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Humanity

vadimivich

vadimivich

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Wien, Österreich
I wanted to post something on this, but I don't even begin to know how to discuss this issue.

Over the past two years is has become clear that the destruction of any form of effective national governments in Syria, Eritrea, Somalia, Afghanistan and Libya (other countries as well, including Mali, both Sudans and the northern parts of Nigeria) has created an enormous humanitarian crisis that has become the largest mass migration on the planet since the Second World War. This has coincided with a period of global economic slowdown and distress for many wealthy western nations who would normally have assisted more in the early stages of the crisis (as happened with the Vietnamese boat people in the 1980s). The rise of right wing, isolationist parties - many in Europe which don't even pretend to hide their xenophobia and racism - in western nations has happened rapidly, and has had an effect as well.

I don't even pretend to know if there is an answer, or what it would be. I do know that as humans we have some form of shared, common humanity which is what separates us from animals. More than 7,000 people have made it to the Westbanhoff train station the past two days alone here in Vienna, a mere 2km from where my comfortable flat is located. Tens of thousands more are currently bartering with human traffickers, police, transit officials and criminals of all varieties in Turkey, Lebanon, Egype, Libya, Greece, Serbia, Hungary and everywhere else along the path hoping that they could be lucky enough to end up as one of those people sitting in the park outside Westbanhoff simply because at least it would be safe there for a day or two. I have never been, and almost certainly never will be, in any situation in my life even remotely close to that desperate. 71 people were found dead by suffocation in the back of a small shipping truck on the side of the road here in Austria last week. Thinking of my wife and I looking into a truck with 69 people already in it and thinking "this is still the best option we have in our lives" is beyond sobering.

I went last night to a march with more than 20,000 other Viennese, just normal citizens - to let the government here know that outside of the rhetoric of hate, there's plenty of people who want to address this crisis and expect that as a society (and this goes far beyond Austria, but as an entire shared "wealthy western nation" society) we can find a way to recognize these people as fellow humans who simply need help - and that if we don't, we aren't humans ourselves. I've spent time this week now volunteering to help distribute food and other items that have been donated, and I'll continue to find ways to provide the help that I can. I don't know what the solution is to end this suffering, or if anyone will find one, but I do know that my basic requirement of being human being is to help others in need.

Right now, the USA is largely shielded from this beyond a few mentions in the news. It's come here to central Europe, and in person it's astonishing. And we're still only seeing the tip of it ... of the 4m Syrian refugees alone, the vast majority are in Lebanon and other "stable" regional nations which are in danger of becoming failed states themselves as the flood of migrants overwhelms their services.

The hashtag in German that has become something of a slogan for people trying to help is #menschsein (Humanity - mensch in German is the same as in Yiddish, implying the good characteristics of humanness). Massive banners in the stands stating "Refugees Welcome" were seen all over German and Austrian soccer matches last weekend, and the megaphone of hate speech has been silenced for a week or so at least.

This post is rambling and probably makes no sense. The scope of what I've seen just with my own eyes the past few days is saddening to my core. I do know that I am a human, and part of the human race. My trust in that has been both shaken badly and also encouraged, but putting it into context is nearly impossible.
 
Boy with his son, just arrived in Vienna. The worst of their journey is over.

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Home printed signs to let people know the drinking water at the station is safe:

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Unorganized volunteers preparing for a train from Hungary with asylum seekers on it to arrive - drinking water and some food

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Traiskirchen (in Austria) where more than 4,000 people now wait in a camp to apply for asylum

ASYL-ERSTAUFNAHMEZENTRUM-TRAISKIRCHEN_143801327454447.jpg
 
Unorganized, volunteer measures like these can only last for a short time. Formal solutions on a national and international level are required - and while the focus will be on wealthier European states, the real burden of the crisis is being felt in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey ... we risk this becoming much, much bigger if we don't find a way to help those nations.
 
I mean, listen, we're talking about Egyptians. Not Mexicans! Not Ecuadorians! Not Hondurans! We're talking about Somalis. Not Guatemalans; not Costa Ricans that come to this country, not the Panamanians, we're talking about Syrians, man. I mean, how silly is that? We're talking about Afghans. I know I'm supposed to care, I know I'm supposed to lead by example, I know that. And I'm not shoving it aside like it don't mean anything. I know it's important. I do. I honestly do. But we're talking about Eritreans, man. What are we talking about? Nigerians? We're talking about Sudanese, man! We're not even talking about Mexicans.
 
Was in Frankfurt one day when a freak blizzard came up. Snow was so bad that they stopped the trains for an hour or so. By the time my train was ready to go, they attached several boxcars to accomodate everyone. The imagery of being packed into a frigid German boxcar wasn't lost on me and there was a lot of nervous laughter. Almost nobody on board was alive during the Holacaust, but it wasn't lost on anyone.

Lots of East Germans left via Hungary in 1989 and 26 years later many people with first hand memories of that time are still alive. Was rough to see a razor wire topped fence being built Trump and Walker style around the entire country. Kind of bizarre that anyone in Central Europe could be oblivious to their own history. Refugees are unknowns, but it's silly to pretend 11M people, including U.S. citizens, who already have roots in the U.S. are going to be rounded up and deported. The optics, let alone the policy, would be shocking to most Americans.
 
Thank you for posting Vad. I havent seen or read much about this. I would really appreciate it if you would continue to update this thread with your thoughts and experiences.
 
FuckmouthedRube said:
Was in Frankfurt one day when a freak blizzard came up. Snow was so bad that they stopped the trains for an hour or so. By the time my train was ready to go, they attached several boxcars to accomodate everyone. The imagery of being packed into a frigid German boxcar wasn't lost on me and there was a lot of nervous laughter. Almost nobody on board was alive during the Holacaust, but it wasn't lost on anyone.

Lots of East Germans left via Hungary in 1989 and 26 years later many people with first hand memories of that time are still alive. Was rough to see a razor wire topped fence being built Trump and Walker style around the entire country. Kind of bizarre that anyone in Central Europe could be oblivious to their own history. Refugees are unknowns, but it's silly to pretend 11M people, including U.S. citizens, who already have roots in the U.S. are going to be rounded up and deported. The optics, let alone the policy, would be shocking to most Americans.
Click to expand...

Americans have an empathy problem.
 
Completely volunteer organized "Train of Hope" - a public web document that lists contact information, individuals and small groups in various cities along the migrant path in Europe so volunteers can see how and where to help and for refugees to find assistance.

https://pad.systemli.org/p/trainofhope
 
I saw a little about this in the news but not much. It looks pretty untenable. Is this primarily a result of Islamic civil wars and wars between Islamic forces and other cultures or is there something else at play here?

Short term, we have to give aid. Long term, we have to find a way to deal with the underlying issues.
 
knowell said:
I saw a little about this in the news but not much. It looks pretty untenable. Is this primarily a result of Islamic civil wars and wars between Islamic forces and other cultures or is there something else at play here?

Short term, we have to give aid. Long term, we have to find a way to deal with the underlying issues.
Click to expand...

The Syrian civil war as well as the horrifically oppressive secular military led regime in Eritrea seem to be the largest sources, but the destruction of any form of functioning government in Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan is also contributing.

The saddest part to me is that many of these people are highly educated professionals and would be the "core" of any functional society you would want to build. I don't know who will be left in Syria or Eritrea or Libya to even make a new functioning state, the "good" people have been driven out and are now homeless and stateless.
 
So, basically, the United States lit the fuse on a powder keg? Good job, Yanks.
 
I live in Budapest. A few hours ago I was two blocks from Keleti [Eastern] RR station, which has become a focus of the immigration crisis. The scene was not too encouraging. There are two tragedies here. First, the tragedy that many of these people feel they have little choice but to undertake this perilous journey into a dangerous unknown and walk thousands of miles to get to Western Europe. The second tragedy is that no one seems to know how to deal with the situation. Individual European countries cannot solve the problem, and the EU is completely derelict and incompetent.
 
My father and grandparents escaped from communist Romania in the 1970s and ended up at a refugee camp in Austria. It was a tough experience from them, but they are forever grateful for the kindness of the Austrian people.

I've heard their stories my whole life and as someone born here, it's easy to think that that was a different time. But people are living that same story right now
 
Mystery, the current problem is rather different than previous refugees from Eastern Europe, sporadically a few from here and there or about 200,000 from Hungary in 1956. Those were pretty much small and finite numbers of refugees, who were obviously fleeing communist oppression. Here and now, the numbers are huge and potentially unending, with the political refugees inextricably mixed together with economic migrants, and who knows whom else. Around five million are in camps in the ME around Syria and in North Africa and many more are wanting to come from places such as Pakistan and Bangladesh, where there is no war. The whole of Europe is stuck on the horns of a terrible dilemma. If you are humane and help the refugees and take them in - with those that are already here it would be inhumane not to take them in and help them - you encourage others to come in ever larger numbers. If you adopt some sort of tough line and attempt to stop them or sort them, then you are being cruel and inhumane. The western world is losing control over its borders. The results will be highly unpredictable.
 
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I don't mean to derail this conversation from the immediacy of the crisis at hand, as the care for these refugees is undoubtedly of first priority, so I'd actually prefer that I not take too many responses to this but rather just to provide food for thought based on my own expertise.

The US State Department and Department of Defense have both recognized climate change as a "threat multiplier", often expecting this exact type of refugee scenario. Addressing climate change is therefore not merely an environmental issue - it is also a social justice and humanitarian issue. Take Syria, for example. It's been well established that a multi-year, unprecedented drought in Syria pushed around 2 million rural landholders into the cities, thereby stressing the urban infrastructure and the ability of the government, who was already guilty of human rights abuses, to provide adequate social services to the rapidly urbanizing and unemployed population. Naturally, the backlash was against the government who had not provided for its citizens, or at least not fairly to all citizens. War breaks out, migrants move to other nations, and those nations are put under the same stresses as their governments struggle to find the means to provide for thousands of refugees while still providing for their own population.

This drought, to be sure, was likely going to happen in a normal climate. Droughts happen. However, more than one peer-reviewed study has shown increasing likelihood that warmer global temperatures, and the changing weather patterns that come with it, at least intensified the drought. This will continue at larger scales if we allow temperatures to continue to rise, and particularly past 2 degrees Celsius where positive feedback processes such as methane release from permafrost begin to be unstoppable.

To act on climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by modernizing our energy system to clean, renewable, and increasingly affordable sources is not only an economic and environmental benefit. It is a human rights benefit, and one that will prevent this kind of mass migration from stressing our own systems here in the US.

I am not saying climate is 100% to blame. Governance reform, education, and humanitarian aid are important pieces of the puzzle. But don't put on blinders and hope that those things will be enough in an increasingly warming world. We've changed the effects of the way we've established our civilization, and we need to either drastically adapt (really, really expensive and messy) or rapidly mitigate (much less expensive and controllable).
 
It's eerily quiet here today. Hungary had effectively slammed the door shut, so Vienna now has more volunteers and donated goods than people to give them too. Aid organizations are now trying to figure out how to shift help to Hungary and to channel the attitude here to Austrian neighbors who are vigorously anti-migrant.
 
Strickland33 said:
Americans have an empathy problem.
Click to expand...

http://www.rawstory.com/2014/12/cli...turn-the-us-into-a-selfish-and-greedy-nation/

How Ayn Rand Helped Turn Us into a Selfish and Greedy Nation

“Capitalism and altruism are incompatible….The choice is clear-cut: either a new morality of rational self-interest, with its consequences of freedom, justice, progress and man’s happiness on earth—or the primordial morality of altruism, with its consequences of slavery, brute force, stagnant terror and sacrificial furnaces.”
 
vadimivich said:
It's eerily quiet here today. Hungary had effectively slammed the door shut, so Vienna now has more volunteers and donated goods than people to give them too. Aid organizations are now trying to figure out how to shift help to Hungary and to channel the attitude here to Austrian neighbors who are vigorously anti-migrant.
Click to expand...

Vad, I would avoid finger pointing - with one exception (more about that later) - in this problem. It seems to me that part of the reason that the EU has done little to develop solutions has been an excess of finger pointing. No single country can solve the problems created by the current mass migration. Each country is trying to cope with the issues as best they can, and some are far more exposed than others. The one place where all fingers need to be pointing is Brussels, which has failed to do much for years, although the problem in Italy has been increasingly severe. Without Brussels the refugee problem cannot be met effectively. Blaming this or that country at this point is a waste of time. One could just as easily blame Frau Merkel for trying to deal with the crisis in a way that will only further the very crisis she is professing to try to alleviate. Austria's policy can most charitably and politely be referred to as inconsistent and hardly morally superior to any of its neighbors. Other European leaders could be accused of encouraging lawlessness. Need I go on? Let's skip over this polemical accusatory phase and try to concentrate on alleviating the plight of these poor people and finding a common European Union policy without laying the seeds for an even bigger problem down the road.
 
What did Abraham Lincoln do when the Irish flooded the shores of the US ? Grant immediate citizenship and draft them into the army to go fight in the south.

Maybe the EU should draft them and send them to Syria to fight ISIS ? Or the Ukraine.
 
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