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Trump and International Securityby Richard Kemp • November 14, 2016 at 5:30 am
(Image source: Twitter/Donald Trump) Since Donald Trump's election, media-fuelled panic has engulfed Europe, including over defence and security. We are told that World War III is imminent, that Trump will jump into bed with Putin and pull the US out of NATO. Such fantasies are put about by media cheerleaders for European political elites, terrified that Trump's election will inspire support for populist candidates in the forthcoming elections in Germany, the Netherlands and France. In fact, it is the EU, not Donald Trump, that threatens to undermine NATO and the security of the West. In recent days, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, his foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, and German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen have suggested that Trump's election should give greater impetus to a European defence force. Trump's Difficult Ally in Ankaraby Burak Bekdil • November 14, 2016 at 4:00 am
Turkey's political distance from Europe and the West is growing. The EU has said a number of Turkish laws regarding fundamental rights were "not in line with European standards" and expressed "grave concern" over the arrests of journalists, opposition politicians and academics. Pictured: European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker (right) and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (left). (Image source: Turkish President's Office) Bilateral relations with NATO ally Turkey are probably not on president-elect Donald Trump's top-50 priority list. All the same, when Trump's diplomats will have to work with Turkey on issues that may soon gain prominence -- such as Syria -- they will have to deal with a man who says he does not mind being called a dictator. Instead of resembling a Western democracy in the European Union -- to which Turkey has long been struggling to join as a full member -- Turkey increasingly looks like Kim Jong-Un's North Korea. Most recently, the World Justice Project placed Turkey 99th out of 113 countries on its Rule of Law Index 2016, performing even worse than Myanmar and Iran. The index measures nations for constraints on government powers, absence of corruption, open government, fundamental rights, order and security, regulatory enforcement and civil and criminal justice. Turkey is also now the world's biggest jailer of journalists and academics. |
by Yves Mamou • November 12, 2016 at 5:00 am
Between 2005 to 2014, Germany welcomed more than 6,000,000 people.
Two essential questions about integration must be put on the table: 1) What do we ask of newcomers? And 2) What do we do to those who do not accept our conditions? In Europe, these two questions of integration were never asked of anyone.
In the new migrant order, the host population is invited to make room for the newcomer and bear the burden not of what is an "integration," but the acceptance of a coerced coexistence.
"No privileges are granted to the Europeans or to their heritage. All cultures have the same citizenship. There is no recognition of a substantial European culture that it might be useful to preserve." — Michèle Tribalat, sociologist and demographer.
"We need people that we welcome to love France." — French Archbishop Pontier, Le Monde, October 2016.
When "good feelings" did not work, however, the authorities have often criminalized and prosecuted anti-immigration critics. The Dutch politician Geert Wilders is currently on trial for trying to defend his country from Moroccan immigrants whose skyrocketing crime wave has been transforming the Netherlands.
Everyone now knows -- even German Chancellor Angela Merkel -- that she committed a political mistake in opening the doors of her country to more than a million migrants from the the Middle East, Africa and Asia. It was, politically, a triple mistake: