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Showing posts with label immigration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label immigration. Show all posts
Sarah Kay ✊ In 1985, at the height of the Cold War, British singer Sting wrote a protest song against mutual nuclear deterrence. 

Calling upon reason, which was scarce at the time, he pleaded to understand that no one is above another – that we all fear death, violence, that we all want the same thing for our children. We all, supposedly, do. We all, supposedly, work toward a society in which they would grow up free and happy.

The Belfast pogroms have tested that theory in two different ways. The non-issue of asylum has been fascinating the United Kingdom, and Ireland, in the most negative way possible. A population ranking under 2%, asylum-seekers have become targets of the most violent of acts, including burning people alive. The Belfast attacker was a 30 year old from Sudan. This was a call to review immigration and our role toward those under international protection. It’s in the name: asylum is not regulated domestically as much as it is the product of a post-war treaty that was meant to address the consequences of the 1936 Nüremberg laws – statelessnesss - and provide for the millions of displaced in Europe: refuge, the right to seek safety and protection.

The current genocide in Sudan should horrify us all. A consequence of the 1994 Rwanda genocide and the 2003 genocide in Darfur, Sudan is suffering unprecedented levels of conflict-related sexual violence. In 2024, Volker Türk, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, commented that:

(The RSF) have killed thousands, seemingly without remorse. They have manufactured a climate of sheer terror, forcing millions to flee. They have let the people who could not - or would not - escape, suffer, destroying medical services and blocking humanitarian aid. 

Ignoring that Sudanese people should indeed be under international protection is dehumanisation on a state scale.

But there are other genocides – in Palestine, in Congo, in Armenia – where the horror continues to unfold; sometimes live streamed into our phones, sometimes spoken about at the tail end of news reports. In 2025, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights announced:

In other areas under M23 control in South Kivu, such as Minova, M23 has occupied schools and hospitals, forced IDPs out of camps and subjected the civilian population to forced conscription and forced labour. Additionally, DRC officials report that at least 165 women were raped by male inmates during the prison break by more than 4,000 inmates from Goma’s Muzenze prison on 27 January, as M23 began its assault on the town.

 As Sting then said, “there’s no such thing as a winnable war, it’s a lie we don’t believe anymore.”

But migration isn’t only about seeking asylum; it is the oldest, and most important, human behaviour. Since the beginning of human civilisation, we have migrated: to find food, to find land, to find water. We have migrated, even more importantly, to find shelter. Through this migration, Darwin’s theory of evolution brought us here, to the point where Jim Crow laws on segregation, a source of nostalgy in many European countries, can become a biological issue. Migration isn’t and will never be a crime, because we have all migrated one way or another in our lives: we studied abroad; we did a work away visa; we visited a friend and overstayed our welcome; we decided to check out a new city because Belfast felt too small. All of this is migration. Moving back with your parents in Dundalk because you couldn’t find a job in the city is a micro form of migration; you wouldn’t have it removed from you. Migration is not the issue; racism is. Only one category of people is allowed to migrate and doing so on the assumption that their chosen form of immigration is the only valid one. Ending immigration has never helped any public deficit or crumbling institutions, in fact, it’s been demonstrated time and time again that immigration has immense economic benefits.

As Sting said again, here’s no monopoly on common sense on either side of the political fence. We believe that those seeking asylum made a choice. We believe that migrants all inherently are bad faith actors in an otherwise open and thriving community. We deny the simple fact of genocide and the direct consequences of global exploitation leading to global inequality. We have no moral or ethical right to denounce what we would continue doing to ourselves: criminal exploitation. Paramilitary recruitment, drug trade, all of which show cruel child neglect in the name of scoring political points. Wouldn’t we want a different future for them, too?

⏩ Sarah Kay is an international human rights lawyer now described as “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States” . . . again.

Do We Love Our Children Too?

Dixie Elliot ✊We know who the first man to set foot on the moon was. 

But did you know that the first people to set foot in Ireland were immigrants?
 
That and other things you might not know:

The first people to arrive in Ireland were Mesolithic hunter-gathers who travelled across Europe and arrived in Ireland by boat around 8,000 BC.
 
So were the first inhabitants of Ireland immigrants or were they Irish?

Well Ireland hadn't got an name yet so obviously they weren't Irish.
 
Then in 4,500 BC the Neolithic Farmers came from Anatolia, which would now be known as Turkey.
More bloody immigrants!

Ireland still wasn't called Ireland so they weren't Irish either which meant that the country was full of foreigners, even before the Irish came.
 
Fuck off! Where did the Irish come from if there was nowhere called Ireland?

During the Bronze and Iron ages the Celts were moving around central Europe including Northern Spain. These people were described as Keltoi by the Greeks and they spoke a precursor to the modern Celtic languages. Along the way they integrated with other tribes, stayed in the one place or moved on.

Around 500BC the first of these Keltoi people arrived in Ireland. They didn't invade, they just arrived and kept coming over the course of time and settled here. The language these people spoke is well over a thousand years older than the English language which originated in and around where Germany is today. The Anglo-Saxons eventually brought the English language to Britain.
 
The Celts called the land they settled in Ériu, their word for describing a 'fertile land.' In their mythology Ériu became the name of a goddess and together with her sisters, Banba and Fódla, she represented the spirit of the island.

So Ireland eventually had a name.

In 795 AD the Vikings began raiding the coastal areas of Ireland, plundering and pillaging. These Norsemen, who were primarily from Norway, were a right shower of baduns. They eventually began to settle along the coast, so that they'd have somewhere to park their longships. Viking ports were eventually established at Dublin, Wexford, Waterford, Cork and Limerick, which became the first large towns in Ireland.

After they had been defeated by an army led by the High King of Ireland, Brian Boru, at the Battle of Clontarf in 1014, the Vikings gave up on the idea of conquering Ireland. Instead, the Norse established coastal settlements like Dublin and increasingly assimilated into Irish society.
However, the kinsmen of the Viking Norsemen, who were also primarily from Norway, had been at the same carry-on in in what would become known as Normandy in northwestern France, which was of course named after themselves and they became known as the Normans.
 
This lot eventually got round to invading England which, at the time, had been ruled by the Anglo-Saxons, who, as I already pointed out, originally came from Germany. The Normans, led by William the Conqueror, defeated the Anglo-Saxons, led by King Harold at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Apparently he was keeping an eye on them when an arrow went clean through that eye killing him stone dead. Or so they say.
 
Over time the victorious Normans intermarried with the Anglo-Saxons and the Celts in Britain and became known as the Anglo-Normans.

In 1167 Dermot MacMurrough, the deposed King of Leinster, asked the English King Henry ll to help him regain his territory after rival Irish lords and the High King of Ireland Rory O'Connor forced him into exile. Henry told him to give a guy called Strongbow a shout. Strongbow had just discovered that if you crush apples you can get an alcoholic drink called cider, which was becoming very popular at the time, and he didn't want to go to Ireland in case others started into the cider making business while he was away invading.
 
MacMurrough told Strongbow that if he gave him a hand out he'd give him his daughter Aoife's hand in marriage. She was a fine looking colleen so Strongbow agreed to help him and in 1169 the Anglo-Normans invaded Ireland. MacMurrough became the King of Leinster again and Strongbow cider became the most popular alcoholic drink in Ireland until Arthur Guinness invented the black stuff.
Strongbow married Aoife and MacMurrough was glad to be back on his throne, although his arse wasn't on it for more than two years before he died in 1171. The Anglo-Normans went on to help themselves to the rest of Ireland.
 
Now here's the thing. Over time the Anglo-Normans assimilated into Gaelic society, adopted the Irish language, embraced local customs, and intermarried with the native clans. They famously became 'more Irish than the Irish themselves.'

The English Crown weren't having any of this as it threatened their control over Ireland, so Parliament passed the Statutes of Kilkenny in 1366. These laws strictly banned the Anglo-Normans from speaking Irish, adopting Irish names, dressing like the Gaels, or marrying native Irish people. However, these laws largely failed to stop the ongoing Gaelicisation of the Anglo-Normans.

So, in brief, the first people to arrive on these shores were immigrants. These immigrants kept coming until the first of the Celts turned up and they too were immigrants.
 
The Vikings and the Anglo-Normans came as invaders not immigrants, but Irish culture suited them just fine so they got tore into it and out came the jugs of Strongbow.

Irish culture, including the Gaelic language was as strong as it had always been. It remained that way until the time of the Irish Holocaust (The Famine) in 1845 when the deliberate starvation of the poor Irish people forced them to flee from the shores of Ireland, in coffin ships, seeking a better way of life. They went for the most part to America, where racism was waiting to greet them as soon as they arrived on Ellis Island in New York.

The London Times, at a time when the exodus was at it's most pitiful, screamed with delight in one of its editorials...

They are going! They are going! The Irish are going with a vengeance. Soon a Celt will be as rare in Ireland as a Red Indian on the shores of Manhattan. 

It is estimated that up to 2 million people left Ireland for North America, Australia, and Britain to escape starvation and disease between the years 1845 and 1855. Since then, between 9 and 10 million Irish born people have emigrated from this country.
 
Today the Irish diaspora; that being all those known to have Irish ancestors, is believed to be in the region of over 100 million people, which is more than fifteen times the population of the island of Ireland. Which is the reason why Saint Patrick's Day is the most widely celebrated national holiday across the world. More so than even the USA's 4th of July.

How ironic that the Far-Right in Ireland accuses todays foreign immigrants of being 'invaders' who are a 'threat to our culture' and that within twenty years Irish people will be as rare in Ireland as Eskimos in the Sahara Desert. Oh and Muslims will impose Sharia Law on the few remaining Irish people who will be driven into the likes of the Mourne Mountains or the bogs round Barnesmore Gap.
 
You don't need to ridicule that warped logic as it ridicules itself.

James Connolly wrote in July 1900:
 
All races are mixed more or less; a pure race does not exist. The modern Irish race is a composite blending - on the original Celtic stock have been grafted shoots from all the adventurous races of the continent.

Roger Casement made clear his feelings on racial purity back in 1904:

The more we love our land and wish to help her people the more keenly we feel we cannot turn a deaf ear to suffering and injustice in any part of the world . . . 
And remember that a Nation is a very complex thing – it never does consist, it never has consisted of men of one blood or of one single race. It is like a river which rises far off in the hills and has many sources, many converging streams before it becomes one great stream.
 
Bobby Sands scrawled his thoughts on racial unity on a filthy wall in his prison cell when he wrote his famous poem:

The Rhythm of Time

"It is found in every light of hope,
It knows no bounds nor space,
It has risen in red and black and white
It is there in every race.
It lights the dark of this prison cell
It thunders forth its might,
It is the undauntable thought my friend
That thought that says ‘I’m right’!"

The whole history of Ireland has been one of immigration. The immigrant came to these shores at the beginning of time in search of a better way of life. In more recent centuries the Irish immigrant was forced to leave these shores in search of a better way of life.
 
Racism is a refuge for the ignorant. It seeks to divide and to destroy. It is the enemy of freedom, and deserves to be met head-on and stamped out. - Pierre Berton

 

Thomas Dixie Elliot is a Derry artist and a former H Block Blanketman.
Follow Dixie Elliot on Twitter @IsMise_Dixie

Where Did The Irish Come From If There Was Nowhere Called Ireland?

Dr John Coulter ✍ There was a lot of well-worded rhetoric of condemnation of the race riots which erupted in parts of the Province following an alleged stabbing incident in north Belfast.

But the vast majority of these carefully drafted press statements seemed to avoid the crucial ‘elephant in the room’ - what will be a workable, long-term solution to the illegal immigration crisis sweeping the UK?

This month’s riots were a mirror image of the race riots which engulfed my home town of Ballymena last year, where - as in the recent situation - a water cannon was deployed by police.

Whilst rightly condemning the mindless violence, the PSNI Chief Constable did make mention of the peaceful protests which had also taken place in areas such as Coleraine, but were vastly overshadowed by the rioting elsewhere.

Th trigger for the current racial unrest is the belief that illegal migrants and asylum seekers are sneaking into the UK via the open border with the republic.

The underlying problem is that when violence takes centre stage, all migrants are tarred with the same brush. Racial rioters do not take notice of the many folk from the ethnic communities who, since 1945, have integrated successfully into Ulster society.

Rioters do not distinguish between genuine legal migrants who are making a positive contribution to the economic life of the UK - especially those who work in the NHS - and the illegal ‘benefits brigade’ who see the UK’s benefit system as an easy ticket to manipulate.

Then there’s the asylum seekers who have genuine reasons, too, for being in the UK because of religious or political persecution in their home lands, such as Christians who have fled Nigeria or the Middle East.

Analysing the causes of the riots recently in my commentating on GB News TV, I emphasised the point that for a long-term solution to the immigration crisis to work, it required radical political surgery, not a sticky plaster.

For Northern Ireland, the problem - ironically since partition - has been the existence of the common travel area between the six counties of Northern Ireland and the 26 counties of Southern Ireland. A generation of folk in Northern Ireland still remember how the south was used as a springboard for the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the border pro-Union community by republican terrorists during the Troubles.

If any flow or even a trickle of illegal migrants coming from Southern Ireland into the UK is to be halted, then manned border posts and check points must be introduced.

That sounds like a very radical option, but there’s a perception that many politicians, community groups and places of worship are afraid to address the immigration ‘elephant in the room’ for fear of the current woke snowflake society branding them as racist, fascist, Nazi or Far Right.

However, given the recent riots - and the fact that next May voters in Northern Ireland will go to the polls in local council and Stormont Assembly elections, political parties will have to seriously address the immigration issue.

However, the real immigration issue is in mainland Britain where the so-called small boat crisis is perceived to be out of control, hence the recent surge in support for the Right-wing Reform UK party with some opinion polls predicting leader Nigel Farage MP could be a future holder of the keys to 10 Downing Street.

The root cause of the UK’s seeming inability to get control of the small boat crisis, which has seen tens of thousands of illegal migrants cross the English Channel to Britain, has been the UK’s lack of an iron wall of ships across that particular sea border.

If ever that point was being rammed home, it was the recent resignation of the Labour Defence Secretary John Healey who cited that military spending ‘fell well short’ of what was needed.

Put bluntly, the Royal Navy simply does not have the ships to create that iron wall across the English Channel which would force the small boat armada to turn back - and we are still not in the teeth of the summer months when the weather in the channel is expected to be better, thus encouraging more migrants to risk the crossing.

Even if a budget was magically approved to build more ships and train more sailors, that development will not become a reality within the next few months.

Put bluntly again, the real problem is the inability of the French authorities to stop the armada of small boats leaving French shores in the first place. If the French security forces were doing their jobs competently and effectively, none of the illegal migrant boats would leave the beaches.

Mind you, the inability of French authorities to control their own borders comes as no surprise. They could not do this in the Great War and they could not do it in the Second World War, so why should we in the UK be so surprised that France cannot hold sway over its own beaches!

Even if the French could gain control of their beaches, what about the tens of thousands of illegal migrants who have already arrived in the UK and have been housed in hotels before being moved into the community? What is radically required in an isolated holding centre along the lines of the American Camp X Ray, which existed in Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay.

Such a detention camp would be policed by the intelligence community so that every migrant or asylum seeker would be vetted to ascertain if they were genuinely fleeing persecution, or had the view - ‘we’re on our way to benefits Britain!’

The genuine migrants seeking political or religious asylum could be integrated into the community while the illegals would be deported to their countries of origin. But no one leaves the UK’s Camp X Ray until their identity is confirmed.

Integration must be the key to migrants and asylum seekers remaining in the UK. In this respect, the Christian Churches have a major role to playing in educating migrants in Western Christian values.

Last year, I attended a Presbyterian missionary rally at which a woman spoke passionately about how her church was assisting such integration in Northern Ireland. However, she emphasised one of the main difficulties they faced was these new comers’ views on women. To migrants - legal and illegal - from some cultures, women are viewed as second class citizens or sexual play things.

Likewise, many migrants arrive in the UK with little more possessions than the clothes they are wearing. Given that migrants have been housed in hotels where they get regular meals and clothing, the perception has been fuelled that UK authorities take the view - migrants before locals.

This perception has fuelled an anger and fear in some communities that migrants are being given preferential treatment especially as many local families are struggling with a cost of living crisis, having to rely on food banks, or even deciding if they can either heat their homes or cook a meal - the so-called ‘heat or eat’ dilemma.

One fact is certain in Northern Ireland. The current political parties will have to radically address the immigration ‘elephant in the room’ before next May’s elections, otherwise the door will be opened electorally for the real Far Right parties to enter the political arena with their hard line solutions.

Time is not on the side of the current local government and Assembly establishment parties if they want to avoid another repetition of this month’s horrible rioting.

Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter
John is a Director for Belfast’s Christian radio station, Sunshine 1049 FM. 

Time To Tackle Immigration ‘Elephant’ Head On

Christopher Owens “When I was just a boy I so wanted to be loved/When I thought I held your hand I know now it was a gun/It was empty from the start but a threat to make them run/A veil of protection though we needed none" - Converge.

24/02/22 - Eight men (Owen McMahon, four sons and a McMahon employee) were shot dead at their home in Kinnaird Terrace, Belfast. According to survivors, police officers were behind the murders.

08/06/26 - One man (Stephen Ogilvie) was taken to hospital with slash wounds to his back, face and eye injuries after an attack in Kinnaird Avenue, Belfast. According to some reports, his attacker (Hadi Alodid) had briefly served as a police officer in Sudan.

Chilling proof, if needed, that history in this country doesn’t necessarily repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

♞♜♝

Firstly, it goes without saying that the attack on Monday night was an appalling act of violence and should be condemned by everyone living in a peaceful, democratic society. While some details are still emerging at the time of writing this, we should still wait for more information to come to light so we can get a better picture of the circumstances that led to that brutal act of violence.

Similarly, the subsequent rioting and torching of homes that we’ve seen played out over the last few days is utterly sickening. Seeing families targeted because of their skin colour should be anathema to everyone. There is no excuse for intimidation or pogroms of any kind and the fact that this is the third instance of rioting over immigrants in the North in less than three years is a depressing thought.

A lesser discussed impact of the pogroms is that it allows the political establishment act as the moral authority and ignore the underlying causes and tensions that have led to such nihilistic violence.

♞♜♝

Let’s state the obvious: to the average citizen it feels like this country is at breaking point:

  • stagnant wages
  • high cost of living
  • lack of new housing
  • faltering NHS
  • a road system which gridlocks if someone sneezes
  • petty crime seemingly going unpunished
  • hypocritical and unaccountable political system
  • withdrawal of communities into individual silos
  • a society that no longer believes in itself

These, of course, are not unique to the North. Many countries in the West and the United States are faced with these problems as well.

But when mass immigration, in particular the way it's been handled by the political system, is thrown into the mix; things become explosive. This is because it’s the most obvious example of change in a society like the North which was (and still is) overwhelmingly white. Of course, there has been immigration in the past: Vietnamese, Black British, Nigerian, Sudanese, Kenyan, African, Pakastani, Chinese, Indian, Turkish, Italian, Israeli, Polish, Greeks and Cypriots have all made the North their home and we should be proud of how they have not only become part of the furniture, so to speak, but that many run successful businesses and give back to their respective areas.

However, in recent years, the number of new arrivals has increased dramatically. Once again, this is not a unique situation to this country, but it is the first time demographics have shifted not just visibly but also at great speed. Change will always happen and nowhere is immune. But change that would normally happen over a span of 50 odd years has happened in the space of 10-15 years. If handled incorrectly, the end result can lead to parallel lives, impact on already stretched health and social services, housing and a grave sense of alienation and displacement among people which can be difficult for some to articulate. If ignored by left wing commentators, it gives the far right the equivalent of a penalty kick.

And quite a few commentators from across the political spectrum have been doing that in recent days.

♞♜♝

Let’s look at a few examples, two from the left and two from the right:

Claire Hanna (SDLP):

The violence in North Belfast was horrific, the video will create fear and shock. No good will come of sharing it or of turning on each other in this society, including for the clout of online voices who don’t know or care about us and who offer absolutely nothing for the future.

On the face of it, this seems to be a reasonable request not to share the horrific footage of the attack and it’s certainly true that various terminally online types have been sharing it not only as an example of the “suicide of the West” but also because their nihilistic world view is partially quenched by such sick footage.

However, when you consider that initial news reports suggested that the incident was merely a stabbing, the tweet can also be considered an attempt to stifle discussion and downplay the severity of the attack. Considering trust in both legacy and new media is at an all-time low (who could forget "firey but mostly peaceful protests" in 2020), I don’t think this is an unreasonable conclusion to draw.

Anthony McIntyre:

The person arrested on suspicion of last night's attack is reported by the PSNI to be a Sudanese national. That has kickstarted a surge in anti-immigrant rhetoric from quarters which were much less vociferous when Ian Ogle was knifed to death in Belfast in 2019. Ogle's killers, because they identified as white and British, did not provoke the same rabid outcry that we are familiar with when the attacker is a different colour. The Irish News has reported that 'far-right activist Tommy Robinson and tech billionaire Elon Musk amplified calls for people to take to the streets in response to the incident.'

Obfuscation, pure and simple.

Firstly, Ian Ogle was stabbed in the chest and then stamped on the head by a gang of men. An evil murder undoubtedly, but one that we have (sadly) seen many times. By contrast, Ogilvie was slashed repeatedly, has lost much of his eyesight with some witnesses believing that it was an attempt at beheading. Leaving aside the 50-year-old example of the Shankill Butchers, that is highly unusual for a killing in Belfast.

Secondly, the background of Ogle’s murder involved the East Belfast UVF, long standing grudges and family ties. At the time of writing this piece, we don’t know the full story of what led to Alodid’s actions but I would be surprised if it was as expansive as Ogle’s.

Thirdly, Mackers knows fine rightly that the discussion surrounding this case will inevitably touch on mass immigration, especially now that the Home Office has confirmed that Alodid had entered the UK in 2023 (supposedly via Dublin) and was granted refugee status the same year until 2028. Writing in 2024, Mackers made his views clear: 

I'm fine with immigration but not fine with suppressing any opinion that is not fine with it. The government have not yet explained how they are going to make it practical. They do not provide the infrastructure and leave it to the leftoids to label those who ask questions about the infrastructure deficiency as far right and racist. Time out of number I have said to people that if they accuse everybody of being far right they will create a far right much more virulent than it currently is.

Yes, the likes of Elon Musk and Stephen Yaxley-Lennon have inflamed the situation but the implication that ordinary people who feel that the North is spiraling out of control have to be manipulated by such types is what the kids refer to as a cope: for many, the video of the crime confirmed their worst fears. They didn’t need anyone to tell them to be angry.

Now let’s look at the right.

Fergus Mason: 

Is anyone actually stupid enough to believe that the family of Stephen Ogilvie, who is currently in a coma with hideous injuries after being attacked by an imported savage, would write a bland statement about the importance of immigration to the hospitality sector? The government's fingerprints are all over this.

Leaving aside the blatant racism, this commentator doesn’t seem to consider the possibility that the Ogilvie family (as well as Stephen) may not be bigots and do genuinely value the importance of immigrants contributing to society, particularly within the NHS.

Disturbingly, it can also be interpreted as an attempt to dehumanise workers who are already facing a rising tide of racist abuse in our aforementioned overstretched society. Such views are abhorrent to the average person.

Paul Golding: 

I hate the IRA, but fair play to those staunch republican for telling the African invader to get the fuck out of Belfast.

Filming a man minding his own business and proceeding to racially abuse him = staunch republican? Fuck away off with that bullshit. The cunt filming that video would have run a mile if he’d been asked to help out the republican movement back in the day.

♞♜♝

The reason it’s important to look at both sides is to see how one fails to address some core issues while the other offers a blinkered, hate-filled response to a complex issue. And there’s evidence that the traditional barrier of ‘themmuns and usuns’ that has demarcated the debate on mass immigration along nationalist and unionist lines may not be as sturdy as some think.

Writing in Unherd, Aris Roussinos noted that there were scenes in North Queen Street and Ardoyne that suggested that it may not be long before nationalist areas have their own migrant riots. If true, this would be a grave inversion of the 1932 Belfast Outdoor Relief Strike (again, history rhyming but not repeating) and would dent the idea of Irish nationalism as a progressive force.

In some ways, globalisation has now given the situation in this country a wedge that has pushed both sides even further apart: nationalism/republicanism (generally) have gone Eurocentric as it allows for a decent facsimile of a united Ireland while unionists/loyalists (generally) have gone in a Brexit style direction as they feel disillusioned with the peace process. Both of these differing stances, combined with a decaying infrastructure, loss of common bond among communities, disconnect between elected representatives and the voters and stagnant wages, has added an extra layer of gunpowder onto a tinderbox which Hadi Alodid inadvertently set off with his evil, frenzied attack.

We live in deeply toxic times and genuine adults need to step up and avert an oncoming crisis.

♞♜♝

Writing in 2011 about the then recent London riots, Kenan Malik correctly diagnosed the malaise and offered up words that we must live by:

Because the right has appropriated the arguments about moral failure, many on the left have rejected moral arguments altogether. The left talks much about the social and economic impact of neo-liberal policies. But little about its moral impact. Such wilful blindness is dangerous. The questions about economic and social poverty, about unemployment and the cuts, are closely related to the questions about moral poverty, about the breakdown of social solidarity and the rise of a nihilistic culture. There can be no challenge to mass unemployment and the imposition of austerity without the restoration of bonds of social solidarity. We cannot, in other words, confront economic poverty if we do not also confront moral poverty. We need to remake our own language of morality, reforge our own moral norms.

⏩ Christopher Owens was a reviewer for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland. He is currently the TPQ Friday columnist and is the author of A Vortex of Securocrats and “dethrone god”.

Deliberately Misinterpreting The Present For An Elusive Future

The Hartmann Report ✏ Written by Thom Hartmann. 

How a small nation’s pragmatic, humane approach exposes the lie behind America’s manufactured “crisis” and offers a roadmap for defeating the racist strongmen weaponizing immigration for power…

Razor wire in the sunrise, shadows waitin’ at the gate,
Families walk from fire only to meet another state.
Little hands on chain-link fences, tired eyes that plead for grace,
A journey made for freedom ends in fear they shouldn’t face.
’Cause the cruelty ain’t a bug—it’s the whole damn plan,
Turning hope into a weapon in the heart of this land.
But we can guard our borders without losing dignity;
We can choose the road of mercy over cold strategy.

The most gruesome feature of the Trump/Vance/Miller regime is their glee in brutalizing nonwhite people and terrorizing anybody who objects or tries to hold them to account. Their entire rationale is that the barbarity and savagery are “necessary” to deal with millions of “illegals.”

Denmark is onto something that could blow up their entire excuse for this violence against both people and our Constitution, and Democrats need to pay attention.

Back in June 2008 I did my radio program for a week from the studios of Danish Radio in Copenhagen. 
Continue @ Hartmann Report.

Did Denmark Find The Answer To Immigration 🪶While Trump Chose Barbarism Instead?

The Journal 📰 False claims about asylum seekers often use terms in confusing and contradictory ways.

Ongoing Crisis Involving migrants have introduced an obscure lexicon about asylum seekers into political debates in Ireland.

Terms like “human trafficking”, “economic migrants”, “illegal immigration” and “refugee” are sometimes used to specify the legalities of people coming into Ireland.

However, these terms are also frequently misused by anti-immigrant groups to conflate those seeking protection with those who travel to Ireland for job opportunities.

The Journal has increasingly seen such terms used interchangeably online, including in misinformation about refugees, or at protests against new arrivals being housed in certain areas.

But digging into the meaning behind such terms shows that there are specific distinctions between those entering the country.

The conflation of these terms by anti-immigrant groups can often make them seem the same, and the thrust of arguments by those groups sound more convincing to those who can’t distinguish between them.

The Journal’s FactCheck team regularly comes across nonsense claims online that use these terms: for example, posts that that refugees are economic migrants, or that asylum-seekers in State housing are unvetted and don’t receive background checks.

Continue @ The Journal.

Explainer 🪶 What Is The Difference Between ‘Economic Migrants’, ‘Refugees’ And 'Asylum-Seekers'?

The Journal ★ The claim that Muslims outnumber the Gaeltacht population has circulated online in recent days.

False Claims Have been widely shared online which suggest that Ireland now has a larger population of Muslims than people who live in Gaeltacht areas.

These claims have circulated since 14 October, when a number of accounts on X shared a graphic showing a map of Ireland with its Gaeltacht regions highlighted in green.

The graphic also featured two statistics: one which said “Gaeltacht population 106,000″ and another which said “Muslim population: 112,000″.

This image with incorrect data has been shared dozens of times on social media

However, the figure about Ireland’s Muslim population is incorrect.

According to the Central Statistics Office (CSO), there were 81,930 Muslims in Ireland when the 2022 Census was taken.

The same Census results show there were 106,220 people living in Gaeltacht areas in Donegal, Mayo, Galway, Kerry, Cork, Waterford and Meath.

It also recorded 1,873,997 people saying that they could speak Irish across the entire country, equivalent to around 40% of Ireland’s entire population over the age of three.

There are no statistics available on how many Muslims in Ireland are living in Gaeltacht areas . . . 

Continue @ The Journal.

Debunked 🪶 There Are Not More Muslims In Ireland Than People Living In Gaeltacht Areas

Church And State ★ written by Joseph Carvalko.

I’m not a practicing Catholic—not because I reject the teachings of Christ, but because the institutional Church has, too often across centuries, including the 20th Century, betrayed those teachings through its complicity in the most egregious human rights violations. 

Yet I still believe in the moral vision attributed to Jesus: the sanctity of human dignity, the triumph of kindness over cruelty, and each of our obligation to protect the vulnerable.

These are values that transcend religion. They are the bedrock of any humane society, and in the case of Americans, a shared aspiration of moral behavior.

Today, Christian Nationalists distort that vision. Their rhetoric and policies—especially around immigration—stand in opposition to the Gospel’s call to welcome the stranger. Their support for militarized deportation forces, like ICE under Trump, reveals a theology of exclusion, not compassion.

Pope Leo’s recent message to U.S. bishops offers a stark moral contrast. He urged them to speak out forcefully against deportations and to act in unity for the protection of migrants. His words were clear:

1. Those who condone inhumane treatment of immigrants contradict the very essence of a pro-life ethic. 2. Every migrant should be welcomed as if welcoming Christ himself.

Immigration And Human Dignity Needs Moral Clarity

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