Katherine Butler’s picks for the 2nd week of November 2023

Editor’s picks

Portuguese PM António Costa resigns amid corruption inquiry German chancellor Olaf Scholz agrees ‘historic’ stricter migration policy Le Pen’s anti-Islamism and support of Israel seen as attempt to obscure antisemitic past Russian Jews fear Israel-Hamas war awakening sleeping antisemitism ‘Inestimable importance’: 500-year-old cache of pressed flowers reveals new secrets Dutch elections 2023: everything you need to know

Opinion and analysis

Ireland’s criticism of Israel has made it an outlier in the EU. What lies behind it? | Una Mullally With the far right on the rise, it’s a bad time to live in Germany – but a worse time to leave | Fatma Aydemir Germany’s bond with Israel has been admirable – but it is becoming a straitjacket | John Kampfner Climate fatigue isn’t a sign that Europeans are in denial – it’s a sign of their fear | Francesco Grillo How do you memorialise the horrors of war? In Ukraine, it happens quickly, and with love | Charlotte Higgins How did The Lord of the Rings become a secret weapon in Italy’s culture wars? | Jamie Mackay

Life

Fika, four-week holidays – and zero overtime: Sweden’s stunningly healthy work culture ‘Best of both sides’: Berlin’s Israeli-Palestinian restaurant that won’t give in to fear ‘The perpetrators were people like us’: the burden of history at Auschwitz What’s in a word? How less-gendered language is faring across Europe ‘Dogs should eat as well as humans’: high-end canine cucina opens in Rome How to make apple strudel – Felicity Cloake’s masterclass

Arts and culture

Hungary sacks museum chief for not enforcing under-18s ban at LGBTQ+ exhibition Unopened 18th-century love letters to French sailors read for first time Pyramid of Tirana review – from tyrant’s monument to joyful symbol of modern Albania Jean-Baptiste Andrea wins Prix Goncourt for novel set in fascist Italy God is a DJ: the Jesuit priest who runs avant garde electronica nights

In pictures

Female faces of photography: masterworks at Paris Photo

From the archive

1973 | ‘Two hours trying to siphon a prawn’: at home with Salvador Dalí

The Vikings Really Got Around, Spread Their Seeds Far and Wide

Teaching History's Slender Threads, Including 'What Ifs', Almosts, Alternatives and Turning Points

The period from the 750s to the 1100s is generally known as the Viking era in Scandinavian history. If you have Scandinavian in your DNA, it is probably from this period when the Vikings were exploring, conquering and mating with the maidens of Northern Europe. The Vikings originated in Denmark, spread into what is now Sweden, Finland, Norway, Iceland, Greenland, Northern Scotland and the Hebrides islands, Northern Ireland, Northern Europe, particularly Normandy (now France), over to Kiev, along the Dneiper River in what is now Ukraine, founding the Rus, and even way over to North America — what is now part of Canada, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and New Brunswick. In short, the Vikings really got around, spread their seeds far and wide. They were also great traders, and looking for a higher standard of living.

They were part of the Age of Exploration…

View original post 315 more words

How Did Scandinavia Become Christian?What If It United?

Teaching History's Slender Threads, Including 'What Ifs', Almosts, Alternatives and Turning Points

The Infographics Show: “What exactly is Scandinavia? The countries of Scandinavia are Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. We might also refer to the Scandinavian Peninsula, or Fennoscandia, which also comprises Finland and parts of Russia. Moreover, we talk about Nordic countries, and these include Iceland, Greenland and Faroe Islands. But today we are talking about three countries alone, and they are Sweden, Denmark and Norway. The countries have similar customs and cultures, and the languages are not far apart. The EU tells us the citizens of all these countries will likely be able to read each other’s language, although Swedes and Norwegians can have trouble understanding spoken Danish, even though the Danish and Norwegian languages are the most similar. Now, let’s look at what would happen if those countries finally came together, in this episode of the Infographics Show, What if Scandinavia United?

For those of us of at least…

View original post 27 more words

State capitalism and climate emergency

A continued look at {Why capitalism massively intensified the climate crisis, and why only collective action can solve it}

Continuation of

Capitalism and relevance to climate change

Capitalism and The environmental record of the communist world

In his article “Why capitalism massively intensified the climate crisis, and why only collective action can solve it” Gezwin Stanley confirms that the climate emergency couldn’t have happened without fossil fuel driven industrialisation. But there is more:

human technology plus the very human inclination towards short termism tends to result in environmental degradation. It isn’t just capitalism that caused the climate crisis. But it is clear that capitalism, or rather the different varieties of capitalism, meaning any system where the few both control and benefit from the engines of wealth creation, the very same productive forces that can damage the environment, while also being best able to use their position to shield themselves against any environmental side effects, did and will dramatically exacerbate environmental damage. And, comparing state capitalism with private capitalism, it isn’t markets or consumerism that appeared to make the difference: the West had those in abundance, but the Communist world did not, and the outcomes were similar: critical environmental crises. The implication is that mass-scale industrial technology, combined with the control of that economy by a few who are compelled to strive for growth at all costs and to disregard, even deliberately hide, all externalities, is sufficient to cause environmental collapse, even if consumerism and insufficiently democratically regulated markets really don’t help. {Why capitalism massively intensified the climate crisis, and why only collective action can solve it}

We must remember that important pressures contributing to current and future ecological collapse include habitat loss, habitat degradation, and habitat fragmentation, monocultures, overgrazing, overexploitation of ecosystems by humans, human industrial growth and overpopulation. The Soviet Union sinned against the respectful use of the earth by the practice of growing the same crop each year on a given acreage. The Soviet government found out, to its shame, that their large-scale plan of mass production or to produce huge quantities of cereals, vegetables and fruit, impoverished the country and did not produce good harvests. This because nonlegume crops usually exhaust the nitrogen in the soil, with a resulting reduction in yields. When they wanted to make the fertility level of the soil higher, they introduced fertilisers that poisoned the soil. The idea of greater flexibility in planning the system to meet year to year changes in the need for various crops, failed dramatically with food shortages and starvation as a result.

That environmental damage will be even more extreme if the masters of the economy, under private or state capitalism, are actively competing with each other whether for profit or to hit targets mandated by some dictator’s latest five year plan. {Why capitalism massively intensified the climate crisis, and why only collective action can solve it}

writes Gezwin Stanley, admitting that

 the vital experiment, of a technologically advanced society that combines political and economic democracy, hasn’t as yet really been tried, perhaps because it is so offensive to the powerful and power-hungry.

Would such a society be able to better balance environmental and economic concerns? It certainly seems likely in theory, but in practice all we have to go on are smaller scale examples, often embattled and created despite huge challenges, such as the Zapatistas in Mexico or Rojava in Kurdistan. While environmentalism is a core thread of the ideology of both these movements (see for example: “What the Zapatistas can teach us about the climate crisis” or “Rojava is trying to build a green society”), how that would play out in the long term, in more stable conditions and at scale, has still to be determined. Though social democracy may be precarious, because the super-rich often buy politicians, parties and media influence, the historically more thorough-going social democracies may offer a clue as to what would be possible environmentally if economic control was more democratic, with (again according to the World Bank figures here: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC) per capita carbon dioxide emissions in 2018 for Denmark being 5.8 tonnes, for Norway 7.0 tonnes and for Sweden 3.5 tonnes, compared to the USA at 15.2 tonnes, though the Nordic countries are at a similar level of technological advancement and average prosperity and overall have a colder climate. The same figure for the Russian Federation is 11.2 tonnes per capita and for considerably poorer China 7.4 tonnes. It may also be worth contrasting how Scandinavia confronted the problem of acid rain from the 1970s with how the former Soviet Union attempted to “bury” its multiple environmental crises. {Why capitalism massively intensified the climate crisis, and why only collective action can solve it}

For him, it is no wonder that the state-capitalist communist countries of the past or the present were the cause of environmental calamities.

There have been more human generated greenhouse gas emissions since 1990 than in the rest of history (see this excerpt from “The Uninhabitable Earth”, published in 2019). Nor should we ever forget the whole corporate funded global disinformation campaign of climate change denial , and now “greenwashing”. For example, Exxon knew of climate change in 1981, but it funded climate change denial for 27 more years. None of this is surprising as the richest have an incentive to care least about climate change, because they can most easily escape its effects, from basing themselves in less affected countries, through being able to afford air conditioning, coastal defences and other protections to participating in the growing market for elite bunkers and safe havens (see “‘Billionaire bunkers’ that could shelter the superrich during an apocalypse”).

If the economies of at least the most technologically advanced and richest nations had been run along lines of distributed economic power, of economic democracy as described here: https://gezwinstanley.wordpress.com/what-is-economic-justice-and-how-can-we-create-it/ , then there would most likely still have been a climate crisis. We are not angels. But without hugely powerful billionaires willing to conspire to deny climate change, and able to rig the political debate in many countries such as the USA, we would have acted a decade or two, possibly three, sooner. For example, the climate change deniers’ “Climategate” conspiracy in 2009 sabotaged the Copenhagen COP15 Conference and alone may have set back progress a decade, while none of the conspirators or those enlisted to help with the subsequent public relations have ever been brought to book. All that lost time could prove to have been crucial.

To resolve this conflict of interest we need to place everyone in control of the things they need to live and make a living. Then no one can disproportionately reap the economic benefits while disproportionately avoiding the environmental costs. That ensures everyone has an incentive to co-operate to create environmental regulations, pricing, taxes and subsidies, that avoid collective catastrophe, because no one can rig the deadly serious economic “game” of balancing economic output against environmental costs by largely reaping the economic benefits while passing most of the environmental impact onto someone else. {Why capitalism massively intensified the climate crisis, and why only collective action can solve it}

 

+++

Related

1. The Tale of Truth and Lie
2. What is said by the People Who don’t care About The Planet
3. Debunking rightwing myths: Qanon
4. The Melting Iceberg and other Problems Caused by Climate Change
5. PM can’t see the emissions truth for the trees
6. Now Can We Believe in Climate Change?
7. Thought for Today: Climate Science Denial
8. Advertising and Climate Breakdown are interlinked
9. Net-zero emissions is a great goal for companies to set — but really hard to reach. Here’s why
10. Eat it
11. Its not about sustainable plastic- but the system embedded around the product
12. What is Greenwashing and how to avoid falling victim to it
13. Gaslight, Gatekeep, Greenwash!
14. Let’s talk about ‘Greenwashing’
15. Greenwashing | Fashion Industry’s Dirty Little Secret
16. Greenwashing and the UK Electric Vehicle Industry
17. Aussie companies jumping on ESG reporting wave cautioned against “greenwashing”
18. Is Singapore Truly Sustainable?: Greenwashing in the ‘City in a Garden

A dangerous turning point – Earth facing the collapse of everything

Despite so much evidence to the contrary, “experts” deny there is any threat to the world’s ecology.
Study Disputes That Earth is in a ‘Climate Emergency’

Brietbart 07-Feb-21 by Delingpole

“There is no “climate emergency”, according to a study for the Global Warming Policy Foundation by independent scientist Dr Indur Goklany.
Dr Goklany concludes:

“While climate may have changed for the warmer:  Most extreme weather phenomena have not become extreme, more deadly, or more destructive.  Empirical evidence directly contradicts claims that increased carbon dioxide has reduced human wellbeing. In fact, human wellbeing has never been higher.

Whatever detrimental effects warming and higher carbon dioxide may have had on terrestrial species and ecosystems, they have been swamped by the contribution of fossil fuels to increased biological activity. This has halted, and turned around, reductions in habitat loss”.

The report would make hugely depressing reading for all environmental activists — even the Pope – if it was
infallibly accurate – which it is not!
Dr Goklany says there is little to scare us:

Yes, there will be more hot days, but fewer cold days. Oh? Where?

In the Arctic and the Antarctic of course – silly!

*There will be less tornados – #in Great Britain?
* There will be less floods, less frequent and smaller!
# Perhaps Goklany slept through last year, but there were half a dozen cyclones causing death by floods, drowning, landslides and inundation from January to December 2020 throughout the Southern Hemisphere!
*There will be less droughts and less wildfires.

# When does this begin? So far so bad in California and many parts of Australia. In October 1917 intense, deadly fires killed 41 people in Spain and Portugal, and in 2020 fires affected Sweden and Northern France as well as Italy and Spain where wildfires are not indigenous!

In 2020 for months, Siberia has been experiencing extreme heat due to a combination of persistent sunny weather and human-caused climate change. In addition to producing Arctic temperatures that cracked 100 degrees in June, the heat has fueled an enormous outbreak of wildfires, including fires on Siberia’s tundra……

Breitbart News Desk February 16, 2021:

The deep freeze that knocked out power in Texas spread across the country this week. The agency that manages power in fourteen states from Texas through Oklahoma and all the way up to North Dakota declared a state of emergency and ordered utilities to initiate rolling blackouts to cut electrical demand and stabilize the grid.
Meanwhile, a lot of fracking for oil has been brought to a halt by the freeze. Twenty percent of the U.S. oil production has gone offline, and some of the biggest refineries have been shuttered. The big problem is that the Texas oil kits are not set up for arctic weather. Up in North Dakota the extraction process is winterized, but that’s not the case farther south. Even something as simple as picking up oil in a truck to move to a refinery can become impossible when your roads are iced over, there are no snow ploughs or road salt, and no one has snow tires.
Crude oil production is down by more than four million barrels a day, twice what was reported a day earlier. Prior to the cold crisis, the U.S. was producing around 11 million barrels a day.
The Permian Basin, America’s largest oil field, has been hard hit. Production in the area that straddles western Texas and
New Mexico is down between 65 percent and 80 percent.

The melting Arctic has been watched closely by countries like China and Russia who are looking to take advantage of the increasingly available shipping lanes. But scientists have lamented the latest milestone, and are sounding the alarm about further environmental degradation due to increased shipping activity.

It is a very dangerous turning point

says Associate Professor Nengye Liu, an expert in international polar law at Macquarie University.

In Revelation 6:8-9 we can see that “Global Warming” is the result of the 4th Vial of God’s Wrath –

   8 And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and power was given unto him to scorch men with fire. 9  And men were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the name of God, which hath power over these plagues: and they repented not to give him glory.

+

‘Too late’:

David Attenborough warns Earth faces ‘total collapse’

Nick Whigham ·Assistant News Editor | Yahoo News| 24.2.20-21

The world’s most famous naturalist has issued a dire proclamation about the state of the planet, warning Earth is facing “the collapse of everything” if we continue on our current path.

94-year-old Sir David Attenborough warned overnight that climate change is the biggest security threat modern humans have ever faced while addressing the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) session on climate, saying it was “already too late” to stem the diabolical impacts of global warming.

   “There is no going back, no matter what we do now, it’s too late to avoid climate change and the poorest, the most vulnerable, those with the least security, are now certain to suffer,”

he said.

“And if the natural world can no longer support the most basic of our needs, then much of the rest of civilisation will quickly break down.”

Arthur Wright, Kallangur, Brisbane

+++

Related

1. Global Climate Change. Overstated or Understated?
2. Earth Is In Serious Trouble If We Don’t Make Major Changes. Period.
3. Stop the depletion of the earth
4. Earth had its coolest February since 2014
5. Climate Change Responsibility
6. The Triple Crisis: Coronavirus is increasingly linked to global warming and remaking the economy, call it a socialist trifecta
7. Sea-level rise caused by climate change> LTE Under Consideration: Re: March 1 Article, “Was climate change to blame?”
8. Scientists stunned to discover plants beneath mile-deep Greenland ice
9. New Permian Methane Leakage Study Confirms What We Already Knew
10. Routine Gas Flaring Is Wasteful, Polluting and Undermeasured
11. Rare Lizard’s Habitat May Open Up
12. “Arctic air freezes Permian shale fields”… Fake news?
13. Texas Oil Giant ExxonMobil Sells Some North Sea Drilling, Exploration Sites Amid Muted Oil Prices
14. Clean Fuel Opens Door for Sustainability
15. The two gravest threats to humanity
16. 60,000 Belgians take government to court over alleged climate inaction

Migration not something to fear

With the terrorist attacks in Paris last weekend, the European Union was shocked again and the social media went as a roller-coaster shouting love and hate messages.

In most messages which tried to bring fear and hate against non-Caucasians and people of an other faith than Christendom we noticed that that’s a gross of given numbers was overestimated a lot. Many overestimate the amount of illegal citizens as well as the amount of refugees.

What does “fair” migration look like? Does protecting citizens’ rights depend upon limiting migrants’ freedoms? Or is migration actually one of the best weapons we have in the fight against poverty, injustice and social immobility – on both sides of our border?

Lets look at real ciphers:

Ten years ago, developing countries hosted 70% of the world’s refugees. In 2014 it could reach 86% of the amount of which those who reached Europe were just a very tiny percentage 4 à 5 %  of the total population of Europe.

The 49 least-developed countries – places like Chad, Malawi, and Yemen – provide asylum to 2.4 million exiles. By whatever measure you choose, the idea that the West is under siege from would-be refugees flies in the face of statistical evidence. In Pakistan, there are 552 refugees for every dollar per capita GDP; that number is 303 in Ethiopia, and 301 in Kenya. For the US, UK and Australia, the equivalent numbers are 5.4, 4.7 and 0.9.

In certain developed states we can see that people move around quite a lot to find work opportunities. This might not be so much in Belgium and Holland, but for France and other countries the locals often have to emigrate to an other place to be able to survive. Spanish, Greek and Portuguese we may find looking for work in Germany.

Most of us, if we move at all, do so within the borders of our own country – from Manchester to London, or from New York to California. In fact, we are at least six times more likely to migrate across a country (from one region to another) than we are to move across a border. There are at least 740 million domestic migrants. Few today would suggest we should restrict these migrations – in fact, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights explicitly prohibits such restrictions. But however obvious this may seem to us, your right to move within the borders of your own is relatively recent. The US Supreme Court, for instance, only definitely confirmed US citizens’ ‘fundamental’ right to ‘move at will from place to place’ across state lines in 1920.

Stamp of Moldova: 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In 2013, according to the World Bank, there were 232 million people living outside the country of their birth. This is a significant number: but it isn’t overwhelming. It means that just 3% of the world’s 7 billion inhabitants are international migrants. The real puzzle about the age of global mobility is arguably not why so many people are moving across borders, but why so many are not.

Lots of people are afraid to loose their jobs when refugees come to live and work in their country. they must see that when more people are coming to live here, there shall be a need of more housing facilities, more products to be made for the growing amount of consumers, and those coming to work here shall also contribute to the social security providing enough money to pay for the older generation which shall be able to do more in their retirement.

Until 2008, Swedish labour migration was among the most restrictive system in the developed world: trade unions ‘had, and used, an informal veto on recruitment’. Today, its labour migration system is one of the most liberal. Employers – having first advertised the job to the local EU market for 10 days – can effectively recruit any worker, for any job, from anywhere. The result? Swedish workers working for firms recruiting labour migrants earn on average 10.5% more than those working in firms that don’t. The recent rise of the far-right Swedish Democrats risks pulling apart this liberal – and successful – model for labour migration

When it comes to inequality, birthplace is destiny. In 2012, researchers at the World Bank determined that no less than 50% of our lifetime income is determined solely by the country we live in — which, for 97% of us, is also the country we were born in.  It’s a citizenship lottery – and those of us lucky enough to be born in wealthy states are automatic winners.

This means international migration is one of the only ways in which individuals can redress the arbitrary inequalities of citizenship assigned at birth. And it works – a migrant who moves from a low-income to a high-income country can expect, on average, a 15-fold increase in income — and a 16-fold decrease in child mortality rates.

Emigration is not a one-way flow: Western citizens leave their home countries too.

In 2014, at least 5.6 million British citizens lived permanently abroad. And while some of them may prefer to call themselves “expatriates”, 40% of these emigrants – an estimated 2.2 million UK citizens – are EU migrants by any other name.  That balances neatly with the 2.3 million EU migrants from other states who have come to the UK.

Did those ex-pats bring problems to the countries they moved to? Did those migrating people bring more criminality in those visited countries?

The US has experienced a 45% drop in violent crime rates since 1990. During the same period, the number of unauthorised migrants climbed from 3.5 to 11 million, and the percentage of the population who were foreign born rose from 8 to 13%. Correlation, of course, is not causation.  But it is a good indication that more migration does not translate into more crime.  And in fact, researchers from the US have similarly concluded that ‘broad reductions in violent crime during recent years are partially attributable to increases in immigration’. In the UK, immigrant “enclaves” – defined as neighbourhoods where at least 30% of the residents are immigrants – have lower levels of crime and victimisation than similar socio-economic areas without a large immigrant presence.

We must be honest and we must be sincerely looking at the reality of the migration issue.

Perhaps it would be better if more people would consider how a migration could keep a certain balance and how the refugees of today perhaps can be the solution for the problems we shall have to face when the boomchildren are going to retire.

Remember also what shaimaa khalil BBC @Shaimaakhalil by mobilitymuse twittered today

Refugees are not the cause of violence,they are the people trying to flee it. Hope EU leaders remember that as they deal with #ParisAttacks

• With thanks for the text-material to “Migrants and Citizens” which poses the big questions we need to be asking about immigration and inequality.

+

Preceding:

What we don’t say about the refugee crisis?

Human tragedy need to be addressed at source

Real progress leaves nobody behind

++

Additional reading:

1. Built on or Belonging to Jewish tradition #3 Of the earth or of God
2. Welfare state and Poverty in Flanders #3 Right to Human dignity
3. Welfare state and Poverty in Flanders #8 Work
4. Economic crisis danger for the rise of political extremism
5. Refugee crisis, terrorist attacks and created fear
6. Europe’s refugees just follow the ancient routes for the peopling of Europe in the Neolithic
7. Is ISIS a product of American in-action or a product of direct action
8. Islamophobic hate crimes rise in UK following terror attacks
9. Paris attacks darkning the world
10. Trump brand of migrant demonization #1
11. Trump brand of migrant demonization #2
12. Europe and much-vaunted bastions of multiculturalism becoming No God Zones
13. Wrong ideas about religious terrorism
14. State and attitude of certain people to blame for radicalisation
15. The world Having to face a collective failure
16. Can We Pay The Price To Free Humanity?
17. Bringing into safety from Iraq and Iran

+++

Further reading

1. Welcoming the Refugee – Choosing to Walk Away from Fear
2. Feelings on Refugees, Post-Paris Attacks
3. The other side
4. So many women stand waiting behind fences…
5. The Migration of the Irish to Newport in the 1800’s.
6. America, the Not So Promised Land – The New York Times
7. Walter Noteboom’s Emigration Record from the Netherlands
8. San Marino and Paris
9. Beach Bound
10. Poll: Third of Jewish Israelis favor urging Arab Israeli emigration
11. The Feld family – part two
12. Dithane and Doodlebugs
13. Jews Leave Europe as Arab-Muslims arrive
14. Armenia’s independence generation
15. Leaving on a jet plane, don’t know when I’ll be back again!
16. Moving Home, Moving On
17. Looking for emigrants from the Rhineland?
18. I Need to share…
19. Hello from the other side…

+++

 

Related articles

• What Rights Do Refugees Have?
• Britain’s Police State: Targeting Key Individuals, Stifling Free Speech, Arbitrary Detention
• Human Rights Day
• UK plans could be part of new EU treaty, says French minister
• The Migration Crisis and Europe’s Crippling Doubts
• World Congress of Families Welcomes Pope Francis and The World Meeting of Families
• EU leaders pledge $1 billion for Syrian refugee camps
• Migrant Surge Tests Sweden’s Open-Door Policy
• Slovakia will not implement mandatory EU migrant quotas, PM says
• BOOM: German Town Shows Surefire Way to Keep Muslims Out… This Is BRUTAL

Social media and asylum seekers

For sure we have thousands of people now coming to Europe with the idea they can escape the war in their country and find a heaven on earth in Europe. Lots of them had enough money to escape the war-zones and left those behind who are to poor, to old or not in good health.

When hearing about the reason why so many are going to one or another Western country, like Germany, Sweden, Belgium or the Netherlands, we come to hear that many of them got to know those countries from what they heard and saw on the internet and from the messages they got on their phones or tablets.

Alias Yalensis on his blog Awful Avalanche looks at a writing from Evgeny Chernykh, who writes about the refugee crisis rocking Europe.

May we believe those writers like cyberwar expert, Elena Larina, who is quoted in the piece, that the refugees and we are victims of a “special operation”, organized by the powers-that-be?

It could be that they have not bad reason to believe some superpowers and bad willing groups are using mass media, especially Twitter, to lure the refugees from Syria to Europe.

One must always keep in mind that the American-sponsored “Arab spring” began in Tunisia, and not for nothing was called the “Twitter Revolution”.  Tunisia, and the ensuing “color revolutions” were proof of concept operations.  They proved that large numbers of people (in the tens and even hundreds of thousands) can be politically manipulated, even physically moved around, via social media. {Twitter Feed Lures Hordes to Europe}

A protester holding a placard in Tahrir Square referring to Facebook and Twitter, acknowledging the role played by social media during the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Is it possible that Chernykh who also quotes PhD philosopher Vladimir Shalak have good reason to belief in Shalak his special analytical computer program against Twitter.

The results show the marketing campaign to attract refugees under the hashtag «Welcome, refugees».   The two countries named most as being receptors, were Germany and Hungary. {Twitter Feed Lures Hordes to Europe}

According to the blogger:

Analysis also shows that social media provided the refugees with maps, routes, transportation info, tipsheets on how to comport themselves with police and speak to the media, etc. {Twitter Feed Lures Hordes to Europe}

+

Preceding articles

Poster: Please Help The Refugees

The World Wide Refugee and Migrant Crisis and a possible solution for it

 

++

Additional articles of interest:

1. Sharing a common security and a common set of values
2. Cognizance at the doorstep or at the internet socket
3. Faith related boycotts
4. Mocking, Agitation and Religious Persecution
5. Economic crisis danger for the rise of political extremism
6. Americans wrongly informed about situation in Europe
7. Fitting the bill in the North and in the East
8. The Protester named Person of the Year 2011 by Time Magazine
9. Cool Person of the year 2011
10. 2014 Social contacts
11. Continues Syrian conflict needing not only dialogue
12. Can We Pay The Price To Free Humanity?
13. Are people willing to take the responsibility for others
14. If Europe fails on the question of refugees, then it won’t be the Europe we wished for
15. State of Europe 2015 – Addressing Europe’s crises
16. Schengen area and Freedom for Europeans being put to the test as never before
17. Europe’s refugees just follow the ancient routes for the peopling of Europe in the Neolithic
18. Why Russia backs Assad: a view from Russia’s anti-imperialist left
19. Meeting to focus on humanitarian issues for Syria
20. Propaganda war and ISIS
21. African misery and women inequality

+++

Related articles

• Top Ten Facts About the Arab Spring
• Deleted Politician Tweets Site, Which Twitter Blocked, Now Preserved on Internet Archive
• Denmark closes road as refugees attempt to reach Sweden by foot – video
• Syria and Turkey’s imperial dream
• Calls in ‘Democratic’ Tunisia to Support Violence Against Israel
• World › Refugees spurn France in search for better life
• Drought and migration > Syria wasn’t prepared for the effects of climate change, and neither are we.
• Good Question: Why Are Syrian Refugees Fleeing Their Homeland?