Netherlands Headed For Unprecedented Crisis?: Millions Of Retirees Face Pensions Cuts Thanks To The ECB - "This Report is Questionable say Dutch Government insiders" - by Tyler Durden

When one thinks of pensions crisis, the state of Illinois - with its woefully underfunded retirement system which issues bonds just to fund its existing pension benefits - usually comes to mind. Which is why it is surprising that the first state that may suffer substantial pension cuts is one that actually has one of the world's best-funded, and most generous, pension systems.

According to the FT, millions of Dutch pensioners are facing material cuts to their retirement income for the first time next year as the Dutch government scrambles to avert a crisis to the country's €1.6 trillion pension system. And while a last minute intervention by the government may avoid significant cuts to pensions next year - and a revolt by trade unions -  if only temporarily, the world finds itself transfixed by the problems facing the Dutch retirement system as it provides an early indication of a wider global pensions funding shortfall, not to mention potential mass unrest once retirees across some of the world's wealthiest nations suddenly finds themselves with facing haircuts to what they previously believed were unalterable retirement incomes.

At the core of the Dutch cash crunch is the ECB's negative interest rate policy, which has sent bond yields to record negative territory across the eurozone, and crippled returns analysis while pushing up the funding requirements of Dutch pension funds.

Ahead of a parliamentary debate on Thursday on this hot topic issue, the Dutch minister for social affairs and employment, Wouter Koolmees, will write to lawmakers to outline his response to the pension industry’s problems, the FT reported.

Read more: Netherlands Headed For Unprecedented Crisis: Millions Of Retirees Face Pensions Cuts Thanks To The ECB | Zero Hedge

Netherlands-Court decission: Netherlands does not have to help kids from ISIS parents trapped in Syria

The Netherlands will not have to retrieve children of Dutch citizens awaiting their fates in Syrian detention and displacement camps, the kids of Dutch women who left the Netherlands to enter conflict zones in Syria and Iraq. The Appellate Court in The Hague overturned a lower court's ten-day old order on an emergency appeal filed on behalf of the Dutch government.

Read more at:
https://nltimes.nl/2019/11/22/netherlands-help-kids-trapped-syria-appellate-court

Tourism: Spain set for tourism record as U.S. visitors counter Brexit blues

Spain is on track for a record year of tourist arrivals, the seventh straight year of new highs, with U.S. and Asian visitors countering the disruption of Brexit and collapse of tour operator Thomas Cook, the industry minister said on Wednesday.

Read more at:
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-spain-economy-tourism/spain-set-for-tourism-record-as-u-s-visitors-counter-brexit-blues-idUKKBN1XU20E

The Netherlands: Two gov't parties now support women's quota in listed companies

A mandatory women's quota for executive positions in listed companies is now one step closer. Coalition party CDA expressed support for a quota to ensure that at least 30 percent of listed companies' top positions are filled by wmen. The party, along with coalition partner D66, is submitting a motion calling on the government to adopt the recent proposal.

Read more at:
https://nltimes.nl/2019/11/21/two-govt-parties-now-support-womens-quota-listed-companies

Democracy: The Shocking Paper Predicting the End of Democracy - by Rick Shenkman

Everything was unfolding as it usually does. The academics who gathered in Lisbon this summer for the International Society of Political Psychologists’ annual meeting had been politely listening for four days, nodding along as their peers took to the podium and delivered papers on everything from the explosion in conspiracy theories to the rise of authoritarianism.

Then, the mood changed. As one of the lions of the profession, 68-year-old Shawn Rosenberg, began delivering his paper, people in the crowd of about a hundred started shifting in their seats. They loudly whispered objections to their friends. Three women seated next to me near the back row grew so loud and heated I had difficulty hearing for a moment what Rosenberg was saying.

What caused the stir? Rosenberg, a professor at UC Irvine, was challenging a core assumption about America and the West. His theory? Democracy is devouring itself—his phrase — and it won’t last.
As much as President Donald Trump’s liberal critics might want to lay America’s ills at his door, Rosenberg says the president is not the cause of democracy’s fall—even if Trump’s successful anti-immigrant populist campaign may have been a symptom of democracy’s decline.

We’re to blame, said Rosenberg. As in “we the people.”
Democracy is hard work. And as society’s “elites”—experts and public figures who help those around them navigate the heavy responsibilities that come with self-rule—have increasingly been sidelined, citizens have proved ill equipped cognitively and emotionally to run a well-functioning democracy. As a consequence, the center has collapsed and millions of frustrated and angst-filled voters have turned in desperation to right-wing populists.

His prediction? “In well-established democracies like the United States, democratic governance will continue its inexorable decline and will eventually fail.”

Read more: The Shocking Paper Predicting the End of Democracy - POLITICO Magazine

Posted by EU-Digest at 10:02 PM

Israel-USA-Palestine Relations: Is the US Trump Administration starting to embrace international lawlessness?

The US Trump Administration’s declaration that it no longer considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal marks another step away from the principles of international law.

The illegality of the settlements by Israeli citizens on Palestinian land is quite clear from Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention: “The occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”

The 600,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have already colonized much of Palestine, fragmenting its territory — over which the Israeli occupier retains complete military control — criss-crossing it with roads barred to Palestinian users, stealing much of the most fertile land and depriving the Palestinian population of most of the available water.

The Israeli towns that have been planted across Palestinian territory are a serious barrier to the independent Palestine to which almost all countries, including the US and Israel, remain technically committed — though Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has shown up how hollow this commitment is by repeatedly stating explicitly that there will never be a Palestinian state on his watch.

The pro-forma international condemnation has not halted the settlement programme nor prompted any Israeli government to consider meeting its obligations towards Palestine under the Oslo Accords.

The US has also regularly used its veto to block UN resolutions condemning the settlements even while officially viewing them as illegal.

It’s also against international law to apply sanctions with the aim of changing the government in the targeted country.

The US Trump Administration decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, is in fact encouraging ever more reckless and aggressive ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by the Israeli Right-Wing authorities and assures them that racist legislation such as the Nation State Law, reducing Israeli Arabs to second-class citizens, will not affect the enormous economic and military sponsorship they receive from the US.

Relying on Israeli allies to rein in its expansionist government has never worked. A US thumbs-up to illegal settlements makes that clearer than ever.

Nabil Abu Rudeina, a spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, said: "The United States is neither qualified nor is authorised to negate international legitimacy resolutions, and it has no right to give any legitimacy to Israeli settlement."

Palestinian militant groups also weighed in, calling it the official funeral of the Oslo peace process - which laid the foundations for Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip - and urging stepped-up resistance to the Israeli occupation.

Bottom-line: the US Trump Administration has basically ripped-up the Oslo Agreement of which the US was a co-signer and is now applying the "Trump doctrine of the jungle"

 EU-Digest

EU: How is Europe faring on violence against women?

58% per cent of the 87,000 women murdered in 2017 were killed by intimate partners or family members.

Read more at:
https://www.euronews.com/2019/11/18/watch-how-is-europe-faring-on-violence-against-women