French Presidential Election

[a completely inoffensive name]

The Socialist party has lost it's incumbent president and has no chosen nominee yet.

The Republicans have chosen Filion.

Now please tell me how Le Pen has absolutely no chance. Is right wing populism just a 2016 fad?

[Brenus]

That is because Media play the same than in US and UK. Ignoring other candidates in order to create the fear factor, then it will be the usual blackmail Le Pen or else.
So, the else, whoever, will be elected.
But there is one outsider who can change the rules...
The rejection by the French of the oligarchy (thanks to the Sarkolland's policies) is so intense that Le Pen might be elected (for the same reason Trump was elected, Corbyn and brexit), but then she will have to get a majority in the Assembly. And this is another story.

[Greyblades]

The establishment just needs to keep doing what it is doing: deny and downplay a few more terrorist attacks, rape gangs, crime increases and le pen will be in.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

The establishment just needs to keep doing what it is doing: deny and downplay a few more terrorist attacks, rape gangs, crime increases and le pen will be in.

A fair point. While conservative and nativist elements tend to overplay these episodes, progressives and tranzies tend to downplay them too far. With Trump and Brexit, there was enough backlash to shift things.

However, Brenus makes a telling point regarding the legislature. Trump may not like the establishment GOP all that much, nor they he, but both will work together more readily than would a Trump executive with a partially or wholly Dem legislature.

[edyzmedieval]

Valls is the Socialist key. He's by far the most high profile member of the Socialist Party, and he stands a reasonable chance in the election.

[Brenus]

"Valls is the Socialist key. He's by far the most high profile member of the Socialist Party, and he stands a reasonable chance in the election." Not a chance. He is the man who used the 49.3 too many times.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articl...h_Constitution

He is part of the Government that gave money to rich, voted oppressive laws against workers, put unionists in jail whereas Lagarde can go free after conviction. No leftists will vote for him, and righists have their own in Fillon: 600 000 more unemployed from 2012, 1 french on 7 under the poverty level, 800 000 families on the minimum benefits scheme (RSA).

The only way for Fillon and Valls to convince the French to vote for them is the fear factor (Le Pen). I don't think it will work. Not any more. Game over.

[edyzmedieval]

The Socialists do not have Hollande - he declined to participate, so that's that. They need other members of the Parliament/government/party to step up to the plate and stand a reasonable chance because as things go, it's a race between Fillon and Le Pen right now.

[Brenus]

"it's a race between Fillon and Le Pen right now." That is what the media try to convince voters in order to have Fillon elected.
Problem for Fillon is he was Sarkozy's Prime Minister for 4 years and has a very reactionary political platform, even if he is trying to backtrack a bit now...
The surprise might be from the "ignored by media" stream.

[edyzmedieval]

Fillon's political platform is more reactionary than the traditional Republican platform, indeed, but it shows that it connects with the Republican electorate because of his surprising victory over both Sarkozy and Juppe.

The next step is the primaries, we will see there who will come out on top.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

"it's a race between Fillon and Le Pen right now." That is what the media try to convince voters in order to have Fillon elected.
Problem for Fillon is he was Sarkozy's Prime Minister for 4 years and has a very reactionary political platform, even if he is trying to backtrack a bit now...
The surprise might be from the "ignored by media" stream.

Is there a mechanism whereby a Candidate can win in the first round if they get a high enough percentage
of the vote? I assume not, as that's the mechanism designed to prevent Le Pen being elected.

From the perspective of an Anglo the last president was bizarre, most especially in the way he treated the women in his life but also in the way he dealt with Foreign Relations.

I suspect the Fillion will win, in the current climate a many people will vote Right instead of Left because the Left will refuse to address outsiders as a potential problem despite the damage they inevitably do to social cohesion by their very nature (outsiders are always disruptive).

I don't think Trump and Brexit are simply an "angry backlash", I think they are also genuine expressions of opposition to the general political "direction of travel" in the West.

A lot of people ask why the Welsh voted to leave the EU, completely missing the fact that it was EU regulations against government interference in "competition" that prevented the UK Government from nationalising the Port Talbot Steelworks, and everything else owned by Tata Steel. That's a concrete reason to leave the EU if you're Welsh.

[Husar]

outsiders as a potential problem despite the damage they inevitably do to social cohesion by their very nature (outsiders are always disruptive)

Indeed, it's a common problem all around the world:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/tr...e-holiday.html

Especially poor people are terrible humans:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...her-crowd.html

And they terrify the locals due to their terrible culture:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/living/1725...h-from-locals/

Something has to be wrong with the "direction of travel" here indeed.

Who invented the terrible idea of travel? Do we really need need bananas, cocoa, cacao, coffee, tea? All this terrible globalism, people should forever stay in the village they were born in. British people would never support the idea to send people all around the world in ships to conquer tea plantations and diamond mines.

I hope that Fillon wins, too, though. I mean, anyone but LePen is okay with me, French politics are weird anyway. Now we have a socialist imposing a seemingly indefinite state of emergency.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Indeed, it's a common problem all around the world:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/tr...e-holiday.html

Especially poor people are terrible humans:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...her-crowd.html

And they terrify the locals due to their terrible culture:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/living/1725...h-from-locals/

Something has to be wrong with the "direction of travel" here indeed.

Who invented the terrible idea of travel? Do we really need need bananas, cocoa, cacao, coffee, tea? All this terrible globalism, people should forever stay in the village they were born in. British people would never support the idea to send people all around the world in ships to conquer tea plantations and diamond mines.

I hope that Fillon wins, too, though. I mean, anyone but LePen is okay with me, French politics are weird anyway. Now we have a socialist imposing a seemingly indefinite state of emergency.

Uh huh.

Sure.

There's nothing wrong with foreigners - but mass movements of people on both a local and an international scale invariable cause disruptions and make things worse for the locals. This is as true for the Upper Middle Class "White Flight" into Devon as it is for the immigrants coming from overseas into the large cities like London.

If all your major politicians tell you that the disruptions, cultural upheavel, loss of housing etc. are good for you or that they can't do anything to help - they're going to vote for someone else.

Witness the rise of the Far Right in Germany after a string of terrorists Attacks perpetrated by Asylum Seekers, where the German Government continues to pursue a policy not only of allowing all Asylum Seekers (regardless of point of entry) but also defends the Schenhan Agreement which allowed one terrorist to cross into the country from Italy over an open border and then back again.

When people get attacking my axes, blown up with bombs and run over by lorries they understandably get scared. If you don't acknowledge that the fear is a rational response and address the cause they will conclude you are not rational and turn to someone else.

We've been hearing it for years here, a refrain something like, "They say the foreigners don't take our jobs but they work for less and undercut us, we can't compete."

Response: "You're a racist/lazy/too greedy."

[Husar]

Uh huh.

Sure.

There's nothing wrong with foreigners - but mass movements of people on both a local and an international scale invariable cause disruptions and make things worse for the locals. This is as true for the Upper Middle Class "White Flight" into Devon as it is for the immigrants coming from overseas into the large cities like London.

If all your major politicians tell you that the disruptions, cultural upheavel, loss of housing etc. are good for you or that they can't do anything to help - they're going to vote for someone else.

They're not saying that. In case you missed it, France is in a state of emergency since the last attacks, laws have been expanded to allow warrantless searches of homes and so on. To say politicians claim they can't do anything is either a lie or ignorance.

Witness the rise of the Far Right in Germany after a string of terrorists Attacks perpetrated by Asylum Seekers, where the German Government continues to pursue a policy not only of allowing all Asylum Seekers (regardless of point of entry) but also defends the Schenhan Agreement which allowed one terrorist to cross into the country from Italy over an open border and then back again.

Why is it important whether he kills people and/or gets caught in Italy or in Germany? Are Germans inherently more deserving of protection than Italians? Master race?
You also forgot to mention that he also crossed from Northern Africa to Italy despite being a known criminal and even though that border is technically closed.

When people get attacking my axes, blown up with bombs and run over by lorries they understandably get scared. If you don't acknowledge that the fear is a rational response and address the cause they will conclude you are not rational and turn to someone else.

It would be more understandable if they were just as scared about getting eaten from inside and demanded similar efforts from the government to stop that from happening. Instead they only seem to get scared by whatever the news and blogs choose as headlines. From an intelligent thinker I demand to see a little more than the carrot dangling in front of his or her eyes.
Can you explain rationally to me why a guy with an axe should scare me more than MRSA or why the truck killing 12 people is scarier than the estimated 3300 traffic deaths in 2016? Is it somehow less scary that you would drive to the bakery and suddenly someone ignoring a redlight T-bones into you and you slowly bleed out with half the bones in your body broken? I've been almost run over by a car a few times and got actually hit and injured by a truck once, but I've never seen someone point a gun at me or murder someone. So if I don't shit my pants every time I cross a street, why should I shit my pants because of terrorism?

Don't say this is relativism because I'm not saying terrorism is okay, I'm asking why it should scare me as much as you think it should.

We've been hearing it for years here, a refrain something like, "They say the foreigners don't take our jobs but they work for less and undercut us, we can't compete."

Response: "You're a racist/lazy/too greedy."

Wasn't the foreigners who thought capitalism is the system we need and competition is better for all of us. So why is the foreigner less deserving of a job than the local? Master race? Tribalism? Where were you when Intel and NVidia outcompeted AMD? Did you shed some tears and complain that AMD employees did not deserve to be laid off just because Intel bribed retailers to not offer their products? Did you ever complain about colonialism because the Zulus could not compete with the British due to spears vs guns?
And why can a British person not compete with an immigrant? Does an immigrant not need shelter and food and possibly entertainment etc.?
And don't immigrants pay the same taxes etc. that the locals pay?
There is literally no reason why a local could not compete with an immigrant, the locals even have the language bonus, the local bonus, they know the laws better, they can organize better and so on. So how can you say they cannot compete? Is it due to the inferior culture of not wanting to share a room with two other people? And then whine that the younger generations are too entitled, lol....

Even funnier if you consider that Trump and the AfD advocate the same kind of trickle down economics that caused a lot of the problems in the first place...

[Viking]

It would be more understandable if they were just as scared about getting eaten from inside and demanded similar efforts from the government to stop that from happening. Instead they only seem to get scared by whatever the news and blogs choose as headlines. From an intelligent thinker I demand to see a little more than the carrot dangling in front of his or her eyes.

This is beside the point. Note that people campaigning for awareness surrounding car accidents or pathogenic bacteria are not normally labeled autophobes or bacteriophobes.

If someone is suspected to have been infected with MRSA, they will likely be put in isolation; whereas if immigrants from some countries are much more likely than others to turn into terrorists, this does not appear to have any impact on immigration policy at all. How does the 'intelligent thinker' justify this?

[Brenus]

"Is there a mechanism whereby a Candidate can win in the first round if they get a high enough percentage
of the vote? I assume not, as that's the mechanism designed to prevent Le Pen being elected." No. You have to get 50% + 1 voice at the first round if you want to be elected, then relative majority at the second.
The trick is you can stay on the race if you get 12,5 % of the vote.
For the moment, as polls goes, 4 candidates can qualify: Le Pen, Fillon, Mélenchon and Macron.
I don't believe in them as Macron is the candidate of the establishment and of the news agencies.
However, I believe that Le Pen, Fillon and Mélenchon are in position to be in the second tour.
Le Pen is fighting her own niece ( The Front National is a federation of parties, from Royalistes, extreme catholics to Nazi and Pagans with all the crescendo of the extreme right to right extrem).
Fillon is losing grounds. He is the candidate of a extreme reactionary right and his programme starts to be known for what it is, a big leap backwards. Even his side starts to realize he has to change his speeches. Unfortunately for him, a video of his financial platform has been published on youtube and largely shared...
Le Pen can count on the abstention of the left and the anti-establishment feeling largely spread in the french society, and an absence of questioning of her program, if she has one except "death to foreigners"by the media that use her in order to boost their candidate.
The third one, Mélenchon, might be the out-sider claiming back the leftist vote. His challenge is to convince them to go to vote.
The Pseudo-Socialist Party, whoever they will choose, has not a chance.

[Husar]

This is beside the point. Note that people campaigning for awareness surrounding car accidents or pathogenic bacteria are not normally labeled autophobes or bacteriophobes.

If someone is suspected to have been infected with MRSA, they will likely be put in isolation; whereas if immigrants from some countries are much more likely than others to turn into terrorists, this does not appear to have any impact on immigration policy at all. How does the 'intelligent thinker' justify this?

That's a terrible comparison because it does not work. If someone performs a terrorist attack, they are also put in isolation, it's called prison.

Your impact-on-immigration-policy-example is just as terrible, or do you put all older people and infants into medical isolation because they have a higher likelihood to get infected?

Besides, it is not besides the point because I have not seen autophobes and bacteriophobes found new parties that advocate putting old people in isolation because they cause more car accidents and spread so many germs and then actually get a large share of votes. Even though statistically their issues would seem to warrant such a response far more in terms of dead people and direct cost on society etc.

[Viking]

That's a terrible comparison because it does not work. If someone performs a terrorist attack, they are also put in isolation, it's called prison.

Relevant diseased individuals are isolated because of their potential to infect others in general, not because they already have infected people. Similarly, certain demographics can be 'isolated' to avoid the spreading and/or induction of terrorism.

Besides, it is not besides the point because I have not seen autophobes and bacteriophobes found new parties that advocate putting old people in isolation because they cause more car accidents and spread so many germs and then actually get a large share of votes. Even though statistically their issues would seem to warrant such a response far more in terms of dead people and direct cost on society etc.

If elderly people were mowing down many people every now and then because of poor driving skills, and the major political parties suggested that scepticism against driving elderly people was driven by gerontophobia, you might get the rise of political parties that suggested restrictions on the driving of elderly people.

Of course, it's not just the terrorism that's a potential issue with mass-immigration; but local breakdown of law and order as well. A good case study is the Swedish city of Malmö (click the link to see more news items), a city with ~ 340,000 inhabitants:

Malmö has experienced thirty explosions this year [2015], so worried local police have asked for assistance from the national police for help in staunching the wave of violence.

Just this week, there have been three hand grenade incidents.

http://www.thelocal.se/20150725/malm...-stop-violence

The suspected murder would be the eleventh murder in Malmö in 2016, and it is the second murder investigation to be started in the city in a period of two days.

http://www.thelocal.se/20161115/man-...-malm-shooting [15 November 2016]

(related: Masked men on mopeds shoot four in Malmö [September 2016], Man injured in shooting at Malmö shopping mall [July 2016], One dead after Malmö drive-by shooting [September 2016])

A secondary school in Malmö has been closed after the teachers' union declared that it is too dangerous a place for students and teachers to attend due to widespread violence and criminality.

Violence, threats and visits from adult criminals eventually became too much for the teachers' unions at Varner Rydén School in the Malmö suburb of Rosengård, whose safety officers have now closed the premises.

http://www.thelocal.se/20150301/malm...s-for-students [2015]

The wave of summer car burnings in Malmö has continued, with nine more set alight between Thursday night and Friday morning. And police have still been unable to catch any perpetrators, despite calling in extra resources.

[...]

Over 70 car fires have occurred in Malmö since July 1st this year [2016], and police have been left scratching their heads as to why the trend has occurred.

http://www.thelocal.se/20160812/malm...ings-continues

Suspected gangland shootings have marked the start of the weekend in the Swedish cities of Malmö and Gothenburg, with victims left seriously wounded in both cities.

At around 7pm on Friday evening a 20-year-old man was shot in Biskopsgården, a district of Gothenburg long plagued by gang violence. Then at 2am on Saturday morning, a man in his mid-to-late 30s was shot inside a club in Norra Grängesbergsgatan, a Malmö street known for its illegal nightclubs.

http://www.thelocal.se/20161126/gang...and-gothenburg [26 November 2016]

Something more seems at stake here than mere terrorism or car accidents. And in France, the subject of this topic, similar things are going on.

[Montmorency]

But isn't the problem, Viking, that the groups in question are already isolated? This is distinct from isolating groups for the application or construction of policy (though in fact the former carries on from the latter a fair extent in recent history).

[Husar]

Relevant diseased individuals are isolated because of their potential to infect others in general, not because they already have infected people. Similarly, certain demographics can be 'isolated' to avoid the spreading and/or induction of terrorism.

There is an incredibly large gap between infected individuals and potentially dangerous demographics.
That argument is completely useless. You could lock all poor people up with that argument.

If elderly people were mowing down many people every now and then because of poor driving skills, and the major political parties suggested that scepticism against driving elderly people was driven by gerontophobia, you might get the rise of political parties that suggested restrictions on the driving of elderly people.

We had 3300 traffic deaths and maybe 20 due to islamic terrorism in 2016. Now I don't have any statistics on who caused all the traffic deaths and why, but surely old people would account for 20 or more of them?
The rest of your argument seems pretty irrelevant to the argument.

Of course, it's not just the terrorism that's a potential issue with mass-immigration; but local breakdown of law and order as well. A good case study is the Swedish city of Malmö (click the link to see more news items), a city with ~ 340,000 inhabitants:

I get that you can't just put 340000 immigrants into a city of 340000 people and expect it to work out just fine, that is actually besides the point now. Just as it is useless to take one city as anecdotal evidence and then make some vague claim about how problematic mass immigration is.

[Montmorency]

Husar, the statistical argument has more limitations than you recognize. If this is still a period of low-risk from terrorism, then speaking apart from the wider political issues associated with terrorist actors we should take this as good time to work out appropriate, scaleable laws, practices and responses so that we don't end up extrapolating the French "panic and flail" response to public emergencies. In the West, Germany is still in the best position of all to take a lead here. If strong reactions against Arab immigrants are the wrong approach, then it is because there are better approaches, not because the threat of terrorism or terrorists is actually meaningless.

[Husar]

Husar, the statistical argument has more limitations than you recognize. If this is still a period of low-risk from terrorism, then speaking apart from the wider political issues associated with terrorist actors we should take this as good time to work out appropriate, scaleable laws, practices and responses so that we don't end up extrapolating the French "panic and flail" response to public emergencies. In the West, Germany is still in the best position of all to take a lead here. If strong reactions against Arab immigrants are the wrong approach, then it is because there are better approaches, not because the threat of terrorism or terrorists is actually meaningless.

I did not say it is meaningless, I said it is not something to panic about at the moment to the extent a lot of people are doing.
Of course something should be done, but the knee-jerk reaction of directly or indirectly killing people and/or mass-punishments of everyone with non-white skins are complete overreactions. Obviously someone will say I misrepresent their proposed methods now, but since I only see vague proposals ('isolated'), I feel free to speculate here.
As for "but you don't offer anything", well, yeah, because I'm too busy talking down people who propose broad brush attempts of what sounds like ethnic monocultures. I'm thinking along the lines of giving more resources to the police, handling people differently upon entering the country and, terrible idea, maybe spreading them out more across EU countries so they're not as concentrated as they are in certain Swedish cities. And perhaps also thinking about how we can dissolve the reasons people have to come here in the first place.

[Gilrandir]

I've been almost run over by a car a few times and got actually hit and injured by a truck once, but I've never seen someone point a gun at me or murder someone. So if I don't shit my pants every time I cross a street, why should I shit my pants because of terrorism?

Since statistically the older you are the more likely you are to die, you should shit your pants every morning realizing you are a day older.

[Husar]

Since statistically the older you are the more likely you are to die, you should shit your pants every morning realizing you are a day older.

Exactly. Do you know how many people die in household accidents because a ladder does not alarm them as much as a bearded brown person?
http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/...o-prevent-them

[Viking]

But isn't the problem, Viking, that the groups in question are already isolated? This is distinct from isolating groups for the application or construction of policy (though in fact the former carries on from the latter a fair extent in recent history).

Not sure what you are saying here (which groups isolated how?).

There is an incredibly large gap between infected individuals and potentially dangerous demographics.
That argument is completely useless. You could lock all poor people up with that argument.

You could, but most would consider that unethical and overkill. It's different from telling people that they should rather stay in their home country or migrate to countries that are more culturally similar.

We had 3300 traffic deaths and maybe 20 due to islamic terrorism in 2016. Now I don't have any statistics on who caused all the traffic deaths and why, but surely old people would account for 20 or more of them?

Presumably, but there are at least a couple of things to consider:

• how many of the dead were elderly people (and should therefore be subtracted from the total), and how many non-elderly people were killed by elderly people as an overrepresentation (relative to the rest of the driving population; the actual number we are looking for)?
• how easy is it reduce the number of deaths and injuries resulting from traffic relative to those resulting from terrorist attacks? Presumably, the government is already spending a great deal on road safety, the police and counter-terrorism.

I get that you can't just put 340000 immigrants into a city of 340000 people and expect it to work out just fine, that is actually besides the point now. Just as it is useless to take one city as anecdotal evidence and then make some vague claim about how problematic mass immigration is.

It's not an anecdote, similar things are happening/have happened in many cities in Western Europe and form part of a larger statistic. For example, the Köln assaults last year match the general pattern of antisocial behaviour. Malmö is just one place where this phenomenon has turned particularly extreme, and could represent the future of other vulnerable cities if immigration pressure and government policies persist.

[Husar]

You could, but most would consider that unethical and overkill. It's different from telling people that they should rather stay in their home country or migrate to countries that are more culturally similar.

That's like a red herring scarecrow or whatever because plenty of them already go to similar countries but these countries don't always want or can't always take all of them and they also don't always offer them the same chances of a better life. Telling people their lives are over and will be spent in a military-controlled tent-city for decades or for ever from now on is not as unethical as locking a group of people up? Aren't people basically imprisoned in quite a few of those refugee camps?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a6996161.html

Oh look, we can even do it here. One of the comments is very ethical:

Wonderful! Then GO HOME! Swim. Walk. Die.

No one cares. But spread the word. Europe is a prison.

Excellent.

It's funny how we want to protect our Christian heartland full of good people who'd rather watch outsiders die in droves than let them into their lovely christian paradise of brotherly love.

Presumably, but there are at least a couple of things to consider:

• how many of the dead were elderly people (and should therefore be subtracted from the total), and how many non-elderly people were killed by elderly people as an overrepresentation (relative to the rest of the driving population; the actual number we are looking for)?
• how easy is it reduce the number of deaths and injuries resulting from traffic relative to those resulting from terrorist attacks? Presumably, the government is already spending a great deal on road safety, the police and counter-terrorism.

You really want to continue that angle?
Well, no, the police is understaffed and overworked, driving deaths could be reduced by barring people from driving, preferably all people because none of us are perfect and computers could probably do it much better. So far the accidents per kilometer driven for self-driving cars are already lower than for humans, IIRC only half the number of accidents per kilometer driven. Do you think the government should ban manual driving once the technology has arrived in the mainstream?

It's not an anecdote, similar things are happening/have happened in many cities in Western Europe and form part of a larger statistic. For example, the Köln assaults last year match the general pattern of antisocial behaviour. Malmö is just one place where this phenomenon has turned particularly extreme, and could represent the future of other vulnerable cities if immigration pressure and government policies persist.

The problem is that not everywhere in Western Europe can you prove that foreigners are statistically more antisocial than the natives. In addition you get excuses for the locals who are "just reacting to the evil foreigners", yet the fact that foreigners may be angry and antisocial because they just react to the racism and discrimination of the locals is never considered, they have to shut up and take it. There may be good behavior as a guest, but being a good host is just as important. Your "general pattern of antisocial behavior" is based on superficial newspaper headlines and since you were so statistically adept about accident statistics, have you factored the social status, environmental factors, type of criminality and so on into your "pattern" or are newspaper headlines and skin colour the only metrics you used?

You know, I'd consider tax evasion and bullying antisocial behavior as well, how many natives do you think engage in that or does that not count and why?

http://investorplace.com/investorpol.../#.WGz3Cy-GNGE
http://www.workplacebullying.org/wbi...014-us-survey/
http://freakonomics.com/2013/07/19/t...on-bar-fights/
http://ncadv.org/learn-more/statistics

Are those the noble Christian social values we defend?
Is that the social peace they are disturbing so violently?

[Gilrandir]

Exactly. Do you know how many people die in household accidents because a ladder does not alarm them as much as a bearded brown person?
http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/...o-prevent-them

The fact that people are afraid of the immigrants more than of other, more lethal , things is quite explicable: those car accidents and vicious ladders are the things from their every day environment they had got used to. Immigrants are a new thing that has intruded/has been imposed upon them. Hence a closer attention paid to anything they do and more painful awareness of their actions.

This being said, I don't support the idea of indiscriminate acceptance of migrants, for they are migrants and not refugees.

[Husar]

The fact that people are afraid of the immigrants more than of other, more lethal , things is quite explicable: those car accidents and vicious ladders are the things from their every day environment they had got used to. Immigrants are a new thing that has intruded/has been imposed upon them. Hence a closer attention paid to anything they do and more painful awareness of their actions.

That is very true and it affects me, too. That does however not make it rational or mean one should have a terrible knee-jerk reaction based on it.

This being said, I don't support the idea of indiscriminate acceptance of migrants, for they are migrants and not refugees.

Are we talking about anyone specific or just making sure everyone understands that migrants are not refugees? I currently don't support the indiscriminate acceptance of migrants either.
These ones for example should not be let in just like that: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38486584

[Viking]

but these countries don't always want or can't always take all of them

We could spend money we would otherwise have to spend on integration and anti-terrorism to sweeten the deal for such countries.

and they also don't always offer them the same chances of a better life.

Are they entitled to our quality of life right now just because we have happen to have it?

Telling people their lives are over and will be spent in a military-controlled tent-city for decades or for ever from now on is not as unethical as locking a group of people up? Aren't people basically imprisoned in quite a few of those refugee camps?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a6996161.html

Doesn't seem like any worse conditions than what I would guess millions of very poor people the world over have lived in for all their lives; to put things in perspective. Are the people in that camp more worthy of Western help because they used to have a wealthier lifestyle once? Or should we empty the slums and move all their inhabitants to the West along with the migrating Syrians?

Note that the camp in question is in Europe. A more compelling argument, here, would be concerning camps in other Muslim countries, although that takes us back to my first point in this post: putting pressure on other Muslim countries to take them in, and help them with it where it seems useful and possible.

Well, no, the police is understaffed and overworked

Yet you might have to spend great sums only to see small reductions in deaths and injuries. It's comparing the return on investment from the different alternatives that is relevant here.

The problem is that not everywhere in Western Europe can you prove that foreigners are statistically more antisocial than the natives.

That's not the point, but that law and order is unravelling different places (cities and neighbourhoods) in Europe because of mass-immigration, while mass-immigration continues. Whatever the percentages are for natives and immigrants when it comes to antisocial behaviour, that doesn't particularly matter unless you can use it to both actually restore law and order in these places and prevent lawlessness from spreading (and without gutting other parts of the state budget, which could of course lead us to more traffic deaths, increased MRSA incidence, less aid to poor countries etc..).

You know, I'd consider tax evasion and bullying antisocial behavior as well, how many natives do you think engage in that or does that not count and why?

http://investorplace.com/investorpol.../#.WGz3Cy-GNGE
http://www.workplacebullying.org/wbi...014-us-survey/
http://freakonomics.com/2013/07/19/t...on-bar-fights/
http://ncadv.org/learn-more/statistics

What are you trying to say?

It's funny how we want to protect our Christian heartland full of good people who'd rather watch outsiders die in droves than let them into their lovely christian paradise of brotherly love.

[...]

Are those the noble Christian social values we defend?
Is that the social peace they are disturbing so violently?

I care little for Christianity and 'Christian values', so I'll leave it to you to defend them.

[Husar]

We could spend money we would otherwise have to spend on integration and anti-terrorism to sweeten the deal for such countries.

Pay dictators to take them in as well? You would pay countries like Saudi Arabia, who fund terrorism in the first place, to take in the people that were displaced by the terror they funded? Now you're rewarding bad behavior IMO. Not only that, you'd also give them a lot of people who hate us (more) now as recruits for terrorist organizations. You're not fixing a problem, you're just throwing money at a problem once more, hoping it will go away. Where exactly has that worked out fine before in the long term?

Are they entitled to our quality of life right now just because we have happen to have it?

Are we entitled to it just because we were born here? Were we entitled to violently conquer some of these countries and extract their resources to gain part of the wealth we currently have? If violently taking something is okay, then their attempts to violently try and get in here cannot be called immoral.

Doesn't seem like any worse conditions than what I would guess millions of very poor people the world over have lived in for all their lives; to put things in perspective. Are the people in that camp more worthy of Western help because they used to have a wealthier lifestyle once? Or should we empty the slums and move all their inhabitants to the West along with the migrating Syrians?

Are Western people somehow more worthy of protecting their jobs and peaceful lifestyles just because they had them once? If other people can take a hit to their quality of life, why can't we? Surely immigration does not lower our lifestyle to the level of the poorest slums, so it is overall more acceptable than just increasing the size of the poorest slums by putting more refugees there. We can afford to give more and still be better off than most. Your argument defeats itself.

Note that the camp in question is in Europe. A more compelling argument, here, would be concerning camps in other Muslim countries, although that takes us back to my first point in this post: putting pressure on other Muslim countries to take them in, and help them with it where it seems useful and possible.

The point was that you're basically locking people up, some of them are running away from dictators who want to lock them up or kill them and you want to lock them up and chain them somewhere far away from you. Where they get locked up is not the issue if they are proper war refugees. That you lock up people who try to violently climb a fence to become millionaire football players in Europe is more understandable IMO, but so far you seem to want to take noone here and keep Europe somehow ethnically clean given how you talk about immigration in general. On that note, do you also not like Spanish people who come to Norway to work or do you find they do not disrupt public order?

Yet you might have to spend great sums only to see small reductions in deaths and injuries. It's comparing the return on investment from the different alternatives that is relevant here.

That makes no sense, the ROI on anti-terror measures may already be enormous if you consider how many attacks we may have had without any police at all. And obviously if you have only 20 deaths to reduce, it's impossible to reduce the deaths in that field by 100.
If 20 scares you so much, then consider that we have some 30000-40000 deaths per year from infections in hospitals and we wouldn't even need enormous investments to reduce them. The disinfectant for example is usually already provided, it's just not used properly by personnel because there is not pressure being applied. All the pressure is seemingly applied to reduce the last 20 terror deaths instead of forcing people to clean their hands and material for little extra cost to prevent maybe 10000 deaths from infections. The ROI on the latter would be a whole lot higher than on the former. Which was my point from the start...
And spending more money on the police would help with more than just fighting terrorism either way.

That's not the point, but that law and order is unravelling different places (cities and neighbourhoods) in Europe because of mass-immigration, while mass-immigration continues. Whatever the percentages are for natives and immigrants when it comes to antisocial behaviour, that doesn't particularly matter unless you can use it to both actually restore law and order in these places and prevent lawlessness from spreading (and without gutting other parts of the state budget, which could of course lead us to more traffic deaths, increased MRSA incidence, less aid to poor countries etc..).

To restore law and order implies that there were law and order before, which is a myth that you can't prove.
The best thing you can claim is that before there was a kind of lawlessness that people were used to but when it involves brown people, it suddenly gets everyone's attention. You haven't shown me anything that proves otherwise, see the next answer as well.
Maybe the crimes of immigrants have a tendency to be more bold and out in the open, but in that case the only thing that unravels is the illusion of law and order that we grew so comfortable with before.

What are you trying to say?

That lawlessness is not exclusively caused or greatly increased by immigration, it exists already anyway, you just ignore it when it is not caused by immigration. You are free to actually prove otherwise. And by prove I don't mean that you just claim it is so or show single newspaper incidents that prove nothing as you did until now.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Since statistically the older you are the more likely you are to die, you should shit your pants every morning realizing you are a day older.

Hmmm.....


I don't think the death part is optional, so shouldn't I wake up happy to have had one more day and the chance to move forward into the new one, rather than dwelling in fear on that which is unavoidable?