US Trump Adm. Environmental Policies: Thousands join worldwide climate marches on Trump's 100th day in office

Thousands of people across Canada, the United States and other countries marked U.S. President Donald Trump's 100th day in office by marching in protest of his environmental policies.

Participants in the Peoples Climate March say they're objecting to Trump's rollback of restrictions on mining, oil drilling and greenhouse gas emissions at coal-fired power plants, among other things.

In Washington, D.C., large crowds on Saturday were making their way down Pennsylvania Avenue, where they planned to encircle the White House. Organizers say about 300 protest marches are taking place around the country, and dozens more in Canada and overseas.

• Trump signs order to expand drilling in Arctic, Atlantic oceans
• Trump wins victory in effort to roll back Obama climate change efforts

Note-EU-Digest:  the EU hopefully is prepared to act forcefully in what is becoming an ever greater increasing problem in dealing with the US Trump Administrations irresponsible executive orders and decisions, among others, those of combating Global Warming.  

Read more: Thousands join worldwide climate marches on Trump's 100th day in office - World - CBC News

The Environment: Temperatures Skyrocket in Arctic, Prompt Desperate 'Refreeze' Plan

Temperature readings near the North Pole soared to 50 degrees F above average on Friday, as a storm pushed warm air into the Arctic region.

This is the third such worryingly warm period this winter and sea ice figures released last week show the lowest January ice extent in satellite record—nearly 500,000 square miles below average.

The situation in the region is so alarming that a team of scientists from Arizona State University have published a plan to "refreeze" the Arctic in the American Geophysical Union's journal Earth's Future.

The fact that the $500 billion plan, which would use millions of wind pumps to circulate colder water to the surface of the ice, is even being discussed "reveals just how desperately worried researchers have become about the Arctic," reported the Guardian.

Read more: Temperatures Skyrocket in Arctic, Prompt Desperate 'Refreeze' Plan

Donald Trump: The US has elected its most dangerous leader. We all have plenty to fear - by Jonathan Freedland

''The American Dream Is Dead"

The thought the United States would step back from the abyss. We believed, and the polls led us to feel sure, that Americans would not, in the end, hand the most powerful office on earth to an unstable bigot, sexual predator and compulsive liar.

People all around the world had watched and waited, through the consecutive horrors of the 2016 election campaign, believing the Trump nightmare would eventually pass. But today the United States – the country that had, from its birth, seen itself as a beacon that would inspire the world, a society that praised itself as “the last best hope of earth”, the nation that had seemed to be bending the arc of history towards justice, as Barack Obama so memorably put it on this same morning eight years ago – has stepped into the abyss.

Today the United States stands not as a source of inspiration to the rest of the world but as a source of fear. Instead of hailing its first female president, it seems poised to hand the awesome power of its highest office to a man who revels in his own ignorance, racism and misogyny. One who knows him well describes him as a dangerous “sociopath”.

And what awesome power he will soon have. Republicans did not just defy almost every projection, prediction and data-rich computer model to win the presidency. They also won the House of Representatives and much of the Senate. Trump will face few checks on his whims. A man with no control of his impulses will be unrestrained, the might of a superpower at the service of his ego and his id.

The most obvious impact will be on the country he will soon rule. Just think of what he has promised. A deportation force to round up and expel the 11 million undocumented migrants who make up 6% of the US workforce. A ban on all Muslims entering the country, later downgraded to a pledge to impose “extreme vetting” on anyone coming from a suspect land. A giant wall to seal off the Mexican border. “Some form of punishment” for women who seek an abortion. And prison for the woman he just defeated.

People will say that all that was just talk. But they said that throughout the campaign, insisting that Trump would “pivot” to a more moderate stance, that he would become more “presidential”. He never did. And surely he will see this victory as proof that he was always right, that his instincts are perfect and never to be challenged. There is no reason for him to moderate at all. The office of Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and John F Kennedy is now his playpen. He can do what he likes.

This will be America’s ordeal primarily. But it will affect all of us. A reality TV star with no experience of either politics or the military will have the nuclear button as his toy. This, remember, is the man who reportedly asked several times, during a military briefing, why the US didn’t use nuclear weapons since it had them. This is the man who has said “I love war”. Whose proposed solution to Isis is “to bomb the shit out of them” and steal the oil.

Think of the anxiety this morning in Riga, Vilnius or Tallinn. In the summer, Trump told the New York Times he did not believe in Nato’s core principle: that an attack on one member should be met by a response from all. He seemed to see Nato as a mafia protection racket: unless the little guys paid up, they should be left undefended. Vladimir Putin – Trump’s hero, admired as the very model of a leader by the president-elect of the United States – will not need more of a hint than that. The Russian dictator will surely see his opportunity to invade one or more Baltic states and expand his empire. President Trump would only admire the macho swagger of such a move.

A trade war looms with China, the imposition of tariffs that could imperil the entire global trading system. America is about to turn inward, towards protectionism. The markets have already delivered their verdict on that. They plunged.

And what about our planet? Trump believes climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. He will do nothing to reduce emissions: he does not believe they exist.

But beyond all that, there is another consequence of this terrifying decision, no less dark. Trump’s success has delighted white nationalists and racists in his own country and beyond. His victories in the key battleground states were hailed by David Duke, a former luminary of the Ku Klux Klan: “God Bless Donald Trump,” he tweeted. “It’s TIME TO TAKE AMERICA BACK.” The Dutch nationalist Geert Wilders was in similarly cheery mood: “The people are taking their country back,” he said, “So will we.” Marine Le Pen will feel the same jubilation, as will every other populist or nationalist who traffics in hate.

For they have seen the power of a message built on fear and loathing. It’s not good enough to say this is all about the economic anxiety of those who have been left behind, though that clearly played a part in winning rustbelt states for Trump. But it’s an incomplete explanation because Trump did not only win those voters. He won 63% of white men and 52% of white women. Not all of those were the left behind. A lot of them were people drawn to a message that was, in part and however thinly coded, about reinstating white privilege.

Who is to blame? The list is so long, from the Republican party to the media, from the pollsters and data nerds who got it so wrong to the Clinton campaign team that took onetime Democratic bastions for granted, including Clinton herself, who for all her strengths was a flawed candidate. You can condemn all of them, but on a day like this who really cares about blame? The most powerful country in the world is to be led by its most dangerous ever leader, a figure who could have walked out of a school textbook narrating the darkest history of the 20th century. The wartime holder of the office that in January will be Trump’s once told Americans they had “nothing to fear but fear itself”. That is not true today. America and the rest of us have plenty to fear – starting with the man who now stands on top of the world.

Note Almere-Digest: Maybe also time to give Trump the benefit of the doubt. Donald Trump - Amazing, and shocking for many, but not unexpected. First Brexit and now Trump. Get ready for Marie Le Pen in France and Geert Wilders in Holland. It will certainly create a chain reaction of popular movements around the world against a totally corrupt political, and corporite establishment who slowly dug their own grave. It will be either the beginning of a new era or the beginning of the end. Will Trump be able to deliver and satisfy this popular movement? One thing is certain, the status-quo has been hit by an earthquake. "Business as usual" is no more. QUE SERA SERA!  

Read more: The US has elected its most dangerous leader. We all have plenty to fear | Jonathan Freedland | Opinion | The Guardian

Middle East: The War in Syria is out of control: The War in Syria Cannot Be Won. But It Can Be Ended - by  Phyllis Bennis

We need a powerful Global movement demanding an end to the war in Syria. The United States and to some extent the global antiwar movements remain largely paralyzed. There are some campaigns responding to specific congressional and other war moves, with some particularly good work against US support for Saudi Arabia. But as a movement, we seem unable to sort through the complexity of the multi-layered wars raging across Syria, and unable to respond to our internal divisions to create the kind of powerful movement we need to challenge the escalating conflict.

It was easier during earlier wars. Transforming public consciousness, changing US policy—those were all hard. But understanding the wars, building movements based on that understanding, that was easier. Our job was to oppose US military interventions, and to support anti-colonial, anti-imperialist challenges to those wars and interventions.

In Vietnam, and later during the Central American wars, that meant we all understood that it was the US side that was wrong, that the proxy armies and militias Washington supported were wrong, and that we wanted US troops and warplanes and Special Forces out. In all those wars, within the core of our movement, many of us not only wanted US troops out but we supported the social program of the other side—we wanted the Vietnamese, led by the North Vietnamese government and the National Liberation Front in the South, to win. In Nicaragua and El Salvador, we wanted US troops and advisers out and also victory for, respectively, the Sandinistas and the FMLN (Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front). In South Africa we wanted an end to US support for apartheid and we also wanted the African National Congress to win.

The solidarity part got much harder in Afghanistan and especially in the Iraq wars. We stood in solidarity with ordinary Afghans and Iraqis suffering through US sanctions and wars, and some of our organizations built powerful ties with counterparts, such as US Labor Against the War’s links with the Iraqi oil workers union. And we recognized the right under international law for an invaded and occupied people to resist. But as to the various militias actually fighting against the United States, there were none we affirmatively supported, no political-military force whose social program we wanted to see victorious. So it was more complicated. Some things remained clear, however—the US war was still wrong and illegal, we still recognized the role of racism and imperialism in those wars, we still demanded that US troops get out.


Now, in Syria, even that is uncertain. Left and progressive forces, antiwar and solidarity activists, Syrian and non-Syrian, are profoundly divided. Among those who consider themselves progressive today, there is a significant though relatively small segment of activists who want their side to “win” the war in Syria. Only a few (thankfully, from my vantage point) support victory for what they often refer to as “Syrian sovereignty,” sometimes adding a reference to international law, and only sometimes acknowledging that that means supporting the current Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad. (It should be noted that international recognition does not necessarily equal legitimacy; the South African apartheid regime was internationally recognized for decades.) A larger cohort wants to “win” the war for the Syrian revolution, the description they give to the post–Arab Spring efforts by Syrian activists to continue protesting the regime’s repression and working for a more democratic future. There is a deep divide.

Among those who want the Syrian regime to remain in power and the anti-regime opposition to be defeated, some base their position on the belief that Syria leads an “arc of resistance” in the Middle East—a claim long debunked by the actual history of the Assad family’s rule. From its 1976 enabling of a murderous attack on the Palestinian refugee camp of Tel al-Zataar in Beirut by right-wing Lebanese backed by Israel, to sending warplanes to join the US coalition bombing Iraq in 1991, to guaranteeing Israel a largely quiet border and quiescent population in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, to its role in interrogating and torturing outsourced US detainees in the “global war on terror,” Syria has never been a consistent anti-imperialist or resistance center.


Outside forces are fighting for various regional, sectarian, and global interests that have little or nothing to do with Syria—except that it is Syrians doing the dying. Saudi Arabia and Iran are fighting for regional hegemony and for Sunni versus Shi’a dominance; the United States and Russia are fighting for global and regional positioning, military bases, and control of resources; secular versus Islamist forces fight for dominance of the anti-Assad front; Turkey was fighting Russia (until recently, when it seemed to settle its differences with Russia before invading northern Syria, where now it is primarily going after the Kurds); the United States and Israel are fighting Iran (unlike in Iraq, where the United States and the Iranian-backed militias are on the same side in a broad anti-ISIS front); Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar vie for dominance among the Sunni monarchies; and while Turkey is fighting the Kurds, progressive Syrian Kurds are challenging the more traditional peshmerga of the Iraqi Kurdish regional government.


It is up to us to build a movement that puts forward what an end to this murderous war could look like, as part of a movement to end the US “global war on terror” overall, and support the refugees created in its wake. The military alternatives now being debated will not end the war, and they do not protect vulnerable populations either. There is no military solution. It’s time we rebuilt a movement based on that reality



To read the complete report click here:  The War in Syria Cannot Be Won. But It Can Be Ended. | The Nation

Britain - Brexit: The Worst of All Policy Ideas - by Stephan Richter

Brexit is the UK equivalent of the United States launching the Iraq War: Noble intentions perhaps, but an utterly self-defeatist move.

Come to think of it, Brexit is the worst of all policy ideas.

The whole idea militates against longstanding notions of British pragmatism. That smart school of thought always asks one simple question: What is the fastest, least cumbersome way to obtain a payoff for a policy move?

Brexit is the exact opposite of that: It is a highly complex maneuver with a very uncertain outcome and an equally uncertain payoff. In that sense, the Brexit agenda is entirely un-British.

Indeed, Brexit is such an abstract policy “idea” that it bears all the hallmarks of literally being a proverbial brain fart coming out of the obtuse minds of leftist French intellectuals.

It is well known that they have a strong penchant for trying to make the world fit their ideological predilections even against impossible odds.

What has been unknown to date is that British conservatives evidently seek to emulate those French intellectuals.

The most charitable thing one could say about Brexit is that British ultra-“sovereigntists” – sadly including Theresa May, the country’s new Prime Minister – may have noble intentions.

But these intentions are entirely naïve. They are, in fact, as laudable as the U.S. neocons’ ill-fated desire to “bring democracy to the Middle East.” Given where the Middle East is, those intentions, even if taken at face value, are at best wholly impractical and dangerously delusional.

Top British policymakers – Messrs. Johnson, Davis and Fox, the Theresa May’s “Three Musketeers” – and their supporters in the chattering class will find out a most unpleasant fact of life soon.

Many nations in the world have far more important goals to pursue than discussing the future possibility of a potential bilateral trade deal with the British government.

No matter how often British negotiators refer to the seemingly golden fact that the UK is the world’s fifth-largest economy, it won’t account for much.

In such a world, dealing with the UK is way down the agenda – as U.S. President Barack Obama made refreshingly clear during his pre-Brexit visit, when he talked about the UK finding itself at the end of a long queue for trade negotiations. 

Virtually every other nation is busy working on terrorism, finding strategies to promote employment for young people, securing pensions for old age and so forth.

Theresa May and the Brexit mastermind trio of Johnson, Davis and Fox must still believe that these are the days of Viceroy Mountbatten: London (or one of its representatives) calls – and the world jumps to attention. Not so.

Once it is understood just how badly they are overselling their case, frustration will settle in quickly.
 

Contrary to their continuing promises, they will have a very hard time to come up with any quick successes.

This is due to the very complex, interlocking logic of international trade deals – which British negotiators helped co-invent over the centuries.

Read more: Brexit: The Worst of All Policy Ideas

European Migrant Disaster: EU commission says "Worst migration crisis since WWII" - by Mo Ahmad

The European Union says the scale of migration, driven by war, disaster and poverty in Middle East and North Africa, has no parallel since the end of World War II.

So far Italy and Greece have borne the brunt of the emergency in the EU, while Turkey is already coping with housing more than a million refugees.

Greece recently  sent a ship to the resort island of Kos to speed up the registration of hundreds of Syrian refugees following mounting tensions over a huge influx of new arrivals.

While in Italy the situation was not much better. “We were faced with a very emotional scene”, Commander Massimo Tozzi, told the Italian news agency AGI, describing how some bodies were floating on the water. Three hundred and nineteen people, including a dozen women and children, were saved, according to Massimo Tozzi, commander of the rescue patrol.

Nearly 400 other migrants were picked up in the Mediterranean Saturday August 15 by other vessels taking part in the EU’s patrol and rescue operation, Triton.

The Corriere della Sera newspaper revealed that the migrants who lost their lives were in the hold of the vessel. When the sailors got on they discovered the bodies.

“Either the global community is able to resolve the Libyan question, or today’s (migrant tragedy) won’t be the last”, Alfano said.

Survivors of the hazardous crossing from Libya often tell of how traffickers lock migrants in the hold who pay less for the voyage – mostly black Africans.

“The human smugglers have found that road and flows of migrants have been growing, which is a cause of concern”, he said.

UNHCR European Director, Vincent Cochetel, has said facilities on the Greek islands are “totally inadequate”.

“There is still no care being provided for the refugees”, Vangelis Orfanoudakis said. The two fishermen filming the footage can be heard saying there are “many migrants” on the boat. The number is a little less in Italy, where 102,000 migrants have made the journey.

But after the precarious boat trip to Kos and sleeping rough on the streets, a young Syrian man, Anas, who is travelling to Athens with his daughter, feared more hardship was to come.

“Then when the Greeks saw what happened, they decided to pull us out of the water and bring us to land…” The ship is expected to speed up the registration process of about 7,000 refugees who are stranded on the Kos island.

Almost a quarter of a million migrants have crossed the narrow stretch of water from Turkey in small boats and dinghies to Europe this year, according to the worldwide Organization for Migration.

Note EU-Digest: the EU Commission and EU member states better get their act together on solving this crises which has the potential to result in a variety of serious consequences. It should also acknowledge and remedy the fact that this Middle East exodus of refugees to the EU is a direct result of a totally failed Western US led Middle East policy, which goes back many years and is only getting worse.


Read more: EU commission: Worst migration crisis since WWIIPress Examiner

Europeans Fight U.S. Trade Deal With Fear of McHospitals, Fracking Under Eiffel Tower (and they should)-by Leo Cendrowicz

It will afflict Europe with American abominations on an almost Biblical scale: cheap and dirty food, toxic waste, mind-numbing movies and television, gas-guzzling cars, all while scrapping healthcare and erasing labour rights.

That, at least, is how angry European activists are painting a planned trade deal between the European Union and the United States. A legion of horrors has been evoked about an agreement known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP, which is currently under negotiation.

Dozens of groups have sprung up to oppose the planned pact, like Stop TTIP (whose website describes the deal as “a corporate coup that will put power and money into the hands of corporations and away from the elected government.”) and No TTIP (“TTIP would lock in the privatization of our public services, erode government protection for people and the environment and threaten a new round of unjust economic reforms forced on the poor”).

U.S. and E.U. officials are currently in New York this week for their ninth round of talks to hammer out the details of deal. But on Sunday, tens of thousands of protesters marched through the streets of Berlin, Brussels, Vienna, Madrid, Helsinki, Warsaw, Prague and other cities in simultaneous colorful demonstrations against TTIP.

Europe’s anti-TTIP campaigners characterize the plans as a diabolical plot to allow the likes of McDonalds to take over hospitals, Exxon to frack under the Eiffel Tower, and Google to take over parliaments. “It’s the most contested acronym in Europe,” admits Cecilia Malmström, the E.U. trade commissioner, who is in charge of the European side of the negotiations.

Work on TTIP will continue for the moment. Planned for over a decade before its formal launch in 2013, the negotiations are expected to last at least another two years. But the real test will come when the ratification process begins in European and American legislatures – some 898 amendments have so far been proposed in the European Parliament’s TTIP wish list.

 If anger continues to swell, it could dilute TTIP or derail it completely. If that happens, TTIP’s many opponents would celebrate. Whether their interests would be served by the trade pact’s demise is another matter. But even TTIP’s supporters accept that in its current form, the agreement has become a lightning rod for almost every European discontent.

Read more: Europeans Fight U.S. Trade Deal With Fear of McHospitals, Fracking Under Eiffel Tower - The Daily Beast

Mediterranean Disaster: Fears that 30,000 migrants could die crossing Mediterranean in 2015

A dire warning has been issued as survivors of Sunday’s shipwreck arrived in Sicily, after a disaster that left up to 900 people dead.

It is feared that if Mediterranean migrant deaths continue at the same rate, more than 30,000 people could drown before the year is through.

The warning comes from the International Organisation for Migration.

From the United Nations Refugee Agency too, the statistics are grim.

“April 2015 has truly been the cruellest month, the highest numbers that we have seen for deaths in any month on the Mediterranean,” UNHCR Spokesman Adrian Edwards told a news briefing in Geneva.

“We have had so far this year 1,776 reported dead on the Mediterranean.”
Europe is soul-searching after this worst such tragedy in living memory.

 Read more: Fears that 30,000 migrants could die crossing Mediterranean in 2015 | euronews, world news

Netherlands mourns as bodies of MH17 plane crash victims are flown home - by Philip Oltermann

A a day of national mourning in the Netherlands

As the first coffin was lowered from the planes on the runway, silence fell over Eindhoven military airport. The only sound came from a row of flags whipping in the wind at half mast.

Almost a week after Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot from the skies above Ukraine, 40 bodies arrived on Wednesday in the Netherlands, the country that bore the heaviest toll in the crash.

King Willem-Alexander, Queen Maxima and the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, joined about 1,000 relatives and friends of the victims, who gathered at the airport for a ceremony receiving the two military transport planes.

A lone trumpeter played the Last Post as troops in dress uniform saluted then carried the wooden caskets to a row of hearses. They drove from the airport under military police escort to an army barracks in the central city of Hilversum where forensic experts were waiting to begin the painstaking task of identifying the remains.
Crowds gathered on bridges along the 65-mile route to throw flowers on to the convoy of 40 hearses.

The Dutch government had declared a day of national mourning – the first since the death of Queen Wilhelmina in 1962 – and at 4.07pm a minute's silence was requested across the country.

Two-hundred and ninety-eight passengers and crew were killed when the Boeing 777 flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpar was shot down last Thursday a week today. The Dutch victims numbered 193. In a nation of just 16 million, few have been unaffected by the disaster.

Read more: Netherlands mourns as bodies of MH17 plane crash victims are flown home | World news | The Guardian

"Britain on road to disaster": Cameron’s EU ‘debacle’ proves he is a threat to British economy, says Miliband

 David Cameron poses a “real and present danger” to the economy because his doomed bid to block Jean-Claude Juncker leads Britain towards an exit from the European Union that could put up to three million jobs and thousands of businesses at risk, Ed Miliband said today.

Note EU-Digest:  When will Britain understand that the "power" of the British Empire has come to an end and that their only chance to remain a valuable player on the world's political and economic scene is in participation with the other 27 members of the EU.

Read more: Cameron’s EU ‘debacle’ proves he is a threat to British economy, says Miliband | The Times