IMMIGRATION thread

[Gaius Sempronius Gracchus]

But Gaius is not stressing the distinction, he is claiming that they are two words meaning the same thing.

Your incomprehension is astounding. Truly, I can't think of an individual I have ever entered discourse with who has had less insight or understanding...even of just a couple of sentences.

Readthis slowly, one word at a time. I was pointing out that the term immigrants had simply been switched for the word refugees but was clearly referring to the same proposition - ie the words were being used snonymously (to mean the same thing). NOT that the words mean the same thing (or rather, they ought not) but that they had simply been conflated. I am perfectly aware that the two terms are distinct,hence my initial suggestion that the idea that the crimes related were carried out by "refugees" (specifically, as opposed to the more general "immigrants")was something certain posters might need to get upto speed with (the implication was exactly that it was not "refugees", but was actually other "immigrants") and the next post (which you appear to want to defend...???) was a sarcastic post conflating the two terms.

Christ on a bike, could you be any more clueless? Read the actual posts....you know, the words, in their order and you'll decipher what they mean. That's how this whole writing and reading malarkey works.

[AE Bravo]

The elephant in the room is that virtually every ME country is dominated by one religious sect or another and is a hell hole that these people are trying to escape.

Religion and its opiate uses on the masses is the issue not enlightened democracies. Proof is in the lack of upward mobility, corruption and war in the countries the people are escaping and a lack of the ME countries of the same religion resolving the problems with a spectrum of initiatives ie boots on the ground, NGOs or taking in all the refugees themselves.

Western workers compounds get attacked all the time in the ME even in supposedly stable countries. What would be headline news in the west is quietly swept under in the ME.

Comeback when they have functioning middle class democracies with social mobility rather then sponging off a geographical fluke of oil that is found, pumped, refined by other people. ME will have zero clout at the UN as soon as oil subsidies are removed and other energy sources are utlised. Talk about failed states, take away oil and they have nothing the rest of the world wants.

The problem with the European rightwing mind is that...

1) Their government displaces an entire population abroad

2) Displaced people come flooding

...and they blame it on their people rather than their government. Basically their governments are fucking them over with no repercussion, Islamophobia/xenophobia is a scapegoat.

[Papewaio]

Oh I agree with you on that.

If someone is doing such horrible things we bomb them.

Then we either follow up with boots on the ground AND stabilize the region OR accept the refugees running away from the failed state.

EDIT

Also the Enemy of your Enemy might be a good reason to make friends with your Enemy not make friends with the second lot.

Bombing Lybia to help Gadaffis enemies isn't smart when those enemies are now dominated by Caliphate in a box.

[Pannonian]

Oh I agree with you on that.

If someone is doing such horrible things we bomb them.

Then we either follow up with boots on the ground AND stabilize the region OR accept the refugees running away from the failed state.

EDIT

Also the Enemy of your Enemy might be a good reason to make friends with your Enemy not make friends with the second lot.

Bombing Lybia to help Gadaffis enemies isn't smart when those enemies are now dominated by Caliphate in a box.

Or better still, in the future when the Muslim country regime du jour maltreats their population, we do nothing for or against either side, and leave them to their own devices. If there is displacement, it's nothing to do with us. I was strongly against intervention in Libya and Syria (and Iraq for that matter).

[Brenus]

"Or better still, in the future when the Muslim country regime du jour maltreats their population" Much better than that in the past. We helped in training their Secret Police against the opponents of the Tyrant's of the day, unionists, leftists, intellectual, liberal and others. We left open the only way for oppressed population to protest to the Religious we though could be tamed...
The Coup against Mossadegh gave the Throne to the Shah and ended to Khomeini... Well done.
The guy who did that got probably the same kind of training than the one who send Lenin back to Russia!...

[Pannonian]

"Or better still, in the future when the Muslim country regime du jour maltreats their population" Much better than that in the past. We helped in training their Secret Police against the opponents of the Tyrant's of the day, unionists, leftists, intellectual, liberal and others. We left open the only way for oppressed population to protest to the Religious we though could be tamed...
The Coup against Mossadegh gave the Throne to the Shah and ended to Khomeini... Well done.
The guy who did that got probably the same kind of training than the one who send Lenin back to Russia!...

I'm sure if we go back far enough, we can find something to flagellate ourselves with. Never mind the people who actually do these things and order these things to be done. Somewhere along the line, we can find a paperweight that we sold to an associate to one of these regimes, that is the real reason why these things happen.

[Snowhobbit]

Your incomprehension is astounding. Truly, I can't think of an individual I have ever entered discourse with who has had less insight or understanding...even of just a couple of sentences.

Readthis slowly, one word at a time. I was pointing out that the term immigrants had simply been switched for the word refugees but was clearly referring to the same proposition - ie the words were being used snonymously (to mean the same thing). NOT that the words mean the same thing (or rather, they ought not) but that they had simply been conflated. I am perfectly aware that the two terms are distinct,hence my initial suggestion that the idea that the crimes related were carried out by "refugees" (specifically, as opposed to the more general "immigrants")was something certain posters might need to get upto speed with (the implication was exactly that it was not "refugees", but was actually other "immigrants") and the next post (which you appear to want to defend...???) was a sarcastic post conflating the two terms.

Christ on a bike, could you be any more clueless? Read the actual posts....you know, the words, in their order and you'll decipher what they mean. That's how this whole writing and reading malarkey works.

Don't blame me that your parents denied you a dictionary while growing up. You'd think they'd have one in school that you could have borrowed though? I suppose we should be happy that you can string a sentence together anyway :)

I'm glad that you have come to the realization that different words mean different things.

[Kralizec]

I'm glad that you have come to the realization that different words mean different things.

You two are still arguing about this after 5 pages? Gaius was the first person to point out the difference between the words....

You know...it's so easy to get people to believe something...just write it as a headline story. Doesn't matter if the story is later shown to have no truth to it....it'll always be the thing that people remember. Just like the idea that refugees are responsible for the New Year attacks on women...you might want to update yourselves on that information as well....

Then corrected someone else, who used the general term "immigrant" but from the context it's clear that wooly_mammoth didn't know about the distinction or the point that Gaius had been trying to make:

Yup, everyone knows those women have sexually molested themselves and then they threw the blame on the immigrants.

As I said...you might want to get up to speed with the evidence vis a vis those attacks and refugees..as opposed to knee-jerk headlines.

[Snowhobbit]

You two are still arguing about this after 5 pages? Gaius was the first person to point out the difference between the words....



Then corrected someone else, who used the general term "immigrant" but from the context it's clear that wooly_mammoth didn't know about the distinction or the point that Gaius had been trying to make:

So did he hit his head halfway through? I would presume that if Wooly uses immigrants he means immigrants rather then refugees. Because, ya know, words.

[AE Bravo]

This bit of conventional wisdom is thrown around a lot, but it's not that simple. The Shia and Kurds wanted the dissolution of the army because the military officers were almost entirely drawn from Sunni tribes and had been instrumental in keeping the rest of the country under Saddams boot. If they had kept the army intact and civil war would still have broken out, people would be pointing fingers at that stupid idea.

It's because that bit of conventional wisdom is true. Saddam had Shia officials in his regime also and replacing the Sunni officers after his death didn't necessarily warrant de-Baathification of Iraqi army. The fact of the matter is that the US governor of Iraq disbanded a multiethnic military institution and handed over state coercive power to the Shia.

The fact of the matter is that Iraq's central government had an opportunity to reconcile with the Sunnis at this point, but the Shia dominated government blew it. The Sunni who had supported the counter-insurgency felt betrayed, paving the way for ISIS several years later.
In short: there's a 10 year gap in your chronology of events.

At which point they (Iraqi gov) were already a client of Iran. It sort of proves his point.

1) decades of Baathist rule which actively exploited ethnic tensions to justify its authority
2) meddling of neighbouring states, essentially this whole quagmire is a proxy war between Qatar and Saudi Arabia on one hand and Iran on the other

1) This may be true about Baathist Iraq, but far from the truth in Syria's case.
2) Western countries discredited the country's sovereignty when they asked Assad to step down publicly and started funding foreign non-Syrian movements in the country after destroying Iraq. They opened the door for the neighboring countries to split it open.

[Kralizec]

It's because that bit of conventional wisdom is true. Saddam had Shia officials in his regime also and replacing the Sunni officers after his death didn't necessarily warrant de-Baathification of Iraqi army. The fact of the matter is that the US governor of Iraq disbanded a multiethnic military institution and handed over state coercive power to the Shia.

My impression is that the important positions were mostly held by Sunnis, but I don't have any statistics at hand. Bremer himself has said that many Iraqis shared that perception, and furthermore that the army had effectively dissolved by itself after the invasion. It was not a question of "disbanding", but a question of wether to rebuild the old army (with its unpopular reputation) or to start from the ground up.
I'm not saying that the decision was wrong or right, just that it wasn't the ill-considered blunder people make it out to be.

At which point they (Iraqi gov) were already a client of Iran. It sort of proves his point.

If anything that would suggest Iranian meddling is the primary cause. Brenus' point was to establish a connection between the rise of ISIS and the decision to dismantle the army 10 years earlier, which I think is dubious.

1) This may be true about Baathist Iraq, but far from the truth in Syria's case.
2) Western countries discredited the country's sovereignty when they asked Assad to step down publicly and started funding foreign non-Syrian movements in the country after destroying Iraq. They opened the door for the neighboring countries to split it open.

1) it's a strategy that many authoritarian regimes employ, and from what I know about Syria it fits the description perfectly. Alawites have always been overrepresented since the Assad family took power and overwhelmingly support the regime because they think, with ample justification, that the survival of their community is linked to the regime. The same logic applies to other minorities, Kurds being a notable exception because they have their own brand of nationalism that is at odds with the government line.

2) the Syrian uprising was well under way before any NATO country sent assistance, let alone made calls for al-Assad to resign.

[Gaius Sempronius Gracchus]

You two are still arguing about this after 5 pages? Gaius was the first person to point out the difference between the words....



Then corrected someone else, who used the general term "immigrant" but from the context it's clear that wooly_mammoth didn't know about the distinction or the point that Gaius had been trying to make:

Thank you...that's all I've been trying to point out.