European Politico-economics QA Mega-thread - Page 530

On August 21 2016 04:56 Koorb wrote:

The NY Times is the whole world now? This caricatural rag whose insight on the world don't go further than the bourgeois boroughs of their hometown?

You should take a moment to read the comment section of some burkini ban-related articles on The Guardian (whose journalists are laying pro burkini articles as if they were eggs). You'll see how a vast majority of its left-leaning subscribers actually support the ban, and loathe the regressive faux liberal who are out of touch with reality.

The international public opinion on this issue is a far cry from what the monolithic response you claim it is.

You exhibit an all too common set of symptoms of French-bashing yourself. Hopefully this particular brand of self-hating French leftism, which screams of colonialism and racism at every opportunity, will dry out as the nostalgics of may 68 retire from education and from the public life.

Voting numbers today are roughly the same as 30-40 years ago (2012 presidential election second round had a 80% turnout, compared to 85% turnouts in 1981 and 1988). Even the infamous first round of the 2002 presidential election (which brought far-right Jean-Marie Le Pen to the second round) featured a 72% turnout. And voter registration is just as high today as it was 40 years ago. So you are factually wrong here.

Don't even think of claiming that French society and democratic institutions is what "disenfranchises" young muslims and make them go to Syria. Hardship affects all young people in our country nowadays, and yet only the sunni muslims somehow end up spree killing their fellow men. Adel Kermiche, who murdered the priest in Normandy, comes from a family that wasn't short of money. His siblings were raised in the same setup as he was, and yet his older sister became a surgeon. They had the exact same opportunities in life, but she is a surgeon, and he is a coward who murdered an elderly man. (And just so you know, his other siblings also have higher education degrees, including an engineer)

So no, it's not the French society or institutions that are to blame for modern jihadism.

On August 22 2016 05:33 Elroi wrote:
I can understand (and sympathise with) the ban of religious symbols in places like schools or court rooms, but does the state really have the mandate to tell you what clothes you can use for swimming in the ocean in your own free time? To me that sounds like a step over the line - from a form of social contract to something more like totalitarianism light...? What do you guys think?

'Nobody believes in anything anymore': Why Greece's economic crisis is not over

With Europe facing pressing crises including the refugee crisis, economic slowdown and political disintegration following the Brexit vote, it's easy to forget that Greece's political and economic crisis dominated headlines last summer.

One year on and a third bailout worth 86 billion euros ($96.1 billion) later, arrived at after tortuous negotiations between Greece and its lenders, and the situation in Greece is a game of two halves with many Greeks suffering - and some trying to make something out of a bad situation.

Greece's government has been forced to make widespread spending cuts over the course of its three separate bailout programs, making life harder for most Greeks of ordinary means. The cuts have affected all ages with unemployment rising to the highest level in Europe.

A survey by independent analysis firm DiaNEOsis in June revealed that many Greeks were facing an increasing struggle to get by. Extreme poverty in the Greek population (of 11 million people) had risen from 2.2 percent in 2009, to 15 percent in 2015, the public opinion survey of 1,300 people showed, with 1.6 million people now living below in extreme poverty.

One resident of the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki, Evangelos Kyrimlis, told CNBC that the Greece's crisis had taken its toll on society, both at a local and national level.

"Disillusionment is the first big thing that's going on," he noted. "Nobody believes in anything anymore."

"The second big thing is withdrawal. People have retreated to their families and fight only for the family survival. Society has been fragmented," he said. Kyrimlis works for his partner's family firm, having returned to Greece after working for an engineering consultancy in London.

Returning to Greece in the midst of the country's financial breakdown, he said he now noted an increase in animosity between people, saying there was a "widespread hatred not directed to anyone in particular, it's like all against all."

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On August 22 2016 23:47 Gorsameth wrote:

Should have just payed those taxes.

On August 23 2016 00:17 TheDwf wrote:

Corruption and fiscal desertion are a thing, the criminal intransigence of the troïka to save French and German banks and the eurozone while cynically claiming it was “helping Greece” is another one. You know the pillage went through the roof when even the IMF says that orthodox measures were enforced too harshly. Lots of economists warned that the so-called “cure” would simply mutilate the patient and extend its agony, yet austerity is still the only horizon. The Greek people voted OXI, the government ignored it. Here's the disastrous result of this mess.

On August 22 2016 23:47 Gorsameth wrote:

Should have just payed those taxes.

On August 23 2016 00:27 Gorsameth wrote:

I was never a fan of austerity, I don't believe you can cut your way out of a recession and the Eurozone certainly hurt Greece badly but when its not your money your spending then your giving up a lot of autonomy in how you can spend it.

But I certainly think we should not ignore how Greece got itself into the dire situation it was in. And if the Eurozone had given them a financial injection without forcing Greece to restructure its financial situation they would have continued just as before and get into trouble again and again.

On August 23 2016 01:40 TheDwf wrote:

Sure, the corrupt Greek elites have a major responsibility in that crisis, through endemic cronyism, refusal to tax the rich, having an overall weak administration, cheating with the help of Goldman Sachs' banksters, etc. They also should not have entered the eurozone in the first place. But the eurozone, under German control, was less interested in fixing fiscal inequality or excessive military spending than in using this opportunity to reinforce their “golden rules” at all costs. The austerity plans were mathematically unviable (some debt haircut was unavoidable), so unless they're completely dumb the guardians of the orthodox temple wanted to make an example: punish Greece to send a message to other countries.

On August 23 2016 03:46 zatic wrote:
So Sarko running again. Any of our French friends want to comment? What are his chances?

On August 23 2016 01:51 Gorsameth wrote:

Not just the elites, tax dodging was (still is?) rampant at all levels of society.
Plus I consider a society responsible for the leaders it elects..

On August 23 2016 04:02 LegalLord wrote:
I remember some time ago Sarkozy was being investigated for election fraud after losing to Hollande. What came of that?

On August 23 2016 19:40 RoomOfMush wrote:
Well, greece is in a bad spot for many reasons, but I think its more important to discuss what could actually be done to improve the situation. Saying one strategy is bad but if you dont have an alternative then you are not helpful.

In my opinion the biggest problem is that greece has shitty people at the top. But other countries can not do anything against these. Its not like france can decide who will run greece because the greek politicians are shit. The rest of europe can tell them how to do things but they can not tell them who should be doing it.
I am sure europe would have been more lax with the austerity and all if they knew the top politicians could be trusted.

On a smuggler’s boat from Turkey two years ago, 19-year-old Rawan watched the passengers start to panic as a Greek coast guard vessel approached them head on, circling twice. Rawan heard two gunshots ring out from the Greek patrol. Fearing arrest, the driver of Rawan’s boat, a Turkish fisherman, turned the vehicle around to flee back to Turkey. Then Rawan heard more shots.

When the bullet hit her in the lower back, at first she felt nothing. Then, Rawan says, it felt like fire.

Rawan’s husband had made it to Germany a year earlier; both were fleeing their home in Damascus, Syria. Rawan and 12 other Syrians were headed for the Greek island of Chios on a small fiberglass boat, much faster than the inflatable dinghies that many refugees use for the 5-mile crossing.

Before the shots, Rawan heard “stop” blare over a loudspeaker on the coast guard vessel. She and four others were in the forward compartment of the boat, and more people were sitting in the back near the outboard engine. Rawan’s father-in-law, Adnan Akil, was also shot in the lower back, and Amjad A., another Syrian refugee who asked that only his first name and last initial be used, was shot in the shoulder.

Akil says he clearly remembers the chain of events leading up to the shooting. One officer had a pistol, the other had a submachine gun. Akil, Rawan, and other witnesses say they heard one officer shoot in automatic bursts. “We were shouting and screaming for the driver to stop,” remembers Braa Abosaleh, another Syrian refugee who was on the boat that day.

When the driver didn’t stop, the coast guard rammed their boat from the back right side. Akil and Rawan remember the driver stopping the boat, pretending he was going to surrender. As the officers put down their weapons and approached, the driver fired up the engine again and turned back toward Turkey. This time, the coast guard shot directly at the fleeing boat.

Finally, after the second round of shots, the driver stopped. From just outside the front compartment, Abosaleh watched a coast guard officer board their boat and scuffle with the driver. Abosaleh says the officer beat the driver with the butt of his pistol before handcuffing him, an account confirmed by Rawan. The wounded were transported to the hospital and the rest of the refugees were taken to a hotel in Chios city for interrogation.

A report of damages from the March 2014 incident would later document a total of 16 bullet holes in the boat, centering on the front compartment.

Sitting on a couch in her apartment in northern Germany last month, Rawan nervously rolls one cigarette after another. She walks with a limp from the shooting. She insists on only publishing her first name; her family in Syria still doesn’t know she was shot. Rawan says the coast guard officers threw her and the others wounded into their boat “like animals.”

After the shooting, one of the coast guard officers involved was arrested. According to court reports, he admitted finishing a clip of 30 bullets and reloading before continuing to shoot. In court, the two other officers aboard blamed him, saying he acted on his own and not on orders from his superior. The shooting was treated as an isolated event.

Less than a month later, a Greek court ruled that the coast guard officers, including the one arrested, did nothing wrong; they were shooting to stop a suspected smuggler.

Yet a collection of incident reports from Frontex, the European Union’s border agency, obtained by The Intercept, reveals a broader Greek and European tactic of using weapons to stop boats driven by suspected smugglers — and injuring or killing refugees in the process. (In the Greek islands, Frontex operates alongside the coast guard, patrolling the sea border with Turkey. In many cases, the information in these documents was reported to Frontex by the Greek coast guard as part of their joint operations.)

The documents, which were meant to be redacted to shield operational details but were inadvertently released by Frontex in full, reveal multiple cases of firearms use against boats carrying refugees (The Intercept has elected to publish the unredacted versions to demonstrate how refugees’ lives were endangered during these incidents). The reports span a 20-month period from May 2014, two months after the Chios shooting, to December 2015. Each case of firearms use — even if it resulted in someone being wounded — was described as part of the standard rules of engagement for stopping boats at sea.

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