relevance in context = 0

Just submitted a similar comment. Thank you for pointing this out as well.

As much as I despise Putin and his regime, this whole story reeks of bullshit. If it’s possible to “plant an incendiary device” on air cargo, then the safety checks are fucked up, also if anyone seriously wanted to bring a plane down, they’d put a trivial pressure sensor inside to trigger at altitude, not a more complex (and error prone) timer.

Your reading comprehension is non-existent.

while I appreciate the the iel jokes, this is the wrong subject. Nothing to laugh about piece of rotting shit Nazis.

I honestly ran a bit out of energy to respond at length - but also, since we’re mostly agreeing, I guess our energy is better invested in trying to talk some common sense into those who are not (although that feels like a Sisyphus task these days)…

The problem is how to realistically go from were we are now to that utopia.

Unfortunately, I have no solution. And while I don’t, the only thing I can do is vote for those that most align with solutions I consider feasible and try and convince others to do the same.

Sadly, propaganda is working frighteningly efficient.

As I said in my other comment(s): We need to build up infrastructure and help to stabilize political systems and combat climate change in order to avoid ever increasing refugee streams that will overstrain any system. And our mortal enemy and traitors to humanity in this are the right-wing conservatives slash populists and racist dipshits, because they create and worsen every single reason for migrants to flee their home countries. People who further social inequality need to be put in jail and put on mandatory empathy training until they stop being sociopaths.

I strongly disagree with but this one point from you

(so less capable of doing the high value jobs that produce more wealth in the West),

There are no “high value jobs” in the West that are responsible for producing more wealth. As society, we are thieves and parasites stealing from poorer countries simply because we industrialized first and gained a technological, educational and military advantage.

Western society by and large is a parasitic life-form. And I am disgusted that the choice in this world is “benefit from exploitation or be exploited”.

I am ashamed of and disgusted by my fellow Europeans who believe that we somehow “did better” at anything, and that thereby our economical well-being is somehow well-deserved. It is not, it is founded on exploitation of the third world and it continues to thrive on cheap labor & resources and lack of regulations from around the globe.

the extremes of “we should help everybody that needs help in the World by inviting them to move over whenever they feel like”

How about “everyone should be able to move freely in the world and live in the place they desire” but in order to sustainably achieve that goal, we need to make most of the world a place worth living in?

I am absolutely disgusted that I can move freely about but my Turkish friends have to ask for a Visa to come visit me.

I think the “thinking” Left needs to separate immigration (inviting people over), from immigrants (people who came because we invited them over in the past, so our guests) and refugees (people who we are helping or should help due to their dire need and we being able to help them) and treat those things differently since there is really only a moral and ethical duty for the last 2, not for the first one.

While I believe that this is a very good point, I also believe we have a duty to do our best to ensure that people all over the world have a chance to live a life worth living. Especially in those countries whose natural resources we use to attain our lifestyle. And IMO the best counter-measures vs. mass migration are

1. create infrastructure in the countries of origin and help towards stable political systems (i.e. the opposite of what the west has been doing in the middle east for decades)
2. combat climate change

Both of these measures face the strongest opposition from the most racist people (climate deniers are strong among right-wing people which I correlate with less brain cells in active use), so in effect the political rightwing is very much causing the problems that they want to be racist about.

While I support a differentiated perspective like you demonstrate, I believe that maybe it can be summarized a little briefer:

• yes, there absolutely are problems related to immigration, that have nothing to do with intentional manipulation by the powerful
• no, those problems do not justify any racism

The typical racist thought process goes: Oh - an immigrant did crime X. How dare “they” while guests. Immigrants (from X / of ethnicity X) are more likely to be criminals. Let’s get rid of them.

Addressing those issues requires targeted solutions for complex problems. And some of those are very similar to the solutions required for children from families with a low social status: Sometimes, we have to sadly accept that adults beyond a certain stage of brain development are “beyond help” (sadly, that also means most racists have crossed a line that they can mentally not recover from), and focus on the children being given all chances to learn normal and unprejudiced social interactions. This being: give even the worst parents an incentive (typically that means money) to send their kids to public kindergardens / daycare from an early age. And provide enough spots for children / enough caretakers, and pay those caretakers a decent salary and ensure that they have a very good education.

And our population continues to skyrocket due to unrestrained immigration, depressing wages and pushing unemployment to historic highs.

See my other comment. Immigration is NOT your problem. You are falling for the carrot that the assholes actually causing this social inequality are dangling in front of your nose.

they instead usually talk about migrant crime, low migrant employment and “we don’t have enough for ourselves”.

This is exactly the kind of racist bullshit I am talking about. As if any of these had anything to do with where people come from, and not everything to do with how they are taken care of (or rather not), and how corporations fuck you over.

No population in this world has more or less assholes because of their color of skin, country or origin or religion. Talking about “migrant crime” as a problem, instead of seeing it as a consequence of giving people no chance to live a decent life, and working on the actual fucking problem, that’s a deeply racist talking point.

The whole point of racism is to direct anger of the masses away from those assholes actually responsible for their misery - the megacorps, banks, rich people and establishment politicians - at a convenient out-group, so that the masses do not get any ideas that would indeed change something for the better. And people who think migrants or migration are/is the problem are lacking the education to see through this bullshit and gobble up the lies and end up serving as useful idiots to the powerful.

People who believe this bullshit and regurgitate racist talking points are one of the most powerful tools of the wealthy to prevent the sensible people from driving politics that would actually change things for the better.

Fuck racists, and eat the rich!

No shit. I see and hear so much pathetic racist bullshit in Europe I want to vomit more than I could possibly eat. Pathetic little racist shitstains thinking they are somehow superior to “brown people”. /a “white” person with common sense and no inferiority complexes

I wish for the responsible judges, politicians and CEOs to get spat in the face by their own children for being the disgusting vile pieces of shit that they are. Sadly, too often, the apple does not fall far enough from the tree.

Don’t waste my time with your bigotry and shortsighted dumb comments.

Palestinians don’t accept that the borders change and still want all of Israel.

“Palestinians” here is a useless generalization, because it lacks a quantifier. Certainly some do, and just as certainly not all do.

You underestimate the amount of brainwashing going on. When two people brought up in entirely different parts of the world, all other circumstances identical, are exposed to two completely different systems - they can often believe opposite things to be true, despite no person being intrinsically more or less good or bad than the other.

Also, generalization is a BIG problem the moment you use it as prejudice against individuals before knowing them. As a matter of fact, judging individuals based on generalizations is - the moment the generalization is applied to an ethnicity - equal to racism.

"On August 18, as a result of targeted shelling […] against residential buildings and civilian infrastructure […] a third bridge […] was damaged

Comedy gold right there. What is it now? The Ukrainians targeted residential buildings but missed so badly that they hit a strategically important target? Right…

no shit, Sherlock. Still, glad to see it in the news.