European Politico-economics QA Mega-thread - Page 1002

On November 22 2017 07:44 Pr0wler wrote:
Why would the FDP lose votes ? They left, because they decided to not agree with things that are against their election promises. So their core should be happy. I expect them to win more votes and I expect Merkel to lose.

I expect AfD to win even more than last elections.

Members of a Russian “troll army” were quoted more than 80 times across British-read media outlets before Twitter revealed their identity and banned them, a Guardian investigation has shown.

Some posts from the accounts were embedded in articles to provide apparently local reportage and pictures from the sites of disasters and crime scenes around the world. In fact, Twitter claims, all the accounts were run from the offices of the Internet Research Agency in St Petersburg, alleged to be the headquarters of Russia’s troll army.

Other accounts managed to work their way into more light-hearted coverage, quoted in roundups of Twitter jokes on topics such as “five words to ruin sex” or “make me hate you in one phrase”.

Still others were quoted as part of apparently grassroots reaction to news events such as the death of Fidel Castro or the US ban on travellers from six majority-Muslim nations.

The investigation will raise concerns about the extent of Russian penetration of the British media, which would have disseminated their messages to a much wider audience than they might get on Twitter alone.

On November 22 2017 07:44 Pr0wler wrote:
Why would the FDP lose votes ? They left, because they decided to not agree with things that are against their election promises. So their core should be happy. I expect them to win more votes and I expect Merkel to lose.

I expect AfD to win even more than last elections.

On November 22 2017 07:44 Pr0wler wrote:
Why would the FDP lose votes ? They left, because they decided to not agree with things that are against their election promises. So their core should be happy. I expect them to win more votes and I expect Merkel to lose.

I expect AfD to win even more than last elections.

On November 22 2017 16:24 Pr0wler wrote:
I don't think that participation in the government at any cost is valued highly by the general population. Usually it's a sign of unprincipled politicians. If their campaign was targeting Merkel, why would they want to govern with her and why would their voters be happy with that coalition based on nothing ? Such coalition most likely will worsen their situation instead of improving it.

On November 22 2017 17:58 Mafe wrote:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahl_zum_20._Deutschen_Bundestag/Umfragen_und_Prognosen
Of course, there isnt much data yet. And, yes, the FDP is being blamed a lot, but I would image this mostly comes from poeple who would vote for other parties anyway. So it is not a contradiction that a party is getting a lot of the blame yet still gains voters at the same time.

On November 22 2017 16:24 Pr0wler wrote:
I don't think that participation in the government at any cost is valued highly by the general population. Usually it's a sign of unprincipled politicians. If their campaign was targeting Merkel, why would they want to govern with her and why would their voters be happy with that coalition based on nothing ? Such coalition most likely will worsen their situation instead of improving it.

On November 23 2017 04:50 pmh wrote:
You can not do anything wrong when you are opposition party,and the government usually alienates a few people and they then go to opposition partys. Maybe fdp voters don't mind that much that they wont govern,preventing merkel from governing could be enough for them. Like all the afd voters they know they wont go govern and they don't expect to either I think.
Forming a government is kinda unattractive for any small party to be honest,they wont be able to get much of their program through yet they will still take the blame for everything the government does. And even if it all goes well then the bigger partys will get most of the credit and the voters might think:hmm I might as well vote a big party because it is more stable and it doesn't really matter for policy in the end (they could be wrong with that thought btw!)

Fdp is former east german communist party? They wont gain to much votes then I think nor lose to many. If people want make a "protest" vote then they might be more acceptable then afd.

On November 23 2017 04:50 pmh wrote:
You can not do anything wrong when you are opposition party,and the government usually alienates a few people and they then go to opposition partys. Maybe fdp voters don't mind that much that they wont govern,preventing merkel from governing could be enough for them. Like all the afd voters they know they wont go govern and they don't expect to either I think.
Forming a government is kinda unattractive for any small party to be honest,they wont be able to get much of their program through yet they will still take the blame for everything the government does. And even if it all goes well then the bigger partys will get most of the credit and the voters might think:hmm I might as well vote a big party because it is more stable and it doesn't really matter for policy in the end (they could be wrong with that thought btw!)

Fdp is former east german communist party? They wont gain to much votes then I think nor lose to many. If people want make a "protest" vote then they might be more acceptable then afd.

In July 1997, a Yugoslav army officer named Milan Gunj received an urgent phone call at home in Belgrade. Something strange was happening at work and he was needed immediately.

Staff Sergeant Gunj’s job could best be described as that of an army hotelier. He had risen through the ranks from barracks cook and caterer to the rather pleasant task of looking after a string of gated and guarded holiday homes the Yugoslav military had traditionally provided for its top brass. The man calling him on this summer day was a soldier who worked in one of these bucolic retreats, at a place called Rajac in the wooded hills of central Serbia. Some unexpected guests had arrived. The soldier dared not say any more on the phone, but he was insistent Gunj come as soon as possible.

A few moments later, he received a second call. This time it was from an aide in the office of the Yugoslav chief of the general staff, ordering Gunj to get to Rajac immediately and deal with his visitors. He would be told what he needed to know when he arrived. He got in his car and headed south.

Two hours later, he arrived at Rajac after dusk and found a group of about a dozen armed men in civilian clothes milling around the entrance, and then the reason for all the subterfuge came striding out of the hotel lobby, as if he had just commandeered the place: the unmistakable barrel-chested figure and blunt ruddy face Gunj had seen in a hundred news reports of the Bosnian war – General Ratko Mladić.

“I was somewhat surprised, scared, and confused by this turn of events,” Gunj recalled. “First of all, because this was in my compound, and I had no information that this would happen. And secondly, I know that Mr Ratko Mladić has been accused of certain acts by the Hague tribunal. So at that point in time I was in a state of panic.”

Gunj was by no means alone in feeling terror in Mladić’s presence. The general stood accused of the worst atrocities Europe had witnessed since the Nazi era. The Bosnian Serb general had overseen three years of the Sarajevo siege and the daily attrition of its residents by shelling and sniper fire. He was also there when the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica was overrun by his troops in July 1995. Presenting himself as an instrument of national retribution, he declared the sacking of Srebrenica as payback against “the Turks” for a massacre of Serbs under the Ottoman empire. Mladić reassured panicked captive Muslim women that their loved ones would be safe at the same time that his soldiers were rounding up and slaughtering 8,000 husbands and sons. The beetroot-faced officer who had turned up to stay at Gunj’s vacation home was the world’s most wanted man.

Mladić and his entourage stayed for a month in Rajac before departing – again in the middle of the night – for another military resort, at Stragari, near the city of Kragujevac, a more elaborate sylvan hideaway with sports grounds, swimming pools, and table tennis. For the benefit of hunters, the surrounding woods were stocked with deer and mouflon, a species of wild sheep with flamboyantly curved horns.

General Djordje Ćurčin, an old family friend of Mladić, described a typical day with the fugitive: “We talked, we walked through the woods, we played some chess. We also played cards, table tennis. We had lunch. And then we walked some more.”

Such was the determination of the Yugoslav general staff to keep Mladić both comfortable and hidden that an entire department, the 30th Personnel Centre, originally set up to oversee the social welfare of former Bosnian Serb officers, was tasked with looking after him. A substantial personal protection force was established.

“There was a bounty of $5m on Mladić’s head, and it was considered necessary to set up a unit that would protect him from various bounty hunters and criminals. This unit was attached to the 30th Personnel Centre in Belgrade and consisted of Republika Srpska army members, at times about 100 of them,” said Jovo Djogo, a former officer with the centre who went on to be Mladić’s personal security chief.

The Yugoslav government of Slobodan Milošević staunchly denied any responsibility for the mass atrocities committed by the Bosnian Serb military, but the elaborate measures taken in Belgrade to tend to Mladić’s safety and comfort after the war are a testament to close ties. In the aftermath of the Bosnian war, the Yugoslav army was an overwhelmingly Serb force. And as far as its commanders were concerned, Mladić was one of them.

Along with a formidable phalanx of guards, Mladić had a driver, his own cook, even his own personal waiter who would travel with him back to Rajac in the late winter of each year. When the season was over and the deer hunters had departed, the entourage would return like a travelling court. During this period, Mladić also spent a considerable amount of time in Belgrade, at his family home on Blagoja Parovića Street in the upmarket suburb of Košutnjak. He went out to restaurants and football matches in the Serbian capital. Video of these days shows a relaxed Mladić playing table tennis at Stragari, theatrically ruing a missed shot, and presiding over family celebrations.

The men and women who helped keep the fugitive general in this contented bubble saw him as a national hero, embodying the martial virtues of Serb legends from other eras. Somehow they managed to persuade themselves that within this crude stub of a man was an echo of Serbia’s heroic age. But just in case their loyalty should ever waver, they were shown photographs of their children – a characteristically direct reminder of the high price paid by informants.

In his 14 years on the run, Mladić depended on a succession of institutions and groups to keep him from being captured: first the Serbian military establishment; then a closer coterie of his Bosnian Serb wartime lieutenants; and finally, when those concentric rings fell away, like layers of a withered onion, his troubled family. But the common factor was fear.