Migrants - Italy making a stand

Nasher said:
Merkel is barely hanging on, she is less popular in Germany than May is in the UK. But acts like she runs Europe.
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Lol, another post by Nasher proving as long as you think the opposite you are closer to reality..

It is a skill to be so consistently wrong, even if you were just guessing at answers you should get ~50% right :p

Despite a woeful year for the chancellor, a majority of Germans continue to view Angela Merkel as good at her job.

Merkel has an approval rating of 57 percent at the beginning of her fourth term as chancellor.
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In 2018, 34 percent of respondents approved of Theresa May's work
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Right now, immigration/asylum policies are all carrot and no stick, hence they are openly being abused en masse. It’s nothing short of an unarmed invasion. This is what happens when the left, that runs on emotion, has hegemony over policy with little to no input from the practical right.
 
Skunkworks said:
Right now, immigration/asylum policies are all carrot and no stick, hence they are openly being abused en masse. It’s nothing short of an unarmed invasion. This is what happens when the left, that runs on emotion, has hegemony over policy with little to no input from the practical right.
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:rolleyes:

Merkel's CDU is on the political right.
 
From wikipedia

As a conservative party, the CDU supports stronger punishments of crimes and supports involvement on the part of the Bundeswehr in cases of domestic anti-terrorismoffensives. In terms of immigrants, the CDU supports initiatives to integrate immigrants through language courses, and aims to further control immigration. Dual citizenship should only be allowed in exceptional cases. The CDU emphasises curtailing red tape and the preservation of cultural traditions.

In terms of foreign policy, the CDU commits itself to European integration and a strong relation with the United States. In the European Union, the party opposes the entry of Turkey into the EU, preferring instead a privileged partnership with Turkey. In addition to citing various human rights violations, the CDU also believes that Turkey's unwillingness to recognise Cyprus as an independent, sovereign state contradicts the EU policy that its members must recognise the existence of one another.
 
Freakbro said:
Lol, another post by Nasher proving as long as you think the opposite you are closer to reality..

It is a skill to be so consistently wrong, even if you were just guessing at answers you should get ~50% right :p
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Lol, another post by Freakbro proving not a lot.

It still looks like Merkels government may collapse as it's pretty fragile right now. The migrant crisis being the cause. But oh well, she has "57% approval rating" whatever that actually means.
 
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Amp34 said:
It does put a persons political position into perspective when they consider a socially conservative right wing partly "left"...
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Depends. The UK is overall left leaning compared to many other countries. Compare e.g. UKIP to parties in the US and they would probably sit on the left :p
 
Freakbro said:
Or, a more civilised approach - since these people either pay people smugglers or risk their lives alone to come to what they are told is going to be a better life - would be to get the message back to these areas that they are being sold a lie and it's not all milk and honey over here and they will just end up just as destitute and poor, probably in a camp, and now away from their families.
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The people coming from Africa already have enough family/friends etc over here to have a reasoble understanding of what's on offer and not ...

A life scrapping by in a western country is far preferable to almost anywhere in sub saharan Africa....

The average wage for a black African in South africa, one of the more stable and prosperous nations there (relatively), is just over 60,000 rand which is around £3,350. ..

3/4 of Africans live in less than $2 a day

Its not hard therefore if you gain accces to the stay in a western nation to get by with a far better quality of life and send quite a lot of money home (at the relative value abroad)... Of course a lot of thoose remitances are used to fund successive waves of immigrants...

The only way to effectively stop the economic migrants is to stop them en route and turn them back until the message gets back that no one gets into Europe via these means
 
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Amp34 said:
It does put a persons political position into perspective when they consider a socially conservative right wing partly "left"...
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Merkel "we can do it" welcome in 2015 to all that could make it to Germany (and by extension Europe, who she forget to consult) is the hallmark of either the no borders 'left' who believe border are 'racist' or the 'right' who want no borders, small weak goverments with no social security or welfare......


It was gesture massively out of step with the majority opinion in most European countries at the time.

Personally I think the long running collective guilt some associate to being German combined with misguided Christian charity was the source of this foolishness.
 
Nasher said:
Depends. The UK is overall left leaning compared to many other countries. Compare e.g. UKIP to parties in the US and they would probably sit on the left :p
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The US is more an exception than the rule for western style democracies.

That said, even in the US his position would be considered pretty conservative, even among republicans.
 
Caracus2k said:
Merkel "we can do it" welcome in 2015 to all that could make it to Germany (and my extension Europe, who she forget to consult) is the hallmark of either the no borders 'left' who beilive border are 'racist' or the 'right' who want no borders, small weak goverments with no social security or welfare......


It was gesture massively out of step with the majority opinion in most European countries at the time.
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But as already mentioned, it was designed to help countries like Greece, who were being left to fend for themselves after the rest of the EU refused to help.

Also:

On August 31, 2015, Merkel was fresh from a visit to a refugee center near Dresden where locals had given her a tough time. She was booed and vulgar slurs were hurled in her direction. At the same time, the human cost of the crisis was becoming clearer: A few days earlier, a truck had been found along an Austrian highway with 71 dead refugees inside.

It was against this background that, around 13 minutes into a press conference, Merkel said: “I put it simply, Germany is a strong country … we have managed so many things — we can do this.”

In German, “Wir haben so vieles geschafft – wir schaffen das.”

German media picked up on it, but it wasn’t until two weeks later that the phrase was first thrown back in Merkel’s face.

In mid-September, Werner Faymann, then Austria’s chancellor and Merkel’s closest European ally on migration, visited Berlin. During a joint press conference, Merkel was asked about critics of her refugee policy.

“I say it again and again: We can manage this, we can do it,” she said defiantly, adding, “If we start having to apologize for showing a friendly face in an emergency situation, then this is not my country.”

“We can do it” went global, at least in part because of the soundbite’s similarity to Barack Obama’s “Yes we can.”

But it’s not quite as simple as that.

The German “Wir schaffen das” does not express the same degree of enthusiasm as “we can do it” does in English. Instead, it implies “we will manage the situation, because we have no other choice.”

Merkel’s complete sentence, in its original context, would more accurately translate as, “We have managed so many things — we will also manage this situation.”
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https://www.politico.eu/article/the-phrase-that-haunts-angela-merkel/
 
Amp34 said:
It does put a persons political position into perspective when they consider a socially conservative right wing partly "left"...
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There’s nothing socially conservative about flooding your country/continent with unwanted foreigners that are going to be nothing but a disruptive drain and destabilising force. It’s unnatural, provocative, downright irresponsible, and is very likely to end in unpleasantness of one degree or another.
 
Amp34 said:
But as already mentioned, it was designed to help countries like Greece, who were being left to fend for themselves after the rest of the EU refused to help.
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It was designed as a massive, vicarious, public virtue signal by Merkel..... (maybe she thought it would get her a nobel peace prize?)

Germany could have helped out more discreetly, behind the scenes, with the issues with Syria and the existing migration crisis but made things far worse by Merkel publicly in effect announcing that anyone who could get to Germany could stay (and by extension get to go where they wanted in Europe in time)

Even the Guardian ran an article re the belief that Merkel's actions were motivated strongly by a desire to establish a 'legacy' as she approached the end of her likely tenure as Germany's leader

If we're going to start playing silly games about it all being a translation error then let's look at a German sourced view....

Yes, Merkel says, of course we can. It was only three weeks ago that the chancellor said Germany was an amiable country -- and that people fleeing war and political persecution are welcome here. Such statements, free of tactic and calculation, are new for the chancellor.




DER SPIEGEL
Graphic: The growing challenges of getting through the Balkans.

Her words traveled at lightning speed. They were shared over Facebook and Twitter, via email and SMS, prompting tens of thousands of people -- maybe hundreds of thousands -- to make their way to Europe. In Hungary, refugees are being fought off with water cannons and tear gas. Police officers are back at the German border with Austria to at least try and channel the flow of desperate people pouring in.
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Merkel wasn't helping a refugee crisis she caused one ...
 
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Caracus2k said:
It was designed as a massive vicarious public virtue signal by Merkel. ..

Germany could have helped out more discreetly, behind the scenes, with the issues with Syria and the existing migration crisis but made it far worse by Merkel publucally announcing that anyone who could get to Germany could stay (and by extension get to go where they wanted in Europe in time)

Even the Guardian ran an article re the belef that Merkel's actions were motivated strongly by a desire to establish a 'legacy' as she approached the end of her likely tenure as Germany's leader

If we're going to start playing silly games about it all being a translation error then let's look at a German sourced view....

Merkel wasn't helping a refugee crisis she caused one ...
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Fine, but that's an opinion piece, not a news article. Everyone is entitled to an opinion and there are many opposing opinions.

In what way? Most of the refugees had already arrived in Europe when she "opened the doors". She had already tried to set up an EU wide scheme, and "help behind closed doors", yet it failed.

Was it the best option? Debatable. Had she tried to do many other things before hand? Yes.

What would your solution have been at that stage? Let Greece deal with the hundreds of thousands of refugees on it's own, provide tens of Billions to Greece unilaterally?
 
Skunkworks said:
EU countries easily have the military power to setup and maintain a safe zone in Syria.
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I'm not sure a military option would have gone down well with the public, especially when soldiers started dying.

The EU as a whole refused to help. One of the options that was agreed on later was to help fund refugee camps in Turkey (part of the deal to send many Syrians that are in Europe back), but so far most of the money is still forthcoming, and it wouldn't have helped Greece at the time.

One of the ideas prior to Merkels speech was to set up a processing system run by the EU in Greece, and then distribute successful refugees throughout the EU, reducing the burden on individual states, but that failed to come to pass. Countries were more interested in not having to deal with it, and letting Greece handle it instead.

It's also worth noting that the majority of Refugees preferred to end up in Germany prior to Merkels speech, due to the large Syrian community there.
 
Amp34 said:
I'm not sure a military option would have gone down well with the public, especially when soldiers started dying.
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A zone could have easily been setup just inside the country and hundreds of miles from any conflict. With a 1st world millitary guarding it nothing hostile would get within 50 miles. As towns and cities are liberated people could leave the safe zone and return easily to their homes. Genuine refugees could be determined in the camp and given passage to Europe. I'm sure EU countries would be a lot happier knowing they're helping actual refugees and not getting mugged off by opportunists.

Amp34 said:
The EU as a whole refused to help. One of the options that was agreed on later was to help fund refugee camps in Turkey (part of the deal to send many Syrians that are in Europe back), but so far most of the money is still forthcoming, and it wouldn't have helped Greece at the time.

One of the ideas prior to Merkels speech was to set up a processing system run by the EU in Greece, and then distribute successful refugees throughout the EU, reducing the burden on individual states, but that failed to come to pass. Countries were more interested in not having to deal with it, and letting Greece handle it instead.
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The EU is a weak, dysfunctional mess with one foot in the grave.

Amp34 said:
It's also worth noting that the majority of Refugees preferred to end up in Germany prior to Merkels speech, due to the large Syrian community there.
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I don't care what they want, they're guests.
 
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