Assange & the Swedish Hothouse

ꕤ Article SOURCE various Anders Danielsson is the current Director General of the Swedish Migration Agency, which is under the Justice Department. Previously, Daneilsson was head of Sapo (Swedish security police - here), also under the Swedish Justice Department. 1980 - Master of Laws 1982-1984 -- Police Chief training -- Reservist 1990-1991 -- Superintendent Sapo 1992-1997 - National Crime Investigation Dept -- training FBI (1993), several months, USA 1998-1999 -- Director Police Bureau National Police 1999-2002 -- Director Police Bureau National Police, Devel & Strategic Unit 2002-2007 -- County Police at Police Authority in Skane County 2007-2012 -- Director General of SAPO What I found interesting is that Anders Danielsson would have been head of Sapo right at the time that Julian Assange, publisher WikiLeaks, would no doubt have been a target of Sapo, Carl Bildt (then Foreign Minister of Sweden), the FBI and the US State Department, in 2010. Daneilsson underwent FBI training of several months duration in Virginia, USA, in 1993, and as head of Sapo, presumably, maintained good relations with his American counterparts over the years. What is unexpected and very intriguing is that Danielsson is a friend of Carl Bildt's brother, Nils Bildt, dating back to his reservist UN evacuation of Cyprus days: Nils Bildt, entrepreneur, lieutenant colonel and friend since reservist training (brother of Carl Bildt):     "Anders is such a friend that you can call around the clock and without the need to specify what terms he will. He is incredibly reliable. Now I feel that he is the weight of the seriousness of the situation, but occasionally there is a twinkle in his eye, the little bus to arrive. We've had a lot of fun together." http://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/han-klarar-flyktingvagen-om-han-far-vara-sig-sjalv/ So, this is a very interesting Swedish hothouse of cross-over relationships:  American and Swedish security and other relationships; Sapo and FBI; Justice Department and Sapo; Justice Department and Swedish prosecutor Ny; Justice Department and Swedish lawyers; Sapo and then Foreign Minister Carl Bildt etc.  Imagine what Daneilsson must know about the shifty Swedish goings on in relation to the US State Department's determined hunt for Australian journalist Julian Assange. Please leak Anders Danielsson.  xxx  ;) Speaking of shifty:  check out Bodström, Säpo & Mossad  https://archive.is/t93UW Written Question 2002/03 1044 Security Service and the Mossad June 3 Question 2002/03 1044 Gustav Fridolin (MP) to the Minister of Justice Thomas Bodström Säpo and the Mossad The Security Service report for 2002 can read the following: "In 2002, the Security Service conducted a continued monitoring of groups and individuals in Sweden who are likely to commit violent acts because of the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Until spring 2002, Palestinian groups in Sweden generally manifested their loyalty by demonstrations and fundraisers . During the spring of 2002, however, a change when pro-Palestinian demonstrations in some cases turned violent. Säpo's investigation shows that it was not dealing with organized violent actions, but rather about individual movements. In 2002, the Palestinians carried out a numerous terrorist attacks against Israeli interests in Israel and the Palestinian territories, and SAPO guard with cooperative security and intelligence services development in order to prevent any such attacks internationally. " The Israeli intelligence service Mossad, according to several analysts one of the world's most ruthless organizations and has conducted many of the extrajudicial executions by the Swedish government hard criticized. I would therefore ask the Minister of Justice if the Minister is able to illuminate if there is an organized collaboration between the Swedish security police and the Israeli Mossad. https://www.riksdagen.se/sv/Dokument-Lagar/Fragor-och-anmalningar/Fragor-for-skriftliga-svar/Sapo-och-Mossad_GQ111044/ Got curious about Sapo & Mossad and came across the above 2002 parliamentary question. It's difficult to work out what the question is.   Did Gustav Fridolin, Member of Parliament, ask the Swedish Minister of Justice Thomas Bodström to disclose whether there is a collaboration between Sapo and Mossad to conduct extrajudicial executions in Sweden? Bodström goes on to give a non-answer:  https://archive.is/B85ZW While this is really shocking, we shouldn't be surprised if it was happening.  Generally speaking, states are lawless.  Sweden is definitely known to be lawless.  And Israel was founded on assassinations (including one in Europe), so Mossad conducting assassinations would just be carrying on the Israeli national traditions. Check out what this site has to say about Thomas Bodström: The intermingling between government, prosecutor Ny, and the ‘accusers” law-firm Borgström & Bodström ... intermingling between the Swedish police officer, taken the declaration of her friend and party comrade AA ... Mr Thomas Bodström, member of the social democratic party, is the Swedish former minister of Justice identified as main collaborator with the CIA renditions of political refugees from Sweden that occurred during the government of Göran Persson. At the time of their case against Assange, Thomas Bodström was a permanent resident at Virginia, U.S. There, in his blog Bodströmsamhallet (Bodstrom’s society), he proudly announced that his law firm defended the plaintiff against Assange (see down below). Mr Claes Borgström, then member of the social democratic party, was a government-appointed Gender ombudsman ... also known in Sweden for his claims that “all men carry a collective guilt for violence against women”. "This woman accuser, AA, also an active member of the Social Democratic Party, was at the time the political secretary of the organization “Brotherhood” (now renamed “Religious Social Democrats of Sweden“), [9] integrated by the group of Christian social democrats where former Minister Thomas Bodström was highest ranking member after the ex PM Göran Persson – the U.S. (and Bush’s) friend, according to their own declarations." Bodstrom, Borgström & Ny Marianne Ny, Thomas Bodström and Claes Borgström participated in the same governmental consulting team set by the Swedish government for the formulation of new sexual-crimes legislation. With the time, has Claes Borgström himself felt obliged to acknowledge that he – previously to their initiation of the ‘Assange case’ – has worked together with Marianne Ny in a governmental committee and that he has met her also at a workshop on genders issues. [7] Regarding the ‘expert-assignment’ prosecutor Marianne Ny  received from the part of the Swedish government, it is noteworthy to mention that this assignment was still going on at the time she decided to open a case against Mr Assange – times that overlap, as we wrote before, with the period in which the U.S. government requested the countries participating in the military occupation of Afghanistan to open a prosecution against the founder of WikiLeaks. source:  here ---------------------- ꕤ ---------------------- Well, that was fun.   Too tired to find out if there were Mossad extrajudicial assassinations in Sweden, tho. Must sleep.  lol ꕤ

Torture & War Crimes - The Show Must Go On

ꕤ Article SOURCE http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2223831/How-Britain-tortured-Nazi-PoWs-The-horrifying-interrogation-methods-belie-proud-boast-fought-clean-war.html How Britain tortured Nazi PoWs: The horrifying interrogation methods that belie our proud boast that we fought a clean war By Ian Cobain Published: 09:34 EST, 27 October 2012 | Updated: 09:35 EST, 27 October 2012 The German SS officer was fighting to save himself from the gallows for a terrible war crime and might say anything to escape the noose. But Fritz Knöchlein was not lying in 1946 when he claimed that, in captivity in London, he had been tortured by British soldiers to force a confession out of him. Tortured by British soldiers? In captivity? In London? The idea seems incredible. Britain has a reputation as a nation that prides itself on its love of fair play and respect for the rule of law. We claim the moral high ground when it comes to human rights. We were among the first to sign the 1929 Geneva Convention on the humane treatment of prisoners of war. Surely, you would think, the British avoid torture? But you would be wrong, as my research into what has gone on behind closed doors for decades shows. It was in 2005 during my work as an investigative reporter that I came across a veiled mention of a World War II detention centre known as the London Cage. It took a number of Freedom Of Information requests to the Foreign Office before government files were reluctantly handed over. From these, a sinister world unfolded — of a torture centre that the British military operated throughout the Forties, in complete secrecy, in the heart of one of the most exclusive neighbourhoods in the capital. Thousands of Germans passed through the unit that became known as the London Cage, where they were beaten, deprived of sleep and forced to assume stress positions for days at a time. Some were told they were to be murdered and their bodies quietly buried. Others were threatened with unnecessary surgery carried out by people with no medical qualifications. Guards boasted that they were ‘the English Gestapo’. The London Cage was part of a network of nine ‘cages’ around Britain run by the Prisoner of War Interrogation Section (PWIS), which came under the jurisdiction of the Directorate of Military Intelligence. Three, at Doncaster, Kempton Park and Lingfield, were at hastily converted racecourses. Another was at the ground of Preston North End Football Club. Most were benignly run. But prisoners thought to possess valuable information were whisked off to a top-secret unit in a row of grandiose Victorian villas in Kensington Palace Gardens, then (as now) one of the smartest locations in London. Today, the tree-lined street a stone’s throw from Kensington Palace is home to ambassadors and billionaires, sultans and princes. Houses change hands for £50 million and more. Yet it was here, seven decades ago, in five interrogation rooms, in cells and in the guardroom in numbers six, seven and eight Kensington Palace Gardens, that nine officers, assisted by a dozen NCOs, used whatever methods they thought necessary to squeeze information from suspects. Of course, it is crucial to put these events into context. When the gloves first came off at Britain’s interrogation centres — the summer of 1940 — German forces were racing across France and the Low Countries, and Britain was fighting for its very survival. The stakes could not have been higher.  [see:  Dresden fire-bombings war crime for comparison -- "well over 250,000 -- possibly as many as a half a million -- persons" killed "within a 14-hour period, whereas estimates of those who died at Hiroshima range from 90,000 to 140,000" -- here] In the following years, large parts of Britain’s cities were left in ruins, hundreds of thousands of service personnel and civilians died, and barely a day passed without evidence emerging of a new Nazi atrocity. Little wonder, perhaps, that it was felt acceptable for German prisoners to suffer in British interrogation centres.  [I'm going to guess that the 'new Nazi atrocity' referred to, as if to justify allied war crimes, is a production of British and allied wartime propaganda, as well as the product of illegitimate 'confessions' obtained under torture.] And it should also be said that whatever went on within their walls, it paled into insignificance compared with the horrors the Nazis visited on millions of prisoners.  [And what of the Dresden genocide and what of the post-war atrocities visited upon millions of starved German civilians and German POWs deliberately murdered?  Elements of this article sound like an apology for those that were much the same as their vilified German enemy, based articles and videos I've seen so far on the subject of allied crimes and atrocities.] So, how can we be sure about the methods used at the London Cage? Because the man who ran it admitted as much — and was hushed up for half-a-century by an establishment fearful of the shame his story would bring on a Britain that had been fighting for honesty, decency and the rule of law. That man was Colonel Alexander Scotland, an accepted master in techniques of interrogation. After the war, he wrote a candid account of his activities in his memoirs, in which he recalled how he would muse, on arriving at the Cage each morning: ‘Abandon all hope ye who enter here.’ Because, he said, before going into detail: ‘If any German had any information we wanted, it was invariably extracted from him in the long run.’ As was customary, before publication Scotland submitted his manuscript to the War Office for clearance in 1954. Pandemonium erupted. All four copies were seized. All those who knew of its contents were silenced with threats of prosecution under the Official Secrets Act. What caused the greatest consternation was his admission that the horrors had continued after the war, when interrogators switched from extracting military intelligence to securing convictions for war crimes. Of 3,573 prisoners who passed through Kensington Palace Gardens, more than 1,000 were persuaded to sign a confession or give a witness statement  for use in war crimes prosecutions. Fritz Knöchlein, a former lieutenant colonel in the Waffen SS, was one such case. He was suspected of ordering the machine-gunning of 124 British soldiers who surrendered at Le Paradis in northern France during the Dunkirk evacuation in 1940. His defence was that he was not even there. At his trial, he claimed he had been tortured in the London Cage after the war. He was deprived of sleep for four days and nights after arriving in October 1946 and forced to walk in a tight circle for four hours while being kicked by a guard at each turn. He was made to clean stairs and lavatories with a tiny rag, for days at a time, while buckets of water were poured over him. If he dared to rest, he was cudgelled. He was also forced to run in circles in the grounds of the house while carrying heavy logs and barrels. When he complained, the treatment simply got worse. Nor was he the only one. He said men were repeatedly beaten about the face and had hair ripped from their heads. A fellow inmate begged to be killed because he couldn’t take any more brutality. All Knöchlein’s accusations were ignored, however. He was found guilty and hanged. Suspects in another high-profile war crime — the shooting of 50 RAF officers who broke out from a prison camp, Stalag Luft III, in what became known as the Great Escape — also passed through the Cage. Of the 21 accused, 14 were hanged after a war-crimes trial in Hamburg. Many confessed only after being interrogated by Scotland and his men. In court, they protested that they had been starved, whipped and systematically beaten. Some said they had been  menaced with red-hot pokers and ‘threatened with electrical devices’. Scotland, of course, denied allegations of torture, going into the witness box at one trial after another to say his accusers were lying. It was all the more surprising, then, that a few years later he was willing to come clean about the techniques he employed at the London Cage. In his memoirs, he disclosed that a number of men were forced to incriminate themselves. A general was sentenced to death in 1946 after signing a confession at the Cage while, in Scotland’s words, ‘acutely depressed after the various examinations’. A naval officer was convicted on the basis of a confession that Scotland said he had signed only after being ‘subject to certain degrading duties’. Scotland also acknowledged that one of the men accused of the ‘Great Escape’ murders went to the gallows even though he had confessed after he had — in Scotland’s own words — been ‘worked on psychologically’. At his trial, the man insisted he had been ‘worked on’ physically as well. Others did not share Scotland’s eagerness to boast about what had gone on in Kensington Park Gardens. An MI5 legal adviser who read his manuscript concluded that Scotland and fellow interrogators had been guilty of a ‘clear breach’ of the Geneva Convention. They could have faced war-crimes charges themselves for forcing prisoners to stand to attention for more than 24 hours at a time; forcing them to kneel while they were beaten about the head; threatening to have them shot; threatening one prisoner with an unnecessary appendix operation to be performed on him by another inmate with no medical qualifications. Appalled by the embarrassment his manuscript would cause if it ever came out, the War Office and the Foreign Office both declared that it would never see the light of day. Two years later, however, they were forced to strike a deal with him after he threatened to publish his book abroad. He was told he would never be allowed to recover his original manuscript, but agreement was given to a rewritten version in which every line of incriminating material had been expunged. A heavily censored version of The London Cage duly appeared in the bookshops in 1957. But officials at the War Office, and their successors at the Ministry of Defence, remained troubled. Years later, in September 1979, Scotland’s publishers wrote to the Ministry of Defence out of the blue asking for a copy of the original manuscript  by the now dead colonel for their archives. The request triggered fresh panic as civil servants sought reasons to deny the request. But in the end they quietly deposited a copy in what is now the National Archives at Kew, where it went unnoticed — until I found it a quarter of a century later. Is there more to tell about the London Cage? Almost certainly. Even now, some of the MoD’s files on it remain beyond reach. Scotland, his interrogators, technicians and typists, and the towering guardsmen left the building in January 1949. The villas were unoccupied for several years. Eventually, numbers six and seven were leased to the Soviet Union, which was looking for a new embassy building. Today, they house the chancery of the Russian embassy. Number eight — where it is thought the worst excesses were carried out — remained empty. It was too large to be a family home in the post-war years and in too poor a state of repair to be converted to offices. By 1955, the building had fallen into such disrepair it was sold to a developer, who knocked it down and built a block of three luxury flats. One that went on the market in 2006 was valued at £13.5 million. The Cage was not, however, Britain’s only secret interrogation centre during and after World War II. MI5 also operated an interrogation centre, code-named Camp 020, at Latchmere House, a Victorian mansion near Ham Common in South-West London, whose 30 rooms were turned into cells with hidden microphones. The first of the German spies who arrived in Britain in September 1940 were taken there. Vital information about a coming German invasion was extracted at great speed. This indicates the use of extreme methods, but these were desperate days demanding desperate measures. In charge was Colonel Robin Stephens, known as ‘Tin Eye’, because of the monocle fixed to his right eye. It was not a term of affection. The object of interrogation, Stephens told his officers, was simple: ‘Truth in the shortest possible time.’ A top secret memo spoke of ‘special methods’, but did not elaborate. He arranged for an additional 92-cell block to be added to Latchmere House, plus a punishment room — known chillingly as Cell 13 — which was completely bare, with smooth walls and a linoleum floor. Close to 500 people passed through the gates of Camp 020. Principal among them were German spies, many of whom were ‘turned’ and persuaded — or maybe forced — to work for MI5. Its first inmates were members of the British Union of Fascists.  Some were held in cells brightly lit 24 hours a day, others in cells kept in total darkness. Several prisoners were subjected to mock executions and were knocked about by the guards. Some were apparently left naked for months at a time. Camp 020 had a resident medical officer, Harold Dearden, a psychiatrist who dreamed up regimes of starvation and of sleep and sensory deprivation intended to break the will of its inmates. He experimented in techniques of torment that left few marks — methods that could be denied by the torturers and that civil servants and government ministers could disown. These techniques surfaced again after the war in a British interrogation facility at Bad Nenndorf, a German spa town, in one of the internment camps for those considered a threat to the Allied occupation. In the four years after the war, 95,000 people were interned in the British zone of Allied-occupied Germany. Some were interrogated by what was now termed the Intelligence Division. In charge of Bad Nenndorf was ‘Tin Eye’ Stephens, on attachment from MI5, and drawing on his Camp 020 experiences. An inmate recalled him yelling questions at prisoners and then punching them. Over the next two years, 372 men and 44 women would pass through his hands. One German inmate recalled being told by a British intelligence officer: ‘We are not bound by any rules or regulations. We do not care a damn whether you leave this place on a stretcher or in a hearse.’ He was made to sleep on a wet floor in a temperature of minus 20 degrees for three days. Four of his toes had to be amputated due to frostbite. A doctor in a nearby hospital complained about the number of detainees brought to him filthy, confused and suffering from multiple injuries and frostbite. Many were painfully emaciated after months of starvation. A number died. The regime was intended to weaken, humiliate and intimidate prisoners. With complaints soaring, a British court of inquiry was convened to investigate what had been going at Bad Nenndorf. It concluded that former inmates’ allegations of physical assault were substantially correct. Stephens and four other officers were arrested while Bad Nenndorf was abruptly closed. But there was a quandary for the Labour government. The political fallout could be deeply damaging. There were other similar interrogation centres in Germany. From the very top, there were urgent moves to hush things up. Stephens’ court martial for ill-treatment of prisoners was heard behind closed doors. He did not deny any of the horrors. His defence was that he had no idea the prisoners for whom he was responsible were being beaten, whipped, frozen, deprived of sleep and starved to death. This was the very defence that had been offered — unsuccessfully — by Nazi concentration camp commandants at war-crimes trials. But he was acquitted. The suspicion remains that he got off because, if cruelties did occur at Bad Nenndorf, they had been authorised by government ministers. Extracted from Cruel Britannia by Ian Cobain, published by Portobello Books at £18.99. © Ian Cobain 2012. To order a copy for £15.99 (p&p free), call 0843 382 0000. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2223831/How-Britain-tortured-Nazi-PoWs-The-horrifying-interrogation-methods-belie-proud-boast-fought-clean-war.html ---------------------- ꕤ ---------------------- COMMENT When it comes to propaganda, lies, corruption, cruelty, murder, war crimes, and evil, it looks like it's a level playing field:  there's no distinction between the 'good guys' and the 'bad guys'. Everything is a lie. The account in this article is a drop in the ocean of injustices and crimes committed by the 'good guys' before, during and after world wars, and in the 70 years since. Seventy years since the WWII torture of Germans and various other war crimes committed by the British and the Americans, the corrupt, lying, lawless and morally bankrupt British authorities hold an Australian journalist hostage of political persecution and detention without charge, following WikiLeaks exposure of modern day corruption and war crimes of Western governments.  Assange is denied medical access and deprived of liberty, under threat of extradition to the convicted in absentia, war criminal, torturing, kidnapping and assassinating Americans, while the bustling modern world stands by and lets these long-time bad actors and geopolitical villains get away with this crime, day after day for 5 years. Does anybody else feel sick knowing there's no limit to the depths of Western state depravity, lies and hypocrisy? How odd that the Russians have been allocated the British torture chamber interrogation suites in London as embassy premises. Is this some kind of attempt at modern-day psychological warfare on the Russian ambassadors in London, I'm wondering? Although I'm appalled by disclosures in the article, I'm also kind of drawn to the creepiness of the torture chamber and imagine a visit to the back end of the Russian embassy in London could be an interesting and eerie experience. The British were torturing German prisoners 4 years after the end of war, but it's unclear to me why, when the war was a long time over. First inmates of the London torture chambers were members of the British Union of Fascists. As the torturing war criminal Western governments are just totalitarian fronts for elites and their corporate interests, the first round targeting of fascists with state torture is probably based more on the existing political and economic elite's determination to maintain its power, than on the objective merits of proposals by fascists: "British fascist corporatism planned to replace the House of Lords with elected executives drawn from major industries, the clergy, and colonies. The House of Commons was to be reduced to allow for a faster, "less factionist" democracy."  [wikipedia] Replacement of the House of Lords sounds like a sensible idea, but replacing the overlords with industrialists and clergy is just allocating power to more of the same types of elites, isn't it? Don't know enough about political fascism to judge these ideas as a whole. Hey, I've just realised that the CAGE support for victims of 'war on terror' UK NGO is probably styled after the original British Cage torture history name. As torture and war, disguised as 'national security' and 'humanitarianism', has continued unabated the last 70 years, the warmonger elite serving Western puppet state fronts for what poses as 'democracy' and representative government, really ought to drop the entirely unconvincing 'peace' and 'humanitarian' propaganda:  the financial and social costs of serial US-led military interventions, resulting in blow-back invasion by refugee immigration that inundates the Western austerity-punished underprivileged, Western working classes and Western taxpayers, is evident to those bearing the brunt of blow-back, whose societies are being wilfully destroyed by treasonous, lying, elite and foreign interest serving politicians. About to watch this video: Eisenhower’s Rhine Meadows Death Camps   A Deliberate Policy of Extermination ꕤ

NYT / AP - "Balkans Reel as Number of Migrants Hits Record" | Sweden's Double Standards

ꕤ Article SOURCE http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/28/world/europe/balkans-slovenia-reel-as-number-of-refugees-migrants-hits-record.html?smid=tw-nytimesworld&smtyp=cur&_r=0 Balkans Reel as Number of Migrants Hits Record By BARBARA SURK and RICK LYMANOCT.  27, 2015 Groups of refugees and migrants waited in a Slovenian border town, a stopping point for most on their journey to northern Europe.  By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS on Publish Date October 27, 2015. SENTILJ, Slovenia — The small Balkan nations on the path of the human migration through Europe are seeing record numbers of asylum-seekers cross their borders, and are overwhelmed in their ability to manage the human flow. Despite hopes that plummeting temperatures and treacherous seas would finally slow the tide of refugees flowing into the heart of Europe, fresh fighting in Syria and growing fears of border closings are driving more migrants to undertake the treacherous trek. At the moment, the biggest crunch appears to be on the southern border of Slovenia, a small Alpine nation on the Adriatic Sea that has become the gateway to Europe for migrants since Hungary closed its border with Croatia on Oct. 16. In recent days, fights have broken out over blankets and in the line of migrants waiting in this northern Slovenian border town to cross the frontier into Austria. There were also growing signs of tension between refugees from Syria, fleeing a growing war in their homeland, and migrants from other nations. In the past 10 days, 83,600 migrants have crossed into Slovenia, government officials said, while 57,981 have crossed from Slovenia into Austria, and 14,000 are waiting in government reception centers. The remaining 12,000 or so are at government registration centers, stuck on trains or buses, or simply in the open, roughing it in the increasingly cold fields and forests of the ragged foothills. “When Hungary closed its border, the Slovenian politicians said, ‘Oh, we are prepared,’ ” said Natasa Pirc Musar, president of the Slovenian Red Cross. “They said Slovenia could handle 2,500 people a day. The problem is, we are getting 10,000 a day and hearing reports that it will soon grow to 13,000. This is something Slovenia cannot cope with anymore.” On Sunday, European Union officials approved a 17-point plan that may not see fruition for months. It includes more accommodations in Greece, the European Union country the migrants usually enter first, as well as along the entire migrant trail through the Balkans, plus fresh reserves of border guards and injections of cash to help financially struggling Balkan nations pay for all of this. Slovenia’s foreign minister, Karl Erjavec, said his country would welcome the support of other European countries, including 400 new police officers. But he warned that Slovenia could not accommodate the growing number of people in need for long without outside support. If help does not come soon, he said, the country will take unilateral measures, including potentially building its own fence along the Croatian border and deploying additional troops to guard the frontier. “All plans remain on the table if promises from the Brussels summit are not fulfilled,” Mr. Erjavec said. Refugee officials worry that it is too little too late, and that the new plan will suffer the same fate as all of the previous, ineffectual European Union efforts to manage and cope with the largest movement of people across Europe since World War II. “This should have been done months ago,” said Babar Baloch, spokesman in Hungary for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Mrs. Pirc Musar, the Slovenian Red Cross president, said, “We are trying to use a small fire extinguisher to kill a giant fire.” Meanwhile, migrants — exhausted, cold and frequently forced to stop — are growing impatient, crossing one border after another. In recent months European nations have worked to block the main route taken by migrants fleeing war and upheaval. Groups of young men from Afghanistan and other countries, noticeably more aggressive toward the police than the terrified families traveling with them, are becoming a challenge for the authorities and other refugees. CONTINUE READING ARTICLE - HERE http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/28/world/europe/balkans-slovenia-reel-as-number-of-refugees-migrants-hits-record.html?smid=tw-nytimesworld&smtyp=cur&_r=0 ---------------------- ꕤ ---------------------- COMMENT It is estimated that only 20% of the unstoppable tide that has descended upon Europe are Syrian refugees, according to multiple recent mainstream sources.  As a Sweden source has indicated (today) that Sweden's getting 'less than one in three' Syrians making their way through to Sweden, the guess is that the overall figure of Syrian refugees among the throng is actually significantly lower than that reported. Sweden, taking the Multikulti-R-Us crown, as US-serving neoliberal 'Marxist' EU immigration-destination (with Germany in hot pursuit for the honour), is also -- unsurprisingly -- the 'liberal'-fascist press suppression capital, a press that's heavily taxpayer subsidised.   So the Swedish taxpayers get screwed twice over, but who's keeping count.  The magnanimous state of Sweden sure ain't. Germany, with her own heavy-duty state interest in media & therefore no doubt decades long experience in spinning state propaganda, since Goebbels handed over the baton, is the political dissent suppression Meccca of Europe, alongside its Swedish counterpart. Sweden and Germany:  the evil EU twins.   Who would have guessed?  lol Germany also has the dubious distinction of appointing an ex-Stasi  East German snitch as the Fourth Reich social-media-suppressing Facebook censorship snitch, and, of course, Facebook is more than happy to oblige, because Mutti Merkel and Mark Zuckerberg know what's best for all Germans -- especially the jacked off ordinary Germans. Mutti Merkel's Fourth Reich also resorts to press blackouts to keep the German sheeple ignorant and therefore in line. As Sweden's not to be relied upon for provision of straight immigration figures, and as Sweden is as dodgy as all f*ck (see Julian Assange, detained on trumped up 'allegations' 5 years, no charge), I'd be inclined to conclude Europe's migrant deluge comprises perhaps as little as 10% Syrian refugees landing in Europe. But who'd know?  Germany and Sweden sure as hell don't.  EU doesn't.  There's no medicals.  There's no quarantine.  There's no papers.  But, hey, there's false papers.  Oh, and there's even 700 freshly minted German refugees that have just gone missing in Germany.  Uh-oh!  Most are physically capable young men from demolished, chaotic and/or impoverished surrounding countries.  'Syrian refugees' is the mainstream media sound-bite, often an anti-al-Assad propaganda 'blame card', and also a convenient narrative for this largely Western intervention-induced mass non-European migration frenzy. Judging by previous statements made by politicians, it's safe to ignore anything European politicians have to say:  the European sheeple need to be pacified.  And talk is cheap.  It's plain that Europe's politicians have got no plan and, sadly, no balls.  National sovereignty is dead in Europe. Nothing will come of warnings and 'threats' to restore territorial and social order.  And, in terms of social order, the horse has already bolted.  So whatever 'remedies' are eventually taken, the problem remains. Immigration avoidance strategists take note:  Mutti Merkel's German Open Haus immigration overland march from Greece and Turkey is, of course, making a b-line for the generous, soft, easy policy marks:  Mutti's most accommodating (but disgruntled) Germany, and Sweden's 'feminist foreign policy'  schizo neoliberal-'Marxist' cultural integration Nordic play-pen involving:  knife-wielding maniacs, shootings, frequent grenade tossing, rioting, and fire-setting ... to start with. 'Human traffickers' on a mission to make a fast buck, kindly supplying discarded life vests to many, many thousands of Middle Eastern would-be permanent European residents per day -- every day, is an incongruity nobody's bothered to question or explain.  Screw you, ideologically sold out, deceitful, complicit, and useless elite and corporate fascist serving mainstream press.  The cynic in me sees this Great Migration as a highly organised (and highly expensive), adept feat of logistics ... and, therefore, not so legit.   Of course, the deceitful, lying, double-dealing politicians who have aided and abetted aggressive US-led foreign policy (and have also clearly sold out their own nations and peoples, as US-servile war strategy secondary 'weapons' and their societies as ill-fitting receptacles for displaced Middle Eastern and African migration) knew what to expect from well before 2011, when they partnered in the US-led murder of Gaddafi, plunging Libya into destruction and civil war, before moving right along to:  training, arming, and otherwise supporting terrorist proxies that the West has set upon beleaguered Syria. So, looking past the razzle-dazzle of theatre of state and military (and past the state and media propaganda), Syria is yet another attempted regime change in the Middle East -- in the service of nothing but corporate fascism.  I honestly believe that's the bottom line -- always.  I should probably point out here that it cannot just be the West alone responsible for everything, although, yes, there's masses of interference that is wrong (including an illegal war).  But big, bad US-led allies cannot force proxies in the region do what they don't want to do, or force them to fight among themselves.  So the people in the region -- including Arab players in the region -- also play a part in the destruction and displacement from the region. From my point of view, the domestic public bears no responsibility whatsoever for taking on the blowback problems (including refugees and immigrants) created by the politician shills for corporate fascism, when the crap eventually hits the fan and world populations start moving.  To my way of thinking, nobody is obligated to self-destruct, and certainly not because of decisions made by lying, cheating, con artist politicians that don't even really represent or hear the public. There's indication that Bashar al-Assad has been targeted by the US and its allies since 2006 (mentioned by WikiLeaks), so this European apocalypse is a long time in the making. Yet these servants of corporate fascism did no forward planning?  I don't think so.  The ugly truth is that they do not care about their suffering domestic populations -- they do not care about their own blood or their own land -- and they do not care about the future of Europe itself. The massive displacement of inhabitants from Libya, Eritrea, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and beyond, is predictable once you know the pattern to look for:  intervention/regime-change/war/civil-war, displacement, refugees, immigration (or something like that). As I think I may have said before, any experienced politics observer would have predicted this 'catastrophe', let alone governments who have prior experience with exactly this sort of displacement, and as first world governments who have no shortage of experts and advisers on hand. The highly predictable results of multiple US-led military actions, terrorist proxy destabilisations, and economic sanction assaults on the Middle East, that have been aided and abetted by key European players, would have been very plain to corporate fascist serving lying and scheming European politicians. So these treasonous politicians have squandered an opportunity of at least six years (if not more) to plan, to take control and to take appropriate action to avert what amounts to foreign civilian invasion of Europe. Lying, scheming, cheating, treacherous, European politicians could have made arrangements for in-situ humanitarian assistance for the eligible among those that have been consistently migrating into Europe from Africa and the Middle East for years now, well before Mutti Merkel unleashed mayhem upon Europe. The actions of these European politicians are a gross breach of duty of care to their domestic populations and are, in my opinion, undemocratic and incalculably costly acts of colluding criminal politicians that have placed European nations' long-term social welfare and national security in ongoing and permanent peril. Mutti's Ministry of Truth EXTRACTS ONLY Angela Merkel declares death of German multiculturalism Chancellor's remarks, which claimed multiculturalism had 'failed utterly', interpreted as a shift rightwards from previous views Kate Connolly in Berlin Monday 18 October 2010 06.27 AEDT Chancellor Angela Merkel has declared the death of multiculturalism in Germany, saying that it had "failed utterly" , in what has been interpreted as a startling shift from her previous views. The German leader said it had been an illusion to think that Germans and foreign workers could "live happily side by side". "We kidded ourselves for a while that they wouldn't stay, but that's not the reality," she said at a conference of the youth wing of her Christian Democratic Union party at the weekend, referring to the gastarbeiters, or guest workers, who arrived in Germany to fill a labour shortage during the economic boom of the 1960s. "Of course the tendency had been to say, 'let's adopt the multicultural concept and live happily side by side, and be happy to be living with each other'. But this concept has failed, and failed utterly," she said, without elaborating on the nature and causes of this failure. Merkel's verdict marks a shift in her previously liberal line on immigration which had always put her at odds with the more conservative wing of the party. While she stressed in the same speech that immigrants were welcome in Germany and that Islam was a part of the nation's modern-day culture, her remarks positioned her closer to Horst Seehofer, the Bavarian state premier of the Christian Social Union, who last week called for an end to immigration from Turkey and Arab countries. They also align her with Thilo Sarrazin, the former Bundesbank member whose book on how the failure of many of Germany's 16 million immigrants to integrate was contributing to Germany's decline led to his dismissal. Sharing the same podium as Merkel in Potsdam, Seehofer also said "multiculturalism is dead" and that both the rightwing parties were committed to a "dominant German culture". If Germany did not revise its immigration policies, he said, it was in danger of becoming "the world's welfare office". Seehofer insisted his statement was "an attempt to stop rightwing lunatics" but Jürgen Trittin, for the Greens, called the comments "shabby" and in danger of "lending social acceptability to views similar to those of rightwing extremists". There is a labour shortage in Germany. The chamber of industry and commerce has said Germany is short of 400,000 skilled workers and the gap costs €25bn a year, equivalent to 1% of growth annually. While industrialists have called on the government to remove obstacles stopping more skilled workers entering Germany, citing lengthy bureaucratic procedures as well as unrealistic thresholds, others say that long-term unemployed German workers should be given more of a chance first. Merkel insisted in her speech that immigrant workers should not be considered "until we have done all we can to help our own people to become qualified and give them a chance". The issue has caused tension within Merkel's year-old coalition with the pro-business Free Democrats. ... What they said "At the start of the 60s we invited the guest-workers to Germany. We kidded ourselves for a while that they wouldn't stay, that one day they'd go home. That isn't what happened. And of course the tendency was to say: let's be 'multikulti' and live next to each other and enjoy being together, [but] this concept has failed, failed utterly." Angela Merkel, German chancellor "Germany should … get tougher on those who refuse to integrate before opening itself up to further immigration." Horst Seehofer, Bavarian state premier "Integration is the achievement of one who has integrated … I don't have to recognise anyone who lives from the state, rejects that state, refuses to ensure his children receive an education and continues to produce little headscarfed girls." "A large number of the Arabs and Turks living in this city (Berlin) has no productive function other than selling fruit and vegetables". "Turks are conquering Germany in the same way as Kosovars conquered Kosovo – with a high birth rate." Thilo Sarrazin, former Bundesbank board member http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/oct/17/angela-merkel-germany-multiculturalism-failures Sweden Sweden: It Is Considered Racism Only If the Victims Are Not White by Ingrid Carlqvist October 27, 2015 at 5:00 am http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6760/sweden-victims-racism -------------------- I'm half anticipating a civil war in Europe.  But I think that might be stretching things too far at this point in time, as the only Europeans armed and willing to stand their ground and fight for their land, and their identity, are the people of Novorossiya. ꕤ

Transcript - Audio - JULIAN ASSANGE Interview By Kostas Ephemera, The Press Project

ꕤ Transcript SOURCE http://www.thepressproject.gr/podcast/final_assange.mp3 TRANSCRIPT [for quotations, confirm audio] INTERVIEW JULIAN ASSANGE, WIKILEAKS INTERVIEWED BY: Kostas Ephemera The Press Project Podcast On:  Monday, 20th October 2015 AUDIO SOURCE http://www.thepressproject.gr/podcast/final_assange.mp3 Hi, I'm  Kostas Ephemera from the Press Project, and I'm speaking to you from the Embassy of Ecuador. I'm here with Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, and he's agreed to give us some answers for the Greek audience. The first question is:  through the work of WikiLeaks & people like Edward Snowden, people now know that the system is corrupted.  Although we've had movements like the Indignados and Occupy Wall Street, they don't seem to last.  Why is that? Julian Assange, WikiLeaks The visible, apparent failure of Occupy Wall Street to produce a clear result has discouraged people, at least in the West, from engaging in large, mass gatherings. However, a great many lessons and networks did emerge from Occupy Wall Street and have continued on in other areas. More generally, the problem of mankind has always been its lack of understanding about how the world actually works, and the first task of human beings is to educate themselves and each other.  That is what has led to all the advances that mankind has achieved. Further advances in relation to how to restructure society or how to produce better institutions can only occur as a result of: (a) new information which further reveals how modern human institutions actually behave; and (b) the conveyance of that information into people's heads, in an accurate manner. The problem of (a) is the problem of secrecy.  The problem of (b) is the problem of media accuracy. Kostas Ephemera, The Press Project OK, you spoke of the media.  When you started WikiLeaks, you collaborated with some of the biggest international media, but after a while they backed off.  Why? Julian Assange, WikiLeaks Well, all institutions eventually become defined by their own quest for power, regardless of how they start. Large media organisations have been around for a long time and are powerful and, so, their management and ownership class, has learnt how to exploit that power by doing favours for other power groups that are around them, or defending their own social class or their shareholders directly. The only exception is when the organisation is small, or where it has an ideological leader that has firm control over the organisation's destiny, or, perhaps, where its business model is populist and directly relies on its readers. 2:56 As a result of our publications, we have contracts with more than a hundred and ten (110) different media organisations around the world, and in a number of different publishing projects, we've given all those hundred and ten (110) media organisations exactly the same material and, so, we're able to compare results. And we can see the geopolitical biases, cultural biases, the political interference from owners, the political interference from the management class, and redaction and censorship, for political purposes or because of fears of legal costs, or because of cultural sensitivities. For example, The Guardian newspaper, El Pais, Le Monde & The New York Times, extensively redacted material in the diplomatic cables publication, for reasons other than protecting people from retribution, whereas The Hindu newspaper (which is the highest quality English newspaper in India), only redacted two cables. 4:07 Kostas Ephemera, The Press Project *** [???]  the dictum "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" works, after all, for the system. Julian Assange, WikiLeaks First of all, the national security state is very powerful. In the United States, the  Defence Department alone feeds ten percent (10%) of the US population in terms of its salaries and direct contracts. That ten percent (10%) of the population has a social group on its periphery.  It's people they are related to.  For example, they have good friends, business partners.  It maybe extends to thirty (30%) or forty (40%) percent of the entire US population. Media proprietors tend to have many business interests and, so, those business interests intersect with the national security state. So there has been suppression of the story, first of all. Secondly, it is a complex story about spy agencies and it involves the interception of nearly the entire world. It's not easy for people to imagine such a thing and still believe in it. This interception is a lot like the concept of god:  it is invisible; intangible; knows what you're doing; knows what everyone is doing; it seems that one has to take it on faith. The fact is, strangely, mass surveillance is the first god in that respect, that has been proven to exist, that even atheists can believe in. 5:53 But-- atheists can say they believe in, but, really, most people don't believe in things they haven't directly seen themselves, because most people don't see direct -- they don't see the National Security Agency or GCHQ spies under their bed -- they don't understand the danger. 6:17 But I'm pleased that they don't understand the danger, because if everyone understood the danger, the response wouldn't be to stop mass surveillance:  the response, by most people, would be become extremely conformist. Now, this old result of 'nothing wrong'.  So what is it? 'If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.' That encodes within it exactly the problem. People try and guess what it is that these powerful agencies might consider wrong, and they are not sure where the boundaries are, and so they adjust their own behaviour and start to self-censor.  But it's intellectually bankrupt. 7:00 In the end, even if you are a baker, not involved in any politics at all, its not simply a matter of arbitrary injustice might trip you up anyway, because of confusion and incompetence in the national security state.  But it is necessary to protect forces in society that keep society honest. For example, human rights activists, journalists, and opposition politicians. These are all involved in preventing society collapsing due to corruption or incompetence. And if those elements can't operate, then society will decay. 7:46 And it will even affect 'the baker' when society does decay. So it's not just about you. It is about this professional class of people who are involved in trying to holding government to account. If they can't hold government to account, government will go bad. Kostas Ephemera, The Press Project Oh, yeah. Lately, governments are becoming more aggressive, while their people find it harder to control them. Are conspiracy theorists not wild enough anymore? 8:11 Julian Assange, WikiLeaks The US government is prosecuting me for conspiracy to commit espionage and general conspiracy. And the government has conspiracy theories about the people, and even laws called 'conspiracy'. It is interesting if you look at some conspiracy.  You know, some unfounded paranoid conspiracy theories, spread around by people about the capacities of the National Security Agency and some other national spying services, they were not paranoid about. 8:46 I knew that at that time, and we know even more now. But the bigger concern is where all of that is going. I like to joke that the only thing that has saved mankind is bureaucracy, corruption and incompetence, because massive spy agencies like the National Security Agency that are intercepting nearly all the world's electronic communication, of nearly every person, would completely dominate the Earth if they were not corrupt, if they were not bureaucratic, and if they were not incompetent. But, fortunately, secrecy breeds incompetence and corruption, and these are very large secret organisations, so they are also very corrupt ones -- corrupt and incompetent. The problem is that the commercial sector like Google and Facebook are not corrupt or incompetent, as traditionally defined. They are in a highly competitive commercial market and so they have become extremely efficient at collecting information, and the security agencies then simply stick their fangs into the big corporate players and suck the information out from there. Kostas Ephemera, The Press Project Let me ask you something different. Greece, now, has a left-wing government with very friendly relationships with Ecuador and with *** [???] How would you like to ask Greece for political asylum? 10:08 Julian Assange, WikiLeaks I would be very interested to hear of such an offer from Greece, as we know there's a lot of support from the Greek population, and it would be a legally and politically important gesture here in Europe. It's an interesting question [whether] the true nature of Greek power permits such an action or not. Kostas Ephemera, The Press Project Why do you think Greek government is powerless to offer you asylum? 10:33 Julian Assange, WikiLeaks If I had been Cyprus, what would I have done in this conflict with the troika? I can see that there's different arguments for going different ways, but what I would have found most interesting would be to use the conflict to create an intense unity within Greece and, provided you have control over the police, the army and the law, and you have a healthy population and no natural disasters, you can do a lot. But there is really that question. And you effectively create a war-time footing, which has effectively been a problem like war for Greece, and Greece has survived much harsher circumstances in war, so there's no reason to believe it couldn't survive a conflict of that type and, in fact, a number of good things might come out of that conflict -- but only if you have control of the police and the army.  And, I think, the reality is that Syriza did not have full control over those three services, so that was not an option. 11:42 Kostas Ephemera, The Press Project In Greece, we have suffered and continue to suffer the results of austerity. Does the TTIP mean such kind of austerity for the whole of Europe? Julian Assange, WikiLeaks TTIP is the US-EU portion of a much grander project. That grand project [is] the three t'd agreements:  TTIP, TISA, and TPP. It's a project to create a new grand enclosure, a modern form perhaps analogous to the partition of Africa or the construction of the European Union -- a new economic and legal regime that will incorporate fifty-two (52) nations -- 1.6 billion people -- and, most importantly, two-thirds of global GDP. It has been constructed politically by playing the China card. So whenever something that radical and that large occurs, it's because it has the backing of several powerful forces. In this case, it has the backing of the major US multinationals, who have been always trying to achieve agreements like this. But it has also managed to get the backing of the US national security class, who view it as a strategic way of isolating China, India and Russia. 13:07 By playing that China card, they've also scared much of the establishment in Western Europe to coming into the system, and a lot of the South-East Asian countries like Australia. It is the most radical construction of an international regime since the construction of Europe [ie the European Union], and it cements once and for all, international and neoliberalism [interests?] into those fifty-two (52) countries, in a binding international treaty which is exceedingly difficult to withdraw from -- much more difficult than Greece withdrawing from Europe [ie the European Union]. 13:45 It covers nearly every aspect of the economy:  transportation, all services -- and services make up about seventy-five percent (75%) of the European economy, so that means all internet services, banking services, consulting engineers and accountants.  In fact, it covers everything that you can't drop on your foot. [Laughter] 14:10 It arises -- let's go back to World War II. After World War II, the US had fifty percent (50%) of the global GDP and it started to construct some international institutions to deal with that and the  Bretton Woods system, the WTO [World Trade Organisation] and, eventually the WTO became an institution with its own goals to expand, and it included India, Brazil, Russia and China. And the WTO became too democratised for the United States and there was several rounds of negotiation in the WTO in the 2000s, called the Doha Rounds, to negotiate some mutual lowering -- lower of tariffs and other mechanisms -- and the the US didn't like where things were going.  So it effectively created a negotiation outside the WTO with its allies that it could push around, and the result is those T-3 agreements. So, as negotiations originally started in Doha show, [the US] set up this legal and trading system covering two-thirds of global GDP.  So its multinationals get what [they] want and, also, to isolate China. 15:35 To my mind, the single most significant issue is that it locks in, for at least decades, the US model of global multinational-led neoliberalism -- this radical new form of international neoliberalism -- which means that if Greece elects a different government, or Syriza wants to go a different way, it can't.  It's too late.  There's clauses in the treaty, such as if the government tries to introduce new legislation it will be penalised. 16:25 It may even be seriously anti-economic. It does introduce the establishment of a great many new monopolies for the US pharmaceutical and copyright industries, which is anti-economic. But just having such an invasive level of regulation for ninety-seven percent (97%) of industry in an international trade agreement suggests that it will calcify around economic activity. 17:01 It's very hard to change this international agreement, and as industry changes and new inventions come onto the scene, and there's new ways of working and new ways of trading, countries which have signed up to this treaty system will be bogged down in this international regulation. 17:22 Kostas Ephemera, The Press Project One last question. These days, the refugee crisis is the main issue for all Euro summits, but the people who participate in those meetings are the very same leaders of countries who sold their weapons, or, actually, their armies actively contributed to the bombing of the refugee countries. What are your thoughts on that? 17:40 Julian Assange, WikiLeaks Well, it's a moral disgrace, you know, that the US is not taking Syrian refugees, and that the UK has said it will take only four thousand (4,000) per year over five (5) years. It's no surprise to anyone.  But, I mean, the situation comes about as a result of US, UK and French policy in the Middle East, together with the behaviour of US regional allies in the Middle East -- Qatar, Turkey, Jordan, Israel and Saudi Arabia. But we published cables, including in my new book -- The WikiLeaks Files -- showing that the US has been trying to overthrow the Syrian government since at least 2006 and has very serious plans to do that; was trying to make the Syrian government 'paranoid,' trying to get it to 'over-react' by instilling that fear and paranoia, trying to make it worried about coups; trying to stir up sectarian tensions between Sunni and Shi'ites; trying to make its efforts to stop the originator of ISIS -- the ISI, the Islamic State of Iraq -- to make Syria look weak, and the fact that it was trying to crack down on terrorists at all, pushed that as an example of Syrian government not having full control over its territory, to encourage the government overthrow; trying to stop foreign investment in Syria and secretly funding a variety of NGOs in Syria and, also, *** [???], using Saudi and Egypt to help push that along. There's an interesting question:  what is even in it for the US, this result? 19:37 Well, it's not about the US population as a whole, of course.  It's about the particular factions that pushed for it -- whether they have a benefit -- and, of course, the CIA perceives they have a benefit.  They create a problem and then they're given a greater budget to clean 'the problem' up. Similarly, with the contractors, arms dealers and arms manufacturers:  if there's no 'problem', then their budgets are cut.  So they create problems. It's also part of a grand area strategy to, you know, weaken Hezbollah, to allow Israel greater control over Golan Heights and maybe a buffer zone as well; to knock out a regional ally of Iran; to knock out the last Russian base, that's left outside the former Soviet Union, in Tartus; to create a path for a gas pipeline [with] a proposed path from Qatar to Saudi, up through Syria to Europe, which will compete with Russian gas. 20:39 So there's like, as I said before:  like most significant changes that happen in the world, they happen because significant forces come together, and with multiple motivations. It's what we see here. But an easily predictable disaster.  But from the US perspective there's nothing for them to dislike about having Europe flooded with Syrian refugees. In fact, we have an interesting speculation about the refugee movements.  We looked through our cables. So the speculation was this: occasionally, opponents of a country will engage in strategic depopulation -- which is, to decrease the fighting capacity of a government, you try and get people to flee the country. 21:28 In the case of Syria, it is predominantly the middle class that is fleeing, because it is the most able to flee -- it has the language skills, money, some connections, and that's the engineering class, the management class, the bureaucratic class, precisely the class that is needed to keep the government functioning, and encouraging it to flee Syria -- for example, Germany saying that they will accept any refugees and by Turkey taking nearly two (2) million refugees, it does significantly weaken the Syrian government. 22:09 So we looked for other recent precedents of that. In 2007, the Iraqi government made a formal demand of Germany to stop encouraging migration from Iraq to Germany. Now, in that case clearly Germany wasn't trying to collapse the Iraqi government, but nonetheless the Iraqi government was feeling the same effect, that it was weakening its governing capacity. Sweden, in the Iraq war, is documented in the cables as making its contribution to the Iraq war, as it said to the United States, the acceptance of the Iraqi refugees was part of its contribution. So, regardless of whether there is design behind it, the forces engaged in trying to overthrow the Syrian government must be happy with the results. Kostas Ephemera, The Press Project We have the same effect of brain-drain from Greece due to the economic crisis now.  Or the brains go. Julian Assange, WikiLeaks Exactly. So, the result is to weaken. As a political asylee myself, I'm not suggesting at all that Syrians shouldn't be treated kindly as refugees. But we should understand that engaging in the situation that causes depopulation of a country does encourage its collapse. Kostas Ephemera, The Press Project Thank you very much. --- end audio --- More Article by Kostas Ephemera  (Greek)  http://www.thepressproject.gr/article/83422/Ligi-ora-me-ton-Julian-Assange  (English translation)   here 2014 US population estimated at 322,583,006 -- ref:  http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/us-population/ USA DOD Beneficiaries Therefore, 10% of that estimate total population is equal to 32,258,300.6 Americans -- ie over 32-million US citizens benefit directly from US Dept of Defence. Adding estimates of periphery associations, perhaps up to over one-third of the total US population would benefit, either directly or indirectly, from the US Dept of Defence. Troika = European Troika  /  tripartite committee led by European Commission (Eurogroup) with European Central Bank (ECB) & the International Monetary Fund (IMF) - representing the European Union (EU) in its foreign relations, particularly re common foreign policy & security policy -- see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_troika Syriza - a left-wing political party in Greece, originally founded in 2004 as a coalition of left-wing and radical left parties. It is the largest party in the Hellenic Parliament, with party chairman Alexis Tsipras serving as Prime Minister of Greece -- ref:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syriza Bretton Woods system -- landmark system for monetary and exchange rate management established in 1944  - ref:  http://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/brettonwoodsagreement.asp ꕤ