© Santi Palacios/Associated Press Syrian refugees wait near the border railway station of Idomeni, northern Greece, to cross into Macedonia.
Watching the horrific images of Syrian refugees struggling toward safety — or in
the case of Aylan Kurdi, 3, drowning on that journey — I think of other refugees. Albert Einstein. Madeleine Albright. The Dalai Lama.
And
my dad.
In the aftermath of World War II, my father swam the Danube River to flee Romania and become part of a tide of refugees that nobody much cared about. Fortunately, a family in Portland, Ore., sponsored his way to the United States, making this column possible.
If you don't see yourself or your family members in those images of today's refugees, you need an empathy transplant.Aylan's death reflected a systematic failure of world leadership, from Arab capitals to European ones, from Moscow to Washington. This failure occurred at three levels:
■ The Syrian civil war has dragged on for four years now, taking
almost 200,000 lives, without serious efforts to stop the bombings.
Creating a safe zone would at least allow Syrians to remain in the country.
■ As millions of Syrian refugees swamped surrounding countries, the world shrugged. United Nations aid requests for Syrian refugees are only 41 percent funded, and the World Food Program was recently forced to slash its food allocation for refugees in Lebanon to just $
13.50 per person a month. Half of Syrian refugee children are unable to go to school. So of course loving parents strike out for Europe.
■ Driven by xenophobia and demagogy, some Europeans have done their best to stigmatize refugees and hamper their journeys.
Comment: There is so much wrong with the US electoral process, where does one even begin - except to say that the information presented above should come as no surprise whatsoever. But just for the sake of reminder, lets review:
1.) There are no essential differences between the fake two party system we are forced to choose between. The Democricans and Republicats both ultimately serve the same monied interests and power brokers in the banking, finance and military industries, and elsewhere. If the politicians didn't, they wouldn't win elections. Third party candidates with sincere mandates for social reform and honest brokering rarely, if ever, are "allowed" in the club.
2.) There is no test currently being administered to weed out pathological individuals from political office. That means that you can be just as dangerous an influence aligned with either party. We see both. Choosing a party affiliation is like choosing what color suit you prefer more: gray or navy. It is not about having objective values or ethics, but who has a greater will to power.
3.) If you want to make yourself extra crazy pondering voter fraud in particular, just enter 'voting' or 'voter fraud' in the SOTT.net search function and see how many articles come up reporting on this pervasive phenomenon. Then connect that with 'brand USA' where we try to sell ourselves and the world on the con that we are a "free" and "democratic" republic when we really are, in actuality, THE most fascistic and totalitarian nation on the planet.