because it’s always dangerous, anytime, anywhere, no matter how. That’s what you always say about terrorism, and it is not related directly to the example you have mentioned, because this is only a manifestation of terrorism. It’s a long process that started years ago even before the crisis in Syria. Terrorism is serious and dangerous because it doesn’t have borders, it doesn’t have limits. It could hit anywhere, it’s not a domestic issue. It’s not even regional; it’s global, that’s why it’s always dangerous. In our case, it’s more dangerous, let’s say, the situation is worse not only because of the military situation that you have mentioned in your question. Actually because this time it was having a political umbrella by many countries, many leaders, many officials, but mainly in the West. Many of those officials didn’t see the reality at the very beginning. It’s more dangerous this time because we don’t have international law, and you don’t have the effective international organization that would protect a country from another country that uses the terrorists as a proxy to destroy another country. That’s what’s happening in Syria. So, I’ll say yes, it is dangerous, but at the same time, it’s reversible. As long as it’s reversible, it’s not too late to deal with it. It’s going to be more serious with the time when the terrorists indoctrinate the hearts and minds of people.
Question 2: But they are overrunning more areas in Syria. Are the Syrian forces and army weakened?
President Assad: That’s the natural, normal repercussion of any war. Any war weakens any army, no matter how strong, no matter how modern. It undermines and weakens every society, in every aspect of the word; the economy, the society, let’s say, the morals, and of course the army as part of this society. That’s normal.
Question 3: But is the army weaker than before? Because last year, we could see win-win effect from your side, from the army’s side, you overrunning more areas, more control over al-Qalamoun and other areas, but now, they have control over Idleb, as an example.
President Assad: It’s not related to that issue, whether it’s stronger or weaker. As I said, any war undermines any army, that’s the natural course of events. But in your case, when you look at the context of the war for the last four years, you have ups and downs. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and that depends on many criteria, some of them related to domestic, internal and military criteria, or factors, let’s say, which is more precise. Some of them are related to how much support the terrorists have. For example, the recent example that you mentioned about Idleb, the main factor was the huge support that came through Turkey; logistic support, and military support, and of course financial support that came through Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Question 4: Is it information, or is it an opinion?
President Assad: Information, everything, they were like one army; the terrorists, al-Nusra Front which is part of al-Qaeda, and the Turkish government or institutions or intelligence, were like one army in that battle, so it doesn’t depend on the weakening of our army. It depended more on how much support the terrorists have from Turkey.
Question 5: Turkey and Qatar and Saudi Arabia, they had an agenda four years ago. Did it change? Did they change that agenda?
President Assad: First of all, they’re not independent countries, so they won’t have their own agenda. Sometimes they have their own narrow-minded behavior or vengeful behavior or hateful behavior that’s been used by others’ agenda, let’s be frank here, sometimes the United States. So, we cannot say that they have their own agenda, but they haven’t changed. They still support the same terrorists, because this behavior is not related to the crisis in Syria. They supported the terrorists in Afghanistan, they supported the Wahhabi ideology, the extremism that led to terrorism recently in Europe, for decades, and now they are supporting the same ideology and the same factions under different labels and names in Syria. So, there’s nothing to change because this is their natural behavior.
Question 6: Which ideology you mean?
President Assad: The Wahhabi ideology, which forms the foundation for every terrorism in the world. No terrorist acts for the last decades in the Middle East and in the world happened without this ideology. Every terrorist bases his doctrine on the Wahhabi ideology.
Question 7: Wahhabi ideology, it’s linked to 9-11 and all the terrorist groups. Doesn’t the United States know about that link between Wahhabi ideology and terrorists? But they continue to support Saudi Arabia.
President Assad: This is a very important question, because the United States in the 1980s called the same groups of al-Qaeda and Taliban, in Afghanistan, they called them holy fighters, and that’s what president Bush described them as, holy fighters. And then, after the 11th of September 2001, they called them terrorists. The problem with the United States and of course some Western officials is that they think you can use terrorism as a card in your pocket, as a political card. Actually, terrorism is like a scorpion; whenever it has the chance, it will bite. So, they know, but they didn’t estimate how dangerous terrorism is to be used as a political card.
Question 8: Mr. President, the official Syrian delegation and part of the opposition have recently met in Moscow. Are there any effective results of that meeting?
President Assad: Actually, yes. We can say yes, because this meeting was the first time to reach – because you know we had many dialogues before – this is the first time to reach an agreement upon some of the principles that could make the foundation for the next dialogue between the Syrians. We haven’t finalized it yet, because the schedule of that meeting was very comprehensive, so four days wasn’t enough. Actually, two days, it was four days, but two days between the government and the other opposition representatives. It wasn’t enough to finalize the schedule, but because when you have a breakthrough, even if it’s a partial breakthrough, it means that the next meeting will be promising in reaching a full agreement about what are the principles of Syrian dialogue that will bring a Syrian, let’s say, solution to the conflict.
Question 9: It’s very important, what you say, Mr. President, because the United Nations’ Syria Envoy, Mr. Staffan de Mistura, he’s planning a series of consultations to begin in May or June to assess the chance of finding a common ground between the main states with an interest in the conflict. What do you think about it?
President Assad: Actually, I agree with de Mistura about this point, because if we want to look at the conflict in Syria as only an internal conflict between Syrian factions, that’s not realistic and that’s not objective. Actually, the problem is not very complicated, but it became complicated because of external intervention, and any plan you want to execute in Syria today in order to solve the problem – and that’s what he faced in his plan towards Aleppo – it will be spoiled by external intervention. That’s what happened in Aleppo, when the Turks told the factions, the terrorists they support and supervise, to refuse to cooperate with de Mistura, so I think he’s aware that if he couldn’t convince these countries to stop supporting the terrorists and let the Syrians solve their problem, he will not succeed.
Question 10: What is your opinion about de Mistura’s efforts?
President Assad: We discussed with him the plan for Aleppo, and it comes in line with our efforts in making reconciliations in different areas in Syria. This is where we succeeded, and this is where you could make things better, when you have people going back to their normality, when the government gives them amnesty and they turn in their armaments, and so on. So, his plan for Aleppo comes in line with the same principle of reconciliation, so we supported it from the very beginning, and we still support his efforts in that regard.
Question 11: Mr. President, Sweden is the only country in Europe that grants permanent rights of stay for people that flee the war in Syria. What has that meant, and how do you view Sweden’s policy?
President Assad: In that regard or in general?
Question 12: In that regard, that’s right.
President Assad: I think that’s something that’s appreciated around the world, not only in our country, and this humanitarian stand of Sweden is appreciated regarding different conflicts, including the Syrian one. So, this is a good thing to do, to give people refuge, but if you ask the Syrian people who fled from Syria “what do you want?” They don’t want to flee Syria because of the war; they want to end that war. That’s their aim, that’s our aim. So, I think if you give people refuge, it is good, but the best is to help them in going back to their country. How? I think Sweden is an important country in the EU. It can play a major role in lifting the sanctions, because many of the Syrians who went to Sweden or any other country, didn’t only leave because of the terrorist acts; they left because of the embargo, because they have no way for living, they want the basics for their daily livelihood. Because of the embargo, they had to leave Syria, so lifting the embargo that has affected every single Syrian person and at the same time banning any European country from giving an umbrella to terrorists under different names, whether they call it peaceful opposition, whether they call it moderate opposition. It’s been very clear today, it’s been proved, that this opposition that they used to support is the same al-Nusra and al-Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood. Third one is to make pressure over countries that support terrorists and prevent any plan of peace in Syria, like the one that you mentioned, of Mr. de Mistura, to be implemented in Syria, mainly Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey. So I think this is the best help and humanitarian help on the political title that Sweden could offer to the Syrian people.
Question 13: Embargo and war, and millions of refugees or people who fled from the country. This has been described as the worst refugee crisis since World War II. How big of a responsibility, Mr. President, do you have for this situation?
President Assad: I think to compare between what’s happening in Syria, even from a humanitarian point of view, and what happened in World War II, I think it’s kind of a huge exaggeration. We cannot compare, for political reasons. But regardless of this exaggeration, we have millions of people who are displaced from their areas to other areas because of the terrorist acts, and that’s a huge burden. Actually, so far, we bear the major brunt of the crisis. You hear a lot of fuss about what the international organizations and what they call themselves “friends of Syria” spend money and give support and donations to the Syrians. Actually, if you want to have just a glimpse of what we are doing, for example in 2014, last year, all those countries and organizations offered in the food sector 22% of what we offer as a country during the war. That’s a huge difference, which is 1 to 5.
Question 14: Inside the country?
President Assad: Inside Syria, yes. Regarding the healthcare sector, it was 1 to 18 in our favor. So actually, we are bearing the brunt. Besides that, we’re still paying salaries, sending vaccines to the children, offering and providing the basic requirements for the hospitals in the areas that are under the control of the terrorists. So, we are still running the country and bearing the brunt.
Question 15: According to SAPO, the Swedish intelligence agency, returning jihadists – there are many here in Syria now – returning jihadists are the biggest domestic threat in Sweden today. Do you agree?
President Assad: I wouldn’t look at terrorism as domestic or as regional. As I said, it’s global. So, if you want to look at Sweden as part of Europe or part of the Scandinavian group of European countries, you have to take into consideration that the most dangerous leaders of ISIS in our region are Scandinavian.
Question 16: This is information?
President Assad: Yes, it’s information. That’s what we have as information. So, you cannot separate this group of countries or Sweden from Europe. As long as you have terrorism growing in different European countries, Sweden cannot be safe. As long as the backyard of Europe, especially the Mediterranean and Northern Africa is in chaos and full of terrorists, Europe cannot be safe. So, yes I agree that it is a primary or prime threat, but you cannot call it domestic, but it’s a threat.
Question 17: Has Sweden asked you to share information about these ISIS fighters or other jihadists?
President Assad: No, there’s no contact between our intelligence agencies.
Question 18: Mr. President, in December 2010, Taimour Abdulwahab, a Swedish terrorist who was trained in Iraq and Syria, carried out a suicide attack in Stockholm. Recently, the same scenario in Paris, Charlie Hebdo, and even Copenhagen. Do you think Western countries will face the same scenario in the future?
President Assad: Actually, everything that happened in Europe, and I mean terrorist attacks, we warned from at the very beginning of the crisis, and I said Syria is a fault line, when you mess with this fault line you will have the echoes and repercussions in different areas, not only in our area, even in Europe. At that time, they said the Syrian president is threatening. Actually, I wasn’t threatening; I was describing what’s going to happen. It doesn’t take a genius because that’s the context of events that happened many times in our region, and we have experience with those kinds of terrorists for more than 50 years now. They didn’t listen, so what happened was warned of before, and what we saw in France, in Charlie Hebdo, the suicide attempts in Copenhagen, in London, in Spain, ten years ago, this is only the tip of the iceberg; terrorism is a huge mountain. It’s not isolated events. When you have those isolated events, you have to know that you have a big mountain under the sea that you don’t see. So, yes, I expect, as long as you have this mountain, and as long as many European officials are still adulating countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar just for their money and selling their values and allowing the Wahhabi dark ideology to infiltrate and be instilled in some communities in Europe, we have to expect more attacks in that regard.
Question 19: What is the most effective way to deal with terrorism?
President Assad: First of all, terrorism is not a war. First of all, it’s a state of mind, it’s a culture, so you have to deal with this culture. You have to deal with it in an ideological way, and that implicates the education and the culture. Second, those terrorists exploit the poor people. You have to deal with poverty, so economic growth is very important, development. Third, you have to deal with the political issue that’s being used by these terrorists in order to indoctrinate those youths or children in solving the political problems in our region, for example the peace issue was one of the primary reasons for those terrorists to recruit terrorists.
Question 20: Which peace? You mean the peace process?
President Assad: I mean between the Arabs and the Israelis. Solving this problem, because this is one of the reasons to having desperation, you have to deal with the desperation of those youths who wanted to go and die to go to heaven to have a better life. That’s how they think. So, you have to deal with these desperations. The last measure is exchanging information between the intelligence. War is only to defend yourself against terrorism. You cannot go and attack terrorism by war, you can only defend yourself if they use military means, so that’s how we can defend against terrorism.
Question 21: Mr. President, ISIS has asked its supporters from around the world to come to Syria and Iraq to populate their so-called caliphate. How do you see the future for ISIS?
President Assad: I don’t think that ISIS so far has any real incubator in our society. Let me talk about Syria first. I cannot talk on behalf of other societies in our region, because when you talk about ISIS it’s not a Syrian issue now; Syrian, Iraqi, Lebanese, Libyan, in Egypt, in many areas they have it. But regarding Syria, they don’t have the incubator, so if you want to talk about the short term, ISIS doesn’t have a future, but in the midterm, in the long term, when they indoctrinate the hearts and minds of the people, especially the youths and children. This area will have only one future; al-Qaeda future, which is ISIS, al-Nusra, and Muslim Brotherhood, and this is going to be your backyard, I mean the European backyard.
Question 22: In the middle and long term, it’s very dangerous.
President Assad: Of course it is, because you can take procedures against many things, but ideology you cannot control. When it is instilled, it’s very difficult to get rid of. So, when it’s instilled, this is the only future of the region.
Question 23: ISIS and al-Nusra, they get help, they receive support from outside, you said Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and like that, but so does your side too. You have Hezbollah fighting for you. Do you need Hezbollah here in Syria?
President Assad: As a Swedish citizen, you don’t accept anyone to tell you or to draw comparison between Taimour Abdulwahab, for example, as a terrorist, and your government, no matter whether you agree with your government or oppose your government. The same for Charlie Hebdo, terrorists and the French government, you cannot make comparison. So, we don’t accept as Syrians to have comparison between the state and the terrorist organizations. Our mission is to help the country, to defend the citizens, while I don’t think this is the role of ISIS or al-Nusra or the Muslim Brotherhood. Their role, actually, is only to kill people and terrorize them. So, you cannot make a comparison. Second, as a government, we have the right to ask for support from any state or organization or any entity that will help us in our war against terrorism. Third, because when I said terrorism cannot be a domestic issue, and this is wrong to look at it as a domestic issue, the good thing is to have cooperation with different powers in the region. For example, we had cooperation between the Syrians and the Iraqis even before the rise of ISIS recently during the summer of last year in Mosul. Before that we had good cooperation, intelligence and even military, for one reason; because the Iraqis were aware that the terrorism in Syria could spill over to Iraq, and that’s what happened in Mosul. The same is with the Lebanese. So, Hezbollah is aware that terrorism in Syria means terrorism in Lebanon. Chaos here means chaos there, so this kind of regional cooperation is very important for all of us.
Question 24: Mr. President, once again you are accused for having used chemical weapons in Syria. Two sets of tests carried out for The Times and medical charities reveal that your forces chlorine and cyanide, according to The Times and even Amnesty International, I think. What do you have to say about it?
President Assad: We always said this is propaganda against Syria from the very first day, to demonize the president to demonize the state, in order to bring the hearts and minds of the Syrian people toward their agenda. That didn’t work, and if you want to compare this propaganda to what is happening now in the West regarding Ukraine, it’s nearly the same; demonizing Putin and telling and forging, a lot of videos and things that only tell the public opinion in the West lies. This is reality. Western people should be aware about this. That doesn’t mean we don’t have mistakes, we don’t have something wrong or something bad going on, but at the end, this media propaganda doesn’t reflect the reality in our region. So, talking about the chemical weapons, they didn’t have a single evidence regarding this, and even the numbers that are being published by many European organizations as part of that propaganda were varied from 200 victims to 1,400 victims. It means it’s not objective, it’s not precise, and so far there’s no evidence that those people were killed because of this attack. The only evidence that we have when the committee came from the United Nations, it proved that the sarin gas was used in that area, but they couldn’t tell how and by whom, so they just keep accusing Syria of that. That’s not realistic, because if you want to use WMDs, you don’t kill a few hundreds; you kill tens of thousands of people, and that’s beside the capital, it will affect everyone. So, many stories regarding this issue are not correct. Second, we are the party who asked the United Nations to send a delegation to verify this allegation.
Question 25: You still do that?
President Assad: We did, Syria did. Syria asked the United Nations, not any other country. When there was proof that terrorists used it in the north of Syria, they didn’t try to verify it. They didn’t mention it. So it’s part of the political agenda against Syria.
Question 26: As you know there are many serious allegations against your government, about human rights abuses committed by your side. How much do you know about torture in your prisons here?
President Assad: When you talk about torture we have to differentiate between policy of torture and individual incidents that happen by any individual. When you talk about a policy of torture, the closest example is what happened in Guantanamo. In Guantanamo, there was a policy of torture by the American administration that was endorsed by president Bush and by his minister of defense and the rest of the administration. With Syria we never had under any circumstances such a policy. If you have any breach of law, torture, revenge, whatever, it could be an individual incident that the one who committed should be held accountable for. So, that’s what could happen anywhere in the world, like any other crime.
Question 27: Can Amnesty International or Red Cross visit your prisons here?
President Assad: We had many reporters and many organizations that came to Syria, but if you want to mention a certain name to come and visit, that depends on the kind of cooperation a certain organization and our government and that depends on the credibility of the organization. But in principle, many organizations and entities can visit our prisons.
Question 28: Mr. President, I have covered the war in Syria for the last four years. I met different groups and activists who were involved in the conflict. I even met soldiers from your army here. Some of those activists are actually not Islamists. I have been told that they fight for freedom. What would you like to say to them?
President Assad: We never said every fighter is an Islamist. We know that. But they are prevailing now, the terrorists, ISIS and al-Nusra, but if you want to talk about freedom, freedom is a natural instinct in every human since our ancestor Adam, and this is a divine thing for anyone to ask for, so it’s going to be illogical and unrealistic and against the nature of the Earth and the people to be against freedom. But we have to ask a few simple questions. Is killing people part of that freedom? Is destroying schools and banning children from going to schools part of that freedom? Destroying the infrastructure, electricity, communications, sanitation system, beheading, dismemberment of victims. Is that freedom? I think the answer to that question is very clear to everyone regardless of their culture. So, we support anyone who works to get more freedom, but in an institutional way, under the constitution of that country, not by violence and terrorism and destroying the country. There’s no relation between that and freedom.
Question 29: They blame even the Syrian army for the same things, as in killing and like that.
President Assad: They have to prove. I mean, the army has been fighting for four years. How can you withstand a war against so many countries, great countries and rich countries, while you kill your people? How could you have the support of your people? That’s impossible. That’s against reality, I mean, that’s unpalatable.
Question 30: If you could turn back the time to 2011 and the start of the crisis, what would you, with the benefit of hindsight, have done differently?
President Assad: We have to go to the basics first. I mean, the two things that we adopted in the very beginning: fight the terrorists, and at the same make dialogue, and we started dialogue during the first year, a few months after the beginning of the conflicts in Syria. We invited everyone to the table to make dialogue, and we cooperated with every initiative that came from the United Nations, from the Arab League, and from any other country, regardless of the credibility of that initiative, just in order not to leave any stone unturned and not to give anyone the excuse that they didn’t do this or didn’t do that. So, we tried everything. So, I don’t think anyone could say that we should have gone in a different way, whether regarding the dialogue or fighting terrorism. These are the main pillars of our policy since the beginning of the problem. Now, any policy needs execution and implementation. In implementation, you always have mistakes and that’s natural. So, to talk about doing things differently, it could be about the details sometimes, but I don’t think now the Syrians would say we don’t want to make dialogue or we don’t want to fight terrorism.
1. ↑ Whilst Expressen's Middle East correspondent Kassem Hamade conducted the interview fairly and professionally, the same cannot be said of all of Expressen's editors.
Unlike with part 1 of the interview, part 2 of the interview commences with an 'introduction'. The heading, in huge font, which precedes, is:
The poison gas victims al-Assad refuses to see.
The 'introduction' is:
He denies that he sold out his country to Iran.
He denies that he sold out his country to Iran.
He talks about his dependency on support from Hizbollah.
But Syria's President Bashar al-Assad refuses to admit that his regime uses poison gas, despite reports of several horrific attacks where children were killed.
Those who do take the trouble to objectively read part 2, in addition to those who have already read part 1, will find that the above claims are not borne out. Possibly the claims were designed to sow prejudice against President al-Assad in readers' minds in the hope that they won't commence to read part 2 of the interview.
The ABC reported today:
Mr Fraser — Australia's 22nd prime minister — was born into a wealthy pastoral family in 1930 and first entered Parliament in 1955 as its youngest MP. He spent nearly 20 years as a backbencher and in the ministry. He became opposition leader in 1975, facing off against Gough Whitlam and becoming prime minister in the wake of Mr Whitlam's dismissal.
From his first days in politics, Mr Fraser was an advocate of immigration as a means of boosting the population.
As a minister in the Gorton government, he became the first federal politician to use the word "multiculturalism" — an historic break from the Anglocentric past of his own party. Mr Fraser's multicultural conviction found shape in immigration policy in the post-Vietnam war push to bring refugees from mainland South East Asia to Australia.
"I believe we had a moral and ethical obligation," Mr Fraser later said. "If we had taken polls ... I think people would have voted 80, 90 per cent against us but we explained the reasons for it.
"We were also working to get people to understand that the idea and the reality of a multicultural Australia could be an enormous strength to this country, not a weakness.""There is strength in this kind of diversity so long as we understand what it's about."
Nothing wrong with any of these sentiments. After declaring war on Vietnam, a humanitarian refugee intake was logical and ethical.
Note also Fraser's intimated "Populate or Perish" attitude to population growth. Fraser was supporting humane refugee intake from Vietnam on an ethical basis and mass migration to achieve population growth - based on his opinion that population growth was "a good idea".
The ABC loves pumping this kind of confusing muddle of refugee / immigration / population growth rhetoric to support its propaganda campaign for pro population growth extremism.
Since when are refugee intake, mass migration of the relatively wealthy, and population growth management the same issue? Even an ABC journalist should be able to understand that these are three separate issues. If you look at what Malcolm Fraser actually did it is as follows:
But the ABC doesn't want to confront this contemporary reality because it is suffocated by confused, outdated and illegitimate phobias.
The US-Empire's present preeminent position of brutal global thug is a self-evident truth based on hard facts regarding the magnitudes of death and destruction; counted in millions of lives, millions of refugees, and nation-wide obliterations of civil infrastructure, not to mention annihilations of national and civil institutions. US crimes do not diminish the importance of injustices perpetrated by non-aligned regimes, but there is an obvious asymmetry of magnitudes that simply cannot be denied. (Article originally published here:
http://activistteacher.blogspot.ca/2014/09/obamas-isis-project-is-nothing-but.html
The US military-finance-corporate empire (US-Empire) is characterized by (LINK):
The nations entirely destroyed recently by the US-Empire include: Haiti, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and so on. These actions are outright crimes of mass aggression viciously targeting entire peoples, using combinations of military devastation, political overthrows, and brutal economic blockades.
No other regime in today's world is responsible for such premeditated and repeated acts of mass murder against entire modern societies. The US with its military allies, most notably Israel, is presently by far the greatest threat to peace and the greatest purveyor of terror on the planet.
This is not debatable by reasonable people. The US-Empire's present preeminent position of brutal global thug is a self-evident truth based on hard facts regarding the magnitudes of death and destruction; counted in millions of lives, millions of refugees, and nation-wide obliterations of civil infrastructure, not to mention annihilations of national and civil institutions. US crimes do not diminish the importance of injustices perpetrated by non-aligned regimes, but there is an obvious asymmetry of magnitudes that simply cannot be denied.
It is also apparent that the US-Empire's projects of nation destruction are strategic and premeditated. Having built an instrument for annihilating nations, it appears difficult for the US-Empire to not use it, irrespective of any moral or legal considerations. US "diplomacy" has become strictly an exercise in promoting its wars for geopolitical design.
It is in this realistic context of a ferocious, rogue and barely-constrained superpower that we must understand Obama's emanations about ISIS as nothing but a pretext to "remove Assad". And "removing Assad" can only mean destroying the Syrian nation and its people because the Syrian army and the Syrian people stand together and overwhelmingly support Assad against the foreign invaders.
The legitimate political dissidence in Syria was used as a front and a pretext to inject massive numbers of externally-funded foreign rebels into a proxy war for the US-Empire and its regional partners-in-crime. This is established by every credible researcher. (And, of course actively masked by the US-Empire's propaganda.)
And now an element (ISIS) of the injected foreign rebels is used as a pretext for all-out war US-style. For Syria, this means complete annihilation of the national defence forces, and total destruction of civilian infrastructure to bring the population to its knees and lay siege to any resistance. Straight-up crimes against humanity as the modus operandi for "regime change", a la USA, followed by US corporation predation, territorial control, etc.
Dr. Denis G. Rancourt is a former tenured and Full Professor of physics at the University of
Ottawa, Canada. He is known for his applications of physics education research (TVO Interview).
He has published over 100 articles in leading scientific journals, and has written several social commentary essays. He is the author of the book Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism.
While he was at the University of Ottawa, he supported student activism
and opposed the influence of the Israel lobby on that institution,
which fired him for a false pretext in 2009: LINK.
There is now a long record of interventions in foreign countries that have been followed by floods of refugees. For Ethiopia modern development began at the end of the 19th century. In a recently recirculated 2008 article, Irish journalist, Kevin Myers wrote despairingly of Ethiopia's overpopulation and the hopelessness of giving more aid. "By 2050, the population of Ethiopia will be 177 million; the equivalent of France, Germany and Benelux today, but located on the parched and increasingly Protein-free wastelands of the Great Rift Valley." Myers grimly anticipates a massive overflow of emigrants with poorly nourished brains to Ireland, to America, to Australia.[1] So, why is Ethiopia in such a mess? Was it always thus?
I think that Ethiopia's problems go back to the end of the 19th century and were caused by industrialisation and furthered by 'development aid' in the cause of more industrialisation.
In the late 19th century Ethiopia's population was only 4 or 5 million, when Mennilik II began 'modernisation'.
After Mennilik's modernisation programs, which included massive land 'reforms' (enclosures), Ethiopia's population climbed to 10 million. In 1950, as development continued, the population climbed to 18.3 million. In 2010 it is 83 million and climbing rapidly still.
What changed?
Ethiopia is one of the oldest sites of human civilisation and international trade. It had a variety of populations within, mostly rural, including hill tribes who farmed using ploughs. The various tribal populations mostly kept to their traditional areas and were sustainable within them, although for a long time there have been conflicts between adjacent states and an ancient slave trade along certain routes.
In the late 19th century there were massive land 'reforms':
The land 'reforms' coincided with dispossession and 'integration' of clans and tribes with Mennelik II who was influenced by Russian imperialists. Thrown off their land - particularly those on the plains, the people drifted to the cities, which were growing as agriculture was industrialised and roads and electricity were installed.
This process destroyed local self-government and sustainable local economies where there was probably still men's and women's land, and marriage opportunities would have been kept low through kinship rules that limited approved spouses, [2], with late menarche the rule, and low fertility through local traditional birth control practices, including contraception, spousal non-cohabitation, abstinence, delay of coitus [3] and co-operative breeding [4] (where people live in an extended family around a principal fertile couple, taking the roles of servants, aunts, aunties).
As happened in the Netherlands and in Britain,[5] local populations were disorganised by classes that got control of the food production and government and, lacking the land that had once brought them independence, they were obliged to move to new settlements, with only their labour to sell. This is the kind of system where women and children become slaves to their husbands, fathers, uncles and brothers.
Irrigation was put in place and former grazing ranges were intensively cultivated, which required dispossessing the peoples that had led sustainable lives there for millenia, without overpopulation. Malaria became a huge problem, indicative of land-disturbance and new population movements.[6]
In the 1970s there were more huge land reforms.
In the 1980s there were mass government resettlements.
The 'reform' has not stopped. It has accelerated.[7]
It is not difficult to find many accounts of how foreign aid assisted in all these 'modernisation' projects that led to the dispossession of the peoples of Ethiopia and the surrounding regions and to the current overpopulation problem and enslavement of women, for which more 'development' continues to be recommended, under the malignant pretext that overpopulation was Ethiopia's eternal burden.
What is in it for the countries driving more 'development' in Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, Egypt etc? One of the major reasons for foreign powers to maintain these countries in disorder is so that the foreign powers can continue to dominate the surrounding region with military forces, supposedly to safeguard international investments. The pretence is that these African countries and all those around the Red Sea and to the North of Syria need international aid and management, however it is clear to anyone aware of the petroleum in this region that Ethiopia could be a source of primary wealth, as it was for other reasons in Ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman times. [8]
Australians rightly complain that their country is overpopulated.[9] They also rightly complain that refugee and asylum-seeker numbers are adding to this problem. But they fail to link these problems to the wars the Australian government backs in the regions where the asylum seekers come from. Australia, like the United States in the film, Mother of 7 Billion,[10] adds over-consumption to its overpopulation problem. To maintain our commodity production and our importation of new residents to keep our land-sales up, we rely on huge amounts of petroleum and one of the most important sources of petroleum is the region bordered by the Land of Punt.
If Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Sudan had maintained their efficient local economies, there would be no excuse for foreign troops and corporations to be in the region, but Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Sudan would probably all be wealthy through association with the oil producing countries.
Instead the oil producing countries and the regions buffering them are in constant state of flux, overpopulation, poverty, and war and the foreign powers actually rule the region. We hear of Somalian pirates, trying to get control of the oil, but we call our own pirates 'peace keepers'.
[1] Kevin Myers, "Somalia is not a humanitarian disaster," The Irish Independent, 2008
[2] Fertility opportunities would have been kept low through kinship rules requiring endogamous marriages that reflected the local environment with up to 8 degrees of incest avoidance and other variations that greatly decreased mating opportunities. See Sheila Newman, Development, Territory, Law: The Rules of Animal and Human Populations, Countershock Press, 2013.
Details of the wide variety of these kinship impediments to marriage and fertility in Ethiopia can be found in Siegbert Uhlig, (Ed.), Encyclopaedia Aethiopica: He-N, Otto Harrassowitz GmbH & Co. KG, Germany, 2007, pp. 55, 405-406, cited by hbdchick at https://hbdchick.wordpress.com/tag/exogamy/. Although the afore-cited Encyclopaedia states that being unmarried is not an option in Ethiopia, this is contradicted by the presence of extended families. "The extended family arrangement is frequently found among Ethiopian families since children, male or female, who have married continue to live with their family. In some cases, unmarried aunts, uncles, cousins and even close family friends continue to dwell with the nuclear family. " http://www.africa-expert.com/ethiopia/family-and-housing/ ftp://ftp.cgiar.org/ifpri/ElizabethB/Ethiopia%20papers/diFalco_Bulte_2013.pdf,
Mhairi A. Gibson and Eshetu Gurmu, "Land inheritance establishes sibling competition for marriage and reproduction in rural Ethiopia"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3038728/#!po=21.4286: "We use rich anthropological, demographic, and socioeconomic data from five traditional rural villages in Ethiopia (Table S1), where wealth remains positively correlated with reproductive success (characteristic of preindustrial societies)."
Another likely indication of earlier prevalence of local birth control methods would be family-size trends in older women who may have had more links to traditional villages. The results varied according to tribal origins as well as religion. A survey in 1986 showed that childlessness varied from 20% to 3% in the earliest cohorts (women aged 59 or older) compared to 12% to 2% in the most recent cohorts (women aged 30-39). Although much of this was attributed to successful treatment of sexually transmitted diseases the article concludes that there is more to it than that.- See more at: http://www.popline.org/node/372469#sthash.OatvN3Yl.dpuf
[3] John Knowles (Lead author), Report, "History of Birth Control Methods," Katharine Dexter McCormick Library and the Education Division of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, 2012, http://www.plannedparenthood.org/files/2613/9611/6275/History_of_BC_Methods.pdf
[4] Cooperative breeding is similar to the extended families described (which existed in most pre-WW2 societies) in note [2] Traditional Ethiopian societies were comparable to traditional European ones in many ways, so I don't mean for the following references to imply that they were all hunter-gatherers, However, for some modern evolutionary research of the phenomenon in terms of inclusive benefits etc in human societies, see, for instance, Smaldino, Paul E., Newson, Lesley, Schank, Jeffrey C., Richerson, Peter J., "Simulating the Evolution of the Human Family: Cooperative Breeding Increases in Harsh Environments," http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0080753 and Hill, Kim, and Hurtado, A. Magdalena, "Cooperative breeding in South American hunter–gatherers, " School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University, PO Box 872402, Tempe, AZ 85287-2402, USA, http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2009/08/18/rspb.2009.1061.full.pdf+html
[5a] Sheila Newman, Demography, Territory, Law 2: Land-tenure and the Origins of Capitalism in Britain, Countershock Press, 2014.
[6] David N. Weil, "The Impact of Malaria on African Development over the Longue Durée,"
Brown University and NBERhttp://www.indiana.edu/~econdept/workshops/Fall_2010_Papers/Malaria_and_Early_African_Development.pdf: "The current geographic distribution of malaria impact may not accurately represent the historical burden of the disease. Packard (2007) gives numerous examples of how human activity has changed the intensity of malaria. Clearing forests and introducing irrigation often produces the marshy environment needed for breeding of Anopheles mosquitoes. When large tracts of land are consolidated and controlled by a small number of landowners, people living on these lands are often deprived of the tools for properly tending to it and for avoiding malaria infection. This problem is exacerbated when seasonal labor is used, as migrants may come from non-malarious zones and lack immunity, then return to these zones carrying malaria with them. As for Africa, he notes that “while climate and the presence of highly efficient vectors contributed to the persistence of malaria, conditions of production played an equal if not greater role." Webb (2008) similarly describes how the introduction of agriculture led to malaria endemicity in lowlands throughout the Eurasian landmass. Population density is also important to the nature of malaria burden. Packard argues that in the African contexts, low population densities associated with mobile hunter-gatherer populations would have been unable to support the P. Falciparum infection because of the speed with which the disease exits or kills the human host. The emergence of Anopheles gambiae is also believed to closely associated with the development of agriculture. For all these reasons, the current distribution of malaria in Africa today is potentially a poor proxy for the historical distribution." See also malaria references in Sheila Newman, Demography, Territory, Law 2: Land Tenure and the Origins of Capitalism in Britain, Countershock Press, 2014.
[7] "Ethiopia, 30 years after the famine," by David Smith (23 October 2014). "Three decades after images that shocked the world, country has become darling of the global development community – and the scourge of the human rights lobby." http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/22/-sp-ethiopia-30-years-famine-human-rights
[8] "This is pure common-sense commercial logic,” ... “There are numerous discoveries along the East African Rift in other nations and also it ends basically in Yemen, which is a known oil-bearing territory." "http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-21/gazprombank-s-gpb-global-signs-oil-exploration-deal-in-ethiopia.html; Ogaden Basin in Ethiopia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogaden_Basin; "Africa's next Frontier - Ethiopia?" http://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Africas-Next-Oil-Frontier-Ethiopia.html]
[9] And some of us can see that the same thing is happening here, with 'development' as has happened to Ethiopia.
[10] I spoke at a screening of Mother of 7 billion in 2013 and was uncomfortable at some of the assumptions made in the film. Most difficult for me was the assumption that Ethiopians had always had huge families. There was seemingly no inkling that Ethiopia had ever been anything except poor and overpopulated - of the sudden leap from 4 million to 83 million. When one considers Ethiopia's remarkably long and impressive history, this is quite an oversight. It was because of this film that I started writing an article on Ethiopia's long and different past, but it has taken me until today to get this short version up.
It is good to hear that Syrian refugees are coming back home to Syria. Before the present conflicts, Syria was host to many refugees from other countries, including Iraq, as a result of foreign interference in the region. Although the government-held regions are safe, new refugees were created in 'rebel' occupied areas of Syria, where atrocities seem to have known absolutely no bounds. But Syrians want to come back to Syria, and most Syrians want to keep the government, as was shown by the massive voting in favour of Bashar Al Assad in the recent elections, by expatriates and Syrians in Syria. Mother Agnes Mariam, who has remained a firm and identifyable force for good in the awful Syrian conflicts, heads the Mussalaha Reconciliation Initiative in Syria (of which there is an Australian branch). One of their main messages is to say that foreign powers need to stop interfering in the Syrian conflicts because they are making it worse - all having their own agendas.Originally published with the title, "Syrian refugees leave Lebanon's Ersal for Syria," on Thursday, August 7, 2014. Source: Agence France Press.
At least 1,700 Syrian refugees have left the eastern Bekaa town of Ersal, where troops have been battling jihadists for days, to go back to Syria, a nun helping them return said Thursday.
The departure appeared to be the first time a group of refugees has left Lebanon en masse to return to Syria, and comes after days of fighting in the border town that has killed 17 soldiers and dozens of militants.
A Lebanese security services official confirmed that the group had left Ersal and was headed to the Masnaa border crossing to leave the country, putting the number of refugees heading out at 1,500.
The Syrian nun facilitating their return, Sister Agnes, who is close to the Syrian regime, told AFP that "1,700 men, women and children have left the Ersal area for Syria".
"They are mostly from the Qalamun region, particularly from Qara,"
she said, referring to a Syrian area just across the border from Ersal, which was largely recaptured by regime forces earlier this year.
Sister Agnes, who heads a convent in Qara, said some of the 47,000 Syrian refugees in Ersal had contacted her around a month ago requesting her help in returning to Syria.
"The formalities were complicated because of the presence of some men who had not done their military service," she said.
But the Syrian government "has put no obstacles in the way of their return."
The nun, who has mediated between regime and rebel forces on several occasions inside Syria, said Lebanon authorities were also facilitating the departure of the refugees, some of whom had entered the country illegally.
She said another 3,000 refugees in Ersal were still hoping to leave and return to Syria.
In the neighbouring town of Labweh, an AFP correspondent saw the refugees packed into some 20 trucks, carrying their belongings as they headed towards the border.
The presence of the refugees in the area, and claims that some of the jihadists had emerged from Syrian refugee camps in Arsal has raised tensions in the region.
On Monday 31 March 2014, I watched the last half of Q and A, entitled "Human Rights and Wrongs." I was very annoyed by the hugely innaccurate information the panellists were operating with, which went uncountered by Tony Jones.The panellists were Egyptian author, Mona Eltahawy, Kenneth Roth, International Director of Human Rights Watch; Tim Wilson, Human Rights Commissioner; Ilwad Elman, Somalian peace and human rights activist; and Lucy Siegle, Ethics columnist The Observer.
A large part of the discussion concerned refugees and took in a pond of misinformation and ignorance . The worst misinformation was the impression given that 20,000 refugees = total immigration to Australia.
Actually, in addition to the refugee quota, Australia takes in about 200,000 non-refugee, economic immigrants per annum.
This was left unsaid, as ignorant panelists from somewhere else called our country racist on national Television and no one objected. The more the asylum seeker issue is conflated with immigration over all, the more confused the Australian public will become. Australians need to understand that refugees hardly contribute to Australia's population growth, but that there is a whole other stream of 200,000 plus economic migrants who do, enormously.
On the whole a middle class public take the ABC as the Oracle and many form their views according to what they are exposed to on the ABC. If the text messages shown mainly flogging Australia for its supposed immigration inadequacies were truly representative of the ABC audience for Q & A on 31 March, then there is a marked unearned guilt inferiority complex amongst them based on the ABC's continuous misinformation.
One of the panellists on Q and A drew our attention, as though it were an original thought, to the possible need for havens in Australia for overseas climate change refugees. The reality of this situation is that Australia, itself , the driest and least fertile inhabited continent on the planet may well itself have serious environmental problems. In addition, most of Australia's population and infrastructure lie on coastal land, much of which is projected to be lost to rising sea-levels due to climate change. The rest of Australia has very few inhabitants because it consists of deserts and rangeland.
Why would anyone think that Australia will stay the same while much of most other countries is inundated or in other ways environmentally destroyed?
Why do I have to pay for the ABC to let uninformed people from other countries lecture on immigration to Australia. The ABC compounds the general ignorance.
The real problems facing us are environmental decline, overpopulation, and the very real prospect of serious deficits of energy availability which will necessitate enormous changes to our total way of life. Q and A largely misses the point as far I’m concerned in all the episodes I have watched.
It would be helpful if Q and A would consider getting in some real experts one night to discuss the real challenges we face as a nation and as Earthlings.
March in March 1 [Note from candobetter.editor] Abbott took government by playing on the fears of Australians, supported by the Murdoch press. Fears that have been built up and sustained through systems of secrecy, lies and deception. This is the emerging pattern of westernised governments and corporations across the globe. And these techniques depend upon violence, fear and coercion. All of which were evident in the Manus Island riots and killing, despite attempts to demonise the victims (Howard pulled a similar trick with Tampa).
The truth is that refugees, particularly those arriving by boat, form a tiny percentage of immigration into Australia, and could not come close to the “legal” immigration figures (see here for Asylum Seeker Myths). Not to mention that we are bound by law to accept them, under our international agreements. The vast majority of immigration is officially encouraged specialist migration, done not out of any grand vision for Australian society, but solely to feed the industrial growth model which is destroying the planet and leading not to higher prosperity for Australians, but significantly lower in terms of: levels of debt; less choices of jobs; less educational opportunities; crowded transport systems; hideous urban living developments and ongoing destruction of the natural environment.
In fact, it is this failing growth model that is mostly causing the refugee problem in the first place. Our dependence on fossil fuels, Australia’s collaboration and support of the U.S in global manipulations to establish regimes that serve the interests of a wealthy elite; the general extraction of the resources of less developed nations; manipulations of markets by multi-nationals which ensure that those nations at the bottom of the global food chain can never climb up, the list goes on. The WTO has never delivered the necessary agreements on agriculture that would eliminate subsidies by the U.S and other wealthy nations so as to allow developing nations to compete fairly. In the WTO’s own words: “developing countries […] say developed countries have failed to implement the agreements in a way that would benefit developing countries’ trade.”
George Monbiot – a respected journalist for The Guardian newspaper - is exactly right when he states: “The real threat to the national interest comes from the rich and powerful".
In fact the failure of the multi-nationals to achieve what they wanted through the WTO has lead to the Trans-pacific Partnership (TPP) , an “agreement” being negotiated in secret and described as a “corporate coup”.
The manipulation of corporations is well captured in the following video parody of the Coal Industry – coal which is now polluting Gippsland as it has been polluting Chinese cities for years – to the sure detriment of their children’s long-term health. Not to mention 8 million acres of Chinese land so polluted that food cannot be grown on it. It is in such nations that the dark underside of our growth based consumerism is hidden from view, and the less said about it in the corporate controlled media, the better:
The underlying fact is the whole destructive system is based on force. Even the most passive resistance cannot be tolerated and must be removed by force, as Occupiers around the world found out in 2012 (including in Melbourne). This is confirmed by Oxford Professor Avner Offer who says this model is: “a warrant for inflicting pain.”
Offer also says: “Economics tells us that everything anyone says should be motivated by strategic self-interest. And when economists use the word ‘strategic’ they mean cheating” and he concludes: “one of the consequences of this is that economists are not in a strong position to tell society what to do.”
It is this coercive, cheats based system that the Abbott government firmly believes in and supports, and it is because of the faults and failures of this system that we must march in March.
In Melbourne: State Library at midday, Sunday March 16. Click here for other locations, including country towns
1. ⇑ Candobetter Editor: Some of us are a little cautious about urging readers to jump on a popular bandwagon without citing good cause. We have tried to find out who is organising it and the origins of the March in March. The 'about' page of the associated website is not very informative, but gives a link [which facebook questions, but just put it in your browser, it's okay] to a blog by Sally McManus, http://sallymcmanus.net/Secretary of the Australian Services Union NSW & ACT Branch. The blog makes many valid complaints about Abbott, notably re Workchoices revisit risk, although does not make the point that ALP state and Federal governments have been agents of similar ills. McManus does not acknowledge the tweedledum/dummer systemic political problem in Australia. Basically you are asked to march on faith and you are not told how this will make a difference, except perhaps you are meant to assume that Abbott might be constrained by a show of people marching in the street. Because of the reach of this campaign, we assume that there must be a lot of money behind it, probably because it will garner information (via the website) of value for the financers. GetUp and the SumOfUs are examples of other organisations that do this in the guise of marshalling popular protest. March in March could just be after potential contacts who might be valuable to the union movement or the ALP, but also for various refugee activist and other political groups, commercial groups and the Abbott government itself. Readers should be aware of this when they add their facebook page or give personal information out. Nothing wrong with giving information to a union or to a political party, but they should be upfront in asking. On the March in March there is no way of contacting the organisers for more information, which is also troubling. We have also not been able to find out who Joanne Newers is, the author of the pyramaid shaped note at the bottom of this article.
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Join hundreds of others at Fed Square to shine a light of hope for the people of Syria.
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The conflict in Syria has become the worst humanitarian crisis1 of our time. Friday 15 March 2014 marks the third anniversary of the crisis, three years of failure by the international community to end the appalling suffering. The Syrian people cannot wait any longer.
In 2014, with more than 100,000 people killed in the conflict (including 11,000 children) and a million children living as refugees, now is the time to call on our leaders to do all they can to make sure the people of Syria do not lose another year to bloodshed and suffering.
This event is hosted by Save the Children, Oxfam, World Vision, Amnesty International, Act For Peace, CARE and Caritas to highlight the plight of children in Syria and to encourage people to campaign for a peaceful resolution to this devastating conflict.
Guest speakers and a short visual presentation will be followed by a candlelight vigil.
1. ⇑ The estimated death toll since March 2011 is 130,000 Syrians killed. As terrible as this is, the death toll from the Iraqi conflict since 1990 has been far worse. Iraq was attacked and bombed in 1991 and invaded in 2003, after which a sectarian civil war was deliberately fomented by the occupiers. Sanctions, which were imposed upon Iraq from 1990, even denied medicine to sick Iraqi children and food to starving Iraqi children. As a result of these criminal actions by the United States and its "Coalition of the Willing" allies, including Australia, 1.3 million Iraqis sought refuge in Syria, according to Wikipedia. Had the Syrian Army, with the support of the Syrian people and Syria's allies, not fought so effectively against the terrorist mercenary invaders, the Syrian toll would be much higher. If Syria had been defeated, it would now be suffering sectarian killings and the the death toll would have been much closer to that suffered by Iraq. This toll is estimated to be at least many hundreds of thousands. One estimate puts the death toll as high as 3.3 million.
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