Be Careful What You Wish For, Angela

It appears the whole world is against the only law that really matters – the law of common sense. Of course the people from the war-torn countries should be protected. WHERE IS THE UNHCR? Why weren’t camps set up in a safe part of Syria? Why? It’s not that that organization doesn’t have enough billions of dollars to throw at it. Where were they?

Every single one of these families should have been set up and protected in a camp, and they should have been supported by the whole world. And you speak of law? When almost every other law has been thrown out the window recently, somehow the precious Geneva Convention is sacrosanct? And what does the Geneva Convention say? That refugees should be allowed to seek asylum in the closest safe country, and cannot be pushed back. It doesn’t say anything about them travelling hundreds or thousands of miles to get to the most favorable countries (Sweden, Germany, Norway, etc.), the ones who are calling them to come, enticing them with benefits (free medical, dental, housing, welfare, eventually family reunification), countries that allow them all of the rights, yet require no obligations from them, such as adopting the customs and habits of the welcoming countries, abiding by their laws, not what they’ve been taught or what it might say in the Koran. Merkel even threw out the Dublin Agreement. Laws and agreements apparently have a way of being changed, ripped up or trampled on when it’s convenient.

Who really should be taken to court, then jailed, are the leaders of these countries who have gone against what the majority of their citizens wanted, and all to please the business communities. Yes, socialize the costs of the new citizens to all of the taxpayers, yet the businesses reap the benefits. Same old, same old. They all should be tarred and feathered for what they have done, not just to their own citizens, but to all of the migrants who are understandably flocking to where the most benefits are paid.

Don’t even think about telling me that they’re running to Germany to be safe! That would just be stupid and it would not be truthful – at all. They’re safe in Greece, but since Greece does not pay any benefits, they don’t want to stay there. They want to march forward to where they will benefit. No, a true refugee would kiss the ground of Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon. They’d be happy they made it out alive. But that’s not the case here, as they are making their way to where conditions are “most favorable”, not to where it’s “safe”.

80% of Syrians – 80% – were not living in refugee camps in Turkey. They were living in apartments, working under the table. Only 20% were in refugee camps. Why any of them had to flee their own country is beyond me. The UNHCR should be made to set up camps in a safe zone within war-torn countries so people never have to flee. That way we wouldn’t have to have the argument that they “HAD” to travel thousands of miles because every country they passed through was NOT SAFE. Yeah, right. It appears the word “optimal” is taking the place of “safe”.

And as Trivium says, why are we not talking about who is causing these wars and going after them? Isn’t it COMMON SENSE to go after who is causing this continual warfare, instead of running after the “effects” like a chicken with their head cut off? Instead of rolling up in a ball and crying that the sky is falling, the sky is falling, they’re not adhering to the law, shouldn’t we be getting to the bottom of what’s going on, who is benefiting, following the money?

Where is the court of law – call it the War Court – who oversees and heavily sanctions warmongers? Nowhere to be found. Instead we have a bunch of namby pamby laws that try to mitigate the effects of the warmongers’ wars.

The sick bastards who caused a lot of the problems in the Middle East were the ones who drew up the maps of the countries, ex. Winston Churchill. Had these countries been separated along religious, ethnic, cultural lines, there probably would have been peace. But TPTB wouldn’t want that, would they? They wouldn’t have control. Why aren’t we seeking to draw up new lines: Sunnis, over here; Shia, over here; Christians, over here. Give them their own countries. Israel got their’s, didn’t they? Somehow they see the benefit of having a nation of like-minded people. Somehow they realize that commonality fosters peace.

When Tsipras got elected, he set free the migrants who had been held in detention, let them travel to northern Europe. He set the precedent. The word went out on Twitter, Facebook that if you got to Greece, you could get to northern Europe. The floodgates opened. The migrants, who had been “safe” in Turkey, decided to chance it. As the Iraqi fellow in my post two days ago said, “Everybody was doing it, so I joined in.” He had been told that you get “this and that” in Europe, but he found out otherwise, so he returned to Iraq with his friend. His story, the reason he travelled, was NOT about safety. It was about being an economic migrant. These people ARE economic migrants.

This isn’t about safety. This is where what you write does not smack of the truth. If I sensed there was some truth in what you had to say, I would acknowledge it. You can’t bend the truth.

Truth – the United States and its allies are trying to overthrow Assad of Syria.
Truth – the United States and its allies are funding and arming ISIS and others.
Truth – the United States and its allies pretend to be fighting ISIS and others.
Truth – refugees have had to flee to safe countries (where is the UNHCR?)
Truth – economic migrants decide to leave safe countries for more optimal countries.

Let’s at least call it for what it is.

There is no such thing as ‘International Law’. Or rather to the extent that there is it used only at the whim of the US. Post WWII some very upstanding people, mostly Americans,worked on behalf of the US government to put in place the laws and frameworks of law which would serve traditional American and Western values based upon well tenents of moral philosophy.

However the deep state, the spooks and ‘global strategic thinkers’ were not on board. So the levers or power pushed ‘international law’ when it suited them. To count on such law to mean a thing is a fools errand. The world doesn’t work that way. America is just as capable of doing anything possible to serve the interests of the self declared defenders of The Nation, and enhance their own wealth and power.

Completely agree with you Raleigh. This is insanity.

The automatic Earth has been documenting over the past several years how the middle class in western countries is economically disintegrating under the pressure of economic globalization. Political and economic decision-makers have established the primacy of corporations rights and freedom of financial flows over the well-being of a large section of their population. Established political parties and mainstream media have, on the demographic front, been relentlessly campaigning for ever more immigration, legal or not. The stresses on society are growing ever more apparent, the structure is creaking and groaning but the political leadership was always determined to stay the course, considering that there is no alternative. Populations abandoned to their fate have started rebelling, deserting traditional political parties in favor of newly-created populist parties in spite of a relentless mainstream media opposition painting them as beyond the pale. Actually most of them just happen to think that maybe the Euro might not be the key to widespread prosperity, the European Union not the utopia it’s cracked up to be, mass immigration is not helping anyone and may actually contribute to the demise of the welfare state they are fond of.

It is only under this newly appearing political pressure that the Establishment has started to reluctantly step back some on refugees. Many asserted that there was no alternative, that it was futile to think of preventing refugees from ever entering Europe – but it turns out that putting some mild border enforcement does go a long way. We can see that refugees have little chance to hold jobs in the developped world and we can expect most to be wards of the state forever, creating ghettos of poverty, criminality and resentment. Cologne and the recurring riots in asylum centers and criminality by refugee status seekers have turned the masses against refugees. Sheltering refugees in camps in the Middle-East is a simple and cheap affait. In Germany, France or Scandinavia you cannot accomodate people in a tent, you need housing which the state does not offer its own poor population. Hence Sweden renting luxury cruise ships to find a roof, any roof to put above the “refugees” heads. Add in health care, welfare, translators, language teachers, police, social workers – stabbed to death! – it adds up. Since money does not grow on trees, countries cut help to refugees elsewhere in the world to shelter fewer refugees at a much greater cost in Europe, and endanger their own social safety net as growing deficits create a need to go through austerity. Some program!