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West 'did nothing' to resolve the Syrian crisis, says aunt of drowned Syrian boy

Drowned Syrian boy
© Daniel Roland / AFP
A graffiti depicts the drowned Syrian refugee boy Alan Kurdi at the harbor in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
The Western countries have done nothing to resolve the Syrian crisis, pursuing their false narrative instead, while the real situation in Syria stays underreported, the aunt of a Syrian refugee toddler who drowned in 2015 on his way to Europe told RT.

"Our country is being destroyed by outsiders," said Tima Kurdi - a Syrian-born Canadian lawyer and the aunt of Alan Kurdi, a three-year-old Syrian boy who died in September 2015 en route to the Greek island of Kos from Turkey - adding that "Western countries are not doing anything" about that.

She said the death of her nephew became "a wake-up call to the world, a message from God, who told us [that] enough is enough," adding that the Syrian people "were suffering for four years [at that time] and Syria was crying out to the world for help but nobody was hearing" to these pleas, as "there was not enough media coverage until" the picture of the body of her nephew washed ashore in Turkish resort city of Bodrum made global headlines.

That image prompted politicians in many Western countries to open their borders and take in refugees. However, "months later, they started to forget that image and just got back to their everyday business, but the suffering [of the Syrian people] continued," Kurdi said.

Comment:
Death and despair has migrated to the doorsteps of Europe. But tens of millions of people do not simply abandon home and native land for an insecure dangerous future of desperate struggle. The forces that have created this crisis are massive and historic in scale. People are now confronted with a tiny fraction of the horrors that have been visited upon millions and millions in the last 14 years. The refugee crisis is merely a symptom of the far greater and far more brutal reality. This is not just a "current crisis" to last a dozen news cycles, and it will not be resolved by humanitarian support.

The current crisis is similar in magnitude to that of World War II because the events causing it are nearly as epochal and momentous as a World War. Those who leave their homelands now face much greater peril of death than asylum seekers faced 20 years ago, yet despite this their numbers have swollen to the tens of millions.

The crisis has been caused by a new Holocaust, but it is one we refuse to acknowledge. The facts of the mass violence and mass destruction are not hidden. We can see the destruction and death that follows Western intervention, but we have been living in wilful ignorance and denial, just as the Germans denied the obvious fact and nature of German genocide. We don't want to understand. However, like the Germans under Nazism, our self-serving ignorance is nurtured and magnified by a propaganda discourse that is in our news and entertainment media, and also in our halls of education and the halls of power.

We do not understand the genocidal nature of US-led Western interventions because we do not understand the nature of genocide. We have allowed Zionist and US imperialist elites to dictate that genocide be understood through a lens of Holocaust exceptionalism, Nazi exceptionalism, and Judeocide exceptionalism. But genocide was never meant to be specifically Nazi nor anti-Semitic in nature. The word "genocide" was coined by a Jew, Raphael Lemkin, but was never intended to apply specifically to Jews. It was meant to describe a strategy of deliberately visiting violence and destruction on "nations and peoples" as opposed to visiting it on armies. Lemkin wrote a great deal about genocide against the native people's of the Americas, but that work went unpublished.

The truth is that there is widespread genocide in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia. A new Holocaust is upon us and the refugee numbers are the just tip of a genocidal iceberg. By bombing, invading, destabilising, subverting, Balkanising, sanctioning, corrupting, indebting, debasing, destroying, assassinating, immiserating and even enraging, the US has led "a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups...." That is where tens of millions of refugees have come from, but we refuse to see the fact of coordination. We blind ourselves to clear indications of Western agency and intentionality. We twist ourselves in knots to avoid seeing coherence or any pattern in US foreign policy. We are blinded by nonsense from pundits about party-political rhetoric and power struggles in DC, and we ignore the monolithic elephant of coherent imperial strategy that is threatening to crash through the floor and destroy the room altogether.

Westerners don't want to face the truth of what their governments are doing -- particularly NATO governments, and the US government most of all. The millions who died in Iraq were victims of a genocide that was intended to kill Iraqis in such numbers. The victims were not incidental to some other project. The same was true in Viet Nam, but it is also true in Syria, in Libya, in Yemen, in Somalia, in the DR Congo, and in many other places. The destruction, the death, the misery and the chaos are not "failures" of "ill-advised" policy. This is not even some sort of "Plan-B" where the US creates failed states when it cannot install the regime it wants. This is Plan-A and it is becoming harder and harder to deny the fact.

Wars no longer end. We cannot simply pretend that there is no reason for that. Wars no longer end because instability and conflict are the deliberate means of attacking the people -- the means of destroying their nations as such. That is what "genocide" means, and that is why we avoid the knowledge. This knowledge will destroy comforting delusions and reveal the cowardly false critiques of those who think that the US government is "misguided" in its attempts to bring stability. The US doesn't bring stability, it doesn't seek to bring stability. It destabilises one country after another. It infects entire regions with a disease of acute or chronic destruction, dysfunction and death.

See entire article: The refugee crisis reveals the Neo-Holocaust



Chalkboard

Russian Ministry offers assistance to U.S. amid California dam collapse fears

Russia offers help for US dam collapse fears
© AP/Rich Pedroncelli
Russian experts ready to provide their assistance to the United States amid the crisis with Oroville Dam in California that may collapse, the head of the Information and Analytical Centre for Water Industry Development at Russian Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment told Sputnik Monday.

Almost 190,000 people, who are living near the dam, were ordered to leave the area to escape the possible peril.

"If necessary, the Russian experts would be able to provide the corresponding assistance to our US colleagues. For example, we have provided similar consultations to the countries of Southeast Asia and some African countries," Ilya Razbash said.

Media reported that years of droughts had damaged the concrete structure, while this year's rainy winter filled the lake with too much water and the use of the emergency spillway to lower water levels accelerated its erosion creating, according to the local sheriff's office a "hazardous situation."

Comment: See also: Spillway at tallest dam in U.S. in California about to collapse; 188 thousand people ordered to evacuate


Shopping Bag

Sears and Kmart join other retailers in dumping Trump brands

Sears
© Shannon Stapleton / Reuters
Sears Holdings, the corporation that owns retail giants Sears and Kmart, says it has decided to stop selling 31 items from the Trump Home products line on its website due to poor sales.

The Trump Home collection, owned by the Trump Organization, includes furniture, bedding, lighting, mirrors, and chandeliers.

"Amid that streamlining effort, 31 Trump Home items were among the items removed online this week. Products from the line are still offered online via third-party Marketplace vendors. Neither Sears nor Kmart carries the line in brick-and-mortar stores," Hanover added.

Sears and Kmart are the latest retailers to drop a product line associated with the Trump family businesses.

Earlier this month, US department store chains Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus announced they were cutting Ivanka Trump's collection, with Nordstrom citing the brand's declining sales.

Ambulance

Population on edge: Massive bar brawl involving 100 people erupted in UK pub

huge pub fight
© Tommy Arkle / Facebook
Footage has emerged of a mass brawl in a Wiltshire pub in the early hours of Sunday morning. More than 100 punters are thought to have joined in the melee.

Dozens of men were filmed kicking and punching each other at the Wetherspoon pub in Trowbridge, southwest England, as music played in the background.

A police officer was reportedly struck in the face but avoided serious injury, while one person has since been charged with possession of a knife.

A video of the brawl was uploaded to Facebook by truck driver Tommy Arkle, who captioned the clip: "Last night got way out of hand." It has been viewed more than half a million times.

Arkle, who spoke to the Mirror, said: "There was a group of lads, who had obviously had a bit to drink. It started as two people on one and then suddenly escalated into almost everyone in the bar.

"I was walking back from the bar with a pint in my hand when I heard a load of shouting and looked around. Then I just saw everyone fighting, I didn't even have time to think about it.

"One of my best mates was bottled, he wasn't even involved in the fight. Somehow he ended up getting caught up in it all on his way back from the bar.

Boat

Spillway at tallest dam in U.S. in California about to collapse; 188 thousand people ordered to evacuate

Oroville dam overflows
© Mark Brown/YouTube
Tens of thousands of people have been fleeing California towns downstream from the Oroville Dam after fears of an imminent collapse of its spillway prompted an evacuation order. Authorities are seeking to stem the breach with the help of helicopters.

"Immediate evacuation from the low levels of Oroville and areas downstream is ordered. This is NOT A Drill. This is NOT A Drill. This in NOT A Drill," says the statement posted on the Butte County Sheriff's Facebook page.


The statement refers to the Lake Oroville Dam, located 105 km (65 miles) north of Sacramento.

Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said the evacuation orders affect 188,000 people, AP reports. The dam's spillway was "predicted to fail within the next hour," the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) said at around 4:30pm PST Sunday (00:30 GMT Monday).

Comment: The LA Times reports that the 'immediate threat' had passed, water levels were dropping, but the situation was still dangerous and evacuations would continue. 23,000 California National Guard soldiers and airmen have also been ordered to be on alert for an Oroville dam emergency.

Environmental groups in California had warned federal and state agencies of the risk of the spillway's collapse in 2015 citing a need for upgrades. The agencies said at the time that the concerns were overblown.

The Associated Press reports that officials were waiting until dawn today (February 13) to inspect the erosion and that water levels were continuing to drop.

See also: Update: Oroville Dam overtops, government still refuses to order evacuation preparations


Bomb

Bomb explosion rocks protest rally in Lahore, Pakistan

explosion debris
© AFP 2016/Ali Jan
Police in Pakistan say a large bomb has exploded at a protest rally in the city of Lahore, with early reports suggesting at least two people had died.

The blast struck outside the Punjab Assembly, injuring several people, including police officers and journalists covering the march.

Vehicles on Lahore's Mall Road, a major thoroughfare that passers through the centre of the city, were also destroyed.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the blast, which appeared to come from a parked car.

Quenelle

Elephant at Thai resort launches 'elephant-lover' tourist into the air - Upset woman cancels plan to get elephant tattoo (VIDEO)

ELEPHANT WASH
Some resorts in Thailand offer tourists the opportunity to learn the ropes of being a mahout, an elephant handler in Asia that works with, rides on and tends to elephants.

In some cases, tourists are allowed to bath the elephants in a river, and while that sounds like it might be fun, one woman discovered the downside of doing so:


The video was posted Friday on LiveLeak, and though it's hard to say how recent the incident occurred, it nevertheless offers a reminder that elephants are still wild animals, even captive ones.

In this instance, the woman unfortunately did something that the elephant did not like.

As she wiped down the top of the elephant's trunk with a sponge, the elephant suddenly swept its head forward and with its tusks, bound together at the tips, tossed the woman into the air, sending her and her sunglasses and headband flying.

Airplane

Passengers flee United Flight after 'unstable' pilot goes off on bizarre Trump, Clinton rant

United Airlines plane
© JAY JANNER / AMERICAN-STATESMAN
A United Airlines pilot was removed from an Austin flight Saturday evening, a spokesman for United Airlines confirmed.
Nearly half the passengers reportedly fled a United Airlines flight before it could take off on Saturday evening after a seemingly disturbed pilot went on a bizarre political and personal rant over the intercom.

As passenger Randy Reiss wrote on Twitter, the pilot dressed in a ball cap and casual shirt remarked on her appearance after she boarded the flight at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in the late afternoon, "Then she says 'sorry, I'm going through [a] divorce,'" Reiss wrote. "Ummmm uh oh."


Reiss told BuzzFeed that other passengers even sympathized with her at first. The sympathy quickly changed to dread as her speech veered from her personal life into a string of non sequiturs, at which point the mood aboard the San Francisco-bound jet turned from cozy to uncomfortable, to worse.

Bug

Kiev continues to be a beacon of light and distinguish itself as a mecca of tolerance and Western values

Art lovers
Chanting "Jews out!" and destroying art exhibits. Is this what Merkel was talking about when she referred to Europe's enlightened "community of values"?

The third anniversary of the "Revolution of Dignity" is just a few short days away. By now of course Ukraine is a full member in the EU and enjoys a standard of living that even Scrooge McDuck would envy.

Corruption is non-existent and Ukrainians are able to take evening strolls without being accosted by torch-wielding mobs chanting "Jews out!"

In other words: Maidan was awesome, and if you don't think so, real Ukrainian patriots have ways of making you to think so.

And so, in accordance with Merkel's "community of values", a group of tolerant Kiev liberals visited an art exhibit that explored the "unrest that led to the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution." Explored? Not praised? We can't allow that:

Binoculars

Belgian national crisis center: Spread of Saudi-backed Wahhabism cause for concern

Belgium Brussels airport
© AFP
Members of the civil protection walk outside the damaged front of Brussels Airport in Zaventem on March 23, 2016, one day after a series of bomb attacks in the country.
Belgium has voiced concerns over the spread of Saudi-backed Wahhabism throughout the country and the rest of Europe.

According to a Wednesday report by De Standaard, the country's OCAM national crisis center stressed that Wahhabism is being preached in an increasing number of the country's mosques receiving financial support from Saudi Arabia.

"We believe that a growing number of mosques and Islamic centers in Belgium, like the rest of Europe, are under the influence of Wahhabism," said the OCAM.

Wahhabism is the radical ideology dominating Saudi Arabia, freely preached by government-backed clerics there, and inspiring terrorists worldwide. Daesh and other Takfiri terror groups use the ideology to declare people of other faiths as "infidels" and then kill them.

"We also note that the imams of these mosques are regularly being 'salafized' or are already 'salafized'," added the center.

Comment: But never mind, keeping sending the Saudis weapons so they can keep spreading radical Islam to Europe and America and giving them medals for "fighting terrorism":