by William Skink
I am not well versed in the anti-vaxxer backlash, so I really appreciated JC’s post pushing back on the lazy caricature presented by PW.
I’m not sure people without kids (and maybe I’m being too presumptuous here) can really appreciate weighing the fear of preventable illness with the fear of pharmaceutical companies cutting corners with the products that get literally injected into our children.
Having kids also amplifies the horror one experiences seeing the image of a dead toddler washed up on the beach. Every parent worth a damn sees that dead kid as their dead kid, and their heart screams.
For me, the world view I relate to adds another layer of rage. There is all this talk of Syrian refugees, but not nearly enough accurate talk of why all these Syrian refugees.
Why ask why?
Doing a bang-up job avoiding that question, the Missoulian has a nice human interest piece on the efforts of the Risho family to welcome Syrian refugees to Missoula:
…Risho is part of an effort in Missoula to help Syrian refugees in the midst of a growing humanitarian crisis. In Europe, more and more families are fleeing war in Syria and leaving poorly supplied refugee camps in other countries.
A group in Missoula hopes to bring 10 of those families here. It’s just one of the ideas the group is discussing, but it’s personal to Risho, and it’s already showing the giving spirit of the community.
Betsy Mulligan-Dague, executive director of the Jeannette Rankin Peace Center, said a handful of people came together last week who are unconnected but share a concern for the refugee crisis.
“All of a sudden, we have actions that are happening and people wanting to participate and money coming in. It’s heartwarming that that kind of response is out there,” Mulligan-Dague said.
My emphasis, because it’s only all of a sudden to a media that has studiously ignored the ongoing efforts at regime change in Syria. If full context was provided, America’s direct role in creating this refugee crisis would necessitate not just accepting a few thousand refugees, but stopping the funding and arming of jihadists to destroy the secular government in Syria.
Instead of full context, how about Another human interest piece? This story is the perfect feel good story. It’s about a 14 year old girl, Zoe Wilson, who raised funds online then sent 2,000 dollars in supplies to Syrian refugees in Hungary. This part caught my attention:
Wilson said she hopes increased attention to the refugee issue will lead to the U.S. granting asylum to more Syrians.
“Currently, the U.S. is only granting asylum to 1,500 people. Germany is accepting 800,000. This is a world problem, and as long as the situation in Syria stays as awful, people will be leaving and seeking asylum,” she said.
Yeah, it was thought that Germany was stepping up to accept hundreds of thousands of refugees, but Merkel is now rethinking the political fallout:
Germany has reintroduced border controls with Austria, its interior minister has confirmed, halting all trains and deploying 2,100 riot police to help carry out checks.
Speaking at a press conference called at short notice, Thomas de Maizière said the controls were being applied with immediate effect “to bring some order to the entry of refugees”.
While the exact nature of the checks remained unclear, the minister described them as a “safety measure” which was within the remit of the Schengen Agreement.
Anyway, all this talk about helping refugees is moot because these refugees are being exploited by the Obama administration to justify another round of regime change in Syria. Regime change is a fancy term for war, and war makes refugees. From the link:
President Barack Obama has called on Congress to authorise US military action in Syria. The move has provoked sharp, multifaceted debate in the US Capitol as a resolution moves through the legislative process.
Here is more about this resolution:
The resolution would allow a “a 90 day window” for U.S. military attack in Syria, where both ISIS and the Syrian government would be targeted; with regime change in Syria being the ultimate objective.
The U.S. public has virtually no knowledge of these new developments. A field of candidates campaigning for President haven’t mentioned the subject. The U.S. media’s silence on the issue is deafening.
War produces war refugees. The once-modern societies of Iraq, Libya and Syria were obliterated while the western world watched, seemingly emotionless. But the drowned toddler, named Aylan, unearthed these buried emotions.
Sorry Zoe Wilson and all you Americans on Facebook horrified at the image of a dead toddler. That dead toddler is your tax dollars hard at work. As the West continues to spread death, chaos and misery across the Middle East and North Africa, there will be hundreds of thousands more dead and displaced innocents.