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DarkCrawler posted:In fact hundreds of millions, possibly billions of people are not much worse off then Syrians. Most who do not reside in Turkish refugee camps but in the cities towns and villages of Turkey and other countries they are in. Well, first, most of this so called Europe is actually a victim of historical imperialism, and as such bears no responsibility for the Middle East. That includes first and foremost Hungary who ended up bearing the brunt of the problem at the worst possible time by no guilt on their part. Second, if there's one country that ruined the fragile balance of the ME, it's the US, who have categorically refused to deal with the crisis.
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Sep 17, 2015 01:11
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Dead Reckoning posted:Still waiting for that explanation of how the United States was responsible for Assad starting a military crackdown on his protesting citizens. Give it a rest, this is no longer about Assad. The Americans aren't responsible for literally every single thing in the region, but they are more culpable than any other country in the world.
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Sep 17, 2015 01:17
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computer parts posted:Maybe you should petition Russia to accept refugees. Russia should accept refugees, being another major participant, but I'm not sure why you posted this non sequitur.
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Sep 17, 2015 01:25
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Arglebargle III posted:Aren't you Danish? If you're so worked up about this, maybe you could work towards getting your own rear end-backwards country to do its share instead of posting shrill historically-illiterate complaints about how the US ruined the middle east. What you're doing right now is about as righteous as posting about how Lloyd George needs to change his mideast policy. i'm Czech, and while my rear end-backwards country is being pissy about admitting refugees, at least it can argue with being relatively poor compared to the likes of, well, Denmark. Also my nation was no more autonomous than any one of the Arab countries at the time of Lloyd George's rule, being an involuntary subject of the Austrian Empire, so...
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Sep 17, 2015 02:24
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Arglebargle III posted:So it's very comfortable where you're sitting? I dunno if you're going to be able to wield much influence over American policy, I'll have to czech with my congressman. It's certainly not half as comfortable as where the Western people are sitting, though I don't claim to be undergoing a humanitarian crisis, like Hungary. Unfortunately the geopolitical arrangement of Europe has led to a situation where the countries least responsible for the crisis, and leas capable of dealing with it, from a purely economic standpoint, are most exposed. And the truly comfortable individuals are chastising them for not being dedicated enough to progressive ideas and for trying to retain their comfortable status quo. It's a disgusting display of hypocrisy.
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Sep 17, 2015 03:03
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Effectronica posted:It's cool how social mobility suddenly becomes evil when nonwhites try to do it. Sure, there was no backlash when Poles, Bulgarians, Romanians were moving to England. It's almost as if the principles of EU that regard freedom of movement were very specifically designed to deal with movement WITHIN the EEC, and that with every broadening of the Communities fears arose about the effects of the wider internal space, as well as about the sustainability of the new EU frontier. In short, freedom of movement was instituted to ensure a more efficient internal economic development of the member states, with the collateral condition that members retain full intergovernmental control over the policy, in order to ensure it doesn't produce negative externalities. It's never been a humanitarian or a charity project, and always was scrutinized against unforeseen consequences, whether the perceived problems were caused by whites or non-whites.
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Sep 18, 2015 12:44
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VitalSigns posted:Compared to 400 million Europeans, it is. I'd like to see the US absorb the entirety of the Mexico City in a year, with no regulation and oversight to speak of, and watch the results.
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Sep 18, 2015 12:46
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SaltyJesus posted:Ahaha you gotta be loving kidding me. The Dublin agreement is meaningless in a refugee crisis of this scale. It's not a question of will, the border countries literally cannot enforce their borders and the smugly safely-distanced (until recently) countries didn't want to help. To be perfectly honest, I'm skeptical you'd be able to prevent people from crossing even if all of EU pitched in barring like a huge wall around eastern Thrace and a permanent naval blockade of Turkish and Levantine ports and coastline. I think the only realistic way would be to set up advanced checkpoints in Lebanon, Turkey etc., so that as many refugees as possible can be approached and processed before the smugglers disperse them all around the place and kill half of them in the process.
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Sep 18, 2015 12:54
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VitalSigns posted:You (and some other people) are taking this more strongly than I meant it. I didn't mean it'd be super easy and required no planning, only that fears of them bankrupting one of the world's largest economic zone, somehow taking over an area fifty times them in population, or even noticeably affecting the living standards of the average European on the street are absolutely ridiculous, sorry for being unclear. I basically agree, unfortunately there are posters who unironically argue for just unconditionally opening the BTW, citizens and immigrants who registered an intention to become a citizen would be granted something like 60 ha of land under the Homestead Acts in 1870, that's something I fear no advancement in infrastructure can replace - left to sell their marketable skills in a country whose language they most likely don't speak very well, these migrants may well end up the same way as East Asian migrants to the 19th ct. USA: Poorly treated day labourers. At least for any foreseeable future. E: That's not a reason to ship them back, of course, just saying that comparing immigration stats from 19th century with today doesn't make much sense to me. steinrokkan fucked around with this message at 13:56 on Sep 18, 2015 |
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Sep 18, 2015 13:54
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Tesseraction posted:Back in my long-haired metalhead days I wanted to learn Finnish but my god how many loving vowels does a word need?! In the end I just made friends with a Finn and had him translate bullshit I wanted to read. Unfortunately for immigrants learning Finnish probably isn't a matter of hobby, but rather a matter of being able to find qualified work. Even in, say, state institutions start providing multilingual services, not speaking the local language will be a limiting factor in dealing with any private subject.
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Sep 18, 2015 14:05
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Nonsense posted:Italians do not want their wages and hours undercut. The Greeks though? Pillage their nation for the good of the Volk. 
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Sep 18, 2015 18:27
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Tesseraction posted:Ah yes, thank you for providing the interviews given that within the past page or so the Cracked team on the ground found the exact opposite of what you just said. The Red Cross says something else (that maybe one on 20 refugees has some workable knowledge of English, and that speakers of Urdu Pashto and other languages are urgently needed to close the growing communication gap). Cracked is an authoritative source on exactly zero topics ever.
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Sep 22, 2015 15:11
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I hope your personal culture gets destroyed with a bullet to the brain.
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Sep 23, 2015 11:51
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Starshark posted:If it's not about race, why is the Somali/Iraqi unemployment rate higher? Do you see literally no reason why people coming from a Third world country on a different continent over could have it harder to fit into a local service economy than people who came from a stone's throw away?
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Sep 23, 2015 17:58
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Effectronica posted:I gotta admit, the trick people pulled where they pretended to believe race is immutable, and so Kenyan integration proves Somali lack of integration can't be due to discrimination, is a good one. The Finns have a deep historical experience with Somalia and Kenya that has granted them an inherent prejudice against one of them, and a perfect ability to distinguish and discriminate among them from pure racial hatred. The Offended Brigade is really grasping at straws in this case.
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Sep 23, 2015 21:47
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DarkCrawler posted:Yes, but they're also taking in refugees. Russia and Ukraine have a storied history of migration between them. Millions of Ukrainians have worked in Russia as temporary workers on an annual basis, and there's a huge established labour market for Ukrainians in there. Similarly thousands of Ukrs. have moved to other countries that also have had a large Ukr. work force since at least the fall of the USSR: Poland, the Czech republic... The Russians are also largely taking in Russian speakers, often ethnic or self-identified Russians with relatives / acquaintances already in Russia. Those who come without any connections sometimes have to go through sorting camps where they browse available housing and job opportunities, and generally have to limit themselves to unqualified jobs, because that's what the market for CIS migrant labour is 99% geared for. However, I don't think their situation is remotely similar to that of Middle Eastern refugees. In short, the situation is different because Russia was already accustomed to provide jobs and services to millions of Ukrainians and other CIS citizens on a regular basis, and there was already a huge established Ukr. community. steinrokkan fucked around with this message at 22:32 on Sep 23, 2015 |
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Sep 23, 2015 22:28
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DarkCrawler posted:Eh, it's not really that simple, because there were already millions of Ukrainians with jobs on Russia when the crisis happened and almost a million more moved in and Russia entered a huge economic slump: Yeah, the timing was pretty bad for the influx, and the country as a whole has been suffering economically, disposable labourers especially, but I don't think it invalidates my point that immigration to Russia from Ukraine was a much more seamless process than from the Middle East to Europe because there was an existing infrastructure, however strained it became due to general economic depression.
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Sep 23, 2015 22:36
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Effectronica posted:The vast majority of Americans are unable to determine whether someone is African-American or an African immigrant (and there'd be plenty of difficulty identifying someone who was Black West Indian) but there are still significant differences in socioeconomic status between the two groups. Similarly, the "model minority" status of Chinese-Americans and Japanese-Americans isn't conferred on Hmong-Americans. So in the US there've been decades of racial politics that led to differentiated treatment of different minorities, and saying that people "can't determine" who's who seems disingenuous, while technically true from a specific standpoint. Finland (AFAIK) and Eastern Europe in general doesn't have this experience in the case that you are talking about (of African immigration specifically) as it's a recent phenomenon with the difference occurring among concurrently introduced groups with no previous exposure. E: Yeah, as DarkCrawler said, people in this area are more likely to have very nuanced and numerous racist attitudes towards other white people than towards some strangers from two "obscure", far away countries¨(that is to say, if they are going to be racist against black people, it sure as hell doesn't matter if they are from Nigeria or Uganda). Because their formative experience with the "others" is fundamentally different than that of Americans. steinrokkan fucked around with this message at 22:59 on Sep 23, 2015 |
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Sep 23, 2015 22:55
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Effectronica posted:Okay, let me explain this very carefully to you. Just because you have a racial group, doesn't mean that that racial group is deterministic for all groups within its umbrella, because there are a variety of factors at work beyond whether Finns merely shriek and cross the street at the sight of a nonwhite, or actually have to be restrained by police officers, when it comes to race and ethnicity. Given the bald prejudice against Somalis specifically on display from various Finnish posters, there's actually plenty of room to suggest that a lot of the disparity is probably due to discrimination above the other factors people like to point to. OK, I'll leave it up to the Finnish posters to determine if this anti-Somali hysteria that is leaving other migrant groups unscathed is happening because honestly I haven't been hearing about it, here or elsewhere.
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Sep 23, 2015 23:12
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Effectronica posted:Glib remarks don't work when they reveal you're downright pig-ignorant. I mean, Jesus Christ, do you think that all racial discrimination consists of KKK members burning people alive? Have we uncovered the root reason why Europeans believe they have a fundamentally different approach to race than Americans? Don't write your posts in a patronizing tone if you don't want dismissive answers. Also your Sociology 101 posturing is nice, but it's pointless without any empirical backing.
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Sep 23, 2015 23:16
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PaleIrishGuy posted:How do you think people choose a target of discrimination? The neighborhood I live in near Chicago is really mixed race (and nationality), and gently caress me if I could even begin to tell you at a glance whether one white guy is Irish or Polish, if one black woman is descended from Niger or is straight over from Botswana, or the tan guy walking down the block had parents from Mexico, Cuba, or Puerto Rico. How the hell can I know any of that just by looking at someone? So what gift of racism is it that Finns apparently have that we in the US lack that lets them distinguish at a glance a family from Ethiopia or Somalia? Cause that ability sounds like straight up magic to me. I think he's saying the different levels of discrimination faced by these groups are present on an institutional rather than casual individual level. That they may not stick out on sight, but would face different obstacles when trying to achieve something and identifying themselves. Which is a valid concern, but I'm not sure if it's as prominent as he makes it out to be, in this specific scenario. steinrokkan fucked around with this message at 23:35 on Sep 23, 2015 |
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Sep 23, 2015 23:32
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Glah posted:Obvious explanation is discarded so readily it feels like I'm missing some kind of surreal joke here. People like effetronica only have one tool in their argumentative toolbox, and you know what they say about dealing with problems when you only have a hammer...
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Sep 24, 2015 09:24
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It's not Keynesian, it's the broken window school of economics.
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Sep 24, 2015 20:34
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namesake posted:No because the refugees are people who exist no matter what the governments of Europe do. The choice faced by the EU is to spend lots of money to heavily militarise their borders to stop people crossing by shooting them, increase internal spying and surveillance to catch and deport these refugees or to create a real system for integrating them into Europe. Sure, but let's not pretend that the current stages of whatever the process will be will be beneficial economically, which is what I referred to.
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Sep 25, 2015 12:33
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Tesseraction posted:Well, you say that, but it actually could be if you're in one of the net takers from the EU funding pot - Germany and Austria have threatened economic sanctions to countries that don't step up to the quota obligations, so it could end up actually being more economically viable to accept the refugees than to have your EU subsidies halted. Since the options then are either spending money, or losing money, I don't see the benefit.
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Sep 25, 2015 12:40
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Tesseraction posted:The money you'd need to spend on refugees in the short term is unlikely to outweigh the financial assistance from the EU - going by the Grauniad's data (Google Spreadsheets) for example the Czech Republic received €1455.2million in 2011 (and the value probably isn't wildly different this year, I'd assume). While obviously not all of that money could be sanctioned or held back by Brussels, certainly a significant dent can be made should Germany prove to be vindictive. Look, I'm not saying we shouldn't take in refugees, I'm just saying that they won't provide a boost to the economy, which is what some posters claimed. You don't seem to be contradicting me at all because financial assistance would be received by members with or without refugees coming in so they aren't a factor in that.
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Sep 25, 2015 14:48
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endlessmonotony posted:Barren Finland isn't. Source your quotes. It's amazing how much space the 5 million Finns can take with all this talking about themselves.
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Sep 25, 2015 16:05
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PaleIrishGuy posted:what would be the action taken against a country like Finland that seems to be in an economic slump yet is a net contributor to the EU? Net contributors still receive money from EU funds. Nevertheless, I'm sceptical about the ability of any single actor to effect any sanctions, as the EU budget is approved by a majority in the Parliament and in the Council.
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Sep 25, 2015 18:13
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PaleIrishGuy posted:I realize they still receive money (similar to the U.S. where some states take like .73 for every dollar they give, while others take 1.86 for every dollar they give out). My thought was more that attempting that same sort of sanction on a donator state would more lessen their contributions back to the EU more than hurt the state in the short run. That said, I could be hilariously mistaken there. If you mean that a contributor would refuse to hand over the payments required by the Commission, then that would be a grim precedent with such far reaching consequences I don't think anybody would be willing to risk it. I mean, the redistributive budget of the EU, from which members receive funding, makes up something like 1% of the EU GDP. And boycotting the procedure through which contributions to this budget are levied would totally wreck the credibility of the maverick country in negotiating the actual area where the EU matters, which is policies with fiscal effects implemented on a national level. In other words, the rebel government would withhold relatively small payments, and in return would most likely lose power over legislation that dictates how the entire drat economy can be run. Not to mention that fundamental decisions in the EU still depend on unanimity, and I believe any country subjected to "sanctions" over this would have revenge on the perpetrators as soon as they could veto their proposals. steinrokkan fucked around with this message at 00:45 on Sep 26, 2015 |
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Sep 26, 2015 00:42
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PaleIrishGuy posted:More what I meant is that, were a state to dispute the distribution of refugees to the point that the EU would consider a form of sanction such as withholding subsidies until they comply, might not the removal of such subsidies have a negative effect on the economy of the rebelling nation (the presumed intention of such a sanction) that would hinder the relative contributions of said nation back toward the EU? No, not really. At least in any appreciable way on any considerable horizon. The budget is created based on multi-year guidelines published in the Framework that guarantees a great deal of continuity in trends contained within consequent budgets, and the contributions are calculated by the Commission, once again with view to continuity. Unless a country suddenly lost like 50% of its GDP or something, I don't see there being any incentive for the EU to steer away from the plan. The net contributors aren't supposed to be reliant on donations anyway, and even the infamous CAP has been reformed to such an extent from its original form that I don't think there's a single economic sector in any one of the wealthiest economies that would be existentially dependent on EU transfers. As I said, the aspects of the EU integration that are not expressed in its budget are much more materially significant for these countries. So in other words: I think there would be no economic downturn for these countries, and therefore no reason for the Commission to cut them slack. If anything, there would be a minute drop in growth rates, which while somewhat frustrating in the long term wouldn't lead to lowering the absolute funds available for drawing a budget, but rather to a decrease in marginal additions to the bulk sum of the budgets under the future Framework agreements.
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Sep 26, 2015 03:54
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Ligur posted:Sorry, got no link either, but one of the most devastating posts ever was made about a decade ago by a social worker who accidentally revelead on the news we have immigrant groups who don't even know who pays their rent because they don't speak Finnish. After living here for two decades. They honestly thought the money falls from heaven and everything is free in that sense. In this case, something is broken. I guess Finland must have amazingly lightweight bureaucracy, then, I couldn't even change my insurance policy without having a little marathon between three different institutions, so I can't really imagine receiving welfare without being able to apply for it. And if there are foreign language social services, that "they don't even know who's taking care of them" line makes no sense.
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Sep 26, 2015 15:05
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DarkCrawler posted:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_Internet_users By that logic alone there should be tons of French people in here, but I don't ever remember any discussion derailed by French goons. I'll go with the shut-in theory.
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Sep 26, 2015 17:43
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computer parts posted:The two main countries in the EU had worldwide empires, as did Italy, Belgium, and other nations. This makes as much sense as saying that because of the NAFTA, Obama should pay reparations to Central American nations for conquistadors.
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Sep 27, 2015 18:25
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computer parts posted:No, there are other reasons why the US should pay reparations to Central America. So it doesn't make sense.
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Sep 27, 2015 19:24
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computer parts posted:Oh it does, just that that was a terrible example for you to use. First, I said NAFTA, not NATO, because the EU has closer to a FTA than to a political union, second, the idea to base policies of a wildly divergent group of countries on some sort of retributive reasoning that is completely blind with regards to which countries are the supposed historical culprits and which countries are actually "paying the debt" makes no sense.
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Sep 27, 2015 19:38
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computer parts posted:Oh, somehow I read that as NATO. I guess because conquistadors came from Spain and they're not a part of NAFTA, so that would make even less sense. I used a very specific relation (Spain -> Mexico -> NAFTA -> collective historical guilt), you decided to change it to US-LA relation to make an asinine point. Like, if you people call the EU responsible for example for the partitioning of the Middle East post-WWI, which happened before many of the current members even gained independence, then it makes equal sense to hold all members of other unions responsible for other events that happened before their existence and to which they are only linked by vague association. steinrokkan fucked around with this message at 19:49 on Sep 27, 2015 |
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Sep 27, 2015 19:47
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Effectronica posted:No, you didn't. You said "Central American nations". Either you're lying or very geographically ignorant.
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Sep 27, 2015 19:51
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Effectronica posted:Okay, then, you've clarified the chain of reasoning you've made up to conclude that reparations are stupid. Am I supposed to be convinced by it? I hope you are not, because that would make me doubt it. Anyway, this has nothing to do with reparations, it's about the disingenuous nature of using collective guilt as an argument in this crisis.
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Sep 27, 2015 19:55
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Effectronica posted:Am I supposed to be convinced that "collective guilt" is bunk because you made up a ridiculous statement for the purpose of proving it to be bunk? Or is this just supposed to be an argument that Europe has very limited responsibilities towards refugees that you've accidentally turned into a blast of the trumpet against apologizing and so many other things? Europe has a great responsibility towards refugees, but not because of guilt.
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Sep 27, 2015 20:07
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If you feel that Americans as a whole have responsibility for the state of the Americas, fine, but you must see how laughable it is to say that, say, the Greeks are somehow a guilty party in this scenario when they were subjugated by the same Empire as the warring parts of the Middle East for most of the modern era. To return to the thread title - I don't see how they can posibly see it as a crisis of historical conscience.
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Sep 27, 2015 20:11
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