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The latest from Yanis Varoufakis

Europe’s stumbling response to the refugee crisis is the result of the divisions caused by the six-year monetary crisis which has fragmented the continent and turned nations against each other, former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has told the Guardian.

With thousands of migrants travelling to Europe from Africa, the Middle East and south Asia, Varoufakis said the future of the European Union was threatened by the worst such crisis since 1945.

European leaders have agreed a plan to share 120,000 refugees through a quota system, but countries on the Balkan route have begun refusing people of certain nationalities as part of a backlash against migrants in the wake of the Paris attacks. The issue has become symbolic of Europe’s inability to act together.

Countries such as Britain were gripped by “moral panic” at the sight of refugees camped out at Calais, Varoufakis said, while countries such as Hungary had erected razor-wire fences to prevent migrants getting in.

“Take a glance at events in Europe over the last 10-15 years ever since monetary union. The project has failed spectacularly,” said Varoufakis, who quit his job in July after failing to win the deal on debt relief that he believed was necessary for the Greek economy to turn the corner.

“Europeans are a people divided by a common currency. The euro crisis has fragmented Europe, turning Greeks against Germans, Irish against Spanish etc.

“It makes it hard for the EU to function as a political entity, as a unified entity. The centrifugal force of monetary union has made it harder to deal with the refugee crisis. In a sense, it is the straw that has broken the camel’s back.”

Varoufakis, speaking during a short speaking tour of Australia, admitted that he did not have the solution to the refugee crisis.

“I don’t have the answer. The numbers of people are very large. But if someone knocks on my door at three in the morning, scared, hungry and having been shot at, as a human it is my moral duty to let them in and give them a drink and feed them. And then ask questions later. Anything else is an affront to European civilisation."

“From a European perspective, we have a lot to answer for. Countries such as Iraq and Syria are creations of western imperialism and the cynicism of the west’s treatment of the region in the past has caused a backlash.

“The invasion of Iraq was a great example of the inanity of the west. Syria and Iraq were very fragile states but by creating the rupture, it propelled a shockwave.”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/n ... gee-crisis

He's one of the seriously good guys.

I wouldn't be happy with him were I to be greek.

I don’t have the answer.

This is most sensible part. I wish more folk would admit we are facing wicked problems for which no one has reasonable answers. The arrogance and confidence being shown by many these days is ridiculous.

Why start a new thread to discuss the refugee crisis? We already have a thread called 'Migrant Watch'......

Some people have the answer to the migrant crisis, sadly the people who don't know what to do are running most of europe.

The answer is simple don't let them in .

If this was collapse in the micro level say a lifeboat or small community, these people who would let in the shot at stranger because of some notion that its the moral thing to do are toast.

Change your moral compass its wonky

I actually find it hard to understand how you can have adult person a grown-up that would find what to do hard .

jonny2mad wrote:I actually find it hard to understand how you can have adult person a grown-up that would find what to do hard .

You have many people today that have never had to make a hard decision on a problem that was both easy or hard on the problem and easy and hard on the solutions. Easiest example I can come up with is a beloved family pet that has reached the end. Hard to admit that he is done and prolonging it just causes him more pain. Easy (sort of ) to let the Vet put him down or hard to do it yourself if you don't have the cash.
Such events and the decisions we make dealing with them are perhaps but a tenth of the decisions we will have to make as the middle east refugees try to climb into our life boat.

Our generation have been very lucky in that, although there have been many wars in the last 70 years, none have really impinged on our western lifestyles in the way that the two World Wars did to previous generations. We have not been subjected to mass bombing for years on end nor have we lost large numbers of friends and relatives to war.

Neither have we suffered hunger to any extent nor any form of rationing, except for a few years in the case of the UK, so we don't know what hardship is. We don't know what it is like to see our own children starve or die in front of our eyes.

In view of this many people can feel quite magnanimous about sharing our resources with large numbers of people of a different culture. They can't see that this sharing attitude is being transmitted across the world to every slightly hungry or poor person who see our riches and feel entitled to a share.

I watched an interview with a migrant who was stuck at the Macedonian border with Greece and, when asked what he wanted to do, said that he was going to Europe, to Germany, with such a look in his eye that you could see that he thought that the streets were paved with gold, that he would be in heaven on earth and that all his troubles would vanish. His paradise was here on earth if only he could get to Germany!

When he gets to Germany and finds that he is just one of maybe a couple of million migrants who all think the same and to have his hopes crushed by the shear numbers of migrants who all want their share of the cake, what will he think then? Will he think that if he can't have his cake here on earth perhaps he would get it in heaven? Maybe he won't do that as he will recognise that his existence is better in Germany than in an Arab country, any Arab country.

But his children, who haven't had the bad experience of living under an Arab regime might think that Sharia offers them some sort of Nirvana or Shangri La so they might go looking for it as have some of the children of Belgium and France and the UK recently. Should we let that tidal wave of migrants, of which the present numbers are just the first trickle, come and take over our countries?

The little Macedonian boy has his finger in the dyke at the moment but should that leak force the finger out the whole dyke will burst and then we will have a real problem. The people at the Macedonian border aren't just Syrians but they come from Iran and Pakistan and Afghanistan as well. And then there are the Nigerians, the Ghanains, the Sierra Leonians coming over from Libya as well. They all expect their piece of Nirvana and they will be equally upset when they don't get it, although their pride won't let them tell those at home how bad it is in Europe for illegals; how they are exploited; how they live ten to a small room in the cold and wet of a European winter. No they'll just tell everyone that they are doing well and so the tsunami will continue.

Great post Ken - realism.

https://www.stratfor.com/weekly/fear-other-europe

A divided Europe will not necessarily replicate the horrors of the early 20th century. History will rhyme, however, at the intersection of several trends running in parallel. The splintering of Europe overlays the erosion of central authority within the Sykes-Picot borders in the Middle East — borders that the Europeans created to divide the region and tighten their colonial grip. With those territories in prolonged conflict, the weakening of those regimes and the radical ideologies borne out of power vacuums will risk drawing a minority of European Muslims into battle while driving migrants into the heart of Europe, accelerating Europe's path toward fragmentation.

As the core powers of Europe become more skeptical of the benefits of the European Union, compromises on issues ranging from migration to bailout policies will become elusive. A resurgent Turkey will leverage its position as the migrant gateway to Europe to exact concessions from the West while reassuming its imperial responsibilities in northern Syria and Iraq. Russia will use European divisions to its advantage as it tries to temper a Western encroachment in its former Soviet space even as it remains just as susceptible as the Europeans to the ethnic frictions and security threats emanating from mass migrant flows.

The global hegemon, by definition, will find itself at the center of this oddly familiar set of challenges afflicting Eurasia. The United States already shoulders most of the burden in extending a security buffer against Russia in Central and Eastern Europe and in trying to put a lid on conflicts in the Middle East. But an even bigger challenge may not have fully registered on Washington's radar: the darker side of a Europe willing to re-embrace nationalism in response to a fear of the other.

A good analysis by Strator on how the migrant crisis deepens the on-going fragmentation of the EU.

Good post btw Ken - fully agree with everything you say.

The EU is dead in it's current form. Not sure why we need a separate thread to discuss this when we have other threads, but there you go...

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015 ... et-surplus

George Osborne is relying on rising immigration numbers to reach his fiscal target of a budget surplus by the end of the decade, according to a Guardian analysis of official data.

Without the UK’s current levels of net migration, the chancellor would be faced with the choice of missing his fiscal goal or achieving a surplus by adding more spending cuts and tax rises to his existing plans.

Hurray for immigration!

The UK is ageing. We are all living longer, and have a longer slower decline to death. Also, health costs are increasing because we keep developing new and generally more expensive treatments to keep people alive, without adding to their economic productivity. Even if we stopped increasing lifespan and stopped new treatments we still have a huge demographic bulge to get over to reach steady state. Since we now have at or below replacement birth rate then the only way to sustain this level of economic activity is to import productive labour through working age migration.

We can no longer have net economic growth without immigration. We are already long past long term sustainable population levels, given PO and limits to growth. This is a predicament.

In the last 10 years I have revised down my personal target lifespan by 20 years.

Mods - can we please either lock this thread as it a duplicate of 'Migrant Watch, or merge this this thread with 'Migrant Watch'? Thanks.