EPTEuropean Politico-economics QA Mega-thread - Page 824
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Shield
Bulgaria4824 Posts
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OtherWorld
France17333 Posts
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Shield
Bulgaria4824 Posts
On April 29 2017 22:12 OtherWorld wrote: ^well, that's the reason why decision by majority is most of the times pretty stupid Sure, just like Brexit, but it would have been nicer if 5-10% were set as a minimum difference for such big changes.  | ||
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Simberto
Germany11528 Posts
On April 29 2017 22:15 Shield wrote: Sure, just like Brexit, but it would have been nicer if 5-10% were set as a minimum difference for such big changes. I think in most countries, constitutional changes demand a 2/3 majority (or something similar). Usually not in a referendum, but in parliament, but the result is similar. It means that you need a larger consensus to change the system than to rule in that system. Which makes a lot of sense to me. At least in Germany, it is also impossible to legally change the constitution in a way that gets rid of the democracy. | ||
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Sent.
Poland9201 Posts
On April 29 2017 21:52 warding wrote: lastpuritan doesn't seem to realize that despotism stinks pretty much the same way all around the world. But hey, I guess he really demolished all of us here calling for a return to a 1920 style western partition of Turkey, our whatever strawman it was he's trying to put down. A_flayer the discussion shouldn't be about whether individual X or Z is promoting violence and therefore should be arrested. It's about the political and legal institutions of the country and what it means to have an executive branch with the power to do all those things arbitrarily. It's about an almost developed country turning rule of law into the rule of Erdogan. Basic knowledge of political science and history makes it obvious that liberal democracies are what create happy, prosperous societies. There's nothing unique to Turkey that makes that not apply. Every dictator everywhere makes the exact same arguments that lastpuritan makes. I think that even if you somehow removed Erdogan and gave Turks a chance to democratically reform their country, they would still choose to go back to autocracy. For some reason they just don't want liberals to run their country. Liberal democracies do create happy prosperous societies in stable times, but they are very unreliable in turbulent periods, as every central eastern european country (except Czechoslovakia) showed in the interwar period. Most of these countries tried using the French model, but everything went to shit during the Great Depression. Liberal institutions kept failing until they were replaced by autocracies, which were far from perfect but still more effective than dysfunctional parliaments. | ||
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warding
Portugal2394 Posts
On April 29 2017 22:35 Sent. wrote: I think that even if you somehow removed Erdogan and gave Turks a chance to democratically reform their country, they would still choose to go back to autocracy. For some reason they just don't want liberals to run their country. Liberal democracies do create happy prosperous societies in stable times, but they are very unreliable in turbulent periods, as every central eastern european country (except Czechoslovakia) showed in the interwar period. Most of these countries tried using the French model, but everything went to shit during the Great Depression. Liberal institutions kept failing until they were replaced by autocracies, which were far from perfect but still more effective than dysfunctional parliaments. The lesson is that these institutions are hard to build and can be fragile, which is why we must not be complacent. In the first half of the XX century a lot of democracies failed - including in Portugal - but we have learned a lot about political systems since then. Today, western democracies are far more robust than any other type of political system - even with an incompetent lunatic in the White House, american democratic political institutions keep checks on his crazy Bannonist tendencies and conserve normalcy. In Europe the EU is also valuable because it can provide further robustness to liberal democratic institutions by preventing autocratic power emerging in EU countries. In that respect, I'm very curious to see how the Hungarian situation develops. | ||
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Sent.
Poland9201 Posts
Macron said Poland's getting sanctions three months after he's elected. I guess these strong words can be explained with this: Macron's criticism of Warsaw comes a day after a row over plans to close a Whirlpool tumble-dryer factory in France as production shifts to Poland took centre-stage in the presidential campaign, with both candidates visiting the factory. Macron alluded to the problem of social dumping - a hot-button issue in France, which refers to companies employing cheaper labour from other EU countries or moving production to lower-wage countries - though he added that he could not bring sanctions in that area. "You cannot have a country that plays on the fiscal and social gaps in the European Union and which is infringing European principles," Macron said. | ||
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lastpuritan
United States540 Posts
That's plain stupidity. We only know that Wikipedia posted some alleged stuff as facts about Turkey/ISIS links and Turkey demanded their removal, Wikipedia refused and it's blocked. Erdogan once said he has the information about Youtube's and Twitter's strict cooperation when it comes to the US concerned leaks they're getting erased by CIA's demand as quick as possible but Turkey related ones are always delayed. It was understandable to block those two as protest within that perspective, and in the end it actually worked, Twittter is working with Turkish intelligence service efficiently like they do with the US, but THIS one is a mess. Because, come on, the Wikipedia has hundreds of pages about Armenian genocide which Turkey objects the most on this planet since the foundation of the republic, biggest Turkish red line. If you don't do anything about that and block the Wikipedia over something we already know. I mean, we know even Assad bought wheat from ISIS while fighting them, almost impossible to have some links. I think Turkey loves negative attention, what can I say. On April 29 2017 22:02 Shield wrote: Speaking about Turkey, what I find weird is Erdogan is proceeding with his plan even though 2% easily change majority in his referendum. It's stupid such a small percentage changes the whole system. Also, what's worse is Bulgaria is a neighbour of Turkey and Turkey tried to get a pro-Turkey party into our parliament. They failed because they got like 3% and they needed 4%. Do I have a proof that Turkey interfered? Well, their diplomats were supporting that party, so Bulgarian officials had to tell them to stop. It wasn't on our notice until you guys raised your voice on the issue. It has been on our TVs for few days and people were arguing about whether Turkey should fund the Turkish-party's campaign to protect Turkish citizens there or stay neutral. Are there Turks in Bulgaria? It must be a good country to live I assume, but not for a Turk that's for certain. Why would Turks go there anways? Some people love to live hardcore, and we shouldn't be helping them so that they can sustain their brutal life. Sorry to hear that, but I'm pretty sure it's written somewhere on the international treaties that enables a country/individual to fund campaigns on other countries. Another tool of globalism feeding imperialism. On April 29 2017 21:52 warding wrote: lastpuritan doesn't seem to realize that despotism stinks pretty much the same way all around the world. But hey, I guess he really demolished all of us here calling for a return to a 1920 style western partition of Turkey, our whatever strawman it was he's trying to put down. A_flayer the discussion shouldn't be about whether individual X or Z is promoting violence and therefore should be arrested. It's about the political and legal institutions of the country and what it means to have an executive branch with the power to do all those things arbitrarily. It's about an almost developed country turning rule of law into the rule of Erdogan. Basic knowledge of political science and history makes it obvious that liberal democracies are what create happy, prosperous societies. There's nothing unique to Turkey that makes that not apply. Every dictator everywhere makes the exact same arguments that lastpuritan makes. I think I said it before but, we tried to be very liberal when we started peace process with the PKK. Kurdish crowds were this big usually: + Show Spoiler + ![[image loading]](http://www.anarkismo.net/attachments/mar2013/newroz2013.jpg) And Erdogan was trying to get Kurdish votes: + Show Spoiler + ![[image loading]](http://www.diken.com.tr/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/erdogan-perwer-tatlises.jpg) But they publicly started recruitment tables on HDP rallies. The numbers show us the PKK doubled the recruitment amounts and started to heavily fortify Kurdish provinces with tons of bombs, IEDS, mines... Here's a PKK member saying they knew the process will and they kept planting bombs: https://www.wsj.com/articles/urban-warfare-escalates-in-turkeys-kurdish-majority-southeast-1440024103 and some footage of Kurdish municipalities helping the guerilla forces on their mine planting within asphalt roads. + Show Spoiler + If that happens anywhere on this world you would expect closure of those municipalities and arrest of the responsible. When Turkey does it, it's called CRACKDOWN on Kurdish polticians on your newspapers, but none of these videos were mentioned. The PKK openly said they will be not only on the mountains, but in the towns as well this time after peace process failed. (with Turkish rejection on the release of Ocalan and assassination of 2 Turkish Policemen during their sleep.) We all thought they were saying they'll attack police forces or assassinate politicians like that, but we didn't know they meant full civil war with trenches, 5-10k guerilla forces inside towns that constantly fight until they die. I'm not only sorry for the Turkish loses, but for all those Kurdish youth because they were ordered to fight a superior enemy with a limited chance to win. Because at some point, it was obvious that house to house chase with police/gendarme forces will fail for Turkish side, and the army will kick in. That means tanks will roll, and towns will be destroyed. Within a month or two this happened: + Show Spoiler + And it was on your newspapers again as "Turkish forces destroying Kurdish towns" but again, with no mention of the PKK leaders decision to fight inside towns, there's even a video in Turkish PKK leadership threatens Turkey with that. You can't expect a tank to knock your door and politely ask if there's a terrorist inside, it's usually announced via megaphones prior to operation, demanding citizens to leave. Believe me police forces tried to cleanse the PKK forces with door to door techniques but they wired ieds to doorhandles etc, almost impossible to beat them like that. In the end, you can't fight a liberal war. All the liberal values start to crumble when you're fighting a dirty war. Before 2013, you could see kurdish people on the TV's debating whether autonomy or indepence would fork for them, if you have a liberal democracy you can debate on that, but in the war-times that liberal value would most likely harm your fight. As for the free press, I bet if there was a coup attempt in the US, state's first target would be their newspapers and hq's who secretly signaled the incoming coup, right? And any journalist who would whitewash those people would be either jailed or forced out of the country. Would you let newspapers live if they praised 9/11 attacks? Why are you going nuts when some Kurdish newspapers get closed. It's not journalism but terrorist propaganda. Isn't it pretty normal from the Turkish perspective to close them? I only feel sorry the journalist who reported some leaked information by Gulen, they did their reporting, in the end they weren't spying at all. However, Turkey's most selling newspaper is Hurriyet, and Hurriyet isn't pro government. They harshly criticizing Turkey over Syria, domestic issues and many things. They're against the PKK and Gulen, or they stay away from those topics usually. We do have crippled press, yes. But not a dead one. What else we can talk about liberal democracy? We still have free market, we don't have checks and balances, because of gulen trauma the state became way too nationalist from their judges to lawyers, and we have one man ruling but that's okay with us, we always had it since Ataturk anyways. (What I mean with OK is Turkish people are happy with one man rule it seems.) What I find interesting is, SISI in Egypt is also a dictator with 1 man rule, and he ain't elected like Erdogan. The only difference he's ultra secular compared to Erdogan but I see Erdogan being covered in western newspapers 10 times more. I believe you people are okay with one man rule too if the man is secular. To sum up, Erdogan was expecting 60% on the referendum with MHP votes. He won more kurdish votes compared to possible nationalist votes coming from the MHP, that was absurd. But this also means, 49% of Turkey, if can persuade 2% of the YES voters, we won't be seeing Erdogan as president in the next elections. That means, our new DICTATOR, or president, will be able to change Turkish policies on many subjects swiftly. IF ONLY your politicians stop Turkey bashing because that doesn't help us at all, but makes more YES votes for Erdogan. Because he uses every opportunity given, Germany let Kurdish rallies but not the Turkish ones, do you really expect Erdogan not to turn it into a nationalistic propaganda? Or you expect Turks to think stable if they see PKK flags all over the Europe. Sometimes it's better to stay neutral to all sides, not raising those fancy "concerns". We would surely be better with European help, but do we get it? Where's the visa-free? | ||
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warding
Portugal2394 Posts
I know all of your arguments, they are the same for every despot. Dictators breed extreme opposition everywhere, which then help dictators enact stricter illiberal policies. It's the same everywhere. You seem to believe that Turkey doesn't have anything to gain with democracy and that the current status is fine and nobody here will convince you otherwise. Good thing you mention Egypt because that's the sort of direction you're heading towards, instead of Europe. As for European help, you'd be getting it if Erdogan hadn't stalled progress towards EU application once he got into power. | ||
TheEmulator
28090 Posts
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a_flayer
Netherlands2826 Posts
https://www.scribd.com/document/335885421/Declassified-Intelligence-Community-Assessment-of-Russian-Activities-and-Intentions-in-Recent-U-S-Elections#from_embed In the runup to the 2012 US presidential election in November, English-language channel RT America -- created and financed by the Russian Government and part of Russian Government-sponsored RT TV (see textbox 1) -- intensified its usually critical coverage of the United States. The channel portrayed the US electoral process as undemocratic and featured calls by US protesters for the public to rise up and "take this government back." In an effort to highlight the alleged "lack of democracy" in the United States, RT broadcast, hosted, and advertised third-party candidate debates and ran reporting supportive of the political agenda of these candidates. The RT hosts asserted that the US two-party system does not represent the views of at least one-third of the population and is a "sham." RT aired a documentary about the Occupy Wall Street movement on 1, 2, and 4 November. RT framed the movement as a fight against "the ruling class" and described the current US political system as corrupt and dominated by corporations. RT advertising for the documentary featured Occupy movement calls to "take back" the government. The documentary claimed that the US system cannot be changed democratically, but only through "revolution." After the 6 November US presidential election, RT aired a documentary called "Cultures of Protest," about active and often violent political resistance (RT, 1- 10 November). And that were the observations of the US intelligence community as the result of a peaceful transition of power. If some sort of attempt at a violent uprising did happen, they would obviously not do anything to stop these kinds of grave and deliberate attempts at spreading unjustified discontent through the media, because freedom of the press is so important to them (this is sarcasm by the way). Or, you know, arrest and convict journalists, and then arrest them again for talking to press after they did their time: https://theintercept.com/2017/04/27/formerly-imprisoned-journalist-barrett-brown-taken-back-into-custody-before-pbs-interview/ Award-winning journalist Barrett Brown was re-arrested and taken into custody Thursday, the day before he was scheduled to be interviewed for a PBS documentary. Brown quickly became a symbol of the attack on press freedom after he was arrested in 2012 for reporting he did on the hacked emails of intelligence-contracting firms. Brown wrote about hacked emails that showed the firm Stratfor spying on activists on behalf of corporations. Brown also helped uncover a proposal by intelligence contractors to hack and smear WikiLeaks defenders and progressive activists. Faced with the possibility of 100 years in prison, Brown pleaded guilty in 2014 to two charges related to obstruction of justice and threatening an FBI agent, and was sentenced to five years and 3 months. In 2016, Brown won a National Magazine Award for his scathing and often hilarious columns in The Intercept, which focused on his life in prison. He was released in November. Jay Leiderman, Brown’s lawyer, told The Intercept Brown was arrested Thursday during a check-in. According to his mother, Brown had not missed a check-in or failed a drug test since he was released to a halfway house in November. Neither his mother nor lawyer has been informed where he is being held. And before anyone starts talking "Well, the situation is different, there's so and so reason why they're arrested" - that's exactly the point I'm trying to make. We have more detailed information about these arrests, we have a better understanding of our own laws and culture (and we live inside our own culture, which is inherently different from theirs). Yet, despite that, there's still two camps of belief regarding these issues. We don't speak the Turkish language, and it's exceedingly difficult to get a good grip on the details when you're being fed information from an outsider's perspective. If you do have a large faction of people in your country who are sensitive to suggestions of turning to violence, maybe you'd be more supportive of suppressing media that helps spread discontent in their name. If that's what happening in Turkey, because I sure as fuck couldn't tell you. | ||
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warding
Portugal2394 Posts
https://rsf.org/en/ranking Turkey ranks 155th. Unless the only good arguments for curtailing freedom of speech and freedom of the press only exist in Turkish with no translation available, I don't see why knowing the language is a factor in understanding what's happening. Again, dictators act the same the whole world over, there's nothing new or unique to Turkey here. Pretending that the US or other Western countries act similarly can only be accomplished with a good dose of moral relativism. | ||
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Manit0u
Poland17291 Posts
Constitutional tribunal being neutered. Supreme army command being moved from president to the minister of defense. Judges being appointed by politicians. 13 out of 14 police generals being fired. Attempt at splitting the policeman's union (they have a single union with 40k members) into many smaller ones due to recent concerns from the police force and their statements against being politicized. Most of the higher ranking military commanders (those with real combat experience and such) resigning due to new minister of defense's policies and cleansing (our special forces, involved in operations against ISIS and others have had their commander changed several times in the past year and they're voicing some serious concerns about it). Public media being turned into propaganda machine for the government (which also included plenty of cleansing where a lot of journalists lost their jobs because of not being on the board for it). Attempts to give military full, pretty much unrestricted surveillance access. etc. etc. Fun times. Not. I'm just waiting for the EU to turn off the money stream, which would disable any efforts to hide our government's shitty governing useless. They can fool a lot of people as long as there's money and they're not hurting that much - it's surprising how many people don't give a shit about their freedoms as long as nothing much changes in their day-to-day lives. Fucking scary. | ||
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Nyxisto
Germany6287 Posts
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OtherWorld
France17333 Posts
What is described by Manit0u is typically the kind of thing that could (would) happen in France with Le Pen in power. Except for the police neutrality part, I guess, since a good chunk of our police forces is proudly voting FN. | ||
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maartendq
Belgium3115 Posts
On May 01 2017 10:47 Nyxisto wrote: I don't really get it, is there any specific crisis that causes this powergrab? Poland seemed to be doing just fine I would argue that the current generation of polish politicians still has some soviet-authoritarian tendencies. | ||
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maybenexttime
Poland5588 Posts
On May 01 2017 10:43 Manit0u wrote: Speaking of dictatorships, we have some pretty crazy things going on in Poland right now... Constitutional tribunal being neutered. Supreme army command being moved from president to the minister of defense. Judges being appointed by politicians. 13 out of 14 police generals being fired. Attempt at splitting the policeman's union (they have a single union with 40k members) into many smaller ones due to recent concerns from the police force and their statements against being politicized. Most of the higher ranking military commanders (those with real combat experience and such) resigning due to new minister of defense's policies and cleansing (our special forces, involved in operations against ISIS and others have had their commander changed several times in the past year and they're voicing some serious concerns about it). Public media being turned into propaganda machine for the government (which also included plenty of cleansing where a lot of journalists lost their jobs because of not being on the board for it). Attempts to give military full, pretty much unrestricted surveillance access. etc. etc. Fun times. Not. I'm just waiting for the EU to turn off the money stream, which would disable any efforts to hide our government's shitty governing useless. They can fool a lot of people as long as there's money and they're not hurting that much - it's surprising how many people don't give a shit about their freedoms as long as nothing much changes in their day-to-day lives. Fucking scary. Could you, please, provide credible sources? | ||
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LegalLord
United Kingdom13775 Posts
The front-runner in the French presidential election has told the BBC that the EU must reform or face the prospect of "Frexit". Pro-EU centrist Emmanuel Macron made the comments as he and his far-right rival Marine Le Pen entered the last week of campaigning. French voters go to the polls on Sunday to decide between the pair. Ms Le Pen has capitalised on anti-EU feeling, and has promised a referendum on France's membership. She won support in rural and former industrial areas by promising to retake control of France's borders from the EU and slash immigration. "I'm a pro-European, I defended constantly during this election the European idea and European policies because I believe it's extremely important for French people and for the place of our country in globalisation," Mr Macron, leader of the recently created En Marche! movement, told the BBC. "But at the same time we have to face the situation, to listen to our people, and to listen to the fact that they are extremely angry today, impatient and the dysfunction of the EU is no more sustainable. "So I do consider that my mandate, the day after, will be at the same time to reform in depth the European Union and our European project." Mr Macron added that if he were to allow the EU to continue to function as it was would be a "betrayal". "And I don't want to do so," he said. "Because the day after, we will have a Frexit or we will have [Ms Le Pen's] National Front (FN) again." Source In context sounds like an attempt to siphon a few Le Pen potential voters by saying what they might want to hear. He clearly has not a single Eurosceptic bone in his body so it's more along the lines of the "EU needs some form of vague unspecified reform" that we tend to hear about these days. | ||
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warding
Portugal2394 Posts
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
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