[Non-US] News That Makes You laugh/cry/neither...

[Longes]

https://www.thespainreport.com/articles ... revolution
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/keep-calm-cat ... ml#uNyV4wJ

So, apparently the catalonian separatists quietly began 'winning' the fight for independence?

[Blade]

France is now as close to war as is possible without actually being at war.

France was already attacking Daech, so it was at war. Daech just attacked on our soil.
To me, it's just a shift in warfare. Just like trench warfare in WW1, blitzkrieg in WW2, guerilla warfare in Vietnam...

I just hope France is faster to adapt this time than it has historically been.

[tussock]

Yeh, the English-speaking media's been pretty shit about it for the most part. Like it was a surprise that the outfit whose towns and cities we've been bombing for a couple years has now bombed our one of our cities. Whoa, out-of-the-blue terrorist strike, whut. Is no one safe from this menace?

Propaganda 101, really, from both parties. The French govt. is protecting it's people from the existential threat of those guys in old trucks in the desert ten thousand kilometres away with high altitude bombing runs, and DAESH is trying to get them to irrationally send in ground troops and persecute Muslims in France to bring about the return of Christ for the Apocalypse by sending a couple of bombs to Berlin. Or was that Churchill. Whichever.

I'd say France would see through that and be sensible, but then they are busy bombing Syria and Iraq for no particular reason with no end-game plan or actual goal or anything, just because all their friends are doing it and they don't want to be left out.

[RobbyPants]

I must say, I am amused by all the pundits who imply this is all the fault of the objecting people who disagree with them - do they really think that if opposition were silenced this wouldn't be occurring?

I'm equally amused by the pundits who imply that this is all the fault of not blocking out an entire group of people, when only a fraction of a percent of that group are actually militant - do they really think that not letting in refugees will stop terrorists from getting in?

[Occluded Sun]

No, they think not letting in 'refugees' will mean that a foreign culture and people won't usurp their own.

Although not letting in people who don't have any real way to benefit the host country would help quite a bit. Especially since, a la the Tsarnaev brothers, they're significantly more likely to become disaffected bombmakers.

What, do you think it's ethnically native Frenchies who are burning all those cars year after year?

[angelfromanotherpin]

So we shouldn't ignore those pundits because they're racists, we should ignore them because they're nativists? I'm down.

[erik]

Although not letting in people who don't have any real way to benefit the host country would help quite a bit. Especially since, a la the Tsarnaev brothers, they're significantly more likely to become disaffected bombmakers.

Fuck me for clicking to read an OS post.

All people do have potential to be of benefit to the host country, so that's a completely useless metric to go by, doubly so for refugees.

In France, Paris in particular, immigrants get discriminated against and are not incorporated into the culture and economy. What the fuck are you going to do if you apply for jobs and nobody will hire you because of your arabic last name or arabic ghetto address? The best way to avoid creating more disaffected youth and terrorists would be by not discriminating against them and actually letting them work.

[Blade]

What, do you think it's ethnically native Frenchies who are burning all those cars year after year?

Sometimes. And when they do, like the taxi drivers did when they attacked Uber drivers and their cars, they get away scott-free.

(Not to mention the native French politicians and CEO who steal huge amount of money and - at worst - get a small fine.)

[Longes]

Russia's security chief says an act of terror brought down the Russian A321 airliner in Egypt last month, killing all 224 people on board.

[Occluded Sun]

All people do have potential to be of benefit to the host country

What a stupid thing to say!

Guess why Canada has such strict rules about letting unauthorized people stay in their country, and why you have to jump through hoops to become a second-class resident that lacks voting privileges, and becoming a full citizen is remarkably difficult. Go on, guess.

Why does Canada deprive itself of all the potential benefit of letting anyone into itself, permanently?

[angelfromanotherpin]

Steven Harper's government was a bunch of exploitative asshats?

[Occluded Sun]

Steven Harper's government was a bunch of exploitative asshats?

The first time I encountered Canada's highly selective and restrictive immigration laws was in a mid-1980s SF novel about the early 1970s. (That aspect of the novel was entirely realistic.)

I find it hilarious that you'd blame things on Harper, though. Please, continue telling us how the world works! We love to know what you think.

[angelfromanotherpin]

I only hope it's as much as I enjoy your complete lack of support for any of your assertions.

[Occluded Sun]

I've noticed that most people on the Internet only bother to demand factual support on assertions they don't like.

I don't bother giving links to facts that can easily be found - or, for that matter, easily refuted. If you think I'm wrong, go and check for yourself. Feel free to post links to evidence that I'm incorrect, too, if you find it.

Canada has strict immigration policies because of its extremely generous welfare system. The only way to keep it from being overwhelmed is to ensure that 1) people can't show up to claim resources from it at will, 2) people who are allowed to join the society have a significant capacity to pay into the system more than they're likely to take from it. If your profession is likely to make money, and you'll pay a lot of taxes, they'll let you in. One of the great unwashed masses? Don't bet on it. The Canadians can do math.

[angelfromanotherpin]

I think the real question is: why does almost everything you claim contradict the relevant wikipedia article?

According to Canada's Immigration Program (October 2004), Canada has the highest per capita immigration rate in the world, although statistics in the CIA World Factbook shows that a number of city states and small island nations, as well as some larger countries in regions with refugee movements, have higher per capita rates.

In part because of the credential issue, many immigrants are forced to find work below their education level and at lower wages. However, even for doing work of the same skill level, immigrants are much less well compensated than their native born counterparts. Immigration scholar Jeffrey Reitz calculated that in 2001 native Canadian employers were benefiting from, and immigrant employees were losing out on, between $2 and 3 billion per year due to this imbalance.

[Occluded Sun]

Did you even read the article?

The Canadian system puts great emphasis on finding skilled immigrants.[20] Immigrants to Canada are more skilled than immigrants to the United States. George J. Borjas compared immigrants to Canada and the United States finding those to Canada being better educated and receiving higher wages once settled.
[...edit...]
Within the Canadian economy, immigrants are mostly found at the highest education levels. In Canada, 38% of male workers with a post-graduate degree are immigrants to the country.[22] 23% of Canadians are foreign born, but 49% of doctorate holders and 40% of those with a master's degree were born outside Canada.[23] A persistent problem for skilled immigrants is the recognition of foreign credentials. While Canada recruits people to come based on their degrees, many newcomers arrive to find employers and professional organizations not recognizing their foreign education.[24]

[angelfromanotherpin]

I don't even. So Canada lets in more people per capita than any country that isn't a bullshit tiny island or city-state, and those people are paid very badly for their skills - and you think that supports your position that Canada is super-restrictive of immigration, because they want immigrants who will make a lot of money and so pay a lot of taxes.

But I forgot that you live in Bizarro world, where freedom in the U.S. has been dropping since the end of the Civil War. nvm, makes perfect sense now.

[Korwin]

If I understand OS correctly, he is saying Canada lets only highly educated immigrants into the Country and it's unimportant for him how many those are...

From the outside, it looks like you two are talking about slighty different things.

[DSMatticus]

The government makes money off of you by taxing your income directly and then taxing your remaining income again when you try to spend it. The less money you make, the less profitable you are for the government to have around. With that in mind, it is very much pertinent that immigrants are less likely to find jobs fitting their level of education and that even when they do they are paid less - because it means immigrants are less profitable than Canadians and are actually very likely to be a downwards pressure on the per capita spending Canada is capable of. Certainly far worse than just giving a bunch of Canadians a free education, which honestly has a very small upfront cost and far better long-term returns than accepting foreign doctors and then employing them as janitors.

OS's ideal immigrants are actually the illegal ones, though he doesn't know it and would never admit it. They are eligible for almost zero welfare programs, but pay almost exactly the same taxes as everyone else. They put quite a lot of money into the system without receiving any significant benefits. They're basically free tax money. That is obviously kind of horrible and unfair, but that is how it is.

[Koumei]

Yeah, that's what Milton Friedman said was ideal - letting in illegal immigrants so you can keep them as slaves to do the jobs Americans don't want to do, and they can't get welfare (which obviously needs to be abolished anyway except for corporate welfare), but whatever money they do find, they pay into the system straight away. And if they cause trouble you can just deport them or whatever.

Which is an example of Friedman being a lump of shit, and seems completely in line with what OS wants out of the world. After all, keeping immigrants as slaves means more freedom!

[name_here]

All the known Paris attack suspects are EU citizens

The guy with the Syrian passport apparently did enter through Greece using the name on the passport, though the passport seemed to have been forged/stolen and modified and there is no compelling reason to think he was actually from Syria. The corpse is apparently too badly damaged to identify except from fingerprints.

[Ancient History]

http://rbth.com/multimedia/pictures/201 ... hes_541877

[Longes]

http://rbth.com/multimedia/pictures/201 ... hes_541877

Not sure why this is in the politics thread.

Did he really have to give Nightingale the anus face?

[Starmaker]

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov//petit ... cks-russia

[Longes]

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov//petit ... cks-russia

Hurr durr, this is factually wrong. Fedorov claimed that protests were organised by the US agents, not that Platon was made by the US agents.