Still think we shouldn't accept refugees?

And how will posting the picture here in any way motivate Obama do anything more than take another trip to stare down a retreating Alaskan glacier?

BTW: Since the Pleistocene epoch mankind has viewed retreating glaciers as a sign of hope. It's kind of like the arrival of spring.

I explained why I posted it, and it wasn't to win any fucking argument on the internet. Jesus Christ people, can't you think bigger than a message board? This isn't a game. I'm not dealing in hypotheticals. I know that people around here love to do whatever to win an argument, but I'm not out to win arguments. I'm out to show viewpoints. The picture is what I saw, and in the face of Dinner's bigoted screed, I wanted him to see it too, so he could put faces to the people he chose to dehumanize.

WTF are you blithering about Georgie? Who the fuck said anything about Obama? I''m pretty sure we're talking about events in Canada and Europe. I'm not sure anyone has even brought up US policy on refugees.

They already do. Big, poster-sized pics of dead fetuses, outside damn near every family planning clinic in America. Not that there's really any comparison between an actual human child, and a potential human child, that, more often than not, resembles a gummibear more than an actual child.

I feel it's a bit different in this case. Firstly, this image is all over the news. I see this image on the same level I do the napalm bombings in Vietnam, where the children emerged burned and terrified, and other shocking photographs of how awful people can be to their fellow human beings. In this case, Dinner had decided that these immigrants were scum, and he didn't seem to differentiate between them. So I showed him the human side of things.

That poor child died because its father was trying to rescue his family from the brutality of war, poverty, and death. Well, death won, and I think that man has paid more than enough of his fair share to stay. Surely the cost isn't higher than that, nor should it be that high, but that's what it cost him, and for people like Dinner it seems that it's not enough. Certainly, there are immigrants who arrive and plan on taking advantage of good will, but that's in every group. Giving someone basic treatment as a human being doesn't cost, however, but he can't even spare that.

Yeah, whatever, why not post a pic of an aborted fetus while you're at it?

It truly is pointless to explain things to you.

Explain? All I see are excuses.

I can't help you there.

Obama and Hillary encouraged the Arab Spring. Hillary even backed the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt (probably because her closest assistant Huma's family are among its leadership). So it started up in Syria, and Obama drew some red lines, which he then blamed on the World community when Assad crossed them. But despite calls to form a viable, non-radical Syrian opposition, he did nothing except talk and talk. Years ago he said his plan was to train vetted opposition fighters in Jordan, and later the White House revealed where they were being trained. To date the US has trained about 60 of them, and most got captured on their first day of operation. He dismissed ISIS as the JV team, and they all but took over most of two countries.

So now he says the fight against ISIS will be a multi-generational conflict. Your kids and grand kids might take part! Yet ISIS is a tiny fraction of the size of Saddam's army, which we crushed in less than a week. The only reason this conflict rages on is because Obama has chosen to let it rage on. He'd rather face down retreating glaciers.

We have a large navy that could provide help for all the refugees making perilous boat journeys, but he hasn't sent them to help. We have a huge airlift capability, but he hasn't used it to help. We are the world's leading provider of humanitarian aid, but the UN relief agencies are going broke. The UN is slashing rations for Syrian refugees in Jordan and Lebanon, and are going to completely cut off about 3 million people who depend on such aid.

They know not to look at Obama to help, because he's too busy blowing our money on green power projects for his croanies. They could try to get $2 Billion "charity" dollars back from Hillary, but she's already blown it all on mansions and private jets. They could try appealing to multi-millionaire John Kerry, but he's too busy making sure the Iranians get to dominate the Middle East so they can spread further misery and suffering, on top of killing all the Jews.

The world is careening out of control and there's no one at the helm. Back in the late 1970's the world was beset with the Vietnamese boat crisis as millions of people fled Vietnam. The anti-war left insisted that we not interfere. Only Joan Baez spoke out, urging Jimmy Carter to act. He came to the White House fence and said he would act, and he sent the US 7th Fleet to keep people from drowning in the ocean. Cyrus Vance said:

We are a nation of refugees. Most of us can trace our presence here to the turmoil or oppression of another time and another place. Our nation has been immeasurably enriched by this continuing process. We will not turn our backs on our traditions. We must meet the commitments we have made to other nations and to those who are suffering. In doing so, we will also be renewing our commitments to our ideals.

Carter ignored the anti-war left and did what was right, and the US took in 750,000 Vietnamese. Carter, considered the weakest and worst President of the modern era, at least had some sense of morality that drove his policy. Obama just has nihilism and self-loathing. The refugees are his offspring, and he cares for them not.

That's good, but it doesn't answer my question.

The US had nothing to do with bombing the girl, and the South Vietnamese Air Force mission was conducted danger close because the girl and the rest of her village were about to get slaughtered by the North Vietnamese who had attacked and occupied it. She and the other villagers were retreating with some South Vietnamese Army units that were fighting their way to safety when they were mistaken for more North Vietnamese attackers, and so the South Vietnamese pilot dropped on them.

But we abandoned her, along with the rest of the South Vietnamese, and after conquering the South the North used her as a propaganda ploy. They flew her to places like Cuba and Moscow. On one of these trips she managed to escape during a refueling stop in Canada, where she asked for asylum.

The father of the children that drowned has returned to his home in Syria. He'll probably join whatever side he'd been on and continue the fighting. All is as Allah wills.

Which was...

Is that handy dandy? That's your question, right? I'm not really sure what your asking. But if ya want to know if I'm okay with them doing it? My answer is "what does it matter?" My feelings are irrelevant. The point is that they're doing it, and my opinion of it means bupkiss, zilch, nada.

I thought the gist of you post I responded to was to "fuck class" when a problem got outta hand. Does that apply to all problems (such as the right spamming FB pages of dead fetuses over that Faux News PP black market that doesn't exist) or just the ones you (in the general sense) agree with?

The way I see it, it can easily be seen that both parties can use images to manipulate a point. I know @John well enough to know that scoring points on a message board doesn't mean anything to him, but that doesn't mean others wont.

My roundabout point is: it's someone's kid we're discussing. It has to hurt the dad to see this being retreated around the world, and I hope if people are using this photo and others like it in the future that they frigging get this point and not as a cheap scoring tactic against the other side to "fuck class."

If I read way more into that, feel free to correct me and I apologize in advance.

Funny, I feel the same way about you given how you never once responded to a fact in this thread and, yes, you did use the picture of the dead kid for shock value. So spare me your hollow claims about loving humanity since they are all just a prop to you.

You could try responding to some of things said with substance. Just saying.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/aug/10/10-truths-about-europes-refugee-crisis
https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/people-on-the-move/
http://www.dw.com/en/dispelling-myths-about-refugees/a-18680503
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/europe-migrant-crisis-myths-facts_55df64e5e4b08dc09486d510
http://www.news.com.au/world/number...able-experts-say/story-fndir2ev-1227513624915
https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/6-myths-about-migrants-in-europe-that-we-need-to-c/
http://www.coe.int/en/web/commissio...-and-prejudices-about-roma-migrants-in-europe
http://www.imi.ox.ac.uk/publication...ient-realities-of-african-migration-to-europe

I have to agree. Dinner may use some ugly words and seems to have got on the hate list of the left just like Diacanu became a target for many lefties because of this "gamer gate" bullshit. But the statistics Dinner posted are correct, deal with it. The only liberal here who seems to be really interested in the topic and has a clue about the true dimensions of the refugee crisis is Gul.

What has become of "debate the topic, not the poster"?

http://www.thestar.com.my/News/Worl...e-economic-migrants-France-Germany-Italy-say/

Finally, a voice of reason. France, Germany, and Italy propose stepping up deportations of economic migrants.

I read three of those at random and found all three dealt with the UK. The truth is the UK is not a major target for these benefits migrants exactly because Britain's welfare state is not as generous as Germany or Sweden. Not surprisingly the two states with the most generous welfare states ARE the target destination for these people.

Ironically, if someone wants to work the UK has one of the lowest unemployment rates in Europe yet they don't want to go there. Gee, I wonder why that could be?

I don't care about left and right wing anything, and Wordforge has never been about post not poster. That's TrekBBS. That said:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukn...h-do-immigrants-really-claim-in-benefits.html
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/mar/28/immigrants-eu-benefits-welfare-magnet
http://www.migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/briefings/fiscal-impact-immigration-uk

http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Crime_statistics
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/257233/lse-consulting.pdf (this one's along read)
http://migrantsandcitizens.org/recent/migrants-cause-crime/
https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/about...-has-little-impact-on-crime-rates-in-england/

I read the HuffPo one and the guy was in la-la land, unable to make a coherent argument. It boiled down to "you must allow free heroin flow because otherwise you'll have smugglers."

Again, all dealing with the UK which simply is not the focus of these benefits migrants. Germany and Sweden are there preferred destinations.

Also, I refuse to believe you have actually read those last 20 or so links. You are just doing a link dump from Google. If you feel any of those links advance your position then please summarize them and tell us why.

http://www.dw.com/en/dispelling-myths-about-refugees/a-18680503

That one is at least from Germany but it is mainly discussing people from the former Yugoslavia. We are getting closer though.

Yes, there's an entire industry in Europe that argues that non-skilled immigrants from crime syndicates and terrorist groups don't actually contribute to crime or terrorism. That they're actually employed more than natives, even though many didn't even have a job in their home countries, which is often why they left. The big employment advantage a Moroccan immigrant has in someplace like Sweden is that he doesn't speak a word of Swedish, the thing most sought by Swedish employers, because Swedish employers hate customers. The German government is setting aside $7 billion dollars to handle this summer's wave of refugees (which is an extremely lowball number amounting to less than $8000 a person) because they know that the refugees don't need public money, being so productive and all.

Where Europe failed was having a viable, non-bureaucratic bullshit system of immigration. They didn't prioritize. They didn't produce a workable system that gave people hope. They just buried desperate people in the usual government Kafkaesque bullshit. Now the migrants are calling the shots, and the lesson isn't loss on all the Muslims who want to invade, occupy, and destroy Europe.

DW is a good site though, John. I was looking around and this is their top story:

http://m.dw.com/english/mobile.A-18697112-9097.html

It is about the migrants, Merkel making her case that they all should be let in, and announcing Euro 6 billion to feed and house them. I wonder how long that money will last and if every political party in Germany will support her.

Hmm, $8000 a person. That will not last very long. This is going to get much more expensive very quickly especially since, seeing success, every taxi driver and street vender in the middle east is now packing his bags and heading to Germany. They will all claim to be Syrians or Iraqis as you can now buy a fake Syrian passport for $10 often sold by the Syrian government who is happy to make extra cash.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34150408

Exactly. It's like a bank announcing free money giveaway and not expecting to start a stampede. At some point wiser heads must prevail to prevent what must inevitably follow.

The flip side is that the US isn't spending a dime, and thus isn't buying any love, and a counterpoint is that the UN refugee fund almost broke, possibly because countries are diverting the money to the crisis they've just created and don't feel the need to do more. As has been said, our attention span is limited and drawing it to one place removes it from another, possibly more pressing need.

On the flip side of that is that if we were trying to guarantee a uniform diet and adequate housing, perhaps the migration could make economic sense. If you viewed the mass of people (refugees) as an army in the field that are supplied from Europe (largely true), they would be much cheaper to support on the "home" soil than in a far flung set of camps. The money it took to keep you supplied in Iraq was mind boggling due to the length of the supply line and the amount of air transport legs. If the same holds true for aid to Jordan, Turkey, and Syria, the EU might end up saving money because the "army" of refugees they were supplying in the Middle East can be much more cheaply supplied at home. I haven't seen anyone make that argument, but it might be true. Of course feeding an army is cheaper at home, but you're still feeding an army and billing someone else for it.

Fair enough, John. But your article is an opinion piece and doesn't represent the general consensus at all. There is no general consensus! But It makes a few good points while ignoring some inconvenient facts. The stuff about the Roma and Switzerland is simply not true, for example.

It is sad that you guys don't understand German. The debates in the German-speaking press are extremely interesting at the moment. While some people say that these masses of immigrants are the best thing to happen to Germany since the Marshall Plan, others say that the flood of refugees will destroy the country. As always, the truth is somewhere in the middle. While the media is still occupied with ideological turf wars, the politicians slowly get a grip. Germans are very p.c. and quick to cry "racism!", but in the end, they are able to find solutions and overcome ideological differences. Reminds me of the Swiss!

I see one problem among many. Nobody who is sane or a complete asshole disagrees that refugees need acceptable housing and medical treatment. However, if you treat them too well, they will be even more reluctant to leave again. And nobody who is sane or a complete idiot really thinks that they all can stay and even bring their families in after a while. Many WILL have to leave again, sad but true. It's a thin line.