Refugee situation / EU response - rolling news

fwiw South Carolina doesn't believe in marital rape, not sure about honour killings.

So what do you think should be done, Mordy?

I think there a few things. I think that programs like Norway's to educate refugees as a way to speed up the acculturation process are essential. I think allowing refugee communities that are distinct from the general pop is a disaster and new arrivals should be seeded into a variety of already established communities, also to speed up that process. I think that on the deterrence side host countries need to aggressively investigate + watch recent arrivals, both before they come (w/ the understanding that intelligence gathering on refugees coming from a war torn country will be difficult) and certainly after they arrive. I think there should be a no tolerance policy for anyone convicted of a crime (or at least certain kinds of crimes should be cause for immediate deportation). I'm sure there are other good ideas as well. Ultimately if you're going to accept refugees into your country - something that is morally desirable (and possibly even desirable from an economic/demographic pov) you need to be v hands-on in how you integrate them into your society.

All that said, I don't think there's a bulletproof answer. There will always be tensions - but the current gov has an obligation both to its citizens and to its refugees to reduce those tensions as much as possible. Otherwise the right-wing /will/ come back into power and that won't be good for anyone, least of which the refugees.

of all the things to throw money at wrt refugees, surveillance is quite low down the list

I disagree. Even if it is a tiny minority of refugees who cause problems that is sufficient to poison people against them as a group. It's not fair but you can't make policy based on how you want people to act but on how they actually do act. Another incident like the recent Paris attacks could be extraordinarily dangerous to European politics.

how you want people to act but on how they actually do act

I am utterly convinced these are one and the same. I guess it won't help my argument if I start dropping bible quotes?

You're convinced that people act the way you want them to act?

I mean this is all putting aside the fact that there may be motivations for keeping Paris style attacks from occurring besides just fear of radicalizing the polity.

xpos - They become like we as a society subconsciously want them to become. Because people always pick up on some level if you like them, or if you're afraid of them. So if you act warily around $group, they become wary themselves.

And my English is getting worse.

Let me put it this way: There may be objective differences between people, but you must never, ever allow yourself to differentiate subjectively between people. You can do it, of course, but you need to catch yourself doing it every time.

This will get easier over time.

I think those are pretty good answers Mordy even if I take issue with some of the things you say, particularly around deportation

The reason I ask is that this is the challenge of this generation of European politicians: can they rise to it? Or will they just point fingers?

I'm not sure what link is being made between the drunk mobs in cologne and the paris attacks carried out by french nationals. increase spending on security if you want, but why would you target refugees as a group? have people follow congolese women who don't leave the house because they don't speak english, whose children are all officially born on the 1st of january. you could make exactly the same arguments re: public opinion for general surveillance of muslims

also how do you surveil hundreds of thousands of people? where do you deport a refugee?

Right

There is a law and order issue here, not an immigration issue

I want to believe that, but I can understand why right wing politicians would disregard that idea as humanist bullshit

There are certainly infrastructure and integration challenges to mass immigration but the question is, is Europe up to it? Does it have the imagination and generosity to make this not a problem but an opportunity? Or will it hide its head in the sand?

Now I can't figure out if you're being sincere or mocking clichés?

Why would I be mocking that?? Jesus you people

Because a lot of people are!

a lot of people would say that refugees deserve help & respect but if they bring cultural values that clash with ours (such as different views on gender equality) they need to somehow leave those values behind and accept ours instead - and the "Köln incident" is supposed to demonstrate that some refugees have terrible values

best way to argue this is not the case is perhaps to show through journalism/research that "Köln incident" is misrepesented in mainstream/social media and that few conclusions as to general "refugee cultural values" can be drawn from it

Bear in mind, for the nonsensical 'cultural values' debate at least, only two weeks ago it was reported 1 million migrants and refugees had reached Europe in 2015 alone. I wonder how many of them have been assaulted themselves since arrival (let alone before).

the German interior ministry said 31 people had been identified as being involved in the violence, of whom 18 were asylum seekers suspected of crimes ranging from theft to assault. None of the asylum seekers was suspected of committing sexual assaults of the kind that prompted outrage in Germany over the past week.

How common are sexual assaults in Europe? They are so incredibly common in the United States (one every two minutes) that I would not imagine that the number of assaults carried out by a percentage of migrants tops what we already have. (Hence, if true, zero cultural difference at all.)

I'm surprised it's controversial to suggest there's a cultural difference in views on gender equality between "western" and "arabic" world

I've heard it suggested that leftists think all cultures are alike but always thought this was a strawman...

Who finds it controversial?

glad to hear there's no place for sexual assault in western values

Yeah, I didn't say zero cultural difference on views of gender equality, I raised the question of whether it's ultimately zero cultural difference in terms of the number of actual sexual assaults.

i'm not surprised a strawman think's it's controversial to do anything at all, that's what they do

The idea that MENA cultural values are behind any crimes, rather than any of the other reasons young men emboldened by the perceived anonymity of crowds might commit them, is poisonous orientalist nonsense. The main takeaway from the list of fucked up interactions between a proportion of migrants / tourists / foreign workers - whether British, Moroccan, American or Chinese - and women is that people frequently tend to behave in ways that run counter to their "cultural values" when they can view the women as 'other' and think they can get away with it.

There can be situations in which what codes as persistence in some cultures reads as sexual harassment in others (which is also true within Europe and within individual countries) but nobody commits criminal assault through an ignorance of 'western norms' or an adherence to alternative cultural values. To suggest otherwise is phenomenally dangerous.

Thank you.

Seconded.

Mordy, you need to (hopefully re-)screen "Battle of Algiers" right now.

Or rather, don't. It hurts to realize you've been an oblivious, unrepentant unmensch all your life, along with (mostly) everyone else. I know because I realized about a week ago and I'm still reeling.

I caught myself looking for ways to identify Syrians so I could put on an encouraging face to help them with their plight, while reserving my good old frowny face for the 'old' immigrants, people I was taught BY SHEER BODY LANGUAGE by my peers not to trust.

A collective negative feedback loop, that nobody but nobody sees the whole picture of, a human forest fire and it would be very easy to stop if everyone woke up and got their act together.

Are bullshit and hypocrisy synonyms I do not have the language.

Or even a positive feedback loop.

So how I'm attempting to fix this is to be as nice to random strangers as I would be to, say, my mom, unless I can't pull it off without making it seem like they owe me something.

Growing up, after 37 years, is exhausting

Remember that Jack Handey joke with the knife in the jack'o'lantern

Being a melanomically challenged person in Germany rn means getting handed pumpkin after pumpkin after pumpkin in the street BY EVERY PERSON YOU PASS

Kafka, Theresienstadt, Polanski's fucking Pianist, we have not learned a thing, not where it counts. We're looking for our lost keys in the wrong place because the light is better.

Yes I'm preaching sue me

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/01/when-are-you-really-an-adult/422487/

Adulthood is a social construct. For that matter, so is childhood. But like all social constructs, they have real consequences. They determine who is legally responsible for their actions and who is not, what roles people are allowed to assume in society, how people view each other, and how they view themselves. But even in the realms where it should be easiest to define the difference—law, physical development—adulthood defies simplicity.

It doesn't

1. Obey your local laws, unless they make you an unmensch
2. Treat everyone - even Assad, when you meet him - like a close relative

That's it. Seriously. Love is literally all you need.

melanomically challenged

Are you kidding me

You think snarky comments make you, or the commented upon, a better person

Signing off. I'm fezaffe btw, I insulted the dear departed liz:x by remembering her, please ban me

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/09/my-syrian-refugee-lodger-helen-pidd

Ha looking back now at Mordy's 'Germany must aggressively keep tabs on all refugees who enter' I am fugoggled by its authoritarianism (and frankly I'd imagine him to be more aware of the unfortunate historical resonances in such a stance)

I'm fezaffe btw

I don't know who that is, sit down

The idea that MENA cultural values are behind any crimes, rather than any of the other reasons young men emboldened by the perceived anonymity of crowds might commit them, is poisonous orientalist nonsense. The main takeaway from the list of fucked up interactions between a proportion of migrants / tourists / foreign workers - whether British, Moroccan, American or Chinese - and women is that people frequently tend to behave in ways that run counter to their "cultural values" when they can view the women as 'other' and think they can get away with it.

There can be situations in which what codes as persistence in some cultures reads as sexual harassment in others (which is also true within Europe and within individual countries) but nobody commits criminal assault through an ignorance of 'western norms' or an adherence to alternative cultural values. To suggest otherwise is phenomenally dangerous.

Very good post, though I must admit I'm not entirely convinced cultural values have no bearing on crimes commited. Sexual assaults in the West are linked to Western values, right?

Anyway, I'd like to convince myself that you're right. Not so sure I'll be able to convince other people, though.

I suspect those are not the Western values Mordy is referring to. I'm not a sociologist but sexual assault seems both entirely universal and usually inversely proportionate to the effectiveness of domestic police. Talking about a "clash of cultures", which even a lot of liberal commentators are trotting out, essentially boils down to 'it is in their nature to rape and our nature to stop them', which is fatuous on a number of levels.

It would be naive to think that there are not law and order issues related to a sudden influx of people who have no direct ties to community yet, no legal right to work, nothing much to do all day and whose prior records can't be effectively checked but using 'eh, that's just what they're like' when issues occur doesn't strike me as the most useful starting point.

Similarly, there can often be a lot of issues more directly related to gender and equality with immigrant groups of all stripes and entry routes but the most effective ways to combat them tend to actively seek out the participation of women from those communities rather than demonising the whole.

As TWU indicated, the sequence of crimes is still being properly investigated but the Polish government has just used the 'clash of cultures' narrative to ban all Muslims from seeking refuge. Feeding that narrative carelessly is not without consequence.

It's actually quite difficult to piece together what happened in Cologne, especially as the police apparently decided to just stand by and let it happen. How credible are the reports that the assaults were "co-ordinated", as opposed to a general snowballing of behaviour akin to riot? I'm assuming the answer to this is 'not very'.