Italy is still Western Europe's armpit.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

No one has tried to electrify the fences around the substation to prevent these.. leeches of society from doing their dirty work?

If they did, the migrants would sue. Remember, the US is a litigation based society.

What possible cause do they have to sue?! If they are going to complain about safety, surround the electrified fence with a normal fence, then throw in warnings about suits if they damage the fence.

[Kanastrous]

You don't need legitimate cause to sue.

All you need is an attorney willing to file for you.

Odds are most utilities would rather pay a settlement and avoid court time, even when they know the charge is bogus.

[Questor]

No one has tried to electrify the fences around the substation to prevent these.. leeches of society from doing their dirty work?

If they did, the migrants would sue. Remember, the US is a litigation based society.

What possible cause do they have to sue?! If they are going to complain about safety, surround the electrified fence with a normal fence, then throw in warnings about suits if they damage the fence.

They don't need to win the suit to be expensive, and "cause to sue" is a tricky thing. The migrants would play the "evil corporate profit-monger" card and portray it as a public hazard. Juries could be very unpredictable in this case.

Granted, the judgement would probably be overturned on appeal, but how much would it cost to defend by then. This would then be repeated in every single state, unless it somehow gets into the federal court system.

I don't know what the statutes are on electrified fences, but I can see the NIMBYs having a problem with it too. I can just see the propaganda campaign:

Voiceover saying something to the effect of: The evil corporate profit-mongers don't just want to rob us, they want to kill our children.
Picture of power station, followed by pictures of children with electrical burns.
Vote Yes on Proposition 5 to defeat the electrified fences.

If you don't believe me, find some of the commercials from the California eminent domain propositions.

[Darth Wong]

The fact is that the nomadic lifestyle is fundamentally disruptive to a fixed-property society like ours. There is no way to make the two lifestyles work well together, period. Nomadic behaviour needs to be strongly discouraged by the authorities.

[Kanastrous]

The injuries are too horrific for television.

But, yeah.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

They don't need to win the suit to be expensive, and "cause to sue" is a tricky thing. The migrants would play the "evil corporate profit-monger" card and portray it as a public hazard. Juries could be very unpredictable in this case.

Granted, the judgement would probably be overturned on appeal, but how much would it cost to defend by then. This would then be repeated in every single state, unless it somehow gets into the federal court system.

I don't know what the statutes are on electrified fences, but I can see the NIMBYs having a problem with it too. I can just see the propaganda campaign:

Voiceover saying something to the effect of: The evil corporate profit-mongers don't just want to rob us, they want to kill our children.
Picture of power station, followed by pictures of children with electrical burns.
Vote Yes on Proposition 5 to defeat the electrified fences.

If you don't believe me, find some of the commercials from the California eminent domain propositions.

And these people can't be counter-sued for trespassing on private property or stealing electricity?

[Questor]

And these people can't be counter-sued for trespassing on private property or stealing electricity?

They could, but you would never collect, as they have virtually no assets, and the counter-suit would cost money.

The end result is that you lose money by doing that as well.

[Elfdart]

The fact is that the nomadic lifestyle is fundamentally disruptive to a fixed-property society like ours. There is no way to make the two lifestyles work well together, period. Nomadic behaviour needs to be strongly discouraged by the authorities.

As long as these nomads aren't breaking any laws, what business does the state have in telling them how to live?

[Darth Wong]

The fact is that the nomadic lifestyle is fundamentally disruptive to a fixed-property society like ours. There is no way to make the two lifestyles work well together, period. Nomadic behaviour needs to be strongly discouraged by the authorities.

As long as these nomads aren't breaking any laws, what business does the state have in telling them how to live?

They are breaking laws. The problem is that the laws are nuisance laws like trespassing, squatting, stealing utilities, and littering, and the penalties for those laws were designed with a single delinquent in mind, not an entire community in collusion.

[The Grim Squeaker]

I think a lot of people get a pissed off at Gypsyies, here in the U.K. it's a national pastime. The main problem here, is Gypsyies turning up at a carpark/field/empty indutsrial ground, pitching camp and leaving a pile a crap in their wake (which local councils have to pay to clean up and as they've left they can't be charged), and then moan about intolerance and racism. They don't pay tax, T.V licence, claim benefits, and work cash in hand. They connect themselves up to electric and sometimes water, how this works I don't know. Recentley they have been complaining about that their are not suitable sites to camp, and stay. Stay. Why not, I don't know live in a house like normal people. Calling yourselves travellers and then wanting to stay in one place is just bollocks..

God, don't even tell me about Gypsies in the UK. The "Right of travel" law just lets them blackmail people even worse (In the UK if a path is well used/recognized, then it becomes a legal right of way, even if it's in private property).
My dad's second project in the UK, years back was building an apartment building, and he found himself with a group of Gypsies parking there, burning campfires, using the water and electricity and making a right royal mess. They told him that if he didn't try to raise a fuss, then they would move on in a few weeks-months, and if he tried doing anything about it (police, suing) then they would be...less polite to the premises.
Eventually they left, but he (dad) ended up with a right of way through the front of the apartment building, and a lot of clean up to do.

The problem is that the laws are nuisance laws like trespassing, squatting, stealing utilities, and littering, and the penalties for those laws were designed with a single delinquent in mind, not an entire community in collusion.

There is also the fact that it's a long term social problem as a whole.

You have a large group of people producing very little, living of the state, and immobile communities, and very often stealing as a way of life (hand to hand with low education, cultural seperatism, and massive population growth rates in some cases).
To bring up an example close to me, There are unbelievable rates of theft by the Bedouin Arab-Israelis in the south of Israel, the authorities rarely prosecute them since: A) Protectionism. B) It's very hard to get someone with a clan protecting and hiding him. C) Most cops used to laugh at "small" theft such as windows, metal, wheels, taps, water, electricity, goats, etc'. The situation is slightly improving now that the "small" thefts are more often cracked down on, but it's a massive issue as a whole, and that's ignoring the lack of education, 9.7% annual population growth rate, and problems trying to get them to settle down rather than setting up squatter camps everywhere.

[MKSheppard]

They told him that if he didn't try to raise a fuss, then they would move on in a few weeks-months, and if he tried doing anything about it (police, suing) then they would be...less polite to the premises.

That's what Pinkerton men are for.

[The Grim Squeaker]

They told him that if he didn't try to raise a fuss, then they would move on in a few weeks-months, and if he tried doing anything about it (police, suing) then they would be...less polite to the premises.

That's what Pinkerton men are for.

This was in England . (That, and he's a nice guy. And was a young, naive guy back then, making it even worse ).

It was a case of "If you try to move us, it'll be more trouble than it's worth. Let us stay here for a month or two, then we'll leave". At least they did.
Still though, it's bloody blackmail in my opinion, it's utterly unreasonable.

[Netko]

The Economist had a good article about the Roma issue (centered around their most populous areas in the Balkans, where, incidentally, they aren't nomadic).

Bottom of the heap

Jun 19th 2008 | BRUSSELS AND BUCHAREST
From The Economist print edition
The dismal lives and unhappy prospects of Europe's biggest stateless minority
AFP

THE village of Vizuresti lies 35km (22 miles) from Bucharest and on the wrong side of the tracks. For the first few miles the road from the highway is paved, passing through a prosperous district with solid houses and well-tended fields. But once it crosses the railway, leading only to the Roma settlement, the tarmac stops. The way to Vizuresti is 20 minutes of deep potholes and ruts. Life for its 2,500 people, four-fifths of them Roma, is just as tough.

Mihai Sanda and his family, 37 of them, live in half-a-dozen self-built, mud-floored huts. In his two-room dwelling, seven people share one bedroom; chickens cluck in the other room. The dirt and smell, the lack of mains water, electricity, sewerage and telephone are all redolent of the poorest countries in the world. So is the illiteracy. Ionela Calin, a 34-year-old member of Mr Sanda's extended family, married at 15 without ever going to school. Of her eight children, four are unschooled. Two, Leonard, aged four and Narcissa, aged two, do not even have birth certificates; Ionela believes (wrongly, in fact) that she cannot register their birth because her own identity document has expired.

For the millions of Europeans—estimates range between 4m and 12m—loosely labelled as Roma or Gypsies, that is life: corralled into settlements that put them physically and psychologically at the edge of mainstream existence, with the gap between them and modernity growing rather than shrinking. The statistics are shocking: a Unicef report released in 2005 said that 84% of Roma in Bulgaria, 88% in Romania and 91% in Hungary lived below the poverty line. Perhaps even more shocking is the lack of a more detailed picture. Official indifference and Roma reluctance mean that data on life expectancy, infant mortality, employment and literacy rates are sparse. Yet all are deplorably lower than those of mainstream society.

The immediate response to this (as for most of eastern Europe's ills) is to blame history. The lot of the Roma has been miserable for a millennium, ever since their mysterious migration from Rajasthan in northern India sometime around 1000 AD. With the possible exception of a principality in Corfu around 1360, they have never had a state. In parts of the Balkans, Roma were traded as slaves until the middle of the 19th century. Mirroring America's history at the same time, emancipation proved a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for freedom. The Roma of Vizuresti went from being slaves to being landless peasants. Even now, seasonal agricultural labour of the most menial kind is the main source of income; that, and begging.

But a twist of history in the next century meant that Europe's Roma suffered even more than America's blacks. Hundreds of thousands perished in the Nazi Holocaust. Compensation has been stingy, belated and badly administered.

It would be even easier to blame the Roma's plight on communism. Certainly that system largely stamped out the Roma's traditional nomadism. Countries such as Czechoslovakia also practised forced sterilisation (though Sweden did that, too). But the paternalistic structures of state socialism to some extent sheltered, if usually in the most menial jobs, those unable or unwilling to compete in a market economy. And an ostensible commitment to the brotherhood of man restrained at least some racial prejudices. For the Roma, democracy unleashed their fellow-citizens' latent hostility, while capitalism offered them few prospects.

As eastern Europe prospered, the Roma fell further behind. Their surviving traditional skills (handicrafts, horsetrading) were out of date; they lacked the administrative skills to set up businesses in the formal economy; even those wanting to work found few factories or offices willing to employ them. And European Union membership has added a new bureaucratic burden even to the businesses in which they thrive. In Balteni, near Vizuresti, the local Gypsy chieftain or Bulibasha (at the age of 84 himself a Holocaust survivor) runs an immense informal scrapyard, where tractor-trailers, car shells drawn by horses and rickety lorries deliver precariously loaded piles of rusty metal to be sorted and then sold to a nearby metallurgy plant. A vast bonfire of copper cables fills the air with fumes as insulating material is burnt off. A ragged, shoeless workforce of all ages sorts the inventory by hand. There is not a safety notice, a glove or a visor in sight, and it is hard to imagine the business or its illiterate owner managing to cope with any kind of bureaucratic inspection.
Criminal suspicions

The most conspicuous problem for the Roma is lack of education, which keeps them out of jobs. Others include hostility from the majority population, apathy in officialdom, dreadful public services and infrastructure, and a pervasive feeling of hopelessness. It is hardly surprising that many tens of thousands of Roma have moved west in search of a better life. But if they did not fit in well at home, they adjust even worse to life in western Europe. Begging on the street, for example, often with young children, scandalises the citizenry, as do Roma encampments in public spaces such as parks or road junctions. A delegation of top Finnish politicians visiting Romania this month publicly complained. “In Finland, begging is not a job,” the country's president, Tarja Halonen, told her hosts with Nordic hauteur. Maybe not, but for Roma it may be the only choice they have.

West Europeans also tend to believe that Roma migrants are responsible for an epidemic of pickpocketing, shoplifting, mugging—and worse. In Italy, public patience snapped earlier this year after reports of gruesome muggings, rapes and the alleged stealing of a baby. Such reports were not matched by any change in the crime statistics. But coupled with some incendiary statements by the incoming right-of-centre government, they were enough to provoke something close to an anti-Roma pogrom in May in Naples and other cities. Rioters burned Roma caravans and huts; the authorities followed up with arrests and deportations.

West European attitudes differ little in essence from those of the ex-communist bureaucrats in the east. They want the problem to go away. Emma Bonino, a feisty Italian politician and former EU commissioner, says that Roma make a “perfect scapegoat” for politicians who have failed to deal with Italy's other, graver problems. The authorities' response has been milder than their rhetoric suggests, she says, but she laments the lack of any programme to help the Roma integrate into Italian society. The biggest danger, in her view, is that politicians have made anti-Roma racism respectable for the first time: “When you go down that road, you will not stop it just by saying ‘Enough is enough’.”

That is not just a moral cop-out. It is also bad economics. Excluding an Ireland-sized group of millions of people from the labour market, particularly when they typically have much larger families than the average in fast-greying Europe, is a colossal waste of human potential. But those looking for encouraging signs have to hunt hard indeed.

Europe is supposedly in the middle of a “Decade of Roma Inclusion”, launched in 2005 when the governments of the countries with big Roma populations (Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and Slovakia) agreed to close the gap in education, employment, health and housing. Fully €11 billion ($17 billion) is available from the EU's social fund, with a further €23 billion earmarked from the regional development fund in coming years.

Yet the main effect so far has been to create a well-paid elite of Roma lobbying outfits, fluent in bureaucratic jargon, adept at organising seminars and conferences and nobbling decision-makers. It has had little effect on the lives of the Roma themselves. As the Open Society Institute, funded by George Soros, a billionaire philanthropist, says in a recent report, most governments see the answer to the Roma problem in terms of “sporadic measures” rather than coherent policies. An official in Brussels says: “We don't lack the laws and we don't lack the money. The problem is political will.”
Unwillingly to school

Certainly a bit of willpower can work wonders. In Vizuresti, for example, only 6% of the children never go to school at all—a triumph by local standards. But it is still nothing to cheer about. “When the girls reach nine or ten they are ready to get married, and it is shameful for them to come to school,” explains a local, firmly adding that “marriage” in this sense means betrothal, not conjugality. “The boys don't come if they are busy helping their fathers to collect scrap,” he continues, “and the boys drop out at 15 because then they have completed the eighth grade, which you need to get a driving licence.”

In much of eastern Europe Roma children are packed off to special schools for “backward” children, reinforcing stigma and prejudice and guaranteeing that they enter the labour market with a third-class ticket. Another obstacle is the lack of birth certificates: schools that do not want Roma children can simply refuse to register those without official papers. But perhaps the biggest barriers are parental reluctance and poverty. Children in school can't work. They need expensive uniforms and books. It may even be embarrassing if they can read when their parents can't. So why bother?

A well-run country can try to spend large amounts of taxpayers' money on alleviating social problems. The results may be patchy, but at least in western Europe they have got somewhere. Spain, for example, is regarded as a big success story. Its Roma were marginalised and neglected under authoritarian rule; now a mixture of good policy and generous EU funding has brought widespread literacy, better housing and integration in the labour market. But the ex-communist countries have much weaker public administration, and neither politicians nor voters consider Gypsies a priority.

Vizuresti is doing better than most places. Thanks to a charismatic and impressive head teacher, Ion Nila, lack of documents is no barrier to registration at the village school. His teachers go door to door in the mornings, cajoling parents into sending their children to class. The real breakthrough, he says, will come if he can get Roma children to attend the nursery attached to the school. But, says Mr Nila, parents are reluctant to send their young children, as they don't have the money to buy them shoes. He hopes that hot midday meals will be an incentive, if he can find the money to pay for them.

So, at the top, billions of euros are being pumped in; while, at the bottom, a teacher struggles to find the tiny amount needed simply to feed his charges. Indeed, most of the progress in Vizuresti comes not from taxpayers' money, which soaks away into bureaucracy far from the village, but from the work of a charity, Ovidiu Rom, headed by a fiery American philanthropist, Leslie Hawke. The charity, not the state, has paid for and helped with IDs, teacher training, student workbooks and a special summer programme designed to prepare 20 of the poorest children and their often illiterate parents for what seems, to them, scary school life.
Bound only by music

So why is Europe floundering? The conventional answer is that the Roma's biggest problem is racism pure and simple. Enforcement of tough anti-discrimination laws, Roma-friendly curriculums in schools, cultural self-esteem, positive discrimination in both officialdom and private business are the necessary ingredients for change, say the politically correct.

But that is not the whole story. Even defining what “Roma” really means is exceptionally tricky. Europe has plenty of marginalised social groups, often with traditions of nomadism and their own languages: Irish Tinkers, for example, who speak Shelta. Their problems and history may in part be similar to the Roma's, but they are not the same. Even within the broad category of Roma (meaning those with some connection to the original migrants from Rajasthan) the subdivisions are complex. Some prefer not to use the word Roma at all, arguing that “Gypsy”, sometimes thought derogatory, is actually more inclusive. The impressive catalogue to the Roma Pavilion at the 2007 Venice Biennale insists that Roma is too narrow a term, excluding as it does “Sintis, Romunglo, Beas, Gitanes, Manus etc”. Even ethnographers find it hard to nail down the differences and similarities between such groups.

Moreover, those more narrowly defined as Roma have surprisingly little in common. The Roma tongue—originally related to Sanskrit—has splintered into dozens of mutually incomprehensible dialects. The sprinkling of internationally active Roma activists have developed their own version (sometimes derisively known as “NGO Roma”), but it bears little relationship to the creoles still spoken in the settlements. The strongest common culture is traditional Roma music, where it survives. But its haunting chords and rhythms do not conquer tone-deaf bureaucracies.

The boundaries between the marginalised groups and “normal” society are fluid. One reason that a Roma middle class, which supposedly would provide role models, lessen prejudice and increase social and economic mobility, has failed so far to take root is that most Roma who become middle-class drop the “Roma” label at once. Hopes for a change rest on the new generation of thousands of young Roma graduates, who may be less shy about their origins.

Similarly, those not born into the Roma world can end up there—by marriage, adoption or choice. In Balteni, a blonde girl, Roxana, shyly shows off a necklace of seven big gold coins given to her as a mark of impending puberty; not born a Roma, she was adopted from an orphanage into the family of a local patriarch. A Roma—which comes from the Romani word “Rom”, meaning husband—is, ultimately, anyone who wants that label.

Furthermore, as Zoltan Barany, author of a controversial but acute book on the Gypsies of eastern Europe, points out, Roma lobbyists tend not to notice that the Roma's own habits and attitudes may aggravate their plight. Speaking off the record, a westerner engaged in Roma welfare tells the story of an exceptionally talented teenage pupil at her country's top academy. She was bound for university and a stellar career, but her family decided that this was too risky: she was bride-snatched, taken to a remote village, raped and kept in seclusion. From there she was trafficked to western Europe, where she is now in a group of beggars camping out near one of Europe's best-known stadiums. Well-wishers tried to rescue her, offering a safe-house where she could continue her studies; she refused, frightened that her family would find her.

The result of that is what a senior official dealing with the issue calls “self-decapitation”. A handful of Roma politicians have emerged, including a couple of impressive members of the European Parliament. But even their symbolic value is limited. The vast majority of Roma do not even vote in elections, let alone join the campaigns waged on their behalf. There is no sign of a Roma Martin Luther King, let alone a Barack Obama. But, notes the official, “There are lots of angry young men.”

Amid all this, the EU is tottering forward. A report due to be issued next week will criticise the “implementation gap” in the worthy policies conceived so far. It will rebuke governments for slow progress. Controversially, it is likely to say that formal equality before the law is only a starting point, and that American-style positive discrimination will be needed.

That may prove a risky course. As in America, race and a history of slavery make a potent combination, entrenching stereotypes and attitudes on all sides. But also as in America, it is unclear how far the problem is race, and how far it is a matter of poverty and other factors. Stop treating Roma as a racial minority, Ms Hawke argues, and concentrate on the poor level of public services they receive in housing, health and particularly education.

Seeing the problem only through an ethnic lens is great news for the “Roma industry”, as the campaigning groups are sometimes derisively known. Their activities turn all too quickly into a theoretical, nit-picking discussion about politically correct language, complete with internecine feuds between different lobbies. It plays badly with voters, who already tend to blame the Roma for their own misfortunes. In most ex-communist countries, polls show striking degrees of prejudice: as many as 80% of those asked say they would not want Roma neighbours, for example. In Hungary, the commendable idea of integrating Roma and non-Roma children in the same schools has sent parents scurrying elsewhere.

But there are some shoots of hope. One is that the violence in Italy has highlighted the Roma issue in a way that would never have happened if the misery had remained concentrated in the slums and ghettos of eastern Europe. “Just as Putin has galvanised Europe on energy policy, Berlusconi has galvanised Europe on Roma policy,” says Andre Wilkens, a thoughtful Brussels-based observer of the region who heads the Open Society Institute's Roma efforts. He believes that the new member states of the EU have a chance to derive advantage from the Roma by finding an economic niche for them—for example, by turning their tradition of scrap-dealing into the basis for a modern recycling industry.

Such hopeful nibbles abound. But even an optimist would have to concede that Europe's biggest social problem will persist for the lifetime of anyone reading this article, and probably far longer.

The whole issue is just fucked up, with the Roma's "culture" being a really big source of the problem - as the article notes, those that manage to integrate into mainstream society don't want to have anything to do with those that don't, while those living in the "culture" are actively discouraging education and getting proper jobs instead of being thieves and scavengers.

And its not like there haven't been multiple attempts with different approaches to tackle the issues. During communist times, with the state-imposed "brotherhood and unity" i.e. tolerance, they were given jobs like everyone else and given every chance to integrate into society from the state. It didn't have a major impact.

The current NGO approach, as the article notes, is also failing dismally.

I actually have a similar (albeit less tragic then that poor girl who got gang raped and forced into begging rather then be allowed to go to university) anecdote which highlights the decapitation problem. A person I know is one of the people assigned to oversee government financing of certain types of NGO and charity funding which targets minorities, the disabled, and other special groups. Anyway, each NGO that applies for funding must disclose their previous record and accomplishments with such funding. One of those was an NGO attempting to provide IT job training and placement to the Roma (Croatia is currently having a major shortage of IT workers, and with the sector being higher educated then average it was chosen as the closest to perfect sector with regards to the likelyhood that employers will not discriminate against the Roma, and, do to the shortage of trained workers, the wages are high - the national average wage is usually the entry wage in the sector). Anyway, it worked - in part. About a fifth of those that went through the course managed to get jobs and almost universally they immediately cut off contact with their families and a small number of then are attempting to go to community college to get a degree. The rest? It was considered by their parents that the course was like sending them to a gaming club - a little fun which won't impact their futures. And that is exactly what happened - the rest of the teenagers/young adults (the program was for people 18-24) that took part never even went to any of the interviews that the NGO set up for them, but rather went back to the family business (scrap collecting/begging/petty thievery), usually not very willingly but convinced (forcefully or not) that it was their unavoidable destiny by their families. This was especially prominent with the girls, where IIRC, only two managed to get a job.

[K. A. Pital]

During communist times, with the state-imposed "brotherhood and unity" i.e. tolerance, they were given jobs like everyone else and given every chance to integrate into society from the state. It didn't have a major impact.

Same here. During Soviet times however the Roma were never much of a problem. They were working at factories, they had their passports, etc. etc. a lot of them worked in cultural festival business and so on, throught the "Union of Soviet Roma" which was their pan-Union organization.

However, in the 1990s, they rapidly fell out of work (the State abandoned it's "Roma nanny" role and just let the whole group to fall into the mafia).

The Roma made a huge recruit majority for the army of criminals, from the petty thieves to heavy drug cartel henchmen. A few Roma gangs controlled the drug traffic from Afghanistan through Russia and into Europe.

The current "spare their culture!! culture supreme!" approach yields nothing. Their culture is destructive, anti-education and anti-industrial. They are reinforcing the criminalization by denying education and work to their children, thus remaining entangled in theft, crime, drug dealing and pocket-picking.

[Sea Skimmer]

When nomadic people meet settlements, violence almost always results historically, and one side or the other gets wiped out. Its just too incompatible ways of existing and I’m a bit amazed that so many Roma nomads still exist in light of European history.

No one has tried to electrify the fences around the substation to prevent these.. leeches of society from doing their dirty work?

Substation? When people steal power they don’t tap into a substation, that would be noticed by workers. They'll tap into plain old telephone polls or street lights and use a five dollar K-mart extension cord to power a whole battery of air conditioners. It still happens in Philadelphia all the time, entire blocks get run off hookups like that and the only reason everything doesn’t burn down is lots of airflow around the suspended cord. I hear though that in NYC in some cases whole neighborhoods powered themselves off multiple streetlights. Then they’d connect up with the mob to bribe or scare off utility workers who tried to disconnect anything.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I forgot that the Roma originated from India. Now that I think about it, they sound just like some of the Hindu fundamentalist/male chauvinist scum in India. Guess the culture is incredibly resilient.

[K. A. Pital]

Guess the culture is incredibly resilient.

A rigid socialization program, which denies modern knowledge and education, if it's culturally enshrined, will of course make the culture resilent. In a bad way.

[Norseman]

When nomadic people meet settlements, violence almost always results historically, and one side or the other gets wiped out. Its just too incompatible ways of existing and I’m a bit amazed that so many Roma nomads still exist in light of European history.

The reason that they still exist is that they travel, and it is hard for a bureaucrat to get to grips with them. In Scandinavia the full power of the state was brought down on the gypsies, and it didn't do a thing. We are here talking about laws banning vagrancy, children being forcibly removed from their familes, even the odd sterilization (though no mass programs for such), in 1951 they were banned from owning horses (we had rationing for cars at the time).

Simply put if a powerful and efficient state machinery capable of wielding both a stick and a carrot cannot do the job, what makes you think that anyone can?

[Elfdart]

They are breaking laws. The problem is that the laws are nuisance laws like trespassing, squatting, stealing utilities, and littering, and the penalties for those laws were designed with a single delinquent in mind, not an entire community in collusion.

Oh please, I'm sure Italy and other European countries have conspiracy laws.

I love the idea that the state should harass a group as whole rather than individual lawbreakers. I also love the way people on this board are more upset over littering and petty theft than they are by racist government policies and bigoted shit stains who attack people with molotovs. Here we have a wave of racist hysteria because one woman makes up a bullshit story based on a medieval blood libel, Fascist politicians exploit long-held bigotry for votes, and it's the victims of arson who are to blame, and they need the government crackdown?

I forgot that the Roma originated from India. Now that I think about it, they sound just like some of the Hindu fundamentalist/male chauvinist scum in India. Guess the culture is incredibly resilient.

The nerve of a minority group to survive when so many people want them all dead! The bastards!

[Kanastrous]

Enforcement of tough anti-discrimination laws, Roma-friendly curriculums in schools, cultural self-esteem, positive discrimination in both officialdom and private business are the necessary ingredients for change, say the politically correct.

Yeah, by all means encourage 'cultural self-esteem;' after all, that culture of their has worked out so well for them, and those around them...

Idiocy, like almost any plan that revolves in whole or part, around "self-esteem."

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

The nerve of a minority group to survive when so many people want them all dead! The bastards!

I meant their damn culture, but nice strawman over there.

[MKSheppard]

I never thought of Elfdart as a libertarian until now.

[Darth Wong]

They are breaking laws. The problem is that the laws are nuisance laws like trespassing, squatting, stealing utilities, and littering, and the penalties for those laws were designed with a single delinquent in mind, not an entire community in collusion.

Oh please, I'm sure Italy and other European countries have conspiracy laws.

I love the idea that the state should harass a group as whole rather than individual lawbreakers.

If the group is concealing lawbreakers, why not?

I also love the way people on this board are more upset over littering and petty theft than they are by racist government policies and bigoted shit stains who attack people with molotovs.

Did anyone say that molotov atacks were OK? As for finger-printing, police need ways of tracking people down. For most of us, they have addresses, and various other forms of ID. For people who attempt to evade most of that system, I see nothing unreasonable about pursuing some other way of making them trackable, like fingerprinting.

[Elfdart]

If the group is concealing lawbreakers, why not?

Because collective punishment is so Third Reich.

I also love the way people on this board are more upset over littering and petty theft than they are by racist government policies and bigoted shit stains who attack people with molotovs.

Did anyone say that molotov atacks were OK?

Nice dodge. I would think that arson would take priority over small-time theft and littering as a better use of police manpower. I see there's no call for having homegrown Italian thugs fingerprinted based on real acts of violence, nor is there any call for the state to step in and tell them how to live. No, that kind of horseshit is reserved for a detested minority.

As for finger-printing, police need ways of tracking people down. For most of us, they have addresses, and various other forms of ID. For people who attempt to evade most of that system, I see nothing unreasonable about pursuing some other way of making them trackable, like fingerprinting.

Yeah, I'd sleep better at night knowing the police were going to use fingerprints to track down people for littering:

"This is an all points bulletin! Calling all cars! a couple of Gypsies left a park without putting their empty bottles in a trash can! Be on the lookout for these dangerous, ruthless criminals!"

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

If the group is concealing lawbreakers, why not?

Because collective punishment is so Third Reich.

You do realise that some countries have laws that state that accomplices are also liable to be getting charged in court for aiding and abetting with criminals? How is that collective punishment then?