European Politico-economics QA Mega-thread - Page 511

On August 09 2016 23:55 WhiteDog wrote:
Should post that in the Iraq & Syria civil war thread.


Empower Greece (and bulgaria).

But we fucked that up too. Yeah, those idiot europeans are just too dumb. Turkey could have been part of the european union ten years ago, when it was actually doing everything it could to come in, but when it's over it's over ... Don't try to negotiate - by proposing free access to the european territory ! - with a country that you rejected for ten years... That's just basic common sense.

On August 09 2016 22:59 doc_biceps wrote:


I totally agree on your points 3 and 4. On the other hand, I highly doubt that it is logistically possible to create as many camps as needed for the number of refugees, but I lack real numbers to "prove" my point there.

Properly funded camps would have made a "fair" distribution to other places possible (e.g. taking in kids, sick people, families etc from the camps to Europe).

I totally disagree on the "never going to be able to continue living their lives". Yes, some of them will never be able to go back and did what they did before they left their country, but some of them will return IF the war is over (which will hopefully happen at some point). Yes, the "refugee status" as a temporary situation is pertinent in and outside of a camp, but a lot comes down to how refugees feel in the situation. From my own experience, they feel less lost and "homeless" if they are allowed to live in a flat with their family or even with a couple of strangers then they are in bigger accommodation (sorry, I dont know if accommodation is the right word here ...). People need to have something to do (work, learn, acivities) which are much easier achieved in or next to towns and cities.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan says Turkey and Russia can rebuild their damaged ties and make the two countries even closer after talks with Vladimir Putin.

Calling the Russian leader his “dear friend”, President Erdogan said Turkey is ready to implement a natural gas pipeline project with Russia and a deal to build Turkey’s first nuclear power plant.

Mr Putin, in his turn, said that the flow of Russian tourists to Turkey – halted after the downing of a Russian jet by Turkey in November – will resume.

Mr Putin added that he and Mr Erdogan will have a separate discussion on Syria later on Tuesday involving top military and intelligence officials to search for common ground in the crisis, where Moscow and Ankara have backed the opposing sides.

On August 10 2016 00:56 Ghostcom wrote:


I think you might want to reread the last paragraph of my previous post. If they return to their country they are no longer refugees. It is easy enough to set up teaching and leisure activities in camps. Work in the conventional sense is obviously difficult.

However, I think you are idealizing what we are offering those who made the trip to EU - most of them are not working in the conventional sense either. Ideally it would be the best if we could create an entire new society in which the refugees could simply "plug'n'play" i.e. continue their lives like nothing happened. However, we can't. So at some point we have to decide what we deem more important: That we help a small fraction or we help a proportion orders of magnitude larger - my vote is for the latter.

On August 10 2016 00:56 Ghostcom wrote:
I think you might want to reread the last paragraph of my previous post. If they return to their country they are no longer refugees. It is easy enough to set up teaching and leisure activities in camps. Work in the conventional sense is obviously difficult.

However, I think you are idealizing what we are offering those who made the trip to EU - most of them are not working in the conventional sense either. Ideally it would be the best if we could create an entire new society in which the refugees could simply "plug'n'play" i.e. continue their lives like nothing happened. However, we can't. So at some point we have to decide what we deem more important: That we help a small fraction or we help a proportion orders of magnitude larger - my vote is for the latter.

On August 10 2016 18:14 Morfildur wrote:
I had an interesting experience with immigrants yesterday.

I live right next to a house in which several non-native families live. I assume they are Turkish, because they sound like the guy I used to buy Doner kebab from which is probably just my ignorance of their various languages, but I'll maintain that assumption for the moment.

The older people are always loudly arguing in Turkish - or whatever language they are speaking - and some of the older people apparently can't even speak German. Yesterday, after coming home from work, their children were playing with other non-native children, all maybe 5-8 years old, in front of the house... and they were chattering away in German like any other German child.
After thinking about it, I was wondering which language their children would consider their native language. In 20 years, when those 5-8 year olds have their own children, what language will they speak at home to their children? Probably not Turkish, more likely German.
What about the children of those children? Will they even remember that their family doesn't come from Germany? And the generation after?

So, thinking some more about it, maybe it's not a problem that first generation immigrants don't bother learning the local language. After all, their children go to our school, learn our language and the children of those children will grow up in German speaking households. Sure, that's 50+ years in the future, but some things take time and eventually those immigrant families become just as German as the Germans arguing about immigrants. Sure, it would go faster if immigrants learn the local language and even speak it at home, but in the end the generations after them will assimilate, whether the first generation does or not.

On August 10 2016 17:14 doc_biceps wrote:


Why do you think you can help more people with the camps? While thinking about it, you never really stated why you made that statement (maybe I didn't get the point ). You said that more kids, old people, poorer people could be helped in the camps and I guess thats where the "more" comes from, right?

After doing some "research" I found some sources and numbers about refugees hosted. In 2014 Turkey, Pakistan, Lebanon and Iran were sheltering around 5 Million people ( www.esiweb.org ). In 2015 1 Million refugees came to Germany (prob more). If the EU would have funded more/better camps, that would be 25% more people in countries which are already at their maximum capacity. And those are only the refugees which are in Germany right now (I know that there are a lot in Denkmark, Sweden etc as well).


EDIT:
I want to add this to the camp discussion: www.theguardian.com

The United Nations has registered over 4.2 million Syrian refugees, a step in seeking asylum from other countries, and has a demographic snapshot of about half of them. Of the 2.1 million registered in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon there’s a pretty even split in gender: about 50.5% are women and 49.7% are men. For men and women, the bulk of refugees (a little under a quarter each) are between the age of 18 and 59.

In Europe, over 800,000 migrants have traveled to Europe by sea in 2015, according to the United Nations refugee agency, and a little over half have come from Syria. About 62% of all migrants that have traveled to Europe this year, however, are men. A little under a quarter, 22%, are children and only 16% are women.

On August 10 2016 17:10 Elroi wrote:

Good point, but I think we need to do both. Lets be honest, life in refugee camps is like a life in prison. Sure it can be better with possibilites for education etc, but many, many people want to do something with their lives. If we tried that solution we would still have hundreds of thousands of people who would come here and live here illegally or die trying. The difference is that there would be no way of integrationg these people.

It said one Russian soldier had been killed in what it called a "massive fire fight" when Ukrainian forces with the support of armored vehicles had tried and failed to break into Crimea.

On August 10 2016 18:14 Morfildur wrote:
I had an interesting experience with immigrants yesterday.

I live right next to a house in which several non-native families live. I assume they are Turkish, because they sound like the guy I used to buy Doner kebab from which is probably just my ignorance of their various languages, but I'll maintain that assumption for the moment.

The older people are always loudly arguing in Turkish - or whatever language they are speaking - and some of the older people apparently can't even speak German. Yesterday, after coming home from work, their children were playing with other non-native children, all maybe 5-8 years old, in front of the house... and they were chattering away in German like any other German child.
After thinking about it, I was wondering which language their children would consider their native language. In 20 years, when those 5-8 year olds have their own children, what language will they speak at home to their children? Probably not Turkish, more likely German.
What about the children of those children? Will they even remember that their family doesn't come from Germany? And the generation after?

So, thinking some more about it, maybe it's not a problem that first generation immigrants don't bother learning the local language. After all, their children go to our school, learn our language and the children of those children will grow up in German speaking households. Sure, that's 50+ years in the future, but some things take time and eventually those immigrant families become just as German as the Germans arguing about immigrants. Sure, it would go faster if immigrants learn the local language and even speak it at home, but in the end the generations after them will assimilate, whether the first generation does or not.

German intelligence services have evidence that “hit squads” from the Islamic State terror group have infiltrated the country disguised as refugees, the deputy head of Bavaria’s spy agency told the BBC Thursday.

“We have to accept that we have hit squads and sleeper cells in Germany,” Manfred Hauser, the vice president of the Bavaria region’s intelligence gathering agency, BayLfV, told the Today program.

“We have substantial reports that among the refugees there are hit squads. There are hundreds of these reports, some from refugees themselves. We are still following up on these, and we haven’t investigated all of them fully,” said Hauser.

German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière will present a set of new security measures in Berlin on Thursday, following recent attacks in the country inspired by ISIL.

On July 18, five people were injured on a train near the city of Würzburg in Bavaria by an axe-wielding attacker. Less than a week later 15 people were injured during a suicide bombing attack outside a bar in Ansbach, also located in Bavaria.

Hauser said intelligence services have “irrefutable evidence that there is an IS command structure in place,” making a coordinated attack, similar to those seen in Paris last November and Brussels in March, “likely.”

Bavaria has been the main gateway for asylum seekers fleeing conflict in the Middle East, over 1 million of whom arrived in Germany in 2015.

On August 12 2016 06:34 Yuljan wrote:
Please excuse the German but its hard to find even the few German sources on the subject let alone english ones. I dont like muslims immigrants much, as you may have noticed, but I absolutely hate Germans like you.