World Politics Digest thread

but i guess the question is more, is it a democratic process the way its being done.the majority in parliament and extremly close to absolute majority seems to say no.

i would agree that macroon is right, but lets see what happens in the next 2 weeks.

I don’t understand how a logical educated person can look at it and not say that 62 is too young to stop working.

I’m 42 and have been doing a trade since I left school after the leaving. It’s bloody hard on the body but I figure as I get older I’ll have to transition to a leadership role, product support or just downgrade to a store man role or something like that.

I'm surprised the tribulations of the proto-fascist Netanyahu led Government in Israel doesn't get more discussion on these pages.

Having formed a coalition with ultra-nationalist zionist parties, even further to the right of his own Likud, the bold Bibi has u-turned on undertakings to stay out of conflicts of interest with investigations against himself,including of course, attempting to interfere with the powers of the supreme court and the appointment of judges.

Weeks of protest have culminated in the Defence Minister speaking out today that the attempted reforms should be dropped, as the Military Authorities are getting word that thousands are refusing their national military service in protest. For his troubles the Minister, a Likud man himself, got dismissed by Netanyahu.

Now, diplomatic representatives abroad have begun resigning and 700,000 people are on the streets tonight, some of them breaking down protective barricades around the PMs residence.

So much for Israel, the democratic light in the window of the middle east.

Its been interesting how many experienced commentators have been ready to say today, that Israel is at risk of a civil war. One that doesn't even include Arab Israelis or Palestinians!

Netanyahu has had the most unbelievably damaging impact on the Country.

Looks like another attempt at a coup that has been tried and half succeeded a few times over the last 4/5 years.

Looks like the opposition ran one of the biggest independent vote counts in history. They have co-counted and photographed every single ballot.

Its either incredibly smart (him reasoning that the results will scare the middle ground into voting for the Socialists) or it'll be a bloodbath. These local elections left a lot of people surprised.

A lot of the middle people in Spain are fed up of the Socialists and moving to PP, my wife and her family being one, regrettably. PP are doing a lot of the right posturing but they're rotten to the core and corrupt as **** but my wife's logic was "they're all corrupt". A lot of Spaniards think similar, unfortunately.

For what it's worth, I voted for the Andalusian independence party in my local elections.

Only Spanish nationals can vote in the general elections so its quite frustrating because I don't want those history re-writing, xenophobic, hateful shitehawks getting in.

My only hope is that them being the junior party in a coalition will see them getting eaten up by PP, as has happened to Ciudadanos and Podemos.

And Feijoo will say a vote for the Socialists is a vote for Podemos and they will turn Spain into Venezuela.

Yeah, I got my hopes up a while back when Podemos and Ciudadanos first emerged but they've both been tossed aside. They just couldn't break the stranglehold of the big two.

In a lot of ways, Spain is not unlike the UK. There's a lot of classism and harking back to better days. The Civil War, the dictatorship and the transition steered it away from a similar path but there's still a lot of things I notice among Spaniards that remind me of the English.

The royal family get more flak but a lot of Spaniards struggle to see a world without them and there's not much of a Republican movement, despite there having actually been a republic in the last hundred years.

There's a lot of banging on about traditions and what it means to be Spanish and build a unified identity but God forbid the Catalans or the Basques don't want to be a part of that, even from more open-minded types.

I anticipate that this will be a shitshow of a campaign.

He is a bell-end about many things but I don't see a problem with a Serb having a problem with Kosovo.

He should certainly receive a sporting sanction because I am sure it's against various rules

Kosovo was never a country but it long a part of Serbia and historically significant part so I won't judge any Serbs upset about what the Albanians done.

It's akin to us claiming Liverpool as part of the Irish Free State.

Yugoslavia was a very short lived entity Serbia existed long before it.

So famous people cant have an opinion on a volatile matter ?

Or Ukraine where the entire celebrity word is writing messages.

You can kinda see why Djokovic wouldn't see any difference for his public support of one powder keg where he feels his country was invaded and another.

Plenty of celebrities have waded in on stuff like this. Paul McCartney's song Give Ireland back to the Irish for instance or the whole BDS movement in Palestine.

I don't want to go too far down the road of sounding like I am defending Djokovic as a person as he has some dubious ties to various crackpot ideas but I don't see a problem with a famous Serb supporting Serbs in Kosovo or being anti Kosovo.