My news is full of one picture: a toddler, drowned, lying face down in the surf on the shore of Turkey. He was one of a great many Syrian refugees fleeing their country in desperation, and dying in the process.
It’s a shocking image. It’s heartbreaking. It tore me up to see it, so I’ll spare you all. Instead, I’ll show you another image that popped up in my newsfeed that is, in many ways, even more terrible.
We need to remember that our friends, our enemies, and the innocents in between are all human beings, and all deserve to live. Remember when we vote to give politicians the right to launch missiles into cities, and when we stand by and watch and do nothing as the suffering grows.
The boys in the picture are brothers.
Both drowned.
These kids never had a fucking chance.
Call it liberal guilt, but everyone needs to stop every now and again an appreciate what you have. If you still think this sort of thing is ok or you’re indifferent, I don’t know how you live with yourself.
And in my country, the government is proud of turning boats back to sea and putting lives in more danger, or locking up those in concentration camps, those who are in most desperate need of help.
So terrible. So shameful. It is things like this that make me feel like I don’t even know what to do. I’ll be back after hugging my little dude for a while.
bonzaikitten,
that is awful. I remember reading an article about the mayor (I think) of Lampedusa telling the news a couple of years ago that his island would take any refugees that came, even though they were already way over their normal population, and then some. The local fisherpeople were taking boats out to sea to rescue who they could, and the whole island basically tried to pitch in to do something even though the government was practically ignoring them. Sigh.
Now fill every square inch of your room full of baby pictures just like that and you won’t have even begun to see the staggering breadth of this human disaster. These are just two of thousands.
We have a responsibility in the situation from which these people are trying to escape.
I welcome these pictures; maybe we’ll finally realize we’re dealing with other human beings, not that different from ourselves, just not as lucky.
Thank you, PZ, for writing about what happened and for showing Aylan and his brother like this.
Seeing them like this helps nothing. For me, personally. If anything, it becomes even more tragic and heartbreaking.
And I don’t mean that in the sense that this post is meaningless or shouldn’t be written or etc., but that image of them drowned was already haunting me all day yesterday, and… well, it’s just all that much more difficult to see when in contrast with this one. See, Aylan – in pretty much everything but hair colour – resembles Youngest so so so much…
Can’t unsee.
We’re creatures wherein “out of sight, out of mind” is very powerful. What disturbs me even more than the picture in this post or the pictures of the child, dead, is that, intellectually, I’m fully aware that the death of children just like them is constantly ongoing on a massive scale. Starvation, AIDS, war and so on… but since we rarely hear about it (an ongoing crisis stops being valued news after a while), it’s easy to ignore. And even when we hear about it, it’s usually in the form of a statistic.
Sometimes I hate Canada.
In the thread Discuss: World Politics , there are some more links about refugees’ problems in Europe.
Not to cross-post everything, some news here:
The only refugee center in Estonia has been set on fire tonight
Thankfuly, no one was injured and the damage is mainly external.
Victor Orban, Hungarian prime minister has something to say about immigrants. Can I wish him to emmigrate to US? He’d fit right in. Sorry for wishing him on you, USAmericans.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/03/migration-crisis-hungary-pm-victor-orban-europe-response-madness
These are just some choice excerpts from the article, mostly of bullshit “advice” Orban has to give. The whole thing is worth a read.
I apologize for mangling the asshole’s name. He’s Viktor Orbán, not Victor.
What the fuck is HUngary playing at?!
After keeping hundreds of people at the Keleti train station in Budapest (This comment and the followin one have several relevant links), today they let a train leave only for the police to stop it before the border with Austria, telling refugees to step off the train and leading them to a nearby reception centre.
Meaning it was a ploy to take them there from the beginning.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/reuters/article-3220864/Hungarian-police-stop-train-migrants-off.html?ITO=1490&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490
I’m listening to radio news, so I’ll have to search for supporting links but for now:
Refugees at the Hungarian/Austrian border are not going to take the manipulation just like that. Many are reported protesting, refusing to be led to the center and requesting to be let back on the train.
In the meantime, Orban is trying to stir more shit by “warning” other countries at the inner borders of EU that the wave of people is going to go over their countries once Hungary completely shuts down its entrances for refugees.
As usual twitter is very useful in following what’s going on.
On hashtag#Keleti, you can see some of the news about refugees that were allowed to leave Budapest, only to be stopped before the next border.
Another one is #Refugeeswelcome.
Disturbin video – Woman pleads for the police to let them back on the train. Desperate husband drags her and child onto the train rails, holding on until police drag him away.
Latest news is that all the refugees might be back on the train, with police not knowing what to do any more.
Danai @mafiosiprincesa
Here’s an “illegal immigrant” with his terrorist son, ready to commit crimes in “your” country. #refugeeswelcome
I’ve been hearing news recently that I guess is about this… it may seem weird that I’m guessing rather than knowing, but the news was about how we have a “migrant crisis.” Thankfully, now that images of dead children have begun circulating, we appear to have discovered some refugees among those terrifying migrants, and people – even Tory ministers and The Sun, if I heard right – are suggesting that we might want to, you know, take care of these people, rather than treating them like an invading army.
I can’t help but wonder how many people have written or spoken the word “migrants” while knowing that they were talking about refugees? I mean, I suspected something was up, because “migrant” has many implications, but large numbers of people desperately trying to cross borders isn’t really one of them… at least not in my mind.
Something nice for a change – for certain values of nice considering the primary response of Iceland’s government:
(video at the link starts playing automatically)
Thousands of Icelanders Have Volunteered to Take Syrian Refugees Into Their Homes
The NYT is now doing exactly that. They wrote an article about how almost all of these “migrants” are in fact refugees… but decided to keep using the term anyway.
The moment you guiltily laugh:
https://twitter.com/Gabor_V/status/639407380678221824
An artist’s point of view:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CN-kqFEWUAAlnMt.jpg:large
The image you wisely did not choose to display is awful. It calls to mind the iconic picture of a child in Africa, crawling toward an aid station while being followed by a vulture.
For what little it may be worth, the crisis is having an effect in Canada. Our Immigration minister just suspended his reelection campaign and returned to Ottawa to focus on his duties. Aylan and his family were trying to reach Canada.
Same rhetorics, different dog whistles. Apparently calling refugees aliens was the choice of the day for othering people in 1938:
https://twitter.com/klaaskatkop/status/639418317946638336/photo/1
Holy shit.
Predictably, most the comments on the CBC story about this are saying the usual if you feel we should take in more refugees then go ahead and host them… on a story about how the family was denied despite being sponsored.
Sponsorship means you pledge to pay *everything* for the family you sponsor — housing, food, health care. And you prove that you have the ability to pay. But the government decided that a family that fled Kobane didn’t have a refugee case.
@ numerobis #27: The comments on virtually any CBC story are usually a wretched hive of scum and villainy. There seem to be a core of very right-wing eedjits who spend their entire day crapping there.
There is now a Chrome extension that replaces the word migrants with fellow humans.
doubter@28: indeed, I should have ignored the comments.
The more important part is how this is a family that was sponsored by relatives, but were denied anyway. I mean, if a family from Kobane doesn’t count as a refugee case, who does?
Touching and heartbreaking as these photos are, it is images like this that pushed even the most die-hard liberals into supporting the Iraq War. I recall the photos of dead Kurdish children who were the victims of Saddam’s chemical weapons. And despite their “noble” reasons for wanting to take out Saddam, I will never forgive those liberals given the current aftermath. Indeed those same liberals whose hearts bled for those Kurdish children must surely realize that the Iraq War only empowered Assad and now led to the deaths of these Syrian children.
I am sorry if I offend the sentiments of those who feel “We gotta do something about this!” but I will take a firm stance on this matter. We (ie. the US in particular) should not interfere in that region of the world because when we do, we only make matters worse. It is stupid to blast chemotherapy into a patient with endstage metastatic cancer and cause more suffering than good. And that is exactly what happens when we interfere in the Middle East. I say this as I shed tears for those 2 boys. Leave that region of the world the fuck alone! Sorry, but I won’t go into the Neutral Zone in the Kobayashi Maru scenario.
Well, the ‘we gotta do something about this’ sentiments I have seen here reflect a willingness to provide aid and support to the refugees, not actually interfering with the region: convincing nearby European governments, in countries that are seeing a large influx of these refugees, to provide them with aid. How is that interfering? How is that leaving that region of the world alone, when those people have left the region and are crawling through barbed wire fences to get to the rest of Europe?
@ ragdish #31: Not interfering in the conflict itself is one thing. But what is our moral obligation to the refugees? The developed nations can accept a lot of people in need without ever putting troops into the war zone.
A very positive article on Germany’s rising acceptance of refugees:
Germany greets refugees with help and kindness at Munich central station
I hope this is true:
The EU used to run a refugee sea rescue service in the Med, for situations just such as this. It was run mostly by the Italian navy, but received EU-wide funding.
My government cut our contributions to it in October last year. The whole thing collapsed soon afterwards. The Foreign Office minister, Lady Anelay, said the operation lent “an unintended ‘pull factor’, encouraging more migrants to attempt the dangerous sea crossing”. In other words, they fully intended to let migrants die as a deterrent to others making the trip.
I was angry at the time. This shit is the result.
ragdish,
There was no talk of war on this thread, there is only talk about welcoming refugees in Europe.
PZ
Athywren
Thumper
Thank you. For joining the dots; we are part of what makes this happen.
Beatrice #26
Oh, it goes farther than that. The whole dumping refugees at the border trick was done by Hitler in 1938:
Unsurprisingly, Viktor Orban’s coalition includes actual Nazis (who are, due to Orban’s changes to the constitution and election rules, now the third largest party).
Wait…Canada was denying shelter to refugees? Canada?! After the good people of Gander opened their whole down to refugees following 9/11, and it resulted in nothing but good things for Canada?! Do they have the memory span of a goldfish?!
Thanks for the link in comment 11, rq. The rest of the tragic story. Canada and U.S. bear some responsibility. They could accept more refugees.
I heard the news this morning about our country turning the family down and I was ashamed to be Canadian.
This horrible man is apparently some kind of politican in UK:
Peter Bucklitsch
@bucklitsch
The little Syrian boy was well clothed & well fed. He died because his parents were greedy for the good life in Europe. Queue jumping costs.
Beatrice, that last set of links don’t exist. Has he deleted his account, perhaps?
Anyway, here’s an article listing things people can do to provide practical help. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/5-practical-ways-you-can-help-refugees-trying-to-find-safety-in-europe-10482902.html
One of the comments does make the point that the Amazon wish list is written by and for men, and with no consideration for including e.g. feminine hygiene products. I hope that gets revised soon.
Ah, he deleted the tweet, and various other things. For clarity, he is at least in no position of power, being a failed UKIP candidate who stood for election and failed earlier this year. https://twitter.com/search?q=peter%20bucklitsch&src=typd
katybe,
Yeah, I noticed that about the wish list. It’s admirable that people came up with that idea, but really… no one thought there might be women or children needing help?
I see they have added some times (mostly food and more men’s clothes) since I last looked, so I hope things for women will follow at some point.
Just heard on the CBC that the Canadian government has offered citizenship to Aylan’s dad. He turned them down. He wants to take his family back to Kobane to bury them. Speechless, and disgusted with my country. Fuck.
I just heard this on the radio and I can’t find any cofirmation but there will be an emergency meeting of EU ministers for agriculture next week. They have to discuss problems farmers are facing thanks to blockade of commerce with Russia.
I heard it was suggested that extra produce should be sent to places dealing with huge numbers of refugees. I hope something will come out of this, it would be helpful.
@Beatrice #42:
He’s a wannabe politician, who stood for a party which is wildly xenophobic. What he’s saying now is little different to what many of their candidates got caught out saying during the run-up to the election. Some of them were expelled from the party when they went too far for the UKIP leadership to condone, but many remain.
Personally, I think it’s always good to see these heartless, small-minded wankers out themselves at any time in the election cycle. In particular, when he says they were ‘greedy for the good life’ when in fact they were fleeing a war zone, he highlights his massive ignorance and that can be used to shame the people I’ll no doubt meet around the water cooler who will be saying much the same thing.
An interview with Aylan’s father.
I doubt he wants to accept anything from Canada right now. Canada’s earlier refusal (they applied direct to Immigration Minister Alexander, for fucks’ sake!) is a strong contributing factor to why his family is now dead.
Quotas for refugees that Croatia is supposed to accept might* have risen from about 700 to 3.200. Most of the sympathy towards refugees that appeared after Aylan’s photo was plastered all over the news disappearing into thin air in 5… 4… 3…
/cynical
*Saw this in our papers, but I’m a bit sceptical. Austria accepting 4.800 compared to our 3.200 for example. The numbers are suspect.
Beatrice
Huh. I wonder if we’re still capped at 250? The numbers are suspect.
rq,
I can’t find those numbers anywhere else online, just mentiones about Merkel,, Hollande and others discussing quotas (and several countries refusing them).
Do you mean the royal “we”? I mean, you didn’t vote for this, and have been very vocal about this all along. What’d you do to cause this?
tbtabby@39:
Most Canadians generally are pretty happy with immigrants, refugees included. But even if it’s no a majority, there’s plenty of islamaphobia to go around, largely in the suburbs, and general anti-brown-people sentiment. This group is the group most likely to vote for the tories, so they get their wishes under Harper.
“You have to understand, that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land.” #RefugeesWelcome
Rob Grigjanis@46:
As Trudeau said:
Minister Alexander is trying on compassion, but it doesn’t sit well on his hips.
On the plus side, news now is that Cameron is changing his tune a bit thanks to that photo. Thousands of dead didn’t move him, it took a kid face-down on the beach.
The EU is caving in to the refugee crisis, finally:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/03/migration-crisis-germany-presses-europe-into-sharing-refugees
Germany alone is expected to take 800,000 refugees this year, but this system forces smaller countries to take at least some.
None of this is to say wealthy countries shouldn’t take in more refugees, or that the US in particular does not bear a great deal of responsibility for a destabilized Middle East, but…
The particular family in the boat tragedy had not been offered sponsorship by a Canadian relative, Canadian papers have since confirmed. That was an offer to those kids’ uncle, who is still alive. The family in question had made no kind of actual application to the Canadian government for them to process, let alone turn down, before attempting to get into Europe.
The Canadian government likely could not have done anything because the Turkish government has actively denied Kurds fleeing Syria refugee status or given them travel visas, both conditions for most countries’ refugee programs. Canada has consistently protested this Turkish policy towards the Syrian Kurds.
Canada has so far resettled 2,300 Syrian war refugees, and has offered space for over 7,000 more. The US, with 10 times the population, has accepted 1,400, and says they can take 3-6,000 more.
Finally, these were Syrian Kurds fleeing a civil war and particularly the ISIL faction that would have liked to kill or enslave them. Talking about “letting politicians launch missiles” without mentioning that fact elides over the greater evil here, that the missiles are ostensibly being launched against now. Third-order effects from the Bush years aside, it is still at least an argument worthy of consideration that the Western air offensive against ISIL it is inferred Prof. Myers is condemning there is the only thing right now keeping this same humanitarian crisis from getting even worse.
More needs to be done, to be sure. We’ve got lots of room for people yet and I really hope those quotas increase and more pressure is put on the Turks to do more to enable the resettling of Kurdish refugees. But politicians and their missiles have nothing to do with the Turkish indifference that blocked this family’s flight, and are, at least arguably, in active opposition to the actual people who drove these people from their home.
bruce1
Do you have a link to that information (re: sponsorship of the Kurdi family)? Because the article @11 clearly states:
Which seems to be the opposite of what you’re saying.
From your comment,
It’s good to know that the Western air offensive is not actually destroying anything necessary to maintain normal living conditions in the region. I always knew technology would come to the rescue, be 100% target-specific, and have 0% collateral damage of any kind. It’s also good to know that 100% of the intelligence information is 100% correct, so we know that each and every time only ISIL combatants are targeted and struck. If things keep on this way, all those refugees will be able to go back to their homes in no time at all!
… Except that it’s Turkish politicians being indifferent and demanding valid passports from refugees in order to hand out exit visas.
I’ll wait to comment on Canadian indifference once you get back to me on the correct information (with a link!) re: the Kurdi’s sponsorship application.
Not a good morning. World still broken.
http://www.dw.com/en/five-injured-when-refugee-shelter-in-heppenheim-near-frankfurt-catches-fire/a-18693005
(bolding mine)
—
numerobis,
I don’t think the photo of the dead child moved Cameron, if anything made him change his mind about accepting more refugees it’s the bad publicity not being moved by that photo brought him.
bruce1: why is it Turkey’s fault in any way? Ok they don’t want to fill out some paperwork — it’s our process, we can just not require that paperwork!
Canada failed the older brother, and the younger lost faith, seems to be the fuller explanation now. Not a huge difference.
numerobis,
There’s plenty of faults to go around. Turkey is not innocent in this.
Okay… Migrants crisis: Unease as Czech police ink numbers on skin. Somebody actually thought that was a good idea? There’s got to be a different way to identify people and keep families together…
Beatrice: Turkey is guilty of many things, but it does not run Canadian immigration. That buck stops in Ottawa.
And good point about Cameron’s sudden change of “heart”.
Found it: Alan Kurdi death: A Syrian Kurdish family forced to flee
Also note:
Something nice for a change:
I realize this is a fuck you to Croatia almost as much as it’s a generous gesture, but as far as fuck yous go, I wish there were more like this one:
Some Serbs who fled Croatia during the war are offering their houses in Croatia to refugees for free. One gave it a 5 year limit because he would like to return when he retires, but most just want them to live there as long as they like.
(source only in Croatian)
President-for-life Harper has done so very much already to make Canadians ashamed of our international image (world champion polluters, Israel is *always* right about everything, failure to be re-appointed to UN Security Council, gagging of scientists – the list goes on…) but this takes the cake. Problem: drowned toddler on Turkish beach whose hope had been to join family in Canada. Solution: Step up the bombing.
He has repeatedly refused to commit in any way to speed up the trickle of refugees coming to Canada. This compares extremely poorly to many refugee efforts Canada has made in the past. One thinks particularly of our response to the Boat People in 1979-80. Somehow we brought in something like 65,000 in a year. Under a Conservative government no less.
Oops, my bad. That was a *Progressive* Conservative government. Thank goodness that President-for-life Harper (and the treacherous Peter MacKay) managed to purge all those Red Tories. There is no room for sentimental humanism in the difficult job of running a country.
Bruce1 @58 does make some fair points, especially re Kurds. However s/he seems to have forgotten the role of Assad in all this. As father of 300,000 dead, millions displaced, and utterly unrepentant, he is just the sort of person President-for-life Harper would feel comfortable allying Canada with. Because although ISIL is not a boogie man – it is a real threat – Assad owns 90% of this so far. Yet to our boy Stevie, I suspect Assad looks like a poster boy for Peace, Order and Good Government.
The world IS broken.
#MarchOfHope: #Refugees are still walking from #Budapest to #Austria. p/v @SebJabbusch #RefugiadosBienvenidos
Alan’s dad was the sole survivor of the boat on which he, his family and other people tried to cross. He swam back to the coast.
Alans Dad was born in Kobane, but lived in Damascus, from which the family fled back to Kobane. As ISIS came for the town, they left again and landed in Istanbul. He used to work as a hairdresser, but couldn’t make ends meet in Istanbul, and he needed medical attention because ISIS pulled many of his teeth. Somehow he convinced himself that the dental work would be cheaper in Europe (fyi: Europeans go to Turkey for cheap & quick dental work). The only way that would be true, if is the european tax payers foot the bill.
The story is tragic, he decided to risk the lives of his family who couldn’t swim in a small open boat, while living in a country where there is no war and where he and his family was safe.
What killed his family is the fantasy that many of these refugees carry with them about Europe. They will not believe you if you tell them that Europeans are protesting against taking in even more refugees, and that in Germany asylum centres got torched. They will say you are lying. Just like how you are lying that not everyone in Europe is rich, has two cars and is on holiday al the time.
And so, as proverbial lemmings, they keep coming to places that still haven’t figured out how to deal with the immigrants that came in the decades before. Have populations that are not waiting for another wave of people that will degrade the services of their welfare state even further. All the while regional “friends” sitting on mountains of oil money are doing nothing. Well, not entirely true, they do keep money flowing into the conflict zone so weapons can be bought, and more refugees created.
Europe just sits there, doing nothing, at the whim of some koran carrying petty warlords.
It’s a sad world where Germany, home of Pegida*, is a shiny beacon in how refugees are being treated.
Which is not a feather in the cap of our government, but due to the work, money and resources countless volunteers are putting into this.
*neo fascist and racist protestors masked as “concerned citizens”
+++
Also, I hate the “take them into your hime” rhethorics. Refugees are not pets. They are people.
Of course, Europe has entirely nothing to do with the situation in Iraq, Syria or Afghanistan. The weapons Daesh is using have apparently been manufactured in Saudi Arabia. Many f Daesh’s volunteers have also not been born and raised in Europe.
Really, it’s not like European politics over the last dacades have anything to do with the current situation.
dutchdelight,
Well, if you drop the scaremongering bullshit about refugees forever living off of government help, then mister Abdullah could have become a tax paying European citizen too.
Also please drop the narrative about how “Europe just sits there, doing nothing, at the whim of some koran carrying petty warlord”. Don’t make me laugh. It’s like we’re some sort of victims.
I write this from a house where I have all the instalations like electricity, running water, gas… I can call the police or emergency and trust they will be here in some (hopefuly) reasonable amount of time. I can pop to any of the nearby stores that work all day and where I can buy nearly anything I set my mind to. I’m not afraid someone will knock on the door and drag me out to some unknown location for “interrogation” or attack me on the street because I dared look at a man.
Poor are poor everywhere, but Europe is currently a pretty good place to be. So cut the bullshit about us being at a whim of Koran carrying warlords.
beatrice
Let’s not forget who financed, empowered and militarized said warlords…
Hungary was shamed into sending buses to pick up the marching people and bring them the rest of the way.
http://www.startribune.com/refugees-on-train-police-in-2nd-day-of-standoff-in-hungary/324309801/#1
@Giliell
It’s a feather in the cap of people you like to identify with, how enlightnened and impartial of you. In other news, EVERYONE in Germany is already helping out since refugees cost 25k – 35k or so per year to house and provide services for.
That’s not mentioning the anti-tank weapons Germany provided to the Kurds, which is pretty much the reason the Kurds can hold off ISIS and stand their ground against ISIS heavy material and armored bus-bombs. The German government risked quite some political (and economic) fallout from that with Turkey besides the money involved in supplying those weapons.
You keep alluding to this. Enlighten us how German politics over the decades caused Alan to wash ashore dead near Bodrum. More then… let’s say, unwilling Turkish authorities lead by a corrupt Islamist who considers Kurds as Untermenschen.
@Beatrice
Interesting how you fantasized me saying anything about “refugees forever living off of government help”. I suppose that helps with the demonizing right? Good job.
I guess what you are implying is that refugees are an investment product, but, unless you are ready to apply that to the immigration rules this seems like a pretty disingenuous thing to put forward.
Maybe you can start by running some of the numbers by us, from past immigration waves from the same region?
You are blinded by ideology, that’s a shame. I can’t help that you desperately keep applying your own preferred narratives to what i’m writing. I’m saying the EU has resources, knowledge and capabilities to end the suffering caused by ignorance, yet doesn’t.
I’m having trouble making sense of this. Do the actions of armed religious fanatics in Syria cause waves of refugees, yes or no. If yes, the EU is at the whim of these armed groups, as the EU gets waves of refugees to house and take care of. It’s not that complicated.
What “poor people” have to do with this, i have no clue. They’ll be even worse off then the general population as usual, but usually nobody who is in favor of mass immigration wants to talk about that.
And yea, the EU is a pretty decent place to be, just like Turkey is pretty good too. Which reminds me… why are refugees who are safe in Turkey risk their life to cross over to Greece or Italy? And given that the EU is such a nice place to be, why do they risk their life again, crossing into and out of EU country after EU country until they reach places like Germany, or the UK specifically… all the way on the other side of Europe from where they came in?
People are smarter than their governments.
Seen pictures on Facebook of a protest in Toronto in honour of #WelcomeRefugees, too.
And in Germany, with song against prejudice.
I must have dreamed up that whole Afghanistan mess and all that followed.
Apparently the whole region just destabilized itself because, well, they’re muslims or something..
dutchdelight,
Don’t throw a bunch of dog whistles into the conversation and then play dumb when they are correctly interpreted.
Some perspective on how many refugees have fled to Europe:
https://twitter.com/LeftUnityUK/status/640172649235247104
I think we’re done here.
This just another expression of the false dichotomy you’ve bought into hook line and sinker.
Beatrice,
Don’t lie about what other people say, then you don’t have to get mad about people pointing out that you did so.
ftfy.
Accuracy is not your friend it seems.
dutchdelight:
No one is lying about what you say. Your arrogant bigotry is well known here.
Arrogant bigotry even. That sounds pretty serious Caine.
dutchdelight
Would you link your source for the story about Abdullah Kurdi’s teeth?
dutchdelight
“We” have been done with your dressed-up neofascism for a long time.
+++
Besides, even if the EU had nothing to do with the creation of the conditions that lead to the current situation, their responsibility towards the refugees as fellow human beings would still be the same.
dutchdelight,
You are right, Syrian refugees, as the illustration clearly states.
AS for the rest. I did not lie:
What is this little story if not an alusion that refugees are after our hard earned money? If not, state its purpose. (oh, and please add the source for this. )
You are either now well informed of the conditions for Kurds in Turkey or you’re just bullshitting.
And I don’t think we need any more explanations about poor Europe just sitting there innocent at the mercy of warlords.
This is exageration on par with people who are criticized screaming with hunts. People risking their lives to reach Europe are the ones at the mercy of warlords. Europe is not, under any reasonable explanation.
@chigau
Everyone refers to Terry Glavin getting that from the sister in Vancouver. That they were pulled by ISIS.
Back to more productive conversation:
http://www.politico.eu/article/sanctions-considered-for-refugees-migrants-quota-crisis-opt-out/
It is not clear whether this has been formally discussed.
[Disclaimer (because thease are now apparently needed): Read the whole fucking linked article before complaining]
—
Croatian newspapers are pulling numbers for new quotas out of their asses again, so I’ll wait with this until I can find some more sources.
—
Not all Hungarians are as cold hearted as their prime minister, but the situation there is nevertheless bad. Even when the refugee crisis calms down, their right wingers have gained more strength and I worry about the future with so many nationalist, bigoted parties on the rise.
A story about Hungarians’ reactions to coming refugees (millions and millions that are GOING TO TAKE OVER EUROPE … sorry, must be Orban’s screaming coming through the net):
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/05/us-europe-migrants-hungary-divide-idUSKCN0R50F120150905
dutchdelight #76
It looks like you’re trying to derail the conversation.
However, by sheer luck you managed to ask an important question:
In the 1960s West Germany has experienced a severe shortage of workers and began inviting Turkish laborers into the country. The initial figure was 700k, which grew into over 2.5m today.
So how did that affect the economy?
Figure for pre-1970 West Germany are extremely hard to come by, but here are a few snippets. The real wage growth was tremendous (table 1., remember that we’re talking about a country with near total employment), while the per capita GDP took a small initial which turned into a much larger growth four years later (NYT graph, but the article that uses it is here).
The final verdict is that West Germany has benefited from the large immigration of people from this region, or, at the very least, there is no evidence at all that its economy has suffered in any measurable way.
_______
Giliell #88
Exactly!
The refugee crisis calls for basic humanity. Anything else is, more often than not, a distraction.
@Beatrice
It’s your own ideology at work again.
The sister brings it up in the conversation of his situation and motivation to risk his family and himself to get to Europe. I dwell on it just because it seems out of place, given that getting that kind of care would be cheaper in Turkey for many Europeans. The sad fact is that he probably would indeed recieve the quickest medical attention if he did get accepted as refugee in the EU. Well, unless he used the money he got for human traffickers towards his medical needs, but that’s another story.
It is a dig at the Turkish government if anything. But you are to busy trying to burn the heretic to notice. It’s entertaining though.
There is no war in Turkey. Unless you are carrying a weapon against Turkish forces, a Kurd can life a pretty good life in Turkey. I suggest you take your complaints about Kurd rights in Turkey to the corrupt Islamist in charge there.
@AlexanderZ
Imagining you wagging your finger makes this at least funny to read.
People found it necessary to call me arrogant, so consider this a friendly warning, they’ll be on you in no time at all.
Do you have a cute selfserving anecdote from a time where compared to the 60’s most “workers” have been replaced with robots, there is an economic crisis going on, and “worker shortage” is just newspeak for “current workers want to much pay” ?
Fail.
And everyone lived happily ever after. Don’t forget to clean up.
dutchdelight #94
“Most workers replaced by robots” as well as every other thing you’ve said, would result in an increasing unemployment.
Meanwhile, in the real world, German unemployment has been steadily decreasing and is now at 1991 levels (i.e. 4.7%) – one of the lowest unemployment rates anywhere in the world.
http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/mothers-of-isis/index.html
long, but worth a read.
The article tells stories of four mothers whose sons left their families to fight for ISIS.
Here’s a source for an interview with Tina Kurdi (the relative in BC):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZUuoaq1MLM&feature=player_embedded
Not exactly an unbiased source — it’s a clip from SkyNews with some added bullshit text. I got it from a Czech acquaintance of mine who is outraged at Cecil the Lion getting shot, but thinks these migrants aren’t really refugees and should just stay at home where they’re safe and happy (she and I got into a debate about whether the Kurdi family are refugees; it’s not a pretty sight).
So, in that video, Tina Kurdi clearly answers why the Kurdi family needed to move: fixing the teeth would cost $14k, but they couldn’t make ends meet in Turkey, and she couldn’t even send them money to pay for it because she can only send $1k at a time, through intermediaries who charge a huge amount in commission and have no legal obligation to actually deliver the money.
@AlexanderZ
Right… Let me know when the worker shortage breaks out across the EU or, why these jobs don’t go to people in memberstates with double digit unemployment.
Goodness, is there any fascist dogwhistle dutchdelight hasn’t blown yet?
They’re getting our jobs? Really?
Giliell: yes! He hasn’t mentioned how the refugees will rape all “our” women like they do in Sweden.
I got that one from the youtube comments on the racist-made video I linked above.
dutchdelight, whining about other people’s biases while spouting the BS talking points he heard from Wilders. How cute.
dutchdelight #98
OK! Will you give me your phone number or should I shine the bat signal into the skies? (call me!)
BTW, if someone else is interested: By far the largest majority of refugees (about 600k) go into Germany, then come France and Sweden with about 200k, after which comes Sweden with 86k. EU takes into account the economic situation in each country before assigning the refugee quota. At the moment there is a crisis because all(!) of eastern members of EU refuse to house between them 120k refugees – a mere fifth of how many there are in Germany alone.
P.S. If you go to the link above you’ll see that most refugees aren’t even in Europe. They are in Pakistan, Jordan, Turkey, Syria (yes) and Lebanon. Turkey, which has 10% of Europe’s population and an even smaller fraction of its wealth, houses more refugees than all of Europe combined. Just to put things into perspective.
A quarter of the population of Lebanon are refugees: 1 refugee for every three Lebanese citizens. By comparison, Germany is taking in about 1% of its population as refugees and there’s gnashing of teeth.
Granted, except for the issue of sectarian politics, Lebanon could declare about a half-million of its refugees to be citizens tomorrow — these are refugees whose ancestors fled Palestine decades ago. Still, that would leave a sixth of its population as refugees, mostly Syrian.
Also, since Hungary is apparently fucking rich now (after all, such walls cost money), can’t we just take their alligned share from regional development funds and use it to support the refugees?
Giliell,
The article I linked to in comment #91 doesn’t contain this as a formal statement, but here is a similar suggestion:
According to several media reports, an option under consideration is that countries that do not want to take in refugees would be offered an opt-out clause, but they would have to pay to use it. This sanction fund would then be used to support countries that do take part in the new relocation.
I messed up quotes: According to… and the rest are a quote, not my words.
A piece on Germany and its response to the refugees.
And it obliquely answered a question I’ve had, and an argument I’ve heard from people who want to put other limitations on where refugees can go: the question of why Germany, why not elsewhere in the EU? (Because refugees wanting to go to Europe is, apparently, a sign that they are economic migrants, not actual refugees.)
One factor, I think, is probably a lack of knowledge of other European countries in general (just as I have rather poor knowledge of the Middle East and the specific geography of most African countries).
But the main one is, I think, the fact that Germany is actually willing to accept refugees and is trying to put infrastructure in place to care for them. How many other countries are refugee-friendly, or are actively working to become so? How many other leaders of European countries are publicly welcoming refugees to their countries? What are other countries like in their current treatment of refugees? (All the gods know that Latvia is failing miserably on all counts here, most notably in the ‘current treatment’ category because holy shit no, you can’t live on 2.15 euros a day even if you’re being provided with ‘a roof over your head’ and a government food aid package that is mostly flour and tomato paste…)
So it’s really no surprise, esp. if Germany’s acceptance rate is 87% (that sounds high, it’s from the article, is this true?), that refugees will want to go to a place where they know they will be alright, rather than left to suffer in a poorly-constructed camp and a hard political fight for assistance.
I hope the welcome doesn’t wear off.
@ Beatrice #42
Peter Bucklitsch is an ex-UKIP candidate. No surprises there.
(You’ll note the very English name…)
The front page of today’s Sun: “Cowards – [Labour] Leadership rivals won’t back raid on IS to end migrant crisis”
Because obviously, dropping more bombs will create less refugees.
Seems legit.
*scans thread*
Oh hey, dutchdelight’s being an arse again. That’s new.
Sorry you’re late
Last night the cabinet and Merkel declared that the acceptance of refugees from HUngary was and exception and that we need to stick to the Dublin agreement.
Merkel’s got her postive news, so the welcome is over.
They are also going to declare several more countries to be “safe states”, because they magically become so if you say so. I mean, if you simply ignore the racist persecution of Sinti and Roma in many countries of the Balkan, those countries are generally safe. And if you ignore the news broadcasted three minutes later about the Turkish army bombing Kurdish cities (this was yesterday’s evening news, in this exact sequence), Turkey is a safe state as well.
Of Syrian refgees, yes. Since they are war refugees they only have to credibly prove their origin. The acceptance rate of Syrian refugees should be 100%, I don’t know how those 87% are calculated.
General acceptance rates are 60%, with many people coming from the Kosovo or Albania, often after they had lived in Germany as refugees in the 1990’s.
Let’s not forget that the current positive image is due to volunteers. It is good that large parts of the German population are showing solidarity. Unfortunately it seems like our opinion can be discarded and we now need to listen to the “concerned citizens” again.
Refugee crisis: Hollande says France will take 24,000 refugees and ‘begin Syria air missions’
Oh gad, we have this organization In the name of family, I probabla mentioned it before. They are extremely conservative nationalistic bigots.
It’s too long to translate, but I just read the open letter that the leader of the organization sent to our prime minister regarding refugees.
In short: IS sent terrorists among those reugees. WE have suffered and we have accepterd Bosnian refugees in the past and Pope asked us to take them in our homes so of course I agree with him and you have to ask European Commission that they are housed outside the borders of EU because of terrorists.
*pukes*
Thath self-contradictory bit with taking them in and housing them outised EU is reallly there in teh letter.
Here’s the link in case someone want to play with google translate. This bullshit might even make more sense in bad translation.
source
Britain to take in 20,000 Syrian refugees over five years
I’m not really sure I understand this. Hopefully, this won’t last for years but there is a large number of refugees from Syria now.
Thousands are going to ….. [something somewhere not in UK] and then in 2-3-4-5 years uproot again to go to UK as refugees?
While I aprove of this approach, I’m not sure how you can continue doing something you haven’t been doing.
Thanks for that update/commentary, Giliell. *sigh*
And yes, I was aware that the current positive image was from volunteers and caring people – with, of course, the politicians taking credit – but I was expecting the politicians to maybe listen to the people a little bit… I guess not. *sigh* (I was having a good day, don’t blame me!!!)
I also don’t get the ‘x number of refugees over the next 5 years’ (5 years seems to be the standard timeframe). Latvia was horrified at 250 over 5 years, and apparently is now being offered to take just over 1000. Still a teeny number compared to THE MILLIONS who need refuge. So helpful, the EU is. *sigh*
Is this actually happening?
And if so, how?
20k?
Over 5 years?
How generous.
That’s like, 2.5% of the number expected to arrive in Germany this year. Fucking ridiculous. Is there going to be a lottery?
An article I read this morning is too long to translate, but it raises some good points:
– there are 2 reasons ISIS could attack Europe now:
1. to prevent more people from Middle East from escaping to Europe and seeing it as their salvation
2. to prompt Europe to answer those attacks in the same or similar way with their own version of racism – what are some already suggesting, to send refugees to camps (you might call them concentration camps) at the edges of Europe or in Africa.
– it’s ridiculous to suggest that terrorists would use the same methods as refugees to sneak in European countries. We already know that a lot of these terrorists have been formar Christians born and raised in Europe, and besiced why would wanna be terrorists risk their lives like the refugees when they can just get on a plane, fly to Europe and execute their plans.
So it is expected that the refugees crisis might prompt ISIS to terrorist attacks, but not that they wold use it to commit it .
– He also talks approvingly about “fundamental European (humanistic) values” that Merkel is asking us to show, saying how that is what ISIS would like us to give up on. They would like us to show the racist hateful face instead, for reasons stated in 1 and 2 above
– IN the end he mocks those people who keep pointing out that a lot of the refugees are young men so… ? He makes a parallel with how in the 80s, Serbs were starting to get afraid or Albanians and then Bosnians “outbreeding” them (and we know ho that ended). Where’s the differences between bigots that stated that then and those who do it now, in relation to all the young people coming here, who are paranoid that these refugees have some sort of secret plans to “outbreed” us.
– he ends by calling that photo of a German police officer talking and laughing with a young Syrian boy a victory of fundamental European values over ISIS
While EU countries argue about how many refugees should be accepted and where, Danish government came up with an idea on stopping the influx of immigrants. They have placed ads in several newspapers in Lebanon, more or less advising people not to come to Denmark:
Meanwhile, Greece is in deep shit because of all the refugees passing through there, and they were pretty deep before that aleady thanks to its own problems.
More on general state in various parts of EU:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/09/world/europe/denmark-migrant-crisis.html?_r=0
Beatrice
A friend of mine on FB today called out ‘asylum shopping’, specifically mentioning why refugees aren’t clamouring to go to Denmark… Funny how that works.
Perhaps Giliell has some information on this: Bavarian school warns girls should dress ‘modestly,’ due to Syrian refugees nearby. I’ve been trying to google follow-up articles, since this story specifically is mostly shared by rather conservative sources (incl. Stormfront), but there’s no further news. Is it a real thing that happened? If not, is there info on this? If yes, what happened later (as it’s from the end of June)? My google-fu is failing me (perhaps a language barrier) but I would like some info for FB purposes.
rq
Yep, that’s true.
I heard about it in a different context, in the context of slut shaming girls and dress codes that forbid hotpants. Not like there are actual repeated problems. The conservative Bavarians are just using the refugees as an excuse to make local girls cover up*. After all, Bavaria IS the Texas of Germany.
I don’t find any news newer than the start of July in German either, so I guess the whole thing died down.
*Except during the Oktoberfest. Then it’s their national duty to hang out their tits for the world’s men to oggle at.
rq #119
RT is a Russian state-owned news agency and is used for propaganda purposes. That article was published over two months ago and the fact that there is no follow up anywhere (I also looked) when this topic dominates the news means that the article was completely false.
It’s merely another way for Russia to attack Europe.
(Which is pretty amusing considering that Russia is simultaneously proclaiming itself to be Syria’s ally and does all it can to sponsor Islamophobia and general xenophobia towards Syrians)
Giliell
Seriously?
Why isn’t that being reported anywhere?
To add to it:
It’s of course a clusterfuck of rape culture and prejudice against muslims.
Refugees and muslims are painted as rapists, stroking fears and anti muslim sentiments while at the same time they are being excused for their potential behaviour. As the author of a short article in the HuffPost (yes, I know, but at least HuffPost Germany has been wonderful when dealing with topics like refugees, racisma nd rape culture) noticed: Of course there can be cultural clashes and missunderstandings. Why not talk with the refugees about it?
So they’Re painted as simultaneously as being dangerous to “German*” women and girls while also not really responsible because they’re incapable of behaving themselves due to be ing men, brown and muslim.
It will come as no surprise to you all that this news is also found on right wing webpages that have no problem with publishing Birgit “just button up your blouse” “lesbians lick each other” Kelle…
*Even a highschool in Bavaria will have pupils with a migratory background
rq,
Asylum shopping sounds very negative, but what’s wrong with it actually?
Sure, they would be safer in Serbia than in Syria, but the country has high unemployment and it’s not exactly known for its tolerance. Same goes for a lot of Eastern European countries. Why wouldn’t a sensinble person, who already had to give up everything try to go somewhere where they might actually live instead of just surviving?
Some weeks before this chaos started, I was watching a documentary about refugees in Hungary. In a refugee center, educators said that most people were just passing through, waiting for an opportunity to go somewhere else. A small group of children who wanted to go to school wasn’t accepted into the closest one because parents voted against it- the refugee families weren’t informed of that to spare them the humiliation and their children were just sent to another school that welcomed the children gladly.
But that first school sounds much closer to the general feeling about refugees in Hungary.
So why would they want to go there or stay there? You probably hear stories on the road, of the condition, of the hate… they are desperate, but while they are already travelling I find it perfectly logical to try and get somewhere where they could build a life.
Oh, I know everything wrong with the article: the attitude of the Bavarian schoolmaster, the attitude towards the Syrians, etc. I was wondering if there’s any article out there addressing that, because a FB friend posted an article similar to this one (basically the same one but a different source, so not RT), with a comment expressing worry about guests following the rules of the host and things like that. The article SHE posted included sentences about how white women should stay away from certain men, and called Sweden the rape capital of the west. And was chock full of racism and islamophobia and the idea that of course muslim men can’t control themselves around undressed women (because it’s not like they realize they’re in a foreign country, right?).
I was also tempted to call the story fake because there IS no follow-up or anything from any reputable sources…
Fuck the slut-shaming, though. And yes, it’s the refugees that need to be taught about the local culture, while advising the locals to be sensitive to cultural differences without actually inhibiting the rights of the locals in any way (as in, differences are to be expected, please be understanding, they are learning and we are teaching sort of way).
AlexanderZ
I did not actually realize that RT was a Russian propaganda machine, thanks for the heads-up.
Alexander Z
One or two schools, along with others that try to impose dress codes just because “German boys” could be distracted in a world of bombs and burning refugee homes is hardly world news.
I only heard about iti n the context of a school that tried to ban hotpants for just the usual slut shaming reasons.
rq
You know, I was thinking about this in Spain at the beach. There were many muslim women there who did not swim at all or went swimming while being fully clothed, some in those special muslim swimming garbs*. There were many other women who were hanging out their tits to catch some sunlight. Quite obviously it’s possible that we all do what we think is right without enforcing it on the person who thinks what we’Re doing is wrong.
*Their kids, boys and girls, were running around stark naked, btw
Also, yes I’ve had my share of men from other cultures who thought that my open western attitudes and clothing meant they could simply take what they like. And also those who were genuinly confused by signals. Body language and signs are by no means universal. A friendly gesture in one culture can be an insult in another and an invitation for something more intimate in a third*. If those cultures come together, all people must learn. That presupposes that you also take an interest in the other culture.
*In Cuba we had the particular case of the gesture where you clench your right hand into a fist, hold your left hand flat and then smack them together quickly and repeatedly. Here that’s a gesture for fucking. There it was a gesture for beating somebody literally or figuratively.
Or take the Hungarian gesture for “yes” that’s understood as “no” by most oher people.
Hungarian reporter “welcomes” refugees:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3226888/Hungarian-camerawoman-sacked-filmed-tripping-migrants.html
I also saw another video where she kicked a little girl.
*spits* on Jobbik. I bet they were only angry because she got caught on tape.
I hope the job loss sticks, and
Meanwhile, in Heidelberg there are about 275 refugees in housing meant for 100, with expansion to 200 in a real pinch. They’re…doing fine. No major crimes, certainly no wild hoards of rapists. Because it’s a bunch of people in overcrowded conditions with nothing to do, fights break out occasionally. When they do the police are called, go in, and tell everyone to calm down-and they do. Then the police go back to their usual duties, which include things like looking for the wild pig that collided with a car. (True story: Car was totalled. Pig walked away into the woods, though the police were seeking it to see if it was hurt.)
Also someone pointed out to me this morning that Steve Jobs was the son of Syrian immigrants. So I’m going to have to say that Syrian immigrants have worked out fine for the US so far.
New quotas:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34193568
I appreciate that Merkel said this, I think it’s the right perspective:
beatrice
But don’t you call the HUngarian Government racist, that’s mean. Chasing desperate people like criminals, now that’s just politics.
dianne
That’s the situation up and down the country. When I last went to the “Erstaufnamestelle” (refugee centre) at the end of June/start of July itw as a miserable overcrowded space. Now it’s a miserable overcrowded space with additional tents.
And from bad to worse, an empty school that was provisioned to house refugees has been attacked with arson, delaying the relief it would have brought.
Of course you get conflicts when you house so many people in such little space with scarce means.
Which brings me to another point:
The much repeated argument that is people “want” refugees they should house them.
I mean sure, if there was a real emergency I could house a family of 4 in our 2 bedroom flat. In an emergency. But refugees aren’t pets you house for the humane society until PZ adopts them, they are people.
I’m not saying that some ideas are wrong, like the appeal that people rent out empty flats to the governemnt to house refugees. THat’s good. I can even see huge benefits for elderly people who are often left alone in too big houses with their own kids working far away if they have any.
+++
Sometimes even Merkel makes sense.
Yeah, treat people like they don’t belong for decades, even if they’re the third generation and then wonder why they don’t “integrate themselves”.
BTW, German industry spokespeople are already rubbing their hands. Capital doesn’t give a fuck about who creates its profit. Merkel’s words need to be interpreted in that context. With the Balkan wars we got a huge influx of people who were already well-educated or who went to school and college here and then we sent them away again, whether they wanted to or not.
PZ’s adopting all the refugees?