on the thesis that 'there's a deep evil at the heart of the west'

great. bollocking train disruptions on horsemouth's new route over september weekends. horsemouth has the return portion of a ticket he needs to use before september 25th but he must also be back at the homestead the 27th/ 28th/ 29th to cover for his mum being away at the ballet in birmingham (with his brother).

get out your diaries and start planning 

'there's a deep evil at the heart of the west' opined a friend (in a private communication). horsemouth agrees - look at gaza (failure to intervene), look at iraq and afghanistan (intervention), look at libya (look at all the fallout from the arab spring),  look at the former soviet union (driven to the brink of collapse) and  the wars of succession from it.  

the one that worries horsemouth at the moment is the civil war in sudan. this could kill millions - through the war itself and through the famine that will result.

let's have another live aid gig says a bright spark. it will be inspiring and demonstrate our humanity. 

at the bottom of it is a failure to value all human life equally. 

a friend has taken to rattling on about 'illegal immigration' by which he means refugees and asylum seekers - but people need to flee warzones, people need to flee oppression, people need to flee poverty, and soon enough people will need to flee climate change.

faced by what it takes to be a refugee crisis there has been in europe  a turn to the right, a turn to racism and a turn to tighter asylum legislation some on the left are moving from refugees welcome here to a refugees not really welcome here... position. 

the ruling class are stuck. 

on the one hand they know that western societies and their growth are not wholly generated from within but by material extraction from the developing/ underdeveloped world (sorry these are slightly old terms that demonstrate a commitment to development as if it were a given). these resources include the skilled labour that the west needs but is unwilling to pay for the training of (doctors and nurses for the NHS etc.). these new workers pay into tax, benefit and pension systems that take care of the ageing western populations. here we have legal immigration and this has been boosted up in the belief that it will drive growth.

horsemouth subscribes to the great non-replacement thesis, that given the low birthrates across the world populations will soon begin to fall and there will be shortages of workers/ tax-payers etc. governments will then have the choice of either permitting large scale immigration or going into decline. 

the numbers of asylum seekers/ refugees is a sideshow compared to this. you cannot defeat racism by pandering to it.