Climate Change: EU, Canada, China to jointly fight climate change

The European Union, Canada and China are joining forces to strengthen global action in the fight against climate change, co-hosting a Ministerial Meeting on Climate Action on September 15-16 in Montreal, Canada.

This gathering, a first of its kind, seeks to galvanise global momentum for the implementation of the Paris Agreement and will bring together ministers and high-level representatives from 34 economies that are part of the G20 and other invited countries, the Commission said.

Climate Action and Energy Miguel Arias Cañete and Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are leading lead the roundtable discussion on climate action and clean growth.

Cañete stressed that the EU remains committed to the Paris Agreement and its full and swift implementation. “Domestically, we are progressing steadily with the finalisation of the measures to reduce our emissions by at least 40% by 2030. Internationally, we are strengthening our existing partnerships and seeking new alliances.

Our aim is to raise global climate ambition, follow through with concrete action and support our partners, in particular the most vulnerable countries,” Cañete said.

The meeting in Montreal takes place only days after this year’s State of the Union Address by Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker where he underlined that he “wants Europe to be the leader when it comes to the fight against climate change.

Set against the collapse of ambition in the United States, Europe will ensure we make our planet great again. It is the shared heritage of all of humanity”.

Two months before the next United Nations climate conference (COP23) in Bonn, Germany, the meeting will also provide the space for discussions on the expected outcomes of upcoming UN climate talks, the Commission said.

Read more: EU, Canada, China to jointly fight climate change

US playing with fire re:Sanctions: Russia is retaliating against new US sanctions in a big way - by Zack Beauchamp

Russia will force the US diplomatic mission in the country to eliminate hundreds of people from its workforce by September 1, President Vladimir Putin told state TV in an interview that aired on Sunday

"More than 1,000 workers — diplomats and support staff — were working and are still working in Russia; 755 must stop their activity in the Russian Federation," Putin said, per Reuters.

This does not mean, as early news reports suggested, that 755 US diplomats will be expelled from the country entirely — but it is a serious cut to America’s diplomatic presence in Russia.

The order is retaliation, plain and simple. On Thursday night, Congress overwhelmingly passed a new package of sanctions on Russia as punishment for the nation’s interference in the US election.

Late on Friday, the Trump administration announced its intention to sign the sanctions bill into law. The diplomatic staffing order is Putin showing he hasn’t been cowed.

This is very much not normal; countries do not generally force other countries to limit their diplomatic presence so sharply, absent a major crisis in relations.

It suggests instead that the pro-Russian stance Trump has taken, at least rhetorically, is not paying off — and that US-Russia relations are likely to keep getting worse for the foreseeable future.

Read more: Russia is retaliating against new US sanctions in a big way - Vox

Paris Agreement on Global Warming: Donald Trump Dumps agreement as US Conservatives and Evangelicals applaud move

Noah Could Be Back In Business

Donald Trump has announced the withdrawal of the US from the global Paris agreement on climate change - in a huge blow to efforts to curb the effects of global warming. The president said he wants to "renegotiate" a "more fair" deal for the US with Democrats and other countries.

He added: "if we can get a deal, that's great. If not, that's fine."

Mr Trump, who had made pulling out of the pact - which has been signed by almost 200 nations - a central plank of his run for the presidency, said that in withdrawing he was "keeping his campaign promise to put American workers first".

He said he wants to talk to citizens of "Pittsburgh, not Paris" to cheers in the crowd of the Rose Garden at the White House.

The President had been put under extreme pressure by allies around the world to stay in the agreement, and though administration said his views on the subject were "evolving" - having previously claimed climate change was a "hoax" - Mr Trump refused to be backed into a corner.

He has said that the deal would hit the US coal industry hard and that it would prove "too costly" for US to stick to the Paris accord to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

But Mr Trump ignores the fact that new money in renewable energy outpaced new investments in fossil fuels for the first time in 2015 to the tune of $350bn.

Pulling out of the agreement outright would take four years under the standard cooling-off period for new international treaties - the route Mr Trump is likely to take, but he said that the US is out "as of today."

Note EU-Digest: Of the world's countries, the climate change denial industry is most powerful in the United States. 

The Koch brothers, industry advocates and libertarian think tanks, often in the United States. More than 90% of papers sceptical on climate change originate from right-wing think tanks.The total annual income of these climate change counter-movement-organizations is roughly $900 million.

Between 2002 and 2010, nearly $120 million (euro 136 million) was anonymously donated via the Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund to more than 100 organizations seeking to undermine the public perception of the science on climate change.. In 2013 the Center for Media and Democracy reported that the State Policy Network (SPN), an umbrella group of 64 U.S. think tanks, had been lobbying on behalf of major corporations and conservative donors to oppose climate change regulation.

Since the late 1970s, oil companies have published research broadly in line with the standard views on global warming. Despite this, oil companies organized a climate change denial campaign to disseminate public disinformation for several decades, a strategy that has been compared to the organized denial of the hazards of tobacco smoking by tobacco companies.

Also for millions of Americans evangelical Christians belief in the science of global warming is well below the national average.

Recent data from the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication suggests that while 64 percent of Americans think global warming is real and caused by human beings, only 44 percent of evangelicals do. 

Evangelicals in general, tend to be more politically conservative, and can be quite distrusting of scientists (believing, incorrectly, that they’re all a bunch of atheists). Plus, since some evangelicals really do go in for that whole “the world is ending” thing—not an outlook likely to inspire much care for the environment. 

EU-Digest 

The Global Order Shuffling The Cards: China and Europe are moving forward without Trump

The EU looks ahead at the future without TRUMPLAND

Beijing is in prime position to capitalize on major policy fissures that have emerged between Europe and the Trump administration on climate, trade and defense.

The new dynamic will be on full display on Thursday (June 1)  in Brussels, when Chinese Premier Li Keqiang meets with EU counterparts at the annual EU-China Summit. 

Hours later, President Trump is expected to announce the withdrawal of the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement.

"If peace and prosperity are the object of the global economic order, the Trump administration offers neither to Europeans," wrote analysts at High Frequency Economics, a research firm. "A new axis of power, based on economic power, will form between Europe and China if the U.S. continues to shirk its role as global leader."

Beijing appears to be chomping at the bit, having asked for the summit to be moved forward to June.

A closer relationship between the two giant economies is easier said than done, however. There are major questions over the compatibility of the economic systems promoted by Europe and China, as well as differences over flashpoint issues including human rights.

"If peace and prosperity are the object of the global economic order, the Trump administration offers neither to Europeans," wrote analysts at High Frequency Economics, a research firm. "A new axis of power, based on economic power, will form between Europe and China if the U.S. continues to shirk its role as global leader." 

Note EU=Digest: "The United States and Europe appear to be hurtling toward a messy breakup. China, meanwhile, is ready to pounce. The EU, however, better not jump in bed with China immediately, before making certain all bases are covered", said an EU Commissioner

EU-Digest

Peace and War: Whatever happened to peace? Arms, oil and war by proxy- by Jonas Ecke

When will the killing stop to finance weapons industry

The end of the Cold War was one of the few historical moments in which people around the world looked forward to a future that promised to be more just and peaceful for everyone. The Berlin Wall was finally torn down, following years of tireless civil society activism in one of the world’s few peaceful revolutions. Liberal democratic systems seemed to be spreading everywhere, compelling Francis Fukuyama to craft the (nowadays often-scorned) argument that “The End of History” – and consequently the cessation of constant conflict – had finally arrived with the falling of the Iron Curtain.

The promising world 'peace dividend', a term initially coined by US president George H.W. Bush and UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher, was on everyone’s lips. Hope was in the air. The Soviet Union and United States vowed to work together to further cut down on a nuclear arsenal that could have blown up the world many times over. And they also seemed to be hard at work getting rid of another major – and often underestimated – impediment to peace: proxy wars, the type of war waged in the developing world for most of the Cold War, from Latin America to Central Asia to the Horn of Africa. 

These were wars in which the Soviet Union and US did not directly fight, but paid and favored local fighters, often through highly classified operations and byzantine financial networks that have inspired generations of spy novelists. Before the Cold War, colonial regimes paid local proxies to advance their agendas and “divide and conquer”.

As the Cold War finally came to a close, it was hoped and anticipated that weapon donations would be replaced by UN Peacekeepers and a new generation of NGO activists. Indeed, the new crop of peacemakers seemed to be more liberated. Free from the stifling imperatives of geopolitics, they could implement deals that had previously died prematurely at the conference tables of diplomats, anxious over the advances of an enemy superpower. The tit-for-tat strategies that would reap destruction seemed to be a thing of yesteryear.  

The “War to End all Wars” is a coinage that stems from the First World War. In the global public imagination: the Cold War would be the real “War to End all Wars.” Following its conclusion, an era of enduring peace was within immediate reach. Or so it seemed.

Fast forward 28 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and few such promised realities seem to have materialized. On the contrary, we have entered a new era of proxy wars.

Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria,Yemen, Somalia etc.

To bring these complex wars to a halt, we have to be very precise about what keeps them going. Saudi Arabia and Iran, probably the two main players in proxy wars in a destabilizaion of the Middle Eastern region that is steadily increasing, fund proxy forces to bolster their versions of Islam—Sunni and Shiite Islam, respectively. It is safe to assume that from the perspective of Riyadh and Teheran, furthering sectarian interests, inextricably intertwined with access to resources and geopolitical influence, are of more importance than peace in the region.

But it is not only sectarian strife—often highlighted in the western media—but also global unregulated capitalism that pours kerosene on a Middle East that is already in flames. 

Western weapon companies see the newly emerging proxy wars as momentous opportunities for increased revenues. During a 2015 conference of Lockheed Martin in Palm Beach Florida, its executive vice president Bruce Tanner predicted “indirect benefits” from the war in Syria. Similarly, as the Intercept reports, Raytheon chief executive Tom Kennedy spoke of “a significant uptick” for “defense solutions across the board in multiple countries in the Middle East.” Referring to Saudi Arabia, Kennedy elaborates, “It’s all the turmoil they have going on, whether the turmoil is occurring in Yemen, whether it’s with the Houthis, whether it’s occurring in Syria or Iraq, with ISIS.” And sure enough, stocks for arms have soared in recent years.

But it is not only weapons but also oil which disincentivizes policy makers from de-escalating proxy wars. As Christopher Davidson, who the Economist called “one of the most knowledgeable academics” writing about the Middle East, shows in his 688-page long tome “Shadow Wars: The Secret Struggle for the Middle East,” how many covert operations in the Middle East were historically supported to advance the explicit geopolitical or economic interests of the funders. 

According to Davidson, the emergence of the US as a major oil producer has motivated US policy makers (Trump included) to let Saudi forces engage in exhausting proxy wars throughout the region so that a weakened Saudi Arabia is forced to sell its state assets.

Whatever the precise motivations, aside from the publicly touted humanitarian rationales, oil and weapons play a role in the decisions made by states, even when lives are at stake.

But whatever the argument, the evidence in support of proxy wars as an effective means in the interest of peace is scarce. At least this is the case if one follows the analysis coming from the proverbial mouth of the horse, the CIA. The spy agency has funded proxy fighters for most of its history. 

Reportedly president Obama, at least an initial skeptic in the use of proxies, was interested in finding out if funding insurgents generally accomplish the stated strategic goals and commissioned an internal study.

The report concluded that conflicts were not decided in the interest of the US following the funding of proxy actors, unless, according to the report, US personnel were on the ground along with the proxies. The notable exception—according to the study—was the support for the Mujahidin against the Soviet Union in the 1980s. However, although the Mujahidin did ultimately chase the illegally invading Soviet forces out of the country, Afghanistan did not regain stability. One thing to come out of this instability was the merging of the Mujahidin into Al Qaida: the very same enemy the US fights in the current global 'War on Terror'. 

This is not just one war, but multiple new proxy wars that cause immense suffering and which have, according to the Global Terrorism Index, contributed to an almost nine-fold increase in deaths caused by terrorism between 2000 and 2016. If we consider the entire historical context, the Afghanistan example serves, at best, as a very cautionary tale. 

Tthe Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP), demonstrates that 2014 saw an increase in the number of active conflicts and also the casualties from battle. Forty armed conflicts were active in 2014, whereas in 2013 34 conflicts were designated active. The increase in conflicts since 1999 stood at 18 percent. Whatever gains were brought about by the 'peace dividend', they have been reversed, with people all over the world paying the greatest price.

President Donald Trump, by contrast, initially critical of Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy, has stepped up military activities since he took office. For example, drone strikes, an important component in the theater of war in Yemen, have gone up by 432 percent and his $ 110 billion weapons sale to Saudi Arabia also won't help in getting hostilities slowed down.

A new type of vigorous and principled peace movement must be formed in this time of crisis. Peace movements in rich countries should join Middle Eastern peace movements that rally for more democratic and less sectarian governance. Social movements can become stronger by integrating divergent points of view, histories and ideologies, which inform interpretations of complex conflicts. It necessarily has to look at the various internal roots of conflict, and also at how foreign governments, from Moscow and Washington to Riyadh and Teheran, fuel conflicts.

Supporting and holding political platforms accountable will be key to demilitarizing political ideologies and stopping the world in its “ruinous race” to global war, to use the words of Gorbachev. More often than not, a call to arm a party to a conflict prolongs said conflict. 

The public’s immediate question with regards to conflicts probably shouldn’t be “Whom should we support militarily?” Instead, we should more seriously consider questions such as “Who keeps a conflict going?” and “How can we de-escalate it?”

Somehow we the people—who, against all odds, want to raise our children in a more peaceful world—have to let our politicians know that arms should be removed from most regions of conflict.

Far from being out of touch with reality, the global peace movement—though worryingly weakened—in fact holds the most realistic solutions to conflict. Given the data, it is clear that negotiation with the actors in a conflict is the best route to peace. De-escalation is the only framework in tune with the realities of the contemporary world as well as the lessons of recent history. 

We the people have to compel and force if necessary regional and global political forces to work towards de-escalating conflicts. Challenging the financial conglomerates that bring weapons into the hand of proxies may be one of the most effective ways to do so.

Please get out of your comfort zone and act- the future of your children and grand-children are at stake. 

EU-Digest

Climate change: China vows to defend Paris agreement

Chinese President Xi Jinping has vowed to protect the landmark Paris agreement, which aims to curb climate change and fossil fuel emissions.

He made the promise in a phone call with incoming French President Emmanuel Macron, the Chinese foreign ministry said in a statement.

US President Donald Trump is still deciding whether to withdraw from the accord - an election campaign promise.

Climate experts worry such a move would throw the agreement into chaos.

Read more: Climate change: China vows to defend Paris agreement - BBC News

German US Relations: Merkel Calls Chinese President Ahead of Trump Visit – by Thomas Sigmund

It’s a sign perhaps of a shift in the weight of EU-German foreign policy. Shortly before departing for a trip to Washington, German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke by telephone with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The two leaders reportedly sought to reach a common negotiation position on the Trump administration’s policies ahead of a summit of the Group of 20 nations, government sources in Berlin told Handelsblatt. The conversation can be seen as a sign that Germany and China hope to move closer together.

The two export-led nations have been deeply concerned by anti-free trade rhetoric stemming from the U.S. administration, a dispute which has already spilled over to preparatory talks for a meeting of G20 finance ministers in Baden Baden later this week.

Read more: Merkel Calls Chinese President Ahead of Trump Visit – Handelsblatt Global

EU: Immigrants and refugees: Le Pen, Petry and Wilders all trying to cure the symptoms not the cause - by RM

The European Destruction Team

Senior members of Alternative for Germany cut short a meeting Monday with the Central Council of Muslims, accusing the group of failing to renounce religious beliefs that they claim clash with the German constitution.

The confrontation came days after the party — known by its acronym AfD — launched a campaign against the construction of a mosque in the eastern state of Thuringia, joining up for the first time with the group known as the Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West.

When you read all the nonsense the so-called right-wing nationalist parties, specially those in France, Germany and the Netherlands are saying, reporting and announcing, you can only wonder if the electorate has gone crazy, or if the existing political leadership just does not have it together anymore?

This is the reason why Europe has a refugee problem

The large flow of immigrants to Europe is certainly not because they find Europe such a wonderful or great place to be living in, but mainly because we, together with our so-called "allies",  have bombed their cities, homes and countries into oblivion.

As the saying goes - "you always harvest what you sow".

Geert Wilders (Holland), Marine Le Pen (France) and Frauke Petry (Germany) have taken full advantage of the fact that our present European political leadership have never dared to tackle the true cause, as to why all these refugees came to Europe.

Obviously the electorate, which had been kept in the dark by their political leaders on the true cause  and reasons of the refugee influx into Europe, unfortunately resulted in the fact they started  listening to the garbage coming out of the mouths of Wilders. Le Pen and Petry,.

They put the blame of the refugee problem on national Government policies, related to immigration and refugees, not on the real cause of the refugee problem re: the military involvement of EU countries in the Middle East wars.

Instead the Ultra-Right focused on Islamophobia, decay of national economy/sovereignty. and the functioning of the  EU,  without producing any plan to back-up their arguments .

It is a sad state of affairs and will not get better unless the EU and its member states take a more independent direction and stance when it comes to military alliances and foreign policies.

If the nationalist succeed in breaking up the EU - no country in Europe will be able to stand-up on their own against the manipulations of the USA, China or Russia. It is as simple as that.

EU-Digest ©

Weapons Industry: International arms trade shoots up to highest level since end of Cold War – by Daniel Mützel

The global arms race grew significantly last year and sales shot up by 8.4%, according to a study by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) that compared the last five years with the 2007-2011 period. It called it the highest level since the end of the Cold War.

The five largest arms suppliers, the United States, Russia, China, France and Germany, are responsible for 74% of weapons traded around the world.

According to the SIPRI, the reason for this increase in sales is the growing demand presented by Asia and the Middle East.

Read more: International arms trade shoots up to highest level since end of Cold War – EurActiv.com

Weapon dealers: ISIL ramps up fight with weaponised drones-weapns dealers should be arrested not protected

Why aren't the weapon dealers who sell terrorists weapons arrested?

As fighting raged in eastern Mosul on a recent afternoon, a black Humvee arrived at an Iraqi army command post with a collection of plastics, electronics and rotor blades lashed to its back.

Soldiers leaped to unload the cargo, which comprised the remnants of the latest tool in ISIL's armoury: drones.

The haul included a number of small devices of the kind favoured by filmmakers and hobbyists, costing a few hundred dollars apiece. But there were also larger, fixed-wing craft fashioned out of corrugated plastic and duct tape, apparently made by the fighters themselves.

Since mid-2014, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group has held Mosul, after sweeping through northern Iraq in a shock offensive.

It is now their last urban stronghold in the country, and for more than two months, the Iraqi army's operation to retake the city has met fierce resistance, including snipers, ambushes and suicide attacks using explosive-laden trucks. Drones have been used for reconnaissance and to relay instructions to suicide bombers, said General Abdul Wahab al-Saadi, a commander with the elite counterterrorism service in eastern Mosul.

"They use them to give directions to suicide car bombs coming towards us, as well as to take pictures of our forces," Saadi told Al Jazeera.

In the past, ISIL has used drones in Iraq and Syria for general intelligence-gathering, as spotters for mortar firing, and even for filming propaganda videos. Soldiers have regularly spotted these drones over army positions on the outskirts of Mosul, prompting bursts of gunfire skywards.

But there is a fresh threat, Saadi said: ISIL has begun to use the drones themselves as weapons. "They also use a new tactic, where the drone itself has a bomb attached to it," he explained.total of 37,910 organs from living and deceased persons were donated in 2015.

Note EU-Digest:The question that must be asked - who sold the drones to ISIS? Why are they not persecuted or are the weapons sold by the same people who say they are "fighting" ISIS  so they can perpetuate the wars against terrorism forever?

Read more: ISIL ramps up fight with weaponised drones | ISIS | Al Jazeera

Resolution 2017- Help Clean-up Global Plutocracy:: Breaking Through Power: It's Easier Than We Think

This has become the New Normal: Don't accept it

 "When a small group of people rules a society the political system is considered an oligarchy; when only money and wealth determine how a society is controlled, the political system is a plutocracy.

This is basically the situation we have today in the US, Russia, China, EU and many other countries in the world.

From the standpoint of a democratic society, both oligarchy and plutocracy are inherently unjust and corrupt.

Of course there are variations in the degrees of authoritarianism and cruelty that each system exercises over the communities it relies upon for workers and wealth. Scholars have resorted to using phrases like “benign dictatorships” or “wise rulers” or “paternalistic hierarchies—“ to describe lighter touches by those few who impose their rule over the many.

Thomas Paine simply called them tyrannies. People, families, and communities can only take so much abuse before they rise up to resist. The job of the rulers is always to find that line and provide the lowest level of pay, security, housing, consumer protection, healthcare, and political access for society so that they can extract and hoard the greatest amount of wealth, power, and immunity from justice for themselves. In many ways, the majority of Americans live in a democracy of minimums, while the privileged few enjoy a plutocracy of maximums.

In a plutocracy, commercialism dominates far beyond the realm of economics and business; everything is for sale, and money is power. But in an authentic democracy, there must be commercial-free zones where the power of human rights, citizenship, community, equality, and justice are free from the corrupting influence of money. Our elections and our governments should be such commercial-free zones; our environment, air, and water should never fall under the control of corporations or private owners. Children should not be programmed by a huckstering economy where their vulnerable consciousness becomes the target of relentless corporate marketing and advertising.

American history demonstrates that whenever commerce dominates all aspects of national life, a host of ills and atrocities have not just festered and spread, but become normal—enslavement, land grabs, war, ethnic cleansing, serfdom, child labor, abusive working conditions, corrupt political systems, environmental contamination, and immunity from the law for the privileged few. History also shows that whenever there have been periods when enough of the country organizes and resists, we see movements of people and communities breaking through power. Progress is made. Rights are won.

Education and literacy increase. Oppression is diminished. It was in this manner that people of conscience abolished the living nightmare imposed by the laws and whips of white enslavers. The nation moved closer to promises of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” expressed in the Declaration of Independence. We won more control over our work, our food, our land, our air, and our water. Women secured the right to vote. Civil rights were elevated and enforced. Public schools, improved environments, workplace collective bargaining, and consumer protections did not spontaneously evolve; they were won by people demanding them and breaking through power.

These moments of great progress are expressed in terms of new legislation, regulations, and judicial decisions that directly benefit the life, liberties, and pursuit of happiness of most Americans. From the abolition of slavery to the introduction of seat belts, great social gains have been achieved when people mobilize, organize, and resist the power of the few. The problem is that these liberating periods of humanitarian and civilizational progress are of shorter duration than the relentless commercial counterforces that discourage and disrupt social movements and their networks of support. Some commentators have used the bizarre term “justice fatigue” to describe the pullback that often occurs when communities of resistance are faced with increased surveillance, infiltration, harassment, and arrest. A more accurate term is repression.

Concentrated power in the hands of the few really should matter to you. It matters to you if you are denied fulltime gainful employment or paid poverty wages and there are no unions to defend your interests. It matters to you if you’re denied affordable health care. It matters to you if you’re gouged by the drug industry and your medication is outrageously expensive. It matters to you if it takes a long time to get to and from work due to lack of good public transit or packed highways. It matters to you if you and your children live in impoverished areas and have to breathe dirtier air and drink polluted water and live in housing that is neglected by your landlord. It matters to you if your children are receiving a substandard education in understaffed schools where they are being taught to obey rather than to question, think and imagine, especially in regards to the nature of power.

If you’re a little better off, it matters to you when your home is unfairly threatened with foreclosure. It matters to you when the nation is economically destabilized due to Wall Street’s crimes, and your retirement account evaporates overnight. It matters to you if you can’t pay off your large student loans, or if you can’t get out from under crushing credit-card debt or enormous medical bills due to being under-insured. It matters to you if you are constantly worried about the security of your job, or the costly care of your children and elderly parents.

“We live in a beautiful country,” writes historian Howard Zinn. “But people who have no respect for human life, freedom, or justice have taken it over. It is now up to all of us to take it back.” To better assess what it specifically takes to do just that, it is important to understand how the people profiting from plutocratic forces strategically and regularly dominate old and new circumstances with powerful controlling processes".

With elections coming up in in Europe and other countries of the world in 2017- don't ever believe it is too difficult for you as one person to make a difference.  Speak out, join an advocacy group, or even organize one yourself. Go to political meetings of your choice and ask questions.

Politicians need your vote and will listen to you, specially if their political career depends on it.Politicians will usually also tell you everything you want to hear, and will even lie through their teeth, as long as you give them your vote. Check their voting record and compare it to their promises.  You will notice that most of what they told you before they never materialized. Question them about it in Public.

In Europe these questions could be : "why is Europe spending millions of euros fighting loosing wars in the Middle East.  What is done to improve education, Why has the care for the elderly declined so dramatically?" 

Or people in the US could ask: "why do we still have an outdated voting system, How come military spending figures are kept secret, etc etc".

Believe it or not, your future and that of your children stands or falls based on your involvement as a Citizen. Sitting at home and watching "pre-cooked" news by the corporate owned media or wondering what kind of dog food is better for your dog won't get you anywhere.

Most of the above quoted text comes from an easy-to-read compact book by Ralph Nader, called "Breaking Through Power" - You can order it on line and certainly will find it most fascinating as the world around you becomes more bizarre by the minute.

Wishing you a Merry Christmas and an active and involved 2017 - hope you will take-off those slippers and use them to start slapping your politicians into shape and making them listen more attentively to you and what your needs are.

EU-Digest

France: French foreign minister says Trump's approach to China is 'not clever'

The French foreign minister has described Donald Trump’s approach to China as “not very clever”, warning the US president-elect not to threaten or lecture Beijing as “we do not talk like that to a partner”.

Jean-Marc Ayrault was responding to Trump’s threats of a trade or currency war with China, as well as his surprise decision to speak directly by phone to the Taiwan president, Tsai Ing-wen.

Beijing lodged a complaint over the phone call, which it saw as a breach of the “one China” principle that officially considers the independently governed island to be part of the same single Chinese nation as the mainland.

In an unusual piece of public advice to an incoming US president, Ayrault told TV channel France 2: “Beware of China. It is a great country. There may be disagreements with China, but we do not talk like that to a partner. We must avoid getting into a spiral where things are out of control.

“When China feels challenged on its unity, that is not necessarily very clever. We will have to be very careful, but we can hope as the days go by the new American team has learned enough to manage an uncertain work with more coolness and responsibility.”

Trump stood firm on the issue on Sunday, saying the US did not necessarily have to stick to its longstanding position that Taiwan is part of one China.

By the beginning of this week, the Chinese response became more hardline. On Monday, Beijing warned any individual who threatened China’s interests in Taiwan that it would “lift a rock that would crush his feet”.

On Wednesday, An Fengshan, a spokesman for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, said a US approach that favoured formal recognition of Taiwan threatened stability in the region.

“Upholding the ‘one China’ principle is the political basis of developing China-US relations, and is the cornerstone of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, he said. “If this basis is interfered with or damaged, then the healthy, stable development of China-US relations is out of the question, and peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait will be seriously impacted.”

Until now, the French government has made little noise about the election of Trump, as it tries to gauge the extent of his likely influence on foreign policy, including towards Iran and Russia.

Broadly, the view in France is that Trump has little to gain from a downturn in relations with China when so much else needs to be addressed in Europe and the Middle East. French politicians are anxious that Trump does not seek to tear up the Iran nuclear deal and have noticed that China has been publicly advising the US not to do so.

On Monday, China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, urged all sides to stick to the six-nation pact agreed last year. Without mentioning the US directly, Wang said: “Maintaining the deal’s continued, comprehensive and effective implementation is the responsibility and common interest of all parties, and should not be impacted by changes in the internal situation of each country.”

Ayrault has a history of speaking his mind, having accused the UK foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, of lying during the EU referendum campaign. In an interview with CNN during the US presidential election campaign, he described Trump’s foreign policy plans as “very confused”.

On Wednesday, he said the Trump administration would be judged by its deeds, but the US president-elect had selected “an unusual team after an usual election”.

Read more: French foreign minister says Trump's approach to China is 'not clever'

Heallth Alert - Chinese Garlic: This Is How You Spot Harmful Bleach And Chemical Laden Garlic From China - by David Avocado Wolfe

According to Epoch Times, “64,876 tons of dried, fresh, or chilled garlic, were imported from China in 2014… About a third of the garlic in the United States comes from China.”

Our garlic isn’t coming from California anymore, it is being imported from China. Quality control is a big issue, but it pales in comparison to how and where this garlic is grown.

Many Chinese farmers use pesticides that are illegal to use for farming purposes in China. “An undercover magazine reporter investigating in the area found that many vegetable farmers used phorate and parathion, two pesticides banned by the government, to irrigate the crops to save time and effort.” (Epoch Times) Both phorate and parathion have been labeled HIGHLY TOXIC POISONS.

China’s pollution problem and soil is also a cause for concern. “An official government report in 2014 showed that nearly a fifth of China’s soil is contaminated by heavy metals like cadmium and arsenic as well as unhealthy amounts of pesticides and fertilizers. Severe pollution has tainted all of China’s major rivers with large amounts of industrial chemicals and household waste.” 

Readmore: RED ALERT: This Is How You Spot Harmful Bleach And Chemical Laden Garlic From China - David Avocado Wolfe - DavidWolfe.com

Propaganda: ′Divide Europe′: European lawmakers warn of Russian propaganda - what about propaganda from other sources?

The Russian government channels propaganda aimed at disrupting democratic values across Europe, targeting "specific journalists, politicians and individuals in the bloc," lawmakers of the European Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee said in a resolution passed on Monday.

"The Russian government is aggressively employing a wide-range of tools and instruments, such as think tanks […], multilingual TV stations (i.e. Russia Today), pseudo-news agencies […], social media and internet trolls, to challenge democratic values, divide Europe, gather domestic support and create the perception of failed states in the EU's eastern neighborhood," the resolution said.

European lawmakers called on media representatives in the EU to compile facts on the "consumption of propaganda," worrying that "with the limited awareness amongst some of its member states, that they are audiences and arenas of propaganda and disinformation."

The resolution urged European authorities to turn the EU's Strategic Communication Task Force, an initiative mandated by the European Council aimed at dispelling propaganda, into a "fully-fledged unit" within the bloc's diplomatic office, "with proper staffing and adequate budgetary resources."

MEP Anna Fotyga, the chief rapporteur for the resolution, told DW that more needs to be done to expose the "mechanism of propaganda" directed at the bloc's member states, and more broadly the EU and the West.

However, Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of RT (formerly Russia Today), told DW that the resolution, in effect, targets free speech in the 28-nation bloc.

"This a rather interesting interpretation of the much-touted western values, particularly that of the freedom of speech - which in action apparently means attacking a rare voice of dissent amongst literally thousands of European media outlets," Simonyan said in an emailed statement.

"If anything is eroding public confidence in European institutions, it's that," she added.

Note EU-Digest: Good move by EU lawmakers, but propaganda is coming to the EU citizens and politicians from a variety of sources and directions - countries and industry, and the question should not only be focused on one potential culprit, but other sources as well, including, the US, China, multi- nationals, etc. If the EU lawmakers don't approach the issue in a far more broader and objective way, it unfortunately does start to smell like censorship, and that, one can only hope is not the purpose of this exercise ?

Read more: ′Divide Europe′: European lawmakers warn of Russian propaganda | Europe | DW.COM | 11.10.2016

Christianity: China on Track to Have World's Largest Christian Population by 2030 - by Brandon Showalter

Despite the increasing persecution of Christians in China, the Communist country is on track to have the largest Christian population in the world by 2030, according to Rodney Pennington who studies religious trends for OMF International.

"We are overjoyed with what the Lord has already done in China," said Pennington, vice president for mobilization of OMF, a missions organization, in an interview with The Christian Post on Tuesday. "But that doesn't mean the task is finished."

By 2030 "China will almost certainly have the most evangelical Christians," he said, "and that will greatly shape the global evangelical Church in the coming years.

That said, Pennington emphasized that there are still many needs in China, especially in areas like discipleship, cross-cultural outreach and ministering to children and youth."

"While 200 million Chinese believers by the year 2030 may seem ambitious, it certainly gives us a strong goal to pray toward," he added.

Yu Jie, a Chinese Christian and democracy activist, said in an essay published in the August edition of First Things that Chinese Christians are known to say "the greater the persecution, the greater the revival." If recent reports are correct, the persecution has indeed been great but the revival has been, in Yu's words, a "gushing well or geyser."

The exponential growth of the Christian faith in China can be traced back to two moments in modern Chinese history, according to Yu.

Those two moments were the launch of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution in 1966 and the Tienanmen Square massacre in 1989. Millions of innocent people lost their lives in those events, and as a result many people have stopped believing in Marxism-Leninism and Maoist ideology, Yu said.

The director of the Center of Religion and Chinese Society at Purdue University, Fenggyang Yang, noted in an essay published in Slate magazine that Protestantism has been growing in China by more than 10 percent every year. In 1980 there were approximately 3 million Christians in China. By 2010 that number had risen to 58 million. He suggests that by 2025, there could be 255 million Christians.

Even with the impressive growth of Christianity, China is still officially an atheist country.

In April, CP reported that Chinese President Xi Jinping told his Communist Party members that they must be "unyielding Marxist atheists" who will command Christians and other religious groups in the country.

Since 2014, the Communist regime has been targeting Christians and demolishing churches, deeming the buildings "illegal." The government has demolished more than 200 churches and removed over 2,000 crosses in China's Zhejiang province in an effort to limit Christianity's influence in the region.

Human rights attorneys who provide legal support to churches in China have also been subjected to gruesome torture and forced to confess on television that they have disturbed the peace, and jeopardized national security.

While some churches have been allowed to operate under strict state surveillance, many others, especially house churches and ministry organizations not registered with the government, are heavily oppressed.

Yu noted that there are three times as many illegal house churches as state-sponsored ones, and that repression is particularly bad in Wenzhou, "China's Jerusalem" in Zhejiang province, where an estimated 15 percent of the population is Christian.

Despite the crackdown on Christianity in his native country, Yu said he is not unsettled.

"Neither the dead hand of Communism, nor the cynical imitation of Confucianism, nor capitalism, nor democracy, nor any earthly thing will determine the fate of my land," he said.

Read more: China on Track to Have World's Largest Christian Population by 2030

Terrorism: Terrorist groups need to be infiltrated and destroyed - cheaper than bombing and more effective

It is time to infiltrate terrorist organizations and destroy them

After the most recent terrorist attack in France, it seems their might also be an urgent need for a far more effective strategy than just the involvement of costly military operations.

First of all we should not label terrorists as good and bad ones - Daesh - Boko Haram, -PKK - Haqqani Network - Kataib Hezbolla - AL-Qaeda. They are all terrorist groups and should be labelled and treated as such.

Also for starters. Since just about every government in  the world is facing similar terrorist problems, cooperation and exchange of information between governments, in this respect, is not only important, but essential.

A "hot-line" for local citizens to call in every country, where they can confidentially report suspicious activities in their neighborhood certainly could be another effective tool to get a grip on these terrorist cells

In this context there should also be a financial reward system for people who can provide valuable information to the local authorities which leads to the arrest or elimination of terrorists.

Local government and the military should also develop training programs for individuals who can be used to infiltrate terrorist organizations via their recruitment programs and other means, to create internal chaos within terrorist organizations or destroy their chains of command.

Stopping terrorism can only happen when we are able to outsmart them.

© EU-Digest Editorial 

Kleptocracy Rules: The Panama Papers & Capitalism-Today:Neo-liberalism’s World of Corruption

TTIP: legalizing Kleptocracy

Of course corruption has always existed in capitalism. But neo-liberalism, the ‘free market’ system that started in the 1980s, promoted it on a vast scale for two reasons:

1. Neo-liberal deregulation and privatisation promoted the dominance of financial capital and the expense of industry and the state. Financialisation and low capital gains taxes have turned big companies and utilities into cash cows, virtual banks with huge wealth, looking to maximise the interest on their money and minimise their tax. Finance capital is, after all, basically about swindling. In the middle ages they called it usury.

2. The shift to the right crashed ‘socialist’ command economies and undermined nationalist governments in the third world, replacing both with corrupt and usually highly authoritarian neoliberal regimes. Getting hold of the state apparatus has become a royal road to mega-wealth for dozens of dictators and their cronies through simple theft.

The core of it is the banking system. European and American banks receive (read: launder) billions of dollars every year from international mafias, and in particular from drug dealers. Sometimes by accident some of this comes to light. In 2006 Mexican soldiers intercepted a drug shipment in Ciudad del Carmen and found a cache of documents showing the Sinaloa drugs cartel had made payments of $378 billion to the American bank Wachovia, a subsidiary of the financial giant Welles Fargo.

Roberto Saviano, the author of the best-selling Gamorrah which exposed the workings of the Neapolitan crime organisation Camorra, claims that London is the centre of money laundering for Latin American drug money. Even the British National Crime Agency says:

“We assess that hundreds of billions of US dollars of criminal money almost certainly continue to be laundered through UK banks, including their subsidiaries, each year.”

Saviano says that Mexico is the ‘heart’ of the drugs trade and London its ‘head’. Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Crime and Drugs Agency, says drug dealers invested $352 billion in Western banks in 2008, and this was key in keeping some major banks from collapse.

So corruption – receiving money from crime and drug cartels – is deeply ingrained in the culture of US and European banks. And this is not going to stop, given the vast profits involved.

The klepocratic state is an old story. It’s reckoned that no Mexican president leaves offices with less than $100m. Key Western allies from the 60s and 70s, like Mobutu, president of Zaire (DRC) from 1965-97 and Suharto, president of Indonesia from 1967-98, both established murderous regimes and systematically looted their respective peoples of billions of dollars.

Direct corruption by the state is one thing, influence is something else. In western democracies influence is stacked in favour of the rich and powerful. In the United States and increasingly in Britain it is professional lobbyists who fight their corner. The Atlantic magazine in the US points out:

“Corporations now spend about $2.6 billion a year on reported lobbying expenditures—more than the $2 billion we spend to fund the House ($1.18 billion) and Senate ($860 million). It’s a gap that has been widening since corporate lobbying began to regularly exceed the combined House-Senate budget in the early 2000s.

“Today, the biggest companies have upwards of 100 lobbyists representing them, allowing them to be everywhere, all the time. For every dollar spent on lobbying by labour unions and public-interest groups together, large corporations and their associations now spend $34. Of the 100 organizations that spend the most on lobbying, 95 consistently represent business.”

The above account doesn’t include the direct payments and other gifts given to members of Congress by big companies, not least the health insurance and healthcare companies who have fought so long and so successfully against a universal US healthcare system.

Britain is going in the same direction. As in the United States, business and politics are often revolving doors with former minister joining the boards of companies they dealt with when in power. Seumas Milne says:
“…lobbying doesn’t begin to cover the extent of corporate influence. More than ever the Tory party is in thrall to the City, with over half its income from bankers and hedge fund and private equity financiers. Peers who have made six-figure donations have been rewarded with government jobs.

“But the real corruption that has eaten into the heart of British public life is the tightening corporate grip on government and public institutions – not just by lobbyists, but by the politicians, civil servants, bankers and corporate advisers who increasingly swap jobs, favors and insider information, and inevitably come to see their interests as mutual and interchangeable. The doors are no longer just revolving but spinning, and the people charged with protecting the public interest are bought and sold with barely a fig leaf of regulation.”

Corruption everywhere has the effect of transferring huge amounts of wealth from the poor to the rich. If poor individuals are not directly robbed, then their economic situation, their public services, their health service, their transport, their education – all these are robbed when taxes are avoided and government revenues robbed.

You can’t analyse corruption today by looking for illegal activity alone. Many of the practices that happen in rich and poor countries are legal or in a grey area where it’s difficult to tell criminal from the lawful.

For example, property dealing in Britain is profoundly corrupt. House prices in London (and thus in the whole country indirectly) are pressured by the huge amount of hot money from corrupt Russian oligarchs and assorted gangsters of various nationalities invested in the expensive end of the market. But nothing here is illegal, as far as the house purchases in Britain are concerned. It’s just that they are bought with corrupt money and force up the living costs of millions of ordinary British people.

Look at the purchase of rare earth minerals from the Congo, essential for computers and mobile phones. Much of this mineral wealth is controlled by war lord armies, guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The companies who buy the mineral products they control – the moral equivalent of blood diamonds – have no contact with them at all. Dealers act as a buffer and through their transactions – perfectly legal – wealth based on rape and murder is miraculously washed clean.

Finance capital is by definition corrupt. The investment banks typically do not disclose their fees to investors in advance (they call their charges ‘consideration’) by deduct self-decided amounts as they go along. Free charging professionals like lawyers, and in many countries doctors and dentists, make up their own huge fees. Isn’t this corrupt? But there’s nothing illegal about it.

The tax dodges by major companies like Amazon, Facebook and Starbucks, are perfectly legal. They pay all the tax they are required by law – or by agreement –in countries like Ireland and Luxemburg where they are registered. Whether these practices are illegal in the UK for example is a very grey area. But corruption it certainly is.

All these examples have the same effect: robbing the poor to further enrich the wealthy.

 Read more: CADTM - The Panama Papers & Capitalism Today: Neo-liberalism’s World of Corruption

Wealth: Richest 1% will own more than all the rest by 2016 - "time to fire our political representatives"

The combined wealth of the richest 1 percent will overtake that of the other 99 percent of people next year unless the current trend of rising inequality is checked, Oxfam warned today ahead of the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos.

The international agency, whose executive director Winnie Byanyima will co-chair the Davos event, warned that the explosion in inequality is holding back the fight against global poverty at a time when 1 in 9 people do not have enough to eat and more than a billion people still live on less than $1.25-a-day.

Byanyima will use her position at Davos to call for urgent action to stem this rising tide of inequality, starting with a crackdown on tax dodging by corporations, and to push for progress towards a global deal on climate change.

Wealth: Having It All and Wanting More, a research paper published today by Oxfam, shows that the richest 1 percent have seen their share of global wealth increase from 44 percent in 2009 to 48 percent in 2014 and at this rate will be more than 50 percent in 2016. Members of this global elite had an average wealth of $2.7 million per adult in 2014.

Of the remaining 52 percent of global wealth, almost all (46 percent) is owned by the rest of the richest fifth of the world’s population. The other 80 percent share just 5.5 percent and had an average wealth of $3,851 per adult – that’s 1/700th of the average wealth of the 1 percent.

Note Almere-Digest: Hope our politicians are reading this because they have completely failed on a local and global scale to remedy this ever increasing global problem. Finger pointing to others for this disaster is not acceptable.

Read more: Richest 1% will own more than all the rest by 2016 | Oxfam International

Political Mismanagement : 10 Economic, Political and Social Global Forecasts Indicate Troubled Times Ahead In 2016 - by RM

The legacy of a totally failed Middle East Policy

As a wise man once said "Without Freedom Of Speech There Are Only Official Lies"

Below links to 10 reports which indicate that the overall state of our globe in 2016 does not look very rosy.  Click on the headline to get the report.

 

European economies face harsh headwinds from China

Is the EU imploding?The Europe Question In 2016

Toward Global Disaster: Chaos and Intervention in the Middle East

Global Economy: Soros: It's the 2008 crisis all over again

Middle East: Where Will this War Frenzy Lead?

EU Presidency: ′Turbulent times′ as Netherlands takes over EU presidency

USA: To understand Donald Trump, look to Europe

Global Economy Catching China's Cold

China: Don't blame the economy for China's latest market meltdown

US Economy: Could the American economy tank in 2016?

Change however lies in the hands of the people, and if politicians have made life worse rather than better for you - get rid of them. Don't sit on the sidelines staring at your navel or pointing your finger at others.   

After all : "The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by its private citizens" - Alexis de Tocqueville

EU-Digest

Weapons Industry: ISIS weapons sourced from Russia, China, US and EU

The terror group have used these weapons to commit gross war crimes in both Syria and Iraq and also to take control over areas across Syria and Iraq.

The report draws on expert analysis of thousands of verified videos and images and details how IS fighters are using arms, mainly looted from Iraqi military stocks, which were manufactured and designed in more than two dozen countries, including EU states.

Other weapons have been acquired during battle, through illicit trade as well as through defection of fighters across Syria and Iraq.

Patrick Wilcken, Researcher on Arms Control, Security Trade and Human Rights at Amnesty International said the vast and varied weaponry being used by militants was “a textbook case of how reckless arms trading fuels atrocities on a massive scale.”

Note EU-Digest: the solution is simple: but the implementation is nearly impossible. National governments in cooperation with the UN must register all local and international arms dealers and trace their sales and whenever possible prosecute them.The least National Governments can do is to make the life of weapons dealers more difficult. It proves once again, given the actual facts, how hypocritical governments are when it comes to curbing their profitable weapons industry.

Read more: ISIS weapons sourced from Russia, China, US and EU