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Europe Tag

Wednesday, Swiss Police raided a mosque and several houses in search of terrorists belonging to Islamic State. Around one hundred law enforcement officers were involved in the counter-terrorism operation carried out in the Italian-speaking region of Ticino. Police arrested two Islamists of Turkish origin, including a recruiter for Islamic State. So far, Switzerland has been spared terrorist attacks such as those carried out in France, Belgium and Germany, but the country has long been in the crosshairs of Jihadists. ISIS had previously released propaganda clips calling Switzerland part of the "coalition of devil" and threatening to carry out terrorist attacks inside the country.

Vice President Mike Pence attended the Munich Security Conference in Germany where he told Europe that America will stand behind its NATO allies. Pence also met with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to assure him that America remains committed to Ukraine and that Russia upholds the Minsk Agreement. President Donald Trump rattled some cages on the campaign trail when he stated his beliefs that NATO was obsolete, leading many to believe America will abandon the organization. Pence said that will not happen:

Uh oh. UK Parliament Speaker John Bercow has found himself in deeper water after he revealed to students that he voted for the UK to remain in the European Union on the Brexit vote. From The Telegraph:
His fresh comments appear to breach the convention that Speakers of the House of Commons do not allow themselves to be drawn into political debate.

Right after the Paris attacks of November 2015 that killed 128 people, President Obama scoffed at Republicans for being "scared of widows and orphans coming into the United States of America." But just because those "clinging to their guns and religion"  -- to use another of Obama's expression-- might be skeptical of mass-migration from Muslim dominated countries, doesn't mean Islamic terrorism isn't out to get them. According to a recent report published by a UK-based counter-extremism think tank, Islamist groups like ISIS and Boko Haram are using child recruits to infiltrate the refugee wave currently overwhelming Europe. ISIS was paying smugglers to bring child recruits across to Europe and offering up to $2,000 for each child recruited inside the refugees camps in Lebanon and Jordan, says the report issued by Quilliam International.

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.

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]

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.

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.”

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."

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.

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.

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."

“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.

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".

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.