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The Forum > Article Comments > Asylum seekers: turning back the ocean tides > Comments

Asylum seekers: turning back the ocean tides : Comments

By Kellie Tranter, published 16/10/2013

When will western liberal democracies publicly concede the links between war, political and social unrest, economic deprivation and climate change, and asylum seekers.

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Kellie

You must be so irritated that the Abbott Government is exhibiting a low key, professional approach to illegal immigrants who come by boat.

Yes Kellie - we know other countries in the world have to save illegal immigrants who are ripped off by organised criminals called people-smugglers.

I see your About The Author description (below your article) lists you as "a member of the WikiLeaks Party National Council".

You must be joking. Wikileaks imploded before last month's (Australian) Election.

Here's Your Leader's - that resident of the Peruvian Embassy London's attempted electoral funny http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg3-b8LZwNc . Its a joke - Assange mimes John Farnharm's voice.

Why do you follow Assange?

Are you also impressed by that dear little would-be trannie, Chelsea Manning, as well?

Planta
Posted by plantagenet, Wednesday, 16 October 2013 8:50:52 AM
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"gathering support for a co-operative regional, if not international, approach to dealing with asylum seekers and refugees fairly and above all with humanity?"

Did you notice that Kellie's impassioned call for a solution doesn't actually propose any solution? Presumably "gathering support for a co-operative regional, if not international approach" means the political leaders will get together for a gab-fest in Bali, sipping pina coladas, and then leave the Sir Humphreys of this world to iron out the details.

But hang on. An "international approach to dealing with asylum-seekers" is what we've already got. It's call the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.

Any new approach must either abnegate, continue or amend that Convention.

If it abnegates it, presumably Kellie will then rail against the inhumanity of it. If it continues, we're back to the original problem.

If it amends it, what should the amendments be, Kellie?

I think Australia should withdraw from the UN Convention. This would in no way restrict Australia's ability to accept refugees. It would allow the government to do what both major parties are trying to do, which is, set the numbers and conditions for onshore refugee applicants, just as they do for offshore refugees, and all non-refugee immigrants. It would enable the hundreds of millions now being wasted on Manus Island to go to better causes. The problem is not "people-smugglers", the problem is the Convention.

But it's precisely the so-called "progressives" [translation: adorers of big government] who are its main supporters.

A rather unimpressive piece of tartuffery Kellie, even if we disregard (which we don't), the blatant dishonesty you display about global warming. (But if it's not dishonest, then where is that peer-reviewed paper proving the existence of the tropospheric hotspot on which the entire theory depends? The personal vilification and appeal to absent authority with which the global warming cult inevitably responds to my call for evidence, only proves the skeptic argument.)
Posted by Jardine K. Jardine, Wednesday, 16 October 2013 8:54:30 AM
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CORRECTION

Mr Assange is a long term resident of the ECUADORIAN Embassy, who has not set foot in Australia for years.
Posted by plantagenet, Wednesday, 16 October 2013 8:57:10 AM
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There may be links Kellie, but not of our making.
Moreover, they need to be addressed at origin and can't ever be fixed by a few moving and weakening the whole.
Besides, moving and taking the very beliefs and mental attitudes/traditional enmity with you, that created the problems in the first place, resolves nothing.
Take Shri Lanka as a classic example.
The Tamils live but a few scant miles from one of the largest Tamil populations on earth, yet choose to all but sail halfway around the world in rotting hulks, in the mistaken belief, that soft touch countries like OZ, will keep swallowing their line about war crimes and persecution.
Neither side are blameless, and we simply can't allow war criminals to escape or postpone due justice by migrating, as did so many Nazis.
The war is over and recent northern elections saw an overwhelming result for Tamils.
I'm not sure we have improved anything in Afghanistan with our involvement.
Even so, the only way for that situation to be fixed, is if the oppressed turn on their oppressors, together!
And they simply cannot do that standing alone as small villages, divided by ethnic culture or some such whimsical nonsense!
How can we help those who refuse to help themselves.
Its history repeating itself again and again!
We simply have to stop fighting other nations wars for them.
Why should we get in between armed "warriors" and the virtually helpless women they want to kill, simply because they refused unwanted sexual advances or some such, or because they stood up as singularly courageous individuals, to demand basic human rights!
The money saved by turning back economic migrants, could be redirected at want, which would likely result in much better outcomes and far more friends.
If they want to come, let them seek an invite, and legal entry as properly documented migrants.
That result is hardly likely to improve the financial position of income earning, legalistic asylum seeker advocates, Kellie!
Rhrosty.
Posted by Rhrosty, Wednesday, 16 October 2013 12:08:26 PM
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When will western liberal IDEOLOGUES publicly concede the links between political and social unrest, economic DAMAGE and climate change, and THE UNCONTROLLED INFLUX OF CULTURALLY UNSUITABLE asylum seekers?

Hmmmm?
Posted by divine_msn, Wednesday, 16 October 2013 4:15:34 PM
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Hi Kellie,

you may like to review this article by William Bourke and Dr Jane O'Sullivan in which they identify the key driver of those seeking asylum.
http://www.independentaustralia.net/2013/politics/overpopulation-drives-boats/

A big part of the problem as the authors above highlight is:
"Refugees are not a major source of Australia’s population growth, yet. You would never know it by listening to the major parties obsessing about asylum seekers, but they are still only around 10 per cent of our total permanent immigration program. The population growth agenda, which both the Coalition and Labor are keen to keep out of public discussion, is mainly about the big end of town’s insatiable appetite for ever more customers, and of course an abundance of cheaper and more compliant labour."

So, what we have for decades is a largely irrelevant distraction being marketed by the major voices as the reason for the growing dissent amongst Australians until as the article continues:
"Having said that, the scale of our humanitarian program must be contained. Without doing so, according to Foreign Minister Bob Carr, we could end up facing over 200,000 unauthorised arrivals per year. This is equivalent to the total size of Australia’s enormous permanent ‘legal’ immigration program. In a climate where government austerity is hurting many of the most vulnerable Australians, they have a right to know that asylum seekers and refugees do not command an open cheque book."

Dr Jane O'Sullivan amongst others have done a lot of research which makes a very strong (perhaps almost watertight case) for the argument that the main focus of our foreign aid should be in providing family planning and education for countries facing these issues while also allowing our population to stabilise to relieve growing pressure here. This focus (far more so than development) would offer a path which is win-win.
Posted by Matt Moran, Wednesday, 16 October 2013 4:45:26 PM
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yep well lets face it Kellie those rotten Brits and especially Christians who set up schools, hospitals, unis, infrastructure have certainly created the best environments in the world to live. Most immigrants who came here legally are grateful for that. The new breed who pay people smugglers thousands don't seem to have the same gratitude. In some cases they want us to adopt the values of the countries that they fled from.
Posted by runner, Wednesday, 16 October 2013 4:49:05 PM
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I would so love to be able to make the Kellie Tranter's of this world go & live in the middle of some of our suburbs destroyed by her boat people.

These idiots are never going to see the way their generosity destroys the lives of those who have to live with it.

Nothing like an elite activist to make me want to throw up.
Posted by Hasbeen, Wednesday, 16 October 2013 5:20:31 PM
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divine_msn. I take your point on "cultural suitability and attach an article you may find of interest that reinforces your point.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/the-gang-religion-of-islam.html
Posted by Prompete, Wednesday, 16 October 2013 5:24:06 PM
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Kellie, between Rhrosty, Jardine, Runner and Hasbeen, you must wonder whether you have strayed into the local asylum.

Please continue to provide OLO with your well-written, intelligent, thought-provoking articles.

The OLO audience is divided into the haves and the havenots. I'm referring to intelligence of course.

Cheers!
Posted by David G, Wednesday, 16 October 2013 6:31:29 PM
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Well yes David G

Kellie rights well, with heart, even if I disagree with many (most?) of her values and opinions :)

Regards

Pete
Posted by plantagenet, Wednesday, 16 October 2013 7:37:27 PM
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Ms Tranter, as usual, wearing her cranky pants, pronounces:

"At its present level the ongoing "debate" about asylum seekers is an expression of the decay in both our thinking and in our society more generally."

How wearying it is to read from privileged elites this mantra that we, the great unwashed, who do not achieve the moral heights of Ms Tranter and her ilk, are a part of a decaying, inhumane, oppressive, or whatever other florid description pops into their fevered brows, society.

The great bulk of refugees in the world and to Australia are Muslims.

Islam is inimical to Western secular societies. The experience in Europe is conclusive that Islam represents a threat to the social, legal and political structure of Western nations. That Tranter ignores this and in fact by default justifies the invasion by Islam of the West means the only conclusion which can be reached is that Tranter is betraying her own nation and society.

That Islam is fundamentally anti-progressive and regularly and systemically usurps human rights, particular those which accrue to women like Tranter seems not to occur to her. Such self-destructive behaviour is more than witless; it is a perfect example of moral egotism destroying the very system which allows such self-indulgence to exist.

Tranter's smug, stupid essays are part of a long suicide note by the West.
Posted by cohenite, Wednesday, 16 October 2013 7:40:21 PM
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>>Australia, behind as usual, has at least recognised the need for a regional solution.<<

Here in Germany, during the discussion after the recent Lampedusa tragedies, Australia, US and Canada are being offered as models on which to craft a legislation or regulation - going somehow beyond Dublin III - concerning immigration to Europe.

>>Kellie's impassioned call for a solution doesn't actually propose any solution<<

Exactly, the problem is not how to best voice one’s indignation - at boat people, at people-smugglers, at complacent Australians or Europeans, at this or that nation, political party or government. The real problem is how to find a workable solution. That will be easy neither in Australia nor Europe, where the problem is aggravated by internal inequalities (and envies) given by Europe's division into still souvereign nations.
Posted by George, Wednesday, 16 October 2013 7:59:22 PM
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>>The real problem is how to find a workable solution

I'd suggest the real problem George is too few understand that the solution was actually proposed a long time ago by Martin Luther King:
"There is no human circumstance more tragic than the persisting existence of a harmful condition for which a remedy is readily available. Family planning, to relate population to world resources, is practical and necessary. Unlike plagues of the dark ages or contemporary diseases we do not yet understand, the modern plague of overpopulation is soluble by means we have discovered and with resources we possess.

What is lacking is not sufficient knowledge of the solution but universal consciousness of the gravity of the problem and education of the billions who are its victims."

But what we also know is that the overwhelming majority actually prefer smaller families when armed with the information and means to control their fertility and further, that lower fertility levels are a pre-requisite to economic prospoerity. Tunsia and Botswana are two amazing success stories in this respect.

The solution however, needs to be win-win and end to end as proposed by the Stable Population Party: http://www.populationparty.org.au/
Posted by Matt Moran, Wednesday, 16 October 2013 8:26:58 PM
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Cohenite: The great bulk of refugees in the world and to Australia are Muslims. Islam is inimical to Western secular societies. The experience in Europe is conclusive that Islam represents a threat to the social, legal and political structure of Western nations.

Going on what has happened in the United States and the European Union, we could expect the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), a bloc of 57 Muslim countries, to spearhead The Istanbul Process : its explicit aim is to enshrine in international law a global ban on all critical scrutiny of Islam and/or Islamic Sharia law . See

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/2734/criminalize-free-speech
Posted by Raycom, Wednesday, 16 October 2013 11:18:30 PM
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There is one, and only one, reason for "asylum seekers", Kellie Tranter. There are 100 million new people being added to the world population every year and all of that increase is coming from Third world countries where they breed like flies and don't care.

You must have lived in your ivory tower suburb for too long if you can't figure out hat Australia will turn into a third world country ourselves if we took in only 1% of these people every year.

The Australian government has a mandate, nay, an INSTRUCTION form its electorate to stop the boats, and no amount of moral posturing is going to change that. As our experience with Vietnamese and Lebanese has shown, refugees make poor citizens but great drug pushers and drive by shooters. As an Australian, your first priority should be towards your own people and the society you live in.
Posted by LEGO, Thursday, 17 October 2013 3:45:03 AM
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>>smaller families when armed with the information and means to control their fertility and further, that lower fertility levels are a pre-requisite to economic prospoerity.<<

I am sure, Matt Moran, that this suggestion of a WORKABLE solution to their problem will delight e.g. the Somali refugees in Lampedusa who just survived a capsized boat, and before that escaped Islamist thugs in their home country. Similarly the European (and Australian) legislators looking for a workable solution that would allow for a humane treatment of these people without at the same time be seen in Africa and Middle East as an invitation to come and improve their living conditions in numbers that Europe (and Australia) could not handle.
Posted by George, Thursday, 17 October 2013 5:26:03 AM
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>>I am sure, Matt Moran, that this suggestion of a WORKABLE solution to their problem will delight e.g. the Somali refugees in Lampedusa who just survived a capsized boat, and before that escaped Islamist thugs in their home country...

George, the issue here is that it's precisely because the warnings on overpopulation have been ignored that these situations are getting progressively worse. Bear in mind that boat arrivals have been going on for decades so this is not a new issue and aren't going to go away anytime soon.

Further, boat arrivals are escalating dramatically. Population pressures invariably splinter along cultural lines as very few see things from a population perspective - after all, the major institutionalized religions have been engaging in population control for millennia by poisoning the water on family planning efforts - this of course hasn't been helped by earlier governments engaging in draconian policies on one hand, and other governments using boat arrivals as a political football.

The problem now is that the issue has been left unchecked for so long, that the numbers are becoming unmanageable and the vulnerable people in the wealthier countries increasingly neglected. Subsequently, you end up in a situation that we have - between a rock and a hard place.

But there is no solution that doesn't start with addressing population pressures. To give some relative costing, for what it costs to process a single person in a developed country, thousands can immediately be helped in situ (and subsequently orders of magnitude more).

Working in this way firstly gives hope in these countries where for the most part none is available, secondly, it has been shown how quickly purchasing power increases with declining fertility rates (and we are talking from 6 children down to 2). This coupled with current programs in place would start to make a difference very quickly. Of course it would have been better if world leaders had acted decades ago but far too many think it's development that lifts people out of poverty when we now know that it's the lowering of fertility rates.
Posted by Matt Moran, Thursday, 17 October 2013 6:05:32 AM
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>>I am sure, Matt Moran, that this suggestion of a WORKABLE solution to their problem will delight e.g. the Somali refugees in Lampedusa who just survived a capsized boat, and before that escaped Islamist thugs in their home country...

George, the issue here is that it's precisely because the warnings on overpopulation have been ignored that these situations are getting progressively worse. Bear in mind that boat arrivals have been going on for decades so this is not a new issue and it isn't going to go away anytime soon.

Further, boat arrivals are escalating dramatically. Population pressures invariably splinter along cultural lines as very few see things from a population perspective - after all, the major institutionalized religions have been engaging in population control for millennia by poisoning the water on family planning efforts - this of course hasn't been helped by earlier governments engaging in draconian policies on one hand, and other governments using boat arrivals as a political football.

The problem now is that the issue has been left unchecked for so long, that the numbers are becoming unmanageable and the vulnerable people in the wealthier countries increasingly neglected. Subsequently, you end up in a situation that we have - between a rock and a hard place.

But there is no solution that doesn't start with addressing population pressures. To give some relative costing, for what it costs to process a single person in a developed country, thousands can immediately be helped in situ (and subsequently orders of magnitude more).

Working in this way firstly gives hope in these countries where for the most part none is available, secondly, it has been shown how quickly purchasing power increases with declining fertility rates (and we are talking from 6 children down to 2). This coupled with current programs in place would start to make a difference very quickly. Of course it would have been better if world leaders had acted decades ago but far too many think it's development that lifts people out of poverty when we now know that it's the lowering of fertility rates.
Posted by Matt Moran, Thursday, 17 October 2013 6:07:22 AM
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<< I think Australia should withdraw from the UN Convention. This would in no way restrict Australia's ability to accept refugees. It would allow the government to do what both major parties are trying to do, which is, set the numbers and conditions for onshore refugee applicants, just as they do for offshore refugees, and all non-refugee immigrants. It would enable the hundreds of millions now being wasted on Manus Island to go to better causes. >>

Yes! Well said Jardine.
Posted by Ludwig, Thursday, 17 October 2013 1:38:14 PM
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Matt Moran,

I do not necessarily disagree with what you wrote as “the issue here”. Only that it is useless as an immediately applicable (workable) solution to the problem of the present refugees in Lampedusa (and elsewhere in Europe) horrified at the threat of being forcefully “repatriated”, coupled with the economic and social problems of the receiving countries with limited capabilities to absorb large numbers of them.
Posted by George, Thursday, 17 October 2013 11:05:46 PM
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One amusing thing in all this is the fact that the more successful Ms. Tranter is in imposing her favored folk, the Muslims on us, the sooner she will be banished to the kitchen, wearing a tent.

These fools think that as elites they will be treated differently, but they will be the first to be subdued, once Sharia law is established. Girls & education are not permitted.
Posted by Hasbeen, Thursday, 17 October 2013 11:55:25 PM
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"George, the issue here is that it's precisely because the warnings on overpopulation have been ignored that these situations are getting progressively worse."

Matt, I don't think that's true. I have done a lot of refugee cases in my time and in fact have not long come back from doing cases on Manus Island. This makes me privy to all their reasons for leaving their country.

The cause of refugee status is a risk of being persecuted. It's got nothing to do with overpopulation per se. For example, in Afghanistan the Pashtuns, who are Sunnis, hate the Hazaras, who are Shias. It's a straight-out case of racial and religious prejudice.

In Pakistan, the conflict is between the Sunnis and the Shias.

In Iran, the government is run by God's representatives on earth, and apparently God wants them to hang and beat and torture people for all sorts of religious offences, such as homosexuality, drugs, apostasy, fornication, adultery and so on.

In Sri Lanka, there's an age old ethnic conflict between the Sinhalese and the Tamils.

The flow of refugees is caused by racial, religious, political and social intolerance.

It's facile to say it's population pressure. The population of New York or Glasgow is much higher than in the hills of Afghanistan or rural Sri Lanka, but we don't have refugees coming from those places of "overpopulation" do we?
Posted by Jardine K. Jardine, Friday, 18 October 2013 8:59:27 PM
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The two aren't mutually exclusive Jardine indeed we are by and large trying to elevate the status of women from entrenched patriarchal cultures. But I think you might like to view the film Mother: caring for 7 billion. For the most part, it's that people don't know any better as we see in Egypt. But things can turn around very quickly when the right environment is fostered.
Posted by Matt Moran, Friday, 18 October 2013 9:24:36 PM
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Jardine,

You are right so far as immediate causes are concerned, but why have ethnic and religious communities that have more or less coexisted for ages suddenly turned on each other? Afghanistan has a fertility rate of 5.1 births per woman, and it was 6.7 back in 2008. Their population has a 29 year doubling time. Whether a country is overpopulated depends on its resources, including water and agricultural land, and the level of technology, unless people can produce goods or services that they can trade for food, as in the case of New York and Glasgow. People per square kilometer is irrelevant, or Antarctica and the Sahara would be seriously underpopulated.

When food and other resources run short due to population growth, people are tempted to drive off or kill their neighbours if they can. Societies fracture most easily along ethnic or religious lines, as these provide good rallying points when people are joining up sides, although other excuses can always be found if these won't do. There is a lot of literature on this. See Steven Pinker's Better Angels of our Nature" for a summary and a lot of references. Good sources, containing first hand accounts of excavations, are "Constant Battles" by Prof. Steven LeBlanc (Archaeology, Harvard) and "War Before Civilization" by Prof. Lawrence Keeley (Archaeology, University of Chicago). From the latter book (p. 91)

"My own first excavation training was on a prehistoric village site on the San Francisco Bay in California. Thousand-year-old skeletons with obsidian arrowheads embedded in the bones, missing heads, and other signs of violent death were so common that our excavation crew referred to burials as 'bad sights'."
Posted by Divergence, Sunday, 20 October 2013 1:32:00 PM
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The Hazaras are the remnants of Ghengis Khans garrisons who maintained the integrity of his empire by exterminating anyone who lived within 500 miles of the Mongol borders. When the Khan's troops entered Afghanistan, they decided that the entire population of Afghanistan were within the death zone and they went around killing everybody they could catch. The Shiites and Sunnis who live in Afghanistan still consider it to be their Holocaust and they understandably are not well disposed to the ancestors of the Khan who committed genocide on them.

One point I would like to make. Whichever branch of Islam is on top at any time will immediately go about persecuting the others in its need to be on top. The Wahhabis and Shiites, and Alawites and Sunnis all persecute each other and kill each other off within those areas that they control. When the Hazaras in Afghanistan were on top, they were most definitely killing everybody else off.

How is this therefore Australia's problem? Somehow, we have to feel sorry for both the persecuted and the persecutors, even though who is what depends upon where they live. And we must let them launch an amphibious assault on our country and steal of emergency accommodation. So that when 100 homes are destroyed in a bushfire, like at Sydney last week, we have no emergency accommodation for our own people.

Bugger the lot of them. I always rail against moral absolutes, but there is one moral absolute I do believe in.

In Australia, Australians come first.
Posted by LEGO, Monday, 21 October 2013 3:49:49 AM
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Matt
“…we are by and large trying to elevate the status of women from entrenched patriarchal cultures.

Speak for yourself. I’ll believe you when anyone saying it is trying to liberate men from their traditional obligations under patriarchy.

Divergence
Yes all that’s true but they haven’t suddenly turned on each other. They’ve been persecuting each other in all these refugee-generating countries for centuries. For example in the 19th century, an Afghan king just declared open season on Hazaras, either to kill or enslave. And no doubt the reason is as Lego said: the Hazaras are the descendants of Genghis Khan.

No doubt if we lived in a cornucopia of unlimited resources, there would be no occasion for such conflicts.

But the point is, it’s not scarcity of resources per se that’s causing the refugee flows: it’s ethnic and religious persecution based on bad cultural habits. Plus being invaded by Yank empire and their cronies doesn’t help either.

If all of these territories were evacuated and an equivalent number of people who think like 19th century British or 21st century Australians were miraculously planted there, it wouldn’t look like Kabul , it would look like Sydney.

It’s cultural. They have a culture of bad government - very bad.
Posted by Jardine K. Jardine, Monday, 21 October 2013 7:40:05 AM
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Jardine,

The culture certainly has an influence, but Prof LeBlanc (see my last post) points out that many American Indian groups appeared very peaceful when the Europeans first contacted them, while the archaeological record showed widespread violence among their ancestors. The Europeans had introduced Old World diseases to which the Indians had no resistance, and these diseases swept through the New World, decimating groups that had never heard of Europeans. (There was even a theory that the depopulation of the New World was responsible for the Little Ice Age, as trees grew back over agricultural land and pulled carbon dioxide out of the air.) The Europeans also introduced new crops and livestock, as well as new agricultural technology, which increased the carrying capacity. Once resource pressure was off, the fighting often stopped, depending on the culture.

Similarly in Rwanda, the genocide was preceded by years of shrinking land holdings due to properties being subdivided among many children, and more immediately, a severe drought.

Attacking people is dangerous and best avoided, as they can fight back and you can be hurt or killed.

Your refugees are also not going to admit to you that they primarily came for "a better life", as this might defeat their asylum claims. This is not to say that some of them didn't experience severe persecution.
Posted by Divergence, Tuesday, 22 October 2013 1:59:13 PM
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