I believe your comment was clearly about the outlet. I just took the opportunity to say where I stand on this topic, as well.

I think I just understood our main point of difference. Maybe.

For me, the problems in the middle-east / West Asia for example, have been created due to colonialism. More specifically, because eurpean colonisers carved up the area when the Ottoman Empire started to crumble. In a way, I look further back in time to find the root cause, which is not that long ago, if you think about it. Btw, I also consider the US power-house as a problem that derived from european colonialism. Similarly, Australia and Canada even if they don’t seem to have the US power ambitions on global geopolitics.

This is why I also see migration as such a difficult issue, but as you might have noticed I didn’t talk about solutions. The prosperity of western societies was created and is maintained due to the exhaustive exploitation of other parts of the world. I believe before the west addresses that, there can be no solutions, and and-aid legislation (best case scenario that is) cannot help the healing of such deep wounds.

That is because you are describing the EU as an union of colonizers,

Not at all. Yes they started with their neighbors. You mentioned a couple of examples, another would be Ireland and the UK. Still, some common things tho between european colonisers was their sense of superiority and their brutal practices towards indigenous peoples and their environment.

On the one hand, the current refugees are not coming to Europe from old European colonies, but from Russian ones.

This is not my understanding, for 2 main reasons

• Practically such a huge amount of the world has been colonised by europeans. Btw check out the maps in the wiki page of the colonial empire.
• About the Russia thing, I don’t think so. I found these stats that present a different picture about the countries of origin. See our world in data (sort by Refugee by country of origin). If you have some info that changes significantly this picture, please share.

Edit: I moved around some sentences to make it more coherent. Hopefully.

I also believe that migration, refuge status and asylum are very difficult topics but I don’t agree with the framing you make because it seems to me you present the issue as something that came out of the blue.

For me, the context mainly derives from European colonialism, since this is how global inequalities have been established in the first place. European countries have exhausted the resources from formerly colonised places for their benefit. We also need to examine if this so-called “post-colonial era” has really shifted towards decolonisation or to a neo-colonialism in practice.

Without using taking into consideration these aspects, I don’t think we can have a meaningful conversation on the topic.

Of course, and I should have specified that the military occupation of Palestinian territories is illegal according to international standards, as well as the longest one in modern history.

For Lebanon and Syria, I believe you are right.

For Gaza, not so sure because it is part of the Occupied Palestinian Territory by Israel, for many decades now.

I don’t like the Washington Post neither. After reading a few articles on this topic from other outlets that are compatible with this community’s rule about MBFC, I chose to post this one because it’s content was relatively ok imo.

Maybe I missed a better article? Sure.

At the same time, kinda tragic of the state that western mainstream media are? I would argue, totally.

I found a site called Committee to Protect Journalists and I though of sharing some relevant info:

As of April 16:

• 175 journalists and media workers were confirmed killed: 167 Palestinian, two Israeli, and six Lebanese.
• 93 journalists were reported injured.
• 2 journalists were reported missing.
• 84 journalists were reported arrested.
• Multiple assaults, threats, cyberattacks, censorship, and killings of family members.

Do you think that morality is relative to each person’s view point or do you think that moral facts do not exist at all?

I think that morality is relative to each person and in the same time it is shaped from social and cultural norms.

In relation to your answer to my question, I came to realise that I don’t think that I will get a satisfactory one, because of our different backgrounds. What I mean is that you talk with philosophical terms to a commoner. For example (and to my understanding) you talk about moral facts as a given term, and for me this notion doesn’t even exist. Don’t get me wrong, good for you!

Also, taking into consideration that our answers are getting longer and longer, maybe this could be a good exit point. So, I would like to thank you for the time you spent on this conversation, because I enjoy thinking and you gave me food for thought.

I was not satisfied by my previous answer, so I thought of deleting it and giving it another try.

So your suggestion is that we can keep our moral judgments out of practical considerations without espousing the objective truth of moral facts?

Not at all. I would be extremely hesitant to suggest something on this topic, for all people. In a way, this is the reason why I talked about how I see things on a personal level, specifically.

About the category error, once more I don’t know the terms you use, so I will answer from what I understand by the way you describe them.

My question was related to a notion (objective morality), and not a physical object (i.e. a rock). Notions exist - to my understanding - because we use language, so we should be able to define them. An object like a rock, is there even if language is not used. So I don’t see where the category error could be.

Finally, I will rephrase my 2-part question for clarity, because only half of it got kind of answered:

Since you claim that morality is objective I would assume that you would be capable of tracing where this objectivity comes from, how it emerged, and how it stays that way. I’m not too sure how to phrase this as a question, but it’s something along those lines.

Also, if it were objective for all people, I imagine we would all know its content. But, for example, the terms morally good & morally bad even tho they are commonly used in modern languages, they often have different content. So, it seems clear to me that the terms morally good and bad are not objective. So which morality is objective? Please, describe the content of this notion you claim to be objective.

deleted by creator

I don’t know the term you mentioned so I’ll be talking about the points you made, not the term itself.

So, I don’t need morality to condemn the human suffering that slavery, female genital mutilation, or genocide creates. I don’t need a moral lens for this, just a practical one – out of solidarity, for freedom, equity, equality etc, for everyone on this planet. This is why it’s easy for me to justify any fight for social justice. These fights are by default systemic so against the status quo. I hope it is clear why I don’t need an objective moral truth.

I would like to ask you, when you say morality is objective who defines it and what is it?

The way I see things, there is nothing objective about morality because it is based on cultural principles, and these vary from place to place and through time as well.

Ok, I hear you about Press TV.

If you have links contradicting the content of the article itself, please share.

Note: About links from wiki on this topic I am skeptical after seeing the following video. So other sources are welcome.

Course: Zionist Editing on Wikipedia - Israel National News

And there is the Lancet Report:

Gaza death toll 40% higher than the official number, Lancet study finds - The Guardian

Analysis estimates death toll by end of June was 64,260, with 59% being women, children and people over 65

The actual report: Traumatic injury mortality in the Gaza Strip from Oct 7, 2023, to June 30, 2024: a capture–recapture analysis

I didn’t know the Henry Jackson Society mentioned in this article. By doing a quick search I found this article, and it looks like it is funded by Zionists.

Islamophobia sponsored by Zionist think tanks

If you have info links contradicting it, please share.

Edit: the strikethrough

Archive link: https://archive.ph/OzV5s

To where? Where will they go? Who will take them?

(To) Hospitals

How will they even be let out?

According to the article : “Under this ceasefire agreement, there is supposed to be a mechanism in place for medical evacuations. We’ve still not seen that process spelled out,”

I was under the impression that:

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the US accounted for 69% of Israel’s imports of major conventional arms between 2019 and 2023.

And that:

In May 2024, the US confirmed it had paused a single consignment of 2,000lb and 500lb bombs over concerns Israel was going ahead with a major ground operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. But Biden immediately faced a backlash from Republicans in Washington and from Netanyahu who appeared to compare it to an “arms embargo”. Biden has since partially lifted the suspension and not repeated it.

From Biden plans to send $8bn arms shipment to Israel - BBC - 4 January 2025

Relevant site:

The Forever Pollution Project - Journalists tracking PFAS across Europe

In January 2025, the Forever Lobbying Project exposes the lobbying and disinformation campaign orchestrated by the chemical and plastic lobbies to prevent the ban of these “forever chemicals” in the European Union. Fighting to keep their “chemical business as usual” with misleading, scaremongering arguments, polluting industries are shifting the burden of environmental contamination onto society, threatening the economic stability of European nations.

Working with 18 experts, the project calculated the cost of decontaminating Europe if nothing is done to combat PFAS emissions: the figure is more than €100 billion per year – and a staggering €2 trillion over twenty years.