Mayor Peduto Wants The Syrian Refugees To Come To Pittsburgh (Washington: fingerprints, crime)

[UKyank]

Originally Posted by eschaton

Nothing in life is certain of course. But even if we did have a terrorist attack on a similar scope to Paris, accepting the refugees would be worth it, as long as more innocent Syrians were saved than Americans who died.

This is where we differ in opinion

[erieguy]

Agreed.

[sealie]

Originally Posted by dolores412

We have an extra room in our house. Is there any information on how we, as Pittsburghers, can help? I would be willing to take in a couple or small family of refugees to help.

Contact Catholic Charities, or Jewish Children/Family Services or the Pgh Literacy Council. They may not want your room but they can point you to other ways you can help. There are other resettlement agencies but I forgot the names.

[Uptown kid]

I never thought any ethnic group of minorities could scare whites more than blacks. The response of Middle Easterners to the City is like if Homewood/Wilkinsburg moved to Upper Saint Clair/Mt. Lebo & the Hill/Duquesne moved to North Allegheny/Pine Richland...

If there was a terrorist attack not involving planes where would it be?
If what happened in Batman The Darknight Rises occurs in real life than I'll donate to City Data if I'm hypothetically still around. Between as many of the gun packing white knights of the suburbs that we have, ex military plus trigger happy police... I'm sure any problem would be handled with gun power.
Most of the white, blue collar, yinzer dudes I grew up had more guns than all of the old heads I could name...
If what happened to Boston happened in a conservative suburban borough/township, I bet a stack that some vigilante would of, as we say in my neighborhood: catch a body...

[Craziaskowboi]

Originally Posted by PghYinzer

These terrorists had backgrounds and papers. Heck the majority of them were from France and Belgium, and the one accomplice looks like he came through with the refugees. The issue seems to be with the travel back and forth to Syria, which is not as much of a problem (still a problem though) in the US. Of the 23 people that have traveled to Syria from the US, nine were killed in Syria, nine are still there, and five were arrested upon their return. Europe has hundreds if not thousands of people traveling back and forth to Syria. Granted it only takes one, but the problem in Europe is drastically worse than here.

We do understand that the point of terrorism is to create fear and reaction amongst the targeted, and by reacting in fear and changing our very nature is letting them win. We don’t need to be stupid, but at the same time we cannot allow ourselves to lose sight of why they hate us to begin with, because of our beliefs such as freedom, tolerance, and genorosity. Sacrifice our beliefs and they win.

I've been debating people about this elsewhere, and I believe it's a matter of natural rights versus legal rights. The right to life, liberty and property are natural rights that can never be taken away from anybody. On the other hand, freedom of religion is a legal right, and those who abuse it deserve to have it taken away. The problem is, when militant Muslims practice their religion the way they choose, it results in massive loss of life, liberty and property, which means they're abusing the freedom of religion that the Western world affords them. Other people's natural rights supersede their legal rights. If Muslims want to practice their religion freely, then they can practice it peacefully, without violating the natural rights of others. If they refuse to do that, then they don't deserve the legal right to freedom of religion, because they brazenly interfere with other people's natural right to life, liberty and property.

[SteelCityRising]

Originally Posted by eschaton

Could people please stop presuming we're accepting a bunch of illiterate goat herders here. Around a quarter of the Syrian population are college graduates. There are signs that the percentage of refugees coming out of middle-class educated households is even higher, ranging from a third to over half depending upon the country. This makes a lot of sense, because you need money to pay smugglers to bring you out of Syria, and poor families there can barely afford food, let alone pay their way out of the country.

The bottom line is the Syrian refugees are just the sort of people that the U.S. needs. This is doubly true in a city like Pittsburgh, which still has all-to many distressed neighborhoods with a declining population that a new ethnic community could provide a shot in the arm to.

Sorry if you're referencing me. I'm simply presuming that most who flee war-ravaged nations, even individuals with education and a considerable nest egg, will need to take a few years to assimilate into the culture of a new nation; establish themselves professionally; and generate a comfortable standard of living. I'm presuming most will want to rent here relatively inexpensively; will want to live near public transit; and will want to live near a nexus of easy-to-score service-sector jobs to start making money ASAP while they work their way on up the ladder from scratch.

When I worked at Presby I met brilliant immigrants on a daily basis. To my knowledge NONE fled their former country with little more than the shirt upon their back, though. I don't doubt many Syrian refugees will possess skills and traits that will make them very attractive for positions offering middle-class salaries here. I DO doubt, however, that they'll be able to transition from life in Syria to life in Pittsburgh without extreme difficulty, though.

Originally Posted by eschaton

But at the same time I don't think my life is any more valuable than a Syrian just because I happened to be born here.

Agree with this strongly. The imperialism, geocentrism, and ethnocentrism many Americans have is mind-numbing. The United States is great. Guess what? So is Canada. So is Ireland. So is Sweden. So is Poland. So is Monaco. So is New Zealand. So is South Korea. So is Singapore. So is Luxembourg. Shall I continue? We're no more important as Americans than anyone else on this planet. We're 320,000,000 people out of roughly 7,000,000,000 (<5% of the global population). We need to get over ourselves already.

Originally Posted by UKyank

I'll also bet you've done absolutely nothing about the Syrian conflict other than post on the internet.

That's sort of harsh considering most Pittsburghers, including myself, haven't the slightest idea what we CAN do to help Syrian refugees right now.

Originally Posted by PghYinzer

Can someone explain to me what we would consider a win in this situation? It’s a war with no end, but what result would make people happy? Never another attack? Well that isn’t going to happen. I believe the only way that we can even attempt to win in the war against terrorism is to not change who we are and what we believe in. Again, they want us to react this ways. Terrorism is all about reactions, and sadly our reactions at this point are trending towards the ones that they wanted us to give. Granted they are natural reactions, but in troubled times like these it takes more courage to stand up for what you know is right, than to simply allow ones values and beliefs to collapse in on themselves, and in the end let the terrorist claim the win.

^ Best reply of the thread.

Originally Posted by eschaton

A lot of things might happen. I don't worry myself with worst-case scenarios. Even with 1,000 Syrian refugees in the city, I'd still be much more likely to get shot by some random black teenager. Yet despite this, I'm not scared to live around black people.

Ditto.

Originally Posted by Der Schwabe

I wish I could rep you for this. Couldn't put it better.

Done.

Originally Posted by eschaton

Nothing in life is certain of course. But even if we did have a terrorist attack on a similar scope to Paris, accepting the refugees would be worth it, as long as more innocent Syrians were saved than Americans who died.

I also view all 7,000,000,000 of us to have equal worth as human beings. Educated South Koreans aren't any more deserving of life than impoverished Nicaraguans. A middle-aged Caucasian male living in Provo, UT is not any more important than a 3-year-old Bosnian girl or a 84-year-old Tibetan monk. I don't wish ANY future terror attacks upon ANYONE; however, I'm not a moron. It's not a question of "if" ISIS will strike again. It's just "when" and "where". It could be tomorrow in Leeds; next week in Copenhagen; or, yes, three months from now in Pittsburgh.

We're fighting a war we can't win, folks. We're fighting a war against a snake that will just keep regenerating a new head each time it's decapitated. How can you ebb an ideology? We didn't "win" the war in Iraq, despite what our illustrious former president proclaims. We didn't "win" the war in Afghanistan. We're NOT going to "win" a war in Syria, either. We'll go in as a coalition, decimate ISIS while killing scores of innocent Syrians in the process, leave a mess, and then a year later some new Islamic extremist group will form, quickly capitalize upon glaring anti-Western sentiment, and become ISIS: Part II.

Originally Posted by UKyank

This is where we differ in opinion

Originally Posted by erieguy

Agreed.

So far the tally is:

All Lives Are Created Equally: Eschaton, SteelCityRising
American Lives Are More Important: UKyank, erieguy

[tyovan4]

Originally Posted by SteelCityRising

One of my neighbors said it perfectly on Facebook in a debate within one of Mayor Peduto's posts. This is the Holocaust of our generation, and what is going on now in Syria is not at all dissimilar to what happened to Jews in Europe in the early-1940's. Syrians who don't stand with ISIS are being slaughtered just like those in Europe who didn't stand with Hitler. Many nations helped Jews escape back then without fear of a Nazi "plant" traveling within groups of refugees as a "sleeper cell" waiting to strike their own nation. What's changed from the 1940's to the 2010's?

This is such a crap cliche. Everything always goes back to the Holocaust. How many "Holocausts of our generation" have we already had in the past 20 years? Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo, South Sudan and Darfur, now Syria. Not every civil war is a Holocaust. If you want to understand what the Holocaust truly is - go visit Oswiecim and Brzezinka. Walk the corridors, walk between the camps when its -40, see the mountains of shoes and hair and suitcases, stand in the crematorium.

It's also complete crap that the West accepts Syrian refugee men, who are unwilling to fight for their own country against either ISIS or Assad, and showers them with benefits - while sending Western men to Syria to fight on their behalf, and then cutting military and veterans benefits. It is so unbelievably bass-ackwards.

It's nice that some politicians recognize that insanity for what it is:

"Do you imagine that we [Europeans – ed.] send our army to fight for Syria, and hundreds of thousands of Syrians sip coffee on the Unter den Linden [boulevard in Berlin] or the Old Town [in Warsaw], while we fight for their freedom?" - incoming Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski (source: Incoming Foreign Minister: Syrian refugees can fight for homeland - Radio Poland :: News from Poland)

Originally Posted by fat lou

So I wonder how many refugees will be living on Bill Peduto's block? I'm going to bet everything on......none.

True that - but the limousine liberals love preaching to their proletarian admirers.

Originally Posted by ny789987

Yes, we are. Like it or not, ISIS and the remnants of Al-Qaeda are actively at war with us. They have affirmatively declared that the Paris attacks were just a prelude of what is to come. They have openly admitted to and bragged about using the refugee crisis as a way to sneak foreign fighters into western nations in order to engage in jihad.

Look, everyone feels for the refugees, but the primary responsibility of public officials like Peduto should be for the safety and well being of those that already live here. Also, why is it assumed that the only way to help people is to allow them to move into your house? Do you invite every homeless person or stray cat to move into your house with you?

It is incredible the mentality of some - that if they choose to ignore the war, that the enemy will do the same.

Peduto is an attention seeking idiot. Plain and simple, he will do whatever is trendy and "Progressive" to draw more attention to himself, so he can skip town to gallivant around the world to speak at conferences about how wonderful he is. And then blame all problems on Luke's administration when he returns to town.

Originally Posted by eschaton

Nothing in life is certain of course. But even if we did have a terrorist attack on a similar scope to Paris, accepting the refugees would be worth it, as long as more innocent Syrians were saved than Americans who died.

So - think about this question, really think about it. Which of your family and friends are you willing to sacrifice? Any how many refugees would you be willing to trade their lives for? 1:1, 2:1, 10:1?

Originally Posted by SteelCityRising

We're fighting a war we can't win, folks. We're fighting a war against a snake that will just keep regenerating a new head each time it's decapitated. How can you ebb an ideology?

By finally getting tough with Saudi Arabia. They are the primary financier and proselytizer of the particular strand of theology (Wahhabism) that inspires these radical Sunni attackers. It's time very much for a policy of reciprocity with them. They keep their borders closed to our influences, have no respect for freedom for any religion other than their own, and blatantly discriminate - heck you can't even enter Mecca unless you're a Muslim.

I think Western countries need to block Islamic organizations from receiving any foreign funding. And also block any foreign clerics from preaching in mosques.

Unless you separate the head from the snake, chopping off a few bits of its tail at a time won't stop it from biting you.


I also think its high time for the West to get medieval on ISIS. I'm not in favor of carpet-bombing Raqqa. Nor am I in favor of the crazy calls for boots on the ground and for occupation of more Arab lands. But I'm in favor of the complete destruction of any infrastructure that ISIS is using in their so-called state. All oil production facilities, all industrial facilities, any "governmental" buildings that are being used, and yes - schools and hospitals if they're being used for indoctrination purposes or for treating ISIS fighters.
No indiscriminate bombing of occupied civilians - but anything else remotely used by ISIS should be given the Berlin 1945 treatment.

[I_Like_Spam]

It is understandable angst that a lot of the people have about this. If thousands of young German men migrated from Europe while WWII was being waged, speaking German and with no documents, people would be suspicious I think.

As far as Peduto, he's a team player with the president, and he's anxious to show his loyalty while feeding into an idea that Obama's opponents are all xenophobes.


Pittsburgh has had a Syrian minority since the 1890's of course, they originally migrated to the lower hill and there are still a lot of Syrians here

[Yac]

Just don't turn this thread into yet another partisan fight, ok ?
Yac

[Goinback2011]

Originally Posted by I_Like_Spam

It is understandable angst that a lot of the people have about this. If thousands of young German men migrated from Europe while WWII was being waged, speaking German and with no documents, people would be suspicious I think.

As far as Peduto, he's a team player with the president, and he's anxious to show his loyalty while feeding into an idea that Obama's opponents are all xenophobes.


Pittsburgh has had a Syrian minority since the 1890's of course, they originally migrated to the lower hill and there are still a lot of Syrians here

I grew up with the kids of Syrian immigrants.

They were all Christians and none advocated killing Americans.