[Majorityrights News] Trump will ‘arm Ukraine to the teeth’ if Putin won’t negotiate ceasefire Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 12 November 2024 16:20.
[Majorityrights News] Alex Navalny, born 4th June, 1976; died at Yamalo-Nenets penitentiary 16th February, 2024 Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, 16 February 2024 23:43.
[Majorityrights Central] A couple of exchanges on the nature and meaning of Christianity’s origin Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 25 July 2023 22:19.
[Majorityrights News] Is the Ukrainian counter-offensive for Bakhmut the counter-offensive for Ukraine? Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, 18 May 2023 18:55.
Posted by DanielS on Friday, 20 November 2015 11:34.
One of the best litmus tests as to whether or not one is being too liberal, too promiscuous with regard to sex, is whether or not you need to use a condom. If you don’t know someone well enough to be sure that you are not going to get a disease or have an unwanted pregnancy, then maybe you ought to get to know them better before having sex with them. If you really like someone and if they are really worth it, you are not likely to have to use condoms at all. And would you really like to use them?
Subtitle: don’t forget to forget your condom. A.I.D.S. is a most beautiful disease, generally targeting people who deserve to die for their bullying, irresponsible, reckless treatment of sex.
Particularly when the bounds of EGI are unguarded, the need to treat sex carefully, as an act which can endorse or undermine our EGI, becomes all the more important. It will be used by our enemies in psy-ops, such as the profusion of interracial porn. It will be used by our enemies to promote liberal politics, empower those horribly destructive to our interests and to dis-empower those thoughtful of our interests - those concerned with our people in our broad pattern. It will be used by our antagonists to outbreed our race, including outbreeding some of our most qualitatively differentiated genetic capital. As de facto safeguards of liberalism, they have their go-to “moral arguments” to distract us from the moral re-ordering of our people.
After marriage, the condom is taken by liberalism as one of its lines of defense. Don’t be fooled, there’s no substitute for the White class and its bounds. This holds your freedom in sacrament and in celebration that gives our people life and health as opposed to destruction.
There can be a time to be Dionysian, promiscuous for some who choose to be - i.e., among our own people - but that time is when the borders or our EGI are secured and members accounted for. Until then, good riddance to those who treat our genetic treasures irresponsibly; it couldn’t happen to worse, more deserving people of a miserable fate.
Don’t you just feel so sorry for her…
Always remember, er, forget your condom. If you think that you have to use one, you’d better get to know who you are screwing around with a little better - maybe a lot better.
Daily Beast, ‘Porn World in Panic Over Charlie Sheen’s HIV Diagnosis’, Nov 20, 2015:
‘There is so much fear right now amongst the girls…’
Well-known for his porn star companions, Charlie Sheen’s recent admission to being HIV-positive has sent a ripple of fear through the adult industry. There’s no protocol in place for this. There are no records of who Sheen’s hired, thus no quarantine list for the porn stars he’s been sexually active with.
In the semi-regulated world of adult film, when an HIV scare is made known everyone asks, “Did I perform with the person who tested positive?” Fear turns to panic if it was a close call, relief if it wasn’t. That’s only after a name is released—or patient zero comes forward. Production shuts down, quarantine lists are drawn up for first generation, second, third, and so on. An ideal “who’s performed with whom” list chronicling before and after known exposure is made available. Some call this “the honor system.”
Unfortunately, those outside the business don’t always play by the industry’s self-regulated rules. Needless to say, former Two and a Half Men actor Charlie Sheen plays by his own rules.
“There is so much fear right now amongst the girls…like who have I had sex with that has had sex with them, or have I had sex with a girl who has had sex with Charlie?” says Alana Evans, 2015 AVN Hall of Fame recipient. “Maybe we can get Charlie to put together a list of all the porno girls he’s had sex with so the rest of us can make sure we’re okay? That’d be great.”
In case you missed it, Sheen admitted on the Today Show that he was HIV-positive, and has known of his diagnosis for four years. He also alleged “all sexual partners have known” about his condition with “no exception.”
While some are applauding Sheen for his bravery in coming forward, there’s speculation amongst industry insiders as to why now? Some credit the 27-year-old blonde who spoke anonymously to the Daily Mail with forcing Sheen’s hand. She estimates the A-lister had sex with at least 50 porn stars since his diagnosis and “fears the porn industry could face an ‘HIV epidemic’ as a result.”
‘There is so much fear right now amongst the girls…’
Sheen’s latest role as victim is a bit hard to swallow. He paints a vivid portrait of his suffering at the mercy of his addictions, depression, and multi-million dollar extortions from ex-lovers. Even so, that his two ex-goddesses are contradicting his story raises questions concerning his credibility.
Ex-goddess Bree Olson, who dated and lived with Sheen for seven months in 2011, appeared on The Howard Stern Show to claim she had no idea about her ex’s condition, and claimed she learned about his HIV-positive status “right along with everyone else.”
“He never said anything to me,” Olson added. “I was his girlfriend. I lived with him. We were together. We had sex almost every day for a year—with lambskin condoms.”
Now lambskin condoms—incredibly thin condoms are billed as providing the closest thing to not using condoms at all—only guard against pregnancy and do not prevent the transmission of HIV. Olson told Stern that while she wanted to use standard Trojan condoms, lambskin was Sheen’s condom of choice.
While Olson tested negative for HIV, in Sheen’s home state of California it’s a felony punishable by up to eight years in prison for a person with HIV to have unprotected sex with the intent to infect someone who’s unaware of their status. Though that is incredibly hard to prove in criminal court, California also has a misdemeanor charge carrying up to six months in prison for willfully exposing others to HIV.
No thoughtful person makes AIDS prevention a cause.
Of the hundreds, or thousands, of women who made themselves available to Magic Johnson, he said: “I tried to accommodate as many as possible. Some of them were unbelievable.”
This liberalism, this irresponsibility to our EGI, is not what we’re here to defend. With unspeakable irresponsibility and selfish uncaring (to say the least), they bring into the world behavior and genetics destructive to any reflective people - especially our European people.
Africa is one of the only places where AIDS is on the rise. That is good. Their population needs to be drastically reduced and its increase, let alone interbeeding with others, needs to be thwarted.
Magic, er, E.T. says, “Remember to not use a condom. AIDS is a beautiful thing.” It kills those irresponsible and reckless with our EGI.
Because not all merit defense, we need an order to secure those who do. 14
“No glove no love”, so the motto of condom proponents goes - a condom being referred to as a “glove”, in their liberal slang.
With “Sheen preferring ‘lambskin condoms”, in particular, an older slogan comes to mind as particularly apt to capture the refrain of those who would contest their liberalism - they are treating those who engage in reckless and socially destructive behavior “with kid gloves” - that is to say, they are protecting them too much and therefore enabling bad behavior in the long term.
Handle a situation, or a person or an object, delicately and gingerly.
Origin
Kid gloves are, of course, gloves made from the skin of a young goat. I say ‘of course’ but, in fact, when they were first fashioned in the 18th century they were more often made from lambskin, as that was easier to come by. They were clearly not intended for use when you were pruning the hedge and wearing kid gloves was the sartorial equivalent of pale white skin, that is, it indicated that the wearer was rich enough to indulge in a life of genteel indoor idleness. The earliest mentions of kid gloves are from England in the 1730s and the following is a typical report of a wealthy gentleman, laid out in his ‘Sunday best’, from Bagnall’s News, in The Ipswich Journal, December 1734:
The Corpse of Mr. Thorp, A Distiller in Soho, who died a few Days since, said to be worth £10000 was put into his Coffin, quilted within with white Sattin; and after several yards of fine Holland [best-quality linen] were wrapt about his Body… on his Head was a Cap of the same Holland tied with a white Ribbond; he has about his Neck two Yards of Cambrick; a Cambrick Handkerchief between his Hands, on which he had a pair of white Kid Gloves: and in this manner he lay in state some Days and was afterwards buried in Buckinghamshire.
At that time, kid gloves were viewed as rather ostentatious and only suitable for the nouveau riche - much as heavy gold chains might be viewed today.
The Social Democrat Prime Minister announced an initiative called ‘Sweden Together’ (‘Sverige tillsammans’) on Thursday morning.
He said that municipalities, religious groups, sports associations, unions and public sector employers would all be invited to a major conference in October to discuss how to help refugees better integrate into Swedish communities.
The Prime Minister told Swedish public broadcaster Sveriges Radio that he wanted a more even distribution of refugees across all 290 municipalities in Sweden, a policy that has been pushed by Sweden’s integration minister Ylva Johansson in recent months.
At a press conference in Stockholm at midday, ahead of cross-party talks on the refugee crisis, Löfven said there would be a large focus on getting refugees into schooling and the work force.
“This is about them having a speedy entrance into our society and getting a job, education, and housing,” Löfven told reporters.
“For us to be able to get through this demographic challenge, we need to get more working. This means we need to quickly get those who have newly arrived into the work force. This is what our investments are aiming for.”
One concrete change that was announced at the press conference was an increase in the compensation for municipalities per refugee, which will be raised from 83,100 kronor ($9,867) to 125,000 kronor ($14,873).
The government said it would earmark 1.8 billion kronor for the entire package to be spent over the next year. 870 million kronor of this will go into helping refugees find work quicker, offering speedier translation and validation of foreign education
The leaders of Sweden’s centre-right Alliance parties which made up former Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt’s previous government are set to attend discussions with Löfven later in the day, along with the leaders of the government’s coalition partners the Greens and the Left Party. The nationalist anti-immigration Sweden Democrat party has not been invited.
“We must have a political gathering, both about what we’re doing here at home in Sweden, but also what Sweden stands for in the EU,” said Löfven, adding that it was currently “unhelpful” that Sweden and Germany were currently sharing the bulk of responsibility for new arrivals.
Sweden’s Prime Minister met Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin earlier this week. Both leaders told a press conference that they backed the introduction of new quotas to force other European countries to take in more refugees, as is being proposed by the European Commission.
The Nordic nation currently takes in more refugees per capita than any other EU member state.
Sweden’s Migration Board (Migrationsverket) received a total of 11,743 applications for asylum last month, up from 6,619 in June and 8,066 in July, as an increasing number of refugees headed for Scandinavia over the summer.
Posted by DanielS on Wednesday, 07 October 2015 09:12.
Seriously, Estonia, Luxembourg & Sweden are to be thronged within days, as invaders are directed northward from their Mediterranean beachheads:
(ANSA) - Brussels, October 2 - EU sources said Friday the relocation of asylum seekers from Italy to other EU nations including Estonia, Luxembourg and Sweden will begin “within days”. The idea is to get it done before the next EU summit on October 15, the sources said. EU interior ministers agreed in September to resettle 120,000 asylum seekers from Greece and Italy - where most refugees fleeing across the Mediterranean usually make first landfall - to other member States.
Of auguries, apparitions and specters.. .
With the help of the Swedish government, Barbara Spectre set-up a non-denominational institute of Jewish learning with the Greek name of Paideia -
She believes Jews have a key role to play in a country undergoing profound change:
“I think there is a resurgence of anti-Semitism because Europe has not yet learned how to be multicultural; and I think that we’re going to be part of the throes of that transformation, which much take place. Europe is not going to be the ‘monolithic’ ..uh, uh, societies they once were in the last century. Jews are going to be at the center of that - it’s a huge transformation for Europe to make. They are now going into a multi-cultural mode, and Jews will be resented because of our leading role.”
She adds….”but without that leading role and with out that transformation, Europe will not survive.” - ??
Posted by Kumiko Oumae on Monday, 28 September 2015 17:03.
When jokes threaten to become reality
A long time ago at the beginning of this ‘refugee crisis’, people used to make a joke and say, “If this keeps up, liberals might start asking for a bridge to be built so that no one would need to smuggle humans across water any more”. Who could have known that this joke would become a jinx?
Austria’s refugee coordinator Christian Konrad has called for the construction of a 200km long bridge from Al Huwariyah in Tunisia to Agrigento in Sicily. This is after Konrad had previously called for housing solutions to be constructed in Austria as hundreds of asylum seekers currently staying at the Traiskirchen reception centre in Lower Austria are sleeping in tents due to overcrowding there.
Education Minister Gabriele Heinisch-Hosek is tasked with devising proposals on how to integrate refugee into Austrian schools. This integration will likely be of the sort that parents of non-Muslim children will have no ability to veto. Integration of school systems never seems to come ‘organically’.
Social Minister Rudolf Hundstorfer will be looking for ways to ease the strictures of employment laws, so as to make it easier for big businesses to employ refugees, and for the purpose of lowering the standards that govern social bargaining at the enterprise and state level, the standards which Austria actually would have had to agree to have upheld upon joining the ERM back in March 1979. So now they have come full circle, and have ended up considering imposing a very ‘American’ form of social bargaining and employment laws, even though the European approach was supposed to have some significant differences.
Under the so-called emergency, the crisis that ‘demands’ compromise, one of the supposed prized qualities of the European labour market, will be dismantled for the benefit of a certain cross section of large companies which see it as being in their interest to use these migrants as a battering ram against any attempts to have any kind of organised labour movement in the continent. It is against this backdrop of the tendencies within the Austrian ruling class, that this bridge proposal is set.
Construction companies
The construction company STRABAG AG would get the contract for the bridge. STRABAG AG is a company that was created through the merger of ILBAU and STRABAG in the 1930s, both being founded by Anton Lerchbaumer. It acquired Deutsche Asphalt Group in 2002, Waltr Bau Group in 2005, it took on a majority stake in Ed Züblin in 2005, Adanti SpA, KIRCHNER Holding GmbH, F. Kirchhoff AG and Deutsche Telekom Immobilien und Service GmbH in 2008.
In 2013 the Supreme Court of the Slovak Republic stated that it believed that one of the companies of the STRABAG Group participated in bid rigging cartel of construction companies in that country. Amongst the companies involved in that cartel, was a company called Doprastav a.s., which is part of Doprastav Group. The illegal conduct centred around the D1 Highway which was constructed from 2004 and continued to have work done on it and its surroundings up to at least 2010.
STRABAG is managed by CEO Thomas Birtel. The Chairman of the supervisory board at STRABAG is Alfred Gusenbauer. Alfred Gusenbauer is an Austrian politician who until 2008 had spent his entire professional life as an employee of the Social Democratic Party of Austria or as a parliamentary representative. He headed the Social Democratic Party of Austria from 2000 to 2008, and served as Chancellor of Austria from January 2007 to December 2008. Since then he has positioned himself as a consultant and lecturer, and as a member of supervisory boards of Austrian companies, STRABAG being one of these.
Gusenbauer is known for having exploited the occurrence of the BAWAG Scandal, in which BAWAG—the bank of the Austrian Trade Union Federation—engaged in failed bets using risky undocumented derivative instruments held off-balance-sheet. After the losses became unmanageable, Fritz Verzetnitsch resigned from the Austrian Trade Union Federation in disgrace, and Gusenbauer used this opportunity to exclude all of the Trade Union leaders from the ballot lists of the Social Democratic Party, an action which moved the party to the right structurally.
STRABAG’s Gusenbauer and Austria’s refugee coordinator Christian Konrad obviously are not strangers to each other, seeing as they come from the same party and travel in the same social circles. In the world of business and politics, it’s quite often about who you know and who you’ve worked with. Aside from the fact that STRABAG is one of the largest construction companies in Austria, there is also the political connection that would exist between persons within the state and within that company’s structure.
Russian-Jewish Mafia involvement
A notable stakeholder in STRABAG is Oleg Vladimirovich Deripaska, a extremely wealthy Russian oligarch, who—when he is not exploiting the mineral and energy resources of impoverished Asians in Siberia—also has for some reason cultivated over the years a very amicable relationship with people who may or may not be associated with former Russian soldiers who had been veterans in Afghanistan who may be part of the presently existing heroin smuggling operations which have been occurring at an ever-heightening rate since the year 2005.
Additionally, Deripaska has a good relationship with the Russian-Israeli Mafia, which helped him with the purchase of Sayansk aluminium plant in Siberia when he was first starting up as a businessperson in the 1990s. He has a especially tight relationship with the Israeli business and crime figure known as Michael Cherney, who personally assessed Deripaska and pulled the necessary strings on his behalf. Deripaska has since operated in the debt of Cherney and the Russian-Israeli Mafia. Cherney also operates security think tank groups, which may or may not be actually just front groups which allow him and his criminal networks to plug into the stream of intelligence exchanges that go on in the War on Terror, so that he can smuggle contraband through conflict zones with less risk of detection. Cherney also publishes anti-fascist publications through the Michael Cherney Foundation which is registered as a ‘charitable foundation’.
Interfacing with activist groups
The proposal for this Africa-to-Europe 200km long bridge, whose construction contract sits at the centre of all of these groups and individuals, also is associated with a local Austrian ‘anti-racist’ activist group. That group is named Zentrum für Politische Schönheit, which in English is ‘Centre for Political Beauty’.
The Centre for Political Beauty refers to itself as a group that “makes art” for the purpose of encouraging the European peoples to adopt a more liberal-humanitarian outlook on the world. Much of what they do is done for the sake of “not rendering void of the legacy of the Holocaust”. One of their members, Massimo Sestini, is perhaps known to Majorityrights readers because he is one of the persons who has consistently been providing ‘humanistic’ photography of the migrants to various media outlets including the British Newspaper, the Guardian, since at least mid-2014. The power of images cannot be underestimated.
The Centre for Political Beauty takes its activism beyond simply creating static pieces of art, and in fact, merges art with political action while invoking shadows of past events which they believe hold immense sway over the European psyche.
Here are four relevant examples of them merging art with political action:
They have removed sections of the Berlin Wall monument, the sections that contain Christian cross logos with names on them. They have removed some of these because they have transferred those crosses to the outer border fences of the European Union, and affixed them there. In some images African migrants are posing with the crosses for photographs. This is a kind of art creation that is apparently supposed to symbolise the idea that the internal wall between the West Germany and East Germany that was removed after the fall of the Berlin Wall, is ontologically the same as the border between Europe and Africa which they believe would be removed after the fall of racially cohesive European identity.
They plan to actually cut holes into some segments of the EU border fences on 09 November 2015, during the commemoration of the 25th Anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall. This would allow migrants to break through the fences at the precise timing of the celebrations, so that they can link the celebration of one thing, with the celebration of another thing that they plan to superimpose onto it.
Since the idea for the creation of a bridge between Africa and Europe is a project that would take them until the year 2030 to complete if it gets started on time and isn’t thwarted in some way, they want to call on Austria to supply state funding for 1,000 rescue platforms to be permanently installed into international waters between North Africa and Italy. The first one of these platforms will be unveiled in the water on 01 October 2015, in Licata Harbour. The press will be invited at 0630 on that day.
Dead African and Middle Eastern bodies will be exhumed and transported from the sea and into the capital city of Germany. The bodies will be displayed and placed into open shallow graves in plain view, so that persons running the media operation can then talk about the ongoing crisis in terms that have allusions to the narratives of the Jewish Holocaust.
They are absolutely serious. It would not be hyperbolic to say that the intention behind these actors who have come together to make these things happen, is that they would like to inflict extreme demographic damage onto the European Union.
The resources being allocated to these plans, and all such operations, stand in stark contrast to the fact that countries in the South of Europe have been placed under austerity policies so harsh that civil society in countries like Greece are breaking down, and money allocated to even basic state functions like national defence have been so low that the topic of whether enough counties are meeting the basic NATO obligations is often raised.
Yet, mysteriously, certain richer state governments of north-western and south-central Europe seem to be very capable of sourcing funds for extravagant migrant rescue operations and even funds for building a 200km long bridge. Where is it coming from? It’s coming from your bank account via taxation.
Kumiko Oumae works in the defence and security sector in the UK. Her opinions here are entirely her own.
Marine Le Pen, the president of France’s far-right Front National party, is to appear in court for allegedly inciting racial hatred over comments in which she compared Muslims praying in the streets to the Nazi occupation.
The FN leader made the comments in a speech during a party rally in Lyon in 2010. Asked on Tuesday about being summoned to appear in court on 20 October, Le Pen told Agence France-Presse: “Of course, I’m not going to miss such an occasion.”
Later, she told Europe 1 it was “scandalous to be prosecuted for having a political opinion in the country of freedom of expression.”
At the time she made the remarks, Le Pen was campaigning to become FN president, succeeding her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, himself no stranger to charges of provoking racial hatred.
At the rally, Le Pen made reference to “street prayers” after reports of Muslims praying in public in three French cities, including Paris, because of a lack of mosques or a lack of space in local prayer rooms. The French government later clamped down on the “illegal” use of the public space for prayers.
“I’m sorry, but for those who really like to talk about the second world war, if we’re talking about occupation, we can also talk about this while we’re at it, because this is an occupation of territory,” she told supporters, prompting waves of applause.
“It’s an occupation of swaths of territory, of areas in which religious laws apply … for sure, there are no tanks, no soldiers, but it’s an occupation all the same and it weighs on people.”
Despite numerous complaints from anti-racist organisations, a preliminary inquiry by the authorities in Lyon was dropped in 2011. However, one association pursued the legal complaint, and when the European parliament lifted Le Pen’s parliamentary immunity in July 2013, a preliminary inquiry was opened. In September 2014, the prosecutor’s office announced she would be sent before a judge.
As of 2011, Jean-Marie Le Pen’s speeches had led to 18 convictions, five for repeating that the Holocaust was a mere “point of detail” of the second world war.
Marine Le Pen has been credited with “de-demonising” the FN and throwing out its more xenophobic and extremist elements since taking control of the party in January 2011. Critics accused her of swapping the FN’s historic antisemitism for Islamophobia.
Le Pen’s deputy, Florian Philippot, reacted angrily on Twitter to her summons. “The only people who should be sent before the court are those who allow prayers in the street that are illegal and against the principle of secularism!” he wrote.
Philippot accused the French authorities of trying to smear Le Pen before regional elections to be held in December.
Le Pen also expressed her anger on Twitter. “We’re quicker to prosecute those who denounce the illegal behaviour of fundamentalists … than to prosecute the fundamentalists behaving illegally,” she wrote.
The penalty for inciting racial hatred in France is up to a year in prison and a €45,000 fine.
* France’s Front National has also been charged with fraud in an election finance inquiry.
BRUSSELS — With Europe’s refugee crisis escalating, European leaders on Tuesday approved a plan to spread asylum seekers across the continent over the objection of Central European nations.
The plan to distribute 120,000 migrants across Europe is a first step toward easing the plight of the men, women and children who have been shunted from one European nation to another in recent weeks, a grim procession of human need in one of the world’s richest regions.
But the decision to override the dissenters means the European Union will be sending thousands of people to nations that do not want them, raising questions about both the future of the 28-nation bloc and the well-being of the asylum seekers consigned to those countries. Hungary, Romania, the Czech Republic and Slovakia voted against the measure, a rare note of discord for a body that usually operates by consensus on key matters of national sovereignty. Finland abstained.
For all the controversy, the plan would find homes for just 20 days’ worth of new arrivals to Europe, a measure of the scale of the crisis and the baby steps the continent has taken to address it. E.U. leaders will meet in Brussels on Wednesday to discuss broader measures to stem the flow, including bolstering the region’s border controls and stepping up support for the overburdened refugee camps along Syria’s borders.
But after Tuesday’s bitter vote, it was unclear how much common ground remained among leaders.
“Some people will say today that Europe is divided because the decision was not taken by consensus,” said Jean Asselborn, the foreign minister of Luxembourg. “If we had not done this, Europe would have been even more divided and its credibility would have been even more undermined.”
Wealthy nations such as Germany have faced tens of thousands of asylum seekers arriving every week. Leaders there have welcomed Syrians fleeing their war-ravaged country, but have also said they cannot shoulder the entire burden on their own.
“We are doing this out of solidarity and responsibility, but also out of our own interest,” German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière said after the meeting. He said the agreement would “prevent more people who are currently in Greece from coming to Germany.” The country expects up to 1 million asylum seekers this year alone.
A first step
Proponents of the plan acknowledged Tuesday that it was just a first step to address the much bigger crisis. According to the U.N. refugee agency, more than 477,000 people have arrived in Europe so far this year via often-dangerous sea crossings, and 6,000 now land on Europe’s shores every day —up sharply even from August, when the figure stood around 4,200 a day.
Germany’s national railway company announced Tuesday that it was suspending rail service to Austria because its trains have been overwhelmed with refugees. It was the latest example of national infrastructure apparently unable to meet the challenge.
Central European leaders condemned the vote, warning that Europe would suffer as a result of the plan to force them to accept asylum seekers.
Breaking down Europe’s migrant crisis
A look at the numbers behind the stream of refugees flowing into Europe as political leaders struggle to ease the burden.
“Very soon we will see that the emperor has no clothes,” Czech Interior Minister Milan Chovanec said on Twitter. “Common sense lost today.”
The numbers will be drawn from Syrians, Iraqis and Eritreans coming ashore in Greece and Italy. Germany, France and Spain will take the most. Of the 120,000 spots approved on Tuesday, only 66,000 were immediately assigned to specific countries, with the rest to be assigned later. An additional 40,000 slots were agreed to earlier in the summer.
The final agreement did not include an earlier proposal to penalize countries that did not take in asylum seekers, so it was not immediately clear how the E.U. would deal with nations that refuse to comply with the plan.
At least one country, Slovakia, said after the decision that it would not take in any of the migrants.
“As long as I am prime minister, mandatory quotas will not be implemented on Slovak territory,” Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico told his parliament’s E.U. affairs committee.
Almost 1,300 people will be sent to Hungary, where Prime Minister Viktor Orban has crusaded against the mostly Muslim asylum seekers, saying they are on a campaign to de-Christianize Europe. He has built a 109-mile razor-tipped fence to keep them away from his country’s frontier with Serbia and in recent days has started to expand this barrier to the borders with Romania and Croatia.
Despite Hungary’s opposition to the asylum seekers, a government spokesman, Zoltan Kovacs, said Tuesday that his country would abide by the plan.
“This is a compulsory decision, and we are going to respect it,” said Kovacs. He said Hungary’s leaders looked forward to discussing the “real causes” of the crisis on Wednesday, adding that solutions include reestablishing border controls and improving the refugee camps closer to Syria.
Refugee preferences
Under the distribution effort, each nation would continue to make its own decisions about whether to grant asylum to individual applicants. Hungary, which grants just a tiny fraction of asylum requests, could continue to be far harsher than Germany, which is relatively generous, particularly to Syrians.
There are few guarantees that asylum seekers would actually stay in the country to which they’re assigned, especially given the lack of border controls between most E.U. nations. Migrants would risk losing benefits if they left one country for another, but, for example, few may want to stay in Poland, next door to Germany’s high wages.
Nor was it clear how E.U. policymakers would take into account the refugees’ preferences. Some countries offer far more generous benefits than others. Many refugees also want to be reunited with family members who already live in Europe.
“They say when you are in Vienna, you can go anywhere,” said Wassim, 28, from Aleppo, Syria, who made it through a bustling border crossing at Nickelsdorf on the Austria-Hungary frontier. He hoped to travel quickly onward to the Netherlands. He gave only his first name out of fear of possible reprisals against relatives in Syria.
Ahead of the E.U. decision, the U.N. refugee agency had pushed hard for action, saying that further delays would create an even more dangerous situation for the streams of people fleeing the Syrian conflict. More than 4 million Syrians have already moved to the neighboring countries of Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey.
“It’s very, very clear that there is a need for a united common response from European countries,” said Adrian Edwards, a spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency.
Despite Europe’s divisions, some refugee advocates said policymakers seem to be slowly coming to terms with the crisis.
“What is widely acknowledged now is that the conditions in Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan are going to become untenable for a large number of people,” said Madeline Garlick, a guest researcher at the Center for Migration Law at Radboud University in the Netherlands. “We are further than we were some time ago.”
