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European Union Tag

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:

Posted by Leslie Eastman on July 01, 2016 19 Comments
As more information is revealed about the extent of European Union regulatory inanity in the wake of the #Brexit victory, the more the Leave voters have been vindicated. Kemberlee blogged that EU regulations were set to ban traditional tea kettles and toasters that are essential appliances in the British kitchen. In 2013, the bureaucrats put restrictions on cinnamon content of traditional Danish pastries:
Brussels has sparked outrage in Denmark by proposing to outlaw their traditional pastries. Christmas festivities have been dampened in Copenhagen by the prospect that this could be the last year its citizens will be able to eat their kanelsnegler or cinnamon rolls. The end to the beloved pastries comes from EU limits on the amount of coumarin, a naturally occurring toxic chemical found in the most commonly used type of cinnamon, cassia.

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on June 30, 2016 9 Comments
The result of the last week’s UK referendum has come as a boost to popular movements across Europe. Arguably the Europe’s most articulate proponent of the anti-EU movement, Netherland’s Geert Wilders has called for a Dutch referendum on EU membership following the British vote. Wilders, leader and founder of Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV), said in written statement that "the United Kingdom is leading the way to the future and liberation. The time is now for a new start, trusting in its own strength and sovereignty. Also in the Netherlands." Wilders believes that Brexit is merely the beginning of the end for the EU. “The Netherlands will be next,” he told the media after the result of the UK referendum was announced. “We want to regain control over our country, our own money, our own borders, our own immigration policy.”

Posted by Mary Chastain on June 29, 2016 12 Comments
British Prime Minister David Cameron told Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn to leave his post, a day after his party passed a no confidence motion against him. "It might be my party's interest for him to sit there, it's not in the national interest and I would say, for heaven's sake, man, go!" he said at the House of Commons. (Video after the jump)

Posted by Mary Chastain on June 29, 2016 14 Comments
United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) leader Nigel Farage, who also led the Brexit campaign, told off the European Union parliament with much glee on Tuesday. Britain voted to leave the EU in a historic vote last Thursday. He said:
"Isn't it funny. When I came here 17 years ago and I said I wanted to lead a campaign to get Britain to leave the EU, you all laughed at me but you are not laughing now," Mr Farage told Members of the European Parliament (MEPs).

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on June 29, 2016 6 Comments
While the doomsday scenario foretold by the EU campaigners and the liberal media of untold misery, political chaos and economic disaster befalling Britain -- if the country votes to leave the EU -- has yet to come to pass. Instead, the British stocks and pound have rallied back after tumbling down initially in the aftermath of the referendum. Even the liberal-minded Financial Times now admits that Brexit will be "neutral to moderately negative for the UK" but "devastating for the EU". The newspaper believes that it is Italy that Eurocrats now need to worry about -- not UK. Italy’s ailing banking sector has been drifting towards a crisis, forcing the government to roll out a $40 billion bailout plan this week. Though Brexit did not causing the crisis, as Italy already suffers from decapitalised banking system, high youth unemployment and sluggish growth. However, the departure of UK, EU’s second largest economy and its third biggest donor, could not have come at a worse time for the country. Nor could economic woes and public discontent in the country come at a less opportune time for EU, as Italy heads towards a constitutional referendum in October.

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on June 28, 2016 17 Comments
With EU leadership in Brussels still coming to terms with Britain leaving the union, following the last week's stunning performance by the Brexit campaign in the referendum, popular movements across Europe have renewed their calls to leave the European Union. Nowhere is the opposition to the EU politically better organised than in France. In a poll conducted by University of Edinburgh in March this year, more than half of the French respondents were in favour of a Frexit -- France leaving the EU. Brexit comes as a shot in the arm for Marine Le Pen, the leader of France's right-wing Front National, as she prepares for the presidential election coming up next year. Le Pen's anti-immigration and Eurosceptic party has shown impressive run in the country's regional elections. Now Le Pen wants to make France’s EU membership a central theme of her presidential campaign, as EU establishes itself as the driving force behind the mass immigration and open border policy, with Brussels actively blocking and penalising EU member state from enforcing even basic border controls. In the aftermath of last November’s Paris attacks, a growing number of people in French want to see an end to the open border policy.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on June 27, 2016 16 Comments
There is no single reason Britons voted to sever ties with the European Union, but for many, decentralized, unelected foreign bureaucrats with bone-headed, meddlesome ideas was all the convincing needed to call it quits. So ridiculous were some of the EU's proposed regulations that even the wildest American legislators look somewhat sane by comparison. Forget migrant assimilation difficulties, terrorism, and financial woes. What and how people ate became a regulatory priority. Sound familiar? A handful of overly nitpicky proposals provide a glimpse into a microcosm of over-reach frustration.

Posted by Mary Chastain on June 27, 2016 8 Comments
People inside the Labour Party have accused party leader Jeremy Corbyn and his office of hampering the party's campaign to keep Britain in the European Union. From The London Times:
Alan Johnson, the former home secretary, said that it often felt as if figures in the leader’s office were “working against the rest of the party and had conflicting objectives”.

Posted by New Neo on June 26, 2016 19 Comments
To be quite blunt about it, a great many people in Britain have just given a big middle finger to leaders who have ignored their concerns about national identity and autonomy, and their right to make decisions within their own country about the nature of that country. These principles used to be the bulwarks of a democracy such as Britain, with a long and proud tradition that has not yet died. Although the EU plan was designed to weaken that tradition---and probably has to a certain extent---the tradition is still strong enough, and the provocation great enough, to cause a majority of British voters to give a big resounding "no" to an EU scheme they've found to be increasingly intolerable, with diminishing rewards and increasing drawbacks. Anti-EU feeling among the people of member-states isn't limited to Britain, although it may be strongest there because Britain was a relative latecomer to the EU and retains some of its non-continental island identity. But nationalist movements are afoot in France, and Donald Trump represents the American version (although of course we're not in the EU and therefore have no need to vote to get out of it).

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on June 25, 2016 31 Comments
Could there have been bona fide reasons for Brexit? Not if you believe Joy Reid. On her MSNBC show today, Reid suggested that old and rural voters, who tended to vote Leave, had "hijacked the future of the young." She also blamed voter discontent on Prime Minister David Cameron's "austerity" program. Guess Reid reckons that people would have been happier with a UK that looked like Greece. Ron Insana chimed in to suggest that older voters were "re-romanticizing" their past, leading Reid to see a symmetry with Trump campaign, which she claims is being driven by the "nostalgia voter."

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 24, 2016 28 Comments
The reaction to the British vote to leave the EU focuses heavily on the money. It will cost Britain jobs. The Pound is getting pounded. The EU will extract a price as bureaucratic retribution. Britain shot itself in the economy. The departure allegedly will destroy young people, female workers, the arts, science, universities and students, just about everything else British, and even .... Massachusetts! The pre-vote analysis summed up the issues broadly as follows: "Remain" voters focused on the economy, while "Leave" voters focused on immigration, sovereignty, loss of control to the EU bureaucracy.

Posted by Mary Chastain on June 24, 2016 18 Comments
So last night the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. Of course, everyone has an opinion. When I say everyone I mean everyone. This is by far the best reaction. Of course, I'm biased since I'm American. https://twitter.com/GlomarResponder/status/746146090198700033 Second best tweet:

Posted by Mary Chastain on June 23, 2016 35 Comments
The United Kingdom has voted to stay or leave the European Union. They closed the polls and people have started counting the votes. The results remained close, but the Leave campaign is inching closer and closer to reality. https://twitter.com/BBCBreaking/status/746186028239683585 https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/746187969980076033 This is the best #Brexit tweet so far: https://twitter.com/GlomarResponder/status/746146090198700033
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