[Non-US] News That Makes You laugh/cry/neither...

[Stahlseele]

Germany isn't much better it seems.
We had a 47,7% Voter Tournout and the more right than center party Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany) got 7% of all votes . .
Pirate Party got a bit more in votes too, but not nearly enough.

[Starmaker]

(Just PMs, most-hated-head-of-state would still go probably to President Putin, possibly to Chancellor Merkel)

Putin's approval rating is currently through the roof. As for normally, this depends on how you count the hate-votes. First past the post he's certainly hated a lot, but he's almost everyone's second-best preference. Recently, "the opposition" got their guy, a Communist, elected Mayor of Novosibirsk. This will never fly nationwide, and I don't just mean "because Putin will fudge the results".

[DSMatticus]

I honestly don't understand why the backlash against the anti-democratic mandates of crippling austertiy is coming in the form of a bunch of far-right fascists who are anti-democratic and want to impose crippling austerity.

I also don't understand why the mainstream political parties don't just poach the core of the fascists' platform, and promise to abandon the EU, which is what the public clearly wants (and at this point, they're right) - it's clearly become a matter of political survival, and the alternative is to continue to lose ground to a bunch of fascists.

But either way, it appears to be that the governments of Europe are so corrupt they can no longer even maintain the illusion of having the people's mandate, and the movements poised to turn that into political advantage are fascist. Good times ahead!

[angelfromanotherpin]

I honestly don't understand why the backlash against the anti-democratic mandates of crippling austertiy is coming in the form of a bunch of far-right fascists who are anti-democratic and want to impose crippling austerity.

The short version is that most people are not sufficiently politically engaged or aware to actually understand why the economy is in the shitter; they are merely smoldering with generic dissatisfaction. And fascism offers answers, answers that are false but very simple, and often in pithy soundbite form.

[Occluded Sun]

And [insert name of political ideology] offers answers, answers that are false but very simple, and often in pithy soundbite form.

Text in italics is mine, not angelfromanotherpin's.

[John Magnum]

Thanks for explaining the use of square brackets! What a shocking new convention.

[PhoneLobster]

The short version is ...

It's more than that though.

Right wing, as in traditional conservative, politicians have been spreading rampant hard right propaganda for decades. They have been mobilizing and antagonizing a paranoid ignorant hard right grass roots movement thinking they could control it and milk it for power.

And actually yeah, that's basically the story. The right has decietfully toyed with building a grass roots fascist movement and spreading fascist policy and propaganda thinking it was a source of personal gain, and then it spiraled out of control and the empowered actual fascist true believers now have the potential of taking power from more traditional, vaguely centrist, right wing movements.

The dynamic in play is basically what's happened in the USA with the Tea Party.

[Koumei]

So let's pretend I'm a selfish bitch who doesn't really give much of a fuck about other people.* My plans are still to get gay-married in Sweden, gain permanent residency, gain citizenship, then denounce my Australian citizenship, living forever in a land on Vikings, homosexuality and herring.

Politically speaking, how is Sweden doing these days? Does it look like I'd be able to live the rest of my life going "Hahaha, suck a dick Australia, a fool and his money are soon elected and you got what you voted for!" while living in a collective regime of peace and love? Or are they also turning to the Right and ruining a good thing they had going?

*"Pretend" might not be the right word here.

[Occluded Sun]

My understanding is that the various immigrant groups are neither doing as well nor melding into Swedish society as well as people hoped they would. Which is part of why they have a "turning to the Right" thing going on.

Although many of their attempts to implement what they see as egalitarian social policies have failed (most notably the attempt to reach gender parity in fields with traditional gender-ratio biases), as long as they have enough high-value sources of income like fossil fuels, they can have a pretty nice society regardless.

I hope you can demonstrate you'd be a valuable immigrant; Sweden seems to becoming more like Canada in that respect.

[DSMatticus]

The surge of far right fascism that's sweeping Europe has manifested in Sweden as fairly standard centre right bullshit. The most noteworthy highlight I'm aware of is the one I felt the need to post about a few pages back:

So, if you happen to have lived somewhere on planet Earth at some point in the past five years, you are probably aware there was a minor economic crisis that sparked worldwide, not-quite-apocalyptic-so-hey-that's-something recession. Good times.

Sweden went into this recession with a strong economic position, their own sovereign currency, automatic hikes to welfare spending, and a dirty pinko commie central bank that thought it could solve all their problems by flooding the economy with money. Idiots, am I right?

So, after posting two years of absolutely astounding growth (but unemployment rates still moderately higher than pre-crisis levels), they decided it was time to aggressively raise rates. And when this caused inflation to plummet below their 2% target, they realized the error of their ways and HAHAHA YEAH RIGHT anyway things kept plummeting and now their inflation is negative. I think there's a word for that. Starts with 'd' for 'dumbasses.'

Long story short, the Swedish central bank is now paying people to hoard cash while growing the debt burden in an economy that already has moderately high employment, high consumer debt, and low demand. And that might become the norm - if you expect your dollar will be worth more tomorrow than it is today (deflation), and you expect the increase in value of your dollar will be worth more than the extra returns you'd get from investing it today (demand is sufficiently low), you hoard the fucking dollar. And if a central bank hands you a bunch of money under the expectation that you will put it into the money supply and that will cause inflation, you hoard those dollars too and it doesn't.

Edit: have some Krugman. I went looking for some other articles that weren't behind an (albeit easily circumvented) paywall/trial limit, but I gave up after a few pissed me off trying to justify the Riksbank's anti-inflationary policies as a legitimate effort to curb another housing bubble. Hint: if you want to stop housing bubbles caused by risky lending, regulate your fucking banks.

The tl;dr is that they have a sovereign currency experiencing deflation because they're idiots. But they have a pretty big cushion before temporary insanity inflicts serious harm, and they can totally recover or squeek by. Especially considering the rest of the world is determined to be even stupider than they are.

Sweden's immigration issues are grossly exaggerated by conservatives, because immigrants are evil and if Sweden has immigrants then clearly they must be causing all sorts of problems because that's just what immigrants do, am I right? But the reality of the situation is that Sweden's immigrant population is by all statistical measures less "scary" than the African American population of the United States, which has completely failed to destroy the country. Surprise: it's baseless fearmongering used to launch a more than slightly racist political agenda!

I am not the least bit qualified to guess whether or not the immigrant populations will integrate in a timely fashion or end up ghettoized (and for how long). Neither is apocalyptic, because countries survive that sort of institutional fuck-you-ery all the time, but the former is obviously preferable to the latter for everyone involved.

[Koumei]

So the latest updates in Ausfailian stupidity:

The PM went to Indonesia to try to patch up relations over the whole phone-tapping, towing boats into their waters and other breaches we've made. The flight was delayed, but don't worry, they made sure to blame the previous government for it. No really.

He then went over to the US to meet with all the big players, and... all signs point to everyone else trying to avoid him. Basically every photo shows him standing on his own from the others, or them walking on ahead while he lags behind. "Is that guy still following us, Obama?" "Just ignore him, Cameron, he'll go away eventually."

Yeah, even (James and/or David) Cameron thinks he's a [EDITED]. Bonus points for the photos always showing Abbott on the far right.

Meanwhile, the new minister for Frankston (it's right at the end of one of the train lines in Victoria, so you know it's "factories and violent crime". Being a shitty slum full of crime is basically it's reputation) is... setting a record. In the first few sentences of his first speech, he's already caused enough of a stir that both sides are basically in agreement to start the proceedings to have him expelled from Victorian parliament. Permanently, that is, not just being told to leave a meeting. The last expulsion they had was 113 years ago, and probably not that early in the member's career.

So what did he do? Simple. It's traditional to start with a "I recognise the original owners of this land" - you can then say "the Australian Aborigines", or "the indigenous Australians" or the name of a specific group that was here before Britain came along. He instead followed with "The God of the Bible, God of Isaac and Abraham". So he mocked the indigenous Australians and wiped his religion/dick all over everyone. So here's hoping he does set that record and has to fuck off.

[tussock]

It's traditional to start with a "I recognise the original owners of this land"

That's actually pretty cool. In NZ our lot start by recognising the Queen of England, and how all authority derives from her. Last bloke who shook that up said his authority was derived from the people who voted for him, for which he had to apologise before being allowed to become an MP. Which is weird, because legally he's correct and the proper oath is not.

[shadzar]

doesnt the US inaugural oath the Pres says include something along the lines of "defend from all invaders, foreign, and domestic"?

and yet The People are still living in concentration camps called "reservations" while the terrorist invaders control the land and everything else.

[Maj]

I realize that reservations are probably not ideal living spaces, but comparing them to concentration camps is utterly ridiculous.

[Lago PARANOIA]

So. How's the euro doing? What's the overall political situation and the publics' view of the elites and the various political philosophy? I heard that the socialists won big in Greece and Italy but got hammered in France.

[Blade]

The european institutions are designed to be pretty unshakable.

So rule number zero is still "prevent inflation", the word of the day is still "austerity", and the population still mostly believe that having stuff done at European level is the only way forward, but that the elites don't care about them.

The Soccer World Cup will probably have more influence in European countries than the election did.

[Username17]

So. How's the euro doing? What's the overall political situation and the publics' view of the elites and the various political philosophy? I heard that the socialists won big in Greece and Italy but got hammered in France.

The biggest winners of the election in terms of seat shift were the radical right followed by the radical left. The biggest losers in terms of seat shift were the center rightists. But the largest single bloc is still the center right. So you can make a perfectly valid case that Juncker's coalition "won" or "lost" the election. And there actually aren't any actual rules for deciding who won the election. The real selection process is that you need a "qualified majority" of the heads of state/government to approve the new commission president. All they are supposed to do is "take the election into account." And then when they do put up a name, it has to be ratified by parliament, and recall that the EPP only has 274 seats, so they would need two other parties (or the Social Democratic Alliance, and good luck with that) to sign off on their dude to get their nominee ratified.

So they've been at it hammer and tongs ever since the election. You can easily point to the election results and announce that Juncker's coalition "won" and thus he's the only acceptable candidate, but you can also easily point to the election results and announce that he fucking lost and literally anyone but him is the only way forward. It seems to be split roughly fifty fifty, and you need a weirdly calculated majority to move forward, so the European Commission is kind of in limbo right now.

Here's the basic problem: Juncker is a right wing asshole and right wing assholes have a majority in the European Parliament. But the right wing assholes are divided between those who want more federal power and those who want less. Juncker, as a literal architect of the Euro, obviously is indelibly linked to the faction that wants more. You can see this most tellingly in the fight between Cameron and Merkel. They are both right wing assholes, but Merkel is Juncker's primary sponsor (he is a member of her party, essentially) and Cameron's conservative party withdrew from the EPP altogether and insists that Juncker can go fuck himself.

What this comes down to is that Cameron, having already navigated the UK into the worst economic depression in its history, is in danger of navigating the Tories themselves into being a non-party because the UK teabaggers are eating their lunch. He has to get out of that, and that means that he has to talk tough about EU reform. Note: that if David Cameron does badly enough at this, the Tories will dissolve as their members defect to UKIP, and the United Kingdom itself will dissolve when Scotland secedes. Cameron bought off a bunch of protests in the north by allowing a "Scotland Independence Vote" this coming September. No one thinks that's going anywhere because it's stupid, but if Cameron is seen to fuck up hard enough between now and then, the UK could actually dissolve, cementing Cameron's legacy as worst (and last) prime minister of the UK. It's hard to see how he could fuck up that badly in the time he has left, but throwing support behind an EU commission presidential nominee who got literally zero seats in the United Kingdom election would be a good start.

France, meanwhile, just had as big a win for their literal neo-Nazis as the UK got for their paint eating teaparty expies. So their head of state is also walking on eggshells. He has to make some kind of grand gesture that unites the angry protests of the French people behind him or France is going Vichy in 2017. Also, he's a social democrat and thinks that Juncker is a twatshitter.

Now the way it works is that in order to nominate a president of the committee, you need 55% of the heads of state/government and over 60% of the population behind those country figureheads. This means that it is literally impossible to nominate someone without at least one of: Germany, France, and the United Kingdom. The three of them together have enough population to block any nomination. But it also means that with only one of those three countries you need a really large pile of countries in your coalition or you can't move forward. Realistically, it's hard to see Germany making a coalition with enough people in it without Italy, Spain, and Poland together - and with the Italians voting for the Social Democrats over the EPP nearly 3:1, it's hard to see that happening.

TL;DR: the Social Democrats, Greens, and Communists together are only 38% of the European parliament seats. But the various flavors of Right Wing are like 3 factions and can't agree on anything. One of those factions literally wants to dissolve the EU - and it's comparatively big. No one has a mandate to govern, and it's not at all obvious that anyone has the ability to govern either.

That being said: Blade is basically right that the EU is basically designed to be unshakeable and to ignore democratic mandates altogether. So the fact that the parliament and the commission are essentially locked, just means that the technocrats who got us into this mess in the first place will continue ramming their failed policies down everyone's throats until violent revolutionaries have them guillotined.

-Username17

[Blade]

He has to make some kind of grand gesture that unites the angry protests of the French people behind him or France is going Vichy in 2017.

I think that's unlikely. The number of voters who voted for the Front National isn't actually much higher than usually. The percentage of the Front National has been on the rise for some time, but it's still no more than 25% of the population.

Even if they did 30% in the first turn of the next presidential election, they'll be up against a "regular" left or right party, and the vast majority of the 70% who didn't vote for the Front National in the first turn will vote against them in the second.

And unless the government changes the way the members of the Assemblée Nationale are elected (which they're now even less likely to do than they were before, and they were already pretty much against the idea), the Parliament will also remain divided between the regular left and right parties.

So in the end, what Hollande will do (and has already started to do) is claim that austerity must stop but actually keep on applying it. He'll just make sure it's named differently, and give small gifts (tax cuts or small raises) to state employees and poor people to try to convince them that it's not austerity.

[angelfromanotherpin]

So, I read an article about how Greece had gone full neo-Nazi and was rounding up a gradually-increasing definition of 'undesirables' (first immigrants, then sex workers, then drug addicts, then LGBT folk) and putting them in camps. Looking for confirmation, I found another article about how they were definitely putting immigrants in camps, but the other groups had merely had some isolated outrages perpetrated against them.

So, can anyone tell me how Nazi they've actually gone, on a scale of 1 to Hitler?

[Lago PARANOIA]

Okay, so, say that the current overall trends do more-or-less continue for the next, oh, 6-8 years. Where do you see the EU and the surrounding countries like Turkey and Russia?

[Laertes]

Okay, so, say that the current overall trends do more-or-less continue for the next, oh, 6-8 years. Where do you see the EU and the surrounding countries like Turkey and Russia?

Best case? The economy recovers, the hard right burns itself out harmlessly, and the moderate right is tainted with the memory of having been "those bastards who carried out austerity." Putin loses his job but his replacement keeps the country together.

Worst case? The economy recovers and the hard right try to hold Europe to ransom like they did with the US, fucking the politics of the continent for a generation. Putin loses power and Russia collapses internally.

[Morat]

The worst case is not "the economy recovers". Krugman pointed out that Japan's "lost decade" (now two decades +) averaged significantly higher growth than Europe's having now. The Eurozone is sliding into deflation, which is extremely difficult to get out of, under the wise guidance of the austerian technocrats.

Unless there is a drastic policy change, there won't be a recovery. And the most likely change by far seems like countries leaving the eurozone and possibly the EU if they're strongarmed.

I don't know enough about Turkey to make sensible comments, though I think it matters quite a lot how Syria and Iraq shake out. Intact (and shaky) Iraq and Syria make for very different neighbors than independent Kurdistan and ISIS fighting each other.

[DSMatticus]

Laertes, your optimism is totally unfounded. The European elite are dedicated to the EU and austerity, and the EU has a lot of institutionalized momentum behind it that will let it keep beating the continent with austerity long after they lose the mandate to do so (which, let's be honest, they already have).

The best case scenario is that Europe is going to be hit with a Japan-style lost however-long except worse. Significant unemployment, the occasional riot, and a side of influential but not overwhelming radicalism feeding on disillusionment just become the new norms.

The worst case scenario is that backlash against the EU and the establishment that supports it lets a bunch of radical parties (on the left and right) sweep into power across Europe, and the EU falls apart after giving birth to a bunch of neo-Hitlers and/or radical leftists who range from "neo-Stalins" to "we only call them radicals because socialism is ebul." Depending on how you think the chips will fall between those three groups, you might actually call this the best case scenario.

But the establishment parties of the right being held accountable for the failure of austerity is just not going to happen. The establishment is being held accountable in its entirety, which is leading to a polarization as people turn to radical movements who are not a part of the establishment that is fucking them. The future of Europe is one of polarization, radicalism, and instability.

[darkmaster]

I'm not sure how this is different than any other period of economic trouble. I mean, are we surprised by this? why? It's not like it hasn't happened before, or that it won't happen again. But hey, if we're lucky we'll send a colony off to mars before world war three breaks out and then when they come back we'll get vampires.

[Username17]

I'm not sure how this is different than any other period of economic trouble. I mean, are we surprised by this? why? It's not like it hasn't happened before, or that it won't happen again. But hey, if we're lucky we'll send a colony off to mars before world war three breaks out and then when they come back we'll get vampires.

Because this time the conservatives have more institutional inertia defending their position than any time since the collapse of papal blessed monarchy.

The 30s played out in a similar fashion. The moderate conservatives insisted that what we needed was hard money policies and austerity (as they have been doing in this crisis, because hard money policies and austerity is their answer to absolutely everything), and it had the predictably disastrous effects. This in turn empowered the radical left, the radical right, and in a few countries the radically weird. And then the continent split into Communists and Fascists and the Fascists mostly won in Europe and we got a very bad period in world history and about a hundred million people died.

This current crisis is playing out exactly the same way, except this time, Europeans are so shell shocked by the horrors of World War 2 that they've signed over essentially inviolate agreements to do whatever the fuck the moderate conservatives tell them to do no matter what their people vote for. And so, despite the fact that the same failed policies are continuing to fail in exactly the same was as they did when they brought Hitler to power in the first place, they keep being implemented and re-implemented as the continent lurches from crisis to crisis while maintaining a double digit unemployment rate across the entire continent.

A whole generation is being brought up in perpetual economic limbo under the control of anti-democratic trans-national institutions. Literal fascists are gaining ground all over the continent. The Republic of Hungary has already had a fascist takeover and renamed itself "Hungary." And these guys claim to have the answers and they are right. Because the answers really are simply "do absolutely anything at all other than what the stupid fucking moderate conservatives want you to do, because hard money and austerity is literally the mathematically perfect cocktail to worsen an economic downturn."

There has never been, in the entire history of the nation state, a period where so many people have been trapped under leadership that has been so totally and so obviously taking them in the wrong direction. We're talking "more obviously wrong than famous Soviet era screwups." And it's more people. It is not weird to wonder if Europe constitutes a pressure cooker, and what will happen when Eurocrats can no longer keep the lid down is anyone's guess. Spain's unemployment rate has been over 25% for over a year. And their government has no plans on how to fix that, and the European establishment dismisses the virtue of even trying.

It's really actually quite scary. Things have never gotten this bad without widespread revolution and anarchy before. And the architects of this disaster are still calling the shots and calling to make it worse. It's surreal.

-Username17