European Defence Union: EU needs own independent military power and leave NATO and Middle East mess

European Defence Force

Daniel Mützel writesin EurActiv.de: "The EU is stepping up its efforts on common defence policy and a “coalition of the willing” could quickly deploy EU troops and promote common defence projects. EurActiv Germany reports.

How under threat is Europe? The question has worried European security policy lawmakers for some time and the events of 2016 have escalated concerns.

Back in June, EU High Representative Federica Mogherini presented her Global Strategy, which called for an EU-wide integrated security community to tackle instability on Europe’s doorstep.

Another white paper produced by the German and French foreign ministers a few months later warned against an “erosion” of the EU and called for stronger military cooperation between member states".

Many people feel that NATO has in fact outlived its purpose of a combined US - European Defence force to protect Europe during the cold war. Instead NATO has dragged most if not all of its European member states into costly US "military advetures" in Afghanistan and the Middle East, which all have been basically total failures and created an incredible Refugees problem for both the EU and Turkey.

As to the present military situation in Syria and the NATO's effectiveness there, one can only qualify that as a total disaster.
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A report recently discussed in the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee shows how far Brussels has moved forward with the idea.

Hardly any other EU document better describes how the perception of European security politicians has changed in reaction to global events.

It alleges that the EU is now “surrounded by an arc of instability”, which includes “terrorism, massive refugee flows, or disinformation campaigns”.

The report also adds that since international relations are now dominated by power politics again, “defence and deterrence capabilities” are crucial when it comes to diplomacy. It concludes that the EU has to use its “unrivalled soft power with hard power.

EU-Digest

Vatican: Where could President Trump and Pope Francis do business?

Defying every last scrap of conventional political wisdom, Donald Trump stunned the world Tuesday night by capturing the American presidency.

Given the role the United States plays on the global stage, actors all over the world right now are scrambling to figure out what Trump’s victory means about the direction America is taking, and how best to react.

One of those actors, of course, will be the Vatican.

To use the categories made famous by Joseph Nye, the Vatican is the world’s most important “soft power,” the only major world religion which has at its core a sovereign state with its own diplomatic corps; the United States, with military expenditures exceeding all other nations combined, is the planet’s most important “hard power.”

Inevitably, therefore, the relationship between these two players is important, and this morning, personnel in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, which has primary responsibility for foreign policy, are undoubtedly trying like mad to get a read on where things stand.

To be honest, at first blush the stars don’t seem aligned for an auspicious relationship between the current administration in Rome and the incoming one in Washington.

Never before in American history, for instance, has a President-elect been directly criticized by a sitting pontiff during the primary campaign. Back in February, of course, as Pope Francis was returning from his trip to Mexico, featuring a stop at the US/Mexico border, he was asked by a reporter aboard the papal plane what he made of a politician who wanted to build a wall along that border.

“A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian,” Francis said. “This is not the gospel.”

Granted, Francis nuanced his response by saying he was taking the reporter’s description of Trump’s position at face value. Granted, too, Trump’s initially irascible response quickly softened as he insisted the pope had been taken out of context.

Read more: Where could President Trump and Pope Francis do business?

The Netherlands: Geert Wilders - PM of the Netherlands in 2017 ?

Will  Geert Wilders ever become the PM of the Netherlands?

To read the complete report click here.

Islam; Banning the Burqa in Europe

List of countries which have banned the Burqa in Europe.

For complete report click here

Turkey: Ready to flood EU with 3000 refugees a day

Is Turkey blackmailing the EU?

For the complete report click here.

Religious Tensions: America Turned Its Back on Anne Frank, Will Trump Do the Same with Muslim Refugees? - by Robert Fisk

I’ve just visited the hiding place of some troublesome refugees who should make Donald Trump very angry. It’s not the first time I’ve called at the little house on the old canal, but you only have to glance at the family’s papers to see how they fall under Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. They fled a dangerous country full of extremists – a nation which threatened its own neighbours – and they sought their first new home for “economic reasons”.

Worse still, they even tried to enter the United States. They were turned away – on the grounds that even if they had good reason to flee their persecutors, they didn’t have good enough reason to choose America as their place of refuge.

No, they’re not Syrians or Turkmens or Yazidis or Afghans, although the younger daughter of the family was reading a book about “Palestine” and was very much a member of a persecuted race. She was, of course, Anne Frank, the German Jewish girl who with her family fled the Nazis in 1933 and was given sanctuary in Holland – until Germany invaded the Low Countries in 1940 and she found herself under the rule of her own vicious country all over again. By 1941, her father Otto – realizing that the Nazis had in store for Jews in Holland the very same fate that was already being perpetrated against the Jews of Germany – sought visas to the United States. And the door was slammed in their face.

Yup, I do wonder what the Trump administration would have done.

Anne Frank’s diary was the first book my mother wanted me to read “on my own” (without having it read to me) and this wonderful narrative of childhood-growing-into-adulthood, of fear and love and joy and fury – especially at the other refugees crowded into the family hiding-place behind Otto’s office on the Prinsengracht Canal in Amsterdam – has stayed with me all my life. With other people too. It has been translated into 70 languages. It’s even been translated into Arabic. Officials at the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam tell me, sadly, that – despite its awful relevance – they sell only about one copy a month in the Arabic language.

No matter. So powerful, so tragic and so relevant is Anne’s story to us today – and that of her mother Edith and her elder sister Margot and the others squeezed into the secret annex in Prinsegracht – one of them a boy called Peter van Pels with whom Anne is slowly falling in love – that queues stand round the block in the cold Amsterdam rain to take their turn to walk up the stairs behind the false bookcase to see where these frightened Jewish men, women and children lived until, two years after they first hid here, the Gestapo arrived. You can still see – it’s so genuine, it allows of no clichés – the newspaper photographs of 1930s film stars (Ray Milland, Diana Durbin, Ginger Rogers) and of a very young Princess Elizabeth of England (plus sister Margaret and corgis) and of the Dutch royal family in exile whose nationality Anne wished to adopt after the war and whose pictures she glued to the wall of her room.

The Dutch nation would certainly have been more loyal to her than the Americans. Otto sought help for US visas from friends who were relatives of those who owned Macey’s department store. He had two brothers-in-law in the States. He wrote of the plight of his wife and two daughters. The State Department was not interested. Otto even pleaded for Cuban visas. He got one – on 1st December 1941 – but it was cancelled a week later when Germany declared war on Japan after Pearl Harbour. Thus did Japan as well as Hitler and the Americans join hands to doom the refugees on the Prinsengracht Canal. Roosevelt’s US – and Democratic – administration did a “Trump” on the Frank family.

To add to the travails of refugeedom, Nazi Germany had already deprived German Jews of their own citizenship – so the Franks, originally – and legally – in exile in Holland, also became stateless under their own country’s occupiers. Stateless? Economic migrants? Illegal migrants in Holland now that their German passports were invalid? What earthly chance did they have?

Each time I read Anne Frank’s diary – and reader, if you haven’t read it, make up for lost time, as they say, and do so – I find something new which I missed on my previous journey through her pages. She wanted to be a writer. She wanted to turn her diary into a novel called The Secret Annex. And she wrote, on May 11th 1944, “my greatest wish is to become a journalist one day.” You can’t beat that.

I find that one day she is about to read a book called Palestine at the Crossroads. Although she does not say so, it was published in 1937 by a Jewish writer called Ladislas Farago – an author I read many years later when he wrote a best-selling biography of General Patton – which is a rather plodding pro-Zionist book, put together after Farago visited, rather indifferently, the old British Mandate. I’ve read bits of it. I doubt if it would have persuaded Anne to help found the state of Israel, had she lived long enough to do so, for she was wedded to European culture and wanted to live among the Dutch and return to school with their children. She waited with childish excitement for her liberation, recording in her diary the joy of learning about the Allied landings at D-Day, writing movingly of the plight of the crew of an RAF bomber which she sees – through the secret office skylight – shot down over Amsterdam.

But then – and her story sometimes seems to have the inevitability of Greek tragedy about it – her family was betrayed and three members of the Dutch Nazi Party and an Austrian (and therefore Reich) SS officer came storming up the staircase behind the false bookshelves on 4 August 1944. And that was the end of all of them. Except for Otto. He was eventually freed from Auschwitz by the Soviet army and travelled slowly back to Amsterdam to find that his family were dead. Edith died in Auschwitz, Margot and Anne at Bergen-Belsen, both of typhus. Anne, now 15 years old, died last. An old school friend says she caught sight of Anne in her last days and threw food to her over the camp barbed wire.

Anne’s was one of tens of thousands of corpses piled into the mass graves of Belsen. Even if he can’t find the time to fly his private jet into Schipol airport and visit the little house on the old 17th-century Amsterdam canal, Donald Trump could at least read Anne Frank’s diary. It’s a short book. It’s by a child, and is therefore easy to read. It’s by a Jewish girl, who asks at one point why God has visited such terrors upon her people. Just as refugees today seek to know why God has forsaken them.

Four Dutch citizens helped Anne and her family and friends throughout their two years of solitude, at daily risk of their lives. They said later that it was a natural thing to do. Odd, that. Because today we are supposed to find it “unnatural” to help these people. I guess that’s Trump’s view. Yet in the streets around the Prinsengrach this week – after all the hundreds of thousands of refugees who have arrived in Europe, and just 72 years after the Gestapo came to Anne’s hiding place round the corner, I found small cafes whose Dutch owners had written on their front doors the words: “Refugees welcome”.

Read more: America Turned Its Back on Anne Frank, Will Trump Do the Same with Muslim Refugees?

US Economy -Trumpanomics: Donald Trump's economic policies could go badly wrong – but not soon enough

November 2020: the results of the US presidential election are in. The Democrat candidate, Elizabeth Warren, fought bravely but the outcome was never really in doubt. With the economy booming, Donald Trump is returned to the White House in a landslide. His pitch to voters has been simple: I kept my promise. America is great again.

For Trump’s opponents, this is the nightmare scenario. Still stunned by Hillary Clinton’s defeat, they have taken comfort from their belief that the billionaire property tycoon will prove to be a one-term president – exposed as a dangerous charlatan as soon as he takes office. This may, indeed, prove to be the case. Trumponomics is by no means a fully thought-through programme. The inconsistencies are obvious, as are the dangers. It could all go horribly wrong. But Trump may well have won a second term by the time it does.

Paul Krugman, the Nobel prize-winning economist and one of Trump’s most vociferous critics, suggested in the immediate aftermath of “that horrible election night” that a global recession was imminent.

Now the dust has had time to settle, Krugman admits that his disappointment got the better of him. “Trumpism will have dire effects, but they will take time to become manifest. In fact, don’t be surprised if economic growth actually accelerates for a couple of years.”

Steve Keen, economics professor at Kingston University, thinks Trump’s first term will see a sharp acceleration in US growth – to perhaps 4% a year. By the time any of the nasty side-effects become apparent, he says, Trump will have been safely re-elected.

Read more: Donald Trump's economic policies could go badly wrong – but not soon enough | Business | The Guardian

Hungary: Trump invites Hungarian PM to Washington

For complete report click here

EU: Marine Le Pen won't become the next French President says EU President

For the complete report Click here: Via euronews: Marine Le Pen won’t be France’s next president, says Juncker

Fillon wins centre-right primary, says France wants action - France - RFI

François Fillon comprehensively won the second round of the centre-right presidential primary defeating Alain Juppé by a wide margin. Partial results showed him winning 67 per cent of the vote with results counted from 9000 odd polling stations out of 10,229.

“France wants the truth and France wants action,” he told cheering supporters following Juppé’s concession speech, promising to “reach out to all those who want to serve the country.”

Read more: Fillon wins centre-right primary, says France wants action - France - RFI

Cuba: Adios Caudillo: Fidel Castro Dies at 90 - by James Bloodworth

Castro and Mandela celebrate S. Africa's overthrow of Apartheid

According to Castro’s own estimates, at one point there were as many as 15,000 political prisoners in Cuba. One of the darkest periods of the repression occurred in 1963 when Castro approved “Operation P,” named because of a black “P” (for pimps, prostitutes, pederasts) emblazoned on the uniforms of those arrested. The operation saw Castro’s newly formed secret police sweep through Havana targeting homosexuals, religious believers, and “deviants”—often no more than men with long hair and blue jeans. Those rounded up were placed in UMAPs (Military Units to Help Production), a euphemism for concentration camps, and forced to do hard labor. According to the poet Armando Valladares, imprisoned by Castro in 1960, “there have been few examples of repression of homosexuals in history as virulent as in Cuba.”

In the ’70s Castro institutionalized his regime along Soviet lines and cultural Stalinism reached its high point, culminating in what the Cuban writer Ambrosio Fornet called the “Quinquenio Gris” (the Gray Five-Year Period), from 1971 to 1976. The Cuban joke that best sums up the period goes like this: In the Cuban family the mother is the nation; the father the comrade; the child the future. One night the child starts crying and wakes up his older brother, who in turn wakes up his father saying, “Comrade, the future is covered with shit.”

In 1989 Cuba was rocked by scandal, this time involving allegations that one of the country’s most celebrated generals and “heroes of the revolution” was corrupt and involved in the lucrative drugs trade. The accusations directed at Arnaldo Ochoa by the Castro brothers were followed by the general’s hasty trial, public confession, and execution by firing squad. According to Roberto Ortega, a former colonel of the Cuban armed forces who defected in 2003, Ochoa was executed because of his popularity with the troops and support for Mikhail Gorbachev’s liberalizing reforms in the Soviet Union. When Che Guevara himself became disillusioned with Sovietization in the mid-1960s, he was encouraged by Castro to leave Cuba in order to ferment guerrilla war in Africa and then Latin America, where he died soon after. Guevara was a zealous and fanatical Communist; but he was never a party man. Despite subsequently admonishing Cuban children to “be like Che,” Castro was undoubtedly glad to be rid of a potential rival.

From the earliest days of the revolution western celebrities and intellectuals paid homage to Castro. Jack Nicholson (“Castro is a humanist”), Oliver Stone (“Castro is very selfless and moral, one of the world’s wisest men”), and the supermodels Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss (Castro is “an inspiration to everyone”) were just some of those who lavished praise on the dictator. “I just spent an hour and a half talking with your president, Fidel Castro,” a star-struck Campbell told a press conference in the Hotel National in 1994. “But he told me there was nothing to be afraid of because he already knew a lot about us from reading the press.” As the high-ranking Cuban intelligence defector Delfin Fernandez would later disclose, the information did not come from the media. “My job was to bug their hotel rooms with both cameras and listening devices,” Delfin noted.

Admirers of the revolution often resembled the fellow travelers Arthur Koestler described as peeping toms, peering through a hole in the wall at history while not having to experience it themselves. The novelist Gabriel García Márquez, a personal friend of Castro, once told The New York Times that he personally could never live under the Cuban system. “I would miss too many things. I couldn’t live with the lack of information. I am a voracious reader of newspapers and magazines from around the world.” For Cubans those privations were apparently acceptable.

Fidel Castro relinquished the presidency in 2008, handing power to his brother Raúl after a period of illness. Since then he has gradually disappeared from public life, occasionally penning a column for the state newspaper, Granma.

Long after the heroism and mystique of the revolution has faded, Fidel Castro will likely be remembered for his role in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when civilization came as close as it has yet come to nuclear Armageddon. During that 13-day trilateral confrontation, while the world watched the stand-off on black and white television sets, behind the scenes Castro was furiously writing to his Soviet counterpart Nikita Khrushchev demanding that the Ukrainian press the button and incinerate us all by launching a first nuclear strike on the United States. “However hard and terrible the solution might be, there is no other,” wrote Castro. Thankfully Stalin’s former henchman, who by his own admission was “up to his elbows” in blood, chose not to heed Castro’s advice.

Read more: Adios Caudillo: Fidel Castro Finally Dies at 90 - The Daily Beast

The Atlantic Alliance: EU, when will we wake up and smell the roses when it comes to dealing with our US partner?

No Es Mi Culpa- it is not my fault

You might initially think while reading this  - Oh boy this is a typical report from some left-wing European, who is not only jealous about the US, but also hates it, and want's to make sure local politicians in Europe finally will get the drift.

Perhaps, but two professors who have conducted exhaustive research to try to present data-driven support for this conclusion explain it this way:

Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.

In English: the wealthy few move policy, while the average American has little power.

The two professors came to this conclusion after reviewing answers to 1,779 survey questions asked between 1981 and 2002 on public policy issues. They broke the responses down by income level, and then determined how often certain income levels and organised interest groups saw their policy preferences enacted.

"A proposed policy change with low support among economically elite Americans (one-out-of-five in favour) is adopted only about 18% of the time," they write, "while a proposed change with high support (four-out-of-five in favour) is adopted about 45% of the time."

On the other hand:

When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organised interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the US political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favour policy change, they generally do not get it.

They concluded:

Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But we believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organisations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America's claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened.

Eric Zuess, writing in Counterpunch, isn't surprised by the survey's results.

"American democracy is a sham, no matter how much it's pumped by the oligarchs who run the country (and who control the nation's "news" media)," he writes. "The US, in other words, is basically similar to Russia or most other dubious 'electoral' 'democratic' countries. We weren't formerly, but we clearly are now."

This is the "Duh Report", says Death and Taxes magazine's Robyn Pennacchia. Maybe, she writes, Americans should just accept their fate.

"Perhaps we ought to suck it up, admit we have a "classist society" and do like England where we have a House of Lords and a House of Commoners," she writes, "instead of pretending as though we all have some kind of equal opportunity here."

All the recent wars, where we Europeans so faithfully followed the US in, either independently, or through the NATO which has outlived its time and purpose; Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Syria. They have a;; been a complete failure.

And now: The election of Donald Trump raises squarely the question of values, soft power, what do we in Europe stand for and how will we behave - moral and ethics? So far Europe and the U.S. have seen eye to eye, but will that continue to be the case? What kind of America will we see? Will Europe have to bend its values to maintain the U.S military umbrella, and if it does what kind of Europe will emerge?

How can the U.S. and Europe do things together if they differ fundamentally on what they stand for?

And why should we?

Yes indeed, Europe needs to smell the roses and act far more independently when it comes to dealing with it's US partner.

EU-Digest

Press Freedom Award: International Press Freedom Awards go to journalists from India, El Salvador, Turkey and Egypt

The Committee to Protect Journalists honored journalists from India, El Salvador, Turkey and Egypt on Tuesday with its annual International Press Freedom Awards for their commitment to a free press despite death threats, imprisonment and exile.

CPJ executive director Joel Simon said threats against journalism are increasing around the world, including in the United States following the presidential election victory of Republican Donald Trump, who has branded mainstream media dishonest and who hasn't held a news conference since his election.

 "It's a very intimidating, hostile environment,'' Simon said before the ceremony. "Now, we're not going to compare it to some of the things we're going to see tonight, but certainly the climate's changed and the notion that we're here living in this First Amendment paradise defending the rights of our more vulnerable colleagues around the world, that gap has closed considerably.''

Turkey's Can Dundar, chief editor of the daily Cumhuriyet, was another honoree. He was arrested on November 26, 2015, after publishing an article alleging the government intelligence service sought to send weapons to Syrian rebel groups.

He was charged with disclosing state secrets, espionage and aiding a terrorist group and was sentenced to five years in prison. He remains free, after spending 92 days in jail, while his appeal is considered. His wife however was not allowed to travel outside the country.

Read more: International Press Freedom Award goes to Malini Subramaniam

The State Of US journalism: Journalism faces an 'existential crisis' in Trump era

CNN's chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour has been awarded the Committee to Project Journalists' Burton Benjamin Memorial Award for "extraordinary and sustained achievement in the cause of press freedom." To read the full transcript of the speech she gave after accepting the honor Tuesday night November 24 in New York.

Read the complete report at: Journalism faces an 'existential crisis' in Trump era - CNN.com

US Economy: Wall Street Is Suddenly in Love with Trump, now they think he is one of them - but will it last?

What is next?

Few people thought Trump could win, and for Wall Street, being caught backing a losing investment is tantamount to death. Plus, his opponent was actually quite friendly if not downright buddy-buddy with the industry.

There was also the matter of Trump saying things on the trail like: ”hedge-fund guys are getting away with murder” and ”Wall Street has caused tremendous problems for us” and ”I’m not going to let Wall Street get away with murder”.

But after a brief moment of panic, wherein it became clear Donald J. Trump, he of ”grab them by the p---y” and “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” fame, would be the next president of the United States of America,

Wall Street quickly adjusted to the new reality. In fact, a lot of people are downright giddy about Trump living in the White House (during the week, anyway).

All the usual Wall Street cronies were happy: “Regulatory overreach probably peaked,” said Robert McTamaney, a former Goldman Sachs partner who helped run the firm’s equities-trading business in Asia until 2011 and now manages his own money. “It’s going to come off the boil, and you can probably cut back on the legal team and compliance.”

The impact of the rapidly changing tide in consumer confidence, though, won't be limited to just Trump and Republicans. Already, we have seen the consequence of falling Democratic voter confidence foster spontaneous, peaceful protests. Should Democrats' moods fall further, those protests will become angrier; and we will see the same divisiveness and and extremism seen recently within the Republican Party.

As mood falls, rising self-interest challenges the cohesiveness of even the strongest organizations.

Throughout the 2016 campaign, one could watch as falling confidence split support between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. If Democrats' confidence remains low, it would not be at all surprising to see even greater divisions form. Based on what I see, a young, leftward leaning, heretofore unknown leader could easily emerge as the new hope of the party — an anti-Hillary Clinton Democrat, as it were.

While Elizabeth Warren is receiving all the media attention now, if mood stays low, the spotlight will almost certainly move on to a true outsider. For the Democratic Party, the outcome of the 2020 election will rest squarely on the party’s ability to pull together young voters in opposition to the Trump presidency.

While admittedly very early, one can expect anti-Wall Street/anti-capitalism sentiment to play a major part, particularly given Trump’s business pedigree. While economists will likely look at the post-election surge in confidence as a reason to expect strong holiday sales,  don’t count on that.

Rather than reflecting the improving financial condition of American consumer, the latest Gallup figures are expressing a return of hopefulness to Republican voters, offset by a mild decline in optimism among Democrats — a change in the political tide. Nothing, however, has changed in the wallets and pocketbooks of voters.

For Trump, he must now translate the "Evengelical tent revival" resurgence in confidence among Republicans into higher confidence for all Americans.

As rising confidence is the critical input to economic growth, financial prosperity and social cohesion, what happens to Americans’ mood over the next several months will drive the trajectory of the next four years. While many Americans feel better today than they did last week, many, many more need to feel good.

Right now, looking closely at the  Presidential election results one can only ask: "has the Trump election win been a silent coup of Corporate America and the Republican party, or have they been just as surprised as the rest of us"

It seems more likely Wall Street could be in for a big surprise and possibly a total meltdown of the US economy. Only time will tell. 

 EU-Digest

Europe's largest passenger plane makes maiden flight

The Airbus A350-1000 is seeking to hog the limelight from Boeing’s popular 777.

It is a larger cousin to the new-generation A350-900, which entered service last year.

Both are built from similar materials to Boeing’s mid-sized 787 Dreamliner.

The lightweight, carbon-fibre A350-1000 is seven metres longer than the A350s already in service.

It has 366 seats and can carry 40 more people.

Read more: Europe's largest passenger plane makes maiden flight

EU Healthcare: Bad health: EU buries billions with 550,000 premature deaths due to chronic disease

A joint OECD/European Commission report says chronic diseases and premature deaths cost the EU billions every year. It calls for better prevention policies and improved health care. So what else is new?

Health reports seldom say anything new. There's the obligatory risk factors - smoking, alcohol and obesity - and an equally standard call for better prevention policies and improved healthcare systems. Let's face it: We could all live a bit more healthily.

Such is the mainline in "Health at a Glance: Europe 2016," a joint report launched Wednesday (23.11.2016) by the OECD and the European Commission in Brussels.

But what's striking about this report is the human cost of Europe's failing health.

The report estimates that about 550,065 people of working-age (25-64 years) in the European Union die prematurely from chronic diseases. It could be a heart attack, stroke, diabetes, or a form of cancer. And their dying early, says the report, costs the EU 115 billion euros annually.

Note EU-Digest: another issue not discussed in this report, which certainly must be seen as a part of the problem, is that in some countries, like the Netherlands, where insurance programs have been  privatized and the insurance premium costs have continuously been on the rise for the consumer, people have not been going to the Dr. or hospital for preventive care, mainly because of personal economic reasons.

For the complete report Read more: Bad health: EU buries billions with 550,000 premature deaths due to chronic disease | Science | DW.COM | 23.11.2016

Turkey: The Erdogan Logic: Turkey's president slams those who call Trump 'dictator'

Turkey's president has maintained that many in the U.S. and Europe are calling U.S. President-elect Donald Trump a "dictator" because he wasn't their favored candidate.

Addressing a meeting of the Organization for Islamic Cooperation on Wednesday, Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused anti-Trump protesters in Western nations of not respecting democracy or the result of the U.S. election.

Erdogan said: "In America they started calling Trump a dictator. In various countries of the Europe they spilled into the streets and started saying 'dictator.' Why aren't you respecting the results of the ballot box?"

The Turkish president also suggested that any leader that doesn't serve the West's interests is denounced as a despot.

He said: "Are they calling someone a dictator? Then you should think the opposite. That person is good."

Read more: Turkey's president slams those who call Trump 'dictator'

EU Parliament: 'Russians, Americans and Turks' trying to destroy Europe: top MEP

A top European lawmaker warned Tuesday that a "ring of autocrats" was trying to wreck the EU, citing the presidents of Russia and Turkey and their future counterpart Donald Trump.

"It seems to me more and more we are surrounded by autocrats. Putin, Erdogan and then, the first appointments of Mr Trump, worries me also a lot," said Guy Verhofstadt, who is the European Parliament's chief Brexit negotiator.

The former Belgian premier added: "What I see today is now Russians and Americans and Turks... working together more and less on European soil to destroy the European model."

Read more: Flash - 'Russians, Americans and Turks' trying to destroy Europe: top MEP - France 24

Turkey: Turkish Expatriates and Diaspora abroad lack the courage to speak out for Democracy

It must be difficult today for the Turkish expatriate community around the world, specially those who believe in Democracy, Secularism and the ideals of Kemalism, created by the founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and to watch what is happening politically in Turkey.

 Specially, if personal friendships have developed between expat Turks, Turkish dispora and Turkish Diplomats

Regardless of that fact, and whatever way you turn it, these diplomats are the mouthpiece of the Turkish Foreign Ministry, which is an integral part of the Erdogan Government. As the saying goes: "He who pays the piper calls the tune". 

Case in point  re: The letter of H.E. Serdar Kılıç, Turkish Ambassador to the US, to the Wall Street Journal on November 16, 2016, which is a "rambling" defense by the Turkish Ambassador in Washington to justify that in effect all is "hunky dory" in Turkey and that democracy and freedom of the Press are, alive and well. Reading the interview, the feeling can't escape you, if he believed what he was saying himself ?

As one Turkish citizen living in Paris, who often entertains and socializes with Turkish diplomats noted: "I have some very good friends among Turkish diplomats here in France, but that does not stop me in questioning them about the state of democracy in Turkey, or in signing petitions against the Erdogan Government ".

"This is not disrespectful, it is in fact the duty of every Turk, who lives abroad and believes in Democracy".

"Turkish diplomats, like any diplomat around the world, have to write numerous reports to their Ministry, including those on issues like "what their nationals are thinking and saying  about their home country and government".

"Consequently you are not doing your country a favor, by keeping your mouth shut on matters that are of importance to you and your country . Democracy in Turkey is on a steep descent and you have got to speak out".

©  EU-Digest

Middle East: Islamic State Receiving Weapons From Eastern Europe In 'Rapid' New Supply Chain Says Arms Expert - by Louise Ridley

Unlimited weapons supply from E-Europe to ISIS via Saudi Arabia and Tukey

Islamic State fighters are illegally using guns and other weapons made in Eastern European factories, in a newly-discovered supply chain that is “almost direct”, a weapons expert has claimed.

The Huffington Post Reported  that James Bevan, the director of Conflict Armament Research (CAR), told The Huffington Post UK that investigations this summer have seen a rapid, frightening change in the source of weapons used by the so-called Islamic State to fight other groups and carry out massacres.

These weapons are moving from Eastern Europe to Islamic State in Iraq and Syria within weeks through a “very rapid” transfer through several countries, according to Bevan, whose company tracks the movement of illegal weapons.

Up until now, IS’s weapons were mainly guns formerly used by the Iraqi army, including some American-made weapons given to it by the US army when they withdrew from Iraq between 2007 and 2011, Bevan told HuffPost UK in an interview.

“Islamic State then overran Iraqi army positions, took those weapons and moved them into Syria.” IS arms could also have come from Syrian armed forces who the group had beaten in battles, he explained. “This is normal with any kind of rebellion or insurgency, they first use the weapons and ammunition of their adversaries.”

But the Islamic State arsenal now includes far newer models, “from 2013 to 2014 and even 2015 dates of manufacture,” Bevan says. He has tracked this rise in recently-made weapons to Eastern Europe, including AK-47s, machine guns and explosives.

n an interview with HuffPost UK, Bevan said CAR is currently challenging the governments of Bulgaria and Serbia, among others, over the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia.

Despite signing an ‘End User’ agreement saying it will use the weapons itself and not sell these them to any other countries, Saudi Arabia (with the approval of the US)b appears to send them “straight to Turkey”, from where they get into Islamic State’s hands “very, very rapidly” via illicit means, Bevan said.

“We have a supply chain which goes from an Eastern European manufacturer, to a second Eastern European country, to Saudi Arabia, to Turkey, to a Syrian opposition group and then to Islamic State in Falluja in Iraq, in less than two months,” he said. “That’s almost direct. If you want to put something on a boat and float it, it’s going to take a month.”

Bevan said his evidence, collected from analysing weapons after the siege of Fallujah ended in May, showed that anyone supplying weapons one of the many rebel Syrian opposition groups has “absolutely no control” over where they end up. Syrian factions that supposedly oppose IS often merge with them or work with them, leading to weapons quickly getting into IS possession, he explained.

Some foreign powers trying to help groups fighting IS are actually backing “pretty hard line Islamist forces,” he claimed, adding that: “it’s very difficult to distinguish between them and Islamic State. They are subsumed within Islamic State, or have a deal with them, or the group will fracture and its fighters will leave with their weapons and join Islamic State.”

“It means that anyone supplying Syrian opposition groups has absolutely no control over the ultimate destination of those weapons. It’s almost a mirror image of what happened in Afghanistan in the 1980s, in the sense that the US, Saudi Arabia and allied states were supplying weapons to the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence Agency.

“They then had discretion as to who to give them to. They picked the winners, which were the hard line Islamist forces that were the origins for Al Qaeda and the Taliban.”

It is possible that the Eastern European governments actually know that their weapons are being sold on through Saudi Arabia, Bevan said, because the heavy ‘Soviet Calibre’ guns they are selling would never be used by Saudi Arabia’s army which favours light, American-made, expensive guns.

In total this year already EURO 1.2 billion of weapons were sold by Eastern European nations to the Middle East.

EU-Digest

The Netherlands The EU’s New Bomb Is Ticking in the Netherlands - by Simon Nixon

Wilders : A lot of talk and spin, rather than substance

If the European dream is to die, it may be the Netherlands that delivers the fatal blow. The Dutch general election in March is shaping up to be a defining moment for the European project.

The risk to the European Union doesn’t come from Geert Wilders, the leader of anti-EU, anti-immigration Party for Freedom. He is well ahead in the polls and looks destined to benefit from many of the social and economic factors that paved the way for the Brexit and Trump revolts.

But the vagaries of the Dutch political system make it highly unlikely that Mr. Wilders will find his way into government. As things stand, he is predicted to win just 29 out of the 150 seats in the new parliament, and mainstream parties seem certain to shun him as a coalition partner. In an increasingly fragmented Dutch political landscape, most observers agree that the likely outcome of the election is a coalition of four or five center-right and center-left parties.

Instead, the risk to the EU comes from a new generation of Dutch euroskeptics who are less divisive and concerned about immigration but more focused on questions of sovereignty—and utterly committed to the destruction of the EU. Its leading figures are Thierry Baudet and Jan Roos, who have close links to British euroskeptics. They have already scored one significant success: In 2015, they persuaded the Dutch parliament to adopt a law that requires the government to hold a referendum on any law if 300,000 cIfitizens request it. They then took advantage of this law at the first opportunity to secure a vote that rejected the EU’s proposed trade and economic pact with Ukraine, which Brussels saw as a vital step in supporting a strategically important neighbor.

This referendum law is a potential bomb under the EU, as both Dutch politicians and Brussels officials are well aware. Mr. Baudet believes he now has the means to block any steps the EU might seek to take to deepen European integration or stabilize the eurozone if they require Dutch legislation. This could potentially include aid to troubled Southern European countries such as Greece and Italy, rendering the eurozone unworkable.

Indeed, the Dutch government gave a further boost to Mr. Baudet and his allies when it agreed to accept the outcome of the Ukraine referendum if turnout was above 30%, even though it was under no legal obligation to do so. This was a major concession to the euroskeptics, as became clear when strong turnout among their highly motivated supporters lifted overall turnout to 31%. With Mr. Wilders’s party, currently polling above 25%, and both Mr. Baudet and Mr. Roos having launched their own parties, Dutch euroskeptics are confident they will be able to reach the 30% threshold in future referendums.

From the rest of the EU’s perspective, the central question of the election is whether mainstream Dutch parties can find a way to defuse this bomb. That won’t be easy.

The first challenge is to find a way out of the Ukraine impasse. Prime Minister Mark Rutte remains committed to ratifying the deal but he needs to do so in a way that won’t expose him to charges of ignoring the referendum result, thereby stoking euroskeptic support. Dutch, EU and Ukrainian negotiators will sit down next week and try to hammer out a legally binding clarification that makes clear that the agreement doesn’t include military assistance and doesn’t offer a path to Ukraine’s EU membership.

But even if the rest of the EU and Ukraine can reach such a compromise, Mr. Rutte may not be able to secure the backing of the Dutch Senate, where he lacks a majority. Opposition parties don’t want to be seen to be participating in what will inevitably be portrayed as an establishment stitch-up so close to elections.

The second step to defusing the bomb is to amend the referendum law to exclude international agreements. But while pro-European politicians privately say this is their goal, few are willing to say so publicly. Parties on the center-right don’t want to antagonize their increasingly euroskeptic voter base, while much of the center-left is hamstrung by its past support for the referendum law, which they backed because of a long-standing enthusiasm for direct democracy.

Instead, some mainstream politicians are privately pinning their hopes on the Christian Democrats, a center-right party currently in opposition and traditionally suspicious of direct democracy, riding to the rescue by insisting on an amendment to the law as a condition of any future coalition agreement. Yet the Christian Democrats don’t appear in any mood to let other parties off the hook so easily: The party is currently leading the parliamentary opposition to the government’s efforts to ratify the Ukraine deal.

Not surprisingly, the mood in Brussels, where this situation is being watched closely, is gloomy. One top official reckons the chances of the Dutch government defusing this bomb at less than 50%. Those may turn out to be the odds on the ultimate survival of the European project.

Read more: The EU’s New Bomb Is Ticking in the Netherlands - WSJ

POPULISM: Trump’s dystopia is coming – but it will destroy itself - by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed

Trump will, inevitably, pull the rug out from under his own feet.

So this is what the victory of Donald Trump means.

It means that the reactionary forces of the far-right are resurgent. Trump’s victory is the latest in a global trend which was previously manifest in Britain’s Brexit vote, which saw Britons vote to get out of the European Union. That itself follows a growing wave of popularity for right-wing extremists across Europe.

It’s no surprise that among the first in Europe to congratulate Trump on taking the White House were far-right leaders like France’s Marine Le Pen and the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders.

That is because, as I’ve documented elsewhere, Trump’s advisory team has close ties to Europe’s fascist political parties.

His campaign rhetoric has meant that the forces he rode to victory are hardly a secret.

As the incoming president and commander-in-chief, Trump represents a threat to ethnic, religious and sexual minorities inside the US; to women and women’s rights; to the people of Iraq, Syria and beyond, where he thinks massive aerial bombing and oil-grabbing is the solution; to the environment, because he’s a rabid climate denier who wants to burn all the fossil fuels available everywhere; and to Europe, which he thinks should be broken up (a view he appears to share with his mutual admirer, Vladimir Putin).

But Trump won because more and more people are fed up with what they see as ‘the establishment’. Voters bought into Trump’s rhetoric about ‘corruption’, about being a maverick operating outside the Washington beltway. They believed his promises to shake up power.

Never mind that his ‘vision’ of making America “great again” is shallow, self-contradictory and vacuous. It appeals to so many because since the 2008 financial crash, and the convergence of economic, energy, and environmental crises that have escalated since then, it is clear to most people that business-as-usual isn’t working.

The problem is that there no alternative.

Faced with the candidacy of Hillary Clinton, who of all the candidates received by far the most campaign funding from Wall Street, Trump won by playing up the fact that he is not part of the establishment two-party machinery.

Neither was Adolf Hitler.

It also proves that it’s only a matter of time before the self-serving fantasy he has woven to win the White House unravels. Trump will, inevitably, pull the rug out from under his own feet.

Representing the most predatory, machoistic, egoistic dimensions of what is politically possible, Trump’s efforts to follow through with the outlandish, destructive policies he has proposed throughout his campaign will not make America great again.

They will hurt America, and they will hurt all of humanity, and they will hurt planet earth. They will do so because Trump does not represent any sort of alternative at all, but merely a more regressive, aggressive version of business-as-usual.

And the more Trump, in his raving glory, does so, the quicker America, the world and humanity will wake up to the folly of what he stands for.

In the meantime, we must raise our voices together and louder than ever in the fight for fairer, cleaner, safer and more inclusive societies for all. 

Read more: Trump’s dystopia is coming – but it will destroy itself | openDemocracy

USA: No, Everything is Really Not Going to Be All Right "for America and the world" - by Ted Rall

After president-elect Donald Trump's 10-15 minute scheduled get-to-know-you with president Barack Obama ran an hour and a half, too many of my friends who ought to know better contacted me with some variant of "maybe everything really is going to be OK after all." 

No. It really isn't. 

SNL's Dave Chappelle says he's "going to give Trump a chance." 

We should not. 

Trump's wide-eyed expression as he sucked in his new DC digs brought it home: the barbarians are at the gate. 

Do not be fooled by what the media is attempting to present as a smooth transition of power, a quirky one to be sure, but generally falling within American political tradition. Do not believe Trump's condescending tweet damning liberal protesters with faint praise. "President Trump" cannot end well. 

Remember how, the morning of the election, the New York Times gave Trump a 15 percent chance of winning? Given that I've been saying The Donald had an excellent chance of winning for many months, maybe you should be scared when I tell you what I think there's really a 15 percent chance of: another presidential election in four years. 

Here's how I think the early years of the Trump Administration will play out, and why. 

Before we get started, forget impeachment. Impeachment is a political process, not a legal one. With Republicans in control of both houses of Congress, the chances of Republicans impeaching a Republican president are pretty much zero. 

Second, forget constitutional checks and balances. Weimar Germany had a lovely constitution, in many ways better than ours, but constitutions are mere paper unless they're enforced by people. If Trump and his henchmen want to trash legal and political precedent, nothing institutional will stop them. 

Finally, Democrats who place their hope in recapturing Congress in two years need to get real. Trumpism is here for at least four years.  

I use the method used by some authors to write character-based novels
in order to game out presidential administrations. Rather than outline the plot in advance, these novelists develop characters, throw them into a situation and watch what they do. 

As with those novels, it isn't hard to predict how a president and his closest advisers will respond when faced with a given political development. All you have to do is consider their personalities, resumes and policy preferences.

Looking at Ronald Reagan's 1981 cabinet, which included a dentist as secretary of energy and an anti-environmentalist as secretary of the interior, it was obvious that the U.S. government wouldn't lift a finger to slow down the raping of the planet. While invasion of Iraq wasn't exactly predestined, it came as little surprise that a Bush Administration full of neoconservatives who had called for the invasion of Iraq saw the 9/11 attacks as a reason/excuse for what they wanted to do all along. 

It's already clear that Donald Trump's cabinet and closest advisers will come from the fringes of the paranoid far right. Among the highlights: 

Joe Arpaio, the racist 84-year-old torture sheriff fired by Arizona voters, has been shortlisted as Secretary of Homeland Security. 

Ben Carson, being considered to head the education department, doesn't believe in evolution.  

Chris Christie, currently facing criminal charges over Bridgegate, is up for attorney general; so is Rudy Giuliani, a fascist who wants to force Muslims to wear electronic monitoring tags or bracelets so the government can track their whereabouts. 

Then there's possible Secretary of State Newt Gingrich, who wants to deport Muslims who believe in Sharia law, and Interior Secretary Sarah Palin, who thinks shooting wolves from a helicopter is sporting fun. 

I've examined all the lists of cabinet prospects. Not a liberal or a leftist among them. No centrists either. At best, we'll wind up with a few relatively sane right-wingers mixed into a majority of complete lunatics. 

These, headed by the delightfully clearheaded and thoughtful Donald Trump, are the characters of our story. 

Now add the situation. Imagine a 6 to 12 to 18 months from now, when these characters face the inevitable political crisis: terrorist attack. Natural disaster. Economic meltdown. Race riot. Nuclear crisis. 

These aren't personalities predisposed to respond to these challenges with introspection or compromise. Beginning with Trump himself, these are people with a cop mentality who, like a hammer, see everything as a nail to be pounded into submission.  

 Bear in mind, they'll be 1 to 12 to 18 months inside the Washington Beltway bubble. Trump's canny campaign instincts, his intuitive understanding of populist anger that got him elected, will have been dulled by lack of interaction with the public. Moreover, Team Trump will be 6 to 12 to 18 months into an unprecedented period of constant left-wing criticism and street protest. Think Richard Nixon: they'll be deep inside a bunker mentality. 

Everyone in the cabinet room will favor moves to curtail civil liberties: tracking and cracking down on leftists, preventative detentions, new police forces to protect the state and ferret out illegal immigrants and those who hide them, the use of drones to kill Americans on American soil (something Obama said was OK), even more abusive NSA surveillance. 

In my book "Trump: A Graphic Biography," I described the president-elect as "an accidental authoritarian." He thinks of himself as a patriot, a good man. He hasn't been planning to lead a plot against America.  

Trump's fascism will come about naturally, caused by the perfect storm of his ego, his CEO mentality, the politics and personalities of the men and women with whom he is surrounding himself, and a set of developments that are all but inevitable. 

Canceling the next election? For these characters, it will be an easy call.  

Read more: No, Everything is Really Not Going to Be All Right - Rasmussen Reports™

Germany: Media and politicians respond to Merkel′s hopes for fourth term as German chancellor

European media have reacted with varying degrees of support following the announcement by German Chancellor Angela Merkel (seen above with fellow Christian Democrat David McAllister) on Sunday that she would be running as candidate for a fourth term in 2017 elections.

Italian newspaper "La Repubblica" questioned whether Merkel's announcement was a gamble or a politically rational decision, saying that she would have to find answers to challenges "such as Germany's inevitable change into a country of immigration."

The paper also pointed to problems at the international level, including increasing Russian assertiveness in the East and a possibly more distant America under a Trump presidency.

"For historical and geopolitical reasons, Germany would be the first to feel the painful consequences," the paper warned.

Read more: Media and politicians respond to Merkel′s hopes for fourth term as German chancellor | News | DW.COM | 21.11.20

France: Sarkozy's comeback in tatters as he’s knocked out of French presidential primary

Nicolas Sarkozy, whose dream of a triumphant return to the French presidency was destroyed at the first hurdle Sunday, failed to shake off a reputation as one of the country's most divisive figures.

With tough talk on immigration, security and national identity, the 61-year-old tried to woo voters tempted by the far-right National Front with an unabashedly populist campaign.

But the man known universally in France as "Sarko" was humiliated in the rightwing's first ever primary, finishing third behind the man who served as his prime minister, Francois Fillon, and another ex-premier, Alain Juppe.

Read more: Sarkozy's comeback in tatters as he’s knocked out of French presidential primary - France 24

Morocco: COP22: 16-Year-Old Moroccan Girl Delivers Fantastic Gripping Speech in Front of World Leaders - by Ghita Benslimane

As a “Representative of the Moroccan Youth,” Meryem Mawhoub was invited to deliver a speech at a COP22 event in Marrakech, which has been taking place from November 7 and ended on Saturday, November 18.

After a short introduction by COP22 President and Foreign Affairs Minister Salaheddine Mezouar, Meryem delivered the speech in flawless English in front of hundreds of COP22 attendees, including many heads of state as well as his majesty King Mohamed VI.

In her speech, Meryem said the following: “Like two billion young people my age, I aspire, after finishing my studies, to work in service of my country and of my fellow human beings […] For me, my generation, and future generations. A number amongst the multitude of available data outlines a huge challenge.”

“According to the Human Rights Committee on the Rights of the Child, composed by international and independent experts, air pollution has killed 600,000 children under the age of 5 since 2013. It’s up to you and to us to put a decisive end to such situations, and it is within our reach if the great wisdom which we showed last year in Paris is staying alive and if the watchfulness of the citizens of the world does not falter,” she continued.

Read more: COP22: 16-Year-Old Moroccan Girl Delivers Speech in Front of World Leaders

France: Ex -aid of Marie Le Pen says her Presidential victory would be ‘disaster’ for France and EU

Marie Le Pen Party riddled with incompetent Staff

Aymeric Chauprade, a political scientist who was once foreign affairs adviser to Le Pen but left the National Front in November, told POLITICO that the party was riddled with incompetent staff and unfit for government, despite its leader’s ambition of running for the French presidency in 2017.

Chauprade, 46, blamed National Front Vice President Florian Philippot, rather than Le Pen, for the problem, claiming that he had created a “Stalinist” environment that discouraged debate.

He also said that Le Pen lacked self-confidence and, though not prejudiced herself, was surrounded by old university friends steeped in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. “I think that these people are not ready to govern,” said Chauprade, who announced he was leaving the party on November 9.

“Marine surrounds herself with people who are incompetent, who have proved nothing, who have no specialty, whom she controls 100 percent, because they are malleable people who owe her everything.”

EU-Digest

Britain: Brexit: They can't have their cake and eat it too: Europe’s leaders must force Britain into hard Brexit

European leaders have come to a 27-nation consensus that a “hard Brexit” is likely to be the only way to see off future populist insurgencies, which could lead to the break-up of the European Union.

The hardening line in EU capitals comes as Nigel Farage warns European leaders that Marine Le Pen, leader of the Front National, could deliver a political sensation bigger than Brexit and win France’s presidential election next spring – a result that would mean it was “game over” for 60 years of EU integration.

According to senior officials at the highest levels of European governments, allowing Britain favourable terms of exit could represent an existential danger to the EU, since it would encourage similar demands from other countries with significant Eurosceptic movements.

One top EU diplomat told the Observer: “If you British are not prepared to compromise on free movement, the only way to deal with Brexit is hard Brexit. Otherwise we would be seen to be giving in to a country that is leaving. That would be fatal.”

The latest intervention by Farage will only serve to fuel fears in Europe that anti-EU movements have acquired a dangerous momentum in countries such as France and the Netherlands, following the precedent set by the Brexit vote. Ukip’s interim leader, who predicted both the vote for Brexit and Donald Trump’s US victory, told the Observer that while Le Pen was still more likely to be runner-up to an establishment candidate next May, she now had to be taken seriously as a potential head of state.

“She will clearly win through to the second round. And after what has happened elsewhere, only a fool would say she would have no chance of winning overall. France is a deeply, deeply unhappy country. If she were to win, it would be game over for the EU.”

Le Pen has made clear she wants to take France out of the euro and the EU. The prospective hardline approach has been agreed by the 27 member states as a bloc. Acting in concert, the remaining EU states will refuse to grant the UK access to the single market unless London agrees to sign up to its rules, including free movement of people, capital, services and labour.

Norbert Röttgen, chairman of the foreign affairs committee in the German Bundestag, told the Observer that he wanted to help the UK but, if there were no willingness to accept EU rules, there was no hope. “I am really ready to come to a result but if [the British position is] no, no, no, then even I would have to say that there is no common ground.”

Note EU-Digest: If the EU Commission does not play hard ball with Britain it will be game over for the EU. No concessions at all. Britain can't have it's cake and eat it too. 

Read more: Europe’s leaders to force Britain into hard Brexit | Politics | The Guardian

Germany: As a result of Trumps election Angela Merkel hopefully will and should take Global liberal lead

Angela Merkelthe the new global Liberal leader ?

Can Germany, the country that once unleashed Nazism, lead the free world? The idea that the former home of militarism and nationalism could become a beacon for human rights and peaceful international cooperation within one lifetime may seem far-fetched. But with outsider Donald Trump’s election as US president and the rising strength of far-right and populist movements in Europe, some have suggested that German Chancellor Angela Merkel is left as the last powerful defender of liberal values in the West.

Since taking office in 2005, Merkel has been a fixture of the international summit circuit, often providing the only dash of color in row upon row of grey suits. She has outlasted most of her contemporaries, save for Russian President Vladimir Putin, and won plaudits for successfully steering her country through the turmoil of the global financial crisis.

Along the way, the trained physicist has deftly maintained relations with allies as they gained new leaders, including prime ministers and presidents whose positions were very different from her own. Merkel navigated embarrassing moments, too, such as when US President George W Bush caused her to recoil in shock by playfully rubbing her neck at a G8 summit in 2006 and after former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was quoted making sexually explicit comments about her.

Merkel’s relationship with US President Barack Obama hit a stumbling block when it was revealed that the National Security Agency had been monitoring her cellphone, but both leaders weathered the strain. Peter Tauber, the general secretary of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party, noted that the uncertainty surrounding another country’s new administration usually makes people think “cooperation won’t work anymore.”

With the German chancellor having demonstrated otherwise, “there is a certain opinion that maybe it would be good if Angela Merkel would remain as an anchor of stability among the statesmen of the Western world,” Tauber said. Merkel departed from the usual diplomatic script after Trump’s election last week by suggesting that respect for liberal values was a precondition for Berlin’s continued good relations with Washington. Many commentators saw her remarks as a sign that the chancellor was thrusting Germany into the forefront of international politics.

As if to drive home her point, Merkel repeated Monday that Germany was prepared to “protect the dignity of every person, and that’s independent of religion, origin, sexual orientation, gender or other attributes.” Obama himself reinforced the image of passing the baton to Merkel by choosing to spend two days in Berlin during his final foreign trip as president, and declaring that the German chancellor had “probably been my closest international partner these past eight years.”

Rather than bid farewell to Europe in Paris, the capital of America’s oldest ally, or in Britain-which prides itself on a having a “special relationship” with Washington, Obama’s choice signals recognition that the heart of the old continent now lies in Berlin. The leaders of Europe’s other major powers- Britain, France, Italy and Spain-will meet Obama in the German capital Friday, a day after he confers at length with Merkel.

“The phrase ‘leader of the free world’ is usually applied to the president of the United States, and rarely without irony,” Timothy Garton Ash, a historian and professor of European studies at Oxford University, wrote Friday in Britain’s left-leaning Guardian newspaper. “I’m tempted to say that the leader of the free world is now Angela Merkel.”

Yet skeptics point out that Merkel may not be suited to rally the West. Her decision last year to open Germany’s borders to hundreds of thousands of people fleeing war and poverty was seized upon by European nationalists and featured prominently in Britain’s debate over quitting the European Union, which the ‘leave’ camp narrowly won.

European allies blame her for earlier stoking popular unrest by insisting on the need to cut public spending during the continent’s debt crisis. And in Ukraine, Merkel’s recent efforts to maintain a united European front in the face of Russian aggression are looking increasingly fragile. Domestically, Merkel is battling a new nationalist foe in the form of Alternative for Germany, a party that has surged in popularity by railing against refugees. Rather than confronting the party head-on, Merkel has instead stuck to her measured mantra of “We will manage.”

“Germany can’t replace the United States as the leader of the free world,” Josef Braml, an expert on international affairs at the German Council on Foreign Relations, said. “At best, it can protect Europe from nationalist tendencies and remind America that the liberal world order it established is also in the economic interests of the United States. That’s something the new businessman in the White House should be able to understand.”

Close allies say Merkel-who is expected to declare her intention to run for a fourth term in the coming days-is conscious both of her responsibility and the limits of her power. “She is absolutely determined, willing and ready to contribute to strengthen the international liberal order,” said Norbert Roettgen, the head of the German Parliament’s foreign affairs committee. “But we can’t see the chancellor of Germany as last man standing. This will only work together, within Europe, and if we can have the backing of the trans-Atlantic alliance.”

For now, German officials are hoping Trump, who called Merkel’s immigration policy “a catastrophe” while campaigning, will tone down his rhetoric once he’s inaugurated. They are conscious that Berlin is in no position to solve problems such as climate change and crises in the Middle East without American help.

In the meantime, Germany hopes that its post-war history will at least serve as an example to other nations. “Our country embodies, perhaps more than any other country in the world, the experience that war can become peace, division can become reconciliation, and that the mania of nationalism and ideology can eventually be replaced by political sanity,” Germany’s Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Wednesday.

Donald Trump election puts pressure on Angela Merkel to take liberal lead | The Indian Express

USA: Cabinet Link with Turkey via Dutch Company Inovo BV owned by Turkish businessman Kamil Ekim Alptekin

Kamil Ekim Alptekin - Erdogan's Link to Trump

Donald Trump has repeatedly promised to “drain the swamp” of Washington corruption.

The new ethics pledge he announced Wednesday would prohibit registered lobbyists from working for his transition team or administration.

But Trump’s supposed aversion to lobbyists has not harmed the fortunes of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, one of Trump’s earliest and most visible supporters, now a vice chair of the transition team and a rumored frontrunner for the influential post of national security adviser.

Though Flynn is not a lobbyist himself, his company, Flynn Intel Group, is registered with Congress as a lobbying organization, and has a registered lobbyist on its staff. A Flynn Intel Group client, Kamil Ekim Alptekin, a Turkish businessman with real estate, aerospace, and consulting interests, told The Intercept on Thursday that one of his companies, Inovo BV, paid Flynn’s company “tens of thousands of dollars” for analysis on world affairs.

On election day, Flynn published an opinion piece for The Hill urging U.S. support for Turkey’s controversial strongman president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and pushing for the extradition of Erdogan’s political rival, Fethullah Gülen, who now resides in Pennsylvania. “From Turkey’s point of view, Washington is harboring Turkey’s Osama bin Laden,” Flynn wrote, on November 8.

In a statement, Flynn said that he would sever ties with his own company if he entered Trump’s administration. He did not say whether he would close the business, where his son is listed as chief of staff, or disclose his other clients.

Alptekin said that while he agreed with what Flynn wrote, he did not have any influence over his views. “There is no money in the world that could make Gen. Flynn or anybody else who is being considered for a cabinet post write that article on election day,” he said. “I don’t think a billion dollars would make him do that.”

The ties between Flynn Intel Group and Inovo BV, Alptekin’s company, were previously reported by The Daily Caller and Politico. Robert Kelley, the Flynn Group’s general counsel and the main point of contact with the Inovo account, told Politico that the company’s duties included reporting on “the present situation, the transition between President Obama and President-elect Trump.”

Alptekin said that was “absolutely untrue. We never had a single conversation on that issue.”

He said he told the Press that he hired Flynn Intel Group “three months ago.” He said he knew of Flynn’s relationship with President-elect Trump, but that had no bearing on his decision to become a client. “It was more his reputation for integrity, and as a decorated war hero who knows the region,” he said. “I didn’t work with him directly. I never discussed the [election day] article with him directly. I didn’t sign off on the article.”

While Alptekin says the payments were not for lobbying, Flynn Intel Group is registered as a lobbyist for Inovo BV, a Dutch company controlled by Alptekin.

Flynn Intel Group had not registered as a lobbying entity until September. That month, Kelley, the company’s general counsel, registered as a lobbyist for Inovo BV. (A third filing, from late October, identifies a government relations company called SGR LLC as lobbying Congress on behalf of the Flynn Intel Group.)

Earlier 2016 filings with the Department of Justice from Kelley’s law office identify him as an agent of the National Mobilization Forces, an Iraqi military group trained by the Turkish government and controlled by the former governor of Nineveh province. The filings show that Kelley received a total of $90,000 from the Iraqi group and terminated the relationship in June.

Alptekin, a Turkish citizen who worked on Capitol Hill as a congressional fellow in 2003, confirmed that Inovo BV, his Dutch company, was a current client of Flynn Intel Group. “I don’t know him so well, but I met him a few times,” he said, of Gen. Flynn. “In general, when [Flynn] meets someone from the region, he ends up talking about the danger of radical Islam. He mentioned that radical Islam in Turkey is no different from other radical Islamic leaders in the past, with a different front face, a different back office. He compared Gülen to Ayatollah Khomeini. I remember that of the talking points he discussed with me. But I never said ‘go out and say this and do that.’”

“Mr. Flynn does not work on my contract,” he added. “Mr. Bob Kelley does.”
Neither Flynn nor the Trump transition team responded to requests for comment. Reached by phone on Thursday afternoon, Kelley read a three-sentence statement which he said had been prepared by Flynn. “Our counsel, Bob Kelley, registered pursuant to law for our company to represent the interests of a private company,” the statement read, in part.

It continued: “If I return to government service, my relationship with my company will be severed in accordance with the policy announced by President-elect Trump.”

Kelley declined to say whether the Flynn Intel Group had any foreign governments as clients. When asked whether Flynn’s son Michael, whose LinkedIn profile has him as Flynn’s “chief of staff,” would continue to have a role at the firm should his father move on to the White House, Kelley declined to respond.

“I can’t give you more than what’s in the statement,” he said.

The Dutch Business Newspaper NRC in a recent article also confirms that Mr. Flynn's Intel Group was hired by Inovo BV a Dutch Company, owned by Mr.Kamil Ekim Alptekin, mainly to get Fethullah Gülen from the US to Turkey.  Alptekin, who also studied in Utrecht, the Netherlands, and he is a prominent member of the Dutch council of Foreign Economic Relations which, has close ties to the present Turkish Government. In 2003-2004 he worked as a counselor to Fatma Koser Kaya. a Dutch D66-party member of Parliament.

EU-Digest

EU-US relations: Europe, Alone in Trump’s World - by Mark Leonard

Alone again. Since World War II’s end, Europe has looked at the world through a transatlantic lens. There have been ups and downs in the alliance with the United States, but it was a family relationship built on a sense that we would be there for each other in a crisis and that we are fundamentally like-minded.

Donald Trump’s election as US president threatens to bring this to an end – at least for now. He believes more in walls and oceans than solidarity with allies, and has made it clear that he will put America not just first, but second and third as well. “We will no longer surrender this country, or its people,” he declared in his one major foreign-policy speech, “to the false song of globalism.”

Europeans will not only have to get used to Trump; they will have to look at the world through different eyes. There are four reasons to expect that Trump’s America will be the single biggest source of global disorder.

First, American guarantees are no longer reliable. Trump has questioned whether he would defend Eastern European NATO members if they do not do more to defend themselves. He has said that Saudi Arabia should pay for American security. He has encouraged Japan and South Korea to obtain nuclear weapons. In Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, Trump has made it clear that America will no longer play the role of policeman; instead, it will be a private security company open for hire.

Second, global institutions will come under attack. Trump fundamentally rejects the view that the liberal world order that the US built after WWII (and expanded after the Cold War) is the cheapest way of defending American values and interests. Like George W. Bush after September 11, 2001, he views global institutions as placing intolerable constraints on US freedom of action. He has a revisionist agenda for almost all of these bodies, from the World Trade Organization to NATO and the United Nations. The fact that he wants to put the “Art of the Deal” into practice in all international relationships – renegotiating the terms of every agreement – is likely to provoke a similar backlash among America’s partners.

Read moreL Europe, Alone in Trump’s World

Special Interests do not like electric cars - VW, Shell accused of trying to block push for electric cars

Special Interests ho;ding back affordable Electric Cars

VW and Shell have been accused of trying to block Europe’s push for electric cars and more efficient cars, by saying biofuels should be at heart of efforts to green the industry instead.

The EU is planning two new fuel efficiency targets for 2025 and 2030 to help meet promises made at the Paris climate summit last December.

But executives from the two industrial giants launched a study on Wednesday night proposing greater use of biofuels, CO2 car labelling, and the EU’s emissions trading system (ETS) instead.

In reality, such a package would involve the end of meaningful new regulatory action on car emissions for more than a decade, EU sources say. But Shell insisted it is not trying to block an EU push for electric cars.

Ulrich Eichhorn, VW’s new head of research and development, said that plug-in hybrids and more efficient vehicles were “building blocks” for the future, but that “higher shares” for biofuels would be needed in the meantime.

He told a meeting in Brussels: “Modern diesel and natural gas engines will absolutely be required to deliver CO2 targets until 2020 and they will also contribute to further reductions going on from there.”

In meeting the Paris goals, “societal costs need to be minimised to keep our industrial strength and competitiveness,” he said.

The Auto Fuels Coalition study, written by Roland Berger, makes a series of highly pessimistic assumptions about the costs of fuel efficiency improvements, and equally optimistic ones about greenhouse gas emissions from biofuels. A recent EU study found the dirtiest biofuels three times more polluting than diesel.

An EU source said: “these two industries have realised they have a shared interest. When you saw who was paying for the study, you knew what the answer would be.”

Dr Christoph Wolff, the managing director of the European Climate Foundation said:“Electrification is taking off rapidly in markets such as China, Norway and the Netherlands. EU policymakers need to agree stringent measures, which will push the auto sector towards developing products that are fit to compete in this fast-evolving marketplace.”

Note EU-Digest: what would  popularize the electric car even more would be the availability of a family electric car within a price range of  €15,000.00 - €20,000.00 

EU-Digest

TTIP - US-EU TTIP trade deal 'frozen' after Trump vote: commissioner

Talks on a vast free-trade deal between the EU and US are likely to be "frozen" for years after the stunning election victory of Donald Trump, the EU said on Friday.

US president-elect Trump campaigned furiously on a promise to scrap international trade deals, throwing the ambitious pact with the European Union into serious doubt.

Brussels and Washington tried to get the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) through by the time Barack Obama left office but fell short.

"TTIP will probably be in the freezer for quite some time and then what will happen when it is defrosted, I think we will need to wait and see," EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstroem said after trade ministers held talks in Brussels.

"We don't know what he thinks about TTIP," Malmstroem said, referring to Trump, although she acknowledged that the brash billionaire was clearly opposed to big trade deals.

TTIP has been under negotiation since 2013 and was supposed to be one of the most ambitious free trade accords ever attempted.

Read more: Flash - US-EU TTIP trade deal 'frozen' after Trump vote: commissioner - France 24