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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: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Thursday July 13 2017, @02:53AM (6 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday July 13 2017, @02:53AM (#538525) Journal

    There's really nothing worse than someone who's bought and doesn't know it.

    I can think of a few things that are worse. But I think what annoys me most about your line of reasoning is that it's bragging about your advertised price tag - like we'd care enough to pay. While I can see occasional advantages to viewing human interactions in terms of markets, maybe it's not such a good idea to exclusively do so. Nor do I get the same tingle from telling others how their subpar news sources make them inferior humans and corporate tools.

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  • (Score: 2) by Lagg on Thursday July 13 2017, @03:17AM (5 children)

    by Lagg (105) on Thursday July 13 2017, @03:17AM (#538537) Homepage Journal

    You shouldn't make that assumption because as is implied - everyone is bought. But I'm safely bought by my own ego and I guarantee you that any sort of bitching, ranting, name calling and deserved labeling of whores I use. Will result in better results for the world and my own mental health than allowing propaganda pushing entities to go unaccounted for in my conscience even if never read or noticed. At worst, I certainly won't mislead people on what my true thoughts are will I? But by all means be annoyed at me for calling out state propaganda as itself and calling people who recognize this better than I do while still consuming it complacent whores. Don't be annoyed at the complacency and misinformation itself.

    Anyway, I have no expectation from people beyond personal responsibility. It won't harm me if people don't want to have it. I just get to bitch more, gain my 15 minutes of satisfaction, everyone forgets and life goes on. Rinse & Repeat. I mean I'll be long dead by the time this sort of conditioning actually has a predictable effect on society. No reason to really worry about it right?

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    http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday July 13 2017, @03:57AM (4 children)

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday July 13 2017, @03:57AM (#538549) Journal

      You shouldn't make that assumption because as is implied - everyone is bought.

      Which is quite a useless observation to make. What is obtained in return for this "bought"? Are you someone's slave (you know as the word actually means, not some ridiculously watered down meaning like "wage slave"), forced to do the whims of some master, no matter how base or cruel they may be?

      Reminds me of buying orange juice. "The fool! For this pittance of money, I have quenched my monstrous thirst." Meanwhile the other guy is thinking "Yet another sucker buying overpriced fruit juice. Cha-ching." Each one has "bought" the other and spun it up into a sordid tale of victory over the gullible. But it's a drink and a little bit of money changing hands. Nobody gets a slave for life.

      To return to the RT example, they sell a few eyeballs to a few advertisers. Maybe some business or the Russian government gets to plant some propaganda with moderate success. What's missing here is a discussion of the effectiveness of the approach, particularly when you get a bunch of parties with conflicting interests all pushing their own narratives. The exercise is no doubt advantageous to the parties who run it, but where's the evidence that it's running our lives rather than merely being an influence? Or is that merely another narrative that's kicking around and which you've happened to buy into?

      • (Score: 2) by Lagg on Thursday July 13 2017, @04:27AM (3 children)

        by Lagg (105) on Thursday July 13 2017, @04:27AM (#538562) Homepage Journal

        No my remark goes along with what you're thinking I assure you. Look at how I approach discussion. I just take no issue with acknowledging it because I'm honestly a lot more personable(?) than I was two years ago.

        In terms of why places and technique like RT's bother me and creep me out is they do work. That CERN narrative was known and didn't die quickly. The US government will inevitably respond to the star wars suit. That's just the recent examples. These pieces make it to the outside world and my token crazy uncle is an instance of it. What "fake news" connotates and triggers currently is a direct result of propaganda distributed via RT and was successful in that they twisted it into a convenient power word to talk about the very thing exposing their nonsense in the first place. For a less direct example (in that I don't think he is smart enough for government work) Alex Jones made popular the claim that Michelle Obama is a man. Or at least made it popular with aforementioned uncle. Who is probably in the target audience for Trump.

        I'm not even sure I can blame him for it either because his sources are other people. He thinks this shit is organic theory. Just like people thought other bullshit [wikipedia.org] was organic. It's a real thing and though my way of going about expressing my distaste with it is not graceful and unlikable. It's still something with prior art and not just a matter of opinion. If this sort of manipulation was possible pre-internet why should it be any less so now? Conflicting narratives don't really mean much. The goal isn't necessarily supporting any one narrative, it's isolation by what I can only call noise saturation. Isolation and chaos is their MO.

        For the record, I know how this sounds. But fact is I didn't buy that Russia was still up to this shit until I saw recent concerning signs. You'll note by a journal timestamp that I did not in fact start taking the extent of the manipulation seriously until recently. But this isn't the normal corporate bot engagement crap that is common currently.

        Oh and per that post by those horrible fucks at Gab - RT knows what it's doing when it reports on things. They know they don't have to try to imply things because if they mess with wording well enough people will come up with their own bizarre ideas. Look at how far that post and its comments were from Gates rather simple message of "don't let everyone get sick and die because of moral quarrels".

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        http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday July 13 2017, @05:00AM (2 children)

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday July 13 2017, @05:00AM (#538573) Journal

          But fact is I didn't buy that Russia was still up to this shit until I saw recent concerning signs.

          Their head of state is former KGB. Of course, they're up to this. I just don't buy that it's as effective as people seem to think it is.

          • (Score: 2) by Lagg on Thursday July 13 2017, @05:56AM (1 child)

            by Lagg (105) on Thursday July 13 2017, @05:56AM (#538587) Homepage Journal

            Well I suppose I didn't buy it more because it would mean Putin's capacity to hold a grudge is absurd. Anyway, the effectiveness has been historically proven. It's just that the nature of it puts people in a position where doubt is so common that the truth slips through the cracks. You're entirely correct if you think it's sloppy almost-incompetent throwing shit at the wall because that is basically what they're doing to see what happens.

            Is it more effective if it points people on a particular narrative or because it fatigues them into not seeing facts? I have reason to suspect the Russian people - and I mean a big ol' chunk of them - are well aware of how the news works there. But they're so fatigued by it that nothing can be assumed to be true. Which is why what I'm seeing now is frustrating to no end. There are compelling arguments [newsweek.com] for this.

            Lower level effects: Try reading anything whatsoever on twitter - even harmless news posts. The bot push was more successful than even they expected. Because they underestimated the ability for Americans to pick up a flag and run with it if someone does it first. It might seem inconsequential now that I can't even bother reading twitter post threads. But precedent starts somewhere. And it's a truly ugly (but familiar) way of stopping dissent. Additionally I feel like an alien for how far apart people's current definition of "liberal", "leftist" and "democrat" are compared to mine and are actively being used to describe character. It's commie hysteria all over again. All of this freaks me out because I only missed 6-9 months of 2016 due to family issues. That's efficient public opinion forming right there.

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            http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
            • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday July 13 2017, @08:55PM

              by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday July 13 2017, @08:55PM (#538854) Journal

              Well I suppose I didn't buy it more because it would mean Putin's capacity to hold a grudge is absurd.

              Absurd? Not seeing it myself. Seems a straightforward case of tit-for-tat as the scenario of alleged Russian interference is presented. Clinton pushed against Russian interests when she was Secretary of State, and received payback when she is running for president.

              Anyway, the effectiveness has been historically proven.

              What does "proof" mean here? Let us recall that Clinton ran a remarkably weak campaign despite spending almost double the money of the Trump campaign. Meanwhile zillions of actors knew of how to game Twitter (for example, I read of a climate change bot back in 2010 that replied to climate skeptic tweets and a smart phone app that could generate climate change talking points on demand and even tweet them). And of course, there's the huge mass of people who tweet and such. The Russians wouldn't have been acting in a vacuum, but in a very crowded environment.

              We have to ask why Russian efforts are supposedly more successful than other efforts? And in particular, did it really happen as claimed? I'm just not seeing it.

              Try reading anything whatsoever on twitter - even harmless news posts.

              Twitter has always been crap for discussion. I don't see this alleged difference between then and now.