One Dead Boy

Seventy migrants suffocate in the back of a lorry and everyone metaphorically shrugs their shoulders. One photograph of dead child on a beach and the whole of the EU changes its policy towards migrants.

This video from Nigel Farage is worth watching

The dead boy's family were quite safe in Turkey, a Muslim country, indeed one might even conclude that they were safe in Syria as they went back to bury their son. This shows me that they were economic migrants, nothing else, not refugees, as apparently they were not in danger in Syria.

Ask yourself, would a refugee, fleeing from Nazi Germany with his family return there to have buried a member of the family who got killed during the escape? That is the reality of real refugees from war or oppression, not someone who goes back, apparently quite freely,  to have a burial service.

It is also of interest that Breitbart is the only media outlet that I am aware of which refers to them as Kurds. The Kurdish controlled area of Syria is now relatively stable (if anything in the Middle East is stable), so one might ask why didn't they join their fellow countrymen and assist with the fight against ISIS?  Or were they from the Kurdish area which meant that they could return at will, but decided that it wasn't good enough for them?

However you look at it they were economic migrants, not asylum seekers fleeing for their lives. Even then, Turkey wasn't good enough for them so they decided to try to get to the Germany or, as they speak English, more likely to the UK.

If we are to take any Syrian refugees, they should be genuine refugees who are living in poor conditions in Lebanon or Jordan, not ones who are effectively trying to jump the queue by forcing themselves upon some unwilling country.

In any event, I take the view that it is wrong to rehouse large numbers away from their home country; hopefully ISIS will be beaten and in due course they will be able to return home. The right approach is what this country was doing, providing humanitarian aid to the adjoining countries which are housing them, Lebanon, Jordan and to a lesser extent Turkey. There they are with people of their own culture, speaking their own language, not having to try to live, in what to them, must be an alien environment.

We have accepted refugees in the past, but they were in relatively small numbers compared with the overall population, they were generally of our culture and were assimilated within a couple of generations. With their different outlook on life, I cannot see Muslims ever being assimilated into the native population.

So I would ask our politicians, don't make major decisions on the basis of one dead boy lying on a beach, but on the basis of common sense and rational logic.

Isolationism

I'm beginning to believe in isolationism; Wherever possible we should keep out of other peoples' problems; we keep being told that we no longer have an empire so why should we continue to be the world's policemen?
Certainly our interventions have achieved very little; in broad terms this country's involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya can't be claimed to have improved things in those countries by any stretch of imagination. Indeed, all that it seems to have done is to turn Muslims worldwide against the West and against Britain and America in particular.
The Middle East problems at this time are clearly of great concern, a quasi-religious organisation going under the name of the Islamic State has captured large swathes of Syria and Iraq in the wake of the unrest in these countries. It has declared the new Caliphate will extend from the Mediterranean through to the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea where they intend to establish a most extreme form of Sharia Law. It seems to be getting organised, in that, what was a ramshackle mob in pick-up trucks, managed to cause the Iraq army in the north of the country to flee leaving them with a considerable amount of modern military equipment, kindly supplied by the Americans to the Iraqi army. They have killed huge numbers of people during their rampage which has received relatively little publicity compared with the assault by Israeli troops on Hamas in Gaza.
The only real resistance they face, at present, is from the Kurds and the Peshmerga fighters. However their weapons are old fashioned and the don't have the armour and longer range weapons available to their attackers.
The other quandary is Syria, where the whole problem started. Thankfully, our Parliament voted against providing arms and assistance to those fighting Assad which, for once, seems to have been the right thing to do as these are the fighters which have now become the forces of the Islamic State. I am aware that Assad in Syria is a nasty bit of work, but until the so-called "Arab Spring", he maintained law and order, and more importantly protected the minority religions.

My concern at the moment is that the government at this time seems to be simply watching events unfold and seems to have no clue as to what to do. Surely those responsible at the Foreign Office, Intelligence Services and the Military should be conducting a serious study of the different possible scenarios that might develop in the Middle East along with a further study of the threats posed by Muslim extremists within this country? In my view, Cameron should be kicking people into action, not surfing from a Cornish beach.

The next problem area is Ukraine, and here I'm in favour of an total policy of non-involvement. What have the events in Ukraine to do with us? We have absolutely no interests in the area and if Russia wants to take over Ukraine, so what? How does it impact on this country? It seems to be a corrupt basket case of a country and why the EU wants to get involved beats me and gives yet another reason for wanting to be out of the EU.

Meanwhile, I would observe that haven't read any reports in the media that "Baroness" Warsi, or any of the Muslim MPs have expressed their concern over the murder of James Foley. Indeed, I haven't read of any representative Muslin organisation in the UK which has expressed any regrets, which I'm sure must be a matter of concern to many people.