Monday, March 10, 2008

Quick Points.

Three quick points that don't quite merit separate posts.
  • Barack Obama's foreign policy adviser Samantha Power is forced to quit after being reported referring to Hillary Clinton as a 'monster'. Quite right, honesty has no place in politics. It wouldn't be a huge surprise to anyone who read her first book 'A Problem From Hell' that the isn't a fan of the Clintons. There have understandably been criticisms of interventionism in recent years after the very poor handling of the Iraqi occupation, but it is often forgotten that doing nothing also has a price which is hidden. Samantha Power's retelling of Bill Clinton's almost vegetative approach to the genocides of the 1990s in Rwanda and Bosnia cost far more lives than the Iraq war ever will.
  • The government has decided to allow 66 Ethiopian refugees to settle in Middlesbrough has been criticised. I have to say that for once I think that the government have got something right though (saying that feels horrible), the fundamental problem with our asylum and immigration system is the large numbers of people who enter either illegally or on bogus pretenses and then claim asylum. What has happened in Middlesbrough is closer to how the system should operate, the Ethiopians fled to a Kenyan refugee camp and then applied lawfully to be allowed to resettle somewhere else permanently and were accepted. Controlled immigration is not a major problem, uncontrolled immigration is.
  • The BBC and other media outlets have been shocked, shocked I tell you, by the abuse suffered by uniformed RAF personnel in Peterborough. This is the same BBC who recently devoted a whole episode of their flagship current affairs programme, Panorama, to a sleazy activist lawyer to repreat already discredited claims about British servicemen conducting massacres (and being so ruthless that they left no actual evidence) of Iraqi civilians. If I went around spreading vicious lies about someone who was later attacked I'm pretty sure that I would face prosecution.

3 comments:

The Sage of Muswell Hill said...

"Controlled immigration is not a major problem, uncontrolled immigration is." In other words immigration - controlled or uncontrolled - is a problem. Seems to me the only plus in this - and the sole reason you approve of the whole business - is that refugees have gone through legitimate channels.

Even if it's legal, approved and above-board it's still a scam for which the tax payers of the UK and Middlesborough will be paying and where "Deputy mayor and lead councillor for community cohesion, Bob Kerr" and the rest of the immigration/race hustlers will preen before their fellow parasites. I can't see where we have any duty to these refugees other than ensuring, as far as possible, that within our reasonable power, any suffering is minimised.

Information available from the newspaper report you quote does not point to any reason why they should have been permitted entry: they have no connection with this country: their lives were not endangered in Kenya: Kenya was not going to return them to Ethiopia. So, why us? If any Western nation should accept Ethiopian refugees it's Italy which was the only colonial power in Ethiopia's history; and that for a very few years before we turfed them out and restored Haile Selassie to his throne.

Ross said...

"Information available from the newspaper report you quote does not point to any reason why they should have been permitted entry"

There isn't any reason why we should be obliged to allow them in, but allowing a limited number of people who have applied in the lawful and proper manner isn't something that I particularly object to. Obviously the race hustling parasites are a problem but they would exist with or without the Ethiopians.

The Sage of Muswell Hill said...

"Obviously the race hustling parasites are a problem but they would exist with or without the Ethiopians."

Agreed.