Tea at Trianon: Christmas in a Refugee Camp

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, December 27, 2015

Christmas in a Refugee Camp

From the Daily Mail:

These beautiful pictures of Christmas prayers and glowing nativity scenes hide a much darker reality. Hundreds of Iraqi Christians, who now occupy these makeshift tents in Erbil, were forced to abandon their homes to escape the wrath of Islamic State fighters. They are safe from immediate danger in this camp built around the Mazar Mar Eillia Catholic Church in Ankawa. But dropping temperatures pose a serious threat to those who hurriedly left their homes without their possessions or winter clothes.

Over 250,000 Syrian refugees had already settled in the autonomous Kurdish region in Northern Iraq when Islamic State extremist began to advance further into Iraq in June. Since then, another one and a half million displaced refugees have flocked to the area. Purpose-built camps have been built for many but the sheer number of evacuees means thousands of families have to settle in unfinished buildings which offer little or no warmth, and no realistic prospect of returning home. (Read more.)