To think that the 'Calais Camp' situation needs to be resolved ASAP!

[Kreacherelf]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3413566/Port-Calais-closed-migrants-storm-harbour-make-Spirit-Britain-ferry-desperate-bid-reach-UK.html

This is just getting ridiculous now. France need to take this problem to the EU and ask for help dealing with it immediately. It has gone on for too long and needs to stop.

I don't know what the answer is. I think the UK should take anyone under 18, and their family members. Other than that, everyone else should have to apply for asylum in France or risk arrest. Not a perfect solution, but the only one I have.

Really? A matter of interpretation no? Baring in mind that one of the main criticisms of the left (to which I myself subscribed to in those days. And who are the body that are most likely to throw the racism accusation out there), was that the US led invasion of Iraq in 2002, could create a power vacuum in that country. One that the radical, anti-Western, Al Quada - type islamists could take advantage of.

So I find it very difficult to believe anyone who asserted the same concern during the 'Arab Spring' years later, got branded 'racist' for it. I think some people may be going a bit far with this "political correctness gone mad" thing...

Tamponlady It amazes me that the German people (who have always struck me as being really on the ball) allowed that idiot Angela Merkel to make such a reckless decision, which will surely affect the lives of all Germans.

As someone who has spent a considerable amount of time in Germany (and in the German education system), I can tell you this:

At school, kids are literally brainwashed to be politically correct. We didn't spend months or even semesters looking at the period of German history known as the Third Reich, we spent years (!!) going through the same things over and over again.

At the same time, the media is very different from that of the U.K. While the media generally either reports news as they happen or reports things people will find outrageous and controversial in a the mind of the politically correct (i.e. Daily Mail, etc.)... German media is the bastion of political correctness. This is due to history. After WW2, the German population had to be re-educated, and it was vital that the media played their part in making sure this new democratic country would be a success story. If you ask Germany's top journalists (and they have been asked about this) what their responsibility is, it's not "reporting news". No, they think they have a moral obligation to make sure that the news they report will influence the public in the right manner.

Hence, the late reporting about what happened in Cologne.

Hence, the German journalist who won some big journalism award last year was not one who investigated anything or put her life in danger or something... it was a journalist who appealed to people's heartstrings on TV with some humanitarian speech. I believe Merkel opened up the country soon after.

This basically means that German media engages in one thing: propaganda. Which ironically is what the media of the Third Reich was known for - in the opposite direction, but propaganda is propaganda however much you twist it.

The media is slowly changing, but not much. After Cologne, the Fokus magazine featured a naked white woman on the cover with handprints in dark paint all over her. The title was:

Are we tolerant or blind?

The magazine was told to apologise for the offending picture immediately.

Mind you, the British media has its own problems, and as much as I don't like the Daily Mail, etc. ...at least, they do say things some people may think of, but don't utter out loud. They have a huge readership base, so there must obviously be people who agree with the DM view. This gives people like David Cameron more support when they say we can't take refugees.

Merkel had none of that. She likely mistook the media's views as that of the people... when really, it was propaganda.

SnowBells do you not think the media in this country is also engaged in propaganda?

Tangerine Not really. Each newspaper has its own agenda but they're different from one another.

For me, propaganda is when most newspapers have the exact same agenda... which they don't.

batshit

Interesting article from the Guardian here:

www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jan/23/arab-spring-five-years-on-writers-look-back

It looks back on writing it featured from the time of the AS which was overwhelmingly optimistic and all of the writers admit it went wrong. As you can see from that writing a lot of left wing commentators believed that it was the solution to Islamism rather than the problem.

I remember it being presented in overwhelmingly positive terms by the left wing press. I also don't remember Islamism as a danger being used as an argument against the Iraq war before it happened. I think that the prominent anti-war bodies would probably have labelled that prediction racism too at the time. Islamism was a distant threat then and although it was post 9/11 there had been no significant attacks in Europe at that time. And I especially remember people who predicted attacks in Europe were called racist too.

There's just such a long line of things which the left have dismissed as racism which have happened it's becoming hard to ignore. It makes me think that rather than these accusations being made out of genuine fear of racism they're made as a convenient way of silencing uncomfortable truths.

Good points Snowbells. But the agenda of the mainstream media in Britain is basically the same as their counterparts in Germany. You refer to - 'it's about being politically correct' . I take the view that the media whether German or British simply direct us by asserting the views and needs of established power. There is a general consensus of outlook in the press and the only odd voice that differs are in the opinion columns, that of "controversial" or "maverick" journalists. Just so they appear to offer balance....

An example is - whilst the newspapers at the moment are almost saturated by images of starving children in Syria. You really will struggle to find in any newspaper, images of the thousands of children suffering from Saudi Arabia’s U.S. backed onslaught on Yemen.

That isn't because it's PC to do so. It's because it serves those forces that rule our lives for us to believe certain things and to attack each other for each others views. I don't want to see Europe Islamised anymore than you do. Nor do I want to see tens of thousands of Muslims arriving here. No more than, say the Iraqi's wanted tens of thousands of heavily armed (mainly) Christians arriving uninvited to their country. Oh hang on.

My point is: we do have a responsibility to work together to sort this refugee crisis out and all nations should stop playing politics and get to it immediately.

I don't think the problem is 'us'. Whether we think of each other as 'wooly liberals', at one end or 'right-wing racists' at the other . The problem will be solved IMO by all nations, That's -- USA, Europe, Russian and ME, pulling together to defeat IS and resettle and rebuild Syria. At the moment we've left Russia to fight the fight whilst Cameron farts around dithering, playing political games, trying to work out what America wants and what way the wind of public opinion's gonna blow .

No because in counties were there is no war they are using other reasons to flee

Eg being gay

Being in fear or ones life political

Or DV

Or being a minor

All things that cannot be verified how every convent

We will never beat Isis because the west is simply brining a knife to a gunfight they believe deeply in what they fighting for our security services are doing their job because they are being paid to I doubt any one at Scotland Yard would be there if you stopped paying them but the Isis nuts will fight and cut heads off

And also out political correctness blinds us people are far to soft and another child will be washed up on a beach in Greece and we will be back to let them all in dispite it not being sustainable

BillSykes. Thanks for the link. I've not the time to read it now, but I will later.

There's just such a long line of things which the left have dismissed as racism. I don't disagree with you there. Of course people's political agenda forbids them taking on certain subjects. The failure of my favourite left leaning, news watchdog websites, that I was very keen on, to even mention the NYE sexual assaults in Cologne is testament to that. Presumably they haven't figured out a way of pinning it all on the U.S and/or Israel......yet!

I don't remember Islamism as a danger being used as an argument against the Iraq war before it happened

You don't remember anyone in the "left wing press", a fallacy if ever I've heard one, (I'm going to assume here you're talking about the Guardian and independent)? Warning that Muslims in this country and elsewhere are likely to be radicalised by the US led invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan? And later Libya? You sure? Ok if you say so, but I certainly do ..

I can remember Blair acolyte, Ruth Kelly (around 2003/4) being asked that very question live on Channel 4 news. Whether she was hearing that in her constituency of Bolton? She denied she had, [obviously]. Saying instead something like "no, it's the radical preachers that radicalise young people in Britain, nothing to do with the carnage were witnessing day to day in Iraq and Afghanistan".

On February 15, 2003, as many as two million people flooded London to protest the impending Bush-Blair war. They did so in part because they knew that invading Iraq would make them targets for the kind of horror we saw in July 2005 According to a YouGov survey that month, 79% of Londoners felt that British involvement in an attack on Iraq "would make a terrorist attack on London more likely".

(www.cnduk.org/pages/press/190504.html)

Also at that time, The Guardian stated that 72% of the British population opposed Britain joining military action against Iraq, without United Nations' approval. And one year later, a poll showed that three-quarters of Britons continued to feel "more vulnerable" to terrorist attack because of the government's decision to join military action in Iraq. (George Wright and agencies, 'London attack "inevitable", says police chief,' The Guardian, March 16, 2004)

Anyway it's an irrelevance IMO. The issue is not complex, not esoteric either. We need to stop arguing amongst ourselves and put pressure on the gov to put narrow economic interests aside and sort it out for the sake of our civil society.

That's really a different kind of Islamism to the one I refer to as related to the Arab Spring BatShit. There may have been discussion of homegrown problems (to an extent). But people certainly were' talking about extremist Islamist states popping up.

I was actually at that protest and do have a recollection of that sort of thing being said around the time re home grown terrorism, but it was seen as more acceptable and non-racist because it also pre-justified any islanmic terrorism of that type as caused by the invasion.

By contrast the Arab Spring was something of total Arab agency. So to suggest that Islamism might occur at the own volition of Muslims rather that as a response to Western Imperialism is, I think, in the eyes of the left, much less acceptable and therefore racist. So they were different. I think it tends to be a general rule of left wing press that if you can say Muslims might do something wrong because the West made them, that's okay. But to say that they might do something wrong because they choose to do so because culturally that's a tendency then = racist.

I do agree with you that it needs sorting out. I am very much in favour of huge amounts of money being spent on camps surrounding Syria. But I'm not in favour of mass migration, I think it causes more problems by weakening the areas ability to resist and ultimately recover.

snowballs - just like in the UK the large German newspapers are positioned across the political spectrum, they don't all follow the same agenda. The most successful tabloid, Bild, is very much on the right, for example.

The Focus was rightly criticised for opportunistically putting a naked woman (with the head out of the picture) on the front cover. Because they like putting nudes onto their front cover no matter what the topic, despite claiming to be a political news magazine.

The focus was criticised because they are openly on the right, and everyone takes a pot at them regularly, the cover was in bad taste but your forgetting that the Süddeutsche Zeitung was also criticised and they are a very liberal respected publication, whilst I don't agree with everything snowballs has written there is an element across all media outlets in Germany that they feel they must atone for the past.

There is a lot of hushing up which even the bild and right leaning press don't cover, the recent case of the 13yr old who went missing for 30 hours for instance, the Russian media are wanting answers and however much I agree Russia loves to stir shit, my German co-workers are getting angry that something is a little of.

The Sueddeutsche at least apologised for their bad taste cover picture. They shouldn't have printed it in the first place but unlike the Focus at least they've taken the point.

Re the rape of the 13 year old in Berlin it appears that there is a police investigation into grooming and sexual abuse of a minor with two suspects, but the claims by the Russian media and some far right German groups of an abduction with a larger number of migrant perpetrators has been refuted. I feel sorry for the girl to have her ordeal used in such a way.

m.bild.de/politik/inland/npd/wie-russland-mit-angeblicher-vergewaltigung-propaganda-macht-44289532.bildMobile.html

<a class="break-all" href="http://m.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/a-1074048.html#spRedirectedFrom=www&referrrer=news.google.de/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">m.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/a-1074048.html#spRedirectedFrom=www&referrrer=news.google.de/

I was just countering your point, the Sueddeutsche apologised for appearing racist and sexist which ties into snowballs post, critism of the focus is like shooting fish in a barrel and is generally ignored in Germany anyway.

Re the 13 yr old, I agree that her ordeal shouldn't be used as a political weapon, but liberal minded are becoming concerned because it mirrored the the NYE attacks, police giving initial reports along the lines of

"no problem, we think it was consensual sex"

is concerning, the media/government are so worried of fuelling the far right that when the majority of people hearing about this situation is via attack pieces against RT and still kick up a fuss you should really start looking at not right v left but that they have got the wrong balance re reporting.

They didn't say it was okay because it was consensual, quite the opposite. 2 people have been arrested over it. However it is relevant that the original claims of 5-7 refugees allegedly having abducted and gangraped her turns out to be no abduction and to blokes who weren't from the local refugee shelter having groomed her.

I'm not sure how your trying to position me in this debate, but her initial report of 3 'arab' looking men was changed and the initial police report came out that it was essentially consensual (ignoring she was 13yrs old) and was even picked up via cheif of police, that has echoes in what snowballs was saying and has echoes of the initial NYE reporting.

www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/angebliche-vergewaltigung-unser-maedchen-kommentar-a-1074048.html

It's also very, very similar to the excuses used for Rotherham. Little sluts who got what they deserved and were in 'relationships' with their abusers.

I think you do have to take the story at face value at the minute BillsykesDog, I'm just countering WidowWadmans posts, there is definetly an angle of Russia being Russia and the right jumping on these stories but there is an element of 'agenda pushing' across the political spectrum where there is a reluctance of reporting facts at face value as snowballs said.

I'm just here for the contrarian view.

zzzzz

The problem I have with your views is that you might as well be a beauty pageant, saying "I want world peace". Believe me, I'd like 'world peace', too, but I wouldn't just say that without offering solutions.

Much of what you say is ill-informed. The fact that a term exists for 'mass sexual harassment' of women means that this has become common (and not just in Egypt). And we're talking hundreds (if not thousands) of men groping women.

So... you think we can't take everyone in. At least, we agree on that. But you think we should take in the ones in Calais.

Well... once you show you have an open door policy plenty more will follow, and the current people in Calais will just be replaced by others - probably double the count. Using your argument, you basically have to take everyone in.

zzzzz

Since you started talking about incapabilities... you do seem to be incapable of knowing the consequences of your own actions. It doesn't matter if the UK takes all the people in Calais or shares them with the rest of Europe. The effect is the same. A few months later, the camp will be full again.

What happens then? Should Europe absorb them yet again?

As I mentioned... EVERYONE probably wants peace. But saying that is not enough. What is needed are solutions that are needed, and so far you have offered none.

And FYI - I have lived in many countries (including Third World countries) over the course of my life. I had one very, very close family member (think immediate family) murdered by terrorists when I was a child. I saw the body. Twelve bullets, I remember to this day.

But you know what? People need to fight back. In the region where this happened, people did fight back, and while terrorists are still around, they are fewer in numbers than a few decades ago. A large number of people fleeing are trying to evade military service. Hence, it isn't surprising many are men. But then who should sort it out?

I have actually been in several conferences / seminars that included former top military personnel from the UK and the US. This war can't be won with missile air strikes alone. You need ground troops. Everyone was clear about that. Are they meant to come from the UK or where? If the men fleeing are not prepared to fight, why should British soldiers do?

As I understand it there is no realistic opposition which is strong and organised enough to take on either Daesh or Assad. So many men of fighting age have a choice of either being conscripted by the enemy - similar to being asked to fight for the Nazis - or near certain death if they join one of the many disorganised factions, fighting against them, not all of whom are 'good guys.' Or fleeing. It is a pretty desperate individual choice and I know which one I would want a young adult son of mine to make. ZzZz I hear you.

Christ almighty zzzzz. How can you expect to post videos like that and have people take you seriously? It's highly selective which information it uses, presents disputed theories as undisputed facts and twists statistics to suit it's own agenda.

It's probably about as reliable and objective as something made by the EDL.