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.
Instead of allowing the powerful elite to turn indigenous and immigrant workers against each other, workers should in fact unite and seek to strengthen their power against the middle class establishment. When you consider that many of the immigrants have had military training and (if they hail from certain countries) at least a basic grounding in communist political ideology the powers that be should be getting very, very afraid:)
“Terrible waste. That could have covered the UK PFI bill for almost 14 hours.”
Or provided £1,000 pounds worth of humanitarian aid to 15,800 Syrian refugees.
Excellent piece by Black Catte in Off Guardian.
The Guardian: “bomb Assad and save the refugees”
The Guardian is currently providing us with a good example of what is often called the “problem-reaction-solution” method of controlling public discourse.
http://off-guardian.org/2015/09/04/the-guardian-bomb-assad-and-save-the-refugees/
4 September 2015
The first comment under this heading is of special interest.
http://off-guardian.org/about-2/
The terrorism of Islam and the old Catholic Church predates western exploitation of the Middle East. So, Craig, how do you blame the internecine conflict between Shia and Sunnis on western foreign policy? And it seems that when we open up a book, we see that history is replete with many examples of Islamic conquest in Asia, Europe and Africa – how did they achieve this? Through kindness and benevolence? The naivety, wilful ignorance and traitorous self-loathing displayed here is truly sickening. As if adding more unemployed refugees to your economies will reduce unemployment. As if adding more homeless people to your cities will reduce homelessness. As if adding more hungry people will reduce hunger, more poor people reduce poverty. Sure, stop the bombing and ignore the horrors that take place without western fingerprints daubed all over the crimes. But turning your backs on and a blind eye to the people of the Middle East who live under the totalitarian misery of Islam is no different than to impose that misery on them yourselves.
Pat Condell to whose video Jemand links has a banner on his Twitter featuring the Wailing Wall with Tweedledee and Tweedledum on top. ???
He retweets rubbish from others including UKIP’s Suzanne Evans and these little gems.
Pat Condell retweeted
The View from Israel @netre25 · Sep 2
@patcondell My final appeal to US Congressmen and women.
Save my life by voting no to the Iran deal.
https://soundcloud.com/nationalsecurityspeaker/my-final-appeal-to-us
and
Pat Condell retweeted
Cliff Rosen @cliffrosen · Sep 3
@patcondell Another tech miracle out of Israel. Let’s see the #BDS hypocrites boycott this.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/intels-game-changing-tech-another-haifa-milestone-says-firm/
etc etc
Get the picture?
I omitted a few retweets from Anne Marie Waters, a failed UKIP csndidate and now of Sharia Watch.
https://twitter.com/patcondell
By their retweets, thou shalt know them.. or similar.
Evil couched underneath a humanitarian sounding heading. You have to get towards the end for the ‘more war’ message.
Aylan Kurdi: this one small life has shown us the way to tackle the refugee crisis
Jonathan Freedland
The three-year-old’s tragic death was the result of geopolitical upheaval but local, human action can save others like him
‘Of course, this could never be a whole solution. Action for refugees means not only a welcome when they arrive, but also a remedy for the problem that made them leave. The people now running from Syria have concluded that it is literally uninhabitable: it is a place where no one can live. They have come to that conclusion slowly, after four years of murderous violence. To make them think again would require action a thousand miles away from the level of the district council, an international effort to stop not just the killers of Isis but also Bashar al-Assad’s barrel bombs.
That might mean the creation of safe havens and no-fly zones. More trenchant voices say the bombs won’t stop until anti-Assad rebels can fire back with anti-aircraft weaponry. Those wary of military action, which always risks making a hellish situation worse, prefer diplomacy. After the breakthrough on the nuclear issue, could there not be progress with Iran – whose military backing, along with Russia’s, has helped sustain Assad in power, and maintained his killing machine, for so long?’
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/04/aylan-kurdi-refugee-crisis
Where have we heard similar before?
Moses killing the palace guard and running away as a start somehow ought to have escaped your attention, but there again every religion is bad other that absent ones in your comments, which somehow always guns for Christianity and more so Islam.
Furthermore in your concern for the “people of the mid east”, your nostrums are quite enlightening;
Which of course relies on;
Basically fomenting an all out religious war to end all religious wars seems to be a constant running through your comments, that as in the latest is advocating;
Patently sickening is your jaundiced view of humanity in general that is coming through loud and clear. This further highlights a certain demographics getting in the neck more than the others. Your bigotry and intolerance disguised as the “atheistic” loathing of religion in a demonstrably dogmatic style nonetheless. It is a smoke screen to disregarding the unfolding human tragedy that apparently ought not to be paid any attention to and the dislocated victims of the wars fomented by the West ought to be left to their own devices, in the way of realising your sick world view!
Mary
05/09/2015 9:42am 9:59am
You are so right. This Black Catte lady has cut through the MSM verbiage with a scalpel. I have seldom seen anything so brilliantly concise.
One thing seriously troubles me though. If she is correct that the MSM is following a thought-out agenda, how comes it that the tragic deaths of the little Syrian boy and his family came at a time which was so useful? Any thoughts other than that of an unhappy accident are so ugly that I hardly even want to go there. I can understand that it is hardly uncommon for young child refugees to lose their lives, but what about the photographs, were they just an unhappy accident too? I very much hope so.
Thank you for the links to this site – I was not aware of it and it is a real eye-opener.
Kind regards,
John
Mary thanks for that Black Catte link, great article.
Jemand
Are you sure you haven’t got the book upside down? I could have sworn there are far more mentions of brutal European conquests of far away and not so far away countries. Very frequent mentions of genocidal destruction of local populations (that’s one thing Muslims never did), forced conversions to Christianity, and destruction of other religions’ places of worship (only two mosques survive in Spain for example, only surviving because converted to churches).
“If she is correct that the MSM is following a thought-out agenda, how comes it that the tragic deaths of the little Syrian boy and his family came at a time which was so useful?”
I don’t think it has been useful, I think it has been an unwelcome distraction. I think the key image this week was supposed to have been that of hundreds of refugees walking down the motorway in Hungary to reach Austria. That would have implanted the “fearful dispossessed rattling Europe’s gates” idea very effectively.
The effect of the Syrian boy’s death has been to arouse genuine human compassion when we should have been feeling fearful.
Mary
5 Sep, 2015 – 10:56 am
I note a comment in response to Aylan Kurdi: ‘..this one small life…’ -is worth repeating here:
“Iran – whose military backing, along with Russia’s, has helped sustain Assad in power, and maintained his killing machine, for so long?”
Putin’s responsibility of course..
“They’re not too worried about costs, because there are existing programmes administered by the UN and largely funded by the European Union.”
And who funds the EU? The European states .And who funds the European states?
But since Mr Freedland, “A leading liberal Zionist ” according to Wikipedia, did not miss the quasi religious ritual of referring to the Holocaust, he may be reminded that Madeleine Jana Korbel Albright, (born Marie Jana Korbelová ), former US secretary of State,a Jewess who has been through WW2 and as such is a double authority, said that the death of 500,000 Iraqi babies was worth it ( in fact one million according to the UN, because of the embargo).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM0uvgHKZe8
Under her moral umbrella, is it possible to declare that the death of this infortunate child is worth it if it could deter more of these illegals intruders to undertake their adventurous expeditions whether from the Near East, Africa or the rest of the world?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pX-vSbnGReo
MJ
05/09/2015 1:52pm
If that was planned to be the key image, then either it happens every week, or the Hungarian authorities and the MSM and maybe agents provocateurs among the refugees must have colluded to engineer such an image.
Do you think that it has been as deliberate as that?
Kind regards,
John
http://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-arrest-up-for-debate-as-uk-petition-hits-target/
O/T
Mention of this E-Petition has been in many threads on this website . This Saturday morning it hit the magic 100K+ figure . When these Government E-Petitions were introduced in 2011 the then leader of the House of Commons Sir George Young said : They will provide ” a megaphone ” through which the public could make their views heard . It looks like they’ve heard from Tel Aviv to Whitehall . # Netanyahu WE don’t want you here unless it’s behind bars facing criminal charges !!
There’s talk now of anti-Assad “rebels” being given anti-aircraft weaponry. It will ease the refugee crisis apparently.
Why would we want to give “ISIS” anti-aircraft weaponry? Perhaps it’s because, in the last few days, Russia appears to have started its own airstrikes against “ISIS” in Syria:
http://theaviationist.com/2015/09/02/russians-against-isis-over-syria/
“Do you think that it has been as deliberate as that?”
All they had to do was shut down the trains for a few days.
Whenever you see an item of news or a package aired on the telly, do you ever ask why am I being told this?
There are millions of events taking place around the world, and you get to know only those that are selected for your viewing or reading, do your ever question why am being told this?
Who decides and what is the basis for their decision that an item makes/becomes the news or not?
The little boy so innocently sleeping face down is one of the hundreds of thousands if not millions whom have died at their early infancy due to the wars that have been directly or indirectly waged on the benighted inhabitants of the oil soaked lands of the mid east. Why do you see this one little boy while other little boys and girls whose mangled bodies and bereft parents searching to pick up their dearest angle’s flesh and placing it in a carrier bag for a burial goes unnoticed and is never mentioned?
It is not a deliberately staged death, if that is what you are driving at? It is a shameless exploitation of a “photogenic corpse” that is being masqueraded as a preamble for the up coming events that judging by the past performance in all probability is; “bomb to freedom and democracy” brand!
Go read the evil and purportedly “godless” jemand comment and check out the bigger picture;
Wars today!
Wars tomorrow!
Wars forever!
Becky
The problem is that those refugees with a basic education in communism have not acquired it in circumstances which recommend it to them. Applies even more of course to all the Hungarians who fled in 1956.
MJ
05/09/2015 2:27pm
Yes, I know. But that was either a fortuitous coincidence, or the Hungarian authorities were persuaded to do it in order to give the MSM a good show.
J
Israel should take in refugees fleeing Mideast carnage, Yesh Atid lawmaker says
4 September 2015
http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Politics-And-Diplomacy/Israel-should-take-in-refugees-fleeing-Mideast-carnage-Yesh-Atid-lawmaker-says-415257
Also Isaac Herzog
Herzog: Jews cannot be ‘indifferent’ to the plight of refugees
“I call on the Israeli government to carry out a process of absorbing refugees from Syria,” said Herzog on Saturday, hours after Germany and Austria open their borders to thousands of migrants. http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Politics-And-Diplomacy/Herzog-Jews-cannot-be-indifferent-to-the-plight-of-refugees-415304
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Men
Chickens come home to roost. What comes around goes around. Sow the wind. Reap the whirlwind.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/05/world/europe/migrant-crisis-hungary.html
This is how its done! Note the Albanians in this incident are Kosovan Muslims.
Fedup
05/09/2015 2:27pm
It seems to me that the UK state is going to be presented with a more and more serious propaganda problem over the coming years.
The neoconservative agenda has the following major strands: the roll back of spending on the domestic welfare state, and simultaneously the need for swift and effective intervention in parts of the world where elite Western interests are threatened. More and more of the UK population, not being idiots, are going to start asking the reasonable question, how come we have all this money to spend on bombing and invading other parts of the world, yet we have no money to take care of our own citizens?
Furthermore, the refugee situation is presumably not going to get better: it’s going to get worse. If we go and bomb Syria, is that going to make the refugee situation better? That’s laughable.
You have to get the citizenry in some measure to be on your side. One way to do that is the stigmatization of beneficiaries of the welfare state, by characterising them as scroungers, lazy, criminals etc., until the majority of the population couldn’t care less what happens to them. Large numbers of the citizenry are in that state of mind already, judging by the comments I read on the Internet.
Another way to do that may actually be to take in refugees. I refuse to believe that Cameron’s suddenly discovered compassion is due to anything other than hard-nosed political assessment. If we take in a few thousand, and then a few thousand more, and so on, and publicize it, many people in the UK may start to think, not entirely unreasonably, that we can hardly have the whole world on the mainland UK, and say: “Enough’s enough. No more refugees.” And then the gates will be closed, with the approval of the populace.
Just a few thoughts.
Kind regards,
John
Craig writes ” I for one am willing to make accommodation available at no charge to help out in the crisis” and all honour to him for that.
It reminded me a little of Phil, who used to post on here quite frequently: all honour to him as well for telling us that, alongside posting on various matters (I happened to disagree with most of his ideas), he was actively involved in helping (I think it was) homeless people.
However, Craig and Phil – there are perhaps others? – appear to be in a minority amoung the posters on here.
Which minds me to refer back couple of threads to our friend Mary. Readers will recall that Mary suggested – I imagine seriously – that “Her Majesty”, as she referred to Queen Elizabeth, should offer one of her several palaces in order to accomodate homeless refugees/asylum seekers.
That moved me to suggest to Mary that she might possibly consider offering to put up one (only one) of those unfortunate people for a short while. This was on the basis that she lives alone in a house with sufficient sdpe to put up someone for a short while.
Curiously enough, Mary has not yet seen fit to respond to my suggestion, whether positively or negatively.
I hope that her silence – which I’m sure she will now wish to break – does not put her into the category of commenters who, unlike Craig and Phil – are big on the keyboard but small when it comes to doing something concrete to help alleviate, albeit modestly, the miseries they constantly refer to.
I sdhould therefore like to renew my suggestion
Is Israeli preparedness to occupy Syria on the cards?
Oded Yinon.
“Greater Israel”: The Zionist Plan for the Middle East
http://www.globalresearch.ca/greater-israel-the-zionist-plan-for-the-middle-east/5324815
The Zionist Plan for the Middle East
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/pdf/The%20Zionist%20Plan%20for%20the%20Middle%20East.pdf
Peter Beswick
“Mixing blame with charity will not root out the corruption in society that the public have allowed to take hold.”
________________
Perhaps not, Peter, but would you not agree that doing something oneself – however modest in itself – might be preferable to just sitting back and blaming everything on the govt or the “corruption in society”?
After all , there is such a thing as society, is there not, and we are all part of it (including the most vociferous commenters on here)?
“In London
Three-year-old ultra-Orthodox Jewish children told ‘the non-Jews’ are ‘evil’ in worksheet produced by London school
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/threeyearold-ultraorthodox-jewish-children-told-the-nonjews-are-evil-in-worksheet-produced-by-school-10481682.html
The worksheet is in Yiddish. Why not English?”
__________________
I quite agree – the worksheet should have been in Hebrew and English.
I recall in this connection that OUR NHS (not to mention several govt departments) produces a lot of its brochures and advice sheetlets in English and a plethora of other languages including Gujerati, Hindi, Urdu, Polish and Romanian (but not, apparently, Hebrew or Yiddish). Of course there is the difference that the NHS’s (and other govt, departments’) literature is paid for by the taxpayer.