USA: Trump-Led Thaw Between Russia, US to Undermine EU Unanimity Over Sanctions

United States President-elect Donald Trump said he would consider the possibility of lifting anti-Russian sanctions, but provided no further details.

 At the same time, Morgan Stanley estimated a 35 percent chance of Washington lifting sanctions against Moscow in the coming two years.

According to the bank, Trump’s presidency will result in easing sanctions against Russian companies and individuals. Meanwhile, the European Union is now concerned over a possible thaw between Russia and the US because this will create obstacles for Brussels’ policy of sanctions.

During his campaign, Trump repeatedly said he wanted to normalize ties with Russia. After the election, he confirmed he wants a "good relationship" with Moscow. Russian markets reacted to Trump’s victory more positively than other global stocks, on expectations of an improvement in bilateral economic ties between Russia and the US.

Read more: Sputnik

US - EU relations: Europe forced off the US lap and Alone in Trump’s World

Will Trump signal the end of the Trans=Atlantic Alliance

Alone again. Since World War II’s end, Europe has looked at the world through a transatlantic lens.

There have been ups and downs in the alliance with the United States, but it was a family relationship built on a sense that we would be there for each other in a crisis and that we are fundamentally like-minded.

Donald Trump’s election as US president threatens to bring this to an end – at least for now. He believes more in walls and oceans than solidarity with allies, and has made it clear that he will put America not just first, but second and third as well. “We will no longer surrender this country, or its people,” he declared in his one major foreign-policy speech, “to the false song of globalism.”

Europeans will not only have to get used to Trump; they will have to look at the world through different eyes. There are four reasons to expect that Trump’s America will be the single biggest source of global disorder.

First, American guarantees are no longer reliable. Trump has questioned whether he would defend Eastern European NATO members if they do not do more to defend themselves. He has said that Saudi Arabia should pay for American security. He has encouraged Japan and South Korea to obtain nuclear weapons. In Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, Trump has made it clear that America will no longer play the role of policeman; instead, it will be a private security company open for hire.

Second, global institutions will come under attack. Trump fundamentally rejects the view that the liberal world order that the US built after WWII (and expanded after the Cold War) is the cheapest way of defending American values and interests. Like George W. Bush after September 11, 2001, he views global institutions as placing intolerable constraints on US freedom of action. He has a revisionist agenda for almost all of these bodies, from the World Trade Organization to NATO and the United Nations.

The fact that he wants to put the “Art of the Deal” into practice in all international relationships – renegotiating the terms of every agreement – is likely to provoke a similar backlash among America’s partners.

Third, Trump will turn all US relationships on their head. The crude fear is that he will be kinder to America’s foes than to its allies. Most challenging for Europeans is his admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Should Trump, cozying up to Putin in search of a grand bargain, recognize Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, the EU would be placed in a near-impossible role.

Fourth, there is Trump’s unpredictability. Even during the 18 months of the presidential campaign, Trump has been on both sides of almost every issue. The fact that he will say the opposite today of what he said yesterday, without admitting that he has changed his mind, shows the extent to which capriciousness is his method.

One of the benefits the US political system is that it provides a two-month grace period to prepare for Trump’s world. So what should Europeans do about it?

First, we need to try to increase leverage over the US. We know from Trump’s writings and behavior that he is likely to resemble other strongmen presidents and treat weakness as an invitation to aggression. We saw from the Iraq experience that a divided Europe has little ability to influence the US. But where Europe has worked together – on privacy, competition policy, and taxation – it has dealt with the US from a position of strength.

The same was true with the so-called E3+3 policy on Iran – when the big EU member states shifted the US stance by standing together. To get on the front foot, the EU now needs to launch a process to agree on common policies on security, foreign policy, migration, and the economy. This will be difficult, as Europe is deeply divided, with France fearing terrorism, Poland dreading Russia, Germany inflamed by the refugee issue, and the United Kingdom determined to go it alone.

Second, Europeans should show that they are able to hedge their bets and build alliances with others. The EU must reach out to other powers to help shore up global institutions against Trumpian revisionism. And it also needs to diversify its foreign-policy relationships. Rather than waiting for Trump to marginalize the EU over Russia and China, Europeans should fly some kites of their own. Should they, for example, begin consulting with the Chinese on the EU arms embargo to remind the US of the value of the transatlantic alliance? Could the EU develop a different relationship with Japan? And if Trump wants to cozy up to Russia, maybe he should take over the Normandy process on Ukraine?

Third, Europeans need to start to invest in their own security. From Ukraine to Syria, from cyber attacks to terror attacks, Europe’s security is being probed in different ways. Despite an intellectual understanding that 500 million Europeans can no longer contract out their security to 300 million Americans, the EU has done little to close the gap between its security needs and its capabilities. It is time to put meat on the bones of the Franco-German plan for European defense. And it will be important to find institutionalized ways of binding the UK into Europe’s new security architecture.

In all of these areas, Europeans must keep the door to transatlantic cooperation open. This alliance – which has so often saved Europe from itself – is bigger than any individual. And, in any case, Trump will not last forever. But the transatlantic relationship will be more likely to survive if it is built on two pillars that understand and defend their own interests.

This will be a tough agenda to adopt – not least because Europe is facing its own brand of populist nationalism. France’s far-right National Front leader, Marine Le Pen, was among the first to congratulate Trump on his victory, and Trump has said that he would put the UK at the front of the queue after Brexit. But even Europe’s most Trump-like leaders will find it harder to defend their national interest if they try to go it alone. To survive in Trump’s world, they should try to make Europe great again.

Read more: Europe, Alone in Trump’s World | European Council on Foreign Relations

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

''The American Dream Is Dead"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Turkey - EU Relations: Turkey blasts EU over crackdown criticism

Turkey:A corrupt dictatorship

Turkey protested to EU envoys and branded relations with Brussels as "fragile" on Monday over the bloc's criticism of its crackdown in the wake of the July 15 coup.

In recent days, the European Union has strongly criticised Turkey, a candidate for accession, over the arrests of nine MPs from the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), including its two co-leaders.

"We made clear our alarm over the positions taken by the EU," Turkish EU Affairs Minister Omer Celik said in televised comments after calling in all EU member state ambassadors for an unusual meeting at his ministry.

"We are in a very fragile period in EU-Turkey relations... Constant opposition to Turkey is not a correct policy," he added.

Celik also lashed out at remarks attributed to an EU minister comparing Turkey's crackdown in the wake of the coup to the methods of the Nazis.

Some 35,000 people have been arrested and tens of thousands more have lost their jobs in the crackdown since the coup bid. The opposition Press was closed down and editors arrested.

Note EU-Digest: Bottom line, if Mr. Erdogan likes it or not: he is now the leader of a Dictatorship without any Freedom of the Press or basic Human Rights and there is no reason whatsoever (except fear)  for the EU to continue dealing with this bully and his puppet government. It is high time the EU shows to have what it takes to put Mr.Erdogan out of business.

Read more: Flash - Turkey blasts EU over crackdown criticism - France 24

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Netherlands-Almere: Sun Island

Almere Zoneiland (Sun Island) is located in the Noorderplassen-West district in Almere and it is the first project in the Netherlands, where houses in a residential area is heated by a single solar energy system collectively.

The project is financially supported by the EU andmimplemented in a cooperation between the Dutch energy company Nuon, Almere Municipality and local citizens.

Read more: Almere: Sun Island - Danish Architecture Centre

Turkey arrests pro-Kurdish party leaders amid claims of internet shutdown

The two joint leaders of Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic party (HDP) have been detained along with at least 10 MPs because of their reluctance to give testimony for crimes linked to “terrorist
propaganda”.

Police raided the Ankara home of co-leader Selahattin Demirtaș and the house of co-leader Figen Yüksekdağ in Diyarbakır, the largest city in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish south-east, early on Friday.


Demirtaş – a charismatic leader known as the “Kurdish Obama” by some admirers – and Yüksekdağ had been targeted by several separate investigations over the past few months but this is the first time that either has been detained.

Note Almere-Digest: Scandalous, as Turkey becomes more and more of a dictatorship.

Read more: Turkey arrests pro-Kurdish party leaders amid claims of internet shutdown | World news | The Guardian