About 500 refugees died last week but who cares?

[Jaga]

We talk about Brexit and about Trump and we forget that so many people die each day, since these people have no real power. They also do not have anybody who speaks for them



www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/05/unhcr-2500-refugees-drowned-europe-2016-160531104504090.html

UNHCR: 2,500 refugees drowned on way to Europe in 2016

UN releases figures after deadliest week of the year for refugees as 880 lost their lives in Mediterranean.

At least 2,510 refugees have died while making the perilous journey to Europe so far this year, the UN refugee agency said, with fears rising that many more will suffer the same fate.

According to UNHCR, the figure marks an increase of 25 percent from the same five-month period in 2015, when some 1,855 refugees drowned. In 2014, from January until the end of May, at least 57 people died en route to Europe.

"Thus far 2016 is proving to be particularly deadly," William Spindler, a UNHCR spokesman, said. "This highlights the importance of rescue operations as part of the response to the movement of refugees and migrants in the Mediterranean, and the need for real, safer alternatives for people needing international protection."

The announcement follows the deadliest week of 2016 for refugees at sea.

READ MORE: Refugee deaths intensify call for safe EU passages

Over the past week, a series of shipwrecks off the Libyan and Italian coasts killed at least 880 people. That number was included as part of the UNHCR announcement, and marked an increase on previous estimates of around 700 people.

"According to some, unconfirmed, accounts, the recent increase in numbers is linked to efforts by smugglers to maximise income before the start of the holy month of Ramadan, in the coming week," Spindler said in a statement.

So far this year, at least 203,981 people have made the journey to Europe, which is a similar number to those who arrived in the continent last year in the same period.

[karl]

Jaga

This came across our news and of course it is deplorable. The accident was not an accident, but a result of negligent boat handling and over crowding. The boat over turned when although over loaded and top heavy, the crowd rushed to one side causing the over loaded vessel to capcise.

If you wish to bring blaim on some one, then point it into the direction of the owners and operaters of that vessel, we have nothing to do with this.

Please do not use empathic sensativities upon me, for over the years have I smelt the dead and seen what good people do to others in the name of their religion. It is not simple the smell of the dead, but the flys and bugs that play about their mouths and nose that is very disturbing and will cause very bad memories.

My self do not know any of these people that drowned in that boat accident, so I am not disturbed other then that is a very bad situation.

Karl

[Jaga]

Hi Karl, I am not blaming you of course. I just see how much human life's value and a level of sensibility goes up or down depending on:
nationality
who did the killing
celebrity status

Can you imagine if 500 people where killed following terroristic attack in Washington DC, London, Paris or TelAviv? This would start the WW III.

What if 500 people were killed in the Earthquake in Netherlands? This would also make news. But hundreds of thousands killed in Syria, Gaza, Iraq is almost nothing for the world.

[pieter]

Dear Jaga,

It is true what you are saying. There are various reasons behind this. I had a deep discussion with a Dutch friend of mine during our weekly wednesday evening bachelor evening dinner with Duthc special beers. (One week he cooks and one week I cook). We talked about world politics, American politics, Dutch politics, European politics, geopolitics and about the influence and manipulation of the press and media. We talked about refugees too and about Donald Trump, Geert Wilders and the new political immigrant party in the Netherlands, Denk (Think).

I think that the indifference with the dead 500 refugees in the West have to do with various historic, temporary, cultural, social, political, financial and economical reasons. The European, Western, secular and christian, population of today for a large part is indifferent, egocentric, narcistic, isolationalist, self centered and blind for the suffering of these poor refugees. A large minority isn't, but they are less visible today than let's say a year ago. Today the anti-immigrant and anti-refugee sentiment is more dominant and more visible in the press and media.

There is a deep islamophobia, xenophobia, racist attitude, discrimination and general aversion towards aliens in Europe. First of all against immigrants who are already here and secondly towards new refugees which are entering Europe. That feeling has all kinds of historical, sociological, anthropological, psychological, political, social and thus human reason. Like other people in the world Europeans think local, regional and national, and after a long, long, long time they think European, International and universal. The feeling of empathy, solidarity and sharing is not universal over here. The feeling of protecting the own culture, of keeping Europe European and fear of alien infuences is stronger. Unfortunately I have to tell you Jaga, that both in Western- and in Central- and Eastern-Europe Nationalism and Rightwing Populism are on the rise. People don't care about the suffering of others and think and speak in a very strong and tough manner. I think about my own family, my own wife, my own daughters and my own people. Fear and distrust of Islam and Muslims is huge in Europe.

There are ancient old elements in the attitudes of the Europeans. Present day Turkey is compared with the old Ottoman empire, North-Africa and the Middle east with the conquering Moors of Spain and Portugal. 911, Madrid, London, Paris and Brussels are still fresh in the memories of the people. The disadvantage and bad luck of many refugees is that they have the wrong kind of ethnicity, the wrong kind of race, the wrong kind of nationality, the wrong kind of religion and come from the wrong kind of region. Europeans find it hard to distighuish between refugees and terrorists. Many Western-Europeans have a lot of understanding for the tough stance of the governments of Hungary, Poland, Macedonia and Slovenia. Don't count out old layers of colonialism, racism and ethnic labeling in the West. It is a taboo to talk about it, it is not a large issue, or there is indirect discussion about it. But it is a fact.

They are Arab, Berber, Kurd, Afhan Tajik, Afghan Pashtun, Afghan Uzbek, Kurd, Iranian, Eritrean, Sudanese, Somalian, Nigerian and etc. They are coloured, have different features, different cultures, and there are a lot of young men amongst them and not a lot of families. That brings distrust. Why are all these young men over here? Why didn't they take their families, their wives, their children with them? The Western-Europeans have a lot of questions and they don't like leftwing, liberal or moderate christian-democratic politicians who are to tolerant, open and welcoming to the refugees. This is a fact I have to tell you Jaga. In the USA you have Donald Trump who wants to built a wall. In Europe there are a lot of Donald Trumps who want to close the borders, an immigration stop and who are Euroscpetic.

Cheers,
Pieter

[pieter]

Jun 1, 2016 17:41:01 GMT -7 Jaga said:

Can you imagine if 500 people where killed following terroristic attack in Washington DC, London, Paris or TelAviv? This would start the WW III.

What if 500 people were killed in the Earthquake in Netherlands? This would also make news. But hundreds of thousands killed in Syria, Gaza, Iraq is almost nothing for the world.

Western, European, white casualties attract more attention and compassion than coloured, brown, black or Middle Eastern people from Africa, North-Africa, the Middle east and Asia. You see that over and over again. And that annoys immigrants, former refugees who experienced that indifferance and lack of empathy earlier and Western people with understanding of the situation over there. We have a catch 22 situation over here, and Murphy's law.

There is only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for our own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. The European politician is crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to let more refugees in. The politician would be crazy to take the risk of letting more refugees in and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane, he had to let them in. If he let them in, he was crazy and he didn't have to; but if he didn't want to, he was sane and had to. The politician was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.

Murphy's law is an adage or epigram that is typically stated as: Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.

Politicians and citizens in Europea are ruled by fear, distrust, doubt, dualism (between compassion and selfinterest), alienation, rage, feelings of solidarity and the wish to keep Europe as it is while it is changing rapidly.

The intellectually left-wing Dutch magazine Vrij Nederland (Free Netherlands) interviewed the Hungarian Jewish author György Konrád last week. I read the interview and translated a few of the Dutch sentences into English over here.


György (George) Konrád (born 2 April 1933) is a Hungarian novelist and essayist, known as an advocate of individual freedom.

In that interview Konrád labeled the German chancelor Angela Merkels hospitable attiude towards Muslim migrants from Syria, North-Africa and Afhanistan as disastrous for Europe. He said; "We have to fight islamophobia, but in the same time should defend our values." He continued: 'The West-European leftwing elite play into the hands of radical Islam. But you are not in or at any place better of that here.' "The leftwing elite has a lot of criticism directed on European civilization, and that is very perilous." "We in the east know what opression is, you in the West have lived to long in peace, freedom and democracy." "We have a healthy distrust and you lack that attitude in the West". The leftwing soul is quickly won for the wrong cause. You see in everything and everybody a victim.


György Konrád in his apartement in a Villa in the green Buda part of Budapest

Cheers,
Pieter

[Jaga]

Hi Pieter, I share your distress, but I believe that in spite of this deeply rooted xenophobia the world is moving forward. As you said, you have lots of immigrants already in Europe and this trend would not change. What I am trying to say, the change is happening around.
The xenophobia and islamophobia is the same as treating slaves as different people or Ku Klux Klan. It would eventually go away, but it doesn't mean that we will ever be completely without bias and without dividing the world into us and they.

By the way, it is nice that you have these bachelors parties every Wednesdays. It sounds like fun!

Jun 1, 2016 18:22:15 GMT -7 pieter said:

Dear Jaga,

It is true what you are saying. There are various reasons behind this. I had a deep discussion with a Dutch friend of mine during our weekly wednesday evening bachelor evening dinner with Duthc special beers. (One week he cooks and one week I cook). We talked about world politics, American politics, Dutch politics, European politics, geopolitics and about the influence and manipulation of the press and media. We talked about refugees too and about Donald Trump, Geert Wilders and the new political immigrant party in the Netherlands, Denk (Think).

I think that the indifference with the dead 500 refugees in the West have to do with various historic, temporary, cultural, social, political, financial and economical reasons. The European, Western, secular and christian, population of today for a large part is indifferent, egocentric, narcistic, isolationalist, self centered and blind for the suffering of these poor refugees. A large minority isn't, but they are less visible today than let's say a year ago. Today the anti-immigrant and anti-refugee sentiment is more dominant and more visible in the press and media.

There is a deep islamophobia, xenophobia, racist attitude, discrimination and general aversion towards aliens in Europe. .... I think about my own family, my own wife, my own daughters and my own people. Fear and distrust of Islam and Muslims is huge in Europe.


Cheers,
Pieter

[pieter]

Dear Jaga,

I hope that people come to their senses and that extremism, fundamentalism, fanatism and ultra-orthodox movements will become less prominent, and that more moderate directions will become more dominant and leading. It is a fact that people from different continents and different countries are different. But in the core we are all human beings with the same basic needs, desires, aspirations, ambitions, dreams, achievements, and lives. I have studied history and I am afraid that there are historic curves or circles. I hope that we today are not back in the twenties and thirties.

I see some (not everything, but elements) similarities between the Muslims in Europe today and the jews in Europe for centuries ago until the Second World War. Like jews in let's say Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, Romania, Belarus and Russia, in the time of the Russian Czarist empire the Muslims have oriental looks, different clothes, different temperaments, different languages and accents (Yiddish, Hebrew or German back then for jews, and Arab, Berber languages, Turkish, Kurd, Iranian Farsi, Urdu and African languages today of the Muslim migrants). The jews back then in Central-, Eastern- and sometimes also in the West had oriental Moorish (Arab or Ottoman Turkish) Mosque looking synagogues, and they sometimes were darker and middle eastern Arab looking with their Semitic looks (again I say not all of them, but many). The Poles, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Russians and Romanians couldn't understand these poor and often Ultra-Orthodox Hasidic jews who only spoke Yiddish. They looked different than the Slavic, blond and blue eyed peasents, brunette, redhead or blond townspeople and Polish nobility and aristocracy.

Another minority in Poland, the German burgher saw competitors in the trading, money lending (banking), arts & crafts professing jews, and the poor Polish peasents and Roman-Catholic Schlachta (Polish gentry) saw aliens and a danger in the jews who had their own neighborhoods, villages and towns (Shtetl; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shtetl ). Back then jews often felt attracted to liberal progressive ideas, socialism and communism, because they were internationalistic and inclusive for minorities. Some jews were radical leftist leaders, like Trotsky, the Hungarian Béla Kun, and the Polish jews Rosa Luxemburg, Józef Unszlicht, one of the founders of the Cheka (the predessesor of the NKVD and KGB), Adolf Warski, Maksymilian Horwitz and Bruno Jasieński.

The jewish masses wanted to escape alienation, discrimination and racism in the form of anti-semitism in the Russian Czarist empire in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Lithuania and Poland. Back to today. All over Europe a new kind of 'Jewish minority', with strange features, a different faith, different cuisine, different taste, different language and different foreign accent in the national language entered our spaces. These people wear strange long dresses and cover their heads with a large sort of square kippah, pray five times a day, don't eat pork like us, butcher their meat in a different way, don't drink alcohol or very little, and drink Bedouin style coffee or tea instead, and stick to their own kind in their own funny temples (mosques), and go to their own coffee houses, greengrocer's, bakeries, butchers, little funny supermarkets, bars and even restaurants. They don't mix with us and don't make contact with us. Ofcourse we neither made or make contact with these aliens. Why should we. Who are they? What do they want? Where do they come from? What is in their mind? What are their plans? Do they want to take things over over here?

Most of them are poor and working class, and a few of them are rich, smart and successful. Their representatives are often leftists of left and far left political parties and they have their representatives in the unions. Due to a language gap and Islamic education their children and women live in seperate worlds than ours. They go to their black schools and our white European children go to white European primary schools, highschools and universities. People are irritated that these foreigners speak in their own alien Semitic (Arabic) or oriental, middle-eastern and Southern-European and North-African languages (Turkish, Kurd, Berber, Arabic, Persian Farsi, Urdu, Tadjik, Uzbek, Pashtun, Turkmen and African languages). In general these people are seen as archaic, backward, traditional, conservative and repressive, and not progressive, modern, pragmatic, Western and European (Caucasian) like us. Here comes the similarity with the jews of the 19th and early 20th century in mind. They were seen as an alien minority despite they had been around for a while. The Turks, Moroccan Berbers and Arabs are here also for quite a while over here now (some decades, some half a century, in the French connection). Like the jews they are dark, have large noses, different eyes, different sorts of hair, different skin colors, and like the jews they were different clothes and have a different kind of house of worship (their mosque).

Their being different is a cause for racism, xenophobia, anti-Arabism ( in fact a new version of anti-semitism), islamophobia (merged or mixed with anti-arabism), ant-immigrant sentiments, resentments and resistance towards the arrival of refugees from Syria and Afghanistan, and a call for closed borders, border controls, border fences or walls, stricter policies towards the immigrants who are already there and a stronger empathis on the native European character of a nation, the purity of a language (without foreign influences or accents), and also a call for 'Our own people first', in the cases of jobs, housing opportunities, social benefits (social security) and health care. Migrants are accepted if they are silent and invisible and don't cause any trouble, disturbances and thus turmoil.

Immigrants kids and young men become irritated, frustrated, annoyed, bored and restless due to the daily discrimination, exclusion, bad news, and the role of scapegoat they have, and they organise themselves in groups, gangs, ethnic corners or ghetto's and thu ethnic subgroups of Turks, Moroccans, Kurds, Afghans, Eritreans, Bosnians, Arabs, Salafist Muslims, and live a different life than the native European kids and young men. They haven't got easy lives in Europe I can assure you. You don't easily get a job in Western-Europe with the name Mohammed Benazzouz, Ali Khan, Mehmet Özturk or Fatihma Ethalik. The segregation, separation and thus 'New Apartheid' in Europe is a problem and a danger for the near future due to the alienation of migrant youth and young adults of foreign background.

Some things I tried to write as clear, blunt and direct as possible to describe the situation, like the racial features and such.

Cheers,
Pieter

[pieter]

[Jaga]

Pieter,

how I agree with you. Yes, I see similarities in the way Muslims are treated trying to protecting their faith, and how Jews were treated, since they also tried to protect their faith and their culture but in a way they made themselves isolated and backwards like Muslims do now. Among Jewish people there was always a bright and very intellectually active elite, I hope that Muslims would develop it too.

+++Immigrants kids and young men become irritated, frustrated, annoyed, bored and restless due to the daily discrimination, exclusion, bad news, and the role of scapegoat they have, and they organise themselves in groups, gangs, ethnic corners or ghetto's and thu ethnic subgroups of Turks, Moroccans, Kurds, Afghans, Eritreans, Bosnians, Arabs, Salafist Muslims, and live a different life than the native European kids and young men.++++

Pieter, this is another scary thing. It is not just that immigrants in Europe have no perspectives, but young people in their home countries in Algeria, Syria or even in Idaho cannot find jobs or any real purpose in life. I hope that somehow the virtual world would help at least some of these people to connect, so that they would not become ISIS.

[pieter]

Dear Jaga,

One of the results of the presence and tensions with and within the migrant and minority groups is the fact that finaly the media, press and people are talking about the multi-cultural society, discrimination, institutionalized racism, xenophobia, islamophobia, anti-semitism, and aversion against any group. The Political movement or Party (Denk) exists not for nothing next to the existing leftwing and center-left political parties. It is a party of (by), for and about migrants, respect, a right to be part of a society without alienation, constant discrimination, ethnic labeling and hatred and bluntness. The party exists, because from the Turkish, Moroccan, Surinamese and Dutch Antillian communities there was a need for such a party. I hope that native European Dutchmen will become a member of that political party too so that it will be more mixed.

But I frankly believe that today white progressive, liberal, radical and leftwing native Dutchmen do not feel attraction towards Denk. They see it as an ethnic segregational and Turkey loyal party movement which isn't independent nor thinking and handling from a Dutch perspective. Some white leftist Dutch people doubt the motives of the black Sylvana Simons to join that party. They see Turks and Moroccans as racist people who look down on blacks and other people. They see Denk (Think) as a tool of the Turkish Erdogan movement.

Fact is that we have an active political movement which is the speaker for the minorities and migrants in the Netherlands, and who speaks out against racism, xenophobia and islamophobia where the other parties (left and rightwing) don't.

www.bewegingdenk.nl/


Discrimination and racism on Dutch tv has to stop




Moroccan Migrant boy mocks Denk, with a fake Turksih style moustache and Turkish Dutch accent, but the Denk politician plays with him



Muslim hate within the education system according to Denk

He shows the political parties who do not act against hatred against muslims and against discrimination. PvdA, VVD, CDA, PVV, SP and GreenLeft, the majority in the parlaiment in Denk's (Think's) eyes.

Cheers,
Pieter