The Leonids will charge at us in the night between November 17 and 18 (mostly in the after-midnight hours) – the most temperamental of the annual meteor showers, often sleepy, occasionally so ferocious that people feared the sky was falling and the world ending. For this stream of meteors, which appear to fly out from constellation Leo, meets Earth head on, at the highest possible speed, and must vary from sparse to very dense.
Gandhi wouldn’t lose his cool
But I’m less perfect. Yesterday, late in a Saturday, I came to a news item that made me grimly angry. Anger is sometimes useful – that’s a theme in a story Tilly finished writing yesterday. I fired off this to my MP:
Britain will send troops to build barbed wire? To help Poland keep refugees out? I am ashamed to be British.
There are pregnant women. There are small children. There are sick people. They have been tricked into letting themselves be brought from the Middle East and left stuck in a forest with no shelter, in temperatures below freezing. For this they have parted with their life savings.
Help Poland instead by flying these few thousand to Britain and give them asylum. By the sufferings that drove them from their homes, and their sufferings at this minute, they deserve it.
As you surely know, the tyrant of Belarus, Lukashenko, held onto power by imprisoning his opponents and rigging his re-election, so the European Union imposed sanctions on Belarus. So Lukashenko found a merry way to get revenge on the EU: adding to the torrent of refugees hoping to get into Europe. People-trafficking, as by a gang. Belarus’s agents offer desperate people in Middle Eastern countries, mostly the long, long-suffering Kurds, air flights to Europe. When they get to Minsk, Belarus’s capital, they are charged about all the money they have and driven to the border with Poland. Poland’s right-wing government keeps them out, by declaring a state of emergency and a border zone forbidden to journalists or foreign observers or aid workers and building border fences with mountain ranges of barbed wire. The refugees – perhaps with no possessions but what’s in the pockets of the short pants some of them are wearing – are dumped in the forests along the border, pushed back – with blows of rifle butts, sometimes with gunfire – by the border police of both countries. And it’s mid November, cold in Britain, colder in the depth of the continent, faling below freezing as each night falls. There is nothing to warm these souls but stars and meteors.
A few refugees have used logs to batter through the barbed wire, and a few good Poles get blankets and hot tea to them and, when the border police get there too, try (with unknown but unlikely success) to explain that international law requires that refugees must be given the chance to apply for asylum. So Poland’s government’s priority is to increase the security of its border: more troops to reinforce the police, more fence.
So the British government steps in. To help whom? – Poland. It sends ten soldiers to help build those fences. Presumably they are from the Royal Army Engineers, with whom I had to spend part of my army service, learning how to dig latrines and bridge ravines and stick plastic explosives to railway tracks and erect barbed wire.
What is Britain’s motive for this despicable intervention? Britain and Poland are both squabbling with the EU: Britain over the status of Northern Ireland, Poland because it has been fined by the European Court of Justice for declaring that its own laws override the more enlightened EU ones.
America and Britain were built by immigrants, are enriched by them, have traditions of welcoming the huddled masses “yearning to breathe free.” Britain has enough second homes and ducal palaces to lodge forty thousand refugees as they begin to integrate.
You can roar at the British prime minister, wherever you are:
or
boris.johnson.mp@parliament.uk
At least I think you can; let us know how it goes.
__________
This weblog maintains its right to be about astronomy or anything under the sun.
Lukashenko NO ONE should hold any brief for, though he has had his own rows with Putin, he is in effect the stooge of Putin. So we can see that Putin ,may very well be behind the bizarre choice of Belarus as a gateway into the EU. I will not lecture Poland on what it has to do to protect its sovereignty—against the machinations of Russia, Belarus, OR an EU that has gone way beyond iits ideal mission. The EU should have been nothing more than a customs union, or at most a free trade area. AAre not Poland’s laws—enlightened or not a matter for the Poles? Or, for that matter, Great Britain’s for the Scots, English, Welsh, Cornish and Northern Irish to hash out? As for the Earl of Northumberland, that house is either his property, or that of the National Trust, What they do with it is their affair.
Back during the Presidency of Benjamin Harrison, the Russians had a pogrom. The USA accepted many refugees from that pogrom BUT our Minister Plenipotentiary in St. Petersburg issued a demarche to the Tsarist Government reminding it of its duty to maintain order and further reminding it of that provocation of mass movements of refugees was in itself an unfriendly act. The guilty parties here may need to be reminded this today—especially in the light of the present day security environment.
I feel that the word “lecture” is over-used. I have the right to tell my own government where I think it is wrong or what I think it should do, and I also have the right to convey such opinions (for instance in the form of Amnesty International appeals against injustices) to the authorities in China, Honduras, Poland. As their citizens, too, have the right to criticize the US or the UK. Sure, I am less likely to be thoroughly informed on matters in far counties, or to have any influence there. But the validity of what we say derives from what we say, not from who or where we are.
Guy,
I don’t mean to preach, but I have some helpful suggestions if you’re seeking to be “more perfect.” You’ve invoked the name of Gandhi and I like that. Indeed, he would never loose his cool. Actually I’ll go one further to say that anyone who has real patience could never be pushed to lose it. Gandhi was either a perfect man or one that was well along the way to perfecting himself. “Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect,” said Jesus. Looks like Gandhi found that way to be perfect, IMHO. So with that said I’ll ask you, Is it good to be angry? Is it useful to be angry? What good comes from anger? If anyone will defend anger, can you cite one example where good blossomed out of anger? For that matter, can anyone defend anger WITHOUT making an excuse for it?
When you feel like speaking to your government, try putting aside the anger first. Then, know that you are not God and neither should your government play God. Examine yourself and ask carefully. Do not ask for errors. When you know your limits, you will know that you have a democratic voice, one vote, and the charge over your personal space and belongings. Beyond this, you rightly have nothing except you take it.
A righteous Gandhi way of helping to solve this problem you have undertaken would look like this: 1) Vote, CHECK; 2) Write your MP and offer your service and advice; 3) Open your own house to a migrant family that you can comfortably accommodate. If you do not feel comfortable doing this, write down what prevents you from acting in a right way and is acting to enfeeble you. Separate out the excuses remembering that excuses are ways of giving you license not to practice what you preach and make you a hypocrite. You will now see either the errors of your thinking, or you’ll see that you’ve helped others, or you will see that you’ve helped yourself, or you will see some miracle happen which you don’t feel the need to explain. Either way, the outcome will be amazing and fruitful. After all, it’s easy to have an opinion and it’s easy to wretch and cry at your government to “do it for you.” It’s even easy to afflict your opposition. But it takes fortitude to be perfect, righteous, and never a hypocrite.
I realize that my words can be quite painful to deal with and have quite a “bite” to them, but it’s a pain that damages the god-complex within each one of us – the ego. Let it hurt and learn how it can be removed from you like Gandhi was removed from his ego. Know also that stress and pain is required for the growth of any organism. Plants don’t even bear fruit unless they’re stressed. Dealing with that stress in a graceful way takes practice and patience.
;
I’m looking forward to this week’s Leonids as well as the upcoming partial lunar eclipse. Thanks for the reminder.
Best wishes from across the pond,
Dan
Dan, thank you for your high advice, which doesn’t pain me in the least.
Slow calm gentle approaches are the best in general, but the case of the refugees freezing in the forest demands quick action. To get quick action you sometimes have to shout.
We have several times talked of taking in refugees or refugee. When living alone I sometimes took in homeless people. Unfortunately the house we’ve moved into is still not in a condition to make any guest comfortable.
That’s why I alluded to the Duke of Northumberland’s mansion almost next door to us!
Nice graphic. Glad It’s just a picture. Wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of that lion’s rage.
I wish there didn’t have to be refugees. If Middle Eastern countries (and other countries) would create a constitution patterned after the brilliant US constitution, their citizens would have the freedom to express their full potential and make their country a better place to be.
There’s a partial lunar eclipse on the 16th too but these are very subtle and you don’t see much just a slight darkening of the lunar surface.Boris is being pragmatic with troops in Poland as he knows that the people trying to get in with be following the Pet Shop Boy’s tune of “….go west 🎶🎵!”I don’t know how they got into Belarus to begin with as it’s a rather challenging state to visit.Sadly my visa for it is in my old expired passport not that I’ve been far in 2 years!Still don’t worry according to Sir Elon Musk we’ll all be living on Mars in 2 years!