No, Turkey is not a safe country for refugees

So sending refugees back there to
“discourage others from making the dangerous journey”
is hypocrisy

Many politicians have been claiming that they are refusing refugees asylum and sending them back to Turkey in order to “discourage others from making the dangerous journey” to the EU. There are a few problems with that story.

First Turkey is not a safe country for refugees in any sense. Turkey has been deporting Syrian refugees back to Syria since January , including many children (1) – (2).

On top of that Turkish border guards have actually begun shooting Syrian refugees as they try to cross the border  (3).

And since the middle of last year there has also been civil war in Turkey itself, between the Turkish government and military and Kurdish separatist groups. There was a peace process between the two and negotiations were close to a breakthrough. Then left-wing Kurdish pro-peace HDP party won enough seats in an election to take away President Erdogan’s AKP party’s majority in parliament (4) – (5).

At the same time in Syria,  Syrian Kurdish groups with the support of the PKK (a Turkish Kurdish separatist group) took territory in Syria, on the border with Turkey. This raised Turkish fears of a Kurdish state (6).

Erdogan responded by restarting the war with the PKK and other Kurdish separatists in Turkey. Kurdish civilians in Turkey are among the casualties of Turkish military sniper fire and there is some evidence of war crimes against Kurdish civilians (7) – (8).

This means Turkish Kurds aren’t even safe, let alone Syrian Kurdish refugees.

What’s more there has been no food for many of the Syrian refugees in camps in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon since the middle of last year, when the UN was forced to cut off food aid to many of them due to lack of funds. Wealthier governments simply haven’t donated enough money to buy that food (9).

Nor is Turkey even a proper democracy for people born there – journalists and even opposition MPs who criticise the government are often jailed.  Insulting the President is a criminal offence with a sentence of 4 years or more in jail. So refugees can forget about having any rights at all (10) – (11).

Libya is even more dangerous, with the many sided civil war still going on.

Why aren’t The Muslim / Arab countries Taking Their Share?
They are – EU countries aren’t

The Gulf states including Saudi, despite some mistaken media reports, have been taking in some Syrian refugees, but given Saudi is a hardline Sunni Muslim dictatorship with religious police, no Christian, Shia Muslim, secular, or moderate Sunni Muslim Syrian refugee is likely to want to go there. (see the blog post on this link – scrolling down to bolded sub-heading ‘Are the wealthiest Arab states refusing to take in any Syrian refugees?’)

The reality is that Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon have each taken far more refugees per capita and relative to their size and wealth than any EU country. (also see comparison of the UK and Jordan on the post on this link under bolded  sub-heading ‘Is the UK taking more than its share of refugees'). (12)

The EU and the UK should take more. And as long as both are sending refugees, including children, back to Turkey, pretending it’s a “safe country”, it is impossible to be proud to be either British or European.

True, David Cameron did do a partial u-turn on his government’s refusal to allow any unaccompanied child refugees from Calais to be granted asylum in the UK. But this only allows children who arrived before 20^th March to apply for refugee status – and there is no guarantee of any who reach their 18^th birthday soon being allowed to stay after that (13).

Why are they coming here illegally?
Because They’re Given No Other Option

As for the outrage over migrants and refugees “coming here illegally” what choice are they given? The vast majority of them have none. Other than the pitiful number of 4,000 a year being selected by the UK from refugee camps in Turkey, out of millions of Syrian refugees, to one of the richest and largest countries in the EU, they have to the EU or UK illegally to make an asylum claim (14) – (15).

The obvious alternative would be for governments like the UK’s to tell their embassies in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon (and also countries bordering Libya, like Tunisia) to accept applications for asylum from people in those countries. Those whose claims were judged genuine would be granted refugee status and helped to travel safely to the UK, meaning they wouldn’t have to make dangerous journeys, pay people smugglers who are often violent criminals, or do anything illegal.

 

(1) = BBC News 15 Jan 2016 ‘Turkey 'acting illegally' over Syria refugees deportations’,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-35135810

(2) = Amnesty International 01 Apr 2016 ‘Turkey: Illegal mass returns of Syrian refugees expose fatal flaws in EU-Turkey deal’,
https://www.amnesty.org/en/press-releases/2016/04/turkey-illegal-mass-returns-of-syrian-refugees-expose-fatal-flaws-in-eu-turkey-deal/

(3) = Independent 31 Mar 2016 ‘Turkey 'shooting dead' Syrian refugees as they flee civil war’,
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/turkey-shooting-dead-syrian-refugees-flee-civil-war-a6960971.html

(4) = Newsweek 04 Aug 2015 ‘Turkey's Erdoğan calls on other parties to be 'realistic' after his party loses its majority’, http://europe.newsweek.com/turkey-war-kurds-pkk-331163?rm=eu

(5) = Independent 08 Jun 2015 ‘Turkey's Erdoğan calls on other parties to be 'realistic' after his party loses its majority’, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/turkeys-erdo-an-calls-on-other-parties-to-be-realistic-after-his-party-loses-its-majority-10304127.html

(6) = Telegraph 25 Jul 2015 ‘For Erdogan, Turkish assault is about containing the Kurds as much as fighting Isil’, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/turkey/11762210/For-Erdogan-Turkish-assault-is-about-containing-the-Kurds-as-much-as-fighting-Isil.html

(7) = Guardian 08 Sep 2015 ‘Kurdish civilians hit by snipers as Turkey cracks down on militants’,
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/08/kurdish-civilians-killed-snipers-turkey-cracks-down-militants

(8) = Independent 22 Jan 2016 ‘Video shows Kurds waving white flag 'shot by Turkish soldiers'’,
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/video-shows-kurds-waving-white-flag-shot-by-turkish-soldiers-a6828416.html

(9) = Guardian 06 Sep 2015 ‘UN agencies 'broke and failing' in face of ever-growing refugee crisis’,
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/06/refugee-crisis-un-agencies-broke-failing

(10) = New Yorker ‘Turkey’s jailed journalists’, http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/turkeys-jailed-journalists

(11) = BBC News 16 Apr 2015 ‘The problem with insulting Turkey's President Erdogan’,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-32302697

(12) = Amnesty International 03 Feb 2016 ‘Syria's refugee crisis in numbers’, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/02/syrias-refugee-crisis-in-numbers/

(13) = guardian.com 07 May 2016 ‘Should David Cameron’s U-turn on unaccompanied child refugees be celebrated?’, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/07/should-david-camerons-u-turn-on-unaccompanied-child-refugees-be-celebrated

(14) = BBC News 07 Sep 2015 ‘UK to accept 20,000 refugees from Syria by 2020’,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34171148

(15) = See (10) above

Some people called Duncan Smith think they’re fit to be government ministers And that voters are all idiots who’ll believe any lie they tell ; Wrong on both counts ; And what you can do about it

Conservative Work and Pensions Minister Iain Duncan Smith has responded to a court ruling that it was illegal for his department to tell unemployed people it was compulsory for them to work unpaid for private companies or lose their unemployment benefit, when the law parliament passed only allowed for voluntary unpaid placements, by making dishonest personal attacks on one of the people who brought the case (1).

Smith says people who think they are “too good to stack shelves” are wrong and that their attitude is “unacceptable”. Cait Reilly never objected to stacking shelves though – she objected to doing it for no pay for a company that was profiting from her unpaid labour, especially as this would mean the firm would hire less paid staff (2).

She objected to the government helping big companies avoid paying the minimum wage (and in fact avoid paying one penny for the work done for “workfare” workers). (Department of Work and Pensisons guidelines for Workfare ‘Providers’ warn that offering a job at the end of a Workfare placement could breach the National Minimum Wage law. (3))

She objected to being told that if she didn’t complete the unpaid placement, she would lose her unemployment benefit.

A decent government minister wouldn’t lie to the unemployed and tell them that workfare placements were compulsory when the law passed by parliament only allowed voluntary placements. Nor would they force them to stop unpaid work they enjoyed for a museum, a public asset, for unpaid work for the profit of a company.

Duncan Smith also pretends there will be a paid job at the end of workfare. For most people there isn’t. Research on workfare in other countries commissioned by the Department of Work and Pensions in 2008 concluded that ‘There is little evidence that workfare increases the likelihood of finding work. It can even reduce employment chances by limiting the time available for job search and by failing to provide the skills and experience valued by employers.’ (4).

As the Boycott Workfare blog points out, the claim made by Duncan Smith and the Department of Work and Pensions that half of people who do workfare are no longer on benefits after 13 weeks, does not show half of them are getting jobs (5).

Smith’s choice of 13 weeks as the relevant time-frame is also interesting given that his department brought in a ‘sanction’ against unemployment benefit recipients for “non-compliance” (including even missing an appointment) of cutting off their benefits for 13 weeks (This is one of the most minor 'sanctions' - higher ones include no benefits for 3 years) (6).

So how many of the people who aren’t on unemployment benefit after the 13 weeks have got a paid job Mr Smith? ; and how many had their benefits cut off even though they don’t have a job yet? ; and how many of those were for being late or missing unpaid work or an appointment with a DWP official on just one day?

Figures released by Tesco last year showed only 21% of those who were put on workfare placements with them got a paid job at the end of it (300 out of the first 1,400 (7) – (8).

You can judge the general level of honesty on this subject from the government from the fact that they are fiddling the unemployment statistics by counting people on unpaid workfare placements as “employed” in “new jobs” (9).

Smith, true to form, is being utterly dishonest. He’s also a hypocrite. When he was in opposition he toured the country in teary eyed meetings with the poor, the disabled and the unemployed and charities working with them, promising them that when he got into government he would help them rather than punish them.

After less than three years in government Smith as Welfare minister has approved not only a 21^st century version of the 19^th century workhouse through unpaid “workfare” placements like Cat Reilly’s; but also letting French IT company ATOS get commissions on the number of disabled people they take benefits from on the basis of the say of doctors ATOS is employing and who often refuse to even look at their medical records or their GP’s opinion (10).

(The leadership of the Labour party actually initiated this scheme and gave ATOS this contract in 2008 in a shameful betrayal of vulnerable people and their supposedly democratic socialist ideals, though the Conservatives have made it even harsher than it was under Labour by changing the terms of the contract (11) – (12))

Smith is also rumoured to be currently trying to scrap the appeal process against ATOS rulings, because 40% of people stripped of their benefits by ATOS have had them restored on appeal to tribunals (though ATOS keeps its commission payments for removing someone from disability benefit even if their ruling is found to be wrong on appeal) (13) – (14).

Smith has also approved caps on housing benefit, along with an insane “bedroom tax” which takes away the housing benefit of anyone living in a flat or other property with more than one room in it and the government thinks one of them could be converted into a bedroom (15).

But, warm-hearted, compassionate men that they are, he and Lib Dem Treasury minister Danny Alexander have now let it be known that they will oppose any further welfare cuts (16). That’s nice of them. How about reversing all the ones you’re making? Then there might be anyone who gave a flying fuck. Currently it’s a bit like Hitler pledging not to invade any more countries now he’s done France, Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Austria and Greece.

I know whose behaviour I think is unacceptable – and it’s not Cat Reilly’s, it’s yours Mr Smith. You would not make an acceptable local councillor never mind an acceptable government minister.

What You Can Do

Go to the Boycott Workfare website to find ways you can help end Workfare in the UK
(there will also be a week of action against Workfare on 18^th to 24^th March)

Sign this petition to keep the Disability Living Allowance instead of the ATOS contract

If you’re in Scotland, sign this petition to the Scottish government to ban the bedroom tax

Wherever you are in the UK, sign this petition to scrap the bedroom tax

Join the Peoples’ Assembly Against Austerity – a non-party group to oppose austerity and welfare and public service cuts which members of any party and of no party can join

Sources

(1) = Independent 13 Feb 2013 ‘Poundland ruling: Back-to-work schemes in disarray as no-pay placements judged unlawful’, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/poundland-ruling-backtowork-schemes-in-disarray-as-nopay-placements-judged-unlawful-8491398.html

(2) = Independent On Sunday 17 Feb 2013 ‘Nobody is 'too good' to work as a shelf-stacker, says Iain Duncan Smith’, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nobody-is-too-good-to-work-as-a-shelfstacker-says-iain-duncan-smith-8498374.html

(3) = Department of Work and Pensions – Work Programme Provider Guidance - Chapter 3c – work experience on a voluntary basis and community benefit work placement,
http://www.dwp.gov.uk/docs/wp-pg-chapter-3c.pdf ; ‘Even if they are not paid by the employer, participants will qualify for the NMW (National Minimum Wage) if they are regarded as employees of the employer AND are participating in a trial period of work with that employer, in which the employer has agreed to offer a job to the participant if they successfully complete the trial, in cases where the trial is in excess of six weeks… “Employment” has a wide meaning, and participants are likely to be regarded as employees if they agree voluntarily to take up the placement with a particular employer.…The NMW is very unlikely to apply to participants mandated to participate in unpaid work experience or an unpaid community benefit work placement through the Work Programme, or to Participants who volunteer to take part in an unpaid placement of either type which is not a work trial exceeding 6 weeks.’

(4) = Department for Work and Pensions Research Report No 533 ‘A comparative review of workfare programmes in the United States, Canada and Australia’,
http://research.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd5/rports2007-2008/rrep533.pdf (see page 5 , paragraph 7)

(5) = Telegraph 21 Feb 2012 ‘Iain Duncan Smith: it's better to be a shelf stacker than a 'job snob'’, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9095050/Iain-Duncan-Smith-its-better-to-be-a-shelf-stacker-than-a-job-snob.html ; 5^th paragraph, 1^st sentence, ‘The Government says half of those who join the scheme have either found work or stopped claiming benefits after 13 weeks.’

(6) = Telegraph 03 Jul 2012 ‘Lazy jobseekers to lose benefits for up to three years’, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9370402/George-Osbornes-plans-to-use-billions-of-pounds-from-British-pension-funds-cash-to-pay-for-roads-fail-to-get-going.html ; 4^th sentence ‘The new sanctions regime, which come into force this Autumn. will see a claimant losing their benefit for 13 weeks for a first failure to comply with the rules.’

(7) = Guardian 10 Feb 2012 ‘Unions call on UK high street giants to halt unpaid work schemes’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/feb/10/unions-shops-unpaid-work-schemes ; ‘Tesco said that over the last four months around 1,400 people had worked for free for a month as part of work experience in its stores, and since the scheme began 300 jobseekers had gained a job with the company.’

(8) = Daily Mirror Blogs 16 Feb 2012 ‘Outrage over Tesco's £1.50 per hour "job offer"’,
http://blogs.mirror.co.uk/investigations/2012/02/post-2.html (see ‘Tesco’s Statement’ at bottom of the page on that link)

(9) = Guardian 15 Jan 2013 ‘Statistics cast doubt on coalition's '500,000 new jobs' claim’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jan/15/statistics-doubt-coalition-500000-jobs

(10) = guardian.co.uk 31 Jul 2012 ‘Sick and disabled people are being pushed off benefits at any cost’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/31/disabled-people-benefits-panorama

(11) = New Statesman 23 Jan 2013 ‘The Shadow State: The "dehumanising, degrading" treatment of disabled people’, http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/01/shadow-state-dehumanising-degrading-treatment-disabled (see especially 2nd paragraph and 9^th paragraph)

(12) = BBC News 17 Aug 2012 ‘Watchdog finds weaknesses in benefits system’,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19244639

(13) = New Statesman 23 Jan 2013 ‘The Shadow State: The "dehumanising, degrading" treatment of disabled people’, http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/01/shadow-state-dehumanising-degrading-treatment-disabled ; 11^th paragraph, 2^nd to 3^rd sentences ‘On average 40 per cent of challenged decisions are overturned at tribunal – one in ten of the total assessed. It has cost £60m thus far to assess the appeals. Some 1,300 people have died after being placed in the “work-related activity group” for those expected to start preparing for an eventual return - 2,200 died before the assessment process was completed.’

(14) = Channel 4 News 08 Feb 2013 ‘Disability testing system causes ‘misery and hardship’’, http://www.channel4.com/news/disability-testing-system-causes-misery-and-hardship , ‘But the public accounts committee report though, lays much of the blame at the door ot the Department for Work and Pensions. It says the DWP relies too heavily on the decisions taken by Atos assessors. And how good are those decisions? Well , according to the committee, 38 per cent of the department's decisions were overturned in appeals...In the meantime Atos Healthcare were paid more than £112m to carry out 738,000 assessments between 2011 and 2012. The PAC report adding: "It (the department) has failed to withold payment for poor performance."’

(15) = Independent on Sunday 17 Feb 2013 ‘'We won't put up with this': Residents facing brunt of 'bedroom tax' will refuse to pay’, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/we-wont-put-up-with-this-residents-facing-brunt-of-bedroom-tax-will-refuse-to-pay-8498691.html

(16) = Guardian 15 Feb 2013 ‘Senior ministers to oppose more welfare cuts’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/feb/15/ministers-oppose-more-welfare-cuts

Additional Ranting

The Conservatives’ theory is that people don’t work because they’re lazy. The reality is that even on the government’s own (fiddled) figures there are 5 people unemployed for every job vacancy available. And the real ratio is much higher because of all the fiddling of the unemployment figures. For instance people on temporary, unpaid “workfare” placements are counted as employed and in “new jobs”.

The Conservatives’ theory is that most people on disability benefit could actually work easily and are being prevented from getting jobs and getting on in life by receiving benefits and believing they can’t work (with the unspoken assumption again that there would be enough jobs for all of them even if this was true). Look at the Paralympic athletes they say, that proves that it’s all in the mind – glass half empty or glass half full perspectives. Unfortunately this is all bollocks. Many people are genuinely disabled and simply cannot work – and what’s more many of those who have become disabled worked and paid taxes for decades before becoming disabled due to illnesses or ageing.

The Conservatives’ theory is that the welfare state is creating dependency and a drain on the economy. The reality is that it is vital to a civilised society which doesn’t want to leave many of it’s people to die of hunger, cold or treatable diseases and illnesses, which is why it was created, in infancy and weak form in the late 19^th to early 20^th centuries and in it’s full form since the end of World War Two. Charities cannot do what welfare states and national health services do – we know that because there were lots of charities before there was a welfare state and they never came close to reducing poverty for the majority.

The welfare state is not a drain on the economy either. For instance unemployment benefit during recessions helps to limit a downwards spiral of falling wages and more people made unemployed, followed by people spending less money on buying goods and services (because many of them now have less), followed by firms sacking more employees and cutting pay for the rest as they can’t sell as many goods or services.

The Conservatives are trying to bring us back to the 19^th century and many of the Liberal Democrats are supporting them and basically agree with them. Worse still much of the leadership of the Labour party largely share their ideology and only differ in how quickly they want to dismantle the welfare state and privatise the NHS by the back door.

Much of the leadership of the Liberal Democrats and the Blairite wing of the Labour party seem to differ only in wanting to do this more gradually.

Gaza conflict helps Israeli government distract from the acceleration of it’s West Bank land grab under Netanyahu, Lieberman and Barak

The conflict between Israel and Hamas continues to distract from the Israeli land grab in the West Bank, which has accelerated under Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Foreign Minister and now electoral list partner Avigdor Lieberman, who says Palestinians should settle for just 40% of  it, along with Gaza (which is almost water-less), while Israel keeps the entire former British Mandate of Palestine along with 60% of the West Bank (1).

Israel currently takes 80% of vital water supplies in the West Bank ; and 64% of the West Bank is already under Israeli military control under the one sided Oslo Accords ( not all has been annexed yet, although the Israeli military are telling more Palestinian farmers to get off their land within Zone C (the 64%) all the time) (2) – (5)

As soon as the Gaza crisis became the media focus Netanyahu’s Finance Minister Yuval Stenitz told Israeli journalists “we doubled the budgets [allocated] to Judea and Samaria. We did it with a low profile” so that “elements in Israel and abroad” wouldn’t block it (6).

(All Israeli governments call the West Bank by it’s ancient biblical period name of ‘Judea and Samaria’ in order to try to claim it is all similarly part of the modern state of Israel by right – a claim about as valid as if the Italian government claimed a right to rule over the entire former Roman Empire, or a modern Assyrian Iraqi to the ancient Assyrian empire.)

Netanyahu’s government has gone beyond even previous Israeli government’s annexation of West Bank land by formally authorising Israeli settlements even East of the vast Israeli “barrier wall”. These new settlements are not only illegal under international law (as all Israeli settlements in the West Bank are) but even under Israeli law according to Israeli Supreme Court rulings (7).

Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak (who was also Defence minister in the previous government during the previous Gaza war in December 2008 to January 2009) personally approved the five-fold expansion of one West Bank settlement in September (8). A freedom of information request by an Israeli peace campaigner found that Barak’s Defense ministry has marked 10% of the West Bank for expansion of settlements over the years, including many settlements illegal under Israeli law which were later approved by the government (9).

The Israeli group Peace Now also say more West Bank settler houses were constructed in 2010 (9 months of which were part of a moratorium on settlement construction meant to allow negotiations) than in 2009, before the moratorium (10).

 All this will boost the vote for Barak’s new party and even more so the joint election list announced by Netanyahu for his Likud party along with Leiberman , whose Yisrael Beitenu party won more seats than Labor in the 2009 elections and whose support base comes from immigrants to Israel from the former Soviet Union – mostly Russian, secular, but hardline Israeli nationalists (11).

The collapse of the Soviet Union’s economy, especially under Yeltsin’s complete free market “reforms” created a few dozen billionaires while leaving millions with nothing. Israel by comparison provides cheap housing to settlers (land taken by force doesn’t have to be paid for after all) and some welfare payments including child benefit to it’s citizens

Israel’s ‘Law of return’ allows anyone with one Jewish grandparent or who has converted to Judaism as a religion the right to Israeli citizenship. In practice their partners are usually granted citizenship too, unless they are Palestinians or Arabs (12).

The Israeli government is also forcibly relocating Bedouin Israeli-Arab Israeli citizens from the Negev region within Israel itself in order to make way for Jewish settlements within that part of Israel, who, like 19^th century American Indians, have been forced to move twice already (once in the 1948 war and again in the 1950s) to make way for settlers (13) – (14).

This is all part of trying to solve “the demographic problem” which is a euphemism for the Arab birth rate being higher than the Jewish birth rate within Israel and the occupied territories. The Israeli government wants to settle most of the West Bank without ending up with an Arab majority (15).

The conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza serves to distract the US, the UN and international media from the West Bank and settlements. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah ended negotiations with Netanyahu’s government in November 2010 because Netanyahu refused to continue a freeze on new settlement building in the West Bank, and returned to coalition with Hamas (the other half of the elected Palestinian government since the 2006 elections) from April 2011. (16).

The useful distraction from the West Bank may well be one of the reasons the Israeli government refuses to negotiate on anything with Hamas except for ceasefire agreements, despite Hamas being half the elected Palestinian government and despite some of it’s leaders and spokesmen having offered negotiations repeatedly on the basis of the 1967 borders (17) – (18)

Whether any of these offers are genuine or not is debateable, but as many Israelis including former heads of Mossad and Shin Bet say there should be negotiations with Hamas without preconditions, because if even some of Hamas are serious about negotiations it will swing influence within the organisation in their favour if Israel actually makes any serious concessions (i.e full sovereignty for a Palestinian state in Gaza and the majority of the West Bank, including most of the water and farmland).

If Hamas are not genuine Israel has it’s overwhelming military strength not to mention the world’s only remaining superpower the US as an ally, so it has nothing to lose by negotiating – except the majority of West Bank land and water which it wants to keep for itself.

Israeli governments claim Hamas’ offers of negotiations on the basis of a ‘Hudna’ (an Islamic term from the Quran) for the 1967 borders are similarly just for an extended ceasefire and so worthless, though opinion among experts and even Hamas leaders on what a Hudna involves is divided.

 

Sources 

(1) = Guardian.co.uk 14 Nov 2012 ‘Israel threatens to overthrow Abbas over Palestinian statehood bid’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/14/israeli-minister-threatens-abbas-un ; ‘Lieberman's draft paper proposed Israeli recognition of a Palestinian state on provisional borders encompassing around 40% of the West Bank in exchange for the Palestinian leadership dropping its approach to the United Nations.’ (3rd from last paragraph)

(2) = guardian.co.uk 27 May 2009 ‘Israelis get four-fifths of scarce West Bank water, says World Bank’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/27/israel-palestinian-water-dispute

(3) = Amnesty International 27 Oct 2009 ‘Israel rations Palestinians to trickle of water’, http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/report/israel-rations-palestinians-trickle-water-20091027

(4) = KIVA blog 06 Apr 2012 ‘The ABCs of West Bank Agriculture’,
http://fellowsblog.kiva.org/fellowsblog/2012/04/06/the-abcs-of-west-bank-agriculture

(5) = Al Jazeera 29 Aug 2012 ‘Palestinian farmers ordered to leave lands, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/08/2012829184442780471.html

(6) = Haaretz 12 Nov 2012 ‘Netanyahu's government has quietly doubled funding for settlements, says finance minister’, http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/netanyahu-s-government-has-quietly-doubled-funding-for-settlements-says-finance-minister-1.477204

(7) = UNoCHA IRIN news 14 May 2012 ‘Analysis: Israeli government challenges the law to embrace illegal settler outposts’, http://www.irinnews.org/Report/95445/Analysis-Israeli-government-challenges-the-law-to-embrace-illegal-settler-outposts

(8) = Haaretz 12 Nov 2012 ‘Barak approves plans to build 500 new homes in West Bank settlement’, http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/barak-approves-plans-to-build-500-new-homes-in-west-bank-settlement.premium-1.476862

(9) = Haaretz 30 Mar 2012 ‘Israel Defense Ministry plan earmarks 10 percent of West Bank for settlement expansion’, http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/israel-defense-ministry-plan-earmarks-10-percent-of-west-bank-for-settlement-expansion-1.421589

(10) = Peace Now 23 Dec 2010 ‘Intensive construction in every other settlement’, http://peacenow.org.il/eng/content/intensive-construction-every-other-settlement

(11) = Ynet News (Israel) 25 Oct 2012 ‘Netanyahu, Lieberman join forces ahead of elections’,
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4297100,00.html ; ‘Nearly six months after shocking the political system by forming a unity government with Kadima, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has thrown another curve ball and joined forces with Avigdor Lieberman ahead of the upcoming elections. In a press conference held Thursday evening, the two men announced they were uniting the Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu under one ticket. …The move is aimed at creating the largest list in the Knesset elections thus guaranteeing that Netanyahu will form the next government.’

(12) = Haaretz 12 Jan 2012 ‘Supreme Court upholds ban on Palestinians living with Israeli spouses’, http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/supreme-court-upholds-ban-on-palestinians-living-with-israeli-spouses-1.406812

(13) = Ynet news (Israel) 29 Sep 2012 ‘'Turning Bedouin village into Jewish settlement is racist'’, http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4287018,00.html

(14) = +972 magazine 02 Oct 2012 ‘Bedouin village in Negev to be destroyed, Jewish settlement to be built on site’, http://972mag.com/bedouin-village-in-negev-to-be-destroyed-jewish-settlement-to-be-built-on-site/56875/

(15) = See this web page and sources for it (please note – the claim on it that child benefit is not given to Israeli Arabs is out of date and inaccurate – I’ve since found out that there used to be a lower rate of child benefit for Israeli Arabs than Israeli Jews, but they have since been equalised – see Haaretz 16 Dec 2009 ‘BoI: Child benefits boost Arab, Haredi birthrates’,
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/business/boi-child-benefits-boost-arab-haredi-birthrates-1.2023 )

(16) = BBC News 21 Nov 2010 ‘Abbas rules out talks without full settlement freeze’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11806747

(17) = Haaretz 25 Dec 2011 ‘Netanyahu: Israel will not negotiate with Palestinians should Hamas join government’, http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/netanyahu-israel-will-not-negotiate-with-palestinians-should-hamas-join-government-1.403547 ; ‘"If Hamas joins the Palestinian government we will not hold negotiations with the Palestinian Authority," said Netanyahu in a speech at a conference for Israeli ambassadors.’

(18) = Israel National News 06 Feb 2012 ‘Netanyahu to Abbas: 'You Can't Have it Both Ways',
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/152462 ; ‘Israel's Prime Minister issued an ultimatum to officials in Ramallah that they must choose between Hamas and peace with Israel…. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Monday responded to an agreement signed by Fatah and Hamas in Doha saying the Palestinian Authority "can't have it both ways’

Salmond and Grampian police should be ashamed for aiding Trump’s illegal campaign against the people of the Menie Estate ; but it doesn’t show Scotland is too small to be independent – the same happens in the US and UK regularly

Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond, The Telegraph and Grampian police should be ashamed for allowing and aiding Trump’s use of illegal methods to try to force people out of their homes and farms on the Menie Estate in Scotland but the main cause of the problem isn’t Scotland being too small to stand up to big money, similar things happen in the UK and US all the time. The cause of the problem is allowing big banks, firms and billionaires to make political donations and allowing revolving doors between jobs with them and with government departments giving contracts to them and regulating them. (If you just want to know what you can do rather than read the rest, scroll down to the ‘what you can do’ bolded sub-heading)

I'd thought Donald Trump was the obvious contender for balloon self-inflated by his own arrogance. Maybe Neil Midgely, deputy editor of the Telegraph newspaper is a contender too. He has a review of the documentary ‘You’ve been Trumped,’ which is Anthony Baxter’s film showing Trump’s SNP government and Grampian police backed campaign to try to force out people out of homes and farms they’ve lived on all their lives, by illegal methods including letting Trump’s employees cut off their water and electricity supplies, build earth berms round their houses and many other intrusions on to and damages to their property (1).

Midgely writes " But the …documentary…was so biased in favour of the protesters that it was hard not to end up rooting for Trump and his monolithic capitalist plans. There were endless sympathetic chats with the locals who wouldn’t sell their eyesore properties to Trump….When Trump’s men infuriated the locals – by apparently cutting off their water supply, or building mounds of earth outside their windows – the film’s implicit suggestion was that it was all done out of spite. And if spite was the motive, it was spite so bracing as to be a rare and precious thing. It was also cheering to see the busybody film-maker, Anthony Baxter, at one point carted off by the local constabulary. " (2).

First off Neil, they’re not “protesters”. The word you’re looking for is “residents” – people who’ve lived (and in some cases farmed) there for all their lives. They had considerable sympathy and support from many people and there were a few protests in favour of them, which get brief coverage in the documentary – but most of it is interviews with the residents, with police, with Trumps’ spokespeople (who unsurprisingly didn’t have much to say other than threats of getting the documentary makers arrested and charged), clips of Trump making his own case and film of what Trump’s employees and the police were doing, along with interviews with legal experts and experts on the likely impact on jobs from the development (which found, in opposition to Trump’s claims that local people would get a lot of jobs on it, most of the jobs would be likely to go to Polish and other EU migrant workers).

I thought that Conservatives were all for property rights, Neil ;  Seems not in your case. Seems you're quite happy for billionaires who've bought political influence to come in and take peoples' property and try to force them out of their homes to make way for another frigging golf course (because of course there's a massive shortage of them in Scotland - e.g St Andrews for instance has none, obviously), so long as they're oiks and not your golfing buddies.

I thought Conservatives were for upholding the law. Seems not in Neil’s case. He’s fine with money trumping the law; fine with Trump's money, or the promise of some jobs, getting police to let him illegally cut off peoples’ water and electricity supplies and steal parts of their land from them and even build earth berms round their houses.

I thought Conservatives were meant to be for civil liberties. In Mr Midgely’s case, seems not. He enjoys seeing people arrested on trumped up charges of 'breach of the peace' and handcuffed for merely interviewing the people involved.

I very much hope that you are a victim of similar injustices in future Neil – that your property is stolen by developers, that your electricity and water are cut off to try to force you out of your home – and that the police and government similarly either aid the developers or look the other way as your property  and rights and civil liberties are ridden roughshod over by big money. Then you might understand what you got wrong here.

On top of that Trump was determined he should get to build not just on 90% of the site he wanted, but that it had to include destroying an SSSI (Site of Special Scientific Interest) containing rare species too. We don’t exactly have a shortage of golf courses in Scotland. St Andrews alone has more than you could count and there are huge numbers of others all over the country. If we lost a golf course we could replace it. If we lose rare species to extinction there is no getting them back though. They are gone forever.

The smartest political calculations can go wrong when they leave out right and wrong

SNP First Minister Alec Salmond decided to over-rule the elected local council’s planning committee – and it’s SNP chairman in 2009 – to give Trump exactly the planning permission he wanted. His government must have either looked the other way or else seen to it that the then SNP headed Aberdeenshire local council got the police to do a mixture of looking the other way as Trump’s employees broke the law on other peoples’ property, guarding the law breakers as they did so; and harassing and arresting the documentary makers (including by arresting them and putting them in a cell for four hours by mis-using the catch-all ‘breach of the peace’ charge).

Salmond calculated that he would gain more votes by the jobs created and sports coverage of the new golf course than he would lose by allowing an arrogant billionaire to over-rule the local council, destroy habitat for rare species and force people out of their homes. Even the most charismatic and intelligent politician can get his sums wrong where he doesn't factor in right and wrong though. In a case of poetic justice he’s suffered negative media coverage (largely due to Anthony Baxter’s work) combined with a feud with Trump over plans for offshore wind turbines off the coast of his golf course development. The recession created by the financial crisis has also reduced investment and demand for Trump’s development, which might fail yet.

Next time Salmond is engaging his brain purely as a vote calculating machine he should remember this and take right and wrong into account too.

Why it’s not caused by Scotland being a small country – and not an argument against independence

However those arguing that this shameful episode is due to Scotland being too small to resist big money’s influence and using it as an argument against independence have it wrong too.

The British and US governments cave in to big firms, banks and billionaires constantly. Just look at the NHS contracts going to Circle Healthcare whose shareholders lobbied for privatisation and donate to the Conservative party ; or US military aid of over $1bn a year to Egypt, openly given to subsidise US arms firms that make political donations to Presidential and congressional campaigns, particularly Lockheed Martin (3) – (9).

That’s not to mention all the white-washing of the pollution of water and air by fracking and on land oil drilling in the US due to the big oil and gas companies buying up political influence and even funding biased scientific studies (thankfully countered by neutral ones).

So the problem isn’t the size of the country, but big money buying influence through private donations to election campaigns and political parties; revolving door syndrome allowing people to go between jobs in those firms and the government departments giving contracts to and regulating them ; and governments’  choosing jobs from multinationals, which may go overseas as quickly as they arrived, over backing smaller businesses based in their own country. (the last problem being the relevant one with Trump and the SNP – though it’s possible Salmond also hoped to get donations for his party, though I’ve found no evidence he got any) (10) – (11).

The solution is to make it a criminal offence to give or receive private political donations,   or to go from a job in a government department to a company given contracts or regulated by it, or vice-versa, for 5 or 10 years; and provide limited, equal, public funding to all candidates in elections.

What you can do

Sign the petition against Trump’s illegal campaign to drive people out of their homes .

Join and/or donate to the Tripping Up Trump campaign group against forced compulsory purchase orders being issued purely for the benefit of big developers.

 

 

Sources

(1) = Independent blogs 18 Oct 2012 ‘You’ve Been Trumped! Director Anthony Baxter speaks about his new documentary’, http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/10/18/you%E2%80%99ve-been-trumped-director-anthony-baxter-speaks-about-his-new-documentary/

(2) = Telegraph 21 Oct 2012 ‘You've Been Trumped, BBC Two, review’,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/9621334/Youve-Been-Trumped-BBC-Two-review.html

(3) = Herald letters 23 Oct 2012 ‘Trump documentary highlights the vulnerability of smaller economies’ http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/letters/trump-documentary-highlights-the-vulnerability-of-smaller-economies.19214235

(4) = Conservative Home website ‘Big cash donors to the Conservative party, by ‘donor group’ January 2001 to June 2010’, https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?authkey=CM2egqgB&key=0AtAQVk3Qj4FYdEJKVTg3aTZteV9pcnFZbXBvN3lRcUE&hl=en&authkey=CM2egqgB#gid=0

(5) = Observer 05 Jun 2011 ‘Questions grow over private care firm Circle Health ahead of flotation’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/jun/05/questions-grow-over-circle-health

(6) = guardian.co.uk 05 Nov 2011 ‘Private firm to run NHS hospital’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/nov/10/private-firm-run-nhs-hospital

(7) = NYT 23 Mar 2012 ‘Once Imperiled, U.S. Aid to Egypt Is Restored’,
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/24/world/middleeast/once-imperiled-united-states-aid-to-egypt-is-restored.html?_r=0 ; ‘An intense debate within the Obama administration over resuming military assistance to Egypt, which in the end was approved Friday by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, turned in part on a question that had nothing to do with democratic progress in Egypt but rather with American jobs at home…. The companies involved include Lockheed Martin, which is scheduled to ship the first of a batch of 20 new F-16 fighter jets next month’

(8) = Center for Responsive Politics – Organisation Profiles – Lockheed Martin,
http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000000104 (shows Lockheed Martin executives and PAC committees donated over $2 million to candidates in the 2012 election cycle including Obama and Romney and members of congressional committees on defense spending)

(9) Center for Responsive Politics - Lockheed Martin: All Recipients ; Among Federal Candidates, 2008 Cycle, http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/recips.php?id=D000000104&type=P&state=&sort=A&cycle=2008 (shows similar donations including to Obama and McCain’s campaigns in 2008)

(10) = Guardian 15 Oct 2012 ‘MoD staff and thousands of military officers join arms firms’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/oct/15/mod-military-arms-firms

(11) = Guardian 22 Oct 2012 ‘Blurred boundaries between public service and private interest’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/healthcare-network/2012/oct/22/public-service-private-blurred-boundaries ; ‘the resignation from the NHS Commissioning Board of Jim Easton to become managing director of the private provider Care UK…Previous senior officials in the Department of Health transferring their wallets to the private sector include Matthew Swindells, chief information officer at the DH who joined KPMG, along with Mark Britnell and Gary Belfield, who had run the DH commissioning programme; Simon Stevens, Tony Blair's senior health advisor from 1997-2004 became a vice-president for United Health; and Penny Dash, formerly DH director of strategy, left for McKinsey.