I am delighted by the apparent sea-change in media opinion on the treatment of refugees, but concerned that in modern society compassion only seems able to operate in a wave of emotional hysteria rather than as a fundamental, underlying everyday principle. There is also a danger that those arriving in the Mediterranean and Balkans are viewed, quite wrongly, as in some way different from those in the awful camps at Calais, who have been demonised all summer, reaching its peak when a child being killed by a train led to vicious media headlines about delays to British passengers.
Cameron and May’s apparent willingness to budge at least minimally in admitting more from Syria must be matched by a willingness to admit those from the Calais camps who are genuine refugees. I still have a home in Ramsgate from which you can actually see France. I for one am willing to make accommodation available at no charge to help out in the crisis.
These are troubling times. In London the National Youth Centre has cancelled a play, Homegrown, which explored Islamic radicalism, because it had an “extremist agenda”. By this they mean that it did what it was meant to, it explored the reasons that attract young people to terrorism including a revulsion at western foreign policy and the alienation from society of urban youth in a society that values materialism above all but increasingly restricts access to prosperity and choice. These are precisely the issues that modern playwrights ought to be considering, if they are worth anything.
However it goes against the government’s insistence that radicalisation is nothing whatsoever to do with our invasions and bombings of Muslim countries or the huge and burgeoning wealth gap in our society. We are supposed to view terrorism as a spontaneous outbreak of pure evil, for no reason. So the play was cancelled, after consultations between the National Youth Theatre and the Metropolitan Police. When you have the police deciding on the content of plays, you really are on the road to being a fascist state: we already have the police involved in what can be said in universities under the government’s definitively illiberal Prevent strategy.
Just as there is still no official admission that our invasions and bombings greatly boosted terrorist organisations, so there is still no official admission that the wave of terror and destruction we helped unleash on the Middle East, either by direct invasions or bombings or by proxy, by funding and through the Gulf States, is the root cause of much of the refugee crisis. It is good we are moving a tiny way towards helping. We should do very much more. And acknowledgement of our own culpability in the crisis should be an essential part of a new attitude.
“As a global criminal enterprize, it is very lucrative”.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/smuggling-refugees-into-europe-is-a-new-growth-industry/2015/09/03/398c72c4-517f-11e5-b225-90edbd49f362_story.html
It gets worse:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/as-tragedies-shock-europe-a-bigger-refugee-crisis-looms-in-the-middle-east/2015/08/29/3858b284-9c15-11e4-86a3-1b56f64925f6_story.html
The refugee crisis is not only the cause of wars. It is for a large part the result of the west plundering resource rich countries.. Instability, civil commotion and war are part of this process.
http://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/en/world-news/detail/articolo/migranti-migrants-migrantes-francesco-francisco-francis-43067/
David Cameron, may yet find a way for Britain, not to take any refugees.
However, reports suggested the UK Government would just be expanding a Syrian Vulnerable Person scheme, which has seen Britain take in just 216 refugees.
Cameron is not expected to allow tens of thousands of refugees to come to the UK and the expanded scheme is expected only to be open to those from the UNHCR camps on the border of Syria and not refugees who have arrived in Europe.
The developments follow a huge demand for action after photographs emerged on Wednesday showing the body of drowned three-year-old Syrian boy Alan Kurdi washed up on a Turkish beach.
http://www.thenational.scot/news/we-must-do-more-sturgeon-attacks-cameron-after-he-refuses-to-join-eu-sanctuary-plan.7198
Typo please read “caused by wars”
A significant proportion of Central American refugees in the US are unattended minors who have migrated from homeland full of kidnappings (human traders) and murder. Conservatives claim they only want the criminals deported, as cover for their genuine intent (as promulgated honestly by Trump) to send them ALL packing. Not only is it inhumane, it’s fiscally unfeasible as the cost would be hundreds of billions.
Syrian kid provides the solution to anyone who will listen:
<script
Would we be having this debate if demos kratos was taken litually?
If people assemblies were running the show, opposed to corrupt / corruptable politicians, and they were presented with actual facts, would recent wars and regime changes have taken place?
Obviously, a lot would be down to who presented the facts, but if society / polis were some how free from the concept of value, there would less chance of the facts being distorted.
Corbyn And The End Of Time – The ‘Crisis Of Democracy’
04 September 2015
http://www.medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/2015/800-corbyn-and-the-end-of-time-the-crisis-of-democracy.html
On the demonization of Jeremy and how the gatekeepers go into a gaggle like geese in print and on Twitter and with less brain than just one Greylag goose.
‘Ditum’s ostensibly anti-war piece was greeted with high praise by some notorious pro-war figures. John Rentoul, resident neocon networker at the Independent, thought it ‘brilliant’. The Times’ tireless armchair warrior, David Aaronovitch, tweeted Ditum, or ‘sd’: ‘That’s a spectacular piece, sd.’ Even more disturbing, David Frum – the ‘Dubya’ Bush speechwriter who invented the ‘axis of evil’ propaganda line – described the piece as ‘thoughtful’.
Ostensibly at the far-distant, liberal end of the media spectrum – in reality, a baby-step away – Chris Cook, policy editor of BBC Newsnight, lauded ‘a stunning piece’. Guardian columnist Marina Hyde – daughter of Sir Alastair Edgcumbe James Dudley-Williams, 2nd Baronet of the City and of the County of the City of Exeter – swooned: ‘I also thought this by @sarahditum was brilliant (and brilliantly uncomfortable)’.
We noted the tragicomic unanimity on Twitter:
‘Awful Sarah Ditum Iraq piece we RTd was “spectacular”, Aaronovitch; “stunning”, Cook, BBC Newsnight; “brilliant”, Marina Hyde, Gdn. The Club’
Guardian journalists Marina Hyde and Hadley Freeman responded by lampooning us as the conspiracy theorists we certainly are not.’
Oops Try this:
https://vine.co/v/eTZO5j3q9Vp
“If people assemblies were running the show, opposed to corrupt / corruptable politicians, and they were presented with actual facts, would recent wars and regime changes have taken place?”
This is the reset needed. Our broken political process needs a complete transfusion.
Using the jury system to select candidates who testify under oath what their political promises are. Then taxpayer-funded campaigns provide a level playing field for valid candidates.
More here on migrants being taken in by Russia. Kyrgyzstan has removed all border controls with Kazakhstan (which itself borders Russia and Uzbekistan) and both have joined the EAEC (Eurasian Economic Community). This article is of interest because it discloses the US failed attempts to spread its ‘freedom’ to the country via its Embassy in Bishkek.
http://nsnbc.me/2015/09/04/kyrgyzstan-has-officially-joined-the-eaec/
We know now that that was what was done in Kiev where Geoffrey Pyatt was running a non-governmental organization (NGO) Techcamp from the US embassy there. Some of us have suspicions that a similar operation was behind the bombing of Palestine on the same day MH17 was shot from the skies when, for the first time ever, ambassadors to Israel from UK, US and Canada, were all Jewish.
Looks like Germany are going to play the role of scapegoat on the refugee issue. Hungarian PM Viktor Orban, has repeated far and wide that, the refugee problem is a German problem.
Mr Orban went as far as to say the refugee problem isn’t a European problem, it’s a German one. Germany is in the process of accepting 800,000 refugees.
Quite how it’s all Germanys fault, I’m not sure as Mr Orban doesn’t go into detail, but he is the leader of the anti-immigration party,Fidesz.
Mr Orban didn’t touch on how the US,Saudi Arabia and EU countries razed the refugees countries to the ground, leaving them nothing but marauding murderous factions roaming the streets seeking blood, in the name of one god or another. But I’m sure it was on the tip of his tongue.
Syrian refugees are nothing if not tenacious, as one young Syrian cycles across Russia’s Arctic border with Norway.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/syrian-refugees-take-arctic-route-to-europe-1441273767
This guys endeavour, makes Peary and Cook’s look tame by comparison.
RT;
Cameron blames Assad and ISIS as partners in the crisis for more selective demonisation.
“The PM said he was “deeply moved” by pictures of a drowned Syrian boy who was found washed up on a beach in Turkey which went viral on Wednesday.
“Anyone who saw those pictures overnight could not help but be moved and, as a father, I felt deeply moved by the sight of that young boy on a beach in Turkey. Britain is a moral nation and we will fulfil our moral responsibilities,” he said.
“That’s why I sent the Royal Navy to the Mediterranean and saved thousands of lives. That’s why Britain meets our commitment of 0.7 percent of our economy spent on aid, much of which goes to North Africa, goes to the Middle East to help those countries.”
People of ‘conscience’ needed….
” Brandon Bryant, 27, from Missoula, Montana, killed scores of innocents – by his own admission – simply by pressing a button from a control room in New Mexico.
Bryant couldn’t take any more after following orders to shoot and kill a child in Afghanistan. He knew that following the orders was wrong, but the very fact that he had been ordered to murder people who it was clear to all were innocent, told him that he was fighting for some very bad people.”
http://republicbroadcasting.org/drone-operator-admits-he-was-ordered-to-kill-countless-innocent-civilians-including-children/
Earlier this year, the European Union came up with a triage plan for trying to resettle 60,000 refugees around Europe, but the plan exempted Hungary and Bulgaria, and Britain opted out. Clearly, the EU plan is inadequate to the task. Germany’s reception centers have received nearly 550,000 migrants, and Sweden’s 230,000. Other European nations, such as financially troubled Spain, have taken only slivers of the population.
Meanwhile, Hungary’s nationalist prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has cynically sought to frame the crisis as a battle for European identity against Muslim interlopers, introducing a repugnant layer of intolerance. “Is it not worrying in itself that European Christianity is now barely able to keep Europe Christian?” he said recently. “…We have no option but to defend our borders.”
In recent days, Hungary has banned thousands of migrants from traveling out of the Keleti train station in Budapest, leaving them stranded; Australia has turned back boats packed with migrants.
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-migrants-20150904-story.html
‘Nuff said…
This refugee crisis is just the excuse Cameron needed for more war in Syria.
Any refugees taken will be sent to the few places with lower demand for social housing ie. Northern mill towns, which have already been disproportionately screwed over by tory cuts.
I love your blog Craig, but this post, and the one on alcohol have shown you up as very middle class.
First of all, you post a weeks drink intake that would shame an average Scottish 14 year old. That is half a night out in Dundee! Drink 20 units a day for a month, then tell me there is no physical addiction. I used to come back from the normal ‘lads two weeks in the med’ with the shakes, and extreme paranoia for a week. So did my mates, and this was normal. We probably drank a bottle of spirits each a day for the 14 days. 🙂
Then you mention your 2nd home in Ramsgate today, yet said you were skint a little while ago!
You middle class tosser, you! 😉
Comrades – anyone know how we’d go about donating things like feminine hygiene products to these miserable wretches? We could buy some stuff locally and post it I suppose, but surely some organisation is arranging a bulk purchase/delivery which would be much more cost effective.
Thought I saw something about such deliveries in the Morning Star a week or so back, but if someone here has a definite example of a reliable, efficient organisation for this sort of thing, it would make more sense to go through them. Thanks.
O/T.
There’s a new production in the making of John McGraths, The Cheviot the Stag and the Black Black Oil.
For those of you who haven’t seen the original version, here it is:
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sb3qbFcLYZc
Well it quite clearly is not a “fascist” state, just as there is not a “mass-famine” happening in this country (Bevin the other day).`..`
Among the vast number of things that you don`t understand, Anon1, it is not surprising to find the meaning of the word `famine.
A famine is a situation in which the necessities of life are unprocurable by its victims. Thus, in the Irish Famines of the 1840s, food was being produced to the extent that Ireland`s agricultural exports continued undiminished- until labour shortages caused by mass starvation and emigration took effect. Amartya Sen has written a book about it- in almost all famines the problem is that the victims are too poor to buy what they need to survive.
My guess is that this is the case in Britain where hundreds of thousands of people no longer have the wherewithal to purchase shelter, clothing, fuel and food in the quantities necessary to sustain life. That would be a famine and all the signs are that it will get a lot worse before those causing it are swept aside by the people.
As to your inability to understand how the wars against a wide range of nations in the middle east and North Africa must lead to mass flight out of the region, I am not surprised by it. Neither am I surprised that your reflex is to blame `the left`for recognising the crimes of the imperial system which you, I take it, regard as a small price to pay for the comfort in which you fester.
What does surprise me is that you make an enormous fuss about a wholly imaginary genocidal event which you designate by the Ukrainian fascist term `Holodomor`while regarding the currently occurring crimes of the governments which you support as justifiable.
If the British government is not inclined to fascism why does it support, wholeheartedly, the undeniably fascist government of IsraelÉ
Glen.
Google,- Miriam Brett, she will put you right on how to help.
Glenn. Sorry one N.
Is it something in the drinking water, in the air, perhaps an obscure
fungus or virus? What can account for the massive and slowly
deepening collective mental illness of Western Europe?
It is surely an historically unprecedented phenomenon, this
determination of a people to cleanse a continent of a despised ethnicity: themselves.
Not very kind Juteman.
AFAIK Craig rents his flat in Edinburgh, so not a two home owner.
The alcohol consumption is surely of his own choosing. Not my bag but each to his own.
Mary: … You should hear the muck [Farage] has been spewing.
Mucky muck but not half as dangerous as the evil muck Verity Fox has been whispering.
Wickedness Bevin.
‘
The famine proved to be a watershed in the demographic history of Ireland. As a direct consequence of the famine, Ireland’s population of almost 8.4 million in 1844 had fallen to 6.6 million by 1851. The number of agricultural labourers and smallholders in the western and southwestern counties underwent an especially drastic decline.
About one million people died from starvation or from typhus and other famine-related diseases. The number of Irish who emigrated during the famine may have reached two million. Ireland’s population continued to decline in the following decades because of overseas emigration and lower birth rates. By the time Ireland achieved independence in 1921, its population was barely half of what it had been in the early 1840s.’
http://www.britannica.com/event/Irish-Potato-Famine
Note produce unaffordable to the Irish continued to be exported to Britain throughout.
Some years back, on a holiday to Ireland, we stood looking at a memorial in a village that listed all the names of the dead. Harrowing.
Robert: Thanks a lot. And no worries about the ‘n’ – I’ve certainly been called worse.
Did you mean Fox’s mouthings on the Iran deal Winkletoe?
UK’s Former Defense Secretary: The West ‘Surrendered’ to Iran in Nuclear Talk
September 03, 2015
http://dailysignal.com/2015/09/03/uks-former-defense-secretary-the-west-surrendered-to-iran-in-nuclear-talks/
Reported in The Daily Signal, the organ of The Heritage Foundation, a collection of Zionist supporting paleocons.
The site’s entries on Israel:
http://www.heritage.org/places/middle-east/israel?ac=1
Craig:
Istanbul is in Europe.
Scotland is in the UK