Calling Erdogan's Bluff in Afrin

"As observers of Erdogan’s war on the Kurds know, the current attack on Afrin is to be put into the context of Turkey’s longstanding racist hostility towards any prospect of Kurdish self-determination, including democratic rights within existing states. By labelling any attempt at self-determination as ‘separatism’ and ‘terrorism’, Turkey tries to legitimize its war crimes in the eyes of the international community."
"Ever since the peace process between the Turkish state and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) ceased in the summer of 2015, and especially after an attempted coup attempt in July 2016, several massacres on Kurdish civilians have been committed by the state, while tens of thousands of people were arrested, and even more assaulted, sacked, injured or displaced."
New Internationalist In Afrin, northern Syria, Kurds protest Turkey's invasion as YPG (People's Protection Unit) members look on, 24 January 2018. Source: Kurdish Struggle, CC

Robert Fisk of The Independent, Great Britain, writes disparagingly of Afrin's untouched status; that despite the news coming out of the region of Turkey's assault on the YPG and stated determination to wrest Afrin from Kurdish hands, he could see first-hand no indication of any conflict other than in surrounding towns, that all seems normal and calm, commercial establishments open for business and no perturbations to be seen anywhere. There is a discreet presence of Russian soldiers which tends to give the impression of a loose solidarity with the Kurds.

Fisk, an opinionated and fussily critical journalist at the best of times, seems to take a sneering position at anything that belies his impressions. As a nit-picker, he had to point out in his latest entry in his rag that he had to repeatedly correct Kurdish pronunciation of Erdogan's name, impressing on them that the 'r' is pronounced as 'w', as though that salient fact would be of any great moment to a people fearing the loss of their established autonomy in a geographic area in which they can measure Kurdish heritage by millennia.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan feels entitled to invade areas on the border with Syria, considering them to be Turkish in character and historical precedence and thus on the wrong side of the border. Aside from which he has an overweening sense of paranoia at the presence and autonomous territorial control of the YPG whose connection with the Turkish PKK he points out is injurious to Turkey given the Kurdish aspiration of achieving sovereign status on their own historical geography, absorbed by Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.

Erdogan's fascist hatred for the Kurdish propensity to claim what is historically and morally theirs, restively agitating for the world to finally recognize the injustice done the Kurds when the dominating custodians of the region, colonialist Britain and France were casually marking up borders for posterity, ignoring natural ethnic, tribal and religious minority groups and forcing uneasy pluralism on a population that historically saw no need to acknowledge the other, each living in their geographies, has been brought to a head.

Under Kurdish control, minorities generally were able to live in peace, unlike the kind of persistent persecution suffered by Christians, Yazidis, Kurds, Jews and Druze among others living under Muslim majority domination. During the invasion and caliphate establishment of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, minorities fled for protection from the invaded areas to find haven within wider, autonomously-regulated Kurdish areas.

Kurdish YPG fighter. Source: Kurdish Struggle, CC

Erdogan's purpose in the Afrin area and beyond is to establish a greater presence of Turkmens and Sunni Syrians on the border area between Turkey and Syria to counteract the link between the YPG and the PKK, sundering their alliance and giving 'protection' to Turkey, and just incidentally in the process enabling Turkey to target the fighting Kurds and demoralize their citizenry with the prospect of an invading Turkey. Because Turkey is a member of NATO, Erdogan has become almost exempt from scrutiny in his ambition.

That Turkey remains a member of NATO is one of those realpolitik mysteries. Ankara's realliance with Moscow has shifted his membership even further outside the Western alliance, yet it remains impervious to hard scrutiny. Lip service is paid by Europe and the United States to the plight of the Kurds under Turkish attack. Discreet messages, mild in language beseech Erdogan to refrain from full-out attack. In fact, Fisk did get one thing right; Turkey with its massive military could, if Erdogan willed it so, make quick work of Afrin if it dispatched sufficient numbers and weaponry to confront the YPG with.

Turkey's arrogance in warning the U.S. that it expects the White House to withdraw from ongoing training of the Kurds, to stop arming them and to recall all the weapons it has thus far supplied the YPG with, along with Turkey's intention to extend its invasion to areas like Manbij where American troops are established, calls for a more vigorous response from the Trump administration than merely responding that it has taken note of Turkish demands.

Kurdish YPG fighter, 19 January 2018. Source: Kurdish Struggle, CC

Iran's Real and Most Pressing Existential Problem

People protest near the University of Tehran on Dec 30 in this picture obtained from social media. Iran is the latest example of a country where a water crisis, long in the making, has fed popular discontent. Photo: Twitter/@kasra_nouri/via Reuters

"[Water stress is slated to become] a growing factor in the world's hot spots and conflict areas."
"With escalating global population  and the impact of a changing climate, we see the challenges of water stress rising with time."
CNA report, Arlington, Virginia

"Water is not going to bring down the government [of Iran]. But it's a component -- in some towns, a significant component -- of grievances and frustrations."
"[Twelve of the country's 31 provinces] will entirely exhaust their aquifers within the next fifty years."
David Michel, analyst, Stimson Center, Washington

"Twenty-five percent of the total water that is withdrawn from aquifers, rivers and lakes [in Iran] exceeds the amount that can be replenished [by nature]."
World Bank report

Egyptians enjoy a boat ride along the Nile River, in Cairo, Egypt. (Photo credit: AP/Hassan Ammar)

Two scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology produced a study in 2015 predicting that at current rates of global warming, "many major cities in the region [of the Middle East] could exceed a tipping point for human survival". Scientists have long warned that diminishing supplies of fresh water across the globe will result in increased levels of conflict representing the desperation that deprived countries finding themselves without adequate water supplies bring to contest neighbours' supplies.

Most recently, a transborder water dispute has engaged both Egypt and Ethiopia as the Blue Nile is being harnessed by Ethiopia building a dam to ensure water retention, while Egypt is furious, claiming that Egypt's agriculture will be destroyed by the diversion prospects of the largest dam in Africa. Construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam has seen Egypt threatening military strikes should its neighbour continue to ignore its protests.

And while Ethiopian officials stated that "the diversion of the Blue Nile will not affect Egypt's share of the water", Egyptian officials released a statement saying that "Egypt supports any development project for the Nile Basin countries, as long as it does not damage the downstream countries Egypt and Sudan." Egypt characterized Ethiopia's determination to divert the Nile as a plot hatched between it and Israel to deprive Egypt of water, bringing the spectre of food insufficiency to the country.

At the height of the controversy in 2013, Abdel Bari Atwan in the London-based Al Quds Al Arabi charged that "The construction of this dam… is the result of instigation by Israel. Avigdor Liberman, the Israeli foreign minister who threatened to bomb the Aswan dam and flood Egypt, led a delegation of 100 businessmen and engineers with expertise in the construction of dams to five (Nile Basin) African countries. This was poisonous for previous water arrangements. Now Israeli companies have signed contracts to take over energy distribution from the new dam. Israel is exploiting the collapse of Egypt and the hunger of its people."

The Islamic Republic of Iran is focusing on consolidating its influence and power in the Middle East in a Shiite crescent elbowing the Sunni majority Arab Middle East and Saudi Arabia aside to once again occupy the position Persia held in antiquity as the centre of Middle East power. With the advent of climate change and the very real and obvious changes that have been taking place worldwide, Iran stands out as one of those nations that will be the most adversely affected with a parched landscape due to water scarcity.

Even one of its own, a former Iranian agriculture minister, Issa Kalantari, stated at one time that the prospect of water scarcity would result in Iran becoming so harsh that 50 million Iranians would be persuaded by desperation in its lack, to voluntarily exile themselves from their country of birth. Water scarcity is increasingly making it more difficult for the theocratic government to deliver vital services to its population. A situation which, in part, spurred the recent widespread protests so concerning in their adamant rejection of the regime.

In the wake of the 1979 revolution, Iran purposed to become self-sufficient in food. Iranian water expert Kaveh Madani explained that the government then encouraged farmers to plant crops such as water-thirsty wheat, offering farmers cheap electricity and favourable wheat profits as an incentive to plant more water-intensive-need-grains and to achieve that, to extract increasing amounts of groundwater, a process leading inevitably to groundwater depletion

In rural areas, rivers were dammed across the country to divert water to areas considered key to curry favour with farmers. That had the result of shrinking many of Iran's lakes, including Lake Urmia, the region's largest, diminished in size now by close to 90 percent since the early 1970s, with no prospect of the lake recovering. Climate change has resulted in a future of a 25 percent decline in surface water runoff from rainfall and melting snow by 2030,

Summers are projected to become hotter by two to three degrees Celsius, should current warming rates prevail, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, while rain is expected to decline by ten percent. There is always Syria's example, should any have doubts about what lies in store. The drought experienced by Syria from 2006 to 2009 was responsible for a mass migration from country to city and collapsed employment for the young.

In 2011 street protests erupted and were crushed by the Shiite government of Bashar al-Assad. A half-million dead Sunni Syrians resulted from that initial attempt by Syrians to broker a more even situation for themselves in the spirit of sectarian equality in their nation of birth. As for Iran, it would do well to remove its ayatollahs and mullahs from power, sweep away the Republican Guard Corps, make peace with Israel, and invite its engineers and water desalination technology to reverse the damage done by the ruinous policies of the Iranian Revolution.

Two Canadian Solitudes

"If you're a First Nations person, you live, you breathe this [racism]. As a First Nations mom, I live in fear. I would love for you to walk with me. I'd take a week off from work and I'd go incognito, maybe with a ponytail where nobody knows that I'm the chief."
"We'd walk around and go different places and you'd see clearly the fear -- not only physical but professional -- knowing that my [children]  are going to be viewed as less than ... as not worthy as their friends who are not First Nations."
Kim Jonathan, first vice-chief, Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations (FSIN)

Colten Boushie, 22, died on Aug. 9, 2016, after a shooting on a farmyard in the RM of Glenside. Facebook

"I see many posts from Aboriginals to fill the courtroom to show support for [Colten] Boushie. However, I haven't seen one request from local farmers, neighbours or family to show support for Mr. Stanley."
"As a farmer's wife, I believe what Gerald Stanley did was to protect his family, however, I think the courts will be pressured by Aboriginal presence to make an example of him. I think it should be posted somewhere, anywhere, that farmers support Gerald Stanley and the ability to defend our property from armed, drunk and violent trespassers, regardless of race."
Facebook member of Farmers with Firearms

Gerald Stanley Liam Richards / Saskatoon StarPhoenix

"Here's a situation where you've got some folks that are different from each other; there's a lot of unknown between each other and a lot of mistrust going both ways."
"It's a hot-point button that could drive more of a wedge between our communities."
"But if there's a not guilty [verdict], I'm scared how bad it could get."
John Lagimodiere, editor, publisher, Eagle Feather News

"This must stop."
"These comments are not only unacceptable, intolerant and a betrayal of the very values of and character of Saskatchewan, they're dangerous."
Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall

"This case should make all Canadians feel uncomfortable. It should knock them out of their comfort zone."
"The night Colten died, the RCMP searched his mother's trailer while at the same time telling her that her son had been killed."
"I'm white. There is a zero-percent chance that, had I been shot, the police would have searched my parents' house while notifying them I was dead."
Chris Murphy, Boushie family lawyer

The initial RCMP press release intimated that robbery might have been involved when on August 9, 2016, a resident of the Red Pheasant First Nations, 22-year-old Colten Boushie, out for a day of swimming and drinking, with four friends, drove onto the property of farmer Gerald Stanley close to the town of Biggar. The farmer and the group of friends in the vehicle faced off confrontationally and while the others fled at the sight of the farmer's rifle, Boushie, still sitting in the vehicle, was fatally shot.

Ultimately, charges of theft were never laid against Boushie's friends who escaped injury. And why the friends made their way to the private property of the farmer, and the confrontation ensued remains uncertain, though it was suggested they had a flat tire and were looking for help. Which is passing strange in that most men know how to change tires, a common enough though nuisance occurrence on the highway. Mr. Stanley exited his farmhouse, rifle in hand, to confront what was purportedly a vehicle full of inebriated young men.

Farmers in the area, supporting Mr. Stanley's reaction claim that it is every farm owner's right to protect property from trespassers. If people are merely trespassing, it's odd that farm owners feel entitled to confront them, lethal weapon in hand, however. Many of those farmers, eager to make a point, posted photographs of the cabs of their trucks and tractors, rifles installed where they could be readily accessed. No racism was involved here, they claim, but rather a reaction to a crime problem.

"I think that Canadians should be thinking about how is it that Canada is at this place right now in terms of race relations. Where does it come from? How did it manifest to be like this? And how do we move forward", provocatively wrote Robert Innes, an Indigenous studies professor at the University of Saskatchewan. All worthwhile reminders that both 'sides' in this conflicting situation have much to consider, and much to lose. Those 'sides' are wider than Saskatchewan only; the personal search of conscience and introspective search for answers must be undertaken nation-wide. On both sides.

According to the RCMP the complaints filed by the Boushie family against the federal police force are without substance; that they had been treated with respect, rather than as the family claimed, made to feel like criminals. The officers involved were cleared of wrongdoing by an internal investigation into the situation. But as a sociology professor at the University of Saskatchewan pointed out, whatever motivated the shooting, there is a wider discussion relating to the kind of racism foisted on Indigenous people.

The controversy following Mr. Boushie's death, stated Julie Kaye, "reflected so many people's lived experiences", citing proven allegations that police on occasion engage in "starlight tours", where Aboriginal people found intoxicated on the streets are often driven to remote, isolated locations and simply dropped off, to somehow make their way back to town, in sometimes inclement weather conditions. "It's the work right now of the country to take these instances and really understand the broader context", Professor Kaye stated.

Alvin Baptiste stands by the grave of his nephew, Colten Boushie. (Richard Agecoutay)

Jury selection for the trial of Gerald Stanley in the death of Colten Boushie has been taking place this week in Battleford, Saskatchewan. Pitting the Aboriginal community against the white, rural farming community. The trial of the fatal shooting of an unarmed young Indigenous man where his shooter is charged with second-degree murder has divided the community anew. Eagle Father News suggested its readers guess the potential trial outcome.

Thirty-one percent felt that the farmer would be found guilty of a lesser charge Another 26 percent felt he would be found not guilty of any charges. The hope among those who prefer to avoid any further, future confrontations capable of provoking violence, is that leaders of both communities would find a way to improve relations. Should Mr. Stanley be released of responsibility for the death of young Mr. Boushie, however, all bets are off.

That jury selection resulted in not one Indigenous person out of the available hundreds of potential jurors being chosen, leaving the jury comprised of only non-Aboriginal white people, This turn of events  hasn't given the Indigenous community comfort in the sense that justice will be done, even if the trial itself will answer enough questions to ensure that justice has been done, if there is no conviction.

Jade Tootoosis, the cousin of Colten Boushie, says she was disappointed to see Gerald Stanley's defence attorney challenge "every single visible Indigenous" person as a candidate for the jury in Stanley's trial. (Guy Quenneville/CBC)

Do Unto Others....

"It was really a night of horror. We went to all the hospitals. We thought maybe he was under the wrong name, because he didn't bring his ID for the quick trip to the mosque."
"In the end, it was only at 4 o'clock the next afternoon that we got the confirmation that he had died. And it was as if our lives turned upside down."
"My father was totally passionate about his scientific work. But behind the man of science was a man with a really great sense of humour."
"Hate blinds us, so we don't see clearly anymore and we think that the other person is the enemy. When really, he or she is just a person like  you. They're a human being with faults and qualities, goals and achievements, with their own story."
"So the lesson is that, for example, we wrongly think that all Muslims are Islamists, but here we have a clear example of people who lost their lives but they weren't Islamic extremists. They were just ordinary citizens."
"I dare to hope that it was just an isolated act. I dare to hope that having seen this horror, which was so widely publicized, it will affect people's perceptions."
Megda Belkacemi, 28, Quebec  City lawyer

The police officers emerge suddenly from the mosque carrying a body toward the paramedics. There is a bullet wound in his head. No pulse. (Mathieu Belanger/Reuters)

One's heart goes out to this woman who lost her father last year in a random, single-attacker act of brutal, incoherent violence when a 18-year-old university student , Alexandre Bissonnette, launched his personal hatred against Muslim Quebecers at prayer at the Quebec City Islamic Cultural Centre mosque, killing six people and injuring another 19 worshippers, the attack that killed Ms. Belkacemi's father, university professor Khaled Belkacemi of Universite Laval, the same university that the attacker attended.

The 10,000-member Muslim community of the city was understandably traumatized.The entire community of the city, non-Muslims and Muslims alike, reacted in disbelieving shock. And sympathy was extended to the Muslim community from all quarters, from municipal and provincial and federal authorities, to other faith congregations, to ordinary people on the street, their neighbours in mourning. Empathy at such times has healing powers. Everyone said they would dedicate themselves to combating hate.

But then polls indicating adverse views of Muslims in Quebec "bumped back up when we re-engaged discussions about the niqab" (full face veil), according to president of the Association for Canadian Studies, Jack Jedwab. "No matter how you slice it, these debates that we have around values are a catalyst for building on people's negative sentiments", he elaborated. In October, Quebec's Bill 62, barring people who conceal their faces from giving or receiving government services, and debates over the rights of religious minorities commenced anew.

"This obsession with focusing on the religious clothing has really harmed our community because it really tends to exacerbate the differences, versus highlighting all the similarities and all the joint sentiments of community-building and wanting to participate equally in our societies", stated Amira Elghawaby who volunteers with DawaNet, a Muslim group based in Mississauga, Ontario which has provided Quebec City Muslims affected by the mosque attack, with support. She is also the the former director of communications at the National Council of Canadian Muslims.

A Hamas flag carried by an anti-Israel demonstrator on Parliament Hill, July 22, 2014 (Photo: Martin Sampson)

The National Council of Canadian Muslims was formerly known as CAIRCan, an affiliate of CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) in the United States, an influential lobbying group with connections to the Muslim Brotherhood whom they support, and with Hamas for whom fundraising was carried out. As a U.S. court had it: "The Government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR, ISNA and NAIT with HLF, the Islamic Association for Palestine ("IAP"), and with Hamas." Under Canadian and American law, Hamas is a designated terrorist organization.

The National Council of Canadian Muslims, along with its American parent, promote the fiction of "Islamophobia" to counter any questions relating to their mission in the West, their values and their adherence to Sharia law. Any individual or group questioning Islam and its jihadist tradition, particularly in view of the decades of terrorist attacks that have accompanied the migration of Muslims to the West and the dysfunctional breakdown in Muslim-majority countries with the incursion of fundamentalist Islam, is shamed, blamed and named as "Islamophobic". 

"I thought that after January 29, 2017 [date of the attack on the Quebec City mosque], the racist atmosphere would decrease. But on the contrary, it has exploded."
"Movements that used to be hidden, like La Meute, now march openly in the streets and appear in the media."
"The massacre has had a paradoxical effect. I expected things to calm down, especially after the extraordinary support we [the Muslim community] received from the public in the days that followed, which still continues. But instead, we're seeing these racist groups come out into the open."
Rachid Raffa, 68, former president of the Quebec City mosque

They see two more lifeless bodies. The prayer room is thick with white smoke and the acrid smell of gunpowder. (Francis Vachon/Canadian Press)

On the other hand, when groups of Muslims attend rallies or protest marches, Hamas flags can be seen along with placards urging boycott-divestment of Israel. At such protests posters slandering Israel and Jews as oppressors and killers of Palestinian children are commonly seen. Muslims and those identifying as supporters of the Palestinians at Canadian universities mount verbal and physical attacks against their Jewish student counterparts. They are not labelled Judeophobes, though their anti-Semitism is recognized and deplored -- by Jews.

The Muslims thus engaged are sending their own messages of racism and hatred, the very actions they rail against that they insist they are victims of. They point out rising incidents of "Islamophobia", and yet Statistics Canada has registered a decrease of anti-Muslim incidents, while those targeting Jews has seen a marked increase. Anti-Semitic incidents in Canada, as elsewhere in the West where Muslims have migrated increasingly toward, are on a definite rising curve, reflecting the impact that Islam has on its relations with non-Muslims and Jews.

"It was a terrible shock and we kept wondering 'Why us? Why us?'. We're just citizens who live quietly. We don't do harmful acts to society. On the contrary, we're builders, we're hard-wrking people. Why did it happen to us?' When you connect a Muslim with international situations, you start to see that person as a monster. We need to make ourselves better known, to show what we bring to society, in terms of work, in terms of culture, in terms of recreation, and as dynamic participants."

"We're working very hard to answer that quest, 'Why us? Why did our bodies come under a hail of bullets? When we meet people, we feel they sympathize with us over January 29. People come and shake our hands in the street or at the shopping centre. It's not all of society that is racist and Islamophobic, no, no, it's just a very small portion. But that small portion makes a lot more noise than the silent majority that is kind, that is good, that consists of normal citizens."
Boufeldja Benabdallah, co-founder of the Quebec City mosque

Well, facts speak otherwise, in fact. Muslim youths are disproportionately taking up space in Canadian prisons for common crimes of violence, drug and weapons smuggling, gang activities and murder. And in the prisons their brand of Islam leaning toward murder and mayhem finds a ready recruiting audience. Mr. Benabdallah expresses mystification over reactions to Muslims in society and that in and of itself is mystifying, given their disruptive actions in petty and not-so-petty criminal activity, in agitating for terrorist groups, in discriminating against other members of society and bringing their hostile attitudes toward Jews from their countries of origin to the countries they migrate to.

There appears to be little introspection amongst Canadian Muslims in the aggregate, but for a small core of Muslims who do what they can to rescue Islam from the dungeon of despair in the actions of the fundamentalists who are easy recruits to jihad and terrorism. Speaking of those who question Islam, who take umbrage at the very notion that Canada needs a national anti "Islamophobia" day, and to criminalize "Islamophobia" speaks to the agenda of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation's unstinting efforts to persuade the United Nations to make it a crime to practise "Islamophobia".

When Muslims speak of racism and anti-Muslim sentiments and label those who relate Islam with the endless tide of jihadist attacks and terrorist atrocities taking place around the world, "Islamophobia" they make use of a tool of those like the Muslim Brotherhood -- another outlawed organization recognized for their terrorist roots and incitements -- to 'guilt' touchy-feely Westerners who cringe at being identified as anti-Muslim or racist, and in the process force upon them the self-defence of attempting to mollify and concede and intervene and support.

Dis-Entitling Palestinian "Refugees"

"That money is on the table, and that money is not going to them unless they sit down and negotiate peace. Because I can tell you that Israel does want to make peace. And they're going to have to want to make peace too, or we're going to have nothing to do with it any longer."
"This was never brought up by other negotiators, but it's brought up by me. So I will say that the hardest subject they had to talk about was Jerusalem. We took Jerusalem off the table, so we don't have to talk about it anymore."
U.S. President Donald J. Trump

"UNRWA is suffering from a deficit of $146 million, which prompted it to borrow from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs to pay its employees’ salaries in December."
"This financial crisis will effect all sectors and force UNRWA to undertake austerity measures in terms of health care, education and relief, affecting 450 teachers in Gaza whose contracts expire on May 30 and might not be renewed."
Amal al-Batsh, director, Union of Arab Employees, UNRWA, Gaza

"We received a list of 250 Palestinian businessmen who could grant us financial aid. We will also turn to new sponsors such as Turkey, Russia, China, Indonesia, Malaysia and South Korea to expand UNRWA's donor circle and approach Arab countries to commit to paying their share of UNRWA's budget."

"[The program] benefits about 1 million Palestinians in Gaza, distributing food parcels to them every three months. UNRWA has classified 460,000 Palestinian refugees in Gaza as living below the poverty line.

Adnan Abu Hasna, UNRWA spokesman in Gaza

REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa  Palestinians take part in a protest against aid cuts outside the United Nations Relief and Works Agency office in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Jan. 21, 2018.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the United Nations' unique-to-Palestinian-refugees program that has maintained Palestinian "refugees" as international welfare cases for 70 years, absorbing any and all offspring of the original estimated 700,000 Palestinian Arabs into the "refugee" net depends on generous funding from international sources to keep its one-of-kind program maintaining Palestinian Arabs as refugees alive. Palestinians are so accustomed to being welfare cases resulting from their "victim" status when  Palestinian Jews finally were able to reinstate their homeland on traditional territory, they feel entitled to international welfare.

In maintaining the fiction of victimization and refugee-status of a large number of people for whom that status is an integral and valuable part of their identity, politics, psychic dramatization of poor, helpless people vulnerable to the vicissitudes of Israeli oppression, the Palestinians have never matured toward self-responsibility. The infrastructure for a responsible government, the opportunities for establishing a sovereign state, the normalization of which would result in full employment through a thriving commercial establishment and trade resources has been spurned in favour of the martyrdom beloved of the victim fallacy.

UNRWA not only provides the financial wherewithal giving the Palestinian "refugees" their opportunity for fully-supported non-state structures for social welfare, but it is designed to keep these "refugees" wholly dependent on international largesse. Since there is no need to actually build a country and its governing bodies and social-political arms, the opportunity for graft and corruption continues unimpeded. Instead of structuring a social contract amenable to living in peace with a neighbour, the governing body of the Palestinian Authority incites its constituents to reject 'normalization' with Israel, to clasp close to their hearts the concept of destroying Israel through 'resistance' leading to one state from the 'river to the sea'.

UNRWA is the largest employer of Palestinians, paid by international funds to administer themselves. Dependent on Israel for their energy needs, for water distribution, for security protection because one segment of the Palestinian governance, Hamas, threatens the majority-governing status of its political rival, Fatah. Both subscribe to the original founding purpose of the Palestinian Liberation Organization; to use all means, violence and slanderous propaganda, to destroy the presence of the Jewish state of Israel. In its never-ending support of Palestinians as refugees, UNRWA is complicit in these plans.

Palestinians, facing the imminent loss of a significant portion of their funding and anticipating austerity, general budget cuts and other inconveniences to daily living in the West Bank and Gaza mount protests against the despised Israel and the new administration in the White House which has suffered a huge loss in Palestinian esteem resulting from the Trump administration's stated recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, explaining that in so doing it is in fact, recognizing reality and setting aside the fiction of the Arab world that Israel has no heritage status in the city.

Wealthy Arab nations in the Middle East whose leaders first convinced Palestinians to leave the area they could later return to once the newly established State of Israel was destroyed by the combined might of their militaries, at the very time that they expelled their own Jewish populations, depriving them of their property in countries where they had lived for a thousand years and more, deliberately avoided giving legitimacy and citizenship to the Palestinians living in "refugee" camps in their regions. Israel, in defending itself against Arab aggression, routed the armies sent to destroy it and gained its traditional territory Arabs demand for themselves.

And though the surrounding Arab states encouraged the Palestinians to continue imagining that Israel would be destroyed and the displaced Arabs could then return to the area on which Israel now sits, it seems never to have occurred to them that the responsibility to part with some of their wealth to aid the stateless Palestinians originally hailing from Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon which then refused to give them status, rather than expect the non-Arab, non-Muslim West to empty state coffers in support of the "refugees". 

The Jewish-state-destroying demands of the Palestinians who once one demand was met, dug deep and lobbed another in the ongoing consultations and discussions over peace negotiations with Israel never saw an offer from Israel, willing to make sacrifices, that they were willing to accept. While at the same time refusing to sacrifice any of their demands for 'right of return' and taking the Old City of Jerusalem containing the most sacred-to-Judaism elements for their own. The Palestinians co-opted all the Judaic heritage Biblical sites as their own, persuading UNESCO to recognize them as Palestinian, not Judaic, linked to Israel.

All of which activities, plots and pernicious devices are hardly reflective of a society prepared to live in peaceful harmony with its neighbour, willing to set aside its victimhood grievances and recognize that its own intransigence of monumental proportions have led to the impasse it finds itself in now. The Arab Palestinians living within Israeli borders with full citizenship rights, inclusive of voting their representatives into the Knesset, prefer to live in Israel for the material benefits accorded them rather than in territories administered by the Palestinians, but loyalty to the Jewish State is largely absent.

Fundamentally, Deadly Hostile

"We are shocked and appalled at the violence, carried out against our staff in Afghanistan who are dedicated humanitarians, committed to improving the lives and well-being of millions of children across the country."
"[Save the Children has been active since 1976 in Afghanistan] providing life-saving health, education, nutrition and child protection programs that have helped millions of children."
Carolyn Miles, president, Save the Children

An Afghan army soldier takes a position Wednesday near the Save the Children office in Jalalabad.CNN

Well, guess what! The Taliban don't much care. They do care that there are foreign elements in Afghanistan and they dedicate themselves to attacks against foreigners be they politicians or charitable humanitarian volunteers. They have never personally asked foreigners to enter their country and they take huge umbrage at their entry for whatever reasons for any purpose whatever. All the more so when arrogant non-Muslims enter the country in a charitable act of transforming it into what the Taliban will not permit.

And if the Taliban are not implicated in specific attacks, there are others who can and will be, from al-Qaeda operatives to Islamic State militias proud to 'protect' Afghanistan from the corrupting influence of foreign missions. This time it was the NGO Save the Children. A week ago it was foreign guests at an upscale hotel. That attack at the Kabul Intercontinental was spread out over a thirteen-hour period before Afghan security forces managed to dispatch the terrorists and rescue most of the hotel guests, absent the 22 who died.

This time the Jalalabad Save the Children attack left four dead, among them two NGO staffers, a security guard and a member of the Afghan military.These attacks are always well coordinated and this one was no exception, with a suicide bomber detonating his explosives vest at the NGO offices, and the siege was over in less than a day, counting the original eight hours of fighting followed by a two-hour re-ignition, leaving 26 wounded along with the four dead and four attackers killed by the military.

Islamic State, al-Qaeda, the Taliban; none of them mind the opportunities the presence of the hated interloper gives them to become martyrs; it is what Islam demands of its faithful and the reward in Paradise is passionately sought-after.

Afghan security forces inspect the site of the attack on Save the Children’s office in Jalalabad on Wednesday. Photograph: Noorullah Shirzada/AFP/Getty Images

"Humanitarian organizations provide life-saving assistance to the most vulnerable men, women and children in Afghanistan. Aid workers and their premises and assets, should never be a target", moaned UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric, as though unaware that his sentiments are pro forma redundant. "Increased violence has made operating in Afghanistan difficult for many organizations", added Monica Zanarelli, head of delegation in Afghanistan for the International Committee of the Rd Cross.

In fact, deadly attacks take place regularly all over Afghanistan. Mostly targeting the national police and the Afghan military. The Islamist jihadi groups do take especial care to make it known to any foreign elements in Afghanistan that they are not held in appreciative fond esteem but venomous contempt for their presence. A presence now in abeyance for fear of further violent attacks and loss of life among the humanitarian actors. A result which must be accorded a win for the jihadis proud of their mission and prepared to continue until the last man.

Unfortunately, there will never be a 'last man'. Every time one jihadi is put to rest, twice the number invariably rise to take  his place. Their Islamist ardour is unquenchable, their dedication to eventual conquest unshakable but by one little victory after another, laying their winning sacrifices at the feet of a devouring god who will be appeased only with the wholesale conversion and surrender to Islam of the world's population by a conquering army of Islamist warriors.

Afghan army soldiers take positions near the global charity's office Wednesday.   CNN

Optics Vs Reality: Migrating Islamist Fundamentalism

"Saudi Arabia's export of the rigid, bigoted, patriarchal, fundamentalist strain of Islam known as Wahhabism has fuelled global extremism and contributed to terrorism."
"[It is deplorable that] radical schools and mosques around the world [exist] that have set too many young people on a path towards extremism."
New York Times 2016 expose

"In each place I visited, the Wahhabi influence was an insidious presence, changing the local sense of identity; displacing historic, culturally vibrant forms of Islamic practice; and pulling along individuals who were either paid to follow their rules or custodians of the Wahhabi world view."
"Funding all this was Saudi money, which paid for things like the textbooks, mosques, TV stations and the training of Imams."
Farah Pandith, U.S. special representative to Muslim communities, U.S. Department of State

WikiLeaks documents involving cables between diplomats at the Saudi embassy in Ottawa and government officials in Riyadh, contain conversations from 2012 and 2013 about a $211,000 donation to a school in Ottawa and $134,000 to a school in Mississauga.  Dave Chan/The Globe and Mail

"There were also small signals that all was not well with the Muslim communities in Canada, especially those of Pakistani origin. For example, the mother of one of my children’s classmates of Pakistani origin, asked me why my kids sang the Canadian national anthem when it is haram, forbidden. Upon asking where she got that information, she confessed that the imam of the local mosque had told the congregation that it was against the faith to sing the national anthem, or, indeed, to show loyalty to Canada."
Raheel Raza, Pakistani Canadian, Writer, Activist

Special representative Farah Pandith toured 80 countries between 2009 to 2014 in pursuing her official mandate. Her conclusion after all that she had seen and experienced was that the Saudi influence succeeded in destroying 'tolerant' Islamic traditions. Of course, Saudi Arabia is not alone in this deliberate, institutional religiously ideological pursuit of normalizing extreme-to-radical Islam in countries around the world, particularly those in the West. The Muslim Brotherhood has succeeded to an alarming degree in infiltrating all levels of national government in the West in pursuit of establishing their own, and very similar brand of Islamism.

Moreover, although fundamentalist jihadi groups like Hamas and Hezbollah are identified as terrorist groups and listed as such on various government terror lists, they too are known to have a substantial presence abroad for the purpose of propaganda, enlistment and wealth-gathering, both through 'charitable' donations and through the substantial proceeds of criminal activities such as illicit drug dealing and weapons smuggling.

The schools (madrassas), community centers, mosques and other gathering points for Muslims abroad that have been built with foreign funding by countries whose agendas are to create a foundational space in the West for the proliferation of fundamentalist Islamic values have a defined purpose, to instill in followers the sense of Islamic entitlement to help alter the fundamental values of the nations they have migrated to, and challenge the indigenous laws while stifling the social culture with their own.

In Canada, the national security policy has seen fit to establish the Canada Centre for Community Engagement and Prevention of Violence; at the present time, a hollow sham under the Liberal government. An opposition Member of Parliament and former federal Minister in the previous Conservative-led government has introduced Bill C-371, the Prevention of Radicalization through Foreign Funding Act, now moving through Parliament and slated for a second reading vote a month hence, representing long-overdue legislation in the making.

The Bill would allow Canada the establishment of a list of foreign states meeting specific criteria; those who promote obvious forms of religious intolerance, and/or those who engage in activities supporting radicalization. All Canadian religious, cultural and educational institutions, should that Bill result in legislation making it legal, would be prohibited from accepting funding from listed foreign governments. Receiving funding from individuals and entities linked to those states would also fall under its restrictive provisions.

For fairly obvious reasons an exception clause would list a number of other countries reflecting Canada's own liberal democratic values; countries that include the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and Israel would have listing immunity, among others. The Bill itself is an acknowledgement of the faulty permission of Canadian educational, religious and cultural institutions being influenced by foreign states that promote extremist ideologies. Canada's open, pluralist society is being subverted by these financial infusions in support of Islamist exceptionalism.

The Iranian Revolutionary Republic Islamist regime was invited by the previous Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper to exit Canada, closing its embassy while withdrawing the Canadian mission and its diplomats from Tehran. The current prime minister, Justin Trudeau, has stated aspirations of reversing that situation, re-establishing the Canadian mission in Tehran and inviting Iran's Ayatollahs to re-open their embassy in Ottawa.

The Khomeinist ideology which today rules Iran as a theocratic totalitarian government was fully involved in building networks sympathetic to its creed through the funding of religious institutions, schools and cultural centres within Canada. Two such Iranian cultural centres, one in Ottawa, the other in Toronto were seized in 2014 and their assets distributed to victims of terrorist attacks which Iran's proxy militia, the terrorist Hezbollah group had mounted on Iran's instructions, as a sponsor of Islamist terrorism.

While solving the problem of radicalization will remain a dilemma that alert governments must continue to confront, Bill C-371 can become a useful tool in blocking those maleficent influences within Canada. The Bill is there, it remains for the ruling Liberal government to affirm its intention to protect Canadians from ongoing terrorism in the name of Islam, by voting in favour of C-371 at its second reading.

It may be too late for France, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and others to mount a defense against full Muslim conquest of their traditions, values and laws, but Canada, it is to be  hoped, still has time in its favour, but certainly not forever....

A case in point is Turkey's belligerent interest in the presence of German-Turks resident in Germany.  Both Turkey and Saudi Arabia have spent billions constructing countless mosques servicing Muslims throughout Germany, and the sermons that come out of those mosques are definitely not geared to persuading German-Turks that they should render unto Caesar; rather than persuading Muslims to defer to German values, culture and laws.

Religious leaders in those mosques preach Islamist values and Sharia law, contrary to the citizenship of German Turks, who then turn around and complain they don't feel  'accepted' as equals in Germany, they feel alienated from its general society. Irascible, bellicose Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan feels entitled from time to time to scaldingly berate German authorities for mistreating Turkish Germans, brooking no interference in his own propensity to interfere in German politics.

Here's hoping Canada can do better.

Which Is It, Apartheid Regime or Robust Democracy?

"The United States has chosen fact over fiction -- and fact is the only true foundation for a just and lasting peace."
"Jerusalem is Israel's capital and as such President Trump has directed the State Department to immediately begin preparations to move the United States embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem."
"Our message to President [Mahmoud] Abbas and the Palestinian Authority is the door's open. The door's open. President Trump is absolutely committed to doing everything the United Stater can to achieve a peace agreement that brings an end to decades of conflict." 
"I am here to convey one simple message: America stands with Israel. We stand with Israel because your cause is our cause, your values are our values and your fight is our fight."
"We stand with Israel because we believe in right over wrong, good over evil and liberty over tyranny."
U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence, Jerusalem, Israel

Israeli Arab parliamentarians and other members of the Knesset scuffle with security after they held protest signs during Monday's speech by Vice President Pence. Ariel Schalit/AFP/Getty Images

This visit to Israel after other stops on a brief Mid-East tour by the American Vice-President has been boycotted with spite in abundance by the Palestinian Authority, with Turkey's approval, while it is busy bombing the Kurdish enclave of Afrin in Syria. The Palestinian chief negotiator has denounced the Trump administration's announcement of last month that in full recognition of reality, it is prepared to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This announcement, barked Saeb Erekat "has proven that the U.S. administration is part of the problem rather than the solution".

In view of the outrageous turn of events, the Palestinian Authority should return every penny of the billions it has received over generations of Palestinian victimhood as self-regarded refugees to the source that has finally awakened to the reality that PLO indoctrination has served its purpose well (Palestine 'Liberation' Organization, with a vehement emphasis on 'liberation') to persuade Palestinians that they can not, must not and will not accept the presence of a Jewish state, much less one on 'Palestinian land' which Jews claim is their heritage landscape.

Historical clues such as "Palestinians" traditionally referring to Jews, not Arabs represent inconvenient little factoids to be ignored. Archaeological proofs, scriptural and Biblical references of the existence of a Judaic presence vastly preceding that of opportunistic Arabs migrating in the early 1900s to the area of the Middle East which has never been absent a Jewish presence are simply contrived incidences of Jewish conspiracies meant to cheat Arab Palestinians from their birthright which current legends declare theirs and theirs alone.

All the sentiments expressed by Vice-President Pence represent anathema to the Palestinian Authority. Fatah (Palestinian Authority in the West Bank) and Hamas have one over-riding vision and that is (expressed in Arabic by the PA and both Arabic and English by Hamas) the destruction of the State of Israel with whom relations can never be 'normalized' as to do so runs directly counter to each group's foundational principles of 'resistance'. To them, Israel is a criminal upstart, an occupier of Muslim land.

Israel, once and for all, defended itself from the last of the combined armies of its neighbours in 1967 to take possession of the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza from those whose intention it was to rout the Jewish state from its traditional, lawful existence on its heritage lands. The countless times Arab nations dispatched their armies to destroy Israel all failed. Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt on the signing of a peace agreement, and turned over the Gaza Strip to Fatah as an experiment in unilateral withdrawal only to have Hamas wrest it from the PA and turn it into a monomaniacal death squad enclave.

US Vice President Mike Pence, center left, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, center right, at a welcome ceremony in Jerusalem on Monday.   CNN

The U.S. is accustomed to being the focal point of its many enemies; this, at the very least they have in common with Israel, in addition, both democracies, both committed to justice and the rule of law and equality among peoples. While several million non-Jews have citizenship in Israel, the majority of them Arabs, few Jews remain in their ancestral homes in Arab states from which they were expelled, and Mahmoud Abbas who accuses Israel of being an 'apartheid' state has declared that no Jew would ever be permitted to live among Palestinians in a Palestinian state.

As Vice-President Pence addressed the Knesset, a group of elected Arab MKs raised banners reading "Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine", heckling the Vice-President as he began to speak, before them, necessitating that they be escorted out of the parliamentary chamber. The major Arab political party in the Israeli parliament's leader, Ayman Odeh, vowed his people would not become a "silent backdrop" to a "dangerous racist". This typical Muslim-Arab uncivil response to the presence of an honoured guest in the country.

Who responded generously and not without irony that he felt humbled to speak before such a "vibrant democracy". This, in a country surrounded by ill-wishers dedicated to the downfall of a Jewish state whose presence affronts Islam, but which offers equality of opportunity, citizenship and freedoms political and civil to the very demographic that supports the aims of Hamas and Fatah to destroy Israel. Irony upon irony, these lawmakers and those with Israeli citizenship whom they represent prefer life under Israeli rule as opposed to Palestinian rule, and one wonders why that is?

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Taliban/Haqqani Network

"They broke down my door and burst in. I had managed to slip under the bed. There were three of them in the room, one went onto the balcony, the other shot at the other bed and lifted it up."
"So I went back into the room and used a small pair of scissors to cut an opening for myself inside the mattress and remained there."
"I don't know why but I was very calm. It was as if something told me that I would live. I heard English being spoken and came out of my mattress."

"They would open every door, I heard voices, a couple of shots, and then laughter. They were undisturbed, [in the absence of security forces] nobody tried to stop them, and I think that was a big mistake."

Vassilis Vassilio, guest, Intercontinental Hotel, Kabul, Afghanistan 

"[When the elevator doors opened] I saw two armed suicide bombers. People were escaping and the attackers were firing at them."
Mumtaz Ahmad, telecommunications employee

"They [attackers] were wearing very stylish clothes. They came to me and asked for food. I served them the food and they [attackers] thanked me and took their seats. Then they took out their weapons and started shooting the people."
"There were dozens of dead bodies lying around me. I was one of the few people alive there, but one wounded person asked me for help and I took him out."
Haseeb, 20-year-old restaurant server, Intercontinental Hotel

"Our five fighters, Bilal, Ayubi, Khalil, Bashar and Abid entered the building and conducted the operation that resulted in the death of ten foreigners and Afghan government officials."
Zabihullah Mujahid, spokesman, Taliban

  Gunfire could still be heard eight hours after the assault began   Reuters

In the final analysis it appears to have been six, not five Taliban attackers who entered the most secure hotel in Kabul. Reputedly secure. Considering the number of successful Taliban attacks that have taken place in Afghanistan's capital, in areas considered 'safe' and well protected by the military, nowhere is safe in that violent country where Pashtun Taliban have threatened stability for over a decade, (aided and abetted by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency) attempting to return to rule the nation as they did before the U.S.-NATO-led invasion of 2001 in reaction to the 9/11 al-Qaeda atrocity.

All together on this occasion, 22 people lost their lives, fourteen of them foreigners. It took close to a full day for Afghan security forces to finally take back the hotel from its six dedicated jihadists on yet another successful Taliban mission to demonstrate how well entrenched they are throughout corrupt Afghan society and its arms of government, in particular the well-infiltrated national police and the military. It defies belief that although this hotel was previously attacked, and is known to be the choice for government officials and foreigners, the military had no protective presence.

Instead the safety and security of the hotel had recently been re-assigned through a contract with a private security organization. The hotel is said to be well fortified, irrespective of which the Taliban insurgents were able to enter posing as guests; entering the hotel well dressed to meld with the elite that usually gathered there. In casual civilian clothing no less, the question should be how were they able to bring with them grenades and AK-47s? How does one conceal such large and prominent weapons while garbed as civilians?

Desperate guests and staff trying to escape from burning #Kabul Intercontinental Hotel as siege enters 11th hour. TOLONews

And why, under the circumstances, knowing that 170 people were being held hostage, many of them systematically being killed, did it take so long for security police and the military to arrive? Once having arrived, what might account for the thirteen hours it took before the hotel was liberated and the survivors brought to safety? That is, those who didn't take their own security into their own hands by tying bedsheets to balconies and desperately escaping the violent chaos that overtook the premises.

One of the guests described his own salvation efforts in shutting down his mobile cellphones so their ringing would not betray his presence. And taking the initiative to hide himself in a mattress for the thirteen or so hours it took for the gunmen to be killed and the survivors taken to safety. As he described his situation, from 9:00 p.m. to noon the following day, he remained inside that hotel room mattress, hearing some of the gunmen enter his room, his presence concealed. The gunmen had used all their ammunition, it seems, setting fire to floors before the police and military deemed it safe enough for themselves to enter.

Security forces near the Intercontinental Hotel after the attack. CNN

Germany's Noble Sacrifice

"In a European comparison, and above all considering how people are coming to us [Germany], I think this roughly 185,000 [figure] is much too high."
"So far, it is still the case that the people who decide whether someone comes to Germany or Europe are criminal smugglers."
"[Germany is prepared to do its part to help people who genuinely deserve protection] but it can't be the case that we take in as many vulnerable people as the other European countries together." 
"In all cases, where no official and real document is presented, we need to determine the age [of the migrants declaring themselves underage] in another way, if needed through medical examinations."
German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere

The anti-migrant sentiment has increased over recent months Credit: Chad Buchanan/Getty Images

German cities, towns and villages generously, at the bidding of their Chancellor, opened their borders, their wholesale acceptance of the presence of alien migrants with backgrounds, cultures, and religion utterly unlike their own heritage, when Europe was being overrun by a mass influx of refugees, haven-seekers and economic migrants. Setting an example for all of Europe, Germany's selfless intake of people flooding their borders, ensured that Germany and its people would undergo a long and difficult commitment of inclusiveness and helpfulness offered to perfect strangers.

In well-publicized incidents, some of those strangers turned out to be less than perfect in behaviour, unfortunately. Germany's resentment at other European countries, particularly those in the east, not welcoming their apportioned 'share' of the newcomers is understandable in a sense, but Germany, its politicians and its people made a judgement call, deciding to absorb the mass influx, while other countries made their own decisions, to absorb fewer numbers and in some instances none at all, which is their right as sovereign nations.

Europe has had ample experience with absorbing immigrants from Muslim-majority countries fleeing persecution by their governments, absenting themselves from conflicts between nations, and attempting to find haven where economic opportunities might shape their futures, absent in their countries of origin. All too often sheer numbers of migrants have succeeded in diluting the home culture, laws and values of receiving countries. An inability and unwillingness to integrate into the prevailing culture and the adoption of indigenous values all led to demands for institutionalized recognition of Muslim culture, religious values and laws.

In European countries attempting to become functioning pluralities offering equality to all, Muslim communities continue to impose their misogynistic views of women, inclusive of the need to practise female genital mutilation, multiple marriages, the isolation of women, and the imperative of full body and face coverings for girls and women. A culture where 'honour' relates to women's chastity raises its sons to feel that violence against women when men are spurned by them is justified. In Germany the Berlin Christmas market attack, the mass rapes in Cologne and elsewhere have awoken German citizens to a kind of violent dysfunction they are shocked to feel immersed within.

Attacks by Muslim migrants upon one another of a sectarian nature, of men attacking and raping women in refugee shelters, of gays and Christian migrants being in constant danger of attack keeps authorities on the alert. In Kandel, southwestern Germany, a 15-year-old migrant stabbed a 15-year-old German girl in the heart after she spurned him and he stalked, then finally murdered her. He had declared himself to be 14 years of age on arrival in Germany for the government benefits known to ensure that youth have a higher acceptance rate and derive greater benefits in assistance.

Many of the migrant 'youth' from the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa are in fact, not youth at all, but mature, unaccompanied men from among whose demographic violence often derives. "I am scared" professed a 24-year-old German dental assistant in Kandel, mother of a two-year-old girl. "It makes you think how many others will betray our hospitality", she commented after the murder of the 15-year-old German girl. "It feels like we've lost control. The state has lost control", said Jana Weigel nervously.

Others resent the level of 'hospitality' given the newcomers, grumbling that German retirees' needs have been ignored, in contrast. "German retirees w ho have worked hard for 45 years get less than the refugees", claimed Knoll Pede, 64, a town maintenance worker. "I have no problem with foreigners", said 53-year-old Maja Mathias who works in a local bakery. "But there is always the fear: What else is coming?" "Germans feel neglected. We need to wake up", commented the town's mayor, Gunther Tieleborger.

Austria, Sweden and Saarland, a German state, conduct age-proofing examinations on a regular basis. By a migrant claiming to be under 18 they have access to German lessons and job opportunities geared to minors. In Saarland, over a third of the migrants claiming to be under 18 were tested and found not to be. In 2015, Germany took in 890,000 people from the Middle East and elsewhere, another 280,000 in 2016, and 186,644 in 2017. Syrians represented the largest single group last year at almost 50% of the total, followed by Iraqis and Afghans.

While 603,000 applications were processed last year, 38.5 percent were rejected and 18 percent ended in some other way; withdrawals of applications, and presumably a number of the rejected melting into the general population determined to stay. Last year 26,000 were forcibly deported, fewer than the year before but not by much. The city of Cottbus, population 100,000, which has taken in 3,000 asylum seekers. has had to endure unfamiliar levels of violence, leading to a 'temporary' ban on refugees.

The local governments representing the towns of Salzgitter, Delmenhorst and Wilhelmshaven in Lower Saxony claiming they lack the resources and capability to properly integrate additional arrivals have implemented their own prohibition on accepting more refugees. One might call it Germany's new awareness leading to a new awakening.

Cooling towers near the university town of Cottbus Credit: REUTERS/Pawel Kopczynski/File