The world is losing its ability to prevent conflicts and the lack of "effective leadership" has led to the worst displacement situation since World War II, the UN refugee chief has warned.

Antonio Guterres, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said the twin crises in Iraq and Syria had created a serious displacement situation and the world showed no effective leadership to address the challenges.

"The Syria and Iraq mega-crises, the multiplication of new crises and the old crises that seem never to die, have created the worst displacement situation in the world since World War II," Mr Guterres said in an address to the annual meeting of Turkey's ambassadors stationed abroad.

He said over the last year, more than 13 million people have been displaced by the conflicts in Syria and Iraq.

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-01-07/world-losing-capacity-to-prevent-conflict-says-un-refugee-chief/6003544

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Who or what is the "world"? As we chastise Russia for, well, being Russia, and blame it for all the sins of the planet — from the downing of MH17, which Russia had nothing to do with, to the "annexation" of Crimea, which was Russian territory anyway — rather than invest time to help solve problems in cooperative manner, we create more conflicts that we don't need — often by flaunting agreements made with the said Russia...

The "sanctions" against Russia did not work too well, so what did the West do? Without any sizeable change in the relationship between demand and supply of oil, the West has artificially "crashed" the price of oil in order to hurt Russia. In the same motion, the West has also degraded the value of renewable sources of energy.

Two birds for the price of one. And of course the Saudis have been complicit in this deception... By accepting the regime of Saudi Arabia as a lovely little kingdom that often holds the world to ransom or plays the game the USA wants, we're carrying on helping those conflicts rather than solve them. It is the form of Islamic fanaticism coming out of Saudi Arabia that fuels the ISIL extremism. Syria and Iraq are just two of the little conflicts, in which we get involved, not about ideologies but about ressources. In Africa, the same is happening (I would suggest with the help of the Saudis). Colonialism has changed its name and operation to a new format of serfdom, where entire countries (even continents like Europe) are not allowed away from the teats of debt and dependency from the US "neoliberalism (neofascist) machine. I mean it. It's not subtle at all. It's plain like the nose in front of our face... but looking at it demands a mirror...

Read the articles at top contained in the image... Caring?... 

Note the date of the articles and that of their publication differ by one day...

The edition of the Sydney Morning Herald as show at top, 26 January 1965, did not mention "Australia Day"... 

Unlike the Fourth of July or the 14 Juillet, the National day in Australia was a mute affair until the early 1980s though this record of history is slightly misleading: Australia day in Sydney was well celebrated in 1983.

http://www.australiaday.org.au/australia-day/history/

Privately though, there was some various celebrations... I remember in the early 1970s, the 26th of January was a date commemorated since the 1960s for deep reflection and intellectual discourse about the country by my mates of the writing and artistic intelligentsia.  

It was a sobering time where culture was the core of the discussions, drawing back into the visions of Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson's works. Aborigines were not forgotten. It not a sober time as beer and wines were liberally consumed in a very communistic manner. Most of the people were socialists (many former communists)...

The only mention of capitalism was about the way authors were always screwed by publishers...

The difference between the articles and publication dates is due to Australia being nearly "one day ahead" on the international time zones. With Abbott is charge, of course, Australia is more than 50 years behind at present...