The Government’s Duty to Repatriate the Non-Contributing Non-Native

The conceptual problem many people have with forceable repatriation of unwanted immigrants is that a person’s nationality is not morally relevant. Plenty of people born in a country can’t or won’t make a living for themselves either, but are tolerated and even housed, clothed and fed by welfare. The mistake of this objection make is that repatriation is not done on the basis of nationality, but of contribution.

It is a moral duty of any resident in a country to pay their own way, usually by being employed and paying taxes. This duty is waived for extreme disabilities of birth or accident. Someone who will not work or lacks the skills and temperament to be employable is a free-loader. They are failing in one of their duties as a resident, and if they can be sent home, they should be. Their place can then be taken by someone willing to contribute. No country or community is under any obligation to take in and support people who are lazy, work-shy or who lack the skills and temperament to be usefully employable. Nor is any country under any obligation to train or to socialise adults from other countries who force themselves across its borders.

Castro may have been the first to export his criminals and psychiatric cases to the West as a form of warfare. The Russians certainly exported their Jewish criminals to Israel. The latest version has been the influx of vigorous young men of military age from the Maghreb and other Muslim countries into Europe. They are not refugees.

Real refugees are families with children: equal numbers of men and women and of all ages and classes. If the young Muslim men are in mortal danger, what has happened to their mothers, grandmothers, sisters and nieces? Why haven't these young men died defending their women? Because their sisters and mothers are in no danger. Which means the young men are in no danger either. Most have been sent by their families, villages or local governments to farm welfare benefits from Europe. By definition of the process, they are the least-skilled, the least-well-adjusted, the least valuable in their own countries. (And some, the criminal and the disruptive and the mentally-ill, were let loose by governments and warlords.)

No country, wealthy or poor, Occidental or Oriental, is under any obligation to take these young men. Indeed, any government is under an obligation, to its native population, to remove them.

Removing over a million vigorous young men by force would be a mis-use of the police and armed forces. Since they have been sent to farm welfare, they must not be paid welfare. (Fed and housed for humanity’s sake, but the bill comes off that country’s foreign aid budget.) The unskilled must not be offered jobs or training and they must be confined to camps, where they can sit and rot until they sign up to be sent home. If they try to escape, they can be deported as criminals. They were sent because they were the least useful people in their families and communities, and they can be sent back for the same reason. They are not the receiving country’s problem. They are the sending country’s problem. Their fate is not on the conscience of the receiving country.

Look carefully, and what the people are doing is letting these young men rot. Some are not, and more fool them, for all their good intentions. It is the first duty of any government to protect and advance the interests of its citizens. The British reminded its government of that duty recently. The Austrians, Americans, Germans, French, Dutch and many others will follow. We can only hope.

I have no problem with Westernised people coming to the West and wanting to work hard and do well. If they are not Westernised, they won't be productive, and so they won't be making any contributions.

Today, in Greece, an EU country, poor Greeks cannot afford bread even at 50 cents the loaf. There is a scheme where people with money can buy a loaf for a poor person who comes in later.

If there is any wealth to spare in the "rich" EU, maybe it should go to the Greeks, fellow EU members first. Or what is the point of being in the EU, or any other association?

The Official Theme Song of This Blog

A couple of Saturdays I spent the day doing bits, pieces, printing out some photographs to make a collage, and playing not a few Cameo videos on You Tube. This is now the official theme song of this blog. The dancing is terrific, especially the solo guy on stage doing those whirls.

 

If you’re not familiar with Cameo and the weird imagination of Larry Blackmon, search You Tube for “Cameo”, hook the iPad up to the TV and settle down for a treat.

I’m not living the single life portrayed in the video. Not with plastic stuck to my teeth and a daily routine that means I’m getting to sleep when most people are starting to do something indiscreet after one drink too many. And with this much grey hair.

But I’m living a single life. I don’t thank God in my morning prayers for not having made me a married man but that’s only because I don’t do morning prayers. I would if I did.

Kingsway 07:40 August

Burqinis and Astroturf

The Burqini, was created in 2004 by a Lebanese designer. How many women have been seen on French beaches wearing one? Very few. This summer, the designer's PR company sent a handful of women to the beaches of Nice and asked them to go paddling in a burqini. PR stunt. Call the Press, make an anonymous call to the Mayor’s office and maybe the Police.

The Mayor of Nice played along. He, along with many of his colleagues, needed some way to indicate to the ivory-tower politicians in Paris that he has genuine security concerns that he doesn't have the resources to address. And that it would be very useful if France didn't take any more of Angela's Army. So he picked on Mutual benefits for the Mayor and the designer. Bright green astroturf.

A simple provocation can rapidly become "the biggest story from Boston to Budapest”. Whenever we see a provocative story, we should ask: which PR agency or organisation arranged it? Whose cause does it publicise? Is it genuine grass or just astroturf? The presumption must always be that it's astroturf.

Centrepoint Hidden By Scaffolding

Through The Window, Black Rock, Throgmorton Avenue

Basquiat Becomes One Of My Things

I saw Julian Schnabel’s movie Basquiat when it came out in the UK, and it lifted my spirits something wonderful. I was intrigued by the Basquiat’s art - although the paintings in the movie are by Schnabel, Jeffery Wright and other assistants.  For a long time Basquiat was on my list of “Good Artists Whose Work I Wouldn’t Want On My Walls”.

(Jeffrey Wright actually painting a school-of-Basquiat.)

There was an article on Marion Maneker’s Art Market blog earlier this year about the fact that, though Basquiats do well with collectors and at auction, art museums don’t have many if any. There are none in Tate Modern. I had the answer as soon as I finished reading the sentence.

Imagine a Basquiat next to all those paintings in Tate Modern: it would simply drown them out. You would realise how damned polite all those Surrealists and whatever all else’s are. From memory of the collection there, only the Rothkos could stand up to the competition.



This sent me back to looking at his paintings again. I bought the affordable and well-illustrated book from the exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum and turned the pages looking at the pictures. This time around I found myself thinking that I wouldn’t mind having some of these on the walls. Whatever it was I had seen but couldn’t respond to, I could no respond to. So a couple of weeks ago, I saw the larger Now’s The Time (published by Prestel and pretty darn affordable) in Waterstone’s Piccadilly and snapped it up. And a pleasure to look through it is.

This happens from time to time. Something I’ve dismissed, ignored or simply filed as “Not My Thing” suddenly becomes one of my things. Time. Experience. More reading, looking and listening. Remind me to tell you how I came to like, rather than simply admire Eric Rohmer’s movies.