My opinion on imigrants from Syria.

[Minimalist]

C/L this is an impossibly complex problem and Syria is only part of it.  There are waves of refugees from Libya and the Horn of Africa not to mention sub-saharan Africa who are mainly economic refugees although "peace" in those countries can be tenuous at best. 

To a certain extent the west does have some culpability because we do encourage the rebels by pretending that the "government" is always bad and the "rebels" are always good.  Well, this is not fucking Star Wars and Hollywood horseshit has no place in realistic discussions of actual problems.  No government tolerates rebellion, including our own...in case anyone forgot the Civil War or the earlier Shays and Whiskey Rebellions.  I think it might have been Rand Paul who pointed out that whenever we have conspired in or actively replaced a secular arab dictator the result has been worse for the nations involved, not better: Libya, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Yemen.  We pretended that the Arab Spring was a flowering of "democracy" but you can't give democracy to people who think it means that they get to kill their adversaries.

I have no solution for this.  The European Union has created an impossible scenario for itself.  They hold out the hope of refuge but then can't make it happen and they risk serious political repercussion on the home front which will put an end to the "refuge" real fast.  Europe has less than a stellar record of dealing with minorities throughout history.  Some of that is religion-related but a lot is simply nationalism.  And before the US starts acting all high and mighty and pretends, as we normally do, that things are black or white we need to remember that we have signally failed to solve the black/white issue here. 

I don't know.  Some problems do not have solutions.

[Catholic_Lady]

C/L this is an impossibly complex problem and Syria is only part of it.  There are waves of refugees from Libya and the Horn of Africa not to mention sub-saharan Africa who are mainly economic refugees although "peace" in those countries can be tenuous at best. 

To a certain extent the west does have some culpability because we do encourage the rebels by pretending that the "government" is always bad and the "rebels" are always good.  Well, this is not fucking Star Wars and Hollywood horseshit has no place in realistic discussions of actual problems.  No government tolerates rebellion, including our own...in case anyone forgot the Civil War or the earlier Shays and Whiskey Rebellions.  I think it might have been Rand Paul who pointed out that whenever we have conspired in or actively replaced a secular arab dictator the result has been worse for the nations involved, not better: Libya, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Yemen.  We pretended that the Arab Spring was a flowering of "democracy" but you can't give democracy to people who think it means that they get to kill their adversaries.

I have no solution for this.  The European Union has created an impossible scenario for itself.  They hold out the hope of refuge but then can't make it happen and they risk serious political repercussion on the home front which will put an end to the "refuge" real fast.  Europe has less than a stellar record of dealing with minorities throughout history.  Some of that is religion-related but a lot is simply nationalism.  And before the US starts acting all high and mighty and pretends, as we normally do, that things are black or white we need to remember that we have signally failed to solve the black/white issue here. 

I don't know.  Some problems do not have solutions.

I know Europe can't take it alone. Anyone/any country who can help, should help. These people shouldn't just be left out to die, regardless of how difficult the situation is. There are children out there.

[Minimalist]

Can you imagine the shrieking from the right-wing if Obama advocated bringing in thousands upon thousands of Syrians?

Actually, you don't have to imagine it.  Here it is.

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/an...te-america

Last week on her American Family Radio program, Sandy Rios invited Ann Corcoran on to discuss the Obama administration’s decision to expand the number of refugees from Syria’s civil war who will be settled in the United States. Corcoran, who runs the anti-refugee blog Refugee Resettlement Watch, warned against accepting Muslim refugees from Syria, whom she claimed want to move to America in order to establish a “caliphate.”
Lamenting the fact that English-speaking Americans now have to hear Arabic words, Rios asked Corcoran to explain the concept of “Hijra.” Hijra, Corcoran claimed (falsely), is “the Islamic doctrine of immigration. Mohammad told his followers that it was their duty to migrate … The idea is to spread Islam to create a caliphate, literally a worldwide caliphate.” This, she explained, is why Muslim Syrians want to immigrate to the United States, not because they are fleeing an ongoing civil war in their home country that has killed thousands and displaced millions of people.

This article is dated yesterday. 

Your humanity does you credit but even what Obama proposed merely re-allocates the existing number of refugees to bump up the number of Syrians...not the total admitted.

[Minimalist]

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34280460

Migrant clashes leave Hungary bitterly divided

"War on all fronts," thunders the headline in the conservative daily newspaper, Magyar Nemzet - a reference to both the battles between desperate refugees and Hungarian riot police, and to Hungary's deepening diplomatic isolation.

Csaba Lukacs, the paper's leader writer, depicts a Hungary under attack from young, stone-throwing Muslim men: "Hungary's border was besieged by those who think they have the basic human right to march across Europe without documents."

[Wyrd of Gawd]

I agree completely. I think the US should be doing more to help.

US policy is the cause of the problem.  It got its European stooges to join in and go to the Middle East to overthrow the local bigwigs and cause chaos.  So why shouldn't the displaced people invade Europe and the US in return?  If the Europeans don't want the displaced people they should put them on planes and send them to Washington DC.  Then we can send them to Bush and Cheney's houses.  

Now the Repubs want to attack Iran.  What the hell do they expect to happen as a result?  

Even now we are doing zero to restore peace and harmony to the area.  We keep flooding the area with weapons and creating discord to keep the fighting going.  So it's only natural that the people who can leave continue to leave.  They have to go somewhere so why not go bunk with the dummies who caused it all?

[Wyrd of Gawd]

The Statue of Liberty does not have a "Christians Only" sign on it.

We need to melt it down and send the crap back to France.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

We really should take that fucking poem off of it.  No one believes it any more.

It was the French being delusional anyway.

A Jewish woman poet wrote the damn poem.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

C/L this is an impossibly complex problem and Syria is only part of it.  There are waves of refugees from Libya and the Horn of Africa not to mention sub-saharan Africa who are mainly economic refugees although "peace" in those countries can be tenuous at best. 

To a certain extent the west does have some culpability because we do encourage the rebels by pretending that the "government" is always bad and the "rebels" are always good.  Well, this is not fucking Star Wars and Hollywood horseshit has no place in realistic discussions of actual problems.  No government tolerates rebellion, including our own...in case anyone forgot the Civil War or the earlier Shays and Whiskey Rebellions.  I think it might have been Rand Paul who pointed out that whenever we have conspired in or actively replaced a secular arab dictator the result has been worse for the nations involved, not better: Libya, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Yemen.  We pretended that the Arab Spring was a flowering of "democracy" but you can't give democracy to people who think it means that they get to kill their adversaries.

I have no solution for this.  The European Union has created an impossible scenario for itself.  They hold out the hope of refuge but then can't make it happen and they risk serious political repercussion on the home front which will put an end to the "refuge" real fast.  Europe has less than a stellar record of dealing with minorities throughout history.  Some of that is religion-related but a lot is simply nationalism.  And before the US starts acting all high and mighty and pretends, as we normally do, that things are black or white we need to remember that we have signally failed to solve the black/white issue here. 

I don't know.  Some problems do not have solutions.

One thing is for sure and that is tens of thousands of babies and old people will soon die in strange lands far from home in the harsh European winter.   We are definitely seeing a major human tragedy unfold before our very eyes because of the crimes against humanity committed by our national leaders.  The pictures of the dead that we will see in the coming months will be truly heart-wrenching.  May the soon-to-be dead have quick merciful deaths.  There will be a lot of mass graves throughout the land.

[ignoramus]

Maybe chaos in the ME is exactly what the west wants?
To all Western governments, life is just commodities, and collateral damage is part of war. Why the fuck doesn't the ME join together and solve their own issues? It's like 5 states in the US are having a civil war and the other states saying: don't get involved.
Why do they need the west to save them from themselves?

[Lemonvariable72]

If we're going to make a mistake then let it be the mistake of giving them shelter. I have no doubt in my mind that some of them are members of isis and that some more are islamists. But the majority are people in search of shelter. If do not take them in we give them all to isis. If take them in and use proper measures to integrate and weed out the extremists then it is isis that will have to play the fool, even if they do manage an attack.
What I worry about is the foolish conservative Muslims in the crowd that will try to oppose free speech and western culture and the hate they will stir from us.