Spain: Citizens take power in Spain’s largest cities as a political revolution sweeps the country

“We are servants of the people of Madrid”, said Carmena. “We are here because they have chosen us to represent them. We cannot forget it.We are at their service. Therefore I would insist and remember that we want to listen as well as govern”.

Pablo Iglesias, the leader of the anti-austerity anti-corruption Podemos party was there to the witness the event. He can claim much of the credit for the changes taking place across the country.

The victory for the left wing citizens’ alliance in the Spanish capital is the fall out from the dismal ruling right-wing Partido Popular results in the local and regional elections last month.

Similar citizen-driven left-wing alliances are now also in power in Barcelona and Valencia.
What amounts to a political revolution in Spain can be traced back to the ‘indignados’ protests against austerity measures introduced by the PP Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy in 2011.

He now has some serious thinking to do before the parliamentary elections due in November.

Read more: Citizens take power in Spain’s largest cities as a political revolution sweeps the country | euronews, world news

Russia says will retaliate if U.S. weapons stationed on its borders - by Gabriela Baczynska and Wiktor Szary

A plan by Washington to station tanks and heavy weapons in NATO states on Russia's border would be the most aggressive U.S. act since the Cold War, and Moscow would retaliate by beefing up its own forces, a Russian defense official said on Monday.

The United States is offering to store military equipment on allies' territory in eastern Europe, a proposal aimed at reassuring governments worried that after the conflict in Ukraine, they could be the Kremlin's next target.

Poland and the Baltic states, where officials say privately they have been frustrated the NATO alliance has not taken more decisive steps to deter Russia, welcomed the decision by Washington to take the lead.

But others in the region were more cautious, fearing their countries could be caught in the middle of a new arms race between Russia and the United States.

"If heavy U.S. military equipment, including tanks, artillery batteries and other equipment really does turn up in countries in eastern Europe and the Baltics, that will be the most aggressive step by the Pentagon and NATO since the Cold War," Russian defense ministry official General Yuri Yakubov said.

"Russia will have no option but to build up its forces and resources on the Western strategic front," Interfax news agency quoted him as saying.

He said the Russian response was likely to include speeding up the deployment of Iskander missiles to Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave bordered by Poland and Lithuania, and beefing up Russian forces in ex-Soviet Belarus.

Read more: Russia says will retaliate if U.S. weapons stationed on its borders - Yahoo News

Ukraine: While Middle East is falling apart US now storing heavy weapons and tanks in Eastern Europe

Some 200 years ago Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz said "War is a mere continuation of politics by other means."  It still holds truth today.

And...as we all know, politics are very much influenced by the corporate lobby and interest groups.

In the case of the US, the military industrial complex plays a major role in the political decision procress.

Even though the extravagant US military budget was cut according to The Wall Street Journal over the past four years from $721 billion, to "just" $560 billion -- It still provides a huge market for the Pentagon's new weapons systems, and a lot of revenue "up for grabs" by the defense contractors.

If you look, however, at the track record  of the US military, which was sent into war by the political establishment, the results, overall have been dismal.

Just this 21st century alone, the US, assisted by a "coalition of the willing" (some have called them willing  "lap dogs"), fought three wars, in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

What these wars had in common is that each time, the US and their "allies"  scored what they thought was a stunning victory -- they quickly also found out that victory was a brief mirage on the road to defeat.

Today's results of the disastrous US Middle East  policy, which goes way back in time, is really starting to "bear fruit",  specially when we watch the recent boatloads of Middle Eastern and North African refugees arriving on the shores of Europe.

When former US President George W. Bush announced in 2003, on the US aircraft carrier SS Abraham Lincoln, that the combat operations in Iraq were over, while he proudly stood under a  "Mission accomplished" banner, he could not have been more wrong, specially if we look at the aftermath of that war today.

As someone said at the time of the Bush victory announcement, "confidence is the feeling you have before you fully understand the situation."

And here we go again, as the US announced on Saturday, June 13, that it plans to store heavy military equipment in the Baltics and Eastern European nations to "reassure allies made uneasy by Russian intervention in Ukraine, and to deter further aggression", a senior U.S. official said.

Several questions arise? What is the EU Commission and Parliament saying about this. Are they just sitting back and letting the US steam-role them into another military escapade?

Isn't it time Europe starts to do some serious thinking about the fact that always blindly "following the leader" is maybe not the right way to go forward? Or, that the real issue at stake in Europe is the Ukraine crisis and the future of America’s role as Europe’s security guarantor.


EU-Digest

The Netherlands: Dutch economy fully recovers from financial crisis - by Janene Van Jaarsveldt

By the end of this year the Dutch gross domestic product is expected to top the real level seen in 2008 for the first time since the financial crisis. This is according to De Nederlandsche Bank’s latest half-yearly forecast, which was published on Monday.

According to the forecast, the Dutch economy will grow a projected 2 percent this year, the highest figure recorded since 2008. The bank expects that the Dutch economy will, on average, maintain this growth pace in 2016 and 2017, which means that the economic activity will develop more favorably than previously foreseen.

Exports remains the driving force behind the economic growth. The bank expects that the international environment will improve further, partly due to the depreciation of the euro, low level of oil prices and a pick-up in world trade growth.

Domestic spending will also contribute to economic growth – a development unseen since 2011. Private consumption will show a significant increase of 2 percent this year, for the first time since the credit crisis broke out. This can be attributed to a strong increase in real disposable income and improved sentiment.

Read more: Dutch economy fully recovers from financial crisis - NL Times

Turkey's elections: A Turkish Obama ? - Selahattin Demirtaş: thumbing his nose at political convention in Turkey

 Selahattin Demirtaş

When Selahattin Demirtaş shrugged off the formal traditions of Turkish political campaigning and went on a television talk show equipped with a saz, a Turkish folk guitar, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan sensed an opportunity to land a blow.

The co-leader of the Peoples’ Democratic party (HDP), sniffed the Turkish president, was a mere “pop star”. But, far from hurting Demirtaş, the remark merely served to highlight Erdoğan’s fear of the 42-year-old’s youthful, telegenic appeal and sense of humour.

His musical performance was just one of the ways in which Demirtaş – the man who has done more than anyone to thwart Erdoğan’s aspirations to build an all-powerful presidency – achieved electoral breakthrough by thumbing his nose at political convention.

In Sunday’s parliamentary elections, the HDP broadened beyond its Kurdish roots, to become a liberal umbrella group with particular appeal to women, gay men and lesbians, anxious about Erdoğan’s growing power and deepening conservatism.

In May, Demirtaş invited the television cameras into his home, where he made a leisurely Turkish breakfast for his wife, Başak, and their two daughters. “Breakfast is the only time we truly enjoy each other’s company,” he said. “After that everyone goes to either school or work.”

Read more: Selahattin Demirtaş: thumbing his nose at political convention in Turkey | World news | The Guardian

Turkey′s election system the ′most unfair′ in the world

With days to go until general elections, the fairness of Turkey's voting system has come under international scrutiny. When compared with other democracies, the Turkish voting system appears to be designed to leave underdogs in the lurch.

The British daily newspaper The Guardian reported that Turkey had "the world's most unfair election system." This was based on the fact that a 10 percent threshold kept smaller political movements from entering parliament - forfeiting dozens of seats to their rivals under the country's d'Hondt voting system, which allocates parliamentary seats proportionally according to vote totals.

The Guardian's primary criticism is that Turkey only allocates seats to parties that win at least 10 percent of the vote.

Though such a barrier is not exclusive to Turkey, 10 percent is the highest threshold of its kind. German politics employ a 5 percent threshold, and many other countries - the United Kingdom, France and Portugal among them - don't feature any such hurdle.

The Turkish voting system is also regarded as unjust for facilitating minority governments. Under certain circumstances, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) could manage to gain a majority of parliamentary seats with merely 45 percent of the popular vote, in which case the wishes of 55 percent of the electorate could effectively be ignored.

These guidelines could create an unpredictable outcome at Sunday's polls. While AKP has managed to grow support in its 13-year-reign, taking full advantage of the 10 percent threshold, the latest polls suggest that its luck may change. The Konda Research and Consultancy institute in Istanbul gave the party of President Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu only about 41 percent of the vote.

Read more: Turkey′s election system the ′most unfair′ in the world | News | DW.DE | 04.06.2015

Life Expectancy: Ubble: the online test to predict if you'll die within five years

If you are a middle-aged man and want to know if you are going to die in the next five years, you simply need to ask yourself how healthy you think you are.

Whether you would rate your health as excellent, good, fair or poor is a better predictor of death in the next five years for men aged 40 to 70 than physical measures including blood pressure and pulse rate, according to scientists writing in the Lancet medical journal. Other significant questions include how briskly you walk and how many cars you own.

The first major publication from scientists using data from the UK Biobank scores 655 different measures that can affect the chances of premature death. The researchers have used this to put together a short questionnaire. Just 13 questions for men and 11 for women will produce a percentage risk factor for death within five years.

While self-assessed health is the strongest risk factor for men, the strongest for women is any diagnosis of cancer, which is the biggest cause of women’s death in this age group. For people of both sexes who do not have any serious disease or disorder, smoking is the most significant factor.

The website, called Ubble (for UK Longevity Explorer), also tells people their “Ubble age”. If their Ubble age is lower than their real age, then their risk of early death is also low. If it is higher, say researchers, people might like to think about making possible improvements to their health such as stopping smoking and a better diet.

The website has been designed with the help of the charity Sense About Science.

The death rates in the 40-70 age group are low. Among the nearly 500,000 Biobank participants, 8,352 died over a five-year period – fewer than 2%. There are no questions about weight or body mass index because they will not impact mortality over a five-year period.

The researchers found that how many cars a household owned was a factor, however – because more cars indicated a more affluent family. Walking briskly was more obviously an indicator of better health.

he scientists, Professor Erik Ingelsson from Uppsala University and Dr Andrea Ganna from the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, have also put their more detailed findings about the 655 significant measures on the website.

To do the test click here.

Read more: Ubble: the online test to predict if you'll die within five years | Science | The Guardian