Dutch elections

[Admiral Yi]

Admiral Yi, meet Josquis.

Josquis, meet Admiral Yi.

I see what you did there. 

[Crazy_Ivan80]

I have to agree that issues have been left unattended and as a result they seem to have gotten worse...

I have some questions for you, if you don't mind:

1.From your perspective, what is the solution? What are reasonable actions that can be taken to enact that solution?

2a.Do you make any distinction between types and categories of foreignes and immigrants - and do those distinctions matter to your proposed solutions? 2b.When it comes to Muslims, from your point of view is there any reason to distinguish between radical Islamists and other Muslims? From your perspective are there "good Muslims", and if so how does that figure into the actions you think we should take?

3.Basically if we accept your framing of the problem and your general analysis, what actions and policies do you propose? And how fine-grained or broadly do you think we should apply those actions and policies?

all from the belgian perspective, mind you.

1. Far stronger control over the borders, both internal and external. Covid has shown that it is possible (and of course it was also possible before Shengen). Illegal entry must be reduced to a minimum and walls, border-fences and pushbacks all have their place in that. Illegals that are already present need to tracked and effectively deported, not handed a notice to leave the territory. Once that has been done strict policies for immigration can be enacted: it's not like the US, Canada, Australia or New Zealand let just anyone in.
Basically making sure that we don't get an influx the size of -at the low end- Lokeren (35k) or -at the high end- Brugge (115k) every year (the low and high range has been between 2009-2022, net migration only so the actually immigration is higher), or about a million people in the last 20 years or so. Infrastructure and services just can't keep up, and that's not even taking into account the environmental and climate targets that were set.
Cheating needs to be -basically- punished, restoring and rising support for green-card style migration and actual asylumseekers (like the Ukrainians). Limited migration will also enable society to assimilate the people arriving into society: like it did with the Italians, the Greeks, the Spanish and even many of the earliest arrivals from Morocco and Turkey.
Additionally, the period of cultural self-flaggelation western society is going through needs to end. A culture that doesn't respect itself isn't going to inspire assimilation. The western countries have done bad things through history, so did everyone else. So people need to stop accentuating only the bad from their own country/culture/history and stop focussing on only the good from the immigrant countries/cultures/histories. The western countries did many good things, so much so that without those things most of current day humanity wouldn't even be alive without them.

2. Not exactly sure what you mean but I'll give it a shot.
2a. Not all foreigners/immigrants are the same, culture wise, this includes religion (individually they are, obviously, all different). The reality is that there is something like cultural distance that positively or negatively affects the ability of groups of migrants to assimilate into the host society.
Migrants from countries with cultures that are similar to ours should generally adapt faster and easier, while migrants from cultures that are very different will probably have it harder. Some might even be wholly incompatible. Ability to assimilate is of course further modulated by the individual migrant's character and traits, amount of ghettoisation (peer pressure to stick to the culture), willingness and access to work*, presence of a schoolculture<->streetculture, access to media from the original country etc etc. The willingness of the host culture to integrate newcomers is of import too, of course.
The endresult still being that it's preferable to have immigrants from cultures than can be slotted in easily. Immigrants from the other group are still possible, but only in minimal numbers. Illegals, regardless of groups, should get the boot. They undermine goodwill.
Even then: I still wouldn't want to host 30% of Dutchmen, Frenchmen, Englishmen or Germans, all arriving in a generation. They'd still mess up the host society.


2b.
It's the ideology that is an issue, so anyone following it suffers, as it where, from a -50 to -100 penalty to diplomatic relations depending on severity of the following. I've got no reason to be positive towards an ideology that basically wants to separate my head from the rest of my body because I don't believe in their version of a sky-creature, any sky-creature at all, or any other crazy tenet of ideology. I also don't appreciate the negative influences of the ideology on our society.** We've got enough crazies as it is.
Individually they can be the best people you can imagine, but then again: I'm pretty sure the germans of 1939 were, in general and individually, upstanding people. Same for the communists (ours over here still think that Stalin and Mao were 'swell guys') or those 'conservative' (reactionary actually) extremists in the US. You wouldn't want them to have too much, if any, influence on your society.
The best muslims are those that aren't of course.
As it is, distrust the group but consider the individual.
Given that religious fundamentalism is a big thing in the islamic communities (as per research of Ruud Koopmans) their communities must be under watch, extremists causing trouble need to go and existing mosques brought under state control while at the same time removing foreign control from these mosques (so no Diyanet for example). No more new mosques and no converting of others allowed. That ban can be lifted once the muslim countries reciprocate regarding freedom of religion. Preachers preaching hate can get a one way ticket out of here. Migration of muslims needs to be limited as much as possible. That's not going to be easy but the government's first responsability is towards the people living in the country it governs, then to the allied and friendly nations. Only then towards the rest, and even then, since they have their own governments (who most decidedly don't give a fig about us, or even their own citizens). We've decolonized.

3. A hard one and unless the powers that be in government and administration are overturned completely nothing is ever going to happen, but here goes (with the risk of repeating myself):
- cracking down on illegal migration, hard. In relation to that: cracking down even harder on human trafficking, it's modern slavery. The people engaging it should lose at least all their illgotten gains and in an ideal world much more.
- illegal migrants that are present need to be removed from the territory
- no endless asylum procedures. Rejected is out.
- no longer allowing that 3rd countries refuse to take back their criminal expats. They're citizens of those countries: you're getting them back. The european economy is large enough that most of those countries can be pressured into submission on that (EU politicians need to grow some balls -of steel, not light- on that and many other issues)
- refugees need to be given refuge in the region as much as possible (and yes, for the majority that already happens). The European countries could do a tad more on that. It makes financial sense since it's usually much much cheaper to house people over there instead of over here (cost of living among others). It's also likely that the neighbouring countries are culturally closer, decreasing the sense of estrangement. It'll also facilitate returning to the home country once the issue is resolved. Again, the EU could do more provided it finds its balls***
- A great reduction in illegal migration should ideally lead to more capacity and willingness to help those actual asylumseekers for which refuge in the region isn't feasible. So limited numbers****
- Once the crisis is solved, asylumseekers go home. As long as the crisis hasn't been resolved: no holidays in the country you fled from. After all: when, during WW1, up to a million belgians fled to the Netherlands they didn't stay their indefinately. Heck, most of them were back home a year later (in 1915!).
- Regular migration needs to be possible, but subject to the needs of our countries. So a system like the US, Canada, Australia... i.e. the supposed blue-card proposed at the EU-level. But again: there's still quite a bit of unemployment in the European countries so with proper amounts of reschooling we should put these people to work first and foremost. After all: it's not quite okay to separate the other countries from their educated people.*****
- allowing mass migration from the islamic regions was a mistake, and a bad one. It also can't be reversed quickly. The best we can do putting up pressure so people stop being practicing, instead becoming fully secularised or even ex-muslims. Make it easier to leave than to join. Reduced foreign influence on the mosques, etc
- no multiple nationalities, especially not for politicians. You can't serve more than one master. If you migrate here with the intention of staying for ever, then you need to fully choose for your new country. If you can't: stay an expat and return home once your permit runs out.
- and a last one: specifically for Belgium. So you know it'll absolutely never happen. The various governments we have need to become more efficient in what they do, they also need to do less since it's not the task of government to do everything, and they need to stop wasting our money (highest or second highest taxed country in the world when it comes to people working, and the second biggest deficit in the EU this year. Percentage wise that is. It still comes down to about 30 billion euros iirc.). Meaning we basically have no reserves when another crisis hits, and the - especially- francofone left parties are so retrograde and extreme that reforms are basically impossible.


I'm well aware that migration is of all times and that a bit of migration is usually a good thing to shake things up a bit and keep the cultures vibrant. But I'm also of the opinion that what we're having since at least the start of the century is not a little migration but mass migration. And of that I'm less convinced it's a boon, more like a burden, since I'm not certain that there are any mass migrations in history that were of a positive nature to the people on the receiving end during the event. Centuries later, when things had been restored, maybe. But at the moment itself: wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Anyways, I'll stop. I've probably lost my train of thought a few times so I'm not even sure any of it'll make sense.

----

*remember that I live in a country where an immigrant can live a relatively comfortable life just on stipends from the state without have to work a day in his life. Same goes for more than a few natives too, by the way. One extreme case from a few years ago was a person who never worked a day in his life having a bigger pension than someone who worked a full career or 40ish years. Like I said: extreme cases, but it shows what is possible.

**For example, Fouad Ahadir from the socialist party, voted against the law that would outlaw slaughter without stunning the animals first (something that is done in Indonesia, only the biggest muslim country in the world). His reasoning was that he couldn't believe God would allow the animals to suffer. Religious obsurantism in other words.

*** Yes, I know I'm not that big a fan of the EU as it is and I'm also not a big fan of a EU state. This being cause by the way the EU is, which doesn't give many any confidence in a potential EU federal state. They'd fuck up. Doesn't mean that should the EU improve it's quality of politics greatly I wouldn't be amenable to backing a federal EU then. (I hope I didn't mess up my is and isn'ts here...)

****In case of Ukraine: we're basically the region.

***** Migration towards Europe also shouldn't be a method autocratic countries can use to get rid of their dissenters and thus stave of collapse of their faulty regimes. If the people there want better regimes they'll have to put in the work. We generally can't do it for them since we'd be accused of 'imperialism' if we did.

[Jacob]

Thank you for that. I didn't ask you because I wanted to argue about it - so I'm not about to construct a long reply or argument or anything. I'm sure there's stuff I disagree with or can question, but that wasn't the point. Mostly in the past our political exchanges have been at the level of sarcastic oneliners and I wanted to move beyond that.

I'm going to finish reading your post, digest and think. I may or may not come back with comments or questions, but appreciate the effort you went to in laying it out like that.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Thank you for that. I didn't ask you because I wanted to argue about it - so I'm not about to construct a long reply or argument or anything. I'm sure there's stuff I disagree with or can question, but that wasn't the point. Mostly in the past our political exchanges have been at the level of sarcastic oneliners and I wanted to move beyond that.

I'm going to finish reading your post, digest and think. I may or may not come back with comments or questions, but appreciate the effort you went to in laying it out like that.

no problem.
There's no need to reply to it if you don't have the time or desire to do so.
And I'm well aware of my sarcasm and cynicism and one liners. Not always endearing (probably mostly not). heh
I've worked with enough people from all over the globe, including those following a number of versions of islam, to be more pragmatic in real life.

[Solmyr]

Wilders having trouble as not even other right-wingers like him.

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20231129-huge-blow-for-wilders-as-major-party-snubs-coalition

[HVC]

So what happens if he can't form a coalition?

[Maladict]

We're not there yet. This is mostly just posturing before the real talks start. The other parties can probably get pretty large concessions from Wilders and he's probably willing to give them for a chance to form a coalition.
If it really doesn't work, coalition options without the PVV will be looked at, or a minority government.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

There's been post-election poll apparently. Seems like it might be a bad idea to piss of the electorate by playing polical games. On the other hand: it's still early days and the Dutch electorate is one of the most volatile in western Europe.

[Josquius]

Isn't this the normal way things work after elections there?

Any sign of an alternative coalition building elsewhere excluding the fascists?

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Isn't this the normal way things work after elections there?

Any sign of an alternative coalition building elsewhere excluding the fascists?

Jeez, it's not because you disagree with them that they are fascist.

[Josquius]

Isn't this the normal way things work after elections there?

Any sign of an alternative coalition building elsewhere excluding the fascists?

Jeez, it's not because you disagree with them that they are fascist.

Ah, "You just call everyone who disagrees with you a fascist".
Interesting how this always comes out when fascy views are being called fascist and its just never an issue with other disagreeable groups.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Isn't this the normal way things work after elections there?

Any sign of an alternative coalition building elsewhere excluding the fascists?

Jeez, it's not because you disagree with them that they are fascist.

Ah, "You just call everyone who disagrees with you a fascist".
Interesting how this always comes out when fascy views are being called fascist and its just never an issue with other disagreeable groups.

Problem is that you think everyone is a fascist. Ever wondered if you're not the one with the extremist views?

[Josquius]

Isn't this the normal way things work after elections there?

Any sign of an alternative coalition building elsewhere excluding the fascists?

Jeez, it's not because you disagree with them that they are fascist.

Ah, "You just call everyone who disagrees with you a fascist".
Interesting how this always comes out when fascy views are being called fascist and its just never an issue with other disagreeable groups.

Problem is that you think everyone is a fascist. Ever wondered if you're not the one with the extremist views?

Except that evidently isn't true.
My distaste for Margaret Thatcher is well known I believe? Do I call her a fascist?

[garbon]

Isn't this the normal way things work after elections there?

Any sign of an alternative coalition building elsewhere excluding the fascists?

Jeez, it's not because you disagree with them that they are fascist.

Ah, "You just call everyone who disagrees with you a fascist".
Interesting how this always comes out when fascy views are being called fascist and its just never an issue with other disagreeable groups.

Problem is that you think everyone is a fascist. Ever wondered if you're not the one with the extremist views?

Except that evidently isn't true.
My distaste for Margaret Thatcher is well known I believe? Do I call her a fascist?

He is just upset because you are ragging on his dreadful views.

[Maladict]

Isn't this the normal way things work after elections there?

Yeah, still well within the realm of normalcy.

Any sign of an alternative coalition building elsewhere excluding the fascists?

No, and there won't be at this stage. All leftist parties are banking on Wilders trying and failing.