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So the EU has renewed the general refugee status of Ukrainians in Europe. Obviously this is reasonable on humanitarian grounds, war is terrible and if we can shelter people safely away from it it is the decent thing to do. (Just try not to apply similar standards to Gaza, a conflict which has a far higher casualty rate among the civilian population.)
However, there is a new provision:
Personally I am a bit of two minds about the Ukraine war. On the one hand, I am all for my taxes paying for Ukrainian weapons for as long as Ukraine cares to fight Russia. Punishing a defector against the rule based international order while also weakening the main NATO adversary seems an excellent investment.
On the other hand, Ukraine seems like the kind of meat-grinder conflict like WW1 where the best option is not to fight it, and the second best option is to stop fighting sooner rather than condemning another few hundred thousands to death in a likely futile attempt to change the strategic picture. In WW1, among millions of volunteers butchering each other in the trenches, the wisest were probably the few who decided that they did not give a fuck about any dead archduke and would try to reach a neutral country rather than being compelled to murder and get murdered by the crazies who had taken over their countries.
My understanding is that Ukraine (unlike the German basic law) does not recognize conscious objectors to military service. Yet we only extend the right to refuse military service to the Ukrainian men who had already fled from the draft, but not the ones coming now.
Most of the risk of death is actually to military personnel. Numbers are contested, but it seems that being in the armed forces probably increases one's risk of death by more than 10x compared to civilians. If anyone has a claim that they are in physical danger from the war, it is military-age men.
I am also wondering what the long term plan of the EU is. In two years, will Merz and vdL tell the Ukrainian boys who fled to Germany at age 12 that they are now old enough to die for their country and ship them back?
I strongly suspect that most people with "FREE PALESTINE" in their Instagram bios don't want to let Palestinian refugees into Europe (or anywhere outside of Gaza), because that would constitute "ethnic cleansing".
I think you're almost exactly wrong.
https://old.reddit.com/r/uknews/comments/1uxxd2g/family_of_18_from_gaza_wins_human_rights/
This news is being widely celebrated by the Free Palpatine lot. It's about being anti-West and more specifically anti-Right Wing, not any greater principle. Right Wingers don't want the Gazans in their countries, that's all the justification the far left need to import as many of them as possible, by any means, by hook or by crook.
What proportion of Gaza's civilian population has left Gaza for another country since the war began vs. what proportion of Ukraine's?
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