Author Topic: European matters  (Read 120843 times)

ccp

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what a sudden turn around in GB !
« Reply #350 on: October 24, 2022, 02:07:56 PM »
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2022/10/24/coronation-covid-era-tax-and-spend-rishi-sunak-makes-it-through-leadership-challenge-unopposed-will-be-prime-minister/

from Right to extreme LEFT in 2 weeks or so! :-o

GB is gone .......

Germany gave us Marxism (Marx Engels )
Germany gave us Naziism ( we know who)
Germany gave us the new World Order / Global Elitism (Klaus et al)

I am beginning to hate Germany all over again....    :x


DougMacG

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European matters, Britain, Liz Truss
« Reply #351 on: October 24, 2022, 04:14:52 PM »
Trying to figure out what happened to the Liz Trius era...

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/10/the-death-of-the-thatcherite-rebirth/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=capital-matters&utm_term=second
-----------------------------------------------------------

Supply side economics is really taking a hit.  It fails every time it is not tried.

Crafty_Dog

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France sliding towards barbarity and chaos
« Reply #352 on: November 08, 2022, 06:54:11 AM »
France Sliding toward Barbarity and Chaos
by Guy Millière  •  November 8, 2022 at 5:00 am

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Hundreds of thousands of immigrants enter Europe illegally each year. Many head for France and stay there. They have been benefiting, since 2000, from financial aid and free medical care to which even poor French citizens do not have access. If they are arrested, like Lola's murderer, they are ordered to leave the country, but are not placed in a detention center so the order, never enforced, is not an order at all. In 2020, 107,500 orders to leave France were issued; fewer than 7% took place.

Approximately 48% of all crimes committed in Paris in 2021, he notes, were committed by illegal immigrants. Murders almost as gruesome as Lola's -- most of which are committed by illegal immigrants -- are committed nearly every day. No one even mentions them. The victims often have their throats slit.

Maurice Berger, a psychiatrist, speaks of "gratuitous violence": violence for no other reason than the pleasure of committing it. He reports that in France, gratuitous violence resulting in injury or death happens, on average, every two minutes. France reports more than two hundred rapes a day.

In L'archipel français ("The French Archipelago")... sociologist Jérome Fourquet writes of a French "collective nervous breakdown" and the "crumbling" of French society. He notes that the religious and historical moorings of the French people are disappearing: churches are empty, important moments in the country's history are no longer taught in schools... France's Muslim population, on the other hand, maintains its culture, customs and traditions, assimilates into French society less and less, and appears more and more filled with contempt and hatred for France...

Speaking about a "great replacement" of the population in France is taboo. Anyone who does it is immediately demonized and described as a follower of conspiracy theories. But the numbers are clear... In addition to hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants already in France, approximately 400,000 more immigrants from Africa and the Arab world enter France each year. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of French people emigrate from France annually. In 2018, the most recent year for which figures are available, 270,000 French people left. Over the past 20 years, the number of French people living abroad has increased by 52%.

Whenever someone is arrested, injured or killed by the police in or near a no-go zone, riots break out. When an arrest turns violent, the police are asked to let criminals seeking refuge in a no-go zone escape. The government evidently fears that a larger conflagration might occur.

Inside classrooms, in high schools and primary schools, the French educational system is subject to Islamic intimidation.... Those who might have thought that the beheading of Samuel Paty would lead the authorities to make drastic decisions were proven wrong. Today, teachers throughout France report the relentless threats they receive. In the complaints they file, many say that Muslim students threaten "doing a Samuel Paty" to them.

Economically, France is in decline. French GDP has gone from fifth in the world in 1980 to tenth today.... France is among the European countries which impose the heaviest tax burden on its population (45.2% of GDP in 2022). France also has the highest level of public expenditure in the developed world (57.9% of GDP in 2022) -- and an increasing share of public expenditure goes toward financial aid to immigrants, legal and illegal.... Taxes, however, are insufficient to pay for these public expenses....

"Worse than the rise of barbarity is the feeling that our leaders are in denial and unable to take the strong and effective decisions that would be necessary to ensure the protection of the population. Barbarity spreads when the authorities no longer know how to be the guarantors of law and order." — Céline Pina, author, Le Figaro, October 19, 2022.


Lola, a 12-year-old French girl, was recently raped and murdered in Paris by an Algerian illegal immigrant. Illegal immigrants in France are the perpetrators of nearly half of crimes committed. Murders almost as gruesome as Lola's are committed nearly daily. The psychiatrist Maurice Berger reports that in France, crimes of gratuitous violence resulting in injury or death happen, on average, every two minutes. France reports more than two hundred rapes a day. Pictured: Protesters hold portraits of Lola reading "Lola could have been our little sister," in Paris on October 20, 2022. (Photo by Emmanuel Dunand/AFP via Getty Images)
October 15. The corpse of a 12-year-old girl hidden in a big plastic box is discovered on a sidewalk in the eastern part of Paris. The victim's name was Lola. She was the daughter of the caretakers of the building where the murder took place.

Witnesses, fingerprints and images from surveillance cameras quickly lead police to arrest a woman. She confessed but said she had absolutely no remorse. The details she gave, confirmed by the autopsy, are that she gagged Lola with tape, undressed her, tied her to a chair, raped her with objects, partially cut her throat, put the blood in a bottle and drank it, smoked a cigarette, then finished slitting Lola's throat and beheaded her. The woman stabbed the corpse multiple times before placing it in a plastic box, and took it down to the street.

Crafty_Dog

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Diversity is Europe's Strength
« Reply #353 on: December 15, 2022, 04:34:07 PM »

Crafty_Dog

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Zeihan: European demographics
« Reply #354 on: January 05, 2023, 09:21:22 AM »

Crafty_Dog

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RANE
« Reply #355 on: January 05, 2023, 03:54:00 PM »
The EU's Shifting Balance of Power
undefined and Director of Analysis at RANE
Adriano Bosoni
Director of Analysis at RANE, Stratfor
10 MIN READJan 5, 2023 | 17:18 GMT





EU flags fly outside the headquarters of the European Commission on Feb. 23, 2022, in Brussels, Belgium.
EU flags fly outside the headquarters of the European Commission on Feb. 23, 2022, in Brussels, Belgium.

(Thierry Monasse/Getty Images)

Between 2020 and 2022, three heavily disruptive geopolitical events altered the balance of power within the European Union, increasing the influence of countries in the south and the east of the bloc to the detriment of traditionally more influential countries in the north. These new power dynamics will not only shape EU domestic and foreign policy in the coming years, but likely lead to internal conflict further down the line that will once more test the bloc's internal unity.

A Turbulent Three Years
The first of the three disruptive events was Brexit. The United Kingdom left the bloc in January 2020 after years of negotiations that began with the June 2016 referendum. Britain had previously been one of the bloc's strongest supporters of free trade, deregulation and limited social, economic and political integration in the continent. For decades, the United Kingdom had also been an ally to Northern (and especially Nordic) European countries that defended an open Europe with a pro-business approach to economic affairs and were skeptical of EU federalization. Britain's departure from the European Union, therefore, created an opportunity for countries in Southern Europe, which tend to defend a more interventionist EU that shields their economies from external competition while also pooling financial resources across the continent to pay for bloc-wide policies.

Right after Brexit came the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in the first wave of EU-wide lockdowns in March 2020. The devastating human and economic impact of the pandemic opened the door for the European Union to take unprecedented steps, including launching a massive 750 billion euro stimulus package in July 2020 that included grants and loans for its members, with Italy and Spain receiving the largest sums of money. Notably, the 27 EU member states allowed the European Commission to borrow in financial markets on their behalf to pay for the package — a policy that had proved impossible to implement during the financial crisis only a decade prior due to firm opposition from northern European governments. To some extent, the north supported the 2020 package because, unlike the 2009 eurozone crisis, the economic damage in Southern Europe was not the result of irresponsible fiscal policies but of events beyond their control. Still, both in scale and especially in the way it was financed, the stimulus package was unprecedented in recent European history and was a strong sign of a more influential Southern Europe. As such, it has established a precedent for future crisis responses.

The third geopolitical event that altered the balance of power in the European Union was Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which led to a spike in inflation across Europe amid tighter and more expensive energy supplies. The economic fallout from the war and the subsequent disruptions to Russian energy exports saw European governments (again) introduce large stimulus packages, as well as desperately look for alternative supplies of natural gas to avoid gas rationing and blackouts. Energy-intensive industries across the continent in sectors ranging from cement to fertilizers were also forced to reduce or halt their operations. The war presented both a risk and an opportunity for Central and Eastern European countries, which for decades had warned about Russia's threat to peace in the continent, and had demanded a greater presence of NATO troops in the region and a more hawkish EU position toward Moscow. Under pressure from Poland and the Baltic states, the European Union imposed economic and political sanctions on Russia while increasing financial, humanitarian and military aid for Ukraine. Notably, the war also forced Germany to break with its decades-old policy that sought to keep political tensions between Russia and the West separated from Germany's massive imports of Russian natural gas. Berlin's decision in February 2022 not to use the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline connecting Germany to Russia (which previous German governments had fervently defended) was highly illustrative of this policy change.

Perhaps more crucially, the war also gave NATO a renewed sense of purpose that was in line with Central and Eastern Europe's views, less than three years after French President Emmanuel Macron had declared the military alliance ''brain dead'' and promoted European alternatives to NATO cooperation. The fact that Sweden and Finland broke their historical neutrality to join the Western security alliance realized Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia's aspiration of completely surrounding Russia in the Baltic region and opened the door to deeper Baltic-Nordic security cooperation.

Finally, the war also increased the strategic importance of Southern European countries, which overnight became key players in the European Union's push to diversify its natural gas supplies away from Russia. Spain and Italy's multiple LNG terminals and their pipeline connections with Northern Africa contrast with Germany's high dependence on pipelines coming from Russia, and put Madrid and Rome at the center of ongoing plans to multiply and diversify the European Union's energy suppliers. In addition, Southern Europe's significant investments in renewable energy (including solar power, which has a huge potential in sun-blessed Mediterranean countries) will only further expand its role in the bloc's energy mix in the coming years —- especially if Northern Europe is willing to pay for the necessary infrastructure to distribute the energy across the continent. Ironically, Europe's energy crunch also resulted in Brussels tolerating countries using more coal, which was a short-term victory for heavy coal users like Poland and other countries in the region.

The Impact Moving Forward
The effects of Brexit, the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine were visible in 2022, but their impact will continue in 2023 and beyond. Now that the taboo of joint EU borrowing has been broken, Southern European governments will continue to push for joint borrowing to pay for continent-wide initiatives in areas ranging from climate change to energy infrastructure. Meanwhile, the European Commission (which in 2020 suspended EU rules on sovereign debt and fiscal deficit limits so that countries could spend their way out of the pandemic) is pushing for a redesign of the rules before they are reintroduced in 2024. Under pressure from the south, the new rules will likely focus on more flexible goals related to long-term growth and debt sustainability as opposed to the current rules, which are more skewed toward meeting short-term, rigid fiscal goals that have proven almost impossible to achieve. In addition, the European Union will use protectionist measures in China and the United States to justify its own ramping up of state aid, subsidies and other forms of assistance to strategic sectors of its economy, which is also in line with Southern Europe's views on how the bloc should operate.

The coming years will also offer new opportunities for Central and Eastern Europe to increase their ability to steer the European Union's strategic direction. Poland and the Baltic states will use their newfound influence on EU foreign policy to ensure that sanctions against Russia are kept and, if possible, expanded. They will also call for (and contribute to) an increased presence of NATO troops in the region, and push against any French plans to implement defense initiatives that would compete with the U.S.-led military alliance. A cease-fire in Ukraine is unlikely in 2023, which means that Poland and its Baltic allies will probably achieve these goals in the short to medium term. More importantly, Poland is emerging as a leading military power in Europe thanks to years of increased defense spending and military modernization, a trend that Russia's invasion of Ukraine will accelerate. This, combined with the fact that Poland is one of the most dynamic economies in the European Union, means that Warsaw's clout in European affairs is likely to only increase in the coming years.

A Permanent Shift?
While these power shifts in Europe will be visible in 2023, they may not be permanent. Once the pandemic- and war-related sense of urgency is gone, Northern European countries may decide that the combination of more flexible fiscal rules and massive EU spending backed by joint debt is not a responsible or sustainable policy. This could result in significant pushback against these measures later this decade out of fears of a new financial crisis in the European Union.

This potential change in attitude will largely hinge on Germany, because many of the current EU policies have been made possible by the fact that two of the three members of Germany's coalition government are economically progressive. By depriving Brussels of decisive German leadership, Berlin's increased focus on domestic affairs over the past year in response to mounting economic and energy crises has also granted Southern European governments room to raise their own profiles in the bloc. But Germany's next general election (which is scheduled for 2025) could bring the conservatives back to power and, with them, more hawkish positions on EU fiscal integration. Early rebellions against the European Union's laxer debt and deficit policies are also likely in countries like the Netherlands, Sweden, Austria and Denmark if the bloc's economic recovery from the current crises happens faster than anticipated. Even without a return to north-south conflict over fiscal policy, volatility in financial markets caused by significant jumps in sovereign debt levels (especially in southern countries like Italy) could be a wake-up call for the European Union to change direction.

The influence of Central and Eastern European countries faces constraints of its own. Poland's sway over EU policy grew in 2022, but the country is still under the threat of sanctions from the European Commission due to rule of law-related disputes that could result in the freezing of billions of euros in EU funds. And while Poland is a leading voice in Russia-related policy, pro-EU countries like Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania do not necessarily share Poland's euroskeptic views on continental integration, which means that there could be divides among the Central and Eastern European governments that are the leading Russia hawks. Moreover, the war in Ukraine isolated Hungary, which was left alone in opposing some of the sanctions against Russia. But Hungary and Poland are still aligned and back each other on social, cultural, rule of law and institutional issues that irritate most Western EU member states and limit cooperation with them. Opinion polls suggest that Poland's pro-European opposition stands a decent chance of winning the general election in late 2023 (which would improve Warsaw's relations with Brussels). However, times of war also tend to benefit incumbent governments, meaning Poland's euroskeptic leaders may secure another term, which would limit its influence on EU policy beyond security issues.

So far, the European Union has managed to remain united despite the seismic changes that took place between 2020 and 2022. But the effect of these changes on EU policy may fade with time. Protectionist trends in China and, to a lesser extent, the United States will give EU members that support state intervention continued justification for their views, which means that such policies will likely persist. But Northern Europe is unlikely to remain passive to the fiscal policies promoted by Southern Europe for fear of rising moral hazard and the risk of new debt crises in the south. In addition, some Eastern European countries' skepticism regarding further EU political and economic integration will likely clash with the more pro-integration views in Western Europe. From a security perspective, China's military rise will not bring the European Union together in the same way that Russia's invasion of Ukraine did, which will result in internal debates over the future of both NATO and defense integration in Europe. This means that while the ongoing shift in internal power dynamics does not pose an immediate existential threat to the European Union, the seeds are currently being planted for new confrontations that will likely come to a head later in the decade — and when they do, the bloc's unity will once again be tested.

Crafty_Dog

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GPF: Serbia
« Reply #356 on: January 05, 2023, 04:45:14 PM »
Third

Serbian buildup. Serbia will increase its special forces personnel, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said on Wednesday. He also said Serbia received its first delivery of weapons – launchers and missiles – from a Western country, though didn’t specify which one. Vucic ordered the Serbian military to go on high alert in December, when tensions escalated in northern Kosovo following clashes between ethnic Serbs in the area and Kosovar authorities.

I am told that we have been training their SF for some years now.

DougMacG

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Re: European matters, Eco Terrorism
« Reply #357 on: January 06, 2023, 03:13:32 AM »

ccp

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Greta approves of violence
« Reply #358 on: January 06, 2023, 06:16:21 AM »
"Swedish activist Greta Thunberg’s “Fridays for the Future” group will also join the Berlin climate protests, German media reported"

THIS - is not funny
the smile is wiped from my face as of now!

 :-o

ccp

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Crafty_Dog

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ccp

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Re: European matters
« Reply #361 on: April 08, 2023, 03:36:15 PM »
option #1  is this
age limit raised from 62 to 64 to at least buy more time

option #2
social security collapses and people starve in the streets
and string up the Soros' et al. on "lamp posts" (George's own phrase * 'Once Upon a Time in Russia; The Rise of the Oligarchs )

Crafty_Dog

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Sweden
« Reply #362 on: June 04, 2023, 06:53:43 PM »

How Sweden Became a Gangster's Paradise
by Peder Jensen  •  June 2, 2023 at 5:00 am

After the Russian invasion of the Ukraine in February 2022, Sweden and Finland abandoned generations of neutrality to apply for membership in the NATO military alliance. However, there is already a gang war going on in Swedish streets, and it has nothing to do with Russia.

[National Police Commissioner Anders] Thornberg estimated that more than 30,000 people are now involved in gang violence in Sweden... According to Thornberg, the situation is "extremely serious," with organized crime infiltrating and corrupting the democratic society, the business world and the public sector.

Some two million immigrants (20% of the population) now live in Sweden, according to David Jones in the Daily Mail, Many come from the most troubled parts of Asia and Africa and have not integrated well into Swedish society. Rival gangs now shoot each other on a regular basis. In Stockholm alone, 52 gangs are vying for control of the burgeoning drug trade, according to a police report, and they are becoming ever more ruthless. Some child gang members even carry explosives in their school thermos flasks. Jones writes:

"Twenty years ago, gun crime was almost non-existent here." — David Jones, the Daily Mail, February 10, 2023.

"Ten to fifteen years ago, it was about shoplifting when we were dealing with 14-year-olds, but now they deal in drugs and handle automatic weapons... Older criminals use children to avoid being caught themselves, and for the children, it is a sign of status to be chosen. It starts as a cool thing for a kid who can't see consequences and ends up getting involved in gang conflicts."— Police officer who asked to remain anonymous, document.no, March 1, 2023.

When available resources are dedicated to investigating shootings and bombings, other crimes such as burglary or theft have become effectively risk-free. This inversion of law enforcement contributes to a growing sense of lawlessness now being felt by many Swedes. What is the point of having laws if they are not enforced, or only used to punish honest citizens?

Since 2010, shoplifting in Sweden has doubled.

More serious crime is also being ignored or de-prioritized by an understaffed police force. In the city of Uppsala, victims of rape complain that they must wait for months to be interviewed.... Most available police resources are now dedicated to combating criminal gangs.

Swedish schools are also becoming increasingly violent, for teachers and pupils alike. Reports about threats and violence at schools have more than doubled since 2012. These reports mainly concern students who have attacked teachers with threats, punches, or strangulation.

In Malmö, Sweden's third-largest city, native Swedes are already a minority. The city is experiencing a kind of "white flight." Many move to smaller towns to find safer environments and schools for their families.

While ownership of rifles for hunting is not uncommon in Sweden, owning guns for self-defence had never, until recently, been a reason to be granted a firearms license.

G M

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Re: Sweden
« Reply #363 on: June 04, 2023, 07:03:21 PM »
Where is the magic soil?



How Sweden Became a Gangster's Paradise
by Peder Jensen  •  June 2, 2023 at 5:00 am

After the Russian invasion of the Ukraine in February 2022, Sweden and Finland abandoned generations of neutrality to apply for membership in the NATO military alliance. However, there is already a gang war going on in Swedish streets, and it has nothing to do with Russia.

[National Police Commissioner Anders] Thornberg estimated that more than 30,000 people are now involved in gang violence in Sweden... According to Thornberg, the situation is "extremely serious," with organized crime infiltrating and corrupting the democratic society, the business world and the public sector.

Some two million immigrants (20% of the population) now live in Sweden, according to David Jones in the Daily Mail, Many come from the most troubled parts of Asia and Africa and have not integrated well into Swedish society. Rival gangs now shoot each other on a regular basis. In Stockholm alone, 52 gangs are vying for control of the burgeoning drug trade, according to a police report, and they are becoming ever more ruthless. Some child gang members even carry explosives in their school thermos flasks. Jones writes:

"Twenty years ago, gun crime was almost non-existent here." — David Jones, the Daily Mail, February 10, 2023.

"Ten to fifteen years ago, it was about shoplifting when we were dealing with 14-year-olds, but now they deal in drugs and handle automatic weapons... Older criminals use children to avoid being caught themselves, and for the children, it is a sign of status to be chosen. It starts as a cool thing for a kid who can't see consequences and ends up getting involved in gang conflicts."— Police officer who asked to remain anonymous, document.no, March 1, 2023.

When available resources are dedicated to investigating shootings and bombings, other crimes such as burglary or theft have become effectively risk-free. This inversion of law enforcement contributes to a growing sense of lawlessness now being felt by many Swedes. What is the point of having laws if they are not enforced, or only used to punish honest citizens?

Since 2010, shoplifting in Sweden has doubled.

More serious crime is also being ignored or de-prioritized by an understaffed police force. In the city of Uppsala, victims of rape complain that they must wait for months to be interviewed.... Most available police resources are now dedicated to combating criminal gangs.

Swedish schools are also becoming increasingly violent, for teachers and pupils alike. Reports about threats and violence at schools have more than doubled since 2012. These reports mainly concern students who have attacked teachers with threats, punches, or strangulation.

In Malmö, Sweden's third-largest city, native Swedes are already a minority. The city is experiencing a kind of "white flight." Many move to smaller towns to find safer environments and schools for their families.

While ownership of rifles for hunting is not uncommon in Sweden, owning guns for self-defence had never, until recently, been a reason to be granted a firearms license.

Crafty_Dog

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Douglas Murray: The Death of Europe
« Reply #364 on: September 01, 2023, 06:56:12 AM »

Crafty_Dog

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WSJ: Hamas violence is another Euro failure
« Reply #367 on: October 13, 2023, 07:13:36 AM »
Hamas’s Violence Is Another European Policy Failure
The EU hoped to influence the world via economic clout. It didn’t work with China and Russia either.
Joseph C. Sternberg
Oct. 12, 2023 5:17 pm ET


If the European Union were a single country it would be the world’s third-most-populous nation—behind India and China—and boast the second-largest economy, behind the U.S. The bloc has evolved a central administrative apparatus that is leading to ever greater political integration and that increasingly attempts to exert its influence on the rest of the world.

The question about all this following Hamas’s invasion of Israel: So what?

The terrorist war launched last weekend from Gaza has shocked Europe in much the same way that Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine did 19 months ago. Gone—at least for now—is the moral and intellectual torpor that has afflicted Europe’s Middle East strategy for decades. Dawning—again, at least for now—is the realization that one side in Israel’s long-running struggle for security is barbaric, and it isn’t Israel.


As happened to an extent following the Ukraine war, the shock will deepen as Europeans continue to absorb the horrific images currently filling their television screens and ask what they should do next. That’s because this disaster, like last year’s, is in part an indictment of Europe’s fundamental way of thinking about itself and its role in the world.

EU foreign policy always has been about the economy. Today’s EU was born in the 1950s as a six-country coal-and-steel bloc intended to use economic integration to secure peace in Western Europe. As the European project expanded—pacifying and enriching the Continent—a new aspiration developed to leverage the bloc’s economic heft into global influence without the need for costly and exhausting military force.

This dream has collapsed in spectacular fashion over the past 19 months under the weight of three challenges.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine was the start. Europe’s hope, dating to West Germany’s Ostpolitik in the 1970s, had been that the carrot of access to a large, prosperous economic bloc could tame its aggressive eastern neighbor. This helps explain Europe’s willing pre-2022 energy dependence on Russia. As preposterous as it sounds in retrospect (and did to sensible people at the time), many European leaders convinced themselves that this was a sign of strength: So great would be Russia’s economic benefit from selling energy to Europe that the Kremlin would never step too far out of line. Oops.

The collapse of that plan has opened European eyes to the second great failure of their old way of relating to the world—China. Here was meant to be an even more muscular version of what the Germans called Wandel durch Handel, or “change through trade.” Trade and European investment into China would hasten the country’s transformation into a more democratic market economy.

This hope was shared by the U.S. and others when China was allowed to join the World Trade Organization in 2001, and it seemed to work for a while. But the West now faces an antagonistic leader in Beijing, Xi Jinping, who cares less about the economy and more about expanding China’s hard power. Though economic influence might not work, the U.S. maintains a Navy capable of projecting power in Asia. What does Europe have?

Hamas’s invasion of Israel represents a different sort of European failure. Across the Middle East, Europe’s strategy generally has been to marshal its domestic resources to buy influence abroad via generous aid. The EU describes itself as the “most important donor for the Palestinian people,” shoveling money into the Palestinian Authority directly and also via the United Nations refugee agency that is particularly active in Gaza.

It has been obvious for some time that an embrace of European values wasn’t following this money, and Brussels announced Monday it is reviewing whether to cut off some or all of this aid. Yet it isn’t clear what other mechanisms the EU might have to exert itself in a region where many of the risks—such as the possibility of new migration flows or a nuclear Iran—pose direct threats to Europe.

The precise reasons for these foreign-policy disasters are many and varied. A common thread is Europe’s failure to admit that other parts of the world weren’t as ideologically exhausted as it was. The Continent’s reliance on economic leverage leaves it ill-equipped to deal with counterparts for whom prosperity is secondary to some other goal—the reconstitution of a Russian empire, the preservation of the Chinese Communist Party, the destruction of the Jews.

Europe’s failures in Russia and China have triggered painful, albeit so far only partial, political recalibrations over the past year and a half. One result is a reinvigoration of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as Europe discovered that military muscle still matters. A sign that Europe is really learning will be if a similar debate breaks out over Middle East policy now.

ccp

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Armenia - Azerbaijan
« Reply #368 on: October 14, 2023, 08:01:02 AM »
since Vivek brought this up in veiled attack on Jewish media (intentional or not?):

https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/20/asia/azerbaijan-armenia-nagorno-karabakh-explainer-intl/index.html


Crafty_Dog

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Zeihan: The coming collapse of Germany
« Reply #369 on: October 15, 2023, 09:14:02 AM »

Crafty_Dog

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Re: European matters
« Reply #370 on: October 18, 2023, 07:48:23 AM »
October 18, 2023
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Europe’s Biggest Challenges Ahead
The Israel-Hamas conflict has complicated some of the Continent’s deepest divides.
By: Antonia Colibasanu

A little over a week ago, I was set to depart for a conference in Brussels when news broke about Hamas’ attack on Israel. The unfolding conflict introduced another layer of complexity to the conference, which was supposed to focus on the challenges facing the Eastern Mediterranean and Southern Europe over the past year stemming from the war in Ukraine. It also made my journey to Brussels more complicated – as I believe will be the case for all travelers to major Western European capitals in the months ahead.

I arrived in Brussels on Oct. 12, just hours after Hamas called on its supporters to observe Oct. 13 as a “day of rage.” In a rush to prepare for my speech at the conference, I didn’t leave my hotel and confined myself to the Brussels bubble, occupied by fellow analysts, lobbyists and policymakers. The day after the conference, I finally left the hotel, and the city seemed empty. The area I was staying in was home not only to buildings of major European institutions but also to one of the largest mosques in Brussels. Walking around the city, I noticed a Palestinian flag hanging on a building and a heavier security presence than I had seen on my previous visits. The friend I was supposed to meet asked if we could convene at another location, farther from the European Parliament. When I got there, she asked if I knew about the terrorist attack in France that had happened just minutes earlier. It was then that I realized the reason for the relative lack of congestion in Brussels at the time: People in the city, particularly those working at EU buildings, were worried about a terrorist attack.

After the EU publicly expressed its support for Israel, flyers condemning the move and supporting the Palestinians were plastered on walls around EU buildings. They were quickly removed, but concerns were growing.

By the end of the day, France announced that it would increase its state of alert to the highest level. Major museums and tourist attractions in Paris were closed the next day. While fears of terrorist attacks in European cities aren’t new – Brussels saw a major attack in 2016, and Paris in 2015 – it seems what’s happening in the Middle East has given such concerns more validity. My friend and I tried to go about our day more or less as usual, but we too were worried. (Little did we know that a Tunisian man claiming to be a member of Islamic State would kill two people in Brussels a few days later.)

I walked back to my hotel through Ixelles, a neighborhood with a large community of people with African origins. Hearing loud chatter about the Middle East and the fate of Palestine, it was clear to me that residents were not indifferent to what was happening in the Middle East. Later that evening, when walking to dinner, I passed by a group of young people – judging by their French accents, likely international students or workers from North Africa – having a strong disagreement over Israel’s actions. At the restaurant, a group of young Italians were debating the same topic. Clearly, many in Europe are preoccupied with the crisis.

There are a few reasons for this, each pertaining to the three dimensions that define European geopolitics: security, economics and politics. The situation in the Middle East has the most obvious impact on security. France announced on Oct. 14 that it would deploy 7,000 soldiers around the country to beef up security. Its Ministry of Interior said it has already addressed 189 incidents of antisemitism since Oct. 12 when Hamas issued its call to supporters of the Palestinians. After the United States, France has the world’s largest Jewish community outside of Israel, as well as Europe’s largest Muslim population. The possibility that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could spill over into its streets is a major cause for concern among French authorities.

While France is likely the most vulnerable place in Europe to a potential spillover, other countries on the Continent will also have to address the problem. Since Oct. 13, protests in support of the Palestinian cause have taken place in London, Madrid, Barcelona, Brussels, Rome, Amsterdam, Luxembourg City, Bern, Dusseldorf and others. Vienna and Berlin saw pro-Israeli protests over the weekend, while police in the German capital broke up a protest on Oct. 15 that had been banned by authorities at short notice. The German interior minister confirmed on Oct. 16 that security services were instructed to consider using all legal options to expel Hamas supporters from Germany.

While officials focus publicly on the need to stamp out antisemitic and anti-Israel actions and statements, the concerns over violence point to much deeper friction relating to Europe’s socio-economic problems. In addition to supporting the Palestinian cause, the people participating in pro-Palestinian demonstrations are also doing so out of self-interest. They believe they have been oppressed not by the state of Israel but by the governments and the elites who control much of the wealth and opportunities where they live. This is a common view among poorer classes in European societies, but the feeling of being unjustly treated grows even bigger when race or religion plays a role.

Over the past decade, class-based polarization in Europe has been growing. This is largely due to the economic crisis but has been magnified by the large influx of migrants over the past several years. Between 2014 and 2016, Europe saw a record surge of refugees fleeing wars in Syria and elsewhere, primarily Muslim countries in Africa. Over the past six months, the Continent has seen another wave of migrants, most fleeing poor socio-economic conditions, which were exacerbated by disruptions in global food supplies as a result of the war in Ukraine.

In fact, the Hamas attack happened just as EU member states were discussing a new deal to tackle the refugee influx. Under the agreement, nations like Italy, Greece and Spain – which are among the top migrant recipients in Europe – could speed up asylum procedures and request immediate assistance from their EU peers, including financial aid and relocations. In addition, Germany announced on Oct. 11 that it intends to make it easier and faster to deport unsuccessful asylum-seekers, particularly those with a criminal record, by shortening notice periods and making it easier for authorities to conduct searches, including for documents at an asylum-seeker's home. These moves are all responses to the recent wave of migration, which will grow only bigger with a new conflict in the Middle East.

The measures also highlight concerns by various European governments over established Muslim communities in their countries. According to a poll conducted by Pew Research, Muslims accounted for about 4.9 percent of the total European population in 2016. Countries with the largest Muslim populations were France, Germany, the U.K., Italy, the Netherlands and Spain – all of which have seen protests and stepped up security measures in recent days. The migration issue will exacerbate these concerns, considering that many migrants come from Muslim-majority countries.

There’s also a political dimension to fears over what the Israel-Hamas conflict could mean for Europe. The countries mentioned above have all seen populist movements growing in popularity over the past decade. Most populist parties (particularly those on the right but also many on the left) have been highly critical of migration into the EU from Muslim-majority countries. According to Pew polling from 2019, supporters of populist parties have developed negative attitudes toward Muslims in their countries. This issue, and its security implications, will likely play a large role in political campaigns ahead of European Parliament elections in 2024, as well as elections in member states.

Meanwhile, EU members are also in talks on how to modify the bloc's budget to tackle growing problems, including the post-pandemic economic recovery and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. EU leaders will sit down to review the budget in December, but the European Commission has already suggested that funding for Ukraine needs to increase. In 2021, the commission established the European Peace Facility, a project funded outside the EU budget aimed at continuing to supply the Ukrainian military with arms. Initially worth 5.6 billion euros ($5.9 billion), the commission this year proposed increasing the fund by another 20 billion euros over the next four years. It also wants to secure an additional 50 billion euros in macroeconomic assistance for Ukraine. It’s likely the EU will also consider new funds for the Middle East as the situation there intensifies.

However, adoption of these plans will depend on the priorities of EU member states in the coming months. With populist and mainstream parties disagreeing over migration policies and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s vision for the world, Europe is in for an intense campaign season. And as the conflict in the Middle East escalates and the United States heads into its own election season, it seems that divisions in Europe will only worsen.

Body-by-Guinness

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Finnish Pipeline Damaged by Chinese Vessel?
« Reply #371 on: October 21, 2023, 12:14:49 PM »
There has got to be more to this, but it appears a Chinese ship somehow damaged a Finnish ocean pipeline and now the Finnish popo are trying to unravel just what occurred. Perhaps this is just an ancho dropped in the wrong place, or maybe this is 4D energy chess. Whatever it is, it has been eclipsed by the Hamas atrocities and hence few are looking into it:

https://poliisi.fi/en/-/the-investigation-is-now-focused-on-the-role-of-the-vessel-newnew-polar-bear?embed=true&fbclid=IwAR3GmJNxMP6M7RFFmrjbVznUh4M5KYXMYbOkIjGsOfaXfP-SQhmSsecCkwY

Crafty_Dog

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Re: European matters
« Reply #372 on: October 21, 2023, 01:57:08 PM »
Yeah, I saw this one too.  Weird.

Body-by-Guinness

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Bland but Controversial
« Reply #373 on: October 31, 2023, 09:20:25 PM »
This is pretty white bread and there are several points that inspire an eye roll; however its publication appears to mark a dawning grasp of anti-dhimmitude, and might even be cast as bold given the certainty some will object, perhaps vociferously, particularly as these points more than suggest they are written in response to a mindset of medieval religious thuggery: 

https://rairfoundation.com/german-newspapers-50-point-manifesto-for-migrants-we-do-not-arrange-marriages-for-children-or-beat-them-men-cannot-have-multiple-wives-knives-are-for-kitchens-not-our-pockets/?fbclid=IwAR1H8x1c40nX7w-mXVnHBeGSnv2j_ieqKNSvhSrk228OtqKST9uXyScrBbY


ccp

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DougMacG

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Argentina, now Netherlands elects conservative, Geert Wilders
« Reply #376 on: November 23, 2023, 05:28:18 AM »
The whole world is turning left, all except the voters. The voters turned left but then found out what the results of that are. It's like Lucy and the football. They keep trying to elect the good kind of socialism and instead they get the real kind and they don't like it.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/11/the_netherlands_just_elected_a_conservative_prime_minister.html


ccp

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VDH : decline of the West
« Reply #378 on: November 23, 2023, 12:36:43 PM »
https://dailycaller.com/2023/11/23/victor-davis-hanson-can-europe-become-western-again/

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1293562/expenditure-on-military-defense-as-gdp-share-in-the-european-union-eu-27/#:~:text=On%20average%2C%20the%20EU-27%20countries%20spent%201.2%20percent,two%20percent%20of%20their%20GDP%20for%20defense%20purposes.

In 2021, the United Kingdom's defense spending as a share of Gross Domestic Product was estimated to have been 2.3 percent. Since 1980, the UK's defense spending was at it's highest in 1984 when 5.5 percent of the UK's GDP was spent on the military.


Crafty_Dog

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Crafty_Dog

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ccp

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Re: European matters
« Reply #382 on: January 18, 2024, 07:31:23 AM »
and here we see more and more demonization of Christians, especially evangelicals.

how often did we see and hear admonishment from the main stream media recently of them while the Iowa caucuses were in progress?

the caliphate continues its growth
Mo could not be happier in his grave.


Crafty_Dog

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Poland tells EU to fizz off
« Reply #384 on: February 24, 2024, 06:12:48 PM »

Body-by-Guinness

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Irish Stoutly Defeat Constitutional Amendments
« Reply #385 on: March 09, 2024, 08:06:01 PM »
Pols across three parties sought to insert de rigueur language into the Irish constitution, but were soundly defeated. My guess is the pols will prove tone deaf to voter sentiments and instead will lament that insufficient communication addressing voter ignorance was the cause:

https://www.politico.eu/article/irish-voters-reject-bid-to-rewrite-constitutions-view-women-family/

Crafty_Dog

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Germany
« Reply #386 on: March 20, 2024, 09:59:54 AM »

ya

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Re: European matters
« Reply #387 on: March 23, 2024, 09:17:00 AM »
"“Europe is a digital colony of the United States… an economic colony of China… a demographic colony of Africa… and is about to become a religious colony of Islam.”