USA: Tourists Beware - US Still Cowboy Country: Mass shootings past 24 hrs kill 30 people in Texas and Ohio

Tourism USA - Still No Gun Control ?

This year alone, there have been at least 32 fatal shootings in America,

Mass shootings in El Paso Texas, and Dayton Ohio. If I was a tourist deciding if I would go on vacation to America, and heard that 29 people were killed within 24 hrs today, in addition to the non-stop gun violence all around the country, and knowing the US has no real gun control laws which work, I would certainly think twice, before I would go to the US on vacation.

Statistics are also showing that the U.S. tourismvhas suffered heavily since 2016. Now it looks like the evidence is finally here.

The bigger picture shows the U.S.is specially  losing ground on the global stage. Arrivals to Europe and Asia-Pacific both increased by 6 percent, while the Middle East saw a 10 percent uptick in 2018. It seems that global travelers are looking elsewhere for their vacations.

“International travel markets posted disparate performance in 2018 including several notable surprises on the downside,” states the report from Tourism Economics.

“After registering average annual growth of 23 percent over the previous decade, Chinese travel to the US stopped in its tracks last year—perhaps in connection to trade tensions. Similarly, South Korea fell 3 percent after averaging 11 percent growth over the prior ten years. Japan also contracted; this continues the narrative of an ever important but languishing market. And Germany surprised with a steep decline in 2018, perhaps evidence of a reaction to unpopular U.S. diplomacy and policies.”

Among some of the major reasons foreign tourists are giving for not choosing the US as their tourist destination  are: inadequate Public Transportation Systens, personal safety, as a result of gun violence and poor infrastructure.

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Saudi Arabia: Key Republicans say Saudi crown prince is guilty in Khashoggi murder following CIA Briefing - by Heather Timmons

Republican senators briefed by Central Intelligence Agency director Gina Haspel about the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi Tuesday (Dec. 4) had an immediate reaction: Saudi crown prince Mohammad bin Salman is guilty.

Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina senator who has been a loyal supporter of Donald Trump in recent months, told reporters on Capitol Hill there’s no “smoking gun,” in the case, but  a “smoking saw,” a reference to the bone saw that the crown prince’s underlings reportedly brought with them into the Istanbul embassy where Khashoggi was killed on Oct. 2.

Bob Corker, the retiring Tennessee Republican, said a jury would find the crown prince guilty in minutes.

And Richard Shelby, the Republican from Alabama, said “all evidence points to that all this leads back to the crown prince.” Haspel briefed senators heading committees related to national security; late last month she briefed intelligence committees in the House and Senate about Khashoggi’s death.

Note EU-Digest: Talk is easy for these Republicans - but they should stop sitting on their hands and do something about it.
 

Read more: Key Republicans say Saudi crown prince is guilty in Khashoggi murder — Quartz

US Mid -Term Elections: With Democrats taking control of the Congress, checks and balances have been restored to the US Political system, in what was a Trump Administration one party rule of America

Democrats took control of the House Tuesday night, a victory that will transform a Republican-controlled chamber that supported and protected President Trump into a legislative body ready to challenge and investigate him.

 GOP-held suburban seats around the country gave Democrats more than the 23 seats they needed to retake the majority, giving them control of Congress after being locked out of power since Trump took office last year.The Repunlicans still control the Senate

 The Democrats aim to quickly usher in a new era and tone in Washington, starting with a legislative package of anti-corruption measures aimed at strengthening ethics laws, protecting voter rights and cracking down on campaign finance abuses.

 With Democrats taking control of the Congress, checks and balances have been restored to the US Political system, in what was a Trump Administration one party rule of America.

EU-Digest

US Midterm Elections: A Nation in Turmoil Prepares to Deliver a Verdict on Trump - by Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin

The tumultuous 2018 midterm campaign, shaped by conflicts over race and identity and punctuated by tragedy, barreled through its final weekend as voters prepared to deliver a verdict on the first half of President Trump’s term, with Republicans bracing for losses in the House and state capitals but hopeful they would prevail in Senate races in areas where Mr. Trump is popular.

The president was set to storm across two states Saturday, two Sunday and three Monday in an effort to pick off Senate seats in Indiana, Florida and a handful of other battlegrounds where Republicans hope to add to their one-seat majority in the chamber. Democrats and liberal activists, galvanized by opposition to Mr. Trump, gathered Saturday to knock on doors and make turnout calls from Pennsylvania to Illinois to Washington to try to erase the G.O.P.’s 23-seat House majority.

The run-up to the election, widely seen as a referendum on Mr. Trump’s divisive persona and hard-line policy agenda, has revealed deep strains in the president’s political coalition and left him confined to campaign in a narrow band of conservative communities. Republicans’ intermittent focus on favorable economic news, such as the Friday report showing strong job growth, has been overwhelmed by Mr. Trump’s message of racially incendiary nationalism.

While Mr. Trump retains a strong grip on many red states and working-class white voters, his jeremiads against immigrants and penchant for ridicule have proved destabilizing, with the party losing more affluent whites and moderates in metropolitan areas key to control of the House.

Note EU-Digest: Amazing, but also very sad, what has happened to the US since January 20, 2017, when Trump became President. Despite claims by the US President (who has been found to have lied by independent research tanks more than 6400 times since his inauguration) and his Republican base, that the economy is doing fantastic, the truth is quite different - see https://www.chicagotribune.com/…/ct-perspec-trump-economy-j… - 

Basically just about every thing the Trump Administration has been tampering with has been a disaster, starting with the appointment of his dysfunctional scandal ridden Cabinet - Affordable healthcare for everyone including for those with existing preconditions - US Foreign Policy - Clean Air Policies - Gay Rights-Equal Rights - Curbing white supremacy and pro-neo-Nazi groups/hate crimes-Gun Control -migrant and immigration policies - Freedom of Speech and the list can go on and on. 

AMERICAN VOTERS ARE STILL ABLE TO MAKE THE COUNTRY CHANGE COURSE, AWAY FROM TUMBLING DOWN THE CLIFF - BY USING THEIR RIGHT TO VOTE ON TUESDAY NOVEMBER 6.

Read more:: A Nation in Turmoil Prepares to Deliver a Verdict on Trump - The New York Times

USA: Is the US showing its true face under Trump ?- by Neil McDonald

This is not America? Oh, yes, it is: Opinion

For the complete report go to:

Shared via the CBC News Android App

USA AND THE STATE OF AMERICAN CIVILIZATION: After Parkland: Murder By Congress - by Alon Ben-Meier

Nothing can assuage the agony and the unbearable pain that parents feel when their child is lost to an outrageous and utterly senseless attack that could have been prevented.

When will lawmakers face the bitter truth that America is at war with itself? A de-facto civil war is consuming us from within. Firearms are mercilessly robbing the lives of 33,880 each year—nearly five times more than American soldiers killed in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined (4,530 and 2,408 respectively).

On average, 93 people are killed from gun violence every day, and at least 239 school shootings have occurred across the United States since 2012; a majority of the over 400 casualties are children under the age of 19.

And yet, after every such unconscionable carnage, you hear our derelict political leaders suggesting that it is not the right time to talk about gun control laws when the families and friends of the victims are agonizing about the loss of their loved ones.

When will the right time come? How much more pain and suffering must our own fellow citizens endure before we act?

Shame on every single House and Senate member who each year takes millions in blood money as a political contribution from the National Rifle Association to ensure their re-election.

Perhaps only when some of these lawmakers lose a child of their own will they begin to grasp the excruciating pain that parents bear when their telephones ring, only to be told that their child was just gunned down at school by a random shooter. Yes, every lawmaker should stop and think how it really feels. But then again, are they even capable of feeling?

The Book of James says it best: “Faith without works is dead.” Without action, “thoughts and prayers” cannot be counted on to stop random mass killings; this has been proven by history time and again. The occasion for condolences and prayers expired a long while ago.


Read more: After Parkland: Murder By Congress - The Globalist

TERRORISM: Saudi terrorism support 'dwarfs' Qatar's says Bob Corker

An influential US Republican senator has criticised the Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, over a blockade on Qatar by the kingdom and three other Arab states.

The comments by Bob Corker, chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, came as tensions in the region continue over the crisis, with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson expected to make an unscheduled stop in Doha on Thursday.

"The amount of support for terrorism by Saudi Arabia dwarfs what Qatar is doing," Corker said on Wednesday.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain and Egypt cut ties with Qatar on June 5 and imposed a land, air and sea blockade on the country.

Read more: Bob Corker: Saudi terrorism support 'dwarfs' Qatar's | News | Al Jazeera

Global Economy: Back to the Global Vertical -a politically dangerous development - by Andres Ortega

There are horizontal periods – indeed some people, Thomas Friedman among them, believed some years ago that the world was definitively flat. And then there are periods in which verticality imposes itself again.

In many ways, we are once again moving from the horizontal to the vertical dimension of global affairs.

This “verticality” is making itself especially felt in social terms. Social classes are back on the agenda, although not in the traditional Marxist sense of class struggle.

Rather, we are now coping with the decline of the middle classes and the emergence of a broader “precariat.”

The social escalator is not working as in previous eras, despite renewed growth in many economies following the crisis. Benefits that were taken for granted, such as full-time jobs with social security protections, are disappearing in significant numbers.

Perhaps we are witnessing what Dennis J. Snower calls the “great decoupling,” which he labels “dangerous,” unlike its predecessor, which was “convenient.”

When economic progress is not mirrored or is not linked to social progress, discontent is generated in those left behind. This decoupling ends up manifesting itself in politics.

This is what may be going on in many countries amid the prospect of recovery, an uneven emergence from the crisis and, before that, globalization, which is now generally acknowledged to have produced winners and losers.

The decoupling phenomenon is arising when the advanced economies, both industrial and post-industrial, are recovering from the crisis.

As Marc Fleurbaey of Princeton University argues, we must “prepare people for life and support them in life.”

Central to that is the commitment to education, particularly amid the challenge of technology and its controversial impact on employment and the concept of work.

A smart policy approach in that regard, as Ylva Johansson, the Swedish Employment Minister, points out, is not protecting specific jobs (which may be dying) as protecting workers (which need to be actively equipped and/or a guided toward a new one).

Somehow or other, although no one knows how, remedying the great decoupling will induce the vertical to become more horizontal again. Or so one hopes.

Failing to achieve this will only accentuate more verticality. And vertical moments, as we know, tend to be the more dangerous ones.

Editors note EU-Digest: but the situation is not hopeless. Change is possible. People can and will make the difference. All that is required is for responsible, well educated, socially conscious people, with new ideologies to start speaking out. The outdated, corrupt, political systems in many places of the world must be replaced before it leads to a catasthrophy

If it was possible in France, for a new party to be created within a one year time span prior to their Presidential and parliamentary elections, and for that party to win decisively, in both the Presidential and Parliamentary elections, it can also be done elsewhere. 

The old and established parties have failed the people. The political establishment on both the left and the right have become corrupted by corporate influence and greed. It is high time for change, because the status quo is not acceptable anymore.

Read more: Back to the Global Vertical

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 

US Political System: A week that reveals how rotten today’s Republican Party (US Political System) is - by Jennifer Rubin

Disaster: level explosive

President Trump has had more-scandalous weeks. He has had weeks with more bombshell bad-news stories. But no week has matched this one in revealing the moral and intellectual rot at the center of the GOP. Pandemic intellectual dishonesty and celebration of uncivilized conduct now permeate the party and its support in the conservative ecosystem. Consider what we saw and learned this week:

• Trump in Saudi Arabia disclaims any concern for human rights.
• Trump bullies NATO allies in public (and physically shoves one leader).
• Trump’s budget is built on a rickety scaffold of math errors, economic nonsense and fantasyland predictions.
• Trump’s advisers defend massive cuts to the safety net, coupled with huge giveaways to the rich.
• The Congressional Budget Office score, which the House did not require before voting on a mammoth health-care bill, confirms that GOP leaders falsely claimed they protected people with preexisting conditions.
• Trump’s lawyers contemptuously swat away a request for information relating to his receipt of foreign monies, finding that it is too impractical to abide by his own promise and the Constitution.
• Trump has nothing but praise for thuggish autocrats, including Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte.
• Trump continues to pursue a Muslim ban, repeatedly struck down by the courts as bigotry disguised under the cloak of national security.
• A GOP congressional candidate, conclusive evidence suggests, attacks a reporter and apparently lies about it (he later apologizes for actions he denied less than 24 hours earlier), but party leaders do not repudiate him or demand that he withdraw.
• Jared Kushner, the beneficiary of egregious nepotism, now is a focus of the FBI’s Russia investigation, bringing a once-in-a-lifetime scandal one step closer to the presidency.
• Sean Hannity is forced to stop propagating a detestable hoax about a young man’s murder; Fox News after a week withdraws the original false report without much explanation or an apology.

This is the state of the GOP (and the US political system) — a refuge for intellectual frauds and bullies, for mean-spirited hypocrites who preach personal responsibility yet excuse the inexcusable.

Note EU-Digest: One can not only blame the Republicans for this political mess, but must also include Democrats and voters in general for creating it.   This is not business as usual, it is the recipe for disaster and the collapse of Western Democracy as we know it.

Read more: A week that reveals how rotten today’s Republican Party is - The Washington Post

EU: Nationalism Raising Its Ugly Head in Europe at Populists TRUMP Disciples Meeting in Germany, praising Fuhrer Trump - by Simon Shuster

European Nationalist TRUMP Disciples  Wilders, Petry, and LePen

Across the European Union, politicians on the right-wing fringe have been invigorated by Trump’s victory, which has given them a chance to attract new supporters, build coalitions and argue that, despite the often glaring differences between them, they are all part of a movement with seemingly unstoppable momentum.disciples

The most striking proof yet of that movement came on Saturday in the cross-section of far-right populists who met for the first time, at the AfD's invitation, at a convention in the German city of Koblenz. A day after Trump’s inauguration, the stars of the European right drew a direct line between Trump’s success at the ballot box and their own looming electoral battles.

“In 2016, the Anglo-Saxon world woke up,” said Marine Le Pen, the National Front leader currently favorite to become France's next President, referring to Trump’s victory and the British vote to leave the European Union in June. “In 2017, I am sure that it will be the year of the Continental peoples rising up,” she said to raucous applause.

The speech was the first Le Pen has ever delivered to an audience in Germany, whose right-wing leaders had previously avoided associating themselves with her more radical and xenophobic positions. But on Saturday she shared a stage with AfD leader Frauke Petry, signaling to the world they are now on the same team.

Taking the podium by turns, leading political upstarts from France, Germany, Italy, Austria and other European nations stuck to a strikingly similar message for their audience of roughly a thousand delegates. They raged against the globalist elites, the European Union, the media and, in particular, the millions of Arab and African immigrants whom they accuse of threatening European culture.

After a few weeks of reading online about Donald Trump’s transition to the presidency, Marco Kopping, a 36-year-old apprentice at a car-parts supplier near Frankfurt, decided to get involved in German politics. He had never sympathized with a political party before, let alone joined one. But in December he received his glossy membership card from Alternative for Germany (AfD), one of the far-right movements now riding the updraft from Trump’s ascent. What drove him, Kopping says, “was the feeling of a revolution.” He didn’t want to be left behind.

Across the European Union, politicians on the right-wing fringe have been invigorated by Trump’s victory, which has given them a chance to attract new supporters, build coalitions and argue that, despite the often glaring differences between them, they are all part of a movement with seemingly unstoppable momentum.

 The most striking proof yet of that movement came on Saturday in the cross-section of far-right populists who met for the first time, at the AfD's invitation, at a convention in the German city of Koblenz. A day after Trump’s inauguration, the stars of the European right drew a direct line between Trump’s success at the ballot box and their own looming electoral battles.“In 2016, the Anglo-Saxon world woke up,” said Marine Le Pen, the National Front leader currently favorite to become France's next President, referring to Trump’s victory and the British vote to leave the European Union in June. “In 2017, I am sure that it will be the year of the Continental peoples rising up,” she said to raucous applause.

The speech was the first Le Pen has ever delivered to an audience in Germany, whose right-wing leaders had previously avoided associating themselves with her more radical and xenophobic positions. But on Saturday she shared a stage with AfD leader Frauke Petry, signaling to the world they are now on the same team.

Taking the podium by turns, leading political upstarts from France, Germany, Italy, Austria and other European nations stuck to a strikingly similar message for their audience of roughly a thousand delegates. They raged against the globalist elites, the European Union, the media and, in particular, the millions of Arab and African immigrants whom they accuse of threatening European culture.

Just a few years ago, such rhetoric would have confined these voices to the margins of European politics, especially in Germany, whose history with fascism has long provided a level of resistance to the allure of nationalism and identity politics. But today, buoyed by Trumpism, their message has entered the mainstream.

Two of the party leaders at Saturday’s event — Le Pen of the National Front and Geert Wilders of the Dutch Party for Freedom — are leading in the polls ahead of elections scheduled for this spring. The Austrian Freedom Party, whose two top leaders skipped the event in Koblenz in order to attend Trump’s Inauguration, narrowly lost a presidential race last month, even though the party’s founders in the 1950s were former officers of the Nazi SS.

“We all stand for the same things,” the party’s representative at the event, Harald Vilimsky, said from the stage on Saturday. “And if Trump is the winner, we are also winners.”

The new U.S. President has gone out of his way to encourage his admirers in Europe. The first foreign politician he met with after winning the election in November was Nigel Farage, the populist leader of the U.K. Independence Party, which drove the British vote to leave the European Union. In an interview last week with two European newspapers, Trump echoed the attacks that European nationalists have leveled against their favorite bugbear, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, calling her immigration policy "catastrophic." He also predicted that other E.U. members would follow Britain's lead in breaking away from the bloc.

“They’ve managed to create a public discourse that I thought was impossible here,” says Sylke Tempel, the editor of the Berlin Policy Journal, referring to the AfD. “You feel it in the little things, the use of language, the way people have started to talk.”One case in point took place about 10 minutes into the summit on Saturday, when the crowd turned on the attending journalists and began chanting "Lügenpresse!" — “lying press” — a term first popularized by the Nazis and, in the past couple of years, revived by European nationalists as a means of vilifying the media. Some of Trump’s supporters also adopted the term during his campaign rallies.

What matters to them now is maintaining a sense of unity behind the idea that their time has come, and Trump’s victory has made that a lot easier. “Yesterday you got a new America,” said Kopping, the AfD member, at Saturday’s event. "Now we want a new Europe."

Note EU-Digest: Given the track record of the new US President Donald Trump so far, European voters should at least be forewarned that Trump's European disciples of the far right Nationalist Camp are not the answer to a better, stable and economically strong Europe. 

Read more: Europe's Populists Meet at Koblenz, Germany, in Awe of Trump | Time.com

Global Warming: Who are the Global Warming Skeptic Organizations - who also have lobbyists in Bruxelles?

Global warming is for real - Vested Interest fights change

An overwhelming majority of scientists agree — global warming is happening and human activity is the primary cause. Yet several prominent global warming skeptic organizations are actively working to sow doubt about the facts of global warming.

These organizations play a key role in the fossil fuel industry's "disinformation playbook," a strategy designed to confuse the public about global warming and delay action on climate change. Why? Because the fossil fuel industry wants to sell more coal, oil, and gas — even though the science clearly shows that the resulting carbon emissions threaten our planet.

Who are these groups? And what is the evidence linking them to the fossil fuel industry?

Here's a quick primer on several prominent global warming skeptic organizations, including examples of their disinformation efforts and funding sources from the fossil fuel industry. Many have received large donations from foundations established, and supported, by the fossil fuel billionaire Koch brothers.

American Enterprise Institute

The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) has routinely tried to undermine the credibility of climate science, despite at times affirming that the “weight of the evidence” justifies “prudent action” on climate change. [1]

For years, AEI played a role in propagating misinformation about a manufactured controversy over emails stolen from climate scientists [2], with one AEI research fellow even claiming, “There was no consensus about the extent and causes of global warming.” [3] A resident scholar at AEI went so far as to state that the profession of climate scientist “threatens to overtake all” on the list of “most distrusted occupations.” [4]

AEI received $3,615,000 from ExxonMobil from 1998-2012 [5], and more than $1 million in funding from Koch foundations from 2004-2011. [6]

Americans for Prosperity

Americans for Prosperity (AFP) frequently provides a platform for climate contrarian statements, such as “How much information refutes carbon dioxide-caused global warming? Let me count the ways.” [7]

While claiming to be a grassroots organization, AFP has bolstered its list of “activists” by hosting “$1.84 Gas” events, where consumers who receive discounts on gasoline are asked to provide their name and email address on a “petition” form. [8]

These events are billed as raising awareness about “failing energy policies” and high gasoline prices, but consumers are not told about AFP’s ties to oil interests, namely Koch Industries.
AFP has its origins in a group founded in 1984 by fossil fuel billionaires Charles and David Koch [9], and the latter Koch still serves on AFP Foundation’s board of directors [10]. Richard Fink, executive vice president of Koch Industries, also serves as a director for both AFP and AFP Foundation. [11]

Koch foundations donated $3,609,281 to AFP Foundation from 2007-2011. [12]
American Legislative Exchange Council

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) maintains that “global climate change is inevitable” [13] and since the 1990s has pushed various forms of model legislation aimed at obstructing policies intended to reduce global warming emissions.

ALEC purports to “support the use of sound science to guide policy,” but routinely provides a one-sided platform for climate contrarians. State legislators attending one ALEC meeting were offered a workshop touting a report by a fossil fuel-funded group that declared “like love, carbon dioxide's many splendors are seemingly endless." [14, 15] Another ALEC meeting featured a Fox News contributor who has claimed on the air that carbon dioxide “literally cannot cause global warming.” [16, 17]

ALEC received more than $1.6 million from ExxonMobil from 1998-2012 [18], and more than $850,000 from Koch foundations from 1997-2011. [19]

Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk University

From its position as the research arm of the Department of Economics at Suffolk University, the Beacon Hill Institute (BHI) has published misleading analyses of clean energy and climate change policies in more than three dozen states.

These economic analyses are at times accompanied by a dose of climate contrarianism. For example, BHI Director David Tuerck has claimed that “the very question of whether the climate is warming is in doubt…” [20] Claims such as “wind power actually increases pollution” can be found in many of BHI’s reports.

BHI has publicly acknowledged its Koch funding [21], which likely includes at least some of the approximately $725,000 the Charles G. Koch foundation contributed to Suffolk University from 2008-2011. [22]

Cato Institute

Cato acknowledges that “Global warming is indeed real…” But when it comes to the causes of global warming, Cato has sent mixed messages over the years. Cato's website, for instance, reports that “… human activity has been a contributor [to global warming] since 1975.” [23] Yet, on the same topic of whether human activity is responsible for global warming, Cato’s vice president has written: “We don’t know.” [24]

Patrick Michaels, Director of Cato’s Center for the Study of Science, has referred to the latest Draft National Climate Assessment Report as “the stuff of fantasy.” [25] The most recent edition of Cato’s “Handbook for Policymakers” advises that Congress should “pass no legislation restricting emissions of carbon dioxide.” [26]

Charles Koch co-founded Cato in 1977. Both Charles and David Koch were among the four “shareholders” who “owned” Cato until 2011 [27], and the latter Koch remains a member of Cato’s Board of Directors. [28] Koch foundations contributed more than $5 million to Cato from 1997-2011. [29]

Competitive Enterprise Institute

The Competitive Enterprise Institute has at times acknowledged that “Global warming is a reality.” [30] But CEI has also routinely disputed that global warming is a problem, contending that “There is no ‘scientific consensus’ that global warming will cause damaging climate change.”  [31]

These kinds of claims are nothing new for CEI. Back in 1991, CEI was claiming that “The greatest challenge we face is not warming, but cooling.” [32] More recently, CEI produced an ad calling for higher levels of carbon dioxide. [33] One CEI scholar even publicly compared a prominent climate scientist to convicted child molester Jerry Sandusky. [34]

CEI received around $2 million in funding from ExxonMobil from 1995-2005 [35], though ExxonMobil made a public break with CEI in 2007 after coming under scrutiny from UCS and other groups for its funding of climate contrarian organizations. CEI has also received funding from Koch foundations, dating back to the 1980s. [36] 

Heartland Institute

While claiming to stand up for “sound science,” the Heartland Institute has routinely spread misinformation about climate science, including deliberate attacks on climate scientists. [37]

Popular outcry forced the Heartland Institute to pull down a controversial billboard that compared supporters of global warming facts to Unabomber Ted Kaczynski [38], bringing an early end to a planned campaign first announced in an essay by Heartland President Joseph Bast, which claimed “… the most prominent advocates of global warming aren’t scientists. They are murderers, tyrants, and madmen.” [39]

Heartland even once marked Earth Day by mailing out 100,000 free copies of a book claiming that “climate science has been corrupted” [40] – despite acknowledging that “…all major scientific organizations of the world have taken the official position that humankind is causing global warming.”

Heartland received more than $675,000 from ExxonMobil from 1997-2006 [41]. Heartland also raked in millions from the Koch-funded organization Donors Trust through 2011. [42, 43]

Heritage Foundation

While maintaining that “Science should be used as one tool to guide climate policy,” the Heritage Foundation often uses rhetoric such as “far from settled” to sow doubt about climate science. [44, 45, 46, 47] One Heritage report even claimed that “The only consensus over the threat of climate change that seems to exist these days is that there is no consensus.” [48]

Vocal climate contrarians, meanwhile, are described as “the world’s best scientists when it comes to the climate change study” in the words of one Heritage policy analyst. [49]

Heritage received more than $4.5 million from Koch foundations from 1997-2011. [50] ExxonMobil contributed $780,000 to the Heritage Foundation from 2001-2012. ExxonMobil continues to provide annual contributions to the Heritage Foundation, despite making a public pledge in 2007 to stop funding climate contrarian groups. [51, 52]

Institute for Energy Research

The term “alarmism” is defined by Mirriam-Webster as “the often unwarranted exciting of fears or warning of danger.” So when Robert Bradley, CEO and founder of the Institute for Energy Research (IER), and others at his organization routinely evoke the term “climate alarmism” they do so to sow doubt about the urgency of global warming.

IER claims that public policy “should be based on objective science, not emotion or improbable scenarios ” But IER also claims that the sense of urgency for climate action is due not to the science that shows the real and growing conequences of global warming. Rather, IER suggests that researchers “exacerbate the sense [that] policies are urgently needed” for monetary gain, noting that “issues that are perceived to be an imminent crisis can mean more funding.” [53]

IER has received funding from both ExxonMobil [54] and the Koch brothers [55].

Manhattan Institute for Policy Research

The Manhattan Institute has acknowledged that the “scientific consensus is that the planet is warming,” while at the same time maintaining that “… accounts of climate change convey a sense of certitude that is probably unjustified.” [56]

“The science is not settled, not by a long shot,” Robert Bryce, a Manhattan Institute senior fellow has written in the Wall Street Journal [57]. At other times Bryce has expressed indifference to the science on climate change. “I don’t know who’s right. And I really don’t care,” he wrote in one book. [58]

The Manhattan Institute has received $635,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998 [59], with annual contributions continuing as of 2012, and nearly $2 million from Koch foundations from 1997-2011. [60] 

Read more : Global Warming Skeptic Organizations | Union of Concerned Scientists

Syrian Refugee Crises: So far in 2016 the U.S. has admitted only 281 Syrian Refugees

US Turning Its Back On Syrian Refugees

Of the 4.2 million Syrians displaced since that country’s civil war began in 2011, the US has only taken in 2,290—or 0.0005 percent of the total number of refugees. 

CNN has reported that more than half the US's governors say they oppose letting Syrian refugees into their states, although the final say on this contentious immigration issue will fall to the federal government.

States protesting the admission of refugees range from Alabama and Georgia, to Texas and Arizona, to Michigan and Illinois, to Maine and New Hampshire. Among these 31 states, all of them but one have Republican governors.

Worthy News recently reported that out of a total of 281 refugees, the U.S. State Department has admitted only two Syrian Christians into the U.S. in the first two months of 2016.

According to Barnabas Aid, these figures show the injustice of the U.N. referral system towards Syrian Christians who are at a higher risk than most Muslim refugees because of the Islamic State's anti-Christian ideology.

Syrian Christians need special assistance because they do not live in U.N. refugee camps for fear of the Islamists refugees inside them. Instead, Christians seek shelter in schools, churches, or are crowded into their relatives' homes. Therefore they are at a disadvantage under U.N. resettlement programs that only provide aid and asylum for those registered inside U.N. refugee camps.

Republican Presidential candidate Texas Senator Ted Cruz (an Evangelical Christian)  plans to introduce legislation that would ban Muslim Syrian refugees from entering the U.S. If there is any presidential candidate who should appreciate the plight of refugees, it’s Cruz, whose father fled Castro’s regime in Cuba in the 1950s.

Donald Trump has pushed for increased surveillance of “certain mosques” and a specialized Muslim database to track their activities. 

Democratic presidential candidates, even though more positive in general, have, however, certainly not come up with any breakthrough proposals on solving the Syrian Refugee crises. .Bernie Sanders is content supporting Obama’s 10,000 Syrian refugee policy, while Hillary Clinton has called for an additional 65,000 Syrian refugees to be accepted over the next five years.

These are all ridiculously low numbers compared to the millions of Syrian refugees currently fleeing to Turkey and the EU.

In reality this is really pretty amazing, given that the refugee crises can certainly be traced back to failed Western Middle East foreign Policies under the leadership of the US.

EU-Digest

US Presidential Elections: More countries are destroyed by their own politicians than by foreign armies - editorial

Montesquieu,

“The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded.”, said  Montesquieu, (Charles Louis de Secondat)  (1689-1755), a  famous French political philosopher who lived during the European "Age of Enlightenment".

In fact, putting this in the context of the US Constitution and the intended way America is supposed to function, it follows,“Congress makes the laws, the president carries them out, judges decide controversies, and the citizens may be penalized only by a jury of their peers”,

Unfortunately, in reality, this is not how the US functions as a political entity anymore.

America is now ruled by a uniformly educated class of persons controlling the commanding heights of bureaucracy, of the judiciary, education, the media, large corporations, and that force wields political power through the political establishment.

Its control of access to prestige, power, privilege, and wealth exerts a gravitational pull that has made the political elites its major accomplices.

As to the economy : “Think of the American economy as a large apartment block. A century ago—even 30 years ago—it was the object of envy. But in the last generation its character has changed."

"The penthouses at the top keep getting larger and larger. The apartments in the middle are feeling more and more squeezed and the basement has flooded. To round it off, the elevator is no longer working. That broken elevator is what gets people down the most.” said Lawrence Katz, Harvard University economist, already back in 2010.

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874-1965) once noted that “democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”  Indeed, democracy is a very fragile political system that can sometimes fail the very people it is designed to serve.

American president Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) defined it as “a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” He would turnover in his grave if he saw how his Republican party defines the functions of Government today.

But democracy is at its worst when an oligarchy takes control of a country’s institutions and imposes its own agenda. Such is the case, unfortunately, in today’s United States. Money interests, not the sovereign people, control the political system; they control the corporate media system, they control the U.S. Supreme Court and much of the judicial system and, one can even argue that they control a large chunk of the academic system.

The U. S. economy, like most industrial economies, is an open economy. This means that goods and services can be exported and imported while facing a minimum of border taxes and other barriers to international trade. For a quarter of a century now, it has also meant that the U. S. economy is part of the economic globalization model.

The later goes much further than free trade: it means that corporations and banks can move their capital, technology and production plants around the world in search of the greatest profit and the best investment environment. Many economists believe that this globalization model has been pushed too far and has become a major cause of economic stagnation in the industrial economies.

In an open economy, keynesian-type stimulus policies of deficit government spending or of tax reduction do not work properly, essentially because stimulus policies of this type are the equivalent of heating a house in winter with the windows and doors wide open. The new deficit spending may help the world economy, since much of the new spending ends up abroad, but the domestic multiplier effect of such spending can be very low. This means that such an economic stimulus in an open economy may not be as effective in stimulating economic activity as hoped and, in some circumstances, it can do more harm than good.

Nevertheless, many politicians (and some economists cling to the old idea that lowering taxes for the rich when the government is in deficit or new non-infrastructure government deficit spending can stimulate the economy.

 This obviously does not work, at least not if the new deficit spending is not focused domestically. Spending deficit money in Afghanistan or in Iraq doesn’t much stimulate the U.S. economy!

What works in an open economy are policies geared toward changing relative prices in order to encourage domestic production and employment. First of all, a lowering of the real exchange rate can encourage net exports and stimulate domestic production and employment, provided the government does not sustain excessive domestic absorption through unproductive large deficits.

Another approach to move relative prices in favor of domestic production and employment is to use the tax system accordingly. Presently, many American corporations are hardly taxed at all on their profits when they operate abroad. Some appropriate taxation of these profits can encourage repatriation of capital and support additional domestic investments. It may be argued that the American political system is not flexible enough to allow for the use of tax policies to encourage domestic production and employment. If so, this would be another indication that the current state of the political system in the U. S. is inimical to economic progress.

The results of the present day US economic policies are everywhere to be seen. The United States has reached levels of inequality in wealth and income that used to be seen only in some backyard third-world countries.

Specifically, therefore, when it comes to politics, it is also in the best interest of any country to avoid giving power to idiots, ignoramuses, incompetents, devious and delusional characters or to demagogues. If not, watch out.

The records show — More countries are destroyed by their own politicians rather than by foreign armies.

Donald Trump’s claim to be an enemy of 'rule-by-inside-deal' is counter intuitive. His career and fortune have been as participant and beneficiary in the process by which government grants privileges to some and inflicts burdens on others. Crony capitalism is the air he breathes, the only sea in which he swims, his second nature. His recipe for “fixing” America, he tells us, is to appoint “the best people”—he names some of his fellow crony capitalists—to exercise even more unaccountable power and to do so with “unbelievable speed.” He assures the voter that, this time, it will be to “make America great again.” Sure, tell us another one Mr.Trump.

Hillary Clinton's approach is to "improve on the system" as she says. She's also embracing the label of "insider," declaring that she knows "what it takes to get things done". With Hillary it is probably the word "insider" which worries most Americans,specially those who believe that the US political system is rotten to the core.

Bernie Sanders's call for a political revolution is at the center of his political appeal. Progressives don't just love him because his policy proposals are more left wing than Hillary's. They love the fact that he calls America's political and economic system by what it is: corrupt.

America's choice for President in November 2016 will either be as significant as the declaration of independence on July 4, 1776, or the final chapter in the systematic destruction of the American Democracy..
.

EU-Digest

US Politics: A European looks at the US political establishment and the upcoming Presidential elections - by RM

The US 2016 Presidential race has begun

A Dutchman who lived nearly half his life in the US was recently asked on a local radio show what his impressions were about the upcoming US Presidential elections and his perception on the two major parties involved in the elections.

"Looking at both US political parties, and mainly basing my observations on policy and  popular appeal , the Democratic party probably sticks head and shoulders above the Republican party, or at least what has become of this party over the years ."  

"Famous Republican politicians like Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower and Reagan would probably turn over in their grave if they could see what has become of their party.".

"On the face of it,  the Democratic party seems to be more of a reflection/cross-section of America re: cultural, religious and ethnic mix, rich, poor, intellectual , less gifted, gay, lesbian and socially conscious."

Today's Republican party is mainly white, Judeo Christian, militaristic, reflects a preponderance of "doublespeak, and quite ignorant, as to the realities that are at play in today's world .

Rolling Stone magazine wrote about Republicans : "All you have to do to secure a Republican vote today is to show lots of pictures of gay people kissing, black kids with their pants pulled down, or Mexican babies at an emergency room. Then you push forward some "dingbat" like Michele Bachmann or Sarah Palin to reassure everyone that the Republican Party knows who the real Americans are."

"Unfortunately, on the negative side, many politicians from both political parties are quite corrupt and over the years the US corporate establishment has developed a brilliant political strategy to capitalize on this  and benefit from this greed."

"Their scheme is quite simple - corporate America donates heavily to both parties, essentially hiring two different sets of politicians to market their needs and goods to the public. The Republicans, as a result,  give them everything that they want, while the Democrats give them "almost everything".

Corporate America, however, seems to get more in return for their bribes from the Republicans than from the Democrats, because Democrats and their special interest groups, given their diversity and more liberal leanings, often also happen to ask more questions."

Instead of having short, publicly-funded political campaigns with limited and/or free advertising (as a number of Western European countries do), the US has long political campaigns in which candidates need big bucks for advertising. They are therefore forced to spend much of their time fundraising, which is to say, seeking bribes. Consequently many US politicians are basically on the take. They are forced into it not only by the system but also by their own greed..

Former Republican  majority leader John Boehner actually once handed out cash on the floor of the US Congress from the tobacco industry to other representatives.

When French President Nicolas Sarkozy was defeated in 2012, soon thereafter French police actually went into his home searching for an alleged € 50,000 in illicit campaign contributions from the ’Oreale heiress.

Seriously? € 50,000 in a presidential campaign? US presidential campaigns cost at least a billion Euro's  each!  The George W. Bush campaign accepted millions from arms manufacturers and then created a war for them, and the police haven’t been anywhere near his home yet.

American politicians don’t represent “the people.” With a few honorable exceptions, they represent the 1% at the top  of the US financial ladder.

Bottom line: Bernie Sanders, one of the most progressive Democratic Presidential candidates noted in one of his stump speeches in the state of Ohio recently: "American democracy is being corrupted out of existence."

Will the American electorate elect Bernie as the first socialist President of America as a result? Probably not, but major changes are coming to the US political system. The "status quo" could be over.


EU-Digest

Torture USA: “Corrupt, toxic and sociopathic”: Glenn Greenwald unloads on torture, CIA and Washington’s rotten soul - by Elias Isquith

It took years until the executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s torture report — which shows not only that the CIA’s torture regime was larger and more vicious than understood, but that the agency repeatedly lied about it to the White House and Congress — was finally released to the public.

But it only took hours before President Obama was once again urging the nation to look forward, not back. “Rather than another reason to refight old arguments,” read a White House statement, “I hope that today’s report can help us leave these techniques where they belong — in the past.” When members of the media asked whether that meant the White House considered torture to be ineffective, as the report claims, an anonymous official said Obama would not “engage” in the ongoing “debate.” On the issues of rape, waterboarding and induced hypothermia, apparently, reasonable minds can differ.

Glenn Greenwald, the Intercept’s Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and longtime critic of the war on terror, disagrees. “There’s no debate,” he told Salon. “Everything that we did,” he continued, “in terms of how we treated detainees, has [long] been viewed as morally vile and inexcusable and criminal.”

Greenwald has little doubt, however, that Washington will turn torture into yet another partisan squabble. It’s the go-to move, he says, when America’s political and media elite decide they’d rather look the other way. “That’s just the ritual Washington engages in,” Greenwald said.

Speaking with Salon from his home in Brazil (or at least we assumed as much, given the barking in the background) Greenwald discussed what surprised him about the summary, what we still don’t know, why expressions of shock and horror from Congress are disingenuous, how President Obama is culpable, too, and why America’s leaders are “sociopathic.” Our conversation is below(click on link below)  and has been edited for clarity and length.

Read more: EXCLUSIVE: “Corrupt, toxic and sociopathic”: Glenn Greenwald unloads on torture, CIA and Washington’s rotten soul - Salon.com

USA Politics - the Koch Brothers - Conservative Money and Influence in America

Looking inside one of the biggest political operations in the country – a sprawling network of politically active nonprofit groups backed by the billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch and other conservative donors showed some interesting facts.

Working with Robert Maguire, a researcher at the Center for Responsive Politics who tracks nonprofits, we calculated that a coalition of 17 groups raised at least $407 million in the 2012 election cycle. Much of that was spent on get-out-the-vote efforts and ads attacking President Obama and congressional Democrats.

Tracing the flow of money required pouring through hundreds of pages of tax returns and mapping out the connections between the groups. Much of the money was transferred to LLC subsidiaries, known as disregarded entities, that are wholly owned by the recipient groups. The network also gave millions of dollars to other outside groups allied with the GOP.

For more details on how the funds moved through the network, check out The Washington Post's visualization by clicking on the link below.

Read more in the Washington Post

On the US Political Scene: Watergate and Washington Bridge -"Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose" - by RM

President Richard Nixon: "I am not a crook"

The French have this wonderful saying: "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose" which in essence in any language indicates a certain disillusionment or resignation regarding whatever is being talked about.

For example: a company might make all kinds of policy changes, but the personnel issues are unaffected. 

Or a couple go to marriage counseling, but continue fighting about everything. 

A new sheriff comes to town, but there is no noticeable impact on crime. New people, new promises, but the same old problems - plus ça change....

Governor Chris Christie:" I did not know"

Last week Thursday, Christie said, "I am outraged and deeply saddened to learn that not only was I misled by a member of my staff, but this completely inappropriate and unsanctioned conduct was made without my knowledge."  

This Wednesday morning, news outlets around the USA released emails that strongly implied that in September a top aide to New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie planned a dangerous traffic jam near the George Washington Bridge to punish the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee. After over seven hours of silence, Christie—a possible presidential candidate in 2016—released a statement denying he had knowledge of the aide's actions. Up until then, Christie and his aides made numerous statements claiming his office had no involvement in the scandal.

For some reason it brought back memories of Watergate and President Nixon's press conferences and statements at that time .

Some forty one years ago on November 17, 1973,  Richard Nixon declared: "I am not a crook", as the President at the time of the Wagtergate scandal vigorously defended his record during the case and said he had never profited from his public service. 

"I have earned every cent. And in all of my years of public life I have never obstructed justice," Mr. Nixon said. "People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook. I've earned everything I've got."

In an hour-long televised question-and-answer session with 400 Associated Press managing editors, Mr. Nixon was tense and sometimes misspoke. But he maintained his innocence in the Watergate case and promised to supply more details on his personal finances and more evidence from tapes and presidential documents.

Yesterday January 9, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie did a full blast, full house, two hour Press conference, responding to the George Washington Bridge traffic jam that had exploded on Wednesday and appeared to have imperiled his presidential aspirations.

He announced that he was firing the staffer responsible and that he would cut ties with one of his top political aides, and would be investigating what other abuses might be left uncovered. He then took round after round of questions in which he fulfilled most of the compulsory mea culpa requirements .

Governor Christie apologized, took responsibility, called himself “embarrassed and humiliated,”and even used an old Truman quote that  "the buck stops here" in addition to expressing regret, denouncing the affair several times as "callous" and "stupid", and announced that he was going to be visiting the injured parties.

Somewhere it became more clear what the French mean by "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose ".

EU-Digest