Two nights in a row, that’s something of an acheivement lately. I’ve been blogging for a month now and if my connection holds up I find it a valuable way to vent some feelings. I’m quite gratified that some people (or maybe it’s just one person reading often!) have been looking although I maintain that isn’t why I’m doing it. Work has been actually quite busy now, I’m starting to get things to do as well as various parts of settling down and aclimatising. I like the department and the people have all been friendly.

Back to the politics and as the title may suggest the bee in my bonnet today is regarding the asylum situation. I find it staggering that with the EU expansion now so many countries are talking about not letting people in etc. etc. The key phrases at the moment appear to be that we are happy to encourage workers to do specific jobs that we need (let’s face it -they mean the shit ones) but we don’t want people coming here and thinking they can abuse our benefits system. Christ if they can make a living off the benefits system then employ them as teachers because I can’t see how with the pittance usually given anyone can survive off the state benefits here. Basically the whole EU thing is a sham, it’s just a vehicle for the TNCs and the rich Western corporations to have unlimited access to get in and buy up cheap land and infrstructure for there own gain. They have no wish to ameliorate the surroundings or the lives of the people, unless it’s a direct investment that will yield a dividend. So whilst the US juggernaut rumbles through many countries for it’s own interests the EU seems to have adopted a corporate ‘lebensraum’ policy that Hitler would have approved of. And yet people in the West are whipped up into a frenzy about these “spongers” who are taking their jobs and living off their taxes, these “economic migrants” who are painted as people who just come here on a whim because they want to make lots of money. How the fuck are they going to do that unless they’re involved in criminal activity, most are just likely to be exploited by those who are. Economic migrants is a highly ironic term -the West has usually exploited these countries so much that ordinry people are forced to leave the country if they want to provide any more than basic survival for them and their family -and why should they live like that when we have so much we upgrade appliances just because they don’t have the latest features or design, when we can go to shops piled high with enough food to feed a small country, where people drive around alone in vehicles large enough to have a family live in them? Sorry Western world you reap what you show, the marketing has worked you told the rest of the world how wonderful it all is here and they now believe it because they have seen such riches they could never have dreamed of and I’m afraid it is natural human emmotion to try to better your existence, it isn’t greed that’s just capitalist anthropological revisionism in my view, it’s just a desire to provide your children with a better life than you’ve had. If the West doesn’t like it then sort the fucking problems out in the rest of the world to make it habitable rather than spend billions on wars and missions to Mars. It doesn’t take rocket science to find the solution!

There was just a program on Abdul Haq an Afghan who could have led a relatively bloodless revolution in Afghanistan but instead was betrayed by the Americans and principally the CIA in favour of their warlords. It also went into how they screwed up the hunt for the leaders of the Taliban and Al Q and basically allowed them free reign to escape to Pakistan. I say allowed them, if they didn’t then the balls up whether through lack of geographical intelligence or incompetence is too mind-boggling to contemplate.