Utopia Talk / Politics / Seb strikes again?

Sam Adams Member	Fri Dec 23 08:53:57 7 muslims arrested in australia plotting to bomb christmas gatherings. Lol seb... how is it possible to be so wrong?
Seb Member	Fri Dec 23 23:56:37 Sam Adams: I don't know Sam, but you keep going and going, citing terrorist incident after terrorist incident that doesn't involve refugees. While ignoring right wing terrorist nut jobs that are just like you.
jergul large member	Sat Dec 24 05:06:22 Sammy Seb is quite correct on the cargo cult pseudo-science approach you are using. Good fun if just trolling, but if you stare into the abyss... Seb That sort of goes for you too. You should continually re-evaluate d2p in the face of mounting evidence that the 1649 founding fathers of the modern nation-state system were correct (and they did not even know about nukes).
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Sat Dec 24 06:39:10 Does "refugee" even mean the same thing for you all? The word has come to mean everything from immigrant to muslim, depending on the political leanings. When I have discussed the refugee crisis and the economic aspects of it, I have many times heard "immigration" arguments about educated people who will contribute to the economy. I think it is unrealistic and unreasonable to expect a refugee to be an immigrant. A refugee is by definition someone who has fled involuntarily and if we have decided to recieve them, then that is associated with costs. You expect something else from someone who immigrates voluntarily.
Paramount Member	Sat Dec 24 06:54:44 If they get permanent residency when they arrive as refugees, they are transformed to an "immigrant" and thus expected to contribute to the economy. But they don't get permanent residency any longer. So right now, a refugee is a refugee, and a refugee is a cost.
Renzo Marquez Member	Sat Dec 24 08:06:57 They stimulate the economy by increasing the demand for rape counselors.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Sat Dec 24 08:30:13 Yes Paramount, but that is still to be viewed as long term deal, residency doesn't change the fact that the entire thing was imposed on you. You have naturally a harder/longer time to adjust, psychological factors to overcome etc. If you chose to move (immigrate) you have the sense at least that you are in control. Most of the people in the recent waves ended up in Sweden and Germany not because those were their nr 1 choice as an immigration desitination, but because they were the only countries accepting people and least likely to send you back.
Sam Adams Member	Sat Dec 24 08:59:36 Seb yet again tries the used car salesman approach... "well, a refugee isnt a muslim. See, the words are different"
Seb Member	Sat Dec 24 19:50:10 Jergul: No. I disagree. If we had intervened to force a peaceful resolution between the FSA and Assad, as like the Dayton accords, there would be no refugees or power vacuum into which ISIS spread. Rather, it is the non intervention that allowed Assad to create that vacuum and radicalise the population by his scorched earth policies: seeking to create demographic facts on the ground (with Russian and Iranian backing) in urban areas while abandoning other areas. Syria shows exactly why your invocation of fundamentalist interpretations of Westphalian principles don't work. Both in realist terms and in principled ones. Europe would have been much better off with a robust intervention early on, along the lines of Yugoslavia.
Seb Member	Sat Dec 24 19:52:42 Nim: Actually, once grabbed work permits, most refugees quickly become net tax contributors. The cost of refugees is only when they are denied right to work & integrate. In so far as there is an economic cost, It's a cost that countries take to ensure cultural purity
Seb Member	Sat Dec 24 19:55:13 Sam: He's hardly a Muslim. Drinks for a start. Never went to mosques. Notorious alcoholic and womaniser. Arab, for sure. But not a refugee. And your argument was that I'm crazy to take in refugees. Well, this guy isn't a refugee. Like most of your examples.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Sat Dec 24 20:39:12 If people can be shuffled into the system quickly, that is great, but there are costs associated with recieving refugees (even the initial reception and housing) that you just do not have with immigration. And if we are going to help people (we should) we have to accept the costs. Obviously throwing people into a work environment is best for everyone, but nothing you can assume with a refugee, which could be anyone from 70 year old retiree to a 15 year old who comes alone, a wide spectrum. Someone who immigrates generally has work and/or housing set up. It might be a proffesional or someone who is married to a national etc. Different circumstances that require different input from the host country. Even when you get residency as a refugee you need to learn the language (not as big an issue in English speaking countries) and that takes time and is funded by the host country. On some level accepting a refugee (residency or not) is social wellfare, I don't mind social wellfare, but it costs money and it makes no sense to bundle it with immigration which can be expected to generate revenue fairly quickly if not from day one.
Seb Member	Sat Dec 24 21:29:25 Nim: So, yes, there are costs initially. Net, they are a winner. From a Europe perspective, the filters on getting to Europe are such that most refugees are skilled, young and net contributors. The poor can't afford to pay the people smugglers, the stupid or lazy don't know or have the motivation to get this far, the old can't make the journey without family. Immigration, OTOH, though again statically it's positive, within the EU it is possible to have Romanians coming to e.g. the UK, claiming benefits, and sending it back home. But the big disbenefit of immigration though is labour market effects. It helps hold down wages and discourages employers investing in training and skills for their workforce. This is - in the EU - a huge problem when we have the Eurozone pushing deflationary policies. It means that you have low skilled Brits trying to compete with Spanish graduates for entry level retail jobs.
Seb Member	Sat Dec 24 21:31:07 And the systemic effect of pushing down wages while prices rise is the need for the state to step in with in work benefits and social services as workers can not afford to own homes or start families.
Seb Member	Sat Dec 24 21:33:04 Net migration in the UK is 300k a year. It's way more an issue than refugees - even if we took all the refugees heading into Europe in the last two years, it would have less an impact than 15 years of this level of immigration.
Forwyn Member	Sat Dec 24 21:35:44 "If we had intervened to force a peaceful resolution between the FSA and Assad... Rather, it is the non intervention" Are you still parroting the line that because we don't have battalions of boots on the ground, that this qualifies as non-intervention? While BGM-71 toting "moderates" drive around in Toyotas?
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Sat Dec 24 22:11:40 Womanizing, drinking etc. all these things are ok in traditional Jihadist views in wartime, for deception espionage etc. Any confusion over how sex and religiosity is reconciled should be clear after IS and Boko Haram took sex slaves and conducted mass rapes. None of them are indicative of a lack of conviction. Majid Nawaz explains this in his book with Sam Harris. Beyond that, who is and who isn't a true believer of Islam (or any religion for that matter) is only important to the adherents of the religion itself, people who believe there is a true interpretation to be followed. Not something I would get involved in as an atheist.
jergul large member	Sun Dec 25 04:01:14 Seb You disagree on the need to continually re-evaluate your position on d2p in the face of ever mounting evidence that it does not work? Nothing you said about Assad is true. Catch and release programmes for rebels are for example the opposite of scorched earth. Radicalisation was and is a function of being village idiots. Or an expression of the rural-urban divide (including recently migrated rural denizens). Anyway, without re-evaluation, all your position becomes is a variant of a cargo-cult religion.
Sam Adams Member	Sun Dec 25 07:57:01 "most refugees are skilled, young and net contributors" Did that retard seriously just say that? Godamnit seb, you are actually a retard.
Seb Member	Sun Dec 25 08:26:34 Forwyn: Did we have boots on the ground before the Dayton accords? We have provided paltry arms after letting the conflict fester for about four years.
Seb Member	Sun Dec 25 08:36:51 Nim: He wasn't at all religiously affiliated when doing that our fighting a jihad. He was just robbing shops and dealing drugs. The guy wasn't a refugee, entered Europe before Merkel's "open door" policy, spent years in jail for non jihadis crimes (were he was radicalised), was known to the intelligence agencies and police forces, who subsequently failed to do anything. He tells us nothing about refugee policies, he tells us all about the failure to get a grips with homegrown Islamic communities that radicalised him, the pathetic state of our prisons, and the incompetence of our police and intelligence agencies. In short, what this shows is you do not need to be a refugee to enter Europe and commit an act of terror. In fact you don't need to enter at all - we have plenty of disaffected youths of North African and Arab backgrounds that we are so shockingly bad at integrating (hint, best thing to integrate someone is give them a job, I surely don't need to remind you of the shocking discrimination in hiring practices in, e.g. France) that there is no shortage of potential terrorist recruits. So when calling to stop providing asylum to those fleeing ISIS and the toxic trio of Assad, Russia and Iran (where we will not do anything to realistically safeguard in their own countries) - and baring in mind the principle of providing such refugee - one must ask does the tenuous supposed increase in safety really outweigh abandoning those principles? For me, the answer is a clear no.
Seb Member	Sun Dec 25 08:40:52 Jergul: You are in denial. Assad & Russia targeted markets, bakeries, hospitals - the full gammut of civil infrastructure. R2P works - that's why Russia is so keen to equate it with regime change. People need to live in fear of strong men everywhere, or the people back home might get ideas. Cowering at home and hoping Russia might tolerate democracy if you keep quiet about it won't work. Just ask Ukraine.
Seb Member	Sun Dec 25 08:41:07 Sam: Check the stats.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Sun Dec 25 08:43:23 The number for Sweden. Roughly 50% have jobs after 7 years and the overall employment is well below what is required to maintain the Swedish system. I don't know what the overall is for the EU, but the EU has on taken far less people per capita than Sweden and Germany. What are the per capita numbers? I don't know the UK's but they are far below Swedens, UK number would be fine. The labor market effect of immigration would apply to refugees as well, but the EU coop is not the same thing, because the member countries agreed to have this deal, a deal now on the verge of unraveling. So it seems to imply that free movement is only tenable between countries that have parity in social and economical wealth. Otherwise the richer countries will be flooded with cheap labor.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Sun Dec 25 08:59:36 I don't know all the details of this attacker, I just responded that the things you cited are not good arguments to decide what convictions he had and to what degree he held them. As for the Jihadis hiding among refugee, I think it is worrisome, not for the attacks as much as the psychological effects it will have on society. And in principle I agree with you that the threat does not outweigh our duty to help people, not even close. My gripes with immigration and refugee policy has little if anything to do with the wave of recent attacks, they are economical worries, concearns about segregation and the inevitable clash of values. Hard problems to solve, but certainly not impossible.
Sam Adams Member	Sun Dec 25 09:22:45 There was just an article that showed about 5% of german refugees had jobs. Rofl seb the clown is wrong again.
jergul large member	Sun Dec 25 10:22:31 Seb The level of destruction and overall casualties are way too low to sustain speculation on scotched earth tactics. woot@d2p domino theory. It is a new religion!
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Sun Dec 25 10:25:26 After how long a time from them recieving work permits? I doubt the number portrays an accurate picture. Comparison made with the USA and how succesful it has been where Sweden and Germany have failed, do not factor in that the USA does not have a welfare state on the same level and the enormous discrepency in the sheer number of people recieved. That alone allows the USA to have far less red tape hindering refugees from getting jobs, because the impact on the job market is minimal. I mention this because the "hindering refugees from getting jobs" is often brought up as an argument. Yes there is a degree of protectionism involved in Germany, Sweden and else where aimed at protecting wages, providing preferance to nationals and EU citizens and maintining quality for high education jobs by requiring evidence (that can be hard to produce if you come from a war torn country). Looking at the numbers you also see that refugees arriving in Germany and Sweden are much younger, meaning they lack life/work experience, in the USA it is much more evenly spread.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Sun Dec 25 10:31:44 Much younger = Young men*
Forwyn Member	Sun Dec 25 11:07:36 "We have provided paltry arms after letting the conflict fester for about four years." False. FSA was birthed by Turkey. Training, weapons, even direct intel. Just because the US hadn't openly acceded to John McCain's bleating for assistance to head-chopping moderates doesn't mean they weren't getting massive assistance. "You are in denial. Assad & Russia targeted markets, bakeries, hospitals - the full gammut of civil infrastructure." Assad and Russia targeted staging grounds for military operations, same as rebels. I don't see you whining about the suicide bombing of Al Kindi hospital.
williamthebastard Member	Sun Dec 25 11:14:11 Al kindi hospital had been turned into a military base by assad.
Forwyn Member	Sun Dec 25 11:17:44 Right. Military operations target locations of other military operations. Not really controversial.
jergul large member	Sun Dec 25 11:23:23 It was a pretty epic siege. Up there with aleppo central prison and Kweires airbase. Lots of building have been repurposed or serve dual purposes. More by the rebels than by the regime.
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