Refugees Welcome celebration Aotea Square this Saturday
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- Date published:
9:00 am, September 18th, 2015 - 21 comments
Categories: activism -
Tags: refugee crisis
The left is running a fundraiser for the Auckland Refugee Council this weekend with guests poet Whaitiri M Mikaere, musicians The Neo-Kalashnikovs, Jack and Jenny Lange, and MANIC SEEDS, Green Party MP Marama Davidson, Labour Party MP Louisa Wall, Arabian refugee Mustafa Steve, Bosnian social justice activist Emir Hodzic, Syrian Solidarity Abdul Elah and Kareana Kee, NZ Kurdish Society Sarkawt Abdullazada and Laila Saber ,Tobi Muir and Kumbirai Makwindi Jafa Mafia Sound System, Sharman and Payman, Kurdish refugee activists with Shakti, Unions Auckland Rachel Mackintosh, Chris Sullivan, Catholic Deacon, Fala Haulangi, SFWU and Tuvaluan Eco-refugees, Hela Rahman, Iraqi community, Billy Hania NZ Palestine Solidarity Network, Jeremy Randerson, Mana Movement, Joe Carolan Socialist Aotearoa, Mike Treen Unite Union, Anu Kaloti Migrant Workers Association of Aotearoa, Dennis Maga UNIMEG / First Union, Albert Barr Citizens Resistance, Gary Cranston, Climate Justice Aotearoa, Sunny Sehgal EPMU, and Sirpa Gunn Auckland Refugee Council. Art and street theatre by Front Line Arts Collective.
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“Speakers from oppressed groups” You mean like homosexuals, atheists, apostates, non-Muslims and others who should be given priority in any refugee intake? Or will this rally be the normal display of Dhimmitude, where no-one will actually name the ideology that is causing the problem in the first place?
You didn’t read it properly, did you?
Did you just misquote a sentence then go off on a rant about what you thought you read?
Outstanding.
You’ve got a better turn of phrase than me Flocky.
OK I misread, but the point remains. Is anyone prepared to name the ideology that is oppressing these countries from which people are fleeing: Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia…
Don’t worry I’m sure someone will mention the USA, Capitialism and neo-liberalism at some point
Well, I guess we can begin with ideology of patriarchy. Most ideologies around the world that employ illegitimate power structures are based on it.
Next question?
edit: for the benefit of yourself PR yes, that includes neo-liberalism, social democracy, state communism, the institutional expression of many if not most religions…and so on.
The same one that made people flee Colombia, Myanmar, Lebanon, Palestine, Afghanistan (1980s), Cambodia (1975), Eritrea, Iraq (2003-onwards), Bosnia, Sri Lanka, Mozambique…
dunno what the official term for it is, but I call it “human stupidity”.
Warlord style authoritarianism aka dictatorship. Who really cares what ideological or religious flag that they wrap it in?
There is a secondary effect that when the authoritarianism is released for any reason, including foreign invasion (Iraq by the Americans, Afghanistan by the Russians and the Americans), the societies released from national authoritarians aren’t resilient enough to deal with the change. They revert to tribal warlordism.
“Who really cares what ideological or religious flag that they wrap it in?”
Their followers ?
Depends on the amount of agency “followers” actually have. When elephants fight the grass gets trampled, but most of the grass bends in the easiest direction at the time.
Steve, this line pissed me off, and I couldn’t figure out why.
Bigots have commented here before, and I think everyone has a pretty good idea of whom you were targeting even without your cherry-picked list (BTW, in my additions to your list I forgot to include Rwanda. Hundreds of thousands dead, millions mutilated and displaced barely 20 years ago, and I forgot about it). Normally I don’t think too much about their idiocy.
But yours comes back to me, and I think I now know why. It’s because you’re too much of a coward to name your own bigotry that you wanted us to do it for you. But you also genuinely thought that the list, cherry-picked by your own confirmation bias, reflected reality and that someone would read your comment and suddenly become a bigot like you.
You’re wrong. Your perception is skewed, because you are a bigot.
I have named islam as the greatest threat to the greatest number in the world in many places on the internet over the years. The fact that in this thread I chose to make people do a little thinking for themselves does not mean I am afraid to name the ideology. It is not bigotry to point out that the more islam there is in a country, the worse things are for women, gays, apostates, religious minorities, or even the wrong type of muslim. Neither is it cherry-picking to point out that such conditions produce the most refugees- it’s there in the 2015 UNHCR report.
http://www.unhcr.org/556725e69.html (p 14)
Top sources of refugees 1. Syria, 2. Afghanistan 3. Somalia 4. Sudan, with many of the rest of the top 10 being due to muslim/non-muslim conflict.
So the top sources don’t all have Islam in common.
What do they all have in common? Any thoughts?
I sincerely hope that the refugees discarded to Manus Island and Nauru feature large in any speeches.
Why should queue-jumpers who were foolish enough to pay people smugglers be rewarded? Australia’s hard-line policy has reduced drownings to zero. Germany’s idiotic decision to throw its doors open shows the disastrous consequences of the opposite policy.
“Queue-jumpers”? There is no “queue”.
Why should you repeat lies that(a href=”http://thestandard.org.nz/body-on-keys-moral-compass/#comment-1068188″>have already been exposed? Oh, that’s right – it’s the only way you can support your (apparently) racist, (definitely) stupid and (obnoxiously) pestilent position.
So, you seem to understand that people with some financial means have a better shot at travel than do those with none. That’s a start.
I take you are upset that refugee flows – at least those that extend over a number of borders – tend to be disproportionately made up of ‘middle class’ people; that you would favour some system that redressed the balance, to reflect the make up of the society from which people flee?
Maybe then, countries like NZ should allow refugee status to be filed from camps in Lebanon or Turkey etc (ie, countries immediately bordering the areas people are fleeing), rather than insisting that a person must first of all become an illegal immigrant within the country they seek refuge?
That would end the perilous boat journeys and the extensive over-land travel and mean the likes of street vendors or goat herders could also flee rather than just having to wait it out in god-forsaken hell holes.
Where do the Migrants stand as they will be a larger group than the “Refugees”
Says who? Your reckons aren’t worth shit.
Imagine the sad frightened internal monologue of Tory trash: a world of economic migrants, poised, waiting for a refugee crisis to exploit. Better bomb their country.