> "The Dalai Lama, who often speaks of humanity's need to acknowledge its "oneness", is a refugee himself. ... From a moral point of view, too, I think that the refugees should only be admitted temporarily ... The goal should be that they return and help rebuild their countries."
Well, yes. The former sovereign of Tibet has long wanted to regain control, preferably with full independence, though more recently accepting high-level autonomy.
But we can't always get what we want.
If the Chinese government refuse to restore autonomous rule to the satisfaction of the exiled government, then what is India supposed to do? Granting citizenship seems the most humane of the possible solutions.
If the US government is unable to change the government of Cuba (including the disastrous attempt at the Bay of Pigs and the decades long trade embargo) to the satisfaction of the Cuban exiles in the US, then what is the US supposed to do? Prevent the children of Rafael Díaz-Balart - the exiled majority leader of the Cuban House of Representatives before Castro came to power - from being elected to office in the US?
If there is no peace in Syria, so the goal of returning home cannot be achieved, what then?
> If the US government is unable to change the government of Cuba (including the disastrous attempt at the Bay of Pigs and the decades long trade embargo)
The longest standing issue facing Cubans is the US trade embargo and that has always been in it's power to fix...
> If there is no peace in Syria, so the goal of returning home cannot be achieved, what then
There is no peace in Syria because of over a decade of destabilizing policies and engagements by the US in that region, which Europe has mostly supported.
More generally, as to 2of3 examples which you provided - the refugees aren't due to some terrible internal policies of these countries or natural catastrophies - but majorly due to Western/US involvement.
"There is no peace in Syria because of over a decade of destabilizing policies and engagements by the US in that region, which Europe has mostly supported."
There are probably about a dozen major causes of the problems in Syria, of which US/western involvement is only one. There's lots of blame to be spread around.
* The failure of the Ottoman Empire to create a unified culture and nation state.
* Religious rivalry between Sunni and Shiite Islam.
* Regional rivalry between Saudi Arabia (an autocratic Sunni state heavily reliant on a very conservative sect (Wahhabi) for legitimacy) and Iran (a theocratic Shiite state).
* Oil being the main economic mainstay, and not being conveniently divvied up among different ethnic regions
* Great power ambitions on the part of Turkey
* Superpower ambitions on the part of Russia
* The failure of any state in the region to produce viable governments with strong internal legitimacy, rather than series of political "revolutions" that led to changing merely of who was treating the state as their feeding trough
* Western engagement in the region
* Western disengagement in the region (damned if you do, damned if you don't...)
I'm probably missing some, but it's worth noting that while the Iraq War didn't help the situation in the Middle East, it's not like a strong dictator is an effective guarantee of internal security--after all, the Arab Spring started in Tunisia, instigated primarily by local causes (and the only country that seems to have actually improved its situation as a result!).
This comment should be at the top. So many westerners who bash their own governments, communities and beliefs without any real knowledge of the situations and what caused them.
By 2012 the population of Syria had doubled since 1986, despite massive emigration. A huge chunk of the country was under 30. This lead to problems with employment, housing, water, food, etc. Which in tern led to escalating sectarian tensions.
> There are probably about a dozen major causes of the problems in Syria, of which US/western involvement is only one.
Yes, but there is a significant difference between a terrible government and a full blown civil war. It's really impossible to see the later happening without US involvement.
* it's impossible to see full blown civil war happening without the failure of the Ottoman Empire to create a unified culture and nation state.
* it's impossible to see full blown civil war happening without Religious rivalry between Sunni and Shiite Islam.
* it's impossible to see full blown civil war happening without Regional rivalry between Saudi Arabia (an autocratic Sunni state heavily reliant on a very conservative sect (Wahhabi) for legitimacy) and Iran (a theocratic Shiite state).
* it's impossible to see full blown civil war happening without Oil being the main economic mainstay, and not being conveniently divvied up among different ethnic regions
* it's impossible to see full blown civil war happening without Great power ambitions on the part of Turkey
* it's impossible to see full blown civil war happening without Superpower ambitions on the part of Russia
* it's impossible to see full blown civil war happening without The failure of any state in the region to produce viable governments with strong internal legitimacy, rather than series of political "revolutions" that led to changing merely of who was treating the state as their feeding trough
* it's impossible to see full blown civil war happening without Western engagement in the region
* it's impossible to see full blown civil war happening without Western disengagement in the region
I've read his comment - I really don't see the purpose achieved by you copy and pasting it.
His comment was a response as to why Syria has problems, not as to why there is civil war. Your take on his comment:
> it's impossible to see full blown civil war happening without the failure of the Ottoman Empire to create a unified culture and nation state
Is something the equivalent that blaming the bombing of Hiroshima on the Shogunate would be. If you do not see the difference between historical events which contributed to a circumstance and recent ones which precipitated the events stemming from a circumstance (e.g. Truman's authorization) - than I think there is no way we can have a conversation.
I am not talking about the Cubans living in Cuba, just like the Dalai Lama is not talking about the Syrians in Syria.
If the Dalai Lama says exiles should be treated as temporary residents, and have the goal of returning to their country, then what should the US have done for the Cuban exiles now living in the US?
Your mention of "Western/US involvement" is a distraction. The Dalai Lama's comments appear to be meant to apply universally. In any case, after centuries of Western colonialism and the US/USSR Cold War, there's hardly a place on the planet which isn't majorly affected by "Western/US involvement".
The trade embargo is NOT a major issue for Cubans. The effect of the embargo is that economically, the US is essentially a big hole in the water that you can't trade with (kind of like the Atlantic ocean to the east of Cuba).
The longest standing issue facing the Cubans is Communism.
Exactly. They are able to trade with every other country in the world, and yet Cubans are still living in poverty.
If the embargo was lifted, the US would be blamed for "forcing their imperialist products down Cubans' throats".
There's always an easy discourse for Latin American dictators when things go south, to be promptly parroted by useful idiots (to use Lenin's nomenclature).
It's also easy to point to Cuba, and ignore the other countries in the Caribbean.
By most measures (GDP/capita, GNI/capita, life expectancy at birth), Cuba is about the same or better than the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Jamaica.
The DR and Haiti, like Cuba, have a long history of being run by dictators. But has been a parliamentary democracy since independence from the UK in 1962.
FWIW, the World Bank says 41% of the DR, 58% of Haiti, and 20% of Jamaica are below the national poverty lines. It doesn't give a number for Cuba.
Puerto Rico has a GDP/capita about 5x higher than Cuba, built in part on the special tax status of PR as a US territory. But PR is also in an economic crisis that Cuba isn't facing. And 45% of the country is below the federal poverty line http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/04/06/the-puerto-rica... .
How do you measure the poverty of Cuba? How do you compare it to other poor but non-Communist Caribbean countries, and then conclude the difference is due to Communism?
One measure I like is number o citizens trying to escape the country. But I guess it's only in Cuba that leaving is forbidden.
Unfortunately being a democracy isn't enough. Without reasonably free market, quality of life for the population will never increase. Both Dominican Republic and Haiti have low scores in the economic freedom index, for example.
"Trying to escape" is not a measure of poverty, so be aware that you've changed the goalposts. I want to know how your phrase "Exactly. They are able to trade with every other country in the world, and yet Cubans are still living in poverty." is meaningful.
But let's go with that. What are the numbers, and what does "escape" mean?
Does it make sense to talk about the number of Puerto Ricans who are leaving Puerto Rico, when they are US citizens who have the right to migrate internally? ("Puerto Ricans leaving island for U.S. in record numbers" - http://edition.cnn.com/2016/05/02/americas/puerto-rico-exodu... )
Does it make sense to compare the numbers of Cubans who reach US soil under the "Wet-Foot, Dry-Foot Policy", vs. from other countries, which don't have that privilege, and are farther away? Do you include large number of Haitians who escaped to the DR?
Do you think you're being played by the US government, because Cubans who reach the US directly from Cuba are considered refugees, while those who travel via another country are considered aliens and subjected to US immigration rules? Since the US prohibits commercial traffic to/from Cuba, this incentivizes those who come by boat.
> In 2009, the vast majority of Caribbean immigrants were from Cuba (28.6 percent), the Dominican Republic (22.9 percent), Jamaica (18.8 percent), Haiti (15.5 percent), and Trinidad and Tobago (6.4 percent).
Do you classify all of those as people who escaped their country for the US? Or was it only the Cubans you consider to have escaped?
For that matter, is isn't only Cuba which places restrictions on foreign travel. We need only look towards Snowden, whose passport was revoked, to see an example of how the US government restricts foreign travel by its citizens. The US can also revoke the passport for non-payment of child support, for certain drug traffickers, for persons convicted of sex tourism, and other reasons.
I have yet to see someone risk their lives fleeing their countries because of too much wealth.
Poor living conditions in Cuba are well known. The video below (in Portuguese) is a description of communist abundance, made by a Cuban woman living in Brazil.
In summary, Cubans receive a rationing card that allows them to acquire goods in two places, the grocery store and the butchery.
Each person is allowed 2.5kg of sugar, 300g of coffee, 500g of beans and 250ml of soybean oil, 10 eggs, 1 chicken thigh. Per month. All in terrible hygiene conditions. Toilet paper is described as a luxury, extremely expensive and not supplied by the government.
If you prefer to ignore this firsthand account, then compare the statistics you found with the ones from before the revolution, when Cuba was a leading country in Latin America in many indicators.
The comment about using people trying to escape the country was obviously made in snark. I'm not trying to compare numbers of Cubans who try to escape the prison island with other countries, exactly for the reasons you mention: the comparison makes no sense, as in other countries you simply are free to leave.
Yes, it is obviously only Cubans who have escaped. The others simply left their countries when they wanted. It's a bit different from escaping a dictatorship fleeing in precarious boats, don't you think?
Finally, yes, Americans can have their travel rights restricted for reasons. Cubans have it like that by default.
You think Cuba under the corrupt mobster-friendly Bautista was a "leading country ... in many indicators." Well, I don't disagree. Then again, it was also a regressive country in many indicators. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulgencio_Batista#Economy_of_C... .
Which indicators do you think are important? Are there other non-Communist countries in the Caribbean which are worse off than Cuba, using those indicators? If so, how can you simply point to Communism as the reason for Cuba's ranking?
Again, I point to Puerto Rico, which has a high GDP but increasingly terrible debt crisis, to show that a simple indicator like "GDP" is insufficient.
If the US decided to block all bank transactions and trade to/from the Bahamas, as it did Cuba, do you think the Bahamas would be able to maintain its current economy?
Communism may not be the only reason, but it is certainly a strong one. Latin America has suffered with communist/socialist sympathizing governments for a long time, even if the respective countries are not "officially" communist.
For example, here in Brazil we have more than 30 political parties, and they're almost all pretty much left-leaning, to the point that the social democratic party is labeled "right wing" and "neoliberal", whatever that means. It's pretty much 50 shades of red down here.
I never mentioned GDP until you did and don't consider it sufficient to evaluate quality of life in a country. It was you that brought it to the table.
But anyway, my original post's intent was to show the contradiction between the idea that Cuba's problems are due to the embargo (while they could still trade with every other country in the world) and the idea that trade with the US, described as "American imperialism", is the root of a country's problems. If that were the case, Cuba should be in a great situation, since they're free of the imperialists, and that is simply not the case.
I live in "socialist sympathizing" Sweden, and disagree with the broad brush of "suffered with communist/socialist sympathizing governments for a long time". Communist is not socialist, and socialist sympathizing governments don't automatically lead to suffering.
There are also many shades of red here; on May Day the Social Democrats, Communists, Marxist-Leninists, Red Front, Kurdish Worker's Party, Leftists, Anarcho-Syndicalists, and more will march.
I mentioned GDP because you wrote "Exactly. They are able to trade with every other country in the world, and yet Cubans are still living in poverty." I want you to say why that's meaningful.
All other Caribbean countries can trade with "every other country in the world", and yet some are still living in poverty equivalent or worse than Cuba. I mentioned some proxy methods to estimate poverty, to back my opinion.
That's why I argue that you cannot single out Communism as the primary reason for Cuba's poverty. We have no idea of what it would be like without the embargo.
Regarding the embargo, I again point to the Bahamas. Its economy depends on tourism from the US and international banking. Suppose the US were to embargo the Bahamas in the same way it embargos Cuba. Tha is, restrict travel and trade to the Bahamas, and prevent financial transactions to/from the Bahamas from going through the US banking networks. (Remember, the US can control SWIFT transactions inside the EU if they concern Cuba and transit the US network - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_Worldwide_Interban... ).
How much poorer would the non-Communist Bahamas get if the US were to embargo that country?
Or, how much richer do you think Cuba would be if the US allowed the import of Cuban sugar, and dropped the tariffs which double the price of foreign sugar? It's much more expensive for Cuba to ship sugar to Europe than to the US.
> I live in "socialist sympathizing" Sweden, and disagree with the broad brush of "suffered with communist/socialist sympathizing governments for a long time". Communist is not socialist, and socialist sympathizing governments don't automatically lead to suffering.
I'm sure there are many socialism sympathizers in Sweden, but it's not a socialist country. It's a welfare state, and conflating the two to mean the same is a serious mistake that keeps being repeated. If you want to distribute wealth, there must be wealth to be distributed. How was that wealth created in the first place?
Sweden, like other Nordic countries often used by misguided people to show how "socialism works", is a market economy, ranking high in economic freedom. The top income tax for companies, for example, is lower than in the US. Luckily for you, your shades of red have not been in power.
> I want you to say why that's meaningful.
It's meaningful because defenders of Cuba's dictatorship say that Cuba would be heaven on earth if it weren't for the embargo. Why should they even want to trade with the evil empire though? Again, I'm making a comparison between Latin American governments who claim that all that is bad comes from US trade and defenders of Cuba who claim it's all the fault of lack of trade.
> All other Caribbean countries can trade with "every other country in the world", and yet some are still living in poverty equivalent or worse than Cuba.
Communism implies poverty. That doesn't mean absence of communism implies wealth. For example, a tribal community is not communist and is not wealthy.
And of course the Bahamas would be worse off if trade with the US would suddenly stop. That's the whole point. Trade is beneficial, and not an imperialist weapon.
You said "Latin America has suffered with communist/socialist sympathizing governments for a long time." You did not say they were socialist countries, just like I did not say that Sweden was a socialist country. Yet it appears that you think I claim that Sweden is socialist.
Your reference to "The top income tax for companies" is irrelevant. The US has far more ways to avoid the official tax rate than is reasonable, in that it benefits the larger companies that can afford accountants. Quoting http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/sep/09/... "Another 2011 study by the Congressional Research Service put the U.S. effective rate at 27.1 percent, slightly lower than the OECD average of 27.7 percent." Quoting http://www.doingbusiness.org/~/media/GIAWB/Doing%20Business/... :
> However, while the rate of corporate income tax has a high public profile, corporate income tax is a relatively small part of Sweden’s Total Tax Rate. Just less than 16 percentage points relate to corporate income taxes while just over 35 percentage points relate to labour taxes and mandatory contributions. Over the nine years of Paying Taxes the Total Tax Rate for labour taxes and mandatory contributions has dropped slightly from 36.9% in 2004 to 35.5% in 2012. In 2012, the Total Tax Rate stayed at 52.0% for the fourth year in a row and so remains well above the global average.
You write "defenders of Cuba's dictatorship ... defenders of Cuba who claim it's all the fault of lack of trade".
Do you take me as a defender? I have not said it would be "heaven on Earth". Nor have I ever said it was "all the fault of lack of trade". If anything, I have pointed out that there is no single explanatory factor. What I ask is for some backing to your opinion.
You write "Communism implies poverty". Do you regard China ("socialist market economy") and Vietnam ("ardently capitalist communists") as communist? The latter seems to be doing well at reducing poverty.
If trade is beneficial, then is stopping trade detrimental? Can I consider forcing others to also stop trade a form of economic weapon? If not, what would be an "imperialist weapon", other than a battleship off your coast?
That is, are you objecting to the metaphor of "weapon" for "economic action", or the principle that trade can be used to influence a country's internal policies? If the latter, what do you think of the boycott and divestment from apartheid South Africa? Was it a non-imperialist weapon?
You said Sweden is socialist sympathizing. I said that Sweden does not implement socialism, but a welfare state. As I understand it, those sympathizers of socialism in Sweden are actually sympathizers of a welfare state, while erroneously calling it "socialism".
This is very different from Latin America, where socialism really means it (see Cuba, Venezuela, for example).
Point taken about Sweden's corporate taxes, though it doesn't detract from the fact that there's nothing socialist about its economy.
China and Vietnam reduce poverty the more they embrace capitalism... Not a coincidence I guess. Even in far from ideal conditions, the presence of an even somewhat free market improves the quality of life of the population.
Trade is beneficial and stopping trade can be used as a weapon. However, what is usually claimed in Latin America is that having trade is the imperialist weapon, which is absurd.
My whole point in this thread is that the people who claim that the US are evil imperialists simultaneously claim Cuba would be better off if not for the embargo. I'm simply pointing out this contradiction.
>Well, yes. The former sovereign of Tibet has long wanted to regain control, preferably with full independence, though more recently accepting high-level autonomy.
The quality of his message really deteriorates when you find out about this.
Refugees by definition are poor (civil war wiped out their livelihood in this instance). They end up relying on the government safety-net, which is better than nothing, but normally still a barely above poverty life-style. This congregates the migrants in migrant only areas; to where they do not experience the culture of the nation which is now their home, in a way a normal immigrant would... Thus there is no real pressure to assimilate and the customs which aren't congruent with western society which are endemic in parts of the Arab world remain(woman's rights, freedom of religion, etc...).
The "by definition" makes it easy to refute, I just need a single example. Let's take the Jews fleeing Germany in the 40ies, or, for kicks&giggles: the Dalai Lama.
> They end up relying on the government safety-net
While poor people tend to do that, you're generalizing from the usual case to the special. If I burn down all your immobile possessions, will you just throw your hands in the air and say "fuck it, I'll do welfare from here on out"? Not saying that it's to start anew in a different country, but if you take the average person, and then select those marching through the desert for 40 weeks, you'll end up with someone vastly different than your average welfare recipient.
> This congregates the migrants in migrant only areas;
Possibly true in France, not so much in, say, Germany, where all the cool kidz want to move to the inner-city with their start-ups and underground parties.
> Thus there is no real pressure to assimilate
It sounds like there'd be economic pressure, or are immigrants just too happy with a "barely above poverty life-style"?
> and the customs which aren't congruent with western society which are endemic in parts of the Arab world remain(woman's rights, freedom of religion, etc...)
Very much enjoying how everybody-and-their-racist-uncle is discovering women's rights these days. If only they'd be so open-minded when they hear that >90% of sexual assaults are perpetrated by, well, that uncle. Or some other family member.
That doesn't work at all adrenalinelol should have just said something like "are primarily poor because of their refugee status".
The term 'by definition' means that all of the mentioned group have the particular characteristic, it absolutely is saying "necessarily everyone". If you don't mean to strictly require that condition then use different terminology.
Casual conversation is usually not very strict. In any case, it was obvious from the context that parent didn't mean "absolutely every single refugee must be poor".
I don't think that was clear: it's a common misunderstanding that all refugees are poor, political rhetoric often tries to emphasise this in order to sway people against migrants.
Totally agree about casual conversation but the modification of these expression by addition of "by definition" IMO flips this to be a statement of fact that should be challenged if it's false. There was no need to add that emphasis and it pushed the statement to being demonstrably false.
> Possibly true in France, not so much in, say, Germany, where all the cool kidz want to move to the inner-city with their start-ups and underground parties.
The cool kidz inner city quarters, where the stalemate-like coexistence between hipsters and n-th generation migrants creates a unique slowdown to gentrification forces can't be artificially grown. Unfortunately, Neukölln does not scale.
I am still not sure why it is a good idea to let millions get displaced from the ancestral lands, having hundreds of them dying while trying to migrate and then the remaining ones living isolated lives in alien countries with those countries supporting them by spending billions of dollars every year and having culture and way of life changed forever. Compare this to taking on ISIS once and for all which numbers about 30,000 - 40,000 fighters. Wouldn't it be better to spend those billions of dollars and take on some inevitable loss of life and annihilate them forever. From where did we all start believing in the defeatist mentality that world cannot take on ISIS? That land belongs to the Syrians and Iraqis and not to some 7th century cult. The best solution is to return that land to whom it belongs rather than taking millions of refugees and creating problems from them as well as for ourselves. If you want to take in refugees then there is no end to it, billions of ppl would like to move to Europe or USA. Whom are you going to deny and on what basis?
Well, it isn't ISIS alone. In Syria, you have the Kurds fighting against islamists (ISIS and others), the Turks and against Assad, you have the Free Syrian Army fighting against ISIS and Assad, you have Assad, you have Russians, Iranians, Americans and maybe others I forgot. So defeating ISIS might be possible and is being worked on - however, finding a livable solution for the whole middle east, inclusing Lybia and Iraq, is on a whole different level.
Taking on ISIS? First, that's easier said than done. They're not an army that you can just take on in open field. See occupation of Irak. But really, the war in Syria and Lybia didn't get started by ISIS and won't end if we "end ISIS", not that I think that's possible anyways. Personally, I think you have a point, and the best way to help somehow fix the clusterfuck that we (the West) created in these countries is send lots of money and help to set up refugees up in other countries in the region (Jordan, etc). But NOT Turkey, which seems to grow every day more and more extremist and I get the feeling refugees are going to be miserable at best there.
Terrible idea. Just because the west can spend billions of dollars it makes no sense to bring in large populations of a foreign culture and then actively try to assimilate them into another one. It doesn't work and leads to alienation which can be seen in the second and third generation muslims now living in Europe. On top of that, it is extremely hypocritical of the west to spend billions on refugees when most western countries themselves have their own citizens living like refugees in their own country. Over 60 million americans live below the poverty line. Helping the refugees reclaim their land will enable them to maintain their culture and mitigate assimilation issues in the west. Other wise we just add more burden to the social safety net. Do you really believe that a majority of these refugees will be able to find jobs in the west? Their is a small portion of them who are educated and highly skilled, but the majority are not.
The problem is that it is unpalatable to a significant portion of our voters, probably you included. Think back to when the US defeated Germany. We leveled Dresden. It is entirely possible to wipe ISIS from the face of the Earth, sympathizers and supporters included.
Regarding the inevitable suffering and death, quick solutions can't hurt more than the current population. There is no such limit if we let things fester forever. Trying to avoid conflict just drags it out, preventing recovery. We could face the suffering and death of many many times the current population.
> Wouldn't it be better to spend those billions of dollars and take on some inevitable loss of life and annihilate them forever. From where did we all start believing in the defeatist mentality that world cannot take on ISIS?
You're grossly oversimplifying this. Remember Iraq? Afghanistan? It's easy for a large army to topple a government or kill some leaders. But groups like ISIS and Al-Qaeda are basically ideologies that rely on guerilla warfare (al-Qaeda moreso than ISIS, since ISIS at least wants to establish a caliphate).
These wars have been going on for decades and are guaranteed to continue for decades more. Even if ISIS was completely wiped out, there would still remain the ideologies and history that making recruiting for such groups possible. Knocking over governments like in Iraq, Syria, and Libya, just creates even more power vacuums for these groups to grow and recruit in.
I'm not sure what the best solution would be. The U.S. and NATO seem content to just keep fighting proxy wars for the upcoming decades. Personally, I'd rather accept refugees and put the effort into successfully integrating them in Western culture. This would probably be much easier in the U.S. which already has a long history of immigration and serving as a "melting pot" of cultures. Maybe more difficult in Europe. Another big problem is the xenophobic and racist attitudes towards immigrants, and it's hard to successfully integrate people when they're forced to live amongst those kinds of people.
I'm not saying immigrants should be forced to abandon their cultures, just that leaving them to fester as an outgroup in impoverished countries lacking strong institutions can't possibly help win an ideological war. Many Western countries are already suffering from population decline. Offering a new home where the influence of toxic ideologies is weaker seems a better solution to me than indefinite war with no plan for what happens afterwards.
> But groups like ISIS and Al-Qaeda are basically ideologies that rely on guerilla warfare (al-Qaeda moreso than ISIS, since ISIS at least wants to establish a caliphate).
The group that later decided to call itself "The Islamic State in Iraq" used to be "Al-Qaeda in Iraq", and both it and its parent organization had the goal of establishing a caliphate then; this has always been an al-Qaeda goal.
Yes, but al-Qaeda existed for years as just a decentralized terrorist network, whereas the legitimacy and appeal of ISIS partially depends on their establishing a caliphate (i.e. formal government and controlling territory). Otherwise they just go back to being another random terrorist group.
Which is both why it's slightly more plausible to "defeat ISIS" using a standard military, but it still wouldn't solve the underlying problems. More likely some other group just takes up the ISIS flag again a few years later.
> Yes, but al-Qaeda existed for years as just a decentralized terrorist network, whereas the legitimacy and appeal of ISIS partially depends on their establishing a caliphate
Prior to the post-9/11 period, during which, after a brief spike, the value of al-Qaeda's brand fell, the Taliban in Afghanistan wasn't so much a government sponsor of terror as a government sponsored by al-Qaeda, and a key part of al-Qaeda's appeal and legitimacy. Success at establishing territory with a formal government of the style promoted by the ideology has been as much a part of al-Qaeda's appeal as it is for the Islamic State (and the failure of al-Qaeda central to maintain that is a big part of the reason that al-Qaeda in Iraq, with its greater success at that, broke away and became, through a number of steps, "The Islamic State".)
"I'd rather accept refugees and put the effort into successfully integrating them in Western culture."
We can't. Western culture has decided Western culture is toxic and asking others to conform to it for any reason is imperialistic, racist, and xenophobic.
Until Western culture stops the virtue signaling competition to see who can slag their own culture harder than the next person, and acquires even minimal self-confidence, there will be no assimilation possible.
"Another big problem is the xenophobic and racist attitudes towards immigrants,"
But is that cause or effect? Immediately after you basically state that these immigrants are not assimilated into Western culture, you complain that some members of the Western culture don't want to live next to them. How do you expect to "successfully integrate" people even as you just told them about how the culture you expect to integrate them into is xenophobic and racist against them and everything else? Would you integrate into a culture constantly telling you how much it sucks and how it's wrong about everything and how sorry it is to you about that?
If by Americanized, you include become Native English speakers, then I'd have to disagree with that 0 number. There are huge swathes of NYC neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens where second generation immigrants would be mistaken for first generation in most of the rest of the country.
I'm not saying this is good or bad, just that we're not so superior to Europeans with regards to integration as we think we are. I think we tend to care less. Of all the xenophobic stuff some of our politicians say, I don't notice the word integration come up a lot.
"Successfully integrate" = "live peacefully in this country under a single government and set of laws," not force them to abandon their culture. Stuff about making immigrants abandon their religion, outlawing their traditional dress, forcing them to shake hands, whatever, is (imo) disgusting and not what I mean by "cultural integration." That stuff will work itself out over time by regular culture processes and a two-way exchange, the same as it did for all the previous immigrant groups (Catholics, Irish, Chinese, Africans, etc). No, things still aren't perfect, but over time things do become more integrated just through natural processes.
> Would you integrate into a culture constantly telling you how much it sucks and how it's wrong about everything and how sorry it is to you about that?
The people acting that way (e.g. Donald Trump) are not helping. They're an obstacle. They're making things worse for everyone. There would need to be strategies to mitigate that, finding ways to convince them to be more accepting of immigrants, or reducing contact with the most hostile people as much as possible. But I still think allowing immigration, and having programs to facilitate it, is a better strategy than what has been happening so far, despite the obstacles.
'"live peacefully in this country under a single government and set of laws," not force them to abandon their culture.'
Government and laws are culture. They aren't all of a culture, but they are culture.
May I assume, for instance, that one of the laws you'd like to see them adopt is equal treatment of women? For the specific set of immigrants in question, that is a major abandonment of culture. Do the immigrants have a responsibility to culturally integrate here or not?
"The people acting that way (e.g. Donald Trump) are not helping."
Could you find me, say, five quotes where Donald Trump tells other cultures of the world than ours is racist, sexist, xenophobic, and toxic, or where he apologizes for all the things that Western culture has done?
I don't think I'm going too far out on a limb here by guessing you don't like Trump. Isn't exactly the reason you don't like him precisely that he doesn't do those things, like all proper public figures do?
Actually, never mind, I don't really care about how you feel about Trump, I just needed some textual distance before this paragraph. A few paragraphs ago I asked you if immigrants have a responsibility to culturally integrate or not. I'm also not too worried about the answer to that either. My point is, did you notice how that made you feel? I bet you find you didn't want to answer that question. You certainly didn't want to answer it with a resounding "Yes, immigrants absolutely should conform to basic Western standards of how women should be treated equally." I bet there's a part of you that wants to just go ahead and copy and paste that into a reply, just to show me.... but there's another part of you already writing the "but ...". And that's the proof of what I'm saying here... that sort of confidence is not in our culture. You don't need to go out into the culture to find this truth, you merely need look honestly inside yourself. How is that culture supposed to assimilate anything?
The US could simply let the Kurds in northern Syria wipe out ISIS. They have the track record as the world's best ground force against ISIS.
But Turkey, the ISIS-friendly NATO partner that's bombing its own cities, wants to obliterate them. It does everything it can to keep the Kurds from closing the Turkey-ISIS supply line. Turkey's government is such an embarrassment that "Obama now considers [Erdoğan] a failure and an authoritarian." (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-obam...)
The US government can easily end ISIS. But they have other priorities and agendas too. They want certain outcomes.
That 7th century cult would've been defeated by Syria's military and other forces. How about letting countries defend themselves and fight their own wars and revolutions instead of interfering in their internal politics and making a mess nobody cleans because that kind of "cleanup war" would not be profitable?
We don't need to globalize every f conflict by meddling in...
And if we don't do this, we won't have to feel morally responsible and give welfare to refugees...
What caused ISIS?
The war in Afghanistan, and especially Iraq. The dictator was toppled, and not effectively replaced. Saddam may have not been the nicest guy, but he lead a fairly stable country. He was firmly in charge.
By not effectively replacing the leader of a country, it leads to a power vacuum, looking for someone to take that power. ISIS grew to fill that void. If you displace them, someone else will come along and take that power, potentially even worse than ISIS
I would go much further back than those two wars, simply put this is a situation that had been brewing for many years and simply got to where it was through better organization abilities of the groups and the withdrawing of forces to keep the peace. Our actions in Libya, Syria, and elsewhere, certainly have dug the hole deeper.
But lets be honest, go back to the Treaty of Sèvres and subsequent assigning of territory to European countries and how it was done without regard to the religious and ethnic traits of those living there. As in, European Colonialism started this mess as it did in Africa. This did not happen in the last twenty years, this is generation after generation finally reaching a point to where they could act.
If you keep arming all sides and leave it is to be expected.
>> "the remaining ones living isolated lives in alien countries with those countries supporting them by spending billions of dollars every year"
You're just assuming that refugees won't integrate. I know quite a few refugees all of whom are living good lives in their new countries and work in good jobs. Anecdotal evidence of course but you aren't providing any evidence for your statement.
>> "taking on ISIS once and for all"
What does that mean? It sounds like you think other countries can go in and kill 30-40k people and it'll be over. It's an ideology. Take the head off ISIS and someone else will emerge. They aren't the first extremist group and they won't be the last unfortunately.
>> "billions of ppl would like to move to Europe or USA"
Again, show me your evidence. From what I've seen a lot of refugees were very happy in their own countries. They had good careers, large families, and lots of friends. They were left with no choice but to leave or die. Your view of countries outside of Europe/the USA is likely heavily tainted by the media.
Don't have time at the moment to look at the second link but the data in the first one is pretty useless. Those 700m people who want to move abroad probably includes half of my friends in the UK who are moving simply because they like another country. Not because of any real problem in the UK. The also have good jobs and won't be a drain on the economy. Not very relevant to the current discussion therefore.
> You're just assuming that refugees won't integrate. I know quite a few refugees all of whom are living good lives in their new countries and work in good jobs.
The pressing question is wether that is getting harder or easier with rising numbers and by how much.
You should read this study from Michigan State University that focused on the refugee mentality. Highly skilled refugees integrate well, and they are the ones you know because they integrated well. This creates this skewed view for you. However many segregate themselves and slowly begin creating their own communities, separate from the people of the native country. Have a read
The Syrian Crisis dates back to before ISIS taking over. ISIS just amplified it. Syrians were fleeing their country by the millions even before then. Millions of refugees went to Turkey and Jordan due to the civil war and the brutal campaign led by the local ruling dictatorship.
Many of these people are also climate change refugees. Syria has been suffering drought for around 40 years through poor conditions, overuse, mismanagement, etc. It used to be the pistachio capital of the world. The collapse of its agriculture sector was a factor in all this.
This is also a warning. It has just begun. Based on climate models it seems north Africa and the Mediterranean will be hit hard by climate change. There will be many more people fleeing their lands.
Just to add, but a lot of responsibility is being dumped on western nations who are acting out of humanity. But no one is mentioning the complete failure of extremely rich and near by Muslim nations from doing anything (Saudi Arabia, Iran, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Singapore). Countries with the same underpinning religion as a majority of refugees won't even accept them, and this really shows their own values. For humanities sake, we accept refugees, but don't be a fool and think its going to go well.
Still geographically far and culturally different. Although sharing religion does create some familiarity but in reality I don't think the culture is similar.
"...Never before in the entire course of human history, has an entire culture, race and civilization decided to hand over its lands, social capital, heritage and identities to competing and intruding cultures without a fight..."
The Dalai Lama fought most of his life for the right to cultural identity. It's exactly what he is asking for here, that one society doesn't get its cultural identity destroyed by an influx of individuals from another society.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 131 ms ] threadWell, yes. The former sovereign of Tibet has long wanted to regain control, preferably with full independence, though more recently accepting high-level autonomy.
But we can't always get what we want.
If the Chinese government refuse to restore autonomous rule to the satisfaction of the exiled government, then what is India supposed to do? Granting citizenship seems the most humane of the possible solutions.
If the US government is unable to change the government of Cuba (including the disastrous attempt at the Bay of Pigs and the decades long trade embargo) to the satisfaction of the Cuban exiles in the US, then what is the US supposed to do? Prevent the children of Rafael Díaz-Balart - the exiled majority leader of the Cuban House of Representatives before Castro came to power - from being elected to office in the US?
If there is no peace in Syria, so the goal of returning home cannot be achieved, what then?
The longest standing issue facing Cubans is the US trade embargo and that has always been in it's power to fix...
> If there is no peace in Syria, so the goal of returning home cannot be achieved, what then
There is no peace in Syria because of over a decade of destabilizing policies and engagements by the US in that region, which Europe has mostly supported.
More generally, as to 2of3 examples which you provided - the refugees aren't due to some terrible internal policies of these countries or natural catastrophies - but majorly due to Western/US involvement.
There are probably about a dozen major causes of the problems in Syria, of which US/western involvement is only one. There's lots of blame to be spread around.
Can we get a few examples?
* Religious rivalry between Sunni and Shiite Islam.
* Regional rivalry between Saudi Arabia (an autocratic Sunni state heavily reliant on a very conservative sect (Wahhabi) for legitimacy) and Iran (a theocratic Shiite state).
* Oil being the main economic mainstay, and not being conveniently divvied up among different ethnic regions
* Great power ambitions on the part of Turkey
* Superpower ambitions on the part of Russia
* The failure of any state in the region to produce viable governments with strong internal legitimacy, rather than series of political "revolutions" that led to changing merely of who was treating the state as their feeding trough
* Western engagement in the region
* Western disengagement in the region (damned if you do, damned if you don't...)
I'm probably missing some, but it's worth noting that while the Iraq War didn't help the situation in the Middle East, it's not like a strong dictator is an effective guarantee of internal security--after all, the Arab Spring started in Tunisia, instigated primarily by local causes (and the only country that seems to have actually improved its situation as a result!).
By 2012 the population of Syria had doubled since 1986, despite massive emigration. A huge chunk of the country was under 30. This lead to problems with employment, housing, water, food, etc. Which in tern led to escalating sectarian tensions.
Yes, but there is a significant difference between a terrible government and a full blown civil war. It's really impossible to see the later happening without US involvement.
* it's impossible to see full blown civil war happening without the failure of the Ottoman Empire to create a unified culture and nation state.
* it's impossible to see full blown civil war happening without Religious rivalry between Sunni and Shiite Islam.
* it's impossible to see full blown civil war happening without Regional rivalry between Saudi Arabia (an autocratic Sunni state heavily reliant on a very conservative sect (Wahhabi) for legitimacy) and Iran (a theocratic Shiite state).
* it's impossible to see full blown civil war happening without Oil being the main economic mainstay, and not being conveniently divvied up among different ethnic regions
* it's impossible to see full blown civil war happening without Great power ambitions on the part of Turkey
* it's impossible to see full blown civil war happening without Superpower ambitions on the part of Russia
* it's impossible to see full blown civil war happening without The failure of any state in the region to produce viable governments with strong internal legitimacy, rather than series of political "revolutions" that led to changing merely of who was treating the state as their feeding trough
* it's impossible to see full blown civil war happening without Western engagement in the region
* it's impossible to see full blown civil war happening without Western disengagement in the region
His comment was a response as to why Syria has problems, not as to why there is civil war. Your take on his comment:
> it's impossible to see full blown civil war happening without the failure of the Ottoman Empire to create a unified culture and nation state
Is something the equivalent that blaming the bombing of Hiroshima on the Shogunate would be. If you do not see the difference between historical events which contributed to a circumstance and recent ones which precipitated the events stemming from a circumstance (e.g. Truman's authorization) - than I think there is no way we can have a conversation.
If the Dalai Lama says exiles should be treated as temporary residents, and have the goal of returning to their country, then what should the US have done for the Cuban exiles now living in the US?
Your mention of "Western/US involvement" is a distraction. The Dalai Lama's comments appear to be meant to apply universally. In any case, after centuries of Western colonialism and the US/USSR Cold War, there's hardly a place on the planet which isn't majorly affected by "Western/US involvement".
The longest standing issue facing the Cubans is Communism.
If the embargo was lifted, the US would be blamed for "forcing their imperialist products down Cubans' throats".
There's always an easy discourse for Latin American dictators when things go south, to be promptly parroted by useful idiots (to use Lenin's nomenclature).
By most measures (GDP/capita, GNI/capita, life expectancy at birth), Cuba is about the same or better than the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Jamaica.
The DR and Haiti, like Cuba, have a long history of being run by dictators. But has been a parliamentary democracy since independence from the UK in 1962.
FWIW, the World Bank says 41% of the DR, 58% of Haiti, and 20% of Jamaica are below the national poverty lines. It doesn't give a number for Cuba.
Puerto Rico has a GDP/capita about 5x higher than Cuba, built in part on the special tax status of PR as a US territory. But PR is also in an economic crisis that Cuba isn't facing. And 45% of the country is below the federal poverty line http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/04/06/the-puerto-rica... .
How do you measure the poverty of Cuba? How do you compare it to other poor but non-Communist Caribbean countries, and then conclude the difference is due to Communism?
Unfortunately being a democracy isn't enough. Without reasonably free market, quality of life for the population will never increase. Both Dominican Republic and Haiti have low scores in the economic freedom index, for example.
But let's go with that. What are the numbers, and what does "escape" mean?
Does it make sense to talk about the number of Puerto Ricans who are leaving Puerto Rico, when they are US citizens who have the right to migrate internally? ("Puerto Ricans leaving island for U.S. in record numbers" - http://edition.cnn.com/2016/05/02/americas/puerto-rico-exodu... )
Does it make sense to compare the numbers of Cubans who reach US soil under the "Wet-Foot, Dry-Foot Policy", vs. from other countries, which don't have that privilege, and are farther away? Do you include large number of Haitians who escaped to the DR?
Do you think you're being played by the US government, because Cubans who reach the US directly from Cuba are considered refugees, while those who travel via another country are considered aliens and subjected to US immigration rules? Since the US prohibits commercial traffic to/from Cuba, this incentivizes those who come by boat.
From http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/caribbean-immigrants-... :
> In 2009, the vast majority of Caribbean immigrants were from Cuba (28.6 percent), the Dominican Republic (22.9 percent), Jamaica (18.8 percent), Haiti (15.5 percent), and Trinidad and Tobago (6.4 percent).
Do you classify all of those as people who escaped their country for the US? Or was it only the Cubans you consider to have escaped?
And finally, Cuba relaxed its restrictions on foreign travel a few years ago. See http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2012/10/16/cuba-tra... .
For that matter, is isn't only Cuba which places restrictions on foreign travel. We need only look towards Snowden, whose passport was revoked, to see an example of how the US government restricts foreign travel by its citizens. The US can also revoke the passport for non-payment of child support, for certain drug traffickers, for persons convicted of sex tourism, and other reasons.
Poor living conditions in Cuba are well known. The video below (in Portuguese) is a description of communist abundance, made by a Cuban woman living in Brazil.
https://m.facebook.com/163790763963427/videos/17806373253613...
In summary, Cubans receive a rationing card that allows them to acquire goods in two places, the grocery store and the butchery.
Each person is allowed 2.5kg of sugar, 300g of coffee, 500g of beans and 250ml of soybean oil, 10 eggs, 1 chicken thigh. Per month. All in terrible hygiene conditions. Toilet paper is described as a luxury, extremely expensive and not supplied by the government.
If you prefer to ignore this firsthand account, then compare the statistics you found with the ones from before the revolution, when Cuba was a leading country in Latin America in many indicators.
The comment about using people trying to escape the country was obviously made in snark. I'm not trying to compare numbers of Cubans who try to escape the prison island with other countries, exactly for the reasons you mention: the comparison makes no sense, as in other countries you simply are free to leave.
Yes, it is obviously only Cubans who have escaped. The others simply left their countries when they wanted. It's a bit different from escaping a dictatorship fleeing in precarious boats, don't you think?
Finally, yes, Americans can have their travel rights restricted for reasons. Cubans have it like that by default.
I'm arguing that you can't simply point to "Communism" as the reason for Cuba's poverty.
BTW, if you believe the numbers at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_food_ener... then Cubans get at least as much food calories as those from the DR and Jamaica.
You think Cuba under the corrupt mobster-friendly Bautista was a "leading country ... in many indicators." Well, I don't disagree. Then again, it was also a regressive country in many indicators. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulgencio_Batista#Economy_of_C... .
Which indicators do you think are important? Are there other non-Communist countries in the Caribbean which are worse off than Cuba, using those indicators? If so, how can you simply point to Communism as the reason for Cuba's ranking?
Again, I point to Puerto Rico, which has a high GDP but increasingly terrible debt crisis, to show that a simple indicator like "GDP" is insufficient.
If the US decided to block all bank transactions and trade to/from the Bahamas, as it did Cuba, do you think the Bahamas would be able to maintain its current economy?
For example, here in Brazil we have more than 30 political parties, and they're almost all pretty much left-leaning, to the point that the social democratic party is labeled "right wing" and "neoliberal", whatever that means. It's pretty much 50 shades of red down here.
I never mentioned GDP until you did and don't consider it sufficient to evaluate quality of life in a country. It was you that brought it to the table.
But anyway, my original post's intent was to show the contradiction between the idea that Cuba's problems are due to the embargo (while they could still trade with every other country in the world) and the idea that trade with the US, described as "American imperialism", is the root of a country's problems. If that were the case, Cuba should be in a great situation, since they're free of the imperialists, and that is simply not the case.
There are also many shades of red here; on May Day the Social Democrats, Communists, Marxist-Leninists, Red Front, Kurdish Worker's Party, Leftists, Anarcho-Syndicalists, and more will march.
I mentioned GDP because you wrote "Exactly. They are able to trade with every other country in the world, and yet Cubans are still living in poverty." I want you to say why that's meaningful.
All other Caribbean countries can trade with "every other country in the world", and yet some are still living in poverty equivalent or worse than Cuba. I mentioned some proxy methods to estimate poverty, to back my opinion.
That's why I argue that you cannot single out Communism as the primary reason for Cuba's poverty. We have no idea of what it would be like without the embargo.
Regarding the embargo, I again point to the Bahamas. Its economy depends on tourism from the US and international banking. Suppose the US were to embargo the Bahamas in the same way it embargos Cuba. Tha is, restrict travel and trade to the Bahamas, and prevent financial transactions to/from the Bahamas from going through the US banking networks. (Remember, the US can control SWIFT transactions inside the EU if they concern Cuba and transit the US network - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_Worldwide_Interban... ).
How much poorer would the non-Communist Bahamas get if the US were to embargo that country?
Or, how much richer do you think Cuba would be if the US allowed the import of Cuban sugar, and dropped the tariffs which double the price of foreign sugar? It's much more expensive for Cuba to ship sugar to Europe than to the US.
I'm sure there are many socialism sympathizers in Sweden, but it's not a socialist country. It's a welfare state, and conflating the two to mean the same is a serious mistake that keeps being repeated. If you want to distribute wealth, there must be wealth to be distributed. How was that wealth created in the first place?
Sweden, like other Nordic countries often used by misguided people to show how "socialism works", is a market economy, ranking high in economic freedom. The top income tax for companies, for example, is lower than in the US. Luckily for you, your shades of red have not been in power.
> I want you to say why that's meaningful.
It's meaningful because defenders of Cuba's dictatorship say that Cuba would be heaven on earth if it weren't for the embargo. Why should they even want to trade with the evil empire though? Again, I'm making a comparison between Latin American governments who claim that all that is bad comes from US trade and defenders of Cuba who claim it's all the fault of lack of trade.
> All other Caribbean countries can trade with "every other country in the world", and yet some are still living in poverty equivalent or worse than Cuba.
Communism implies poverty. That doesn't mean absence of communism implies wealth. For example, a tribal community is not communist and is not wealthy.
And of course the Bahamas would be worse off if trade with the US would suddenly stop. That's the whole point. Trade is beneficial, and not an imperialist weapon.
Your reference to "The top income tax for companies" is irrelevant. The US has far more ways to avoid the official tax rate than is reasonable, in that it benefits the larger companies that can afford accountants. Quoting http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/sep/09/... "Another 2011 study by the Congressional Research Service put the U.S. effective rate at 27.1 percent, slightly lower than the OECD average of 27.7 percent." Quoting http://www.doingbusiness.org/~/media/GIAWB/Doing%20Business/... :
> However, while the rate of corporate income tax has a high public profile, corporate income tax is a relatively small part of Sweden’s Total Tax Rate. Just less than 16 percentage points relate to corporate income taxes while just over 35 percentage points relate to labour taxes and mandatory contributions. Over the nine years of Paying Taxes the Total Tax Rate for labour taxes and mandatory contributions has dropped slightly from 36.9% in 2004 to 35.5% in 2012. In 2012, the Total Tax Rate stayed at 52.0% for the fourth year in a row and so remains well above the global average.
You write "defenders of Cuba's dictatorship ... defenders of Cuba who claim it's all the fault of lack of trade".
Do you take me as a defender? I have not said it would be "heaven on Earth". Nor have I ever said it was "all the fault of lack of trade". If anything, I have pointed out that there is no single explanatory factor. What I ask is for some backing to your opinion.
You write "Communism implies poverty". Do you regard China ("socialist market economy") and Vietnam ("ardently capitalist communists") as communist? The latter seems to be doing well at reducing poverty.
If trade is beneficial, then is stopping trade detrimental? Can I consider forcing others to also stop trade a form of economic weapon? If not, what would be an "imperialist weapon", other than a battleship off your coast?
That is, are you objecting to the metaphor of "weapon" for "economic action", or the principle that trade can be used to influence a country's internal policies? If the latter, what do you think of the boycott and divestment from apartheid South Africa? Was it a non-imperialist weapon?
This is very different from Latin America, where socialism really means it (see Cuba, Venezuela, for example).
Point taken about Sweden's corporate taxes, though it doesn't detract from the fact that there's nothing socialist about its economy.
China and Vietnam reduce poverty the more they embrace capitalism... Not a coincidence I guess. Even in far from ideal conditions, the presence of an even somewhat free market improves the quality of life of the population.
Trade is beneficial and stopping trade can be used as a weapon. However, what is usually claimed in Latin America is that having trade is the imperialist weapon, which is absurd.
My whole point in this thread is that the people who claim that the US are evil imperialists simultaneously claim Cuba would be better off if not for the embargo. I'm simply pointing out this contradiction.
The quality of his message really deteriorates when you find out about this.
The "by definition" makes it easy to refute, I just need a single example. Let's take the Jews fleeing Germany in the 40ies, or, for kicks&giggles: the Dalai Lama.
> They end up relying on the government safety-net
While poor people tend to do that, you're generalizing from the usual case to the special. If I burn down all your immobile possessions, will you just throw your hands in the air and say "fuck it, I'll do welfare from here on out"? Not saying that it's to start anew in a different country, but if you take the average person, and then select those marching through the desert for 40 weeks, you'll end up with someone vastly different than your average welfare recipient.
> This congregates the migrants in migrant only areas;
Possibly true in France, not so much in, say, Germany, where all the cool kidz want to move to the inner-city with their start-ups and underground parties.
> Thus there is no real pressure to assimilate
It sounds like there'd be economic pressure, or are immigrants just too happy with a "barely above poverty life-style"?
> and the customs which aren't congruent with western society which are endemic in parts of the Arab world remain(woman's rights, freedom of religion, etc...)
Very much enjoying how everybody-and-their-racist-uncle is discovering women's rights these days. If only they'd be so open-minded when they hear that >90% of sexual assaults are perpetrated by, well, that uncle. Or some other family member.
On the contrary. By definition here is used casually and doesn't mean "necessarily everybody" just the vast majority.
The term 'by definition' means that all of the mentioned group have the particular characteristic, it absolutely is saying "necessarily everyone". If you don't mean to strictly require that condition then use different terminology.
Totally agree about casual conversation but the modification of these expression by addition of "by definition" IMO flips this to be a statement of fact that should be challenged if it's false. There was no need to add that emphasis and it pushed the statement to being demonstrably false.
The cool kidz inner city quarters, where the stalemate-like coexistence between hipsters and n-th generation migrants creates a unique slowdown to gentrification forces can't be artificially grown. Unfortunately, Neukölln does not scale.
The problem is that it is unpalatable to a significant portion of our voters, probably you included. Think back to when the US defeated Germany. We leveled Dresden. It is entirely possible to wipe ISIS from the face of the Earth, sympathizers and supporters included.
Regarding the inevitable suffering and death, quick solutions can't hurt more than the current population. There is no such limit if we let things fester forever. Trying to avoid conflict just drags it out, preventing recovery. We could face the suffering and death of many many times the current population.
You're grossly oversimplifying this. Remember Iraq? Afghanistan? It's easy for a large army to topple a government or kill some leaders. But groups like ISIS and Al-Qaeda are basically ideologies that rely on guerilla warfare (al-Qaeda moreso than ISIS, since ISIS at least wants to establish a caliphate).
These wars have been going on for decades and are guaranteed to continue for decades more. Even if ISIS was completely wiped out, there would still remain the ideologies and history that making recruiting for such groups possible. Knocking over governments like in Iraq, Syria, and Libya, just creates even more power vacuums for these groups to grow and recruit in.
I'm not sure what the best solution would be. The U.S. and NATO seem content to just keep fighting proxy wars for the upcoming decades. Personally, I'd rather accept refugees and put the effort into successfully integrating them in Western culture. This would probably be much easier in the U.S. which already has a long history of immigration and serving as a "melting pot" of cultures. Maybe more difficult in Europe. Another big problem is the xenophobic and racist attitudes towards immigrants, and it's hard to successfully integrate people when they're forced to live amongst those kinds of people.
I'm not saying immigrants should be forced to abandon their cultures, just that leaving them to fester as an outgroup in impoverished countries lacking strong institutions can't possibly help win an ideological war. Many Western countries are already suffering from population decline. Offering a new home where the influence of toxic ideologies is weaker seems a better solution to me than indefinite war with no plan for what happens afterwards.
The group that later decided to call itself "The Islamic State in Iraq" used to be "Al-Qaeda in Iraq", and both it and its parent organization had the goal of establishing a caliphate then; this has always been an al-Qaeda goal.
Which is both why it's slightly more plausible to "defeat ISIS" using a standard military, but it still wouldn't solve the underlying problems. More likely some other group just takes up the ISIS flag again a few years later.
Prior to the post-9/11 period, during which, after a brief spike, the value of al-Qaeda's brand fell, the Taliban in Afghanistan wasn't so much a government sponsor of terror as a government sponsored by al-Qaeda, and a key part of al-Qaeda's appeal and legitimacy. Success at establishing territory with a formal government of the style promoted by the ideology has been as much a part of al-Qaeda's appeal as it is for the Islamic State (and the failure of al-Qaeda central to maintain that is a big part of the reason that al-Qaeda in Iraq, with its greater success at that, broke away and became, through a number of steps, "The Islamic State".)
We can't. Western culture has decided Western culture is toxic and asking others to conform to it for any reason is imperialistic, racist, and xenophobic.
Until Western culture stops the virtue signaling competition to see who can slag their own culture harder than the next person, and acquires even minimal self-confidence, there will be no assimilation possible.
"Another big problem is the xenophobic and racist attitudes towards immigrants,"
But is that cause or effect? Immediately after you basically state that these immigrants are not assimilated into Western culture, you complain that some members of the Western culture don't want to live next to them. How do you expect to "successfully integrate" people even as you just told them about how the culture you expect to integrate them into is xenophobic and racist against them and everything else? Would you integrate into a culture constantly telling you how much it sucks and how it's wrong about everything and how sorry it is to you about that?
While I can't speak for Europe, in America there are approximately zero second-generation immigrants who aren't thoroughly Americanized.
I'm not saying this is good or bad, just that we're not so superior to Europeans with regards to integration as we think we are. I think we tend to care less. Of all the xenophobic stuff some of our politicians say, I don't notice the word integration come up a lot.
> Would you integrate into a culture constantly telling you how much it sucks and how it's wrong about everything and how sorry it is to you about that?
The people acting that way (e.g. Donald Trump) are not helping. They're an obstacle. They're making things worse for everyone. There would need to be strategies to mitigate that, finding ways to convince them to be more accepting of immigrants, or reducing contact with the most hostile people as much as possible. But I still think allowing immigration, and having programs to facilitate it, is a better strategy than what has been happening so far, despite the obstacles.
Government and laws are culture. They aren't all of a culture, but they are culture.
May I assume, for instance, that one of the laws you'd like to see them adopt is equal treatment of women? For the specific set of immigrants in question, that is a major abandonment of culture. Do the immigrants have a responsibility to culturally integrate here or not?
"The people acting that way (e.g. Donald Trump) are not helping."
Could you find me, say, five quotes where Donald Trump tells other cultures of the world than ours is racist, sexist, xenophobic, and toxic, or where he apologizes for all the things that Western culture has done?
I don't think I'm going too far out on a limb here by guessing you don't like Trump. Isn't exactly the reason you don't like him precisely that he doesn't do those things, like all proper public figures do?
Actually, never mind, I don't really care about how you feel about Trump, I just needed some textual distance before this paragraph. A few paragraphs ago I asked you if immigrants have a responsibility to culturally integrate or not. I'm also not too worried about the answer to that either. My point is, did you notice how that made you feel? I bet you find you didn't want to answer that question. You certainly didn't want to answer it with a resounding "Yes, immigrants absolutely should conform to basic Western standards of how women should be treated equally." I bet there's a part of you that wants to just go ahead and copy and paste that into a reply, just to show me.... but there's another part of you already writing the "but ...". And that's the proof of what I'm saying here... that sort of confidence is not in our culture. You don't need to go out into the culture to find this truth, you merely need look honestly inside yourself. How is that culture supposed to assimilate anything?
But Turkey, the ISIS-friendly NATO partner that's bombing its own cities, wants to obliterate them. It does everything it can to keep the Kurds from closing the Turkey-ISIS supply line. Turkey's government is such an embarrassment that "Obama now considers [Erdoğan] a failure and an authoritarian." (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-obam...)
The US government can easily end ISIS. But they have other priorities and agendas too. They want certain outcomes.
We don't need to globalize every f conflict by meddling in...
And if we don't do this, we won't have to feel morally responsible and give welfare to refugees...
By not effectively replacing the leader of a country, it leads to a power vacuum, looking for someone to take that power. ISIS grew to fill that void. If you displace them, someone else will come along and take that power, potentially even worse than ISIS
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,998512,...
Anyhow if we sort ISIS who will they blame for restricting freedoms at a time when rampant inequality is causing domestic unrest?
But lets be honest, go back to the Treaty of Sèvres and subsequent assigning of territory to European countries and how it was done without regard to the religious and ethnic traits of those living there. As in, European Colonialism started this mess as it did in Africa. This did not happen in the last twenty years, this is generation after generation finally reaching a point to where they could act.
If you keep arming all sides and leave it is to be expected.
They sold it to the U.N., the world bought it and now look what the US has to show for it, smoking holes in the ground...
You're just assuming that refugees won't integrate. I know quite a few refugees all of whom are living good lives in their new countries and work in good jobs. Anecdotal evidence of course but you aren't providing any evidence for your statement.
>> "taking on ISIS once and for all"
What does that mean? It sounds like you think other countries can go in and kill 30-40k people and it'll be over. It's an ideology. Take the head off ISIS and someone else will emerge. They aren't the first extremist group and they won't be the last unfortunately.
>> "billions of ppl would like to move to Europe or USA"
Again, show me your evidence. From what I've seen a lot of refugees were very happy in their own countries. They had good careers, large families, and lots of friends. They were left with no choice but to leave or die. Your view of countries outside of Europe/the USA is likely heavily tainted by the media.
http://openborders.info/polling-data-on-migration/
The pressing question is wether that is getting harder or easier with rising numbers and by how much.
https://msu.edu/course/pls/461/stein/MNREXP1.htm
A 1951 treaty, that most civilized countries are now signatories to, defines what a refugee is and what these countries' obligations are:
http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/1951-refugee-convention.html
Note that most of the people referred to as "refugees" by the media may not fit the definition.
This is also a warning. It has just begun. Based on climate models it seems north Africa and the Mediterranean will be hit hard by climate change. There will be many more people fleeing their lands.
Singapore? Singapore doesn't belong on that list.
"Turkey hosts 2.5 million refugees from Syria, more than any other country worldwide
Lebanon hosts approximately 1.1 million refugees from Syria which amounts to around one in five people in the country
Jordan hosts approximately 635,324 refugees from Syria, which amounts to about 10% of the population
Iraq where 3.9 million people are already internally displaced hosts 245,022 refugees from Syria
Egypt hosts 117,658 refugees from Syria"
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/02/syrias-refuge...
"...Never before in the entire course of human history, has an entire culture, race and civilization decided to hand over its lands, social capital, heritage and identities to competing and intruding cultures without a fight..."