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Tuesday 6 December 2016

214. ‘The 3 Million’ - Aleppo…


…and the compassion vacuum.

The current rotten crop of world movers and shakers show that they fall not just short of the task in hand but short of basic humanity. We’d be better off if we were elephants…

If you haven’t heard of them, The 3 Million is a group trying to ensure that EU citizens, settled in the UK prior to the madness of Brexit, are treated as – well – human beings. Is that too much to ask? In the present environment, it seems so.

From those who were abused after the referendum result in June (and I was one caught up in the post-referendum xenophobic shit despite being born in the UK) to EU citizens with British children whose status is uncertain, there is deep unease. Stress and unnecessary worry is being caused by the ongoing nonsense of the vacuous position Brexit means Brexit (see blog. 207).

Theresa May has been scurrying round to pet companies assuring them they will get everything post-Brexit that they got before June 23rd. The Prime minister ought, by now, to have given similar reassurance to UK based European citizens.

The current expensive supreme court appeal by the government is a side show. The whinging of a Labour Party that did so little to make the case for EU membership prior to June, is irrelevant. Nothing more than pathetic babbling; posturing about the paint work and when the wreck will be towed away, after a nasty car crash.

I was wondering why videos on you tube of, for example, a mother elephant spending 11 hours rescuing a baby elephant or a whole herd risking their safety to pull a calf out of a bog, get so many views. Then I realised. It is a craving for what we thought of as humanity. It’s got to the point where we look to the animal kingdom for evidence of compassionate behaviour (see blog. 209 - Put the Monkeys in Charge).

Have we forgotten what happens when compassion dies and fear-fuelled bigotry becomes a driving force? Elephants supposedly never forget but it seems humans do.

At the extreme end of the compassion wasteland is Aleppo. It is not the only humanitarian disaster right now but it is certainly contending for 2016 title of Hell on Earth.

While I am not equating the slaughter in Aleppo with the way Britain has sunk into the stinking quagmire of spite, bigotry and short-sightedness (which signals the end of a positive status in the world) I state without hesitation that one is the thin end of the same wedge.
SO – yes – when we humans, desperate to find some good on the planet surf you tube – we end up watching wild animals.

We glance at Aleppo side on. We cannot look at it directly, it is too grim. To see human beings behaving like this in the 21st century fries the minds of decent people. But the way EU citizens, resident in Britain, are being left in limbo is just a lesser level of lack of compassion. It smacks of an us-and-them world none of us should be proud of.

But, I suppose, while humans are demeaning and slaughtering each other they’ve done a pretty good job of wiping out elephants too.

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Residents of Syria's Aleppo are at risk of extermination and the clock is ticking on the besieged city as winter sets in, a top UN envoy told the Security Council last week.

Aleppo

What shall we have for tea
While another child
Is blown apart
In Aleppo

What shall we watch on TV
Baking
Gardening
Celebrity freak shows
While homes are pulverised
Mothers clutch children who hold
Their breath

Western clocks tick slowly
Alleviate boredom
With online gambling
Parade of women
In ‘fantasy lingerie’
Would you like
A three-million-dollar bra? 

In Aleppo a deafening clock ticks fast
And sometimes
Suddenly
Stops

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