Thousands of refugees and asylum seekers head for safe havens daily – a human flood entering Europe, risking life and limb to get there. Why?
Endless US direct and proxy wars force desperate people to seek safety out of harm’s way. Numbers fleeing war and destabilized areas are greater than any time since WWII – increasing exponentially as conflicts and chaos rage in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Donbass, Somalia, South Sudan, and elsewhere.
According to a UNHCR report, 60 million people were forcibly displaced by end of 2014. Globally one in every 122 people are asylum seekers, refugees or internally displaced persons. More than half the world’s refugees are children.
On August 28, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said over 300,000 refugees and asylum seekers crossed the Mediterranean to reach Europe so far this year – greatly exceeding 2014’s 219,000 total, a human flood likely to approach half a million by year end, likely hundreds of thousands more in 2016 and beyond.
Thousands of others die or go missing. On August 27, hundreds were feared dead after two overcrowded vessels capsized off Libya’s coast. Dozens of Syrian refugees were found suffocated to death in a truck parked on an Austrian highway – their bodies in a state of decomposition. Other similar horror stories repeat with disturbing regularity.
One of the most significant demographic trends in American history, was the growth of our cities during the 20th century. The industrial revolution lowered the labor costs associated with agriculture, while creating more jobs in our urban areas, thus fueling a mass migration into our cities that continues to this day. However, that trend may be reversing for the first time.
According to a Bloomberg analysis of census data between 2013 and 2014, millions of Americans are fleeing our cities. But these cities aren’t shrinking, the locals are being replaced by foreigners. While their research noted 100 cities, it focused on 20 urban areas that experienced the greatest loss of local residents. New York City came in 2nd place after losing 163,000 US citizens. Americans are largely leaving due to soaring housing costs, and are being replaced by two different kinds of immigrants. Highly skilled immigrants working in the tech sector who can afford the rent, and low skilled workers who are willing to split the rent, and cram as many of their friends and relatives into tiny urban apartments.
Instead of the “White Flight” from our urban areas that was widely documented in the latter half of the 20th century, we’re now experiencing “American Flight.” As our nation takes in more and more foreign citizens, these people are mostly settling into our urban areas, which are now being referred to as “global cities.” It’s safe to say that by the end of the 21st century, what we now recognize as an American culture, will cease to exist in urban areas, and will almost exclusively exist in rural and suburban locations.
Joshua Krause is a reporter, writer and researcher at The Daily Sheeple. He was born and raised in the Bay Area and is a freelance writer and author. You can follow Joshua’s reports at Facebook or on his personal Twitter. Joshua’s website is Strange Danger .
This morning, on live TV, a reporter Alison Parker, and cameraman Adam Ward, were shot and killed during their local news report. The crew was reporting live for WDBJ7, a CBS affiliate in Roanoke, Virginia at about 6:45 am at Bridgewater Plaza near Smith Mountain Lake.
LIVE: Chilling still image of shooter by camerman apparently laying on the ground.
A third victim, Vicky Gardner, a member of the Chamber of Commerce who took part in the report, was said to be wounded and in stable condition.
Watch this news report video here:
This latest ‘Truman Show’ shooting takes this all-American genre to a whole new level. According to reports, the shooter posted his own video of the shooting on social media – on his Facebook account and on Twitter. Watch his video, shot low-res on either an iPhone or Galaxy phone (vertical rectangular format) and not on an HD GoPro as CNN and others wrongly claimed today.
After viewing my exposé of his erroneous assertion that the neocons are not really Zionists, the alternative media gatekeeper Robbie Martin has hardened his stance, calling my rebuttal ‘reverse Hasbara’ without addressing a single point raised.
Likely at the behest of his sister Abby, he also took a shot at “Holocaust deniers.”
Reverse Hasbara: bombing comment threads of legitimate anti-Israeli government critique with holocaust denial and other discrediting shit
He initially challenged me to a debate on the neocon subject, which I accepted, but he then quickly backed out.
@bmartinez567 i think i’m going to have to bow out of the ‘debate’. this is just getting more than a tad on the weird side for me — Robbie Martin (@FluorescentGrey) August 16, 2015
Like most left-wing gatekeepers, Martin’s impetus appears to be to try to set up narrow parameters for what constitutes “legitimate criticism of Israel”, and then once these barriers have been established, dismissing anything that goes beyond his watered down analysis as off-limits, heretical and “discrediting”.
Their hypocritical use of the pejorative “Holocaust denial” is a testament to the dishonesty of the Martin siblings. While they label anyone who asks legitimate questions about the victors’ interpretation of the Second World War and the Holocaust narrative “deniers,” they concurrently decry the mainstream media’s use of the term “conspiracy theorist” to discredit dissenters and skeptics of government narratives.
Ever since the EPA accidentally dumped 3 million gallons of toxic mine water into the Animas River, Colorado authorities have been keen on reopening the river for public use as soon as possible. The river is a significant source of tourist income in the region, and they don’t want the toxic spill to put a damper on their summer.
Governor John Hickenlooper is one of those authorities, and he’s determined to prove that everything is back to normal. So on Tuesday, after being given the challenge by the Durango Herald, he decided to take a big gulp of river water for the cameras. After 24 hours, he reported that he was still in perfect health.
However, that hardly proves that the river is safe, at least in the long term. Granted, the EPA has tested the water and found that its toxicity has returned to pre-spill levels, but all of this is based on only a few days of water testing, which hardly enough time to draw a proper conclusion. Even the EPA admitted that during a recent public meeting between themselves and the Governor.
Speaking in Durango, Hickenlooper, a Democrat, said a preliminary analysis of water samples taken Friday from Cement Creek – after a plume of mustard-yellow mining wastewater crawled down the river – shows that the water has largely returned to pre-event levels. Concentrations of heavy metals and pH had returned to within normal ranges, confirmed Dr. Larry Wolk, executive director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
But an official with the EPA asked Hickenlooper to stop making comments about the returning health of the river.
“It doesn’t show where we are at right now,” Shaun McGrath, Region 8 administrator for the EPA, told Hickenlooper, as officials huddled on the grass at Rotary Park. “You have to have a couple of days of data to show that you’re actually back to baseline conditions, and we’re not there yet.”
“That’s nonsense,” Hickenlooper responded, pointing out that businesses that rely on the river to drive operations are closed.
Just one day later, the EPA went so far as to call the water safe for consumption in Durango and La Plata County. Make of that of what you will. It’s probably true that this stretch of the river is now relatively safe, but that’s only temporary. In all likelihood, the toxicity of the whole Animas River will haunt the region for decades.
Law enforcement authorities and mainstream US news media are framing the November 20 Florida State University shooting incident as yet another case of a lone nut who regrettably gained access to a firearm.
Police Chief Michael DeLeo intimated May’s mental disorientation by noting to the press that the intellectually-gifted 31-year old attorney was in a “state of crisis.” “It’s clear Mr. May’s sense of being in place in our community,” DeLeo continued, “was not in a normal status” [sic]. For US journalists such statements, coupled with May’s unusual behavior leading up to the shooting are unambiguous: a sudden onset of mentally illness.
But was May in fact mentally ill? According to Derrick Robinson, President of Freedom From Covert Harassment and Surveillance (FFCHS), the United States has a long history of mind control research and techniques, dating at least to the CIA’s MKULTRA and similar programs begun in the early 1950s.
“Basically their aim [has been] to control a human being without the person being aware of their efforts.” An individual can thus be directed to commit any number of acts, including murder and political assassination. “They use drugs, they use electroshock, they use hypnosis, and ultimately electromagnetic energy. That seemed to be what paid off the most for them.”[2] Robinson, a former US military veteran, also claims to be a victim of such practices.
May’s personal characteristics and behavior indeed fit the profile of many targeted individuals. He was single, changed his occupational status and living arrangements frequently over a short period leading up to the November 20 event (perhaps to avoid continued harassment), and was even in contact with FFCHS members for support as he protested what he perceived as electronic surveillance and harassment on social media.
On Sept. 7, May called police in Las Cruces, New Mexico, to report that someone had installed a camera in his apartment. As the Miami Herald reports, “He told police he could hear voices coming through the walls, and the voices were talking about him. One evening, for instance, he heard the voices commenting on his actions as he applied lotion after a bubble bath.”[3] According to Las Cruces broadcast journalist Laura Thoren, when May “filed the report police told him to ‘switch apartments.’” Aaron Alexis made similar complaints to police in the weeks leading up to his September 16, 2013 assault on the Navy Yard military base.
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