Christianity: The Goodness of Good Friday - by Chris Armstrong

Good Friday: a day of sadness and mourning but also of Hope 

What a supreme paradox. We now call the day Jesus was crucified, Good.

Many believe this name simply evolved—as language does. They point to the earlier designation, "God's Friday," as its root. (This seems a reasonable conjecture, given that "goodbye" evolved from "God be with you.")

Whatever its origin, the current name of this holy day offers a fitting lesson to those of us who assume (as is easy to do) that "good" must mean "happy." We find it hard to imagine a day marked by sadness as a good day.

Of course, the church has always understood that the day commemorated on Good Friday was anything but happy. Sadness, mourning, fasting, and prayer have been its focus since the early centuries of the church. A fourth-century church manual, the Apostolic Constitutions, called Good Friday a "day of mourning, not a day of festive Joy." Ambrose, the fourth-century archbishop who befriended the notorious sinner Augustine of Hippo before his conversion, called it the "day of bitterness on which we fast."

Many Christians have historically kept their churches unlit or draped in dark cloths. Processions of penitents have walked in black robes or carried black-robed statues of Christ and the Virgin Mary. And worshippers have walked the "Stations of the Cross," praying and singing their way past 14 images representing Jesus' steps along the Via Dolorosa to Golgotha.

Yet, despite—indeed because of—its sadness, Good Friday is truly good. Its sorrow is a godly sorrow. It is like the sadness of the Corinthians who wept over the sharp letter from their dear teacher, Paul, convicted of the sin in their midst. Hearing of their distress, Paul said, "My joy was greater than ever." Why? Because such godly sorrow "brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret" (2 Cor. 7:10).

I like to think the linguistic accident that made "God's Friday" into "Good Friday" was no accident at all. It was God's own doing—a sharp, prophetic jab at a time and a culture obsessed by happiness. In the midst of consumerism's Western playground, Good Friday calls to a jarring halt the sacred "pursuit of happiness." The cross reveals this pursuit for what it is: a secondary thing.

This commemoration of Christ's death reminds us of the human sin that caused this death. And we see again that salvation comes only through godly sorrow—both God's and, in repentance, ours. To pursue happiness, we must first experience sorrow. He who goes forth sowing tears returns in joy.

EU-Digest

NATO: President Trump makes 180 degrees turn on NATO:, says 'It's no longer obsolete' - by Ryan Struyk

Results of 16 years of Disastrous Middle East Foreign Policy

 When somebody says one thing, does another, and possibly thinks something else, all that you’re going to wind up with is problems.

President Donald Trump reversed course on his view of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization on Wednesday, saying the organization is "no longer obsolete" after months of bashing the defense alliance as no longer relevant during his campaign. 

"I said it was obsolete. It's no longer obsolete," Trump said in a joint press conference with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the White House. 

"The secretary general and I had a productive discussion about what more NATO can do in the fight against terrorism," Trump said. "I complained about that a long time ago, and they made a change and now they do fight terrorism. 

"... Every generation strives to adopt the NATO alliance to meet the challenges of their times, and on my visit to Brussels this spring, which I look very much forward to, we will work together to do the same," Trump continued, calling for NATO to support Iraq to fight ISIS. "We must not be trapped by the tired thinking that so many have, but apply new solutions to face new circumstances." 

Trump also reiterated that countries in NATO ought to allocate 2 percent of their GDP of military spending, a frequent rallying cry during his presidential campaign last year. Only five of the 28 member states currently do so, including the U.S. 

Trump said that NATO was obsolete as recently as this January in an interview with The Times of London. “I said a long time ago that NATO had problems. No. 1, it was obsolete because it was designed many, many years ago. No. 2, the countries aren’t paying what they’re supposed to pay," Trump said in January. "I took such heat when I said NATO was obsolete. It’s obsolete because it wasn’t taking care of terror. I took a lot of heat for two days. And then they started saying Trump is right." 

Note EU-Digest:  - When somebody says one thing, does another, and possibly thinks something else, all that you’re going to wind up with is problems. 

Let us be honest these problems are the direct result of how President Trump's Administration has been conducting its day to day business on just about every given issue during Trump's Presidency so far.

Hopefully the EU does not fall for this self-serving nonsense of the Trump Administration. 

It should make clear to the US Administration, that as a result of US failed Middle East Policies during the past two decades, which included NATO EU nations involvement in the equation, the EU is now saddled up with millions of refugees and ISIS terrorism. 

Business can not be conducted as usual because it has not worked. 

The reality is that the EU needs a more effective and mature relationship with the US, which includes having an independent foreign policy and military defense force. It is as simple as that. 

Read more: President Trump on NATO: 'It's no longer obsolete' - ABC News

EU: Going Dutch? What Americans can learn from how children are raised in the Netherlands - by Amy Perrette

Dutch grammar school

 When Rina Mae Acosta, originally from California, fell in love with a Dutch man, they got married and moved to the Netherlands. At first she wasn’t sure what to make of the new culture. But as soon as she became a parent, she was struck by the richness of Dutch family life — by how independent, resilient and happy Dutch children seemed.

Data backs up Acosta's impression. In the latest UNICEF study ranking 29 of the world's richest industrialized countries according to child well-being, Dutch children come out on top. America ranks 26th, just above Lithuania and Latvia.

Acosta and her British friend, Michele Hutchison (also an expat married to a Dutch man), decided to document the differences they saw between their own pressurized childhoods and the Dutch parenting style, and explain what it is about the Dutch approach that is producing such contented kids. The result is their book, "The Happiest Kids in the World: How Dutch Parents Help Their Kids (and Themselves) by Doing Less."

“Scrap the idea of ‘quality time,’ as American and British parents know it,” says Hutchison. “That is too stressful and puts too much pressure on planning and finances.”

Instead, Dutch parents enjoy spending lots of relaxed time together at family meals, or having the children play nearby while the parent is attending to his or her own interests and projects.

Part of why Dutch parents are able to have that low-key family time is because they allow their children a high degree of independence, even allowing them to climb trees unsupervised and bike alone at a young age.

“It isn’t that the Dutch aren’t aware of risk,” Acosta says. “They just keep the risk in perspective.”

Dutch kids are not taught to read and write until about age 7 and don’t get regular homework until their early teenage years, yet they score at the top of educational achievement and participation in the same UNICEF study.

Catherine Tamis-LeMonda, professor of applied psychology at NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, says that low-stress start to schooling makes good sense.

“A huge number of studies show that children's motivation to do things — to be engaged, to learn about their world — goes up when they make choices about what to do,” she says.

Stressing less and relaxing more as the recipe for happy children? It might be time we all “go Dutch.”

Read more: Going Dutch? What Americans can learn from how children are raised in the Netherlands - TODAY.com

EU - when will the EU sit up and smell the roses when it comes to its relations with the US - by RM

EU-US Relations on collision course

When President Trump sits around the table with his policy advisors you can be sure that the EU is not on top of the agenda.

Just compare last weekends state visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to the Trump Estate in Palm Beach Florida to the "sober, cold shoulder" reception by Trump given to European Heads of State, Angela Merkel and Theresa May in Washington DC.

That probably says it all as to how President Trump ranks Europe in his thought process.

Trump has also said that he trusts German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Vladimir Putin equally. Does that imply that the United States will pursue a policy of equidistance between the EU and the Kremlin?

Everything is possible .

It is not an idle question. Trump has made it obvious that established partnerships, alliances, rules, and protocols mean little to him. In his tweets, he rants about the media, attacks independent judges, targets individuals and companies, and belittles international organizations.

But even though the US under Trump is now a very unattractive ally for Europe, writing off the US as a European partner – which some in Europe would like to do sooner rather than later – would probably be a major mistake.

In the meantime, maybe Mr. Trump and his advisors should start to read-up on how important the EU and the US are to  each others economic well being.

• Total US investment in the EU is three times higher than in all of Asia.
• EU investment in the US is around eight times the amount of EU investment in India and China together.
• EU and US investments are the real driver of this EU-US  transatlantic relationship, contributing to growth and jobs on both sides of the Atlantic. It is estimated that a third of the trade across the Atlantic actually consists of intra-company transfers.
• The transatlantic relationship also defines the shape of the global economy as a whole. Either the EU or the US is the largest trade and investment partner for almost all other countries in the global economy.
• The EU and the US economies account together for about half the entire world GDP and for nearly a third of world trade flows.

Nevertheless, it is also very important for the EU to realize, if they haven't already, that they can't continue to be a "lackey" of the US, having to say "how high", whenever  the US says "jump". .

But first,  before issuing an avalanche of "directives", the EU Commission, which has been running a pretty colorless "operation", should set itself a primary goal, which is to get all the member countries of the EU running in the same direction.This is not the case at present.

They can do this by initiating some basic changes as to how the EU operates, in order to make it more homogeneous and people friendly including:

* Having the President of the EU Commission, who is presently appointed,  instead elected by popular vote in all EU member states.
* Develop an independent foreign policy for the EU, which is not aligned with any other country's foreign policy.
* Develop an independent EU Military defense force, which includes a central EU command and is not aligned with any other foreign military force.  

It is  no secret that NATO (which includes many EU member states)  and which was initially intended, after WW2, to protect Europe from Soviet aggression during the cold that followed, was gradually expanded by the US into a US government policy controlled global strike force.

Its purpose being to support US foreign policy in military operations around the world.

For the past past 16 years, however, mainly focusing on Afghanistan and the Middle East.

So far the results of these NATO military operations in Afghanistan and the Middle East (Iraq, Syria, Libya) have been a complete disaster.

In the meantime, NATO and US military campaigns in the Middle East over these past 16 years have also resulted in hundreds of thousands of people killed, created millions of displaced persons, flooding the EU and Turkey with refugees,and created major economic and social hardship.

Last but not least, the turmoil surrounding these wars  in the Middle East also resulted in the birth of the so-called Islamic State, which in reality is an assortment of former Iraqi soldiers, disturbed Islamic radicals and young indoctrinated Islamic fanatics from Europe and other parts of the world who have made terrorism their trade mark around the globe.   

Unfortunately, there is very little time left for the EU to change cours in this turbulent world..

The EU  must be warned, however, that if they fall apart into smaller states again, these individual states will become "chopped meat" in serving US, Russian and Chinese interests and ambitions to obtain global dominance

If BREXIT wasn't a wake-up call, Mr. Trumps foreign policy "tap-dance" with Russia and China certainly is a signal for the EU Commission to sit up straight and smell the roses.

EU-Digest

Middle East: external and internal combatants in this perpetual war must stop fighting and reach political solution - by RM

Middle East: Time to stop this perpetual war and negotiate

Russia, the USA, all EU nations who are amembers of the NATO, the Gulf states, Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, must get their troops out of these perpetual Middle East wars which have caused hundreds of thousands of casualties and displaced millions of. people.

Why and what about ISIS ?

Because, whatever way you turn it, there is no military solution to this problem

As to ISIS - rest assured that if a political solution is achieved the local Governments or their populations will take care of eliminating ISIS. .

So really, the only small, and it certainly is a very small chance to get a lasting peace, is for all parties in this Middle East disaster to sit around a conference table "as civilized people" and hammer out a peace agreement which represents the consensus of all the parties around the table.

Anything less will not work and perpetuate this human disaster.

Unfortunately, if it does come to extensive negotiations, we are dealing with human beings around the conference table, mainly evil and egoistic human beings, so the hope for reaching a political solution is very slim.

Nevertheless, it is worth a try because mankind deserves it.

Almere-Digest

Global Warming: Low-lying Netherlands is exporting its water-management expertise

Netherlands: famous for water-management expertise

Passengers arriving at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport might be alarmed to learn that they are landing on a runway that would  be — if nature took its course — 13 feet under water.  

The fact that the runway is dry and the passengers can alight without getting their feet wet is thanks to more than a century of water management. For hundreds of years, the Dutch have been pumping, draining, building sea walls and dykes, fighting coastal erosion and reclaiming land as a matter of national survival because more than half their country lies below sea level.

These skills in keeping water at bay have served the domestic economy in the Netherlands well, but now, in an era of climate change and rising sea levels, they are driving a major export industry as well.
 
“There are so many cities around the world in deltas, or in coastal zones, very close to the water that are in jeopardy,” Piet Dircke, a Dutch water engineer, told Marketplace. “Millions of people in these big cities need to be protected against the impacts of floods and climate change, and the Dutch know how to do that,” Dircke said.

From Wuhan in China, to São Paulo in Brazil, to Miami, New Orleans and New York, big coastal and riverine cities around the world have been hiring Dutch companies to combat rising sea levels. Dircke’s employer, the giant engineering consulting firm Arcadis, has seen its water business revenues jump by 42 percent over the past five years to $515 million due to this increasing global demand for Dutch expertise.

The know-how extends well beyond pumping and draining. In Rotterdam harbor, an experimental  project has been unveiled that could help communities cope with rising sea levels, not by draining and reclaiming land but by “building on water.” 

Sweden’s PM weeps at the scene of Stockholm terror attack - by Rory Tingle

The Swedish Prime Minister laid a bouquet of red roses and lit a candle to remember the four victims of the Stockholm truck attack.

Stefan Lofven was visibly emotional as he paid his respects outside the Ahlens department store.

This was the site of a horrific attack that saw a 30-tonne truck ram into a crowd of shoppers, killing 4 and  injuring 15 people - nine seriously.

Read more Sweden’s PM weeps at the scene of Stockholm terror attack | Daily Mail Online