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European Union Tag

Posted by Mary Chastain on August 08, 2016 6 Comments
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced at a rally that he would approve the death penalty if parliament votes to bring it back:
“If the parliament accepts the reintroduction of death penalty, I will accept it,” he told the crowd, adding that the death penalty exists in the U.S., Japan and “many other countries.” “If the people want death penalty, I think the political parties will also accept it,” he also said, as he noted that the death penalty existed until 1984 in Turkey.

Posted by Mary Chastain on August 08, 2016 3 Comments
The Belgium government has opened a terrorism investigation into the machete attack on Saturday that injured two female cops in Charleroi. A third cop shot and killed the attacker. The attacker, a 33-year-old Algerian, yelled "Allahu Akbar!" when he attacked the females. The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the man.

Posted by Mary Chastain on July 25, 2016 8 Comments
Turkey continues to purge people after a failed coup two weeks ago. Authorities said ambassadors are next while Amnesty International reported authorities have raped and tortured the detainees already behind bars. Turkey blames the Gülen Movement and have said everyone purged has connections to the group. Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said they are no concentrating on his department:
"Some personnel in the ministry had been given answered questions... and some personnel were placed in key positions in the ministry," he told broadcaster France 24.

Posted by Mary Chastain on July 25, 2016 5 Comments
Two Syrians in Germany attacked innocent civilians on Sunday. One killed a pregnant woman with a machete while the other detonated a bomb outside of a music festival. The bomber recently pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, which has led authorities to call it a terrorist attack. Authorities call the murder of the pregnant woman a crime of passion since the attacker was in love with her. The attacks come only days after Ali Sonboly, a German-Iranian 18-year-old, killed nine at a McDonalds in Munich.

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on July 22, 2016 29 Comments
The Munich police have an 18-year-old German-Iranian male shot and killed eight people today. He killed himself afterwards and they do not have a motive. https://twitter.com/dwnews/status/756646211738828800 https://twitter.com/dwnews/status/756647504335216648

Posted by Mary Chastain on July 19, 2016 18 Comments
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan continues to purge those allegedly involved in the failed coup on Friday. Today, the Education Ministry sacked 15,200 teachers, canceled 21,000 licenses at private schools, and asked deans at universities to leave:
“Our ministry is carrying out extensive efforts aimed at public personnel in central and rural districts who have connections to FETÖ. As of today, 15,200 public officials have been suspended and investigations were launched into them,” the statement released from the ministry’s Twitter account read.

Posted by Mary Chastain on July 18, 2016 14 Comments
European Union commissioner Johannes Hahn told the media he believes President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan made his purge list before the coup:
"It looks at least as if something has been prepared. The lists are available, which indicates it was prepared and to be used at a certain stage," Hahn said. "I'm very concerned. It is exactly what we feared."
The government has arrested more than 6,000 people, some who did not even know they participated in the coup. They claimed their commanders told them "they were taking part in military manoeuvres."

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on July 17, 2016 11 Comments
The Brexit vote that resulted in David Cameron stepping down has also prompted a range of apocolyptic fear-mongering that British trade would collapse. In fact, numerous countries are beginning to explore free trade deals with Britain after its EU exit.  With the 2019 date for Britain's exit from the EU looming, the United States and Australia have emerged "at the front of queue" to line up trade deals.  Such deals with just these two countries "alone could be worth billions of pounds to the British economy." Australia, in particular, sees the opportunity to open up trading with Britain as a "matter of urgency." The Guardian reports:
Australia has called for a free-trade deal with Britain as soon as possible, in a boost for the newly appointed prime minister, Theresa May. In a phone call on Saturday, May spoke to her Australian counterpart, Malcolm Turnbull, who expressed his desire to open up trading between the two countries as a matter of urgency.
For her part, May states her belief that these talks are important in terms of showing that Brexit can work out well for Britons.

Posted by Mary Chastain on July 11, 2016 6 Comments
Energy Secretary Andrea Leadsom dropped out of the race for prime minister on Monday morning, leaving Home Secretary Theresa May as the only candidate left standing. Current Prime Minister David Cameron said he will leave on Wednesday since there is no need for an election. The Conservative Party officially named May as his successor:
"Obviously, with these changes, we now don't need to have a prolonged period of transition. And so tomorrow I will chair my last cabinet meeting. On Wednesday I will attend the House of Commons for prime minister's questions. And then after that I expect to go to the palace and offer my resignation. So we will have a new prime minister in that building behind me by Wednesday evening," Cameron told reporters outside 10 Downing Street on Monday.

Posted by Mary Chastain on July 08, 2016 6 Comments
President Barack Obama wants NATO to "stand firm" against Russia until the Kremlin has fully complied with ceasefire agreements in east Ukraine. He also promised 1,000 troops to Poland for extra security:
"In Warsaw, we must reaffirm our determination — our duty under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty — to defend every NATO ally," Obama said.

Posted by Mary Chastain on July 07, 2016 6 Comments
NATO will meet in Warsaw to show unity against Russia and approve a Baltic force, but the Brexit referendum could take center stage as some believe a weaker European Union means a weaker NATO. Poland always wanted a NATO summit, especially since Russia has flexed its muscles. But unfortunately, the Brexit referendum may take a starring role with the leaders along with a possibility of Donald Trump joining them next year:
“Since 1999, when Poland joined NATO, this is the most important summit for us,” said Tomasz Szatkowski, Poland’s deputy minister of defense. “It provides for the actual presence of Western allies in Poland.”

Posted by Mary Chastain on July 07, 2016 5 Comments
The United Kingdom will have its second female prime minister after David Cameron resigned when the kingdom voted to leave the European Union. The second ballot pushed Home Secretary Theresa May and Energy Minister Andrea Leadsom to the front. Justice Secretary Michael Gove came in third, thus eliminating him from the race. Conservative members will vote for the next prime minister and announce the winner on September 9.

Posted by Mary Chastain on July 07, 2016 7 Comments
Believe it or not, Germany never had decent rape laws until now. It took numerous rapes and sexual assaults for the country to establish a "No means No" law. Now a woman can claim she was raped even if she did not fight back. Yes, before this, a woman had to fight back in order to claim rape. They also classified "groping as a sex crime and makes it easier to prosecute assaults committed by large group."

Posted by Mary Chastain on July 06, 2016 17 Comments
German activist Selin Gören said she lied to the police about her attackers because she did not want racists to use her story as an excuse to keep out refugees. The men attacked the spokeswoman for Linksjugend Solid, a left-wing German youth organization, at a playground late at night in Mannheim. She immediately called the police, but told them German speaking men robbed her. Her boyfriend, though, became mad at Gören for lying and encouraged her to tell the truth.

Posted by Mary Chastain on July 05, 2016 12 Comments
The Swedish police face over 40 reports of rape and sexual assault at two music festivals over the weekend in Karlstad and Norrköping. The police have identified seven suspects described as "foreign young men." The victims are mostly under 18-years-old with three under 15. The youngest victim is only 12-years-old.

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on July 05, 2016 9 Comments
“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” Chicago Mayor and long-time Obama confidant Rahm Emanuel once said. Despite being rejected by the UK voters in the last month’s referendum, top bureaucrats running the European Union want to do precisely that. Since Brexit results, they have unveiled plans to build an EU Army, expand the entitlement programmes, and boldest of all -- calls to create a unified EU Government, a pan-European Superstate. What was once confined to the realm of myth and conspiracy theory, is now being proposed from the helm of the EU. On the day of the Brexit result, President of EU Parliament Martin Schluz and German Vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel published a detailed proposal calling for reconstituting the EU into a European Government. Both Gabriel and Schulz are leading members of Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) that is currently in a coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU). Having tied its lot to Merkel’s policy of open borders, SPD’s poll numbers have hit a historic low. The proposal co-published by two of the Europe’s most powerful politicians wants to wrest remaining economic powers away from the national governments, creating an ‘Economic Schengen’ zone.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on July 04, 2016 14 Comments
I have been following the antics of "AG's United for Clean Power," a group of Democratic states attorneys general spearheaded by former Vice President Al Gore, who are threatening Big Oil and climate change skeptics with racketeering statutes. Despite scholarly reminders of this tactics' obvious constitutional abuses and outcries from proponents of First Amendment rights and sound science, the Democratic Party Platform Drafting Committee is keen to adopt the approach.
The committee unanimously adopted a “joint proposal calling on the Department of Justice to investigate alleged corporate fraud on the part of fossil fuel companies who have reportedly misled shareholders and the public on the scientific reality of climate change.” I.e., it wants to criminalize courageous people who still believe it’s okay to think independently, at least about allegedly dangerous manmade global warming.

Posted by Mary Chastain on July 02, 2016 7 Comments
Austria's highest court ruled for a do-over of the presidential election runoff after it found discrepancies in the mail ballots. The mail-in ballots made former Green Party chief Alexander Van der Bellen president with 50.3% of the vote over Freedom Party candidate Norbert Hofer. Constitutional Court head Gerhart Holzinger said the court noted "that the irregularities affected nearly 78,000 votes — more than twice the margin separating the two candidates." From Reuters:
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