Grave events in the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea in recent days involving migrants and refugees –Rohingya and others – from Bangladesh and Myanmar confirm that vulnerable people around the world are moving in search of safety and dignity, fleeing persecution, abject poverty, deprivation, discrimination, and abuse. Such perilous journeys, whether by land, sea, or air, have become a global phenomenon.
2. Stop boat push-backs and measures to ‘help on’ boats to leave territorial waters, while ensuring that all measures taken are in strict accordance with the principle of non-refoulement and other fundamental human rights standards.
8. Redouble efforts, nationally and through strengthened international cooperation, to address ‘push factors’ and the root causes of refugee and migrants flows, including discrimination, deprivation, persecution, and violations of human rights.
John Pilger: Why does Australia spend $28bn a year on the military and war?
Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch, said on twitter that blogger and activist, Raif Badawi, was lashed outside a mosque in the Red Sea coastal city of Jeddah on Friday, (09/01/15).
Thirteen years ago, after the Towers came down but before the war started, I wrote a book that claimed there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and therefore there was no reason to go to war there. That book has stood the test of time, but as it turns out, there were WMD in that shattered, battered and bombed-out nation…just not in the way it was explained to us.
On Tuesday, The New York Times published a thunderclap of an article titled “The Secret Casualties of Iraq’s Abandoned Chemical Weapons.” The gist of it, in short, is that Iraq was littered with thousands of chemical munitions the US and other countries had sold to the country before 1991. US troops were tasked to police them up and destroy them, a process that injured many of them in ways they still endure today, but because the Bush administration wanted to keep these munitions secret, the troops who happened to scoop up a leaking mustard gas shell and woke up the following day covered in boils and unable to breathe never received proper medical treatment.
But wait, hold the phone: Wasn’t the whole point of the exercise about the presence of WMD in Iraq? If US troops found thousands of chemical shells, which they dealt with at their peril, why didn’t the Bush administration bellow the fact to the heavens?
I am wondering of late how the West is ever going to untangle the unholy mess we have created by backing violent fringe groups all over the globe in order to create disorder and regime change in target countries. This tactic has enabled us to maintain hegemonic control over strategic areas of the globe and to plunder their resources.
Isis makes a perfect example of this descent into chaos, while the fascists in Ukraine are another group in the early stage of development.
But now this gambit is unraveling because the pawns are turning on their kings and our leaders are finding it harder to deceive us that their motivation is the protection of democracy and our “Western values”.
In the West in order to deliver democracy to the third world our politicians tell us it is necessary to reduce our rights and freedoms at home and increase our taxes.
There is another elephant in the room that is becoming more visible as our taxes rise and freedoms are disappearing, and that is our governments are not doing these things for us.
Here in Australia and more so in the United States we are fighting wars for the wealthy and especially for the tax dodging corporations making up the military industrial complex. This industry is now being overtaken by the “insecurity industry” based around the CIA run fear business which makes most of its money from spying on citizens and industrial espionage rather than averting terrorism.
In fact this industry depends on our fear of terrorism and the latest security laws in Australia created in response to 30,000 CIA trained zealots in Toyota utility vehicles taking over Iraq oil wells, our rights and liberties are being butchered by our parliamentary “representatives”.
With CIA operatives fueling turmoil in Libya, Syria Ukraine, Chechnya Venezuela and Pakistan and then losing control of the many balls they are juggling, we are on the edge of international chaos with many millions of refugees being created. How much longer can we afford security?
I shudder to think of the difficulties we are creating for our children especially when this turmoil will be getting worse as global climate change adds to the social and economic cost of this insanity, pushing it beyond their ability to cope.
Most alarmingly the struggle to control Middle Eastern oil fields pits the words largest nuclear powers against each other and as I write this article nuclear submarines from at least five nations are shadowing each other in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Syria.
World War 3 is pushing closer to a start up date.
It is time we ordinary people in the West used what power we have left to dump the inept politicians and their moribund party systems and replaced them with men and women of imagination and the intelligence to think outside the restrictions of our corporate controlled consumerist world.
We need leaders with the courage to take on the fear industry and the corporate elites whose psychotic greed is killing us all. It is also time we challenged ourselves to step outside our comfort zone and confront the future rather than idealizing the past and importantly to re-engage in politics instead of leaving the field to the ship of fools steering our destiny.
More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israel-Gaza conflict, according to Palestinian medical officials.
The news comes as foreign ministers from seven nations called for an extension of the 12-hour ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, according to Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister.
“All of us call on the parties to extend the military ceasefire that is currently underway,” Mr Fabius told reporters, following a meeting that included the foreign ministers of Britain, France, Qatar, Germany, Italy, Turkey and the United States.
Israel’s military pledged to hold fire for 12 hours from 8am (0500 GMT), but will continue searching for tunnels used by militants. The Islamist group Hamas, which dominates Gaza, said that all Palestinian factions would adhere by the short ceasefire.
Meanwhile, Gaza health officials said rescue workers have so far gathered 40 bodies from under rubble since the truce started. Eighteen members of a family died from tank shelling near Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip shortly before the ceasefire begun, the Gaza Health Ministry stated.
Is this the start of the third intifada?
On last night’s Daily Show, every time Jon Stewart uttered the word “Israel,” his team of correspondents started to yell at him. “Self-hating Jew!” one screamed in his face.
Australia is pursuing draconian measures to deter people without visas from entering the country by boat.
In doing so, it is failing in its obligation under international accords to protect refugees fleeing persecution.
The New York Times, July 2014.
“….Channel 4 News cannot show some of the video footage, which often includes severed limbs and mutilated corpses, because it is too distressing to watch. However, the footage we can show speaks to the mass destruction of lives and neighbourhoods that is taking place.
The barrel bomb is just that, a barrel filled with TNT and shrapnel. When it explodes the shrapnel sprays around the blast zone killing anyone in its path.
But the horrific simplicity of this weapon should not lead you to underestimate its devastating power. Barrel bombs typically carry between 1,000kg and 1,500kg. On impact, within a 250m radius, everything is destroyed – buildings are flattened, cars are torched, civilians die.
The barrels are so large the air roars as they plummet to earth – the briefest of warnings before mayhem hits.
Current estimates are that a total of between 5,000 and 6,000 barrel bombs have been dropped during Syria’s civil war, killing at least 20,000 people.
1,600 of these deaths have taken place in Aleppo in the last month alone…Mendacious Morrison – take note!!!