I’ve already mentioned the stabbing of Bertrand Delanoe, motivated by Delanoe being gay. Was that a response to western imperialism?
Terrorists linked to Iran have committed two major bombings in Argentina that killed over 100, including children. Are Jewish children in Argentina western imperialists?
There have been Islamic terrorist attacks in Canada. Canada has never invaded any Islamic country as far as I know.
You surely have heard about Boko Haram abducting hundreds of Christian schoolgirls in Nigeria. About the beheading of Christian schoolgirls in Indonesia. And then there are those attacks on cartoonists, which you seem to already be aware of.
Islamic terrorist groups such as Al Queda, ISIS, Boko Haram, and Islamic Jihad had all people who are not Muslims, and believe that they have a religious duty to wage war on all non-Muslims. Western imperialism has nothing to do with it, though it may be occasionally invoked as an excuse.
No it is not. You are making it very easy for yourself there. The refugees arriving in Germany these days are not Greek, Turkish or Hungarian. They are Syrian. Basically what you are saying is that we should not be helping the refugees, because Turkey can do it. A very selfish point of view.
Which brings me back to the Swiss and the Jews back in WW2. A main reason wh Switzerland started turning back Jews was that they were feeling overburdened by their numbers. They might very well have taken them all in had there been anybody that they could pass some of them on to. Of course with Switzerland surrounded by the axis powers that was hardly possible. But Turkey, the Lebanon or Jordan are not surrounded. We can take some of the refugees of their hands.
Maybe it’s instructive her to note that Steve Jobs’ biological father was a Syrian migrant. Yes THAT Steve Jobs.
Notable of course was Steve’s dad who never saw his son, but that was because the father of Steve’s mom forbade Steve’s dad from marrying her because he was Muslim.
But Steve’s father was very intelligent and worked as an assistant professor in the US and then went into the gaming industry.
Nonsense. If you were living in a place where the local ruler finds it appropriate to have his airforce drop barrel bombs on civilian living quarters you might find it advisable to pick up your family and move elsewhere. Once uprooted in this way, where would you go? You cannot stay in a Turkish tent camp forever. So you will of course turn to the place where you are feeling you are most likely to have something you can call a life. Almost every country in Europe can offer them that. So can the US, Canada, even Russia. If all of them really did, the numbers for each country would no longer be all that intimidating.
Besides - what is the alternative? You keep talking about turning the refugees back. Back to where? Turkey is under no legal obligation to take them back. Why would they? They have enough refugees as it is. By invoking the Dublin Regulation Germany could perhaps send them back to Greece, but what problems would that solve?
para 1: there must be 10 stabbings a night in large US cities, never mind shootings, never mind attacks on gays. Wkipedia says:
I’m seeing a messed up idiot - help me out with the terrah.
para 2: Dude, a response to Israeli imperialism sigh
para 3: camille has already kindly helped you out with that
para 4: Boko Haram, like ISIS, is a fucked up response to imperialism - Nigeria enjoys huge production and reserves of oil and yet is categorised as a failed state. We all know how that story goes.
Back to the point. The leader of the 7/7 attacks on London:
As mentioned, Blair had been re-elected after it was known the WMD pretext was bogus.
The above seems a position several magnitudes of sanity more reasonable than the aims of The Project for a New American Century - broadly the ideology that led to the war on Iraq:
So in the cases in which the refugees can’t stay in those countries for various reasons, do you think the other European countries should be criticized if they don’t accept them?
No, because I believe many of them are. Maybe some had a chance to stop elsewhere and chose to continue on, but I believe that many had no such choice. Do you believe all of them had a choice? That not a single one, including not a single child among them, had no choice but to try and get into these latest countries?
They have a choice to stay in the first country they cross into from theirs. The civil war that they are fleeing from is a “horror”, but it doesn’t extend into the country to which they flee. When they decide to flee from the second country (and yes, it’s a choice, no one is expelling them with a gun to their back), they are economic migrants. They may have good economic reasons to continue on. But they are not in any way fleeing “horrors” anymore.
I don’t believe that every single one had this choice. You do. That’s the difference, or at least the major one, it seems.
If you believed that there was some non-zero chance that some small number of them might not have had this choice – that there may have been a slight chance of other factors (such as officials telling them “you must go on or you will be jailed” or something like that, or violence or threats, or something else) that may have been involved that forced some of them onwards – would you agree with me?
The latest leader to reject Syrian refugees? Netanyahu. I’m not Israeli, but if I were I would agree with Herzog that they should accept some of the fleeing refugees. Netanyahu’s argument only applies to the idea of accepting millions – they could easily accept some small number of refugees without upsetting demographic concerns and swamping the small country of Israel.
And in this case, they didn’t pass through Hungary, Turkey, and Greece.
Show me where they are being expelled from those countries with a gun at their back. Or any “horrors” happening to them there.
And what is it with the “every single one” fallacy that you constantly bring up? So - if ONE person has no choice, that means that a million people should be called “refugees”?
All of the interviews with refugees that I’ve seen include a statement of something to the effect of “we had no other choice”. I don’t believe that every single one are lying.
I generally believe that fleeing migrants should be believed, and they consider themselves refugees, so I take their word. I don’t think every country should accept every refugee, but most European countries (and Israel) could take more, in my view. I’ll add the US to this – the US should take some number of refugees as well, if possible.
You do - I suggest you petition to invite a Syrian family and host it in your house. Every refugee law that I know of requires proof of “no choice” or “horrors”. Not a statement of it.