* With the increasing levels of automation in manufacturing (or for that matter services) it makes no sense to worry about fake labor shortages. The Japanese apparently aren’t doing so except to the extent that they will need to push robotic technology to be able to handle complex tasks such as caring for aged humans.
Judging by the now famous selfie of Angela and a refugee, I think she is more concerned with reducing the German population’s average number of eyebrows per person. (BTW, I wonder if that monobrow look is a symptom of inbreeding? You don’t see it so much even among European ethnic groups who are known for lots of face and body hair.)
* Japanese and Koreans are smart ; they would never let in such large number of non ethnic kinfolk and especially not Muslims. Germans are being sold up-river by the scheming Euro elites.
Christian Syrians wouldn’t be a problem but Muslims will never integrate, instead they will work towards taking over Germany …gradually, and like Ghadaffi said: through the womb. As if all those Turks weren’t problem enough, Merkel wants Germans to expereince even more masochism.
* I just learned there is a scholarly treatment of mass migration as a means of coercion:
Weapons of Mass Migration (2010) by Kelly Greenhill.
From the blurb:
In Weapons of Mass Migration, Kelly M. Greenhill offers the first systematic examination of this widely deployed but largely unrecognized instrument of state influence. She shows both how often this unorthodox brand of coercion has been attempted (more than fifty times in the last half century) and how successful it has been (well over half the time). She also tackles the questions of who employs this policy tool, to what ends, and how and why it ever works. Coercers aim to affect target states’ behavior by exploiting the existence of competing political interests and groups, Greenhill argues, and by manipulating the costs or risks imposed on target state populations.
This “coercion by punishment” strategy can be effected in two ways: the first relies on straightforward threats to overwhelm a target’s capacity to accommodate a refugee or migrant influx; the second, on a kind of norms-enhanced political blackmail that exploits the existence of legal and normative commitments to those fleeing violence, persecution, or privation.
As of now, there is only one customer review on the Amazon page, by a German who thinks this has all been orchestrated by “the Americans” to “destroy the economy and political stability of the new host country, and to sow the seeds of civil war” in order to “further cement their imperial control”.
Well, I dunno. If nothing else, Germany and Europe are important trading partners for the U.S. Destroying their economies would severely impact U.S. businesses and jobs. Of course, one never knows what schemes are being hatched in the Obama White House, but I am skeptical.
More likely, in my opinion, is that Turkish President Erdogan decided to utilize the weapon of mass migration for his own goals. Until this summer, he had diligently enforced the integrity of his country’s border by preventing Syrian (and transiting Afghan etc.) refugees from emigrating en masse. Opening the floodgates meant putting Europe in a world of hurt, with him holding the power to make it stop — if his demands were met.
We know only some of his demands, such as billions in financial aid for Syrian refugees in Turkey and the abolition of visa requirements for Turkey’s 70+ million citizens. The EU has now announced that these demands will be met. At a minimum he will also want assurance of no interference as he ratchets up oppression of his country’s Kurdish population (whose birth rate is much higher than that of non-Kurdish Turks). It’s possible that after he closes the border to Syrians trying to get into Europe, he will launch an even bigger refugee tsunami by making the lives of Turkish Kurds unbearable. The extent of Erdogan’s regional superpower ambitions is not known, therefore we do not know the full extent of his demands either.
In any case he has not yet shut down border crossings by Syrians (fake and real ones) into Europe. Whether this is due to EU bureaucratic bungling and slowness or because he is trying to drive a still harder bargain is not known. My guess is that he is surprised that it took the EU so long to cry uncle and acknowledge that Erdogan holds the keys to the gate.
What is also unknown is the extent to which Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the two main financiers of Turkey’s economic expansion, are influencing Turkish policy in return for making funds available at below-market rate, and what their specific goals in this game of hardball are. One would think that, being major shareholders of European corporations, they do not wish to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs — but the lure of islamizing Europe may be a powerful temptation.
P.S.: A crazy thought, maybe Merkel has known all along what Erdogan’s plan is and by holding off on giving in to his demands she is trying to demonstrate Germany’s resistance to blackmail? As in, “we can take whatever you throw at us and remain standing”? To be honest, I don’t believe it myself. Merkel is simply too stupid for Machiavellian statecraft.
* “…German Chancellor Merkel’s decision to let in (literally) countless numbers of newcomers from the Muslim world…”
This is something obvious, yet easily ignored, yet extremely important. It’s common in any debate on immigration in any Western country:
John: “What if 100 million people immigrate?”
Matt: “That many people won’t immigrate.”
John: “Then why don’t we place a limit on how many can come?”
Matt: {Stone-cold silence}
They never, never, ever want to talk about limits, just like they never want to talk about enforcement measures, even when pretending to be pro-enforcement:
John: “Why don’t we deny illegals driver’s licenses and car registrations?”
Matt: “That won’t work, they’ll still come and drive without them.”
John: “Why don’t we deny them access to welfare?”
Matt: “That won’t work – they’ll still come, and they don’t use much welfare?”
John: “So, then why don’t we deny them welfare?”
Matt: “That would be immoral.”
John: “So why don’t we deny their kids public education, and fine businesses that employ them?”
Matt: “Those won’t work, either; and denying education to their kids would also be immoral”
John: “So what measures to fight illegal immigration would work?”
Matt: {Stone-cold silence…again}
They say that open borders won’t cause too many people to come, and yet they won’t allow even an insanely high number, like 5 million a year, as a limit.
They say they’re for enforcement, yet can’t name a single damn enforcement measure they would find acceptable.
* Korea has lower consanguinity than Japan does (which makes sense since in Korea it used to be illegal to marry someone with the same surname, even those related by 8 degrees or some such thing, while Japan has been considerably less eugenicist on this score). But my experience in both countries and peoples is that the Japanese are substantially more civic-minded (and polite) than Koreans are. The rough comparison would be that the Japanese are akin to the English while the Koreans are more like the Irish, that is, less mannered and communitarian than the Japanese, but more soulful and unruly.
* Because another inbred people are ruling over the West and demand that the West open up.
Who are these inbred people?
PS. WOWS is overly over-the-top, but the fat guy(best thing in the movie and such an accurate portrayal of his kind) is hilarious, and this scene is a masterpiece.
I love how the fat guy says ‘no’ but then describes the situation that sums up to a ‘yes’.
He says ‘yeah.No’ to the question of whether he married his first cousin and then says her father is brother to his mother which indeed makes her a first cousin.
It’s like a mini-version of how PC works at NYT. NYT will have Nicholas Wade mention and describe the facts that would indicate racial differences do exist, but then say NO, race is just a social construct.
No, we have bananas(or its opposite, ‘yes, we have no bananas’.)
Btw, when the fat guy says he would take a hypothetically retarded kid and let him out of the car, it’s just the funniest thing.
* I’ve always thought that people who were pro-diversity tend to be rather inbred themselves, or rather, ‘lacking in genetic diversity,’ and their crazed insistence on how terrific outbreeding is, is merely their own genes shrieking for the introduction of more variation before their own offspring die out from sheer feebleness. Mental preciousness and neuroticism is a warning that your genetic lines lack robustness and are going downhill.
Germans descend from a small number of tribes that were floating around in the Roman days, so the present multi-million population of the German state doesn’t have that much of a particularly wide genetic base to it.
Many people who live in New England happen to have ancestry from a smaller genetic pool than you would think, namely the Puritan families who emigrated from the same areas in England in the 1600s. Their WASP descendants in America kept marrying each other for generation after generation unless they moved out of region, which is why Northeast liberals can be so remarkably alike in their mentality. It’s not just culture, it’s lack of genetic diversity. Much of this process took place from about 1620 to 1800, a period in which roads were terrible and people rarely traveled away from their local village. Take a rigid Puritan and raise him with today’s culture, and you’ve got a New England liberal.
According to this notion, those who are anti-diversity should have a more varied and wholesome collection of genes, and they wouldn’t see the need for such mass invasions by newcomers. Midwesterners, for example, by moving away from the east coast, met up with and married persons from a wider numbers of breeding enclaves, and they aren’t as keen on diversity as New Englanders are.
* Germany is allowing mass migration because Germany itself is not clannish. (That’s presumably why they are so inclined to “empathize” with folks outside their clan.) On the other hand, the Eastern European states, more clannish than Germany, are apt to resist migration – precisely because they’re clannish. (Is not universalism the ultimate in anticlannish?) Presumably (perhaps I have this wrong) conservatives generally tend to be more clannish than Western liberals: this explains why their loyalty (as you explain in a post on Haidt) is more to their immediate circle.
Then, what about you hbds: do you tend to be innately clannish or not? If clannish, aren’t you to be distrusted? At least, you are suspect of hypocrisy in advocating for the unclannish. If unclannish (which I suspect), how did you manage to adopt a clannish (group-protective) ideology?
* The solution is, of course, moderation in the tradition of Aristotle and Franklin. You don’t want to live in an extremely clannish society. But an extremely unclannish country is likely to be exploited by more clannish elements, such as the Bush Dynasty, families of billionaires, and foreigners from more clannish cultures.
* Pathological altruism, Swedish style:
Per capita, Sweden has taken in more migrants than any other European country, much more than Germany even. Crime has shot up and most migrants are on welfare. Even so, a plurality of Swedes are asking for more of the same:
http://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/kraftig-forandring-fler-vill-se-okat-flyktingmottagande/
Refugee-friendly public opinion has strengthened significantly in only six months, according to DN / Ipsos.
44 percent of respondents believe that Sweden should take more refugees – an increase of 18 percentage points since February.
Close to one in three Swedes are willing to accept a refugee in their home.
During 2015, migration and integration issues have become increasingly important in public debate in Sweden. The civil war in Syria and IS terror in the region have displaced millions of people and the number of asylum seekers who have come to Sweden has increased for four consecutive years.
In February, Ipsos conducted a survey on DN’s behalf on attitudes to immigration and integration. Then, 36 percent said that Sweden should receive fewer refugees than currently. Only 26 percent wanted to receive more refugees at the time.
Now the situation is reversed.
When Ipsos repeated the question in September, 44 percent said Sweden should take in more refugees. That is an increase of 18 percentage points.
– It is not so common to see very strong public opinion changes, this is a big increase, says Nicklas Källebring, analyst at Ipsos.
At the same time, the number of Swedes who want their country to accept fewer refugees declined from 36 percent to 30 percent.
On the other hand, I have seen opinion polls that indicate that the number of people planning to vote for the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats is on the rise.
It’s obvious, isn’t it, that this is a (non-bloody, for now) civil war between goodthinkers and badthinkers and that immigrants are merely the preferred weapon in this war.
Keeping in mind differences between Sweden and Germany, nonetheless the Swedish poll numbers do not augur well for a quick turnaround in Germany’s immigration policy.
* Strong borders are something that evolves naturally in any place inhabited by humans. The present “migrant crisis” can have two possible outcomes. Europe can close its borders and shut off the flow. Or – in the very long term – it will fill with aliens who will eventually create their own borders to safeguard the countries Europeans handed over to them. Absence of borders is never a permanent state of affairs, but an interlude before which territorial integrity is reasserted.
* The US and UK media insist it is mandated by economic reality. But Merkel says otherwise and there are very good reasons to think economic reality has nothing to do with it. Germany was formerly led by a man who never reproduced but had racial theories which required war. Now Germany is led by a woman who never reproduced, but has racial theories about how to avoid war. Merkel has specifically said that the EU is all that prevents war.
A fear of WW3 was certainly the explanation for opposition to nuclear power generation in Germany, which culminated in Merkel’s 2011 declaration that Germany would be nuclear free by 2022. Of course that was when Germany was expected to have a rapidly shrinking population. Now that Merkel has decided to import over a million people a year , Germany will certainly not be able to meet its own needs in the future, and will have to import nuclear generated electricity from Czech republic or somewhere. Financial Times: The growing absurdity of German energy policy.
What is motivating both the anti nuclear and immigration policy is a dread of war. It lies very deep in the German psyche and now they are safely cocooned within friendly states (including Poland now in EC and Nato) they are free to dump any kind of policy with nationalist connotations, leading to them taking mirror image positions to Hitler. Nothing to do with economic /demographic considerations.
http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/oct/12/bake-off-winner-nadiya-hussain-muslims-britain
Above is about winner of a competition on Britain’s biggest TV show. Lots about how she and her husband look, but nothing about how they look like siblings of course.
