Does anyone expect any different from the government who has participated in the active and ongoing political persecution of Julian Assange for now 11 years?
You don't even have to get geopolitical to rip on the UK nanny state. TV detector vans are straight up Orwellian to a point where one would consider it a parody from a comedy sketch if it weren't a real thing.
I guess you can call the detector vans Orwellian? But only in so far as they were probably fictitious and strongly implied things that they couldn't do, which isn't the usual usage but kinda fits with the general category of propaganda about what the authorities can do — it was technically possible but unlikely to be affordable when they were making the biggest deal out of it, much easier to take the list of addresses which don't have a licence and look through the windows or knock on the doors and pretend that the van driving the inspectors had the electronics for what would later be called Van Eck phreaking.
What is much closer to "so Orwellian you'd expect it in a comedy sketch parodying UK politics" are the pro-CCTV posters around London in the early 2000s, one of which I managed to spot in real life when passing through the city: https://www.wired.com/2002/11/londons-privacy-falling-down/
That and the way the heavy-handed Met police response to the vigil held by women protesting misbehaviour by the Met police.
My question is out of those 2,498 people stopped how many of them actually had links to terrorisms? I will be extremely generous and say if the number is less than 2000 than sounds like you just have a system in place to harass random people.
For imbalanced data, even accurate system will give tons of false positives. Unless you are willing to tolerate false negatives, having large false positive rate is almost inevitable. Rare disease testing is a popular example, but this one is a good instance to I think.
Let's say there are 10 million people linked to terrorism in the world and the system is correct 95% of times. Then out of 20000 people, 20 are positives, and 19 will be stopped; out of 19980 negatives, 999 will be stopped.
Compared to disease testing you may argue that FP is more harmful, but that's a different question. The point is that even very non-random system will be dominated by FP.
Edit: in particular, if they stop truly random people and 500 of them are linked to terrorism that implies that 20% of all people passing there are terrorists.
> Unless you are willing to tolerate false negatives
We tolerate false negative all the time: Terrorism is not eradicated at all in UK. Barring successful results, the police should stop harassing people.
Terrorists passed checkpoints today and we tolerated it. Terrorists passed checkpoints yesterday and we tolerated it. Terrorists passed checkpoints the day before that...
The complete elimination of false negatives for rare occurrences is prohibitively expensive to the liberty of non-terrorists.
Probably important to note that this leads to tests not being performed without good reason because they cause more harm than they do good due to the false positive rate.
Great question. The journalist named in the article (Matt Broomfield) is asking authorities to delist the PKK (which clearly IS a terrorist organization targeting civilians) as a terrorist organization.
> * December 2016 Istanbul car bombing / suicide bombing near a football stadium, killing 44 people
TAK != PKK, TAK claimed responsibility. 39 of those killed were police officers. Turkish military also kills civilians while targeting opposing militia groups.
> * June 2014 Istanbul bombing / killing 6 civilians
Not intentional targeting civilians, accidental premature explosion of bomb. Only one of the attacks you've mentioned that was by the actual PKK and actually killed civilians. (e: actually no civilians killed)
To his defence, the TAK is often claimed to be a militant wing of the PKK, that handles affairs that might damage the reputation of the main organization. Like how the Provisional IRA formed fake splinter groups to pin sectarian counterattacks on.
Western government have had high-profile negative media coverage in the past because they weren’t keeping track of returnees from Syria, my guess is they are being more diligent in response to that.
Regardless of the morality it is unusual and you aren’t really supposed to go to Rojava.
Considering they asked him questions like "do you consider your reporting objective" and didn't return his phone and laptop, it's gone a bit beyond counter-terrorism. I would be less heavy-handed towards a journalist, due to the importance of a free media
Intelligence services are good at stopping and intimidating journalists who are reporting on their activities: activities like nurturing Islamic terrorist groups in order to destabilize states perceived as an obstacle. For examples see the 9-11 attackers, the Ariana Grande/ManchesterArena bomber.
They have no lack of information: they just don't do anything with it because their fundamental job at the moment is not protecting us, it's destroying others. MI5 had all they needed to stop the Manchester Arena bomber etc.
Journalists need to be free to pursue their activities in order for us to have a functioning democracy. The detention of Kit Klarenberg, this detention, the detention of the French publisher (for Gilet Jaune protestor links IIUIC) are definite indications that these intelligence agency perverts feel empowered to interfere with one of the important parts of a democratic system.
I've had the same thing happen to me re-entering the US on multiple occasions.
Once I was kicked out of a border patrol point in northern Vermont in a snowstorm in February after they had sent my bus on without me hours before. I had to hitchhike to not freeze.
You used to be able to re-enter the US with just your birth certificate and a driver's license, ~18+ years ago or so. I was 19 and driving back into the US just north of Bellingham, WA, and this rule was set to change later on in the year, but it was still legal to use this method at my time of travel. The border patrol agent literally said to me, "You know, I have half a mind to not let you in right now with these, because that's what's going to happen to you in a few months if you try this shit again."
Like... what? He let me in, but that statement was bizarre.
I live in the aforementioned city. Lots of locals have similar stories, people that cross quite regularly. No idea why BP are such pricks. Their Canadian counter parts are reportedly quite lovely.
Reminds me of that trip report of a road trip through Canada I stumbled across a while ago (start here if you have some time to spare for some reading: https://mrgris.com/travel/blog/labrador/), which also included a visit to Estcourt (https://mrgris.com/travel/blog/labrador/3/), which has one of those slightly unusual border situations with most of the village in Canada and only a couple of houses in the US (and then nothing but miles and miles of forest until the rest of Maine – so the border post only serves the logging traffic and those few houses).
The US border guards at that occasion where highly suspicious and questioned them for three quarters of an hour, whereas the Canadian official was indeed quite lovely and commented about his US colleagues that "ah yes, they have a… different frame of mind."
Although to be fair I personally did do a slightly – though probably not highly – unusual method of entering the US one time, too (walking across the Rainbow Bridge at Niagra Falls with the intention of catching a bus onwards to Buffalo and then taking a flight to Washington from there), and the US border staff on that occasion were quite reasonable.
So from personable experience I can't actually complain too much, but yeah, it seems to be easier to find that kind of stories involving the US rather than Canada…
Well, Frontex, the EU border patrol agency, was imvolved in illegal pushbacks (you cannot deny entry to asylum seekers, not speak of the duty to help people in dostres at sea) multiple times. Even resulting in the death of people. Nothing happened, besides having the head of Frontex being removed. Go figure.
That is certainly a.... take on Frontex job. But by that take, tze job of border police is to shoot at people. Well, at least in East Germany that was part of the job description, they aimed at people tryingbto leave so.
And invaders require an invasion. That means war, and then it woupd be the various NATO navies and airforces doing the shooting.
What Frontex does is just simply illegal and inhumane in some cases.
No, they are actually forbidden from doing that. They should stop illegal migrants, that is a different action and different people. To stop invaders we have an army.
I have heard so many stories - all anecdotal of course but it's been a pattern over the last 20 years - of people crossing the US/Can border on buses specifically being abnormally questioned, searched or detained.
I wonder if there's some kind of bias against buses in border guard culture or training? Are you more likely assumed to be up to no good because you're travelling in the cheapest possible way?
People of all race/class/status/age/appearance too..
It even happened to me when I was 19, but I did not look very respectable at the time so I chalked it up to that.
Well in my case I can certainly tell you it was because I answered "that's none of your business" to all the questions they asked me. They were livid, and the search they carried out was in an attempt at maximum intimidation.
I'm a US citizen re-entering the US with a valid US passport. They have to let me in and I don't have to answer a damn thing (because the appeals court has already ruled they can search everything you have, including all electronics, without probable cause, I refuse to make their job any easier than it needs to be).
On a separate incident at a separate border point (the Windsor-Detroit tunnel) they sexually assaulted my then-girlfriend (not a US citizen) during a very thorough body search which was also conducted for punitive reasons only after our refusal to cooperate in their search of our electronic devices (after they had already decided to deport her).
(In that case I was driving a rented luxury car, so I don't think it was bus bias, I think it was just retaliation for insisting on our human rights.)
This also includes buses on internal routes but within the 100 miles or so of the border. They would stop a bus and ask everyone to prove they are citizens. I know someone who overstayed their visa who was caught and extradited that way.
It’s a way for illegal immigrants to travel relatively cheaply. As opposed to driving or walking. So buses became this target.
Yeah we should arrest journalists when they don't agree with national policy. I'm glad you agree with Russia's government policy towards journalism by the way.
He appears crank, but he is a seasoned journalist who started running his own blog fulltime, so parts of the appearance might be rooted in that. I can only speculate that we have to account for age, funding and personality.
However what is less speculation is that he (and other critics of the German government) are receiving the full „Zersetzung“ Stasi-tactic treatment: Unwarranted unfounded police stops, especially at airports with well meaning officers even admitting there‘s some sort entry in the database, multiple banks cancelling his accounts, as well as all kinds of internet service providers kindly asking him to set up some shell entity to relief them from government pressure. All of this not only limited to him bit to family members as well (his 8-year old‘s daughter bank account „had to be“ suspended according to the bank)
> The Bayerische Staatszeitung described Reitschuster's website as "a controversial, right-wing online Platform". "Depending on one's point of view, it gave "COVID belittlers a podium o took a critical look at" the federal government's corona policy. The Handelsblatt and the Stuttgarter Zeitung called Reitschuster's Blog "right wing-conservative". journalist and lawyer Liane Bednarz described Reitschuster on Spiegel Online as the operator of a "blog with right-wing populist bias". According to NewsGuard, Reitschuster.de is a news blog "that reports on German politics from an undisclosed politically right-wing perspective." According to a September 2021 study by the British non-governmental organization Hope not Hate, Reitschuster's page was "among the most shared [on Facebook] by AfD profiles, alongside that of the German offshoot of the Russian state broadcaster RT."
Placing Reitschuster next to Russias RT is the standard type of smear and funny because Reitschuster is one of the most outspoken critics of Putin, having spent years as a foreign correspondent in Moscow during Putins ascend to power.
British national and journalist Kit Klarenberg was detained in a similar manner earlier this year [1].
It is striking that this Guardian article doesn't mention that key fact. They didn't even report on it, even though it's virtually the same story.
My guess is this story is "fit to print" because it pins the blatant authoritarianism on Erdoğan (acceptable target) rather than the British government (unacceptable target). There was no such scapegoat available in the Klarenberg detainment.
My perception: The Guardian deteriorated substantially around 2015. They became an establishment paper. The Guardian is mostly predictable, boring and neocon nowadays.
"The new project developed from funding relationships which the paper already had with the Ford, Rockefeller, and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.[171] Gates had given the organization $5 million[172] for its Global Development webpage."
It’s impossible to know if it applies to this case, but the UK has laws that can forbid media to report on a story and also to forbid them to mention anything about being forbidden to report it.
Aside from the general principles of free speech I'm a bit shocked they are going after supporters of the Kurds who as the article says fought on the British side against ISIS. Erdogan on the other hand who is probably behind this was trading oil with ISIS and letting them go on beach holidays in Turkey. It was ISIS who blew up busses in London not Kurds. Honesty the state should have some loyalty to our allies rather than our enemies even if the latter probably have more power and money.
He was referring to the use of tear gas in order to disperse crowds (rather than using violence)...that section of the memorandum tends not to be quoted (and Britain only used gases in warfare after Germany began using it indiscriminately in WW1).
It is quite bizarre to imply that pre-colonial India was a haven for human rights but that Britain, the country with the most advanced legal system and which had recognised the notion of human rights nearly 900 years earlier, did not.
> It is quite bizarre to imply that pre-colonial India was a haven for human rights but that Britain, the country with the most advanced legal system and which had recognised the notion of human rights nearly 900 years earlier, did not.
Pop quiz: How long did it take the United States to recognize the human rights of those born into slavery?
People are selectively blind about who the human rights apply to all the time, it's nothing new whatsoever.
I think you are demeaning any valid position you may hold by your contortions over Churchill's well-known and repeatedly documented racism and imperialism.
But maybe that's the fashion nowadays among sophisticated thinkers?:
" I want you to think very seriously over this question of poison gas. I would not use it unless it could be shown either that (a) it was life or death for us, or (b) that it would shorten the war by a year.
2. It is absurd to consider morality on this topic when everybody used it in the last war without a word of complaint from the moralists or the Church. On the other hand, in the last war bombing of open cities was regarded as forbidden. Now everybody does it as a matter of course. It is simply a question of fashion changing as she does between long and short skirts for women."*
I'm just an onlooker here, but you have been misunderstanding/misusing the word "infer" in this thread.
So let's put that word aside and focus on understanding what the person above you is trying to communicate.
They made an accusation against Churchill, and you responded with a defense of Britain. This reveals that you misinterpreted their comment. They wish to correct your musunderstanding and make it clear that they were not talking about Britain, only Churchill.
I'm open to being wrong mate, any chance you could correct me rather than just say I don't know? That's kinda super tedious. I even went to a dictionary and asked chatgippity to double check lmao.
1) The context of poisoned gas is now clearly one where the implication is murder, and not the slew of effects from tear gas. Big difference and worth pointing out considering the bar was never 'is an action violent or not'
Yeah, no. Magna Carta wasn't recognition of _human_ rights (we still had literal slaves and also separately serfdom), it was basically a bunch feudal lords insisting that the courts which the King owned personally treat any case against the King himself with the same regards as any other defendant.
Both sides reneged very quickly, leading to one of the many English Civil Wars that UK history lessons completely ignore because it's not as exciting as Cromwell: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Barons%27_War
It's just a question, designed to provoke a response that might be useful.
Border officials the world over are like this. They have broad leeway to assume everyone is a threat, and to provoke, inconvenience, belittle and annoy them until they are satisfied. Obtuse, trollish rudeness is but one tool in the toolbox.
--
Responding more generally rather than specifically to your point, if you'll forgive me:
I am inclined to believe that while our British border officials are wholly embarrassing, the situation is no worse than it is in every single western democracy.
Let us all not pretend that border police confiscating the journalists' possessions they don't really have the explicit right to confiscate is particularly unique to any country; it's absolutely not. This is an internationally common thing and it is very much a sign of the times.
oh joy, looks like our great UK govt has nothing better to do than kowtow to foreign powers and do their bidding. The Tories in power are becoming more and more fascist by the day. And Labour aren't so hot either.
> Broomfield said: “It seems clear the Schengen ban and my harassment by the UK police are driven by direct or indirect pressure from Turkey, on the basis of my work and reporting in Rojava and around the Kurdish issue.”
This sort of crap is nothing new unfortunately. Erdogan's Turkey has been abusing international cooperation agreements at scale [1], not to mention holding up Sweden's entry to NATO, purely to fight against legitimate domestic resistance against his quasi-dictatorship/sultanate/caliphate (depending on whom you ask, but Turkey is certainly no democracy anymore). And that repression includes journalists such as Deniz Yücel [2], even foreign TV shows [3] and comedians [4] - everyone who criticises Erdogan or recognizes the Armenian genocide becomes a target.
And where legal avenues fail, there is always the Grey Wolves, nominally a terrorist group, and closely linked to the Turkish government, to do Erdogan's bidding [5].
As for why no one does anything to hold Erdogan accountable... the answer to that is simple, he threatens to unleash refugees like he did in the past [6], and Turkey's cooperation regarding the Bosporus is vital in the Ukraine war.
The West is way to cooperative with regimes like Erdogan, Modi, the UAE or Qatar. To name a few.
But what do you expect from a government, Germany which just so happens to be mine, that sees no problem in letting others do the dirty work of repulsing migrants in the Mediterranean, to their death sometimes, not intervening when the US intern German citizens in Guantanamo for years. Most of it out of fear of the far right since the refugee crisis in Europe. With great success regarding the containment of the far right, they poll quite often on second place now. Oh, I forgot, while our police isn't holding journalists, or people threatening and harassing others for that matter, they happily use similar powers to lock up climate activists for a couple of days without trial.
Rant over. If Western democracies don't start to stand up for our proclaimmed values, we will loose what little soft power we have left.
We have elections on state level coming up. Hard choice, because for once a single vote really matters (before every government was more or less the same, now there is the risk of having the AfD sitting there). And those voters are voting! So, two choices, vote on principle and hopefully strengthen the oposition enough to count, or vote for the conservative government hoping to make thek strong enough to not need the far right.
Well, it actually isn't that hard a choice, but still.
As first generation out of portuguese dictatorship in the 70's, living through the whole west/east split, and spending half of my life in Germany, it isn't fun seeing that happening. Similar increase is happening in Portugal, Chega party being one of them.
It is as if the younger generations have no clue what they are voting for.
This is what people who court the far-right don't realise. Far-right politics are a means to an end — that end being naked power. You will get chewed up and spat out if you do something they don't like. The silver lining is that a far-right regime is never sustainable in the long run as a result, but there is a lot of collateral damage along the way.
The left isn't working for them and you could say the same thing about the left.. unchecked it becomes China or USSR. Things will swing back and forth. Too many left policies created unhappiness.. too many right policies will create unhappiness in the future. Rinse and repeat.
The mass immigration policies of the left has created a burden on some (while creating a boom for others).
I would hardly consider Angela Merkel left-wing, but go on I guess. Of course people on the far-left can be power-hungry authoritarians too. Stalin, Malema, and Chavez immediately come to mind. But this phenomenon manifests more often on the right in the west because most of western politics is so scared of any actual far-left sentiment that they nip it in the bud as soon as it pops up. If they had this same attitude towards the right, we would not be in this situation.
Too many left policies create unhappiness? You do have a szrange definition of left. Just a hint, the USSR was rightfully called Stalinistic and the Vommunist. Ehile China is a one party totalitarian regime that only recently is curbing down capitalism. None of which are representative of left politics like pro-union, social security, health care and the like.
Left wing policies unchecked lead to communism, totalitarianism.
Plenty of unhappiness can be created from left policies. Mass immigration cause job loss and wage reduction. Increasing taxes creates unhappiness. Spending more today than you have creates unhappiness tomorrow.
Right wing policies lead more often to totalitarianism then left wing ones, historically speaking.
And if you really believe that migration, and not union busting and unchecked capitalism, lead to lower wages, well, I don't think there is anything I can say that might make think about those things more critical.
I dont think they realize long term consequences, life and politics aint tiktok where 10 second attention span is normalized or even cool. Shit has consequences for decades, but nobody knows them.
I dont have an answer. I personally moved away from my home country (Slovakia) almost 2 decades away, thinking far right is probably the biggest long term threat with causing some civil war with our big Roma population. Oh boy was I wrong, far right is now completely managed by russian troll farms now, they literally jump as russians whistle (an expression back home), having some utterly illogical positions.
You look left, there is a guy completely interwined with 'ndrangheta who probably will win, murdering journalists, managing economy so badly that Romania took us over. Right is this above. Both love russia in fact. Nothing competent in between. People voted last time for cca new face and he turned to be some bipolar less than useless freak who just pissed off literally everybody left and right.
That's why it's even more important to go vote this time, and for a party that will likely make the cut. For all intents and purposes, votes for the everybody-knows-they-will-be-<5% parties are lost votes, with the only difference to "not voting" that there's a buck or so per voter for those parties' piggy-banks.
The rumor that invalidating the ballot makes any difference makes a reappearance every few years, so for clarity: The same applies to invalid votes, which end up being just a line-item in some statistic nobody cares about.
The west hardly cares about soft power. Can you give an example of some soft power that wasn't due to a legal agreement? I came up dry just now thinking of some example that the west has set that the rest of the world has followed purely on the idea of it alone. There's always some sort of formal agreement it seems when it comes to these sorts of things, e.g. forms of government, trade, mutually passed laws like drug scheduling or extradition.
> The West is way to cooperative with regimes like Erdogan, Modi, the UAE or Qatar. To name a few.
I fail to understand how Modi (and likely Erdogan), who are elected representatives, are at the same level as the UAE or Qatar.
"Look at the human right violations they've done!"
Not defending them, but then would you add Bush/Obama/Trump to the list (between Guantanamo Bay/all the middle east military "interventions") Or how Assange is still being treated by the US?
I'm not trying to flame-bait, but if a leader is a democratically elected rep is conflated with autocracies that's not a sound argument. Especially when it's something more countries do than don't. (Disclaimer, am Indian)
When you throw all credible newspaper editors/owners and many credible opposition politicians in prison based on made-up charges, like Erdogan has done, there can't be fair & democratic elections.
In america, "democracy" actually means "democracy that is beneficial to us". If we don't approve of it, it's not real democracy, and we can just send in the CIA to make it the way we want it to be. It's why "populism" is so bad yet people here still reference the popular vote when their preferred candidate got more votes overall.
>Western democracies don't start to stand up for our proclaimmed values
That ship has left the barn long, long ago. We can't provide military resources to a known fascist totalitarian-authoritarian dictatorship, so they can enact genocide, and still proclaim ourselves on the 'right' side of history.
The illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003: same. The funding and arming of ISIS. The destruction of Libya.
We lost our moral altitude long, long ago - and its not coming back. As this story demonstrates, we in the West have gotten far, far too complacent about totalitarian-authoritarianism, such that we just accept it when it happens to us, at the airport, etc.
I think it could well be argued that the "West" never even had moral values. Just look at WW2 and their failure to liberate Eastern Europe and regain lands conquered by Stalin... After that it really was more about their benefits and than any real values held.
Well, there was a reason the continuation of WW2 against the USSR was called "Operation Unthinkable". There was simply no way anybody could afford to start a land war against the USSR in 1945.
But yes, the Western values always have been over valued (no pun intended). Just how much over valued becomes clearer by the day. Still, democracy is the best available form of government, and there have been serious progress in tue last decades. I just wished tze West would wake up and start to live those proclaimed values (which aren't bad at all) and not just so lip service.
They still had other half of population with suffrage left. And wouldn't value of democracy mean that also sacrificing them would have been morally correct way to spread democracy? Just arm them and send to frontlines.
Is what? Want me to list the number of people that I personally know have been abused, harrased, and monitored, just because they were the wrong kind of european? Ranging from PhD students, to software engineers, doctors, drivers, nurses, etc?
Undocumented people can't legitimately enter a country other than their country of origin, which works in both directions. In order to ship people "back" you have to do so directly, including the cooperation of their government to verify that they are in fact their nationals.
I think you can detain them until they provide documentation.
Not sending them back just encourages more people to come in, even if the journey is hard(i.e they are held up at various borders such Turkey). I don't see many illegal immigrants in UAE/Dubai for example.
What if they don't have papers? What if their country hasn't registered them? What if they lie about their name and birthdate, so their home country cannot identify them? What if the home country doesn't want them back?
People don't go to UAE because life will be worse there.
Your encouragement argument has no base in reality. You live your well informed western perspective. These people have no idea where they are going, what life will be like here in the EU (terrible for many). They take the risk because they have nothing to lose: famine, natural disasters, never ending wars, dictators. They don't do this because they are encouraged somehow, except that they can't stay at home anymore. That is the "encouragement" indeed.
The journey is not "hard". It's insufferably hard. Everything you have will be stolen. You may be kidnapped to do slave labour. You may get raped, killed, or see your mates get killed in front of you. And that is before you step in a small boat with tens of people to cross a sea with no navigation, not enough food or water.
When you enter Italy and see your refugee status rejected, you enter the human void of being "illegal", undocumented. You live by the day, no future lies ahead of you.
If you get accepted, you may have lost seven years living in some kind of open prison, no language lessons, nothing to do all day.
Talk about "encouragement", but this doesn't stop people either. So why would this encouragement argument only work one way? Because the discouragement measures do not work at all.
> What if they don't have papers? What if their country hasn't registered them? What if they lie about their name and birthdate, so their home country cannot identify them?
Not our problem? Not our problem, and not our problem. Keep them detained in the meanwhile.
If you want asylum the least you can do is be honest.
> These people have no idea where they are going, what life will be like... They take the risk because they have nothing to lose: famine, natural disasters, never ending wars, dictators.
It's an inconsequential act for the most part. "Nothing to lose" that they know of. I take it being more of a fad (certainly fueled by propaganda) than anything else
> The journey is not "hard". It's insufferably hard
"Everybody should know that" by now. But it seems they can't see that perspective. As I said, it's more of a reckless act than anything else. Asking for charitable views cease when it's more a choice than anything else.
And in the best case they'll be an overworked refugee with barely no perspective.
> You live your well informed western perspective
Having come from a 3rd world country, let me tell you that the naive views from the 1st world about this abound. (Your post thankfully is more balanced than most views out there.)
Especially thinking mass immigration like that will solve anything about labour shortages.
An example with France, there is between 400000 and 600000 (source an article from Le Monde) illegals, meanwhile the jail system can hold less than 60000 and are already full.
So, even if you want to put everybody in prison, you need some absolutely massive investments, and the cost every year will also be substantial (guards, food, sewage, etc, etc).
And I ignore the fact these facilities were designed for adults.
Update for clarity, My point here is to show that you cannot technically just "Keep them detained in the meanwhile." without doing monstrous actions at industrial scale.
There is a reason people usually cannot be detained without trial. That we start to make defavto exceptions for a certain group of people now is worrisome.
Pre-Trial is limited, needs a judge to aprove and is counted against your sentence. Pre-Hearing used to be limited, I'd have to lie on how long exactly, and required a suspected crime to be committed. Something rooted in German history.
Exception, and that got abused often, held in psychiatry in case of imminent risk of self harm and / or harming others.
> Not our problem? Not our problem, and not our problem. Keep them detained in the meanwhile.
Keeping people detained is absolutely our problem, even if you disregard their humanity, because it costs a lot of money.
> If you want asylum the least you can do is be honest.
You can be honest and still have not been registered in your home country, or not wanted by your home country… or worse: they do want you, so they can kill you.
> Having come from a 3rd world country
Which one? There's a big gap between South Sudan and Egypt, but both are technically "third world". (Even more pedantically, Ireland, Sweden and Switzerland are also third world, but nobody would use the phrase today to refer to "neither NATO nor Soviet Bloc").
Transportation always got cheaper once the private sector got involved. Even space transportation(i.e spaceX).
Transporting several millions of people yearly and cheaply(these people don't pay for extra leg room) is not really rocket science.
Right now it's so expensive because the government is as always disconnected from reality. They are deporting each individual on case by case basis using. air flights. The gov is even allocating one or two officers for each immigrant. Now consider boarding all the illegal immigrants on a big livestock carrier. It may take a while to reach its destination(s) but it will be cheap and surely the immigrants(at least most of them) would not try again the adventure. One big immigration camp in a single trip.
The "slaves" seem happy to work there. I mean they could stay home but prefer to work in Dubai. It's interesting how many immigrants work and live in Dubai.
The only complains I've heard are that you can't get citizenship.
What I like most is that people doing "funny" business are quickly deported. You don't see homeless people or beggers on the streets either.
I wonder, why Europe can't do that? I don't think there would be much push-back against migrants if we would have an efficient deportation system(i.e deport them after visa expiration or when they get involved in criminal activities).
> I don't see many illegal immigrants in UAE/Dubai for example.
How would you know? And is this a fair comparison?
I've heard that the country relies heavily on South Asian labourers with terrible working conditions, as well as housemaids who are effectively imprisoned by their employers. It's a huge section of the economy. I wouldn't be surprised if the government makes it pretty easy to enter legally, or if a bunch of labourers are flying under the radar without the government caring.
I decided to search for some facts and found the following:
* Immigrants, particularly from India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, comprise over 90 percent of the country's private workforce [0]
* In 2013, the UAE had the fifth-largest international migrant stock in the world with 7.8 million migrants (out of a total population of 9.2 million) [0]
* About 65,000 unauthorized migrants — including those who entered the country illegally, visa over-stayers, migrants working on tourist visas, and others — currently reside in the UAE, according to official estimates (unofficial estimates run up to 135,000). [0]
* An unknown but likely significant number of migrants lack any identification papers after having “absconded” or abandoned abusive employers who withhold their passports [0]
* More than 10,500 illegal residents were prosecuted in the UAE in 2022, according to authorities.[1]
* In December 2012, the government announced a two-month amnesty program allowing unauthorized migrant workers to regularize their situations or leave the country without punishment.
* In August 2018 the government repeated this amnesty. [3]
* The UAE Government exempts fines for Illegal Foreigners/residents, under these conditions: your Emirates ID or Work Permit has expired, you are Workers who run away from sponsors and violate employment contracts. [4]
> I don't understand what's so hard simply shipping the immigrants back on a big ship once every 2-3 months.
Because as a result of the events from 1933-1945, everyone has the individual right to claim asylum in Europe. Despite the far-right working hard to abolish that, we won't.
Besides, for countries like Syria there's a deportation ban in place by the European court system.
As an American, can I go vacation in Europe and then toss my documents and claim I'm seeking asylum with a succesful outcome of being granted permanent residency and the ability to work?
As an American, you'd be far, far, far, far, far, far more likely to succeed in migrating by following one of the European countries' legal migration paths (each country has its own policies). Most European countries are very interested in allowing migration of skilled workers, and in several countries, being a fluent English speaker is a bonus.
On the other hand, it might be technically possible for you to meet one of these country's criteria for "refugee", "displaced person", "asylum seeker", etc. but it is _remarkably_ unlikely.
> The right to asylum is guaranteed by Article 18 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. Article 19 prohibits collective expulsions and protects individuals from being removed, expelled or extradited to a state where there is a serious risk of death penalty, torture or other inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Also, you don't need to "toss [your] documents", I'm not sure why you think that's required to initiate an asylum process lol
Someone versed in EU law can chime in, but I imagine that being literally undocumented would only make the process harder (though it would be abundantly clear that you're an American anyways)
Indeed, they will need to check your story, and that's a whole lot easier when they know your identity (otherwise they have to verify your identity in other ways, which will certainly take more time...).
Then why people with asylum rejected are not sent back? Most of the immigrants are economic migrants yet I have not seen any massive deportation but we can see massive immigration every year(i.e big ships with "rescued" migrants). Most of them don't even bother to apply for asylum.
How do you ship 5000 people a day to say Mali or some other war torn place? You cant just dump them off the coast of Lybia, we aint Trump (yet).
Plus most dont have papers and can easily claim coming from war place (which many do, but I suspect most are economical migrants). This isnt easy to solve, look what Australia is doing (detaining immigrants in Papua IIRC in bad conditions to scare others).
You wait 3 days and ship 15000 on a single livestock carrier. The trip will take a while but will be "cheap" and efficient.
For example Italy had about 126k immigrants last year so one big ship every month could have solved the issue.
For immigrants who refuse to provide documentation/identificatiin you can just dump them on an isle like Australia is doing. After all nobody is forcing them to conceal their identity. I'm pretty sure that after a while less and less people will be willing to spend their money and resources knowing they will be deported back. At least the economic immigrants.
The less are deported the more will come.
Thanks but no, we learned how Hitler transferred people undesirable to him and we can definitely do better... Plus you didn't answer how do you want to return them to places like Mali, Niger or Central african republic, there ain't a ship sailing there, better check google maps before commenting.
Because a) we don’t want to be the baddies, we want instead feel good despite walling ourselves from the problems and poverty we at the very least contributed to or at most were the primary cause b) it has economic benefits long term c) actively deporting people costs money d) making it possible to easily deport people erodes rule of law and all the nice things we all like.
The problem fundamentally is living in a nice place and not really contributing to making the place so nice. Everybody wants this privilege and there is of course the market and the price for having it.
Real answer is the same as with drugs — be the mafia yourself
> With great success regarding the containment of the far right, they poll quite often on second place now.
So why is this happening? Isn't it a sign that they are proposing ideas more attractive to more and more people? Or alternatively people are becoming skeptical about ideas and policies realized so far by current government over the years?
It is also because elections seem to have little impact on policies. This is due to many reasons but you will see polling get more and more extreme because voters keep telling politicians what they want, and nothing changes.
I will add, this isn't terribly surprising in Europe. In Italy, due to flaws in their political system, you have had politicians parachuted in from the EU repeatedly to run the country...I am not sure what people expect. If you place significant limitations on democracy and then ignore public opinion, people will get annoyed.
Why? Because populist have a very easy job in times of uncertainty. And uncertainty, felt but the real kind doesn't matter, we have plenty. With a lot of frustration since Covid.
The success of the far right in Europe is driven by migration.
Huge numbers of economic migrants make their way illegally to Europe. They have little education and no useful work skills. WTF are we supposed to do with them?
The correct solution is to send illegal migrants right back to Africa. However, only the far right parties dare say that - hence, the increasing support they are getting, despite their other positions.
> The correct solution is to send illegal migrants right back to Africa. However, only the far right parties dare say that - hence, the increasing support they are getting, despite their other positions.
In case you're unaware, the reason Europe has its current asylum standards largely because of what happened between 1933-1945. So would your proposed solution be:
1. Deny asylum to anyone and everyone, even those fleeing genocide ("Sorry that happened to you, we don't have room here!"), or
2. Implement a color chart a la Family Guy [1], so only the "right people" can come in?
They aren't cooperative. The article explains they didn't actually do anything. But international agreements on policing essentially compel police here to act (but not necessarily charge or return people).
For some reason, it is literally the same people who say that massive limitations need to be placed on native authority by international agreements, by courts (in some countries, depending on the legal system), etc. AND they say it is shocking that our police aren't sovereign...really? We cannot have it both ways...either you trust local authority or you trust the authority of foreign governments...it cannot be neither.
> Rant over. If Western democracies don't start to stand up for our proclaimmed values, we will loose what little soft power we have left.
Don't worry, to the rest of the developing world, Western democracies are already considered to be a bunch of moralizing hypocrites, looking to impose their erstwhile colonial tendencies in other ways. Oh, and you guys are a laughing stock with the recent immigration issues, what with Lampedusa being showcased front and center of the news.
You guys ship your garbage to other poorer countries in some sort of wretched don't ask, don't tell policy, then blame those same countries for polluting the earth. Meanwhile a bunch of clowns in your countries inconvenience the rest of the populace by sticking themselves to the roads as a "sign of protest". To quote Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed, the UAE foreign minister, "the next generation of terrorists will be from Europe and the West".
Get over it, you guys are already a joke, already on the decline. Get out of your city shells and walk the rural areas a bit to see how your fellow countrymen actually feel about the policies of your government. Of how the common man has been continually shafted while you preach and vacillate about human rights.
I look forward to the amount of PhD dissertations that will study the decline of Europe and the West over the post-GFC decade. Rant over.
I'm from the USA. Your post alarms me. You berate China and India for using rivers as their own garbage disposal. This seems to be a response to criticize somebody who is making the same claim, more or less.
I am not the original commenter, but let me add here my own observation. In the USA we have a lot of laws and regulations that are supposed to prevent industry from polluting the environment, exploiting child labor, unduly endangering their workforce, etc. You cannot produce a product to place on the shelves of Walmart if you violate these rules. I think most Americans support most of those regulations. But we do not impose those rules on companies from China or India.
This means that a product produced in the USA can cost significantly more than an identical product produced in India. Naturally, USA industry recognizes this and shifts their production out of the USA. You could characterize this as "ship your garbage to other poorer countries." That is, don't allow USA rivers to be polluted but make your money by polluting rivers outside the USA.
I don't suggest that the USA removes its prohibitions from USA industry. I suggest that they impose the same prohibitions on non-USA industry with respect to markets inside the USA. And by this I don't mean raise tariffs. I mean that if a company in Iowa is not allowed to put a product on the shelves at Walmart because their smokestack is too dirty, then a company in Qinghai should not be allowed to do so if their smokestack is too dirty by the same standard.
> Nothing like a troll-named account to post a lot of brash talk without the courage to name where they're from.
Oh my goodness, “brash talk”. We Westerners give out a whole laundry list of things that we do contary to our “proclaimed values” and then in the next paragraph say “anyway, if we don't get our act together the third-worlders might stop looking up to us and our values”.[1] It's farcical how arrogant that is.
If you quote me, do it correctly. I mever said looking up, I said soft power in geo politics, which I think democracies should have. There is nothing saviour-related to this opinion.
Anyway, there is nothing good that came from the last NATO led interventions, did it? Which is part of the problem.
No. (1) Talking generally and (2) reading into whatever the hell “soft power” means in this context.
But report me if you want. I'm sure all of us on this site would get banned because we (“we” as in HN, lest you accuse me of misreading again) constantly disagree about how we interpret each other here.
Just downvote, flag and move on. This guy is here to insult people for fun and stir shit. No reason to engage (and yes, I know I'm also guilty of engaging with anti-Western but definitely not pro-Chinese/pro-Russian trolls).
I'm Indian, been living in Europe and Switzerland for almost the past decade. I've spent a considerable time of my upbringing in South east Asia and the Middle East. I currently reside in Switzerland, specifically Zurich, with occasional stints to the US for business. I used to live in Germany prior to that. There used to be a time I dreamt of Western citizenship, but not anymore. Hope that answers your "question", although I'm certain you'd be loathe to reciprocate the same favor to me and reveal your origin.
As for the climate hypocrisy argument, sorry to hurt your preconceived notions, but it's already proven that most of the waste that ends up dumped in Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.
I applaud you for answering the question. I'm from Texas, United States.
Your argument comparing climate protestors and governments who ship garbage to developing countries is bunk, though. Ever thought about who those protestors are angry with?
An intelligent conversation can be had about failing democratic institutions in the west, the need to disincentive wasteful consumption, and (as happens already) what levels of support developed countries owe to developing countries to dissuade the latter from ramping up fossil fuels consumption.
But your finger wagging still doesn't make sense in the context of thinking India or the developing world is any better.
> But your finger wagging still doesn't make sense in the context of thinking India or the developing world is any better.
I never implied that India or China are doing any better (although India has taken massive strides which is usually ignored by the West). My gripe is with Western countries criticizing the global south for environmental neglect, when they don't do anything about it and simply ship away their problems.
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Why do people always assume that freedom of expression only applies to one side?
He is free to hate the West while living in it. He's not going to prison for it (unlike he would in the countries he likes, ironically). He's not getting deported from the West despite claiming to hate the West or anything.
But I am also free to call him out on it. I have the same freedom, no? Why would he have the freedom to insult me (and you, since you said "our western") but not us to insult him back?
He can call me a hypocrite for West not being perfect and not solving all the problems of the world, and I can call him hypocrite for hating the West and its values yet still living in here for want of luxury. Is it a useful conversation? Not really, honestly, but it is fair.
But more importantly, look up paradox of tolerance and philosophy following from it. You can tolerate a lot, but tolerating too much is suicidal, because the intolerant will eventually take over. This is a general principle - welcoming people in the West is fine, for example, welcoming people who hate the West and want to destroy it is not.
Well he didn't criticize my points or barely even read it, since my monologue was on hypocritical Western European attitudes (after all, I implored GP to "talk to his fellow countrymen in the rural parts, outside the city shells".
Instead, his retort was to tell me to pack my bags and eff off.
I mean go nuts with that for all I care. But the refrain “then just leave” is the most unoriginal and vapid comeback. If someone has a bad opinion or argument then it shouldn't be hard to come up with something better.
Absolutely anyone under any regime—British or Iranian—can say “then leave if you don't like it”.
This is just pulling a strawman argument. I'm criticizing the West for precisely destroying the way of life that you have had, in favour of some misguided sense of tolerance intermixed with arrogance. I don't need to destroy you or your way of life, because a.) I don't think about you at all and b.) you and your government are already destroying your way of life.
"Go back to India." "Go back to Eastern Europe." "Go to Africa." Ahh yes, the same nationalistic tendencies that people in power put on display whenever they're in the majority.
"Stop being a parasite." Sure, I will. This is exactly the kind of attitude displayed by hoity-toity Europeans that has led me to this position. Curse on all the immigrants who actually struggled to create a life for themselves, which includes me and a number of my employees who also migrated (mostly from Eastern and Balkan Europe) in search of a better life in the West, by virtue of their talents and skills, while you import the best "doctors and engineers" from across the Med. You can tell my one of my Croatian employees to "stop being a parasite", even though he can't get a house to rent in his preferred locality by virtue of being from a Balkan country, in spite of earning 4x the median wage of the country. Yes, we're the parasites and cockroaches, and like any of those, we'll find a more inviting home (incidentally the US and Singapore are already being touted as options).
But you go on, you poor thing, and keep insulting us from your high and mighty "Europeanness". After all, it's only a few decades now till the end of twilight.
Stop pretending you struggled when you're an IT guy. There are people who actually struggled, people who don't live in luxury in the richest parts of Europe like you do and yet they are happy to be part of the struggle for better world that EU is trying and don't hate everyone like you do.
I do agree Europe is on a decline and in my opinion it is irreversible. It’s one of the reasons why I am happy to have been migrated to South-East Asia from The Netherlands.
The reason why I believe it’s irreversible is because of the power of the media. Too many people still believe the global warming narrative and are open to mass immigration. Not to mention the fact that the USA has succeeded in convincing many Europeans that Russia is to be an enemy instead of an ally.
All of this will greatly increase the cost of living for the common man while at the same time the welfare state is being destroyed. Europeans will face much hardship the next decennia and I don’t think they’ll be able to recover.
I know this will be an unpopular opinion, but I’ll voice it here anyways :)
Ooo, a pro Russia climate change denier. Don't see those in polite society often.
Believe me, there are many in the liberal sphere who do not support unlimited mass migration. Open borders are not compatible with a welfare state.
As for denying the changing climate and supporting Russia's invasion of Ukraine, I don't feel anything I can type in short order would enlighten the reader if they don't already see the injustice after a few hundred thousand dead.
>Open borders are not compatible with a welfare state
Maybe you liberals shouldn't support neoconservative conflicts that drive the migration in the first place. Hillary's State Department did such a great job in Honduras, Libya, Syria. The same is happening now in Ukraine. These conflicts are all about preserving American hegemony, nothing more.
This is so delusional. The Eastern oblasts were prevented from declaring independence for years based on Russian pressure. Russia doesn't want Ukraine, they just don't want NATO setting up shop on their borders. The same way the US would never tolerate China setting up shop in Northern Mexico or Southern Canada. NATO has spent the years since the dissolution of the Soviet Union breaking all of their assurances to Russia that it would not expand, literally encircling them.
>> Russia is restoring its unity - the tragedy of 1991, this terrible catastrophe of our history, its unnatural dislocation, has been overcome
I suggest you read the article i think you’ll find the word NATO doesn’t even appear in it.
> they just don't want NATO setting up shop on their borders
Then they have already failed as the Russian border with NATO is now longer then it would be if you included Ukraine and Ukraine isn’t even in NATO.
I don’t think it was this though as Germany gave Russia assurances before the war that they would veto Ukraines NATO application.
> NATO has spent the years since the dissolution of the Soviet Union breaking all of their assurances to Russia that it would not expand, literally encircling them.
There was never any formalised agreement to not expand NATO, so no promise was ever made.
Regardless of that Russia has multiple international agreements with Ukraine (that are formalised) that say they will never threaten their sovereignty.
Why doesn’t Russia have to follow those?.
Another question one might ask is why Russias neighbours want to join NATO it’s probably because Russia has invaded nearly all of them at some point in time.
Seems pretty reasonable to me to want to defend yourself from what at this point seems like a likely future invasion,
The word NATO appeared in every diplomatic negotiation about the Donbas preceding and subsequent to the war. Don't waste people's time with nonsense-- I can find an article in US media that also puts forward every conceivable position if I try hard enough.
>Regardless of that Russia has multiple international agreements with Ukraine (that are formalised) that say they will never threaten their sovereignty.
Why doesn’t Russia have to follow those?.
You mean like the Minsk accords that Zelensky failed to implement? The Ukrainian people put their faith in him to end the war, but he caved to the Right. Turns out actors don't make good presidents, as we know in the US as well.
https://harpers.org/archive/2023/10/the-tragedy-of-volodymyr...
Well I'll agree to disagree on a number of points here, but I respect your sentiment. I don't believe that the media is powerful. On the contrary, I feel that the media being weakened and focused on sensational content is the reason we're in this mess. While the European media was supposed to be one of the entities keeping government officials and Eurocrats in check, their systematic weakening has led to those failing governments to implement widely unpopular policies that only harmed the social fabric of the continent.
I also can't believe the big bad USA has turned the Baltic states, Poland, Ukraine, etc on Russia. It's because the media is just too weak in Russia, China, Iran, North Korea so they haven't been able to communicate their upstanding values clearly enough.
Do you think it's a wonder that supporting an invasion that has killed hundreds of thousands of innocents, with truckloads of photographically documented war crimes, is an "unpopular opinion"?
Putin is a monster on the same scale as Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot. Your support for him is disgusting.
Breaking the site guidelines like this will get you banned here, regardless of how right you are or feel you are. We've had to warn you about this more than once before.
You may not owe monsters better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it.
It's not so long ago that a gang of Turkish government thugs beat the crap out of protesters on US soil and pretty much nothing of consequence came of it.
I think our (British) border staff capitulating to these abusive international policing requests is pretty humiliating. But as you say, it's not new to anyone that this is happening.
We have to capitulate because the British policing system is forced to cooperate through international agreements (this isn't often reciprocated, these agreements hand massive power to undemocratic countries because we have to comply and they comply when they feel like it). Turkish judges are actually part of our legal system, we are told that this is an essential part of our legal system respecting the rule of law...people want to have it all and every way (the UK is a horrible police state...but we have to accept the primacy of Turkish judges in our laws...you cannot have it both ways).
I don't understand why the west, including us in the US, even put up with Erdogan's regime at all. I remember when Erdogan's personal bodyguards decided to start attacking peacefully protesting US residents in Washington DC in open street violence. They didn't even get arrested (diplomatic immunity I suppose) for assaulting US residents and citizens protesting against his brutal non-democratically elected regime.
It infuriates me that this injustice was allowed to stand. Are we just going to let brutal dictators visit the US and cause open violence on our streets against peaceful demonstrators exercising their 1st amendment rights?
Probably against china or any threat as well. Turkey houses nuclear weaponry. I'd imagine its globally reaching vs only being in range of Russia, as having some redundancy between launch sites is probably good for your side of world war three.
I would like to add, Turkeys concerns about the NATO entry of Sweden were not without cause: Sweden has introduced an arms embargo against Turkey, prohibiting arms exports to Turkey. NATO is a military alliance and in case one member gets attacked, others have to support this member. However, one cannot really be sure if that will happen when one country has been initiating arms embargos against another member.
That's a complicated story. Turkey bought the Russian S-400 system instead of NATO weapons, partly because they have economic incentives to be on good foot with Russia, partly because want to be ambivalent enough towards the West to have take advantage of credible threats in upcoming negotiations, partly because of domestic policy reasons.
As was expected, they pretty much immediately found themselves under US weapons embargo. Modern weaponry form integrated systems, and integrating a Russian system in a NATO system is pretty much out of the question for various practical reasons.
The Swedish embargo however was different. Swedish law simply forbids export to countries that use force against civilians. There are plenty of well supported evidence of this taking places, not only in Syria. But all this have to be taken into context to understand the Turkish situation.
Perhaps unfortunately, depending on your perspective, the Swedish embargo was lifted when the NATO negotiations started. That is Realpolitik for you. Nobody wants to risk a Turkey allied with the Eastern block. And Turkey knows perfectly well to take advantage of that. Thus far it seems to be working for Erdogan. The deal maker image gains popularity, which is sorely needed with Turkish economy being what it is. The open question is how far he can push it.
I find it incredible that when a British "freelance" journalist goes to Syria (!) and upon return gets questioned about their work there, the default reaction is to... blame Turkey?
Why complain if you need him? Not being snarky - but when it comes to things like these either you need some entity or you don’t. Sometimes they are needed bad enough that we excuse horrible behavior (US black sites, Saudi’s and Yemen, etc.). I think if you look you can put forth a rather long list.
Point is unless you have the power to remove turkey from nato the complaining is pointless.
I didn’t mean the “you” as in personally but rather the states that represent you.
As an example - Sweden and NATO. If the Turks weren’t needed I’m sure NATO members could have come up with a method to remove them. Otherwise, Erdogan is going to press his advantage. From his perspective Kurds are terrorists. The reality is more complicated - but its what everyone is going to hold their nose and live with.
If Sweden is willing to host the missile sites that are currently in Turkey then it might be an interesting proposition, seeing as they have a similarly strategic location.
What missile sites? There are no strategic missiles in Turkey. The USAF does store some other nuclear weapons there. Sweden is not really an equivalent replacement option.
Do you want Turkey to turn into a Russian ally? Because driving Turkey out of NATO is how you turn Turkey into a Russian ally.
Instead of being "sure" you should actually read the treaty. NATO members can withdraw, but there is no mechanism for other members to remove Turkey. And due to their geographic position they are absolutely still needed: removing Turkey would play into Putin's hands and could lead to catastrophic geopolitical consequences far worse than putting up Erdogan.
Yeah sure, second largest NATO military, battle-hardened in recent wars, not to mention rising military power in the Middle East, not needed in a defensive alliance, heh.
Not to mention control of the Bosphorus, as well as a tendency to have dalliances with Russia when ignored by the US (a tendency that, I must remind you, predates Erdoğan).
Start paying up 2% of your GDP (assuming you're European), on defence and military, or don't talk. Turkey is certainly paying their share, and paid their share way before Sultan Erdoğan took the throne.
Alliances are not just about power, but also about common values and goals. Strong allies are good. Strong enemies that are for historic reason part of alliance are pretty bad, and need to be managed.
That is why Turkey is not getting F-35s or even F-16s now. Why help arm your enemy?
The fact that Israel is a nation propped up by $3.5 billion of arms spending by the US, yet makes sure to oppress the Palestinian population in their country in the guise of maintaining their "Jewish mess" is a direct affront to your "western values in alliances" nonsense.
Alliances are based out of pragmatism and a common enemy/threat. They have always been the case since history, whether it was the aggressive Assyrians' neighbours against them, to the Franco-Ottoman alliance, to the Axis alliance in WW1.
Israel is still considered ally for multitude of reasons: big organisations don't turn on a dime and sometimes take decades to change course (same reason Turkey is still considered ally), fascists love Israel as model "pure people state" more than they hate Jews, and small but influential part of American Evangelicals believe that Jews having their own state is necessary step to get us the Rapture.
But you probably know all this, nothing you said was in good faith and and just come to HN to turn your hatred on random people.
Bahrain houses the 5th fleet. USCC and USAFCC are out of qatar. I’d call that being allies. And since they’re US bases they will be used by nato in times of conflict (or otherwise).
It’s been said that the Turkish government has videos of a former secretary if justice of The Netherlands (Joris Demmink) engaging in sexual acts with young boys in Turkey and that Turkey has used this at times as leverage against the Dutch government.
In return the Dutch government is supposed to have jailed a Kurdish leader Baybasin (under a pretense of him smuggling drugs) perhaps to get some leverage over Turkey in return (eg threaten to release him from captivity if anything on Joris Demmink is ever released into the public).
Of course this is all hearsay, but the whole situation around the captivity of Baybasin in The Netherlands sure is fishy. And Joris Demmink also had some weird relationships in the past (I believe once with an eastern European pornographic actor) and was known to pick up men for sex at certain places.
I don't imagine his opinions of the British state improved after this experience. Come to think of it, mine isn't, either...