From Syria to Sweden – 200 voices on escaping the war (opens in new tab)

That is a gross mischaracterization.

I would describe it simply as a smaller BBC, with all that entails. It's more like NPR than FOX in regards to bias. And that is an immense difference.

Edit: As you deleted your comment, I'll edit here instead.

I know the party affiliations, and why I made a comparison to a left biased state sponsored radio network. I still strongly disagree with your comparison to FOX News. It's a huge difference between being biased and still do largely good reporting, and being biased and straight up lying daily.

Party affiliation does not inherently imply doctored news reporting or necessarily even biased reporting. I'm not disagreeing about a bias. I'm saying your comparison is way off on the magnitude.

And I am a Swede and would consider taking your comment with a huge grain of salt.

While i agree that SVT/state media has a very left leaning profile and are leaving facts and statistics unsaid/hidden, that does not mean that the article itself is untrue and uninteresting.

Thats standard in immigration discourse these days, with one side drumming the narrative that immigration enriches our societies and helps our economies with other going that they are criminals and uneducated slackers looking to leech on social programmes.

"Ad hominem (Latin for "to the man" or "to the person"), short for argumentum ad hominem, is a logical fallacy in which an argument is rebutted by attacking the character, motive, or other attribute of the person making the argument, or persons associated with the argument, rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

While I'm not a Swede I do live in Sweden and I do follow Swedish news (both the 'official' as well as the 'alternative' sources). I do have to concede that SVT (and, more or less to the same extent, SR - Swedish Radio) has a problem with bias. Being a state-financed broadcaster (through a mandatory payment for anyone who has 'television reception equipment' in their residence, no matter whether that equipment is used to watch SVT) they are by law mandated to be politically neutral. This is something they (as an organisation) fail in, and rather miserably. If I were to place them somewhere in the political spectrum they would end up next to the (ruling) labour party, sometimes to the left of them, sometimes to the right. In this they mirror most of the 'official' media in Sweden which hover around the same area in their political orientation. As the previous poster indicated this can partly be explained by looking at the political orientation for the large majority of those employed in the 'media' and 'culture' sector.

This combination of left-oriented media and a left-wing government has led to a systematic failure of the media to keep check on the government, especially where it concerns Miljöpartiet (the green party). That party was recently shaken by a number of scandals, mostly related to the infiltration of islamist politicians - one of whom made it as far as a position as minister for housing in the current government, he stepped down when his position become untenable - with an agenda which diametrically opposed that of the party itself. Until a few months ago there was not a single (!) critical voice in the 'official' media where it concerned this party. Where all other parties - especially those which are in opposition against the current migration policy in Sweden - were targeted by the media (as they should be, this is part of their function, to keep check on the political establish ment) the green party sailed by without a single critical voice.

Another problem lies in the fact that Swedish media often use supposedly objective but in truth politically activist research organisations as source for their material. The best example of this is 'Expo', an organisation which was set up to do research on anti-Semitism, racism and xenophobia. This might have been their charter once but they do not live up to it, instead they are a political activist organisation with an agenda which resembles that of Vänsterpartiet ('the left party', formerly known as 'Vänsterpartiet Kommunisterna' or 'the left wing party communists', they changed their name after the demise of the Soviet Union) and Miljöpartiet. While in itself this is not a problem, they are still treated by the media as if they are an objective, politically neutral organisation. That is a problem.

Have you actually ever watched Fox News?

Forcing all the refugees to stay in Greece or Bulgaria would just collapse those countries instead. You may remember that Greece had its own financial crisis, and Bulgaria is one of the poorest countries in the EU.

One of the contributory factors to the war in Syria was that 10% of the population were refugees from Iraq ...

A good analogy would be, if you were very thirsty, but there were no shops around and you had no money. You would walk up to the nearest house and ask for some water. But if they refuse, would you stand there and demand they give you water, or would you just go to the next house up the street and try again?

I feel like this is similar - refugees are met with animosity in good case and outright aggression in worst, so they just keep on moving until they get to the place that will accept them.

Because they're very far from welcome in those countries (Turkey especially).

mainly welfare reasons, and also parts of their family are already in northern europe.

They actually explain this in some stories. For example, some people had friends and relatives in Sweden. Some choose it because Swedens track record in human rights.

Also, the nearest EU countries were Turkey and Greece then Italy and Hungary who don't seem to accept refugees at this point.

> Why should Europe feel responsible for these people?

Because they are human beings. I think than that's more than enough.

BTW Europe has a lot of really big problems with Banks. And that has a lot bigger impact that anything else in our economy. That's also something interesting to talk about.

No offence, but dailymail links should be banned on HN. It's just a vile website that is full of BS on literally any topic it touches. Whatever gets them most clicks/sold newspapers, basically.

references?

I've always considered moving populations was a crime against humanity because it stems so many problems. The UN and the UCJ (The Haye) doesn't assume this, but I wonder whether they've ever considered it. Whether it's Syrians, various places in Africa, Palestinians, it's often at the root of many wars.

Also, French people think it's our duty to "export peace" to Syria. It's costing us €10-15bn (source: Our defense cost is €32bn per year), on top of €6bn new policemen recruited after the attacks. It's €900 per year per person in age of working when our average yearly revenue is only €22k. We're just choked. I mean either the UN coordinates the attack and the cost against Syria, either we shouldn't be there.

It seems like the whole world is involved anyway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_involvement_in_the_Syr...