Writing numbers on refugees’ arms, are you f’ing kidding me?

Thank you Eszter.

Our local refugee support group here made a submission to the Labor party platform that they should offer to host a global UN summit on the refugee crisis.

I don’t know how to get more support for a global summit to start a process that can resettle the high numbers of refugees though.

Two public intellectuals here on the left Father Frank Brennan and Robert Manne have recently moved to support the bi-partisan strategy of “stopping the boats” here in Australia which is a worry.

As it took until 1968 to resettle all the refugees from WW2 there needs to be a global approach to the current crisis, as unlike in the aftermath of WW2 we are looking at refugee and displaced persons numbers continuing to increase due to climate change, with experts predicting 200-250 million people will be displaced by 2050 due to climate change.

We sing a song in choir about an island in Europe welcoming 700 refugees

http://youtu.be/G_kZN4QNbPI

I can’t be the only one who connects this with the repellent Chris Christie’s proposal that immigrants should be traceable in the same way as FedEx shipments, can I? My first thought was “South African passbook system” but this seems to be one of those rotten ideas that occur independently to rotten bastards of every stripe and nationality.

‘The source of significant current problems is ISIS, hardly a group with which many in Europe would sympathize. So why is it so hard for people to appreciate that these refugees need help? ‘ (Eszter)
I’d say the source of most current problem is the western governments who set out to remake Middle East and succeeded.

Assigning numbers to people is basically a requirement if you are going to process a large number of people. Names are nice, but they are not unique, and processing people by name can lead to all kinds of confusion.

All of us who live in the developed world are processed by numbers: driver’s license number, taxpayer ID number, credit card number, ATM card number and so forth. If refugees come into our system, they are going to be given numbers also.

Putting numbers on people’s arms is a bit tone-deaf, but issuing them some kind of ID card is a mechanism to bring them into the refugee-processing system. You can argue about how adequate the system is for doing its task, but at a minimum it is necessary to know how many people are in the system and where they are.

I guess there’s kind of an argument that all decisions should be made by local officials with no knowledge of the overall situation. That’s kind of the way the WWII refugees were handled, because there was no system for processing all the data. There was kind of a system, but it was overwhelmed by the number of people. That allowed, for example, the Vatican ratlines that ran many Axis war criminals out to South America.

Manta@9
‘What’s in a name? that which we call a rose. By any other name would smell as sweet’

Similarly, it’s hard to explain the peculiar vogue, among writers at all positions on the political spectrum, for distinguishing between ‘soldiers’, ‘terrorists’, and ‘murderers’, when they are all in fact ‘killers’ (though they obviously have different reasons and justifications for their killing some of which we may approve of, and some not.)

Contextual note: I’m a(n economic) migrant, and (very fortunately for me), not a refugeee. You may wish to draw on your knowledge of this fact when assessing the intended force of my remark.

I didn’t realize it was a competition to who has the background most fitting for discussion, barebones, otherwise I would have mentioned that I am also an economic migrant, and still don’t find anything the term “a tool that dehumanises and distances, a blunt pejorative”.

Manta@11

‘I didn’t realize it was a competition to who has the background most fitting for discussion’

Who said it was? If that’s the only purpose you can imagine for my mentioning it in the context of that particular comment, you’re rather lacking in imagination. Try again, perhaps.

My point was rather that even if there’s nothing wrong with the word itself (I agree with you – I don’t think I’m dehumanising myself by applying it to myself), there is something problematic about applying it to refugees, just as there would be about insisting on using only the word killers when talking about soldiers.

I included the fact that I’m a migrant in the hope of pointing people towards this interpretation oif what i was saying, rather than other potentially thread-jacking ones (such as the claim that there’s no significant difference between war and murder.)

Chris: I’ve been uncomfortable with the suggestion that I’ve seen in a few places that we should avoid the word ‘migrant’ altogether, not least because there are people to whom it is entirely appropriately applied (eg me and, by his own account Manta).

I can also see that there will be cases where it’s hard to distinguish (economic) migrants from political refugees as Vonberg points out, and that this is important.

Still, I think there are reasons for insisting on ‘refugee’ rather than ‘migrant’ in this particular debate. Someone doesn’t (normally) deserves compassion simply in virtue of being an economic migrant, in the way that they (normally) do simply in virtue of being a refugee. Being an economic migrant – at least under the UN’s definition (unless I’ve misread it) – seems to be compatible with being quite comfortably off. (Instance: myself and, I hope Manta, together with quite a lot of the FP writers on this site.) I also think that part of the point of using ‘migrant’ rather than ‘refugee’ is to undermine the presumption of compassion in their favour, and this is something we should push back on.

If so, there seems to be good reason to describe the people who are at the centre of the current debate as ‘refugees’ rather than ‘migrants’. (And I think that’s what the point of the Al-Jazeera article was)

I think that’s all compatible with thinking that there are many economic migrants – including those who are most frequently identified as such in public discourse – who do deserve our compassion, in virtue of the situations that have made them economic migrants, and we should be very careful about the ways in which public discourse around them develops too. (I think that one way of doing so is to ue ‘economic migrant’ in contexts where people have tended to use ‘expatriate.)

Some people seem to interpret “never again” as a claim about the non-repeatability of historical particulars. I can never have last night’s hamburger again–that exact collection of beef-bits and mustard-molecules, cooked at that time and place. The Holocaust? Those very people, at those particular times and places? It can never happen again, either!

Of course, something very, very similar to it might happen in the future. But it won’t be *that* historical particular! Never again!

ZM 7: I strongly recommend Juan Cole on the role of climate change in the Syria crisis:
http://www.thenation.com/article/did-isil-arise-partly-because-of-climate-change/

Regarding Russia, I’m not up to date on the drought situation there, do you have references?

18: The Cole link why I am more pessimistic than most on climate change, and why I think it will get bad much earlier than most people imagine.

The geopolitical and economic effects will precede (almost invisibly, as with this refugee problem) the worst climatic effects by decades, and probably, without radical effort, turn most political regimes toward the Right.

This post consists entirely of attacking other people for not doing enough. Maybe some people in the comments can post about the sacrifices they have personally made. It would serve as an example. Post pictures of the refugees you have taken into your home.

It does feel a little weird to feel proud of Germany and Angela Merkel for doing the right thing.

I am trying to understand the logistics of this: Merkel suspended the Dublin rules for Syrian refugees. This means that all the Hungarians or the Czechs have to do with anyone claiming to be Syrian is put them on the next train or bus to Munich and walk away. This is also what most of the refugees actually want. This is surely easier and cheaper than building fences, blocking train stations, and generally being crappy.

So why are they doing this? Is there some weird obligation going on here that I’m not seeing reported? If Germany can suspend the Dublin rules to take refugees in, surely the Hungarians can’t find it that hard to suspend them so that they can send the refugees to Germany? I haven’t got a lot of sympathy for “I don’t want those kinds of people in my country” attitudes, but I have some sympathy for “you can’t expect a poor country in a recession to suddenly handle a humanitarian emergency like this without help”. The refugees don’t want to be in Prague or Budapest, they want to be in Munich. The German government is willing to have them in Munich. Is this really such a hard problem?

WRT, “migrant” and “refugee”… I have some problems with this analysis of the distinction.

Hurricane wipes out my apartment on the Gulf Coast and leaves my employer with no work for me for months. I decide to say, “Screw it, I’ll just go to LA and get a job there.” Am I a refugee or a migrant or neither? People move around for a lot of reasons, and no one thinks to label them on that basis until it becomes a legal issue. No, I think the Al Jazeera article has it half wrong: It’s offensive to call someone a migrant because it *is* pejorative, and in Europe it is almost constantly used in a pejorative sense.

I am not a migrant. I am a professional engaged in my trade and legally resident and employed where I am. That the country I am in is neither the one I was born in, nor one I have citizenship in, nor one that I especially identify with, is irrelevant. And I am not an “immigrant”. An immigrant is expected to perform some vaguely defined and never really feasible act of “assimilation”. I don’t assimilate, and why would I want to? When the reasons I have for being where I am stop being good reasons, I will go be somewhere else.

I tolerate “expat”, or “émigré”, and while I prefer “post-modern technomad”, I do understand why others might not use that label.

A refugee is a person who doesn’t want to be somewhere, and is trying to be somewhere else. So are a lot of people who aren’t refugees. What makes them different is *why* they don’t want to be where they were, and what will likely happen to them if they don’t go somewhere else. I don’t see that the questions for the people in the places they go to are hugely different. But then, I’m biased: I think that if people don’t want to be where they are, they should be free to go be somewhere else. I’ve always acted as if that was true, and I think it would be very hypocritical of me to deny to others what I’ve always taken as my right.

24: My guess would be that many people in Germany and elsewhere have been ashamed of what’s been going on. I’m referring to people drowning by the hundreds, dozens of decomposing bodies found in a truck at the border, and arson attacks on refugee shelters. Apparently not everybody wants to be complicit in that. Plus, it doesn’t look good and the world is watching.

Well, I bet a lot of European politicians are regretting their decision not to admit Turkey into the EU. Had they done that, the migrant problem wouldn’t have been Hungary and Greece’s problem, it would have been Turkey’s. And they would have an incentive to handle it better than the are now.

@26 and elsewhere

I thought the migrant vs. refugee distinction was more legalistic than moral. Countries are obliged to take in and shelter refugees, they may use their various immigration policies to admit/reject migrants. Calling these people migrants gives an excuse for not admitting them. Once you give them refugee status (as Germany has apparently done) you’re obliged to help.

The reporting seems to like to use the terms as synonyms, but regardless of any pejorative context, the two are decidedly different.

As for the numbering, I can’t say I like it, but as someone noted up-thread, an obvious alternative doesn’t come to mind particularly given the probable language challenges. At least a sharpie is better than a tattoo…

If they apply in germany they should be sent back to hungary if they are honest about their route id expect. The Dublin rules are a pretty convenient dodge for Germany with the current eu geography. Note you also cant go to the german embassy to get asylum, technically one would have to enter germany as the first eu country to get asylum in germany. ( about hum 70 % sure here) Its rather implausible to think anything would be easier in terms of dodging asylum seekers in pr actical terms if turkey were an eu member and in general the utilitarian case for turkish membership is rather weak.

Its obv easier to suspend a rule that causes solely cost for oneself, since no one will sue or complain otherwise about it.

@TM. I don’t think Turkey will be in the EU any time soon, if ever, for complicated EU internal political reasons. But it’s true they have hosted large numbers of refugees. As has Lebanon, which hosts something between one and two million refugees in a country of four million people with plenty of problems of its own. This has brought about not only an unprecedented humanitarian problem and terrible pressure on health and education services, but also rising crime and insecurity as Syrian organised crime intelligently makes use of the influx to expand over the border. I do wish people were a little bit more conscious of just how much Syria’s neighbours are actually doing and suffering, since that’s where the vast majority of the refugees are always going to be.
And I do mean refugees here, because the distinction is not primarily a technical one. A migrant says “I want to go to X” and when they arrive they are in principle happy. A refugee says “I am fleeing from Y” and is happy when they leave, but hopes one day to return. Obviously there are ambiguities and overlaps, but you can’t intelligently deal with problems such as we are now facing unless you keep simple distinctions like this in mind. It’s true that “migrant” can be a pejorative term, but this is as much as anything because the nature of migration itself has changed, and continues to do so, posing new sorts of problems all the time.

BBC Update (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34142512):

In Brussels, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban described the situation as a “German problem” as Germany was where those arriving in the EU “would like to go”. But European Council President Donald Tusk said at least 100,000 [sic! not millions] refugees should be distributed across EU states.

In other developments on Thursday:

* France and Germany repeated calls for a permanent and mandatory system to accept asylum seekers into the EU
* Czech police said they would stop writing numbers on migrants’ hands after criticism from human rights groups
* Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused European nations of turning the Mediterranean into a “cemetery for refugees”
* Bayern Munich football club said it would set up a training camp for refugees coming into Germany

The human cost of the crisis was put into sharp focus on Wednesday when five children were among 12 migrants who drowned in Turkish waters while trying to reach Greece. Images of the washed-up body of three-year-old Alan Kurdi, who died alongside his mother and five-year-old brother, circulated widely on social media.

“Migrant” was a bad word in the ’30’s. … http://musicfromthedepression.com/how-can-you-keep-on-moving. This is a reminder that the American experience has not been completely pleasing and underscores the ambiguity between economic and political displaced people, as we used to call them. Also to second mcmanus’ observation about our future under climate change.

I also don’t understand why Hungary wants to prevent people from leaving unless they’re just being [bad word]. I saw a quote from an on-site military person that indicated he didn’t understand either.

@hix — unless I’m completely misunderstanding you, you seem to be missing the fact that Germany has dropped the Dublin regulations, which is the background of Scott & Layman’s question of “why does Hungary care, then?” (to which I don’t have a real answer, either).
See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/11821822/Germany-drops-EU-rules-to-allow-in-Syrian-refugees.html e.g.

My assumption was Hungary’s behaviour can be explained by (1) trying to disincentivize migrants from using Hungary as a transit point by making life as difficult as possible (2) an ideological opposition to (particularly Muslim ) migration to Europe (not just Hungary), and (3) fidez playing to their base
Admittedly I know nought about Hungarian politics, so am probably wrong

46: (1) seems to make sense (in that particular logic).

Just skimmed the news on this Merkel lifts Dublin thing. As i read it, Germany is still very much expecting Hungary to block refugees from just going through to German. If however Syrians do make it to Germany after other EU nations made some effort to stop illegal entering, they will not be sent back to that nation according to Dublin rules but get an asylum hearing in Germany.

“Igor Belanov @45: “In the end the peoples and governments of Europe will have to accept that no-one is illegal.”

Great. So the governments (democratically elected) and peoples (hey, but what do they matter) of Europe will have to accept the diktat of the great Igor Belanov.

Somehow, I doubt that will happen, without the great Igor Belanov (and whose army?) being able to enforce it.

If your argument is that there should be no state borders: could you be more specific?”

Ideally there should be no borders. Few people complain about migrants flocking from the peripheries of the UK to the South East, despite all the difficulties this causes the areas concerned. Likewise Eastern Germany and the US rustbelt. These types of migration are constantly happening as a result of economic developments, rather than refugee crises that happen mercifully rarely.

What I was getting at is that despite the ‘democratically-elected’ governments and all the repressive functions of the state, these people (migrants/refugees/asylum-seekers) are still managing to get across the Mediterranean and into central Europe and reaching the Channel. In order to stop this ‘the peoples of Europe’ would have to regress into types of repressive and violent behaviour we haven’t seen in Europe for generations. Thus even on a practical level it would be difficult to stop this tide. As far as ethics goes, can you really give me an argument as to why the ‘peoples of Europe ‘ should refuse passage to these people, without resorting to abstract notions of ‘national sovereignty’ that certainly didn’t apply to Greece in its current crisis?

“I’d say the source of most current problem is the western governments who set out to remake Middle East and succeeded.”

Well not really. Most current problems are a direct result of *the US and the UK* setting out to remake the Middle East by invading Iraq. Both the US and the UK have yet to say, “We have a special responsibility given what we did.” Instead they are basically hiding under the rug hoping no one notices, while doing their best to complain about continental Europeans not doing enough.

Afaik There are plausible links between climate change and the Arab spring, but the evidence is also contested and ambiguous. The problem, afaict, is that research in general hasn’t found strong evidence of links between climate volatility and conflict (although this might might be in part due to methodological flaws, or something like that)

http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2015/03/reflections-on-climate-conflict-research-more-confusion-than-knowledge/

http://www.hbuhaug.com/2015/03/06/climate-conflict-research-where-now/

Trying to link it to isis is probably the wrong way to look at it though, imo. Isis were created by the Iraq war and larger ideological and organisational Islamist trends in the region (and the behaviour of the Iraqi govt over past decade etc) The breakdown in order in Syria Iraq might have given them the means and opportunity to implement their agenda (and greater ability to recruit, perhaps) but focusing on climate change obscures a whole lot of more important factors.
(Ot, so Anyway I’ll leave it there )

There appear to be many difficulties in whatever term is used to identify refugees/migrants, for instance – Economic migrant may be interpreted as – persons dealt with economically rather than individually, just as easily as, a person or persons moving because of economic wish or necessity.

There was a quote which came out of the international assistance arena, once remembered but now the detail is forgotten, the gist of which was:-
Financial aid is frequently provided in a context suiting the sensibilities of the giver rather than the needy resulting in much waste and confusion. Providing the type of aid a person values, which answers their needs, whilst maintaining their dignity, may not meet the sensibilities of the donor but will often be valued more, and hence be economical.

It appears that many of the views expressed from within those nations receiving refugees, and repeated within this topic, reflect each nations needs rather than those of many of the more desperate refugees, and hence appear to be reflective of broader more worrying trends internationally.

The problem is that all of the factors that are producing refugees (in the true sense of the word) are getting worse rather than better. And whilst I’m against reflexively blaming the West for everything (as I am for absolving the West for everything) the fact is that the chaos in the Levant, which is where the main problems are, can largely be traced to a long history of western involvement and manipulation going back to at least 1919. Especially since the end of the Cold War, moreover, the region has been a giant video game without consequences, where you could always leave the game when it became boring. We’ve been shocked to discover during the last decade or so that the sprites in the game are capable of shooting back, but that’s classified as a “terrorist” problem, which in principle we know how to deal with. Now, we are being confronted with the humanitarian consequences of a century of interference and mismanagement, and the political class is panicking. They have begun to realise that this isn’t a game, it’s the real world, and things have consequences.
And you can add to that the factors that produce “migration” in the proper sense are also getting worse, and the political class has no idea how to deal with that either.

@62 “…is the same bullshit I’ve heard LARGE CAPS about MORE LARGE CAPS plan…”
Your frustration is evident and understandable. Given your experience do you think you’re going to win support from people by insulting them and declaring your own moral superiority? I suggest the opposite is likely to occur. Worse, there are, in my experience, a great many who feel very strongly that ‘taking care of our own’ does not mean handing money over to criminal organizations to be smuggled across borders and putting the lives of children at risk, if the gain is simply economic. The points about western responsibility are spot-on. Supposing that nations such as Canada and Australia have a long history of stepping up to help the poor is pure fiction. The opposite is true. Ideally, most people would prefer, I expect, to raise their families among friends and relatives in or near communities where they feel a sense of ‘home.’ There is no question that Drone Strike, Cameron, and Sarkozy, along with a whole list of other malefactors bear much of the responsibility. But they’re extremely unlikely to do much of anything, aren’t they. The numbers are still relatively small in historical terms, and the loss of life minimal.

Things are likely to improve slowly, as border controls are re-imposed and countries like Germany settle more of the influx. If border controls are not imposed and the people smuggling continues, we can expect a real hardening of hearts.

#63 As things are right now, pretending to find “support” from that kind of quarters is quixotic

There is, right now, a battle for the soul of Europe. Better to get people that still have some ounces of humanity left movilized than pretend that you are going to get your local UKIP voter, or Orban supporter, or whatever, on board with anything.

They, right now, are defining our response to this. I dont want to convince anybody of my “moral superiority” – the moment you get somebody like, say, Orban himself, saying what he says, it is clear what we have to rally to keep our whole European “moral superiority” relevant or surrender it to people like them.

@65. I don’t think that’s the case at all. Religious groups, often conservative, do a lot of the front-line work working with the homeless, with refugee groups, and on site in locations that most wouldn’t dream of visiting. The situation in Europe, not yet a full-blown crisis, requires the re-introduction of borders controls and an end to people smuggling. The one UKIP supporter I do know supported Labour all his life. I suspect there are many more like him who see the solution to this crisis/situation as the reintroduction of border controls, and controlled immigration. He has young children of his own and certainly do not believe for a second he derives and pleasure from the scenes we’re seeing now.

Il ne faut pas se tromper. Dans quelques années, les historiens jugeront les Européens sur la façon dont ils ont accueilli ceux qui fuyaient la mort sous les bombes, l’esclavage sexuel, les persécutions religieuses, les barils de TNT sur leurs quartiers, l’épuration ethnique. Dans les livres d’histoire, le chapitre consacré à ce moment-là s’ouvrira sur une photo : celle du corps d’un petit Syrien, Aylan Kurdi, noyé, rejeté par la mer, un sinistre matin de septembre 2015. (Le Monde éditorial 09/03)

We should not delude ourselves. In a few years, historians will judge the way Europeans received those who fled deadly bombings, sexual slavery, religious persecutions, TNT barrels on their neighborhoods, ethnic cleansing. In history books, the chapter devoted to this moment will open with a picture: that of the body of a Syrian little one, Aylan Kurdi, drowned to death, thrown back by the sea, a bleak September 2015 morning. (My translation)

As this New York Times article explains, it’s somewhat difficult for the EU to have a Syrian refugee policy when it doesn’t have a Syria policy.

Ronan: Isn’t the link between rising food prices/food shortages and political instability pretty uncontroversial? It doesn’t have to be a monocausal explanation but certainly it’s been a factor in political events from the French Revolution and before to the Arab Spring. In terms of effects of climate change on food safety, we have seen only the beginning. There were crop failures in Russia a few years back and a terrible corn harvest in the US recently, unprecedented multi-year drought in Australia and now in California, and many more regional drought events that have been made worse and more persistent by rising temperatures. So far, the effects have been localized. What hasn’t happened yet is a megadrought affecting several major agricultural regions simultaneously.

70 wins.

Ronan @56
I no longer read The Monkey Cage, I’m afraid, and my reading of Duck of Minerva has become very irregular (haven’t been there in a while), but a few years back there was quite a bit of stuff on both blogs (esp. TMC), iirc, about pol sci research on the link betw climate change and conflict. Dueling studies, methodological disputes, whatnot. The usual.

I see you give two more recent links, so they probably pick up the studies that were in question.

Z @69
thanks for the Le Monde quote. I wish I had the degree of facility with French — in terms of writing it, e.g. — that you obviously have with English. (I also wish I read the French press more than once a year or whatever.)

With appropriate self-denigration out of the way, I’d offer a slight alteration to your translation (there’s nothing wrong w/ your version, mine is just more literal):
“les historiens jugeront les Européens sur la façon dont ils ont accueilli”
= historians will judge Europeans on the way in which they received [or welcomed] etc.

@72 yes absolutely. I mean if the ‘West’ were to intervene* in Syria then in five years time it might look like modern-day Iraq, or even Libya. Which would obviously be much better.

*I mean overtly, as opposed to the semi-covert Western backed ‘ops’ which are already well underway.

@69. Ah Le Monde at its worst again. Opinion outside the French elites is divided between those who think you can read it with nose-plugs and those who think you can’t read it at all without endangering your sanity. They’ve been pathologically anti-Assad for years, and now they don’t like the consequence. On your bicyclette!

ZM@66: “these conflicts are probably the first conflicts where climate change has been a factor.” Do have a look at, for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4.2_kiloyear_event

Igor Belanov@52: apparently, you reject what you call abstract notions of ‘national sovereignty’.
Many people care for abstract notions of ‘truth’ and ‘justice’. Do you reject these also, or would you prefer to argue that abstract notions you agree with are (though abstract) perfectly acceptable, but the others (being abstract) aren’t?

Ronan @86
Cederman, Gleditsch authored a couple of the earlier articles that were being debated. The debate is not really ‘up my alley’ but thks anyway.

@ 82 Cheers for grasping the nettle. The spectacularly bad decision to repeatedly invade Iraq, depose dictators we don’t like, and otherwise use brute force when better ideas might/would be more effective does have consequences. I’m sympathetic to the plight of refugees fleeing the wars and chaos across North Africa and in the Middle East the west did so much to create. I have much more sympathy, however, for those who can’t afford to pay people smuggler’s the criminal fees they demand, and are compelled to endure the consequences of our actions. I did not oppose the invasion of Iraq or the interventions in Syria and Libya on strictly moral grounds. I also understand these moves to be ill-conceived and dangerously stupid. Who now is ready to argue that removing Libya’s government has made the nation better and safer? I’d like to see democracy sprout everywhere. But I’m not convinced that bombing the hell out of people on the other side of the planet is going to make that happen anytime soon. Removing these governments was the easy part. That was transparently clear at the time. Replacing these governments with something that would provide stability, as we are discovering, is a a challenge of a very different order. And one we are clearly not ready to address, much less to meet.

@kidneystones

The sheer length of the U.S.-Mexico border — almost 2,000 miles — makes it very, very difficult to secure and ‘control’ effectively, assuming for the sake of argument that one wants border control. A (presumably high-tech) fence or wall along the entire land extent of a boundary of this length is, imo, a fairly ridiculous proposition: it wd be very expensive (which is why Trump proposes that Mexico construct it) and I doubt it wd even work as intended. Peter Andreas’ Border Games showed to what degree efforts to control the U.S./Mexico border in the ’80s and early ’90s were mainly symbolic: when efforts were ramped up in one part of the border (e.g. the western part), the flow of border-crossers just shifted to other parts (including the inhospitable Sonoran desert).

To control effectively a 2,000 mile border, you basically need the equivalent of a small army doing it close to full-time. High-tech stuff can help but I don’t think it is sufficient on its own. The politicians clamoring to ‘secure’ the U.S.-Mexico border should face up to the implication: a controlled border of this length will be a highly militarized border. The politicians don’t say that, of course, and in Trump’s case substitute the proposal that Mexico build and pay for a 2,000-mile-long fence, confirming that Trump is an idiot.

It simply wrong to claim, as kidneystones does, that the territorial jurisdication of states is just like private property and that someone who supports the right of people to move across borders must also support a similar right with respect to private houses. But in any case, the general right to freedom of movement is not in play here. What’s at issue is the right to asylum of people where the bond between them and their state has been broken and the duty of other states to do their fair share of catering for these people. It isn’t a general discussion of the rights and wrongs of immigration. Flows of refugees are a tiny proportion of international migrant flows.

@94 My bad. That’s 45-40, Trump over Clinton. 44-40 is Trump over Sanders. Still, early days with plenty of time for Trump to implode. There’s no question the establishment of both parties hates his guts. Here’s the poll, http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollReport.aspx?g=d950cadf-05ce-4148-a125-35c0cdab26c6

Via the Hill: http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/252825-poll-trump-beats-hillary-head-to-head

@83 Every time I think the ‘why aren’t we killing people? For God’s sake, why????’ mob have reached a new low, they keep on digging. However, even by the miserably low standards of the ‘let’s lob some missiles into the middle east and see what happens, might be fun’ sect, your post sets a new benchmark.

” The citizens of a state have the right to determine who enters that state, or do you dispute that point, too?”

As it happens, I do.

” The citizens of a state have the right to determine who enters that state, or do you dispute that point, too?”

Almost all countries are signatories to the 1951 convention on refugees, so no, they don’t have that right.

Beryl, given the fact that one side of the civil war in Syria was trained and armed by the West and its Middle East allies, and another side by Russia, making it “not our problem” would probably be a great improvement over the present situation (see also: Lybia, and “responsibility to protect”).

And this without taking into account the role of Western intervention in Iraq in creating ISIS

Beryl, Hal: how about advocating for something that doesn’t involve killing lots of people to uncertain effect? Safely resettling those fleeing the conflict, for example. Or is that “doing nothing” because it doesn’t involve bombs?

@ 103 You began our brief exchange by comparing me to a segregationist, which it seems you regard as bona fides of your good will, probity, and intellectual integrity. Now, you suggest I’m the aggressor. Thanks, too, for speaking for everyone.

My only question for you is whether anyone you know shares your belief in practice: that everybody should be absolutely free to live everywhere, irrespective of the wishes of the people living there. My experience with people who utter the sorts of platitudes you espouse is uniformly negative, I’m afraid.

Suggesting that I, and others who share my views -that would be most people, btw – provide you with some sort of evidence to disprove that we are not in favor of segregation might win the argument in your mind. Insulting doesn’t come close, of course.

I can’t think of a single person who believes we should scrap borders and surrender the right to determine who should live within a nation state.

“I can’t think of a single person who believes we should scrap borders and surrender the right to determine who should live within a nation state.”

You’re presenting a false choice here. There are lots of people who don’t believe we should scrap borders, but also don’t believe we should use excessive force to prevent miserable people from crossing them.

@112 Wrong (again!), I’m afraid. I’m responding to specifically to that binary articulated by ‘windy’ in @103. “I believe that the moral value of person, their suitability to control their own lives, and their freedom to pursue the life they want, under conditions favourable to them, including the freedom to move and establish themselves in different places, should not be dependent on which side of an imaginary line they were born on, nor on the authority that issues their paperwork, nor their ethnicity, language, or cultural background. You disagree. How, exactly, is position morally different from the core arguments of segregationism other than by superficially not mentioning race?”

Now, it’s possible you missed this little exchange. Could happen. I agree, it’s a false choice, but please don’t lay the blame for the formulation at my door. I’ve made it very clear that we should help people and help those who are helping people, rather than criticize them. Especially, when a plurality of people in America and the UK, for example, want to see their own borders secured. That’s my point.

Please don’t feed the troll.

Manta,

Wrong. The West did not start the Syrian civil war – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_Civil_War – nor did it arm one side. Russia and Iran did… the side of the regime. It was only after chemical weapons and barrel bombs were used by Assad that Obama had his hand forced. A “no-fly” zone could have helped, but by then it was far too late. ISIS had pushed out the “moderate” Sunni rebels and the war had spread across the country. So, in effect, our inaction (then and now) has contributed to Aylan Kurdi’s death. Congratulations.

Here are some links that help put the plight of refugees in Europe in perspective. From the UN. In Turkey alone there are 1.9 million Syrians and a total of 4 million displaced because of the ongoing civil war which is a direct result of western interventions. There are 4 million Iraqis displaced, the majority internally. A quick glance at the Independent reveals that the EU has a new plan to take a total of 160,000 refugees. What makes the plan so appealing (to some) is the transfer of deportation powers to the EU for economic refugees. There’s a list of countries that will be deemed ‘safe,’ which means that citizens of these states will be barred from claiming refugee status.

The initial post expressed ‘outrage’ that the refugees already out of Turkey and in Europe were being identified by having numbers drawn on their arms. Britain, France, the US and a supporting cast of miscreant nations destabilized Syria and destroyed Iraq. France is now planning to start bombing Syria as a ‘solution.’ Turkey is not an innocent actor in all this, but the nation could probably stand some assistance.

Most/many of the displaced people would probably like to return to their homes, homes western nations helped render uninhabitable. When we start to understand and accept the role we need to play in rebuilding these communities we might see an end to the real suffering we helped cause. One place to start is by providing existing states in the region with all they support they need – and that includes some that we find morally repugnant.

Or, we could talk about colored pens.

It seems rather easy to get to Syria with a weapon. Would-be interveners can just get on with it, can’t they? I suppose they’ll say that wouldn’t be enough to end the suffering, but then that’s the pragmatic argument against large-scale intervention, too.

@123, say what? There’s no civil war at this point without ISIS, and there’s no ISIS (of this magnitude/capability) without the manpower and weaponry they import into Syria from Iraq.

Probably should be “difference will be capitalized” with the Nitzan Bichler I’m reading this week.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Syria

Key source for major claim:

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/terrorism-security/2011/0418/Cables-reveal-covert-US-support-for-Syria-s-opposition

My comment is awaiting moderation (probably, too many links…), but the gist is:
contra Beril@118, USA and its allies (both in Europe and the Middle East) were arming Syrian rebels BEFORE Assad used chemical weapons.

@layman fair point. But I’m resolved to take my own advice from now on.

A. Faria 127
The forces who caused Aylan Kurdi to flee Kobane were Islamist revolutionaries who engaged in an attack on secular democrats for the sole reason that they were secular democrats. It’s disgusting that Kurdi’s death is being used to propagandise against Assad and Kurdish autonomy, when the opposition are directly responsible for the attempt to crush Kobane.

Has Kurdish autonomy even been mentioned in the recent media discussions sparked by the photo of Kurdi? If so, I’ve missed it. The photo has been used mainly to focus attention to the refugee crisis rather than to support one side or faction or other, istm. The photo ‘stands in for’ thousands of children who have been displaced and/or killed. For some (or many) people, recitations of numbers become ‘merely’ statistics; they need this kind of concretized and moving visual image to become galvanized or even become aware of the issue. (For another fairly recent example, recall how the deaths from shrapnel of those Palestinian boys playing soccer on the beach crystallized anger about Israel’s actions in the last Gaza war. Different context, but same point re the force of visuals in drawing attention, etc.)

LFC@133
“It should be noted that the CIA covert support for and US arming of Syrian rebels was, from all the coverage I can recall, *much* less than what the Syrian opposition groups in question wanted.”

Of course it was much less that they wanted!
Has it ever happened in the history of humankind that a group of armed people claimed to have received enough founding for their war?
(Anf it was not only CIA, and the support was so “covert” that it ended on the NYT… it seems a scene straight from Dr Strangelove)

Theres an interesting overlap in the almost romantic notions of frictionless integration in the op and the neoliberal employer reps demands to open up the labour market for refugees. The legal situation at least in Germany is different, with asylum status not granting labour market access and a clear expectation of refugees leaving again after the immidiate threat no longer exists. Not sure how that plays out in real life percentage wise, since some do get the right to work unpopular jobs and sometimes the threat just lasts a long time etc… . Either way i dont think those emotional appeals with a rose coloured view on costs ( including non fiscal ones) do any good. Rather the contrary they just trigger responses in kind, with emotional appeals to xenophobia and the narzism of minor diferences with regards to the weakest local populations.

gtfrtghftggftgrftgygtfrtgfrtgfrftgfrgtfgfgfgfggfggfggfgfdgfdefrtgfrdeswedfghgfdswaq

Sorry, cat on keyboard.

bob @141
Thinking of Goldman Sachs, etc here is Romano Prodi explaining what to him is an unassailable logic, in his words a ‘moral imperative – and economic benefit’

“Mrs Merkel’s position was not just a message of EU cohesion, but was also an intelligent proposal for the German economy because Syrian immigrants are appropriate to the German needs – the shrinking of population and the need for skills – 40% of the Syrians are graduates.”

@142 excuse me?

Manta @136
Not only less than they wanted, but not that much, period. And apparently also not very effective.

“local ones” — i.e., for farmers in the recipient countries

The Saturday Paper had an article on refugees this weekend, and I had not registered the high numbers of refugees going to Europe at the moment until I read it. It is very bad that we are offering settlement places to so few in comparison.

“A staggering 3000 [refugees] a day are coming in by land from Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan through the porous borders of the Balkans and the Greek islands. Africans packed in ramshackle boats and flimsy inflatables continue to try crossing the Mediterranean.
…
The numbers already arrived and applying for asylum are staggering. Since 2011, Germany has had 547,000 asking to stay, France almost 256,000 and Sweden 229,000. Even Britain, protected by the Channel moat, has had 125,000 apply for asylum. The flow is increasing: Germany expects to receive 800,000 asylum seekers this year.
…
Australians must look on with amazement and shame at the way Europe still manages a high level of compassion and commitment to refugee treaty obligations under such stress. We continue with Nauru, Manus Island and turning back our comparative trickle of boats, while our newly uniformed border force turns from the frontier to the illegal foreigners within. Melbourne taxi drivers were to be the first target: never mind the organised illegal farm workforce in places such as Griffith and Bundaberg being ignored for the benefit of Nationals voters.”

Beryl @143
“there were always “red lines” (about chemical weapons and so on) that were repeatedly crossed by Assad without much response – even verbal – from the US or Europe.”

Now we are really in cuckoo land:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Syria%27s_chemical_weapons

“OPCW began preliminary inspections of Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal on 1 October 2013, and actual destruction began on 6 October… on 23 June 2014, had Syria finished shipping the remaining declared chemicals. On 18 August 2014, all of the most toxic chemicals had been destroyed offshore. ”

Look, if you want to rewrite history, do about something that is NOT as recent and well-known as the destruction of Assad’s chemical weapons thanks to US intervention.

@154,

On 18 August 2014, all of the most toxic chemicals had been destroyed offshore.

Destroyed. Sure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_chemical_weapons_in_the_Syrian_civil_war

Hal, if you look at the list you will see the only CW attacks since disarmament have been either with Chlorine or with Mustard Gas against the Kurds.

Assad isn’t in conflict with the Kurds, in fact the SAA has been running joint ops with them against ISIS. So whoever was lobbing mustard gas at them clearly wasn’t in the SAA, in fact they’re fighting the opposition and there’s rather a lot of the country under opposition control which wasn’t disarmed (of course no-one issued ‘red lines’ to the opposition), so that’s a clue as to what’s going on there.

As for Chlorine… is your objection really that Syria hasn’t been ‘disarmed’ of Chlorine? You might want to google a bit more about what Chlorine does before you decide it should be a prohibited chemical agent. Destroying all the Chlorine within Syria wouldn’t save any lives.

@71 You might expect climate change to cause conflict. Common sense might tell you it does, however common sense is also what tells you the earth is flat. Basically you have a falsifiable hypothesis so it’s worth actually testing it. In this case the result was rather unexpected. That’s science.

“You might expect climate change to cause conflict. Common sense might tell you it does, however common sense is also what tells you the earth is flat.”

This comparison works against you. Just as there is a wealth of evidence that the earth is not flat, there is a wealth of evidence that changes in climate create resource shortfalls, and a wealth of evidence that resource shortfalls cause conflict. New research is always welcome – as it is in the case of geology and physics – but there’s enough experience now to acknowledge the connections.

The evidence gathered so far hasn’t supported the hypothesis, that’s the thing. It is certainly what we expected to find. So not finding it is fairly surprising. Can you cite any research showing an effect?

@162

“If Igor Belanov continues to believe that national sovereignty, being an ‘abstract notion’ , is to be disregarded in terms of practical politics, I despair of Ivan Belanov.”

I’m glad I got away with it, but I do sympathise with poor Ivan.

As far as it’s worth, I don’t think national sovereignty should be disregarded entirely in terms of practical politics, just that those other abstract notions you brought up, truth and justice, should be given priority over it.

“Surely, giving money to local councils in UK to help Syrian refugees will, by any rational standards, make things better for Syrian refugees. Taking money from the foreign aid budget, a large proportion of which goes to less urgent cases and some proportion of which may be diverted entirely, seems to me like a good idea.”

It would suit me better if they took the money away from the nuclear ‘deterrent’ and the civil list instead.

Ronan @56 linked to a short post by Halvard Buhaug of Peace Research Inst. Oslo. Here’s that post:

Research to date provides no conclusive answer as to whether climate anomalies affect violent conflict. The modal opinion among experts on the subject is a qualified ‘perhaps’; few disagree with the notion that extreme environmental conditions and events can affect people’s inclination for using violence to redress their grievances, but it is increasingly apparent that climate is not related to conflict in a simple and direct manner. In a new essay just published, I discuss some reasons for the scholarly disagreement and offer some thoughts on how the field should progress.

Buhaug, H. 2015. Climate-conflict research: Some reflections on the way forward. WIREs Climate Change. doi: 10.1002/wcc.336. [Open access]

Some of you in this thread who are debating the relation betw. climate change and violent conflict might want to look at that piece. He says it’s open access.

I doubt I’m going to read it, but then I haven’t been making assertions on the subject. (Also, one of the few upsides of not having a ‘research agenda’ is that I don’t have to read anything I don’t fu*king want to. In fact, I don’t have to read anything, period. OTOH, if I were going to get into a yes-it-is-no-it-isn’t back-and-forth on the topic, I might want to glance at what some researchers say. Buhaug is just one person, of course, but it’s one place to start.)

I actually believe that people in the Middle East have free will and aren’t just tools of the West, or figures used to support domestic politics in other countries. The Islamists in places like Egypt like to use elections as tools, but don’t particularly respect the idea that elections could also remove them from power.

I think that you don’t need to invoke nefarious Western puppet masters to understand that there were large constituencies, including secular ones and religious minorities, who didn’t want the Muslim Brotherhood running Egypt.

FWIW I agree that the coup against Morsi wasn’t caused by the West. The West “only” had an extraordinarily weak, muted response to a military coup, massacres, and show trials against a recently elected president and his supporters. I don’t think that Americans had a direct hand in it but you can see the enemies of democracy that American leaders really dislike and those who they are relieved to see succeed.

I think it’s appalling to justify the coup by what the Muslim Brotherhood might have done later. That’s doling out punishment on precrime charges. I don’t doubt that many people disliked Morsi’s election. Many people are going to be unhappy with election outcomes unless it’s a sham democracy. But if there’s ever a good time for a military to overthrow elected leaders, surely it’s after those leaders have refused to lose a legitimate election. Morsi was supposed to have a 4 year term but he was overthrown after a year.

Hidari @168
The Nat Geo article you link appears to be referring to this paper:
http://www.pnas.org/content/112/11/3241.abstract

> common sense is also what tells you the earth is flat.

It doesn’t, you know. The earth’s radius of curvature is pretty small, honestly, and its effects clearly and obviously visible: if you think the earth is flat you haven’t been paying attention.

Hidari@172 Of course the al-Sisi regime sought approval and assistance (as your excerpt reports,) from the US.

The interesting question for me is how it is that the US couldn’t sustain Mubarak but so far it’s doing just fine propping up al-Sisi. Mubarak was just as much a creature of the military deep state as al-Sisi. He’d just been out of uniform longer.

“‘This before that,’ he had told his aides, repeating a vow to die before accepting what he considered a de facto coup and thus a crippling blow to Egyptian democracy.” As near as I can tell, Morsi’s crushing of the labor movement was the first crushing blow to Egyptian democracy. Further, the personal regime Morsi was assembling was exclusively based on the Muslim Brotherhood. Making Egypt even more sectarian is not democratic, despite winning an election. And I don’t think it’s a matter of what he might have done, but what he was plainly doing, especially doing so in a way that would leave large portions of the population politically helpless.

Egypt’s 2012 constitutional referendum passed with 64% of the vote. A quick search didn’t turn up fraud allegations from international monitors, though international monitors described suppression of anti-referendum voices in the run-up to voting.

I saw quite a few things to dislike about the Egyptian government when Morsi was in power, but the post-coup government is worse. The military’s massacre of 800+ protesters on 14 August 2013 is the sort of thing that is supposed* to start the CIA smuggling anti-tank missiles to the armed affiliates of protesters. The post-coup government isn’t a secularizing force, in fact is trying to out-Muslim the MB with prosecuting religious offenses. It’s abusing the courts worse than the MB did to sentence groups to death in sham trials. It’s torturing and executing prisoners without even sham court oversight. It’s abominable.

*Though I’m relieved that the CIA is not treating Egypt like Syria, because civil war is an even worse outcome for ordinary Egyptians. Hypocrisy is a lesser evil than inflaming another war.

It’s not so much allegations of fraud, Morsi was genuinely popular and his regime had widespread support. It’s more that the constitution proposed would have entrenched the brotherhood in power pretty much whatever happened. This cost him support amongst western governments and liberal Egyptians.

Matt@177 In a revolutionary situation, elections have only a limited ability to express the people’s will. Morsi chose to interpret his election as an endorsement of him personally and the Muslim Brotherhood generally. I think events have demonstrated it was an endorsement of the MB’s record of opposition to Mubarak, who was equated with what they call the “deep state.” Unfortunately a decisive popular vote does not confer a mandate in democracies, as witness the 2008 elections in the US.

The Mubarak wasn’t a secularizing force either, and it tried to steal MB’s thunder too. The point to take home is that a sectarian strong state that unlike Mubarak et al. aren’t getting rich by selling the store, is the MB’s thunder.

Brett Dunbar @178:

The correlation anticipated just isn’t there in the data.

I suppose that’s why someone whose job involves researching this very question has stated that “Research to date provides no conclusive answer as to whether climate anomalies affect violent conflict.” (see my comment @176)

“No conclusive answer”, in Brett Dunbar’s world, equals “correlation isn’t there in the data.” No, it does not mean that, as anyone acquainted with English should know.

@ 174.

Just imagine turning that last paragraph round for a minute.

‘Nixon had weakened his position by attempting to manipulate the constitutional convention to permanently entrench the Republicans in power. This dubious behaviour cost him both the support of liberal Americans and a lot of Arab governments. Leaving his regime isolated and vulnerable.’

Just the idea, accepted without question, that ‘Western’ governments have the right to decree what sort of government the Egyptians are going to be allowed to have.

Even if the coup was entirely domestic and nothing to do with us, western governments could have made al-Sisi’s life difficult afterwards. For example not recognising his government freezing Egyptian assets, imposing sanctions &c. doing that sort of thing has a significant material cost to us and his regime didn’t seem to be worth it.

The concentration on the US as behind the military coup in Egypt seems odd. You could certainly argue against specific positions the US took, but they didn’t drive the coup, and in fact were pretty consistent supporters (against some regional allies ) for a (even MB led) democratic transition in Egypt.
The drive to oust the MB primarily came from domestic actors. A lot of the (stronger ) arguments to the contrary sound overly UScentric.

173: Unbelievable. So Obama had it announced to the world via the NYT that his officials were the ones who told Morsi he had to go? How do you explain that Ronan if the US was not a driving actor? Is it conceivable that Sisi would have acted without explicit US backing? No more than it is conceivable that Pinochet would have acted without explicit US backing.

Why do you think it’s unremarkable that a junta would use the US as a “channel of communication”? The only purpose would have been to convince Morsi that the junta had US backing, lest he was under any illusion that the US due to its well-known “commitment to democracy” (*) might restrain the putschists.

(*) I didn’t think that any FP observer around the year 2015 might still be able to claim without irony that US foreign policy cares a rat’s ass about democracy and human rights but there you go, they still claim it, knowing that nobody has taken the claim seriously in a long time. E.g. see http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/sep/24/what-foreign-policy-us/

I havent been following it closely over the last year or so, so perhaps some new info has come out that more directly implictaes the US in the 2013 coup (and argues against US policy being ‘pro democratisation’ before the coup)
Here, anyway, is my understanding of it (restating my comment above)
Egypt expert Ellis Goldberg:

” Internationally, however, the two leaders faced different situations with the United States. US policy makers increasingly wanted to see Allende ousted both because they feared the emergence of a socialist government on the Latin American continent and because the Hickenlooper Amendment formally committed the US to oppose governments that nationalized foreign property with insufficient compensation. It would be wrong to say that the US supported Morsi as such but the US appears to have been committed to Morsi’s presidency as a step toward democratization and initially sought, albeit halfheartedly, for his return as the legitimate holder of the office. ”

http://nisralnasr.blogspot.ie/2013/09/a-tale-of-two-coups.html

And Middle East expert Marc Lynch:

“When the coup first happened, I think they wanted to wait and see how things were going to develop. The U.S. obviously didn’t want the coup to happen. The entire heart of their strategy — and I do believe they’ve had a strategy this whole time — has been to push Egypt toward a democratic transition, to hold elections, to bring all the political trends inside the system. That meant bringing in the Islamists, the Salafis, the Muslim Brotherhood, the liberals, the youth activists, and channeling everything toward democratic elections.

The coup basically destroyed all that. It completely swept aside all the institutions, all the processes that the U.S. had been working to try to support. At the same time, however, there was no real love for Morsi, and there were a lot of people who didn’t trust the Muslim Brotherhood. So there was a real ambivalence on the part of the U.S. They were opposed to a coup, but they weren’t sure they wanted to go to the mat to restore Morsi to power.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/15/should-the-u-s-cut-off-aid-to-egypt-an-interview-with-marc-lynch/

It might be seen as a way to slightly cut the foreign aid budget in real terms without formally abandoning the coalition’s achievement of getting to the UN target of 0.7% of GNI, Britain is one of just six countries to do so (the others are Norway, Sweden, Luxembourg, Denmark and rather surprisingly the UAE) and has the second largest in cash term only the US has a higher absolute budget. That was one thing the Liberal Democrats got out of the coalition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_governments_by_development_aid