Russia at the last count had taken in 1.8 million Donbas and Ukrainian refugees before they built the trench to stem the flow. The reason for the trench is that the Islamic State and Nazi members of the various fascist factions present in the Ukraine were posing as refugees. Now Poland has seen a rise in Nazism and fascism because Poland was the staging ground for an assault on Russia. Many leftist Polish leaders are now worried about the presence of such extremists. With regards Iran, it has over many years had a program of aid offering nearly a million mostly Afghan refugees to find legal work within Iran or return home as they choose. It was quite some undertaking and many Afghani’s have now settled in Iran within the framework of the extensive programs Iran offered.
It is also worth noting that prior to the US deployment of their terrorist activists, there was no “Syrian refugee crisis”, that is to say Syrians for the most part did not see cause to flee their homeland in droves. Basher certainly let panic over the US interference in Libya influence his actions in allowing the army/police to fire into crowds of demonstrators fearing where these demonstrations would lead as they did in Libya. To condemn Assad, it is also necessary to condemn the Saudi regime and that of Israel, Turkey and many African States and also of course Ukraine. Strange then that the mantra seems to be “Assad must go” when he is certainly no worse than the regimes just mentioned. The difference being, for those unaware, is that the other regimes are all pro Washington whereas those who do not attract US “exceptionalism” are not. Nuff said?

• Despite the voluntary return of hundreds of thousands of Afghan and Iraqi refugees to their countries of origin during the past decade, the Islamic Republic of Iran remains host to one of the world’s largest and most protracted refugee populations.

But they have only limited sway with the US. Any US citizen can boycott Israeli goods as we do in the UK. Add to this that the rest of Europe cannot be controlled in the same way and can and will continue BDS what is the point of expending so much energy for so little return? There are 139 countries in the UN, many of whom are already boycotting and divesting and sanctioning Israel. As a consequence of the US veto used so many times to protect Israel from War Crime charges, and a whole lot more, many people now feel that the US should leave the UN and take their money elsewhere.

This is nothing more than another Israeli angle at frightening American Jews into falling into step with Israeli policy. Trying to dissuade them from any BDS campaign and pretty much a scaremongering tactic. It has no validity beyond that.

Kris. Golda Meirson was Jewish but admitted that she was a socialist and therefore did not believe in God. So is being Jewish a person practising Judaism or someone who merely identifies with Jewish by blood? If that is the case, then Jews can have no claim to the lands because God gave it to them if they don’t actually believe in God. That is their main excuse for stealing land from anywhere and everywhere. It’s called expansionism, and is familiar to the US and Nazis of WW2 – who promoted the idea of blonde hair and blue eyes as the superior race.
Nazis based their expansionism on colouring, not DNA, religion or geographic existence. According to history, only two tribes qualify as Jews, so how do you check for DNA going back 2 thousand years.

Catalan: You are truly generous and quite obviously not an Israeli. In Israel, there are many moderate Jews, but they are certainly not the majority. The hard right Zionists have as was the case of the Hitler Youth, quite literally brainwashed many Israeli Jews into believing the existential threat of anti-semitic, Jew hating contingents on every border and in every country. I don’t know what news you’ve been reading other than Counterpunch but you really need to get out more. Do you even read the many reports of Jewish dissent both in the US and Israel of this pervasive and twisted narrative that the hard-liners are spouting. For much of Israel, it is no longer about being a Jew following the Judaic faith, reading the Torah or Talmudic discussion, it’s about being a Jew with all it’s historic baggage almost like a knee jerk reaction. Most of our Jews in the UK had never heard of the Nakba, such was their ignorance of their own history, it just isn’t taught. I wasn’t too thrilled to learn of the origins of my own Christian religion, but the facts spoke for themselves. We move on from seeing other people, even Hassidic communities, as being of some other worldly planetary inhabitants and simply accept our differences. That is not the case for the majority of Israelis. Wake up man , you are a world away from Israel, far too many no longer have a religion.

Dachau was at first a deportation camp mainly for Poles but also German Jews – it is located north of I think Berlin. It is most decidedly in Germany.

The world looks on as an Israeli billion dollar budget influences and designs US state laws. We wonder when the US government will take back it’s own country or whether it will continue to be Israel’s twisted round their little finger, lackey. It must be very humiliating for a nation to watch it’s supposed government be led by the nose to serve a despotic regime answering to no-one. So much for the United States of America being the “greatest nation in the world”. The US is now synonymous with destabilizing whole countries and instigating wars where there was once peace, their “interventions” being nothing more than a means to an end, regardless of the cost to human life. It really is time for the US to be engaged with at arms length only with a health warning, including it’s inclusion in the UN. If the UN, who has failed millions of people around the world, will not act to curb US aggression then the UN no longer serves any useful purpose. I, along with probably millions of other people would sooner see the US estranged from all socio/economic and political engagements than continue discourse with a rogue state hell bent on Global Domination by any means. If Russia, Europe, China, Indonesia, Australia, Iran and the Indian/ South American and African continents were to offer an alternative, social and economic arrangement, there would be massive support. I can’t see the US government making any attempt to change their stance, either on the vicious actions of Israel and Ukraine, or the double standards by which they support these regimes. The time is not so far off that the US voice will soon be one “in the wilderness” as they alienate themselves from ordinary people each and every day.

Krauss – Could you direct me to an unbiased insight of Clinton’s social/economic policies as the reported speeches I have heard did not suggest she had any such leanings.

Thank you J. Walters. Although I have no vote in the US I for one would vote for Bernie Sanders, just because the man is principled (whereas Hillary Clinton doesn’t even know the meaning of the word). Have to say I really didn’t expect Paul Rand to come out with something so forthright and applicable. He just earned himself a point. As a UK citizen, it matters greatly who becomes the POTUS in 2016. It could mean the difference between the wars and conflagrations and US overthrows of non Pro Washington governments in favour of “Pro” and someone with an inherent dislike of unnecessary conflict and destabilisation of nations abroad. War proved very profitable for the Bush gramps and great gramps who made a financial killing out of WW2, well the US in general profited. UK Prime Ministers have this nasty habit of being the hanky to catch the POTUS snot whenever he sneezes and the British people pay the price. (so to did Iraq and now the Donbas peoples of Ukraine in which we are all guilty now, no matter who initially installed the nazi regime in Kiev). Since our PM can’t seem to do his own thinking without his own self interests getting in the way, it is crucial who get’s the top spot in the US. Trying to understand the reasons why certain people favour one candidate over another – unless of course they show a marked Pro Israeli or anti-Russian stance, in which case I can dismiss such bigots, helps me to understand future relations between the two nations. As I have seen from so many posts, it seems the US has a truly skewed picture of the UK. So I don’t want to make the same mistake.