Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

A

A

A

A

A

A

A

A

[XXSockXX]

I'm curious though -- has there been any talk (particular in the Western European countries) of abandoning the Schengen plan?

Yeah, but mostly by people like LW - nothing serious so far.

I doubt it would do much anyway. It used to be pretty easy to get from one country to another before Schengen - you just had to avoid the bigger roads or going by train. And there's always the green border. I don't remember getting from Germany to France and vice versa being that much more difficult than it is now. Even building fences like Hungary and Bulgaria do doesn't stop the refugees. Seems like the best way to keep them out is to be an island that is not near the Mediterranean - like the UK.

[smjjames]

I'm curious though -- has there been any talk (particular in the Western European countries) of abandoning the Schengen plan?

Yeah, but mostly by people like LW - nothing serious so far.

I doubt it would do much anyway. It used to be pretty easy to get from one country to another before Schengen - you just had to avoid the bigger roads or going by train. And there's always the green border. I don't remember getting from Germany to France and vice versa being that much more difficult than it is now. Even building fences like Hungary and Bulgaria do doesn't stop the refugees. Seems like the best way to keep them out is to be an island that is not near the Mediterranean - like the UK.

Or Iceland.

[Loud Whispers]

HOhohohoho
What an interesting story has come around!
Before the interesting slaughter that was the British General Election we had a coalition between the Liberal Democrats (liberal party centre-left) and the Conservative Party (conservative centre-right) (it's in the names I guess). Nick Clegg the head of the Liberal Democrats at the time (who aged decades in the span of a few years after Westminster sucked his soul out) pledged to not raise student fees. The interesting story that came about was that George Osbourne (man in charge of budgeting) when deciding the budget with Clegg offered to not raise school fees telling him he might get hammered for breaking his pledge, and that raising the school fees was not absolutely necessary for the budget.
Clegg declined this offer and spent the entire next year apologizing for breaking his pledge, by the time the general election came around the liberal democrats had been nearly entirely destroyed.

Osborne himself's an interesting character. Everyone hates him because he's been running through the budget with a knife and has probably run your mum in with it too, and he even got booed by 80k people during the Olympics. Also his first name was Gideon, so he's probably a Bond villain in disguise. Most amusingly was that he thought Clegg was politically clueless; turns out he was right.

[Antsan]

I'll add that what German people do and what their politicians do are two different things.

That kind of statement is universally true, no matter which country you insert.

HOhohohoho
What an interesting story has come around!
Before the interesting slaughter that was the British General Election we had a coalition between the Liberal Democrats (liberal party centre-left) and the Conservative Party (conservative centre-right) (it's in the names I guess). Nick Clegg the head of the Liberal Democrats at the time (who aged decades in the span of a few years after Westminster sucked his soul out) pledged to not raise student fees. The interesting story that came about was that George Osbourne (man in charge of budgeting) when deciding the budget with Clegg offered to not raise school fees telling him he might get hammered for breaking his pledge, and that raising the school fees was not absolutely necessary for the budget.
Clegg declined this offer and spent the entire next year apologizing for breaking his pledge, by the time the general election came around the liberal democrats had been nearly entirely destroyed.

That is interesting. Also: What the hell did Clegg mean to accomplish with that? I don't get the moral of that story.

[Loud Whispers]

I'll add that what German people do and what their politicians do are two different things.

That kind of statement is universally true, no matter which country you insert.

Ya, nothing against Germans except their horrendous taste in architecture which is also not specific to Germans

That is interesting. Also: What the hell did Clegg mean to accomplish with that? I don't get the moral of that story.

There is no moral of the story, everyone gets fucked :D
Also this was during the budgeting where loads of stuff had to be cut just because they were unaffordable. If I had to hazard a guess Clegg believed this was one such necessary cut that had to be made if there was to be hope for the future. Alternatively he might've had some role in the student loans offer, where the loans were in fact a tax on rich students to subsidize poor students disguised as a loan - it's a very clever system really.
In doing so, he made sure there was no hope for him.
No morals, only grim dark future for everyone.

[Antsan]

Alternatively he might've had some role in the student loans offer, where the loans were in fact a tax on rich students to subsidize poor students disguised as a loan - it's a very clever system really.

I might need a bit more context to understand this particular bit. Or some sleep. I'm not sure.

[Loud Whispers]

Now for comedy:

    You can see that something is fishy when most of those who cross into Serbia enter January 1 as the date of their birth
    Border police officer Miroslav Jovic
Concerns over the regulation of registering migrants at the main entry points into Europe are growing amid the revelation dubious markets selling fake Syrian passports have sprung up across Turkey.

Also some ISIS bloke said there's 4,000 ISIS fighters in Europe right now disguised as refugees. Not really news since it's kinda obvious and all, but the hilarious part? The ISIS bloke threatening Yurop with fighters? Who he reported this news to?

Buzzfeed.
Fucking Buzzfeed

Alternatively he might've had some role in the student loans offer, where the loans were in fact a tax on rich students to subsidize poor students disguised as a loan - it's a very clever system really.

I might need a bit more context to understand this particular bit. Or some sleep. I'm not sure.

Student fees have a max cap of £9,000 a year (most Unis charge the max, it's rare to see one that doesn't). Unless you're born rich or you're a postgrad who already has a job, chances are you can't pay this out of pocket and so will have to get a loan. A very special government loan is available though - you don't actually have to pay anything back, so you can rack up £45,000 of debt and pay nothing. If you go on long enough having paid nothing the debt is written off.
You only start paying the loan once, or if, you start earning enough money. So you get this system where rich students pay off their loans whilst poor students who would otherwise be unable to receive education, receive education funded for by the rich students. Middle income students get the short end of the stick, but as far as systems go it could be much worse. You also pay more if you earn more, so it scales accordingly to richer and poorer students and graduates.

[SirQuiamus]

Buzzfeed.
Fucking Buzzfeed

sounds legit


...welp it was nice knowing ya we all gonna die tomorrow

EDIT: We have 508,191,116 EU citizens and 4000 terrorists with freshly-sharpened Hitler knives: That makes 127,048 facestabs per terrorist, in a single night. My god, they are not Islamists -- they are Gurkhas!

[smjjames]

Now for comedy:

    You can see that something is fishy when most of those who cross into Serbia enter January 1 as the date of their birth
    Border police officer Miroslav Jovic
Concerns over the regulation of registering migrants at the main entry points into Europe are growing amid the revelation dubious markets selling fake Syrian passports have sprung up across Turkey.

Also some ISIS bloke said there's 4,000 ISIS fighters in Europe right now disguised as refugees. Not really news since it's kinda obvious and all, but the hilarious part? The ISIS bloke threatening Yurop with fighters? Who he reported this news to?

Buzzfeed.
Fucking Buzzfeed

All the more reason to stabilize the MidEast one way or another.

[Loud Whispers]

Don't insult Gurkhas by comparing them with ISIS

All the more reason to stabilize the MidEast one way or another.

Only in dreams will China march millions of soldiers into Syria and do as the Americans do: Peacekeeping
Only the Chinese way, so when they try to truckbomb a Chinese base they'd drive headlong into a minefield

Sino Ex Machina aside and assuming Russians or Americans didn't just level Syria how would you stabilize Syria without Assad, Turkey, Kurdish expansion, Israeli expansion or all of the above?
Armchair general time

[Vilanat]

All the more reason to stabilize the MidEast one way or another.

Brilliant idea!

How would you suppose we do that?

[Jopax]

[Loud Whispers]

This is why no one is allowed to give Kazakhstan nuclear weapons

[Baffler]

Speaking from a purely technical standpoint they aren't far away from getting a nuke, and they control a lot of former Soviet launch facilities.

Also:

Spoiler: Now with Background! (click to show/hide)

[Nick K]

   
Also some ISIS bloke said there's 4,000 ISIS fighters in Europe right now disguised as refugees. Not really news since it's kinda obvious and all, but the hilarious part? The ISIS bloke threatening Yurop with fighters? Who he reported this news to?

Buzzfeed.
Fucking Buzzfeed

I find it hard to be too scared of this sort of claim - I don't think ISIS spokesmen are really reliable.
It doesn't seem like it'd make much sense for them to try to infiltrate significant numbers of militants in as refugees. After all, there are thousands of Europeans fighting for ISIS in Syria right now, and probably thousands more who are stuck at home because they can't get out there. We hear stuff all the time in the news about British nutjobs in Syria. If ISIS want militants in Europe, they could just tell some of their supporters over here to stay at home.

I think that this sort of statement is just them trying to fuel xenophobia in Europe. If refugees are treated badly, or Europeans become paranoid and there's an increase in anti-islamic prejudice, then it'll drive otherwise moderate muslims towards the extremists' position. Besides, a lot of the refugees will be ISIS' enemies fleeing them, and it'd very much be in their interests if we sent them back to Syria to be murdered.