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The European Parliament votes non-bindingly to reintroduce visas for Americans

economist.com

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Re: The European Parliament votes non-bindingly to reintroduce visas for Americans

#131

Post by lispm »

Exofunctor wrote: post #115
lispm wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Feel free to actually try to refute anything I said. Refute right-wing propaganda? > It is according to Avraham Burg, and I'm not sure there is anyone more qualified to make such a claim. Point me to a recording where Schulz said anything like that. On the contrary, Schulz has a decade long track record working for Germany and the European Union.

I'm not right-wing by any stretch of the imagination (pretty hard left, actually), so the fact that instead of actually thinking about my arguments you just slap a label on them and dismiss them out of hand should disturb you. Perhaps what's confusing to you is that I'm capable of considering the thought process of people I disagree with. > Point me to a recording where Schulz said anything like that. You understand…

> You understand that not everything politicians say is recorded? That said, Burg has literally no reason to lie about this.

So all you have is that?

Let's sum it up: there is no recording of that, there are no witnesses, there has been no transcript, Schulz himself has never acknowledged it, there are no other sources where Schulz has said anything like that, ...

All you have is a sentence which is circulating in right-wing groups.

It's actually obvious that Germany in its current form exists and that Martin Schulz aims to be its next chancellor.

> All you've done is prove my point

Sure not.

> even people who work for the EU for a long time appear to have plenty of conflicting non-EU interests.

What does it have to do with Martin Schulz?

Re: The European Parliament votes non-bindingly to reintroduce visas for Americans

#132

Post by ascorbic »

lend000 wrote: post #73
castis wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah? What makes you say that?

The EU is composed of seven major institutions, only one of which has direct representation by voters (the EU parliament), and the number of representatives of each country is (roughly) proportional to their size, so any given voter of a small EU country has effectively zero representation. The EU is very far from a democratic, representative system, and yet it hold tremendous power over its 'constituents.' Not to me…

Yeah, and poor Rhode Island has only two representatives.

Re: The European Parliament votes non-bindingly to reintroduce visas for Americans

#133

Post by lispm »

dang wrote: post #123
lispm wrote: post #72

> Most people in Europe are not dumb enough to fall for this. Most people in Europe are not dumb enough to fall for your nonsense. > and yes, it's a real quote It isn't. > I'm not even European I am.

> dumb enough to fall for your nonsense You can't comment like this here, so please don't. Yes, the GP started it with the 'dumb enough', but the 'your nonsense' clearly crosses into personal incivility and we ban accounts that do that. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13786872 and marked it off-topic.

I am European, don't believe anything like what he claims and thus he called me dumb enough.

Why is his posting allowed, which claimed that European politicians literally are given A SHIT about their citizens?????? Read his post.

Sorry, European politicians give a lot of SHIT (his words) about their citizens and I find it extremely offensive to claim otherwise.

He also made extremely negative and racist statements about refugees who fled to Europe from the war in Syria.

Double standards. Allowing racist posts...

Re: The European Parliament votes non-bindingly to reintroduce visas for Americans

#134

Post by sprash »

Exofunctor wrote: post #58

> What is driving this change? AFAICT there are no major issues that should have caused this. I honestly can't imagine how you could avoid exposure to any of the incredible amount of discontent in Europe right now. European leaders have been importing millions(!) of people from incredibly violent, theocratic, illiterate, and regressive regions, to the detriment of peaceful, secular, educated, and liberal Europeans wh…

> European leaders have been importing millions(!) of people from incredibly violent, theocratic, illiterate, and regressive regions

We have a large Turkish community in Germany and it turns out that the new people from e.g. Syria are less violent, theocratic and regressive than the 3rd generation Turkish immigrants we already had.

> I'm not even European

Which means you have no idea whats going on. People here care more about their favorite soccer team than immigrants. Right wing party popularity is falling again after having a short peak. The real problems in Europe are caused by stupid "austerity" politics, not by refugees.

Re: The European Parliament votes non-bindingly to reintroduce visas for Americans

#135

Post by lend000 »

Findeton wrote: post #87
lend000 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU is composed of seven major institutions, only one of which has direct representation by voters (the EU parliament), and the number of representatives of each country is (roughly) proportional to their size, so any given voter of a small EU country has effectively zero representation. The EU is very far from a democratic, representative system, and yet it hold tremendous power over its 'constituents.' Not to me…

The problem is that the EU is organized in such a way that it is at an intermediate stage between it being just a bunch of different nations and it being something similar to the USA. We need more EU and less nationalism to become something similar to the USA, we need a bigger EU government and smaller nations governments. The EU government is about 1% of the GDP and the nations governments are 50%, we need to revers…

> the EU is organized in such a way that it is at an intermediate stage between it being just a bunch of different nations and it being something similar to the USA

There's certainly an argument for that, but I would instead argue that the US states would benefit from being independent countries (this is not as compelling as dissolving the EU, though; we're not at that point yet). The primary motivator is diseconomies of scale -- these huge organizations become extremely inefficient, and often corrupt (look at India and China).

Re: The European Parliament votes non-bindingly to reintroduce visas for Americans

#136

Post by WildUtah »

cplanas wrote: post #116
muninn_ wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US Americans are just Americans. Only people who are incredibly pedantic think otherwise.

Or people for who English is not their first language. In Spanish at least, an "americano" is anyone from the Americas. People from the US are "estadounidenses".

Nobody says estadounidenses. The standard, common word in western hemisphere Spanish for people from the United States is an ethnic slur against us.

Which should help indicate how good an idea it is to invite more people from that region to our country.

Re: The European Parliament votes non-bindingly to reintroduce visas for Americans

#137

Post by vacri »

frabbit wrote: post #43
harigov wrote: post #6

What is going on in this world? I was reading news today that the parties on the right side of political spectrum are gaining ground all over Europe. US already has Republicans in power. Every country is becoming more nationalistic. What is driving this change? AFAICT there are no major issues that should have caused this.

Citizens of western countries got lazy and let plutocrats take over. The result has been a re-distribution of wealth and power. More people are starting to find that uncomfortable: http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/05/ec...

How many countries, western or otherwise, don't have some sort of oligarchs in control? Switzerland is famously low-level democratic, but who else?

And when have the proles ever actually been in control in western countries?

Re: The European Parliament votes non-bindingly to reintroduce visas for Americans

#138

Post by lispm »

Exofunctor wrote: post #58

> What is driving this change? AFAICT there are no major issues that should have caused this. I honestly can't imagine how you could avoid exposure to any of the incredible amount of discontent in Europe right now. European leaders have been importing millions(!) of people from incredibly violent, theocratic, illiterate, and regressive regions, to the detriment of peaceful, secular, educated, and liberal Europeans wh…

I object to this.

> European leaders have been importing millions

They have not imported millions.

> incredibly violent, theocratic, illiterate, and regressive regions

This is aggressive against millions of people.

> European politicians don't seem to give much of a shit about Europeans

This is hate speech.

Re: The European Parliament votes non-bindingly to reintroduce visas for Americans

#139

Post by dragonwriter »

mistermann wrote: post #21
techsupporter wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AFAICT there are no major issues that should have caused this. Populism and a perception that a more globally-connected world is concentrating the benefits of growth into the assets and control of a handful of individuals instead of "a rising tide lifting all boats." Also, the message that some politicians have been using ("trade agreements are evil!" "immigration is bad!" "the EU is making us abuse you!") has take…

I find most people have no problem acknowledging that the gap between the rich and poor is increasing, unless the topic is populist politics, then minds seem to change on the topic.

Oh, plenty of people that oppose the brand of right-wing politics usually denoted in talk about "populist" politics (which is largely authoritarian nationalism) have no problem acknowledg ING that the charge of current economic policies unfairly and unnecessarily increasing the rich/poor gap are true.

It's possible to believe that and think that the program of the "populists" coming to power on the back of it does nothing to alleviate that problem, as well as causing a bunch of other problems.

Re: The European Parliament votes non-bindingly to reintroduce visas for Americans

#140

Post by ascorbic »

Exofunctor wrote: post #129
ascorbic wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not even European Now there's a surprise.

What are you implying? That I need to live in the EU to have knowledge of EU politics?

I'm saying that your post could have been copied verbatim from any number of right wing US sites.
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