The Not So Magnificent Seven.

I wonder at what point we will look at the current position in France and accept that this is part of a multi-level and complex narrative that has led us to once more adopt a language that dehumanises and  "otherises" people?

You know, "people," the same DNA and so on who are now "cockroaches", are part of a swarm or a pack. These words are important because they grant a hidden permission to perceptually disperse, cleanse and stamp on rather than to embrace, help and accommodate.

And like all dangerous miss-assumptions a mythology is created. We are told that we are being invaded, not because we are good but because we are soft. We are also the most invaded because we are the softest and in some bizarre world of twisted logic, we kind of deserve it. 

This puts us in an apparently strong yet disastrously flawed moral place. Because we see ourselves as "over-good" we allow ourselves to believe that other nations are "under-good". That's why migrants think the UK is a soft touch and they ALL want to come here.

Here's something from the Irish Times, published a couple of days ago.

Far be from me or the Irish Times to burst anyone's bubble here but I'm pretty certain that this information is unlikely to make its way into the (our) tabloids that seem to have a vested interest in distortion and misrepresentation.

The significant hike in the numbers since 2014 isn't the result of global misunderstanding based around easy benefits, free housing, health care and education in the UK, rather it's to do with the humanitarian disaster in the Middle East that produced his sort of thing-a refugee camp in Jordan.

Umbilically linked to "The War On Terror", it is one of the the ill-considered outcomes of what happens when myopic nationalism is allowed to transcend greater humanitarian well-being. It is fuelled when national interests are gleefully re-branded by the business of war and the profits it generates as it exponentially multiplies in the toxic Petri-dish of:

1. Enforced military service (including child soldiers) as a weapon
2. Rape and torture as a weapon
3. Starvation as a weapon
4. Religion as a weapon
5. Ethnicity as a reason
6. Difference as a justification
7. Mass population movement/genocide regarded as a desirable outcome

So there's my Not So Magnificent Seven. One that we, our European and Global partners need to get to grips with in order to design an intervention template of more productive outcomes for the stricken-many.

Will it cost? Of course it will! But, wealth isn't the problem here. It is the manner in which it is produced, distributed and recycled that has reduced us to a point where good people are prepared to advocate the death by drowning, electrocution on rail-tracks or shooting of another human being who has been dehumanised not by their behaviour and aspirations but by us and our pitiful, ongoing self regard.

Like All Exceptional People, She Doesn't Think She Is.......

I come from a big family and just over 20 years ago it became a lot bigger than I thought when,as an adopted person, I connected to my birth family and a whole new chapter of experiences that I suspect is far from over!

Like any journey it has "had its moments" and here's one of a few us toasting the life of my Mom's husband Pat, who died at the end of March, a man of great sensitivity, compassion, intellect and humour.

It was here that I had a conversation with my cousin's daughter: a remarkable woman who is going to Nepal on a 3 Month V.S.O programme and here's a link to her "Just Giving" page.

https://www.justgiving.com/Eilish-Sorohan/?utm_id=13

Here Eilish explains a little more about the programme and its outcomes. There's more to it than the words for it is here we have the gateway to the heart of an exceptional person who has chosen to give herself to the critical elements of our humanity that are bigger than ourselves. She has made the choice to enhance the health and well being of others. She has opted to improve an as yet un-navigated future and the events of the week-end serve to sharpen her purpose as an already impoverished country has had its infrastructure decimated.
I hope you feel able to make a donation.
May all of you journey well and in peace, arrive safely and do no harm to others.

John