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Sex Attacks in Cologne and other European Cities Part VIII

999 replies

Cologne2016Petition · 26/01/2016 21:04

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Let the debate continue.....

OP posts:
venusinscorpio · 27/01/2016 22:33

Ah, the Express. Balanced coverage no doubt. Which party do they back again?

Perhaps you'd like to point us to the newspaper with the balanced coverage, responsible reporting and lack of bias. I know I'd certainly like to read it.

HelsBels22 · 27/01/2016 22:38

Emily ---The people in Calais aren't fleeing death they are perfectly safe there. They are only in the jungle because they want to illegally enter the UK.

I would have the camp bulldozed and people given the option to register in France or return home.

emilybohemia · 27/01/2016 22:52

They fled death before getting there Hels. How exactly is living in a disease ridden, damp makeshift shelter perfectly safe? Is that how you live?

CalmYoBadSelf · 27/01/2016 23:01

I agree too. I don't want women's rights sacrificed because politicians are scared of facing cultural issues but nor do I want us to turn on vulnerable people who need our help

MariscallRoad · 27/01/2016 23:09

270

OneWingWonder · 27/01/2016 23:37

emilybohemia

'They fled death before getting there Hels'.

Exactly. The operative word is BEFORE. About 2000 miles BEFORE.

BillSykesDog · 28/01/2016 00:02

They are entitled to housing, cash, education and healthcare as asylum seekers in France and you know that Emily. You know full well they are making a choice to turn that down for the camp.

hefzi · 28/01/2016 00:11

emily you've said quite clearly before that you're not interested in my expertise; however, not everyone in Calais has fled a war zone - there are Ethiopians, Sudanese, a few Kenyans and Ugandans, Nigerians (from the coast, not the North) Guineans, Pakistanis (not from the FATA areas: there are indeed some Afghans, Iraqis and Syrians there - that's true. But they are not the majority. It doesn't mean that they don't deserve to be treated with human dignity - but it's disingenuous in the extreme to suggest that everyone who has left home for a better life, no matter how much we sympathise with that ideal, has fled persecution or war.

I personally would like to move to Canada or Australia for a better life, not to mention significantly higher salaries, both of whom have points system: but despite the fact I have two PhDs, professional qualifications, and am multi-lingual, my age (early 40s) and profession means that I cannot just move - like many specialised and educated individuals who want to come to the UK, I could only do so if an employer could first prove they couldn't recruit within their national borders for their post, and then sponsored my visa. That's the way the world works, I'm afraid - there are national borders, and countries restrict immigration to people they need, and people in need of help.

You don't ever seem to consider the moral implications of the west "cherry picking" those entrepreneurial enough to make the decision to risk migrating - it costs an Eritrean over one year's average salary to pay people smugglers to get just as far as Libya. I don't have one year's salary in the bank. My family couldn't scrape together one year's salary on my behalf. The people who are paying smugglers (and believe me, the Eritrean regime is deeply, deeply unpleasant) are people with serious skills and creativity: those are just the sort of people Eritrea will need to rebuild themselves. The doctors and nurses from West Africa, trying to come over here for a better life for them and their kids - of course I understand it: but is is moral and just we take the skilled staff those countries desperately need?

I have a really good friend in Uganda - her son is one of my god-children - and she's desperate to come to the UK. She wants to come here because she knows that you don't have to pay a bribe to get a job, you don't have to pay school fees for your children, and you can visit the doctor when you're ill, instead of relying on the witch doctor because you can pay him in grain instead of money. She's a fantastic woman, who only wants to work hard to better her family: she can't even get a visa to visit, because she's clearly at risk of over-staying by FCO standards. The bottom line is- it sucks, but the world isn't fair, or just. The only people getting rich from Calais are the organised criminals, who are raking it in. It's morally reprehensible to encourage people to spend their life savings, and risk their own LIVES, to be smuggled to Europe, by relocating everyone within the camp who wants to to the UK. That will lead to further deaths, not to mention draining countries of their most valuable resources - their resourceful, hard-working and creative individuals.

I know I'm never going to convince you that this isn't a black and white issue: you seem very passionate and idealistic - perhaps you could focus your passion towards seeking just solutions to the inequalities that lead people to risk everything to leave their homelands in search of a "better life"? It's a bigger issue than Calais, and a bigger issue than immigration to Britain - solving that problem is like putting a plaster on an amputated limb. Only by addressing - and attacking - the root causes will people's lives be saved, and their welfare preserved. There are plenty of groups, organisations and activists working towards these ends - but there is always room for one more. I understand your frustration and passion to do something - but you are focussing your drive on the wrong areas if you truly want to make a genuine and lasting difference.

januarybrown1998 · 28/01/2016 06:47

hefzi that was an extraordinary post. Thank you. It made very heartening reading to hear the big picture and a lot of kind common sense.

LumelaMme · 28/01/2016 07:17

Fantastic post, hefzi, thank you.
My faith in the thread has been restored.

And january, I agree with you too: independent thought is difficult and risky, and if you come to unpopular conclusions, however well-founded they are, you often get howled down rather than listened too.

Bryt · 28/01/2016 07:25

Great post Hefzi. We'd be a much better country if our children were taught critical thinking skills and more adults could view issues with more than black and white thinking. Forming opinions based on one's emotions is not a virtue, considering emotions aren't solely sadness but include fear, anxiety, disgust etc...

fourmummy · 28/01/2016 08:16

Hefzi, you are exactly right. I think that many people recognise the fact that the root of all this is the cross-global discrepancies in quality of life. We really must work out a way to spread (in a non-imperialist way) ideas of education, critical thinking (as somebody said above), secularism liberalism.

Lumela - your book sounds fascinating and it would be interesting to see how the Judeo--Christian tradition specifically influenced the West's development of human rights. Many ancient cultures make these claims too but the really big event, which pushed forward these ideas in the Western world was the Age of Enlightenment, which was specifically anti-religious, and which enshrined liberalism (within which the notion of human rights is located) within human societies.

We have a genuine opportunity with science and I am sometimes puzzled as to why, as a society, don't push these values more forcefully, as a society. Let people believe what they like because no-one can or should influence anyone else's thoughts (these are private) but societies have to coalesce around similar ideas. Scientific thought gives us the opportunity to say that something is observably true and has been successful in improving people's lives. What's not to like? It's an obvious route for any society to take. In the current context, rather than encouraging people to make dangerous journeys and accepting ridiculous beliefs when these people actually get here, we should be working on initiatives to spread scientific thought (which includes liberalism, humanism, precision, equality, etc.) the other way.

januarybrown1998 · 28/01/2016 08:22

the Age of Enlightenment, which was specifically anti-religious, and which enshrined liberalism

I think this is key. and this is why I find so much editorial and popular opinion perplexing.

There is an inherent contradiction between espousing liberalism and human rights whilst simultaneously demanding that an enlightened democracy accommodate rigid thinking and archaic attitudes, especially towards women and homosexuals.

fourmummy · 28/01/2016 08:55

January - yes, I find this perplexing too. Given that science has shown that similarities in things like gender, race, aspects of biology, IQ, etc., are far more prevalent than any differences between these things, I really don't understand why we, as a society, are prepared to allow these inequalities and discriminations to remain when social groups ask for them.

Palebluedotty · 28/01/2016 09:13

Completely agree Hefzi

LumelaMme · 28/01/2016 09:31

Lumela - your book sounds fascinating and it would be interesting to see how the Judeo--Christian tradition specifically influenced the West's development of human rights. Many ancient cultures make these claims too but the really big event, which pushed forward these ideas in the Western world was the Age of Enlightenment, which was specifically anti-religious, and which enshrined liberalism (within which the notion of human rights is located) within human societies.
Your book = in the stack of unread things next to the bed.

I think - having got as far as the review, the dust jacket and the introduction - that the argument is that the Enlightenment arose out of the debates and upheaval of the Reformation, and was underpinned by ideas of the worth and value of the individual that came from Christian theology.

Off topic. Sorry.

fourmummy · 28/01/2016 09:34

"January - There is an inherent contradiction between espousing liberalism and human rights whilst simultaneously demanding that an enlightened democracy accommodate rigid thinking and archaic attitudes, especially towards women and homosexuals"

The 'different but equal' discourse crumbles in the face of science. It's the only system of understanding the world that allows us to say say that something is true or false because we have observed (and not merely thought it) it multiple times, without recourse to introspection, innateness, 'because somebody said so', 'take it on faith', etc.. The 'different but equal' narrative can't ever work because people are not prepared to give equal weight to the differences, which may be just too big to be acceptable. Science isn't perfect but it's the best we have to date, so we really should be pushing for it and making sure that everyone accepts its tenets (cue Trevor Phillips' article in today's DM). .

MariscallRoad · 28/01/2016 09:55

Fourmumy you talk about the 'Age of Enlightenment, which was specifically anti-religious, and which enshrined liberalism' do you mean Kant's reasoning and the start of modernity? There is a online free course on these concepts of Enlightenment and liberalism titled "The Modern and the Postmodern" which is very interesting and is run by Welsleyan University on
www.coursera.org Try to see the syllabus.

Hefzi many thanks for the concepts you explained. You have widened the talk here. I believe one of the issues you wanted to mention is brain drain even if you did not say this in exactly the same words.

Palebluedotty · 28/01/2016 10:00

As this thread is at base about women's rights, I would mention an excellent book I just re-read. "Misogyny: the world's oldest prejudice" by Jack Holland.

It reminds me how very new and very fragile the concept of women's equality is. The book would say it far better than me but at the base of so much misery in the world is the desire by men to control women and their bodies.

Jack Holland: "What history teaches us about misogyny can be summed up in four words: pervasive, persistent, pernicious and protean. Long before men invented the wheel they invited misogyny...No race has suffered such prejudicial treatment over so long a period of time; no group of individuals, however they might be characterized, has been discriminated against on such a global scale."

The statistics show that countries where women have rights and freedoms are the places people are running to for asylum. It is the hugest irony that anyone would come to such a place and then undermine that with taharrush gamea. For me, Cologne is about going backwards before we've finished going forwards, a depressing reminder that we can never say "Equality for women? Done." Who was it who warned 'progress is not inevitable'?

DespicableBee · 28/01/2016 10:05

60% of the migrants are economic, so not fleeing war, that includes the ones in Calais

DespicableBee · 28/01/2016 10:07

So 60% of the migrants in Calais didn't flee death, they just want to enter the UK for work
Why don't they work in France? Why risk your life on the back of a lorry, or walk through euro tunnel

LumelaMme · 28/01/2016 10:14

Do you have a source for that, Despicable?

BillSykesDog · 28/01/2016 10:18

It was the EU Commissioner Frans Timmermann who gave the 60% figure yesterday Lumela, based on data from the EU border agency Frontex.

fourmummy · 28/01/2016 10:30

Mariscall That course looks really interesting, and yes, I reference the Age of Enlightenment here as a generalised movement across multiple disciplines and social activities. However, I am specifically interested in the break with ecclesiastical ideas that permeated that period, as well as the leading role that scientific thinking and its accelerated development during that time played in society. I believe that the development of scientific thought is crucial to cultural progress and I really do think that we are missing a trick by not promoting it more than we do (or perhaps, more accurately, by allowing non-scientific ideas to stand alongside scientific ones in several spheres of social life)

Palebluedotty That book sounds excellent, too. I get so many ideas for further reading from MN. Brilliant!

DespicableBee · 28/01/2016 10:42

Source: EU commissioner