Of course I am afflicted by the suffering the refugees go through and it is shameful and evil, but the poor are always with us – and tyrannical régimes as well. I often see in the
Geneva region MiddleEast Beasts and fat Africans with limousines full of wives – flashy – wealthy. MiddleEast and Africa are wealthy places. The wealth is drained by despots, tyrants and foreigners (as well). Of course any community could improve but each can only improve his wee corner. In recent decades there has been too much store set on delivering “rights” whereas much more general good would have come from doing “duties”.
The current crisis of African and Middle Eastern migrants blackmailing the European community with the slogan “Grant us asylum and the sort of livelihood which you have made for yourselves in Europe or we will commit suicide in the sea” has, so to speak, pushed the boat out too far: it is the duty of these unfortunate refugees to set their own house in order, to make the sort of life they want for themselves in their country. Running away from their country and claiming that Europe is now responsible for their welfare is arbitrary dishonesty.
Foreign powers coming in is rarely a success – Foreigners have not the right to intervene! The removal of Saddam Hussein, with the enthusiasm of the stupid and ambitious Hillary Clinton was a disaster; Gaddafi’s downfall was just as pernicious etc.
I do not support a CIA-style “Arm The Rebels”, there must be a spiritual awakening – and I’m not talking about bells, incense and cloth of gold. An effective spiritual awakening is not beyond the wit of man. I might support the view that a Fisher Of Souls might be more strongly motivated to give succour to a victim than to kick his oppressor’s balls and that, if he can do that in saecula saeculorum, he’s happy.
Europe has had horrible periods, the 30 Years War, Cromwell in Ireland, Stalin , Hitler, Franco . . . and it just had to be sorted out by the fellows on the spot, that was their duty. It often cost them their lives, cost them torture, cost them the murder of their families – but it had to be done – by them. These realities must not be forgotten in a rush to be peaceful and throw money at evil. Evil must be faced, must be guarded against, with evil’s arms..
In Switzerland’s case,the Swiss have been criticized because they granted the vote to women only in 1972. A fundamental reality is that in the Rütli the primitive Swiss did not hold up their hands to swear allegiance to their confederation, they held up their swords – unladylike, until now.
This posting is bound to get a reaction, isn’t it ?
. “Grant us asylum and the sort of livelihood which you have made for yourselves in Europe or we will commit suicide in the sea” ….
Telling us that it is the refugees gift to stand tall and fight their oppressors on their homeground rather than flee as the wilding psychopaths rape and murder their wives ,while slaughtering their children.
On a local level I can still remember families racing for the border to get away from the burning streets of Belfast .It’s only forty -odd years ago. Many families never went back.
More universally , the human animal has past form at this kind of behaviour , stretching back some 800,000 thousands of years and more .It’s in his nature to do the things you see him doing across the world now. He’s only barely held in check when communal laws are obeyed When the hunter-gatherer stopped his wandering, transient life -style and tied himself to the land and the comparative hard work and slavery of growing wheat for his bread, he may have buggered up his gut but at least he formed settled communities.
He gathered around him ever larger families and communities and for the first time in human endeavour , he had something collected around him that was worth stealing .He could either stand still and fight for his chattels and his storehouses of wheat or run away and save his skin , only to die in the wilderness. Not much has changed . Mankind got to the pole position by basically exterminating every other species of humankind . such as the Neanderthals and the Denisovans and then …or in tandem,as his numbers grew rapidly, he made inroads into the other animal populations which shared the planet and harvested them merrily for food too. Before you could whistle he’d made many inter-connecting species which relied on each other in the food chain, extinct. He eventually even crossed the seas to places like Australia and hunted everything he could find to extinction there .My question is , why should any of us expect our species to change its nature when it has been so successful up to this point at domineering everything else?
It’s always been like this .The weakest suffer under the boot of the aggressor. We can help the weak at our own expense or we can allow them to die at the hands of our more greedy and violent cousins.It’s too late to do anything but help and that will cost money.
This article needs more work. I think it is poorly researched and clumps a whole myriad of the world’s problems all together. For a start foreign powers most certainly did intervene and took part in all the conflicts you mentioned. And people from Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England, Germany, France, Italy, Spain ect. packed up and left for the Americas, Australia, New Zealand and Africa in an attempt to escape poverty, persecution and in some instances seek fortune. So to say things have to be sorted out ‘by the fellows on the spot’ is completely ridiculous. Not everyone is a fighter for a start. And Britain had a huge Empire when WW1/2 was going on, as did France and many of the other European powers. They employed people from China, Burma, India, African, Native Americans all to fight their war. And let us not forget the intervention of the USA in WW1/2. Your wife’s diamond and gold ring, the materials of computers, mobile phones, the food on your table, and the fuel you put in your car has driven the current world situation.
Colman – your disagreement is with M C, not me…
Don’t worry. I know you didn’t write this Jude. I saw MC’s title in the article.
This ,Jude, I can’t agree with….I cannot recognize this arbitrary dishonesty…..we have nonchalantly sat back and witnessed the total destruction of the whole “Middle East” in America’s ( and her wee lapdog Britain) imperial quest to dominate the world…..what is happening in that region is an attempt to surround Russia ,to leave one almighty superpower intent in world domination…..the refugees ,the boat people ,are no different than the people trying to escape An Gorta Mór in the latter end of the 19th century…..they have no options left….America created the Mujahideen ,armed them, and supported them unequivocally to fight Russia…they created Al Qaeda ,they created ISIS…..this is not the rantings of some “conspiracy theorist ” but well documented fact…..we need compassion in our hearts but also the gumption and balls to question the war mongers …..enough is definitely too much!
An ceart go hiomlán agat.
Very messy and intellectually lazy article if you have no compassion for refugees then that is a sad reflection on you M Collider.
would you want a crowd of them next door neill,
I have worked all over the world and been a good neighbour so why wouldn’t they be a good neighbour to me?
Totally agree Neill, without compassion we are nothing, I may disagree with you politically but we are humans and as such must always try to raise our standards , Go raibh míle maith agat .
Jude ,for some reason posts on this site by other people also have “by Jude Collins” written below the posters name.This can be confusing and people not familiar with this site can attribute views to you which you obviously do not hold.
That’s a good point, Michael C. I’ve been pleading that the guest’s name comes immediately after the title, but then mine comes after that. I’ll consult Son No 2 to see if it can be changed – or maybe some whizzkid who visits here could tell me what to do?
I think the writer makes some very good points, the whole world can not just move to Europe. It is about time the Saudis and the Kuwaitis and co. pulled their weight and took in their Muslim brothers. And sisters I suppose. Why have they not done something? The people trying to get into Europe come from countries that by and large hate the west and they could very easily be jihadis, time to say we will accept non Muslims only.As for people here not realising who the author of this piece is and thinking it is Jude, time to go to spec savers. It is written at the top of the page.
It is quite ironic that America can instigate most of the trouble with the help of their puppets in France and Britain and then not have to suffer any of the repurcussions of refugees fleeing ISIS or North African despotic regimes. They wash their hands and leave Europe to absorb the aftershock!
I do not foresee any solution to the migrant crisis. The dam has been burst wide open and there is no stopping the flow of migrants to Western Europe beyond massive military intervention in Africa and the Middle East to enforce peace and to repair the damage that previous interventions have created. We also need a fairer distribution of global wealth but I’ll not hold my breath on that one.
Many of the migrants are people trying to escape violence in particular those from Syria, but many more are economic migrants seeking to reach the more economically successful West.
It is hard not to be moved by some of the individual stories of the migrants and the risks they have undertaken to leave their native countries, but Europe cannot take everyone who wishes to come. On Channel 4 the other night I listened to an interview with a young Syrian woman who was trying to pass from Greece through Macedonia in order to get to northern Europe. In the interview she said that she only wanted to be safe yet she had travelled from Turkey to Greece and had not claimed asylum in either country. In both those countries she would have been perfectly safe yet the attraction of a more affluent life in Northern Europe was obviously more attractive.
How many people can Europe accept and if people keep on coming when and how does it draw the line. And how do you assimilate hundreds of thousands of people of different cultures who do not find western values compatible with their own?
It would take the wisdom of Solomon to sort this mess out. Sadly that is in very short supply.
Politics; whether here or elsewhere all boils down to compassion. Whether rich or poor, black or white, prod or taig. You either feel compassion towards your fellow human beings, or you don’t. God or not, we are all just evolved monkeys clinging to a rock which is hurtling through space. You either feel compassion or you don’t. The Irish tend always to feel compassion for the downtrodden, the dispossessed, the refugees. The British tend not to.
RJC
Absurd stereotyping.
Compassion is not a national trait.