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       #Post#: 1510--------------------------------------------------
       Green Wave
   DIR By: 90sRetroFan
       Date: October 12, 2020, 11:29 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       OLD CONTENT
       Not all bad news coming out of the 2019 EU election:
       news.yahoo.com/green-wave-eu-vote-amid-climate-crisis-194422602.html
       --- Quote ---
       > Berlin (AFP) - With double-digit scores across Europe's
       biggest countries including a stunning 20 percent in Germany,
       the Greens bagged record gains in EU elections on Sunday with
       younger voters leading calls for action to halt global warming.
       >
       > The environmental party doubled its score in Germany from the
       last EU elections in 2014, knocking the Social Democrats off
       their traditional second place.
       >
       > In France, the Greens were number three with 12 percent, while
       in Austria, Ireland and the Netherlands, they garnered
       double-digits.
       >
       > In Britain, they were on 12.4 percent, nearly double their
       previous score, and beating the ruling Conservatives into fifth
       place.
       >
       > "To see The Green Party beating the Conservatives so far in
       these elections is truly amazing. Something seismic is happening
       in British and European politics," said Alexandra Phillips,
       Green Party candidate for South East England.
       >
       > With the two main traditional EU blocs -- the conservative EPP
       and the centre-left Social Democrats projected to lose ground,
       the Greens could end up as kingmakers in the European
       Parliament.
       > ...
       > In Ireland, Green Party candidate Ciaran Cuffe was on course
       to top the first preference tally in Dublin on 23 percent of the
       vote, with the Greens also seen in contention in the country's
       two other constituencies.'
       --- End Quote ---
       Our enemies are not happy about it:
       oklahoman.com/article/feed/9917921/green-wave-europe-wakes-up-to-climate-concerns-after-vote
       --- Quote ---
       > Alexander Gauland, co-leader of the far-right Alternative for
       Germany, declared the Greens "our main enemy."
       >
       > "The Greens will destroy this country, and our job must and
       will be to fight the Greens," said Gauland, whose party has
       claimed that climate change isn't a man-made phenomenon and that
       efforts to tackle it will harm Germany's economy.
       >
       > In addition to pushing for action on climate change, the
       Greens have generally positioned themselves as a counterweight
       to anti-immigration parties such as Alternative for Germany,
       which have decried the influx of migrants from the Middle East.
       --- End Quote ---
       Greens tend to have a good grasp of what Western civilization is
       about via their own field of specialization, as they have been
       watching for a long time how those who damage the environment
       least are the ones who have to suffer the worst effects of the
       damage:
       edition.cnn.com/2019/03/31/africa/poorest-hit-the-hardest-climate-change-mozambique-intl/index.html
       --- Quote ---
       > "This is one of the poorest places in the world, which is
       paying the price of climate change provoked mostly, not only but
       mostly, by the developed world," the 73-year-old added.
       > ...
       > Many of the world's poorest live in equatorial regions, which
       already have high average temperatures. This means a tiny rise
       can be sharply felt and lead to harsher impacts, according to a
       2018 study in Geophysical Research Letter.
       >
       > Meanwhile, most of the world's richest nations are the largest
       emission producers -- by burning fossil fuels and modern farming
       practices that produce climate change causing emissions.
       >
       > Using climate model projections, the paper found that if
       global average surface temperatures reached the 1.5 or 2 degree
       Celsius (3.6 degree Fahrenheit) limit -- set by the Paris
       Agreement -- countries like Indonesia or the Democratic Republic
       of the Congo would feel the changes brought on by global warming
       more keenly than higher latitude countries like the United
       Kingdom.
       --- End Quote ---
  HTML https://europeangreens.eu/
       ---
       The following article is a good introduction to how the issues
       link up from a Green perspective:
       www.thenation.com/article/climate-change-refugees-open-borders/
       --- Quote ---
       > Open Borders Must Be Part of Any Response to the Climate
       Crisis
       > ...
       > The ice is thin and getting thinner. On May 16, one Italian
       and four English scientists published the results of 25 years of
       satellite monitoring of the Antarctic ice sheets. Their findings
       were discouraging: The vast Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers
       are thinning five times faster than they were in 1992; 24
       percent of West Antarctica is now “in a state of dynamical
       imbalance.” Four days later, another study predicted that under
       a “business as usual” scenario—i.e., the current plan—sea levels
       will swell by more than two meters by the end of the century,
       resulting in the displacement of 187 million people. That figure
       does not count those displaced by other climate-related
       catastrophes: desertification, drought, wildfires, floods, crop
       failures, hurricanes, etc. Even so, the authors wrote, there
       will “clearly” be “profound consequences for humanity.”
       >
       > We are already beginning to suffer some of them. The racism
       and fear that dominate the terms of the “immigration debate”
       prevent us from seeing it, but the climate crisis is one of the
       major factors spurring the movements of human beings across
       borders. Severe drought in Central America has been pushing
       Hondurans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans north through Mexico to
       the United States. Droughts in the Sahel, the Horn of Africa,
       and the Lake Chad Basin have been driving many thousands from
       both north and sub-Saharan Africa to risk the journeys across
       the Sahara and the Mediterranean to Europe. A sustained drought
       in Syria caused massive internal displacement, helping to spark
       an uprising that degraded into war, causing hundreds of
       thousands to flee across borders that, for all their apparent
       permanence, didn’t exist a little more than a century ago.
       >
       > The timing could not be worse. In the absence of an actual
       world war, national borders have never in human history been as
       militarized as they are today. Borders, like nations, present
       themselves as natural and eternal. They are neither, but
       movement is. Humans have been on the move for hundreds of
       thousands, perhaps even millions of years. For centuries,
       institutions like slavery and serfdom restricted the movements
       of the sectors of society that did most of the work, but until
       just over 100 years ago, per John C. Torpey’s The Invention of
       the Passport, there was no “consensus for the view that states
       had an unequivocal right to bar foreigners from entry into their
       territory.” Passports were not generally carried or required
       until the First World War. The United States had no Border
       Patrol until 1924. Borders as we now understand them—the fixed
       and impermeable shells of what the political economist Karl
       Polanyi called “the new, crustacean type of nation”—did not
       exist when my grandparents were born.
       >
       > Over the last hundred years, borders have come to function
       much as serfdom did until the 19th century: as a means of
       restricting the movements of the poor. Some of us are free to
       hop continents, suffering only the discomforts of economy seats;
       for the wealthy, scholar Parvathi Raman points out, “open
       borders are already a reality.” Others, who the accident of
       birth deprived of the right brand of passport, die by the tens
       of thousands in the deserts and in the Mediterranean. Thousands
       more survive the journey only to be detained, caged, tortured,
       and starved, or dumped back where they started.
       >
       > The planet’s most prosperous residents, meanwhile, have not
       been gracious about their good fortune. Manufacturing a “crisis”
       at the borders in order to justify their further hardening has
       for decades been a project of the super-rich, one achieved
       through years of investment in think tanks, media, and political
       candidates spouting “populist” rhetoric. Some of the individuals
       who have profited most from the creation of the climate crisis
       are the same ones demanding that the fictional boundaries that
       disfigure the planet be reinforced with a violence that is all
       too real. One quick for-instance: The main, long-term funder of
       the anti-immigrant movement in the United States is the Colcom
       Foundation, which relies on the fortune of the Mellon Scaife
       family, and hence of Gulf Oil, now Chevron. To protect their
       investments, perhaps, Scaife family foundations have also
       funneled tens of millions into climate-change denial.
       >
       > If the 20th century offered just one lesson, it is that the
       ice is always thinner than we think. The centrifugal forces
       holding nations together are the same ones that can tear the
       world apart. Ours is already beginning to fissure. In 2015 it
       took the arrival of fewer than a million refugees, about half of
       them from Syria, to push a continent of more than 700 million
       into a panic that continues to threaten the European Union with
       dissolution. (For comparison, imagine 700 of the most
       comfortable people human history has ever known all freaking out
       because a single tired stranger is knocking at the gate.) In the
       United States, a country of 329 million, the presence of 11
       million people without the appropriate papers or levels of
       melanin has been enough to bring national politics to a near
       standstill, send an obvious cretin to the White House, and
       rehabilitate the concentration camp as a viable form of housing
       for children.
       >
       > This is just the beginning—of the climate crisis, and the
       political unravelings that will continue to accompany it. And
       so, it is time to shout, and loudly, that the freedom of all the
       earth’s people to move across borders must be at the center of
       any response to the climate crisis.
       --- End Quote ---
       Note "populist" has been put in "". The ridiculousness of
       anti-refugee rhetoric calling itself "populist" is becoming
       increasingly apparent.
       ---
       The Green Wave continues in Austria:
       greenworld.org.uk/article/austrian-green-party-wins-historic-share-vote-snap-election
       --- Quote ---
       > The Austrian Green Party has received its highest ever share
       of the vote in a general election after winning 14 per cent of
       all votes cast in yesterday’s (29 September) snap election,
       raising the prospect of the party entering into a coalition with
       the victorious centre-right Austrian People's Party (ÖVP).
       >
       > The Greens 10.2 per cent rise from the last election in 2017
       has seen the party go from having zero seats in the National
       Council to 23, after previously missing the four per cent
       minimum threshold to qualify for seats in 2017.
       >
       > The Greens’ share of 14 per cent put the party it in fourth
       place behind the ÖVP on 37.1 per cent, Social Democratic Party
       of Austria (SPÖ) on 21.7 per cent, and the far-right Freedom
       Party of Austria (FPÖ) on 16.1 per cent.
       > ...
       > Results show that support for the FPÖ has fallen by a third
       following the Ibiza scandal, in contrast to the increase in
       votes for the Greens, perhaps reflecting the surge in support
       for Green Parties across Europe, due to increasing concern over
       climate change.
       >
       > The Green success has brought the party lots of cause to
       celebrate and the potential for a coalition with the ÖVP could
       see environmental issues brought to the forefront of Austrian
       politics. However, support for a union is divided within the
       Green Party, with some members unsure of the conservative social
       policies and wary of Kurz’s previous alliance with the
       far-right.
       >
       > Speaking to Ruptly at the party’s headquarters, Green
       candidate Sibylle Hamann, said: "Our positions are clear, we are
       standing for a radical change in the Austrian climate politics.
       We want social fairness and radical transparency and control.
       Whoever wants to do this with us and wants to achieve it with us
       is more than welcome. If it will be Sebastian Kurz, it's up to
       him."
       --- End Quote ---
       I agree with this approach. Greens need to demonstrate how much
       more they can do in government (even as minor coalition
       partners) to further energize people to support them long-term,
       including with a view to eventually making them major coalition
       partners.
       Further analysis:
       en.rfi.fr/environment/20190930-thunberg-effect-climate-worries-help-revive-austrias-greens
       --- Quote ---
       > The Greens’ revival comes just two years after the party was
       booted out of parliament after failing to win so much as a seat.
       It also follows EU parliamentary elections in May – during which
       green parties across the bloc enjoyed their strongest showing
       yet.
       > ...
       > For Quentin Genard, from the Brussels-based environmental
       thinktank E3G, the results in Austria add to growing evidence
       that environmental concerns are reaching the top of Europe’s
       political agenda. “Austria not an isolated case – far from it,”
       he says.
       >
       > “This is part of a wider trend … Green issues and
       environmentally friendly parties are getting a lot of traction
       at the moment – largely because people on the street calling for
       climate action sends a powerful message to policymakers.”
       --- End Quote ---
       At the very least, Greens should aim to overtake far-right
       parties. This has not yet been successful:
       slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/10/austria-freedom-party-far-right-election.html
       --- Quote ---
       > The real takeaway from Sunday’s election is the incredible
       resilience of the FPÖ, which does not bode well for those
       thinking that the far right will cease to be a factor in
       European politics in the decades ahead.
       >
       > The FPÖ promotes itself as the chief protector of Austrian
       identity and social welfare, both under siege by an influx of
       foreigners. Once untouchable in mainstream Austrian politics, it
       formed a government with Kurz’s center-right party after its
       impressive showing in 2017. Its most recent fall from grace is
       less a sign of voters turning away from the far right than the
       result of very specific—and likely temporary—circumstances.
       > ...
       > Nonetheless, the future will be brighter for the FPÖ than what
       many currently suspect.
       >
       > Sunday’s election showed that the FPÖ has expanded its core
       support from 10 percent in 2002 to 15 or 16 percent in 2019.
       Under the leadership of Strache, supported by a core team
       consisting of members of German nationalist fraternities called
       Burschenschaften, the once-divided party developed a unified
       far-right, populist message. Despite the ongoing fights over
       style and personal behavior, there are no longer ideological
       differences within the party.
       >
       > At its heart, the FPÖ remains a populist opposition party that
       will continue to capture the sentiments of many of those who
       feel like they have “lost” due to globalization. Promoting its
       particular brand of Heimat identity politics, the party will
       keep on playing on the fears of a large segment of Austrian
       society regarding illegal immigration and its impact on the
       pensions, as well as the health care systems and job security of
       Austrians. The party will be helped by a perceived inability of
       the other parties to address these “politically incorrect”
       issues. Simplified, populist slogans rather than concrete policy
       proposals were what made the party appealing in the first place.
       Consequently, following the dismal results on Sunday, the FPÖ
       leadership was quick to announce that it will assume its
       traditional role as an opposition party and not seek a new
       coalition government with the ÖVP. While this position may
       possibly change in the coming months, the FPÖ will without a
       doubt be able to attract many a disgruntled voter unhappy with
       the current state of affairs once the current scandals blow
       over.
       --- End Quote ---
       It would not be at all out of place for Greens to start building
       a paramilitary wing for the express purpose of preparing to
       fight the far-right physically.
       ---
       The Green Wave is even (to our enemies' annoyance) partially
       mitigating what would otherwise have been total normalization of
       cruelty towards refugees in Denmark:
       vdare.com/articles/moral-of-denmark-disaster-the-left-hates-the-west
       --- Quote ---
       > the SDP had voted with the coalition led by Venestre
       (translates as “Left”, but actually center-right conservatives)
       to ban the burka and niqab, seize jewelry from refugees (on the
       theory that if someone is receiving welfare, they should not
       have jewelry worth thousands of dollars ), process
       asylum-seekers outside Europe, and cap non-Western immigration.
       But in order to form a “Left Bloc” coalition—with Greens and
       Socialists, who favor Denmark’s wholesale
       destruction—immigration policies are now officially to be
       “softened.”
       >
       > During the election, Frederiksen pledged focus on
       “repatriation” rather than “integration.” But this has now
       changed to a desire to “improve conditions for families of
       rejected asylum-seekers and recommence accepting refugees under
       the UN’s quota system.” A plan to house asylum-seekers on an
       uninhabited island in the Baltic Sea has also been revoked
       [Denmark’s new government softens line on migration, By Emma
       Wallis, Info Migrants, July 8, 2019]. And the Left Block
       coalition has also overturned what they now claim is a “silly”
       law mandating that you had to live in Denmark for nine years
       before you could claim citizenship [Denmark Removes “Silly”
       Requirement for Citizenship Forms, The Local, September 27,
       2019].
       --- End Quote ---
       #Post#: 1511--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Green Wave
   DIR By: 90sRetroFan
       Date: October 12, 2020, 11:33 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       OLD CONTENT contd.
       www.yahoo.com/news/austria-kurz-optimistic-government-deal-132533707.html
       --- Quote ---
       > (Bloomberg) -- Austrian conservative leader Sebastian Kurz
       expects to strike a deal to govern in a coalition with the
       environmentalist Greens by mid-January, breaking new ground in
       Austrian politics half a year after his alliance with
       nationalists ended in scandal.
       >
       > Kurz, 33, and Werner Kogler, his 58-year-old counterpart at
       the Greens, said they will try to iron out any outstanding
       issues and agree on a roster of ministers over the coming days,
       and that the risk of failure is diminishing by the day. They
       remained vague on the substance of the future government’s
       program.
       >
       > “Our voters have given us different mandates, hence we’ll seek
       a new political culture that is needed when groups that are so
       diverse form a government,” Kogler said. “We’ll try as a
       government to be a model for how to bridge contradictions we’ve
       had in this country for years.”
       >
       > A pact between Kurz’s center-right, traditionalist Christian
       People’s Party and the Greens -- who combine left-leaning urban
       as well as more conservative rural constituencies -- would be
       the first such coalition in Austria since the environmentalists
       entered Austria’s political scene in the 1980s. It combines the
       two clear winners of national elections held on Sept. 29.
       >
       > The deal is also an about-turn for Kurz, who moved his party
       to the right and governed with the nationalist Freedom Party for
       17 months before that pact collapsed after a scandal over a
       sting video shot on Ibiza.
       --- End Quote ---
       ---
       Update:
       www.yahoo.com/news/austrian-conservatives-greens-strike-years-220748930.html
       --- Quote ---
       > VIENNA (Reuters) - Austrian conservative leader Sebastian Kurz
       struck a coalition deal on Wednesday with the Greens to ensure
       his return to power and bring the left-wing party into
       government for the first time, three months after Kurz won a
       parliamentary election.
       >
       > The deal marks a swing left for Kurz, whose last coalition was
       with the far-right Freedom Party. It also means Austria will
       join fellow European Union member states Sweden and Finland in
       having the Greens in government, albeit in a junior role, at a
       time of growing calls for urgent action on climate change.
       > ...
       > For the Greens, many of whose supporters viscerally oppose
       Kurz and his trademark hard line on immigration, going into
       government with Kurz was a trade-off between the compromises of
       power politics and the chance to shape policy after campaigning
       for rapid action on climate change.
       --- End Quote ---
       The Greens should build a hypothetical backup coalition with
       other left-leaning parties ready to go in the event the present
       coalition breaks down. They should then make sure Kurz is aware
       of this.
       ---
       us.yahoo.com/news/merkels-party-punished-voters-hamburg-125027969.html
       --- Quote ---
       > Angela Merkel's CDU party were handed their worst-ever result
       in the Northern city on Sunday (February 23).
       >
       > Hamburg CDU leader Marcus Weinberg looked downbeat as the
       results came in - They scraped just 11.2% of the vote.
       >
       > Sunday's election came in the wake of the decision to step
       aside by the national party leader and Merkel's protégée
       Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer.
       >
       > That move came after an eastern branch of the party voted with
       the AfD to install a state premier from a third party against
       her wishes, thus breaking a postwar consensus among the main
       parties not to work with the far-right.
       >
       > The AfD just scraped into the Hamburg parliament, bucking
       trends of increased support.
       >
       > The ballot came just days after a racist gunmen shot dead 11
       people - including himself - in the Germany town of Hanau.
       >
       > A poll released in a German newspaper found that 60% of
       respondents believed that the party were partly responsible for
       right-wing violence in the country.
       >
       > Preliminary results put the SPD, who share power with the
       conservatives at the national government, down from the last
       vote in 2015 but still by the far the biggest party in Hamburg.
       >
       > Winners of the night were the Greens - who almost doubled
       their vote - reflecting their national strength driven by
       growing fears about climate change. Many predicting a green
       surge in the next national election.
       --- End Quote ---
       ---
       voiceofeurope.com/2020/04/germany-leftist-officials-push-to-import-migrants-amid-pandemic/
       --- Quote ---
       > Dirk Behrendt of the Green party who serves as Minister of
       Justice and Anti-Discrimination in Berlin, argued that migrants
       from Greece should be moved to Berlin where they can be housed
       in unoccupied hotels, German weekly newspaper Junge Freheit
       reports.
       >
       > “We have a lot of vacant hotels in Berlin that could also be
       used to accommodate refugees,” Behrendt said.
       >
       > “We have capacities,” he added. “The fact that the people of
       Lesbos [Greece] live in makeshift tents in the rain and cold is
       unworthy of the European Union.”
       >
       > German officials have been discussing importing migrants from
       Greece since December. Initially, the State of Berlin wanted to
       send a plane to pick-up the 1,500 hundred migrants in Greece but
       it required a federal landing permit to do so.
       >
       > “If something does not happen very quickly at the federal
       level – and for me that is more a matter of hours than days –
       then Berlin is also willing to take its own steps together with
       civil society organizations and fly people from Lesbos,”
       Behrendt said.
       --- End Quote ---
       Greens are some of the only people who are actually trying to
       help those who need help most, something that we used to expect
       from politicians in general at least during emergencies.
       ---
       Rightists frequently ask how it benefits Greens, whose primary
       concern is environmentalism, to side with anti-racists on social
       issues. This article might provide an answer:
       www.vice.com/en_ca/article/v7ggqx/people-of-colour-experience-climate-grief-more-deeply-than-white-people
       --- Quote ---
       > We are not only disproportionately affected by the climate
       crisis, but we carry a pain that comes from a long history of
       racial terror.
       >
       > When the wildfires hit Australia last year, Bee Cruse was
       horrified at the sight of the red sky, the black ash falling
       like snow, and the smoke choking the whole East Coast.
       >
       > The fires were a direct reminder of the British genocide
       against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people like her,
       > ...
       > We are not only disproportionately affected by the climate
       crisis—breathing in more pollution, living in communities with
       higher temperatures, suffering from more medical conditions,
       experiencing more natural disasters, and being displaced at much
       higher rates—but we carry the pain of the climate crisis deep
       inside us.
       > ...
       > our grief—and our anger—is rooted in centuries of painful
       history, and the current ecological violence hurled at our
       communities.
       > ...
       > “For Indigenous people, climate grief comes from when they’re
       first displaced by fossil fuel companies, by drilling, by
       fracking infrastructure that makes Indigenous communities be
       moved from their place of origin, their place that they have a
       relationship with. (Our) relationship with the land is the first
       thing that we care about,” Bastida said.
       > ...
       > Without colonization, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and the
       genocide and oppression of Indigenous peoples around the world,
       we likely would be living in a different reality.
       >
       > Research has bolstered the idea that white supremacy has led
       to the climate crisis. Scientists from University College London
       found that the mass genocide that accompanied the colonization
       of the Americas in the 15th century permanently altered Earth’s
       climate, due to “a huge swathe of abandoned agricultural land”
       that “pulled down enough carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to
       eventually chill the planet.”
       >
       > Ravenous for the mass production of lucrative commodities such
       as salt, cotton, and sugar, the slavemasters and colonists
       stripped the land in what’s now known as Canada and the United
       States, the Caribbean, and South America, murdering countless
       Africans and Indigenous peoples along the way.
       > ...
       > Andom Ghebreghiorgis, Congressional candidate for New York’s
       16th District, recalls a trip he took to see his family in
       Eritrea in 2017, travelling from the capital Asmara to Keren.
       >
       > “We were leaving the Highlands and the mountains, going
       towards lower lands. My uncle was pointing out trees that
       another one my uncles—when he was governor of the area about 20
       years ago—had planted as a reforestation effort,” Ghebreghiorgis
       told me. “But there weren’t many trees anymore. It was brown
       everywhere, and almost the entire land had turned into dust.”
       >
       > Seeing that, Ghebreghiorgis said, was a jolting first-hand
       experience of Africa’s desertification, felt most by people who
       have not contributed anything to global climate change.
       > ...
       > Those nightmares are a daily reality for people of colour, who
       are too often left behind. When ecological disasters strike,
       white people often receive resources long before those resources
       reach communities of colour. A March 2019 NPR report found that
       out of more than 40,000 records in the Federal Emergency
       Management Agency (FEMA) database, a staggering 85 percent of
       post-disaster buyouts went to white, non-Hispanic families.
       > ...
       > “Because Black, Indigenous, and brown communities are the most
       affected, it is indicative of not only more grief, but also more
       action. My personal climate grief was addressed when I started
       being an activist, having a purpose, (saying) ‘I’m not gonna let
       this happen.’”
       >
       > Heglar says that too often, the white-led climate community
       leans on the idea of hope, which can lead to inaction.
       >
       > Hope is “such a white concept,” Heglar said. “You’re supposed
       to have the courage first, then you have the action, then you
       have the hope. But white people put hope at the front. Their
       insistence on hope for all of these years has led to exactly
       where? Nowhere.”
       --- End Quote ---
       ---
  HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StOCNXqpDXE
       Of course Greens are more inclined to support China! Greens are
       more likely to understand the importance of population
       reduction. And who has been the world leader in state control
       over reproduction for the last several decades?
       ---
  HTML https://www.insidernj.com/author-chris-hedges-announces-cd12-run-green-party-candidate/
       #Post#: 1512--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Green Wave
   DIR By: 90sRetroFan
       Date: October 12, 2020, 11:38 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       Latest:
  HTML https://www.politico.eu/article/former-austrian-far-right-leader-falls-short-in-comeback-bid/
       --- Quote ---
       > Heinz-Christian Strache, the former Austrian far-right leader
       forced to resign last year in a major political scandal, lost
       his comeback bid in local Vienna elections Sunday after his
       party failed to garner enough votes to enter the city council.
       >
       > Strache's party — Team HC Strache — won just 3.6 percent of
       the vote, well below the 5 percent necessary to hold seats in
       the council, according to projections by Austrian state
       broadcasting. The Social Democrats, who have governed Vienna
       since World War II without interruption, came in first with 42
       percent and are expected to renew their coalition with the
       Greens, who won 14 percent. Chancellor Sebastian Kurz's People's
       Party, which succeeded in winning over disgruntled far-right
       voters, more than doubled its result to nearly 19 percent.
       --- End Quote ---
       At the link, a graph shows that Greens increased their vote
       share from 11.84% in 2015. FPO, in the same interval, collapsed
       from 30.8% to 7.7%.
       
       #Post#: 1902--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Green Wave
   DIR By: 90sRetroFan
       Date: October 31, 2020, 5:16 am
       ---------------------------------------------------------
  HTML https://us.yahoo.com/news/ardern-makes-room-greens-zealands-075653362.html
       --- Quote ---
       > Despite a landslide election victory for her Labour Party, New
       Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Saturday that the
       Green Party would be given two ministerial positions to help
       advance their "shared goals".
       >
       > The announcement came after Green Party members voted to
       accept a "cooperation agreement" to support Labour.
       --- End Quote ---
       This should happen more often.
       #Post#: 3746--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Green Wave
   DIR By: 90sRetroFan
       Date: January 28, 2021, 12:32 am
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       The topic is Merkel's successor:
  HTML https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17000/germany-armin-laschet-merkel
       --- Quote ---
       > There is no guarantee that Laschet, a 59-year-old German of
       Belgian descent, will become the next chancellor, or that he
       will even be the CDU's chancellor candidate. Germany's political
       landscape, with six main parties and more than 30 secondary
       parties, is highly fractured. As a result, it will be difficult
       for any one party to obtain an absolute majority in parliament.
       >
       > The Greens are now the second-most popular party in Germany,
       according to recent polls. Even if the CDU emerges victorious in
       the national election on September 26, Laschet, in order to
       retain the chancellorship, almost certainly will be forced to
       form a coalition government. The Greens are opposed to many of
       Laschet's positions.
       >
       > If Laschet were unable to forge a governing coalition with the
       Greens, they may decide to bypass the CDU altogether and
       negotiate a three-way coalition with the Social Democrats and
       the radical Left Party. Such a coalition would bring a swift end
       the continuity espoused by Merkel and Laschet.
       > ...
       > Laschet has come under fire, especially from the Greens, for
       past comments in which he defended Russian President Vladimir
       Putin.
       >
       > In March 2014, at the time that Russia annexed Crimea, Laschet
       criticized what he described as the "marketable anti-Putin
       populism" (marktgängigen Anti-Putin-Populismus) in Germany. He
       added: "Forty percent of the gas that we need for our modern
       gas-fired power plants comes from Russia."
       >
       > In March 2018, former Russian intelligence agent Sergei
       Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with the military nerve
       agent Novichok in England. Western countries responded by
       deporting Russian diplomats, but Laschet defended Putin.
       >
       > In January 2021, in an interview with the Frankfurter
       Allgemeine Zeitung, Laschet said that the Nord Stream 2 gas
       pipeline between Russia and Germany should proceed as planned,
       despite the arrest in Russia of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.
       He said: "The question of whether gas should reach us by land or
       by sea is unrelated to Navalny's detention."
       >
       > The Nord Stream 2 project is opposed by many European
       countries, as well as by both Democrats and Republicans in the
       United States, because it would increase Germany's energy
       dependency on Russia.
       >
       > Laschet has been ridiculed as a "Putin understander"
       (Putin-Versteher), a pejorative term for appeasers of the
       Russian strongman. Ralf Fücks, a former Green Party politician
       who is now head of the Center for Liberal Modernity, a think
       tank, elaborated:
       >
       > "You get the impression that Armin Laschet still believes in a
       partnership with Putin's Russia. He ignores the fact that there
       simultaneously is both a geopolitical and a value conflict with
       Moscow. This conflict requires a certain degree of severity, a
       policy of deterrence and also a policy of sanctions. It is
       wishful thinking that all foreign policy conflicts can be
       resolved through dialogue and goodwill."
       > ...
       > Veteran European affairs commentator Wolfgang Münchau wrote
       about the potential difficulties in reaching a coalition deal
       between Laschet and the Greens:
       >
       > "Laschet is the closest you get in German politics — outside
       the AfD — to being a climate change denier. His successful
       campaign theme was protection of German industry against
       ambitious climate-change action. Should the Greens and the
       CDU/CSU ever end up trying to a form a coalition, I would expect
       very difficult negotiations to follow. The two parties are at
       the opposite ends of the most important political debate in
       Germany this decade — on the trajectory towards internationally
       agreed emissions targets....
       >
       > "One of the foreseeable conflicts in the relationship between
       Germany and the EU will be on fiscal policy. The consensus view
       among international economists might have changed in favor of
       higher deficits during economic crises. But the debt brake,
       Germany's balanced-budget debt rule that is firmly anchored in
       the constitution, is still in force....
       >
       > "The CDU's innate fiscal conservatism and Laschet's support
       for coal mining and coal-generated power are formidable
       obstacles to a CDU/CSU/Green coalition, which may be the only
       viable governing option after the September elections. I cannot
       see the Greens signing up to Laschet's agenda."
       --- End Quote ---
       Additional information:
       --- Quote ---
       > Laschet is staunchly pro-Israel and has actively cultivated
       relations with the Jewish state, which does nearly one billion
       euros a year in trade with North Rhine-Westphalia. In September
       2018, his first major overseas trip as state premier was to
       Israel. During a subsequent visit to Israel in 2020, he opened a
       representative office in Tel Aviv. At the time he said:
       >
       > "Our state's office in Tel Aviv is another milestone in the
       relations between North Rhine-Westphalia and Israel. In no other
       country does our state have an office with such a comprehensive
       mission.
       >
       > "Our office in Israel will bring the cooperation between our
       two states to a new level. We want to further strengthen the
       exchange and the meetings between universities and municipal,
       cultural and educational institutions and civil service groups.
       That's a sign of our appreciation to our friends in Israel."
       --- End Quote ---
       #Post#: 4802--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Green Wave
   DIR By: 90sRetroFan
       Date: March 13, 2021, 10:31 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
  HTML https://us.yahoo.com/news/green-leader-faces-backlash-claiming-190622609.html
       --- Quote ---
       > Green leader faces backlash after claiming Royal scandals mean
       Scotland should ditch The Queen
       > ...
       > The Scottish Greens have been accused of indulging in
       “pathetic politics” after claiming allegations of racism within
       the Royal family showed the monarchy should be scrapped in an
       independent Scotland.
       > ...
       > “Their shooting and hunting estates can be put to better use
       serving the local communities and creating more jobs.”
       --- End Quote ---
       #Post#: 4840--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Green Wave
   DIR By: 90sRetroFan
       Date: March 15, 2021, 5:47 am
       ---------------------------------------------------------
  HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOVltVhn0t4
       #Post#: 4973--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Green Wave
   DIR By: 90sRetroFan
       Date: March 19, 2021, 10:15 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       How to know that our backing of the Greens is the correct
       decision:
  HTML https://us.yahoo.com/news/germanys-greens-vow-scrap-russian-101908009.html
       --- Quote ---
       > Germany's Greens vow to scrap Russian gas pipeline after
       election
       > ...
       > In common with the United States, which has imposed sanctions
       on some entities involved in the Gazprom-led project, the Greens
       say it entrenches the wrong response to Russia's annexation of
       Crimea and its arming of separatists in east Ukraine.
       >
       > "The pipeline project Nord Stream 2 is not only a political
       project because of its climate and energy implications but also
       because it causes damage on the geopolitical level - especially
       given the situation in Ukraine - and therefore it should be
       stopped," read the programme, adding that Russia was
       increasingly becoming an "authoritarian state".
       > ...
       > A poll by the Forsa research institute this week put the
       Greens on 21%, behind the conservatives whose share has fallen
       to 29%
       >
       --- End Quote ---
       #Post#: 5127--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Green Wave
   DIR By: 90sRetroFan
       Date: March 28, 2021, 12:16 am
       ---------------------------------------------------------
  HTML https://www.yahoo.com/news/support-merkels-party-falls-further-231041230.html
       --- Quote ---
       > Support for Merkel's party falls further in poll, Greens
       closing in
       >
       > BERLIN (Reuters) - Support for German Chancellor Angela
       Merkel's party has fallen further, a poll released on Sunday
       indicated, with the ecologist Greens closing in to just two
       points behind them ahead of a national election September.
       >
       > With popular frustration growing over Merkel's government's
       management of the coronavirus pandemic, support for Merkel's
       Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian CSU sister party -
       together dubbed the ‘Union’ - dropped to 25%, the Kantar poll
       showed.
       > ...
       > Support for the Greens rose 1 percentage point to 23%,
       according to the poll for Bild am Sonntag by Kantar, which
       canvassed 1,447 voters between March 18-24.
       >
       > The left-leaning Social Democrats (SPD), currently in an
       awkward ‘grand coalition’ with the Union, were steady at 17%.
       The business-friendly Free Democrats (FDP) and the far-right
       Alternative for Germany (AfD) were unchanged on 10%, while the
       far-left Linke rose one point to 9%.
       --- End Quote ---
       #Post#: 5159--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Green Wave
   DIR By: 90sRetroFan
       Date: March 29, 2021, 11:20 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       Our enemies complain about Greens showing solidarity:
  HTML https://gatesofvienna.net/2021/03/a-mosque-too-far/
       --- Quote ---
       > The expansion of the Eyyub Sultan Mosque in Strasbourg has
       caused controversy because it is managed by Millî Görüs, and was
       recently offered a €2.5 million grant by the Green mayor of
       Strasbourg to help with the construction.
       > ...
       > Europe Ecology Greens [Europe Écologie Les Verts, EELV]
       announced Saturday its intention to bring a complaint for
       defamation against ministers Marlene Schiappa [Citizenship] and
       Gérald Darmanin [Interior], who oppose the Green Party mayor of
       Strasbourg concerning a possible subsidy for the construction of
       a mosque.
       >
       > “In accord with the executive bureau and Jeanne Barseghian,
       the mayor of Strasbourg, EELV will lodge a complaint for
       defamation against Marlene Schiappa and Gérald Darmanin,”
       declared Julien Bayou, national secretary of EELV, in a
       statement to the federal council, of which Agence France Presse
       has obtained a copy. “We have taken the decision yesterday
       (Friday) evening and the complaint will be lodged during the
       course of next week,” stated the head of the Greens.
       --- End Quote ---
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