It seemed, at first, that Patel’s proposal to send asylum seekers on a one-way ticket to Rwanda had to be some kind of bizarre joke in very bad taste: so absurd as not to be serious.
Commentators agreed. They said it was meant purely to act as a diversion from the bad news surrounding Johnson’s Partygate lies and his PCN. Hence the lack of detail. It would never happen...
But no. Patel-le-Pen stood up in parliament on Tuesday and defended her policy tooth and nail. Rwanda was a “suitable place” to send refugees from Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, etc., fleeing from persecution, abuse and violation of their human rights... where they would be “given the support, including up to five years of training with the help of integration, accommodation, healthcare, so that they can resettle and thrive”. And what’s more, this threat of a Rwandan prison camp was going to act as an “effective deterrent” (she said) against people smugglers, who send asylum seekers across the Channel in dangerous rubber dinghies.
Kagame’s Rwanda: Devil’s Island
Apparently Marine Patel counts on British people having no sense of why asylum seekers resort to rubber dinghies, nor any clue about what goes on in Rwanda.
That Rwandan President Paul Kagame routinely assassinates (preferably by poisoning and strangulation) his rivals, critics and “traitors” like former officers of his Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) who can no longer stomach his methods, is well known. He is a practitioner of non-judicial killing, state-sanctioned beating and torture ; he is 100% in control of the media; employs sophisticated computer/internet hacking, and presides over a de facto one-party, mono-ethnic state.
True, in 1994, after the genocidal massacre by unofficial/official militias allied to the former Hutu-led regime, of half a million Tutsis, it was Kagame’s Tutsi regime which came into power, seemingly - at the time - occupying the only moral ground.
But when his RPF proceeded to pursue, in revenge, fleeing Hutus into the Great Lakes region of Eastern Congo, this precipitated a regional war which has to date killed 6m people and displaced at least 3m.
The brutal violence, torture and rape continues today - although transformed into smaller wars to gain the lion’s share of the Congo’s rare metals, essential to the world’s computer-ware. But since these horrific wars are in Africa, (not Ukraine!), Patel doesn’t give a damn. Today she relies on the public’s ignorance to get away with her “New Plan for Immigration” which cynically proposes Rwanda as a “safe haven”! Kagame has already been given £120m up front, in anticipation.
Tory or Labour: all liars
What said it all about Labour’s “opposition” to Le Patel’s plans was the fact that all they really objected to was the cost of the scheme!
In the end, however, Le Patel’s outrageous plan was not enough to suppress the loud calls for Johnson’s resignation. So this Thursday, his Partygate lying will again be under scrutiny. Never mind the real porkpies, like the Big Brexit lie, which gave Johnson his premiership in the first place!
No, the purpose of this debate is all about keeping the public fooled into thinking there is still a shred of integrity to be found in the British political system, even if not among Johnson’s followers, whose lack of it is so overt!
It’s worth recalling the Blair lie, which initiated the slaughter in Iraq, and whose aftermath still continues today in Syria. And how this “mother of all parliamentary systems”, nevertheless allowed Blair’s re-election two more times! This same “system” may well allow Johnson to carry on indefinitely, since it’s really just a carefully-manipulated numbers game!
But it’s not just the political system which is based on a lie. What about the primary lie of the capitalist system - that workers get “a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work”? Yes, the economic basis of the capitalist system is the exploitation of human labour for a profit: if workers were paid the equivalent value of what they produce, there would be no profits.
So it’s an economic system based on cheating workers! No wonder it stinks. And today, its rottenness is brought home vividly with this grotesque Ukraine war being played out, minute by minute, on everyone’s screens, and which normal, ordinary people wish desperately would stop!
But instead, Johnson and his NATO fellows are fuelling it, by sending more and more “lethal aid”, glorifying the killing, encouraging Ukrainian nationalism and have even rehabilitated the fascistic Azov Battalion. Because this, in turn, fuels the profits of the arms and oil trade.
As a direct consequence, the cost of living of the working class (worldwide, in fact!) soars even more. So yes, the only solution is to put an end to this increasingly corrupted, lethal system and the politicians it produces, as a mirror image of itself.
A first step could be to turn the national railway strike which has just been announced, into a general strike, involving all workers, and not just against the pay freeze, but against the whole rotten system.