"Bill of Shame"

[Hope]

I am posting this for 2 reasons.  I recently received notification of this from the campaigning community Avaaz, and thought It was worth bringing to folks' attention.  However, unlike many of the other Avaaz campaigns I've seen, I haven't seen anything about this elsewhere on the net.

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/denmark_bill_of_shame_c/?pv=77&rc=fb

So, I leave it to your own judgement as to what you do with it.

[ad_orientem]

Well, something needs to be done and the Danish government is doing it. Hopefully Schengen will fall as well. Most of the people coming into Europe are economic migrants. Most are men of fighting age (why are they not fighting ISIS protecting their families and homes?). It seems Europe is being set up for the biggest wave of economic migration we've ever seen, undermining its cultural and ethnic integrity.

[Shaker]

Well, something needs to be done and the Danish government is doing it. Hopefully Schengen will fall as well. Most of the people coming into Europe are economic migrants. Most are men of fighting age (why are they not fighting ISIS protecting their families and homes?). It seems Europe is being set up for the biggest wave of economic migration we've ever seen, undermining its cultural and ethnic integrity.

And polluting our precious bodily fluids, right?

[Brownie]

I don't understand what "cultural integrity" means, which may mean I don't have any.  Ah well, I haven't felt deprived because of it.

[ad_orientem]

And polluting our precious bodily fluids, right?

Sigh! Have a day off, Shakes. Culture and ethnicity is what makes a people. Lose either one of those they cease to be a people, in this case the Danes. Neither does that have to imply any sense of superiority. If it was anything other than Europeans no one would batter an eyelid.

[ProfessorDavey]

Most of the people coming into Europe are economic migrants.

Evidence please. Most of these people are coming from countries currently being destroyed by war so it isn't really justifiable to claim they are necessarily economic migrants.

But I actually think the crude distinction between refugees and economic migrants is untenable and unhelpful. Many of these people know their towns and previous life is destroyed and won't be restored for years if not decades. The are therefore refugees. But they have also made a decision that given the destruction back home their best option for themselves and their families is a new life somewhere else where they can live work, raise their families and contribute to that new society (which may make them economic migrants) - but what is so wrong with that.

Think about the late 1930s - Jewish people fleeing persecution in central Europe - many decided to make a new start somewhere else and even when Germany and other countries become stable (and safe) again had no intention of returning, their lives were, by then, elsewhere. And think about the contribution those people have made to society and the economies of the countries they moved to.

[ad_orientem]

When it happens on a massive scale, as is now, the multicultural fantasy of the no-borders brigade comes crashing down, a clash of cultures and home is no longer identifiably home anymore but alien, because our cultural and ethnic identity as Europeans will have been lost. It's ok when it happens to Europeans, it seems. Were it Europeans going elsewhere it would be deemed European imperialism and arrogance. Islamisation is ok though.

And again, why aren't these men of fighting ages fighting to protect their homes and their women and children from ISIS?

[Hope]

I don't understand what "cultural integrity" means, which may mean I don't have any.  Ah well, I haven't felt deprived because of it.

Living in a country that has had such a huge variety of ethnic and therefore cultural forebears as we do in the UK and especially England, I think we can forget that there are some parts of Europe where the culture is far less diverse.  Now, whether having what might be deemed a 2- or 3-tone culture is better or worse than having a highly diverse culture is probably a topic for a separate thread, but (a bit like France and its determination to see its language not being 'contaminated' with foreign words) there are those nations that wish to protect their cultural identity.

[Hope]

And polluting our precious bodily fluids, right?

Good to see your blinkered thinking coming to the fore again, Shakes.  We, in the UK, have a two or three cultures that are fighting to retain their unique identities even today; Kernow, Gaelic and Welsh.  There may well be others.

[Hope]

And again, why aren't these men of fighting ages fighting to protect their homes and their women and children from ISIS?

One needs an army to do this, ad_o, and for some of these folk, the only army available to them to join would be so antagonistic to their ways of thinking that they would be as much at war with that army as they would be with ISIS.  At the same time, some would probably be refused entry into that army because of their ethnic and/or religious backgrounds.

[Shaker]

Good to see your blinkered thinking coming to the fore again, Shakes.  We, in the UK, have a two or three cultures that are fighting to retain their unique identities even today; Kernow, Gaelic and Welsh.  There may well be others.

There's somebody on this thread wearing blinkers, and I don't think it's me.

Perhaps you just have an innate tone-deafness to sarcasm and/or irony, which indicates either that (a) you're somewhere on the autism disorders spectrum or (b) American.

[Hope]

Perhaps you just have an innate tone-deafness to sarcasm and/or irony, which indicates either that (a) you're somewhere on the autism disorders spectrum or (b) American.

The problem is that - with your posts - it is hard to tell whether you are being sarcastic/ironic or not, as historically you have been accused of being so and responded adamantly that you weren't - or vice versa.  As for my being 'somewhere on the autism disorders spectrum', I'd be worried if I wasn't. 

[Shaker]

We, in the UK, have a two or three cultures that are fighting to retain their unique identities even today; Kernow, Gaelic and Welsh.  There may well be others.

"Fighting to retain their unique identities"? Give me a break. This is Britain, which means that that entails heavy tutting potentially escalating to a pretty stiffly-worded letter to the local paper, I can tell you.

[Outrider]

Well, something needs to be done and the Danish government is doing it.

Strip those who've abandoned their homes and their lives on a hope of something better of the last vestiges of anything they have.

Hopefully Schengen will fall as well.

Why? How is the free movement of people, goods and capital a bad thing?

Most of the people coming into Europe are economic migrants.

Firstly, no.

In other words, citizens from countries that usually obtain protection in the EU account for fully 75% of illicit arrivals by sea this year. Crunch the numbers further and we find that at least 81% of those migrants entering Greece can expect to receive refugee status or some other form of protection in the EU.

http://tinyurl.com/pd48rr9

Secondly, for those that are 'economic migrants'... why are they a bad thing? Why do we have a right to have opportunities for a health income just because we are fortunate enough to have been born in Western Europe? Why are these people supposed to accept poor living conditions, few opportunities and rampant corruption just because they aren't born in a postcode?

Most are men of fighting age (why are they not fighting ISIS protecting their families and homes?).

Because they don't want to be soldiers? Because they want to be plumbers or electricians or doctors or vets or bicycle couriers? Around 60% of the migrants arriving in Europe are men, which is hardly surprising given that they will typically leave first to earn sufficient money to bring their families after them.

If they remain they are targets because they are young men who could, conceivably, take up arms against (or for) Isis or any of the other groups that are taking up arms and turning these places into the sort of war zones that any rational person would not want to be in the middle of.

It seems Europe is being set up for the biggest wave of economic migration we've ever seen, undermining its cultural and ethnic integrity.

What 'cultural and ethnic integrity'? The Roman Empire roved across North Africa, Western Asia and the expanse of Europe two thousand years ago and pretty thoroughly mixed up the 'cultural and ethnic' mix, and that intermixing has consistently continued ever since. European nations - and Europe as a whole - aren't ethnic or cultural monoliths, eternally independent of each other and isolated from influence until refugees sneak in and undermine our purity.

Ethnicity is an irrelevancy. Culture is a continuously growing, changing, mixing milieu, as it always has been. Just look at this paragraph, and pick out the mix of purely linguistic influences that are present: Germanic languages, probably a few bits from Saxon or Angle, some French, all with ancient Greek and Latin threads running through it.

The idea of 'ethnic and cultural' purity, if not explicitly racist, supports the sort of institutional racism and factionalism that is leading to the conflicts in the other regions that people are trying to escape by coming here because they think this is a better place. Maybe they were wrong.

O.

[ProfessorDavey]

Good to see your blinkered thinking coming to the fore again, Shakes.  We, in the UK, have a two or three cultures that are fighting to retain their unique identities even today; Kernow, Gaelic and Welsh.  There may well be others.

And in every case those 'unique identities' have been massively shaped by migration.

A culture that can only survive by putting up walls and preventing the completely normal evolution of cultures and societies thought natural migration is, quite frankly, a culture not worth saving. No let's be charitable, it is a culture that deserves only to exist in a museum.

[ad_orientem]

Outrider,

As I said, culture and ethnicity is what makes us what we are and for most people it matters. Lose that and we cease to be. As I said, if it was anywhere else in the world apart from Europe and Europeans no one would think anything wrong of it, but then this not happenning by accident. The whole thing has been orchestrated. Europeans are fed up with it which is why anti-immigration parties are making massive gains. May they continue.

[ProfessorDavey]

Outriuder,

As I said, culture and ethnicity is what makes us what we are and for most people it matters. Lose that and we cease to be. As I said, if it was anywhere else in the world apart from Europe and Europeans no one would think anything wrong of it, but then this not happenning by accident. The whole thing has been orchestrated. Europeans are fed up with it which is why anti-immigration parties are making massive gains. May they continue.

But the whole point is that for pretty well every European culture where we are now - the culture and ethnicity you think so precious - is a result of centuries of migration, in which earlier cultures have merged, been superseded, been influenced by other cultures and so on.

It is poor thinking to the n-th degree to consider that the history of migration and cultural shift that occurred in the past to create the culture and society we so value is fine and great - yet further evolution in the future is bad.

I wonder how many of those signing up to 'anti-immigration' politics are themselves where they are now due to migration by past generations of their own families. Rather a lot I suspect.

[floo]

Well, something needs to be done and the Danish government is doing it. Hopefully Schengen will fall as well. Most of the people coming into Europe are economic migrants. Most are men of fighting age (why are they not fighting ISIS protecting their families and homes?). It seems Europe is being set up for the biggest wave of economic migration we've ever seen, undermining its cultural and ethnic integrity.

What an unpleasant post, your faith is a JOKE!

[ad_orientem]

What an unpleasant post, your faith is a JOKE!

You're a joke. Piss off, you old bat!

[floo]

You're a joke. Piss off, you old bat!

As I said your faith is a JOKE!

[Shaker]

The whole thing has been orchestrated.

By whom?

[ad_orientem]

By whom?

Anti-Christian forces.

[ad_orientem]

As I said your faith is a JOKE!

And I said you're a joke. Out of all the posters here you're the worst, the first to condemn anything and anyone that doesn't meet with your batty old approval.

[Shaker]

Anti-Christian forces.

Who are these and where are they supposed to be?

[ad_orientem]

Who are these and where are they supposed to be?

Neo-con/libs, CIA, Mossad but ultimately the devil.