IMMIGRATION thread

[Montmorency]

Why do you think she was a communist?

[Husar]

Why do you think she was a communist?

She lived in East Germany. Every true, self-respecting capitalist either fled from there or got shot trying.
It's a shame to commit suicide but when you get shot trying to leave a commie country your family can be proud of you while the secret police torture them.

As for the British police, yes, they also beat people in wheelchairs and shoot innocent men in the back on the subway, have total surveillance and demonstrating where it is inconvenient for the government is illegal. Either way it is less a police issue than a political one where the police have been complaining for a while that they are understaffed, overworked and underfunded. Just like the army and the banks. As we can see, all countries have their issues.

[Fragony]

Why do you think she was a communist?

http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-317907

She was probably also a stasi-informer. She said they tried to recruit her but that she turned them down, riiiiiight, instant class enemy

do mind upper left corner 'not varified by CNN'

[Pannonian]

She lived in East Germany. Every true, self-respecting capitalist either fled from there or got shot trying.
It's a shame to commit suicide but when you get shot trying to leave a commie country your family can be proud of you while the secret police torture them.

As for the British police, yes, they also beat people in wheelchairs and shoot innocent men in the back on the subway, have total surveillance and demonstrating where it is inconvenient for the government is illegal. Either way it is less a police issue than a political one where the police have been complaining for a while that they are understaffed, overworked and underfunded. Just like the army and the banks. As we can see, all countries have their issues.

The least we can do is stop the bleeding heart liberalism. I am a liberal, but not one who thinks that our culture is at fault for everything. I appreciate the ideals and history of English liberalism, and also that there are worse things out there than us. I welcome all who subscribe to these ideals, in practice as well as in argument. I oppose that which is a substantial threat to the reality of liberalism that reformers have worked for over the past few centuries. I follow Orwell's view that there is a streak in western leftism that seeks to blame everything on the Anglo-Americans, who are willing to spin the despicable actions of foreign governments in order to put the blame on the Anglo-Americans. Whatever our imperfections, there are far, far worse out there.

[Greyblades]

As for the British police, yes, they also beat people in wheelchairs and shoot innocent men in the back on the subway, have total surveillance and demonstrating where it is inconvenient for the government is illegal. Either way it is less a police issue than a political one where the police have been complaining for a while that they are understaffed, overworked and underfunded. Just like the army and the banks. As we can see, all countries have their issues.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

As for the British police, yes, they also beat people in wheelchairs and shoot innocent men in the back on the subway, have total surveillance and demonstrating where it is inconvenient for the government is illegal. Either way it is less a police issue than a political one where the police have been complaining for a while that they are understaffed, overworked and underfunded. Just like the army and the banks. As we can see, all countries have their issues.

Congratulations, you found two cases of the failure of British Police - now explain how the German Police allowed 1,000 men to sexually molest over two hundred women in a public square on New Year's Eve.

If there were Police off duty on the night, particularly riot officers, then this is a failure of Police culture - not politics. If riot officers are not on call it must be because the the Police culture doesn't think it necessary. This is a separate issue to lack of funds or lack of officers generally.

According to this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-35280386 the perpetrators were mostly North African and the majority of those arrested are either asylum seekers or illegals.

1. million in a year - you can't cope with that. Ask Stilicho.

[Husar]

Congratulations, you found two cases of the failure of British Police - now explain how the German Police allowed 1,000 men to sexually molest over two hundred women in a public square on New Year's Eve.

I agree with Pannonian, except on the Orwell part, it's too much fun to blame Anglos for everything. You nationalistic British people are so easy to bait.

If there were Police off duty on the night, particularly riot officers, then this is a failure of Police culture - not politics. If riot officers are not on call it must be because the the Police culture doesn't think it necessary. This is a separate issue to lack of funds or lack of officers generally.

It seems quite obvious that there was no riot police present, perhaps because it was never necessary before.
And perhaps because funding does not allow for them to be on standby all the time. Should they do 72 hour shifts and work for half the pay? One police officer said the police in Cologne use the maximum allowed number of staff on New Year's Eve, I don't know who exactly sets this number but I can only assume it exists to keep the costs low.

According to this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-35280386 the perpetrators were mostly North African and the majority of those arrested are either asylum seekers or illegals.

1. million in a year - you can't cope with that. Ask Stilicho.

We could, but not with our archaic non-integration and lack of law enforcement.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

One million people in a year?

Yeah, no. Germany's population is around 80 million, taking in over 1 million a year means those people have no incentive to integrate, they can just form their own self-sufficient community in Germany.

Like I said - ask Stilicho, he tried to integrate a mass of refugees, he failed and then he got his head cut off.

[Beskar]

I have a feeling the Stilicho example is a little too antiquated to be directly comparable.

[Fragony]

I have a feeling the Stilicho example is a little too antiquated to be directly comparable.

Depends on how you look at it, Merke. isn't going to be killed but her political carreer is over. Nobody takes her serious anymore. Good at expanding her reich though.

[Beskar]

Depends on how you look at it, Merke. isn't going to be killed but her political carreer is over. Nobody takes her serious anymore. Good at expanding her reich though.

Was meaning the advancement in logistics, technology, eduction, identity, and so on, would significantly decrease the risks. Mass movement in ancient times brought famine for example.

[Sarmatian]

The real problem is that all these Balkan-people look the same to me.
How am I supposed to tell a Gypsy (aka Sinti and Roma, but I'm being super edgy today ) from a Bulgarian, a Serbian, an Arab, a Persian, an Indian or a North-African?
And then he's probably Pakistani anyway.

The good looking ones are Serbs.

[Gilrandir]

Sweden now has the biggest gender imbalance in Europe. 123 males for every 100 females. 71% of these refugees are male(they've counted).

I heard that Australia experiences a similar disbalance (though not connected with refugees). Ask them how they handle it.

[Husar]

One million people in a year?

Yeah, no. Germany's population is around 80 million, taking in over 1 million a year means those people have no incentive to integrate, they can just form their own self-sufficient community in Germany.

Syria doesn't have have enough people to send a million over for the next 100 years. I would think a lot of the Africans are not really eligible as they just come to become a famous football player.
Whether we can process that many people every year is a question of funding, but I'm sure they can all get a job here once our companies figure that they work for less money than Germans. But that is capitalism and the market will regulate itself and it's better for all of us.
(Also the British invented it )

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Was meaning the advancement in logistics, technology, eduction, identity, and so on, would significantly decrease the risks. Mass movement in ancient times brought famine for example.

The population movements are larger and faster, though. The various Germanic tribes did flood over the borders en masse largely in a single year but it's likely the numbers in the hundreds of thousands over all, rather than the millions.

Today we have no leaders of Stilicho's calibre. Merkel is more in the vein of Honorious, able to turn any advantage into a handicap.

Aside from that, no historical lesson is exact but the WRE faced many of the problems we do today, wasteful and corrupt to-heavy state organisations, depleted and demoralised armed forces, monetary collapse, falling native populations and even adverse climate change.

As I have said before, the mistake our ancestors made was believing Rome could not fall. That's eerily similar to the EU mantra of "ever closer union", the assumption that history is on your side.

The good looking ones are Serbs.

I heard the good looking women were Persian

Syria doesn't have have enough people to send a million over for the next 100 years. I would think a lot of the Africans are not really eligible as they just come to become a famous football player.
Whether we can process that many people every year is a question of funding, but I'm sure they can all get a job here once our companies figure that they work for less money than Germans. But that is capitalism and the market will regulate itself and it's better for all of us.
(Also the British invented it )

You have just had a massive scandal where hundreds of women were sexually assaulted in public and the Police were powerless to stop it.

Syria can easily send you another million and so can North Africa, time to wake up and smell the coffee. This doesn't have to go on for a hundred years, in another three years you could have 4.5 million new immigrants who don't speak your language or share you ideals.

Lets suppose for a moment that, like Sweden, roughly 70% of them are men, who will mostly be men of fighting age. The entire Bundeswehr, including reserves, is only a around 210,000. If these people decide to riot en masse you'd potentially have to mobilise your entire armed forces alongside the police to stand up to them, assuming no more enter Germany, which they will.

Germany needs to recognise the scale of the problem now or reap the whirlwind.

[Montmorency]

I think you have underestimated Merkel, though of course if her gambles fail then things will get chaotic in Europe.

Days after returning from difficult negotiations over a third Greek debt bailout, Angela Merkel met a group of school children in the northern city of Rostock.

With the cameras rolling, a 14-year-old Palestinian girl named Reem Sahwil told Ms Merkel that she feared being sent back to a refugee camp in Lebanon if her family’s asylum application was rejected. “I don’t know what my future looks like as long as I don’t know if I can stay,” she told Ms Merkel in perfect German. “I’d like to go to college. That is really a . . . goal I’d like to achieve.”

Ms Merkel responded with a lesson in political realities. “We can’t just say, ‘You can all come. And all of you in Africa can come.’ We can’t manage that,” she said. Ms Sahwil broke down in tears. A video of the moment went viral, leaving an impression that the German chancellor could be cold, even mean.

Yet only a few weeks later, the woman who had failed to console one refugee was embracing hundreds of thousands.

My impression is that in 2015 Merkel understood that, as has been highlighted by the New Year's incidents, the German police and border guard are completely incapable of managing such throngs, so her options were to expend her political capital domestically and in Europe on shutting down the borders and concentrating the migrants already in the continent - making a fortress of the EU and damaging Germany's soft power in Europe when it has very little hard power - or to force the issue and bring things to a head, making it a problem that all Europe would have to confront but that could only be solved with German domination.

Of course, it's a tremendous gamble with repercussions far beyond German society, but basically it will be necessary for the EU states to accept Merkel's power play or try to deal on their own with a disintegrating political and economic framework. I understand that neither of these are preferable for many, but frankly it's good to see some proper leadership in the Western world again.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

See - that except tells me something very different.

She doesn't know there's a difference between a North African and a Levantine.

Notably, the report from the German authorities identified a majority of North Africans, not "North Africans and Arabs" as many news sources have been suggesting.

And who calls a 14 year old girl "Ms"?

I think the truth is that Merkel was simply unprepared for the influx and is unprepared to make hard choices. As you note, she is not ready to spend her personal political capital to protect even her own people until forced. Meanwhile, that unspent capital is depreciating as the Contient slides towards a real atrocity - Cologne has brought Germany many steps closer to a Pogrom against Arabs.

It will be a sad irony if a fear of repeating the past actually results in exactly that, repetition of pasts sins. Before you label me Melodramatic consider that a few weeks ago what happened on New Year's Eve was unthinkable.

[Montmorency]

I think the truth is that Merkel was simply unprepared for the influx and is unprepared to make hard choices.

Rather the opposite: Merkel understood that Germany and Europe were unprepared for the migrants unless they immediately somehow united to fund and enforce a Trumpian security regime around the entire Mediterranean underbelly, and she took a big risk by acknowledging it and moving events in a direction that would benefit Germany, or at least prove least harmful.

Remember that when you are facing millions of migrants - remember back to all your lessons from Medieval and ancient history - you either throw them back by the strength of your arms, or you let them pass.

consider that a few weeks ago what happened on New Year's Eve was unthinkable.

The event itself was trivial. What mattered (and still does) was the reaction.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Rather the opposite: Merkel understood that Germany and Europe were unprepared for the migrants unless they immediately somehow united to fund and enforce a Trumpian security regime around the entire Mediterranean underbelly, and she took a big risk by acknowledging it and moving events in a direction that would benefit Germany, or at least prove least harmful.

So she deliberately created the current situation and resulting abuses?

I don't understand what you're saying here.

That concerted joint action was necessary was as obvious as it was impossible.

Remember that when you are facing millions of migrants - remember back to all your lessons from Medieval and ancient history - you either throw them back by the strength of your arms, or you let them pass.

More properly, you throw them back or you submit to them. Peoples have never simple "passed through". Migration continues until the onward pressure abates - so if you "let the migrants pass" they stop and settle.

At that point you either subjugate them, integrate them or submit to them.

The event itself was trivial. What mattered (and still does) was the reaction.

Neither the assaults nor the abject failure of the German Police were trivial. I like to think of myself as a hard man but even I would say that several hundred women being assaulted in public is nothing but a national disgrace.

The reaction has been mostly apathy from the German Establishment, some talk of tightening Asylum rules but that's basically it - the German people are currently vacillating between committing an ethnic cleansing and adopting a battered wife attitude.

What we are seeing is the Liberal "heart" of the EU in France, Germany and Scandinavia swinging to the Right. What hasn't been picked up on yet is that, particularly in Germany, people are starting to move to the Right of the UK.

[Montmorency]

That concerted joint action was necessary was as obvious as it was impossible.

So she deliberately created the current situation and resulting abuses?

I don't understand what you're saying here.

I'm saying she saw the first so she took actions that would lead sooner rather than later to questions of regional policy to a head.

At that point you either subjugate them, integrate them or submit to them.

A view not held by most contemporary historians; what you call integration they consider mutual assimilation, since typically the major changes affected those at the top of the political structure most immediately and significantly. Strip it to the barest essentials and you just have the dichotomy I gave.

What we are seeing is the Liberal "heart" of the EU in France, Germany and Scandinavia swinging to the Right. What hasn't been picked up on yet is that, particularly in Germany, people are starting to move to the Right of the UK.

That is indeed one of the elements in the European challenge Merkel brings to the fore. If she succeeds, she can fracture or at least stabilize right-wing populism in Europe. If she fails then she opens yet another vulnerability in the system for them to leverage.


Note that this isn't to express utmost confidence in Merkel. Her trademark is in dealing decisively with 'fresh' political pressures with a payoff achieved in the short-term, say within one year at most. Looking at her record, there's no evidence in particular that she can manage a long-term investment with continuous and active (especially public) management. Notably, she has always struggled to align the various strands of policy issues into a coherent synthesis, though that is what she seems to be approaching now.

But whatever you think of her tack (sic), or of her Central-Europeanism, it is clear that something like her is what we have been asking for. How long have we been crying for want of strategic direction in Europe? A democratic society in disarray always calls for a quasi-autocratic visionary, the very thing it tends to fear most. If she does get this right, she could be as great as FDR, the strong hand sweeping away the burden of fear and despotism.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

If Merkel is our hope I think we're doomed - not least because if she manages to unite Europe it can only be by the use of hard economic power.

Oppression of subject peoples leads inevitably to systemic collapse of the state or war.

Democracy is our only hope for any kind of lasting peace.

Merkel is not Augustus, she can't manage despotism cloaked in popular democracy and she isn't brave enough to try. She might be egotistical enough though.

[Gilrandir]

And who calls a 14 year old girl "Ms"?

Those who call the married woman (Merkel) the same (see the piece from the FT).

[AE Bravo]

Nice to see the backroom still all about the "brown people creeeping up on us."

Immigrationroom imo.

[Fragony]

Nice to see the backroom still all about the "brown people creeeping up on us."

Immigrationroom imo.

So what is your opinion on what happened there then, without your opinion of the backroom

[Sarmatian]

Merkel is not Augustus, she can't manage despotism cloaked in popular democracy and she isn't brave enough to try. She might be egotistical enough though.

The answer is suggesting itself.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Greyblades]

Nice to see the backroom still all about the "brown people creeeping up on us."

Immigrationroom imo.

Who's this?

[Beskar]

Those who call the married woman (Merkel) the same (see the piece from the FT).

Ms is a title for a female which doesn't reflect their married status. Thus, a marriage-neutral term, and it was used correctly in both circumstances. PFH was probably referring to the fact a 14-yr old cannot be married, and should be "Miss" anyway.

[Viking]

Nice to see the backroom still all about the "brown people creeeping up on us."

Immigrationroom imo.

It's hardly ever about the skin colour (including the old African vs European American noise) - that's just a convenient scapegoat for so-called progressives. The real culprit is ingroup versus outgroup dynamics that, not unsurprisingly given human evolution, correlate with physical attributes of the groups. The solution with the best result is complete assimilation, but such thinking is taboo.

[Montmorency]

The real culprit is ingroup versus outgroup dynamics that, not unsurprisingly given human evolution, correlate with physical attributes of the groups. The solution with the best result is complete assimilation, but such thinking is taboo.

Complete assimilation is, unsurprisingly by the same group dynamics you mention, a rarity in world history given fierce resistance by all parties involved. The world today is just about overrun with cultural irredentism of all forms, and I do believe you could say that nationalism has not really come into its own until just now. To wit:

The 19th c. was the century of ideology.
The 20th c. was the century of the State.
The 21st c. will be (among other things) the century of nationalism.

[Pannonian]

It's hardly ever about the skin colour (including the old African vs European American noise) - that's just a convenient scapegoat for so-called progressives. The real culprit is ingroup versus outgroup dynamics that, not unsurprisingly given human evolution, correlate with physical attributes of the groups. The solution with the best result is complete assimilation, but such thinking is taboo.

Most of the first generation in the UK don't have much problems assimilating to the satisfaction of the host culture. The problem lies with the second generation, who grew up thoroughly assimilated, yet who decide to pursue what to them is an alien culture. See the dad who denounced his son, who went to join ISIS, as a traitor to his country (UK). And yes, that dad regarded the UK as the country of both the son, who was born here, and the father, who moved here and adopted it as his home.