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Microsoft founder Bill Gates has called on Europe to stop demonstrating generosity towards asylum seekers to avoid an overwhelming migrant influx. He also advises European states to make Africans' way to the continent much more difficult.
During an interview Germany's Welt am Sonntag, Gates, one of the richest people on the planet, warned of the grave consequences of exceeding generosity towards refugees coming to Europe, whose numbers would only rise unless something is done.
"On the one hand you want to demonstrate generosity and take in refugees, but the more generous you are, the more word gets around about this – which in turn motivates more people to leave Africa," Gates said.
While Germany has been one of the pioneers of the open door policy, it cannot "take in the huge, massive number of people who are wanting to make their way to Europe." Thus Gates advised European nations to take action in order to make it "more difficult for Africans to reach the continent via the current transit routes."
Source: https://www.rt.com/news/395356-migrants-overwhelm-europe-gates/
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12 2017, @09:08PM (1 child)
-- end of line --
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12 2017, @09:25PM
Gates is not in charge anymore. Microsoft is an Indian company now.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12 2017, @09:09PM (28 children)
And if we cut taxes for the rich, they will invest and the economy will grow and we will have more tax revenue! And if we violate copyright, creators will have no incentive and there will be no Windows 11. You do want windows that go all the way to eleven, don't you?
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12 2017, @09:51PM (27 children)
Besides the fact that the rich pay for almost everything in society already, it is also the case that taxing the rich at 100% (that is, stealing all of their income) would do very little to balance the overgrown budgets of western governments.
As always, the problem is government, not the rich. Indeed, were governments not so powerful, then the rich wouldn't have much reason to buy the knuckle-dragging, paper-pushing, self-serving bureaucrats who run them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12 2017, @10:33PM (24 children)
>"... were governments not so powerful ..."
The government is intrinsically powerful. The problem is that the government abuses its power. What can be done about that is to elect people who exercise restraint in using the government's power. It is bad strategy to take wealth from the rich to give to the poor. That leads to enhancing the wealth of the rich so that there is more to take. What we need are regulations that limit the accumulation of wealth: limiting the market share of corporations is the way to do the job. Sometimes you have to squeeze a little to get anything to trickle down.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12 2017, @10:48PM
A government is an organization that allocates resources according to "do as I say" coercion, rather than according to "do as we already agreed in advance" cooperation.
When coupled with a quasi-religious cultural reverence for the government, then the government has a good chance of becoming powerful through its coercion; people of a civilized society should be interested in routing out government from as many aspects of life as possible.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Immerman on Wednesday July 12 2017, @11:08PM (22 children)
A sound strategy that worked for a while - but how do you implement it when the megacorps basically own the government?
Another strategy is to tax the heck out of corporate profits - that has a proven track record of success when corporate tax rates topped out very close to 100%. Not because the corps end up paying a lot of taxes, but because they end up immediately reinvesting their income so that it doesn't count as profits. When the alternative is just having your money taken away, you can stomach an awful lot of risk, and stimulate a lot of market activity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12 2017, @11:12PM (17 children)
Hey, I know what will help society! Forcing people to make risky investments by threatening to transfer the fruits of their labor to the inherently unproductive bureaucrats in government.
Yeah. That'll do it!
Spread society's resources across both high risk investments and low-intelligence governments.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @12:05AM (16 children)
As opposed to what?
Sheltering those money in fiscal paradises and do nothing with them? Have you ever seen any dollar getting out of Bermuda other than in forms of luxury yachts or the like?
For example, what's Apple doing with the zillions blocked in its coffers?
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @12:29AM (15 children)
That money is locked up to keep it safe from theft by governments.
What's the alternative? Quit threatening productive people with confiscation of the fruits of their labor, so that they can feel comfortable using their money instead of hiding it.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by kaszz on Thursday July 13 2017, @01:08AM (14 children)
There's an inherent assumption that the money came from productive people. They might do that at the bottom. But those in charge are too often rent seekers or legal scammers in various forms.
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Thursday July 13 2017, @01:31AM (13 children)
Yet more government-caused problems. Just because government causes problems at multiple levels doesn't mean it's a good idea.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @01:52AM
As Ronald McDonald Reagan said: "Khallow is not the solution. Khallow is the problem!"
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday July 13 2017, @02:21AM (7 children)
And you think a government less country will have less problems? Bad people cause problems. So there need to be a mechanism to keep them in check without the mechanism being run by.. bad people.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by khallow on Thursday July 13 2017, @02:37AM (6 children)
I'll just note here that enabling bad people to cause problems is one of the more common and glaring failure modes of government whether it be protecting rent seekers or looking the other way while a terrorist cell does 9/11. And I can't help but notice that quite a few of the people complaining about the megacorporations running governments propose to have the governments allegedly run by megacorporations, run the megacorporations. I'm sure that will end well.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @03:02AM
It is a pickle, no doubt about it.
It will end because it is unsustainable, just as running a car on fumes is unsustainable. The faster you go, the more fuel you consume for the most part.
The solution to the problem will become more apparent during the walk to the gas station. It's for your own good. You'll remember to keep a spare gas can for the next time down that road.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday July 13 2017, @04:11AM (4 children)
Perhaps it's possible to make the governments own shortcomings to work against themselves?
Kind of like where big cities causes housing prices to soar until employees that make the city work moves away and the city starts to having trouble performing as well as other cities.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by khallow on Thursday July 13 2017, @04:45AM (3 children)
We call those sorts of things, "businesses". And shortcomings work when the business doesn't have a captive revenue stream, that is, tax money, to do things no matter how harmful those actions are.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday July 13 2017, @05:09AM
If "tax units" abandon ship or government spends the stolen goods on self defeating projects. It might work anyway?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @03:09PM (1 child)
Why are you so ignorant? Are you fresh out of high school??
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @07:46PM
Go easy on him. The person who looks after him has a couple of hours off now and then and lets him go on the Internets all by himself.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday July 13 2017, @10:02PM (3 children)
Rent seeking is a market problem - get rid of government, and the rich will still engage in rent-seeking behaviors.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday July 14 2017, @01:19AM (2 children)
But they'll have a much harder time succeeding. Government provides several things that can't be matched in an actual market: a captive revenue stream - the taxpayer; powerful protection of rent seeking opportunities like barriers to entry (your business has the only contract or is one of the few that has the resources to meet the stringent licensing requirements); and invisibility - in the US, publicly funded rent seeking is hidden in over 3 trillion dollars of budget with a vast number of other rent seekers present.
It's extremely difficult to appreciate the scale and complexity of the rent seeking that goes on in a large government like the US and the state-level governments. Every program or entitlement provides a variety of subtle ways to profit from the public. For example, I once had unemployment insurance (state of California) which required a Bank of America account and card in order to access. That's rent seeking by BoA that wouldn't be present in a real market (I already used a credit union for my regular financial services). It's not huge money, but it was highly profitable for the bank since they collected fees from a fair-sized population and provided little in the way of services in exchange. This is the typical invisible rent seeking.
Meanwhile large government projects can have thousands of rent seekers attached. Money just vanishes and everyone acts puzzled as to why the project has experienced cost overruns.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday July 15 2017, @01:34PM (1 child)
Hardly. Without government there is nothing to hold the wealthy even as much in check as they are now. Which makes something like feudalism the expected outcome. In the absence of collective government, those with power will force the rest to accept their rules, and their rules almost always include "everything is ours, but you can use it in exchange for a substantial fraction of the results of your labor".
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday July 15 2017, @11:16PM
I glossed over this excluded middle fallacy in my previous post, but this is getting ridiculous. No one has advocated the elimination of government. It's just that business isn't not a serious problem in any developed world country while we have plenty of examples of overreaching government power (such as surveillance, imposing restrictions on freedoms, and massive, almost unaccountable government spending.
At this point, government is holding the wealthy back from doing things like paying people to work or creating new businesses. We can have considerably less government and still have it keeping wealthy in check. I'd start with the massive rent seeking and such first, if you want ideas on what to cut since it actually runs counter to your expressed interests. Then I'd move on to the entitlements. Sorry, giving a mediocre pension to every citizen (especially when it's set up as a pyramid scheme where the early participants get good returns and the latecomers get awful returns) is not going to keep the wealthy in check nor serve any other necessary interest of the country.
Wealth isn't power. Sure, you can buy power with it, but you can also be robbed blind by the more powerful. Such a government would not be a government of the richest, but instead a government of the most powerful who just happen to use that power to get rich.
And we forget here that the wealthy can be a check on the power of government. The division of economic power between government and business is yet another division of power. In democracies, such divisions of power help keep societies democratic.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Thursday July 13 2017, @09:50AM (3 children)
That's interesting. It would be helpful please if you could give an example of a country and time period where this policy was successfully applied.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @11:25AM (2 children)
USA.
1940-1945.
Excess profits tax 40%-95%.
Wikpedia is your friend.
You are welcome.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14 2017, @12:08AM
I don't want to check it but I remember it was like a dozen people who actually paid the tax. It basically resulted in negligible revenue. Probably worth looking up if you are going to bring that up though.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday July 14 2017, @11:02AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @10:18AM (1 child)
Even if that statement were remotely true (it's not), the fact of the matter is that the rich are still rich, even after they 'pay for almost everything.' So I fail to see the problem if an investment banker who got rich kicking fixed-income seniors out of their family homes, can only afford one jet instead of two. Not to mention that red states take far more in entitlements than the comparatively wealthy blue states that they leech off of, I think it's time for blue states to build a wall and make red state welfare queens pay for it.
But, won't somebody think of the poor rich people?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @08:54PM
Trump has their backs don't worry. I mean, you want rich bankers to run everything, cause if they're rich then they're smart. Can't have the little people making real decisions now, they just might give themselves a break instead of lowering taxes on the poor (hahaha I mean RICH) over-burdened multinationals.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday July 12 2017, @09:12PM (1 child)
I wonder what was in the other hand....
RT wouldn't be cherry-picking here would they?
The fact that I can't find a transcript of the interview or the quote in it's entirety makes one wonder....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @12:01AM
"I love watching people dismiss a message simply because they can't stand agreeing with the messenger." - The Mighty Buzzard [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Disagree) by c0lo on Wednesday July 12 2017, @09:15PM (3 children)
With the entire population of Africa taking refuge in Germany, who will remain to be taken care by Gates foundation?
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Wednesday July 12 2017, @09:23PM
You can't show that you're doing good, if all the able males are running away to a different place than where you're helping.
I'm guessing the point was to reduce the incentive so Africans build Africa, rather than run to Europe where they cause instability, and leave Africa to Warlords and China.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @02:02AM (1 child)
It could then be renamed the Angela Merkel Foundation (for the Ruination of Europe).
(Score: 2) by Sulla on Thursday July 13 2017, @03:02PM
She seems to be having more success than Gates is with Africa.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12 2017, @09:17PM (5 children)
And rich people hate njiggers.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12 2017, @09:23PM (3 children)
No need to self-censor, friend, we can say nigger here.
Gates shouldn't be so short-sighted. After all, Indians tech workers are becoming more expensive every day. Soon globalization will require African tech workers, to keep costs down.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by http on Thursday July 13 2017, @03:19AM (2 children)
And I can tell you that you're a self-serving racist fuck who deserves the untimely death you not-so-secretly wish upon members of your out-group, "friend".
I browse at -1 when I have mod points. It's unsettling.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @07:00AM (1 child)
How do you know he's racist when he might not be white?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @03:03PM
are you saying that only whites can be racist? Isn't that racist?
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday July 12 2017, @09:53PM
Offtopic? Really? This is entirely on-topic.
Try Troll or Flamebait, people.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by jmorris on Wednesday July 12 2017, @09:25PM (44 children)
It is a simple enough math problem, Mr. Gates isn't an idiot so of course he got the correct answer.
If you allow even 10% of Africa's current population, even 10% of North Africa, to move to Europe it will destroy Europe. And the population of Africa, thanks to Western largess, is exploding so the threat grows by the hour. Don't believe me, go look up the population stats for yourself. Accepting refugees can't possibly be the answer to the problems in Africa, the numbers don't lie. Mad Merkel thought accepting refugees was an answer to the problem of Germans being too demoralized, hopeless and guilt ridden to bother making enough new Germans but no, the refugees aren't likely to ever be a net positive to the German economy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12 2017, @09:55PM (39 children)
For clarification, there are two major groups of immigrants from Africa crossing to Europe: One are North African Arabs (Nafris in German police-speak), the second are sub-Saharan black Africans, who are forced by the racist Arabs to travel in the most dangerous part of the boats.
Both groups are economic refugees looking either for opportunity or handouts.
The Arabs aren't persecuted at home unless they have called for violence against the government. A lot of them, instead of lying low in a foreign country, have been noticed negatively being actively offensive to the host population, like the mass groping of Cologne, joining criminal gangs, burning down their hostels because they didn't like the food / their neighbors / the weather or wtf.
(Score: 1, Troll) by jmorris on Wednesday July 12 2017, @10:25PM (36 children)
A clarification that added absolutely nothing useful. Doesn't matter, Eastern Europe is making it clear they aren't dumb enough to take ANY of them and Western Europe can't possibly take enough refugees to make a difference without collapsing into failed states as bad as what the rabbits are fleeing. They are already broke sustaining a welfare state for their own people. Even ignoring the jihadi element to the refugee flow, the math simply does not work because Arab or African, they do not integrate and become productive citizens, they do not adopt the local customs and language, they simply burden already stressed social welfare systems. Things are near collapse now, and another recession IS coming so these are the good times before the time of horrors start.
London is no longer an English city. Roll that concept around in your head a moment, you may need some duct tape to keep yer head from exploding. Things are still good enough that a majority grumble and keep the peace, having too much to lose. Wait for the economic kaboom and see what happens as desperate people cast about for a scapegoat. Ain't going to be pretty, and don't think people won't remember who made it possible.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by aristarchus on Wednesday July 12 2017, @11:10PM (29 children)
Neither are Boston or New York. Your point? Are you being racist again, jmorris?
(Score: 4, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12 2017, @11:34PM (3 children)
Let's not forget they aren't Native American cities anymore.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Thursday July 13 2017, @12:42AM (2 children)
Well that is because none of the North American ones could build past the large village stage without drowning in their own waste. Now the ones South of the border managed a few cities.... just don't look to close at the human sacrifice and other abhorrent practices. Kinda hard to condemn the Conquistadors too loudly for wiping them out. And who cares, they were immigrants too, they just got here a little before the Europeans.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @01:32AM
Sauce?
The ones who didn't build cities were hunter gatherers. When you move around you don't waste time building giant structures.
Spot on with the just immigrants point though. Technically the europeans are the original african migrants.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @03:18PM
You're a doomsday type huh? Kind of weird cause I never heard of doomsday being caused by brown people. Then again I never would think up half the crazy shit that you spout.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12 2017, @11:40PM (1 child)
You hate whites, and you love blacks. You're the racist asshole. Do pedarasts only fuck their juvenile boys, or do they also like their big black bucks to fuck them?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @03:16PM
Its kind of nice in a way seeing this conservative troll losing his shit all the time. Helps remind everyone of the basic degeneracy that lurks around here.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12 2017, @11:44PM (16 children)
We used to have diversity. For example, you could visit an English city. Now you can't. A traditional native culture is going extinct.
Why is it that we can have "black pride" or "muslim pride" but not "English pride"? Why the hatred for Europeans? Why are you so racist?
Only a tiny portion of the world has blond or red hair with blue or green eyes. By definition, that is a minority. Because these are recessive traits, it's a disadvantaged minority. Your preferences lead to the elimination of a disadvantaged minority. For you white-haters, it's a final solution.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @12:50AM (6 children)
Fecking Brits! You know, some say the Friederich Nietzsche advocated genocide, and that is why the Nazi's tried to appropriate him. But for Nietzsche the target was the English. Something about a nation of shopkeepers not smart enough to stay in the market. Bloody Poms! You know, you pull that Empire stuff just once, and people will hate you for what seems like a really long time. And it might actually be.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday July 13 2017, @03:00AM (5 children)
Well, I did notice when thumbing through the English translation, "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" that Nietzsche had said some clueless things about markets. So not feeling the need to hate on English just because they do economics relatively well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @04:26AM (4 children)
As far as you got, eh? Thumbs? Well, the obvious thumbal is that khallow accuses others of appeals to authority, when his appeal it to his thumbs, in a translation, picking out words like "market" and "profit" when the work was about the "making" of a "Prophet". My God, has the American educational system fallen this far that even a khallow does not know things that any half-way decently educated European does? Is this why Trump got elected? Do you even know who Zoroaster was, and what religion still reveres him, to this day?
And besides, the Brexdeath stuff in not in "Also Sprach", but you would have to be able to read something other than English to know that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @01:21PM (1 child)
Yep.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @03:21PM
Oh come on, who doesn't want a really rich person for president? Rich people are smarter, otherwise they wouldn't be rich! Amirite??
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday July 13 2017, @09:12PM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14 2017, @05:01AM
Calm down, Khallow! No one dissed the "Market". Well, Nietzsche might have, but I don't think that Zarathustra means economic theory. Unless it was that nasty tendency to only value that which holds a price, in a market? Hmm, we may have come to the nub of the khallow here: he believes in nothing. "Il est très simple: on ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux." It is very simple, khallow.
(Score: 4, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Thursday July 13 2017, @01:59AM (3 children)
Why is it that we can have "black pride" or "muslim pride" but not "English pride"?
St George's Day [telegraph.co.uk]
St George’s Day is England's national day and is celebrated on April 23 each year. The day remembers St George - England’s patron saint.
A Christian martyr, St George represents traditional English chivalry and bravery.
...English have taken him under our wing and made him the symbol of our nation.
His emblem is a red cross on a white background, which is England's flag and forms part of the Union Flag – the flag of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Thursday July 13 2017, @08:54AM (2 children)
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by turgid on Thursday July 13 2017, @07:44PM (1 child)
Are they getting him confused with Jesus?
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14 2017, @05:07AM
They defrocked Saint Christopher, and he did not even diddle any altar boys. Catholocism has left me, um, confused. I worship both St. Didymous, and Bob. https://principiadiscordia.com/ [principiadiscordia.com] Where is the Bob? Fuck it, I am going Pastafarian. Easier to understand, and no worries about being taken over by gluten-free phanatics. Credo quia absurdum, that Tertullian guy was a ton of fun at parties, until he went off the deep end and started hanging with the German bankers.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Thursday July 13 2017, @02:06AM (1 child)
For example, you could visit an English city. Now you can't
Don't they let you have a passport any more?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @08:37AM
You can, but it would be Sunderland. You're welcome to spend your vacations in Sunderland. You'll love the... uhm... I'll get back to you.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by julian on Thursday July 13 2017, @03:02PM (1 child)
You just conflated race, religion, and nationality, which are orthogonal and not interchangeable. You didn't earn your race, religion is a choice, and your nation's past achievements aren't yours to claim pride for--neither are its historical sins a legitimate source of guilt.
Westerners certainly have too much guilt; replacing that with misplaced pride as the right-wing nationalists want us to do isn't an improvement. What we need is confidence in our values again.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @03:49PM
You quoted that like it was a one to one correspondence. This is not the case. Islam is not just a religion, it is also a system of government, hence equivalent to both religion and nationality.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Thursday July 13 2017, @07:48PM
Because it usually comes with balaclavas, knuckle dusters, jack boots, petrol bombs and flick knives.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12 2017, @11:58PM (1 child)
Oh, look - another self loathing white dude wants to see hetero white people punished! Just take their cities and countries from them, and take no notice when the non-white foreigners rape the white women to death!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @12:58AM
No, just the Protestant ones. (And what makes you think that there are any "white dude" ACs on SoylentNews?)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @06:37AM
Yep, jmorris is being racist, Again! I bet he lives in perpetual fear, of the UPS Man, asking "what can Brown do for you?" He is probably upset that Orange is the New Black, since the president seems to be largely Orange, and the old one was, in fact, Black. And then there is the fact that jmorris has been barred from ever visiting London. Or any other English city. Maybe he could squeak by with a Welsh one? Of course, I would imagine, that jmorris has been banned from most major cities in the world, now that all nations monitor "social", and "anti-social" media. Would you want jmorris visiting your city?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday July 13 2017, @11:55AM (2 children)
Somehow its bad when white people invade darker skinned countries for economic reasons its called all kinds of bad names like colonialism or genocide when the natives are pushed completely out.
Somehow its the holiest most important social engineering goal of the century, exclusively when it happens to white people.
The inconsistency is mere anti-white racism. Invasion is bad even if the victims are the much hated white people.
(Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Thursday July 13 2017, @06:17PM (1 child)
You silly racist, VLM! It is not a matter of skin color. There is no such thing as "white people", there are only racists with nothing else to self-identify with other than skin color. We call these people, "losers". Since there is no such thing as "white", getting rid of the "white race" is not genocide at all, it is just the clarification of a conceptual confusion by some of the lumpen-proletariat.
If you cannot distinguish between invasion and immigration, your hang up on a false consciousness of racism is maybe one of the lesser problems you have. Invaders typically have organized groups, and they groups have cohesion, and usually arms. Immigrants are individuals. Or are you suggesting that America was successively "invaded" by the Irish, the Italians, Poles, Serbo-Croatians, and Brits who could not make it in their own country?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @09:11PM
Careful with that flame, VLM can only afford one therapy session a month.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @12:07AM (4 children)
London is no longer an English city.
Fuck the Romans and their Londinium! What have they ever done for us?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @12:55AM (3 children)
Yes, first it was that London was no longer a Roman Castre. Then it was no longer a Anglican city, thanks to William. I guess that is the point that jmorris, expert on English history that he is, must be pointing to. Norman invaders making everyone have to speak French, an oppressing the native Angles, and Saxons, of course. And nobody even remembers the real inhabitants, like the Iceni. They even wrote a Domesday Book!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @04:34AM (2 children)
Err, 'Native' you say?, speaking as a Celt, those fucking immigrants you're talking about above can just fuck off right back to whatever parts of the continent they came from...bloody pseudo-germans...
speaking as a Pict¹, those fucking Celts can just piss off back to the continent as well with them....
speaking as a representative of the Beaker Folk², those painted Pictish scunners for fuck off right back to wherever they came from with the Celts..
speaking as a Neanderthal³, you Homo Sapiens can just bugger off back to the continent..
¹ Yes, I know there's a school of thought that the Picts were Celts too...
² Yes, I also know there's a school of thought that the Picts were Beaker People...
³ I kid you not, I stay within a 10 minute walk of a family who, based on the facial reconstructions of Neanderthal skulls I've seen, must be more Neanderthal than Homo Sapiens..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @06:41AM
Now this is what I'm on about! Aboriginals rule!! Take back the land! America! Love it, or give it back! Bloody Wankers! (Translation for non-isle persons: "Red Pillars!")
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @10:01AM
Bloody immigrants, ruined that place. It's been all downhill since the Stone Ages. Can't buy a decent stone axe any more, just this godsawful metal that barely lasts 100 years.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Thursday July 13 2017, @06:49PM
I hear you're a racist [youtube.com] now, father!
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 13 2017, @12:24AM (1 child)
FTFY. As Yemen and Qatar show.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @01:17AM
Other places:
* Burma
* China
* Lebanon
* Bosnia
* Russia
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @01:31AM (1 child)
Regardless how many migrants that are let in to Europe or elsewhere. There will always be more. There's NO end to it. The buck has to stop somewhere.
Providing aid to overpopulated areas without requirements on family planning is wasted. It just perpetuate overpopulation. That parents didn't adjust their kid making in line available resources is not other peoples problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @03:17AM
Goths! No, after the Franks, no more, by God! How much can one continent stand? OK, Vandals, but only if they continue on to Iberia, and North Africa. Danes? You expect us to put up with Danes? And Beowulf? Just wait a minute! Europe is for Europeans! This immigration and Volkwanderungen thing can't go on forever! What? Slavs? I said, no Poles, No Serbs, No Moravians, no Montessori! It all started when Gaul let those damned Romans in. Immigrants!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @06:14AM
jmorris Merkel et. al. don't let Africans in their country because they will increase population (the fear of conservatives) or to improve their lives (the love of liberals), they do it because they are running out of cheap labour. Last time that happened was after WW2 when Europeans let huge swathes of Turkish and Afganis etc. enter to do the job of cleaning toilets and washing streets. You know how Turkey was in 1950? Hijab was banned. And all the conservative Muslims ran to Europe to enjoy religious freedom and provide cheap cheap labour. And Europe spent almost nothing to educate those immigrants. They worked and ate kebap and remained poor until now, when their children and mostly assimilated, getting educated and demanding higher pay. And the male population keeps decreasing... who will do the hard work?
This is economics, no more no less. Europeans need cheap labour, its just that they are not smart enough to know that today's middle east is not what it used to be. The continuous meddling gets documented everyday. Even the educated Muslims know the kind of game that is played. The 'Africans' are not immigrating from Zimbabwe, you know! They are coming from Syria and Lybia. And Merkel has used the liberal ideology to sell this to people.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @03:08PM
Well, the results of Merkel's policies are that a lot of frauleins are involuntarily producing new (half) Germans.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12 2017, @09:39PM
Is Mommy Merkel ♢ going to listen to reason? Are the German people going to have the courage to call for being circumspect when granting asylum, even if they may be called Nazis for speaking out?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12 2017, @10:06PM (24 children)
"Don't give handouts to people" is a thing that rich people say. But how about "A rising tide lifts all ships" and "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". Taking in refugees isn't the only generous thing to do. You could also give a helping hand to those in need. Many people would be happy to stay in their own country if they could make a go of it. Sadly, politics, war, drought, famine, and disease are forcing people to look for a better life 1000's of miles away from their home.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Wednesday July 12 2017, @10:18PM (5 children)
Yeah, but how do you help make their country better when you're not in that country? Just sending aid to those countries usually ends up feeding corruption instead of improving things for people there, but when Western nations take a more active role, they usually get labeled as "imperialistic". If the country's government is too corrupt and the people are miserable and want to leave, then it seems the answer is to oust that government by force and install a new government. But we've done that many times and it doesn't seem to work very well: Iran, Iraq, etc., plus it generates a lot of resentment towards the country doing the ousting.
I honestly don't see a viable solution here. Emptying half the people in troubled countries (which is most of them) into a relatively small number of well-off countries isn't going to turn out well, for simple math reasons. And taking over the troubled countries and administering them as imperial colonies doesn't really fix the problem, as history has shown.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @05:06AM (4 children)
WHOA WHOA WHOA. You're rewriting history hard. US overthrowing governments has never had anything to do with the desire of the people. Most often it is absolutely the opposite of the will of the people. Iran used to be a very secular nation. The CIA overthrew the democratically elected and wildly popular Mohammad Mosaddegh [wikipedia.org] who had worked to further secularize the country, bring social security to the people, and so on. He was actively working to remove religion from government and transition the country to an entirely secular democracy. Predictably, he was vehemently disliked by a small minority of radical Islamic extremists. However, what he also did was threaten western dominance of oil in Iran. He sought to audit British operations on Iranian oil. When the British refused to cooperate he nationalized Iran's oil back to Iran (it had been under British control for about 4 decades). Following that US and British intelligence decided to incite the religious extremists into a supported coup. They brought in hired armed agitators and actively worked to throw the country into a violent disarray. In the end it succeeded and we put a religious extremist in control of the nation. 2 decades later there was a real coup that removed that line of people from power, and the country has been -shockingly- extremely anti-US ever since. US involvement in Iran was specifically about screwing over the people to get our hands on their oil.
You know of Augusto Pinochet [wikipedia.org]? Another dictator often mentioned along the likes of Stalin and Mussolini? Yeah, he was another guy we put into power. Our espionage activities have, to my knowledge, never once been about improving the lives of the people. On Iraq, the story hasn't been written yet since it's only with intelligence declassification that we can see the entire picture. But in any case, I have a quick question for you. How many people do you think have died in Iraq because of us? Iraqis that is. I'm not going to tell you the answer. Go look it up. Then look up the population of Iraq in 2003...
Out of curiosity, where did you 'learn' what you just said above? In particular, are US schools teaching that now?
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday July 13 2017, @03:53PM
Look at the US involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq in more recent years. It's not so obvious (yet) that the motives were plainly bad: they didn't install theocrats as the Iraqi government, for instance. But what have the results been? Rather poor; Iraq is torn by sectarian strife (including the rise of ISIS), and Afghanistan isn't doing that hot either and is constantly plagued by the Taliban.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @09:28PM (1 child)
https://www.google.com.sa/search?q=population+of+iraq&oq=population+of+iraq&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i59l2j69i60l3.3362j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 [google.com.sa]
Iraq population
2001 - 24.26 million
2002 - 24.94
2003 - 25.63
2004 - 26.32
2005 - 27.02
2006 - 27.72
2007 - 28.42
2008 - 29.16
2009 - 29.97
2010 - 30.87
2011 - 31.87
2012 - 32.96
2013 - 34.11
2014 - 35.27
2015 - 36.42
I am unaware of the point you were trying to make ?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14 2017, @05:43AM
Death tolls in Iraq, thanks to us, range from 500k to well over a million.
Like your search shows, the population of Iraq when we first started was around 26 million. In 'freeing' Iraq we have been directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of up to 4% of the population of the entire country. Imagine for instance somebody 'freed' the US and killed off 13 million Americans in the process. That is the Iraqi perspective to our notions of freedom. Iraqi families also tend to be rather large. What this means is that vast quantities of people in the country are going to have family/friends whose deaths we were responsible for, who we killed either directly or indirectly. In the west I don't think we can even conceive of this scale of death and destruction. The entire western world flipped out when 300 people got killed in a theater. 1 million people dying is 300 people dying every single day for than 9 years. I mean I think we literally just don't have the ability to mentally grasp loss of life on that sort of scale. It's insane.
I imagine that Iraq will eventually be shown to be clearly about dragging out the petro dollar for a bit longer (Iraq was looking to start trading their oil in the Euro instead of USD) but regardless of the motivation, even the results have been a complete disaster. Saddam was a tyrant, yet we can't even say well at the least the Iraqi people are better off compared to what was the lowest common denominator - since we've dropped the bar even lower and left them now worse off. We need to stop trying to play god as far as other country's political status is concerned, because we quite clearly suck at it. That or we've gone viking and are playing Loki.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday July 14 2017, @12:03PM
Do you recall why Mohammad Mosaddegh and Salvador Allende (the Chilean counterpart) got overthrown? It wasn't because they were "wildly popular". It was because they were brazen thieves who made plenty of enemies and created massive economic messes which greatly undermined their power when the coups came. Let us keep in mind that both Iran and Chile were circling the drain when the coups happened.
Nor do we have to imagine what would happen if these leaders hadn't been overthrown. Venezuela has gone through the same stuff, including a US-backed coup in 2002 (which failed unlike the other two because Hugo Chavez actually was still wildly popular). While the Bolivarian diaspora [wikipedia.org] is overhyped (at least at present), it remains that Venezuela has one of the largest per capita migration outflows [cia.gov] on the continent (Peru and Guyana being worse) and an economy in the process of collapse. Maybe it's somewhat better than the thugs who took over Iran and Chile, but Venezuela is notably worse than when this mess started back in 1998.
I think what bugs me here is the pretense that things were going great in Iran and Chile until the US/UK/whatever came in and interfered. Instead, the countries were a mess and the leaders no longer had the public support that they started with. That's why the coups happened. Screwing over powerful, foreign parties (which were key parts of both governments prior to their overthrow) merely guaranteed that the coups would have that outside support as well.
But I suppose these observations of mine do support claims of both the parent and grandparent posts. Heavily interfering in the affairs of another country doesn't seem to end well and the US hadn't done that interfering in Iran and Chile for noble reasons.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday July 12 2017, @10:37PM (15 children)
Don't give handouts to people comes from give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day... It's good sense not heartlessness.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12 2017, @10:47PM (3 children)
How about instead of a handout we give them a helping hand?
(Score: 4, Funny) by Gaaark on Wednesday July 12 2017, @11:25PM
So, a hand job?
;)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @03:16AM (1 child)
Engineers Without Borders
Doctors Without Borders
Especially Engineers Without Borders should be better funded and more expansive.
The problem is they have modern weapons, but they have no modern infrastructure. Looks upside down to me. Modern infrastructure first, let weapons remain primitive. Humans have different priorities than I do.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @09:26AM
Tell that to the US and UK Govs. They seem happy to send weapons to the Middle East whether directly or via Saudi Arabia.
If you observe carefully you'll realize the supplied arms and training aren't really to eliminate ISIS but to weaken Syria. Fighting ISIS happens from time to time but only to contain it (google for contain ISIS and you'll see that phrase come up often from the US military, they want something like ISIS)
They are happy to send "fuel" to keep the fires burning: http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-cia-pentagon-isis-20160327-story.html [latimes.com]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/07/10/uk-arms-sales-saudi-arabia-lawful-high-court-rules/ [telegraph.co.uk]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12 2017, @11:14PM (5 children)
Teach a man to fish, and he'll sit in a boat on a lake drinking beer all day.
Or better, for the richies:
Give a man a fire, and he's warm for now. Set a man on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life!
Alt-right psychology! Or, Fake psychology!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @06:43AM (4 children)
Or:
"You can lead a Mighty Buzzard to justice, but you cannot make him drink, because he's sitting in a boat on a lake drinking beer instead."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @09:14PM (2 children)
Nothing a good dose of "personal responsibility" won't fix while simultaneously making the commenter feel superior for their own success. Gotta love the narrow minded, who else would we have to tease? Just sit here and have reasonable discussions all day? Actually fix some problems?
hahahahahah sounds like work! Bring it on TMB, we need more distractions! Give us some more pearls of wisdom!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14 2017, @05:31AM (1 child)
Oh, boy! Stick that "personal responsibility" as far up your ass as you are personally able! I love it how Republican Talking Points get outted and then become maxims of derision. A rising tide, drowns all the people who can' afford to move. Good one. Crab bucket! Some try to climb out, using the bodies of the rest of us, and they are indignant when we pull them down? (And this is not all we do, those climbing bastards, we dis member them, so to speak, and after that, well, we "eat the (aspiring to be) rich. And low rent fuckers we be free to buy health insurance policies that don't actually cover shit, just like in the old days, because Republicans really think Americans are that Stupid.
Well, if it was up to me, I would not have a 99% disability, and I would not have a pension from a suck-ass job, and I might live in a country where health care was right, and not some kind of goddamed commodity that Paul Ryan would think he could balance on his erect penis that my fucking tax dollars went to pay for his Congressional health care is paying for, so he can fuck the United States from his secret Republican Lair in Wisconsion. I am starting to Blame all of Wisconson for the downfall of America. Cheeseheads, get your shit together, or it will be a civil war of all the states, against you and your idiot Koch sucking governor.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday July 14 2017, @12:15PM
As my young nephew said, "It's not about you, it's about MEEEEE!" To the contrary, personal responsibility can still happen even if you have "99% disability". Despite what you've might have heard in your echo chambers, expectations are lowered for those who can't fully provide for themselves. You might count as such.
Sure, bad things happen to people. But bad things didn't happen to everyone. The people who didn't get unlucky should be taking care of themselves.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday July 14 2017, @09:52PM
+1 Insightful
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @12:16AM (2 children)
When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick. Now when it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a desolate place, and the day is now over; send the crowds away to go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” But Jesus said, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” They said to him, “We have only five loaves here and two fish.” And he said, “Bring them here to me.” Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass, and taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and said a blessing. Then he broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And they all ate and were satisfied. And they took up twelve baskets full of the broken pieces left over. And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.
Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @02:08AM (1 child)
Why doesn't jesus just come back and feed them all then? Maybe he knows something, and that they will just make more of them.
Ok bad example, why dont the African sky faries help them?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @03:22AM
Can't. Trying to wedge a food-giving hole in the ground open wider still so he could have more food for himself and his family made their sky fairy angry. Every time he tried, the sky fairy closed the hole a little more until he was left with a bare minimum of unappealing food.
This middle-Eastern sky fairy sounds like a great guy, but seems... fishy.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Thursday July 13 2017, @12:36AM
Gotta like how the Western World cynically put into reality the sick part of the joke... yeah, that's the one, with "set him alight and he'll be warm for the rest of his life".
America sowing wind and then teaching Europe how to fend the storm (e.g. that sick bitch with "We came, we saw, he died" really made the life of Libyans so much happier and easier)
Good teacher, high moral fiber... How many Syrian refugees has USofA managed to accept last year?
'Cause the "fishes" USA keep dropping into Syria and assisting "the rebels" with managed to displace about 11 million refugees.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by aclarke on Thursday July 13 2017, @03:15PM
As I like to point out, give a man a fire and he's warm for a night. Light a man on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @01:44PM
giving a handout once is generosity and helping
giving a handout repeatedly is creating dependency for the receiver and control for the giver
(Score: 2) by Sulla on Thursday July 13 2017, @03:28PM
This message is coming from a person giving more handouts to Africa than everyone else, now saying that they are not working nearly as good as he hoped.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam