by Eric Zuesse for The Saker Blog
Here are two visuals from the latest annual U.N. report about the world’s refugee situation, “UNHCR Global Trends 2018”, and though these images don’t pack the emotional punch of a child’s corpse that has just been washed upon a beach after drowning when his family had attempted to escape from a country that the U.S. and its allies were ‘trying to make free’ by bombing it to hell, each of these two pictures below contains a much bigger and more important message than does any such tear-jerking image or anecdote, but each of these pictures requires a bit of intelligence in order to understand it:
The first picture shows the result of the U.S. regime’s regime-change wars under Obama and Trump, in Syria and Venezuela especially. (Syria by using Al Qaeda in Syria to lead jihadists to bring down the Government, and Venezuela by strangulating sanctions that have produced an economic blockade which prohibits food and medicine from being able to reach the population). The 9-year earlier “UNHCR Global Trends 2009”, which covered the end of the George W. Bush Presidency, had reported that “There were 43.3 million forcibly displaced people worldwide at the end of 2009,” and that this was up from 42.0 million in 2008. The “UNHCR Global Trends 2007” said only that “available information suggests that a total of 67 million people had been forcibly displaced at the end of 2007”, and so there might have been a reduction during the later years of Bush’s Presidency. In any case, the number of “forcibly displaced people” was stable during the final years of Bush’s second term and the entirety of Barack Obama’s first term, until 2012. 2011 was the first year of the Arab Spring uprisings, which were a CIA production, as was documented by two books from Ahmed Bensada, each of which was well reviewed by Stuart Jeanne Bramhall, in her two articles, one on 18 January 2014, and the other on 25 October 2015. Of course, the impression that the American public was presented about the Arab Spring uprisings is that those were spontaneous. Actually, Obama came into office in 2009 hoping to overthrow Syria’s Government.
So, whereas the numbers had been stable for Obama’s first term of office, all hell broke loose throughout his second term, with his invasions of Libya and Syria, plus his continuation of George W. Bush’s occupations of both Afghanistan and Iraq. And, now, under Trump, the number is back again to GWB’s peak level and rising.
As I noted on June 30th under the headline “U.S. Government Tops All For Creating Refugees”, “the U.S. regime’s regime-change operations produce around half of the entire world’s refugee-problem.” That fact is shown in the second visual here. (Just look at Syria and Venezuela there.) What the first visual shows is that the U.S. regime’s attempts to overthrow the Governments of Syria and of Venezuela caused those global totals to soar. Those two nations alone accounted for nearly half of the global total, and part of the rest was from America’s prior invasions: Afghanistan, Iraq, the U.S.-backed coup in Honduras in 2009, etc. America’s invasions and attempted coups (such as in Venezuela) provided the dynamos that drove those rising numbers of refugees.
Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton at The Gray Zone headlined on June 19th, “This celebrated Western-funded nonprofit collaborated with al-Qaeda to wage lawfare on Syria” and documented how U.S.-and-allied billionaires and the U.S. Government fund “lawfare,” a war in international courts, and not only a huge international propaganda campaign to demonize Bashar al-Assad, in order to overthrow him. I had previously documented that “U.S. Protects Al Qaeda in Syria”. Actually, Obama bombed Syria’s army at the oil center city of Deir Ezzor on 17 September 2016 in order to enable both Al Qaeda and ISIS to take over that city. The U.S. team talk a storm against “terrorism” but quietly (along with the monarchs of Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Qatar) sponsor it as being “boots-on-the-ground” fighters — proxies there, instead of U.S. troops — to bring down leaders such as Muammar Gaddafi and Bashar al-Assad.
So, when the U.S. and its allies complain about the refugee crisis, and pontificate against “dictators,” and assert international law when they are the worst violators of international law, maybe they enjoy fooling their own public, but outside the U.S. alliance, their lying and evil are obvious. It even shows up clearly in the UNHCR’s statistics (such as those visuals). Obviously, China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and other nations that the U.S. regime labels as ‘enemies’, are not to blame for those tens of millions of refugees. The U.S. and its allies definitely are to blame for it. This isn’t a situation where the pot is calling the kettle black, but instead it’s one where the pot is calling the fresh-fallen snow black, and in which only propagandistic ’news’ media refuse to reveal this to their audiences. The snow is white, and the U.S. regime and its allies are red, covered with their tens of millions of victims’ blood and flaming misery.
International poll after international poll finds that the country which is considered to be “the greatest threat to peace in the world today” by the most people worldwide is the U.S., but that Americans don’t think it’s true. So: who is right? Americans? Or the rest of the world? Now, why would people outside the U.S. believe that way? Maybe it’s because of “communist propaganda”? The most important thing to recognize is that the U.S. is a dictatorship. That scientifically demonstrated fact explains a lot. None of these sanctions and coups and invasions against countries that had never invaded nor in any way endangered the U.S. could exist otherwise than this, because any dictatorship is based upon lies. Invading Iraq was based upon lies. Invading Afghanistan was based upon lies. Invading Syria was based upon lies. Invading Libya was based upon lies. The economic sanctions against Russia are based upon lies. American foreign policies are based upon lies. It’s no wonder, then, why Americans are so misinformed.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
Epic piece; a big thank you, Eric Zuesse!
In Westish parlance, Dictatorship simply denotes a condition where political power is wielded by people who never would have been approved by Soros and neoliberal despotism. Maduro, Putin, Assad, Gadaffi, etc. and their respective mass base which put them in charge are not legitimate sources of power. Their electorates shouldn’t have been given the franchise which they only use to promote rotten people into power, according to the apostles of Western Democracy.
Can’t be easy to be a two-bit Western supremacist these days when the Zionazis have utterly ditched their mass base of the Western middle classes and labour aristocracies, deliberately creating chaos in Whitey’s Heimat as well (see Jimmie Moglia’s recent submission where Italy’s participation in the raping of Libya is totally omitted, while Italy is painted as a victim of ’the great unwashed’).
The zombifcation of the USA has created a culture that refuses to be denighed its greatness, its baked into the cake by majority rule and probably can not be changed.
I did hear a statement that said if you want to change the laws, you have to get rid of the people who make them, now this is an effort worth pursuing.
So, when the U.S. and its allies complain about the refugee crisis, and pontificate against “dictators,” and assert international law when they are the worst violators of international law, maybe they enjoy fooling their own public, but outside the U.S. alliance, their lying and evil are obvious.
The general US public has not been fooled. They understand implicitly that “democracy bombings” are necessary to keep things in order. In others words, to keep Walmart and Amazon stocked with brand name products at low, low prices, to keep the gasoline cheap and flowing, and of course, to cattle-drive the continuous waves of low wage workers that process their rotisserie chickens; mow their laws, clean their toilets, pick their veggies, etc.
They know.
If you bring up the subject, even as a question, in conversation, things suddenly grow very silent. Very very silent. Until someone changes the subject.
The silence of progress is deafening.
Amen.
Americans are not stupid, nor are they ignorant. Those are self-serving alibis.
While they may not realize every detail of how America’s ill-gotten prosperity is based upon economically raping and looting the world, Americans do realize the fundamental nature of their parasitic Way of Life.
And that it why, when push comes to shove, Americans will support their criminal American Empire and its God-given right to dominate the world. Any nation that stands in the way of American Full Spectrum Tyranny will be, in Orwellian fashion, smeared as a threat by the Americans.
In the reality outside of the American Matrix, however, America is the true existential threat to peace on this planet.
And this American menace is one that must be ended–irrevocably and without delay.
One needs to realize the American people are nice because their politicians are nasty. They shield them from the realitites of global negotiations to keep the bread and circus going. Life in this world is a zero sum game. For some to win, some must loose. For some to win big, some must loose very big. It’s human nature to pick the side that wins when it comes to bread and butter. Americans are no different.
Who are the UNRWA refugees in the first graph? Do these figures include the many million Palestinian refugees; it would seem the second graphic excludes that conclusion. Again, Eric Zuesse is unwilling to accuse Israel of any ill-deed, whilst bandying his America-only, “evil-empire” theories on the unwitting.
If you, “Sourpuss,” had been intelligent, you would have clicked onto the first link, which is to the report itself, which notes that of the 70.8 million total, there are included ” 5.5 million Palestinian refugees registered with the
United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).” While I agree with you that Israel is disgusting, the U.S. and its economic sanctions against many countries, and its coups and attempted coups, and especially its many invasions (mostly via proxies such as jihadists), accounts for vastly more refugee-creation than does Israel, but the fact is that if the U.S. regime did not allow Israel’s regime to be as barbaric as it is, then the situation for the Palestinians wouldn’t be as bad as it is. If you are so stupid as to think that Israel’s regime controls America’s regime more than America’s regime controls Israel’s regime, then I can understand why you think that the greatest threat to world peace is Israel instead of the United States, but it’s not true.
Please accept my sincere apology; yes it was an off-the-cuff jibe, and an anti-intellectual one, to boot.
PS, thank your for succinct analysis of the Israel vs. US/ Zionism issue, I’m certain it is much appreciated
Eric,
I recently read that Columbia has more internally displaced people than Syria. So your charts are those displaced from their countries? Of course, US is to blame for the problems in Columbia as well, they are basically under occupation too.
Great article. It lays out who is responsible for the wars and refugees clearly. I do look forward to the fall of the US dollar and the end of their empire and every article like this helps.
The image of a child washed up on a beach is emotional powerful – making the tragedy real – far more than a statistic. The figure of 70 million forcibly displaced persons in 2018 is staggering, each number a person. As humanity hurtles towards world war three, we get closer with each day to a tragedy of biblical proportions: the displacement of billions not millions.
https://www.ghostsofhistory.wordpress.com/
Americans are one of the most stupid, ignorant and isolated people on the planet. A people with so much land and natural resources who let themselve be lead by such a corrupt elite. They are arrogant and selfish and worship the dollar. Retribution cannot come any quicker.