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Comment by generic_user | Hacker News Reader

There is a coordinated media attempt across the EU to spin positive 'messaging' onto the refugee crisis. But make no mistake this is a total disaster for the refugees, member state Citizens and the EU bureaucracy. The EU has been exposed once again as an incompetent overreaching poorly though dangerously romantic mistake.

Continuous failures of ECB policy, the collapse of Greece under the EURO, the PIGS in serious trouble, add a totally uncontrolled mass refugee crisis, the entire EU project looks like an incompetent bureaucratic mess.

The damage is so great that Even China and Russia have managed to claim the moral high ground and quit rightly blame the crisis on the EU itself and NATO adventurism in Syria.

I do not think rehashing WW2 German collective guilt as a media spectacle is going to change the perceptions of anyone paying attention to this horrible situation.

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The EU is winning this.

It shows that it goes by the humanitarian principles it claims to have. Refugees fleeing from a humanitarian crisis are allowed to stay and to become citizens. People fleeing from a bad economic situation are not.

> But make no mistake this is a total disaster for the refugees, member state Citizens and the EU bureaucracy.

It's a disaster for the refugees. But the disaster is in Syria.

> The damage is so great that Even China and Russia have managed to claim the moral high ground and quit rightly blame the crisis on the EU itself and NATO adventurism in Syria.

You are confused. The US and Turkey are in NATO. But the EU has nearly no involvement in Syria. Besides taking on the fleeing population, that is.

As a European I hope the EU is not guided by blind faith in abstract ideas, but is acting pragmatically and to the interest of its own people instead.

>> The EU is winning this. It shows that it goes by the humanitarian principles it claims to have. Refugees fleeing from a humanitarian crisis are allowed to stay and to become citizens. People fleeing from a bad economic situation are not.

Actually the "refugees fleeing from a humanitarian crisis are allowed to stay" only if they manage to cross the borders which EU still works hard to close:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YO0IRsfrPQ4

There is a reason why people must pay the illegal boats to reach Europe across the sea.

I don't mind the positive messaging, and to be precise the number of refugees is still small. There are millions that have been driven out of syria in neighboring countries like jordan.

However the european media are doing a bad job at telling people the whole story in simple terms about how syria got in this mess and what are the ways to end the crisis where it began (military intervention? who knows). It shouldn't have to take horrible pictures of refugees and children for the people in europe to start talking seriously about this crisis. Focusing on who's going to take more refugees is short-sighted politicking that is benefiting only the far-right parties.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/16979186

> the european media are doing a bad job at telling people the whole story in simple terms about how syria got in this mess

The BBC text linked "conveniently" ignores some influential players and even the recent history:

Compare:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-b...

The Washington Post, September 11, 2013: "CIA begins weapons delivery to Syrian rebels"

And:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_...

"The group gained prominence after it drove Iraqi government forces out of key cities in western Iraq in an offensive initiated in early 2014."

Also note, the state as of October 2014:

http://www.quora.com/Where-is-ISIL-getting-their-ammunition

(which refers to: http://www.conflictarm.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Dispat... )

"Iraqi and Syrian government forces and moderate rebels now face a significant number of ISIL fighters equipped from huge stocks of captured American-made weapons. The report states that the majority of ISIL ammo recovered in Iraq appears traceable to these stocks."

All true, but you rarely find an article that mentions the whole story in simple terms, instead of artifacts.

The actual simple terms would be too inconvenient to state them directly and certainly not many people would be prepared to even consider the story:

For example starting with this ("Remembering 1960s Afghanistan"):

http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2013/01/28/podlich-afgh...

and then this ("Zbigniew Brzezinski Taliban Pakistan Afghanistan pep talk 1979"):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYvO3qAlyTg

Zbigniew Brzezinski was the National Security Advisor to the US President Jimmy Carter at that time.

http://www.aljazeera.com/archive/2003/04/2008410113842420760...

"When former US National Security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski bragged about prompting the Soviet Union to invade Afghanistan so that it could get its "Vietnam" he was not making an empty boast."

"Brzezinski said he convinced Carter to sign the first directive for secret aid to opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul on July 3, 1979 in an effort to goad the Red Army into invading, in a 1998 interview."

Related, a little better covered: who are the people trying to enter? According to some estimates there are 12 million (!) people who had to flee from the places where they lived just in Syria. More than half of all the people in the country!

Probably out of 4 asylum seekers 2 are from Syria, 1 from Afghanistan and 1 from other areas, often Africa.

Also note that most of the original inhabitants of Syria are very young, as around 25 years ago there were twice as less people there:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Syria

The demographics of Afghanistan is comparable.

What I don't understand is why us Europeans have to pay for the adventurism of the NATO; I wish all the refugees moved to Israel and the US, to be honest.

Once again Putin is right, and this uncovers how a permanent conflict at the arab world is in the interest of the NATO and the US/Israel-aligned world overall.

You do realize that Europe is part of the US aligned world and the only thing preventing Europe from becoming Putin's playground is NATO?

I would rather allow Europe to become Putin's playground than to allow the current situation to continue.

I hope you get your wish.

Aligned? That's why they won't allow us Europeans to vote NO to TTIP and they have to discuss and approve it in secrecy. The citizens of Europe are not aligned with anyone. We've had enough with two WW.

Holy fuck people get confused. Exactly how are Americans stopping you from voting? You don't think Europe and the US are aligned? Hate can be blinding. Has a there ever been even a single EU candidate that ran on an anti-US platform? If not why not?

Because you can't win an election without the blessing of the media, and guess who controls it.

> Exactly how are Americans stopping you from voting?

Who said “Americans”? I’m just saying “they”, and “they” are the bribed politicians [0] (both in the US and Europe). “They” don’t want us to vote [1] because they know We (the citizens) are not aligned with everything that USA or ANYONE says and does.

> Hate can be blinding. Has a there ever been even a single EU candidate that ran on an anti-US platform?

LOL, who is telling you that being neutral is being anti-american? chillax dude. I’m just anti-war and anti-media-bullshit, like any libertarian able to read between the lines (even american ones [2]).

Get your facts straight.

[0] http://venturebeat.com/2015/09/04/creative-commons-founder-l...

[1] http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/09/ttip-biggest-th...

[2] http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/

It is clear who tou meant when you said they, but I can see why you want to backtrack. And despite popular confusion it will be voted on so Europeans will have only their own government to blame if it passes.

There is no vote on TPIP because there is no TPIP. When negotiators agree on what TPIP is, so that there is actually something to vote on, it will be voted on by whatever body normally votes on laws in most countries.

What I don't get is why being a war refugee entitles you to claim asylum in any country, even if you passed several peaceful countries in the process. It would make much more sense to have refugees claim asylum in neighboring countries, to maximize cultural coherence, ease a move back home once the country can rebuild, and to stop incentivizing people to risk their life going from a safe country to another safe country with more benefits.

If any war in the world will result in mass migration to just the richest countries with the most elaborate welfare states, then you'll just end up with fewer rich welfare states in the long run. Be careful what you wish for.

The rich countries in the region are more interested in slave labor rather than desperate refugees. The refugees are making the rational choice here, i don't believe they are driven out of some greedy interest.

Please keep your tinfoil-hat antisemitism off HN.

How is it coordinated?

It is coordinated in the Press. The EU has its own Press agents that work with all Member state media and the international Press Including the USA. When the global press put a front page picture of a drowned Syrian Child on there covers it is a Coordinated release. Media Messaging is the bread and butter of the News Media. This story is part of Messageing to set the 'tone'.

The EU has its own Press agents that work with all Member state media and the international Press Including the USA.

It really hurts to read this kind of drivel on HN. This is not how the press works. "The press" is not an uniform entity. This is not how any of this works.

Please take your conspiracy theories elsewhere.

"The EU has its own Press agents that work with all Member state media and the international Press Including the USA."

That is probably true but I don't understand how the recent pictures of a Syrian child washing ashore could be a part of a "coordinated release"?

It looks quite coordinated because the same press was raging against eastern european immigrants, workers and gypsies for years before and accused them of parasitism and now in one, two months, with appeal to emotions, the new immigrants which have way higher chances of being hard to assimilate and drain some budgets are portrayed in rather a positive light. The father who recklessly took his family from the relative safety of Turkey to death on an overcrowded boat for the elusive european mirage is portrayed as innocent victim..

That the EU has its own Press agents that work with all Member state media and the international Press Including the USA' is simply a truism. Policy emerges from Brussels and is widely reported across the media in Europe and the US.

Certainly the EU is heading for political and economic union and to that extent its report of itself is a conspiracy if you want to call it that but it doesn't really meet the definition.

Curious to know why it hurts! Btw stuff that arrives on HN that isn't appreciated is normally simply ignored. That's democratic choice; offering directives is a tad authoritarian, is it not?

Curious to know why it hurts!

It hurts because the claim of conformist media (german: "gleichgeschaltete Medien") is a standard neonazi narrative of the dumbest kind.

There is no "coordinated media spin across the EU" because the EU is a conglomerate of 28 nation states, many of which are in strong disagreement about which kind of media spin they would prefer for the current situation.

Look at the mainstream media in Germany, Austria and Hungary and you'll see very different spins and emphasis. The internet makes this very easy to do, there really is no excuse for naive conspiracy theories anymore.

That's democratic choice; offering directives is a tad authoritarian, is it not?

My tolerance towards stupidity ends when it is directed against people who can't defend themselves. In case you missed whose horn generic_user is tooting then I suggest to take a brief glance at his comment history.

You should do some more research. It would be irresponsible if the EU did not have a large media apparatus. The reporting has been mixed. Some of it is overt and some covert such as direct funding for EU messaging campaigns concerning democratic referendums and so forth. 'Conspiracy Theory' is a bit of red herring in post Snowden age.

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/culturehousedaily/2014/02/the-m...

Actually kinda does, the cartels that formed in the late 19th early 20th century are still around, you only have a handful of large news agencies in the world which produce most of wire news.

The Reuters-HAVAS-Wolf EU cartel is still alive and kicking even tho that Wolf's agency was swallowed by the Nazi party in the 30's. Benito Mussolini's Agenzia Stefani is still alive and well as Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata (ANSA) which is one of the lading news agencies in the world.

If you look at the big agencies, Reuters HAVAS(AFP), and AP you'll see that they produce the vast majority of news reports that you read today, through their partners and subsidiaries they also own/represent/control/influence/hold hands/what ever with most small scale news agencies in the world including a fair deal of national ones.

Will the BBC do some investigative reporting? yes it will, but the majority of the news that the BBC reports comes from the wire they'll might add some facts to it and some flare but they report it as it is, including in the same way it came through the wire so if there was already an opinion or a tone impressed on it it will be reported as such.

This isn't some conspiracy theory this is reality, it doesn't mean that there's a cabal out there that wants to control everyone with old white men sitting in dark rooms smoking cigars, but it also means that even unintentional influence on the nature of a story gets amplified since that story will be reported 10000 times over, this gets aggravated even more considering that the big news agencies rely almost completely on local resources now so whether it's Gaza, Syria, Ukraine, or DC you'll get local reporters producing news with all the bias which is involved in it that will then be distributed to 10,000's of news outlets in the world and reported as recieved.

You really need to study the question. For example, in France, the medias are owned mainly my weapon manufaturers:

EADS, Dassault, Rothschild, Bouygues and Alstom.

https://mondeenquestion.wordpress.com/2011/03/09/la-mainmise...

In other countries, it's similar: the press is owned by oligarchs who have big interests in having wars all over the place.

Who makes the most money out of the war in Syria? Who has interest in having the fighting going on there (and therefore the need to buy weapons and munitions, with GOLD!

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/14/isis-gold-silve...

It does seem to be though. Quite some time ago, there was about a week of articles every day in most German newspapers about refugees doing good things. Like finding money and giving it back and things like this. It was so obvious.

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