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Post by jdredd on May 5, 2012 21:40:16 GMT -5
www.economist.com/node/21554241"IN THE closing days of the campaign, before the French went to the polls to choose a new president on May 6th, Nicolas Sarkozy was clinging to two hopes. First, that the televised debate with François Hollande, his Socialist challenger, on May 2nd would reveal the value of his experience and expose his rival’s lack of it. And second, that his strategy of chasing the far-right vote would pay off. With the National Front’s Marine Le Pen pointedly refusing to endorse Mr Sarkozy, however, and with the polls consistently making Mr Hollande the favourite, neither hope looked likely to rescue the incumbent from defeat." "Despite his last-minute drive for support, and barring an eleventh-hour upset, Mr Sarkozy’s days look numbered. In many ways, this is extraordinary. The man who brought freshness and dynamism to the presidency in 2007 is now facing defeat after just one term. Only one other Fifth-Republic president, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, has failed to win re-election (in 1981). An outsider with immigrant origins, unburdened by the stale thinking of the ruling elite, Mr Sarkozy is a talented and bold politician whose election seemed to mark a turning-point: a moment when the French were ready to face up to the need for them to work more and for the state to spend less. The shame is that he proved unable in office to channel his undoubted energy in a coherent direction, or to control some of his own unfortunate impulses." Just what the elites are eternally striving for: Workers who work more but get less from their government...
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Post by jdredd on May 6, 2012 1:54:21 GMT -5
www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/05/201254112239906368.html"New Haven, CT - Assuming, as the polls project, that Francois Hollande is elected president of France on Sunday, he will face two monumental challenges. The first is to solve France's overwhelming debt and fiscal crisis - in the eyes of many economists, the most serious in Europe. But secondly, in order to achieve this, he will be obliged to abandon many of the ideological mantras which have both fired and hobbled the French left for decades. This will be especially difficult, because so many of his electors actually believe those mantras. " "Assuming all these people vote for Hollande on May 6, he is still four or five percentage points short of the 50 per cent he needs to win. Therefore, he must rely on a substantial section of the far-right National Front voters supporting a socialist. This is a reasonable assumption, since many of them are disgruntled former communists from working-class roots who have swung from one extreme to another."
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Post by jdredd on Aug 10, 2012 0:21:31 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2012/08/07/world/europe/vast-police-operation-targets-migrants-in-athens.html?src=recgATHENS — A vast police operation here aimed at identifying illegal immigrants found that, of 6,000 people detained over the weekend, 1,400 did not have proper documentation, leading the minister of public order to say that Greece was suffering an “unprecedented invasion” that was threatening the stability of the debt-racked nation. The minister, Nikos Dendias, defended the mass detentions, saying that a failure to curb a relentless flow of immigrants into Greece would lead the country, which is surviving on foreign loans, to collapse. “Our social fabric is at risk of unraveling,” Mr. Dendias told a private television channel, Skai. “The immigration problem is perhaps even greater than the financial one.” He said he would resign if he was obstructed. “There would be no point in me staying on,” he said. That appeared to be a warning to left-wing opposition parties, one of which called the operation a pogrom. " " The growing population of immigrants in Greece — about 800,000 are registered, and an estimated 350,000 or more are in the country illegally — adds to the anxieties of many Greeks, who are seeing the government’s once-generous social spending evaporate. They complain that the foreign residents are depriving them of jobs and threatening the national identity. Such frustrations have been exploited politically, notably by Golden Dawn, a far-right group that has been widely linked to a rising number of apparently racially motivated assaults but vehemently denies being a neo-Nazi group. Once obscure, it drew 7 percent of the vote in the June elections. The party has called for the immediate deportation of all immigrants and has accused Mr. Samaras of reneging on his pre-election promises to curb illegal immigration. The party has won public support through a range of initiatives, including the distribution of free food, but only for those who can show Greek identity cards."
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Post by jdredd on Mar 26, 2013 16:23:10 GMT -5
While SCOTUS debates Prop 8, in France hundreds of thousands of people are protesting the imminent legalization of same sex marriage. I guess Europe has no real problems either.
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Post by jdredd on Mar 1, 2014 23:30:49 GMT -5
It looks like it was inevitable that 25 years after the meltdown of the Soviet Union, Russians might be having second thoughts about what they let go. Ukraine was a part of Russia for how long? It was 70 years ago that Soviet tanks were battling the Germans for possession of the Ukraine, and it cost the Russians dearly. And since independence, the Ukraine has not particularly been an example of a well-functioning nation, so I'm not so surprised Russia may be trying to reassert itself in Ukrainian affairs. Of course, it is a given that the EU and America are going to loudly oppose Russia's intervention. Domestic politics for both of them sadly requires it. How much brinkmanship will the West indulge in? Maybe they should send the panzers back in, no?
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Post by jdredd on Mar 6, 2014 2:56:46 GMT -5
www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26461426"EU leaders are to begin an emergency summit to decide how strongly they should respond to Russia's troop deployment in Ukraine's Crimea region. Some members, particularly from Eastern Europe, are pressing for tough sanctions, but others - led by Germany - put more stress on mediation. The Brussels summit comes a day after high-level talks with Russia in Paris ended without significant progress. Pro-Russian forces are in de facto control of Crimea. A tense stand-off continued overnight across the southern region, where Ukrainian troops remain blockaded in their bases." Yada, yada, yada. Can those wacky Europeans ever stay out of trouble?
Hey, I have an idea. Get back at Putin by putting a Hellfire missile up Assad's assad...
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Post by jdredd on Mar 16, 2014 17:24:21 GMT -5
Well, if Crimea votes to succeed from the Ukraine, the question is: will Putin stand up to the West or back down? How far will the West be willing to go? How much will it hurt Europe's economic recovery to "punish" Putin? Could be interesting. Or not.
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Post by jdredd on Mar 20, 2014 4:09:48 GMT -5
Old Crazy Joe Biden was in Poland to reassure the paranoid Poles that we still have their back. Boy, is he looking old. And he said "we have a defense budget that is ten times larger than the next ten nations". Izzat so? Was he exaggerating for propaganda purposes? I suspect we have a defense budget as large as the next ten nations, not ten times as large. But who's counting?
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Post by jdredd on Mar 26, 2014 14:07:01 GMT -5
www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-obama-world-war-flanders-field-20140326,0,105704.story#axzz2x60dSQcb "BRUSSELS -- President Obama laid a wreath at the World War I memorial at Flanders Field on Wednesday, noting the war that tore apart Europe still echoes in conflicts 100 years later. "The lessons of that war speak to us still," Obama said in his first stop since arriving in Belgium late Tuesday. The president is in Brussels for a summit with European Union leaders. He’s also slated to meet with NATO’s secretary-general and deliver a speech at the Palais des Beaux-Arts." Yes, the lessons of WWI still speak to us. Unfortunately they say different things to different people.
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Post by jdredd on Mar 26, 2014 21:17:13 GMT -5
www.bbc.com/news/business-26758788"Ukraine's interim government says it will raise gas prices for domestic consumers by 50% in an effort to secure an International Monetary Fund (IMF) aid package. An official at Ukraine's Naftogaz state energy company said the price rise would take effect on 1 May, and further rises would be scheduled until 2018. Ukrainians are accustomed to buying gas at heavily subsidized rates.But the IMF has made subsidy reform a condition of its deal. Ukraine currently buys more than half of its natural gas from Russia's Gazprom, and then sells it on to consumers at below market prices." Isn't this the reason Ukraine's previous President rejected the IMF offer and went with the Russians before the coup deposed him? Onerous IMF demands? Well, if that's what the Ukrainians want, so be it.
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Post by jdredd on Apr 1, 2014 15:04:41 GMT -5
www.economist.com/blogs/charlemagne/2014/03/frances-local-elections-0"A CRUSHING defeat at French local elections has intensified pressure on François Hollande to reshuffle his government. At a second round of voting on March 30th, Mr Hollande’s Socialist Party lost over 150 towns, most of them to the opposition centre-right. This morning, the French president was holed up at the Elysée, the presidential palace, consulting close advisers over reshuffle plans, which could be announced as early as today." "The other second-round victor was Marine Le Pen’s populist National Front. To add to Hénin-Beaumont, a town that her party already won outright in a first-round vote on March 24rd, she picked up ten others. They include Fréjus and Béziers in the south, a string of smaller towns, and an arrondissement of Marseilles that represents fully 150,000 people. The only town that had looked winnable but which the National Front failed to grab in the end was Forbach, where her party’s number two, Florian Philippot, was standing. Although the overall second-round result gave the National Front only 7% of the countrywide vote, this crop of town halls is a historic result for Ms Le Pen’s party. In 1995, when the front was on the rise under her father, Jean-Marie, it won just three towns. Ms Le Pen has also secured over 1,200 municipal-council seats, giving her both a local base in which to anchor the party and a training ground to prepare National Front officials for future electoral contests. The front could well come top in elections to the European Parliament in May." The French right is on the rise, again. Time to get the cattle cars out of storage, this time for the Muslims.
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Post by jdredd on Apr 7, 2014 13:35:28 GMT -5
www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26919928"The crisis has heightened nervousness in many other eastern European states, with Czech President Milos Zeman saying Nato should deploy troops in Ukraine if Russia invades. "If Russia decides to extend its territorial expansion to eastern Ukraine, the fun is over," he told Czech public radio on Sunday." You are so wrong, Milos. The fun will have just begun! It could be 1914 all over again!
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Post by jdredd on Apr 10, 2014 15:00:14 GMT -5
www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26975204"Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned European leaders that Ukraine's delays in paying for Russian gas have created a "critical situation". Pipelines transiting Ukraine deliver Russian gas to several EU countries and there are fears that the current tensions could trigger gas shortages. Pro-Russian separatists are holed up in official buildings in Donetsk and Luhansk, eastern Ukraine. Meanwhile, a European human rights body has stripped Russia of voting rights." "Mr Putin adds that Russia was "prepared to participate in the effort to stabilise and restore Ukraine's economy" but only on "equal terms" with the EU. And he says that while Russia has been subsidising the Ukrainian economy with cheap gas, Europe has been exploiting its raw materials and worsening its trade deficit." Now would the EU do such a rotten thing? Nah. But is the EU sanctioning Russia a bit of biting the hand that feeds you?
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Post by jdredd on Apr 13, 2014 2:15:58 GMT -5
america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/4/12/rome-paris-anti-austerityprotests.html"Anti-austerity protests took over parts of Paris and Rome on Saturday, with one demonstration in Rome spurring violence when protesters threw rocks, eggs and firecrackers at police, with at least one person injured. Tens of thousands of people took part in protests in central Paris and Rome, organized by hard-left parties opposed to government economic reform plans and austerity measures. Police in Rome armed with batons charged members of a large splinter group — many wearing masks and helmets — and also used tear gas to push back the crowd, with protesters fighting back with rocks and firecrackers. One man lost a hand when a firecracker exploded before he could throw it. There were dozens of lighter injuries among police and protesters, and at least six arrests, police said. The protest was organized as a challenge to high housing costs and joblessness as a result of Italy's long economic slowdown. The procession made its way peacefully through central Rome until the more violent element wearing helmets started throwing objects at police near the Labor Ministry." Another week, another protest. Yawn. Until the powerless masses actually start putting their lives on the line, and making the police puppets do the same, who cares?
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Post by jdredd on Apr 19, 2014 12:18:16 GMT -5
www.economist.com/news/leaders/21600979-cost-stopping-russian-bear-now-highbut-it-will-only-get-higher-if-west-does?spc=scode&spv=xm&ah=9d7f7ab945510a56fa6d37c30b6f1709"FIRST Vladimir Putin mauled Georgia, but the world forgave him—because Russia was too important to be cut adrift. Then he gobbled up Crimea, but the world accepted it—because Crimea should have been Russian all along. Now he has infiltrated eastern Ukraine, but the world is hesitating—because infiltration is not quite invasion. But if the West does not face up to Mr Putin now, it may find him at its door." "That is why the West needs to show Mr Putin that further action will be costly. So far, its rhetoric has marched far ahead of its willingness to act—only adding to the aura of weakness. Not enough is at stake in Ukraine to risk war with a nuclear-armed Russia. And European voters will not put up with gas shortages, so an embargo is not plausible. But the West has other cards to play. One is military. NATO should announce that it will hold exercises in central and eastern Europe, strengthen air and cyber defences there and immediately send some troops, missiles and aircraft to the Baltics and Poland. NATO members should pledge to increase military spending. Another card is sanctions, so far imposed on only a few people close to Mr Putin. It is time for a broad visa ban on powerful Russians and their families. France should cancel the sale of warships to Russia. A more devastating punishment would be to cut Russia off from dollars, euros and sterling (see article). Such financial sanctions, like those that led Iran to negotiate over its nuclear programme, would deprive Russia of revenues from oil and gas exports, priced in dollars, and force it to draw on reserves to pay for most of its imports. They would be costly to the West, especially the City of London, but worth it. Impose them now, and give Mr Putin reason to pause. Do any less and the price next time will be even higher." The Rothschilds chime in on the Russian "threat". So they would like to deprive Russia of revenues from oil and gas, yet "European voters would not put up with gas shortages". So why would Russia export gas and oil that it is making no revenue from? Makes no sense. And no sh*t not enough is at stake to risk war, yet these folks want to continue an escalating tit-for-tat.
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