Honest question, why should the west care about every single problem that happens anywhere in the world? Why should we spend billions in wars, shed lots of our own blood, etc? Haven't we had enough of that?
Even if you don't do that, just don't support them: For example, it'd be great if trump didn't call erdogan after referendum to congratulate him.
Also, until very recently, strong censure of the Erdogan administration's creeping authoritarianism was our policy. It does not seem to have accomplished much.
It is possible to care and act WITHOUT overcommitting. Or at least, it is for countries who do not have a schizophrenic model wherein both sides are pushing against each other as hard as they can and so overcommit to everything including an astronomical defense budget.
I wish I understood why there isn't a move to reinstate border checks in the Schengen area.
It seems ludicrous to me to keep internal borders open when it is clear that the external borders have failed.
This ought to be removed too, along with the whole concept of property.
Go ahead and abolish all your own property, you're free to do so.
Or was it more about you wanting to be entitled to product of your fellow man's labor?
I do not own any private property.
>Or was it more about you wanting to be entitled to product of your fellow man's labor?
No; in fact, the exact opposite. It is about the worker owning the product of his own labour, rather than having it appropriated when production has finished. To each according to his labour.
This is why I insist on working as a contractor and not as an employee: I want to own my intellectual property until I choose to sell it, and I want to create and sell a product that's useful, not be paid for my time.
I recently heard "land-ownership tax/renting land from the state instead of owning it" and "100% tax on death/abolish inheritance", I think they're interesting but not without problems.
One could argue that your kids did not earn that money either. As a reasonable middle ground, I think that we there could be a "good future for the children" exemption (at say $20m per child), while the rest is taxed at 100%. This prevents the natural process of concentration of all wealth in the hands of the few.
The process is called war. Properties are not valuable when tenants and landlords keep dying and the properties themselves might get destroyed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam
Especially in the Nordic countries. Having grown up in Norway, the idea of people e.g. fencing in fields or forests and keeping people off their land seems ludicrous and to an extent offensive. It's a massive restriction of liberty of the many for the benefit of the few.
(it's worth noting that the freedom to roam is generally restricted to non-urban areas, so e.g. not gardens in residential areas and the like)
I think borders can be very valuable to separate groups with conflicting ideologies and worldviews, but I wish you the best luck in advocating that policy in your local political sphere.
I live in England. Why can "the people" (although it is surely not the people: it is the government) of Australia decide that I can't come and live there?
But there is a move. In fact, multiple countries have done so, although temporarily: https://euobserver.com/migration/130260
Thing is, border control isn't free; it may not be visible for many of us, but there are a lot of people reliant on the openness of our borders for their daily lives. Imagine having to pass a border check on your way to work - that'd be the reality for many EU citizens nowadays if you were to reintroduce country borders.
And would it really solve the problem? What if those migrants just came by boat anyway? What are we going to do, let'em drown?
I sometimes miss having more black-and-white opinions. Real life is hard.
What's wrong with rescuing them and then shipping them back to the coast they sailed off from? If they're on international waters, there are no legal obligations to treat them as asylum seekers.
The bigger picture is that these situations would very quickly stop happening if the word spread that it's not longer viable as a way to get into the EU.
Military-intervention-yes-or-no is a completely inappropriate model for the relationship between any given western country and Turkey.
You might see trends or evidence of causality, which may not necessarily happen, but might. Being aware of it can help you, and me, and all of us, to reason and to make the right choices.
For example, you may not believe that your president will become a dictator, but then you look at other countries, and realize that neither did their people, until they got a dictator. There's a lesson in there somewhere. It helps to be aware.
In this case, West being West Europe:
Because European Union decided to build a federal union which has freedom of movement inside, and no border controls on the outside. What happens in Turkey is directly impacting the security, safety and economy of all Europeans (except the British, who were lectured on their selfishness for not joining the Schengen area).
EU's border control was outsourced to Turkey. So, thank Jean-Claude Juncker, Barroso, Prodi, Santer.
No border controls on the outside? Are you being hyperbolic or just misinformed? Of course there are border controls (their adequacy/efficiency is another matter).
There are good border controls towards regions where they are not that necessary. For flight passengers from the United States, for instance. Schengen borders towards Russia are fairly solid in Norway and Finland, slightly less so but improving in Estonia, etc.
There is no effective control of entry across the Mediterranean; in fact, there is an ongoing operation which effectively works as a free taxi service for human traffickers who collect the money from passengers who are treated like cargo. The traffickers tow a rubber boat a few miles off the shore of Libya or Turkey, and leave the cargo to wait for a rescue ship with instructions to puncture the raft and expect to be picked up and taken to Europe.
Sometimes the rescue ship is out of capacity, so the people cannot be picked up, the punctured raft will sink and people drown, but this is no loss for the traffickers. We are told that we must go on with this because anything else would be "unhuman".
Upon entry, everyone has mysteriously lost their papers and everyone is admitted without any idea who they are, as long as they utter some code words.
From Turkey, people used to come across using flotation toys. Because EU couldn't get together an act of controlling the maritime border towards Turkey, the union negotiated a deal with Erdogan where Turkey acts as Europe's border control. Now EU is a hostage of Turkey because of this.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/25/world/europe/turkey-recep...
People absolutely would not be sent out to open sea in little rafts, if the traffickers and their cargo wouldn't know that if they just manage to float the cargo out of Libyan territorial waters, a large percentage will be picked up and therefore guaranteed entry to EU by bringing them to shore in Italy. This enables them to sell the trips. Those who drown are simply deadweight loss but as long as the proportion is not so large that it would diminish the sale of trips, it won't matter.
Whatever is the operation on sea, it won't help because the business is based on the EU asylum mechanism: once someone is picked up at sea, they cannot be returned to the nearby shore (Libya or whatever) from where they left. And once on EU ground, they'll be free to stay by applying for asylum. Italy is not hugely interested because the people know that there are no jobs in Italy, so they move on towards Germany, Sweden or trying to enter Britain through Calais or such.
It's a hard problem to solve. Most ideas seem to be about coming up with a new Gaddafi, to make a deal with him similarly to the Erdogan deal. This is not very nice either.
Until last year Turkey was in slow but ongoing negotiations to be a member of the European Union.
Because that exactly same attitude, especially by the UK and US led to the rise of Hitler and eventually the Holocaust.
Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat its mistakes.
Witness the Iraq war.
What the Iraq war (just as the Afghanistan war) has lacked and still lacks, unfortunately, is a post-war strategy similar to the Marshall plan...
There were no shortage of "Because Like Hitler" and "Neville Chamberlain" type arguments being bandied about and the situation was not even remotely similar.
Point being, this kind of rhetoric (in addition to not being a solid argument) is dangerous and easily slips into justification territory. (As we've seen). Cases should evaluated on an individual basis.