bite me Madam Ambassador / and Hungary too / Charlie Hebdo's migrant crisis cartoons / the remarkable people of Darmstadt

Charlie Hebdo

weekly satire/news magazine

Paris

Click to enlarge

Cliquez fiche pour le plus grande

... wish my French was good enough
I'd tell you so much more ...

......-- "Darling, je vous aime beaucoups"

The cartoons were posted to Tayyab's blog. Clearly Vleeptron Dude and Tayyab perceive Charlie Hebdo's publication of these cartoons in very different perspectives. Tayyab and most of his commenters post in English. The post and comments give an excellent peek at how the migrant crisis is painfully ripping scabs willy-nilly around the world.

The historic flight of refugees is also unexpectedly and unintentionally showing that the human race is filled with Ordinary People who spontaneously, often at sacrifice and risk, do wonderful things.

Within the last day or two, Lord Mayor Jochen Partsch of Darmstadt, Germany hosted a big downtown public party for the town's sudden influx of Middle East refugees, with volunteer townspeople feeding, clothing and entertaining the newcomers and distributing stuffed animals to the migrant children.

"Darmstadt" seemed a familiar echo. Then I remembered. When not welcoming desperate refugees, many Darmstadters work for the European Space Agency's successful Rosetta/Philae mission to land Earth's first robot probe on a comet.

This is a very interesting community: top-flight rocket scientists who welcome desperate war refugees.

This is the First Contact Vleeptron or Vleeptron Dude has ever had with Twitter. Twitter is a communications platform for a world whose deepest and most complex ideas can be compressed into 140 or fewer ASCII characters.  Then you tweet your compressed meme.

My nephew *A* explained to me that Facebook was a Time Suck.

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Robert Merkin
Chesterfield, Massachusetts USA

Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary H.E. Réka Szemerkényi
Embassy of Hungary
Washington DC USA

16 September 2015

Madam Ambassador:

In my parents' and grandparents' day, the government of Hungary chose to ally itself with the Nazi Third Reich, and partner in its mass murder of Hungary's Jews and Roma people.

Today Hungary's government is using riot police, military force and razor wire to block and deport refugees fleeing wars in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and other Asian and African nations.

While I recognize that hostility and brutality toward ethnic minorities, different religions, and foreign children, women and men are historic and well-known elements of Hungarian culture and society, now is the time for Hungary, by its government's clear actions, to erase its historic shame and evil, and make Hungary renowned among nations for its humanity and hospitality to the world's most desperate, imperiled and neediest.

I travel throughout Europe, and have long wanted to visit Hungary.

My desire to visit Hungary has vanished this month.

Its return depends entirely on the actions and policies of the Hungarian government, and, through its leadership, the political behavior of the Hungarian people.

I urge your government promptly to reverse its intolerable and inhumane policies.

Sincerely,

Robert Merkin