The Netherlands: Geert Wilders, 'Fewer Moroccans,' and the Question of Hate Speech - by Uri Friedman

In March 2014, during a rally in The Hague, Geert Wilders asked his supporters whether they wanted more or fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands, where Dutch Moroccans constitute 2 percent of the population. “Fewer, fewer!” the crowd chanted. “Then we will arrange that,” the Dutch politician responded, flashing a smile. The remarks lasted only seconds, but they launched a years-long legal battle that resulted, this week, in a trial. Wilders is facing charges of deliberately insulting a group of people based on their race and inciting discrimination and hatred against them.

Over the next few weeks, the trial will revolve around one question, The Wall Street Journal reports: “Is the right of free speech for politicians absolute, or should it be restricted to protect against discrimination?”

Here’s the video when Dutch prosecutors claim Wilders’s free speech veered into hate speech.

Note Almere-Digest: You might like Wilders or you may hate him, but to qualify the above speech as a hate speech, rather than a derogatory political speech, is somewhat far fetched, specially for a nation which respects the right of 'freedom of speech". 

Read more: Geert Wilders, 'Fewer Moroccans,' and the Question of Hate Speech - The Atlantic

The Ideal Nation State: Free Universal Health Care, Free Quality Education and a Fair Share Tax System-does it exist?

Sounds too far fetched - not at all.

When we look at Unversal Health care there are thirty-two of the thirty-three developed nations have universal health care, with the United States being the lone exception . The following list, compiled from WHO sources where possible, shows the start date and type of  system used to implement universal health care in each developed country .

Note that universal health care does not imply government-only health care, as many countries implementing a universal health care plan continue to have both public and private insurance and medical providers.

If we look at Free Quality education and live in a country where it is not free but costly, like in the US, or if you fail to qualify for fully-funded university scholarships, consider enrolling in universities that are tuition free or universities that charge low tuition fees. Countries like Finland, Austria, Norway, Germany, and Sweden offer different types of free/low tuition schemes for international students.

scholars4dev.com has compiled information and provided links to tuition-free Colleges and Universities in these countries.

According to studyinfinland.fi: There are currently no tuition fees charged in Finland, regardless of the level of studies and the nationality of the student however tuition fees for non-EU/EEA students will be introduced from autumn 2017 onwards for English-taught Bachelor’s or Master’s programmes. Doctoral level studies will remain free of tuition fees.

Updates concerning the forthcoming non-EU tuition fees and related new scholarships options can be found at www.studyinfinland.fi/tuitionfees2017.

Remember that even when there are no tuition fees, you still need to plan your finances – you are expected to independently cover all your everyday living expenses during your studies in Finland.

At the moment, scholarships there are mainly available only for Doctoral level studies and research.

There are now a number of Universities also offering online degrees/courses for free.  The first such University is University of the People which is a tuition-free, non-profit, accredited online university dedicated to opening access to higher education globally.  University of the People offers online Associates and Bachelors Degrees in Business Administration and Computer Science.

This was followed by an initiative of MIT and Harvard called edX which is a learning platform that gives students from any country the opportunity to take free online courses offered by three premier Universities in the US – Harvard, MIT, and UC Berkeley and about 50+ Universities and institutions.

Following this trend, Coursera was introduced which is an online learning platform that partners with the top universities in the world to offer online courses in many fields of study for anyone to take, for free.

Last but not least: which countries have a Fare Share Tax System? For the US one place to turn for factual information on who pays how much percent of the total in income taxes is a report posted on the American Spectator’s blog on May 6, 2015. The data come from 2014, and are reported by the Tax Policy Center, which is the creation of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, two entities not known for right-wing sentiments. According to the IRS, in 2014 the top 1% of all income earners paid 45.7% of all federal income taxes, but earned 17.1% of all income in the U.S. The top 20% paid 83.9% of all federal income taxes, after earning 51.9% of all income in America. The middle 20% of income earners – who the American Spectator claims are the true middle class in America – paid 5.9% of all federal income taxes, but earned 14.8% of all income.

In Europe The EU Commission suggests that tax policy should be geared towards meeting more general EU policy goals. Tax policy must contribute to achieving the goal established at the Lisbon European Council of March 2000 and confirmed at the Stockholm European Council in March of this year of making the Union the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world by 2010. This means that efforts must be made to achieve a durable reduction in the overall tax burden in the EU, by ensuring a balance between cutting taxes, investing in public services and sustaining fiscal consolidation. At the same time, tax policy must be fully consistent with other EU policies such economic, employment, health and consumer protection, innovation, environmental and energy policies. But in particular tax systems must allow individuals and businesses to benefit fully from the Internal Market. This implies a need to focus on eliminating the inefficiencies due to the co-existence of 15 different tax systems within the EU and on making those tax systems simpler and more comprehensible to taxpayers.\

At the recent European Commission’s “Debate on the Future of Europe” event in Luxembourg there was a comment from the audience arguing that corruption and tax evasion in some European countries was one of the root causes of the economic crisis in Europe, and it should be up to individual member states to solve their own problems:

One thing the people can do to promote changes on any of the issues listed above is to use their voting power and their brains to vote in gthose politicians who are in favor of Free Unversal Health Care, Free Quality Education and a Fair Tax System, and vote out those who do nothing else than give you promises and more promises.

It is high time for voters around the world to clean-up those political systems which have brought us non of the above,  but instead, constant warfare, environmental disasters, while they empowered corporate entities to infiltrate and manipulate prevalent political systems.

© EU-Digest  

Turkey: US Journalist arrested says US State Department

http://nbcnews.to/2bTtZak

Germany: Cologne Turkish demonstration shows major flaws in EU legislation re: New EU citizens rights and obligations

German Citizens of Turkish Descent demonstrating in Cologne

Aljazeera reported recently that tens of thousands of Erdogan supporters rallied in Cologne to show their opposition to the failed coup attempt on July 15.

In the meantime Turkey has summoned a senior German diplomat, the embassy said, a day after German authorities stopped Turkey president from addressing a rally in Cologne via video-link. ministry at 1pm (10:00 GMT)," a spokeswoman for the German embassy in Ankara told the AFP news agency, adding that the ambassador, who was summoned originally, was not in town.

Hours before the demonstration, Germany's constitutional court banned an application to show live speeches from Turkey by politicians including Erdogan, amid fears that political tensions in Turkey could spill over into Germany.

The decision sparked anger in Turkey, with presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin calling the ban unacceptable and a "violation of the freedom of expression and the right to free assembly".

Germany is home to aboutthree million ethnic Turks, making up Turkey's largest diaspora, and tensions over the failed coup have put authorities there on edge.

The tension comes at a time when relations between Germany and Turkey are already strained over the German parliament's decision to brand as genocide the World War I-era Armenian massacre by Ottoman forces.

As to new EU citizens rights and obligations. It is high time the EU Commission and EU Parliament review some of the procedures for EU member states immigrant swearing in ceremonies related to new citizen. In this respect the EU would be well served to copy the swearing in procedures applied in the US where a new citizen swears agreement to the following: 

"I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God."  

This would certainly avoid ridiculous scenes like recently in Cologne,Germany, where German citizens of Turkish descent demonstrated in favor of "the leadership in their country of origin, and where the President of that country consequently got upset with the German Government that he was not allowed to participate as a speaker in the demonstration via a TV hookup. 

It can not get any crazier than this. Mr. Erdogan, given his record on freedom of speech, should be the last person to make remarks about human rights or freedom of speech - as to the German demonstrators of Turkish descent.  In case they feel more in-line with Turkish Customs, Tradition and Culture, or Mr. Erdogan's Government ideals, they are completely free to go back to live in Turkey.

EU-Digest

Turkey: How to circumvent Turkey’s social media block

Access to several social media sites was blocked for over an hour in Turkey today during a reported military coup. Although internet traffic appears to be flowing normally again, Turkey’s government frequently responds to political events by blocking certain websites or throttling traffic. 

“We saw the throttling of connections from Turkey to Twitter and Facebook just after the reports of the coup in Turkey,” Doug Madory, the director of internet analysis at Dyn Research, told TechCrunch. “We did not see any problems with YouTube, but I have also seen others report problems accessing that website.” Livestreaming services like Twitter’s Periscope and Facebook Live appeared unaffected by the block. 

Overall, internet traffic in Turkey may have dropped by half, according to CloudFlare data. CloudFlare CEO Matthew Prince tweeted, “From CloudFlare data, appears there’s about a 50% drop in Internet traffic coming out of Turkey.”

Turkish censorship of social media has been relatively easy to circumvent in the past — users could use DNS services like Google Public DNS to evade the blocks. But Turkey has become more sophisticated in how it blocks its citizens from accessing social media, according to Madory.

“This time Turkey appears to be restricting bandwidth when accessing social media. This represents a more sophisticated censorship technique that is harder to detect,” Madory said. “Users should still be able to circumvent it using a VPN, but the average user in Turkey may still not have that technology readily available.”

Click on the link below for the completer report and techniques for getting around internet blocks during times of turmoil:

Read more: How to circumvent Turkey’s social media block | TechCrunch

Google: Questionable Anti-Freedom of Speech action by Google after it blocks Dutch Politician 'Geert Wilders' account

Google has deactivated the mail account of Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders following complaints that the anti-Islam politician was using it to spread anti Islam initiative.

“Unbelievable; Google just blocked the account. It seems Mohammed Rabbae’s complaint was successful,” Wilders tweet was quoted by NL Times on Friday, December 27.

Wilders’ was referring to the complaint presented by Rabbae on behalf of the National Council of Moroccans at Google that Wilders was abusing its service.

Rabbae’s move followed many other complaints that were lodged against Wilders after he came out with his anti-Island sticker a week ago; it read “Islam is a lie. Mohamed is a criminal. The Qur’an is poison.”

The politician claimed the sticker was not meant as an action against Muslims.

After Google’s move, Wilders launched a new account where people may order his sticker.

 "Regardless if one agrees with Wilders or not, but this action by Google is unheard of in a democratic country like the Netherlands or for that matter any EU member state as it relates to secularism and freedom of speech" said a member of the Dutch CDA political party.

Almere-Digest