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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday July 12 2017, @09:04PM   Printer-friendly
from the switching-to-mac dept.

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

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/


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12 2017, @10:06PM (24 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12 2017, @10:06PM (#538387)

    "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)

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Wednesday July 12 2017, @10:18PM (#538390)

    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)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @05:06AM (#538575)

      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

        by Grishnakh (2831) on Thursday July 13 2017, @03:53PM (#538742)

        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)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @09:28PM (#538869)

        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

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14 2017, @05:43AM (#538979)

          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

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday July 14 2017, @12:03PM (#539078) Journal

        The CIA overthrew the democratically elected and wildly popular Mohammad Mosaddegh

        [...] You know of Augusto Pinochet?

        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)

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday July 12 2017, @10:37PM (#538404) Homepage Journal

    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)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12 2017, @10:47PM (#538408)

      How about instead of a handout we give them a helping hand?

      • (Score: 4, Funny) by Gaaark on Wednesday July 12 2017, @11:25PM

        by Gaaark (41) on Wednesday July 12 2017, @11:25PM (#538430) Journal

        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)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @03:16AM (#538534)

        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

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @09:26AM (#538642)

          Modern infrastructure first, let weapons remain primitive. Humans have different priorities than I do.

          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)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12 2017, @11:14PM (#538427)

      give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day..

      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)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @06:43AM (#538601)

        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)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @09:14PM (#538866)

          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)

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14 2017, @05:31AM (#538977)

            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

              by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday July 14 2017, @12:15PM (#539081) Journal

              Well, if it was up to me, I would not have a 99% disability

              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)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @12:16AM (#538463)

      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)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @02:08AM (#538518)

        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

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @03:22AM (#538539)

          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

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday July 13 2017, @12:36AM (#538474) Journal

      Don't give handouts to people comes from give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day...

      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

      by aclarke (2049) on Thursday July 13 2017, @03:15PM (#538719) Homepage

      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

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @01:44PM (#538682)

    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

    by Sulla (5173) on Thursday July 13 2017, @03:28PM (#538730) Journal

    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