Europe is likely to see unprecedented amounts of refugees soon. War refugees from Ukraine, economic refugees from Turkey, famine refugees from all over.
Snipping out the specific sentence: "In exchange, the European Union agreed to resettle Syrian refugees from Turkey on a one-to-one basis, reduce visa restrictions for Turkish citizens, pay 6 billion euros in aid to Turkey for Syrian migrant communities, update the customs union, and re-energize stalled talks regarding Turkey’s accession to the European Union"
Simple, money: Greece closed down their borders for Syrian refugees many years ago, as did everyone else on the so-called "balkan route". In exchange for an awful lot of EU money (six billion € ) to "house migrants", Erdolf promised to have his coast guards prevent people from fleeing to Greece, which together with brutal and illegal pushbacks by the Greek Coast Guard and Frontex led to a collapse of that route, but still not an end, there are regular deaths. The Greek Coast Guard actually got accused a week ago of having murdered refugees by throwing them into the sea to drown [1].
In 2020, Erdolf told refugees that the borders to Greece had been opened and bused thousands of people to the borders, with two refugees being executed by Greek border police [2] during the subsequentriots. In the end, the situation was settled by the EU paying half a billion euros to the Turkish dictator [3].
I keep reading that the Middle East will become uninhabitable this century. All those people will have to go somewhere. Heading North to Europe seems like the most likely outcome.
Sorry but that's just straight-up right-wing propaganda. Don't know if you're acting in bad faith or just repeating things you've read or heard somewhere, but statements like these are just disgusting to me as a Caucasian european who grew up with friends who have parents from the middle east.
I'm an atheist, some of my friends are muslim, yet we don't struggle to be friends because of that.
You are probably talking about very conservative people who like to hang gay people and all of that funny stuff, but just making a blank statement that this is true for all of the middle east is very wrong.
EDIT: Was never down-voted so fast on HN, is the majority of HN really so negative towards people from the middle east?
When things like reading a headline "UNICEF Chief: Taliban Committed to Let Girls Back to School" or the recent history of progress for women in Saudi Arabia is women being allowed to drive... it's not extremist propaganda to say that importing populations from the middle east will have huge cultural implications for western nations.
It is inappropriate to apply the generalization to one person, because there is much diversity among people. When you talk about a population though, it isn't propaganda to say that there are huge cultural problems with views which are fundamentally problematic if you try to import sizable portions into a modern western country.
One of the reasons you get strong right-wing reactionaries is people who are trying to be progressive turning a blind eye to the actual cultural issues instead of acknowledging and trying to mitigate and minimize them.
There are certainly lovely people from the middle east, I have had the pleasure of knowing a few who were from or had roots in that part of the world. There is a basic difference between (wrongly) saying "this is where you're from and what you look like so you must be like this" and (rightly) "taking in a million refugees from here will have these sorts of problems".
I would counter your comment by saying that it is pretty unjust to judge the whole population by taking the worst examples as a metric.
Taliban and the Saudi Arabian government are very conservative and I don't like them either, yes. But I would not take these two as a description for "People from the middle east".
I agree a bit with "people who are trying to be progressive turning a blind eye to the actual cultural issues", but I still think that the comment I responded to is wrong, and your explanation does not really change my mind.
Of course there are issues. A person who hates other sexualities, doesn't like women being independent and wants to spread their religion no matter what is a tough challenge for progressive cultures, but then I guess Europe should not accept very conservative people from other places either ;D
As an example, I don't know why a very conservative, traditionalist and religious person from Texas should be more compatible with Europe than someone from Saudi Arabia(half joking).
Add to that, that Europe != Europe. Were I gay, I would not want to live in Hungary or Poland, either.
Indeed it's not the whole population, not every individual in it. There are though, bulk properties of large groups of people (which also vary by location, citizens of Tehran would differ a lot from Pakistani villagers) and those bulk properties should be acknowledged and of concern.
What I'm pointing out in the parent comment is that if those are the kinds of things that constitute social progress in your part of the world, it's pretty clear that your median or typical cultural attitudes have a pretty damn big distance from that of modern western european nations.
There are plenty of native people in my country who would agree with some of these middle eastern people you mean when asked about gay people, women working and having power etc.
I am of course not including actual terrorists or people who want to kill others in my comment, but I think it should be understandable what I mean.
So, yes, very conservative people from the middle eastare a tough challenge, but for me that does not justify saying that they're incompatible and should rather stay in their countries.
First-generation migrants are a tough challenge, depending on who they are. But with time and care, this will be manageable. Not all of them, but again, this should not be as big of an issue as to say that they should stay away.
I think we can agree that people who mistreat others based on their religion are just assholes in general, doesn't matter if they're extremist muslims, christians, atheists etc.
Were I gay or jewish, I would feel way safer holding hands with another man in Budapest or Warsaw than in a muslim quarter of any large Western European cities.
Sure. It's legal. They also want to ban homo-/transsexuality from childrens books and media, but yeah, totally legal.
It's a sin in Islam, true. You were talking about muslim quarters in european cities, where as far as I know, the law from the country this quarter is in applies, and not the shariah or whatever you may think goes on there.
>EDIT: Was never down-voted so fast on HN, is the majority of HN really so negative towards people from the middle east?
I'm surprised myself, generally HN is pretty reasonable and fair about allowing different view points. International conflict seems to bring out the xenophobes and overly political actors. I say this as a Muslim who grew up with many close atheist friends, who has seen this pattern many times over the past few decades.
> Sadly the Middle East culture and religion is incompatible with the one in Europe.
Which Middle East culture and religion? Be specific. Are you talking about Israel? Saudi Arabia? Iran? Kurdistan? If you're going to condemn a whole ethnic/religion group at least pick just one, not a random grab bag of "brown people".
You don't need to be all that specific because while there is a huge diversity of cultures in the Middle East virtually all of them have serious disagreements and incompatibilities with legacy European cultures.
Curious, what you think these are? I am "European" and probably have such disagreements, it doesn't necessarily make me incompatible... diversity is great...I mean look at the advantages it's already brought (even if the f.. politicians enjoy "playing" with it) I'm personally for integration not assimilation ...
I don’t think the culture differences are going to be as big a deal as you think, partly because religiosity has declined a lot in many western nations since my parents were born (start of WW2), woman’s rights have substantially improved, LGB[0] issues have gone from “we are chemically castrating you” to “there are half a dozen openly gay and lesbian national leaders”, and some of these changes are already in motion in the rest of the world; and partly because the main cultural split in the world right now is between urban and rural within any nation, not between the nations.
[0] while medical tech has improved for trans issues, I can’t really say western culture is kinder to that group today as compared to 1950, nor do I know how trans issues are regarded in the Middle East.
Look at what happened to Sweden. Gangs, bombings, no-go areas, zero integration, all in the span of a few years. Look at what's happening in France. In fact, if you look anywhere where large migrations of non-culturally compatible populations have taken place, the result is always the same: mayhem.
My interpretation is that the social problems around refugees is that they are refugees from poor places. Generally poor, young, uneducated and maybe traumatized.
Here in Canada the largely upper middle class Middle Eastern immigrants integrate and assimilate fairly well. On the other hand, ethnic groups from East and South Europe where we received many refugees in the 80s and 90s still have a bit of a reputation for organised crime, much as the Italians got tarred 50 years ago. Because yes, a lot of those refugees got involved with it. What else is some young Russian or Serb with no job skills and limited language skills supposed to do in the Canadian job market back then?
Bring in lots of poor uneducated people who don't speak the language and no amount of cultural compatibility will defuse the problems created.
The hard stuff is the stuff you don’t even know you need to ask about because everyone thinks it’s “common sense” without realising that’s just shorthand for “stuff I was taught without realising I was taught”.
Do you have any actual evidence or are we supposed to just trust all these right wing nationalist taking points? It's funny that I never hear actual swedes lamenting this, just foreigners that seem to think Sweden has become a war zone because they took in immigrants.
"The chances of men between the ages 15 and 29 in Sweden getting shot were ten times higher than their counterparts in Germany, a 2018 study found, according to The Economist."
"Eight in 10 shootings in Sweden were connected to organized crime, a study by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention said. That ratio was “significantly” higher compared to other countries in Europe, the Guardian reported."
"In 2018, Sweden had the highest gun deaths in Europe, surpassing Italy and eastern Europe, due to increased criminal gang activities, the Guardian said."
"Deaths involving guns tripled in that country between 2012 and 2020, Bloomberg said."
"Nearly 260 crimes in Sweden involved explosives in 2019, up 60% from a year earlier, Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention data showed."
Forbes, Guardian, Economist not your usual "right wing nationalist" sources.
Sweden had 47 gun deaths in 2020, with 10.3 million people, which is 4.6 deaths per million. Massachusetts, the US state with least firearm deaths per capita, had 34 per million as of 2019. US average is 136.
“Gangs, bombings, no-go areas, zero integration” describes my childhood experience as a Brit reading the news about Northern Ireland in the 90s.
And yet, I was raised Catholic, same as the very people I was — unreasonably, in retrospect — afraid of.
And also, I now live in Berlin, capital of a country which took in roughly one million refugees very quickly not too long ago. Just as my childhood news was wildly unrepresentative yet technically correct, if the stories you refer to had been representative one would have expected the literal disintegration of the country I now live in before I moved here.
(I now work with one of those refugees. I find him very impressive! Proper fluency in three languages).
> The worse affected regions still have the highest natality rates.
The same regions have the lowest per-capita carbon output. Perhaps we should tie reproductive rights to carbon footprint, to increase the proportion of low-pollution individuals. I'm only being half-sarcastic.
They have low carbon footprints because they live in mud huts. I don't think they're going to be great stewards for the future of humanity. Modern civilization, that thing you're enjoying right now, was built by the people you want fewer of for some reason.
> The same regions have the lowest per-capita carbon output.
Largely irrelevant. Every country aspires to increase their quality of life, burgeoning populations still living in the mud are just carbon time bombs. So, relevant in the negative sense of their per-capita output has nowhere to go but up, with a huge multiplier.
It helps to view "third-world" as simply arriving in third place at the finish line of modern living; on a long enough timeline, there are no more mud huts.
In the film Before the Flood, there's a part focused on India which states they have ~300M people living without electricity. A population roughly the size of the USA. In the same part, representatives from India's government make clear that India has vast coal reserves and no intention of leaving those 300M people without electricity. You're looking at an overnight arrival of the US population from the dark to using lights and refrigerators.
It's not like populations with low carbon output have all mastered some kind of low impact living. They're just poor and lagging behind the more wealthy nations, don't mistake it for a lack of intention to join the first-world.
> It helps to view "third-world" as simply arriving in third place at the finish line of modern living; on a long enough timeline
This is reductive, and possibly wrong. Developing countries do not have to follow the paths of developed ones; they can simply skip over the less useful bits. As an example, most developing countries skipped large-scale POTS networks and went directly to wireless (GSM). The same is happening with solar and wind energy; because the sparse electric distribution networks are sparse, energy is generated at its point of use, which favors solar and wind.
Our "legacy" countries are the problem because we cannot wean ourselves off pollution without taking a hit in our lifestyles. The problem is in the here and now, not some future "time bomb", and it's not solved by tweaking at the margins by limiting population growth of those that live the greenest lifestyles. The problem with the climate change "debate" is that nobody wants to make changes - it's always the other who has to make sacrifices.
If that were completely true China would be doing it now. We wouldn't see countries shutting down nuclear programs and replacing them with coal.
But yes, I agree that if a tech is freely available there is opportunity for countries to build out with what's the best available then legacy tech, the same way China has 4G/5G everywhere because its all new infrastructure, they never bothered putting up a 3G tower.
Using transport of information as exemplary strikes me as such extreme cherry-picking as to be disingenuous. It's relatively trivial to move data wirelessly.
Physical infrastructure like housing, roads, bridges, are where the real challenges lie. Cement production alone is a huge co2 problem.
Even if all the vehicles of the future are EVs, there's a huge amount of resources put into manufacturing, delivering, sheltering, and operating those per-capita. Despite its vast HSR network, China has still exceeded US car sales every year since 2009 [0].
> Developing countries do not have to follow the paths of developed ones; they can simply skip over the less useful bits.
Nothing I said cast arriving at the finish line as following in the exact footsteps as the predecessors to get there.
Obviously the definition of and means of achieving "modern living" is constantly evolving.
Our most recent example would arguably be China, and CO2-free automobile-free utopia it very much is not.
It will be interesting to see what form India arriving in the first world will take. I'm hoping for solar panels on every home and skipping a coal-fueled power grid much like the cell network you mention, as it does appear to be the obvious wireless equivalent for power. I don't think that alone is sufficient though.
> This is reductive, and possibly wrong
Everything is "possibly wrong", what a pointless thing to say. What's probable?
Is humanity supposed to stop reproducing? This is such a strange take. First worlders ruin the planet and then get exasperated that others continue to reproduce, knowing it may cause the first world more problems in the future
There were two billion humans a hundred years ago. Now we're eight billion. That means you now have to share what would have been yours a hundred years ago with three other people. Soon they will be four. Keep growing like this, you'll be sharing those resources with ten, fifteen people.
You can keep cutting the cake in smaller and pieces, for sure, but that means everyone keeps getting a smaller and smaller portion until everyone is hungry. That doesn't even factor in the fact that the cake is effectively shrinking from overfishing, droughts, and so on.
You keep expanding the human population. It'll be fine. It's probably too late to course correct anyway. Might as well do what makes you happy.
It's interesting to see Malthusianism is still alive and well.
The cake isn't a fixed size. Our agricultural innovations continue to far exceed population growth. We can produce virtually infinite energy with Renewables and Nuclear Energy. The Earth is 70% water, and that too is a renewable resource; there's more than enough for the next million years.
That's not even getting started on the fact that these sorts of prediction have been wrong repeatedly. The average world citizen has a vastly greater standard of living than they did 50 or 100 years ago, despite the increase in population. So the population is going up, and the standard of living is going up even faster.
Most of our modern agricultural processes are about as sustainable as strip mining. They erode the top soil at a staggering rate, and that takes a very long time to regenerate, and that's not even considering the impact of climate change on the amount of arable land.
There is no process for turning energy and water into nutrient rich food. You can make macronutrients (especially carbohydrates) easily enough, but that alone just makes us sick.
Micro organisms, plants and animals literally up-cycle nutrients into proteins to do this every day, there absolutely is a process. The world was much hotter a long time ago. I'm not saying climate change is an issue, and there won't be serious problems to deal with, but the idea that we're all doomed or its all insurmountable is seriously hyperbolic. For every arid farm land that becomes a desert, some place like Alaska will start growing tomatoes. It'll fuck with eco-systems for sure, as it already is, but nature has been through much worse than us. I remind you literal meteors have fallen on the planet and half the planet was an ice block not too long ago relative to the history of the world. The conditions the dinosaurs lived in were much hotter and carbon rich.
There's a lot to be done with just the tools we have now and a lot of things that we're working on that may help.
Rezoning cities for instance making them more walk able or usable by e-bikes, etc, and encouraging people to live near where they work or work remotely at least part of the week can help. Conversion to solar, nuclear, wind, etc. I watch YT videos of third world ppl creating solar powered energy sources. I've seen articles about people developing plants that can be converted into bio polymers that capture 80% of carbon that gets turned into plastic that captures carbon and when it inevitably gets buried in a landfill, its a good thing, because that carbon was removed from the atmosphere and captured in the ground in the course of creating a disposable product.
I currently give $50 a month to cotap.org because its helping somewhat reforest the planet, which I know isn't much in the grand scheme considering how much sealed carbon we're releasing but its something, even if its just spitting in the ocean. But systemically you not having a kid isn't going to fix it any more than me. You act like someone won't just immigrate in from a less developed country to yours or someone socially conservative or traditional won't just have 5 kids, and offset whatever good you did. Honestly, raising a kid whose more environmentally conscious and equipped to handle the upcoming challenges is probably far more productive.
It will take a lot of effort, and the sooner we get on it the better. Personally, energy generation and car dependence for me are the two biggest challenges to conquer.
Right, but this process takes time. The nutrients we're upcycling is coming from a repository of millions of years worth of decayed plant matter, originally coming from dead microbes leeching minerals from solid rock. Digesting rocks is a very slow process.
Historically it hasn't really mattered, as human agriculture has been small compared to the rest of the biosphere, but right now we have so much cultivated land it covers a significant chunk of the planet. At this scale, nutrient depletion absolutely does matter. Nutrients don't just appear from nothing in the ground.
Go on Google maps if you will. Pan over to somewhere in middle of the United States and look for anything that isn't a city, a desert or cultivated land. Forests do exist, but they are really not common.
The middle of the US never was forests, or they were few and far between, they were mostly grasslands which were turned into fields, which became the dust bowl, etc. Where I live there are literally trees everywhere, and it doesn't take long for them to recapture an area if left abandoned a year or two. That said, I do agree we need to stop spreading out so much and start rezoning for less single family homes, at least in actual cities.
It takes time sure, but we compost and recapture those nutrients every day. Every time we flush our waste down the toilet, lots of those nutrients end up being recycled and processed in a water treatment plant and dumped into rivers and used by nature. We might need to stop flushing nutrients into rivers, or figure something out, but given how much food currently gets thrown out and overstocked grocery stores stay, I know there's opportunity for adjustment. Going to a more JIT system for groceries might be better, where a grocery store doesn't need to stock 50% more produce then it plans to sell. Food waste is a huge problem. We can start composting it at least and returning it back to the soil.
I honestly can't tell if that's supposed to be satire or not. Section 1 basically boils down to "Well, you live in the first world! Who cares if some farmers in Africa die from climate change? _Your_ kids will be fine!".
Besides that, all of the arguments that are presented seem to start from the perspective that having children should be the default. The author makes no claims that the world will be a better place for them, and therefore I see no reason why anyone would want to bring more suffering into the world, and cause more harm.
We're well below replacement rates in most western and developed countries, there's a population crash expected in the next few decades which will cause issues as people age out and economies will shrink rapidly and social security programs will collapse, etc. The irony is, those far better equipped to have and raise intelligent productive kids, those with high education, good salaries, and liberal/progressive values, have less kids, meaning most kids in the next generation will be had by religiously conservative or less educated or poorer families and then these people will lament why their country is becoming more conservative when they don't have another generation they raised to pass their values onto. Which is counter productive if you want engineers and those that value the environment as a priority.
For instance, Russia is expected to half their draft able males in the next 5 years and many of their educated engineers and technicians are older since they were mostly educated during USSR days, and be retiring age soon, which as reason why many think Russia is making moves now, while they still can.
Shaming people for having kids is sheer idiocy at this point. Every person having 2 or more kids isn't even making up for the 5-10 people having 0-1 kids. The eventual conclusion of your reasoning, everyone is better off swallowing a bullet for the good of humanity.
This is becoming one of the defining issues of the 21st century. What do we do with all the surplus people? In the past most countries actually wanted higher populations as that meant more cannon-fodder for their armies, more workers for their factories, more farmers to till their fields. But now low-skilled poor people are seen as nothing but a burden, to the extent that wealthy countries will literally pay other countries to take them. There doesn't seem to be any solution.
I expect we'll see some ugly incidents in the next few years where masses of desperate migrants try to rush the EU and US borders. Will border guards fire on civilians and commit mass murder to keep them out?
>Will border guards fire on civilians and commit mass murder to keep them out?
There is no other option... If let in the world pop increases, if not the world pop decreases. We are in a race trying to continuously improve technologically to make up for the very same problems caused by technology. Perhaps mass death events which we defeated in recent years are precisely what is needed for a "correction" in our global hubris. Of course wasteful consumerism in the first world should also be corrected during this period, and hopefully for longer afterwards. As a final thought, although I know it is a false equivalency in many ways, consider the idea that the mass of potential migrants will be looked upon by some countries in the way that Ukraine currently views Russia, the self determination of Ukrainians have put them directly opposed to the Russian invasion, so for many (and likely the majority) of Ukrainians there is no other option but to fire back and employ strict measures.
>There is no other option... If let in the world pop increases, if not the world pop decreases.
Interesting you bring that up. Population in European countries isn't even at replacement levels. They actually need immigrants to keep their economies from collapsing on retirees. Making statements based on the world population as a whole seems irrelevant, China and India play a huge part in the world population increase yet they have no relation to this.
>Perhaps mass death events which we defeated in recent years are precisely what is needed for a "correction" in our global hubris.
And those mass death events, of course, should involve immigrants and not Europeans? Or, you? These conversations about population control always seem to trend in the same direction.. the same people who hate overpopulation of humans never want to start the solution with their own families.
Populations in most European countries are set to decline, but do they really need immigrants? A lot of Europeans think that letting in more impoverished, low-skilled immigrants would actually accelerate economic collapse rather than preventing it. EU youth unemployment is already relatively high so clearly they don't have a labor shortage.
>Population in European countries isn't even at replacement levels. They actually need immigrants to keep their economies from collapsing on retirees.
I am under the impression that there is something fundamentally wrong with a society that cannot even maintain it's own population, especially when you consider that they are already utilizing immigration to some extent. For this reason I doubt the answer is more immigration, after all, what will become of the immigrants children who then produce below replacement rate? Will we simply keep pushing the problem one generation down the line? Short term economic downturn and a large elderly population may be part of a larger cycle which would then allow for a rapid turnaround in population growth. Whether this is through immigration or native growth is anyone's guess.
>And those mass death events, of course, should involve immigrants and not Europeans? Or, you? These conversations about population control always seem to trend in the same direction.. the same people who hate overpopulation of humans never want to start the solution with their own families.
The mass death events affect whoever they affect, I am not blaming people for the place or situation they are born in, nor do I "hate" overpopulation, and indeed you are right to point out that my own self preservation is a part of the overpopulation problem, in the end I intend to do what is best for myself, as would anyone else, I just naively have some optimism about how this may correct itself in the long term, as opposed to the worst case scenario which is total extinction.
Too add one more thing to think about: If we agree on the brutal realism of humanities selfishness and us vs them mentality. Consider why Europe has let in so many low skilled immigrants, when in theory many of these low skilled jobs may be replaced by automation in the coming years. My only guess for why this is is that Europe perceives automation to be farther away and requires stop gaps, although this still would not fix the root issue of below replacement rate births, and I'm not sure if automation would either.
I anticipate a police state in Ukraine if Russia completes the invasion and negotiates a non-NATO entrance for Ukraine with the west, similar to Hong Kong.
What a disaster. If I was Ukrainian, I’d get the living fuck out of there now before living under those conditions.
I think we underestimated what Nuclear weapons actually did to the world. The countries that don’t have it are pretty much sitting ducks unless a Nuclear power is willing to defend them.
We cannot defend Ukraine against the most unjustifiable war ever, and they can’t defend themselves.
NATO could have defended it, but it didn't want to.
Nothing stopped it from moving in four months ago. Putin wasn't going to start a suicidal nuclear war over it.
MAD only works to deter against existential threats. Not being able to invade a neighbour is not an existential threat. Being invaded can be one, though.
Ukraine gave up nuclear weapons for security assurances. The lesson is that if you have nuclear weapons, you do not get attacked - North Korea. You also get to attack other countries. Russia, USA.
Idk why people always brings this up, but those nuclear weapons never belonged to Ukrainians. Soviet Union was the controller and had codes of it. It would be never in the hand of Ukraine.
>> Sad thing is that now with conscription, if you are male 18-55, Ukraine side will force you to fight that war, at least as far as I understand it.
> What a fucked up world we live in…
It's fucked up that it was attacked, it's not fucked up that there are social expectations for its citizens to rise to its defence in its time of need.
I thought about this, my country went trough a civil war 30 years ago. Since the independence "our" government has just been about splitting the spoils of war between the elites.
Between me and my families I think we own one house that's not worth anything because of it's location and my apartment which I'm still paying off.
So if my country got attacked I would grab my family and leave without a second thought - let the people who divided the profits and live off the benefits defend it - I would be just as well in any other country.
Now if it came to world war and it was Russia and China taking over the west I would feel differently about it - but in that case it's a nuclear armageddon so I could probably do shit.
Even at the heught of the nation state as the sole ordering institution in your life I always wondered what compells people to fight for their country other than self defense ofc. At the end of the day you will still be serving the elites when it's all over. Most times they didn't take good care of the veterans. Really no incentive to fight hard other than you were conscripted and treason carries the death penalty.
> At the end of the day you will still be serving the elites when it's all over
What's the alternative? Not fight and become occupied and likely oppressed - is that a better choice? Or flee and become a war refugee? The average citizen doesn't have highly sought-after skills in other countries, they are likely to go to a refugee camp for months and years. So, some people choose to fight for their families, friends, and preserving their way of life. I think defending the in-group from an aggressive out-group is a perfectly reasonable, ingrained human response.
In the end of the day everyone dies anyway and dying defending your home is virtuous on the subconscious level. This is not a rational conclusion you can think through lying on your couch in peaceful times, but when your family is already in the bomb shelter, you cornered on all sides and rockets are flying over, some kind of a deeper instinct kicks in. That's why many Ukrainians are fighting so fiercely right now, there is not enough mental capacity about caring about "serving the elites" or other such thoughts of better times anymore, you fight, you die, you live.
I don't think many people outside Russia disagree with that (including the GP).
> it's not fucked up that there are social expectations for its citizens to rise to its defence in its time of need.
This ia a misrepresentation. It's not a social expectation, it's part of the current martial law decrees. As far as I'm aware (please correct me if I'm wrong) there is no general draft, yet. It's also not a pro-russian statement to say that limiting the travel ban to men only is inhumane - it tears families apart that may never re-unite again, leaving both halves weak to all kinds of dangers. It's also not clear what is being gained in exchange for this. There are many women part of the voluntary defense forces, just as there are many men who cannot reasonably participate in the fight.
Believe it or not men actually make better soldiers for the physical stuff at least, and therefore there is a historical and just evolutionary reaction in times of war that men go and defend their country. Denying this is like denying sexual attraction.
When your country is attacked families are seperated, people die, and fucked up things happen. But if you don't defend your country you are guaranteed to lose and be overrun and be ruled by a maniac dictator. So there's your choice.
I find your position ridiculous and clearly from someone who's never experienced war or even heard about it from parents and grandparents. I have. You can forget about your equality crap and avoiding "inhumanity" and being concerned about the mental health of families.
That doesn't matter when a russian tank rolls down your street. What matters is your survival and your country's survival.
For this to work, your hypothetical man has to see that country as "his tribe" in the first place. I think a lot of people don't, and basically just see their own family as their tribe.
If you’re some hypothetical cosmopolitan man who’s lived in 10 cities and has no emotional connection to anywhere, maybe.
Most people don’t want to see their local area taken over by some Russian maniac.
>> For this to work, your hypothetical man has to see that country as "his tribe" in the first place. I think a lot of people don't, and basically just see their own family as their tribe.
> If you’re some hypothetical cosmopolitan man who’s lived in 10 cities and has no emotional connection to anywhere, maybe. Most people don’t want to see their local area taken over by some Russian maniac.
Also, on the other end, if you're enmeshed in a culture that's rife with corruption and nepotism.
Loyalty to only a very narrow band of close relatives is usually not a recipe for a successful society.
Here's an account from a Ukrainian 4 hours ago re: fighting spirit in a pro-Russian city in Donetsk (my translation):
> "Here's what's happening in Kramatorsk [a city in Donetsk]:
It's quiet for now, but we're expecting an escalation in the evening.
I was at the military registration and enlistment office. Just so you understand, our city is pro-Russian. Was. Seems that's now in the past. There's a huge line at the office, of both the young and old.
I don't know what they thought to themselves in Russia, but they've lost our country once and for all.
Such are the preliminary results of operation "Like it or not, endure, my dearest". [Putin's words to Zelensky Feb 7 in response to the latter stating he liked none of the points of the Minsk Accords]"
> I find your position ridiculous and clearly from someone who's never experienced war or even heard about it from parents and grandparents. I have. You can forget about your equality crap
That's a baseless and uncharitable take. But even if you disagree strongly that women can participate meaningfully in modern combat (pre-invasion Ukraine seemed to think there was nothing wrong with having women be part of the voluntary defense force), it is monstrous of you to assert that opposing how families get torn apart by this decree is somehow tantamount to "equality crap". If there was a male-only general draft in effect you could at least argue that the men need to stay behind for mandatory service. But as of now, they're needlessly sending women and children away as refugees while the men stay behind to do whatever. I want to see you construct an argument that clarifies how this leads to better outcomes for these families.
> This ia a misrepresentation. It's not a social expectation, it's part of the current martial law decrees. As far as I'm aware (please correct me if I'm wrong) there is no general draft, yet.
Sometimes social expectations are enforced.
Also, they're being invaded. It would be foolish to insist on waiting for a formal legislative process.
Poland is ready to take 2M Ukrainians, same for Romania, the country made an announcement today they can take 500k refugees today. Migrants are allowed to cross the border on any ID, even expired will be accepted.
When i called romania’s border police to ask if ukrainians can enter without a visa they said those with biometric passports dont need a visa but actually said those without need a visa. When i asked if visas can be given on the spot they simply hang up on me. Maybe something changed but for an eu and nato member state romania has a lot to work on.
I wouldn't put too much value in those phone-calls. It was the same with Covid rules, you got different responses based on exactly who you'd call, confusion all around, and authorities contradicting each other.
A romanian article from 1 hour ago says that as you said, with biometric passport you don't need a visa, but it also says that with a non-biometric passport you will receive a 3 month tourist visa on the spot.
It also says that you can enter without any kind of passport at all, according to international refugee rules. But you might be handled different, liked being forced to go to a refugee camp (don't know).
>rudeness of romanian public servants appears to be well established and has nothing to do with preparedness.
Thier rudeness is legendary in Romania. I assumed it's because we are a poorer country with a rough past that traumatized a generation, but I've seen equal levels of rudeness sometimes from the public servants in Austria and those earn way more than their Romanian counterparts and get much better benefits and working conditions from the state and didn't go through famine 35 years ago.
So assholes will be assholes regardless, just because they know they can't be fired, and are usually venting their personal failures and frustrations on those in weaker positions who can't fight back (foreigners, immigrants), just like how you see people being rude to employees in the service sector.
Anyway, I hope you find safety and know that you're welcome in Romania.
Better educated. Less likely to contribute to poverty in the accepting country. More culturally compatible with the receiving country.
When you accept refugees you’re also accepting the pain of side effects from accepting those refugees. Refugees from some places come with fewer side effects depending on compatibility with the host country and skills and education of the refugees.
The point was (I thought obviously) that it would not be atypical for someone fleeing for their life to both be an ideal candidate for asylum and to not have their ID.
No, his past actions were a great service to the world.
At the same time, his current behaviour means I no longer find him to be a meaningful source of commentary. He called Trudeau "tyrannical and obscene" -- no followup comment when, days later, Trudeau revoked the Emergencies Act. He mocked the world for trusting US intelligence that Russia was going to invade Ukraine -- no followup comment when Russia then committed a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Again, what he did in the past: tremendous service. What he seems capable of doing today: not useful to me.
get your head out of the state influenced media, this is such a ridiculous position to have. The guy had his passport cancelled and is stuck there. What the fuck is he supposed to do?
OP made out like snowden is making a choice to be in Russia. He’s not. And if the US government would have wanted to resolve this situation they could have over the years. They’ve chosen to basically exile Snowden.
Snowden wanted to go to Ecuador. It’s ridiculous to suggest he’s made a choice to be in Russia or support Russia.
Then again that’s literally what MSNBC, CNN and probably Fox have been saying for almost 10 years to I’m not surprised many have been brainwashed.
He did what he had to do to find a safe heaven. Nobody could blame him for that. However, his opinion from then on has to be treated with a huge grain of salt. Russia is more than capable of using him as propaganda as condition for protecting him. Why is that difficult to accept?
> I've never heard him acknowledge the irony of how he's living.
I don't have an exact source, but I remember him saying how he didn't really want to end up in Russia, how he hasn't adapted super well to it and how he would like to go back to the US if allowed a fair trial.
His original goal was to go to Ecuador for asylum. His passport was revoked while he was waiting for his connecting flight in Russia, ending up with him stuck there[0]. His end-goal was never to end up in Russia.
Yes, but now he's silent about what goes on in his new home, regardless how he got there. He could at least acknowledge the irony. And maybe note that now he really is in a place where human rights are minimal.
I am fairly certain that he is fully aware of the irony. However he's not in any position to criticize Russia because it will lead to immediate deportation.
Does he assume he shouldn't serve time for what he did? Snowden is a complicated figure because the core that the U.S. government was surveilling its own people beyond its bounds was correct.
But he did kind of leak a whole bunch of shit not related to that as well. And that ain't cool.
He kind of has to accept that he's going to go to jail and he's never going to work with sensitive information ever again.
I think by fair trial he means he doesn't want to be tried under the Espionage Act of 1917 which would allow the trial to be secretized, for the evidence to be withed from the jury etc. I'm writing the details from memory, so some might be inaccurate, but that's the gist I got.
It'd make very little difference for anyone else if you get yourself arrested just because. Besides, he's done his part. Why require your heroes to continue working for you after their first act of heroism? That seems unfair.
Directly antogonizing the most powerful government and spy agencies in the world in order to tell the world about their wrongdoings is enough heroism for me. I don't need him to be a martyr. If he lives out the rest of his life safely in comfort I'd say he's earned it. Demanding anyone who's done a good thing to sacrifice themselves at the alter or cease being considered good will just lead to noone doing good things.
The problem is those who consider him a hero continue to act like what he said since escaping to Russia as beacon of truth. If I had a choice I’d stay clear of current affair, because I couldn’t possibly be fair if I kept silence of what Russia has done
You could argue that he acted on principle and went against the US govt resulting in him being "imprisoned" in Russia and unable to return home. In the end, he got nothing out of it. US gov't still conducts mass surveillance and your average consumer doesn't have much qualms about giving their data to corporations that can then sell it to the gov't.
There was a segment where John Oliver met with Snowden in Russia. Oliver went around in NYC asking people about Snowden and most people didn't even recognize his name. Tbh, I wouldn't blame him for not wanting to go to prison just to be a hero to a bunch of random people that didn't care the first time around.
This is weird trolling. You bring up a completely uninvolved, unrelated person and attack them for doing nothing. Maybe Dang will kill off this whole thread for being against HN guidelines.
He's already a martyr. He's living the rest of his life in exile, under a microscope and under constant threat. The only people who would gain from him tweeting about these events are those who wish to see him harmed.
I think most people have enough sense to not do a vast, braindead document dump of classified material, and thus are able to escape all the ridiculous moral grandstanding that comes afterward as you try to appease your custodians.
I'm not sure why you expect some guy to give up more of his life for principles. I think he's done enough and having to flee your country for fear of reprisals is already no picnic. The people who have power to actually force change w.r.t. Putin are our western elected leaders and we should be holding them to account.
> He’d be the first modern hero we’ve had if he came back and forced the government to imprison him.
What about Chelsea Manning and Reality Winner? The fact that you forgot about them already suggests that such an act from Snowden would be ultimately meaningless.
> I think that’s the point. He’s not very principled.
That... is a statement.
So, the guy that openly flouts decades of prison time and enemy-of-the-state status (from the richest first-world country with a nearly unlimited budget for tracking enemies down) to give the world definitive proof of American fuckery for the sake of morals and public good is "not very principled"?
> He’d be the first modern hero
No, he'd be yet another modern martyr.
He's under no obligation to continue crusading. He has already done so much good, let the man retire.
What is it with people expecting their idols to come out and openly crusade for the opinions they want to hear? Do you need a feeling of reassurance or something? Let your opinions stand on their own, you don't need a celebrity to validate them.
what do you expect him to do? You are sitting on armchair and making some petty complains? Go to Russia and be vocal and you will know the consequence. Just see Julian Assange life?
Please at least respect people who reveals the insidious evils at the cost of their freedom?
We can't all fight every single battle there is. And it's not unreasonable to do a cost/benefit analysis on something like this. Dude just wants to live his life, he's already sacrificed quite a bit.
1. Snowden is a dissident wrt the US government, not the Russian one. He doesn't have an obligation to criticize Russia (neither does he have an obligation to criticize the US, but that comes with the territory).
2. He has self preservation to consider too. To him Russia is a relatively safe haven. Why would he endanger that? Sure, this limits his freedom of expression, but that's a relatively small personal compromise in order to ensure you're still alive and not in some supermax.
He’s a very complicated figure and I think it’s best to view everything he says through the lens of someone desperately trying to get home. It is understandably self-serving.
Same for other people. The country you wanted to flee away to from the repressive regime and economic decline now denies visas? Now you have to look for other opportunities. I suspect people who tend to leave Russia aren't pro-putin and have decent education and sought after skills, not sure what forcing them to stay achieves.
Life under Russian occupation doesn't sound like a good time. Still I don't see Ukraine winning this, plus even in peacetime you'll do better in Romania , Poland or Germany. At least from an economic point of view.
The best case scenario at this point is a ceasefire is declared, with Russian troops remaining in much of the East.
Even if the War ends today, still expect tons of refugees. Much of the economic base has already been destroyed. Given the option of fleeing West, being able to build a better, safer life... Or living under constant threat of another Russian invasion.
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[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 257 ms ] threadI think Turkey could yet recover though.
Moreover, they can, and use those same refugees to blackmail the EU whenever it's convenient to them.
Snipping out the specific sentence: "In exchange, the European Union agreed to resettle Syrian refugees from Turkey on a one-to-one basis, reduce visa restrictions for Turkish citizens, pay 6 billion euros in aid to Turkey for Syrian migrant communities, update the customs union, and re-energize stalled talks regarding Turkey’s accession to the European Union"
In 2020, Erdolf told refugees that the borders to Greece had been opened and bused thousands of people to the borders, with two refugees being executed by Greek border police [2] during the subsequentriots. In the end, the situation was settled by the EU paying half a billion euros to the Turkish dictator [3].
[1]: https://www.spiegel.de/ausland/griechenland-eu-grenzschuetze...
[2]: https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2020-03/griechenland-tue...
[3]: https://www.nzz.ch/international/die-eu-und-die-tuerkei-brau...
Sadly the Middle East culture and religion is incompatible with the one in Europe.
So if this scenario should play out, we will see middle east conditions with unrest everywhere.
Better to let the migration go to compatible countries such as Turkey.
I'm an atheist, some of my friends are muslim, yet we don't struggle to be friends because of that.
You are probably talking about very conservative people who like to hang gay people and all of that funny stuff, but just making a blank statement that this is true for all of the middle east is very wrong.
EDIT: Was never down-voted so fast on HN, is the majority of HN really so negative towards people from the middle east?
It is inappropriate to apply the generalization to one person, because there is much diversity among people. When you talk about a population though, it isn't propaganda to say that there are huge cultural problems with views which are fundamentally problematic if you try to import sizable portions into a modern western country.
One of the reasons you get strong right-wing reactionaries is people who are trying to be progressive turning a blind eye to the actual cultural issues instead of acknowledging and trying to mitigate and minimize them.
There are certainly lovely people from the middle east, I have had the pleasure of knowing a few who were from or had roots in that part of the world. There is a basic difference between (wrongly) saying "this is where you're from and what you look like so you must be like this" and (rightly) "taking in a million refugees from here will have these sorts of problems".
Taliban and the Saudi Arabian government are very conservative and I don't like them either, yes. But I would not take these two as a description for "People from the middle east".
I agree a bit with "people who are trying to be progressive turning a blind eye to the actual cultural issues", but I still think that the comment I responded to is wrong, and your explanation does not really change my mind.
Of course there are issues. A person who hates other sexualities, doesn't like women being independent and wants to spread their religion no matter what is a tough challenge for progressive cultures, but then I guess Europe should not accept very conservative people from other places either ;D
As an example, I don't know why a very conservative, traditionalist and religious person from Texas should be more compatible with Europe than someone from Saudi Arabia(half joking).
Add to that, that Europe != Europe. Were I gay, I would not want to live in Hungary or Poland, either.
What I'm pointing out in the parent comment is that if those are the kinds of things that constitute social progress in your part of the world, it's pretty clear that your median or typical cultural attitudes have a pretty damn big distance from that of modern western european nations.
I am of course not including actual terrorists or people who want to kill others in my comment, but I think it should be understandable what I mean.
So, yes, very conservative people from the middle eastare a tough challenge, but for me that does not justify saying that they're incompatible and should rather stay in their countries.
First-generation migrants are a tough challenge, depending on who they are. But with time and care, this will be manageable. Not all of them, but again, this should not be as big of an issue as to say that they should stay away.
And it’s not white supremacists doing this, it’s muslims.
And they’re not getting more integrated, but less.
100% of Uk based Muslims think making homesexuality illegal would be ok. Are they all just extremists then?
Well, that's a lie. And what the hell are you on about, starting to compare Nazis to this.
You are saying that hating gay people is muslim culture?
I am not apologizing these acts either, merely saying that hating other religions is not a muslim-only thing.
50% doesn’t make it any better though really:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/apr/11/british-musl...
Hungary has Anti-LGBT laws, same can't be said about "muslim quarters".
It's a sin in Islam, true. You were talking about muslim quarters in european cities, where as far as I know, the law from the country this quarter is in applies, and not the shariah or whatever you may think goes on there.
But i will suggest that living openly as a gay person in said quarters is just not possible.
Threats and harassment at a level much greater than you would find in e.g. Hungary will be the order of the day.
Those are the facts.
On the other hand you have Muslim patrols in cities like London. Maybe it will come as shock to you, but some people don't care much about the laws.
I'm surprised myself, generally HN is pretty reasonable and fair about allowing different view points. International conflict seems to bring out the xenophobes and overly political actors. I say this as a Muslim who grew up with many close atheist friends, who has seen this pattern many times over the past few decades.
Yeah, it really does feel like it. It seems to me like a lot of europeans and americans have a pretty warped view about africa/middle east.
Which Middle East culture and religion? Be specific. Are you talking about Israel? Saudi Arabia? Iran? Kurdistan? If you're going to condemn a whole ethnic/religion group at least pick just one, not a random grab bag of "brown people".
[0] while medical tech has improved for trans issues, I can’t really say western culture is kinder to that group today as compared to 1950, nor do I know how trans issues are regarded in the Middle East.
Here in Canada the largely upper middle class Middle Eastern immigrants integrate and assimilate fairly well. On the other hand, ethnic groups from East and South Europe where we received many refugees in the 80s and 90s still have a bit of a reputation for organised crime, much as the Italians got tarred 50 years ago. Because yes, a lot of those refugees got involved with it. What else is some young Russian or Serb with no job skills and limited language skills supposed to do in the Canadian job market back then?
Bring in lots of poor uneducated people who don't speak the language and no amount of cultural compatibility will defuse the problems created.
The hard stuff is the stuff you don’t even know you need to ask about because everyone thinks it’s “common sense” without realising that’s just shorthand for “stuff I was taught without realising I was taught”.
"The chances of men between the ages 15 and 29 in Sweden getting shot were ten times higher than their counterparts in Germany, a 2018 study found, according to The Economist."
"Eight in 10 shootings in Sweden were connected to organized crime, a study by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention said. That ratio was “significantly” higher compared to other countries in Europe, the Guardian reported."
"In 2018, Sweden had the highest gun deaths in Europe, surpassing Italy and eastern Europe, due to increased criminal gang activities, the Guardian said."
"Deaths involving guns tripled in that country between 2012 and 2020, Bloomberg said."
"Nearly 260 crimes in Sweden involved explosives in 2019, up 60% from a year earlier, Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention data showed."
Forbes, Guardian, Economist not your usual "right wing nationalist" sources.
And yet, I was raised Catholic, same as the very people I was — unreasonably, in retrospect — afraid of.
And also, I now live in Berlin, capital of a country which took in roughly one million refugees very quickly not too long ago. Just as my childhood news was wildly unrepresentative yet technically correct, if the stories you refer to had been representative one would have expected the literal disintegration of the country I now live in before I moved here.
(I now work with one of those refugees. I find him very impressive! Proper fluency in three languages).
The same regions have the lowest per-capita carbon output. Perhaps we should tie reproductive rights to carbon footprint, to increase the proportion of low-pollution individuals. I'm only being half-sarcastic.
Largely irrelevant. Every country aspires to increase their quality of life, burgeoning populations still living in the mud are just carbon time bombs. So, relevant in the negative sense of their per-capita output has nowhere to go but up, with a huge multiplier.
It helps to view "third-world" as simply arriving in third place at the finish line of modern living; on a long enough timeline, there are no more mud huts.
In the film Before the Flood, there's a part focused on India which states they have ~300M people living without electricity. A population roughly the size of the USA. In the same part, representatives from India's government make clear that India has vast coal reserves and no intention of leaving those 300M people without electricity. You're looking at an overnight arrival of the US population from the dark to using lights and refrigerators.
It's not like populations with low carbon output have all mastered some kind of low impact living. They're just poor and lagging behind the more wealthy nations, don't mistake it for a lack of intention to join the first-world.
This is reductive, and possibly wrong. Developing countries do not have to follow the paths of developed ones; they can simply skip over the less useful bits. As an example, most developing countries skipped large-scale POTS networks and went directly to wireless (GSM). The same is happening with solar and wind energy; because the sparse electric distribution networks are sparse, energy is generated at its point of use, which favors solar and wind.
Our "legacy" countries are the problem because we cannot wean ourselves off pollution without taking a hit in our lifestyles. The problem is in the here and now, not some future "time bomb", and it's not solved by tweaking at the margins by limiting population growth of those that live the greenest lifestyles. The problem with the climate change "debate" is that nobody wants to make changes - it's always the other who has to make sacrifices.
But yes, I agree that if a tech is freely available there is opportunity for countries to build out with what's the best available then legacy tech, the same way China has 4G/5G everywhere because its all new infrastructure, they never bothered putting up a 3G tower.
Physical infrastructure like housing, roads, bridges, are where the real challenges lie. Cement production alone is a huge co2 problem.
Even if all the vehicles of the future are EVs, there's a huge amount of resources put into manufacturing, delivering, sheltering, and operating those per-capita. Despite its vast HSR network, China has still exceeded US car sales every year since 2009 [0].
[0] https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/global-car-sa...
Nothing I said cast arriving at the finish line as following in the exact footsteps as the predecessors to get there.
Obviously the definition of and means of achieving "modern living" is constantly evolving.
Our most recent example would arguably be China, and CO2-free automobile-free utopia it very much is not.
It will be interesting to see what form India arriving in the first world will take. I'm hoping for solar panels on every home and skipping a coal-fueled power grid much like the cell network you mention, as it does appear to be the obvious wireless equivalent for power. I don't think that alone is sufficient though.
> This is reductive, and possibly wrong
Everything is "possibly wrong", what a pointless thing to say. What's probable?
These days, is it still realistic to hold on to a Whig view of history?
You can keep cutting the cake in smaller and pieces, for sure, but that means everyone keeps getting a smaller and smaller portion until everyone is hungry. That doesn't even factor in the fact that the cake is effectively shrinking from overfishing, droughts, and so on.
You keep expanding the human population. It'll be fine. It's probably too late to course correct anyway. Might as well do what makes you happy.
The cake isn't a fixed size. Our agricultural innovations continue to far exceed population growth. We can produce virtually infinite energy with Renewables and Nuclear Energy. The Earth is 70% water, and that too is a renewable resource; there's more than enough for the next million years.
That's not even getting started on the fact that these sorts of prediction have been wrong repeatedly. The average world citizen has a vastly greater standard of living than they did 50 or 100 years ago, despite the increase in population. So the population is going up, and the standard of living is going up even faster.
Most of our modern agricultural processes are about as sustainable as strip mining. They erode the top soil at a staggering rate, and that takes a very long time to regenerate, and that's not even considering the impact of climate change on the amount of arable land.
There is no process for turning energy and water into nutrient rich food. You can make macronutrients (especially carbohydrates) easily enough, but that alone just makes us sick.
There's a lot to be done with just the tools we have now and a lot of things that we're working on that may help.
Rezoning cities for instance making them more walk able or usable by e-bikes, etc, and encouraging people to live near where they work or work remotely at least part of the week can help. Conversion to solar, nuclear, wind, etc. I watch YT videos of third world ppl creating solar powered energy sources. I've seen articles about people developing plants that can be converted into bio polymers that capture 80% of carbon that gets turned into plastic that captures carbon and when it inevitably gets buried in a landfill, its a good thing, because that carbon was removed from the atmosphere and captured in the ground in the course of creating a disposable product.
I currently give $50 a month to cotap.org because its helping somewhat reforest the planet, which I know isn't much in the grand scheme considering how much sealed carbon we're releasing but its something, even if its just spitting in the ocean. But systemically you not having a kid isn't going to fix it any more than me. You act like someone won't just immigrate in from a less developed country to yours or someone socially conservative or traditional won't just have 5 kids, and offset whatever good you did. Honestly, raising a kid whose more environmentally conscious and equipped to handle the upcoming challenges is probably far more productive.
It will take a lot of effort, and the sooner we get on it the better. Personally, energy generation and car dependence for me are the two biggest challenges to conquer.
Historically it hasn't really mattered, as human agriculture has been small compared to the rest of the biosphere, but right now we have so much cultivated land it covers a significant chunk of the planet. At this scale, nutrient depletion absolutely does matter. Nutrients don't just appear from nothing in the ground.
Go on Google maps if you will. Pan over to somewhere in middle of the United States and look for anything that isn't a city, a desert or cultivated land. Forests do exist, but they are really not common.
It takes time sure, but we compost and recapture those nutrients every day. Every time we flush our waste down the toilet, lots of those nutrients end up being recycled and processed in a water treatment plant and dumped into rivers and used by nature. We might need to stop flushing nutrients into rivers, or figure something out, but given how much food currently gets thrown out and overstocked grocery stores stay, I know there's opportunity for adjustment. Going to a more JIT system for groceries might be better, where a grocery store doesn't need to stock 50% more produce then it plans to sell. Food waste is a huge problem. We can start composting it at least and returning it back to the soil.
Yes. I'm not sure why people come to any other conclusion.
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/please-dont-give-up-on...
Besides that, all of the arguments that are presented seem to start from the perspective that having children should be the default. The author makes no claims that the world will be a better place for them, and therefore I see no reason why anyone would want to bring more suffering into the world, and cause more harm.
For instance, Russia is expected to half their draft able males in the next 5 years and many of their educated engineers and technicians are older since they were mostly educated during USSR days, and be retiring age soon, which as reason why many think Russia is making moves now, while they still can.
Shaming people for having kids is sheer idiocy at this point. Every person having 2 or more kids isn't even making up for the 5-10 people having 0-1 kids. The eventual conclusion of your reasoning, everyone is better off swallowing a bullet for the good of humanity.
I expect we'll see some ugly incidents in the next few years where masses of desperate migrants try to rush the EU and US borders. Will border guards fire on civilians and commit mass murder to keep them out?
Interesting you bring that up. Population in European countries isn't even at replacement levels. They actually need immigrants to keep their economies from collapsing on retirees. Making statements based on the world population as a whole seems irrelevant, China and India play a huge part in the world population increase yet they have no relation to this.
>Perhaps mass death events which we defeated in recent years are precisely what is needed for a "correction" in our global hubris.
And those mass death events, of course, should involve immigrants and not Europeans? Or, you? These conversations about population control always seem to trend in the same direction.. the same people who hate overpopulation of humans never want to start the solution with their own families.
>And those mass death events, of course, should involve immigrants and not Europeans? Or, you? These conversations about population control always seem to trend in the same direction.. the same people who hate overpopulation of humans never want to start the solution with their own families. The mass death events affect whoever they affect, I am not blaming people for the place or situation they are born in, nor do I "hate" overpopulation, and indeed you are right to point out that my own self preservation is a part of the overpopulation problem, in the end I intend to do what is best for myself, as would anyone else, I just naively have some optimism about how this may correct itself in the long term, as opposed to the worst case scenario which is total extinction.
What a disaster. If I was Ukrainian, I’d get the living fuck out of there now before living under those conditions.
What a fucked up world we live in…
We cannot defend Ukraine against the most unjustifiable war ever, and they can’t defend themselves.
Nothing stopped it from moving in four months ago. Putin wasn't going to start a suicidal nuclear war over it.
MAD only works to deter against existential threats. Not being able to invade a neighbour is not an existential threat. Being invaded can be one, though.
Ukraine gave up nuclear weapons for security assurances. The lesson is that if you have nuclear weapons, you do not get attacked - North Korea. You also get to attack other countries. Russia, USA.
> What a fucked up world we live in…
It's fucked up that it was attacked, it's not fucked up that there are social expectations for its citizens to rise to its defence in its time of need.
Between me and my families I think we own one house that's not worth anything because of it's location and my apartment which I'm still paying off.
So if my country got attacked I would grab my family and leave without a second thought - let the people who divided the profits and live off the benefits defend it - I would be just as well in any other country.
Now if it came to world war and it was Russia and China taking over the west I would feel differently about it - but in that case it's a nuclear armageddon so I could probably do shit.
What's the alternative? Not fight and become occupied and likely oppressed - is that a better choice? Or flee and become a war refugee? The average citizen doesn't have highly sought-after skills in other countries, they are likely to go to a refugee camp for months and years. So, some people choose to fight for their families, friends, and preserving their way of life. I think defending the in-group from an aggressive out-group is a perfectly reasonable, ingrained human response.
Sounds better than running.
I don't think many people outside Russia disagree with that (including the GP).
> it's not fucked up that there are social expectations for its citizens to rise to its defence in its time of need.
This ia a misrepresentation. It's not a social expectation, it's part of the current martial law decrees. As far as I'm aware (please correct me if I'm wrong) there is no general draft, yet. It's also not a pro-russian statement to say that limiting the travel ban to men only is inhumane - it tears families apart that may never re-unite again, leaving both halves weak to all kinds of dangers. It's also not clear what is being gained in exchange for this. There are many women part of the voluntary defense forces, just as there are many men who cannot reasonably participate in the fight.
When your country is attacked families are seperated, people die, and fucked up things happen. But if you don't defend your country you are guaranteed to lose and be overrun and be ruled by a maniac dictator. So there's your choice.
I find your position ridiculous and clearly from someone who's never experienced war or even heard about it from parents and grandparents. I have. You can forget about your equality crap and avoiding "inhumanity" and being concerned about the mental health of families.
That doesn't matter when a russian tank rolls down your street. What matters is your survival and your country's survival.
> If you’re some hypothetical cosmopolitan man who’s lived in 10 cities and has no emotional connection to anywhere, maybe. Most people don’t want to see their local area taken over by some Russian maniac.
Also, on the other end, if you're enmeshed in a culture that's rife with corruption and nepotism.
Loyalty to only a very narrow band of close relatives is usually not a recipe for a successful society.
> "Here's what's happening in Kramatorsk [a city in Donetsk]:
It's quiet for now, but we're expecting an escalation in the evening.
I was at the military registration and enlistment office. Just so you understand, our city is pro-Russian. Was. Seems that's now in the past. There's a huge line at the office, of both the young and old.
I don't know what they thought to themselves in Russia, but they've lost our country once and for all.
Such are the preliminary results of operation "Like it or not, endure, my dearest". [Putin's words to Zelensky Feb 7 in response to the latter stating he liked none of the points of the Minsk Accords]"
Source: https://www.facebook.com/e.menendes/posts/7085200851522280
That's a baseless and uncharitable take. But even if you disagree strongly that women can participate meaningfully in modern combat (pre-invasion Ukraine seemed to think there was nothing wrong with having women be part of the voluntary defense force), it is monstrous of you to assert that opposing how families get torn apart by this decree is somehow tantamount to "equality crap". If there was a male-only general draft in effect you could at least argue that the men need to stay behind for mandatory service. But as of now, they're needlessly sending women and children away as refugees while the men stay behind to do whatever. I want to see you construct an argument that clarifies how this leads to better outcomes for these families.
Sometimes social expectations are enforced.
Also, they're being invaded. It would be foolish to insist on waiting for a formal legislative process.
The goon squads are already being assembled:
https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1497174648072531969?s=20...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10551327/Chechen-sp...
https://mena24tv.com/en/2022/02/25/kadyrov-mobilizes-10000-f...
Edit: typo.
A romanian article from 1 hour ago says that as you said, with biometric passport you don't need a visa, but it also says that with a non-biometric passport you will receive a 3 month tourist visa on the spot.
It also says that you can enter without any kind of passport at all, according to international refugee rules. But you might be handled different, liked being forced to go to a refugee camp (don't know).
https://romania.europalibera.org/a/acte-intrare-romania-ucra...
Thier rudeness is legendary in Romania. I assumed it's because we are a poorer country with a rough past that traumatized a generation, but I've seen equal levels of rudeness sometimes from the public servants in Austria and those earn way more than their Romanian counterparts and get much better benefits and working conditions from the state and didn't go through famine 35 years ago.
So assholes will be assholes regardless, just because they know they can't be fired, and are usually venting their personal failures and frustrations on those in weaker positions who can't fight back (foreigners, immigrants), just like how you see people being rude to employees in the service sector.
Anyway, I hope you find safety and know that you're welcome in Romania.
When you accept refugees you’re also accepting the pain of side effects from accepting those refugees. Refugees from some places come with fewer side effects depending on compatibility with the host country and skills and education of the refugees.
your elaboration is accurate and fine.
I think they were just speaking very abruptly. But a different phrase would be better.
Wow. I guess you're really screwed if, in the process of leaving everything behind and fleeing for your life, you lose your ID.
At the same time, his current behaviour means I no longer find him to be a meaningful source of commentary. He called Trudeau "tyrannical and obscene" -- no followup comment when, days later, Trudeau revoked the Emergencies Act. He mocked the world for trusting US intelligence that Russia was going to invade Ukraine -- no followup comment when Russia then committed a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Again, what he did in the past: tremendous service. What he seems capable of doing today: not useful to me.
Trudeau revoked use of the Emergencies Act after using it for 10 days to destroy a protest. It's hard to characterise that any other way.
get your head out of the state influenced media, this is such a ridiculous position to have. The guy had his passport cancelled and is stuck there. What the fuck is he supposed to do?
Snowden wanted to go to Ecuador. It’s ridiculous to suggest he’s made a choice to be in Russia or support Russia.
Then again that’s literally what MSNBC, CNN and probably Fox have been saying for almost 10 years to I’m not surprised many have been brainwashed.
What should the US Government do to resolve the situation?
Trump could have pardoned him?
Offer him a plea deal to return home, plead guilty and serve some time?
It's not a crime.
> Offer him a plea deal to return home, plead guilty and serve some time?
I actually like this one. That's fair.
I don't have an exact source, but I remember him saying how he didn't really want to end up in Russia, how he hasn't adapted super well to it and how he would like to go back to the US if allowed a fair trial.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden#Russia
He already almost martyred himself once to bring us the truth. Why are you demanding he does it again to tell us something everybody already knows?
Does he assume he shouldn't serve time for what he did? Snowden is a complicated figure because the core that the U.S. government was surveilling its own people beyond its bounds was correct.
But he did kind of leak a whole bunch of shit not related to that as well. And that ain't cool.
He kind of has to accept that he's going to go to jail and he's never going to work with sensitive information ever again.
EDIT:
Here's a bit of clarification (quick find on Google, not necessarily the most comprehensive): https://www.france24.com/en/20190916-snowden-says-he-would-r...
He’d be the first modern hero we’ve had if he came back and forced the government to imprison him.
This is exactly what a hero who is principled would do. This is the literal thing that separates them from regular people.
You could argue that he acted on principle and went against the US govt resulting in him being "imprisoned" in Russia and unable to return home. In the end, he got nothing out of it. US gov't still conducts mass surveillance and your average consumer doesn't have much qualms about giving their data to corporations that can then sell it to the gov't.
There was a segment where John Oliver met with Snowden in Russia. Oliver went around in NYC asking people about Snowden and most people didn't even recognize his name. Tbh, I wouldn't blame him for not wanting to go to prison just to be a hero to a bunch of random people that didn't care the first time around.
> I wouldn't blame him for not wanting to go to prison just to be a hero to a bunch of random people that didn't care the first time around.
Yes. I don’t either. But this is why he isn’t principled.
He's already a martyr. He's living the rest of his life in exile, under a microscope and under constant threat. The only people who would gain from him tweeting about these events are those who wish to see him harmed.
> He’d be the first modern hero we’ve had if he came back and forced the government to imprison him.
What about Chelsea Manning and Reality Winner? The fact that you forgot about them already suggests that such an act from Snowden would be ultimately meaningless.
That... is a statement.
So, the guy that openly flouts decades of prison time and enemy-of-the-state status (from the richest first-world country with a nearly unlimited budget for tracking enemies down) to give the world definitive proof of American fuckery for the sake of morals and public good is "not very principled"?
> He’d be the first modern hero
No, he'd be yet another modern martyr.
He's under no obligation to continue crusading. He has already done so much good, let the man retire.
What is it with people expecting their idols to come out and openly crusade for the opinions they want to hear? Do you need a feeling of reassurance or something? Let your opinions stand on their own, you don't need a celebrity to validate them.
Please at least respect people who reveals the insidious evils at the cost of their freedom?
I do not expect him to continue to one-up himself and ruin his life more and more until he's dead, or staring at a concrete wall in solitary.
He's done a massive service to the people. Let him have at least the minimal freedom he has left.
It's time for others to carry the torch.
https://twitter.com/CloeKerhoas/status/1497211541912911872
I think if he were a hero/patriot like everybody says he would speak his mind regardless of his status.
1. Snowden is a dissident wrt the US government, not the Russian one. He doesn't have an obligation to criticize Russia (neither does he have an obligation to criticize the US, but that comes with the territory).
2. He has self preservation to consider too. To him Russia is a relatively safe haven. Why would he endanger that? Sure, this limits his freedom of expression, but that's a relatively small personal compromise in order to ensure you're still alive and not in some supermax.
Russia might have more weapons but keeping 100k troops feed in what is going to increasingly hostile areas is no simple thing.
Life under Russian occupation doesn't sound like a good time. Still I don't see Ukraine winning this, plus even in peacetime you'll do better in Romania , Poland or Germany. At least from an economic point of view.
The best case scenario at this point is a ceasefire is declared, with Russian troops remaining in much of the East.
Even if the War ends today, still expect tons of refugees. Much of the economic base has already been destroyed. Given the option of fleeing West, being able to build a better, safer life... Or living under constant threat of another Russian invasion.
Which would you pick ?