Tag: EU

Even the Dutch have figured this out:

Peaceful multicultural societies don’t exist and the EU won’t be able to force “equal” migrant distribution on Eastern Europe, where people of color are beaten to a pulp, the Dutch FM said according to a leaked video.

The explosive comments were delivered by Dutch Foreign Minister Stef Blok during a private meeting attended by some 80 people working for the Netherlands’ international organizations. Footage of Blok speaking to the audience via video link was leaked to the current affairs program Zembla on Wednesday, and the inflammatory remarks promptly spread through the Dutch media.

“I have asked my ministry this and I will pose the question here as well,” Blok can be heard saying in the video. “Give me an example of a multi-ethnic or a multi-cultural society, in which the original population still lives, and where there is a peaceful cohabitation. I don’t know one.”

The minister went further and said it might be all fun and games to go to a “Turkish bakery on Sunday” if you live in a well-off part of a city, but a “number of side effects” promptly become tangible if one lives in a migrant-packed neighborhood. You very quickly reach the limits of what a society can take,” Blok stated.

One of the event goers gave Suriname as an example of a peaceful multicultural society. Bok, however, brushed off the claim, branding the former Dutch colony “a failed state.”

“And that is largely to do with the ethnic divisions,” Blok said.

It’s going to be an interesting contest between which ideology was more objectively insane and which was the most harmful between a) communism, b) feminism, and c) multiculturalism. At this point, I’d say it’s a two-horse race between (b) and (c). Even 70 years of murderous communism left most nations more or less intact.

The European nations are finally getting around to shielding their soft southern underbelly, fortunately before the coming African overpopulation crisis gets completely out of hand:

Europe will shut its southern doors to migrants under plans to be discussed by Germany, Austria and Italy next week, it has emerged. Germany’s hardline Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said talks would take place between the three nations on how to close the Mediterranean route into the EU. His announcement comes after a meeting with Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz and amid plans being considered by Germany’s government for new immigration measures at their shared border.

It’s a good first step. The second step will be to launch Salvini’s quarter-by-quarter repatriations. Preferably on a continent-wide scale.

The sooner that the political abortion that is the EU collapses, the better. Today would be ideal.

Merkel warns the migrant crisis will ‘make or break the EU’ if European leaders cannot solve the problem during summit today ‘Europe faces many challenges, but that of migration could become the make-or-break one for the EU. Either we manage it, so others in Africa believe that we are guided by values and believe in multilateralism, not unilateralism, or nobody will believe any longer in the system of values that has made us strong,’ she said. ‘That’s why it’s so important.’

Merkel’s Bavarian CSU allies have given her until the end of the EU summit to reduce the burden of immigration on Germany, which has taken in 1.6 million migrants since 2014. Otherwise, they will defy her and impose border controls, which could collapse the chancellor’s fledgling coalition. If she fails to secure bilateral deals and show progress is being made to deal with the influx of migrants who have entered Europe, she will return to Berlin a lame duck chancellor, or possibly even out of a job.

Merkel has to go, the sooner the better, and Germany must begin to repatriate all 1.6 million of the migrants that she foolishly permitted entry. But if Merkel’s idiotic action does break apart the European Union, we will at least owe her a modicum of gratitude for that.

The neo-liberal world order, or as it should more accurately be known, the Trotskyite World Revolution, is collapsing. What will replace it is not yet known, but a collection of homogeneous nations living in relative peace would be a worthy objective.

Angela Merkel’s African flotilla is finally being stopped by Italy’s new government.

Italy is seeking to have seven boats carrying roughly 1,000 migrants needing rescue off Libya taken back to North Africa, according to a Spanish aid group. Proactiva Open Arms, which has rescued thousands of migrants in the Mediterranean, said the Italians want the Libyan coast guard to conduct the rescues and return the migrants.

Proactiva said in a tweet that Italian coast guard authorities who coordinate rescues sent out advisories to all ships in the area but told the aid group: ‘We don’t need your help.’

In a tweet on Sunday, hard-line interior minister Matteo Salvini said: ‘It’s right that the Libyan authorities intervene, as they’ve been doing for days, without having the NGOs interrupt them and disturb them.’ It comes days after Salvini refused to let a rescue boat with 224 migrants on board dock in Italy, saying those on board ‘will only see Italy on a postcard’.

My guess is that Italy is going to start seizing the NGO ships first, then forcing the boats to return to Libya. That would probably be the most politically palatable place to start, since no one has any sympathy for them anymore. It would be more effective to simply sink everything that enters Italian waters pour encourager les autres, but that will probably not be necessary once Salvini starts the street-by-street repatriations he has stated are necessary. After all, there isn’t much point in paying traffickers to bring you to Italy if you’re just going to be sent back to a camp in Libya right away.

It’s going to be interesting to see the next political polls in Italy. I expect the fast-growing popularity of Salvini and La Lega is going to astonish the world. It’s very interesting to see how the 5 Stelle leaders are speaking in much more aggressively nationalist terms as well; 5 Stelle may be the senior partners in the alliance, but it’s clear that La Lega is the driving force.

The BBC is whining that Salvini’s “ferocious anti-immigrant rhetoric is proving very popular.”

Also in Italy, we need a mass cleaning, street by street, quarter by quarter, piazza by piazza. A strong manner is needed, because there are entire areas of cities, entire parts of Italy that are out of control. 

Compare that strong and forthright language with Trump’s indecisive civic nationalism that is too much for even the average US conservative to stomach, despite the fact that the genuinely American portion of the US population is already a relatively small minority. That is why Italy will ultimately survive and the USA will not. It appears that even when faced with an clear, present, and existential danger, Americans, like the white South Africans, will not even contemplate defending themselves or their nation until it is far too late. Apparently they prefer to instead redefine their nation out of existence.

It is highly unlikely that whatever calls itself “America” in the year 2100 will have any meaningful connection to the Christian English nation that declared itself independent of the British crown in 1776. The dirt that once belonged to the Iroquois and the Americans will belong to someone else.

Even the Scandinavians are now looking for legal ways to free their nations from anti-Western influences:

 In recent years, the rise of the rightwing anti-migrant Danish People’s party has led to previously radical positions becoming mainstream. And the country’s Muslim population in particular feels under siege. Earlier this month Danish MPs  that, in effect, bans the burqa. It imposes a penalty of 10,000 kroner (£1,200) for repeat offenders.

In another move greeted with dismay by Denmark’s Muslims, a citizen’s proposal to ban the circumcision of children got the 50,000 signatures it needed to go to a parliamentary vote.

The European approach of banning the undesirable behavior instead of the identity with which it is customarily associated is working very well in a number of countries from Denmark to Switzerland. Banning the burqah, halal meat, kosher meat, human sacrifice, and circumcision without consent are all effective ways to legally ban deleterious religious identities from the West without violating any delicate Enlightenment sensibilities.

No one expects Aztecs to be permitted to sacrifice prisoners and offer their still-beating hearts to the sun, after all. If it’s not Christianity, then it is not beneficial to the West and there is absolutely no need to accommodate its practitioners in any way, shape, or form.

Like it or not, these behavioral bans are coming and they will be in place sooner than anyone expects.

The Sweden Democrats want out:

The leader of the far-right anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats is calling for a referendum on EU membership, hoping for a ‘Swexit’ result. Jimmie Åkesson, 39, branded the EU ‘a large web of corruption’, and said Sweden should hold a referendum after the general elections this September. ‘We pay an enormous amount of money and get overwhelmingly little back. But the main reason is ideological: we should not be in an ideological union.’

The Sweden Democrats is currently the second biggest party in the Scandinavian nation, boosted by the European migrant crisis which saw Sweden take in more refugees per capita than any other EU country. 

Meanwhile, Matteo Salvini remains staunchly opposed to the invasion by sea:

Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Salvini on Saturday warned another migrant rescue mission off the Libyan coast that it would not be allowed to land its “human cargo” at an Italian port.

The new rightwing and anti-immigrant Italian government last week banned the French NGO operated vessel the Aquarius, with more than 600 rescued migrants on board, from docking in Italy, causing uproar and a sharp spat with France.
 
Spain subsequently offered to take the Aquarius and it is expected at the port of Valencia on Sunday.

Salvini showed no sign Saturday of softening his position.
 
“While the Aquarius is sailing towards Spain, two other Dutch NGO operated vessels (Lifeline and Seefuchs) have arrived off the Libyan coast, to wait for their human cargos once the people smugglers abandon them,” Salvini said in a Facebook post.
 
“These people should know that Italy no longer wants to be any part of this business of clandestine immigration and they will have to look for other ports to go to,” he said.
 
“As minister and as a father, I take this action for the benefit of all,” he added.
 
After Rome’s decision to ban the Aquarius, French President Emmanuel Macron and Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte met on Friday and agreed that the EU should set up asylum processing centres in Africa to prevent “voyages of death.”

And then be arrested and put on trial for treason, one would hope. But regardless, one hopes Germany will soon see the last of worst German Chancellor since Hitler:

Angela Merkel could be ousted as Chancellor by next week if she doesn’t come up with a plan for the migrant crisis, a German MP claims.

Kai Whittaker, a member of Ms Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, said infighting could weaken the ruling coalition and make her position untenable.

Ms Merkel is at war with her Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, who wants Germany to send back migrants who have registered in other EU countries. Ms Merkel is sticking to her guns, maintaining an open-door migrant policy is crucial for keeping Europe united despite the political standoff with her Bavarian ally.

In her weekly podcast, three days before talks between Ms Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron outside Berlin, she hammered home her stance. ‘This is a European challenge that also needs a European solution. And I view this issue as decisive for keeping Europe together,’ she said.

Members said Mr Seehofer would defy Merkel on Monday if no compromise has been reached by then, and go ahead with the plans alone. Such an affront to Merkel could force her to fire Seehofer, and there is even talk of the end of the 70-year conservative parliamentary alliance between the two parties. Without the CSU, the CDU and Social Democrats, the third party in her ‘grand coalition’, would lack a majority.

It’s astonishing that the outcome is even in doubt at this point.

The EU blinked and accepted the Left-Right nationalist alliance rather than risk a La Lega government.

Italy’s new populist leaders commemorated the founding of the Italian republic by attending a pomp-filled military parade Saturday — and then promised to get to work creating jobs and expelling migrants.

“The free ride is over,” League leader Matteo Salvini, Italy’s new interior minister, warned migrants at a rally in northern Italy. “It’s time to pack your bags.”

The pledge of mass deportations to come was a reminder that Italy has a staunchly anti-immigrant, right-wing party in its governing coalition — and that the European Union will face a whole new partner governing its fourth-largest economy.

Earlier, Salvini joined Premier Giuseppe Conte and the rest of the newly sworn-in Cabinet to view the Republic Day parade. Italy’s aeronautic acrobatic squad flew low and loud over downtown Rome trailing smoke in the red, white and green of the Italian flag.

The national pride on display is a feature of every Republic Day, but it took on a particular significance this year after Italy on Friday ended three months of political and financial turmoil and swore in a government whose populist and euroskeptic leanings have alarmed Europe.

Conte, a law professor plucked from relative obscurity to head an unlikely governing alliance of the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement and League, said the celebrations Saturday transcended all the tensions of recent days.

“It’s the celebration for all of us, of our republic,” he said.

Conte’s Cabinet was sworn in after a last-minute deal averted the threat of a new election that could have turned into a referendum on whether Italy stayed with the shared European euro currency. The political stability relieved financial markets on Friday but Italy’s European neighbors continued to express concerns about the euroskeptic bent and the heavy spending agenda of Italy’s new government…. The political upheaval that has created western Europe’s first populist government this week has been dubbed the start of Italy’s Third Republic.

I think I would have preferred another election, but the fact that Salvini is still the interior minister is the most important thing. And it wasn’t exactly as if the Italians took the EU’s objection to Paolo Savona lying down, instead, they took trolling to new heights by naming him to the Ministry for European Affairs in place of the Treasury. The thing is, it took a while for Italy to get into the Euro, and they’re not going to extricate the nation from it overnight. The most important thing is for the new government to deliver on the promised deportations. As long as it does that, La Lega will be in a stronger position in the next election cycle.

And, of course, this being Italy, the chances are about 85 percent that the new government won’t last a year anyhow. It is tremendously encouraging, however, to see that the eurocrats are so desperate to avoid a popular referendum on the Euro. They know they would lose, because most Italians would prefer to go back to the Lira, despite what the new Minister of the Treasury says.

Italy’s new finance minister Giovanni Tria is a political economy professor whose policies dovetail with those of the far-right League party, with one crucial exception: he wants Italy to stick with the euro. This is an important distinction from Paolo Savona who was previously touted for the job and whose hostility to Italy’s eurozone membership turned out to be a dealbreaker for Italy’s president. But although Tria wrote on the Formiche analysis website that it was “not in our interests to leave”, he also said that the eurozone needed to be reformed. “Before saying why I think that we must reply ‘no’ to the question of a euro exit, I would start from the question ‘what are the conditions for the euro’s survival’, so we can move in the opposite direction of any breakup,” Tria said.

Except that’s not quite what he said.

“Tra tutti i partiti italiani, sia all’opposizione che al governo, non ho sentito una sola forza politica che dica che voglia uscire dall’euro. Questa è la verità: il mondo deve prenderne atto” 

“Throughout all the Italian parties, including the opposition and the government, I have not heard a single political force that says it wants to exit the Euro. This is the truth: the world must take note.”

I found this statement more significant.  Sembra di essere tornati ai tempi in cui Maynard Keynes criticava i vecchi ortodossi.

“It feels as if we have returned to the times in which John Maynard Keynes criticized the old orthodoxy.”

In other words, no major political party has made it an official policy… yet. My take is that he’s warning the Eurocrats that either they shape up fast or Italy ships out. And I am quite sure that he knows they have no intention whatsoever of shaping up. And, as I’ve already mentioned, Italy intends to deal with the migrant situation first. If the EU gets in the way of that, then Italy will leave both the Euro and the European Union.

Viktor Orban and Fidesz are expected to remain in power today:

After an acrimonious campaign in which Orban projected himself as a savior of Hungary’s Christian culture against Muslim migration into Europe, all opinion polls put his Fidesz party well ahead.

A strong victory could embolden him to put more muscle into a Central European alliance against the European Union’s migration policies. Orban, Hungary’s longest-serving post-communist premier, opposes deeper integration of the bloc.

He has far-right admirers across Europe who like his tough line on migrants, while critics say he has put Hungary on an increasingly authoritarian path.

A landslide win would make Orban feel vindicated in his decision to run a single-issue campaign, arguing migration poses a security threat.

Demonstrating, once more, that the Republican strategy of pandering to immigrants in order to destroy the country a little more slowly is not only destructive, but isn’t even electorally sound. Notice that the leading opposition is to his right!

The strongest opposition party is former far-right Jobbik, which has recast its image as a more moderate nationalist force. It has been campaigning on an anti-corruption agenda and urged higher wages to lure back hundreds of thousands of Hungarians who had left Hungary to earn a better living in western Europe…. A poll by Zavech research institute published on Friday showed Fidesz had 46 percent support among decided voters, while Jobbik had 19 percent. The Socialists came in third with 14 percent. 

Now it is time for Huxit. I expect Russia will be willing to guarantee their security if the EU wants to play hardball.

Sacre bleu! I have been expecting more than a few high-level arrests to take place as a result of the Draining of the Swamp, but I was not expecting one of them to be a President of the Fifth Republic!

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was placed in custody on Tuesday as part of an investigation that he received millions of euros in illegal financing from the regime of the late Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.

A judicial source with direct knowledge of the case told The Associated Press that Sarkozy was being held at the Nanterre police station, west of Paris. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

Sarkozy and his former chief of staff have denied wrongdoing in the case, which involves funding for his winning 2007 presidential campaign.

Though an investigation has been underway since 2013, the case gained traction some three years later when French-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine told the online investigative site, Mediapart, that he delivered suitcases from Libya containing 5 million euros ($6.2 million) in cash to Sarkozy and his former chief of staff Claude Gueant.

A lawyer for Sarkozy did not immediately respond to a message from the AP seeking comments. Investigators are examining claims that Gadhafi’s regime secretly gave Sarkozy 50 million euros overall for the 2007 campaign.

Now, it is possible that this has nothing at all to do with Trump’s swamp-draining. But considering all the shady connections between Clinton, Obama, Libya, Gadhafi, and the death of the US Ambassador to Libya, I tend to doubt it.

Macron is certainly proving to be a more interesting, and potentially more independent, character than I expected him to be.