West responsible for migrants crisis: Academic

Press TV has conducted an interview with Anthony Hall, professor of globalization at the Lethbridge University, to discuss the plight of migrants and refugees.  

What follows is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: This migrant crisis or that of the refugees that are coming in, how much of this is a new phenomenon for Europe because these boats have been coming in before as well?

Hall: Yes we have seen of course Libya, the destabilization of Libya creating an influx of refugees into Europe. This disruption of areas to meet geopolitical strategies, war strategies, particularly in this case the strategies outlined a long time ago by Oded Yinon to destabilize the neighbors of Israel, this has of course consequences and disrupts and displaces and ruins people’s lives who have to run for their life, to seek other home so we need to be cognizant of what is beneath this refugee crisis, this humanitarian crisis.

Press TV: Well speaking of that, looking at the way the mainstream media has been covering this crisis, I do not see a lot of them discussing these root causes what is happening in Libya for example or even in Syria. Why do you think that is so?

Hall: Well of course the western powers, the very countries that people disrupted and displaced are seeking to enter, these are the countries creating the situation and this is largely covert. It is now common knowledge among educated people that ISIL is largely created and financed and [spread] along by the western powers and Israel of course has an agenda to use them like a pawn in a chess game to make various moves. So this is meant to be kept from the westerners as taxpayers who pay for this, the reality that we are on both sides of this conflict, a very common banking practice, a hedge fund of you like, to fund both sides in conflict. This is becoming very oppressive now and very important in our geopolitics but must be kept from the knowledge of the average people, the tax payers paying for it.

So we do not get accurate interpretation of what really is beneath this humanitarian crisis. Thanks goodness for the likes of senior Gentiloni who speak of the need for soul, for spirit, for some kind of ethical response. Sweden has making an ethical response.

Press TV: Well speaking of that, what kind of response does this warrant exactly?

Hall: Well this warrants opening up western countries to immigration, to new citizens. This warrants citizenship training so that people are able in these countries in Europe and in the long-run North America, maybe South America as well to understand where the new immigrants are coming from.

Of course we see in the so-called developed countries a low birth rate so new population is taken from immigration. This is an old story. Most of the people here in North America are immigrants. We should be opening up to new waves to deal with the consequences of what our own governments, our own military industrial corporations, the disruption and the devastation that they are causing.  We need to ultimately abolish that, move towards peace but in the meantime we have to be cognizant of the disruption of people’s lives and do something about it.

Press TV: What would you say to those people who argue that opening up Europe’s borders would mean that these refugees will be a drain on their economies and also change the culture and identity of Europe?

Hall: Well it may to some extent be the case but we are all human beings, we are part of the human family and we have to be one another’s keepers. We have to embrace human rights and equal rights of all human beings for dignity and we cannot divide the world in a kind of an apartheid like separation between the haves and have nots. We have to get together, it may sound like a cliché but we have to embrace our common and shared humanity as well as our distinct religions, national personalities and find some compromise between these different types of identity - our universal identities and our specific identities.

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