European Politics
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Italy turns on the European Union
The alt-left Five Star and hard-right Lega are on the verge of forming a coalition
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No mention of mass-migration in that article. I found this an interesting summary prior to the election
John Oliver also missed a few points..who to believe?..
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So crisis in Italy. Their EU supporting president has vetoed government appointments by the euro-sceptic coalition. In effect blocking the election result.
The EU does not like self governing countries by the looks...and it will almost certainly backfire with polls showing a huge increase in support for the League which is the more extreme of the coalition partners.
Goodbye Europe?
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@rembrandt said in European Politics:
So crisis in Italy. Their EU supporting president has vetoed government appointments by the euro-sceptic coalition. In effect blocking the election result.
The EU does not like self governing countries by the looks...and it will almost certainly backfire with polls showing a huge increase in support for the League which is the more extreme of the coalition partners.
Goodbye Europe?
Quite bizarre situation
I don't know why they don't just impeach the president. He us clearly corrupt and doesn't want democracy. -
@baron-silas-greenback said in European Politics:
I don't know why they don't just impeach the president.
That may yet happen.
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Looks like he’s accepted their second attempt. I’m sure he didn’t want another election that would essentially be about quitaly.
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A united Nationalist Europe?
Amazing seeing how much Merkel has changed her tune. Why is that? I don't understand how someone can sell out their own country and the safety of their citizens so much especially if they used to have the opposite view.
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@rembrandt said in European Politics:
especially if they used to have the opposite view.
That's what makes her an effective modern politician.
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Cathy Newman interviewed the polish immigration minister. It went the way her interviews often go
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What on earth is going on with the Swedish youth today?
Sweden cars: 80 set on fire by gangs in several cities
Dozens of vehicles were set ablaze in multiple cities overnight, in an apparent coordinated action.
It's interesting that a version of the following appears at the bottom of each article. Worth reading between the lines?
Sweden is firmly in election season ahead of September's polls, and immigration remains a key issue.
Mr Lofven's government party, the Social Democrats, is facing the worst poll numbers in its history, to the benefit of anti-immigration party the Sweden Democrats.
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This election really is pivitol in Sweden.
Swedish national TV says 58% of men convicted of rape in the past five years were born abroad.
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@rembrandt said in European Politics:
This election really is pivitol in Sweden.
Swedish national TV says 58% of men convicted of rape in the past five years were born abroad.
I remember the last election when one of the major newspapers had a black frontpage after the SD did well. I can only imagine how they'd poll if they weren't so maligned in the media and by the elite. Once again, like Trump and elsewhere, instead of screaming about racism and bigotry, maybe someone should actually consider how this situation has come to pass. The arrogance and ignorance of the media and the so-called elites is quite simply astonishing. Not to mention the disconnect between those in charge and the people they are supposed to serve.
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Anyone been to Paris lately? I did have a chat with a French journalist on my travels who confirmed much of this if you stray slightly from the approved tourist spots and sometimes even if you don't.
I do remember when Fox put out that report about the French 'No-go zones' and they were roundly ridiculed as 'Fake news' does anyone disagree with that now?
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I was there last month and didn't see any of this.
I was mainly around the 5th arrondissement, but went all 1-7, plus Pigalle (9) and Montmarte (17-18) and south in Antony. I wouldn't be surprised to see much of this though, because certain areas of Paris have always been pretty shitty. I stayed down past the Bastille last time (11, 20) and there was plenty of opportunities to get accosted on the street.
On the bright side, if anyone wants a great, affordable, restaurant recommend in Paris, let me know. I found a cracker.
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@gt12 I was last there in 2013. Took my Mrs to what I thought would be a romantic evening visit to the Eiffel tower. It was horrendous, swarmed by folk trying to sell us worthless trinkets or scam us. Romance destroyed, just wanted to get the hell outta there. Did however find a nice restaurant afterwards though.
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So riots in Chemnitz Germany after a woman was apparently sexually assaulted by a migrant, men came to her aid and one of the rescuers stabbed to death. Cue government and media claiming there is no issue with migrant crime and anyone who thinks otherwise is a far right extremist..cue actual far-right extremists.
From speaking with an ex-German journalist in person I have been told that German media are actively advised not to report on migrant crime as that is racist to do so.
As great as German media and government intentions are, they are simply going to create exactly what they most want to avoid.
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Police apparently say that the rape story is incorrect:
Several people are injured as rival demonstrators clash in Chemnitz over a murder on Sunday.
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@gt12 said in European Politics:
Police apparently say that the rape story is incorrect:
Several people are injured as rival demonstrators clash in Chemnitz over a murder on Sunday.
Oh well if the police say so....
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@gt12 said in European Politics:
Police apparently say that the rape story is incorrect:
Several people are injured as rival demonstrators clash in Chemnitz over a murder on Sunday.
Sadly we won't know for sure.
Remember the police also denied one of the largest mass sexual assaults in history.
Trust is evaporating in the police, government and certainly the media.
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@rembrandt said in European Politics:
@gt12 said in European Politics:
Police apparently say that the rape story is incorrect:
Several people are injured as rival demonstrators clash in Chemnitz over a murder on Sunday.
Sadly we won't know for sure.
Remember the police also denied one of the largest mass sexual assaults in history.
Trust is evaporating in the police, government and certainly the media.
My cousin lives in Cologne and he says there is an enormous police presence that simply wasnt there before. Now why would that be?
But ffs, let's take the ethnic and cultural angle out of it. If you have hundreds of thousands of young men living together in a foreign country where they don't understand the language or customs, have no job, few prospects and live cheek to jowl in some converted shipping container, of course they're going to cause strife. This was always going to happen, but who cares about the consequences suffered by others when you can virtue signal and feel great about yourself. It's not like Merkel and co will actually have to do any of the heavy lifting or live anywhere near these people.
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@rancid-schnitzel said in European Politics:
@rembrandt said in European Politics:
@gt12 said in European Politics:
Police apparently say that the rape story is incorrect:
Several people are injured as rival demonstrators clash in Chemnitz over a murder on Sunday.
Sadly we won't know for sure.
Remember the police also denied one of the largest mass sexual assaults in history.
Trust is evaporating in the police, government and certainly the media.
My cousin lives in Cologne and he says there is an enormous police presence that simply wasnt there before. Now why would that be?
What are your cousins thoughts on all of this? Are they aware of any of this or is it overblown?
I've met a couple Germans who know what is going on but petrified about talking in public about it. Their mother was very nearly raped a couples years back by a migrant and they were told to keep it quiet. The worst thing in German society is to be branded a Nazi and it isn't something you can shake, ruining reputations and businesses. That WW2 guilt runs super deep.
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@rembrandt said in European Politics:
@rancid-schnitzel said in European Politics:
@rembrandt said in European Politics:
@gt12 said in European Politics:
Police apparently say that the rape story is incorrect:
Several people are injured as rival demonstrators clash in Chemnitz over a murder on Sunday.
Sadly we won't know for sure.
Remember the police also denied one of the largest mass sexual assaults in history.
Trust is evaporating in the police, government and certainly the media.
My cousin lives in Cologne and he says there is an enormous police presence that simply wasnt there before. Now why would that be?
What are your cousins thoughts on all of this? Are they aware of any of this or is it overblown?
I've met a couple Germans who know what is going on but petrified about talking in public about it. Their mother was very nearly raped a couples years back by a migrant and they were told to keep it quiet. The worst thing in German society is to be branded a Nazi and it isn't something you can shake, ruining reputations and businesses. That WW2 guilt runs super deep.
He was one of those who offered assistance and clothing when it all kicked off but flipped completely when he saw the consequences. But he's now very very careful about what he says. The social media crackdown has had a massive effect. Had a cousin and his wife visit last week and they didn't even want to talk about it. Mum and Dad are over there now and it will be interesting to hear their take on it and the stories of locals.
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My wife was born and grew up in Chemnitz. Her parents still live there. They tell a very different story. They are uncomfortable with the number of incomers for sure but they are used to a city in which foreigners were rare.
My father in law says that in the last few days there have been hundreds of hard right young men flooding into town and they are very scared. The Leipzig/ Dresden/ Chemnitz triangle has had a problem with neo-Nazis since the wall came down (my wife’s 1st cousin was married to one for years) and even before that intimidation of the Vietnamese and Cuban “Gastarbeiter” was commonplace. He’s pretty clear that most of the people in these rallies are not locals, and rather they are from all over Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg who have been spoiling for this fight for decades.
BTW, anybody who thinks Merkel, for all her faults, doesn’t care about this area of Germany knows nothing about modern German history. (Edit: those were my FiL’s words, not mine)
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@JC I don't know a great deal about Germany, but it seems to me that they've always had a problem with neo-Nazis bubbling under the surface. Now they've added a problem with Islamic extremists through their recent open border policy on refugees, and the decent folk of Germany will probably end up caught in the middle.
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@no-quarter I agree it could go badly. I’ve been travelling to that particular area for the last 20 years or so, and there is no shortage of people, mostly men, who have a real axe to grind with the rest of the world. They HATE the “Wessis”, who they blame for taking away their jobs and their dignity, for paying them salaries below the equivalent in the West, for imposing Wessi bosses on them, for thinking they are better than the Ossis. It’s a regional inferiority complex that really didn’t need much to kick off, and the feeling of the locals is that the immigrant problems are a pretext at best.
My wife is embarrassed by this. It’s almost like if the sequential shames of Fascism then Communism weren’t enough they now have to watch the cycle repeat itself. Outsiders like us can point to any causal factor we like, blaming it on Muslims, Wessi political correctness or anything else, but for them it’s just a humiliation from inside. Just like, as said in other threads, there is a generation in the UK who think Communism is cool, in Saxony it’s Fascism that the cool kids rally round, because hey, how anti-establishment is that! Morons.
I’m not saying that the huge wave of immigration hasn’t caused problems, because it demonstrably has. But not so much in Saxony; it’s problems lie elsewhere. Germany is a very diverse country: people in Bavaria can’t even understand the Saxon dialect. You can’t just generalise and say that the issues seen in Cologne are in any way similar to those in Leipzig.
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@jc said in European Politics:
My wife was born and grew up in Chemnitz. Her parents still live there. They tell a very different story. They are uncomfortable with the number of incomers for sure but they are used to a city in which foreigners were rare.
My father in law says that in the last few days there have been hundreds of hard right young men flooding into town and they are very scared. The Leipzig/ Dresden/ Chemnitz triangle has had a problem with neo-Nazis since the wall came down (my wife’s 1st cousin was married to one for years) and even before that intimidation of the Vietnamese and Cuban “Gastarbeiter” was commonplace. He’s pretty clear that most of the people in these rallies are not locals, and rather they are from all over Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg who have been spoiling for this fight for decades.
BTW, anybody who thinks Merkel, for all her faults, doesn’t care about this area of Germany knows nothing about modern German history. (Edit: those were my FiL’s words, not mine)
You are trying to suppress a neo nazi underbelly.. dont go far left/open borders and give them a cause.
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@baron-silas-greenback said in European Politics:
@jc said in European Politics:
My wife was born and grew up in Chemnitz. Her parents still live there. They tell a very different story. They are uncomfortable with the number of incomers for sure but they are used to a city in which foreigners were rare.
My father in law says that in the last few days there have been hundreds of hard right young men flooding into town and they are very scared. The Leipzig/ Dresden/ Chemnitz triangle has had a problem with neo-Nazis since the wall came down (my wife’s 1st cousin was married to one for years) and even before that intimidation of the Vietnamese and Cuban “Gastarbeiter” was commonplace. He’s pretty clear that most of the people in these rallies are not locals, and rather they are from all over Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg who have been spoiling for this fight for decades.
BTW, anybody who thinks Merkel, for all her faults, doesn’t care about this area of Germany knows nothing about modern German history. (Edit: those were my FiL’s words, not mine)
You are trying to suppress a neo nazi underbelly.. dont go far left/open borders and give them a cause.
But isn’t that exactly the argument used to suppress Molyneux and Southern - don’t want to rile up the Tamaki Anti-Fascist Action etc? I don’t agree with the decision to let all these people in in the way they were, but I think we can all agree that the German government believed they were doing the right thing. That being so they can’t let the potential actions of thugs derail what the rule of law, in the same way that Auckland Council or the Victoria state government shouldn’t let it happen there either.
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@jc said in European Politics:
@baron-silas-greenback said in European Politics:
@jc said in European Politics:
My wife was born and grew up in Chemnitz. Her parents still live there. They tell a very different story. They are uncomfortable with the number of incomers for sure but they are used to a city in which foreigners were rare.
My father in law says that in the last few days there have been hundreds of hard right young men flooding into town and they are very scared. The Leipzig/ Dresden/ Chemnitz triangle has had a problem with neo-Nazis since the wall came down (my wife’s 1st cousin was married to one for years) and even before that intimidation of the Vietnamese and Cuban “Gastarbeiter” was commonplace. He’s pretty clear that most of the people in these rallies are not locals, and rather they are from all over Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg who have been spoiling for this fight for decades.
BTW, anybody who thinks Merkel, for all her faults, doesn’t care about this area of Germany knows nothing about modern German history. (Edit: those were my FiL’s words, not mine)
You are trying to suppress a neo nazi underbelly.. dont go far left/open borders and give them a cause.
But isn’t that exactly the argument used to suppress Molyneux and Southern - don’t want to rile up the Tamaki Anti-Fascist Action etc? I don’t agree with the decision to let all these people in in the way they were, but I think we can all agree that the German government believed they were doing the right thing. That being so they can’t let the potential actions of thugs derail what the rule of law, in the same way that Auckland Council or the Victoria state government shouldn’t let it happen there either.
Doesn't everyone always believe they are doing the right thing? Didnt the Nazis think they were the doing the right thing? Didn't the communists?
You also seem to have missed my point, I am saying that youbreed these sort of issues if you put a lid on dissent for so long that conversations cannot be had.
As for thugs ruling, isnt that what has been happening to pressure govts to be more liberal? Mob rule has been condoned for a long time. -
@baron-silas-greenback I can’t disagree with any of that BSG. I guess my point is we can’t take what we are being told at face value even if (maybe especially if) it accords with what we want to see. There is so much wrong with having let in god knows how many people into a western democracy without planning or even monitoring the after effects. But we shouldn’t jump to conclusions that mesh with our own politics just because the Neo-Nazis know what buttons to push, just like we shouldn’t believe what the media are portraying either. Treat everything with suspicion I reckon.
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@jc said in European Politics:
My wife was born and grew up in Chemnitz. Her parents still live there. They tell a very different story. They are uncomfortable with the number of incomers for sure but they are used to a city in which foreigners were rare.
My father in law says that in the last few days there have been hundreds of hard right young men flooding into town and they are very scared. The Leipzig/ Dresden/ Chemnitz triangle has had a problem with neo-Nazis since the wall came down (my wife’s 1st cousin was married to one for years) and even before that intimidation of the Vietnamese and Cuban “Gastarbeiter” was commonplace. He’s pretty clear that most of the people in these rallies are not locals, and rather they are from all over Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg who have been spoiling for this fight for decades.
BTW, anybody who thinks Merkel, for all her faults, doesn’t care about this area of Germany knows nothing about modern German history. (Edit: those were my FiL’s words, not mine)
Totally agree that there have been some shocking problems in the East since the fall of the Wall. Iirc refugee accommodation has been set on fire and there have been numerous acts of violence against foreigners (as an aside the racism towards the foreign guest workers kind of ridicules the notion that everyone was equal under the glorious communist community). The problem is that Merkel must have known letting in 1 million undocumented migrants was going to destabilise an already fragile situation. She also must have known that letting such an enormous number of young men into the country would have consequences for German women. Preventing Germans from now expressing an opinion about this madness is making things even worse.
Surely Merkal knew this would happen or is she really that blind? Or as a childless politician is she more concerned with her legacy of being deemed a saint rather than the future of her country and the citizens she represents?
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@jc said in European Politics:
@baron-silas-greenback I can’t disagree with any of that BSG. I guess my point is we can’t take what we are being told at face value even if (maybe especially if) it accords with what we want to see. There is so much wrong with having let in god knows how many people into a western democracy without planning or even monitoring the after effects. But we shouldn’t jump to conclusions that mesh with our own politics just because the Neo-Nazis know what buttons to push, just like we shouldn’t believe what the media are portraying either. Treat everything with suspicion I reckon.
Agreed. It s also dangerous to side with nasty people just because they are protesting something you also don't like. I agree with what the neo nazis are protesting, but I dont suport them, because they would take us down a very ugly path, they are extremists.
I just wish the media and others took the same atttiude with ANTIFA. They just as scum as the neo nazis. -
@jc said in European Politics:
BTW, anybody who thinks Merkel, for all her faults, doesn’t care about this area of Germany knows nothing about modern German history.
That's a valid point for people who forget she is an Ossi herself, the daughter of a Lutheran Minister.
@jc said in European Politics:
I’m not saying that the huge wave of immigration hasn’t caused problems, because it demonstrably has. But not so much in Saxony; it’s problems lie elsewhere. Germany is a very diverse country: people in Bavaria can’t even understand the Saxon dialect. You can’t just generalise and say that the issues seen in Cologne are in any way similar to those in Leipzig.
I have a friend who grew up in Munich (still lives in Bavaria) and is unbelievably contemptuous of your typical Berliners (well, anyone North really).
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@rancid-schnitzel There’s no doubt by now that it was a bad idea. But I think it’s probably unfair to Merkel to characterise it in terms of her not caring. She’s a devout Christian, to such an extent that she risked her liberty and maybe her life to help bring down the Communists. She saw it as her duty before God to try and end what she saw as an inhumanity. That’s no different to what drove her to let in “refugees”, and from her perspective the ability to absorb large numbers of incomers probably wasn’t anything like as big a problem as moving 11million Ossis into the GDR. Even the integration probably wasn’t that big a deal to her, it’s not as if everyone in the East integrated seamlessly either.
All her mistakes stem from believing that people are fundamentally decent and that some behaviours are self-evidently immoral so nobody will go there if you treat them well. I reckon she believes in a Christian God so much that she can’t see that Judeo-Christian values are now a minority belief system and getting weaker by the day. I don’t think it crossed her mind that many of the people she was letting in have nothing but contempt for what she believes in.
Her blindspot isn’t her arrogance, it’s her decency. She thought it was innate and she was wrong. God only knows if she has learned from this though.
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@jc said in European Politics:
@rancid-schnitzel There’s no doubt by now that it was a bad idea. But I think it’s probably unfair to Merkel to characterise it in terms of her not caring. She’s a devout Christian, to such an extent that she risked her liberty and maybe her life to help bring down the Communists. She saw it as her duty before God to try and end what she saw as an inhumanity. That’s no different to what drove her to let in “refugees”, and from her perspective the ability to absorb large numbers of incomers probably wasn’t anything like as big a problem as moving 11million Ossis into the GDR. Even the integration probably wasn’t that big a deal to her, it’s not as if everyone in the East integrated seamlessly either.
All her mistakes stem from believing that people are fundamentally decent and that some behaviours are self-evidently immoral so nobody will go there if you treat them well. I reckon she believes in a Christian God so much that she can’t see that Judeo-Christian values are now a minority belief system and getting weaker by the day. I don’t think it crossed her mind that many of the people she was letting in have nothing but contempt for what she believes in.
Her blindspot isn’t her arrogance, it’s her decency. She thought it was innate and she was wrong. God only knows if she has learned from this though.
I think you give her far too much credit. She's a politician and has been Chancellor for over a decade. Anyone with half a brain could see the consequences regardless of their religious convictions. It should also be noted that Merkel made a rather controversial speech not that long ago about how multiculturalism had failed in Germany. How do you reconcile that with then letting in hundreds of thousands of undocumented Arabs?
No I think Merkel saw her chance to go down in history as a saint and took it.
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@jc said in European Politics:
@rancid-schnitzel There’s no doubt by now that it was a bad idea. But I think it’s probably unfair to Merkel to characterise it in terms of her not caring. She’s a devout Christian, to such an extent that she risked her liberty and maybe her life to help bring down the Communists. She saw it as her duty before God to try and end what she saw as an inhumanity. That’s no different to what drove her to let in “refugees”, and from her perspective the ability to absorb large numbers of incomers probably wasn’t anything like as big a problem as moving 11million Ossis into the GDR. Even the integration probably wasn’t that big a deal to her, it’s not as if everyone in the East integrated seamlessly either.
All her mistakes stem from believing that people are fundamentally decent and that some behaviours are self-evidently immoral so nobody will go there if you treat them well. I reckon she believes in a Christian God so much that she can’t see that Judeo-Christian values are now a minority belief system and getting weaker by the day. I don’t think it crossed her mind that many of the people she was letting in have nothing but contempt for what she believes in.
Her blindspot isn’t her arrogance, it’s her decency. She thought it was innate and she was wrong. God only knows if she has learned from this though.
I think you are being wildly to generous towards her. if she as half as decent as you say, she would have thought about her own people as well. She clearly did not. She is not a decent person, she is an arrogant one. She was arrogant because she assumed she knew best, consultation and a thoughtful process was not required. She decided as leader, she was going to restructure the whole demographic of her country. What the fuck is that??? Humility? she could have taken it to the polls, told people straight up that she wanted over a million young Muslim men to enter the country, maybe drip feed them and see how they assimilate... nah fuck that she just KNEW it would all work. How exactly?
Fuck Merkel and her arrogance in causing turmoil and grief in her own country. She needs to wear the consequences of her hubris and not hide behind somer sort of higher moral standard.. essentially you are saying she is not guilty.. due to being such a better person than everyone else. She is not. -
@rancid-schnitzel said in European Politics:
@jc said in European Politics:
@rancid-schnitzel There’s no doubt by now that it was a bad idea. But I think it’s probably unfair to Merkel to characterise it in terms of her not caring. She’s a devout Christian, to such an extent that she risked her liberty and maybe her life to help bring down the Communists. She saw it as her duty before God to try and end what she saw as an inhumanity. That’s no different to what drove her to let in “refugees”, and from her perspective the ability to absorb large numbers of incomers probably wasn’t anything like as big a problem as moving 11million Ossis into the GDR. Even the integration probably wasn’t that big a deal to her, it’s not as if everyone in the East integrated seamlessly either.
All her mistakes stem from believing that people are fundamentally decent and that some behaviours are self-evidently immoral so nobody will go there if you treat them well. I reckon she believes in a Christian God so much that she can’t see that Judeo-Christian values are now a minority belief system and getting weaker by the day. I don’t think it crossed her mind that many of the people she was letting in have nothing but contempt for what she believes in.
Her blindspot isn’t her arrogance, it’s her decency. She thought it was innate and she was wrong. God only knows if she has learned from this though.
I think you give her far too much credit. She's a politician and has been Chancellor for over a decade. Anyone with half a brain could see the consequences regardless of their religious convictions. It should also be noted that Merkel made a rather controversial speech not that long ago about how multiculturalism had failed in Germany. How do you reconcile that with then letting in hundreds of thousands of undocumented Arabs?
What’s to reconcile? I didn’t agree with the decision to let them in then and I still don’t now.
As for her speech, she was right. Multiculturalism has failed. But she only realised it too late, the barbarians were already through the gate. That doesn’t make her dishonourable, just catastrophically wrong.
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The criticism of her shortsightedness and ignorance of recent history is a valid one. After all, the prevailing belief was the Turks would eventually go home once Germany no longer required their labour.
