Good analogy; however would anyone listen to that?
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of joe harcz Comcast
Sent: Friday, April 22, 2016 7:18 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Unraveling of European Union deepens crisis for
Mideast refugees
Does anyone realize that this is sort of like WW One all over again?
Except we ton't have the Ottamon Empire to kick around anymore...
----- Original Message -----
From: "Roger Loran Bailey (Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)"
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2016 9:22 PM
Subject: [blind-democracy] Unraveling of European Union deepens crisis for
Mideast refugees
http://themilitant.com/2016/8016/801604.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 80/No. 16 April 25, 2016
(front page)
Unraveling of European Union deepens crisis for Mideast refugees
BY MAGGIE TROWE
One result of the coming apart of the old imperialist Mideast order
and growing divisions born out of the conflicting interests of the
individual states in the European Union is the deteriorating situation
faced by millions of people forced from their homes in Syria, Iraq,
Afghanistan and elsewhere. This includes more than 52,000 people
trapped in crowded Greek refugee detention camps after officials in
Albania, Bulgaria and Macedonia sealed their borders.
Many refugees and immigrants trying to enter Europe are stuck in camps
on Greek islands where they landed, such as Lesbos, Chios, Kos and
Samos, located close to Turkey’s Aegean coast. Under a March 18 accord
between the European powers and Ankara, Turkey began accepting
migrants deported from Greece. Some 325 people were returned the first week.
The imperialist governments’ actions pit workers of different
nationalities against each other. Syrians are still considered for
asylum and settlement in Europe, in a very slow process. But since
February immigrants from war-torn Afghanistan are not.
Fights broke out among nearly 1,000 Syrian and Afghan asylum-seekers
at a detention center in Chios April 1, leaving five people seriously injured.
Cops allowed the melee to go on for six hours before intervening.
About
800 people then broke out of the camp and marched to the port, where
they set up tarps and tents. They were attacked April 7 by some local
residents shouting anti-immigrant slogans and hurling small firebombs,
and police forced most of them to move to a nearby shelter.
At Piraeus, Athens’ tourist port on the Greek mainland, a recent fight
between young Syrian and Afghan men lasted three hours. Some 4,600
refugees live in tents and warehouses at the port, and the social
democratic Syriza government wants to get rid of them before Orthodox
Easter May 1, the beginning of the peak tourist season.
“Do not lose your courage, we stand by you, we love you,” read a
government flyer distributed in Arabic, Farsi, Greek and English to
migrants. Then it threatened, “The port of Piraeus cannot host you any
more and you have nothing to win by remaining here. In a few days the
port of Piraeus will be emptied (evacuated).”
Athens is in the process of selling Piraeus Port Authority to Chinese
shipping giant COSCO in the second large privatization move carried
out by the Syriza government since last year. Dockworkers struck and
marched in Athens April 8 protesting the sale and the job losses they
anticipate as a result.
In Idomeni, Greece, a small town on the Macedonian border, a group of
refugees, including many women and children, held a demonstration and
sit-in on railroad tracks, demanding to be allowed to cross the
border, the Greek press reported April 8. Thousands of people,
including some
4,000 children, live in unsanitary conditions in the camp there.
Millions displaced in Syria, Iraq
The partial cease-fire brokered by Washington, Moscow and Tehran
allows the government of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, aided by
Russian airstrikes, to continue its attacks on Nusra Front, which is
affiliated with al-Qaeda. Other opposition groups have been hit as well.
In Iraq, thousands of civilians fled heavy fighting April 8 in the
Islamic State-occupied town of Hit in Anbar Province, which Iraqi
government forces are fighting to retake.
Some 12,000 families have returned over the past month to parts of
Ramadi that have been cleared of land mines set by Islamic State
forces before they were driven out of the city by Iraqi government forces in
December.
Half a million people used to live in the city, which the war has
reduced to rubble.
The military campaign pressed by Washington and its allies to retake
the city of Mosul in northern Iraq from Islamic State has made little
progress. Iraqi regular army forces outside of Makhmour haven’t been
able to oust 100 to 200 soldiers of the brutal Islamist group, in
spite of Washington’s airstrikes and shelling by a U.S. Marine
artillery contingent on the ground.
The fighting has forced many civilians to flee. More than 2,000 people
have overwhelmed a camp in Makhmour that the Iraqi army is not
prepared to maintain. Many of the refugees, the majority of them
Sunni, distrust the largely Shia government and militias. “The Iraqi
army had no plan for us and we’re 2,000 people,” Abu Noor, a teacher
from a nearby village, told a Wall Street Journal reporter at the camp. “What
will they do with Mosul?
That’s two million!”
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