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 Post subject: The Refugee Crisis
PostPosted: Sat January 09, 2016 10:26 pm 
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Most recently, the attacks in Cologne http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/01/why-are-feminists-refusing-to-discuss-the-cologne-sex-attacks/ provide a new twist on the refugee conflict. Oh wait, the attacks on Paris provided anti-refugee pundits with fodder on the risks of admitting refugees into countries.

Ok, I'm conflicted, we destroyed the middle east, created isis, who now displaces Syrian families by occupying homes mixed into Syrian communities, and now these families have nowhere to go, so ultimately it's on us... But the west was built with certain values (values that we now decry even though we live in the greatest place in the world), and these refugees do not share our values, so is there good reason to deny them coming to our countries. How would you feel if it was someone you knew who was molested in Cologne? Personally, I don't know how to feel about any of this.

Anyway, sorry for starting the discussion off on the wrong foot, but this thread can be used to talk about the refugee crisis, in general.

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 Post subject: Re: The Refugee Crisis
PostPosted: Sat January 09, 2016 10:33 pm 
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I find guilt to be a poor basis for political policy, or anything really.

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 Post subject: Re: The Refugee Crisis
PostPosted: Sat January 09, 2016 10:40 pm 
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BurtReynolds wrote:
I find guilt to be a poor basis for political policy, or anything really.

I have never really thought of it that way, but I agree. Nonetheless, our reasons for helping them need not be limited to guilt.

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 Post subject: Re: The Refugee Crisis
PostPosted: Sun January 10, 2016 11:42 am 
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Would there be a refugee crisis if it wasnt made clear by some in the west that the doors are wide open? Overall are things worse than during the height of the war in the Congo, or during the Ethiopian famine? There may be the greatest migration since WWIi, but are things worse than 1945? Why Europe? Why now? I suggest that stated policy of Europe is the main driver, but I could be missing something.


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 Post subject: Re: The Refugee Crisis
PostPosted: Sun January 10, 2016 8:46 pm 
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Dev wrote:
But the west was built with certain values (values that we now decry even though we live in the greatest place in the world), and these refugees do not share our values, so is there good reason to deny them coming to our countries.

Which values are we talking about here?


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 Post subject: Re: The Refugee Crisis
PostPosted: Tue January 26, 2016 9:34 pm 
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Mine wrote:
Dev wrote:
But the west was built with certain values (values that we now decry even though we live in the greatest place in the world), and these refugees do not share our values, so is there good reason to deny them coming to our countries.

Which values are we talking about here?

we believe in personal freedom and equality.

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 Post subject: Re: The Refugee Crisis
PostPosted: Tue January 26, 2016 10:56 pm 
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Dev wrote:
Mine wrote:
Dev wrote:
But the west was built with certain values (values that we now decry even though we live in the greatest place in the world), and these refugees do not share our values, so is there good reason to deny them coming to our countries.

Which values are we talking about here?

we believe in personal freedom and equality.

yeah right, as long as we are white and male we do

You can't possibly know what these people's values are. You're making an assumption based on stereotypes.
They left the "east" for the "west" meaning they likely share more of the values associated to the west than to the east. Islam as a religion isn't new to Europe and integration based on that alone has never been an issue.

I think it's a much more diverse group of people that it's usually assumed. Part of them are refuges while the others are economic migrants.
I'm sure there's a fraction with very conservative and fundamentalist views but these kind of people tend to return back when they fail to adapt.

I don't know the precise number of refugees/migrants passed through my (tiny, 2 million people) country in the last months but it's well in the 5 digits and nothing happened.
How little issues there were throughout Europe considering the amount of people in this conditions is actually astonishing.

I don't know how this has been covered in the US media through the years but this has been going for years. Many have been coming through the Mediterranean sea to Italy and it was very difficult for them alone to handle and they'd even have to rescue them at sea. Italy has been saying for years it's an issue they can't handle on their own, but the EU mostly ignored them. These people go through hell numerous time before reaching continental Europe. I've seen a reportage from one of the concentration camps they stay in before leaving Africa and it's just awful.

I think there has to be some organisation and protocol set up to handle this situations from a humanitarian and logistic stand point because it's extremely difficult for individual countries to handle it on their own due size of the groups of migrants/refugees.

And i don't see solutions coming before we start to perceive them as people. It's easy to dismiss them as enemies or wrong value carriers, civilization destroyers or a commodity for mostly right wing politicians to feed the paranoia of their followers.
The refugee crisis start well before it touched the western word soil but it was never taken seriously enough i guess. I think some attempt should have been made to create conditions that would aloud some of the refugees/migrants to stay home. I think everybody realized at this point waiting for shit to happen my not be the solution.


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 Post subject: Re: The Refugee Crisis
PostPosted: Wed January 27, 2016 11:52 am 
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It's the rampant sexual assaults and personal violence and the government-level effort to pretend it's not happening that makes people judge.

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 Post subject: Re: The Refugee Crisis
PostPosted: Wed January 27, 2016 1:04 pm 
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b_i_revisited wrote:
It's the rampant sexual assaults and personal violence and the government-level effort to pretend it's not happening that makes people judge.

The sexual assaults are statistically insignificant compared to those committed by the locals.
Does that mean all of us guys have to be expelled just in case?


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 Post subject: Re: The Refugee Crisis
PostPosted: Wed January 27, 2016 10:33 pm 
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b_i_revisited wrote:
government-level effort to pretend it's not happening that makes people judge.

agreed

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 Post subject: Re: The Refugee Crisis
PostPosted: Wed January 27, 2016 10:39 pm 
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but then again...

LetMeSleep wrote:
Image

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 Post subject: Re: The Refugee Crisis
PostPosted: Wed January 27, 2016 10:43 pm 
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Dev wrote:
but then again...

LetMeSleep wrote:
Image

I am also for the deportation of children.

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 Post subject: Re: The Refugee Crisis
PostPosted: Wed January 27, 2016 10:43 pm 
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BurtReynolds wrote:
Dev wrote:
but then again...

LetMeSleep wrote:
Image

I am also for the deportation of children.


you're consistent so that is fair in my books.

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 Post subject: Re: The Refugee Crisis
PostPosted: Wed January 27, 2016 10:44 pm 
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Dev wrote:
BurtReynolds wrote:
Dev wrote:
but then again...

LetMeSleep wrote:
Image

I am also for the deportation of children.


you're consistent so that is fair in my books.

thank you for that.

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 Post subject: Re: The Refugee Crisis
PostPosted: Thu January 28, 2016 4:01 pm 
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Dev wrote:
b_i_revisited wrote:
government-level effort to pretend it's not happening that makes people judge.

agreed

Well, no. It's xenophobia and ignorance.
The kind of actions the people who "judge" would be satisfied with from the governments are all of the paranoid xenophobic kind. The reasoning behind it is always fear (which is understandable to a point) and hatred towards the group of people that pre-dates the isolated accidents. It happened here when some extremists started making up stuff on the internet that never happened. In one case in particular they started spreading the story that the refugees robed a grocery store, the owner however said that never happened. They just normally bought stuff.
There's another example of how it is all about xenophobia. Our government decided to install a razor wire fence on our souther border which is also the Schengen border. The people living around it, including those living where the refugees pass by oppose it strongly, while those further away who aren't as affected by it tend to support it.
What i find to be the most disturbing is that the xenophobia doesn't slow down given the amount of children refuges. It's where the extremism actually becomes most evident. Some are so paranoid to think all the footage is doctored and all the immigrants/refugees are males in their 20s.
Most of these people sell all of their possessions to pay for the trip.

I think deportation alone will not solve anything at this point because it is a continuous flow of people that likely isn't going to stop until the situation in the middle east changes drastically. I don't think anybody in Europe expected a refugee crisis of this magnitude. There's no doubt that there are way to many for Europe to be able to absorb them.

I doubt this is an issue that can be solved anywhere else but where these people emigrated from. And the West will be forced to do something because millions of people being forced to move just isn't sustainable plus it radicalises the East even more.


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 Post subject: Re: The Refugee Crisis
PostPosted: Thu January 28, 2016 10:35 pm 
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Besides they now infamous premeditated NYE attacks in Germany, there are few other recent examples. Including these:

Stockholm
Stockholm2
Helsinki

And in terms of the "pretending it's not happening to not appear racist", the most famous is of course the Rotterdam grooming gangs

I am not in any way, shape, form either suggesting or implying that all refugees are doing this (check wikipedia for 'rape in Sweden', they have somewhat damning statistics about the origin of those arrested for the insane multi-thousand percent increase in rape in that country over the last two decades) but I have not seen anything to back up what you are saying that nothing of significance is happening and it's all just xenophobic fear. And as for the gender divide of people migrating to the EU, the United Nations refugee agency says that just over half are Syrians, followed by smaller groups from Afghanistan, Eritrea, Iraq and elsewhere. Sixty-nine percent are men, 13 percent women and 18 percent children.

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i wonder what the supermassive jackhole broken iris would have thought about this

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 Post subject: Re: The Refugee Crisis
PostPosted: Fri January 29, 2016 4:31 pm 
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b_i_revisited wrote:
Besides they now infamous premeditated NYE attacks in Germany, there are few other recent examples. Including these:

I don't know that the attacks are officially considered to have been premeditated, but it hardly matters.

b_i_revisited wrote:

The 1st link is about homeless Moroccan teens. The premise alone tells you how complex the issue is.
The 2nd sounds familiar, in the sense that promoters often try to play down this kind of accidents because of the bad publicity it gives to the events, even if according the article it was the police.

b_i_revisited wrote:
And in terms of the "pretending it's not happening to not appear racist", the most famous is of course the Rotterdam grooming gangs

This is fucked up on every level imaginable but it's a separate issue from the current refugee crisis.
The story does corroborate my initial post in this thread as the police who didn't put a stop to the exploitation and with that enabled it obliviously didn't have values drastically different from the rapists. I've found very little information about who the children were prostituted to.
I'm mentioning it because it reminded me of an under-age prostitution scandal in Rome involving Italians exclusively. One of the clients was the husband of Benito Mussolini's grand daughter, who you guessed it, is a politician carrying on grandpa's legacy with of course strict Catholic views.

Generally speaking when it comes to sex trafficking in western Europe the by far majority comes from the eastern European countries who are Christian. I'm pointing this out because i often hear recently how supposedly we people from the part of the world who adhere to the Jewish/Christian values are supposed to now better.

Also i don't know if you've seen the ridiculously low convictions the people involved in the Rotterdam scandal got. It's just another indication of the fact that these crimes, regardless of who commits them, aren't considered to be as serious as they are.

b_i_revisited wrote:
I am not in any way, shape, form either suggesting or implying that all refugees are doing this (check wikipedia for 'rape in Sweden', they have somewhat damning statistics about the origin of those arrested for the insane multi-thousand percent increase in rape in that country over the last two decades) but I have not seen anything to back up what you are saying that nothing of significance is happening and it's all just xenophobic fear. And as for the gender divide of people migrating to the EU, the United Nations refugee agency says that just over half are Syrians, followed by smaller groups from Afghanistan, Eritrea, Iraq and elsewhere. Sixty-nine percent are men, 13 percent women and 18 percent children.

I've seen recent reports that the percentage of Syrians has dropped significantly in the last months in favour of Iraqis i believe.
I disagreed with the notion that is ok to assume they all adhere to the same set of values.

What I'm arguing is xenophobic is the generalisation that they're all rapists and terrorists. There is a growing number of people who desperately want this accidents to happen so it gives them the excuse to express their hatred and sometimes violence.


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 Post subject: Re: The Refugee Crisis
PostPosted: Fri January 29, 2016 4:48 pm 
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Mine wrote:
I disagreed with the notion that is ok to assume they all adhere to the same set of values.

What I'm arguing is xenophobic is the generalisation that they're all rapists and terrorists.
There is a growing number of people who desperately want this accidents to happen so it gives them the excuse to express their hatred and sometimes violence.


We are in total agreement here.

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i wonder what the supermassive jackhole broken iris would have thought about this

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 Post subject: Re: The Refugee Crisis
PostPosted: Thu February 11, 2016 10:55 am 
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Image


The EU is going to need to make a difficult choice here and very soon. Either they make a Union wide effort to build out the infrastructure to support these people and give them some level of personal safety (not keep them in 'camps') or they are going to need to stop the flow. Greece cannot possibly deal with this on it's on, even if most of those people end up moving on.

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Alex wrote:
i wonder what the supermassive jackhole broken iris would have thought about this

http://www.livefootsteps.org/user/?usr=1278


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 Post subject: Re: The Refugee Crisis
PostPosted: Thu February 11, 2016 11:50 am 
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It's kind of been done, Turkey was given 3 billion € for this purpose.

http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-16-268_en.htm

As of now the refugees are supposed to return to their home countries once the situation there stabilizes which is why camps are the solution of choice being temporary by design.


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