Re: Why is it the EUs responsibility help the migrants?
Well, obviously if we are selling it to someone with that someone having the intention to sell it to a third party then we are to some extent responsible for doing our due diligence and preventing that within reasonable measures. However if someone 5-10 years later decides to sell it, there is little we can do. Equally if say the Iraqi army decides to flee head over heels when they outnumber their foe 20 to 1, we cannot be held responsible for the fact that ISIS seized all of their nice big guns. We can't trust SA, though the biggest reason to not sell to them is how they treat their own population. Which is why the attempt to do so was in violation of Swedish law and a fake company had been set up to assist in the deal.Originally Posted by Husar
None, did I ever say otherwise? The only issue I have with what you say is that when you talk about the people who move there and the ones who do not behave, you say "they" in both cases, which can easily look like you mean exactly the same group of people (i.e. all of them). It's not so hard to say "some of them" in the second instances to make it clear that you mean a sub-group, is it? Or are you actually saying that none of the immigrants in Sweden can behave themselves?
And please don't talk about common sense or whatever, you do this all the time and it confuses people all the time.
I'm not against arms deals in general, but some governments just can't be trusted with them. Including the US government apparently. While I like Colombia in general, it is currently not a country to which german arms exports are legal. The rules state that arms cannot be sold to any country if that country wants to resell them. Heckler & Koch sold guns to the US Army and they then sold or gave them on to Colombia. The german police raided the Heckler & Koch offices as a result due to the suspicion that Heckler & Koch was aware the guns would not stay in the USA. So yes, it is not always completely controllable, but I'd say it's pretty clear like you say, that countries like Saudi Arabia are not reliable customers for our weapons. We can't even exclude that they don't hand some of them to their allies in Syria or elsewhere. In addition Saudi Arabia and the UAE are currently involved in a war in the region to support their own interests and are definitely using European weapons such as the Leclerc tanks of the UAE. I'm not entirely up-to-date on who the bad guys are down there but it certainly produces a lot of refugees and Saudi Arabia is not exactly known to have our best interests in mind anyway. If even the US ignore our weapon sales restrictions in the most blatant way, how can we trust SA or other unreliable countries to abide by them?
Nope, that's pretty interesting though. I only knew that a whole lot of nations used the 40mm design though, apparently some were derivatives or modified ones, but overall quite a widespread gun.
There are so many things to say about that:
1) I wouldn't say it is squandered on all of the immigrants.
2) I like the idea that I pay taxes to help those who are more in need, both Germans and foreigners.
3) If you do not like what the government spends taxes on, you can elect a different government. In some cases it may have other consequences though or require a new party. Democracy isn't always easy.
4) If your other countrymen do not agree with you and do not vote for the government you want, what are you going to do? Flee to somewhere else to save your precious taxes from being squandered?
1) It is not squandered on all immigrants per definition. But we spend more than the entire Afghan budget+aid on unaccompanied "minors", at a minimum we spend 350 euroes per day per "child". I put these words in quotations because we have had "children" who are 20, 25, 30 and in one case 40+ years old. Or take for example the fact that we have housed people in tents at about 200x the cost of housing people in tents in Lebanon/Turkey. That is a waste of money that could be better spent anywhere pretty much, especially in the refugee camps where we would get a lot of bang for our bucks. Did you know that this has caused us to cut foreign aid to the tune that one of the programs estimate a further 20,000 will die from AIDS/Malaria/TB and a further 800,000 will get infected? This is waste.
2) Yes, helping other people is good, but then we should help people who are in need. Like the people who live in the camps who are too poor to pay a smuggler several thousand Euros to be smuggled into Europe.
3) The sad fact of the matter is that we are ruled by a minority government in which the opposition has forced the government to make their budget with the communists. So until 2018 I can't affect much change, in the meanwhile I will have to bear it, but I will reserve the right to bitch and moan about it!
4) If we continue down this dark path (all signs point to us heading off that path finally) then the least of my concern is tax money. But so long as the EU remain, I may well exercise my right to move to another country if that looks like a better option. I should add that I am not getting taxed up the wazoo currently, but I don't see why that should make me support blatant waste of tax money? I'm not saying it should be given back directly to the tax payer, I'm saying we should spend it where it gets more impact. Are you aware that we spend more on this than the entire UNHCR budget for refugees? Imagine how much the situation in those camps could be improved with twice the money! The UNHCR is quite efficient at managing the camps.
Thanks for sharing your opinion, if you don't mind could you clarify what you mean by "Doing stupider stuff"? Are you referring to bombing campaigns/interference in the Middle East? The current refugee situation?
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