Issue Today

In the last couple of months the number of refugees has grown enormously. However, the number of refugees which have been given accommodation in the European Union is very low. Most of the refugees are fleeing to neighboring countries and there they are outnumbering the original inhabitants (in Jordan for example one in every five civilians is a refugee). What will Europe do next? Welcome a large number of Syrians or help to build on an accommodation near their home country? Or both? Merkel’s message “Wir schaffen das” (We can do this) is contrary to many of the european countries at the moment. Austria brings refugees with busses from the south-side of their country to the German border instead of creating accommodation for the refugees. Their claim is that the refugees do not want to go to Austria but explicitly said they are travelling on to Germany, they are only helping them. Germany doesn’t want to cooperate in the battle with IS yet. They do give military support in th...

Lately Iran and America have been negotiating about a nuclear declaration. Iran has to follow rules set up by America and in exchange for that Iran gets freed from sanctions by the same America. Last week Rohani (the president of Iran) has claimed that he will only sign the deal when Iran is freed from all sanctions led up by the USA. Iranian civilians already celebrated the release from the sanctions last week. Will they be able to keep on partying? The deal which is about to be signed is more complicated than it seems to be. There are different types of sanctions coming from different countries. There are sanctions led up by the UN, the EU, and the USA. To make it more clear I could write in depth about the sanctions. However a video is way more convenient and shows how different news channels look at the sanctions. Let’s first look a video from RT (Russia Today), they have posted a video online in which they clearly explain the current sanctions and how to deal is doing: ...

Are Germany and Greece bad friends as they seem to be? Yesterday the Greek Prime-minister Tsipras visited Angela Merkel in Berlin to discuss the relationship between Greece and Germany which has not been that stable the last few weeks. Remarkable, that’s the word to describe the situation in Europe at the moment. Greece demands money from Germany because of Nazi atrocities. Yesterday he raised the war claims at a press conference with Angela Merkel, according to the Guardian. What is Greece trying to do? They know that they will never get money “back” from crimes that were committed under the Nazi-regime. This could just be a way to cause uproar and unrest in Europe, or they want less pressure from Germany and other countries who have demands that Greece has to change it’s economic plans. Merkel already said that Germany isn’t going to pay for crimes done by the Nazi-regime. She said: “In the view of the German government, the issue of reparations is politically and legally ...

Ebola has not been one of the most important news subjects in most countries until a few weeks ago. The outbreak of Ebola in Eastern-Africa has gone exponentially fast and the number of people murdered by this virus is still growing. The chances of survival of the disease is much higher in a western hospital than in an improvised field hospital in Sierra Leone. Therefore it is of high importance that more aid is send towards these areas in Africa. According to the NOS, the Dutch national news channel, the Dutch soccer team had donated 50,000 euros for the fight against Ebola. More famous people are donating lately, Bill Gates for example. The western countries are taken more and more action to prevent Ebola from entering into our countries. More temperature controls on the western-African flights which arrive at European airports. Civilians who are suspected of being contagious with Ebola are put in immediate quarantine. But let's take a serious look at this problem. W...

This week the central streets of Hong Kong have been occupied with students from the Hong Kong University and others who protest against the current form of government in Hong Kong. They want to choose for themselves which leader Hong Kong gets and a legitimate election for Hong Kong. Protests have taken place before but this time it is on a large scale. First let me explain to you the political situation in Hong Kong right now. On the website of Hong Kong’s government they describe themselves as “prosperous”, “more democratic”, and “capitalistic”. Registered voters can vote in Hong Kong above the age of 18. Registered voters choose for their representative in the territory’s Legislative Council. One step higher in the hierarchical ladder is the Executive Council. This council is chosen by  the Chief Executive and the 1,200 members of the Executive Council choose the Chief Executive. Therefore the Chief Executive (who can be seen as the president) is not directly chosen by ...

During the last couple of months ISIL has taken over a huge part of the Middle East, mainly in Iraq or Syria. They changed their territory into IS (Islamic State) and are planning on expanding enormously.  At first the world just watched and stood by, until this week. The war has been declared to IS. President Obama said in his speech during the 69 th General Assembly of the UN today that he asks the world to cooperate against ISIL, who he calls a “network of death”. He build upon that by saying that this world is formed by “those who build the future, not those who destroy!”. There will not be a landing of US troops on Iraq soil again he claims, he believes that ISIL can be destroyed with bombardments. This is a strong statement which become weak if it would be necessary to invade Iraq and Syria eventually. It is a risk he is taking. President Obama was not the only one to speak on the General Assembly this afternoon. President Rouhani from Iran also gave a speech about IS...