Tag: Refugees

Life & Death

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

The refugee crisis never really went away, it just calmed down a little and was forgotten about. People are still dying on a daily basis. Children are still drowning and we’re continuing to let it happen because of ideological beliefs, ignorance and our own self-serving desires. With the names, ages and photographs of the dead Kurdish-Iranian family being realised there is finally a human face being put on those desperate enough to risk their lives because what they leave behind is worse. Not since Alan Kurdi washed up on that Turkish beach over five years ago have refugees been treated like human beings. It is such a rarity, it stands out as novel. And here we are; Rasoul Iran-Nejad, 35, Shiva Mohammad Panahi, 35, Anita, 9, Armin, 6 and Artin, 15 months. Victims.

It would be easy to blame the current Government, they make it easy. Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, Dominic Cummings, the man with the advice. They’re responsible. The leader of the opposition Keir Starmer, he’s responsible. They are culpable but to turn this into a piece going on about particular politicians or leaders doesn’t do a dead family any honour. If anything they just get used so a point can be made. It doesn’t respect them it just makes them pawns and objects in this continued war for power. They have power, we don’t like how they use it, we think we could do better, we use a dead family as a stick and next week we find something else. We just use them. We use them in the same way the other side would use the highjacking of the oil tanker by Nigerians seeking refuge earlier this week. Desperate people getting used in desperate moments.

How then can we create legitimate discussions about the deaths of these people and find a culpable party or argue about how and whether people should be able to move freely on this planet, without using examples of those who died as a consequence of a series of decision based upon those arguments. We must be able to discuss it. Is it blame? Do discussions fail the moment we allow blame and guilt in? People make errors and there will always be repercussions but it feels like both sides of the argument, the accuser and the accused, don’t want to find a resolution, or at least a resolution that doesn’t perpetuate the cycle of suffering.

In that case we, us, me, I am just as responsible as those previously mentioned leaders. Their job is to be the face of guilt and when that guilt becomes too much they’ll be replaced by a fresh face and so on. We continue to perpetuate this by deluding ourselves into believing the next fresh face will be the good one yet we don’t even know what that means because we ourselves don’t behave or exist in any morally virtuous way. But then we’re human and we’re fallible. We need to forgive ourselves for this too and accept these ideas of good and bad are simply ideas, nothing more. In the meantime a young family have died and while young families have always died and young families will always die let’s not make their death pointless. Life is never worthless and death will always be it’s equal.

The Sun Shining Out Of It’s Own Arse

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Are you ready for me to state the obvious, because I’m going to. I’m going to do it now. The Sun newspaper is full of shit. Yes I know everyone knows it but some forget and it allows them get away with things. The danger with them getting away with things is that they are the number one read newspaper in the UK, owner Rupert Murdoch is a scumbag and also unfortunately people both believe him and vote the way he wants them to. The reason I bring this up is because Facebook‘s algorithm decided I might like to read this article on a man at a school who “could be 40”. To confirm the success of the algorithm I clicked on the link because it sounded ridiculous and because sometimes I have dreams that I’m back at school in sixth form and my mind related becoming curious in the process. It turned out not to be the silly article I originally thought it would be.

The headline – “Worried parents demand answers over new pupil who ‘could be 40’ joining school after moving to UK” – was not on the original link but the nature of the story becomes clear with it. The article goes on to pander to a narrative that child refugees or child migrants are not actually children or more precisely under eighteen. It would be worth mentioning that sometimes this does happen. I don’t deny it but it is important to understand that it’s not rife and it should not discredit the claims to refuge that minors, many of them unaccompanied, make. The article brings up the story of some Iranian who wasn’t under-18 who spent six weeks at a school in Stoke in 2018 before tests confirmed he wasn’t a minor. Without any proof it then uses this example as evidence of guilt in regards the second person with a thinly veiled implication that feeds racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric.

Confirmation bias is a very real thing. We pay more attention to information that confirms our pre-existing understanding of the world. It is very hard to avoid confirmation bias because we’re all susceptible to it’s subtly. This unfortunately is simple and blatant propaganda. It reaches millions of people and the end result is things like Brexit and a majority Conservative government. The people voting for such things will not benefit from them but owners of newspapers like The Sun will. The independent media and the people are at war with powerful vested and influential interests, and themselves. You can’t overcome real power without the people, but first we need to overcome ourselves. I don’t just lay the blame on others, we’re all to blame. Just please don’t buy or believe this crap.

Anger & Despair

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Tonight was very nearly going to be a little rant. It’ll likely still contain elements of one of course but there is now more calm in the mental air surrounding my mind. Anger and despair. This was what I was feeling. Anger and despair at the immediate and direct consequences of political decisions made by the people masquerading as the leaders of my country. Anger and despair that my passport is now useless. Of course that’s not entirely true and I will not cry at my own limited suffering when people can still not enter Europe despite escaping war, violence, poverty and the early affects of a future climate catastrophe. We need perspective and my complaints pale into comparison and I’m aware I sound like a spoilt child having his special privileges taken away but the fact they’re clearly only privileges in the first place shows how utterly wrong the whole thing is. It’s just so completely pointless and self-inflictingly stupid.

Yes I’m taking about Brexit. And no I don’t believe the EU is some kind of beacon of hope and goodness, but I do think it’s a hell of a lot better than the alternative on offer. There is still time and today’s little video by a remarkably happy looking Boris Johnson is likely part of negotiations. It still makes you worry. Mainly because this mob have given every indication so far that they would actual prefer a no deal Brexit. Come the end of this year and with no agreement in place British people will be able to spend no more than ninety days in every one hundred and eighty within countries in the EU. This is how it is for Americans, Canadians and others outside of the Schengen or EU and those fortunate enough to be able to get holiday visas for Europe. I spent time in Greece with friends who had to go to Turkey for a few months before coming back or who just stayed illegally. I generally spend more than half the year within European Union countries. This is a direct and immediate consequence of Brexit.

That’s the thing, when we put aside ideas of what will happen from leaving the European Union, be those positive or negative and be those coming from leave or remain, they are simply ideas. It’s all hypothetical. People may have a fair idea but unexpected events can alter the moment very easily, look at this last year for example. We must understand things by real and measurable events. Freedom of movement is gone. The pound is getting weaker, thankfully we’re dragging the euro with us but that won’t last forever. The general economy has nosedived. Brexit has already cost us more money than we have ever put into the EU since we first entered, that’s not even counting the divorce bill. The benefits are only going to be seen in the long term they’ll say but long term is only an idea. Their dreams are not my dreams. All I know is the direct and completely unnecessary repercussions I can see, experience and measure. So yes I am still feeling a little anger and despair. But you know what, England, you can have yourself. Enjoy your American canned whole chicken and pig shit sandwiches, not to mention the chlorine and hormones. 58% and rising in support of Scottish independence. If it carries on like this there’s no way we’ll be stupid enough to believe the lies a second time. You’re on your own lads.

The Storm Of The Mind

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The first time I came to Greece, perhaps it was about four years ago now. Time is strange, it decides itself how fast it moves. It may have even been five years. The destination was Lesvos and it was with the intention of being some kind of hero, there to save the refugees. Actually I’m not entirely sure what the intention was, it was just suggested to me by a friend as something to do and I thought why not. We arrived in a storm. For about four days the island was battered as people slept rough, they slept wet, they slept on hillsides that resembled rivers. The scene was destruction and devastation. It was post-apocalyptic in everyway except that I was able to return to my little hotel room once all the heroism was done for the day.

There is a lot that could be said about that time, little of it positive in a way but there are always things which shine through the clouds. I made friends who will be friends for a lifetime. That isn’t always something you can say. I also saw the world in a way I hadn’t previously, and I understood seeing truth in another form, despite being hard to take, was a good thing for the mind. These things are all about me though because to view it from any other perspective is too much of a challenge. Thousands of people passed through everyday. The fate of nearly all of them unknown to me. Many survived but I don’t doubt many didn’t, their fates too horrific for these words here.

I’m not sure why I’m going into this. I always feel so self-indulgent. The knowledge I’ll likely always have a hotel room to go to if I need devalues something of any assistance I could give. The words become hollow, if they ever weren’t. That and the knowledge I could also jump on a plane with relative ease and go to any of those countries people were dying just to reach. There is probably a sense of guilt in a way but we shouldn’t feel guilty when ultimately we’re powerless. It is also a completely pointless emotion as we can’t help the lives we were born into. We can help what we do with them but even then we’re limited in anything genuine. It does make you grateful for a bit but that slowly passes as you start casting envious eyes around once more. I can understand how people become detached when they exist in that world for so long. Or maybe they’re detached when they begin and that is how they last. That is unfair. People do what they can. What they have to.

I know why I’m going into this. I’m in day three back in Greece and it’s currently day two of Storm Ioannis. Apparently there will be a day three and day four will be the day the world comes back to life. The scenario couldn’t be further from the last and I am as much a different person as those people I now meet but arriving in a storm seems familiar enough that it has made me reminisce. Reminisce in the most miserable and sad of ways but then weather can do that to you. Our moods are so very defined by the nature of our environment. What is important though is to remember to come out with the sunshine once it returns. It’s best not to leave yourself in the storm.

#accidentalpartridge

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I am not kidding that is actually a real and genuine picture of Nigel Farage. Somebody out there without a hint of irony thought it was not only a good image but one worthy of loading up into the public sphere of life. This is no joke, actually it is because it’s hilarious. This is the man who wants you to follow him up the ramparts and help defend the British Isles from an invasion of hordes of swarms of stampedes of scary looking fellow human beings. Perhaps he’s aiming for the lonely middle aged women in Kent with too many cats. Alternatively, this could just be his new picture for his dating profile on Tinder but hopefully I’ll never find out. “Draw me like one of your French girls” he implored. What a clown.

I’ve been avoiding discussing the hysteria the media tried to drum up last week, or this week, or whenever it was about people trying to cross the English Channel. But then I saw this image and had no choice. Obviously thousands of people cross the English Channel everyday, but these were “illegal asylum seekers” according to one renowned and unscrupulous daily rag. These three words then found themselves bandied about in the rhetoric of those with vested interests and those who’ve been told they have vested interests. That there is no such thing as an illegal asylum seeker is obviously of no importance in the world of who can shout the loudest and whip the most people into a frenzy. It is neither illegal to cross the channel or to claim asylum in any country. That is international law and we are not all of a sudden about to rewrite it just to appease a few scared and unscrupulous racists from the south of England.

It was a handy distraction from Covid-19 and numerous other government incompetencies, it’s just a shame for them that A-Level results were released and everybody stopped caring about a few desperate people risking their lives crossing a bit of sea because possible death was better than what they were leaving behind. All of a sudden everyone realised they themselves have children or know children who have been affected by this mob in power. An issue of immediate importance will always rise above a conflated artificial one that ninety-five percent of the population will not even notice in their daily life. Arguments on immigration have become as entrenched as any other in this polarised world we now live in. The right being self-serving arseholes and the left being self-serving moralists, both sides realising the truth is as ever probably somewhere in the middle. The fact there is no perfect solution if we keep on looking in the wrong places seemingly and conveniently being forgotten. Anyway as a great man on Norwich Radio once said, “Could go your way, could go mine. Either way, one of us is going down”.

A Delivery Of Bread, Harmony and Brexit

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Today began with an interesting morning of delivering bread. I went along this morning with one of the delivery drivers so I could learn his route in case he ever needs some one to cover him. This driver is an interesting man. Certainly at three o’clock in the morning he was far more chatty than I expected but after I while I managed to warm up and discover the ability to hold conversation. We chatted about a few things but at one point after I told him I had lived in Greece for a few years he asked me what the situation with the immigrants is. Now this kind of question can go one of two ways and it comes from a basis usually of “poor refugees” or “economic migrants we may have to be wary of”. I have found myself in this situation enough times to recognise this and give a general answer about how conditions are terrible there and now I can warn of the dangers of this virus in the camps. If he is inclined to be on the economic migrant side of the debate he doesn’t really get a window into the conversation from that angle and I’m careful not to go full refugee’s need rescuing and help coming to Britain because it opens up the possibilities of pointless arguments I cannot be bothered with.

Inevitably the conversation one way or another led onto politics and down the rabbit hole of nostalgia that Brexit has become. He was confident enough of his beliefs to admit to disliking faceless bureaucrats and being pro-Brexit. I suggested it wasn’t as straightforward as that because unfortunately we have plenty of faceless bureaucrats in the UK, we will soon be the United States’ little bitch and I enjoy living and working in foreign countries. The conversation very quickly got to the point we’ve all recognised before where the next step is basically you saying “No you’re wrong” and him saying “No actually you’re wrong”. For anyone who had one, a Brexit discussion reaches a very quick climax of that exact sort without fail. And you know what, there was something about that moment which I realised I missed.

The chap I was having this debate with was the archetypal northern mid-50s working man, he was even called Dave. That is no word of a lie. I like him he’s a good man and I really enjoyed this conversation about a topic which we’ve all forgotten took over our lives six months ago before we moved onto the killer virus. It was painfully evident that despite society having an enormous hug we’ve still got a long way to go to build bridges and men like Dave are still as determined about their understanding of societies ills as snowflake millennials like me of their opposite.

I still can’t get over how much of the perfect box he fit in and genuinely I’m not saying that as a criticism. I think we all forget in our determination to be right and force our version of right on others that we may just be wrong. It is only in understanding that and that men like Dave are not the enemy but very much on the same team as us that we may actually remove those who have pillaged and offered such little genuine hope to people. Dave hasn’t created this shit show, neither have I although we both continue to allow it’s existence as we wag fingers at each other while having our pockets picked. We talk of this virus bringing us together as a society but if we don’t get over any of the other bullshit we’ll just as quickly become divided down old lines once more. It’ll take us all. If not the old order will have won once again.