A fiendish bewilderment

If one is honest there is no denying that the multithemed issue of illegal immigration, refugees and terrorism has one in quite a quandary.

Of course there are those who stand strictly on the Right and the Left who have fixed opinions and will not budge, given there are innocents getting brutally killed either way while the world and Europe, in particular, continue to watch with horror and disbelief.

The rest of us, to whichever part of the political spectrum we belong, are seriously caught in a fiendish ideological bewilderment. You want immigrants and refugees to find shelter and a secure future and you hurt when so many of them, including women and children, alas, actually perish on their desperate way to making their and their families’ dream come true. Then you are suddenly shocked into realisation when teenage terrorists, actually brought up and nurtured in a Western society, take the lives of innocent people enjoying themselves on Bastille Day or simply travelling on a train and taking part in other dayto-day activities all over the Continent.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to synchronise the heart with the mind on the issue. Not only are one’s ideological views twisted and knotted into a disproportionate shape, but there is also the growing temptation to cry revenge and to suddenly become a perplexed accomplice in the propagation of extremist methods and solutions.

Perhaps the most graphic of such an attitude from otherwise very normal, usually level-headed people took place in the immediate post-Nice atrocity. To watch citizens solemnly laying flowers, wreaths and emotional messages on the spot where so many innocent lives were lost because of one bastard’s insane moment is always heartening and uplifting. But then, how does one react to watching those same usually levelheaded citizens spitting and throwing garbage on the spot where the terrorist was happily (good God, did I just say “happily”?) slain by the French police?

It is all a reflection of this bewilderment that has turned the whole social and political scene upside down. Hollande and his ministers are booed for not having done enough to avoid these horrific acts, but what would France and the rest of Europe do if Madame Marine Le Pen, a Donald Trump in drag often described as more democratic and republican than her nationalist father, gets a free ride into the Élysée Palace?

It is easy to identify opinion in Right and Left modes, but in truth no one really knows how and to where he or she is shifting, and it is not merely a French dilemma. The Netherlands has long surrendered to the racists and similar tremors continue to occur in Italy, Germany, most of Eastern Europe and some places in Scandinavia. Europe is in political turmoil and ideological freefall. The extremists are screaming blood, the moderates continue to dither until they discover the voters have simply abandoned them, and, then, is not the electorate sovereign?

If we have truly come to the stage, as Angela Merkel has admitted publicly of late, where one cannot distinguish between a genuine immigrant or refugee and a terrorist in disguise, then the predicament for all European authorities is much stronger and deeper than anyone could have imagined. This mixture of pity and legitimate concern with fear, terror and abuse of freedom is certainly not helping anyone’s cause.

So, is it shutters down, whoever is in is in, whoever is out is out? The idea, however unfortunate, is gaining ground by the day. Continued bungling of the whole issue by the Brussels crackpots is not helping as Europe finds itself caught in this psychological stranglehold. Innocent blood spilt on both sides of the argument makes the whole grim situation all the more confounding. The safety and protection of one’s citizens are a priority, but so is helping desperate, fragile people running away from drought, wars and persecution.

Whoever comes up with the solution, be it on the ground in Europe itself or at source in Africa and the Middle East, will eventually deserve the people’s trust. Sadly, there does not seem to be anyone available or waiting in the wings to do it. Every single one of us is trying to disentangle the tail that has contorted itself into a frustrating state that causes this fiendish bewilderment.

This often-used Maltese expression (crudely translated into “curse the Turks”) has spanned the centuries, going back to the time when the Turks were a constant threat to these Islands, culminating in the 1565 Great Siege. Most people today use it by way of expressing shock, anger and disgust.

It is very unfair on today’s Turks, the lucky, little dictator Recep Tayyip Erdogan notwithstanding. But then, so is the Middle Eastern expression of “like building a mosque in Malta” still in much use in places like Lebanon and Syria when someone is faced with an insurmountable situation, even if we have actually had a mosque for decades now.

This amusing little reflection came to mind as I watched the story of the failed coup attempt unfold in Turkey. No one likes to see a democratically-elected government removed by a military coup just as much as no one enjoys seeing a democratically-elected government slowly but surely turning itself into a permanent fixture, confident in the knowledge that its NATO membership and EU aspirations make it diplomatically, militarily and economically untouchable.

For all the strong language and warnings from EU and US leaders, Erdogan quickly made full use of – his words – God’s gift of a military coup to round up and neuter longtime rivals and critics, something he had been doing for years after all, without the West ever bothering to stop him or criticise him. Even university professors have been banned from travelling outside Turkey and almost 40 radio and TV stations and newspapers have been forced to close down.

Now he is suddenly being told by the European hierarchies that taking revenge via the re-introduction of capital punishment could prove to be counterproductive. With him being a self-declared “man of the people”, however, he has hinted he may have to listen to the people’s demand for the coup perpetrators to receive such just retribution.

He knows that Merkel and Co in the EU can only cry foul and then go back to their problems. Very much the same thing goes for the US which depends on Turkey’s geographical location to maintain its pressure on Putin’s Russia and other perceived enemies in Asia and the Middle East.

Like it or lump it, this is the situation, ħaqq it-Torok...

I see that a subsidiary of Russia’s nuclear corporation Rosatom has signed its first contract with a US nuclear power plant operator for the supply of Russian nuclear fuel. Funny piece of business, for is not Russia supposed to being held hostage through sanctions on the part of both the EU and the US as reparation for some of its Ukrainian “sins”?

So, while European farmers, producers and businesses, including those in bankrupt Greece, have had to accept the imposition of sanctions against Russia, when the Americans suddenly need anything it somehow is never on any sanctions list. Rest assured that if this was a Middle East country trading with Russia, as with the perennial case of Iran, they would have come out saying it is nuclear armament.