| Author | Message | ||
     Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 3663 Registered: 03-2005 |
I'm running out of things to say but it's still important to say something. Just thinking of all of you over there. | ||
| Andrew Kerr Member Username: Andrew_k Post Number: 1084 Registered: 04-2005 |
Thanks Randy. Don't where to start. I begin to have a huge intolerance for all religions. And having read Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" recently, the deliberate invasion of Arabic countries to feed the capitalist machine is a massive factor in this hatred now being shown to the West. We have plunged Iraq and Libya into absolute turmoil. | ||
| Andrew Kerr Member Username: Andrew_k Post Number: 1085 Registered: 04-2005 |
And the French have an enormous problem with their colonial legacy, racism and terrible unemployment amongst the young of the "banlieues". That they don't seem willing to admit or deal with. 25 miles from us in the Lot et Garonne there is small town called Fumel. In the 1960s a metal foundry employed 2000 people, many of whom had been brought over from Algeria (whole families). Today the site is practically shut and there are groups of disaffected youth hanging around on street corners. Virtually zero job prospects. So France has done very well economically from using the Arabic labour, but now there is not the manufacturing and jobs ? I imagine that a lot of these kids feel completely lost between 2 different cultures and countries. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 3664 Registered: 03-2005 |
Andrew, after a fashion we have this same story playing out all over the place, in the interior of the U.S. and the English midlands and north. A lot of manufacturing jobs shifted from the higher paid richer EU countries to the relatively newer EU members like Slovakia, giving their formerly depressed populations a nice boost for a generation but I guess we now know the next chapter. Long ago in another century I remember a professor telling my economics class that the future lay in the service economy. At the time I thought "huh?" Now, of course, it's obvious. We can't just keep making "stuff" to toss into landfills or the ocean or shoot into the atmosphere. And people need something to do, a way to feel valuable and included. And they need to be paid well for it. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 7869 Registered: 05-2005 |
I went into work today thinking I'd be busy with Nice stories, but then Turkey happened in the meantime, and there will be something else in a few days or weeks. I can't remember a time when there was so much relentlessly awful news so often and so close together. It's beyond depressing, especially when every atrocity brings us one step closer to a clown prince US president. |