Resist this constant narrative about "refugees." Usually when US media stick to a singular message, I can simply go to the Guardian UK, Le Monde, El Pais, or other European media to get an alternative view. In this case, all the usual suspects - US, UK, Germany, France, and of course NATO - are complicit in perpetrating their customary war crimes - customary in the history of imperialism, that is. So it's not only valuable to question the message but also look outside to Russian, Cuban, and Indian media, or the truly dissident media within the empires, for another angle.
What is being driven into our heads as a refugee crisis, who will take the refugees, how many will they take, the plight of the refugees, the angst of such leaders as British prime minister David Cameron, who is said to be restricted by a British electorate leery of immigration, or of German chancellor Angela Merkel, who is described as facing down the skeptics in her ruling coalition - all this, all this rhetoric, misses some obvious points right in front of us.
One obvious fact is this refugee crisis is the result of a massive arms build up by the imperial powers in Western Asia over oil.
The other has to do with the economic state of Europe.
The West was literally built by its access into the global South via forced labor camps [plantations] and resource theft to fuel the industrial revolution. As these resources diminish, the need to secure access becomes more critical: hence, the massive tonnage of weaponry being used in the region, something almost never talked about, and where these weapons come from; hence in what Western commentators call generations of peacetime since the end of World War II. we have actually seen an almost constant, sustained imperial war on the global South.
The masses of people of the global South have simply gotten in the way of easy access to this shrinking, global oil supply. People are a threat because they pose potential forces of resistance, violent and nonviolent, revolutionary or not revolutionary.
The Cherokee got in the way, so they had to be made into refugees. East African tribes are in the way, so they are made into refugees. And in the closest analogy to our present situation, the Vietnamese peasants got in the way, so defoliants were used to drive masses of potential revolutionaries from the countryside where they were self-sufficient and into the cities where they would become solely dependent on the US-backed dictatorship.
One obvious fact is this refugee crisis is the result of a massive arms build up by the imperial powers in Western Asia over oil.
The other has to do with the economic state of Europe.
The West was literally built by its access into the global South via forced labor camps [plantations] and resource theft to fuel the industrial revolution. As these resources diminish, the need to secure access becomes more critical: hence, the massive tonnage of weaponry being used in the region, something almost never talked about, and where these weapons come from; hence in what Western commentators call generations of peacetime since the end of World War II. we have actually seen an almost constant, sustained imperial war on the global South.
The masses of people of the global South have simply gotten in the way of easy access to this shrinking, global oil supply. People are a threat because they pose potential forces of resistance, violent and nonviolent, revolutionary or not revolutionary.
The Cherokee got in the way, so they had to be made into refugees. East African tribes are in the way, so they are made into refugees. And in the closest analogy to our present situation, the Vietnamese peasants got in the way, so defoliants were used to drive masses of potential revolutionaries from the countryside where they were self-sufficient and into the cities where they would become solely dependent on the US-backed dictatorship.
And then there is Europe itself.
What is puzzling about this refugee narrative is everyone seems to assume, and the refugees are made to assume, there is a home for them in Europe. I don't know what psychotic one must take to believe this: Europe, which has done so poorly in assimilating its colonial Asians, Africans, Arabs is presumed today to have a home for these hundreds of thousands of refugees, when just one Brazilian laborer could be assumed to be an Arab terrorist and chased by plainclothes secret service agents and shot multiple times in the London tube [subway].
Europe, which has deeper problems which connect directly to capitalism, is supposed to have economies to absorb these hundred of thousands of people.
Even without these refugees, with every advancement in Europe and growth in the British FTSE or German banks, comes deeper unemployment among its own peoples. This phenomenon is certainly true of the US and the rest of the industrialized world, guided by a command economy directed by bankers and financiers. Rising markets seem in competition with rising surplus laborers for whom there is no work and moves to lessen social supports.
Europe is in a crisis, and we see this most clearly in the southern regions and Ireland.
What is to be done with several hundred thousand refugees, regardless of their technological skills, when Europe cannot absorb its own into its narrowing economy? This is why the poorer EU countries are loudest in their resistance to accept these people.
Neoliberalism is supposed despite the evidence to the contrary right in front of us to solve every problem and put a chicken in every pot. These are lies. Vicious, imperial lies.
What is puzzling about this refugee narrative is everyone seems to assume, and the refugees are made to assume, there is a home for them in Europe. I don't know what psychotic one must take to believe this: Europe, which has done so poorly in assimilating its colonial Asians, Africans, Arabs is presumed today to have a home for these hundreds of thousands of refugees, when just one Brazilian laborer could be assumed to be an Arab terrorist and chased by plainclothes secret service agents and shot multiple times in the London tube [subway].
Europe, which has deeper problems which connect directly to capitalism, is supposed to have economies to absorb these hundred of thousands of people.
Even without these refugees, with every advancement in Europe and growth in the British FTSE or German banks, comes deeper unemployment among its own peoples. This phenomenon is certainly true of the US and the rest of the industrialized world, guided by a command economy directed by bankers and financiers. Rising markets seem in competition with rising surplus laborers for whom there is no work and moves to lessen social supports.
Europe is in a crisis, and we see this most clearly in the southern regions and Ireland.
What is to be done with several hundred thousand refugees, regardless of their technological skills, when Europe cannot absorb its own into its narrowing economy? This is why the poorer EU countries are loudest in their resistance to accept these people.
Neoliberalism is supposed despite the evidence to the contrary right in front of us to solve every problem and put a chicken in every pot. These are lies. Vicious, imperial lies.
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