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[Sheb]

It reminds me of kindergarten when people use "but they're doing even less than us" as an excuse to not do more.

Except, you know, we're already doing a whole fucking lot to begin with.

Depend when.

[notquitethere]

On the other hand, taxes are unpopular, by presenting them as loans rather than a graduate tax, you can sell it more easily to middle-class voters.

Yeah I suppose. I still don't understand why some countries are easily able to support free further education (Germany/Cuba etc.) and yet it has to be managed by a series of arcane bait and switch financial products in the UK.

[scriver]

It reminds me of kindergarten when people use "but they're doing even less than us" as an excuse to not do more.

Except, you know, we're already doing a whole fucking lot to begin with.

We're doing not nearly as much as we could, clinging onto petty luxuries while moaning about "spoiled" migrants.

So how much is enough, exactly? When can one start demanding that the people who do nothing help out?

It reminds me of kindergarten when people use "but they're doing even less than us" as an excuse to not do more.

Except, you know, we're already doing a whole fucking lot to begin with.

Depend when.

What?

[SirQuiamus]

_{*And besides, even if we did have 30-foot concrete walls with armed DDR guards, I don't think it would be enough to keep out a hundred thousand desperate people.}

For some reason, the first picture that crossed my mind was that of guards dancing trying to get perfect combos.

That was b8.

[Sheb]

Who said we shouldn't demand that SA and all helps?

[smjjames]

Who said we shouldn't demand that SA and all helps?

For a sec I thought you meant South Africa, but an instant later I realized you meant Saudi Arabia, heh.

[Antsan]

We're doing not nearly as much as we could, clinging onto petty luxuries while moaning about "spoiled" migrants.

So how much is enough, exactly? When can one start demanding that the people who do nothing help out?

Oh, you can demand all you want. First problem is, it won't help at all. You have to remember what kind of state Saudi Arabia is.
Second problem is when people start using it as an excuse. That's what I was complaining about, not about the demands for Saudi Arabia to do something themselves.

[Loud Whispers]

I'm all for some sorts of security checks but come now, Loud Whispers, no one is suggesting (at least in this thread?) we should be tolerant towards Daesh. What Nick K put forward is not only perfectly reasonable but sadly something we have seen materialize in recent times. Extremist, xenophobic far right has been gaining ground in Europe ever since the EU crisis, the migrant surge just adds fuel to their fire. I mean, damn, I live in a country that has yet to even have a taste of this whole migrant mess and I can already hear people talking about them like every non-European is literally 2.67 Hitler. Like, "all aboard the Nazi Satan Moslem Hyte train, next stop your job because they already tuck your social security and your virgin sister in their luggage while you weren't looking" and shit.

Unfortunately it is like that; no one in this thread. The Danes and Swedes bringing ISIS fighters back to Europe for free stuff and health checks are not a credit to Europe. What Nick K has put forward has been the progressive narrative in response to every time another European was beheaded in Europe; we must respond to this attack with tolerance (and then blaming the victim for being at fault for being beheaded). Our ISIS fighters come from various backgrounds, Al-Britanis, Al-Khorasani and Al-Pakistani; English converts and African converts who spent their life atheists or Christians, Muslims who were engineers, store clerks, students, in wealthy families or were NEETs; people who seemed normal up until they left for Syria, people who steadily became intolerable to their former friends, people who were attacking drunks and gays e.t.c.
I'm not sure at what point progressives decided the way to fight extremism was to defend it, but that's where we're at now. If you draw a Muhammed cartoon and someone sets you on fire you'll have a panel of progs tutting with their fingers waggling, saying you shouldn't have done that. I'm reminded of that one poor African woman who was reduced to tears because she created a fake petition in support of female genital mutilation and all it took to get gullible proggys to lap it up and pledge support was for her to say it was a part of her culture that needed protecting. Hell, when I get bored I just start accusing my progy friends of racism, it's not good for their health but it's good for mine. People seem to think you can defeat fundamentalist Islam by endorsing it, giving it state and media protection. I always find it hilarious when Edwards try to ban insulting Islam whilst Muhammeds try to stop the Edwards in an effort to save their faith from being taken over by Wahabism. It was always a source of joy for me to see Muslim media attack the tribalism growing within Islam whilst Western media bent itself backwards and gave their clerics air time.
I'm sure you're also familiar with how we've got shit where the police covered up the systematic rape of thousands of English girls across England by muslims because they didn't want to appear racist, ironically whilst the rapists targeted the girls for their race. It's like the jokes we were making decades ago have come to fruition as reality today. Sad thing is the rape gangs still operate too. The greatest threat however is just fundamentalist Islam, it is incompatible with secular humanism and comes into conflict with it. It is also a far stronger ideology. Western Europe's religious future is Islamic but it still has the choice of what kind of Islam; the European kind of introspection that was the norm back when mass immigration was not a thing and people actually integrated, or the Saudi Arabian kind that ploughs onwards with political momentum in the desire to create the great community. On that? Progressives will tolerate until they die.
P.s. The sad thing is your exaggeration is true here, and I'm not even talking about rape gangs.

Apparently, Saudi Arabia can logistically house 3 million refugees right at this instant.

Housing =/= support capable

They got a whole town made of air conditioned tents that are used for several days a year and the rest of the time sits empty. It would also be far more reasonable to direct all refugees to Saudi Arabia, not just because they share the same religion/language/culture and not just because it is far safer for the refugees to travel by a functioning bus from Jordan to Mina thus sparing them the dangers of the med sea, but because the cost of living in Saudi Arabia is far cheaper than in western europe and which enables the international Aid money to provide for many more refugees.

The latter is true in cases regarding Arab Sunnis. In regards to the tents they will not interrupt pilgrimage just for humanitarian purposes. Also don't use inforwars, it's worse than yahoo news.

But well, as we know, Saudi Arabia is not willing to lift a finger for those refugees. sorry, silly me, i forgot their offer to fund 200 new mosques for the new influx of refugees coming to europe.
http://www.arabianbusiness.com/saudi-offers-build-200-mosques-in-germany-for-syrian-refugees-605755.html

Well obviously, it is in Saudi Arabia's interest to spread Islam. Who can blame them when Europeans make it so easy.

I'm a fully-indoctrinated progressive, and the only "progressive narrative" that I've gathered from the progressive media goes something like this: "There's no way to defeat ISIS head-on in this geopolitical situation, but security checks and dystopian surveillance will (hopefully) defeat most of their infiltration attempts, or at least prevent them from launching large-scale attacks against our society. The authorities are already doing everything they can to protect us, and we should rather worry about protecting the people fleeing from the mindless violence of ISIS."

Consider yourself lucky. Ours are so colossally stupid you'll have to double-take and actually check you're not reading the Onion when papers like the Guardian start running stories that it's sexist to use the term Jihadi Brides since Jihadi Brides are just as capable of beheading infidels as their husbands.

Yes, there are fearsome bloodthirsty enemy combatants lurking among the flood of refugees and all non-Muslim Europeans are living in mortal fear et cetera et cetera, but is there anything more we could do to weed out the infiltrators, apart from building Trump Walls^TM and leaving everyone in the middle of the desert in order to "let God sort them out?" (...and then EU was the terrorists.)* Being "all humane and shit" makes things oh-so-very-complicated, but what can we do? Srsly, Universal Human Rights is the strongest flavour of Kool-Aid, and we just have to deal with the cognitive dissonance somehow.

Depends who "we" are. I'm just assuming that Western Europe is all kinds of fucked and preparing for damage control. Britain might make it out relatively unscathed.

*And besides, even if we did have 30-foot concrete walls with armed DDR guards, I don't think it would be enough to keep out a hundred thousand desperate people.

Israel

Funniest part though is that Europe did do that, and they did it all without walls. And then Schengen comes in like a wrecking baaaaaaaall

Oh, you can demand all you want. First problem is, it won't help at all. You have to remember what kind of state Saudi Arabia is.
Second problem is when people start using it as an excuse. That's what I was complaining about, not about the demands for Saudi Arabia to do something themselves.

No good deeds goes unpunished, inequity is its own reward

[Sheb]

Nice strawmen you got there LW.

[Frumple]

... so what's this I hear about north ireland being without a head of state equivalent?

[Zangi]

On the other hand, taxes are unpopular, by presenting them as loans rather than a graduate tax, you can sell it more easily to middle-class voters.

Yeah I suppose. I still don't understand why some countries are easily able to support free further education (Germany/Cuba etc.) and yet it has to be managed by a series of arcane bait and switch financial products in the UK.

Thar be liquid gold to be squeezed from em students ya socialistcommie.  (Well, at least that applies to the States.  I've less of a clue on the UK.)

[Antsan]

Nice strawmen you got there LW.

Yeah, I couldn't put it better. It's even a very popular strawman.

@LW:
I live in a kind of nest of progressives. Not one of them would defend beheadings or female genital mutilation for whatever reason and victim blaming is just out of the question. It's only on the Internet where I hear stories like that, from people like you. I wonder why I only see that stuff when it is used to shame progressives.

[Loud Whispers]

Nice strawmen you got there LW.

@LW:
I live in a kind of nest of progressives. Not one of them would defend beheadings or female genital mutilation for whatever reason and victim blaming is just out of the question. It's only on the Internet where I hear stories like that, from people like you.

I wish. Do me a solid and tell me what you see as strawmen?

I wonder why I only see that stuff when it is used to shame progressives.

No shame, just frustration and joy

[Antsan]

Nice strawmen you got there LW.

@LW:
I live in a kind of nest of progressives. Not one of them would defend beheadings or female genital mutilation for whatever reason and victim blaming is just out of the question. It's only on the Internet where I hear stories like that, from people like you.

I wish. Do me a solid and tell me what you see as strawmen?

The idea that progressives go out of their way to pander to the totalitarian practices of Muslims? About everything you dumped in that paragraph?
Of course there are nutjobs out there, but they're hardly representative. Not for the larger group of "leftists" in general nor for more extreme positions.
Your strawman is pretending that wanting more permissive laws for immigration and better treatment of refugees is somehow equivalent to condoning beheadings or thinking that everything about some foreign culture is good and flowery.

[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.

I thought I'd quote myself here, because I'm seeing a lot of words being put in my mouth that I haven't actually said. I don't think there's anything in there about defending terrorists or allowing sharia law in the UK or anything.
From some posts I get the impression people are assuming that muslim refugees = murderous extremists. The two groups are very different from each other.
Should we be fighting ISIS in Syria with military force and military support to any surviving pro-democracy factions? Yes. Should we make oppressive practices such as FGM, forced marriages and so on illegal and arrest & imprison those who try to do them in our country? Yes. Should we monitor known extremists who support violent ideologies and arrest them if they prepare terrorist acts? Yes. Should we treat ISIS spokespeople as founts of truth and horrify the millions of moderate, law abiding muslims our countries by treating suffering innocents like inhuman monsters just because of their religion? Absolutely bloody not.