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Humanity

inspectah said:
That photo makes me want to cry and I'm a grown man. It is just heartbreaking when little kids suffer. I was talking about this with the wife tonight. I can't figure out why some of these people, especially the ones with families, are taking such huge risks to relocate. I get that they cannot stay where they are, but why, for example, wouldn't a Syrian take his chances in Turkey or in a neighboring, relatively safe country instead of trying to cross the Mediterranean on a life raft? Maybe it's a stupid question or maybe there's an obvious answer, but some of the deaths seem so preventable and pointless.
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I was wondering the same thing too. My guess is the Turks don't want them any more than the Euros do.
 
Vad, thanks for starting this thread. I've been hearing and reading some about this on NPR and BBC. Yes ELC, Turkey and Lebanon must be inundated and taking the brunt of it. And unfortunately, I don't see the situation improving much over the next few years in Yemen, Iraq and Syria because the choices there are terrible - Assad v. IS in Syria, IS v. Iranian backed Shia militias in Iraq. Seems like a Iran/Saudi proxy war in each of those countries, yet neither is suffering the consequences - Turkey, Lebanon and Europe are. I can imagine the reaction, though, if the current administration offered to help take in a large number of refugees.
 
All these offers to help are nice and humane. However, without an orderly process to determine who can be taken in and who qualifies for asylum, offers of help just run the danger of making the problem much, much worse very fast. There are some 4-5 million people in camps in the ME and potentially many more people from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Africa, who may decide to come to Europe. If people in Iceland want to help, that's great. They should, or their government should go to the ME and select the people they want to take and take them to Iceland. Why put all these people through the agony of walking all the way to Europe and the countries of the ME, the Balkans and the EU, through which they will have to pass before they get to Iceland, to a great deal of expense and difficulty. I appreciate that people want to help, and feel good about themselves for doing so, but try to do it in such a way that you don't threaten to make the problem you are trying to alleviate much worse, and much worse for others.
 
Vad, if one were inclined to donate money, which organization do you suspect is doing the best with donations?
 
JuiceCrewAllStar said:
Vad, if one were inclined to donate money, which organization do you suspect is doing the best with donations?
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Caritas ( https://www.caritas.at/ )

That's the refugee charity arm of the Catholic Church and the group organizing assistance in Austria.

On a larger scale, I don't know fully. I'm sure that help is badly needed in Lebanon, Turkey, Greece and the like but don't know which organizations in particular.
 
cville deac said:
Vad, thanks for starting this thread. I've been hearing and reading some about this on NPR and BBC. Yes ELC, Turkey and Lebanon must be inundated and taking the brunt of it. And unfortunately, I don't see the situation improving much over the next few years in Yemen, Iraq and Syria because the choices there are terrible - Assad v. IS in Syria, IS v. Iranian backed Shia militias in Iraq. Seems like a Iran/Saudi proxy war in each of those countries, yet neither is suffering the consequences - Turkey, Lebanon and Europe are. I can imagine the reaction, though, if the current administration offered to help take in a large number of refugees.
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It will be done, but on the downlow. I was just reading yesterday that the US takes in something like 7/10 of the refugees designated by the UN. That's just insane.
 
EatLeadCommie said:
It will be done, but on the downlow. I was just reading yesterday that the US takes in something like 7/10 of the refugees designated by the UN. That's just insane.
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Do you have a link? That doesn't sound close to true, unless the % of refugees that get officially designated by the UN is really low.
 
EatLeadCommie said:
It will be done, but on the downlow. I was just reading yesterday that the US takes in something like 7/10 of the refugees designated by the UN. That's just insane.
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That's not even close to correct.

http://www.unhcr.org.uk/about-us/key-facts-and-figures.html

There were 19.5 million refugees worldwide at the end of 2014, 14.4 million under the mandate of UNHCR, around 2.9 million more than in 2013.

The other 5.1 million Palestinian refugees are registered with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

During the year, conflict and persecution forced an average of 42,500 persons per day to leave their homes and seek protection elsewhere, either within the borders of their countries or in other countries.

Developing countries host over 86% of the world’s refugees, compared to 70% ten years ago.

In 2014, the country hosting the largest number of refugees was Turkey, with 1.59 million refugees. By the end of 2014, Syria had become the world’s top source country of refugees, overtaking Afghanistan, which had held this position for more than three decades. Today, on average, almost one out of every four refugees is Syrian, with 95 per cent located in surrounding countries.
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EatLeadCommie said:
It will be done, but on the downlow. I was just reading yesterday that the US takes in something like 7/10 of the refugees designated by the UN. That's just insane.
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Conservative xenophobic fearmongering has already begun. Don't believe everything you read, ELC.
 
So looking at that article, it appears to refer to 7/10 who are designated by the UN for resettling end up in the US. That is a significantly smaller number than all those designated as refugees.
 
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