(We) can do better

Interviews with Syrians in Aleppo regarding how they perceive the defeat of the 'rebels', whom they call terrorists. They feel they have been liberated and they consider that France and its allies (US-NATO) were keeping them imprisoned by supporting the terrorists. Arabic, French and English, with French and English subtitles. A number of christian church officials are interviewed.

Good News: Washington Frozen Out of Syria Peace Plan

"As the US mainstream media obsessed last week about Russia's supposed “hacking” of the US elections and President Obama’s final round of Russia sanctions in response, something very important was taking place under the media radar. As a result of a meeting between foreign ministers of Russia, Iran, and Turkey last month, a ceasefire in Syria has been worked out and is being implemented. So far it appears to be holding, and after nearly six years of horrible warfare the people of Syria are finally facing the possibility of rebuilding their lives." [...]

"The fact is, it is often US involvement in “solving” these crises that actually perpetuates them. Consider the 60-plus year state of war between North and South Korea. Has US intervention done anything to solve the problem? How about our decades of meddling in the Israel-Palestine dispute? Are we any closer to peace between the Israelis and Palestinians despite the billions we have spent bribing and interfering?" Ron Paul. Read more here: Good News: Washington Frozen Out of Syria Peace Plan

Just a quick update for our authors and readers to explain how and why candobetter.net disappeared without explanation for several days after Christmas. We were hacked, yet again, by miserable varmints who don't seem to believe in freedom of the press and especially hate the alternative media. Our thanks to LVPShosting for their help in recovering the site. We have replaced nearly all the lost articles now. We will be establishing more secure sites over the next few weeks. We have had to close all the writers' accounts temporarily. If you are an author, please contact Sheila to have your account reopened and be sure then to reset your password. Seasons Greetings to all (except the keyboard spiders).

The UN has concluded its investigation of the 19 September bombing of a UN aid convoy in Syria. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon released the summary of the Board of Inquiry’s report on 21 December, but it received virtually no publicity, unlike the wall-to-wall reporting of the USA’s and UK’s hysterical accusations at the time that Russia deliberately bombed the convoy. The lack of publicity is doubtless because the report proves there was no evidence for the accusations against Russia.

Following is a chronology of the incident:

On 11 September, Russia and the USA agreed to a ceasefire in Syria, which Barack Obama insisted must last seven days before any further Russian-US cooperation in the five-year conflict. Senior officials in the Obama administration, including Defence Secretary Ash Carter, were known to be opposed to any cooperation with Russia.

On 17 September, US, Australian and other members of the US-led coalition in Syria bombed Syrian Arab Army soldiers holding a position against ISIS at Deir ez-Zor. More than 62 soldiers were killed in an attack that lasted more than an hour, and when a Russian officer called the US military’s emergency hotline to inform them they were attacking the Syrian army, the Russian officer was put on hold for 27 minutes! The USA later claimed the attack was an “accident”. (The CEC launched a petition demanding the Australian government withdraw its presence from Syria, as it was only assisting ISIS.)

On 19 September, a UN convoy transporting aid for Aleppo was bombed in an area controlled by rebels. The attack occurred at precisely the moment that the al-Qaeda-led rebels in Aleppo launched a furious offensive to break the Syrian Army lines. It was reported as a bombing, but the burnt out trucks remained intact, and there were no craters or other signs of aerial bombardment. The eyewitness reports that the attack was an aerial bombing came from the so-called White Helmets—British- and American-funded jihadists masquerading as civilian rescuers. The USA and Britain accused Russia of a war crime, and—ignoring the attack on the Syrian army two days earlier—of destroying the ceasefire!

Hysterical propaganda

A 20 September Guardian headline blared: “Russian planes dropped bombs that destroyed UN aid convoy, US officials say”. It cited a Reuters report: “Russian jets carried out strike on Syria aid convoy: U.S. officials”.

The most hysterical accusations came from the British government and Parliament, in an 11 October emergency debate. They were also the most hypocritical and cynical. Conservative MP Andrew Mitchell, who moved the debate, compared Russia’s actions in Syria to those of the Nazis in the Spanish Civil War.

Greens leader Caroline Lucas asked Mitchell: “Does he agree that our own Government should follow the example of the French in supporting a referral of Russia to the International Criminal Court?”

Blairite (a crony of disgraced former PM Tony Blair) Labour MP Ann Clwyd—the politician who first publicised the notorious Iraq war lie, that Saddam killed people in a human shredding machine, yet remains completely unapologetic for the illegal invasion of Iraq—called for the UK to take the same approach to Syria as it did to Iraq! “We do not have to wait for the International Criminal Court”, Clwyd urged. “Indict, an organisation that I chaired, collected evidence on Iraqi war crimes years before they were heard. That can be done again, for example through the Foreign Office.” (Emphasis added.)

When Labour’s Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry at least attempted to inject into the debate the reality that the rebels were predominantly al-Qaeda jihadists, another shameless Blairite Labour MP, Ben Bradshaw, erupted in contrived outrage, and attacked his own colleague: “We had a ceasefire; it was brutally blown apart by Russian and Syrian air power. I still have not heard from my hon. Friend a clear and unequivocal condemnation of Russia’s and Assad’s action. I have not heard her call it out as it is—a war crime!” (Bradshaw is another with the blood of Iraqis on his hands, having aggressively prosecuted the fraudulent case for the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and later having voted against convening Sir John Chilcot’s Iraq inquiry into that criminal and disastrous decision.)

Yet another Blairite, John Woodcock, was the most unhinged in hurling wild accusations against Russia for the attack on the convoy: “There is no doubt as to who was the perpetrator of this grotesque war crime. It was President Putin of Russia. He was sticking two fingers up to the United Nations and the international community of which he still has the audacity to claim he is a working part.” (Woodcock is close to Britain’s biggest private defence contractor, BAE Systems—its al-Yamamah arms deal with the brutal Saudi dictatorship has been exposed as having generated a $100 billion slush fund that financed al-Qaeda and the 9/11 attack and the spread of al-Qaeda and ISIS terrorism generally.)

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said: “All the available evidence therefore points to Russian responsibility for the atrocity. I trust that the UN board of inquiry will establish exactly what happened, and we in the United Kingdom Government stand ready to help.” Johnson’s speech made headlines for his reiteration of Ann Clwyd’s call for anti-war protestors to demonstrate outside of the Russian embassy in London. It is worth noting that Johnson was interrupted by a question from Prince Charles’s close friend Sir Nicholas Soames, demanding war crime prosecutions for the attack. Another toady for the British arms industry, Soames is notorious for his threats against Princess Diana when she spearheaded the international campaign against land mines just before her death in 1997. (The inquest ruled Diana’s death an “unlawful killing”, which is effectively a verdict of murder, where the perpetrators are not identified.)

The only contributor to this House of Commons debate who emerged with any credibility intact was Labour Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry, who exposed the self-righteous hypocrisy of the other contributors by insisting that the UK could not condemn the alleged crimes in Syria while simultaneously arming Saudi Arabia to bomb civilians in Yemen.

UN’s finding

Following are excerpts of numbered sections from the UN Headquarters Board of Inquiry Report summary that Ban Ki-moon released 21 December. While the report still assumes an aerial attack that many experts insist could not have been possible, nevertheless it absolves Russia of a war crime. The findings include:

The area where the convoy was attacked was under the control of Islamist jihadists:

“11. The SARC compound, the incident site, is located approximately 1.5 km east of the town of Urem al-Kubra.”

“13. On the date of the incident, Urem al-Kubra was under the control of armed opposition groups, with Jaish al-Mujahideen being the predominant group in the area. The Board was informed that other groups, including Nour al-Din al-Zenki also had a presence there. In addition, the Board received reports of a Jabhat al-Nusra presence in the area.”

Nour al-Din al-Zenki is one of the so-called “moderate” rebel groups backed by the US, members of which filmed themselves beheading a 12-year-old Palestinian boy in July (the same cameraman later took the staged photo of the five-year-old Aleppo boy in an ambulance that suckered the world media). Jabhat al-Nusra is the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda.

The White Helmets’ claim that a hospital was bombed was bogus:

“33. Despite initial reports that a medical clinic had been destroyed, the Board found no evidence of a medical clinic neighbouring the SARC compound.” (Emphasis added.)

This is an important finding, as the most oft-repeated accusation against Russia is that its aircraft deliberately targeted hospitals in Aleppo. The US and UK-financed White Helmets were the source of these claims, which were always baseless. Not only did they claim dozens of times that the “last hospital” in Aleppo had been destroyed, the recent liberation of Aleppo has proved that almost every site they called a hospital was just a jihadist stronghold.

If the Syrian Arab Air Force (SAAF) were responsible for the attack, given the convoy’s location in a jihadist-controlled area they most likely thought it was a military target:

“36. … The Board considered that the location of the SARC compound, on the outskirts of a populated area, in an industrial zone and astride one of the two primary roads leading to southwestern Aleppo, made it a realistic possibility that the buildings around it were used by armed opposition groups prior to the date of the incident. Therefore the Board considered that it had most likely been attacked by pro-Government forces.”

The UN found no evidence to prove that SAAF perpetrated the attack; an SAAF attack does not implicate Russia:

“39. The Board stated that it had received reports that information existed to the effect that the SAAF was highly likely to have perpetrated the attack, and even that the attack was carried out by three Syrian Mi-17 model helicopters, followed by three unnamed fixed-wing aircraft, with a single Russian aircraft also suspected of being involved. However, the Board did not have access to raw data to support these assertions and, in their absence, it was unable to draw a definitive conclusion.”

“40. The Board noted in this connection that there were technical issues pertaining to a hypothesis of the incident being a result of a joint Syrian Arab Air Force/Russian Federation strike. The Board had been informed that that the Russian Federation did not conduct joint strikes. A high degree of interoperability and co-ordination would also be required for two air forces to operate in the same airspace, targeting the same location.”

The UN found no evidence of a war crime:

“42. The Board stated that it did not have evidence to conclude that the incident was a deliberate attack on a humanitarian target.”

Since the US presidential election, the Anglo-American establishment and their corporate media lackeys have coined the term “fake news” for anything that contradicts their lies. In fact, many times since the genocidal fiasco of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, it is they who have been exposed as the real peddlers of fake news. The most extreme example is their litany of lies against Russia, but those lies are also the most dangerous, as they have pushed the world towards nuclear war. Thankfully, with Aleppo now liberated from the USA’s and UK’s terrorists, and a change of government in the USA, there is a chance to turn away from the policies of permanent war, and achieve a just international order based on respect for national sovereignty and a commitment to peace through cooperative economic development. As we approach 2017, all people of good will should resolve to ensure that it happens.

NOTES

Although candobetter.net's philosophy of land-use and population policy reform runs counter to that of the Citizens Electoral Council, we are pleased to publish this press release about Syria and Russia.

The source of this article was a press release dated 30 December 2016, from Craig Isherwood‚ National Secretary of the Citizens' Electoral Council
PO Box 376‚ COBURG‚ VIC 3058
Phone: 1800 636 432
Email: cec@cecaust.com.au
Website: http://www.cecaust.com.au

Here it is, that time of year,
When we look back and shed a tear
To me the facts are very clear
That better times are in the rear

The world around me is going bats
Replacing houses and gardens with big ugly flats
Digging caverns for cars - are they underground bunkers?
Melbourne's traffic increasing by ever more clunkers

Further afield every bit of space
is under attack from those seeking a place
For ever more cars and bicycle wheels
Thru our peaceful parks where we once cooled our heels

Small pieces of land with scatters of trees
Are deemed surplus to needs and sold off in the breeze
"No one will notice" behind closed doors they say
But the community loses a little each day

On a national scale we had an election,
It threw up an amazing Senate confection!
Such a surprise, One Nation arise!
Who else can the poor, disaffected turn to?

In the US t'was the same situation
though they really did it to utter perfection
Not just a loud voice from the red gallery
A developer star from reality TV

Over in Britain, they put in a lady
to mop up the spillage, (we won’t call her Sadie)
from a sudden and brutal and final exit
From the EU by a disgusted proletariat

Meanwhile in a wedge between India and France
We just can’t ignore that there isn’t a chance
Of stopping the wars in the Middle East
Or all sitting down to a peace giving feast

Until all are united in stamping out ISIS
or Da’esh or any damned name in a crisis.
With this situation let’s watch this space
We really don’t know quite what we will face.

Next year’s an unknown in international affairs
If you are religious then please say your prayers
Can it be worse ? Well may you wonder.
Lets hope that Trump, as he promised, will cast war asunder.

Syria is on the cusp of peace, but the propaganda war is still raging in the west. What about Bashar al-Assad's reputation in the west as a torturer? Does the evidence of this mean that the Syrian state has no right to defend Syria?

To paraphrase from the Russian Marxist Plekhanov who wrote about this kind of "moral" argument in 1901 in his essay "Cant Against Kant", it is one thing to morally object to violence, torture, etc. But it is another thing to use this objection to then say that someone attacked in the street should then be forced to fight with their hands tied behind their backs.

The point I am making is not to endorse torture but to say that whatever moral objections one might have to things done by many governments (and certainly Syria has nothing on the US with its Abu Ghraib and secret prisons all over the world and its invasion and occupation of one country after another) the important thing about what is happening in Syria is not whether there is torture or no torture but that the country is being attacked by terrorists in the interests of imperialism and so Syria has the right to fight back.

In terms of characterizing the Syrian government, torture has been used by both "good" and "bad" governments, as abhorrent as it may be, so that does not tell us very much about Syria. But Syria has many policies that many on the left in imperialist countries only dream about for their own countries. To list some:

- parliament seats are 50%+1 reserved for workers and peasants
- city council seats are 25% reserved for low-income residents
- retail prices are capped by popular committees
- the country's loan capital prioritized public infrastructure and investment so much that private businesses had to go to Europe for loans because they were lower in priority, compare this to crumbling underfunded infrastructure in the US
- university education has nominal (practically free) or low cost
- generally free health care for most people

These are things those in the US want for their "own" countries which Syria already has, so that should give us an idea that the US or the West has no moral superiority over Syria. Even with the Maher Arar case it was after all at the US's request, and as mentioned the US has tortured far worse.

About the Author

Saleh Waziruddin is an Indian/Pakistani (South Asian)-Canadian who grew up in Saudi Arabia. He is on the executive committees of the Canadian Peace Congress and also the Canadian Network on Cuba.

Published on Dec 13, 2016, "Syriennes" - "Syrians" is a beautiful documentary made in Syria by Julien Rochedy for TV Libertés, about how Syrian girls and women feel about the prospect of a 'rebel' win. It includes an interview with an Australian-Syrian woman who returned to Syria when the war began. Girls in Damascus and the regions not controlled by the US-NATO-backed rebels are currently free to study, to follow their passions and to exercise their professions, but they live in fear of a 'rebel' win in the Syrian conflict. We see how many women in Damascus wear western clothes and bare heads, walk freely down the street and eat in cafes alone, just like girls in Sydney or Brisbane. The film also interviews women in Damascus who have escaped the 'Free Syrian Army', Daesh/ISIS and Al Nusra. Their tales are chilling. It is obvious that no woman could benefit from a victory by the militia that the US and NATO support. Women are 50% of Syria's population, so why does Australia and the US NATO support the 'rebels', who are all 'takfiris', that is, Islamic fundamentalists? And what excuse does the west have for the crippling and illegal sanctions imposed on Syria for decades now. It is pointed out that Iraq was subject to similar sanctions for ten years before the US invasion, and that tens of thousands of children died because of this. This film about the most bloody conflict of the early 21st century permits us to understand a much more complex reality than the mainstream media paints.

Article by Leith van Onselen. Dick Smith is a national treasure. Yesterday he used his own money to fund an ad in Australia’s major newspapers challenging Lucy Turnbull – the chief commissioner of the Greater Sydney Commission (GSC) – on mass immigration, and asking her what her eventual plans are for the population of Sydney – querying whether it could be 16 or even 100 million.

Below is the ad:

The response from Lucy Turnbull’s office was pathetic. From The Australian:

The Australian sought comment from Ms Turnbull, through the Greater Sydney Commission. Commission chief executive Sarah Hill responded that Sydney’s rate of population growth was the “hallmark of all successful cities around the world”, and the group based its planning on a middle range of growth forecast, prepared by the state’s demographers.

“More than half of this growth is through natural increase,” Ms Hill said. “Our responsibility is to plan for this to make our city more liveable, sustainable and productive, rather than to debate the facts.”

So, “more than half of this growth is from natural increase”, according to the GSC? Not according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). As shown in the below charts, net overseas migration (NOM) into NSW (read Sydney) accounted for 67% of population growth in financial year 2016, and has done so on average over the past 30-plus years:

However, the above charts significantly understate the true impacts of immigration on Sydney’s population growth because “natural increase” captures the children of migrants. That is, NOM brings with it an immediate direct boost to population as well as a subsequent boost as new migrant arrivals have children (subsequently classified as “natural increase”).

For this reason, the Productivity Commission this year estimated that Australia’s population would peak at 27 million by 2060 under zero NOM, versus 41 million under NOM of 200,000 – a difference in population of 14 million! This comes despite only 9 million of this population increase coming directly from NOM. The other 5 million comes from migrants and the decedents of migrants having children (see next chart).

These are “the facts”, which the GSC seems only too willing to ignore: it is primarily mass immigration that is causing Sydney’s infrastructure woes, as well as pressuring housing.

Clearly, the best way for Lucy Turnbull to make Sydney “more livable” is to tap her husband on the shoulder and convince him to rein-in Australia’s mass immigration program.

Because as far as high immigration goes, the buck stops with the federal government. If you are in local or state government then you don’t have much choice but to cope with continuing mass immigration putting an ever-increasing strain on already stretched infrastructure, housing and public services.

Lucy Turnbull is in a unique position to influence federal policy and effect change for the betterment of both Sydney and Australia. But like her husband she is a mouthpiece for the ‘growth lobby’ that gains from never-ending population expansion at the expense of the rest of us.

unconventionaleconomist@hotmail.com

This article, by Leith van Onselen, was first published at http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2016/12/the-turnbulls-population-credibility-collapses-under-dick-smith-barrage/. Republished with author's permission.

President Bashar al-Assad : “[The ]West is telling Russia that Syrian Army went too far in defeating terrorists … Daesh could only attack Palmyra the way it did with supervision of U.S. alliance”. President Obama’s announcement of a waiver for arming unspecified rebel groups in Syria came shortly before the terrorist group Islamic State launched a massive attack on Palmyra. Syrian President Bashar Assad believes it was no coincidence, he told RussiaToday. In the interview, the Syrian leader explained how his approach to fighting terrorism differs from that of the US, why he believes the military success of his forces in Aleppo was taken so negatively in the West, and what he expects from US President-elect Donald Trump. [Full Video and Transcript]

“The announcement of the lifting of that embargo is related directly to the attack on Palmyra and to the support of other terrorists outside Aleppo, because when they are defeated in Aleppo, the United States and the West, they need to support their proxies somewhere else,” Bashar al-Assad said.

“The crux of that announcement is to create more chaos, because the United States creates chaos in order to manage this chaos,” Assad added.

He added that Islamic State (Daesh, IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) forces “came with different and huge manpower and firepower that ISIS never had before during this attack, and they attacked on a huge front, tens of kilometers that could be a front of armies. ISIS could only have done that with the support of states. Not state; states.”

Russia Today (Maria Finoshina): Mr. President, thank you very much for agreeing to speak with us.

President Bashar al-Assad: You’re most welcome in Damascus.

RT: We start with Aleppo, of course. Aleppo is now seeing what is perhaps the most fierce fighting since the war started almost six years ago here in Syria, but the Western politicians and Western media have been largely negative about your army’s advance. Why you think this is happening? Do they take it as their own defeat?

B.A.: Actually, after they failed in Damascus, because the whole narrative was about “liberating Damascus from the state” during the first three years. When they failed, they moved to Homs, when they failed in Homs, they moved to Aleppo, they focused on Aleppo during the last three years, and for them this is the last most important card they could have played on the Syrian battlefield. Of course, they still have terrorists in different areas in Syria, but it’s not like talking about Aleppo as the second largest city which has the political, military, economic, and even moral sense when their terrorists are defeated. So, for them the defeat of the terrorists is the defeating of their proxies, to talk bluntly. These are their proxies, and for them the defeat of these terrorists is the defeat of the countries that supervised them, whether regional countries or Western countries like United States, first of all United States, and France, and UK.

RT: So, you think they take it as their own defeat, right?

B.A.: Exactly, that’s what I mean. The defeat of the terrorists, this is their own defeat because these are their real army on the ground. They didn’t interfere in Syria, or intervened, directly; they have intervened through these proxies. So, that’s how we have to look at it if we want to be realistic, regardless of their statements, of course.

RT: Palmyra is another troubled region now, and it’s now taken by ISIS or ISIL, but we don’t hear a lot of condemnation about it. Is that because of the same reason?

B.A.: Exactly, because if it was captured by the government, they will be worried about the heritage. If we liberate Aleppo from the terrorists, they would be – I mean, the Western officials and the mainstream media – they’re going to be worried about the civilians. They’re not worried when the opposite happens, when the terrorists are killing those civilians or attacking Palmyra and started destroying the human heritage, not only the Syrian heritage. Exactly, you are right, because ISIS, if you look at the timing of the attack, it’s related to what’s happening in Aleppo. This is the response to what’s happening in Aleppo, the advancement of the Syrian Arab Army, and they wanted to make this… or let’s say, to undermine the victory in Aleppo, and at the same time to distract the Syrian Army from Aleppo, to make it move toward Palmyra and stop the advancement, but of course it didn’t work.

‘ISIS could only attack Palmyra the way it did with supervision of US alliance’

RT: We also hear reports that Palmyra siege was not only related to Aleppo battle, but also to what was happening in Iraq, and there are reports that the US-led coalition – which is almost 70 countries – allowed ISIL fighters in Mosul in Iraq to leave, and that strengthened ISIL here in Syria. Do you think it could be the case?

B.A.: It could be, but this is only to wash the hand of the American politicians from their responsibility on the attack, when they say “just because of Mosul, of course, the Iraqi army attacked Mosul, and ISIS left Mosul to Syria.” That’s not the case. Why? Because they came with different and huge manpower and firepower that ISIS never had before during this attack, and they attacked on a huge front, tens of kilometers that could be a front of armies. ISIS could only have done that with the support of states. Not state; states. They came with different machineguns, cannons, artillery, everything is different. So, it could only happen when they come in this desert with the supervision of the American alliance that’s supposed to attack them in al-Raqqa and Mosul and Deir Ezzor, but it didn’t happen; they either turned a blind eye on what ISIS is going to do, and, or – and that’s what I believe – they pushed toward Palmyra. So, it’s not about Mosul. We don’t have to fall in that trap. It’s about al-Raqqa and Deir Ezzor. They are very close, only a few hundred kilometers, they could come under the supervision of the American satellites and the American drones and the American support.

RT: How strong ISIS is today?

B.A.: As strong as the support that they get from the West and regional powers. Actually, they’re not strong for… if you talk isolated case, ISIS as isolated case, they’re not strong, because they don’t have the natural social incubator. Without it, terrorists cannot be strong enough. But the real support they have, the money, the oil field investment, the support of the American allies’ aircrafts, that’s why they are strong. So, they are as strong as their supporters, or as their supervisors.

RT: In Aleppo, we heard that you allowed some of these terrorists to leave freely the battleground. Why would you do that? It’s clear that they can go back to, let’s say, Idleb, and get arms and get ready for further attacks, then maybe attack those liberating Aleppo.

B.A.: Exactly, exactly, that’s correct, and that’s been happening for the last few years, but you always have things to lose and things to gain, and when the gain is more than what you lose, you go for that gain. In that case, our priority is to protect the area from being destroyed because of the war, to protect the civilians who live there, to give the chance for those civilians to leave through the open gates, to leave that area to the areas under the control of the government, and to give the chance to those terrorists to change their minds, to join the government, to go back to their normal life, and to get amnesty. When they don’t, they can leave with their armaments, with the disadvantage that you mentioned, but this is not our priority, because if you fight them in any other area outside the city, you’re going to have less destruction and less civilian casualties, that’s why.

‘Fighting terrorists US-style cannot solve the problem’

RT: I feel that you call them terrorists, but at the same time you treat them as human beings, you tell them “you have a chance to go back to your normal life.”

B.A.: Exactly. They are terrorists because they are holding machineguns, they kill, they destroy, they commit vandalism, and so on, and that’s natural, everywhere in the world that’s called as terrorism. But at the same time, they are humans who committed terrorism. They could be something else. They joined the terrorists for different reasons, either out of fear, for the money, sometimes for the ideology. So, if you can bring them back to their normal life, to be natural citizens, that’s your job as a government. It’s not enough to say “we’re going to fight terrorists.” Fighting terrorists is like a videogame; you can destroy your enemy in the videogame, but the videogame will generate and regenerate thousands of enemies, so you cannot deal with it on the American way: just killing, just killing! This is not our goal; this is the last option you have. If you can change, this is a good option, and it succeeded. It succeeded because many of those terrorists, when you change their position, some of them living normal lives, and some of them joined the Syrian Army, they fought with the Syrian Army against the other terrorists. This is success, from our point of view.

RT: Mr. President, you just said that you gain and you lose. Do you feel you’ve done enough to minimize civilian casualties during this conflict?

B.A.: We do our utmost. What’s enough, this is subjective; each one could look at it in his own way. At the end, what’s enough is what you can do; my ability as a person, the ability of the government, the ability of Syria as a small country to face a war that’s been supported by tens of countries, mainstream media’s hundreds of channels, and other machines working against you. So, it depends on the definition of “enough,” so this is, as I said, very subjective, but I’m sure that we are doing our best. Nothing is enough at the end, and the human practice is always full of correct and flows, or mistakes, let’s say, and that’s the natural thing.

‘West’s cries for ceasefire meant to save terrorists’

RT: We hear Western powers asking Russia and Iran repeatedly to put pressure on you to, as they put it, “stop the violence,” and just recently, six Western nations, in an unprecedented message, they asked Russia and Iran again to put pressure on you, asking for a ceasefire in Aleppo.

B.A.: Yeah.

RT: Will you go for it? At the time when your army was progressing, they were asking for a ceasefire.

B.A.: Exactly. It’s always important in politics to read between the lines, not to be literal. It doesn’t matter what they ask; the translation of their statement is for Russia: “please stop the advancement of the Syrian Army against the terrorists.” That’s the meaning of that statement, forget about the rest. “You went too far in defeating the terrorists, that shouldn’t happen. You should tell the Syrians to stop this, we have to keep the terrorists and to save them.” This is in brief.

Second, Russia never – these days, I mean, during this war, before that war, during the Soviet Union – never tried to interfere in our decision. Whenever they had opinion or advice, doesn’t matter how we can look at it, they say at the end “this is your country, you know what the best decision you want to take; this is how we see it, but if you see it in a different way, you know, you are the Syrian.” They are realistic, and they respect our sovereignty, and they always defend the sovereignty that’s based on the international law and the Charter of the United Nations. So, it never happened that they made any pressure, and they will never do it. This is not their methodology.

RT: How strong is the Syrian Army today?

B.A.: It’s about the comparison, to two things: first of all, the war itself; second, to the size of Syria. Syria is not a great country, so it cannot have a great army in the numerical sense. The support of our allies was very important; mainly Russia, and Iran. After six years, or nearly six years of the war, which is longer than the first World War and the second World War, it’s definitely and self-evident that the Syrian Army is not to be as strong as it was before that. But what we have is determination to defend our country. This is the most important thing. We lost so many lives in our army, we have so many martyrs, so many disabled soldiers. Numerically, we lost a lot, but we still have this determination, and I can tell you this determination is much stronger than before the war. But of course, we cannot ignore the support from Russia, we cannot ignore the support from Iran, that make this determination more effective and efficient.

‘Stronger Russia, China make world a safer place’

RT: President Obama has lifted a ban on arming some Syrian rebels just recently. What impact you think could it have on the situation on the ground, and could it directly or indirectly provide a boost to terrorists?

B.A.: We’re not sure that he lifted that embargo when he announced it. Maybe he lifted it before, but announced it later just to give it the political legitimacy, let’s say. This is first. The second point, which is very important: the timing of the announcement and the timing of attacking Palmyra. There’s a direct link between these two, so the question is to whom those armaments are going to? In the hands of who? In the hands of ISIS and al-Nusra, and there’s coordination between ISIS and al-Nusra. So, the announcement of this lifting of that embargo is related directly to the attack on Palmyra and to the support of other terrorists outside Aleppo, because when they are defeated in Aleppo, the United States and the West, they need to support their proxies somewhere else, because they don’t have any interest in solving the conflict in Syria. So, the crux of that announcement is to create more chaos, because the United States creates chaos in order to manage this chaos, and when they manage it, they want to use the different factors in that chaos in order to exploit the different parties of the conflict, whether they are internal parties or external parties.

RT: Mr. President, how do you feel about being a small country in the middle of this tornado of countries not interested in ending the war here?

B.A.: Exactly. It’s something we’ve always felt before this war, but we felt it more of course today, because small countries feel safer when there’s international balance, and we felt the same, what you just mentioned, after the collapse of the Soviet Union when there was only American hegemony, and they wanted to implement whatever they want and to dictate all their policies on everyone. Small countries suffer the most. So, we feel it today, but at the same time, today there’s more balance with the Russian role. That’s why I think we always believe the more Russia is stronger – I’m not only talking about Syria, I’m talking about every small country in the world – whenever the stronger Russia, more rising China, we feel more secure. It’s painful, I would say it’s very painful, this situation that we’ve been living, on every level; humanitarian level, the feeling, the loss, everything. But at the end, it’s not about losing and winning; it’s about either winning or losing your country. It’s existential threat for Syria. It’s not about government losing against other government or army against army; either the country will win, or the country will disappear. That’s how we look at it. That’s why you don’t have time to feel that pain; you only have time to fight and defend and do something on the ground.

‘Mainstream media lost credibility along with moral compass’

RT: Let’s talk about media’s role in this conflict.

B.A.: Yeah

RT: All sides during this war have been accused of civilian casualties, but the Western media has been almost completely silent about the atrocities committed by the rebels… what role is the media playing here?

B.A.: First of all, the mainstream media with their fellow politicians, they are suffering during the last few decades from moral decay. So, they have no morals. Whatever they talk about, whatever they mention or they use as mask, human rights, civilians, children; they use all these just for their own political agenda in order to provoke the feelings of their public opinion to support them in their intervention in this region, whether militarily or politically. So, they don’t have any credibility regarding this. If you want to look at what’s happening in the United States is rebellion against the mainstream media, because they’ve been lying and they kept lying on their audiences. We can tell that, those, let’s say, the public opinion or the people in the West doesn’t know the real story in our region, but at least they know that the mainstream media and their politicians were laying to them for their own vested interests agenda and vested interests politicians. That’s why I don’t think the mainstream media could sell their stories anymore and that’s why they are fighting for their existence in the West, although they have huge experience and huge support and money and resources, but they don’t have something very important for them to survive, which is the credibility. They don’t have it, they lost it. They don’t have the transparency, that’s why they don’t have credibility. That’s why they are very coward today, they are afraid of your channel, of any statement that could tell the truth because it’s going to debunk their talks. That’s why.

RT: Reuters news agency have been quoting Amaq, ISIL’s mouthpiece, regarding the siege of Palmyra. Do you think they give legitimacy to extremists in such a way? They’re quoting their media.

B.A.: Even if they don’t mention their news agencies, they adopt their narrative anyway. But if you look at the technical side of the way ISIS presented itself from the very beginning through the videos and the news and the media in general and the PR, they use Western technique. Look at it, it’s very sophisticated. How could somebody who’s under siege, who’s despised all over the world, who’s under attack from the airplanes, who the whole world wants to liberate every city from him, could be that sophisticated unless he is not relaxed and has all the support? So, I don’t think it is about Amaq; it’s about the West adopting their stories, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly.

RT: Donald Trump takes over as US President in a few weeks. You mentioned America many times today. What do you expect from America’s new administration?

B.A.: His rhetoric during the campaign was positive regarding the terrorism, which is our priority today. Anything else is not priority, so, I wouldn’t focus on anything else, the rest is American, let’s say, internal matters, I wouldn’t worry about. But the question whether Trump has the will or the ability to implement what he just mentioned. You know that most of the mainstream media and big corporate, the lobbies, the Congress, even some in his party were against him; they want to have more hegemony, more conflict with Russia, more interference in different countries, toppling governments, and so on. He said something in the other direction. Could he sustain against all those after he started next month? That’s the question. If he could, I think the world will be in a different place, because the most important thing is the relation between Russia and the Unites States. If he goes towards that relation, most of the tension around the world will be pacified. That’s very important for us in Syria, but I don’t think anyone has the answer to that. He wasn’t a politician, so, we don’t have any reference to judge him, first. Second, nobody can tell what kind of pattern is it going to be next month and after.

‘Western countries only sent aid to terrorists’

RT: The humanitarian situation in Syria is a disaster, and we hear from EU foreign policy chief, Madam Mogherini, that EU is the only entity to deliver humanitarian aid to Syria. Is that true?

B.A.: Actually, all the aid that any Western country sent was to the terrorists, to be very clear, blunt and very transparent. They never cared about a single Syrian human life. We have so many cities in Syria till today surrounded by and besieged by the terrorists; they prevented anything to reach them, food, water, anything, all the basic needs of life. Of course, they attack them on daily basis by mortars and try to kill them. What did the EU send to those? If they are worried about the human life, if they talk about the humanitarian aspect, because when you talk about the humanitarian aspect or issue, you don’t discriminate. All the Syrians are humans, all the people are humans. They don’t do that. So, this is the double standard, this is the lie that they keep telling, and it’s becoming a disgusting lie, no-one is selling their stories anymore. That’s not true, what she mentioned, not true.

RT: Some suggestions say that for Syria, the best solution would to split into separate countries governed by Sunni, Shi’a, Kurds. Is it any way possible?

B.A.: This is the Western – with some regional countries’ – hope or dream, and this is not new, not related to this war; that was before the war, and you have maps for this division and disintegration. But actually, if you look at the society today, the Syrian society is more unified than before the war. This is reality. I’m not saying anything to raise the morale of anyone, I’m not talking to Syrian audience anyway now, I’m talking about the reality. Because of the lessons of the war, the society became more realistic and pragmatic and many Syrians knew that being fanatic doesn’t help, being extreme in any idea, I’m not only talking about extremism in the religious meaning; politically, socially, culturally, doesn’t help Syria. Only when we accept each other, when we respect each other, we can live with each other and we can have one country. So, regarding the disintegration of Syria, if you don’t have this real disintegration among the society and different shades and spectrum of the Syrian society, Syrian fabric, you cannot have division. It’s not a map you draw, I mean, even if you have one country while the people are divided, you have disintegration. Look at Iraq, it’s one country, but it is disintegrated in reality. So, no, I’m not worried about this. There’s no way that Syrians will accept that. I’m talking now about the vast majority of the Syrians, because this is not new, this is not the subject of the last few weeks or the last few months. This is the subject of this war. So, after nearly six years, I can tell you the majority of the Syrians wouldn’t accept anything related to disintegration, they are going to live as one Syria.

RT: As a mother, I feel the pain of all Syrian mothers. I’m speaking about children in Syria, what does the future hold for them?

B.A.: This is the most dangerous aspect of our problem, not only in Syria; wherever you talk about this dark Wahhabi ideology, because many of those children who became young during the last decade, or more than one decade, who joined the terrorists on ideological basis, not for the like of money or anything else, or hope, let’s say, they came from open-minded families, educated families, intellectual families. So, you can imagine how strong the terrorism is.

‘Being secular doesn’t protect a nation from terrorist ideology’

RT: So, that happened because of their propaganda?

B.A.: Exactly, because the ideology is very dangerous; it knows no borders, no political borders, and the network, the worldwide web has helped those terrorists using fast and inexpensive tools in order to promote their ideology, and they could infiltrate any family anywhere in the world, whether in Europe, in your country, in my country, anywhere. You have secular society, I have secular society, but it didn’t protect the society from being infiltrated.

RT: Do you have any counter ideology for this?

B.A.: Exactly, because they built their ideology on the Islam, you have to use the same ideology, using the real Islam, the real moderate Islam, in order to counter their ideology. This is the fast way. If we want to talk about the mid-term and long-term, it’s about how much can you upgrade the society, the way the people analyze and think, because this ideology can only work when you cannot analyze, when you don’t think properly. So, it’s about the algorithm of the mind, if you have natural or healthy operating system, if you want to draw an analogy to the IT, if you have good operating systems in our mind, they cannot infiltrate it like a virus. So, it’s about the education, media and policy because sometimes when you have a cause, a national cause, and people lose hope, you can push those people towards being extremists, and this is one of the influences in our region since the seventies, after the war between the Arabs and the Israelis, and the peace failed in every aspect to recapture the land, to give the land and the rights to its people, you have more desperation, and that played into the hand of the extremists, and this is where the Wahhabi find fertile soil to promote its ideology.

RT: Mr. President, thank you very much for your time, and I wish your country peace and prosperity, and as soon as possible.

B.A.: Thank you very much for coming.

RT: This time has been very tough for you, so I wish it’s going to end soon.

B.A.: Thank you very much for coming to Syria. I’m very glad to receive you.

RT: Thank you.

Sources of this article and transcript were:

Videos by Syrian Presidency and Russia Today, Transcript by Russia Today and SyrianPatriots War Press Info Network at:
https://syrianfreepress.wordpress.com/2016/12/15/al-assad-to-rt/

Re-publications are welcome, but we kindly ask you, to facilitate the correct information's diffusion, to cite all these original links and sources.

Dick Smith queries Lucy Turnbull’s Perpetual Population Growth Plan. In a half page advertisement featuring in major newspapers tomorrow morning, including the Daily Telegraph in Sydney,
The Sydney Morning Herald, the Financial Review and The Australian, Dick Smith is asking Lucy Turnbull, the chief planner for Sydney, just what her eventual plans are for the population of Sydney – querying whether it could be 16 or even 100 million.

Dick Smith says, “All of the major political parties, including The Greens, spruik perpetual growth. It is easy to see why Pauline Hanson’s policy to reduce immigration from 200,000 per year to a more sustainable 70,000 is gaining more support.”

Dick Smith also asks Lucy Turnbull, “How are we going to find jobs for these extra people?” Pointing out that with modern robotics and automation there are going to be less jobs.

Dick Smith asks Lucy if we are going to come up with a final plan for population, or are we going to “leave it for our children or grandchildren to solve.”

Previously published (13/12/16) on Russia Insider. See also: Reports: Audio recording between ISIS and US before Deir Ezzor massacre found (26/9/16) | Ron Paul Forums, US attack on Syrian Army in Deir Ezzor was ‘coordinated’ (30/11//16) by Paul Antonopoulos | Al Masdar News, Australian jets participated in massacre of Syrian soldiers in Deir ez-Zor (18/9/16) by Paul Antonopoulos | Al Masdar News.

Four wounded Syrians who survived the bombardment of Deir ez-Zor by Aust­ralian, US, British and Danish aircraft on 17 Sep 2016. Sixty-two of their com­patriots perished that day. Whether they intended to bomb the Syrian Army, or ISIS as they claimed, any aerial attack on the territory of a sovereign country like Syria, without the consent of its government, is a violation of international law. ₁

A US investigation found the coalition 'botched' a strike in Deir ez-Zor, hitting the Syrian Army by mistake. Why did they not return to kill the IS fighters who moved in, or the IS fighters who just moved back to Palmyra?

Following a two-month investigation into the US coalition attack on a Syrian Army base in Deir al Zour in September, the Defence departments of the US and Australia concluded that the 'botched' strike was a result of poor information and human error, and no-one will face charges over the 'incident'.

Australia's chief of Joint Military Operations, David Johnston described it thus in a prepared statement:

"Although the identity of those killed or wounded could not be substantiated, the investigation found it was more likely than not that those struck were irregular forces aligned to the Syrian government.

"The situation on the ground in Syria is complex and dynamic. In many ways these forces looked and acted like Da'esh fighters the coalition has been targeting for the last two years. They were not wearing recognisable military uniforms, or displaying identifying flags or markings."

RAAF F-18 fighter bomber of the type which bombed Syria on 17 September

This conspicuously 'false news' from such a well-briefed source is deeply worrying, particularly as its release coincided with the Syrian Army's 'hour of glory' as it liberates Aleppo's trapped civilians from the four-year long insurgent siege.

Despite the lengthy 'investigation', carried out by the very same people who ordered and executed the murderous attack on the Syrian soldiers defending Deir al Zour from IS, the report's conclusions only confirm the false statements made to the press at the time, though embroidering them with an elaborate cover story. For the hundreds of Syrian victims of this dastardly attack and their families, any confidence in the statements and behaviour of their foreign attackers is now permanently destroyed.

How galling for those families, whose heroic husbands, sons and brothers had held their ground for two years against constant assaults from IS insurgents, to read that 'their identities could not be substantiated'. Or that these members of the Syrian Arab Army's 123rd Republican guard were mere 'irregulars aligned to the Syrian government'.

Never mind the testimony of some of the injured soldiers from hospital broadcast on Syrian state TV, describing the aggression and persistence of their attackers, or their still more incriminating statements that IS fighters moved in to take over the base before their comrades blood was even dry.

Although the US coalition's story is a complete travesty, it deserves closer scrutiny both for what it says and what it leaves out.

While novel unsubstantiated and false allegations are made about the nature of the target, the Australian Defence Forces have admitted responsibility for likely causing some of the deaths of Syrian soldiers - claiming that Australian war-planes had launched six laser-guided missiles, at what they identified as Da'esh fighters.

Since Australia 'joined the US coalition against Da'esh' two years ago, training soldiers in the Iraqi army, Australia's position on the fight against Da'esh in Syria has been obscure, and air-strikes within Syria notionally limited to preventing Da'esh from threatening Iraq. The silence of the Australian government, and the failure of the national broadcaster the ABC to ask questions about our actions against terrorist groups in Syria, contrasts sharply with the rhetoric from both sides of government here for the last five years, both against terrorism and against the Syrian government.

Not only has Australia been a central member of the 'Friends of Syria' group, and a vocal supporter of the Syrian external Opposition, but its anti-Russian and anti-Putin statements and actions have made it one of the most important partners in the NATO war on Syria. Some of that anti-Russian rhetoric is connected with Australia's support for Kiev's post-coup government, and reaction to the deaths of 38 Australians on board MH17. A recent agreement to supply Uranium to Ukraine hardly bodes for our future dealings with Moscow.

In the absence of any sensible discussion or analysis in the Australian media about the Deir al Zour attack and its actual consequences, or how the change in US leadership and likely direction in Syria could affect Australia's strategic position and military involvements in the region, some further investigation is now called for.

In the meantime, and as has happened repeatedly during the Syrian conflict, a resolution of that conflict in one area sees a resumption of it elsewhere. This 'two-steps forward, one back' - or three back - progress of the war is largely why it has taken the Syrian Army and its allies over two years to liberate Aleppo from its insurgent grip.

Of particular interest to those seeking to understand the objectives and allegiances of Syria's foreign invaders and their 'puppet-masters', is a surprising and disturbing development - the reappearance of IS forces in Palmyra.

Palmyra, like Deir al Zour, was stoically defended by the Syrian army until IS forces moved in, controversially crossing hundreds of kilometres of open desert without being noticed by the 'US coalition against IS'. (perhaps they were mistaken for Syrian troops?) In one of Russia's first acts demonstrating that it was serious about fighting and killing terrorist forces in Syria, Russian airpower helped the Syrian Army liberate the historic city and adjacent town of Tadmor ten months later.

But in a situation which is almost a mirror image of that existing today, terrorist groups including IS south of Aleppo took advantage of the Syrian Army's focus on Palmyra to seize control over the main highway linking Aleppo with Damascus, cutting off the Syrian Army contingent protecting Western Aleppo from the insurgents in the East.

As Oscar Wilde said: "to lose one parent may be regarded as misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness."

To strike the Syrian Army while targeting IS may be a 'blunder'; to fail to target IS as it again targets the Syrian Army looks like more than carelessness, and a lot like collusion. And we should ask, why did the US coalition forces not immediately return to kill those Da'esh fighters who moved into the Deir al Zour base that they had just inadvertently 'liberated' of its patriotic Syrian forces in September?

Vice Admiral David Johnston didn't answer that question - but neither was he asked it.

As a virtual postscript, and indication that things are really changing on the ground in Syria even while they remain stagnant in the minds of her foreign 'false friends', it appears that Palmyra has already be re-liberated, with many IS fighters killed in a joint Russian-Syrian operation.

And so we won't be subjected to another call to 'intervene to protect Syria's ancient heritage - from IS terrorists'.

1. ↑The images are from the abovementioned Reports: Audio recording between ISIS and US before Deir Ezzor massacre found
(26/9/16) by Ron Paul | Ron Paul Forums.

The ideology, or perhaps the theology of neo-liberalism is partly based on the idea that 'markets', that is to say, the scope of human activity where trade of valuable goods and services occurs, reveals a fundamental truth or reality beyond that scope of immediate trade. One could say modern Capitalism, or Neo-Liberalism is essentially a form of 'Marketism', where market forces rule all, judge all and value all. The exact name employed to describe this isn't as important as the realisation that underlying what we call Capitalism today, or Neo-Liberalism, or Growth or even The Economy and Society, is a fairly rigid belief system that market forces are behind much of how the world works, and that market freedom is among the most important freedoms for human liberation. It is an idea which some may argue over its correct taxonomy, but it is clear that it is a distinct thing. Many of its opponents, often people whom Neo-Liberalism has failed, critique the damage wrought upon the environment, the dog-eat-dog mentality which emerges, the financial crises the erupt like clockwork, but often fail to think outside the frame of reference of 'Marketism'.

I will look at three ways in which Market economics on its own can fail to solve major problems or provide a reasonable, dignified quality of life.

Markets can only provide marketable solutions to problems

The statement that a market system can only provide a marketable solution may seem like a tautology that carries no meaning or profundity, but it only does so if one believes that the limits of the market are the limits of human activity. Free Marketeers argue that the Free Market will provide solutions to problems, because where there is a need, there is the possibility of profit, and therefore an opportunity for someone to benefit by fulfilling that need. This simple analysis seems complete and logical but in doing so disregards quality and places no value on optimal solutions. When people are faced with a problem, a desire, a need or some other challenge which requires a solution, the best solution isn't necessarily the most profitable. We therefore have a disconnect. The most profitable solution, or the most marketable one, is not necessarily the one which most effectively and efficiently addresses the issue, and the more complex the issue, the greater the disconnect between the two is. A market may respond to a need to listen to music while jogging effectively and efficiently, but it is less effective when dealing with problems such as climate change. With this problem, the solution is presented as marketable energy efficient products, "green" technology, carbon credits, things which may at least slightly lower carbon output from what would have otherwise occurred. Missing from these marketable solutions though are caps on carbon output, regulation of industry, cultural change or prioritisation of energy expenditure. The prioritisation of where energy is expended is determined currently by the market, and the market in practice, has not been capable of regulating its use of energy to avert a climate catastrophe.

Cars are another example of a marketable solution to a problem, but not the most efficient solution. A car represents a sell-able item and exists as a solution to efficient transit. But if the problem to be tackled is moving around the city, this isn't the most practical efficient solution. Our roads are clogged with single passenger vehicles and people are taking longer and longer to traverse the city. One can find better solutions in urban design, public transportation and thoughtful measured placement of residential, commercial and industrial areas. Such a solution though exists outside of the market. Market forces cannot control city design writ large and no single company, entrepreneur, businessman or merchant has the power or inclination to approach the problem from this angle.

Governments and other organisations which act on behalf of a collective are able to implement such solutions, but Free Market ideology argues that the government should do as little as possible, and for many Free Market Libertarians, nothing at all. If Free Marketeers were to have their way, such solutions would never eventuate in the future.

A belief in markets solving problems therefore excludes all non-market solutions to problems, solutions which may be more effective, more efficient, or may be the ONLY effective solutions. The more our culture is framing things in terms of market economics, the narrower our scope for human ingenuity and problem solving becomes. Solutions which may have been trivial decades ago, such as prudent regulation disappear from our scope of thought and we are left with non solutions or a belief that nothing can be done.

Free Market ideology is egalitarian

Equality is seen as an unquestioned positive, and Neo-Liberals use equality in a cynical manner to support their ideological agenda. One of the fundamental tenets of Free Market Libertarianism is that all desires and all market activity is equal. The people who want to trade hardcore pornography have just as much right as people who want to trade pharmaceuticals or food. It is argued that it is left to people to determine what they want to buy, want to sell and want to produce, and that this very act of trade is sacrosanct, and cannot be interfered with. To interfere with it is a violation of someone's rights, and regardless of whether that person is seeking to buy cigarettes, amass residential property for their own petty insecurities, or fund development of software or research into Multiple Sclerosis, their rights are the same. As a result, the resulting transactions are deemed equal, and no one has the right to prioritise one over the other, except when dealing with their own personal transactions. So we observe people's right to buy up the entire street for no other reason than a personal whim to be equal to someone's right to buy shelter for their family. Someone's right to remove trees and wildlife from their property is equal to the rights of others to live in a world with nature. Someone's right to pollute as much as they wish is equal to someone's right to secure a future for their children without the disastrous effects of climate change. This ideology states that one person's situation, no matter how dire, or how much more it affects that person, should not impinge upon anyone else.

This ideology levels human needs, and despite being touted as equality, for most people this means their needs, their quality of life are subject to the whims of merchants and the elite. It stultifies political action by convincing people that they don't have the right to shape society in a way which benefits them and their nation. It is essentially a slave morality, and makes people subject themselves to forces that others control. It is ironic, as people like Ayn Rand promoted market capitalism as a force which empowers people to live in their own best interests, to liberate peoples own will to live from the demands of the masses, but in practice it forces people to voluntarily limit their political and social power, and accept intrusions on their quality of life in the name of the market.

Free Markets degrade the human spirit

Going back to Ayn Rand and many Free Market Libetarian thinkers, there is an emphasis placed upon the right of individuals to support themselves through their own work. The idea, noble enough, is that an individual has the right to the fruit of their own labour, and preventing a person from providing for themselves, and denying them the ability to use their own talents and efforts for their own profit is evil. This idea is the cornerstone of much modern freedom, and anyone who supports human freedom and dignity would support this notion, to a practically reasonable degree. Taken to its absolute thought, it works against the human condition. The original thinkers of the Enlightenment, and of early Liberalism saw this condition in opposition to slavery, feudalism and other systems whereby people worked for someone else. It was argued that it was a natural right for a man to be able to work for himself. This idea has been corrupted in the 20th and 21st century, and Free Market Libetarianism today posits this not only as a right, but as an ideal. Free Marketeers today also take it to an absolute, with many claiming that taxation, any level of taxation at all, is essentially no different to theft by gunpoint. What was a general idea of social organisation is now seen as a set of axioms to be followed dogmatically, even if people don't benefit from them.

Also, this idea has been taken from being one person's right not to be enslaved, either literally or figuratively, to an exaltation of work as a good in and of itself. Human beings are seen as Homo economicus, creatures who exist only to gain profit and in the metrics of what is desirable in life, everything which doesn't fit in with Homo economicus's need for profit is disregarded. Spirituality, nature, security, society, belonging. Only that which people do to trade goods counts, and all other aspects of humanity disappear, as they don't appear on the profit registers. Neo-liberalism therefore sees humanity as nothing more than people seeking to consume, reproduce and consume more, trying to consume more than they produce. There is no other goal than to grow and consume, and human beings therefore are seen as nothing but animals. Society, civilisation, should have no other goals, other than self-perpetuated consumption. Humanity therefore is seen as nothing but an endless competition for resources, with that scramble for resources being more honourable than art, contemplation or self enlightenment. In more enlightened times work was seen as an embarrassing necessity, and the highest act that one could take part in was art, politics, education and religious service. They saw the goal of humanity as not to perfect the art of acquiring wealth but to improve itself. Religion rightfully saw base lusts as desires as sin. It is no coincidence that, of the seven deadly sins, greed, avarice, pride, envy, are the most animalistic. Rather than succumb and nurture these, we should move beyond them. Neo-Liberalism however makes greed a virtue. Human beings are ranked solely on their ability to acquire wealth.

The natural hierarchy which occurs in market societies is therefore based solely on one's skill as a merchant. Regardless of one's ability to build, invent, create art, produce food or goods, teach, write or philosophise, one's success is based on one's ability to do business. Therefore, those who progress in companies and "win" at life are those that can play the corporate game. Whether an artist or writer, you are not judged by your ideas, but by your ability to sell. Banal pop music is put ahead of true art because it has a better marketing team. Even whether one can get a house these days is based on one's ability to play the property market. People absorbed into this culture judge a person's success of failure based on their ability to work a market. As a result, it is the merchant class that has become the elite, as the merchant class consists of those most adept at playing markets. People who have valuable social skills, but no desire or skill at profiteering, are left by the wayside. Teens that can't sell themselves in interviews are judged as lazy and a worthless drain on society. People who aren't competitive may miss out at auctions. People who provide no benefit to society, but are aggressive and acquisitive, are lauded as producers and job creators.

During the 2015-2016 financial year, more than 2600 health workers were brought into Australia via government-sponsored 457 visas on the basis they were needed for jobs that could not be filled by Australians. Of these 1692 were general practitioners and resident medical officers, 228 registered nurses, 35 specialists, 38 psychiatrists, 28 surgeons, 19 anesthetists and 20 midwives.

The high intake of health specialists occurred despite a senate inquiry in June 2015 where the Australian Nurses and Midwife Foundation (AN&MF) stated that there were 3000 unemployed graduate nurses, often with high HECS debts, while about 1 in 4 nursing positions were being filled by 457 skilled migrant intake[1]. They also claimed that many of the overseas nurses were victims of underpayment and exploitation because they live and work under threat of deportation[2]. The inquiry was also told that importing health workers was not solving the shortages of health professionals in rural areas because most imported workers went to the cities.

As of March 2016 there were 177,390 subclass 457 visa holders in Australia. To be eligible for a subclass 457 visa via standard business sponsorship, a worker must have an occupation on the Consolidated Sponsored Occupations List (CSOL) which is uncapped, meaning that there is no limit on how many can enter. Instead the numbers are determined from the applications made by employers. However there is a loophole that will allow employers to hire an unlimited number of foreign workers under a temporary working visa, in a move that unions say will bring widespread rorting of the system and insufficient support for local employment.

This reliance on skilled migration has been a long term policy of, not only our governments, but those of many developed nations, particularly the US, UK and Canada. As a consequence, about a quarter of doctors in Australia are from overseas and in 2010 the U.S. had 265,851 licensed physicians trained in other countries, constituting 32% of the physician workforce. Among these, 128,729 came from countries categorized by the World Bank as being from low- or lower-middle income. The World Health Organization (WHO) published a detailed 40-country study on the magnitude and flow of the health professionals. According to this report, close to 90% of all migrating physicians were moving to just five countries: Australia, Canada, Germany, UK and the USA. Even as far back as 1972, 6% of the worlds physicians were located outside their country of origin.

This poaching of skills or brain drain has been embraced by developed nations because it reduces the expense of training in the host nation. According to the African Capacity Building Foundation, African countries lose 20,000 skilled personnel to the developed world every year. All the developed world's efforts to increase aid to these countries may not matter if the local personnel required to implement development programs are absent. Every year there are 20,000 fewer people in Africa to deliver key public services, drive economic growth, and articulate calls for greater democracy and development. South Africa loses almost half of its doctors to Canada, Britain and Australia and is forced to recruit medical staff from countries like Kenya, Malawi and Zimbabwe. Ghana has lost half of its nurses and has more doctors working outside Ghana than in the country itself. This has cost it an estimated $63million of its training investment while the UK has saved $117m by the recruitment of Ghanaian doctors since 1988 alone. To address some of the concerns of “brain drain” from developing nations, the Commonwealth Code of Practice for the International Recruitment of Health Workers was adopted by Commonwealth Health Ministers in 2003. This serves as a framework within which international recruitment should take place and is intended to discourage the targeted recruitment of health workers from countries which are themselves experiencing shortages. The code also suggests that high-income countries consider how to recompense the donor nations for the recruitment of their health workers.

However there has been been considerable opposition to this approach, with some economists arguing that the transfer of skills is actually beneficial to both nations because many 3rd world nations are highly dependent on the remittances that their nationals return . According to the World Bank, workers from developing countries remitted a total of $325 billion in 2010, and in some countries these remittances are more than 20% of the nations GDP. Which of course is great unless you happen to urgently need the doctor that is now somewhere else. It has also been found that researchers and scientists who migrate are far more effective in their new locality because of better facilities that are available but then again this hardly flows on to benefit the donor nation. Shortages of skilled people in the education sector of developing nations is reducing training capacity and according to a report in the Wall Street Journal the US is to blame for Africa's doctor shortage that made the Ebola epidemic much worse than it should have been[3].

Today there are more doctors from Benin working in France than there are in Benin; more Ethiopian doctors in Washington DC than in the whole of Ethiopia. When you add in the effect of other professions that are poached from these countries under skilled immigration policies, teachers, engineers and others, it becomes plain that the developing nations will stay that way, a supplier of resources and skills to the developed world while ever this policy remains in place.

NOTES

[1] http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/call-for-migration-rort-crackdown-as-data-reveals-foreign-workers-snare-net-job-growth-20140807-3d9ma.html

1 in 3 nursing graduates can’t find work says ANMF report, yet 1 in 4 new nursing jobs going to 457 workers. http://t.co/FHHHQ2TCNH

http://www.smh.com.au/comment/lax-immigration-policy-hurting-australian-job-seekers-20140806-1019tr.html

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/oct/29/revealed-the-systemic-exploitation-of-migrant-workers-in-australia?CMP=share_btn_link

[3] How the U.S. Made the Ebola Crisis Worse: http://on.wsj.com/2cMKN5B
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-27/corruption-and-widespread-rorting-undermining-immigration/7537270?pfmredir=sm

US Congress Quietly Passes Bill Targeting “Russian Propaganda” Websites By Tyler Durden, Global Research, December 03, 2016, Zero Hedge 2 December 2016. On November 30, one week after the Washington Post launched its witch hunt against “Russian propaganda fake news”, with 390 votes for, the House quietly passed “H.R. 6393, Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017“, sponsored by California Republican Devin Nunes (whose third largest donor in 2016 is Google parent Alphabet, Inc), a bill which deals with a number of intelligence-related issues, including Russian propaganda, or what the government calls propaganda, and hints at a potential crackdown on “offenders.”

A quick skim of the bill reveals “Title V—Matters relating to foreign countries”,  whose Section 501 calls for the government to “counter active measures by Russia to exert covert influence … carried out in  coordination with, or at the behest of, political leaders or the security services of the Russian Federation and the role of the Russian Federation has been hidden or not acknowledged publicly.”

The section lists the following definitions of media manipulation:

• Establishment or funding of a front group.
• Covert broadcasting.
• Media manipulation.
• Disinformation and forgeries.
• Funding agents of influence.
• Incitement and offensive counterintelligence.
• Assassinations.
• Terrorist acts.

As ActivistPost correctly notes, it is easy to see how this law, if passed by the Senate and signed by the president, could be used to target, threaten, or eliminate so-called “fake news” websites, a list which has been used to arbitrarily define any website, or blog, that does not share the mainstream media’s proclivity to serve as the Public Relations arm of a given administration.

Read more of Tyler Durdan's article here: US Congress Quietly Passes Bill Targeting “Russian Propaganda” Websites

The momentum has shifted in Aleppo this week as the Syrian Army begin to advance, steadily driving out Western and Gulf-backed terrorist fighters under the command of Al Nusra Front – from their occupied enclaves in Eastern Aleppo. These images and videos will never see the light of day in the corporate media editing rooms because they expose their almost six year narrative on Syria as one of the most criminal propaganda projects ever deployed against a sovereign nation, its people, its state and its national army. This article was first published at http://21stcenturywire.com/2016/11/29/aleppo-updates-tears-hugs-and-smiles-the-relief-of-escaping-imprisonment-in-east-aleppo/ on November 29, 2016.

The prolonged dehumanization of the majority of the Syrian people, the exploitation of their children as cynical props to further the NATO & Gulf state geo-political objectives in the region, the overt and covert endorsement of NATO State-proxy terrorism, the tacit endorsement of economic terrorism via the illegal US/EU sanctions against Syria, all amount to crimes against Humanity and the Syrian people.

The #FakeNews “regime change” cohorts are seeing their pyramid of lies being dismantled stone by stone, by the very people they have been claiming to “protect” for almost six years.

The linked video shows the reactions of civilians, fleeing their four year imprisonment in East Aleppo, subjugated by various militant factions, funded by NATO states and led by Nusra Front aka Al Qaeda.  The first woman, collapses into tears, as she reaches the journalist.  These touching moments will be sullied by the corporate media reporting and accounting of events, as they desperately try to resuscitate their expiring Aleppo chronicles.

Translation of what is being said by Suleiman Milad

“They are saying God bless the army and they send their greetings to the army. They also said that there was no food and water where they were in eastern Aleppo between terrorist groups , they also said that terrorists treated them very bad and that the army helped them get out to safe areas. They also showed very big happiness seeing the interviewer who is a very famous war reporter in Syrian for Syrian official TV.”

The following images were taken of the fleeing civilians in the last 24 hours.

“Today, more civilians exited terrorists held areas, and reached to Hanano & Al-Sakhour which are under the control of the SAA in Aleppo.”

Sarah Abdallah, analyst and commentator, notes the following:

“Syrian Arab Army’s remarkable east Aleppo advancement continues:

Four more districts freed today, including the pivotal region of Sakhour. In the last 48 hours alone, 12 east Aleppo districts have been liberated. From one area to the next, the “moderate” terrorists are melting down. Most important news today though is the SAA’s recapture of the Suleiman al-Halabi Water Pumping Station. The Aleppo water crisis is over! Since 2012, Turkish-backed “jihadists” have withheld water from Aleppo’s residents as a means of blackmailing them into supporting the “revolution”. This has led to unprecedented levels of sickness and malnourishment. But now, the SAA has restored water to more than one million people as it moves ever-closer to freeing Aleppo entirely.

21st Century Wire will continue to post brief but informative updates as we receive them from known and verified sources on the ground in Aleppo and across Syria or the region.

Fears are increasing that something terrible has happened to Julian Assange, the Australian who founded Wikileaks and exposed power elites in the United States - most recently through 'Pizzagate'. We really hope that these fears are groundless, but police presence has been removed from the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where Assange has been sequestered since 2012. The Anonymous video inside this article gives more detail than any other source, analysing and timelining what has happened recently with Assange. You need to start about 37 seconds in to avoid an overly long intro. Please contact candobetter.net if you have information about Assange. The Australian Government should be inquiring into his welfare - but they have failed totally to defend his rights now for years.

Did you know that Great Britain is going down the drain because the citizens want to remain British?

Did you know that the British are inherently racist, jingoistic, bigots, and obnoxious because they don't want to become Pakistanis, Syrians, Africans or some multicultural combination?

Did you know that the British people voted to leave the European Union not because they oppose their loss of sovereignty to a foreign and unelected power in Brussels, but because of their hatred and contempt of foreigners, especially the dark-skinned ones that the EU forces them to accept in unlimited numbers?

If you don't know this, you are not stupid like Brian Cloughley, who lays it out for you in the website strategic-culture.org. Here is the URL for Cloughley's imbecillic article:

Britain Going down the Drain: Racism and Bigotry Are Growing (21/11/16) | Strategic Culture._[1]

While Cloughley calls the white British racists, last May these racists elected a Muslim, Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London. Can you imagine the Mayor of London, England, is a Muslim named Sadiq Khan? Either the British are not racists or the Pakistanis outnumber Englishmen in London, which might before long be renamed New Islamabad.

Cloughley calls the British people every name in the book and then upbraids them for "the racial abuse" of using words such as "Pakis" and "niggers."

Cloughley, obviously a self-hating Britisher, reports that Brexit (the British people's vote to restore their sovereignty by departing the EU) has caused hate crimes to rise by 41 percent. Why would departing the EU cause a rise in hate crimes?

Perhaps the answer is related to the fact that the use of traditional British words, such as "wog," has been criminalized. "Wog" is a British word that according to the English Oxford Dictionaries means simply "a person who is not white."_[2] [3] Despite this innocent meaning, for a white Britisher to use this word as a description of a not white person or group can result in hate crime charges. What is most peculiar about politically correct speech is that political correctness itself marginalizes non-white people by eliminating the use of words that mean non-white. Political correctness has made it so shameful to be non-white that ordinary words such as negro and wog that mean a non-white person have been turned into slurs. How can non-whites have racial pride when words that mean non-white cannot even be used?

As Cloughley's screed against the British people develops, we see that it is a brief against leaving the EU. As the EU was an OSS (original name of the CIA) initiative, Cloughley, knowingly or unknowingly, is serving as a CIA asset.

Cloughley is at perfect ease calling his fellow British every hateful name, seemingly impervious to the fact that if he were not calling white people names he would be committing hate crimes.

In addition to their loss of sovereignty to an unelected EU commission sitting in a foreign country, what the British people are objecting to is that they have been made second class citizens in their own country. White people in Great Britain have to be very careful about what words they use to describe illegal and legal aliens or they can be charged with "hate crimes" for employing vocabulary formerly used by prime ministers themselves.

Yes, Britain is going down the drain. But not because it is trying to rescue itself at this late date from loss of sovereignty and multicultural hell. Britain is going to hell because, judging by the closeness of the Brexit vote, almost half of the British population have been so brainwashed that they are ashamed to be British.

This article was previously published 28/11/2016 on PaulCraigRoberts.org. It was initially republished only in part here on 28/11/2016, but, now, with the author's kind permission, has been re-published in full.

Footnotes

[1] ↑ In spite of its publication of this ridiculous article, Strategic Culture also publishes insightful and informative articles about many of the world's current geopolitical conflicts.

[2] ↑ NOTE (by author, Paul Craig Roberts): I have been reminded from England that WOG stands for Worthy Oriental Gentlemen, a term imposed by British officers on uncouth troops to stop them from using racist names for colonized peoples.

[3] ↑ (by Candobetter editor): It is some years since I have heard the term 'wog' used, but, in my own experience in Australia, and not in Great Britain, back in the 1960s and 1970's, contrary to what the author has written, 'wog' was considered an offensive and racist term. However, like Paul Craig Roberts, I consider it outrageous that the use of the term should be criminalised.

Article by Prof. Marcello Ferrada de Noli, Chairman, Swedish Doctors for Human Rights –SWEDHR. First published at The Indicter Magazine Summary: Sweden did not succeed in getting Bob Dylan to come to Stockholm to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. Nevertheless as a consolation the “White Helmets” did arrive to get the Right Livelihood Award. This article examines a likely geopolitical rationale that the Swedish elites had for selecting that organization. Facts suggest a congruence between the stances of those elites on Syria and the declared political aims of the organization White Helmets. The reviewing of the institutions involved in the award-decision and process can also result relevant in pondering the reason for the event. Finally, to inquire into the role of Carl Bildt, as member of the board of directors in the institution ultimately deciding, is interesting against the backdrop of his opposition regarding the participation of  Julian Assange and Edward Snowden in previous international events organized by the same institutions –all of them under the umbrella of the Swedish Foreign Office.

Late in the day, on Nov. 15, one week after the U.S. elections, the lame-duck Congress convened in special session with normal rules suspended so the House could pass House Resolution 5732, the “Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act” calling for intensifying the already harsh sanctions on Syria, assessing the imposition of a “no fly zone” inside Syria (to prevent the Syrian government from flying) and escalating efforts to press criminal charges against Syrian officials.

HR5732 claims to promote a negotiated settlement in Syria but, as analyzed by Friends Committee for National Legislation, it imposes preconditions which would actually make a peace agreement more difficult.

There was 40 minutes of “debate” with six representatives (Ed Royce, R-California; Eliot Engel, D-New York; Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Florida; Dan Kildee, D-Michigan; Chris Smith, R-New Jersey; and Carlos Curbelo, R-Florida) all speaking in favor of the resolution. There were few other representatives present, but the House Foreign Affairs Committee stated that the resolution was passed “unanimously” without mentioning these special conditions.

According to Wikipedia, “Suspension of the rules is a procedure generally used to quickly pass non-controversial bills in the United States House of Representatives … such as naming Post Offices…” In this case, however, the resolution could lead to a wider war in the Middle East and potentially World War III with nuclear-armed Russia.

Most strikingly, the resolution calls for evaluating and developing plans for the United States to impose a “no fly zone” inside Syria, a sovereign nation, an act of war that also would violate international law as an act of aggression. It also could put the U.S. military in the position of shooting down Russian aircraft.

To call this proposal “non-controversial” is absurd, although it may say a great deal about the “group think” of the U.S. Congress that an act of war would be so casually considered. Clearly, this resolution should have been debated under normal rules with a reasonable amount of Congressional presence and debate.

The motivation for bypassing normal rules and rushing the bill through without meaningful debate was articulated by the bill’s sponsor, Democrat Eliot Engel: “We cannot delay action on Syria any further. … If we don’t get this legislation across the finish line in the next few weeks, we are back to square one.”

The current urgency may be related to the election results since President-elect Donald Trump has spoken out against “regime change” foreign policy. As much as neoconservatives and their liberal-interventionist allies are critical of President Obama for not doing more in Syria, these Congressional hawks are even more concerned about the prospect of a President who might move toward peace and away from war.

Read more here.

The very moving video inside shows a soldier hug his family after 5 years of separation, as a major suburb of Aleppo is retaken by Syria from the terrorists. The fighting in Aleppo, Syria, has been particularly protracted as it has been one of the last bastions of the terrorist forces that are trying to take over Syria. These forces are backed by the United States and NATO and their allies, which, shamefully, include Australia. The Syrian Arab Army has lost about 80,000 soldiers trying to defend Syria, which has a secular government, from takeover by militant religious fundamentalists. Most remaining Syrians are sheltered behind lines held by the Syrian Arab Army, although Australia, NATO and the US view this army as the 'enemy'. The so-called 'Rebels' which Australia, NATO and the United States support, have used people in captive cities as human shields to stop the Syrian Arab Army and Russia from bombing these terrorists. US-NATO have turned this round as propaganda, pretending that the necessity of bombing the fundamentalist forces, is a gratuitous form of bombing civilians. US-NATO have maliciously failed to acknowledge that those civilians are being held against their will. President Elect Trump seems to want to change this and to help Syria to retain its sovereignty by cooperating with the Russian Army. To anyone who is not a crazed fundamentalist guerilla, this seems the only way to go. We congratulate the Syrian Arab Army on its hard-won gains in Aleppo and its surrounds and we wish that our government would cease its support for the terrorists by lifting sanctions imposed by Bob Carr under the pretext that the Syrian Government had massacred its own supporters at Hula.

Latest on the situation in Aleppo

"The Syrian army’s Tiger Forces and allied pro-government groups have fully liberated the key area of Hanano Housing in the northeastern part of Aleppo city (more about the miliary sutioation in general can be found here). The area had been controlled by Jaish al-Fatah militants. With liberation of the Hanano Housing, government forces can threat to split the eastern Aleppo pocket with capturing Sakhur and linking the frontline up in Suleiman Halabi. Another option that now becomes possible with the success in Hanano Housing is to encircle Jaish al-Fatah units between Hanano and Jabal Badro in southeastern Aleppo. Government forces advadnce in southeastern Aleppo is ongoing." Source: https://southfront.org/government-forces-take-control-of-hanano-housing/.

ALSO, dated yesterday: https://syrianfreepress.wordpress.com/2016/11/26/saa-25-villages/ :"SAA establishes control over 25 villages/farms in Aleppo countryside, Terrorist gangs kill civilians in Damascus Countryside and Idleb"

This article gives acknowledgement to the Russians as allies and shows the successful delivery of food aid. We republish the article from the Syrian Free Press.

SAA establishes control over 25 villages/farms in Aleppo countryside, Terrorist gangs kill civilians in Damascus Countryside and Idleb

Syrian Arab Army units, in cooperation with the allied forces, established control over an area of above 120 km2 in the northeastern countryside of Aleppo after eliminating the last terrorist gatherings there.

A field commander told reporters that army units, in cooperation with the allied forces, continued their progress in the area surrounding the Infantry School and engaged in fierce battles with terrorist groups, inflicting heavy losses on them in personnel and equipment.

He added that the army established control over 25 village and farms, including Tal Shaer, the farms surrounding it, al-Ta’ana, Harysa, al-Wardieh, Jobah and the farms surrounding it.

He pointed out that army units confronted attacks launched by ISIS and armed groups linked to the Turkish regime on the military points in the northeastern countryside of Aleppo.

The Commander noted that the terrorist groups which are supported by the Turkish regime falsely claim to be fighting ISIS in the direction of northeast of al-Bab, but it is the Syrian army and the allied forces who drove the terrorists of ISIS away from the entire area in 15 days.

Hama

The Syrian army repels terrorist attack on military posts in northern Hama.

Sweida

Syrian army unit targeted with artillery the movements of Daesh terrorists in al-Qasser village to the northeast of Sweida city, according to a military source.

The source added the ten Daesh members were killed due to the shelling and two of their vehicles were destroyed.

Terrorist attacks kill 7 civilians in Damascus and its countryside

Six civilians were killed due to a terrorist rocket attack on Harasta suburb in Damascus Countryside.

A source at Damascus Countryside Police Command told SANA reporter that the attack, which included several rocket shells, was launched by terrorists of the so-called “Jaish al-Islam” who are positioned in Eatsern Ghoutaby, adding that another person was injured due to the selling.

Colonel Sama’an killed in a terrorist attack on al-Faihaa Sports city in Damascus

Meanwhile, Director of al-Jaish football team, Colonel Nazih Sama’an was killed in a terrorist attack on al-Faihaa Sports city in Damascus.

A police source told SANA that terrorists of Jaish al-Islam targeted al-Faihaa sports city and al-Adawi Street with two rocket shells, killing the colonel and injuring player Ali Maryameh.

Eight persons injured in Aleppo 

ِA police source told SANA that terrorist organizations targeted with a rocket shell residential neighborhood of al-Masharka in Aleppo, injuring a woman and a child.

Later, the source added that 6 other persons were injured in a rocket shell launched by terrorists on a building in Baghdad station neighborhood in Aleppo.

Terrorist sniper shootings on locals in Idleb’s al-Fouaa injure one person

In the same context, another person was also injured when terrorist groups affiliated to Jabhat al-Nusra opened sniper rifle fire on the locals’ houses in the terrorist-besieged al-Fouaa town in the northern countryside of Idleb province.

Local sources told SANA that the sniper shootings came from Binnesh town, confirming that one person was injured in the attack.

Russian aid distributed to displaced families in al-Muallaqa village, Damascus Countryside

A new batch of Russian humanitarian aid was distributed on Thursday to displaced people in al-Muallaqa village in cooperation with Damascus Countryside Governorate.

Representative of the Russian Coordination Center in Hmeimim Alexei Ivanov said 200 food portions, containing rice, sugar and canned food, were distributed to the displaced families in the village as part of the aid provided by Russia to help alleviate the Syrian people’ suffering due to the terrorist crimes.

For his part, Abdul Rahman al-Khatib, the mayor of Harjalleh town in which al-Muallaqa village is located, hailed the Russian stance in support of Syria, pointing out that Damascus Countryside Governorate provides all services and the basic needs to the 800 displaced families currently residing in al-Muallaqa village.

SOURCES:
SANA Reports
Submitted by SyrianPatriot 
War Press Info Network at :
https://syrianfreepress.wordpress.com/2016/11/26/saa-25-villages/
~
Re-publications are welcome, but we kindly ask you,
to facilitate the correct information's diffusion,
to cite all these original links and sources.

The Baird government's controversial biodiversity laws have passed their final hurdle in parliament, with NSW farmers set to get greater power to clear their land from next year. The legislation will replace the Native Vegetation Act, which was designed to prevent mass land clearing. Thousands of possums, quolls, koalas and gliders will be killed each year if Premier Mike Baird scraps our tree-clearing laws. Nationals MPs, big agri-business and developers want to allow landholders trash our precious woodlands and urban bushland by replacing the Native Vegetation Act with weaker tree-clearing controls.

Letter

The Hon. Josh Frydenberg MP

Minister for the Environment and Energy

Dear Minister

End the senseless destruction of our wildlife - stop the carnage and destruction in NSW

The Baird government's controversial biodiversity laws have passed their final hurdle in parliament, with NSW farmers set to get greater power to clear their land from next year.
The legislation will replace the Native Vegetation Act, which was designed to prevent mass land clearing.

Thousands of possums, quolls, koalas and gliders will be killed each year if Premier Mike Baird scraps our tree-clearing laws. Nationals MPs, big agri-business and developers want to allow landholders trash our precious woodlands and urban bushland by replacing the Native Vegetation Act with weaker tree-clearing controls. These changes will:

-add extinction pressures to our state's 1000 threatened species;
-threaten our clean, reliable water supplies;
-turn our fertile land into wasteland through erosion and salinity;
-put landmark trees and bushland at risk; and
-add further to Australia's carbon pollution.

In 2015, a study by NSW Parks and Wildlife found that 60,000 hectares was being cleared per year in the state — a four-fold increase on previous State Government figures.

Professor Hugh Possingham warned that rather than protecting biodiversity, the laws would allow a doubling of broad-scale clearing that would put some native animals at risk of extinction.

The primary objections of Professor Possingham are that the government is proposing self-assessable codes that will result in broad-scale land clearing, thus degrading soil, water and biodiversity, and that the ‘no net loss’ standard against which clearing should be measured has not made the draft legislation. Despite the weight of scientific expertise opposed to the legislation the Baird Government has pressed on regardless. How are those with short-term, vested interests in monetary gain, allowed to determine their own rate of land clearing? Environmental protection is in everybody's interests, and that of future generations. Eradicating habitat is a silver-bullet for more threatened species, and native flora and fauns extinctions - already we have one of the highest rates in the modern world! Tourist come to see, and rightly expect to see, our wonderful mega-diverse range of iconic native species - vegetation, marsupials, birds, and other native wildlife. They don't want to see barren, cleared landscapes, urban sprawl and industries!

The current laws are supposed to prevent that kind of clearing without permits. The changes, which the government says were developed through a "rigorous, transparent, scientific and evidence-based process," allow farmers more freedom to clear their land without having to find equivalent areas of offsets. This is vandalism, and not only will we lose precious biodiversity functions, and native animals/birds, but we will see more desertification in the future - hardly the route to more production and more food!

The Sydney Basin, for instance, has some 1900 koalas under limited protection, with about 300 of the marsupials resident near Campbelltown one of the areas with rapid housing growth. This is because our rate of immigration is set on full-throttle levels - and not inevitable.

Last year 47,000 native animals and birds were killed in NSW by property owners using a "s121 licence". Each licence strictly controls the number of animals permitted to killed, and requires data to be lodged with the Office of Environment and Heritage. The office issued permits for 34 species, or a total of 145,550 animals and birds to be killed in 2015-16. This included more than 100,000 eastern grey kangaroos, almost 9000 corellas, 6500 sulphur crested cockatoos, 5500 galahs, 655 emus, 175 swamp wallabies, 113 wombats and 83 magpies. What sort of department of "Environment and Heritage" actually gives out so many permits to kill off native species? Some Orwellian oxymoron? They are killing off the ENVIRONMENT, habitat, biodiversity and vandalizing NSW's natural HERITAGE. How can this horrendous carnage be permitted, or justified?

Almost 1000 species of plants and animals are currently endangered in NSW, mainly due to land clearing. Over 40% of the state has already been cleared for agriculture, mining and development purposes and of what’s left, just 9% is in good condition. This leaves very little room for our native animals to maintain their homes. Since the "bad old days" of colonisation, and ignorance, biodiversity has been in steady decline in NSW. For the last 10 years, previous Governments have been working hard to halt and improve this decimation of our local plants and animals, armed with two environment protection acts – the 1995 Threatened Species Conservation Act and the 2003 Native Vegetation Act. They aren’t perfect but the World Wildlife Fund reckons these laws have saved the lives of around 250 000 of our furry amigos to date, including koalas and other native animals.

So why the new Colonial land-clearing permits, a return to the dark ages of ignorance, and law-less-ness? What about the national laws and policies that protect our native species?

The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act) is the Australian Government's central piece of environmental legislation. It provides a legal framework to protect and manage nationally and internationally important flora, fauna, ecological communities and heritage places defined in the Act as matters of national environmental significance.

Specifically, the EPBC Act aims to:

-conserve Australia? biodiversity
-protect biodiversity internationally by controlling the international movement of wildlife
-provide a streamlined environmental assessment and
-approvals process where matters of national environmental significance are involved
-protect our world and national heritage
-promote ecologically sustainable development.

So, why isn't this Act being implemented against the rogue Baird government? What are our Environment ministers doing to stop the Baird governments vandalism, and destruction?

Vivienne Ortega

Secretary, Australian Wildlife Protection Council

http://www.awpc.org.au

awpcadmin@tpg.com.au

The two videos inside this article are Parts 1 and 2 of a seminar on "The Right of Blasphemy - No to Medieval Trials" which took place in Rome, Italy, on Sunday, October 30, 2016. The seminar aimed at raising awareness of the fierce campaign against the enlightening intellectuals in the Arab world. From assassinating the writer and intellectual; Nahed Hattar in Jordan, imprisoning the Islamic researcher; Islam Behery In Egypt, and the liberal blogger; Raif Badawi in Saudi Arabia, to sentencing the journalist; Mohamed Sheikh Walad Amkheter to death, to other, endless examples. “Blasphemy”is always a prefabricated accusation of anyone who tries to discuss or think differently. Of additional interest is the fact that the president of the secularist ADHOC organisation that held this very open-minded seminar was Syrian-born Randa Kassis, who recently met with Donald Trump Jr at the French 'think tank' the Center of Political and Foreign Affairs, headed by her husband, Fabien Baussart, to discuss US-Russian cooperation. (See "Hope for Syria! Trump's son at Randa Kassis pro-Syrian French think tank in October."

DR NADIA OWEIDAT: "I have felt personally in my entire ten years of being an analyst in Washington [...] that I am constantly accused of being not authentic enough because I'm not an Islamist.

So there's somebody has decided that if you from the region and it doesn't matter like I come from the biggest tribe in Jordan - my tribe goes back to the time of the Pharaohs - [...] but that doesn't make me authentic because I'm not religious. I'm not Islamist. Not just not really, just I'm not Islamist.

So I've had this accusation and its really irritating who has decided that unless an Islamist I'm not an authentic voice from the Middle East. [...]

We have to fight this because this sympathy is really costing the entire world, because it's a huge imbalance in siding with Islamist as authentic. [...]

Political Islamist parties have proven over and over that they are very authoritarian and there's enough of us in the Middle East that are really sick and tired of authoritarianism. We would like to see real human rights, would like to see real engagement. We want to play a role in building our countries and were excluded from from that engagement. [...] Islam is like returning regimes exclude everybody [...] who doesn't carry their vision. It's not even vision their narrow-minded ideology. So this really needs to be tackled [...]" (Dr. Nadia Oweidat: Modern Islamic thought professor.)

It has been very difficult to discover the list of participants and all their names. Below is a list advertised on the International Humanist and Ethical Union, IHEU site in England.

Speaker list:
1. Dr. Hamed Abdel-Samad: German-Egyptian writer and critic of Islamism.
2. Dr. Nadia Oweidat: Modern Islamic thought professor.
3. Dr. Saaed Nashed: Moroccan writer and intellectual, concerned with the issues of modernism and enlightenment.
4. Dr. Olfa Youssef: Tunisian writer, author, professor.
5. Dr. Elizabeth O’Casey: Advocacy Director of IHEU and representative at the United Nations Human Rights Council.
6. Mr. Majed Hatar brother of the assassinated Jordanian writer Nahed Hatar

Whilst one can obtain an automated transcript of the speeches via you tube's transcript function, the accuracy is poor. I have tried to transcribe parts of the first and the second speeches and may put these up later.

During the recent United States' presidential election campaign almost the entire mainstream was heavily biased against Donald Trump, and in favour of Hillary Clinton. Surprisingly, given Hillary Clinton's repeated claim that Donald Trump was a puppet of Vladimir Putin, the Russian news service RT America was also strongly biased against Donald Trump. Whilst it would be wrong to conclude from this that Clinton was actually Putin's puppet, rather than Trump, how was it possible for a Russian taxpayer-funded news service to act against Russia's own interests by promoting the russophobic Clinton?

Presenters Tyrel Ventura and Tabetha Wallace and their guest, Ed Schultz, presenter of RT America's news service, were savagely critical of Donald Trump in their show Now on to election night: 3rd and final debate with Ed Schultz (21/10/16). Guest, Ed Schultz, predicted that Donald Trump would lose. Whilst I thought, as did many American voters, that Donald Trump clearly won the third Presidential election debate, as well as the second, all three in that discussion on Watching the hawks agreed that he had lost that debate. (There was a small facade of criticism of Clinton from Schultz and Ventura, possibly because they may well have understood that failure to see some fault in Clinton could have caused their credibility to suffer too much.)

Also mirroring the mainstream media's 'reporting' and commentary, the rest of RT America spent nearly all of its coverage of the election attacking the alleged bigotry, racism, xenophobia, and temperamentalism of Donald Trump, whilst omitting discussion of the substantial policies, both domestic and international, that were at stake, and ignoring the mountain of evidence that should have damned Hillary Clinton years ago.

That evidence includes Hillary Clinton's complicity, since 1990, in the deaths of hundreds of thousands in Central Asia, the Middle East and the former republics of Yugoslavia, plus the cover-up of sexual misconduct and rape allegations against her husband, the former United States' President, Bill Clinton.

RT America programs, which, in this way, also sided with Clinton, include News with Ed Schultz, Lee Camp's 'comedy' show Redacted Tonight and Watching the Hawks.

In an example of Redacted Tonight,"Trump cabinet is horrifying, get rid of Electoral College, and TPP is dead," (19/11/16), the promotional summary states:

In this week's episode of Redacted Tonight, Lee Camp covers the latest news on Trump’s cabinet, which already has people panicking. What should we fear most about Trump's cabinet picks? Is he really draining the swamp?

In what seems like an attempt to cover their tracks following Donald Trump's victory, Ed Schultz and the producers of Watching the Hawks now appear to be backing away from the pro-Clinton bias they displayed during the election campaign. However, Redacted Tonight and The Big Picture continue their savage attacks on Donald Trump. Post-election examples of this in The Big Picture include: Why Trump's cabinet is a basket of deplorables (21/10/16) and Will Tulsi Gabbard go from Bernie to Trump?.

Comments after the second show listed above include:

"Is Thom channeling George Soros now? Honestly, he used to have quite an amusing program due to allowing some intelligent and witty right wingers on his panel. Now it is all straight propaganda for the faux left."

"Yep. The show is embarrassing."

"comic-relief?"

"RT should bin 'The Big Picture'. The episode with Lawson and Badawi was truly awful. If we wanted to listen to all this rabid globalist propaganda we could tune in to any of the mainstream media news channels. RT should be presenting the benefits of a MULTI-POLAR globe, not pushing the narratives of the American globalisers. What next? Is RT planning on promoting the Democrats view that the US should punish Russia for existing?"

Quite possibly Thom Hartmann and Lee Camp are banking that the various moves now underway in America to overturn Donald Trump's victory and declare Hillary Clinton President will succeed and restore some of their credibility.

The Russian government set up RT back in 2005. It recognised that it had failed to challenge the Western mainstream media's narrative about the former Yugoslav republic of Serbia. The lack of any strong media to challenge those western media lies then had permitted the United States and its European allies to bomb that country and overthrow its government in 1999.

Since then, RT and other national news services such as Iran's PressTV have helped to counter the Western mainstream media's lying narrative on Libya, Syria, Ukraine, and Yemen. Perhaps in part, consequently, the United States' and its allies' regime-change plans for Syria and Yemen have yet to succeed. These plans have also to contend with the support of the Russian air force, the Lebanese Hezbollah movement and Iran for Syria, along with the resilience of the Syrian people themselves.

RT should not rest on its laurels, however. Its success invites subversion. The apparent (failed) attempt by RT America to make Hillary Clinton President of the United States illustrates that RT America should be thoroughly overhauled with new journalists and a charter that requires RT America to give both sides of the story wherever that story is seriously disputed.

The same comment applies, of course, to the mainstream western media.

NOTES

The above article was adapted from a comment posted by 'Don't Get Fooled Again' beneath an article worth reading, Trump's Media Summit Was a 'F−−−ing Firing Squad' (22/11/16) by Emily Smith and Daniel Happer | Information Clearing House.

Thirty people, including Donald Trump Jr., attended an event on October 11, 2016 at the Paris Ritz. The event was hosted by a French think tank, founded by Fabien Baussart,and his wife, Randa Kassis. Ms Kassis is Syrian born and the organisation has been trying, with Russia, to end the war in Syria. Baussart has described as "absurd" the political stance on Syria of the US and some countries in Europe.This meeting occurred prior to Donald Trump Sr.'s election to President of the United States. It gives support to many hopes that President Elect Trump meant business when he talked of cooperating with the Syrian Government and Russia to end the war in Syria over which he rightly accused the Hillary Clinton and Obama regime of incompetence. Unfortunately, Australia has assiduously followed the Clinton-Obama regime line, with the shameful support of most Australian mainstream media.

Kassis wrote on her facebook page, "Syria's opposition got hope that political process will move forward and Russia and the United States will reach accord on the issue of the Syrian crisis, because of Trump's victory. Such hope and belief is the result of my personal meeting with Donald Trump junior in Paris in October… I succeeded to pass Trump, through the talks with his son, the idea of how we can cooperate together to reach the agreement between Russia and the United States on Syria."

She was also quoted by Sputnik, saying, "I think Donald Trump’s vision of the Syrian settlement will be close to Russia’s approach. I think the conflict will stop. I hope that in practice this will happen as soon as Syrian radical Islamist groups are cut off from their financing sources."

She wrote on her facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/search/str/randa%2Bkassis/keywords_search?filters_rp_author=198576333514358

As the next US president, Donald Trump could show support for Moscow's approach to the Syrian settlement. His team includes people who are ready for dialogue with Russia, French analyst Fabien Baussart told Sputnik.

Sputnik also reports that Baussart said, "State Secretary John Kerry permanently told lies to his Russia colleagues, which created obstacles for a constructive dialogue." Sputnik says that Bausart noted that Trump’s team consists of "people who can launch constructive cooperation with Russia." It adds that "Baussart underscored that the "fight against radical Islamism serves the interests not only of Russia and the US, but also of Europe and Muslims peacefully practicing their religion." "However, Britain, France and even Germany embrace an absurd closed stance on any proposals on the Syrian crisis." Read more: https://sputniknews.com/world/201611141047422760-trump-russia-syria/

The Andrews Labor government has just failed a crucial test of its integrity in relation to threatened species listings and biodiversity governance. Immediately prior to losing office in December 2010, the Brumby Labor government had finalized listing the dingo as a threatened native taxon under the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act.

The current Labor government’s virtual trashing of that listing, through the reinstatement of a ‘wild-dog’ bounty, which directly panders to the Victorian Upper House Shooters, Fishers and Farmers party members, who were voted in on a relative handful of first preference votes, now casts a shadow over the Victorian Government’s commitment to biodiversity conservation.

The broader significance of the dingo listing relates to the dingo’s pivotal ecological role as apex predator. Ecologists around the world are increasingly pointing to the importance of top predators for ecosystem stability at a time of environmental dislocation and accelerating species loss.

The bounty is nothing more than a publicly subsidized membership recruitment drive for recreational hunting organizations because membership of such organizations is a precondition for permission to kill 'wild-dogs'/dingoes and receipt of the bounty payment.

While Jaala Pulford, the Agriculture Minister, against strong advice from peak environmental organizations and environmental experts, has obstinately persisted in reintroducing the bounty, the Environment Minister, Lily D'Ambrosio has remained invisible. No environmental defence of the bounty has been forthcoming, nor could there be.
This reflects a disturbing, environmentally destructive imbalance of ministerial responsibilities established under the previous Coalition government, whereby the Minister for Agriculture has shared responsibilities for key sections of the Wildlife and Flora and Fauna Guarantee Acts.

Labor is now demonstrating its willingness to continue the environmental dirty work of the Coalition government with little acknowledgement of the environmentally progressive legacy of the Brumby government's dingo listing and the arrangements then put in place to ensure a balanced approach to dingo protection and farm stock protection.

By reinstating the bounty, Victorian Labor has displayed serious environmental incompetence and party leaders seem unable or unwilling to do anything about it. Victorians deserve better.

Attached are two media releases, one by the Humane Society International (HIS) and the other by the National Dingo Preservation and Recovery Program Inc. (NDPRP). The HSI emphasises that there is no sound pest animal control justification for the bounty and that it will be environmentally harmful. The bounty of $120 per scalp will make no significant contribution to protecting farm stock from wild-dog predation.

The NDPRP Inc. highlights how the Andrews Labor Government has been captured by extreme elements of the farming lobby and recreational shooters organizations in the misguided belief that the ALP can win over a greater share of the rural vote to compensate for the likely electoral gains of the Greens at the next Victorian election.

Victorians need to ask where such extreme anti-environmentalism by Victorian Labor is heading. There is now a concerted push by the gun lobby for increased access to public lands and the advocacy of ‘community involvement’ in ‘pest animal’ management is providing the rhetorical basis for greater access. Victorians can expect that their national parks will become a focus of this push. At the moment, it is illegal to carry a firearm into national parks. However, given its present reactionary policy trajectory, Labor will likely continue to dump environmental principle in favour of political expediency.

Val Morgan

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Victorian Labor destroys legacy with backflip on dingo bounty
26th October 2016

Humane Society International (HSI) is incensed by the announcement that the Victorian Labor Government has destroyed its dingo conservation legacy with “a bigger, better bounty” than the Coalition program they scrapped just a year ago. A far cry from the previous Labor Government’s landmark listing of the dingo as a threatened species in 2008, the move signals a new era where Labor is beholden to the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party with the state’s wildlife considered nothing more than collateral.

An abundance of reasons this regressive and misguided bounty program is bound to fail at the expense of Victoria’s environmental health were outlined by HSI and echoed by experts last week. They include: leaving the Government exposed to fraud; an inability to determine genetic purity in the field; and ‘wild dog’-dingo hybrids playing the same ecological role as genetically pure dingoes, including suppressing feral cat and fox populations to the benefit of countless native species.

"The Victorian Government is using taxpayer money to incentivise the killing of a threatened species with the ecological fallout to impact dozens more, it’s inexcusable and the public should be outraged. An opportunity to reform management to the mutual benefit of farmers and the environment has been ignored for purely political purposes, and we’re left with short-sighted investment in outdated methods that have repeatedly been tried and failed," said HSI Senior Program Manager Evan Quartermain.

Minister for Agriculture Jaala Pulford’s justification that a bounty of $120 per ‘wild dog’ scalp will be introduced “In recognition of the role hunting can play in supporting the management of wild dogs” is in stark conflict with expert organisations such as the Invasive Species Council, who have determined that shooting is a highly ineffective control measure for canid species. Similarly, Minister Pulford’s claim that “One less dog roaming on people's farms is a good outcome” demonstrates an alarming lack of ecological understanding. The latest research suggests that such control programs in fact increase stock predation due to pack disturbance altering behaviours.

“Alternative stock protection methods such as guardian animals have proven to be effective and are ripe for Government investment. Yet against all evidence the Labor Government has turned their back on the iconic and threatened dingo, bowing to shooters groups and trashing their conservation legacy by mimicking Coalition policy. They should instead be focused on strengthening the dingo’s threatened listing, with the voice of Minister for the Environment Lily D’Ambrosio conspicuous in its absence,” Mr Quartermain concluded.

HSI is currently seeking legal advice on the legality of the Victorian ‘wild dog’ bounty announced today.

Media Contact:
Evan Quartermain, Senior Program Manager: 0404 306 993 or (02) 9973 1728

HSI concentrates on the preservation of endangered animals and ecosystems and works to ensure quality of life for all animals, both domestic and wild. HSI is the largest animal protection not-for-profit organisation in the world and has been established in Australia since 1994.

https://www.hsi.org.au/go/to/2866/26th-october-victorian-labor-destroys-legacy-with-backflip-on-di.html#.WBF_ofS8-So

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Media Release

National Dingo Preservation and Recovery Program (Inc. A0051763G )
Date: Monday November 7 , 2016

Does Victoria have an Environment Minister? –
Agriculture Minister continues to trash threatened species listing

The National Dingo Preservation and Recovery Program Inc. (NDPRP) today expressed dismay that, as the Victorian Minister for Agriculture, Jaala Pulford, appears to have run amok with environmentally damaging ‘pest animal’ policy, the Victorian Environment Minister seems to have resigned herself to a junior minister role over crucial biodiversity decision making.

It is extraordinary that at the very same time as the Minister for Agriculture has announced a ’wild dog’ bounty, she has announced a review of the same policy in 12 month’s time by a newly established ‘Wild Dog Management Advisory Group’. The NDPRP urges the public to ask why a policy that has so little to recommend it was adopted in the first place.

Having been strongly advised by peak environmental organisations, environmental experts and progressive elements within the Victorian ALP itself that bounties are an ineffectual means of pest animal control, would undermine Victoria’s listing of the dingo as a threatened species and would be environmentally harmful, the Agriculture Minister has persisted in imposing the bounty, for which recreational hunters will receive $120 dollars for each dingo scalp. President of the NDPRP, Dr Ian Gunn, today stated:

“The announcement of a review of the bounty decision in one year’s time is clearly a concession that the Agriculture Minister has been forced into by more environmentally responsible elements within the Victorian Labor Party. However, if the justification for the bounty policy is so spurious, why was it reinstated at all? Why would the Victorian Labor government allow the Agriculture Minister to dictate poor policy that is known to have no environmental or pest management validity?”

Part of the answer is the presence of two Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party members in the Victorian Legislative Assembly, with whom political horse trading has become a priority – in this instance at the expense of good environmental management.

Dr Gunn added:

“Unfortunately, the Victorian Government is endorsing what amounts to a publically-funded membership recruitment drive for recreational hunting organisations, as membership of these organisations is an eligibility requirement collection of the bounty.”

“At present the Victorian Labor government is in a race to the bottom with the Liberal-Nationals Opposition to show that Labor can implement the toughest wild-dog policy, regardless of the environmental consequences.”

This is evident in the second stated purpose of the ‘Wild Dog Management Advisory Group’, which is to review the central pillar of the dingo threatened species listing – that lethal control for dingoes/wild dogs not be permitted beyond a 3 kilometer buffer at the interface of public and private land (on public land). This buffer was put in place by the Brumby Labor government to ensure equitable protection for both farm livestock and the threatened dingo population.

Dr Gunn stated:

“The NDPRP considers that, on being forced into a review of the flawed bounty policy before it has even begun, the Minister for Agriculture has countered by including a review of the key protective element at the heart of the dingo threatened species listing, which had been put in place by the Brumby government in 2010 – the 3 kilometer limitation on lethal control.

It appears that the Minister is effectively using her privilege of having shared responsibilities for wildlife and biodiversity conservation legislation to undermine measures previously put in place to protect Victorian biodiversity. ”

Perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of the Victorian Labor Government’s treatment of the ‘wild-dog’ bounty issue is the invisibility of the Victorian Environment Minister, Lily D’Ambrosio.

Dr Gunn stressed:

“Any review of the terms of the dingo threatened species listing should be led by the Victorian Environment Minister and state biodiversity officers, not the Department of Agriculture. It is extraordinary that a review of key aspects of the dingo threatened species listing, arrived at through extensive stakeholder consultation with the Department of Sustainability and Environment in 2009, should now be subject to review by the Department of Agriculture. The public might be forgiven for asking whether Victoria has an Environment Minister at this point in time. ”

The NDPRP calls upon the Premier, Daniel Andrews, to ensure that any review of the terms of the dingo threatened species listing be conducted by the Department for the Environment and led by the Minister for the Environment. The primary focus of any such review must be biodiversity conservation, not pest animal management. The Department of Agriculture has shown itself to be incapable of responsible, balanced decision making on this issue. The current approach is quite perverse and is damaging the Victorian Labor government’s environmental credibility.

Dr Ian Gunn BVSc. FACVSc. President NDPRP, 0427 387778 (mob.) ian.gunn@monash.edu

Canadians for a Sustainable Society is a research and activist NGO focused on changing our society’s pursuit of endless growth and ever higher levels of consumption. Simple growth is neither sustainable nor conducive to reducing inequality, debt, fiscal imbalance or achieving environmental sustainability.

Aging is a Transition, Not a Crisis

Aging is a natural trend towards an increase in the proportion of older people in our population and will continue until the Canadian population stabilizes. 

The aging trend is merely part of the much larger demographic transition which has accompanied the development of our modern societies.  In this transition, life expectancy has increased from under 40 years in the 1700s to nearly 80 and the number of children per woman has decreased from 6 to near 2.

This demographic transition features:
•    lower fertility rates
•    longer life spans and
•    higher proportions of seniors

Growth Doesn't Pay For It

Aging is inevitable and simply cannot be reversed except by catastrophic population collapse or exponential population growth continuing forever.  Aging cannot be supported  endlessly by fiscal deficits with the expectation that “growth will pay for it”.  Growth does not pay for past deficits as a larger version of a debt producing fiscal structure adds on even larger debts going forward.

Immigration Can't Fix It

Very high levels of immigration has been touted as a “fix” for an aging population.  The objective of this fix seems to be to maintain forever the age structure and the rate of growth of the baby boom period.  Ie make it the 1950s forever.  Attempting to boost immigration to levels which will run ahead of the aging trend will see extreme and ever-increasing levels of immigration with little effect on the age structure.

Why? 

• The age structure of our immigration stream is not different enough to "youthenize" our population
• Aging is a global phenomenon

We Need a Better Strategy

Understanding the nature of the changes and modifying our expectations of endless growth are the challenges which all countries will have to meet. Canada is fortunate in that many advanced societies are decades ahead in this transition and are providing an excellent reference for the development of policies which will allow us to deal successfully with the transition to demographic stability.

The best means of dealing with a shift to a higher proportion of seniors is to boost job quality and flexibility along with wage rates.  People must be encouraged to be healthy and the concept of working well past the age previously thought of as “retirement age” must be embraced.  

Neither Business-as-Usual nor Business-as-it-Once-Was is sustainable.  Make sure your media sources and your political representatives are clear on the need for well-informed progressive change in Canadian public policy.  “More of the same” is not a viable strategy.

For more in-depth discussion on aging see our page:   http://sustainablesociety.com/population/aging#.WCuUW8kUht
 

Who are Canadians for a Sustainable Society: 

Canadians for a Sustainable Society is a research and activist NGO focused on changing our society’s pursuit of endless growth and ever higher levels of consumption.   Simple growth is neither sustainable nor conducive to reducing inequality, debt, fiscal imbalance or achieving environmental sustainability.

Our group believes that only a comprehensive strategy with relevant national metrics and clear goals can deliver long term social stability and environmental balance.

Learn More about CSS

Canadians for a Sustainable Society
PO Box 77, Port McNicoll
Ontario, Canada  L0K 1R0
info@sustainablesociety.c