Migrant watch (merged topic)

[jonny2mad]

Now, I'd love to answer the rest of your points, but there's gooseberries to pick.

...is the other reason why you do not debate this in a reasonable manner. When it gets to the nitty gritty, or the posts get a bit too long, you just ignore them.

You cannot defend your position. It is indefensible.

No, it's just that picking gooseberries (and quite a lot of other things) is more important to me than posting on PowerSwitch. Anyway, it's your turn to answer my first point in my 12.56 post.

When you've done that, remind me which important point of yours I missed.

Meanwhile, here's another Guardian journalist explaining what ought to be done. [Not to be read by those of a cold-hearted nature.]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... ent-europe

This is rubbish migrations can be stopped there is another option that would be fortress europe, and a getting rid of the people who have already invaded europe .

Most of these migrants are young fit men your seeing a invasion they are economic migrants, and if you rehome 1 million then it will be 20 million then a 100 million then the people that are here will end up like the palestinians .


RIGHT think about this its the 1930s were the jews people who you need to take in as refugees answer me now




if you look at palestine you have people who used to have a country and now are homeless that orignally happened because of migration of people who were largely pitiful refugees the jews .

So biff is a arab in palestine in 1930 does biff say yes take in the jews give them a home because there were arabs who did that, and now their children and grandchildren curse them for fools .

[Catweazle]

There is a way that people who welcome immigration and those who don't can both be happy.

Those who wish to dilute their share of the countries wealth can simply sell their houses, downsize, and send the excess money abroad to a foreign family.

Everybody's happy.

Right, who's first ? Biff ?

[johnhemming2]

It is often a question of numbers and the nature of the migrants and their consequent impact on the population in the area being migrated to. This applies whatever national boundaries exist. (hence the tensions in Wales and second homes in Devon/Cornwall etc).

[clv101]

This is rubbish migrations can be stopped there is another option that would be fortress europe...

...and if you rehome 1 million then it will be 20 million then a 100 million ...

This, I probably agree with. I think what we're seeing now is literally the very tip of a far larger migration of people over the coming decades. Thousands are likely to become millions.

Whilst the UK certainly could accommodate many thousands more today and I believe the benefit to those arriving would outweigh any negative aspects experienced by those already here (net-human-benefit) I'm less convinced this is a sustainable approach.

I'm more interested in the global response to hundreds of millions of people, moving thousand+ miles.

[peaceful_life]

...is the other reason why you do not debate this in a reasonable manner. When it gets to the nitty gritty, or the posts get a bit too long, you just ignore them.

You cannot defend your position. It is indefensible.

No, it's just that picking gooseberries (and quite a lot of other things) is more important to me than posting on PowerSwitch. Anyway, it's your turn to answer my first point in my 12.56 post.

When you've done that, remind me which important point of yours I missed.

Meanwhile, here's another Guardian journalist explaining what ought to be done. [Not to be read by those of a cold-hearted nature.]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... ent-europe

This is rubbish migrations can be stopped there is another option that would be fortress europe, and a getting rid of the people who have already invaded europe .

Most of these migrants are young fit men your seeing a invasion they are economic migrants, and if you rehome 1 million then it will be 20 million then a 100 million then the people that are here will end up like the palestinians .


RIGHT think about this its the 1930s were the jews people who you need to take in as refugees answer me now




if you look at palestine you have people who used to have a country and now are homeless that orignally happened because of migration of people who were largely pitiful refugees the jews .

So biff is a arab in palestine in 1930 does biff say yes take in the jews give them a home because there were arabs who did that, and now their children and grandchildren curse them for fools .

I'll drop this in again and see if it can stimulate a more solutionary approach.

"If we continue the way we're going, then we're going to reach a crisis point, where it's impossible..to feed everyone and at that point then all bets will be off, because you'll have. millions and tens of millions and hundreds of millions, maybe billions of people who are migrating...to survive. Now...if you're in the first world and you think..well that's ok, it's not me...it's them, well......this isn't going to save you, you can't shoot them down, there are to many, there are 7 billion people on the earth and we're adding another billion people every twelve years, it's not going to be possible to suppress humanity when they can't survive, they won't go gently into that good night"

John D. Liu~


Stewing around in fearful reaction isn't going to help.

[peaceful_life]

This is rubbish migrations can be stopped there is another option that would be fortress europe...

...and if you rehome 1 million then it will be 20 million then a 100 million ...

This, I probably agree with. I think what we're seeing now is literally the very tip of a far larger migration of people over the coming decades. Thousands are likely to become millions.

Whilst the UK certainly could accommodate many thousands more today and I believe the benefit to those arriving would outweigh any negative aspects experienced by those already here (net-human-benefit) I'm less convinced this is a sustainable approach.

I'm more interested in the global response to hundreds of millions of people, moving thousand+ miles.

Stabilising the cause of the issues with intelligent, local and necessary projects looks like the best option.

[mr brightside]

[http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... ent-europe

But the reality is clear: the only logical, long-term response to the Calais crisis is to create a legal means for vast numbers of refugees to reach Europe in safety.

This solution isn't logical, it can't be logical to instigate overpopulation in an area and create civil unrest. What the journalist is suggesting here is that we facilitate the emptying of the third world into the west, where they might exist in such a pattern as to reject the western value system. Europe has to stand firm on this issue and realise that if we resettle some- more will pile in like a tsunami. Their numbers will explode beyond control as they quickly start families and have children born on european soil to eliminate the possibility of getting kicked back out. The way i see it, and again i might be wrong, is that any softly-softly approach will result in the acceleration of every 'collapse' scenario going, and that the only option is to be cold hearted.

[vtsnowedin]

The way i see it, and again i might be wrong, is that any softly-softly approach will result in the acceleration of every 'collapse' scenario going, and that the only option is to be cold hearted.

And you call yourself MR. Brightside??
Sadly I agree with your viewpoint as it is a realistic view of human nature and response to adversity.

[Little John]

Humans, when it comes to overrunning their environment, are only as smart as far as they can see as individuals or as smallish communities. Anything above that and it falls apart. Mass media can help mitigate this to some extent. But, only if the recipients of the message are not too desperate and only if the messengers (the people who own the means of mass communication) are willing to send the message in the first place. Unfortunately, the messengers are short sighted psychopaths and the recipients are growing more desperate by the day. And, in any event, it's too late now for the message to make any difference.

This is the world we live in. Like it or not.

One way or another, many millions, if not billions of humans are going to disappear from the world population over the coming decades. It doesn't matter what one feels about that. It is just going to happen.

If somewhere like the UK, on the back of a superficially noble but fundamentally misguided moral imperative, takes in these several thousand people from Calais right now, they WILL BE REPLACED with thousands more, then tens of thousands and then, eventually, millions. This will eventually lead to major civil insurrection here when the indigenous population finally reaches he end of its tether. And God knows what kind of fascistic nightmare will come of that. Make no mistake, if the likes of Biff Vernon have their way, this is what will become of this country.

[johnhemming2]

...

Unusually I agree with the sentiment here. I find it a bit absurd that we allow a situation where mainly men in their late teens or early 20s who are physically small end up claiming to be unaccompanied asylum seeking children because that presses particularly gentle legal buttons.

[UndercoverElephant]

[http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... ent-europe

But the reality is clear: the only logical, long-term response to the Calais crisis is to create a legal means for vast numbers of refugees to reach Europe in safety.

This solution isn't logical, it can't be logical to instigate overpopulation in an area and create civil unrest. What the journalist is suggesting here is that we facilitate the emptying of the third world into the west, where they might exist in such a pattern as to reject the western value system. Europe has to stand firm on this issue and realise that if we resettle some- more will pile in like a tsunami. Their numbers will explode beyond control as they quickly start families and have children born on european soil to eliminate the possibility of getting kicked back out. The way i see it, and again i might be wrong, is that any softly-softly approach will result in the acceleration of every 'collapse' scenario going, and that the only option is to be cold hearted.

Yes.

There's nothing logical about the limp-minded liberal western response typical of the Biff Vernon's of this world. The logic and ethics are in fact very simple.

The key question is whether you acknowledge that a significant forced reduction in human population levels, AKA "die-off", is now inevitable. Given that the alternative is 10+ billion humans all achieving living standards such as they voluntarily choose to have only one child, the chances of this happening are nil. Biff Vernon says he clings on to the hope that die-off can yet be avoided, although in reality he knows it can't and this "hope" is just an excuse to hide from the tough decisions that would force him to face the wrath of his limp-minded liberal peers, and he's too cowardly to do that, preferring to claim an illusory moral high ground based on dishonesty.

If on the other hand you accept that we cannot now avoid a significant die-off then the whole thing becomes very simple. By allowing mass migration from the places where the die-off is starting to the places where there's still some local hope of avoiding the worst of it, all we do is keep an unsustainable global system going a bit longer, meaning the eventual peak in population is slightly higher, and that the aforementioned local hope is also extinguished. The net result is more suffering, not less, and also more uniform and widespread collapse instead of those places that have done the best job of creating sustainable society of standing a better chance. It actually penalises those societies who have better prepared and rewards those who have got themselves into the biggest mess.

Congratulations Biff Vernon. You are a shining light of moral courage rational thinking.

[Little John]

In terms of whose "fault" lies at the origin of this situation, there are several layers in the answer to that question:

Partly, it's the fault of ruling elites in Western countries pillaging places like Africa over decades and centuries. Partly, it's the exposure of places like Africa to Western technologies and economic systems in recent years when they are clearly culturally unprepared for the speed of the changes that have followed as exemplified by fairly uniformly bad management of those countries by their ruling classes. Partly, it is the fault of the ordinary people of the West who did not challenge their ruling classes strongly enough when their military representatives put on a uniform and "subdued the natives" in various countries around the world.

And then, of course, there is climate change and peak resources.

Mostly, though, when all the details are stripped way, it's just big human brains that are just not quite big enough. This was inevitable as soon as we migrated out of Africa and then staggered out of the last ice age. The specific timing and circumstances of the catastrophe that has now unmistakably begun are, in the end, details.

All that any of us can do now is prepare for the evolutionary correction that is coming. We can no longer afford the luxury born of a colonialist past of thinking we can save the world. We can't. Nothing van save this industrial human world that has already begun process of dying. We can merely try to keep our own house in order and help others out only once we have ensured that. When the shit starts to really hit the fan in terms of global conflicts and disruptions to international supply chains, we are going to struggle even to feed those who are already here, never mind anyone else. Again, that's just the hard truth of it.

I'm a socialist and I want to see a socialist world order. Whether or not that was once possible to coordinate, it is not possible now no matter how much I want it. It is going to be hard enough to implement anything even approaching that in this country. But, try and implement it we must if we are to avoid the worst of the barbarism that is already beginning to engulf the world. Anything that reduces the chances of the above must be resisted. The idealistic stupidity of people like Biff Vernon, being a case in point.

[Little John]

...

Unusually I agree with the sentiment here. I find it a bit absurd that we allow a situation where mainly men in their late teens or early 20s who are physically small end up claiming to be unaccompanied asylum seeking children because that presses particularly gentle legal buttons.

Don't you dare demonise these desperate, wretched human beings. They are simply doing no more or less than we would do if we were them and in their situation. There may well be chancers among them, like in any human population, but the majority of them have literally nothing left to lose.

And yet, still we must stop them coming.

That is the unbearable truth of it.

[johnhemming2]

You cannot blame them do for doing this, but we should not allow them to simply claim to be a child and suddenly they get massive financial support (around 30K pa - not paid directly, however).

Foreign policy (eg the war in Iraq) is part of this as well. However, that is now in the past and we need to deal with the consequences.

[UndercoverElephant]

[http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... ent-europe

But the reality is clear: the only logical, long-term response to the Calais crisis is to create a legal means for vast numbers of refugees to reach Europe in safety.

This solution isn't logical, it can't be logical to instigate overpopulation in an area and create civil unrest. What the journalist is suggesting here is that we facilitate the emptying of the third world into the west, where they might exist in such a pattern as to reject the western value system. Europe has to stand firm on this issue and realise that if we resettle some- more will pile in like a tsunami. Their numbers will explode beyond control as they quickly start families and have children born on european soil to eliminate the possibility of getting kicked back out. The way i see it, and again i might be wrong, is that any softly-softly approach will result in the acceleration of every 'collapse' scenario going, and that the only option is to be cold hearted.

Yes.

There's nothing logical about the limp-minded liberal western response typical of the Biff Vernon's of this world. The logic and ethics are in fact very simple.

The key question is whether you acknowledge that a significant forced reduction in human population levels, AKA "die-off", is now inevitable. Given that the alternative is 10+ billion humans all achieving living standards such as they voluntarily choose to have only one child, the chances of this happening are nil. Biff Vernon says he clings on to the hope that die-off can yet be avoided, although in reality he knows it can't and this "hope" is just an excuse to hide from the tough decisions that would force him to face the wrath of his limp-minded liberal peers, and he's too cowardly to do that, preferring to claim an illusory moral high ground based on dishonesty.

If on the other hand you accept that we cannot now avoid a significant die-off then the whole thing becomes very simple. By allowing mass migration from the places where the die-off is starting to the places where there's still some local hope of avoiding the worst of it, all we do is keep an unsustainable global system going a bit longer, meaning the eventual peak in population is slightly higher, and that the aforementioned local hope is also extinguished. The net result is more suffering, not less, and also more uniform and widespread collapse instead of those places that have done the best job of creating sustainable society of standing a better chance. It actually penalises those societies who have better prepared and rewards those who have got themselves into the biggest mess.

Congratulations Biff Vernon. You are a shining light of moral courage rational thinking.

I'd just like to defend/apologise for my hypocrisy. Having asked LJ to limit the person insults, I ended up accusing Biff Vernon of being dishonest and morally cowardly.

This is the core of the disagreement though. At various times over the years, Biff Vernon has tacitly admitted that he knows some degree of collapse and die-off is indeed inevitable, but he basically says that "giving up" in that way is morally wrong. Instead, he wants to "keep being optimistic." And having been "optimistic" in this way, he can defend things like allowing these migrants to enter the UK.

The disagreement is a moral one, and those can get quite nasty. I think this "optimism" is a cover for what is actually cowardice. It takes guts to stand up and tell your left-wing liberal peer group that actually, in this case, the "hard-hearted" policy usually associated with the political right is the only sensible way forward.

But these difficult moral choices are only going to get more difficult in the years ahead, and the arguments between reluctant realists and people like Biff Vernon are going to get ever more intense and unpleasant.