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Post by jdredd on May 7, 2020 3:26:30 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/business/coronavirus-europe-reopening-recession.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage"BRUSSELS — The good news for Europe is that the worst of the pandemic is beginning to ease. This week deaths in Italy hit a nearly two-month low. And the German leader Angela Merkel announced that schools, day care centers and restaurants would reopen in the next few days. But the relief could be short-lived. The European Commission released projections on Wednesday that Europe’s economy will shrink by 7.4 percent this year. A top official told residents of the European Union, first formed in the aftermath of the Second World War, to expect the “deepest economic recession in its history.” To put this figure in perspective, the 27-nation bloc’s economy had been predicted to grow by 1.2 percent this year. In 2009, at the back of the global financial crisis, it shrank by 4.5 percent." Old Europe diving into a recession? Could it be karma?
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Post by jdredd on Oct 11, 2020 2:48:31 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2020/10/11/world/europe/qanon-is-thriving-in-germany-the-extreme-right-is-delighted.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage"BERLIN — Early in the pandemic, as thousands of American troops began NATO maneuvers in Germany, Attila Hildmann did a quick YouTube search to see what it was all about. He quickly came across videos posted by German followers of QAnon. In their telling, this was no NATO exercise. It was a covert operation by President Trump to liberate Germany from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government — something they applauded.“The Q movement said these are troops that will free the German people from Merkel,” said Mr. Hildmann, a vegan celebrity cook who had not heard of QAnon before last spring. “I very much hope that Q is real.” In the United States, QAnon has already evolved from a fringe internet subculture into a mass movement veering into the mainstream. But the pandemic is supercharging conspiracy theories far beyond American shores, and QAnon is metastasizing in Europe as well." Is Germany reverting to it's old ways?
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Post by jdredd on Oct 19, 2020 21:36:55 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2020/10/19/world/europe/france-raids-teacher-beheading.html?action=click&module=News&pgtype=Homepage"PARIS — France on Monday unleashed a broad crackdown on Muslims accused of extremism, carrying out dozens of raids, vowing to shut down aid groups and threatening to expel foreigners as anger swept the country following the decapitation of a high school teacher for showing caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in class. Many of those swept up in raids were already in police files for showing “signals” of potential radicalization, like preaching radicalized sermons or sharing hate messages on social networks, government officials said. More than 200 others — the bulk already in prison — were threatened with a rare mass expulsion." Some voices were raised against the breadth of the government’s raids, but in general the tone was set by President Emmanuel Macron’s likely principal challenger in 2022, the far right leader Marine Le Pen, whose party has targeted Muslims and immigrants for nearly 50 years. “This situation calls for a strategy of reconquest,” Ms. Le Pen said Monday. “Islamism is a bellicose ideology whose means of conquest is terrorism.” Nothing like a beheading to get up people's ire. Guillotines were a lot less messy I suspect. How come this all sounds familiar? Are they ready to roll out the cattle cars?
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Post by jdredd on Oct 22, 2020 14:15:10 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2020/10/21/world/europe/france-teacher-beheading.html"That, in their view, has justified dozens of raids all over France, the closure of a prominent mosque, the shutting down of Muslim aid organizations and the mass expulsion of foreigners identified in government antiterrorism files. The right and the anti-immigrant far right have been pushing for even stiffer measures, and Mr. Macron is facing a tough re-election in 2022. Mr. Macron’s prime minister, Jean Castex, was forced to get up in Parliament several times on Tuesday to assert the government’s toughness in facing down Islamists, even as representatives on the right booed him. Criticism of the crackdown among French Muslims has been muted, most likely as the country has been swept up in nationalism after Mr. Paty’s killing. Several figures who have been critical of past government action against Muslims were reluctant to talk when reached by a reporter." There has always been a Fascist strain in France, and this overreacting to one murder is exposing it.
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Post by jdredd on Nov 24, 2020 3:44:33 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2020/11/23/world/europe/sarkozy-corruption-trial-france.html?action=click&module=Latest&pgtype=Homepage"PARIS — The former French president Nicolas Sarkozy appeared in a Paris courtroom on Monday to face charges of corruption and influence-peddling, as years of drawn-out legal entanglements came to a head despite his enduring influence and popularity on the right. Mr. Sarkozy, 65, who was president of France from 2007 to 2012, arrived at the main courthouse in Paris under tight security and without talking to a crowd of reporters gathered there. He is accused of trying to illegally obtain information on another legal case against him from a judge in return for promises to use his influence to secure a prestigious job for the judge." I'm so sad to see Sarkozy sunk so low. Maybe Trump will end up on trial too.
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Post by jdredd on Dec 5, 2020 17:08:50 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/opinion/macron-terrorism-france.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage"In the face of scathing criticism from Mr. Macron — expressed in a letter in The Financial Times, an interview with Ben Smith, the media columnist of The New York Times, and elsewhere — The F.T. and Politico Europe both removed articles questioning the role of French policies in Islamist violence. The core of the president’s complaint was that English-speaking countries that share France’s values were in effect “legitimizing this violence, and saying that the heart of the problem is that France is racist and Islamophobic.” It is not always fully appreciated outside France’s borders that the country is home to the largest number of Muslims in the Western world, more than 8 percent of the country’s total population. It also has a history of horrific terrorist attacks, including, in 2015, the raid on the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and the assaults on Paris cafes and entertainment halls that left 130 dead." Here is the line that gives away the bigotry of the NYT and the West.
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Post by jdredd on Feb 18, 2021 18:09:10 GMT -5
www.wsj.com/articles/emmanuel-macron-and-the-woke-11613604823?mod=hp_opin_pos_3"Classical Western values such as free speech and tolerance need all the defenders they can find these days, so kudos to French President Emmanuel Macron for volunteering for the mission. It’s hardly an easy task, but it’s an important one. Mr. Macron is right to conclude it’s vital to France’s future—and we'd add, to America’s. Mr. Macron and ministers in his government in recent months have been fighting illiberal and divisive philosophies they say emanate from American universities. Mr. Macron in October decried the influence of “certain social-science theories entirely imported from the United States.” He means in particular the habit of viewing most matters in racial terms—a core tenet of “wokeness”—and his government wants educational institutions to eschew it. Minister for Higher Education Frédérique Vidal this week promised an investigation into academics “looking at everything through the prism of wanting to fracture and divide.” This is part of a broader drive to reassert French values after many years of Islamist terror attacks. Mr. Macron also is pushing for a new crackdown on religious extremism, and his law to that end passed through one chamber of the National Assembly this week." After trying to cozy up to Trump, now Macaroni is bashing the American left. Of course those on the top want to discourage "divisive" rhetoric.
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Post by jdredd on Mar 12, 2021 14:24:09 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2021/03/12/opinion/germany-afd-covid.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage"BERLIN — In November, as Covid-19 cases began to rise, thousands of people gathered in Berlin to protest against restrictions. In among the conspiracy theorists and extremists were several lawmakers from the country’s main opposition party, the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany. It was striking to see legislators mingle with conspiracists in the streets before heading to the parliament for a debate. Yet it wasn’t too surprising. The party, known as AfD, has sought to improve its electoral standing ahead of the national election in September by associating with the anti-lockdown movement, an amorphous mix of conspiracy theorists, shady organizations and outraged citizens. But it hasn’t worked. In the months since the pandemic, the AfD’s support has slipped. Already struggling to reach new voters, its embrace of anti-lockdown sentiment seems to have further limited its appeal — and sped up its transformation into an extremist organization." It looks like Europe's devolution has stalled out at least in Germany, for now.
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Post by jdredd on Sept 4, 2021 2:10:22 GMT -5
Even our whining NATO “allies” are second guessing Biden’s retreat from Afghanistan. Should I list all of Europe’s military disasters of the last 100 years? Why bother. They were dumb enough to join Bush 43’s idiot crusade. Even Bush’s poodle Blair is piling up on Biden. Maybe Trump was on to something when he threatened to dump those clowns.
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Post by jdredd on Sept 30, 2021 20:47:33 GMT -5
I love Tucker Carlson interviewing the neo-fascist leaders of Hungary and Poland. Of course he brought up George Soros, the great boogeyman of conspiracy freaks.
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Post by jdredd on Nov 21, 2021 22:24:24 GMT -5
So anti-lockdown creeps are taking to the streets of Europe. Are they mostly soccer thugs? I don’t know.
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Post by jdredd on Jan 3, 2022 13:31:54 GMT -5
Once again Trump endorsed the Fascist leader of Hungary. Birds of a feather. By the way, the way the right is throwing around the word “Communist” lately, I’m getting over my avoidance of the “F” word, and I don’t mean the now banal word “f#ck”.
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Post by jdredd on Mar 4, 2022 3:13:37 GMT -5
Just how much European blood has been shed over the last few hundred years over their stupid borders?
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Post by jdredd on Mar 24, 2022 15:11:16 GMT -5
So I’m wondering with a lot of other people also, including those two dufuses Armstrong and Getty, are we all going to get incinerated because of another stupid European war?
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Post by jdredd on Mar 25, 2022 23:33:53 GMT -5
Changing the name of this thread, originally started to chronicle Europe’s slow slide into Fascism. Events have overtaken that idea, with Europe at war with itself once again. Still, this war could accelerate Europe’s Fascist drift.
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