That picture

[muppet]

Our humanity gets shocked by pictures like that.

But our more basic instincts flip when we are told the only solution involves our money, food, time, effort or whatever.

The next time you hear a rant about 'welfare tourists', give the ranting person that photo and then clock them.

[Hereiam]

Why dont they put this picture up on times square and in London.  Wasn't something pointless put up a while back on times square. This would make people take notice.

[MoChara]

For a start it would help if the war in Syria could be stopped.
In the absence of that it's time the EU and UN got their act together to put some plan together.

Its because of the likes of our governments that Syria's in the state its in, it was us westerns bred the likes of ISIS through the FSA with money and weapons, Now the dogs are of the leash they are hard t be put back on, Assads is no saint but what president is he was running a fairly secular state until he got in the way of our imperialist greed.

If the UN and EU stopped f**king other nations the majority of this shit wouldn't even have started.

Angela Merkel a right wing heartless **** by all accounts even reckons the Irish government aren't doing enough to help migrants.

[Walter Cronc]

 I don't think an image has ever hit me in such a way before. Was near reduced to tears!!

Is there anything we can do, what charities can we give money to etc??

[general_lee]

For a start it would help if the war in Syria could be stopped.
In the absence of that it's time the EU and UN got their act together to put some plan together.

Its because of the likes of our governments that Syria's in the state its in, it was us westerns bred the likes of ISIS through the FSA with money and weapons, Now the dogs are of the leash they are hard t be put back on, Assads is no saint but what president is he was running a fairly secular state until he got in the way of our imperialist greed.

If the UN and EU stopped f**king other nations the majority of this shit wouldn't even have started.

Angela Merkel a right wing heartless **** by all accounts even reckons the Irish government aren't doing enough to help migrants. *people.

Changed that for you.

In a way I am glad this image has emerged. I saw much worse images last week of other Syrian and Palestinian children including that child washed up in an album posted on Facebook so in a way I'm maybe not as shocked as many others are. But it is good that people who are usually oblivious to current affairs being awakened by this. It might just serve to act as a catalyst to the pathetic inaction by our governments so far.

[muppet]

http://www.historyireland.com/18th-19th-century-history/grosse-ile-canadas-island-famine-memorial/

When something like this happens it is worth remembering our own tragedy.

In 1847 the shipping season in the St Lawrence opened as usual with the thaw in mid-May. The Syria was the first ship to arrive. She sailed from Liverpool on 24 March carrying 241 passengers and anchored at Grosse Ile on 15 May. Six days later, 202 passengers from the Syria were ill. The quarantine hospital on the island, built for 150 patients, could barely accommodate 200, and was already filled to capacity.
Douglas was astonished by the 'unprecedented state of illness and distress' on the ships; he had 'never contemplated the possibility of every vessel arriving with fever as they do now', all of them carrying passengers 'in the most wretched state of disease'. On 23 May, he reported between fifty and sixty deaths per day. By the end of the month, 900 people had died and a thousand more fever cases were on the island, housed in hastily erected sheds and tents. Douglas was resigned to the prospect that many more would fall sick and require treatment. But since 'I have not a bed to lay them on or a place to put them in', he was obliged to flout the quarantine law and confine all passengers on board the ships at anchor in the river. By 31 May, forty ships lay off Grosse Ile, with 12,500 passengers, old and young, healthy and sick, dying and dead, crammed into grossly overcrowded quarters, packed as human ballast in the holds of merchant vessels built to carry Canadian lumber to England.
Stephen de Vere from County Limerick, landlord, magistrate and social reformer, was no ordinary emigrant. He took passage on an emigrant ship to provide a first-hand report to the Colonial Office. His account of conditions on the ship which, he was assured, was 'more comfortable than many', is a funeral dirge:

Hundreds of poor people, men, women and children, of all ages from the drivelling idiot of ninety to the babe just born, huddled together, without light, without air, wallowing in filth, and breathing a fetid atmosphere, sick in body, dispirited in heart...the fevered patients lying between the sound in sleeping places so narrow, as almost to deny them a change of position...living without food or medicine except as administered by the hand of casual charity, dying without spiritual consolation and buried in the deep without the rites of the church.

[MoChara]

I don't think an image has ever hit me in such a way before. Was near reduced to tears!!

Is there anything we can do, what charities can we give money to etc??

If you search on Facebook Northern Ireland Calais Refugee Solidarity you'll see a group doing collections of stuff tents toiletries etc. in the North at any rate

[Walter Cronc]

Cheers MoChara

[Declan]

Given the amount of crap that  has been spouted on this forum in the last few weeks it certainly puts moaning about TSG ,appeals to CCC, CHC, DRA etc into perspective.

The State, therefore, is the most flagrant, the most cynical, and the most complete negation of humanity. It shatters the universal solidarity of all men on the earth, and brings some of them into association only for the purpose of destroying, conquering, and enslaving all the rest. It protects its own citizens only; it recognizes human rights, humanity, civilization within its own confines alone. Since it recognizes no rights outside itself, it logically arrogates to itself the right to exercise the most ferocious inhumanity toward all foreign populations, which it can plunder, exterminate, or enslave at will." Mikhail Bakunin, September 1867

[MoChara]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/5-practical-ways-you-can-help-refugees-trying-to-find-safety-in-europe-10482902.html

Actually good link here even ya just wanna sign some online petitions

[tbrick18]

It's a devastating picture and selfishly the first thing that came into my head when I saw it was my own kids.
It's heartbreaking that this type of thing is being allowed to happen by the west when they are at least partially to blame for the situation in the first place.
I wish there was something that I could do, I just dont have a clue where to start.
There is some amount of evil in this world and our governments are instrumental..."The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

[Jeepers Creepers]

I have a young lad myself the same age and this picture has broke my f**king heart (as with all pics of familys in desperate situations) Even more so now seeing pictures published in the Gaurdian of him and his brother when they were alive smiling and laughing.

[Bord na Mona man]

The picture would shake you. Then you start to realise that the various bombings and air strikes that we hear about in the news every other day give us similar outcomes, yet we're desensitised towards them.

[Walter Cronc]

Can anyone give a reasonable solution to the issue?

I honestly don't have a clue how you stop it.

[laoislad]

Sick to the stomach looking at that picture, yet somehow I can't stop looking at it.
Like some have mentioned I just keep thinking of my own two little boys when looking at it.