refugees

The modern UN Refugee Convention is now so flea-bitten it’s been put out to the garbage tip of history.  At least the enthusiastic fleas think so, given their conduct as political representatives across a range of parliaments keen on barbed wired borders and impenetrable defences.  Across Europe, the issue of refugees arriving by sea – in this case, the Mediterranean – has become a matter of games and deflection.

Toronto: A reporter from Rebel Media asked passers-by if refugees should be helped by Canadians opening their homes, and they agreed, but when they were asked to take a man described as a refugee home, they all declined.

Over the last 20 years extreme right-wing groups have been on the rise throughout the world. They share a belief in white supremacism and conspiracy theories that allege there is a global plot to replace white Christian populations with Muslims and people of color.

I visited the city of Christchurch on May 23, 2018, as part of a larger speaking tour in New Zealand that also took me to Auckland, Wellington, Hamilton and Dunedin.
New Zealand is an exceptional country, different from other countries that are often lumped under the generalized designation of the ‘western world.’ Almost immediately after my arrival to Auckland, New Zealand’s largest and most populous city, I was struck by the overt friendliness, hospitality and diversity.

Caught in the backwater of the world’s existence, Australia struggles for relevance in various ways. It might show itself a leader in creating a sovereign fund (too late for that now); it might demonstrate, in various ways, a singular approach to solar energy (impossible, we are told, on that score). Lacking a decent number of terrorist attacks, it feels left out, stranded in a provincialism that ignores the decent, maiming bombing that might signal a boost in security funding.

The passage of amendments to the Migration Act 1958 (Cth) by the Australian House of Representatives and the Senate this week was less a case of celebration than necessitous deliverance.  The mental wellbeing of asylum-seekers on Manus Island and Nauru, or lack thereof, has been documented extensively from Australian legal representatives to members of Médecins Sans Frontières.

With only weeks to go to Brexit’s target date, there is deadlock in the British parliament, recriminations on both sides, and, writes Russell Merryman, a growing realisation that what was promised might be impossible to deliver.
Anti-Brexit sentiment is growing as the deadline for Article 50 approaches [MERRYMAN]
We’ve all heard of the thought experiment involving a cat and a piece of radioactive material locked together in a box, the decaying material could, at any moment, give off an atomic particle which would kill the cat.

The Brookings Institute forecasts that the number of Venezuelan refugees will grow to eight-million people! Earlier this month, Democrat Representative Darren Soto introduced HR 549 which would permit Venezuelans to have protected status as immigrants to America, prompting immigration to the US.

Because of gross inefficiencies, the total number of children separated recently from a parent or a guardian by US immigration officials at the US-Mexico border is unknown, says a new US government report. Wikipedia has added US border detention centers to its list of concentration camps. Honduran migrants in Mexico City, above.

The game is afoot. Israel, believe it or not, is demanding that seven Arab countries and Iran pay $250 billion as compensation for what it claims was the forceful exodus of Jews from Arab countries during the late 1940s.
The events that Israel is citing allegedly occurred at a time when Zionist Jewish militias were actively uprooting nearly one million Palestinian Arabs and systematically destroying their homes, villages and towns throughout Palestine.