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“It’s the right thing to do” – the politicians’ mantra to justify policy
When Home Office minister Baroness Williams and the French Ambassador to the Court of St James assured us that the demolition of the Calais refugee camp (“the jungle”) would not begin until all the children there were safeguarded, many people of goodwill believed them. Moreover, at a higher level, Home Secretary Amber Rudd and her French counterpart, Bernard Cazeneuve, also apparently agreed that children must be protected.
Yesterday’s Guardian report shows these promises to be empty words. Instead, children were abandoned,
“lured out of … the camp in the afternoon with the promise of transport to a reception centre where they could be assessed for asylum or reunification with families in the UK. However, after an hour, no bus had arrived. Police units emerged in force, with riot shields, teargas and taser guns, and began to kettle the group, pressing them into a side street in an industrial estate. Some of the refugees were in tears as it appeared that they would be sleeping on the streets again.”
Once news of this began to circulate, a badly acted charade took place, as Amber was said to have called up Bernard and told him that the children had to be “properly protected”.
Tell that to 16-year-old Hussein from Darfur, where he had already spent five years in a refugee camp. In Calais, after queuing before dawn on three successive days,
“he never made it to the head of the line to be processed, and on Wednesday night became one of the estimated 200 unaccompanied children left to sleep rough. Now he faces a second night in the grass with temperatures dropping and despondency setting in.”
Tell it to the despairing kids being helped by charity workers:
“An atmosphere of despair among charity workers was mirrored by the behaviour of the children, all aged approximately 14 to 17, some of whom huddled against the wall in blankets as the temperature plummeted. One Afghan teenager, wrapped in a yellow and green sleeping bag, said: ‘Fuck France, Fuck Britain. You are racists.’ He was in tears as a French volunteer tried to console him by asking him not to be angry with aid workers. He retorted: ‘You didn’t have to sleep on the side of the road last night – you have documentation, you have money. Fuck France.’”
The boy has insight. “No French or British officials were on the scene with the children,” says the report. Of course they weren’t. The agreement to protect between diplomats and politicians is a charade. Their intent is to punish, and to discourage others. That was David Cameron’s intent when he withdrew support from the Italian-based rescue operation in the Mediterranean in the days of the Tory-LibDem coalition. The song that was sung then was that these people must be taught a lesson – that they will die if they come to Europe. Stop rescuing them. We must let them drown.
It’s the same story now. Punish the kids who came, warn future migrants: “Don’t come here if you’re persecuted, or bombed out of your home or even out of your hospital. We don’t want you.”
You see, despite having earlier agreed, unwillingly and under strong pressure, to bring a tiny proportion of the children into the UK, what’s happened to these remaining kids in Calais is not a mistake or down to bad organisation. It’s deliberate. It’s policy. “It’s the right thing to do.”
And if you don’t like it being done in your name, tell your MP to object. Now.
Here’s the Guardian article: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/27/calais-camp-minors-children-abandoned-uk-france-human-rights?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+main+NEW+H+categories&utm_term=196826&subid=12991040&CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2
Remember – and think before you believe what they tell you
This story is about the reinstatement of a person’s reputation. For years he was vilified by the tabloids, and even by more “serious” newspapers, as the “cause” of the arrival of HIV/Aids. The research described in the article below proves that he wasn’t, and that blame was not an appropriate response to the emerging crisis:
The article tells its own story. But if we remember those days (the 1980s), especially the subtle, unrelenting pressure to believe that the epidemic was a “gay plague” because the gays started it, we should now remind ourselves again not to take at face value all we read. About anything. About housing benefit claimants, about disability allowance claimants, about tax credit claimants, about people who use food banks, about “bogus” refugees living in grand houses paid for by the local council, about war and its causes and the reasons for going to war, about the need to bomb children in far-off places – about anything.
That’s all. I just wanted to say that. I was remembering old tabloid headlines.
Oops. Media’s ‘Londoncentric Labour’ nonsense gives their game away
So don’t believe all you read.
As Jeremy Corbyn’s post-leadership-election reshuffle of his Shadow Cabinet began to take shape over the last few days, a media narrative began to grow alongside it.
As so often happens, however, when people try to be too clever, they ended up giving the game away in a fashion that anyone paying even a bit of attention can discern. This means it can provide an invaluable lesson in how to perceive the media’s messages and how seriously to take them, if at all.
This narrative suggests that Jeremy Corbyn’s new-look front-bench lineup is ‘London-centric’:
Take this, for example, from Sky’s chief political correspondent, Beth Rigby – and note how it accepts the premise of a claim by a Tory MP:
Predictably, the Tory Spectator’s ‘Coffee House’ blog picked up and parroted the same line:
Ms Rigby then decided to hammer home her point more explicitly:
presumably hoping we wouldn’t…
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The skill to kill, courtesy of the new Mother Theresa
For peace – and against ceasefires
Am I missing something? I’m tired of the United Nations wringing its United hands about Aleppo and acting surprised because a ceasefire has failed, humanitarian aid hasn’t been delivered and the bombing has got worse. Of course it has. All the nations of the world are united in believing in war; all of them are armed to the teeth, the big and strutty ones with WMDs. War is the opposite of humanitarian. It’s the opposite of aid. War is destruction. War is murder. That’s what it’s for. Why would two (or in the Syrian situation, Gawd knows how many) antagonists at war be interested in aid to their victims? Or a ceasefire? (“Will it hold?” “Oh dear, there seem to have been violations.” What a surprise!).
This is why I can’t stand the mushy sentimentality surrounding the Christmas truce during the First World War. One English language textbook a few years ago used it in one of its lessons. The class weeps over a bilingual “Silent Night” in the trenches, sighs as it realises that the very next day both choirs went back to war, and then the class joins in singing some old wartime song popular with the British troops.
I don’t have an answer to all this. We don’t need ceasefires or humanitarian aid. We need to stop believing in war. Jeremy Corbyn doesn’t believe in war but, if he does get into government, I don’t know how he’ll try to persuade others. He’s set himself the task of trying to persuade his own party not to renew Trident (there’s a mountain to climb) and we can only join him in that effort and keep our fingers crossed. But it feels as if it could all be too late, especially since Iraq, and our creation of ISIS.
So, as I say, I’ve got no answer. I’m just tired of it, that’s all.
Astonishingly racist Times cartoon shows terror of Corbyn’s authenticity
Skwalker’s words here are an eloquent appeal to Labour politicians not to pander to xenophobia but instead join Corbyn in fighting it. And engage in honest politics across the board.
In the run-up to the EU referendum, the ‘leave’ campaign hammered home the message ‘Take back control’, with particular reference to immigration.
Within hours of the announcement of the result, leading leave campaigners were frantically rowing back on the promise that exit would mean ‘control of our borders’, watering it down to meaningless levels or saying outright that free movement would be required for free trade.
Trust in Establishment politicians is at an all-time low – and with good reason.
This week, the Times – now a ‘Murdoch rag’ but still claiming the gravitas and credibility of a ‘broadsheet’ paper – published an appalling, blatantly racist and xenophobic cartoon. The cartoon shows Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn at the helm of the Mersey Ferry (Labour’s conference this week was held in Liverpool) crammed with ‘generic foreign types’, titled ‘Migrant Ferry Across the Mersey’:
The cartoon is supposed to be an attack…
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Labour Conference chair Lillis already ignoring votes
Clearly the dirty tricks aren’t over. Thanks for this, skwalker.
Paddy Lillis, the NEC chair who has been chairing Labour’s first conference session this morning, has already been demonstrating contempt for democracy.
The vote this morning to accept/reject the ‘Conference Arrangement Committee’ report, in which the CAC attempts to justify its decision to ignore some of the most key issues raised by Labour constituency parties and members, was voted on by a show of hands that had a huge number of ‘reject’ hands raised – at the very least, it was tight and probably more than those voting to accept, so a proper ballot was required. People at various heights and angles around the hall have confirmed this.
Lillis declared the ‘accept’ vote ‘overwhelmingly carried’.
Subsequently, various people stood to ‘reference back’ (i.e. object to and put to a delegate vote’) the fact that the NEC’s (National Executive Committee) proposed rule changes are offered as a ‘take it or leave it’…
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Breaking: irony dead – note blames Owen Smith ‘rally’ ad
This made my day
Irony is widely reported to have died this weekend and to have left a note blaming Owen Smith’s ‘Liberty’ advert for its demise.
Investigators believe the cryptic note referred to the Smith campaign’s paid Facebook ad this weekend, after Smith’s comment during last week’s Labour leadership hustings:
Jeremy shouldn’t mistake mass rallies for a mass movement
The campaign ad uses black-and-white footage of an Aneurin ‘Nye’ Bevan rally from the 1950s in its first few seconds, with a soundtrack of Bevan saying,
Behind us are millions and millions of ordinary men and women who are expecting us to do our duty
Commenting on the news, Satire – one of Irony’s closes friends – said,
It was just too much. Using black-and-white footage of a 60-year-old mass rally to oppose a man who can raise huge crowds right now in full colour is bad enough, but to do so just a couple of…
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Rio rules – OK?
A friend complains about the TV listings: “It’s wall-to-wall Olympics”, he lamented yesterday.
He’s right. I turn to the Radio Times – BBC 1 given over entirely to the Olympics. BBC 4 ditto. Same tomorrow, as far as I can see, and it’s leaked into BBC 2 with the swimming heats at 6pm. On Monday, after a one-and-a-half-hour “Olympic Breakfast” starting at 6am, there’s a break till 1.45pm. Then off we go again and it’s Olympics till 4am Tuesday. the only bit of relief to interrupt this pattern is forced feeding of another kind: EastEnders at 8pm. The excitement promised there isn’t tempting:
“Sharon encourages Grant to talk to Phil, but the two only end up in a bitter argument. Jay and Ben have a heart-to-heart, while Claudette encourages a grieving Pam to visit Paul.”
I don’t know who any of these people are. For all I know they’re in Rio, on a trip paid for by my TV licence fee. I daren’t turn the page to Tuesday. Mind you, in the end it might be less depressing than the news.
And that’s another thing – it leaks into the news as well: apparently the Russians are going to be banned from the Paralympics. Which means that the most vulnerable and deserving are going to be punished for the crimes of the powerful while the rich and famous get off scot free. No change there then. And they certainly know all about that in Brazil.
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