A hot topic
Things are heating up here in ol’ Ireland.
The gubmint seem surprised that a hotel destined to house seventy something male immigrants and asylum seekers was burned down just to prevent a foreign invasion. This is not the first time this has happened and naturally it’s blamed on the “far right”.
For the last few years Ireland has had an “open door” policy towards immigration. We constantly hear about how we are a welcoming country [aren’t the Irish wonderful?] and how foreign countries accepted Irish in the past so we must of course reciprocate. One of the many problems is that we just don’t have the room to accommodate them. The latest immigrants are just turned out to sleep on the streets.
For a while now the gubmint has been requisitioning hotels and the like to house immigrants. The somewhat hot hotel above is just such an example. Now this hotel is in a small rural village in the wilds of Galway. The village has limited facilities such as schools, shops or medical facilities. There were significant protests prior to the fire and as the locals pointed out, the village just couldn’t handle the influx. There was also considerable fear for the young kids and old folk who would suddenly face a potential threat from a load of foreign men of dubious origin. Needless to say, the gubmint never bothered consulting the locals before assigning the hotel.
The resentment is growing. People have had enough. The is a growing groundswell of resistance to the open door immigration policy. The main cry is that priority should be given to the many thousands of Irish who are homeless before taking on a large number of foreigners. It’s not the far right who are causing the problem. It’s the ordinary locals in the villages and towns around the country who are raising their voices, The problem isn’t caused by the far right or even the locals – it is caused by the gubmint who refuse to consult with anyone before dumping a load of strangers into small rural communities. It is the gubmint who wants to bask in the glory of Ireland being such a welcoming country.
I don’t necessarily agree with burning down hotels but it does show how the resistance is growing. Even worse there is a growing antipathy towards all foreigners even those who have been living here for years.
If there is a far right problem, it is entirely of the gubmint’s making.
I’m beginning to think it’s deliberate so they can crack down on our legitimate dissent when they move to the next stage.
It’s a great excuse for them to rush through all sorts of new laws such as their dreams of police body-cams and face recognition technology.
This is one reason we moved from Salem to Condon. We stayed in Oregon but left all the tents on sidewalks and associated panhandler craziness behind.
I was thinking the term ‘Progressive’ had something to do with progress. Apparently, I was wrong.
No point consulting the locals, we all know what the answer would be. The second word would be ‘Off’.
They meet with the locals, tell them what’s about to happen and then bugger off before anyone can raise an objection or even a question. Job done. Locals consulted.
Money Week (UK Investing Mag 8/12/23) The Revolt of the Masses
The only surprise is that the workers have put up with their elites for so long
It’s not just about migrants — it’s a class struggle (Photo Caption)
Riots broke out in Ireland last month after an Algerian-born immigrant stabbed five people, including three children, reports the Washington Examiner. Prosecuting those who broke the law should have been the end of the matter, says the paper. “But the Irish government is sensitive about the fact that their immigration policies, which have led to almost 20% of the country’s population being foreign-born, are unpopular. The pace of mass migration has been particularly dramatic in Ireland, with almost half of all migrants… entering in just the past five years.”
The rioters are easily dismissed as hooligans. But is that all there is to it? Is it just about immigration? Does anger increase until the riff-raff the “deplorables” vote for Geert Wilders or Donald Trump? That’s what the press and politicians tell us. In the simple-minded approach of the propaganda press, immigration = good; those who oppose it = bad. The Financial Times, a reliable mouthpiece for the global elite, was quick to see the challenge. In the Netherlands, Wilders won a solid victory by running for prime minister with an anti-immigrant message. His “victory is a warning for Europe”, says the FT. A warning of what? Of “a political earthquake…[Wilders’] success will embolden other anti-immigration, eurosceptic populists who are hoping for big gains in European parliamentary elections in June”. That is, politicians might begin to care what the masses think! Ireland’s PM, however, hopes they don’t think at all. He intends to use the riot as an opportunity to crack down on “hate speech”. Rather than address the problem, he proposes to make it unlawful to say anything about it.
But immigration is a problem. And not the only one. Western elites have created a very uncomfortable and unsustainable world. Their governments print money and are almost all going broke — rapidly building up more debt than they can service, let alone pay. They are also setting much of the rest of the world against them with their financial sanctions and highhanded military policies. Their “green agenda”, too, along with immigration, debt and pettifogging regulation, means that younger generations of native-born citizens probably won’t enjoy the same freedom and prosperity as their parents.
It’s not just about migration though. It’s the revolt of the masses. Here, we turn to Karl Marx for insight. Wrong about so many things, he was right about this: there is a difference between the people who work on assembly lines (the proletariat) and the people who own them (capitalists). The former live on wages. The latter (grosso modo) live on the difference between wages paid and revenues received. The working class may rue the day the immigrants arrive: their wages will be held down by competition and their housing costs go up. But asset owners rejoice: their sales go up and their labour charges go down.
The interests of the workers are not the same as those of capitalists. And given an opportunity, the owners and politicians will conspire against the public, just as Adam Smith said they would. Then public policy twists towards the self- interest of the powerful few, at the cost of the powerless many. Here on the back page, we are about as far from Marxism as you can get. But even we can’t miss a kind of “class struggle” going on right now. An arrogant and incompetent elite have rigged the system in their own favour. What’s surprising is that the workers have put up with it for so long.
Having too much spare time on my hands I tend to ponder these topics.
The modern [Western] world is somewhat akin to the volcano in Iceland. Lots of little tremors all over the place until finally there is an eruption where all hell [literally?] breaks loose, maybe with a cataclysmic split in the crust. Certainly there have been many tremors here in Ireland and, by all accounts around the world too.
We live in interesting times?