Leaving the EU will mean economic disaster for UK or for that matter any other EU member copy-cats - by RM

Whatever your views are about the EU, the first thing that happens when your local political establishment decides through a referendum or other manipulation to get out of the Union, is economic disaster.

In the case of Britain getting out of the EU big companies and financial conglomerates will decamp from London to Frankfurt or Paris. The pound will immediately  fall.. Many of the British exporters have no idea what's going to happen to them, and the banks will not be keen to stick out their neck in their favor.

In general if Britain leaves the EU it would become an economic storm so big it could overshadow anything else the British public would have ever experienced.

In connection with the above, just imagine how any member country which steps out of the EU could handle the NSA spying revelations on European countries and their leaders if they had to do this just by themselves? 

Unfortunately in the case of Britain and the NSA the question which obviously arises and which has not been addressed by the EU Parliament or the Commission is how Britain, a member of the EU, has (is) participating and supporting the NSA spy program on Europeans, without the EU Commission/Parliament or the EU member states having any knowledge of it?

With friends like this who needs any enemies? 

Almere-Digest

Netherlands scores poorly in HSCB survey among Expats as a country they want to work and live in

The Netherlands which claims and is often seen as a great place for foreign companies to establish operations only ranked 18th in the 2013 Expat Explorer Survey  by the HSBC as the best countries for expatriates to live, work and raise your children in. 

If you're sick of your home country and are yearning for a change, you might want to consider settling in Asia for the next chapter of your life.

A new study by HSBC ranks several Asian nations among the best countries for expatriates in 2013. The annual Expat Explorer Survey analyzes the findings from 7,000 expats to rank their new homes according to criteria including economics, experience, and raising children.

When considering all three categories, China comes out on top with high scores in economics and experience. Despite faring poorly in the field of raising children, expats in China report high salaries and better quality of life than in their home countries.

Switzerland tops all nations in terms of economics, though it remains unranked overall due to insufficient data in the raising children category. Hailed as a "beacon of growth," Switzerland instills financial optimism in its new inhabitants, with expats citing strong fiscal policy and healthy markets.

When it comes to experience, however, Thailand outpaces the field, thanks to top scores for healthy diet, working environment, social life, local shops and markets, and local culture. Expats living in Thailand enjoy a high quality of life with little trouble integrating; 76% noted how easy it was to make friends in their new land.

And of course, food plays an important role in satisfying these expats. Like Switzerland, however, Thailand also could not be ranked overall because of its lack of data on raising children.

In that category, Germany reigns supreme, with high scores in child education, quality of childcare, and child health and wellbeing. Expat parents laud German education options as cost-effective while still reporting an improvement in the quality of schooling over those available in their home countries. Deutschland also received high scores in economics, helping the nation to place second overall among all three criteria.

http://www.expatexplorer.hsbc.com/#/countries

Sinterklaas: Tensions mount in the Netherlands as UN questions ‘Black Pete’ Christmas tradition - Elisa Criado

It emerged last week that a UN working group is investigating the Dutch custom of white people dressing up as ‘Zwarte Piet’ (Black Pete) as part of their traditional Christmas festivities.

The leader of the UN group, the Jamaican academic Verene Shepherd, has spoken out against the practice on Dutch national television, condemning it as ‘a throw-back to slavery’.

The figure of ‘Zwarte Piet’ is an integral part of the Dutch Christmas tradition. In the Netherlands, children receive gifts on the fifth of December from ‘Sinterklaas’, a version of Saint Nicholas, along with his black slave helpers. These were originally portrayed as scary figures that would beat naughty children with a bunch of twigs and take them away in a sack to Saint Nicholas’ fictional home in Spain.

Today they are mainly characterised as the clown, acrobat, joker and entertainer. Although the custom is clearly linked to slavery and colonial times, most children are currently told that Black Pete gets his colour from the soot in the chimneys when he delivers their presents.

A few weeks before the culmination of festivities on the fifth, Sinterklaas and his ‘helpers’ arrive by boat and are greeted by the local children in large-scale events that are staged across the country. The largest event takes place in Amsterdam and is broadcast on national television. Both professional ‘Pieten’ and many volunteers paint their faces black, their lips red and don curly black wigs and gold earrings.

It is also customary for the children watching the event to do the same. They greet the procession of Sinterklaas and the Pieten by singing traditional songs, lyrics of which include: ‘Even though I’m black as soot, I mean well’.

 Note EU-Digest: What an utter waste of time and money  for the UN  to meddle in this traditional Dutch children and family celebration which in no way is meant to degrade or mock black people.Doesn't the UN have better things to do?

Read more Tensions mount in the Netherlands as UN questions ‘Black Pete’ Christmas tradition - World - News - The Independent

The Netherlands: Powerful storm hits Europe -over 100 million euros damage to the Netherlands infrastructure

A storm battering north-western Europe has killed eight people - four of them in southern England.

Two people died when their car was crushed by a falling tree in Gelsenkirchen, in western Germany. Two children in the car were injured.

In Brittany, western France, a woman was swept out to sea. And in the Dutch city of Amsterdam a tree felled by the wind crushed a woman by a canal.

Many trains were cancelled in and around London and in north Germany.

In many cases in the UK fallen trees had to be cleared from railway lines.

At least 50 flights have been cancelled at Schiphol airport in the Netherlands, and the German broadcaster ARD says there are severe delays at Hamburg airport.

In the UK as many as 600,000 homes suffered power cuts, though many were later reconnected.
Power cuts also hit 42,000 homes in northern France, and at Belle-Ile in Brittany a woman was swept into the sea from a cliff.

Estimated damage to the Netherlands infrastructure is likely to go above 100 million euros

EU-Digest

The Netherlands: Rabobank to Pay More Than $1 Billion in Libor Settlement; Chief Resigns - by Chad Bray

The Dutch lender Rabobank admitted on Tuesday to criminal wrongdoing by its employees and agreed to pay more than $1 billion in criminal and civil penalties to settle investigations by United States, British and other authorities into its role in setting global benchmark interest rates.

The bank is the latest lender to settle charges over the manipulation of the London interbank offered rate, or Libor. The settlement with Rabobank is the second-largest agreement after the $1.5 billion penalty imposed on UBS related to the interest-rate scandal.

As part of the settlement, Rabobank entered into a so-called deferred prosecution agreement, in which it will avoid criminal charges as long as it continues to cooperate with investigators and stays out of further trouble.

EU-Digest

The Netherlands-Privacy Rights Violations:US taps 1.8 million Dutch phone numbers-very few taps related to terrorism

DutchNews NL reports that the American National Security Agency tapped 1.8 million Dutch telephones in one month alone as part of its "Boundless Informant Surveillance Program"..

The raw information was first published by Der Spiegel in June but has now been interpreted by Dutch technology website Tweakers following publication in Le Monde.

Between the beginning of December and beginning of January, 1.8 million Dutch phone numbers were tapped into by the NSA, recording information about number and possibly location, Tweakers said.

The numbers were compared against a database of suspect numbers and, Tweakers says, if a number was on the list, calls to and from the number were listened in to.

In Germany, 500 million numbers were picked up by the NSA and in France 70 million. Paris has now summoned the US ambassador to explain events. According to Le Monde, documents show the NSA was allegedly targeting not only terrorist suspects but politicians, business people and others.

The raw information comes from whistleblower Edward Snowden. VVD parliamentarian Klaas Dijkhoff said the news that the US is obtaining telephone information in the Netherlands on such a broad scale is ‘disappointing’.

'If it was the Chinese or the Russians, then no-one would be surprised,’ he is quoted as saying by Tweakers ‘But this is an ally and that makes it extra disappointing.’

The Netherlands is already the most heavily phone-tapped country in the world. The number of phone taps rose 3% to nearly 25,500 last year, according to justice ministry figures. And the number of requests for information about phone calls - such as the location calls were made from - reached almost 57,000, up 10% on 2011.

The above  figures do not include taps by the Dutch security services.

The question the EU Commission and Parliament should pose, and so far have not ; "why would the EU want to negotiate a comprehensive and  far reaching trade agreement with the US when they can't be trusted and as a matter of fact even have been caught bugging offices of the EU in Bruxelles and  the US ?"

The Finance Tracking Program (TFTP) of 2010 agreed on by the EU and US, which supplies bank and credit card transaction information to the U.S. treasury in an apparent effort to trace funding to terrorist groups, should probably also be scrapped now it has became evident the Americans have been abusing the agreement. 

Almere-Digest

Netherlands: Famous WWI Spy Mata Hari's Dutch Birthplace Destroyed by Fire

Mata Hari in Paris

Over the weekend the home in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands, in where exotic dancer and WWI spy Mata Hari was born got totally destroyed in a fire.

One person was killed by the fire on Saturday evening as it engulfed several buildings in Leeuwarden, about 140km (87 miles) north of Amsterdam.

Local media said the victim was thought to be a 24-year-old man who had lived in a flat in the buildings.

Mata Hari was born Margaretha Geertruida Zelle in August 1876, to a shopkeeper and a Javanese ( Indonesian) mother.

In the early 1900s she left her husband and travelled to Paris where she found fame as an exotic dancer. Her work brought her into contact with many high society figures.

But she was arrested by France during WWI, accused of being a spy for Germany.

Her defense attorney, veteran international lawyer Edouard Clunet, faced impossible odds; he could not cross-examine the prosecution's witnesses or directly question his own witnesses. Under the circumstances, her conviction was a foregone conclusion. She was executed by firing squad on 15 October 1917, at the age of 41.

German documents unsealed in the 1970s proved that Mata Hari was truly a German agent however. In the autumn of 1915, she entered German service, and on orders of section III B-Chief Walter Nicolai, she was instructed about her duties by Major Roepell during a stay in Cologne. Her reports were to be sent to the Kriegsnachrichtenstelle West (War News Post West) in Düsseldorf under Roepell as well as to the Agent mission in the German embassy in Madrid under Major Arnold Kalle, with her direct handler being Captain Hoffmann, who also gave her the code name H-21.

Several films have been made about Mata Hari's life, most famously in 1931 where she was played by Greta Garbo.

Also read more in: BBC News - Mata Hari's Netherlands birthplace destroyed in fire