Reality is that which everything is an instance of.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
‘Give us back the Statue of Liberty. We’re going to say to the Americans who have chosen to side with the tyrants. . . ’ thus spoke centre-left politician Raphaël Glucksmann, a member of the European Parliament, on Sunday, March 16 2025 at a convention of his Place Publique centre-left movement. ‘We gave it to you as a gift, but apparently you despise it. So it will be just fine here at home in France.’
Le Monde 16.03.25
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| Designed
by Frenchman Auguste Bartholdi, the Statue of Liberty – ‘Mother of Exiles’ – was unveiled in New York City’s harbour on October 28, 1886 for the centennial of the American Declaration of Independence as a gift from the French people to America. (Photo: Pedestal project for Liberty by Bartholdi, c. 1880.) |
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore:
Framed in the silver of the fog and in the faint glow of the distant city, there she stood—lamp, robe, diadem, tablet, and all.
“Statue of Liberty. Finest sight a returning American ever beholds. Do you know the words of the inscription?”
Fleetwood smiled again in spite of himself. His companion's enthusiasm was infectious. He recited from memory:
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses, yearning to be free.
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore . . .
Miles Fleetwood stole a glance at Phil’s enraptured face. No sense spoiling the moment for Phil, so Fleetwood checked an impulse to speak an opinion of his own. To him the statue and the verse amounted to a clever fraud. A subtle masterpiece of propaganda and effrontery planted right here on America's doorstep, back in 1884, by the wily French. Not one American among millions, he would bet, knew how deviously their country had been cozened into admitting hordes of undesirable immigrants, swelling the ranks of the indigent and criminal class, let alone the ranks of those with hyphenated loyalties. What else could he expected of Europe’s “wretched refuse” and the rest of it? Only a sentimental, simple-minded people, which Americans generally were, would have fallen for it. How many injurious immigration bills had been the result of the old lady’s preposterous presence in New York harbor!
Yet the converse of the national hospitality mania was hypocritically ignored. Why did America object so emotionally when a man “yearning to be free” reversed the process, gave up America as his country and embraced multi-nationality? Was America doomed by its ambiguity – and by much else? Well, Miles hadn’t for years been able to summon much regret about it. He didn’t care any more. The country’s doom seemed to him inevitable, and hence acceptable – like his own.
“I guess our eyes have seen the glory,” said Phil. “I just can’t wait to set foot on American soil again. ‘Breathes there the man with soul so dead.’ ” He broke off with a flush that carried up under the roots of his careless hair.
False
flag incursions by returnees.
Reportedly, between 1962 and 1989 the desperate ransom strategy of the impecunious German Democratic Republic facilitated the repatriation to the West of 34,000 East German political prisoners in exchange for hard currency or goods from West Germany. This practice, conceived by Erich Mielke, head of the East German Ministry for State Security, was known as Häftlingsfreikauf (ransom paid for prisoners’ freedom) at a cost thought be as high as 8 billion Deutsche Marks. However, in East Germany penal servitude made little practical distinction between political prisoners and criminal inmates; thus murderers and criminals with sentences of more than five years and political prisoners with sentences of three or more years were classed together as Category 1. Criminals with sentences of 2 to 5 years and political prisoners with sentences of less than three years were classed as Category 2. Category 3 prisoners were almost all criminals on short sentences. It is said that the artful Mielke (whose nerve centre at Stasi HQ was Room 101) could therefore ruthlessly exact handsome payments from West Germany for his republic’s more ‘embarrassing’ inmates, exchanging hardened criminals in the guise of political prisoners at exorbitant prices. The exact number of career criminals or Stasi agents released to the West by this subterfuge is unknown.
Huddled
masses yearning to breathe free.
On 26 June 2024, at the renowned Chatham House think tank in London – the Royal Institute of International Affairs – the panel of their ‘Weaponising Prejudice’ forum promulgated an ‘open-door’ policy for refugees categorised as those falsely ‘criminalised' by Russia and its ideological satellites and seeking asylum in the West as victims of anti-LGBTQI+ persecution. From the panel it was stated ‘that a lot of [war refugees] are, actually, LGBTQI+ individuals and that they are finding their way out of the Russian Federation . . . ’ and, hence ‘. . . integrating LGBTQI+ refugees and migrants, would be very important.’ Never raised by the debate, however, was the possibility of Russia’s LGBTQI+ victims of persecution reconfiguring to replicate the conditions under which East Germans fled to the West, particularly as the terms of reference to validate an individual's persecution in response to their sexual orientation would be inexact. Nor did the panel of policy-shapers appear to recognise the Law of Unintended Consequences, which surely applies when the forum’s exhortations to promote open borders would suggest that the plight of up to 6 million of those persecuted by anti-LGBTQI+ measures within the Russian Federation could result in that number crossing borders to the supposedly welcoming nations of western Europe. The flippancy of the debate’s co-speaker, the UK's Special Envoy on LGBT Rights, Lord Herbert, was equally indicative of simplistic policy-making on the hoof. His flimsy nudge-nudge whimsy – the dystopian future of a ‘Pink Pelmet’ [sic] over Russia – points up the potentialities of the East German scenario, since surely a pelmet (iron or otherwise) is NOT a curtain but a frill that is purely decorative with no appreciable function, a remark of his Lordship which unwittingly tends to highlight a border’s greater porosity and, in consequence, its appearance as a heightened threat to the security of neighbouring states.
Source:
Transcript of ‘Weaponising Prejudice’ forum.
Chatham House, 26 June 2024,
Polish Troops Defend Border Against Failed Asylum Seekers.
July 2025. Poland announces it will deploy 5,000 soldiers to its borders with Germany to stop Germany sending back failed asylum seekers. Tensions have flared between the two countries over how to deal with refugees trying to cross from Poland to Germany amid wider frustrations over migration. Poland and Germany are among a growing number of countries in Europe who are bringing back border controls to quell a backlash over undocumented migration, which has strained the EU’s Schengen passport free travel zone.
The Daily Telegraph
July 7 2025
