EPThttp://www.reuters.com/article/us-belgium-blast-netherlands-idUSKCN0WV1ZY
European Politico-economics QA Mega-thread - Page 444
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oneofthem
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-belgium-blast-netherlands-idUSKCN0WV1ZY | ||
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Jockmcplop
United Kingdom9849 Posts
Ever hear of Unaoil? Didn't think so. Me neither. In the list of the world's great companies, Unaoil is nowhere to be seen. But for the best part of the past two decades, the family business from Monaco has systematically corrupted the global oil industry, distributing many millions of dollars worth of bribes on behalf of corporate behemoths including Samsung, Rolls-Royce, Halliburton and Australia's own Leighton Holdings. Now a vast cache of leaked emails and documents has confirmed what many suspected about the oil industry, and has laid bare the activities of the world's super-bagman as it has bought off officials and rigged contracts around the world. | ||
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oneofthem
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
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IgnE
United States7681 Posts
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oneofthem
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
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cLutZ
United States19574 Posts
On March 31 2016 10:02 oneofthem wrote: causal direction is wrong. oil pumps in hands of exploitative regimes = corrupt industry. corruption is really too nice you are looking at organized crime states Yea. Most of the largest oil companies in the world are government owned. PeMex, Saudi Aramco, Petróleos de Venezuela, several chinese owned corps, Petrobras. Bribery is likely the cost of doing business in many of these places. Its not some sort of "aha look at this corruptiong" scandal, its "look at how shitty these countries are" scandal. Its not like Obama and Cameron were accepting bribes. | ||
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RvB
Netherlands6274 Posts
German joblessness was unchanged in March, snapping a run of five consecutive declines, in a sign that Europe’s largest economy may be struggling to absorb a wave of refugees. The number of people out of work held at a seasonally adjusted 2.73 million, data from the Federal Labor Agency in Nuremberg showed on Thursday. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg predicted a decline of 6,000. The jobless rate stayed at a record-low 6.2 percent. Germany admitted more than 1 million migrants in 2015 alone, increasing the pool of potential workers. While companies have been hiring, they’re simultaneously having to deal with a China-led slowdown in emerging markets that’s curbing exports and posing a risk to the euro area’s fragile recovery. “For this year in general, we expect a rise in the unemployment figure due to the large inflow of refugees we have seen over the last year,” said Johannes Gareis, an economist at Natixis in Frankfurt. The refugees “can’t be integrated easily into the German labor market.” Migrant Report A report by the labor agency’s research arm published on Thursday suggested that it will take time for most refugees to overcome legal and institutional hurdles, language deficiencies and a lack of qualifications. “Migration will become only slowly noticeable in the labor market,” according to the report. “In the coming years, it can be expected that the labor supply will expand because of migration and the number of unemployed refugees will rise.” Separate data have shown that companies are optimistic about their outlook. The Ifo institute’s business climate index rose for the first time in four months in March. German retail sales jumped 5.4 percent in February from a year earlier, data showed on Thursday. The strength of the country’s labor market could also be key for wage negotiations, with an impact on inflation. Consumer prices rose 0.1 percent in the year through March, up from a decline of minus 0.2 percent the prior month, according to figures on Wednesday. With Germany’s economy critical for the euro area’s continued recovery, those figures are important for European Central Bank President Mario Draghi and his colleagues. Monetary-policy makers ramped up their stimulus package for the 19-nation currency bloc in March, in their latest effort to return regional inflation to their goal of just under 2 percent. The rate was minus 0.1 percent in March, initial data showed on Thursday. www.bloomberg.com | ||
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PoulsenB
Poland7736 Posts
The Polish prime minister, Beata Szydło, said she backs moves towards a total ban on abortion, in a sign the nationalist government may be set to turn its attention to the nuclear family. A campaign against abortion is due to be launched this Sunday in the country’s Roman Catholic churches. Priests have been asked to read out a letter from the bishops’ conference calling for Poland’s existing, limited abortion rights to be scrapped. After mass on church steps, anti-abortion group Fundacja Pro will gather petition signatures for a citizen’s parliamentary bill calling for a total ban. Asked on Polish public radio on Thursday if she supported the campaign to bring the issue to parliament, Szydło said: “Every MP will vote in line with his own conscience. At the moment I can not talk about the bill, because this bill does not yet exist. As for my opinion, yes, I support this initiative.” Poland already strictly limits access to abortion. A 1993 law grants it up to the 25th week from conception, but only on the condition that the woman’s life is in danger, the pregnancy is the result of criminally proven rape or incest, or the foetus is “seriously malformed”. The bishops’ letter, signed on Wednesday, calls the current law a compromise, adding: “The life of every person is protected by the fifth of the Ten Commandments: thou shalt not kill. Therefore the position of Catholics in this regard is clear and unchanging.’’ Monika Płatek, a prominent member of Poland’s Women’s Congress, said the prime minister’s view illustrated the influence of the church on the ruling Law & Justice party. “The bishops do not care if a woman dies. Szydło is a puppet. The abortion ban was the condition of the church’s support for Law & Justice. The move is typical of an arbitrary state that uses support for moral ideas to take total control. “We saw it under Hitler and Ceaușescu and now we are seeing it under Law & Justice,’’ said Płatek, a professor of law at the University of Warsaw. www.theguardian.com | ||
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WhiteDog
France8650 Posts
On March 31 2016 10:19 IgnE wrote: is organized state crime even criminal??? It is not if crime is what goes against what the state decide to be the law. You need a moral ground, a normative basis outside of any power struggle, to argue that organized state crime is criminal, one of the few reason why the current extreme left, educated in the french theory, are a bunch of political goofies. Showing out that most of our current culture or system of norm is social and can/should be changed is not a political struggle, it's sophistry. Sorry for this rant. | ||
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Nyxisto
Germany6287 Posts
There are no brakes on the PiS train. Seriously do the Polish posters here still think electing those guys was a good idea? | ||
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Sent.
Poland9299 Posts
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{CC}StealthBlue
United States41117 Posts
Serb ultranationalist Vojislav Šešelj has been acquitted of all nine charges of committing atrocities by the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. The former deputy prime minister of Serbia, 61, who is being treated for cancer, had been accused of recruiting and arming the Serb paramilitaries blamed for carrying out war crimes in Bosnia and Croatia during the early 1990s. The ruling comes less than a week after the former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić was sentenced to 40 years in prison after being found guilty of genocide over the 1995 massacre in Srebrenica. Šešelj, however, was found to have had no military “hierarchical responsibility” for the volunteers that he encouraged to join the Serb army. Croatia on Thursday banned Šešelj from entering the country after prime minister Tihomir Orešković labelled the verdict “shameful” during a visit to Vukovar, scene of some of the alleged atrocities, where he laid wreaths in memory of war dead. Šešelj was not at the courtroom in The Hague to hear the verdict. He had repeatedly refused to cooperate with the tribunal, staging a hunger strike, refusing to enter a plea and declining to present a defence. He had been allowed to return to Serbia because of his deteriorating health. Source | ||
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PoulsenB
Poland7736 Posts
On April 01 2016 08:37 Nyxisto wrote: There are no brakes on the PiS train. Seriously do the Polish posters here still think electing those guys was a good idea? Well, I didn't vote for them. And yeah, the comment about Hitler and Ceaușescu was pretty dumb. Some additional info regarding the proposed law: - no abortion under any circumstances would be allowed, including rape, incest, serious birth defects; even when the pregnancy is dangerous to a woman's life, it can't be terminated. - no "day-after" pills for women - new class of crime: "prenatal manslaughter", punishable by 3 months up to 5 years of prison of anyone involved in an abortion, including the pregnant woman. Human life would be protected from the moment a sperm and an egg meet and combine. - increased care for families with children born with birth defects (more money from the budget, psycholoical care for parents etc.) Hopefully this will never come into effect, but with the PM and (especially) J. Kaczynski expressing their support, I can easily see such a bill being introduced and enforced. At the very least, their support will encourage the anti-abortionist and give legitimacy to their demands, as well as solidify the Church's grip at reproduction law in Poland (PiS already cancelled a public program for funding in-vitro procedures, introduced by the previous government; in-vitro procedure has been heavily opposed by the Polish bishops, who said it is "eugenics" and "murder"). | ||
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Silvanel
Poland4756 Posts
On April 01 2016 08:37 Nyxisto wrote: There are no brakes on the PiS train. Seriously do the Polish posters here still think electing those guys was a good idea? Our society is pretty polarized. I doubt people who didint switch train one month after election are going to be concerened by this. PiS core electorate is very stable and the things PiS is legislating are the things they want. PiS isnt going to care about any kind of opostion short of mass protests (bigger than the ones they already got). This is only start, theys till have 3,5 year to go. | ||
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PoulsenB
Poland7736 Posts
On April 01 2016 16:55 Silvanel wrote: Our society is pretty polarized. I doubt people who didint switch train one month after election are going to be concerened by this. PiS core electorate is very stable and the things PiS is legislating are the things they want. PiS isnt going to care about any kind of opostion short of mass protests (bigger than the ones they already got). This is only start, theys till have 3,5 year to go. Basically this. PiS has been steadily leading the polls as the party with most support, averaging 30-35% (up to almost 40% at times). The opposition is very fragmented and no single party can get close to PiS in the polls; and in parliament, PiS has majority (very slight, by still), so they can pass any law they want and nobody can do anything about it. | ||
Ragnarork
France9034 Posts
How does the church's support for the party materialize? Only money? I'm wondering if that party and esp. Szydło are actually want to strip women of that right or if it's just purely political. | ||
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Sent.
Poland9299 Posts
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oneofthem
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
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Gorsameth
Netherlands22373 Posts
On April 01 2016 20:33 oneofthem wrote: why the fuck does the rightwing everywhere want to ban abortion Because its an easy way to win the religious vote. | ||
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RvB
Netherlands6274 Posts
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