It’s World Refugee Day, but the majority of folk don't care because the corporate news media had them suckling on hate and ignorance for so long that they forgot what empathy feels like.
People no longer know why they should care for humanity's displaced. Not a day, week, month or year reserved for Refugee Awareness can alter the xenophobia that now consumes society.
In Gaza, famish people are lured into zones where they are promised food and then are shot by Israeli soldier or American mercenaries posing as food aid workers. Many escape these daily massacres, but many don't. It's something straight out of the annals of the Nazi Holocaust. But Israel has been granted impunity by the West to exterminate Palestinians. So it is normalised, sanitised and even propagandised as actions done by Palestinians themselves.
Refugees die in their hundreds off the coast of North Africa or are sold for slavery in Libya but no one cares. For a decade, the news media portrayed refugees as grifters, rapists and terrorists, so a dog drowning in a river gets more sympathy than a child drowning with their parents off the coast of Calais.
My Dad donated the last years of his life attempting to make Refugees Welcome. At my Dad's deathbed, Canada’s Minister for Refugees came to pay his respects.
In his typical fashion, my father said the minister's time should not be spent on him. "I am a goner, but the refugees can be saved."
As it turned out, Canada decided not to prioritise saving refugees. Instead, Canada became a cruel place for refugees to find sanctuary. Many live on the streets others are deported to the USA, where they are then shipped to concentration camps in El Salvador or elsewhere. The ones who remain in the USA, UK, EU or Canada face racism, violence and outright hatred by citizens who have been taught that the cost of living crisis is the fault of a society's most vulnerable rather than its wealthiest inhabitants.
In June of 2018, Harry Leslie Smith predicted he would be dead before Christmas. He was 95, and his body was tired from old age and the relentless work schedule he undertook during those last years of life "to not make his past our future."
He was exhausted and physically weak after being battered by an unforgiving and persistent lung infection. Despite his diminished health, my Dad agreed to appear in a video for UNHCR Canada. It was to help make refugees welcome. My dad knew his time was short, but he didn't want to be selfish with the time left to him. Harry Leslie Smith used his last few months to advocate for others because he was still haunted by the refugee crisis he'd witnessed in 1945 following WW2.
Please share my Dad’s video as widely, as possible.
For the last 18 months, I've been piecing together my Dad's Green and Pleasant Land, which was unfinished at the time of his death. It covers his life from 1923 to July 1945 concluding with Labour winning the General election. The book at least in its beta form is ready and shortly its final chapter excerpt will be posted. Let me know if you want a copy as I am compiling a list.
Your subscriptions are so important to my personal survival because like so many others who struggle to keep afloat, my survival is a precarious daily undertaking. The fight to keep going was made worse- thanks to getting cancer along with lung disease and other comorbidities, which makes life more difficult to combat in these cost-of-living, tariff war crisis times. So, if you can, join with a paid subscription, which is just 3.50 a month, or a yearly subscription or a gift subscription. I promise the content is good, relevant and thoughtful. But if you can’t it is all good too because I appreciate we are in the same boat. Take Care, John
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