But seriously, a lot of murdering and cruelty to women and children in the Arab and Muslim world has been done by the supposedly enlightened West in the name of "protecting women."

Hillary Clinton herself ginned up a lot of blood-thirsty war-mongering to get the West involved in unwinnable wars under the guise of liberating women from oppression in Afghanistan and elsewhere, when the real agenda behind the wars was actually far less noble to say the least, and the consequences of that misbegotten war -- sold the liberal-minded public with lies -- have been terrible -- most of all to the women and children of the region.

Now that they are fleeing for their lives, babes in arms, grandmothers on gurneys, do we hear or see women standing give full-throated support to giving them asylum in their neighborhoods? Sisterhood is ... ummm, a sometime thing.

I still think Angela Merkel has done more damage to Europe than any other single European politician sitting in office, but she has been right in insisting that Europe has a moral and legal responsibility to take in these refugees and should not shirk it.

Margareth Thatcher ?

ANNHIG & others, thank you for your comments - hope you are all right.

Peace in the New Year...>>

and to you, LateDay.

<<I see no reason to broad brush adherents of Islam as all failing to respect women's rights. Many women practicing Islam have more gender equality than women who are in various offshoots of Judiaism, Christianty, living in Mexico, Japan or Thailand. >>

that sentence is so broad brushed that it's difficult to argue with, but you appear to want to ignore the institutionalised inequality of women in say, Saudi Arabia.

The fact that many non-muslim women have a very raw deal indeed does not mean that muslim women are necessarily better off. And the child exploitation scandals from Oxford and Rochdale have demonstrated that some muslim men are as prepared to commit sex crimes against young women as some non-muslim men.

The lesson from all of this: all societies and religions contain people who are criminals.

<<I see no reason to broad brush adherents of Islam as all failing to respect women's rights. Many women practicing Islam have more gender equality than women who are in various offshoots of Judiaism, Christianty, living in Mexico, Japan or Thailand. >

I would submit that while there are certainly fundamentalist sects of Judaism and Christianity that do not afford women equality, the operative word should be "some" women practicing Islam, not "many". And while there are dress codes in the fundamentalist sects of Judaism and Christianity I don't know of any that require burkhas. And that kind of total cover-up is not restricted to the Middle East. In northwest Malaysia I thought I had strayed into a nunnery.

I still remember visiting my local mosque, in the US. Women weren't even allowed to go in the same door as the men.

All religions contain fanatics. Right now, it appears the Islam contains more than most.

BTW, printing money does not create more money in terms of value. It simply devalues the currency.

It is not only the position of women, but the culture in general. There is a village of 102 people in Germany that is required to take 750 refugees. How can that not alter things?

I am still waiting for someone to explain why we should be expected to be sympathetic to hundreds of thousands of young men, headed for the countries with the most generous benefits, instead of staying and fighting for their country.

I am still waiting for someone to explain why we should be expected to be sympathetic to hundreds of thousands of young men, headed for the countries with the most generous benefits, instead of staying and fighting for their country.


Maybe because not everybody is a soldier, taht it takes time to become one and that not everybody wants to die for his own country, whatever it might mean ?

What about all those irish who emigrated to USA (ok there was no war at the time, but there was starvation) - maybe they didn't care so much for suffering in their own country and preferred to go elsewhere ?

Maybe Syrians are doing the same.

and has anyone done a study of the ages and marital status of the refugees? I'm not sure that we can necessarily say that hundreds and thousands of them are young single men; perhaps they have mothers, sisters and aunts to support as well.

Ambition to make a better life for oneself is a normal, natural human feeling. I suspect that many are wanting to go to Germany and Scandanavia because they already have family there - just as many want to come to the UK for the same reason. And because they have been led to believe that they will get a warmer welcome there than in other parts of Europe. Whether that's true or not remains to be seen of course, but one can hardly blame them for trying.

"Maybe because not everybody is a soldier, taht it takes time to become one and that not everybody wants to die for his own country, whatever it might mean ?"

What if the British - my father for instance - had decided in 1939 that they weren't soldiers (which they weren't) and weren't willing to risk dying? Wonder what life would be like in Italy or France today in that case?

What if the Americans in 1941 had decided they weren't soldiers? Or the men who became Union soldiers in 1861?

I'm sure they all had relatives, too. (And I don't consider a famine equivalent to a war in terms of available responses.)

What if the British - my father for instance - had decided in 1939 that they weren't soldiers (which they weren't) and weren't willing to risk dying? Wonder what life would be like in Italy or France today in that case?>>

thursdaysd - what if instead of murdering 6 million Jews, Hitler had expelled them? how welcome would they have been in the rest of Europe? would people have been saying that they should have stayed and fought rather than seeking sanctuary elsewhere?

the fact is that we can't compare the situation which faced Britain in 1939 to that facing Syrians fleeing both ISIS and Assad. They do not have a government behind them, in fact they have a government that is against them; civil society has broken down completely. Some communities are facing complete annihilation and when they try to fight e.g. by joining the Kurds they find themselves under fire from the Russians and the Turks. I remember thinking about this dilemma during the Balkan Wars and wondering what I would do if my neighbours were about to come and butcher me, and the answer was that I would grab my children and our passports and run.

They could decide that Assad is the lesser of the evils and join with him against ISIS. Or they could decide they can't stomach him and join the rebels.

There's one basic fact : the EU and our governments has let us down at every stage to the point where the average Daily Mail reader doesn't want refugees from a country ravaged by civil war. Why?

Because they see most of them as money making economic migrants.

Had the EU got hold of the situation by throwing out the economic migrants years ago and reacting in a rationale humane way to the refugees of war then we probably would be seeing the numpty reaction to migration that is currently on show.

It's insane that Africans without visas can wander across Europe then camp out in Calais but legitimate visa holding North Americans are treated as criminals if they stay for 91 days.

Course we don't pay the EU to manage but to employ ineffectual nest builders.

All this proves, yet again, that we learned absolutely nothing from WW2.

They could decide that Assad is the lesser of the evils and join with him against ISIS. Or they could decide they can't stomach him and join the rebels.>>

but what if they can "stomach" neither or are being persecuted by both? there is no structure in these countries, no recruiting offices [except the ISIS virtual ones] no government structure to organise an army, or indeed anything much. It seems to me that society has broke down to such an extent that it is literally every man for himself, or at least for his family because unlike in WW2, there is no government to protect those left at home, nor indeed any homes to be protected.

Btw WW2 could have been avoided in 1935 or1938 when we gave herr hitler Bohemia.

I think W Churchill said 'we had the choice between dishonor and war.
We chose dishonor and we will get war'.

It seems we chose not to intervene but we complain about refugees.

WW2 was unavoidable.

Somewhere, somehow, somebody must have kicked you around some,
Who knows maybe you were kidnapped tied up, taken away and held for ransom
Honey, it don't make no difference to me, baby, everybody has to fight to be free,

You see.....

You don't have to live like a refugee
(Don't have to live like a refugee)
No baby you don't have to live like a refugee
(Don't have to live like a refugee)

Seems my fears were not overblown, unfortunately.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/06/wo...many-says.html

If the OP were a woman and taken the Pollyanna advice being given by the bleeding hearts on this thread, a visit to the Cologne train station on New Year's Eve would have gotten her raped, or at the least sexually assaulted. And those who support open borders are all accomplices in these terrible crimes.

Just to set the record straight, a refugee is someone who leaves a war some to an immediate area of safety. Under international law the preference is for them to be housed and cared for as close to their home countries as possible so they may be repatriated at the end of hostilities.

A migrant is someone who seeks to go from one place to another in search of a better life. Sadly, a better life today often means better and more generous welfare benefits.

The number of Syrian refugees in Europe, excluding Turkey, is probably fewer than 200, and would include only those who arrived directly by plane or ship from Syria. Once they reach a safe haven their refugee status applies to that country only. This is international law.

Many of the European problems in this situation result from a clash of cultures which, sadly often take generations to change, UNLESS the refugees/migrants sincerely want a different way of life, not just a berth with the best benefits.

I read the other day that Canada is in the process of taking in a considerable number of Syrian refugees, with important provisos -- only intact families (either mother & children, or mother/father & children), and no single men between ages 15-50. Sigh. Once again, the Canadians exercise common sense along with generosity.

We have some refugees coming to our island travelerjan. ( Canada.. west coast) a mother , grandmother and 3 children.. and they already have a sponsor here ( a private citizen or family or church willing to put up the 50-60 grand needed for the first year to support them

On social media and local news.. seems like 90 percent of us are open arms.. but we have our complete morons here too..

One poster on FB said she didn't want them to come because ., and I quote " they bring sickness and drugs"...

There are morons everywhere.

It is not moronic to not want what happened in Cologne - and other cities in Germany - on NYE.