European Troop Deployment in Iraq: 3,000 troops from 19 EU states in Iraq. Will they stay?

Around 3,000 soldiers from 19 EU states were deployed in Iraq, plus another 200 from 10 EU states stationed under Nato command, as of late 2019, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), a global think tank.

With tensions flaring following the killing of general Qassem Suleimani in a US drone attack last week, the EU is scrambling to use diplomacy to de-escalate the brewing conflict and possible ensuing war.

Read more: 3,000 troops from 19 EU states in Iraq. Will they stay?

China - EU - Iran - Russia -Turkey -- a new Dawn? : Donald Trump′s risky short-sightedness - by Frank Sieren

New World  Order? China,-EU Russia

Like the rest of the world, Beijing was forced to look on idly as US President Donald Trump ordered the killing of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani last Friday. Even the Iraqi government in Baghdad, which considers Iran an enemy, called on the US to withdraw. On Tuesday night, Iran responded by launching missile attacks on US bases in Iraq.

For now, the situation seems to be, if not de-escalated, at least not re-escalated. But the stakes in the Middle East are also high for China now. As the country with the second-highest oil consumption in the world, it sources a good 50% of its imports from the region. Although Iran is ranked only seventh in the list of oil exporters to China, it has become a close economic and diplomatic partner of Beijing's in recent years.

China is also Iran's largest trading partner. China's investments in Iran are also rising steadily, amounting to over $27 billion (€24.3 billion) between 2005 and 2018. Last summer, the two governments agreed that China would invest $280 billion in Iran's energy sector and $120 billion in its infrastructure and manufacturing sector over the next 25 years. In return, Beijing would receive cheaper oil as well as other benefits. The idea is also that the transactions be conducted in Chinese yuan or Russian rubles, as Russian companies will also be involved.

Iran is playing an increasingly important role for China's "New Silk Road." One of the most important axes of the geostrategic project of the century leads from China to Turkey, via Pakistan and Iran, and then from Istanbul to the Greek port of Piraeus.

Not far from the Pakistan-Iranian border and the Strait of Hormuz, through which 40% of the world's oil transports pass, lies the deep-sea port of Gwadar. In future, the idea is that this be used to transport oil and goods directly to China via an economic corridor in Pakistan. Pakistan shares a common border with both Iran and China, while goods still have to cross three Central Asian countries to get to China via the northern route.

Note EU-Digest: China, the EU and Russia for some time now are starting to cooperate on trade and technology much closer and in the process are by-passing the US at an ever increasing rate, specially following the election of Donald Trump.

Read more: Sieren’s China: Donald Trump′s risky short-sightedness | Asia| An in-depth look at news from across the continent | DW | 09.01.2020

Iran-US Relations: Is the US On the Verge of a War with Iran?

Trump: we will help Saudi Arabia
in their struggle against Iran

"The main question is not whether Soleimani is responsible for carnage in the region (he is) or whether he has blood on his hands (he does), but whether Soleimani’s assassination increases or decreases the risk of a wider conflict between Washington and Tehran. Does this strike put American soldiers, diplomats, and citizens in the region at risk?"

The answers are as obvious as the day is long. The strike on Soleimani is a gigantic leap forward on the escalation ladder, a move so dramatic that Iran will be forced to respond. And it will do so at a time and place of its choosing. The 60,000-70,000 U.S. military forces in the Middle East are now all potential targets of Iranian retaliation, the extent to which Washington can’t fully estimate. The State Department’s travel advisory urging all U.S. citizens to leave Iraq immediately is an indication that the Trump administration recognizes that Americans on Iraqi soil could very well be sitting ducks for some kind of violent response.

Note EU-Digest: The Washington Post  reported that several European diplomats said Friday that they were not aware of any warning from Washington ahead of the strike on Soleimani in Baghdad, though the mission was almost certain to increase the security risk for hundreds of European troops and for other European citizens in the region.The Netherlands government advised all its citizens in Iraq to leave the country. Once again as he did with pulling troops out of Syria it shows he does not have any respect for his Allies and the lives of their troops, who have always supported the US, and put their lives at risk. it is high time the EU tells the US Trump Administration that " the party is over", and that they should start fighting their own ridiculous wars around the world.

Read more at: Are We On the Verge of a War with
ran? | The National Interest

NATO: European Security in Crisis: What to Expect if the United States Withdraws from NATO - by Liana Fix and Bastian Giegerich

t is February 2021. A few months after his re-election as president of the United States, Donald Trump declares that NATO has become obsolete and the United States withdraws from the alliance. All U.S. forces — military personnel and equipment — including nuclear and missile defense assets will be withdrawn from Europe as soon as possible.

This nightmare scenario has been on the mind of many security policy officials, and experts, ever since the New York Times reported in January 2019 that Trump discussed several times over the course of 2018 wanting to withdraw from the alliance. Congress has acted and passed the NATO Support Act, which prohibits the use of funds to withdraw the United States from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Yet the possibility of such a move cannot entirely be excluded.

A policy game prepared by Körber-Stiftung and the International Institute for Strategic Studies sought to answer these questions this summer in Berlin. Five country teams with experts from France, Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom, and the United States addressed a fictional scenario that involved a U.S. withdrawal from NATO, followed by crises in a NATO member state in the western Balkans and across Eastern Europe. How would Europeans react to such a scenario? What are the red lines, interests, and priorities of the respective actors? How might Europeans organize their defense if the United States withdraws from NATO, and what role could the United States play in European security after the withdrawal?

European Security in Crisis: What to Expect if the United States Withdraws from NATO - War on the Rocks

Populism on the rise: Beyond Boris: Donald Trump(ism) Wins in British Election

What are the hard lessons for Europe and wider geopolitics from Boris Johnson’s victory in the 2019 British general election?

Read more at:
https://www.theglobalist.com/uk-election-2019-boris-johnson-conservatives-brexit-populism/

Climate crisis: 11,000 scientists warn of ‘untold suffering’ - as Trump now formally takes the US out of the climate accord

Statement sets out ‘vital signs’ as indicators of magnitude of the climate emergency.

Read more at:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/05/climate-crisis-11000-scientists-warn-of-untold-suffering?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Add_to_Firefox

The Netherlands: Dutch PM, member of secretive conservative Bilderberg group, supports Trump's critical remarks re: NATO - EU members defense spending for NATO, and UN activites in general

Dutch PM Mark Rutte

Read more at: 

https://nltimes.nl/2019/10/04/dutch-pm-calls-trumps-eu-defense-spending-un-criticism-ju

Middle East - Iran: President Trump Tweets About Possible Iran Strike After Saudi Arabia Oil Bombing

In this edition of America First, the President of the United States tweeted that we're "locked and loaded" to go to war with Iran and we're just waiting for Saudi Arabia to tell us what to do. This really is not an exaggeration. "Saudi Arabia oil supply was attacked," Donald Trump said on the Tweet Machine. "There is reason to believe that we know the culprit, are locked and loaded depending on verification, but are waiting to hear from the Kingdom as to who they believe was the cause of this attack, and under what terms we would proceed!"

Yes, we are waiting for word from Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman—the guy who allegedly orders journalists critical of him chopped up and thrown in an oven in the backyard of one of his ambassadors, who leads the regime that is helping to perpetuate a human-rights catastrophe in Yemen using American-made weapons, the same regime that just happens to be spending a fortune at Trump's hotels. If the crown prince gives us the go-ahead, we're bombing Iran! America First.

You would think that, having just marked the 18th anniversary of September 11—a reminder we're now poised to send kids to Afghanistan who were not born when the attacks happened—we'd be a little more worried about getting pulled into another quagmire of death and suffering. You would think that, at this point, we would be re-evaluating our strategy in the region, including our unbreakable bond with Saudi Arabia. And yet you could flip on Fox News this morning and find a Democratic senator from a solid-blue state mongering the war.

How many times are we going to do this? What is the best-case scenario if we enter armed conflict with Iran, which has missiles that can reach deep into Europe and a standing army of well over half a million people? Will we just bomb them and run? Will we try to topple the regime? Who will rise to power in the vaccuum? What would victory even look like? Can anyone tell us what it will look like in the multiple armed conflicts we're already engaged in nearby?

Have we learned fucking anything? How many American kids have to die in the sand and rock before we learn the United States cannot win when it starts blowing things up in the Middle East?

Read more: President Trump Tweets About Possible Iran Strike After Saudi Arabia Oil Bombing
Support EU-Digest, which has reported the news without any political affiliation since 2004, and opposes those who seek to discredit and even destroy news organizations who believe in the right of a free Press. You can do that by investing in an advertisement in EU-Digest, or by giving a donation to keep our efforts going : to donate or advertise and pay by credit card, click on: https://www.paypal.com/webapps/hermes?token=8BP18304C1657151J&useraction=commit&mfid=1567106786154_8591ae1288ebf  

G7: Macron gamble pays off as Trump reacts in a more conciliatory tone towsrds Iran

Read more at:  

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/iran-zarif-macron-trump-g7-nuclear-1.5260294

EU-US Relations: Trump Seems to Hate the EU. Is It Because He Already Had a George W. Bush Florida Orange Juice Moment? by Ivan Dikov

Trump and his administration have been especially hateful of the EU with respect to Brexit, and their impudent encouragement of the UK to leave the Union, and on top of that to even do so without a Brexit deal, the so called hard or no-deal Brexit.

The latest of the Trump Administration’s EU bashing came this week from Trump’s National Security Adviser John Bolton who advertised a no-deal Brexit with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the British public with the prospects of a fast US-UK trade deal.

Bolton, however, also shyly admitted that such a deal wouldn’t probably take the form of a comprehensive all-out agreement but would likely be negotiated “in pieces” and stages.

Critics have reacted that to get even that, the UK would have to give the Trump Administration a lot of concessions and backing on all sorts of top-level global political issues.

Diplomatic tone and manners aside, it has got to be pointed out categorically that downgrading, diminishing, or even destroying the EU does not make sense from the point of view of America’s best interests. This is so self-explanatory that there is no need go into much detail here. It suffices to remind everybody that the West rests on two pillars – North America and (Western) Europe – the USA and the EU, respectively. And if one of those two pillars sabotages or undermines the other, that could lead to the collapse of the entire structure.

The fact that Brexit could actually prove a blessing, rather than a curse to the EU but effectively removing the countless British vetoes to the deepening and widening of EU integration is a whole other story.

Trump first seriously raised eyebrows on the other side of the Atlantic with his campaign speeches, and his first post-inauguration interview in January 2017, in which he openly bashed the European Union.

Read more: Trump Seems to Hate the EU. Is It Because He Already Had a George W. Bush Florida Orange Juice Moment?

The Digest  Group
Almere-Digest
EU-Digest
Insure-Digest 
Turkish-Digest 

For additional information, including advertising rates - e-mail:Freeplanet@protonmail.com

USA - Economy: 10 alarming things about the economy that politicians wont tell you

10 alarming things about the US economy that politicians won’t tell you -

Reed more at :
https://on.mktw.net/2YEgoZk

The Digest Group

Almere-Digest
EU-Digest
Insure-Digest 
Turkish-Digest 

For additional information, including advertising rates - e-mail:Freeplanet@protonmail.com

Iran-US relations:Trump Blew Up The Iran Nuclear Deal. Now He Wants Allies To Help Him Get An Iran Nuclear Deal. - by S.V. Date

Having estranged allies with threats and false accusations, President Donald Trump now faces dealing with the latest crisis he has generated, Iran, without any allies at all.

Trump prepares to meet Thursday and Friday with leaders of the world’s largest industrial economies at the G-20 summit in Japan with the idea, according to the White House, of gaining their cooperation in lowering tensions with Iran. “This is a chance for the president to engage with a number of different international leaders, among our closest partners and allies, to obtain their support and to have discussions about how we can encourage Iran to enter into negotiations,” a senior administration official said this week on condition of anonymity.

Read more :Trump Blew Up The Iran Nuclear Deal. Now He Wants Allies To Help Him Get An Iran Nuclear Deal. | HuffPost

The Digest Group
Almere-Digest
EU-Digest
Insure-Digest 
Turkish-Digest 

For additional information, including advertising rates - e-mail:Freeplanet@protonmail.com

The Netherlands: Dutch PM Rutte to visit Trump for talks on trade. As to US Defense requests : "NO WAY JOSE" - by Mike Corder

"No Way Jose"

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte is visiting U.S. President Donald Trump next week, but said Friday he can't yet give the president a response to American requests for assistance in Syria and the Strait of Hormuz.

Rutte will meet Trump at the White House next Thursday to discuss bilateral relations, international trade and defense and security cooperation, the Dutch government announced.
But Rutte said the visit comes too soon for him to say whether the Netherlands will agree to U.S. requests for assistance in Syria and the Gulf, because his government is still discussing them.

"I can't have a conversation with the American president about it if the procedures in the Netherlands have not been completed," Rutte said. "So that is not a point we are putting on the agenda."

He said that if Trump raises the issue, "I will tell him we are carefully evaluating it."

Last month, acting U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said after a meeting in Brussels that NATO allies gave him no firm commitments that they will participate in a global effort to secure international waterways against threats from Iran.

Since then, Dutch media, citing unnamed sources, have reported that the government in The Hague is considering sending a frigate to the Gulf. Rutte declined to give details of possible Dutch involvement, saying no decision has been made.

The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, said Tuesday that Washington will move ahead with plans to build a coalition of nations to monitor and deter Iranian threats against commercial shipping in the Persian Gulf area and in a busy waterway between the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa.

Note EU-Digest: Donald Trump created the problem with Iran, which has stirred up unrest within the Middle East, after the US stepped out of the Iran Nuclear Treaty. Hopefully PM Rutte of the Netherlands will tell Trump during his visit to the White House, that as to Trump's request for Dutch troops in Syria, or Dutch Navy support in the Persian Gulf, the answer is " NO WAY JOSE".   

Read more: Dutch leader to visit Trump for talks on trade, defense - San Antonio Express-News

The Digest Group
Almere-Digest
EU-Digest
Insure-Digest 
Turkish-Digest 

For additional information, including advertising rates - e-mail:Freeplanet@protonmail.com

USA - Radical Right Wing Social Media group to meet today at secretive right-wing social media summit at White House, hosted by US President Donald Trump

Unfortunately :"Facisme is 
alive and well in the US"

Radical right-wing media personalities will be at the White House on Thursday (7/11) for a social media summit hosted by President Donald Trump to tackle perceived anti-conservative bias on online platforms.

The attendee list is being kept secret by the White House, but a range of right-wing activists, both online and offline, have announced they will be attending.

These include Project Veritas founder James O'Keefe, who has attempted to plant fake stories in the Washington Post to undermine its credibility, and radio host Bill Mitchell who has promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory.

While Facebook and Twitter are reportedly still waiting for their invites, President Donald Trump has invited a cartoonist accused of creating “a blatantly anti-Semitic” illustration to  this Social Media Summit at the White House.

The Guardian a British newspaper noted in an Op-Ed : "Donald Trump borrows from the old tricks of fascism". 

Artist Ben Garrison, whose work often display alt-right themes and is a favorite of the popular pro-Trump Reddit community The_Donald, tweeted a picture Friday of his invitation to the White House for the summit the following week.

Donald Trump wrote in one of his Tweets today: "A big subject today at the White House Social Media Summit will be the tremendous dishonesty, bias, discrimination and suppression practiced by certain companies. We will not let them get away with it much longer. The Fake News Media will also be there, but for a limited period."

The president has previously accused Google of rigging its search results against him, giving greater prominence to negative stories about him while suppressing positive articles from conservative news organizations.

Google denied the allegation, which was not substantiated by independent research.

The media figures attending the White House summit on Thursday will be sharing stories of "how they have been affected by bias online" according to a press secretary.

One of the individuals invited to the summit, Ben Garrison, had been accused of drawing an antisemitic cartoon portraying frequent Jewish liberal philanthropist George Soros as a puppetmaster.

Read more at: Trump hosts secretive right-wing social media summit at White House | Science

The Digest Group
Almere-Digest
EU-Digest
Insure-Digest 
Turkish-Digest 

For additional information, including advertising rates - e-mail: Freeplanet@protonmail.com   

The Netherlands: Dutch King invites Donald Trump tto visit the Netherlands

Read more at:
https://www.euronews.com/2019/05/29/dutch-king-willem-alexander-invites-president-trump-to-the-netherlands

US Hungary Relations: Birds of one feather flock together as Donald Trump invites Viktor Orban to Washington

Note EU-Digest: If this does not make alarm bells go off  in Brussels it would be beyond understanding.

Read more at: 

https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-invites-viktor-orban-to-washington/

US Presidential Elections: Democrat Pete Buttigieg could be antidote to Trump

Democrat Pete Buttigieg, the Midwest mayor who could be the 'antidote to Trump' Were Pete Buttigieg to win the 2020 US presidential election, the intellectual Democrat would become the youngest person ever, and first gay man, to hold the office. The mayor of South Bend has the media’s attention and hopes the polls will follow.

Read more at: 

http://www.france24.com/en/20190412-usa-2020-presidential-election-democrat-pete-buttigieg-midwest-mayor-antidote-trump

White Supremacy banned: Facebook bans white nationalism from their platform after pressure from civil rights groups - by David Ingram and Ben Collins

Facebook is banning white nationalism and white supremacy from its social network following criticism that it had not done enough to eliminate hate speech on its platform

The social media giant said in a blog post Wednesday that conversations with academics and civil rights groups convinced the company to expand its policies around hate groups.

 “Today we’re announcing a ban on praise, support and representation of white nationalism and separatism on Facebook and Instagram, which we’ll start enforcing next week,” the company wrote in the post. “It’s clear that these concepts are deeply linked to organized hate groups and have no place on our services.” Scrutiny of Facebook reached new heights in the past two weeks after a gunman in Christchurch, New Zealand, used Facebook to livestream his attacks on two mosques that killed 50 people.

 Note EU-Digest: Bravo, let's hope Twitter does the same, which would ban Donald Trump and his Populist buddies in Europe and other areas of the world from using both Facebook and Twitter, to spread their white supremacy nationalist ideology.

 Read more at: Facebook bans white nationalism from platform after pressure from civil rights groups

Syria: Trump statement on Golan Heights: EU, Syria, Turkey reject Israeli sovereignty over Golan Heights

EU, Syria reject Trump's statement on Israeli sovereignty over Golan Heights

Read more at 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-israel-golan-eu-syria-1.5067270

The Netherlands: Dutch newspaper AD uses misleading headline which could favor populist, nationalistic - anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies - by RM

A recent headline by Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad (AD) which stated "Fuss in Germany about proposal to change English language courses in primary schools to Turkish". is misleading, especially if you just read the headline and not the whole story.

If you take the time to read the whole story - however - you quickly realize the heading is misleading.

This change of language from English to Turkish will in reality never happen in Germany or in any other country in the EU.

These kinds of headlines, however, are obviously  "grist to the mill" for the nationalist, anti-immigration, populist parties in the Netherlands and Europe, which are mainly supported by people, who do not want to look any further "than their noses are long", to see the dangers of populism.

This regardless of the fact that there are plenty of examples of populist inspired and created political chaotical disasters in the world, including the emergence of a Trump in America, Orban in Hungary , Giuseppe Conte in Italy, and the Brexit drama, the supporters of the populist movement still have their head in the sand.

As the European parliamentary elections this coming May are quickly approaching, it is good to remember that famous saying  "A warned person counts for two". 

It is high time, that we the people of the EU stop this so-called "populist movement", before they destruct our future, and that we take our purpose of being a democratic counter-balance to the many evil forces surrounding us, more seriously 

For the original AD newspaper report in Dutch click on this link  Ophef in Duitsland over voorstel om Engels op basisschool te vervangen door Turks | Buitenland | AD.nl