Refugees, Again

1956...Budapest is rising...
1956...Budapest is fighting...
1956...Budapest is falling...
1956...Budapest is dying...
--Tim Rice, CHESS: THE MUSICAL

It's sickening, what Hungary is doing to Syrian refugees.

Hungary has a far-right PM (Viktor Orban) with an even-further-right opposition that has been gaining in popularity lately. The Syrian refugee crisis is the perfect opportunity for Orban to be a good Nazi and "preserve the Hungarian nation". And so you have razor wire, tear gas and water cannons to repel the tide, and worse-than-prison conditions for those refugees who managed to get in before Hungary had any clue as to the scope of the situation.

It's strange that Hungary, of all nations, should be so virulently anti-refugee. The 1956 uprising, the first spark of heat in the Cold War, is still within living memory. It produced over two hundred thousand refugees, more than a few of whom are still alive.

But in Hungary, and in Eastern Europe generally, a strain of xenophobia has existed since time out of mind. The Museum of Terror in Budapest, a memorial to the horrors of communism, heavily implies that communism was actually Jewish revenge for the Holocaust...but only in Hungarian. The English plaques make no such claims.(source one) (source two)

There are people in Canada who share this xenophobia. It goes without saying they are on the rightward end of the spectrum and the redward end of the necktrum. In the wake of Alan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian refugee who drowned off the coast of Turkey, a Conservative supporter heckled a reporter by asking “How many kids drowned in pools in Canada this past summer? Do you blame the government for that?”

I'm seeing all kinds of hate masquerading as concern for the--to borrow a useful phrase--"old stock Canadians". There's the picture floating around Facebook of ISIS flags flying over Syrian refugees in Germany...WE DON'T WANT THEM HERE! it says, and no, we sure don't. Only problem is, that ISIS flag was Photoshppped into an older picture.

There's the "refugees make better bank than Canadian pensioners!" claptrap I refuted a few blogs back. And just this morning, I got this piece of bile in my mailbox:


Can someone please explain the following regarding the Syrian refugees arriving in Europe and perhaps Canada from worn torn (sic) destinations.

 1/ How come they all seem to have endless supplies of money to pay the people traffickers.

 2/ Most appear to have working mobile phones. 

 3/ Most appear well dressed and fed and do not appear to be suffering the effects of malnutrition.

 4/ Most of the refugees are men of military age. 

 5/ Why are other Muslim nations not helping their fellow Muslims. (Saudi, Kuwait, U.A.E. Indonesia but to name a few) 

 6/ How come the two boys and their mother drowned off the Turkish coast can be returned for burial to the place they fled so quickly, what I believed to be I.S. held territory. ]]


Could it be they are being paid to come to Europe as a way to increase the Muslim population and get IS fighters embedded in Europe? We all know life is cheap from an I.S. point so the loss of a few lives along the way has no meaning for them as long as it benefits their cause. Just a thought.

I almost burst a blood vessel reading this. Really, refuting it is like swatting dead flies, but...

1) Define "endless supplies". It cost one migrant $2000 for the privilege of a twelve hour sea voyage with 75 other people on a boat meant for 30. That's more than a year's salary--likely most of his life's savings. If you're leaving home, with no guarantee you'll ever see home again, would you not take money with you? I would.

2) Okay, here's where I LOSE IT. Such parochial thinking. GO ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD, from the slums of Calcutta to the favelas of Rio to the poorest parts of Africa and EVERYBODY HAS A WORKING MOBILE PHONE. Just because it's obscenely expensive in Canada doesn't mean it's that way...anywhere else.

3) They are fleeing a WAR ZONE, not a ^&^*ing FAMINE. This is not the Middle Ages: ISIS doesn't besiege a town hoping to starve people out.

4) Oh, really? You counted? I'M a male of military age, and if ISIS was on my doorstep I'd be over the hills and gone. Call me a coward if you will, but what I really am is a realist. I am not physically, mentally, or ammunitionistically equipped to deal with that threat. Sorry. If it's any consolation, you're welcome to come with me. I am intimately acquainted with several dozen places ISIS would consider well beneath notice.

5) Now HERE's a legitimate question. There's an air-conditioned tent city in Saudi Arabia that's used for the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca. It holds over 300,000 people...and it's sitting empty. The whole region is filthy rich and could easily absorb ALL of Syria. But it won't, for a couple of reasons. One is that many of the Syrian refugees are the wrong flavour of Muslim. The overwhelming majority of the refugees are Sunni, so they are not welcome in Shiite-dominated areas. And ISIS hates all Muslims that do not adhere to their strict perversion of the faith. They loathe Saudi Arabia in particular. Sheltering refugees invites reprisals.

6) Kobane, Syria, the hometown referred to here, was not and is not 'IS held territory". It is in fact rather hotly contested territory, having been the site of several ISIS massacres, but it is not under ISIS control. See, that's kind of how war zones work, and why people tend to flee them.

A final note on the final note up there. Migrants are not being paid to go anywhere. The Muslim population in Europe is doing just fine all on its own, since their birthrate is higher than the native populations'.

There are, sadly, many Canadians who will read these questions, rephrase them as statements, and repeat them. And that hurts my head...and my heart.