Europe-Middle East-Africa Refugee Crisis General Thread

[ag]

No, Islam is not a problem per se. The problem with Islam is a worldwide problem where it has replaced Communism as the new practical big-tent enemy of the self-righteous Western world. Therefore, any movement the Islamic world makes is considred a threat.

I'm quite gobsmacked to see people still deny the real problems with Islam(ism) in 2015. I mean, it takes quite some cognitive dissonance to act like, for example, 9/11, the killing of Theo van Gogh, the London public transport bombings, the Madrid train bombings, the Charlie Hebdo attack, and the surge of ISIS, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Muslim Brotherhood never happened... Then again, for so many True Leftists everything wrong in the world is the West's fault

Brider yidn, such brider yidn.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Well Islam and Islamism are quite different, the latter being a political ideology. And there's Islamism and then there's Islamism. But, hey, Irish Republicanism was clearly 'a problem' in Britain in the 70s/80s/90s: this did not mean that the Irish population over here was also 'a problem'.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Anyway, most our Muslims came over in the 60s and 70s (most 'immigration' from the Subcontinent subsequently has been back and forth stuff within family units) and from our former Empire to boot. The main exceptions to that are the Kurds* and the Somalis, who you won't meet unless you live in one of the sketchier parts of London. The bloody immigrants that people who aren't being overt racists tend to whine about are Polish or Portuguese (although most people can't tell the difference) and so on. Of course one of the largest groups of migrants (foreign students) are basically 100% anonymous (like even to most people who live in university cities) except to the extent that they inflate the overall migration figures.

_{*As Cyprus was once 'ours' as well the Turkish Cypriots don't 'count' in that sense.}

[Tender Branson]

A couple thousand migrants arrived in Vienna today via train from Budapest.

Police stopped the trains at the border because they were heavily overcrowded and a security risk. After checking the papers, some were returned to Budapest - but most were able to travel on.

Also, most will continue their travel to Munich, Germany or further north.

Pics:



http://derstandard.at/2000021530597/Zuege-an-Oesterreichs-Grenze-Nichts-geht-mehr-in-Hegyeshalom

Trains with migrants allowed into Austria after lengthy border checks

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http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/08/31/us-europe-migrants-idUSKCN0R01IV20150831

[DavidB.]

Police stopped the trains at the border because they were heavily overcrowded and a security risk. After checking the papers, some were returned to Budapest - but most were able to travel on.

Wtf? Why on earth?

[Tender Branson]

Police stopped the trains at the border because they were heavily overcrowded and a security risk. After checking the papers, some were returned to Budapest - but most were able to travel on.

Wtf? Why on earth?

Because we have now reached the point where this movement has become unstoppable.

Police all around are simply unable to do something about it and they just let them pass ...

[Tender Branson]

Meanwhile, 20.000 "welcomed" the migrants today in Vienna and "protested" to treat the asylum seekers in a humane way:

[Beezer]

Having arrrived in Munich...did the women travel separately?

[ingemann]

Xenophobia isn't inherent to "human nature", as Politicus disturbingly seems to believe. Societies can be educated to accept, and even actively promote, multiculturalism, if thier political and cultural leaders make the effort to endorse it, instead of pandering to irrational fears.

They should first explain what multiculturalism is though. Different cultures living side by side or the incorporation of non-native cultures into the dominant one? I.e. forcing people from different cultural backgrounds to accep the basic tenets of our western culture: freedom of speech and religion, gender equality... If it's the latter, I can most certainly sign up to that. The former - not exactly.

I think it's also perfectly acceptable for Danes to feel that their homeland should be the "Land of Danes" rather than the "Land of people who happen to live in Denmark." We tend to bemoan the disappearance of cultures and languages but when it comes to European cultures, efforts to preserve it are somehow frowned upon. Go figure.

How is this any different than saying "Europe for the Europeans" or "Diversity = White Genocide"?

While I suspect you're hopeless cause (based on your post below the one I quotes) I'm going to answer anyway. Saying that a national state should be the home of the nation/people which it's based on, are like saying that children in American school should be taught English, they're free to have classes in other languages, but English should be taught. While saying " "Europe for the Europeans" or "Diversity = White Genocide" " are like saying it should be illegal to have classes in other languages at all.

I know this distinction are likely lost on you, but hope shines eternal.

It was the case in French until a few decades ago.

I don't think that French immigration policies or treatment of minorities are something anybody think should be adopted. As for Denmark we had never had similar policies, exceptt for on the Faroe in the early 19th century, while we still thought that it was a dialect of Danish.

[palandio]

Having arrrived in Munich...did the women travel separately?

According to a news agency report 190 refugees, among them many women and children, were taken out of the train in Rosenheim. 200 others remained on the trained to Munich.
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/ungarn-laesst-fluechtlinge-in-den-westen-ausreisen-a-1050790.html
(The fact, that the majority of arriving people is men, remains, of course.)

[BaconBacon96]

Hungary closes one of Budapest's main railway stations to stop more migrants getting in

http://news.sky.com/story/1544753/police-block-budapest-station-to-migrants

[Beezer]

Refugees in front of the station: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYjekatSiwU&feature=youtu.be

[dead0man]

I would gladly deport half the French Parliament and every Cac40 CEO in exchange for taking a million Syrians, who are a delightful people, or Eritrean, or any other blokes. And I would have them live in my neighborhood. Granted, a small limit to that

I suspect you'll end up getting your wish, but I think it will be a Monkey's Paw type wish.

How's that economic recovery coming along compared to your peers?

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Yeah, screw those women, we're all ready pretty sh**tty to 'em, what's wrong with a little more?

[politicus]

Plus, if you put all of the refugees out of Syria and Eritrea in France, they would still account for a small percentage of the whole population. There is no threat except a panic fear.

Well, 3.9 million Syrians and 700 000 Eritreans would be less than 10% of the French population, but that is not including IDPs, so I suppose that depends how you count and what you consider a "low percentage". Even then there are other refugee groups, some of them coming from Francophone countries in Africa like CAR and DRC and having France high on their list of preferred destinations.

The over all number of refugees and IDPs at the moment is at roughly the same size as the population of France. Would you take them all? Unselected (no picking and choosing the ones likely to integrate well or cause few problems).

There is also the fact that both the Middle East and Africa will continue to produce huge streams of refugees due to, among other things, failed states and pressure on resources from population growth.

Numbers matter - both here and now and what they will be in the long run. This is why the "just let them in" approach is naive.

Also, you are very cavalier bout the gender aspect. Finnish stats show that Arab migrants are 17 times more likely to commit rape than Finnish men and African immigrants 16 times more likely.
(Finland is one of the few countries that produce ethnically based stats for these things - but the pattern is by all accounts the same in other Nordic countries).

The difference may be smaller in macho France, but you can not ignore the "reversing gender equality/harassment/threat to women aspect and just say "crimes should be punished".

People are brutalized by growing up in war torn countries and brutalized people use violence easier than non-brutalized; men from cultures that do not respect women do not suddenly start to respect women because they enter a new continent.

Again, if we are talking about a small amount of refugees all this is manageable, but if we talk about a steady stream of millions of migrants it obviously creates serious problems. And women, gays, Jews and other vulnerable groups will feel this disproportionally.

You already have some of the worst integration problems in Europe (many of your ghetto suburbs are regular hellholes), where will you place 4,6 million refugees (taking you seriously here) without making this much worse?

[politicus]

One aspect that I think illustrates some of the dilemmas of all this is the casting of gay people as everyones favourite refugees in Scandinavia (well, apart from SoCons banking on taking only Christians..). Whenever there is talk about which refugees we should take gay people come up and there are a number of reasons for this - some openly declared, others never mentioned:

- Openly gay people are undeniably a very vulnerable group in African and Middle Eastern refugee camps as well as societies in general. (obviously everyones favored reason)

- Gays are highly unlikely to be Jihadists (openly/self identified gays that is, there are probably tons of repressed gays in ISIS).

- Gays are more likely to have liberal/"Western" social attitudes in general.

- Gay men are not associated with machismo - and thought of as gentle, sensitive etc.

- Gay men do not rape or harass women.

- Gays are better educated on average (at lest that is the assumption).

- Gays are less likely to be deeply religious.

- Gays get much fewer children, so they do not alter the ethnic balance as much (never admitted, but clearly a factor).

The second most preferred group is single women - guess why.

[Tender Branson]

Interesting statistic:

Of the 3.650 migrants who arrived yesterday in Vienna's railway stations by train from Hungary, only 6 (!) applied for asylum in Vienna.

The other 3.644 or so just waited for trains to Germany, as police just stood by and let them drive on ...

[Tender Branson]

The leader of the FPÖ in Burgenland, who is also responsible for police matters in the state's SPÖ-FPÖ coalition, has ordered the state police to conduct additional border security measures starting in the next days. 150 more police officers should be deployed to the border crossings to check trucks coming in.

The police has refused that order though, saying they are already too strained for that new job because they already pick up hundreds of illegals accross the "green border" each day and have to register them and transport them to the migrant centers ...

http://derstandard.at/2000021592662/Tschuertz-ordnet-Grenzkontrollen-an-Polizei-verweigert-Befehl

[Tender Branson]

2.500 migrants slept at the Salzburg rail station last night, the Red Cross provided the help needed:

[Tender Branson]

The situation in Eastern Austria is now relatively calm, with Hungary blocking the railway stations in Budapest.

Some migrants are taking trains outside of Budapest, but not more than 100 arrived in Vienna yesterday.

Most are now coming over the "green border" in Burgenland via cars and trucks (from smugglers) and then are directly taken to camps where they are registered, taken care of and where they can file for asylum. That's about 200-400 per day, or 6.000-12.000 per month. Most are travelling on to Germany though ...

[Tender Branson]

A young migrant boy tries to argue with Hungarian police about opening the gates to the railway station:

[Tender Branson]

There's also another route:

Syrians fleeing war find new route to Europe – via the Arctic Circle

They tried the shores of Libya, the islands of Greece, and the plains of the Balkans. Now it has emerged that Syrians fleeing civil war have found another route to the safety of Europe: the Arctic Circle.

Dozens of Syrians have trekked to the far north of Russia this year in an unlikely bid to reach a little-known Arctic border crossing with Norway. Up to 20 Syrians a month are then crossing into the tiny Norwegian town of Kirkenes, which lies around 2,500 miles north of Damascus, and where the average daily temperature hovers just below freezing.

The town is the northernmost point of the Iron Curtain Trail, a cycle path that traces the boundary between western and eastern Europe during the cold war.

“It’s a relatively new thing – it started maybe half a year ago,” said superintendent Thomas Pettersen, the only policeman on duty in Kirkenes police station on Saturday.

“You can say that maybe about five to 20 people try it a month. There have been a couple of people who have tried by bicycle. The rest are being driven over in Russian cars. It’s very easy for them to cross – they can just sit in a Russian car, and come into Norway. And it’s legal.”

According to Sør-Varanger Avis, a local newspaper, 133 asylum-seekers have used this method in 2015, most of whom are Syrians.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/29/syrian-refugees-europe-arctic-circle-russia-norway

[Sol]

See, sh*t like this is why Europe should aggressive attempt to resettle refugees from Turkey and Jordan, so that they aren't forced to literally go through the tundra to receive asylum.

[Tender Branson]

See, sh*t like this is why Europe should aggressive attempt to resettle refugees from Turkey and Jordan, so that they aren't forced to literally go through the tundra to receive asylum.

Why should only we do that ?

It was the US that stirred up the hornets nests in AfPak, Iraq, Syria and Libya and brought misery and despair to people's lives there so that they had to flee.

What about Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama ordering charter planes to Turkey/Jordan/Lebanon and pick up the millions of refugees there and resettle them in the US ?

[ag]

See, sh*t like this is why Europe should aggressive attempt to resettle refugees from Turkey and Jordan, so that they aren't forced to literally go through the tundra to receive asylum.

Why should only we do that ?

It was the US that stirred up the hornets nests in AfPak, Iraq, Syria and Libya

To begin with, I take grave exception to this calculated racist bullshoot statement.

[The Last Northerner]

See, sh*t like this is why Europe should aggressive attempt to resettle refugees from Turkey and Jordan, so that they aren't forced to literally go through the tundra to receive asylum.

Why should only we do that ?

It was the US that stirred up the hornets nests in AfPak, Iraq, Syria and Libya

To begin with, I take grave exception to this calculated racist bullshoot statement.

There is nothing wrong with that statement Did Austria sell weapons to Syrian terrorists? Did their government spearhead the Libyan Blitz? Are they the ones who send drones to kill children in Pakistan and Afghanistan. No, of course not - that is the United States. Austria should not be held responsible for all the imperialist crap the United States pulls.