|
R. Mute posted:How can you discuss feminism in the context of European politics without wandering into feminism in a more general context? Especially considering the types that frequent this thread. Just keep focused on a particular issue that fits the European politics context. For example, instead of discussing women quotas in general, you can discuss this in particular. Just my two eurocents.
|
#
¿
Mar 7, 2016 14:48
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 05:54 |
|
|
YF-23 posted:This is the same EU that tolerates Orban in Hungary, and in the name of opposing Russian imperialism accepts working with a neonazi-backed government in Ukraine. You're buying in Putin's propaganda if you think that the neonazis in Ukraine are offering a significant support to the government, or exerting any sort of influence on it.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 7, 2016 19:29
|
|
|
If the EU explodes, Turkey cannot be part of it, right?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 7, 2016 23:29
|
|
|
Pochoclo posted:Can eurogoons tell me if Brexit is gonna happen or not? Because I'm moving to London to work next month and it would really suck. It's relatively unlikely since most people will generally favor just keeping the status quo as it is and going on with their lives. On the other hand, those are also the possible the least likely to be motivated to vote; whereas those who do want to change stuff are the ones most motivated. One thing is certain, however: a Brexit win would be the outcome with the most interesting consequences.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 7, 2016 23:47
|
|
|
Effectively including Turkey in the Schengen area is the stupidest thing to come out of Europe in a long, long while. Sure we want the visa-free travel area to have a direct border with Syria, of course we do. After all, it's not like Daesh has claimed terror attacks in Europe, and threatened to do more. It's a political suicide. It's as insane as suggesting to build a direct bridge between Libya and Italy. I think they're trying to force a massive Brexit victory in the UK referendum, there's no other rational explanation for pushing for such disastrously asinine proposal. GaussianCopula posted:Interesting graph from the WSJ which shows that reforms can have pretty significant impact on unemployment. Just wanted to post it as a follow up to my post in the old thread a few days ago. This is all a lot of crock. A business doesn't hire people because they can then fire them, it hires people if it needs people. And it needs people if its order book is full. The so-called El Khomri law (Myriam El Khomri is not actually responsible for anything written in that law, she's just a disposable figurehead so that popular anger doesn't fall on darlings Valls and Macron) will have for only effect to increase unemployment, since all it does is allow employers to make employees work more, for less, and to fire them without having to justify anything, it also allows companies to perform large-scale downsizing for economic reasons even when they are not running a deficit. An employer who needs more manpower is not going to hire anyone, but to make his current workforce work more, without increasing their pay; and if anyone complains it's time to outsource to Bangladesh even though the company is profitable. It'll be just like the previous reforms from the same government, that supposedly aimed at reducing unemployment but only managed to increase it, like the CICE which on paper is basically bribing businesses to hire people, except they don't need to use that bribe money to actually hire people so they just don't. Basically for the amount of money the state spends to create one private sector job with the CICE, they could have instead created ten well-paid jobs in the public service domain -- and there are domains, notably justice, which really need more manpower (for reference, Germany has over double the number of per-capita judges and prosecutors), so don't come claiming it'd be useless and non-productive or that the French public sector is too large already.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 8, 2016 11:45
|
|
|
waitwhatno posted:Most of Europe has visa-free travel with the US. Such an arrangement doesn't necessarily has to be a security risk. And? The whole point of Schengen isn't that it's visa-free, it's that it's passport-free. You can cross from Syria into Turkey, then take a bridge over the Bosphorus, and from there drive to Europe. Migrants take boats because Greece closed their land border with Turkey, not because there's no way to move on foot. When boarding an airliner, there's a lot of security measures that, no matter how easily bypassed they are, do not exist when you're just crossing a Schengen border in a car. Have you crossed Schengen borders in a car? I have. Guess how many uniformed people asking to check my papers, or even just being around at all, I have seen when doing so. 0 There's still checks when a European wants to go in the USA. For example: quote:As of January 2016, the visa waiver does not apply in cases where a person had previously traveled to Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria or Yemen on or after 1 March 2011 or for those who are dual citizens of Iran, Iraq, Sudan or Syria. Even with the VWP, you still need a biometric passport, what is effectively an electronic visa, a justification for your visit, and an onward or return ticket proving that you will leave within three months. How many of these things do you need to cross Schengen borders? 0
|
|
#
¿
Mar 8, 2016 14:14
|
|
|
khwarezm posted:I always like the way Scottish nationalists say they'd let in Wales and the north to show how cool and inclusive they are, but either conspicuously avoid mentioning Northern Ireland or are openly hostile to the notion that they would have to shoulder any responsibility there despite having much stronger cultural links. Probably their position on Ulster is that, if anything, it should rejoin with Ireland.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 9, 2016 11:46
|
|
|
People have polled six continental European countries about Brexit. https://www.aqmen.ac.uk/sites/default/files/TheViewFromTheContinent_REPORT.pdf All polled countries gave a majority in favor of the UK staying in the Union, however this varies from a short majority (56%, France) to an overwhelming one (81%, Spain). There's also some more in-depth statistics. For example, in France, older people are less favorable to UK remaining than the younger people; but in Poland it's the contrary, older people are really gung-ho about Britain staying. Germany and Ireland think a Brexit would have dire consequences for Britain, but in most countries they mostly think it wouldn't have any real impact. The French are also the most favorable to leaving the EU themselves, though they're still a lot less eurosceptic than the Britons.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 12, 2016 22:49
|
|
|
Freezer posted:Do you mean that UK staying in will trigger the collapse? Or that it leaving would trigger the collapse? Because a compelling argument can be made for both scenarios... The collapse was triggered in 1973.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 12, 2016 23:43
|
|
|
LemonDrizzle posted:CDU losing one of their traditional strongholds to the Greens Man, losing a "traditional stronghold" is bad enough, but to Greens? That's just adding insult to injury.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 13, 2016 19:04
|
|
|
waitwhatno posted:And now look at Trump. He proclaims, on national television, that he wants to massacre ISIS woman and children and people applaud. He announces that he wants to create a national register for Muslims, analogous to the one that Nazi Germany had for Jews and people applaud. And the kicker? He's not even the worst GOP candidate (that'd be Cruz).
|
|
#
¿
Mar 13, 2016 23:13
|
|
|
OwlFancier posted:How else does the army normally transport human beings? Would it be preferable if the trucks were uncovered so the human beings can get rained on? I don't think it's a complaint, it's just to head off comments like "I dun see no immigrunts on these thar pitchers".
|
|
#
¿
Mar 14, 2016 20:43
|
|
|
GaussianCopula posted:Norbert Blüm being a former German labor and social minister of Germany (CDU) who famously said "Die Renten sind sicher." (the pensions are safe). Looks like his pensions weren't all that they were cracked up to be.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 14, 2016 21:46
|
|
|
So, more antiterrorism operations in Belgium. http://www.france24.com/en/20160315-live-brussels-french-belgium-police-raid-paris-attacks
|
|
#
¿
Mar 15, 2016 19:23
|
|
|
GaussianCopula posted:Maybe they could just send a police officer to enforce the actual laws in front of the school instead of actively helping their children to ruin their health? But France is strange anyway. "Just sending a police officer" would mean having enough police officers to just send them in front of every collège and lycée, which means hiring more cops, which is absolutely out of question since, as you know, cops are public function workers, and therefore an abomination unto the LORD they God Austerityaveh.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 18, 2016 11:12
|
|
|
It's allowed to have different types of products at different levels of VAT.quote:Eurosceptics accusing Brussels of sexism have seized on complaints that tampons and other female hygiene products carry a sales tax of 5 percent in Britain while other goods such as razors, mainly used by men, are exempt from VAT. However, it's not Brussels which decides what is taxed and what isn't (or what is taxed, but at a 0% rate). It's the nation. The EU merely makes it hard to switch stuff from one category to another, and would rather see less exceptions than more. So the UK can claim all they want that Brussels is sexist because tampons are taxed while razors aren't, but if that's the case, it's only because it was already the case before 1973, and Europe would be more in favor of taxing razors than of exempting tampons.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 18, 2016 11:46
|
|
|
YF-23 posted:When you cut out safe passages of entry for refugees you're only leaving unsafe passages for them, resulting in deaths that would have been avoided otherwise. Sure, it may not be a zombie apocalypse, but don't pretend these deaths are not the result of the border policies. So many people have died trying to cross the Aegean in rubber dingies because the land border with Turkey was fenced by the Samaras government, and the Tsipras governments have either lacked the political will or capital to reopen it. Greece could start by reopening its land border with Turkey instead of forcing asylum seekers to take a boat to Lesbos.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 18, 2016 23:33
|
|
|
Kassad posted:Pretty much. We'd be invading and bombing random countries too, but with budget constraints being what they are... France demonstrated impressive foresight by starting Ops. Barkhane and Chammal even before the Charlie Hebdo attack. 
|
|
#
¿
Mar 19, 2016 18:15
|
|
|
GaussianCopula posted:Didn't people tell me ISIS terrorists would never have to travel on refugee routes? No, you're building a strawman. It was said that these terrorists were mostly EU citizens and therefore could travel like tourists. It was said that they didn't need to travel on refugee routes unless they did it so deliberately to tar refugees.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 19, 2016 19:16
|
|
|
GaussianCopula posted:Do you have any proof that the refugees that took part in the attacks deliberately traveled as refugees while they had other options? Otherwise I'm calling bullshit on this claim. Hard proofs wrt. the motives of dead people are going to be hard to get, since séances are not considered valid in courts of law, but that's a neat way to explain why one would register in three different refugee camps with a fake passport and then throw that fake passport on the floor before blowing himself up.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 19, 2016 21:17
|
|
|
GaussianCopula posted:Interesting fact I just learned: Belgium has an agreement with Saudi Arabia since over 30 years to allow Wahhabist preachers to be active in Belgium to get cheaper oil. Brussels, international capital of good ideas.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 22, 2016 14:16
|
|
|
Riso posted:Criminals/terrorists use illegally acquired weapons so why restrict legal ownership? It would not solve any problems. Non-proliferation.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 22, 2016 23:36
|
|
|
Majorian posted:What would Russia have to gain from that? A warm feeling of Stronk!ness in their pants.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 23, 2016 00:30
|
|
|
A Buttery Pastry posted:What's with the (Greater) German far right and crashing their cars? That's because they drive German cars. Nah, actually it's because German roads are trash, since Germans HAVE CUT BACK ON FUNDING and now they are REGRETTING THIS.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 23, 2016 12:42
|
|
|
Well really the issue with German highways is that they're made out of concrete, so keeping them in shape is becoming increasingly expensive as the concrete cracks and buckles; but they never planned their maintenance budget for something that gets more expensive to maintain over time. Since Autobahns were built in the 1960s and 1970s, they're reached the end of their "mostly okay with minimal maintenance" life time and entering "holy poo poo this is turning into a death trap if you don't rebuild them" period. It doesn't help that traffic has greatly increased and now exceeds what was planned for when they were built, and trucks have become heavier, so the wear and tear they cause has increased dramatically. The damage on that picture was caused by a heatstroke, by the way. In the same situation, an asphalt road melts in place, then goes back to normal after cooling off. Asphalt roads are less durable than concrete roads, but they damage more gracefully, are easier to repair, and when you need to resurface them you can recycle the old asphalt over and over again whereas old concrete is useless. So regular maintenance with relatively constant cost is something you can do with asphalt road, while with concrete roads you've got exploding costs. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-21/crumbling-german-autobahns-leave-drivers-stuck-in-traffic-jams http://www.worldhighways.com/catego...o-be-increased/ Cat Mattress fucked around with this message at 15:36 on Mar 23, 2016 |
|
#
¿
Mar 23, 2016 15:33
|
|
|
Illegal immigration in Spain looks like this:
|
|
#
¿
Mar 26, 2016 21:44
|
|
|
steinrokkan posted:Are they there to collect lost balls? The way they're straddling barbed wire, I'd think they're at risk of losing balls themselves.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 26, 2016 22:45
|
|
|
It's hard to reconcile with what's happening now, but one of the things that brought Erdogan to power originally was making peace with the Kurds. The AKP has been very popular with the Turkish Kurds because of that -- until Daesh happened. Then Erdogan's poll results dropped among that demographics, so he restarted the civil war because he's spiteful like that.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 29, 2016 23:37
|
|
|
Varoufakis posted:One may retort that the European Union’s democratic credentials are beyond reproach. The European Council comprises heads of governments, while Ecofin and the Eurogroup are the councils of finance ministers (of the whole EU and of the eurozone respectively). All these representatives are, of course, democratically elected. No, they aren't. Heads of government (aka Prime Ministers) are elected in many EU countries, but not in all of them, and I've never heard that non-prime ministers, such as finance ministers, were elected anywhere.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 6, 2016 20:40
|
|
|
Tesseraction posted:I think he's referring to them being elected to their country's parliament, as opposed to someone hand-picked by the government at random. That's not a given either. Take a look at this fellow, look in his biography how many times he has been elected. No, it's not an omission on Wikipedia's part. When the Prime Minister isn't elected directly, the person is appointed from the ranks of the majority party, sure; but then you don't have any requirement at the European level that individual ministers should be elected officials. (In fact, such a provision would not necessarily be a good idea, as it'd either require them to assume dual office as minister and representative, or to force anticipated elections in their constituency to replace them.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 7, 2016 00:07
|
|
|
87 reps being present out of 577, sounds about right. Did I say that holding multiple offices ("cumul des mandats") was a problem? Most of these people are also mayors and/or councilors at the dept. and/or regional level. Can't be expected to be everywhere at once! They can be expected, however, to get the full pay for all these jobs; which is why getting rid of cumulards has been a constant promise in the French political scene, one that never had any chance of becoming true.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 7, 2016 13:05
|
|
|
Narciss posted:Rape is power + sexual assault. This was not a rape. So it's not rape if the victim is richer than the assaulter?
|
|
#
¿
Apr 7, 2016 16:41
|
|
|
pigdog posted:Stumbled upon this article on Haa'retz titled a little clickbaitily Why the American 'multicultural' model falls apart in Europe and Israel. I'm not very familiar to Israel's internal struggles, so I'm not sure about the application there, but the author makes a some great points to help untangle why are people in eachother's throats over "<insert category> rights" all the time. Copied for posterity because it might be paywalled. The whole essay can be dismissed out of hand for just the simple fact that it attempts to claim the situation is the same in Europe and in Israel. In Israel, the government systematically builds walls between farmers and their fields or orchards, to prevent them from working, so that immigrants can then illegally build settlements on the agricultural domain. In Israel, being a native of the land, whose family has been present for over ten generations, is enough to make you a non-person devoid of rights. The idea that Israel would even try to be a pluralistic liberal democracy is risible, since Israel is built on ethnoreligious supremacism and colonialism. Israel is pluralistic in the same way that the USSR was libertarian. The article's main goal is to push forward the thesis that Arabs are bad, and therefore should be oppressed, because not oppressing Arabs would be a defeat for democracy. Really, that's all there is to it; all the rest is just padding.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 10, 2016 15:20
|
|
|
Rent-A-Cop posted:It's good to remember that most of Western Europe has restrictions on speech that wouldn't in a million years get by a US court. Yeah, the USA champion free speech to an extent that I'm fine with Europe not imitating.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 16, 2016 00:44
|
|
|
boom boom boom posted:Don't gypsies not want to integrate? Like, I thought that was their whole deal, they like travelling around, doing their thing. wan't their a big kerfuffle in Britain a few years back because a bunch of gypsies just moved onto a dude's field and started building houses and stuff without his permission, and the government was like, "you can't do that"? You can't generalize about the Romani people, they are a very diverse bunch. Some of them are settled, others are nomadic. There is a chicken-and-egg aspect to their integration problem: are they disliked because they are insular, or are they insular because they are disliked? It's a vicious circle. Yeah, some of them flout the laws of the land (find me one population that is 100% law-abiding) but that doesn't mean they're all roaming gangs of criminals. They are generally treated pretty terribly, even when there is legislation that explicitly protects their rights.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 17, 2016 16:20
|
|
|
boom boom boom posted:on that subject, is Roma or Romani really the cool thing to say instead of Gypsy? I don't want it to be like that time when it filtered through that you're supposed to say Inuit instead of Eskimo, and then it turned out Inuit referred to a specific tribe and there's plenty of northern indigenous peoples who get mad if you call them inuits Regardless of how you choose to call them all as a group, some will object. Wikipedia has a whole article just about their names.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 17, 2016 17:09
|
|
|
A Buttery Pastry posted:Neat little rhetorical trick here. Just because people are fleeing from religious extremists doesn't mean they're atheist, or even secular. True, but lots of people have no qualms in holding the opposite but similar assumption that just because they're from the Middle East, they are deeply religious fundamentalist Muslims.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 17, 2016 19:03
|
|
|
Those who do not come from a war-torn country like Syria, Iraq, Libya, or Yemen are not considered to be refugees.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 17, 2016 23:36
|
|
|
V. Illych L. posted:the point being, it's entirely plausible that some saudi republican or w/e could flee and have a valid reason to seek asylum in europe Sure, but if they come as political refugees then they have to prove their claim that they face political persecution at home. For what happens next, play "Papers, Please".
|
|
#
¿
Apr 18, 2016 02:12
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 05:54 |
|
|
YF-23 posted:Greens tend to go far in their distrust, but I would absolutely prefer if everything went into developing renewables instead of nuclear power. Renewables is good, when it's not a disguise for coal. Germany is really bad at this. They figure that since trees can grow, then turning wood into charcoal and then burning it is the same as using renewable energy, right? Between that and mined coal (which is mined with gigantic bucket-wheel excavators that destroy old forests, arable lands, and entire villages as they roam around devouring the entire country like the Nothing from the Neverending Story), Germany is objectively much worse off environmentally than if they had went for full-on nuclear power.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 20, 2016 14:46
|
|