Since fighting broke out in Syria, four million people have fled the nation. Jordan, a relatively poor nation of 6 million citizens, has accepted 1.5 million Syrian refugeesinto its borders. The US, a very rich nation of 312 million people, has accepted 1.5 thousand. It doesnât plan on accepting any more.
If Jordan, whose population is smaller than New York Cityâs, can accommodate 1.5 million people, the United States can probably accommodate more than 1/1000th that.
More importantly, it could do so in a peaceful and orderly fashion. A report funded by the German government that details the ânear-miraculousâ refugee effort in Jordan climbed to the top of Reddit today, and itâs the most goddamn affirming thing Iâve read in ages. The influx of refugees has put a serious strain on the nation but thereâs a prevailing attitude of compassion, and thereâs been no unrest or violent conflict.
âNative Jordanians will tell you how difficult things are,â the Qantara report explains, âbut you wonât hear any protests from them about the refugees, although only around a fifth live in refugee camps, while the rest are accommodated in Jordanian towns and villages, which has put great pressure on rents: alongside water, this is the second fundamental area of life that has been hugely compromised by the refugee crisis.â
Thatâs rightâthe vast majority of the 1.5 million refugees have been absorbed, willingly, into Jordanian social fabric. This is the humanitarian and charitable accomplishment we should be celebrating above all others right now. Itâs nice that10,000 Icelanders offered to open their homes to refugees, and that viral story certainly resonates with western audiences numb to seeing images of dead migrants plastered on their social media feedsâbut Jordanâs prolonged, organized, and good faith effort to support the displaced, disadvantaged, and distraught on a truly massive scale is amazing.
âIt is a near-miracle that the situation has not led to riots, or protests at the very least,â the report says. âIt is also a miracle that this very fact has drawn little attention from the Western public. Not that the West is ignoring the region itself, but reports are dominated by the horrors of Islamist terrorism.â
Jordanâs example offers a model that Western nations might study, as climate change and desertification begin to spur further mass migrations in the near future; Syriaâs war was sparked, in part, by drought exacerbated by global warming. There are 60 million refugees languishing in various states of purgatory around the world right now, many of them in squalor, and that number only promises to grow.
If you are outraged by the death of Aylan Kurdi, then you should feel compelled to help accommodate his peersâit is fear and a lack of imagination that restricts our refugee policies and so limits the number that the US accepts. Nations with the capacity to spare have an ethical obligation to consider reform.
We seem to have reached a unique junctureâwe can either throw in with Trump and the xenophobes and bury our heads in the sand and bluster on about building walls, or we can look at the likes of Jordan for examples of how to sustainably adapt to the worldâs fast-changing geographies and fluid demographies. Ecological, economic, and geopolitical forces have thrown large swaths of the world into turmoil that will not likely settle for the foreseeable future. At the very least, nations like the US have the resources, infrastructure, and spaceânot to mention the economic inclinationâto do a lot more. The humane option is pretty clear.
The SWF thread on the matter has turned from a little Daily Mail to outright racist. What a horrible read. I did think of posting on it but just canât be bothered. What on earth could you say to Batman that he would understand? There are a lot of nasty racist shitbags on that thread, Iâm glad to be out of SWF.
Why did I look?
Brb off to clean my eyes with bleach.
I have seen that image that Batman posted on Facebook. Someone posted it. Her daughter immediately replied âShame on you, mumâ. Thereâs a bit of hope right there. Said it before, but racism is a disease. Can be passed to your kids, your friends. One of the most depressing things the missus and I have ever had to field as parents was having to explain what the word âniggerâ meant. To our five year old. Because a black girl had started school, and other fucking five year olds were calling her it. Peeps are indoctrinated that early.
Iâm not trying to condone anything because in later life, there really is no excuse. Most of us have our hang-ups to deal with. Some of us deal with them. Bit depressing to see grown adults be simultaneously so stupid and so forthright at the same time.
We have a moral obligation to look after every refugee. It took one photograph of a dead 3 year old boy to make people do something.
Before that, They werenât even humans
The thread in the other place has become one of the saddest Iâve seen, people posting extremist website claims as fact.
Itâs like all of those made-up stories about imaginary Tesco branches that refuse to serve soldiers and Birmingham being 100% muslim.
Rule of life no.18 - always fact-check a claim by an extremist.
Would you believe stuff from an ISIS website?
Everyone has an agenda, whether it be the terrorists, the right wing extremists or The Sun and Sky, or the Mail as illustrated above with itâs semi-active ever-shifting agenda.
They start with, thereâs a lot of racists, letâs give them headlines and be their friends, then - oh hang on, itâs gone sad, quick follow public opinion, pretend we care!
So you may well ask, _Oh yeah RB, if everyone has an agenda, whatâs yours? _At the moment, to point out to idiots how they can open their minds.
But some believe everything they are told, if it fits their agendaâŚ
They make the decision to lap up the version of events being peddled by the far right.
They have been bred with and developed deep hatred and no number of facts will drive them from their path.
It isnât even worth engaging with them, they will not listen to facts.
Itâs sad - and worrying.
you have too much time on your hands!
Originally posted by @Rallyboy
you have too much time on your hands!
Thatâs not fair. Have you ever considered I might have gotten quick at this stuff? 
fair point - though thereâs no shortage of inspirational material to work with!
Pity Hitler didnât make it, but looking at that line-up I can see why.
Presumably itâs him, Stalin, Littlejohn and Pol Pot on the bench for later in the game if you need an impact sub.
Considered Hitler and Stalin for the banner, but concluded they were too easy.
You are harsh on Hitler, sure he lacked flair and was a non-creative box-to-box sort of workhorse but people forget the work he did behind the scenes - his stats speak for themselves.
Katie Hopkins talks a good holocaust but AH actually delivered - according to 99.9% of intelligent thinkers.
Hard to knock any of that, RB.
As someone else pointed out, itâs becoming a nasty little echo chamber.
SM, with his laughable âthereâs no white working class people in Londonâ claim. Besides the point itâs perfectly possible to be British and non-white, when asked to substantiate such claims, he just claims victory. How?
but no one challenges him on this. So itâs just accepted. Then, depressingly as he generally seems a nice chap, Whitey comes in with his usual âthe country is just so full! Whatever will we do?! Did you know the official pop figures are wrong? Immigrants are the square route of all our problems fâsureâ.
Good on ya for trying to open closed minds, but i fear you are fighting a losing battle.
Perhaps Iâd have a different view if I still had an account there, but itâs not worth saving. I honestly used to think that it was, which is why Iâd spend so long crafting replies to some of the nonsense that is on there. KRG is right that you can never really beat the likes of Sour Mash and Batman, because nothing gets through in the first place. I suspect that I could let my fucking pets randomly walk over a keyboard to produce posts, and that would still be a more coherent and comprehensive response than the pearls of wisdom which were allegedly conceived in a human fucking brain.
I suspect the main question people are asking at this point is âwhy the fuck did you bother?â. I suppose I didnât like the idea of random fans stumbling across that site and thinking every Saints fan was a racist fucking moron with no empathy. However, given my complete lack of stake in things over there, the fact that this place exists and will grow in both membership and prominence as time goes by, means I donât really give a fuck if the mods want to let those posts be representative of their site. If anything, it helps.
I wasnât going to pop back on here until after next Monday, to avoid proving pap wrong again on Corbyn. But just to add to whatâs been said on here: the numbers of racist scumbags that have come out of the woodwork on the thread over there is scary.
My scumbag list so far includes:
Hypo. Heâs read âa bookâ, donât you know. And it tells him we should wish for all migrants, refugees, and basically anyone but him, to die of disease or drown or be blown to pieces.
Batman. Although I have him in a category of being too stupid even to be a racist scumbag.
Sotons East Side. Whoever the fuck he is - a late bidder for scumbag membership.
Saint in Paradise. A notorious pilferer of guff from racist websites. Aside from that, not a detectable thought in his head.
Sour Mash. Shares with Batman a wasp-chewing glibness masking an evident deep loathing of anyone a darker shade than white.
Whitey Grandad. The clue is in the handle. One of those Farage-like creeps who, it seems, feels his flesh crawl in close proximity to non-white shades of skin.
Wes Tender. A pathetic ukipper whose post lengths are in inverse relationship to intelligibility.
Who else?
As they hunt in packs whenever a race-related thread comes up, they should form a club. Perhaps hypo could try re-reading âa bookâ to find out what to do with it.
I had a quick flick through earlier, and itâs hardly edifying reading. Hypo does seem to read âbooksâ at very convenient times, I must say. I remember him reading one such that taught him that almost everybody is a psychopath. That was enlightening too.
Jesus wept I remember that! I forgot it was him, I remember him diagnosing me on the back of that! Though that may have been as a sociopath, perhaps? Still utterly hilarious.
That pack are all just the same. Itâs the exact same group that got their underwear in a bunch about Ched Evans. Lol forever at Hypo pulling out any possible excuse he could to defend Evans, then getting upset when I called him a rape apologist, âwhere have I apologised for rape?â (Or something close to that).
Iâd add Lord D n all furball. Will literally lap up anything his saviour Nige tells him.