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| How many Syrian refugees should Australia take? |
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52% |
[ 21 ] |
| A few hundred |
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2% |
[ 1 ] |
| A few thousand |
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5% |
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| Over ten thousand |
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5% |
[ 2 ] |
| As many as possible |
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35% |
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| Total Votes : 40 |
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stui magpie 
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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| David wrote: | ^ Exactly my point. You've got this totally binary view of two kinds of people who were essentially plying the same trade, even though many of the people who saved Jewish lives undoubtedly did it for money and some people smugglers in Turkey and elsewhere do it because they think it's the morally right thing to do. Why not just admit that you don't know anything about these people, their motivations or how 'good' they are?
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when you admit you don't have any more idea of what their motivations are than anyone else but you're trying to twist things to fit into your view, as usual.
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Stui, if you think Kurdish (and other) refugees are 'safe' in Turkey, you have no idea what you're talking about. There are currently 1.9 million asylum seekers in Turkey (1.7 million of whom have fled neighbouring Syria). That's 1 refugee for every 40 Turkish citizens (the equivalent for us would be 600,000, fifty times the number we've pledged to take on) in a country with only moderate resources and social support compared to us. Kurds like the man we're discussing are targets of racial hatred, mob violence and discrimination. How exactly do you picture those 1.9 million people living? Do you think they have access to all the food, shelter and medical resources they need?
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they're a fuckload safer than back in Syria, they may not have access to all the stuff they need but they have a lot more access than they did. Again, the comparison with smuggling Jews out of Germany is ludicrous and insulting to those brave people.
_________________
Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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David 
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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Yeah, but I wasn't the one calling other people 'scumbags'.
As I've been saying constantly over the past few pages, unless you can show that the Turkish people smugglers are causing more harm than good then you have no justification for demonising them.
_________________
All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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Can you demonstrate that they're causing any good at all?
_________________
Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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| David wrote: | | Mugwump wrote: | | Perhaps this man, if he loved his children, has paid his price. |
Mugwump, sorry I didn't ask this before, but are you channelling Sting now? 
"Believe me when I say to you/
I hope the Kurdish asylum seekers love their children too"
In all seriousness, it seems just as preposterous here. I'm sure it wasn't more than a Freudian slip on your part, but I think it's indicative of a much more concerning phenomenon. We have a serious problem with imaginative empathy in our culture (and this thread doesn't half show it).
Think about it: would you really ever be inclined to phrase a statement like this if discussing an ordinary Australian who had lost a child in tragic circumstances, with their public grief broadcast around the world? "Well, perhaps, if she loved her child..." |
Of course that sentence has none of the import that you try to give it, here. We are expressly talking about one man with a particular history engaged in a trade that I regard as deep moral turpitude : a man who put his child at immense and fatal risk in the course of his business. I simply do not know anything about his relationship with his children, so I qualified the sentence. There is no assumption whatsoever in that sentence that refugees in general do not love their children, and I think you know that.
_________________
Two more flags before I die! |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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| David wrote: | Yeah, but I wasn't the one calling other people 'scumbags'.
As I've been saying constantly over the past few pages, unless you can show that the Turkish people smugglers are causing more harm than good then you have no justification for demonising them. |
David, let me get this straight - you want to defend a person who exploited people in misery by sending them and their children on perilous voyages on overcrowded boats without life jackets for profit. Would you offer the same benefit of the doubt to an Australian businessman doing this ?
_________________
Two more flags before I die! |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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^But David, if it weren't for those evil people smugglers, and those greedy queue jumpers, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq would have been won; the GFC would have been kept at bay; Europe would not be collapsing into the sea in a cataclysmic ball of flames; the budget would be in surplus; women wpuld be safe in the streets; and young people could afford to buy a home! Work it out, man! Run the numbers for yourself!
It's those evil people smugglers with their pearly white orthodontics, Mediterranean tans, luxury villas in Monaco, accounts in the Turks and Caicos, and yachts and private jets, who keep ruining *everything*! Purveyors of pure evil! Ruiners! Servants of the Death of Civilisation! Thorns in the bloody side of the Christ!
_________________
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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^
Yeah but their redeeming feature is that they don't sell oil.
_________________
Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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Morrigu 
Joined: 11 Aug 2001
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| David wrote: | Yeah, but I wasn't the one calling other people 'scumbags'.
As I've been saying constantly over the past few pages, unless you can show that the Turkish people smugglers are causing more harm than good then you have no justification for demonising them. |
No that would be me - scumbag - a contemptible or objectionable person and that is what on the whole they are!
Seriously causing more harm than good are you for real??
Let's see
They prey on desperate people and pressure them - and yes they pressure them and frequently intimidate and threaten them for their own financial gain.
They connive and convince parents to send their kids on dangerous journeys with no care factor and the parents desperate for their children to have a better life pay up whatever they can and often put themselves in great debt. Have you any idea how many unaccompanied kids have disappeared in Europe with the latest mass influx - where do you think they have gone to happy foster homes - nah don't think so - try child prostitution as a first and last step!
They pretend to care until their victims are on the boats and I use that term loosely. And if they refuse to get on the 'boats' cause the reality and risk is not what was promised - they quite happily threaten them with physical harm.
You are happy with a 'percentage' drowning at sea it seems - cause that's the risk - a risk that doesn't need to be taken for whatever your opinion is of camps and yep some are better than others (but you have NFI or experience just your hypothesis garnered by reading at a distance ) - the camps provide shelter, food and medical care and there is the opportunity to apply for and be granted asylum in other countries where they can begin a new life! Yep they aren't totally safe but tell me what community of humans anywhere in the world - first world, third world or any alternative world is totally safe??
They have for financial gain facilitated the movement of hundreds of thousands of people in a short time into countries that cannot despite the best intentions of many of them cope - Greece is bankrupt, the Balkans are poor - how the hell do you expect these countries to provide the needed shelter and care?
And of course walking miles and miles across Europe is just a big tourist adventure especially for the young, the sick, the old - yay!!
Oh and I can't speak for the current mob of scumbags - but the ones I have encountered were really proficient at scouting and sexually assaulting the young boys and girls and the women left behind after their men " bought" the dream!
My views may be as you say jaundiced but they are not from an alternative land of fairy floss like some and that some includes you.
_________________
“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” |
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Morrigu
Joined: 11 Aug 2001
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| pietillidie wrote: | ^But David, if it weren't for those evil people smugglers, and those greedy queue jumpers, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq would have been won; the GFC would have been kept at bay; Europe would not be collapsing into the sea in a cataclysmic ball of flames; the budget would be in surplus; women wpuld be safe in the streets; and young people could afford to buy a home! Work it out, man! Run the numbers for yourself!
It's those evil people smugglers with their pearly white orthodontics, Mediterranean tans, luxury villas in Monaco, accounts in the Turks and Caicos, and yachts and private jets, who keep ruining *everything*! Purveyors of pure evil! Ruiners! Servants of the Death of Civilisation! Thorns in the bloody side of the Christ! |
 Get a clue FFS!!!
Seriously you people who sit on your superior arses and preach and preach without a scrap of any real experience whilst trying to shove your theories down everyone's throat and taint anyone with an alternative view as a racist give me the shits 
Not to worry if you are happy to have desperate people fleeced, intimated and threatened, drown, kids end up in prostitution to suit your ideology and beliefs so be it!
_________________
“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” |
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Wokko 
Come and take it.
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
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| Not to mention the shit that happens once the overwhelmingly male migrant wave reaches its destination. |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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Peasants in chaos fleeced by peasants in chaos? WTF were people expecting? The Goofy Gophers...
"No, Sir. You first."
"No, no. It would be my pleasure. Please do."
It's a delusionary scapegoat. Find some evil doers, and fixate on them like an obsessed loon with OCD crossing a bridge thirty times.
No, sorry. They're a trivial symptom of far bigger problems; grow up and deal with reality, and let go of the gods and demons of your childhood.
I say we rename the War on Terror something like the War on People Smugglers! That'll get right down to the root of the problem! I'll rid us of the oil economy! It will balance the budget! It will put an end to crime! And, it will end the Cold War that Mugwump thought he won in 1990!
The distraction is telling, and bloody cringeworthy. It's like blaming moonshine producers for the failure of Prohibition, or the bloke at the convenience store dishing out fags all day for lung cancer.
"Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray
South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio
Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, television
North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe
Rosenbergs, H-bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom
Brando, "The King and I" and "The Catcher in the Rye"
Eisenhower, vaccine, England's got a new queen
Marciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye
We didn't start the fire, it was always turning since those gap-toothed people smugglers were earning..."
_________________
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
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Morrigu
Joined: 11 Aug 2001
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^ WTF are you on about now - seriously almost incoherent
Word of warning the Guinness in Eire is stronger than that found in other countries - consumption should be tailored to take this into account!
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“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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| Morrigu wrote: | | David wrote: | Yeah, but I wasn't the one calling other people 'scumbags'.
As I've been saying constantly over the past few pages, unless you can show that the Turkish people smugglers are causing more harm than good then you have no justification for demonising them. |
No that would be me - scumbag - a contemptible or objectionable person and that is what on the whole they are!
Seriously causing more harm than good are you for real??
Let's see
They prey on desperate people and pressure them - and yes they pressure them and frequently intimidate and threaten them for their own financial gain.
They connive and convince parents to send their kids on dangerous journeys with no care factor and the parents desperate for their children to have a better life pay up whatever they can and often put themselves in great debt. Have you any idea how many unaccompanied kids have disappeared in Europe with the latest mass influx - where do you think they have gone to happy foster homes - nah don't think so - try child prostitution as a first and last step!
They pretend to care until their victims are on the boats and I use that term loosely. And if they refuse to get on the 'boats' cause the reality and risk is not what was promised - they quite happily threaten them with physical harm.
You are happy with a 'percentage' drowning at sea it seems - cause that's the risk - a risk that doesn't need to be taken for whatever your opinion is of camps and yep some are better than others (but you have NFI or experience just your hypothesis garnered by reading at a distance ) - the camps provide shelter, food and medical care and there is the opportunity to apply for and be granted asylum in other countries where they can begin a new life! Yep they aren't totally safe but tell me what community of humans anywhere in the world - first world, third world or any alternative world is totally safe??
They have for financial gain facilitated the movement of hundreds of thousands of people in a short time into countries that cannot despite the best intentions of many of them cope - Greece is bankrupt, the Balkans are poor - how the hell do you expect these countries to provide the needed shelter and care?
And of course walking miles and miles across Europe is just a big tourist adventure especially for the young, the sick, the old - yay!!
Oh and I can't speak for the current mob of scumbags - but the ones I have encountered were really proficient at scouting and sexually assaulting the young boys and girls and the women left behind after their men " bought" the dream!
My views may be as you say jaundiced but they are not from an alternative land of fairy floss like some and that some includes you. |
The alternative land of fairy floss...
* in which not all people smugglers are bullying standover men, liars and rapists to boot. A great number are refugees themselves, and some (like Kurdi, if he was indeed one) are trying to facilitate passage for themselves and their families too;
* in which history shows that people smugglers have at times been heroes who saved many lives, suggesting that perhaps there's a little more nuance to this industry than "they're all scum";
* in which the conditions for refugees fleeing a civil war might not be so glibly understood as 'safe', or presumed to be meeting a minimum standard of living with pathways to foreign humanitarian visas;
* in which, for some people, taking a boat trip to a foreign country with a 1% chance of drowning may genuinely be the better option not because subjecting someone to such risk is acceptable, but because the alternative is worse;
* in which a grieving father might be acknowledged as being, more likely than not, an ordinary human being who happens to have found himself in a situation that most of us could not even contemplate;
* and in which it might be wiser and more compassionate to withhold judgement of such a person, particularly when all the facts may not be clear.
You may see all of my statements on this topic as naive, ill-informed fantasy. Indeed, I readily admit to my lack of practical experience in this field and that I respect that you're the only person on this forum (that I'm aware of) who has seen some of these things firsthand. But that only makes some of your posts on this topic all the more disappointing. When you make sweeping assertions about the character of all people smugglers based on the actions of the worst, you lend weight to their demonisation. When you pass character judgement on a man who you've never met, having only read a few (conflicting) news reports about him, you give support to the notion that the refugees of Syria who've made their way through Europe are greedy and selfish. These are not uncommon views; and perhaps I hoped that someone who has dedicated hard unpaid months into improving the lives of such disadvantaged people would be at least somewhat inclined to stand up and call out these accusations as unfair. Instead, these assertions (and worse) practically go unchallenged, here and elsewhere.
When this man's son died, and the photo of his body was spread around the world, people everywhere from conservative politicians to ordinary people on social networks seem to have had a moment of clarity, in which all the rationalisations, avoidance, apathy and bullshit fell away for a brief moment in time. People saw a child, a little kid that could be your own or your neighbour's, dead because of forces beyond his control. Not dead because of a selfish parent, or Europe's failure to 'stop the boats', but dead like so many other children of his age, and teenagers, and babies, and grandparents, and men and women in the prime of their lives, because of the horror of warfare and mass displacement. For a moment, most people saw that this couldn't be fixed by setting up detention centres on Nauru, or talking about the immorality of people smugglers, because the problem was so much bigger than that. But more importantly, for a moment, they felt empathy and compassion.
In that sense, the digging around into his father's story to assess whether he was a 'bad guy', whether it was his fault all along seems like a cruel joke. It seems like a betrayal of that noble humanist impulse that greeted the photograph of his child. It is almost as if we wish to undo it, to go back to a time when we didn't have to care.
I'm not blaming anyone for failing to care about these people. Empathy from a distance is hard; it doesn't come naturally to us. I also acknowledge that there are competing views on how best to solve the humanitarian crisis, and that well-meaning people might hold completely opposing views. But if we could, at the very least, hold onto just a fraction of the compassion that was felt when the image of that child's corpse was spread around the world, then there might be at least some hope that this difficult issue can be dealt with decently and humanely. Sadly, I'm no longer sure that that's possible.
_________________
All watched over by machines of loving grace
Last edited by David on Sun Feb 14, 2016 11:17 pm; edited 3 times in total |
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Wokko
Come and take it.
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
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| Just had a Guiness longneck, maybe I'll start going off soon . |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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| Wokko wrote: | | Just had a Guiness longneck, maybe I'll start going off soon . |
Haha, I'm in a restaurant in Temple Bar on the red and slipping in a couple of sneaky posts while the Beloved heads to the Ladies!
_________________
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
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