Longtime British Member of Parliament Jeremy Corbyn this weekend won the leadership of the Labour Party with 60 percent in a field of four candidates.
In his address before the Labour Party, Corbyn said: “Let us be a force for change in the world, a force for humanity in the world, a force for peace in the world and a force that recognizes we cannot go on like this with grotesque levels of global insecurity, grotesque threats to our environment all around the world without the rich and powerful governments stepping up to the plate to make sure our world becomes safer and better. And those people don’t end up in poverty, in refugee camps, wasting their lives away when they could be contributing so much to the good of all of us on this planet. We are one world, let that message go out today from this conference center here in London.” [Video and transcript]
OLIVER TICKELL, oliver at theecologist.org, @the_ecologist
Tickell is editor of British-based journal The Ecologist. He just wrote the piece “Corbyn’s Political Earthquake Will Resound Long and Deep.” Last month, The Ecologist published a piece by Corbyn: “The Green Britain I Want to Build.”
Just after his victory address before the Labour Party, Corbyn spoke at a rally for refugees: “We need to have a thought as to why people end up in such desperate situations. I’ve been in parliament a long time and I’ve seen many decisions taken. And in moments of clamor and moments of fervor, decisions are made — go here, invade there, bomb there, do this, do that. It’s the easy situation, the media build it up, there’s lots of military advice, there’s lots of apparently simple and easy solutions. … The refugees move on and on, and there are whole generations of refugees around the world that are victims of various wars.” [Video and transcript]
JAMES PAUL, [in NYC], james.paul.nyc at gmail.com
Author of Syria Unmasked, Paul was executive director of Global Policy Forum, a think tank that monitors the UN, for nearly 20 years. He was also a longtime editor of the Oxford Companion to Politics of the World and executive director of the Middle East Research and Information Project.
Paul was just on an accuracy.org news release titled “Regime Change Refugees,” in which he states: “The migrants coming to Europe are mostly fleeting conflicts. The data on origins make that clear. The migrants are coming primarily from Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq and Pakistan in the Middle East, and to a lesser extent from Eritrea, Somalia and Nigeria in Africa. These are all countries with vicious conflicts — conflicts that (with the exception of Nigeria) began with Western military intervention, direct or indirect and continued to be fueled by intervention In Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia the intervention was very direct. In Syria, Pakistan and Eritrea, it has been less direct but very clear nonetheless.
