The Refugee/Migrant Crisis

It would help if people writing about the refugee crisis put it into context. The Middle East is an unstable area, there have long been tensions between Shias and Sunnis to say nothing about the fact that the place is not exactly the home of democracy. In addition, however, the behaviour of Western powers in the area starting (well whenever you like but let’s say) with

• the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and moving on to,
• the carve up of the Ottoman Empire between Britain and France after WW1,
• the understandable but utterly wrong decision to create a Western state out of Palestine in 1948 (Israel will probably survive as long as its predecessor, the Crusader state, did),
• the appalling treatment of the Palestinians by Israel supported by the West since 1948,
• the Western coup in Iran in 1953
• the foolish decision to invade Afghanistan after “9/11”. Although that atrocity conferred no right on the US to invade anyone, if they had to pick a state it should have been the state where most of the bombers came from – Saudi Arabia
• the savagery (and illegality) of the West’s actions in Iraq since 2003,
• Britain and France’s decision to get rid of Gadaffi in the 00s probably to protect arms sales to what they (foolishly) thought might be a post Gadaffi democracy (the Russians and the Chinese will never fall for that one again; I was surprised that they fell for that stunt), and
• whatever you’re having yourself!

has to be included in any meaningful writing about the tragedy of the refugees and the migrants. It would also help if the West acknowledged its mistakes and its crimes and furthermore admitted that the driving force behind its actions in the Middle East today (as with imperialism always), is money. In today’s circumstances, concerns about oil supplies and the need for arms manufacturers to keep making profits are the critical factors. Everyone recognizes the importance of the oil industry to our standard of living and the need for security of oil supplies but it is not necessary to engage in savage violence anywhere to secure oil supplies. What has changed, even since the 1960s/70s, is the extent to which the arms industry in the West has got out of control. President Eisenhower, himself a former soldier, recognized the need to curb the Military Industrial Complex, which I have always believed was behind the Kennedy assassination (and which is why no US President since then has dared to challenge it), and his words of warning have come home to roost.

Although views like mine could be construed as coming from the broad left (or at least the peace movement, which I have supported all my life), they are not really. The refugee/migrant crisis is not a left, right or centre issue or even a peace movement issue. It is a critical issue resulting from the fact that Western states have lost control of hugely powerful interests to which they gave birth (such as the arms industry – TTIP is another example). If Western states don’t regain control over those interests the consequences for the West itself will be huge (and, frankly, deserved).

The treatment of religious minorities in the Middle East should be evidence enough of the nature of the challenge we face and who the bad guys are. The arms industry couldn’t care less if their bombs are killing Christians, Moslems, Hindus or Presbyterian Buddhists! (Remember Milo Minderbinder in Catch-22?) The arms industry is completely amoral and its only interests are sales and profits. Most people in the West are not (that) amoral and if the media joined up the dots the people of the West would see the scale of the challenge we face to get these vested interests under control. Even if public opinion does turn against the arms industry, however, it won’t be plain sailing. The arms industry, the drugs trade and the sex industry (including, it has to be said Hollywood, the theatre and, up to a point, the mainstream media), supported by the banking industry (governments know that genuine efforts to curb the activities of drug traffickers, for example, would seriously damage the banking industry) represent the very depths to which humanity can sink. They are today’s equivalent of the people William Wilberforce tackled and defeated. The arms industry is legal, the sex industry is legal in part and the drugs industry is tolerated. The banks are also legal and are backed up by private and public sector regulators, many of whom, like the bankers and no doubt even some of the arms peddlers, are respectable, church going people. Respectable church-going people some of them may be but try taking them on! It will be a long hard slog. Wilberforce did it with the slave trade and another Wilberforce (Pope Francis?) is needed now.

So, it is not just a case of identifying illegality (the drugs trade) or the amorality of the arms trade. Western society has become deeply corrupted by much of what has gone on since WW2 and, in particular, since the Swinging Sixties, and is now very decadent. Unfortunately, however, because of the link between the activities of the arms (in particular) industry and our standard of living, not all commentators, in particularly conservative commentators, are prepared to say what has to be said. For conservatives (much more than for the left), class loyalties predominate. Pope Francis is possibly a key player in this. Will he call it as it needs to be called or will he play the game? I think he will play  the game. I think he is playing the game.

So, how do you get conservative leaders and opinion formers in the West to break their class loyalties and challenge the vested interests (with or without the help of the Pope)? Until that happens, calling for Christian enclaves in the Middle East (does that mean everyone else is fair game?) or saying we will only admit Christian refugees to the EU is neither here nor there. The problem is here, in our world, not in the Middle East or North Africa. The West is where the bad guys are and they are every bit as wicked as Hitler and the Nazis.

Merkel and the Refugee/Migrant Crisis

It is ironic to hear David Cameron saying that there is a need to tackle the cause of the conflict in Syria when he was gung-ho for bombing the Assad regime out of existence just two years ago - until he was stopped by Red Ed in a House of Commons vote, which in turn, stopped the Americans joining in. If Assad had been got rid of it would have made the Syrian situation infinitely worse with many more Christians either fleeing or having their throats cut. I see that Cameron is going to try again to bomb Syria - this time ISIS, I think. The man should make up his mind who his friends are and who his enemies are!

Cameron's weaknesses are being cruelly exposed but in fairness to him he is riding several tigers at the one time. Britain is more hostile to non-white immigration than many countries, partly because that is the way they are (it is the other side of the nature that resulted in the creation of a powerful empire) and partly because they are now experiencing the consequences of large-scale immigration of non-whites from their former empire. The bottom line is that every state must make its own decisions about immigration but a liberal democracy should be expected to do so in a liberal and humane way.

The British, however, are seeing their country and their society change before their eyes so their anger is hardly a surprise. Given the imperial roots of the problem, I don't have huge sympathy for the British but I do recognize a political problem when I see it. Cameron is also trying to keep the UK in the EU and the Scots in the UK. He shouldn't worry about the EU. It is slowly collapsing but the Scots' situation is deeply worrying as the recent vote there was only half time. So, I have some sympathy for him.

Derek Scally's information (Wednesday 26 August, IT) was interesting:

"German politicians rarely visit these areas [i.e. east German areas where there is high unemployment and where people feel threatened  by heavy immigration], nor do they have answers to German involvement in the causes of the refugee crisis. Such as how, in the first half of 2015 alone, Germany green-lighted arms exports worth €6.35 billion  - almost as much  as in the entire calendar year 2014. Arms exports to Arab states and northern Africa - from where millions of people are fleeing - more than doubled to €587 million...".

I'm surprised the editor of the IT permitted Scally's figures to be published but they have generated no traction nor will they, for the present. The public is upset by the sight of the dead child on the beach in Turkey (and rightly so) and is not, for the moment, interested in reading about the West's part in the Syrian tragedy or the tragedy of the wider Middle East going back to the foundation of the State of Israel. That will come but the timing will need to be right.

Likewise, if NATO had not bombed Libya's Gadaffi out of existence there would not now be emigrants trying to cross the Mediterranean from Libya. Gadaffi could easily have been induced to see to that. The media and commentators generally are not making that connection because they failed to say, at the time, that the overthrow of Gadaffi was a serious breach of international law. It was an act of outright NATO aggression, a throwback to 19th century imperialism. There is no doubt that Gadaffi would have slaughtered every man, woman and child in Benghazi, which is why the UN permitted NATO to stop him from doing so. NATO, however, was not empowered to overthrow Gadfaffi. Nor was it necessary for NATO plans to protect Benghazi. Arab League and/or African Union air forces  - or even the Russians and the Chinese air forces - could have done it. (The Russians and the Chinese should have insisted on that at the UN Security Council. I don't know why they didn't.) The fact that NATO overthrew Gadaffi, which was designed to protect British and French arms sales to the "democratic" government that Cameron and Sarko believed would replace Gadaffi in the Arab Spring, was a significant feature, I suspect, in Putin's decision to annex the Crimea. He saw NATO engaging in imperialism in Africa so he decided to do the same in his neighbourhood. The Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956 followed the Suez fiasco. The media didn't make the connection then and they are not making it now.

Merkel has agreed to take 800,000 refugees/migrants because (as per Suzanne Lynch's article in the IT on Saturday ("Migrant issue poses a threat to EU unity")) if she didn't the crisis could break the EU apart. (It might anyway.) Merkel is getting the credit ("slate for 1939-45 wiped clean", etc.) from people who should know better. She is acting to protect Germany's very own imperial project. I note that she is beginning to get some flack from her Bavarian colleagues but no doubt public opinion in Germany will see her through that particular hiccup. It will take time and good journalism (!)  for people to realize that Merkel is acting in her own interests, not in the interests of the migrants (although no doubt she feels for them as the rest of us do).

I don't know if the migrants will stay in Germany or move around but Schengen should be abandoned. My guess is that if it will have to be, making the migrant issue the second major pressure point leading to a break-up of the EU. The third will be Russia.

Apparently, on a per capita basis (i.e. our share of the EU's population), we should take 10,000 refugees/migrants. We could take 5,000 without too much difficulty. As one of the editorials in the papers said yesterday (I think it was the SBP), it might mean postponing more money for the HSE or roads or whatever but we can do it. My guess is that within a few years the Exchequer would be benefiting from the 5,000. No one would expect us to take 40,000, the same proportion as Germany, because we are not trying to build a European empire, as is Germany. We could, however, take 5,000.

The Refugee/Migrant Crisis

Peter Hitchens had an article in the Mail on Sunday (We won't save refugees by destroying our own country, 6/9/15), which confuses an emergency with a PC-driven demand that people not be allowed to maintain their own cultures and their own societies. The EU (see Tom McGurk’s article in yesterday’s Sunday Business Post about the ECJ blocking the Scots from imposing minimum prices on alcohol in the name of free trade – the Scots should ignore the ruling, if it is finalized), globalization, TTIP, etc., etc. ad nauseam, have been stealthily (the key word) undermining the prerogatives of governments since the 1940s. I favour free trade and always have. If we don’t trade we don’t eat. States, however, must still make the rules, not MNCs. The time has come to say “stop”, particularly with regard to financial services. The movement of gazillons between countries every second is having a hugely damaging and destabilizing effect on the world’s financial system, the world economy and the lives of people.

Removing all authority from governments would be OK if those who have inherited it, the financial system, MNCs, etc., were answerable to the voters but they’re not. We have a ludicrous situation where governments have responsibilities but less and less power. We are also seeing the profession of  politics develop into a business like any other, which exists solely for its own purposes. Politicians nowadays run for office (as they have not yet been abolished although they fulfil no real function) to enjoy the benefits of office. Some political parties have come to understand this quicker and more completely than others. They have developed a language of hypocrisy and a ruthless determination to enjoy the fruits of office while pretending to do otherwise that, were Shakespeare still around (and if he actually wrote his plays!), would lead to him writing another Hamlet or Macbeth.

The crisis with the refugees and the migrants, however, is different. What Hitchens fails to understand is that if millions of people leave their homes and head somewhere else there is nothing that can be done about it. Trying to stop the refugees/migrants is like trying to hold back the tide. They are coming and that’s it. We have to absorb them in the short term. My guess is that most of them will be so grateful that they will settle down and become good citizens of whatever country they end up in. I have no worries about this tide of people. Obviously, if they start coming in their millions that will change our way of life and our standard of living (the protests are more about the effect on standard of living than culture) but the West has brought this flood – if flood it becomes – on itself. If we want to stop this tide before it becomes a flood we (the West) will have to stop engaging in non-stop criminal violence [war] against other parts of the world. Most people would not opt to walk from Syria to Munich if they weren’t desperate.

I’m glad this tide of humanity has begun to reach western and central Europe. Perhaps now, something will be done about its cause.