I posted this earlier in the year but now with all the attention focusing on the Syrian refugee crisis, I thought I might just post it again. Though more chaos has ensued since then, what with the added problems in Turkey, the main thrust of this is addressing the shame of the US and the EU in the way they have been ignoring this crisis of displaced people. How can we call ourselves human if we turn a deaf ear to those cries of the helpless and oppressed? I just signed a petition to force the US to accept more refugees and hope all of you in the US will do the same, as well as all of you in the EU will put pressure of your governments, too. Petitions seem such a weak gesture but it is our right as citizens in a democracy to be able to do that and for our government to listen. If only that were so in other countries I know of and live in. It shouldn’t take the picture of a drowned boy to move people. The cries of the millions should have been more than enough.
I’ve been reading articles by mostly American columnists and the US State Department, as well as other related articles over news agencies and, of course, in the Turkish Press since I do live here, explaining the causes of the Syrian conflict and bemoaning the escalating refugee crisis. At present there are over 4 million refugees in neighboring countries, though mostly, I might add, in Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan. One columnist made the comment: ” However, State Department officials believe that the U.S. has a responsibility to help innocent victims of war. Despite concerns, they have said it is likely that the U.S. will admit up to 2,000 more Syrian refugees by the end of the year.”
Of course, since January, 2012 to the end of February, 2015, the U.S. admitted a total of 335 Syrian refugees, which is pretty far from that overly generous pledge to admit 2,000. And as…
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Leonard Durso 
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Okay. I see it now. I was looking in my email spam folder.
Testimg again …
Allright & Thanks.
Glad we have that straightened out now.
Canada is no better in making promises. We are in the midst of an election and the current Prime Minister has made a mockery of the Canadian reputation while trying to use it to justify inaction.
I’m sorry to hear that. I have always had a better impression of Canada than the US, not only in my travels there but in terms of their policies.
Here is one of the most recent Harper Concentrative policy statements.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/conservatives-syrian-refugees-airlift-jason-kenney-1.3224967
I see what you mean. Elections always cloud the issues. The same is true in the US with all the jockeying for position leading up to the primaries. And in Turkey, we have a power hungry president who is punishing a Kurdish political party for taking enough votes away from HIS party to deny him his dream of an imperial presidency by rekindling an internal war with extremist Kurds in the hope of panicking voters to back him again in a new election slated for November. Politicians always seem to work on the principle f self-interest and never in the interest of others. The people who populate the countries are rarely to blame. It is always the governments of those countries that fail to live up to humanitarian values.
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