The media is trying to paint the town of Oberwil-Lieli village as a bunch of racist rich fuckers, who are paying off authorities in order avoid harboring potentially psychotic throw-backs from the 8th century.
A super-rich village in Switzerland, one of the wealthiest in Europe, has chosen to pay a fine of 200,000 pounds instead of accepting 10 refugees under the country’s newly imposed quota system.
Residents in the picturesque Oberwil-Lieli village, which has 300 millionaires in a population of 22,000, voted ‘no’ in a referendum over whether to accept the refugees.
The vote has resulted in a division in the town and led to people slamming residents for being “racist”.
But Andreas Glarner, the mayor of the village, denied that they were being racist by refusing the refugees.
“We were not to be told if the 10 were from Syria or if they are economic migrants from other countries. Yes, the refugees from Syria have to be helped and they are better served by being helped in the camps nearer their home,” said Glarner.
“Money could be sent to help them, but if we are housing them here it sends out the wrong message. Others will come and risk their lives crossing the ocean and paying people smugglers to bring them,” he was quoted as saying by metro.co.uk.
But the real story here is the unbelievably intrusive governments in Europe, forcing refugees, who have vastly different cultures and ideals, into the lives of Europeans. There seems to be no end to this politically correct horseshit. This quaint town, which is home to many millionaires, who have worked very hard to become successful, are supposed to just take in people because authorities said so? Moreover, if authorities were perfectly willing to accept money instead of shelter, why isn’t the argument or headline “Swiss Authorities Accept Bribe, In Order to Avoid Housing Refugees in Influential Town”?
In the United States, Obama and his administration are forcing well to do towns to house poor people, in order to ‘even the playing field.’ The ideal of western societies used to be work hard and try to move up in the world. Buy a bigger home and get your kids into better schools. Now those ideals have been replaced with ‘everyone is equal. You didn’t build that business. The government did.’
Communist propaganda 101.
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The U.S. is more and more in favor of ignoring poor people. Perhaps we’ll become like India before you know it, which is what you become if you ignore poor people.
No one in the U.S. believes that everyone is equal. We know that the vast majority of the wealth and political decision making power, is concentrated at the top. That’s why both Sanders and Trump are popular– because the 99.99% is sick of getting screwed.
The Obama quote is taken out of context. He was talking about how no one built their business 100% by themselves. They hire public school graduates, use public roads, benefit from the U.S. legal system that insures that businesses and individuals abide by contracts that they agree to etc. And all of that is not free. Taxes pay for it, and so businesses should pay taxes, rather than pretending that they don’t owe anything to anyone.
There should, of course, be conditions and limits on immigration, as Bernie has said.
Poor people are supposed to go to war, silly.
+1 to both of you
As far as forcing well to do towns “to house poor people”, or actually to accept government subsidized housing in their communities, in that article you cited, it looks like Congress is passing a bill that prevents that.
Those 10 would have made good shoe shiners
as a community that’s not much $
Can’t say if I were a millionaire i’d rather take the 10 refugees into my home for only $200k
I actually live a few km from this village (it’s fairly close to Zurich)
If you own any property here, you are instantly a millionaire because all land is prohibitively expensive (unless you’re a banker–I’m not). But it is hard for even regular ‘North Americans’ to integrate here, even with a fairly similar cultural background. People are very conservative here and do NOT like change.
They don’t necessarily hate outsiders here, but they expect them to respect and obey their customs and not break the law.
About 80% of all prison inmates here are non-Swiss…so yeah, you can see why they’re willing to take the fine than risk importing more crime to their community…
You do realize that if 80% prisoners are non-Swiss, that doesn’t mean anything in itself unless you know the circumstances of their imprisonment.
It could mean that the non-Swiss commit more wrongdoings, or it could mena that the justice system is biased against non-Swiss. Probably a little but of both, with a positive feedback loop to boot (Non-Swiss are treated unfairly, so they buck against the sytem more and commit more crimes).
“they expect them to respect and obey their customs and not break the law ”
This is the common arguement against immigration and it needs a compromise. Immigrants must should learn the local langauage and customs, but should not be allowed to keep their own custosm (within limits, of course) as well.
Who is John Galt… ?
He’s a douche-bag character from a crappy, bloated novel.
No need to get frisky, son
You have no point of reference for great literature, no concept of liberty and don’t understand capitalism.
But all is not lost.
You can:
1. Get your head out of your ass (its dark in there)
2. Stop repeating shit you overheard, read actual book instead of sparknotes
3. Start doing your own thinking
For some reason I always get these asshole responses, whenever I decide to come out of hiding and opine around these internets.
I read many of Ayn Rand’s books years ago. I remember them well enough that I know they are not great literature. They are philosophy thinly disguised as literature. In parts they are interesting. However, they are essentially Far Right Libertarian laissez faire capitalist propaganda. Rand grew up in a land of Communist propaganda. She imitated it well, simply changing the subject covered.
It’s like a religion. If you believe in that philosophy and worship at the feet of Ayn Rand, then you do.
But you will rarely meet others who are interested in being converted to your “religion.” Especially if you have nothing more illuminating to say about it than “Who is John Galt?”
But as long as you’re into asking these questions, then: Who is Tom Joad?
I apologize.
Longview
NP 😉
Frog
So, I offer inventor, engineer and industrialist
and you retort with unemployed murderer and ‘community organizer’
Right
iBergamot, I see you read the wikipedia or some summary of The Grapes of Wrath– just enough to find out what the most negative aspects of the main character were. You obviously have no understanding of what that novel was about.
You are like a Bible thumping missionary, just arguing and counter arguing, for the purpose of making a case for why someone should join your church– not understanding anything in the world but selling/missionarying.
Why don’t you phone the missionary churches in your area and ask them to send some missionaries to your door? Then let them into your house and listen to them, and you will understand what you sound like.
If you ever do read the whole book The Grapes of Wrath, which I doubt you will, then you will understand why Atlas Shrugged is not great literature.
Not a big deal. They’d pay that to keep Americans out, too.
https://www.rt.com/news/344983-dalai-lama-refugee-crisis/
I can understand why the Dalai Lama thinks that the refugees should get temporary shelter and then return to rebuild their homeland. But for it to happen, there needs to be peace in Syria, so they have something to return to. This is not an easy problem to solve. It seems like everybody and their brother and sister is over in Syria fighting each other.
This “simple” chart of the war in Syria shows it’s actually mind-bogglingly complicated
http://www.vox.com/2016/2/16/11024056/syria-war-chart
So perhaps the Dalai Lama and others should turn their attention to the matter of how to help Syria to become peaceful enough that refugees have a place to go back to that is less dangerous than when they left.
In the United States, Obama and his administration are forcing well to do towns to house poor people
Rubbish. The rules you are talking about will only apply to cities and towns who want to participate in certain HUD-funded programs.
Many US communities have been shaped in part by historical housing practices that segregated people according to the various biases. These biases were expressed in zoning decisions, in real estate sales, in tenant selection, in bank loan policies, in the routing of new urban highways and placement of off ramps, and in the location of polluting or unpleasant industrial facilities.
HUD was finding that its funds were being used in ways that perpetuated the patterns created by bias, even when there was no deliberate bias reflected in the use of the funds. The purpose of the new rules is to have the HUD-funded projects act as some baby steps away from the historical patterns of segregation.
But, please, don’t let me interrupt your hysterical warnings about communism.
Thanks, Ottnott, for that information. We’re so immersed in propaganda in the U.S. that the facts can be difficult to find.
I just noticed that the “news source” linked above is a propaganda mill. One has to watch one’s “news sources” carefully, to determine whether one is getting any facts at all when reading them.
The WA Times that is.