Refugee situation / EU response - rolling news

I see Cameron's planning to bring peace to the Middle East instead of taking any refugees. At least Orban is honest.

worked out well for Tony B. Liar, if that is in fact his real name

Does anyone know the best place(s) to donate to that will help these people directly? Google is throwing up news links and nothing else.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/5-practical-ways-you-can-help-refugees-trying-to-find-safety-in-europe-10482902.html

^ don't read the comments

http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/jungle-books-calais-migrant-library

Thanks, some of those look very good.

Meanwhile here we're capturing and locking up our asylum seekers on remote islands or in the PNG jungle where theyre getting beaten up and raped and killed and no one is doing anythign to stop it.

Yes, Australia is very much a world-leader in abusing refugees and treating them like shit and genuinely hoping they'll go somewhere else and die so as not to inconvenience us

really having a hard time w this today, in my own head

i have no doubt that cameron's exact lines were trotted out in the 1930s

"europe" is really proving a comprehensive failure when it comes to responding to big problems

i have a three year old of my own and even just the thought of that photo is a wormhole, i go into the whole history - who put those shoes on him, and what were they thinking when they did, and what was he thinking, and what hopes did they have, and how scared they must have been. i'm sorry. none of this needs repeating. i really am finding it hard to deal

Dunno about "europe" failing and what the scare quotes indicate, but the Dublin Treaty is just a big ball of awfulness and needs to be declared dead quickly by a few more heads of state before anything at all helpful can be done on the European level.

scare quotes indicate states working together as a political entity rather than a geographical collection of countries - maybe i don't need them

i don't think it's very controversial to say that europe's failure to handle trade imbalances has been comprehensive

and europe has also been massively failing to deal AT ALL with the massive inflow of refugees/migrants/whatevs from the middle east. it's understandable to a degree that systems are not designed to cope with ~100K people per month but this has been going on awhile now. in an era of historically low interest rates and massively high unemployment surely europe could, like, build entire fucking towns for people to live in

That sounds suspiciously Keynesian.

didn't that happen in the 50s and 60s? governments just looked at a problem and were like "well obviously we need to build about 100 new buildings, MAKE IT SO"

Where have you been for that last 30-odd years? Are you some sort of Socialist?

i swear this is the most pissably impotent set of governments i can ever remember, america considers it a generational victory to force people to sign up for back-breakingly expensive health care and europe allows entire truckloads of people to die by the roadside because they're worried about what pensioners in hendon might do in a marginal seat in 5 years' time

Chunks of Europe that had property boom already have mostly-built now-empty towns, ffs.

Finding it pretty hard to deal with myself, TH. The pictures of him smiling and playing with his brother, who also died, are almost as difficult to see.

(I feel pretty shallow that it takes photographs to turn the sort-of academic anger I had before into this visceral outrage, but it is what it is)

i swear this is the most pissably impotent set of governments i can ever remember, america considers it a generational victory to force people to sign up for back-breakingly expensive health care and europe allows entire truckloads of people to die by the roadside because they're worried about what pensioners in hendon might do in a marginal seat in 5 years' time

Pissably impotent government preferable to BIG GOVERNMENT, I imagine.

(I feel pretty shallow that it takes photographs to turn the sort-of academic anger I had before into this visceral outrage, but it is what it is

And I feel callous that the concentration by the media on the death of just one child is irritating me.

(24 hour news is on at my work all the time, by way of explanation)

It takes one child photo to generate empathy.

hey i've got an idea, why not let people LIVE WHERE THEY WANT TO?!?!?!!! CRAZY I KNOW, IT'LL NEVER WORK, THIS IS MUCH BETTER

Back in the day, they tried to dissuade people from moving to London from Bolton.

I don't know what to think about this. I'm a new European arrival working/struggling with immigration offices daily, but in the position of having a permanent state functionary job, social capital, privilege out the wazoo. My kids have spent two of the last five years in French schools in FLE (français langue étrangère) with immigrants mostly from Africa; so I see integration happening, or not happening, every day, with their classmates and their classmates' families.

So I guess I don't know what to do. Obviously stop the dying. But is the right thing to do to allow everyone in Syria, Libya, Eritrea, etc. to immigrate freely to the European country of their choice? I feel rage at the horrors these people are going through now; and at what they're going through in their home countries. But I don't know: is the right thing to think as a European trying to be moral in 2015 to open the borders? I really don't know! I'm not asking as a question of what's politically "possible", but as a question of: what is the right thing for European nations to do? Is having any limit moral?

Nothing about *that* question is obvious to me; the only thing that's obvious is that we have to stop the dying, stop the suffering. But where does this go after that?

It's always worth remembering that the vast majority of refugees from those countries stay in neighbouring countries. The increase in numbers from Syria to Europe started when the refugee shelters in Turkey (2m Syrian refugees, Lebanon 1.1m, Jordan 620k and Iraq 250k) either became too crowded to take any more or came under attack themselves. There's no expectation of open borders but you can't build a wall around the sea and do have moral and legal responsibilities to the people who are here now.

^yes. but alas there’s no end in sight to the horror, chaos, disaster engulfing syria, libya, iraq etc...

"There's no expectation of open borders but you can't build a wall around the sea and do have moral and legal responsibilities to the people who are here now."

Doesn't "you can't build a wall around the sea and do have moral and legal responsibilities to the people who are here now" entail open borders though? Unless you're maintaining also that:

1) legal responsibilities don't entail long-term residency in the European nation of the refugee's choice
2) the flow of refugees will not continue...indefinitely? for long? for much longer?

don't economists wring their hands that there will not be enough workers to support an aging population? hey guess what I FOUND SOME

There is no legal expectation of permanent residency. However long the flow of refugees lasts, it won't change the relevant UN conventions on not sending people back to war zones. xp

In Hungary: https://twitter.com/jamesmatesitv?lang=en-gb

(nothing graphic btw..but if you are having a tough time to deal then might be best not to look)

Wee boy picture made me cry at work today (in a pub). But, on a plus side we have a right wing customer group, and they've all been very pro helpin people. Surprisingly so - every time it came up I was bracing myself for nonsense.

UKIP twat:

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.

Bucklitsch? That goes back to pre-Norman times, I assume?

Since removed:

https://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpf1/v/t1.0-9/11030543_10153688600104073_694587591403488514_n.jpg?oh=0498e7bf83dac90223f65d91fb6f18e9&oe=5664B508

ugh trying to figure out how to express my outrage at the Hungarian gov't about this without pissing off my Hungarian in-laws

If I were you I'd go right ahead and tell them their Prime Minister is a racist cunt.

i have a three year old of my own and even just the thought of that photo is a wormhole, i go into the whole history - who put those shoes on him, and what were they thinking when they did, and what was he thinking, and what hopes did they have, and how scared they must have been. i'm sorry. none of this needs repeating. i really am finding it hard to deal

There with you. "He died because his parents were greedy", I mean what the FUCK. I can't read about this any more.

Also just want to point out that that little drowned boy's family applied for refugee status to Canada earlier this year, and was rejected.

Good to see Cameron has been shamed into accepting more refugees, though hasn't specified how many.

Orban has been following the same line for years - trying to reintroduce the death penalty, putting Roma children in segregated schools, suggesting that immigrants to Hungary should be put in labour camps, etc. The only time he seems to get much push-back from the EU is when he suggests protectionist economic policies.

You can say and do what you like as long as Germany agrees with your economic policies.

ok i know it's fun to hate germany but their government has pledged to take 800,000 refugees this YEAR so everybody else had better respekognize

tracer your post upthread re drowned child is killing me. this is too big to bear tbh.

Yes, I had an overwhelming hyperventilating + sobbing moment earlier. I was on the verge a few times earlier but the dams broke :(

I dunno if I was just a more callous bastard before I became a parent but yeah I can't read/see that stuff and not have a really uncontrollable visceral emotional reaction

i found it devastating and i haven't spent significant time around a little kid since i was a little kid. im sure many will share this but there was something about his little shoes that produced the beginnings of a large sob that i choked back.

then was even more upset and also deeply angry when i found out that a relative of the little boy lives locally to me (metro vancouver) and that his family's refugee claim had been rejected. by coincidence an org here had just released a multimedia detailing how awful canada's immigration policy has been under the tories which i had just perused earlier in the day.

Good to see Cameron has been shamed into accepting more refugees, though hasn't specified how many.

Its really pathetic - a mere few thousand and no more, just enough so that the new cycle can churn around to something else. The exact figure "being thrashed out in Whitehall" according to Newsnight last night.

Christ.

It really, really is...

right wing on twitter already advocating for the uk to do the same, not going to link to it, nobody needs to see that

What can one say to this kind of evil? I think we’re way down a very dark path and I can’t see the way back.

no market or supranational body could unite europe like ethnic cleansing does

the remainers who shouted down any attempt to raise this issue are as bad as everyone else

the remainers who shouted down any attempt to raise this issue are as bad as everyone else

otm

Sadly, this is who 'we' are and who 'we' always have been. It's just another milestone in the Grand History of Humanity.

death to europe

Happy Easter 🐰 🐣 🌼 to all who celebrate it today, especially those who help to make Europe’s borders more secure!

This holiday weekend there are hundreds of people in Frontex operations far from home. They support countries around Europe to protect our borders. Thank you! pic.twitter.com/lKrwLJMze6

— Frontex (@Frontex) April 4, 2021

This is what a world of hard borders looks like, with its citizens employed as prison guards.

https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/fortress-greece

#EU states are spending ludicrous sums of money on dystopian technology to deter #refugees and #migrants.#Europe #HumanRights #Morocco #Syria #Turkey #Libya @JustinSalhani https://t.co/DwFfR73zju

— Fanack (@FanackMENA) July 15, 2022

potentially stupid question from an American:

how much of the xenophobia / racism against refugees is centered around these people being "violent and dangerous" and if so, do the citizens of European countries find this rhetoric credible? (e.g. Trump's dog whistle campaign comment about Mexicans being bad hombres)

most of it, though at this point the necessity for ethnic cleansing is seen as so self evident that the case often doesn't need to be made. most of this stuff goes unreported and to question it is inherently politically extreme, unserious, elitist, antisemitic (somehow) and maybe treasonous. so people believe it (or pretend to) including most prominent liberals and leftists

Sarah - as the report in the NLR says, Islamophobia is playing a part in turning sections of the Greek population against refugees.

that's just horrible. ugh.

right-wing eejit P Hitch once wrote that the EU is a de facto continuation of the German Empire, it's probably not at all in the sense that he meant it, but not that far off from being that either if you look at the wider picture.

it's depressing in that one wants to think that civilizations and governments and people learn from mistakes and horror and get better ...and this just reminds me, 1945 wasn't that long ago.

also that America doesn't have a monopoly on egregious behavior like that

if the Cleves-Jülich crisis of 1609 taught us anything it’s that refugees streaming into your territory boost the economy, this is basic stuff

Mass deaths at sea are to the EU what mass shootings are to the US.

- It keeps happening.

- And every time, politicians pretend to be concerned.

- And every time, politicians keep in place the government policies at the root of the problem.

- And it keeps happening.

— Andrew Stroehlein (@astroehlein) June 15, 2023

https://jacobin.com/2023/09/europe-migration-tunisia-humanitarian-disaster-italy-asylum-seekers/

Europe is done for. Climate and war will intensify the refugee crisis, with no plan from the centre and the left getting blocked (as the case in France).

Austria election live: far-right Freedom party got most votes, first projections show https://t.co/UZUlkPsyLt

— The Guardian (@guardian) September 29, 2024

with no plan from the centre and the left getting blocked (as the case in France).

As was the case in the UK.

More of these groups will end up in government like Meloni in Italy. This will eventually build as crises intensify. The center parties will eventually fold -- like in France -- to their will.

One thing is that much of these countries have left wing traditions, but whether that can be sustained is another question. Take what I can rn.

* sustained in a parliamentary political set-up