Note: Did the book mentioned that education was free, health care was free and and medicines were cheap, and Syria was debt-free in the last 2 decades?
Posts Tagged ‘debt free’
Forced Dispersion: A Demographic Report on Human Status in Syria (New Texts Out Now)
By : Rabie Nasser. Apr. 16, 2018
The Syrian Center for Policy Research, Forced Dispersion: A Demographic Report on Human Status in Syria (Beirut: Tadween Publishing, 2018).
Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book?
Rabie Nasser (RN): The Syrian Center for Policy Research (SCPR), an independent and non-profit research center, seeks to study and diagnose the socioeconomic roots and impact of the conflict in Syria. (I contend that Non-profit does Not mean Not biased to people financing the research center)
The research team worked to build a comprehensive framework to analyze the institutional, social, economic, and environmental status of the country and its people during the conflict; we called the new framework the Human Status of Syrian people.
One essential pillar of the framework is the demographic dynamics—factors like mortality, fertility, and migration of the population.
As the conflict caused severe impacts in terms of increasing conflict related deaths and wounded people, distortion in fertility patterns, and aggravation of forced displacement inside and outside the country, the team chose to conduct a national survey to build the analysis on hard evidence and to understand the dynamics of demographic distortions.
Based on said analysis, the book provided policy alternatives to counter the demographic consequences of the Syrian catastrophe.
J: What particular topics, issues, and literature does the book address?
RN: The book revisited the demographic transition in Syria before the conflict and produced new evidences on population growth, mortality, fertility, and migration. The results show that the last decade (2000-2010) witnessed some adverse results; the average annual population growth rate of the Syrian residents reached 2.9 percent for the period spanning from 2004-2010 (compared to 2.45 percent according to the official estimations), which reflects an increase in the fertility rate.
The pre-conflict analysis also shows an increase in mortality rate between the years 2007-2010, which profoundly reflects increasing deprivation of appropriate health services and living conditions.
Additionally, the life-tables of Syria that have been built for this book show that the life expectancy at birth in the official estimations (including the WHO ones) are overestimated and do not capture the reduction in life expectancy between the years 2007-2010.
These adverse shifts indicate the failure of population-related programs and policies that targeted reducing population growth rates, and it provides additional proof of the inefficiency of family planning programs in isolation from inclusive development.
During the conflict, the team conducted a non-traditional survey to capture the demographic transition. This survey revealed many indicators:
First, the crude mortality rate increased from 4.4 per thousand in 2010 to 10.8 per thousand in 2015, accounting for the indirect and direct deaths of about 1.9 percent of the total population.
As a result, the life expectancy declined significantly for males from 69.7 in 2010 to 48.4 years in 2015, and to a lesser extent for females, from 72 years in 2010 to 65 years in 2015.
Second, it estimated the total population inside Syria, which was 20.2 million people in 2015, about 31 percent of whom were displaced, along with 4.1 million refugees and migrants.
Consequently, the portion of the population that had not moved was about 57 percent of the total population inside and outside Syria. (A reassuring rate that Syrians are Not hot for moving away from their villages)
Third, the crude birth rate witnessed a notable decrease, from 38.8 per thousand in 2010 to 28.5 per thousand in 2014, which reflected a decline in total fertility rate to 3.7 in 2014.
These results contradict many perceptions about increased fertility rates during conflict, particularly among displaced people. The lack of security, the deterioration of living conditions, and the general sense of instability accompanied by family fragmentation imposed by the conflict have led to the spread of early marriages and the exploitation of children and women’s rights. (May be the 57% of the steady population didn’t feel insecure?)
The book provides a critical assessment of the population policies and counters the narrative that assumed that high population growth is the core root of the conflict. This narrative neglects the role of political oppression and role of neo-liberal policies, which ultimately failed to achieve inclusive growth and human security.
The book suggests priorities for population policies to halt the conflict and overcome its impacts. In this context, dramatic changes in population policies should be adopted toward priorities of stopping the killing, guaranteeing the right to life, decomposing the economics of violence, and facing the challenges of forced internal and external migration to regain people and social cohesion.
The main issue during the conflict is to build population policies within effective and participatory institutions that take into account developmental and humanitarian dimensions in preparing, implementing, and monitoring phases of any policy.
Changes of the actors’ roles should be taken into account in building new institutions and contributing to future population policies. These actors include the state, emerged local powers, civil society, private sector, and the international community. (But never extremist Islamic factions, especially those Muslim Brotherhood allied to Turkey)
J: How does this book connect to and/or depart from your previous work?
RN: As SCPR attempts to understand the development paradigm in Syria, it recognizes the importance of the demographic transition as a key pillar of this paradigm. (The population transfer was done by the Extremist Islamic factions).
The mainstream analysis has been trapped in the family planning programs; therefore, SCPR chose to build a research project that reassess the demographic transition in Syria before and during the conflict.
The results clarified many important aspects that helped in assessing the developmental performance in Syria, like the failure in decreasing the fertility and morality rates during the intensive implementation of neo-liberal policies. It gives the team a comprehensive understanding of the conflict consequences on the population characteristics in terms of forced dispersion, gender and age distortion, conflict related mortality and morbidity, and human development.
This work creates many questions that need to be addressed, like the role of different policies—conducted by different actors—on the demographic transitions.
Many questions about the role of brutal military attacks, killing, kidnapping, looting, rape, and besieging on the population status in Syria need to be addressed in the future research agendas. (How far is this future?)
Finally, this work will be part of the background work that will help in designing the alternatives policies for Syria in the future.
J: Who do you hope will read this book, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?
RN: Our expected audience is members of the research and academic community, policy makers, civil society, United Nation agencies, and journalists. (How will it be disseminated on social platforms?)
We hope that this humble effort will clarify some of the demographic aspects that could help us to better understand the conflict dynamics and also help in providing evidence to support more effective interventions from the population status point of view.
Finally, we hope that this effort could help in establishing a more effective dialogue on demographic policies for the future of Syria.
J: What other projects are you working on now?
RN: Our main project that we are working on, with the participation of many researchers and experts, (any examples of these experts?, A few names?) is the Alternative Development Paradigm for Syria, which aims to build a constructive evidence-based dialogue on the future of Syria to counter the conflict and fragmentation and converge toward inclusive development path.
Additionally, we are working on studying the impact of the conflict on the socioeconomic situation in Syria during 2016-2017, focusing specifically on conflict-economy dynamics, food security, public health during conflict, and institutional dynamics.
J: What are the main debates that have been created around the results of the book?
RN: The first debate is about the official estimations of population growth fertility and mortality; this book exposes the official underestimation of deaths, births, and population growth.
The second debate revolves around the role of population growth and youth bulge (what that mean bulge in this context?); this book counters the narrative that suggested that this was a core root of the conflict.
Seeing as the same phenomena were a reason for sustainable development in East Asia, we brought the discussion back to the roles of institutional bottleneck, mainly the political oppression, and the neoliberal policies and the flourish of crony capitalism in creating the conflict environment and then fueling it.
The conflict results countered mainstream narratives that assumed that conflict leads to an increase of fertility among displaced people; our evidence shows the opposite, that the fertility rate dropped substantially (Because the Syrian people are educated and cultured?)
Another debate was on the population number and life expectancy estimations among other discussions. We believe that these debates are very important steps to build new conceptual and policy oriented frameworks that help us in understanding the roots and consequences of conflict in Syria and other similar countries. This could ultimately help to adjust developmental policies to an effort to prevent or counter the conflict and instability.
Excerpt from the Book:
Toward Participatory Population Policies
Syria is subject to one of the largest humanitarian crisis disasters after the WWII. Its roots are political oppression, subordination, exclusion, and suppression, in addition to a widening gap between the formal institutions and the society’s needs and aspirations, as these institutions have become neo-patrimonial entities motivated by loyalties and royalties. (What about interference of the colonial powers because Syria was debt-free?)
The social movement in Syria erupted to substantially change the structure of these institutions, intending thereby to ensure rights and public freedoms. The subjugating powers, including political oppression, fundamentalism, and fanaticism supported by external powers, have diffused the movement and led to nihilist armed conflict that has killed, injured, or disabled hundreds of thousands of people.
At the same time, many people have been subject to kidnapping, detention, and torture, which have pushed millions to leave their places of origin and flee to other places inside and outside Syria. This migration has resulted in radical changes in demographic indicators in Syria and dramatic shifts in the population map. Therefore, it is crucially important to build population policies in the short term, taking into account the immediate population needs while developing strategies for sustainable inclusive development.
During the first decade of the millennium, attention to population status increased in Syria through several procedures and pieces of legislation that focused on the reduction of fertility rates using family planning programs. Thus, the government aimed to control the relatively high population growth that was seen as an obstacle to economic growth and sustainable development.
This approach accompanied an absence of deep institutional reform, poor coordination between the concerned parties working on the demographic status, and a lack of effective monitoring and evaluation systems. Consequently, there was little efficiency and much confusion in the application of population-related policies, decisions, and actions. In this context, the demographic pre- crisis indicators show relative deterioration in deaths and fertility.
Formal institutions were obstacles to the development, creating major distortions in terms of efficiency, transparency, and accountability. These institutions failed to integrate the population issue within an inclusive development framework, neglecting the population issue in public policy and instead, in many cases, dealing with it from the purely demographic perspective, adopting approaches close to the neo-Malthusian perspective.
During the crisis, the developmental and institutional deterioration has deepened significantly and unprecedentedly, and all resources and potential have been reallocated to serve violence and subjugating powers. Population policies have thus been largely neglected focused mostly on food and medical aid distribution, raising awareness, and training courses without any evaluation of the courses’ relevance to, or impact on, society.
A more dangerous concern is that the provision of medical services, food assistance, and aid has been exploited as a tool in the conflict in favor of the warring parties. Overcoming the impacts of the crisis requires genuine and effective participation of all social powers, informed by future vision and using all available capacities; a lack of participatory involvement will impede the success and the sustainability of any future project.
In this context, and given the results from the research process in finalizing this report, priorities for population policies have been suggested in a framework of halting the conflict and overcoming its impacts. These priorities were compared with suggestions related to population policies before the crisis.
In this context, huge changes in population policies could be noted, as the suggested priorities changed from institutional transformation towards better investment in people’s capacities and a reduction in the fertility rate through a participatory development paradigm; also toward priorities of stopping the killing, guaranteeing the right to life, deconstructing the economics of violence, and facing the challenges of forced internal and external migrations to regain people and reestablish society.
The main issue during the conflict is to build population policies within effective and participatory institutions that take into account developmental and humanitarian dimensions in preparing, implementing, and monitoring phases of any policy. Moreover, changes of the actors’ roles should be taken into account in building new institutions and contributing to future population policies. These actors include the state, emerged local powers, civil society, the private sector, and the international community.
USA Territorial expansion and dominion under various excuses
Posted by: adonis49 on: September 30, 2017
USA Territorial expansion and dominion under various excuses
Here are a few samples of countries that US troops invaded and occupied under various excuses since Independence. Almost all of these countries have experienced repeated US military operations over the last 2 centuries
First, the reasons were for securing interest and US personnel safety.
Then, it was for maintaining Free Market for US export
Then the reasons were for creating “democratic systems” that the US and all colonial nations abhorred to institute abroad
Then it was for sustaining makeshift democracies while fully supporting all dictatorships around the world, as long as they were Not satellite to Soviet Union, or current China
Then fomenting extremist factions, (lately religious extremists of Al Qaeda and ISIS) in order to destabilize nations that were debt free from IMF and World Bank (like Syria, Iraq, Venezuela…)
1776–1794 – Chickamauga Wars, a continuation of the Second Cherokee War that included a larger number of native tribes attempt to halt the expansion of settlers into Kentucky and Tennessee
1785–1795 – Northwest Indian War, a series of battles with various native tribes in present-day Ohio. The goal of the campaign was to affirm American sovereignty over the region and to create increased opportunities for settlement.
1816 – Spanish Florida. United States forces destroyed Negro Fort, which harbored fugitive slaves making raids into United States territory.[RL30172]
1823 – Cuba. US landings in pursuit of pirates occurred April 8 near Escondido; April 16 near Cayo Blanco; July 11 at Siquapa Bay; July 21 at Cape Cruz; and October 23 at Camrioca.[RL30172]
1835–42 Florida Territory. US Navy supports Army’s efforts at quelling uprisings and attacks on civilians by Seminole Indians. Government’s efforts to relocate Seminoles to west of the Mississippi are hindered by 7 years of war.
1835–36 Peru. December 1835, to December 7, 1836. Marines “protected American interests” in Callao and Lima during an attempted revolution.[
1838–39 Sumatra (Indonesia). December 1838, to January 1839. A naval force landed to punish natives of the towns of Quallah Battoo and Muckie (Mukki) for depredations on American shipping.
1840 – Fiji Islands. July. Naval forces landed to punish natives for attacking American exploring and surveying parties
1842 – Mexico. Commodore Thomas ap Catesby Jones, in command of a squadron long cruising off California, occupied Monterey, California, on October 19, believing war had come. He discovered peace, withdrew, and saluted. A similar incident occurred a week later at San Diego
1870 – Kingdom of Hawaii. US forces placed the American flag at half-mast upon the death of Queen Kalama, when the American consul at Honolulu would not assume responsibility for so doing.
1871 – Korea. Shinmiyangyo. US naval force attacked and captured five forts to force stalled negotiations on trade agreements and to punish natives for depredations on Americans,
1882 – Egyptian Expedition. American forces landed to protect American interests during warfare between British and Egyptians and looting of the city of Alexandria by Arabs
1888 – Haiti. A display of force persuaded the Haitian Government to give up an American steamer which had been seized on the charge of breach of blockade.
1888–89 Samoan crisis; First Samoan Civil War; Second Samoan Civil War. US forces were landed to protect American citizens and the consulate during a native civil war.
1891 – Chile. US forces protected the American consulate and the women and children who had taken refuge in it during a revolution in Valparaíso
1894 – Rio de Janeiro Affair. A display of naval force sought to protect American commerce and shipping at Rio de Janeiro during a Brazilian civil war.
1846–48 – Mexican-American War US has annexed Texas in 1845. war ended with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Treaty gave the U.S. states of California, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and Wyoming.
1852–53 Argentina. US Marines landed and maintained in Buenos Aires to protect American interests during a revolution.
1853–54 Japan. Commodore Matthew Perry made a display of force leading to the “opening of Japan.”
1854 – China. American and English ships landed forces to protect American interests in and near Shanghai during Chinese civil strife.[
1853 Nicaragua. US forces landed to protect American lives and interests during political disturbances
1855 – Uruguay. United States and European naval forces landed to protect American interests during an attempted revolution in Montevideo
1856 – Panama, Republic of New Grenada. U.S. forces landed to protect American interests during an insurrection.
1859 – Paraguay. Congress authorized a naval squadron to seek redress for an attack on a naval vessel in the Paraná River during 1855. Apologies were made after a large display of force.
1868 – Colombia. US forces protected passengers and treasure in transit at Aspinwall during the absence of local police or troops on the occasion of the death of the President of Colombia
1898 – Spanish-American War US declared war with Spain. The war followed a Cuban insurrection, the Cuban War of Independence against Spanish rule and the sinking of the USS Maine in the harbor at Havana.
1899–1913 Philippine Islands. Philippine-American War US forces protected American interests following the war with Spain, defeating Filipino revolutionaries seeking immediate national independence and colonized the Philippines
1918–20 Soviet Union. Marines were landed at and near Vladivostok in June and July to protect the American consulate and other points in the fighting between the Bolshevik troops and the Czech Army which had traversed Siberia from the western front.
These are just a tiny samples of countries that have been repeatedly invaded.
The dropping of 2 atomic bombs, carpet bombing of Germany, North Korea, Viet Nam, Afghanistan, Iraq and the usage of defoliant Orange chemicals, depleted Uranium ammunition, phosphoric bombs and most weapons banned by the UN and collateral damages in successions, practicing tortures at a grand scale without anyone being tried at The Hague Tribunal for crimes against humanity is mind boggling of the violent brutality of US military engagement.
Mind you that England and France surrounded the US during the civil war (in Canada and Mexico) and the House of Rothschild blackmailed the US with exorbitant interest rates until Lincoln decided to issue the Green Buck.
If it were Not for Russia that came to the rescue with its naval fleet and securing gold reserve, the world have been much better off with a divided USA
