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RE: Heartbreaking -- Drowned Syrian Boy -- Whole Family... - 9/6/2015 4:45:50 AM   
tweakabelle


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quote:

ORIGINAL: blnymph


quote:

ORIGINAL: JVoV

What's more important in the Middle East? Democracy or stability? And how can either exist without a government and military willing to keep them secure?


I could not answer your question - I think the most important thing is to learn from past mistakes and not add more new upon old; those mistakes I mean were made in 1919/20 when the Ottoman empire was sliced into nice little pieces by pencil strokes on a map
(remember what made IS popular at first was their promise to wipe those borders off the map)


all the states there are more or less artificial and unstable creations and have survived (and survive) by part-time suppression of minorities, denial of individual and collective rights and warfare against neighbours (being kept from collapsing by allying with whoever wanted them to exist for another while)


there is no easy way out of that mess, and democracy sounding so nice is just another word for minority supression - ask the Kurds and Armenians



Yes The situation in Iraq and Syria is labyrinthine in its complexity, operating on multiple levels each of which is fractious.

At the most basic level we have a civil war between on one side, an appalling brutal regime headed by dictator Assad. On the other side there are varying groups with various agendas that are as likely to be fighting each as they are Assad. Rebel groups such as the Nusra Front (an Al Quada affiliate) IS and the Free Syrian Army fight each other as much as they fight Assad. There are ethnic issues too, for people like the Kurds who seek their own homeland carved out of bits of Syria Iraq Iran and Turkey

This civil war has been subsumed by a regional sectarian conflict between Sunni Islam and Shia Islam that was triggered by Bush/Blair/Howard's disastrous invasion of Iraq. So most of the players have sectarian allegiances that most align with their poliltical allegiances but not always. And all of the local players have relationships with regional powers.

Which brings us to the next level of complexity - Syria has become the battlefield where proxy armies of various regional and international power are fighting it out. So there is an Iranian connection supporting Assad, a Saudi and Qatari connection supporting IS and other rebel forces with the tacit connivance of the West, which likes the idea of deposing Assad who is in turn buttressed by the Russians who have long had regional interests and ambitions. It's all happening within sight of Israel who never likes to left out of a war and intervenes mischievously every now and again when Assad looks like achieving a dominant position on the battlefield

All of which is taking place in the shadow of the West's 'War on Terrorism' where one of the more obnoxious local forces IS is attempting to carve out a new State or 'Caliphate' out of the ruins and the West, and most regional powers is determined to destroy IS (even though IS was armed and financed by Western allies such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar).

And the whole imbroglio is being reproduced on a smaller scale in Yemen, where many of the same players are active but their inter-relationships are different and sometimes opposite.

This is a brief and inadequate sketch of the various players but sufficient I hope to convey the bewildering complexity of this issue. With such diverse factions fighting each other, the multiplicity of conflicting interests, and the presence of international players stoking the fires, the only possible way to achieve a solution is for all parties to sit down and negotiate. The only institution capable of facilitating all the parties negotiating with each other is the UN, despite the UN's peace making efforts failing in the past.

To make matters even worse, it's hard to identify a single player that has any kind of moral standing or ethics (that includes the West). So it's a case of bad guys vs worse guys vs even worse guys. Caught up in all of this are millions of ordinary people who just want to live their lives in some kind of peace and security ..... fat chance. And none of the direct players has the muscle to deliver a knock out blow to its rivals which ensures the fighting will be ongoing .....

The only certainty is that direct Western military intervention, which is one of the major causes of the conflict, is not the solution.

Depressing isn't it?

< Message edited by tweakabelle -- 9/6/2015 4:50:07 AM >

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RE: Heartbreaking -- Drowned Syrian Boy -- Whole Family... - 9/6/2015 5:14:38 AM   
blnymph


Posts: 1598
Joined: 11/13/2010
Status: offline 		well some countries certainly have problems with taking care of the refugees, like Greece and Italy - those where they arrive but also those which are the poorest with the least spare money to spend for emergency food and shelter

and there are those politicians fearing to loose votes to right-wingers whether the Tories fearing UKIP, or the ÖVP fearing the FPÖ in Austria - in some way Hungary which is unfortunately (for the refugees) an unavoidable transit is showing us all already the ugly face of Neo-Nationalism
Neo-Nazi hooligans and trolls are of course hoping to gain politically - we all know examples how those react on troll-feeding

but I agree with NorthernGent, in those parts north of the Alps it is no real problem economically. These days it is a logistic problem to provide food and shelter, medical care, on a longer term schooling for the children, something to do for the adults except sitting, watching telly and waiting for the official decisions about their status for months.

Of course on a long term many Syrians, Eritreans etc might return again - if there is something left to return to. Many refugees from Kosovo or Bosnia did, but some stayed too. But right now when thousands of refugees arrive anew every day other things matter, and many other are purely philosophical (like "which side should we be on" - neither, except the civilians)

Of course it is nice that for a change Germany and the Germans gets positive acknowledgements these days for how they deal with the refugee situation - one should not forget that about 20 % of Germans were refugees themselves, or their descendants. So being a refugee is part of collective memory here or in Austria too. But these days the refugees are only taken in considerable numbers in 3 countries, Germany, Sweden and Austria. Austria is a good example that a small country even with limited space can cope up to a certain limit. It is rather appalling though how a few other countries keep ignoring the situation and the immediate needs for action.

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Profile   Post #: 82
RE: Heartbreaking -- Drowned Syrian Boy -- Whole Family... - 9/6/2015 5:26:44 AM   
Lucylastic


Posts: 40310
Status: offline 		I hope that we (canada) make allowances for more. But the paperwork nightmare really isnt helping.I shudder for the reality of the humanitarian aspect as a mom and a bleeding heart liberal it horrifies me what they are going thru. there are many causes for them, but our government is dragging their damn feet again.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/canadas-response-to-refugee-crises-today-a-stark-contrast-to-past-efforts/article26223762/
Canada's response to refugee crises today a stark contrast to past efforts
The Syrian refugee crisis has exposed a wall of bureaucratic hurdles in Canada’s renowned refugee-sponsorship system that did not exist during previous crises, when the country brought in huge airlifts of desperate people.

Migrants wanting to come to Canada as refugees now face long waits at visa offices abroad and for applications to be processed here. Refugee certification from another country or a United Nations agency is required before some kinds of applications can be reviewed.

Tima Kurdi is overcome with emotion as she looks at photos of her late nephews Alan and Ghalib Kurdi, at her home in Coquitlam, B.C., Canada, on Thursday, Sept. 3, 2015. The body of 3-year-old Syrian Alan Kurdi was found on a Turkish beach after the small rubber boat he, his 5-year old brother Ghalib and their mother, Rehanna, were in capsized during a desperate voyage from Turkey to Greece. The family stated that the spelling of the names had been changed by Turkish authorities to Aylan Galip and Rehan, but were in fact spelled as Alan and Ghalib and Rehanna.


In earlier humanitarian crises, Canada went directly to the migrants and accepted large numbers quickly. That stands in stark contrast to Thursday’s response from the federal immigration department to the death of a boy found on a beach in Turkey. A group of Canadians had applied to bring in his uncle’s family and hoped to sponsor the boy’s family next. But the family had not been certified as refugees by the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, or a foreign state.

“An application for Mr. Mohammad Kurdi and his family was received by the department, but was returned as it was incomplete as it did not meet regulatory requirements for proof of refugee status recognition,” the department said in a statement.

Canada has required such certification since October, 2012 – when the Syrian crisis was developing – for “group of five” sponsorships, a reference to the minimum number of adult Canadians needed to bring over a refugee family. But it is almost impossible to come by, said Janet Dench, head of the Canadian Council for Refugees, because the scale of the problem is so vast UN workers cannot assess people quickly.

“It’s just pitiful thinking of Canadians trying to put in an application as a group of five for a Syrian family, because you know right away it’s not going to be accepted,” Ms. Dench said.

The boy, Alan Kurdi, and his family may have been caught in a Catch-22. Tima Kurdi of Port Coquitlam, B.C., who was part of the group trying to sponsor the boy’s relatives, wrote in a letter to Immigration Minister Chris Alexander that the UNHCR would not issue the documents Canada requires without confirmation that the family had been accepted, and Canada will not confirm until it receives the UNHCR documents. “It is impossible to get the family out of Turkey,” she wrote.

Mr. Alexander said on Thursday he would meet with officials to find out the facts of the family’s case and receive an update on the migrant crisis.

Among the other bureaucratic hurdles is the fact that the waits at visa offices for Canadian officials to review applications – a review that happens after that of the UNHCR – range from 11 months in Beirut to 19 months in Amman to 45 months in Ankara, according to Canadian government figures.


And the immigration department’s central processing office in Winnipeg – which handled the application for the boy’s extended family – takes two or three months to look at applications.

Decades before the current crisis, Canada airlifted 5,000 people from Kosovo in the late 1990s, 5,000 from Uganda in 1972, and 60,000 Vietnamese in 1979-80. From January, 2014, to late last month, Canada resettled 2,374 Syrian refugees.




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(in reply to blnymph)
Profile   Post #: 83
RE: Heartbreaking -- Drowned Syrian Boy -- Whole Family... - 9/6/2015 5:43:22 AM   
blnymph


Posts: 1598
Joined: 11/13/2010
Status: offline 		thanks tweakabelle - I think it is a pretty good summary of the situation there.

I would like to add one more psycho-political point, the old "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" attitude revived, thus forming alliances, whether anti-Kurd, anti-Sunni, anti-Shia that are catastrophic in a region where there weren't any "nations", but dozens of ethnicities and religions living side by side, village by village, door by door for thousands of years. This I fear, is past already.




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RE: Heartbreaking -- Drowned Syrian Boy -- Whole Family... - 9/6/2015 7:34:21 AM   
cloudboy


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Joined: 12/14/2005
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quote:

This is a brief and inadequate sketch of the various players but sufficient I hope to convey the bewildering complexity of this issue. With such diverse factions fighting each other, the multiplicity of conflicting interests, and the presence of international players stoking the fires, the only possible way to achieve a solution is for all parties to sit down and negotiate. The only institution capable of facilitating all the parties negotiating with each other is the UN, despite the UN's peace making efforts failing in the past.


You need some kind of alliance and plan. Maybe an arrangement where Asad himself steps aside, someone more palpable takes his place, and Russia, Iran, and the US line up a cease fire.

Clearly professionals have been working this problem to no avail for four years.

What's startling is that after the Gulf War, the US and the World had the forces on the IRAQi border to take Saddam out --- and they didn't do it. The US State Dept. and intelligence agencies knew it would be a bad idea -- opening a can of worms. They were right.

< Message edited by cloudboy -- 9/6/2015 7:41:42 AM >

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RE: Heartbreaking -- Drowned Syrian Boy -- Whole Family... - 9/6/2015 7:40:13 AM   
blnymph


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Joined: 11/13/2010
Status: offline 		nice idea for sure - but honestly why should Assad step aside?

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Profile   Post #: 86
RE: Heartbreaking -- Drowned Syrian Boy -- Whole Family... - 9/6/2015 7:45:05 AM   
cloudboy


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Look, I don't know very much at all. But, sometimes the only way forward is for an unpopular dictator to step down. I can see how the US would suggest this, and how Russia would say, "don't listen to them."

I don't think any kind of new government could feature Asad still in power.

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Profile   Post #: 87
RE: Heartbreaking -- Drowned Syrian Boy -- Whole Family... - 9/6/2015 8:10:27 AM   
blnymph


Posts: 1598
Joined: 11/13/2010
Status: offline 		from what I know and see:
Assad has the reputation of protecting the minorities in Syria and therefore has various supporters and allies who ll keep him in power up to the moment he is decisively beaten - and he knows he has a Ghaddafi style reputation so there is hardly any place for him to escape to

many have good reason to fear Assad being beaten whether supporters of him or not - they fear Sunni powers whether Free Syrian or IS will use any victory to butcher the minorities - and I fear those fears are justified too

this is not a civil war of the people against a dictator, it is a war of parties and nobody really cares about those not belonging to one's own

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Profile   Post #: 88
RE: Heartbreaking -- Drowned Syrian Boy -- Whole Family... - 9/6/2015 8:35:38 AM   
Real0ne


Posts: 21189
Joined: 10/25/2004
Status: offline 		unless they have oil or some other resource that the US of K deems it should control.

_____________________________

"We the Borg" of the us imperialists....resistance is futile

Democracy; The 'People' voted on 'which' amendment?

Yesterdays tinfoil is today's reality!

"No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session

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Profile   Post #: 89
RE: Heartbreaking -- Drowned Syrian Boy -- Whole Family... - 9/6/2015 9:02:02 AM   
blnymph


Posts: 1598
Joined: 11/13/2010
Status: offline 		Syria has no oil ...

for those of you interested: latest figures; 13000 refugees were/are transported by austrian railways across Austria yesterday and today so far

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Profile   Post #: 90
RE: Heartbreaking -- Drowned Syrian Boy -- Whole Family... - 9/6/2015 9:20:41 AM   
Real0ne


Posts: 21189
Joined: 10/25/2004
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: blnymph


quote:

ORIGINAL: JVoV

What's more important in the Middle East? Democracy or stability? And how can either exist without a government and military willing to keep them secure?


I could not answer your question - I think the most important thing is to learn from past mistakes and not add more new upon old; those mistakes I mean were made in 1919/20 when the Ottoman empire was sliced into nice little pieces by pencil strokes on a map
(remember what made IS popular at first was their promise to wipe those borders off the map)


all the states there are more or less artificial and unstable creations and have survived (and survive) by part-time suppression of minorities, denial of individual and collective rights and warfare against neighbours (being kept from collapsing by allying with whoever wanted them to exist for another while)


there is no easy way out of that mess, and democracy sounding so nice is just another word for minority supression - ask the Kurds and Armenians





wow sounds just like the US.

and americans cant understand why these people prefer not to have democracy american style






_____________________________

"We the Borg" of the us imperialists....resistance is futile

Democracy; The 'People' voted on 'which' amendment?

Yesterdays tinfoil is today's reality!

"No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session

(in reply to blnymph)
Profile   Post #: 91
RE: Heartbreaking -- Drowned Syrian Boy -- Whole Family... - 9/6/2015 9:24:40 AM   
Real0ne


Posts: 21189
Joined: 10/25/2004
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: blnymph

Syria has no oil ...

for those of you interested: latest figures; 13000 refugees were/are transported by austrian railways across Austria yesterday and today so far



But is syria in dissent to american gubmint interests?

lets not forget the grand chessboard by brezezinski presidential advisor

http://www.takeoverworld.info/Grand_Chessboard.pdf



< Message edited by Real0ne -- 9/6/2015 9:25:13 AM >

_____________________________

"We the Borg" of the us imperialists....resistance is futile

Democracy; The 'People' voted on 'which' amendment?

Yesterdays tinfoil is today's reality!

"No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session

(in reply to blnymph)
Profile   Post #: 92
RE: Heartbreaking -- Drowned Syrian Boy -- Whole Family... - 9/6/2015 9:31:55 AM   
Sanity


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From: Nampa, Idaho USA
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quote:

ORIGINAL: tweakabelle

Yes The situation in Iraq and Syria is labyrinthine in its complexity, operating on multiple levels each of which is fractious.



So complicated that George W. Bush accurately predicted the situation years in advance

George W. Bush was right about Iraq pullout

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Profile   Post #: 93
RE: Heartbreaking -- Drowned Syrian Boy -- Whole Family... - 9/6/2015 9:35:03 AM   
Sanity


Posts: 22039
Joined: 6/14/2006
From: Nampa, Idaho USA
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: cloudboy

Clearly professionals have been working this problem to no avail for four years.



A community organizer has been working on it, got us where we are now

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Profile   Post #: 94
RE: Heartbreaking -- Drowned Syrian Boy -- Whole Family... - 9/6/2015 9:40:31 AM   
blnymph


Posts: 1598
Joined: 11/13/2010
Status: offline 		I am not familiar with US interest in detail so I d not comment on these much

the US is party indirectly as is NATO insofar already as allied Turkey has its own interests and priorities
(btw did you notice that Turkish authorities did change the names of the refugee family? Odd, dont you think, why should they do that? - unless remembering that their name was ... Kurd - and they were Kurds too of course ...)

and Turkey is controling every measures taken or events happening touching Turkish territory

so the west is maybe not knee-deep but with its toes in the muddy waters of all this

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Profile   Post #: 95
RE: Heartbreaking -- Drowned Syrian Boy -- Whole Family... - 9/6/2015 10:37:41 AM   
blnymph


Posts: 1598
Joined: 11/13/2010
Status: offline 		an interesting quotation from "the prophet GWB" article in the Washington Post:

"But if Bush did speak out, here is what he ought to say:"

It is all a daydream ...

so I d say it is not yet time to found a "Church of George W the prophet"



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Profile   Post #: 96
RE: Heartbreaking -- Drowned Syrian Boy -- Whole Family... - 9/6/2015 10:40:14 AM   
kdsub


Posts: 12180
Joined: 8/16/2007
Status: offline 		Did I read NorthernGent that Germany is expecting 800,000 immigrants if they open the gates.... It seems to me no matter how affluent or charitable it would be a huge immediate strain on housing and welfare. Can you blame them for not wanting to take on the economic cost and potential problems with radicalized immigrants?

Butch

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RE: Heartbreaking -- Drowned Syrian Boy -- Whole Family... - 9/6/2015 10:43:39 AM   
Sanity


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From: Nampa, Idaho USA
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: kdsub

Did I read NorthernGent that Germany is expecting 800,000 immigrants if they open the gates.... It seems to me no matter how affluent or charitable it would be a huge immediate strain on housing and welfare. Can you blame them for not wanting to take on the economic cost and potential problems with radicalized immigrants?

Butch


Aw cmon Butch, youre not thinking that ISIS could be so low that they would use this golden opportunity to infiltrate the West are you

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Profile   Post #: 98
RE: Heartbreaking -- Drowned Syrian Boy -- Whole Family... - 9/6/2015 10:49:32 AM   
Sanity


Posts: 22039
Joined: 6/14/2006
From: Nampa, Idaho USA
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: blnymph

an interesting quotation from "the prophet GWB" article in the Washington Post:

"But if Bush did speak out, here is what he ought to say:"

It is all a daydream ...

so I d say it is not yet time to found a "Church of George W the prophet"





(Derp)

IF he were to comment on Obama

The quoted remarks that were cited were from speeches, addresses and press conferences that he gave, the article makes that very clear

(I am sorry that you are so confused)

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RE: Heartbreaking -- Drowned Syrian Boy -- Whole Family... - 9/6/2015 10:50:17 AM   
cloudboy


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Typically new arrivals work harder than established residents. What do you think has propelled the USA for so many years? Hungry, driven, appreciative immigrants.

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Profile   Post #: 100
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