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Comment by lupusreal | Hacker News Reader

No, it's Russia overtly attacking Finnish society. Even if Finland welcomed as many migrants as their country could handle, Russia would ship in any more. The only winning move is for Finland to close their borders.

The other guys in this conversation are calling you an idiot or a concern troll. I don't know if that's what's going on here but your unwillingness to concede that Finland has a right to defend itself from Russian border bullshit really does make me wonder. Finland wasn't in NATO throughout the cold war, only recently did they join. Why do you think that is? The Russian threat is real and needs to be taken seriously. Russia is sending those migrants specifically to disrupt Finnish society. For you to pretend otherwise is absurd.

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Never would I oppose someones right to defence, I give the right to Russia, Israel, NATO, Palestinians, you name it.

And I explicitly calles out the EUs failure to come up with a workable plan how to handle refugees across all 27, and formerly 28, member states since 2014 (!). Because that plays a big role by allowing other nations to weaponize refugees, either as some war tactic or to gain political and financial favors.

At the core of that failures of EU policies lies something deeply human so: Xenophobia and fear of the unknown and different. In ky opinion so, we owe it to ourselves to not allow those fears define our actions and policies, especially if we give our adversaries angles of attack by doing so.

Besides Russia, we had Turkey and Tunesia using refugees to extract concessions and money from the EU using the same mechanism. One would assume people have learned back then to allow others to extort them using their own fears, but I know that this is propably impossible.

Since nobody who knows me ever called me stupid (I have been called a lot of other things so), I am inclined taking it as a compliment considering whom this insult is coming from.

Explain what moral imperative we (Finland) have to keep goodwill mechanisms like open borders for refugees when there are hostile forces trying to abuse them.

I'll give you a bit of help, you can't use colonialism or similar usual guilt tripping against us because we have never engaged in that activity. (in fact, I believe Finland has had the most people forced into slavery per capita, by the hand of Russia of course - but that doesn't concern this discussion)

Moral imperative? Same as anyone else, human rights and human decency.

If you want to close your borders with an agressive neighbor, by all means do so. Just don't call refugees a threat to national security if the only reason refugees can been seen as a threat a totally home made and self-inflicted (again, by each and every single EU member state and the EU itself).

The reason for doing so is quite straight forward so: soft power. Western democracies relied a long time on the perception of championing human rights, on being the good guys. Just look at how bad the US looked during and after Vietnam. We in the West, especially the EU, lost a lot ofbthat clout and soft power since we are ok with thousands of people drowning unnecessarily in the Mediterranean. Now we do the same on our Eastern borders. Giving up moral high(er) ground, when said morals make up a huge part of your power, is stupid. Especially when you already have others using that weakness for almost a decade.

Just regarding enslaved Fins: bavk during Zarist tines, serfdome was a Russian thing. And Finland still part of Russia. No actions, or lack thereof, in the past justifies actions in the present. At the most, they explain them.

Hahah. Oh right, its our fault that refugees embark the sea on seaunworthy vessels. In other news, wet streets cause rain.

It is our fault to conduct illegal pushbacks, hinder search and rescue and generally not extend the basic rule of saving people in distress at sea to migrants. Yes, it absolutely is. And it is bad looks, when the human rights and democracy parading Europe stands by letting people drown. Which we totally do.

It should give you pause to think so: the risk of the journey is clear to everyone, the risknof loosing your life and your loved ones either somewhere in the desert or at sea. And regardless, people embark on that journey. Just image how desperate one has to be to do so, how utterly fucked up life at your home has to be. At the very least, we all couod afford and extend some compassion to people having much harder lives than we do. And by the way, compassion is not weakness or softness, quite the opposite actually, it is people eho refuse to show it that are too weak to accept and face their oen fears and insecurities. You know, the difference between the real tough ones and the wannabes.

On account of Turkey, it hosts worlds largest number number of refugees.[1] But gets almost no recognition for it.

6 billions of euros EU thought of paying accounts only for a small amount of what it has costed to Turkish taxpayers which are a lot poorer than their, for example, German counterparts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_refugee_p...

Yeah, I know. A lot of countries with much less resources and wealth than the EU host a lot more people. Which commendable. And shows that it is purely a lack of pilotical will on behalf of the EU to do more.

And still Erdogan used refugees to gain concessions and favors from the EU.

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