Syrian Refugee Crisis Reaches Critical Mass

Over 8 million refugees from anarchic and war-torn Syria have been marching in a mass exodus from their home country, in the largest human migration in recent memory. This is not a new phenomenon, as refugees have been continually fleeing Syria since the beginning of its civil war on March 15, 2011; however, the number of people on their way out of the war zone has ramped up to its highest rate so far, in the wake of increasingly fierce fighting between the civil war’s various factions.

These 11 million refugees represent about a third of Syria’s entire population. According to the UN study on this crisis, half of these refugees are children under the age of 18. Families and children are filtering into what seems to be anywhere not under direct threat of all-out war. People have traveled into Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey, then further into Serbia and Hungary. Syrian smugglers continually ship refugees across the Mediterranean with little to no safety gear, which has resulted in thousands of deaths by drowning and shipwreck.

This unregulated shipping of millions of people throughout Europe has resulted in countless individual tragedies. A story which has captured the public’s attention on social media and the Internet is that of three year old Aylan Kurdi, a refugee from Syria who had drowned on a desperate escape attempt to Greece via a smuggler’s boat, which capsized on the journey. Aylan’s body washed up on a Turkish beach, and the pictures taken of the scene have been used to spread awareness and further arguments on Western intervention in Syria.

Obama and other US governmental officials have expressed sympathy for the Syrian refugees, and have raised the number of refugees that they are willing to accept into the country from two thousand to ten thousand – five times the original number.

US Acknowledges ISIS Chemical Weapons

The Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham, commonly known as ISIS, has been determined by US officials to be in possession of chemical weapons, specifically mustard gas. This confirmation has come from four different documented instances by the US government and a BBC journalistic team on the Syrian border.

Intelligence officials say that the most likely way that ISIS has obtained these weapons is through direct manufacture, by a small cell within the organization. An anonymous US official has commented that the method for producing mustard gas is commonly available, and is not comparatively complicated to produce.

The last time chemical weapons were used in Syria was when the previous regime, under dictator Bashar al-Assad, used chemical weapons on political protests against his government.   This prompted airstrikes and bombings from the West in retaliation and protest against the use of chemical weapons.

New Australian Prime Minister

In less depressing news, the Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, was ousted on September 14th, in favor of the election of fellow Liberal Party member Malcolm Turnbull. Tony Abbott has suffered plummeting opinion polls in the past few months, as the third Prime Minister of the country in as many years.

Turnbull is one of the more progressive members of the liberal party, marked by his stances in support of climate change science and gay marriage. Tony Abbott, despite being a member of his country’s liberal party, does not share these positions, which in all likelihood contributed to his low opinion polls.

Turnbull has been in office before, and was ousted as liberal leader back in 2009 by, surprisingly, Tony Abbott. In a strange reversal of fortunes, Turnbull has overturned the decision of six years ago, and once again is in control of the country.

Creative Commons photo source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/kingofdaventry/21351993812/