What's in a word?

So I woke up this morning to this:

http://metro.co.uk/2016/01/30/hundreds-of-masked-men-beat-up-refugee-children-in-stockholm-during-revenge-attack-5652849/

And the article in the Daily Mail (which I'm not linking to because I don't want them getting any more ad revenue) is using the word Migrant to describe the victims.

Migrants.

It's a word the right wing loves throwing around these days. It comes from the Latin migrāre, to change one's abode. It implies a choice. It implies that they woke up and decided they were going to pack up and head over here for a better life, like Katie Hopkins' imaginary 'army of cockroaches.'

But what's the harm in a simple word?

The vast majority of the 'migrants' were bombed out of their homes by our governments. A brief look at any shots of Syria will tell you that.

Source: http://www.pythagorasandthat.co.uk/a-syrian-street-in-2011-and-2014

And Syria's just one of the countries where we've bombed, or funded insurgencies, or otherwise screwed their infrastructure to the point that the people can no longer live there. So they did NOT 'change their abode.' Their abode was changed by war. They were driven out of their homes, and they are looking for a new one.

The word you are looking for is refugee.

1680s, from French refugié, noun use of past participle of refugier "to take shelter,protect," from Old French refuge (see refuge ). First applied to French Huguenots whomigrated after the revocation (1685) of the Edict of Nantes. The word meant "oneseeking asylum," till 1914, when it evolved to mean "one fleeing home" (first appliedin this sense to civilians in Flanders heading west to escape fighting in World War I).In Australian slang from World War II, reffo.

noun
1. a person who has fled from some danger or problem, esp political persecution: refugees from Rwanda

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/refugee?s=t

When David Cameron uses a word like migrant, it is a very deliberate linguistic choice, even if it not at a conscious level. It is a change from passive to active. It changes the image in the listener or the reader's mind from those seeking refuge, those desperately dragging themselves through country after country seeking a better life, into dehumanised targets for our ire. The same way the same paper that supported the Fascist Oswald Moseley warned us about the outrage of 'aliens' and how they were 'pouring into this country,' and is now comparing the refugees to rats.

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/07/31/daily-mail-1938-jews_n_7909954.html

Floods. Hordes. Migrants. The same words. The same paper. The same meaning.

I found myself wondering how it is that the mob responsible for the violence yesterday could have done it. How they could have walked up to a complete stranger and hated them so much that they would beat three children in broad daylight.

The above article makes it clear that this was 'sparked' by the death of Alexandra Mehzer, stabbed by a refugee child. The mob see themselves as taking revenge for that, I have no doubt. Whipped up into a frenzy by the media and the political right wing over the refugee crisis.

But I have no doubt either that the refugee child was blinded by the same fear of us that drove the mob to yesterday's atrocity. I also have no doubt that somewhere in a refugee camp right now, someone is reading a sensationalist report about 200 men beating up a sixteen year old and planning revenge against the 'monsters' who attacked kids.

And I also have no doubt that when it happens, there'll be a Daily Mail journo all ready to go with another 500 words of fear and misinformation, a tory MP who'll stand up and tell us they must be stopped, these migrants. All ready to whip us all up into giving them a little more ad money or a little more power.

We're all going round and round and round taking revenge for this, and that, and the other: a pointless and ongoing cycle of destruction. I asked myself why it is that the attackers couldn't see the refugees as victims, how this cycle of blame is being perpetuated. It's easy.

It's the words.

The press is dehumanising everyone involved for sensationalisation, to be the paper that everyone reads. The news is turning into clickbait. Why use a word like refugee - a nice sympathetic word - when you can use the word migrant, and grab everyone's attention?

Get some clickthrough. Or in Cameron's case, get some votes. Whip up the public into being afraid enough to vote for the warmongers who put us in this situation by bombing the Syrians in the first place. Sod the consequences, we're all just playing the game and if you criticise that, you're just naive. There's money to be made from the latest two minutes of hate. There's power to be gained.

You want to know why we're in this war? Why it keeps going? Why people are killing each other?

Because we've all become afraid of each other, and the right wing are literally making a killing out of it.

Welcome to a Conservative Britain!

From their own 2015 manifesto, here's what you can expect over the next five years:

We can fuck you up the ass, and there's nothing you can do about it!

The number one thing stopping any government getting away with whatever sketchy shit it likes is the European Court of Human Rights. It over-rules our courts, and it's a fucking good thing too. If they didn't, our government would almost literally be unaccountable.

Of course the Tories want rid of it, citing the difficulties getting rid of Abu Quatada and almost certainly EU regulations about Bananas or some shit. Hell, Theresa May still thinks it protects people from being deported if they have a cat (hint; it doesn't, and she's been told off for saying that on the news).

I think they threw her in a wheely-bin. I'm not good at remembering the news. 

So if they're unhindered by a higher authority, what can they do? Pretty much anything they like. But specifically, they can do some pretty terrifying things with the following policies suggested in their manifesto:

• Police-led prosecutions to be 'further extended,'
• 'Semi-custodial' sentencing allowing police to detain offenders in custody for 'extended periods'
• Ability to ban organisations that fall short of meeting the terrorism act's definitions (so anyone they don't like, basically)
• More boundary reforms

The Boundary reforms are probably the most concerning, because they're at the root of why the conservatives are in power right now with only 36.9% of the vote. That's only 6.4% more than Labour. But still the conservatives won 330 seats and Labour only got 232. How can the conservatives win a clear majority? Look at a map of the different voting boundaries and you'll see why:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2015/results

Notice how the blue areas have a lot more small, compact constituencies? They're at the heart of the imbalance. Each constituency gets one vote. So the tories literally get more votes, because they've engineered things so that the regions of the UK that tend to vote Tory are divided up into more constituencies.

Doesn't sound fair? Well, because we've had nothing but Conservative and Labour since about the 1920s, and they both used to benefit from this system, nobody's complained. Unfortunately now that Labour have pissed off the Scots, it's not working for them any more, leaving one, big fat beneficiary who now intends to rewrite the rules to their benefit.

(link to relevant tumblr post)

If we still have a European Court of Human Rights by then, we might be able to stop them, given that the right to fair elections is one of the things that they oversee. I say might, because they could still manipulate the laziness of the general population by implementing photo ID voter registration.

Poorer areas (who are more likely to vote against the Tories) tend to respond very poorly to voter registration, because they're too busy working two jobs to update their photo id, cart it down to the local council office (assuming there's one nearby), stand in a queue and fill out a bunch of forms. Richer and more prosperous areas have the time and the energy to do so (and have generally better maintained public services that are able to keep up with demand).

So you end up with a lot of registered voters in Tory areas, and very few in labour areas. When they redefine the voting boundaries, they'll be redrawn based on the amount of registered voters. Meaning that the situation with all of those extra votes in the Tory heartland and a few vast reds scattered everywhere else is about to get a lot worse.

Of course, even if they fail to get rid of the ECoHR, they'll still be able to do any and all of the following:

Benefit reforms!

• 'Tougher' day one work requirements for job seekers (I'll be interested to see if it's even possible to get tougher without using the word 'workhouse'),
• 18-21 year olds excluded from Jobseekers Allowance and given 6 months 'Youth Allowance', after which they must get a job / training / disappear from the statistics / die (whatever's quickest),
• No housing benefit for 18-21 year olds, so good luck if your parents are abusive, dead or kicking you out!
• More sick / disabled people to be classified fit to work by ATOS,
• Support for Homeless people and mental health care to be hidden behind new and exciting 'bonds' that will doubtless be unadvertised and difficult to access, as with most social care now Jobcentres have strict targets and most of the CAB offices are gone.

Tax Reform!

• Further corporate tax decrease. It's not even veiled behind colourful language, they're proudly boasting they'll decrease corporate tax.

Justice reform!

• EU referendum in 2017. Lets see how much a combined front of the Murdoch press and our own government can scare us by then!
• 'Deport first, appeal later' policy on immigration. Direct quote!
• Police no longer allowed to access journalists phone records (Thanks for the recommendation Ms. Brooks!),
• Police-led prosecutions to be further extended,
• 'Semi-custodial' sentencing allowing police to detain offenders in custody for 'extended periods',
• SCRAP THE HUMAN RIGHTS ACT (I'm not sure how UKip managed to get more attention than this),
• 'British Bill of Rights' to be decided by a bunch of old white men, and Sith lord Theresa Palpatine-May (you know, the one who voted against gay rights including marriage, has been found in contempt of court over detaining an Algerian man, and deported Jackie Nanyonjo to Uganda, where her illegal status as a lesbian has forced her into hiding),
• European Court of Human Rights will no longer be able to correct injustice in the UK.

Most worrying of all:

• Ability to ban organisations that fall short of meeting the terrorism act's definitions (so anyone they don't like, basically),
• Ban / disband nonviolent extremists as defined above,
• Stop 'extremist' individuals from using the internet, or teaching at a university.

Now read these again in light of Home Secretary Theresa May's responses over the detention of Journalist David Miranda. If the government want to call anything terrorism, they can; and just in case they can't, they still want the power to act even if it falls short of any approved definition. Russell Brand's a bit shouty and anti-government. Maybe he can be a terrorist...


Education reform!

• Schools that OFSTED likes can basically do what they like and get free money,
• Everyone else gets threats of closure, funding cuts (helpful for schools in poor economic areas!) or being turned into an academy.

Civil reform!

• Continued censorship of the internet, extending from piracy to porn,
• More boundary reforms,
• Proof of id to vote, so less of those objectionable poor people will register, and the number of Tory safe seats can increase,
• Extend the vote to racist ex-pats on the Costa del Sol (and presumably the ghost of Thatcher),
• NIMBY law allowing locals to protest against new housing, developments and basically anything in Oxfordshire,
• Inheritance tax cap effective at £1 million as long as you put it in property (so you can buy a million quid block of flats, fill it with plebs and hand it on to your family safe in the knowledge they will be carrying on your legacy of spiteful manipulation of basic human needs),
• Decrease co-operation with Europe (proven stability & interaccountability) and increase trade links with India and China (shocking human/civil rights records, poverty stricken manual labourer class and - actually now that I think about it, all-round Conservative wet dream).

It's all in there, check for yourself at http://www.conservatives.com/manifesto if you want. I know you won't.

Because let's face it, you were probably part of the third of the British population who didn't even turn up to vote yesterday.

Democracy!