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Europe Tag

Posted by Mary Chastain on January 24, 2017 11 Comments
The UK Supreme Court has decided that parliament must decide if the government can start the Brexit process. The ruling also stated that the "Scottish Parliament and Welsh and Northern Ireland assemblies did not need a say." Prime Minister Theresa may cannot begin talks with European Union (EU) leaders until parliament votes. May would like to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, the part that allows a country to leave the EU, by the end of March.

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on December 15, 2016 24 Comments
Despite Merkel government’s all-out effort to prevent the breakdown of law and order in German cites ahead of the New Year’s Eve, wide cracks are appearing in country's police preparedness. What reads much like a dispatch from a lost battlefront, the union of police officers in the eastern German state of Thuringa has penned an open letter describing the dire state of affairs amid an unstoppable migrant crime wave. “[You] are abandoning us to a superior force,” says the desperate note addressed to Interior Minister of Thuringa.
Time and again representatives of the police union have pointed out the dramatic consequences to the politicians and higher authorities, the letter further says, (Quote) “But what changes? Nothing. One instead gets a sense of disinterest.”  [Author's translation]

Posted by Mary Chastain on December 09, 2016 7 Comments
EU counter-terrorism coordinator Gilles de Kerchove will tell the EU interior ministers on Friday that experts have found 1,750 ISIS jihadists have come back to Europe to perform terrorist attacks:
Up to 35 percent have returned - some with 'specific missions' - and 50 percent remain in the battle theatre, which amounted to between 2,000 and 2,500 Europeans.

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on December 08, 2016 15 Comments
What could only be described as a political sleight-of-hand, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is suddenly running as a conservative ahead of next year’s general election. Merkel who opened the floodgates of Europe to millions of Arab and Muslim migrants by scrapping the border controls (Dublin Protocol), is now talking tough on mass-migration and calling for a ban on the regressive Islamic garb, Burqa. “The full-face veil is not acceptable in our country,” Merkel said on Tuesday while addressing her party’s convention held in the city of Essen. “It should be banned, wherever it is legally possible.”

Posted by Mary Chastain on December 05, 2016 1 Comment
Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has announced he will resign from his post after Italians rejected a referendum to amend the country's 1948 constitution. Renzi said:
"Tomorrow the President of the Republic will have a meeting with me and I will hand in my resignation," Renzi said. "I take on full responsibilities for defeat and so I say I lost, not you," he told supporters. The defeat of the referendum was resounding, with nearly 60% of voters saying "no."

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on November 22, 2016 14 Comments
It’s official! Merkel will run for a fourth term as German Chancellor. After months of speculations, Chancellor Merkel has announced her decision to lead the Christian Democrats (CDU) in next year’s election. The chief architect of Europe’s open border policy, 62 year old politician has been at the helm of Germany for the last eleven years. President Obama dropped in to lend a helping hand. On the last leg of his presidency, U.S. President gave Merkel a “glowing endorsement” -- to quote London-based Financial Times -- as he toured Germany last week. Obama asked Germans to “appreciate” Merkel. “If I were here and I were German, and I had a vote, I might support her,” Obama told reporters in Berlin.

Posted by Mary Chastain on November 19, 2016 4 Comments
2016 has been a crazy year for governments with the United Kingdom voting to leave the European Union and Donald Trump winning the presidency here in the states. Now Italy is moving towards uncertainty as polls show Italians do not want Prime Minister Matteo Renzi's referendum. Renzi promised to step down if his referendum fails. These referendums will "reduce the role of the Senate and transfer powers to central government from the regions." The Wall Street Journal reports a rejection could tumble bank shares and weaken the euro.

Posted by Mary Chastain on November 03, 2016 33 Comments
The High Court in the United Kingdom ruled that Parliament must vote when Britain can start the Brexit process, meaning Prime Minister Theresa May cannot invoke Article 50, which opens a two-year window for talks to leave the European Union. The government plans to appeal the verdict to the Supreme Court, but if the justices uphold it, "that would mean lawmakers, a majority of whom voted to stay, would have more influence over how Brexit is carried out and could theoretically delay or even stop the process."

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on October 18, 2016 6 Comments
“Anti-Semitic, homophobic and sympathising with Jihad.” This is how a leading Austrian newspaper summed up the latest study looking into the attitudes of young Muslims living in the city of Vienna. The study commissioned by the city reveals that nearly one-third of the Muslim youth living in the Austrian capital hold radical Islamic views and support armed Jihad against the West. The leftist coalition running the city attacked the findings of the study that yet again reveal the clutching hold of Islamism over Europe’s migrant Muslim population. The study also exposes the failure of Multiculturalism, a policy pursued for decades by Social Democrats and ecological Green Party, who run the Austrian capital.

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on October 11, 2016 11 Comments
If the pro-immigration Denk Party has its way in the next election, the Netherlands will receive a “Racism Police” to go after thought and speech crimes. Denk Party, founded a couple of years ago by two former-socialist politicians of Turkish origin, already sits in the Dutch parliament and is banking on the support of country’s growing Muslim population, currently at about 7 percent, in the parliamentary elections held early next year. Denk Party, dominated by members of Turkish and Muslim origin, often piggybacks on progressive and leftist issues to expand its support base. The party wants stricter sentences for "racist and discriminatory behaviour", and treat so-called offenders much like child molesters by listing them on a nationwide "Racism Register". The Muslim-dominated party promises to create a 1,000-men strong force to go after "Dutch racists".

Posted by Leslie Eastman on October 07, 2016 19 Comments
Nothing is safe from race-based drama! This week started with Aleister reporting on Penn State's costume-shaming campaign targeting Halloween garb. However, despite the fact that a Muslim leader originally commissioned the work and the opera has been performed over 1,000 times since its debut in 1886, a British university is shutting down a musical based on Giuseppi Verdi's Aida due amid charges of...cultural appropriation.

Posted by Mary Chastain on September 27, 2016 15 Comments
The Swiss lower parliament has approved a bill to ban women from wearing a burqa in public by a vote of 88 to 87 with 10 abstentions. The commission of representatives will receive the bill, but the members will likely vote against it since the member already "ruled out such a proposal at the beginning of 2016." The Ticino region inspired this bill when the local government banned the burqa. Due to the popularity, people organized a committee to collect signatures "to expand the ban across" Switzerland.

Posted by Mary Chastain on September 12, 2016 7 Comments
The current Austrian presidential election is filled with more drama than America's election cycle, if you can believe that. Independent presidential candidate Alexander Van der Bellen, backed by the Green Party, barely beat Freedom Party candidate Norbert Hofer in May in an election that came down to the mail-in ballots. However, Austria's highest court overturned the election results in July when the justices noticed problems with mail ballots affecting, "nearly 78,000 votes - more than twice the margin separating the two candidates." As a result, a runoff election was scheduled for October 2. That election has recently been delayed and for an all too familiar reason -- mail-in ballots.

Posted by Mary Chastain on September 04, 2016 13 Comments
In July, the Turkish military attempted a coup to take out President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's regime. They failed, which led to a crackdown by the government and a purge of anyone the government felt had ties to scholar Fetullah Gulen, who they feel devised the coup. Erodgan has railed against the West for not standing with its NATO ally, but that all changed this weekend. President Barack Obama met with Erdogan and promised the U.S. will help bring the coup plotters to justice.
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