Tea at Trianon: Migrants and Minorities in Angola

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

Tuesday, February 22, 2022

Migrants and Minorities in Angola

From Crux Now:

With a deepening social crisis in Angola, the living conditions of thousands of migrants are getting worse. The African country has been facing the effects of a political crisis and a severe drought that is impacting the southern part of the country. Unemployment affects about one third of the people, and more than half of the population lives in extreme poverty. Inflation has caused the food prices to increase 36 percent over the last year.

“If the situation is bad for everybody, for the refugees and immigrants it is even worse,” affirmed Brazilian-born Scalabrinian Sister Neide Lamperti, who has been working with immigrants in Angola for 11 years. Lamperti said that there are about 55,000 immigrants and refugees in Angola, most of them undocumented and facing several restrictions on the ability work and receive government assistance. (Read more.)