The Netherlands: What to Expect from Right-Green Coalition in Netherlands – by Nick Ottens

The Green party in the Netherlands has agreed to start negotiations to form a government with the center-right
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Coalition talks could take months. The four prospective ruling parties have many differences to bridge.

The Greens want to raise taxes on pollution; Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s liberals want to build more roads. The Greens want to shrink the income gap; the liberals want to cut high taxes and social insurance costs.

The Christian Democrats and liberal Democrats are close in terms of economic policy but miles apart on cultural issues. The former have called for a mandatory national service; the latter want to legalize certain drugs and expand euthanasia rights.

Nevertheless, there may be enough common ground for an accord.

The national broadcaster NOS compared the election manifestos of the four parties and found that they all favor comprehensive tax reform, including lower income tax rates.

They all want to invest in security. The Greens would prefer to spend more on developmental aid than defense, but, after decades of cuts and in light of (unfortunately) American pressure, higher military spending seems inevitable.

All four parties also want to spend more on elderly care and lower the health insurance deductible.

Read more: Nick Ottens What to Expect from Right-Green Coalition in Netherlands – Atlantic Sentinel

Trump Administration Is Threat To EU Survival-"The Man Who Has Ear Of US Presiden Wants EU To Fail"-by M. Crowley

Trump and Bannon: A major threat to the EU

Europeans are starting to worry that Steve Bannon has the EU in his cross hairs. - and they should be. Here’s how the White House could pull it apart.

Bannon emerged into the national spotlight as CEO of Donald Trump’s struggling presidential campaign. Bannon was an executive at Breitbart News, an activist-editor-gadfly known mostly on the far right, and the “Brexit” campaign was something of a pet project. He hitched onto the Tea Party movement early in Barack Obama’s presidency and noticed a similar right-populist wave rising across the Atlantic, where fed-up rural, white Britons were anxious about immigration and resentful of EU bureaucrats.

 The cause touched on some of Bannon’s deepest beliefs, including nationalism, Judeo-Christian identity and the evils of Big Government. In early 2014, Bannon launched a London outpost of Breitbart, opening what he called a new front “in our current cultural and political war.” The site promptly began pointing its knives at the EU, with headlines like “The EU Is Dead, It Just Refuses to Lie Down”; “The European Union’s Response to Terrorism Is a Massive Privacy Power Grab”; “Pressure on Member States to Embrace Trans Ideology.” One 2014 article invited readers to vote in a poll among “the most annoying European Union rules.”

Bannon’s site quickly became tightly entangled with the United Kingdom Independence Party, a fringe movement with the then-outlandish goal of Britain’s exit from the EU. In October 2014, UKIP’s leader, Nigel Farage, poached a Breitbart London editor to work for him. That September, Bannon hosted a dinner for Farage at his Capitol Hill townhouse. Standing under a large oil painting by the fireplace, Farage delivered a speech that left the dozens of conservative leaders in attendance “blown away,” as Bannon later recalled.

On June 23 of last year, Britons defied the pleas of Europe’s political elites and narrowly voted for Brexit. Many observers called it the most traumatic event in the history of a union whose origins date to the 1950s. Suddenly the future of all Europe, whose unity America had spent the decades since World War II cultivating, lay in doubt. It was the next day that Bannon hosted Farage for a triumphal edition of his daily radio show.

“The European Union project has failed,” Farage declared. “It is doomed, I’m pleased to say.”

“It’s a great accomplishment,” Bannon said. “Congratulations.”

Bannon now works in the West Wing as President Donald Trump’s top political adviser. He is, by all accounts, the brains of Trump’s operation—a history-obsessed global thinker whose vision extends far beyond Trump’s domestic agenda and Rust Belt base. Bannon co-wrote Trump’s “America First” inauguration speech, which hinted at a new world order, and will join the president’s National Security Council—apparently the first political adviser to get a permanent seat in the president’s Situation Room. And while commentators are focusing on Bannon’s views about nationalism here in the United States, his public comments and interviews with several people who know him make clear that, even as he helps Trump “make America great again,” he has his sights set on a bigger target across the Atlantic Ocean. IT IS THE DESTRUCTION OF THE EU HIS SIGHT IS SET ON

Donald Trump’s transition team denied scheduling the French nationalist Marine Le Pen’s visit to the Trump Tower café in January. But she met Guido Lombardi, an informal liaison between Trump and the European far-right, who claims Bannon gave his blessing.

Breitbart often sets Frauke Petry, the leader of the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party, as a foil to Angela Merkel. “The achievements of the Reformation and Enlightenment are endangered,” Petry told Breitbart, arguing that defending immigrants has become a new religion in Europe—and echoing Bannon’s own defense of the Judeo-Christian West.

Geert Wilders—the leader of the Dutch far-right Party for Freedom, which increased his seats in the last Dutch parliamentary elections, has contributed articles to Breitbart—such as “Britain Is The Brexit Pioneer and Others Will Follow” and “Muslims, Leave Islam, Opt for Freedom!” He was also the keynote speaker at Breitbart’s “Gays for Trump” party at the Republican National Convention in July.

Breitbart has covered Italy’s Beppe Grillo and his nationalist movement with articles like “After Brexit and Trump, Italy’s Five-Star-Movement May Be The Next Surprise.” Grillo called Trump’s victory an “extraordinary turning point” for global populism, and he expects Italy will follow.

In 2012, Nigel Farage accepted Bannon’s invitation to meet in Washington, where Bannon introduced the U.K. Independence Party leader to like-minded individuals. Farage became a regular on Bannon’s radio show, and defended critics who called Bannon anti-Semitic, telling Breitbart that the attacks amounted to “demonization.”

 
“Bannon hates the EU,” says Ben Shapiro, a former Breitbart writer who split with Bannon last year but who shares the sentiment. “He figures it’s mainly an instrument for globalism—as opposed to an instrument for the bettering of Western civilization.”

“What we understand from Bannon is that the EU is abhorrent,” one Western European government official told me.

The idea that one man could threaten the European project might sound extreme. And it would be an exaggeration to say that even the full-throated support of Breitbart London was what tipped the scales toward Brexit. But having the ear of the president of the United States is different—and the question of just what Bannon plans to do with his influence has become a huge preoccupation of diplomats, European government officials and experts on the venerable trans-Atlantic relationship. In more than a dozen interviews, they recounted a creeping sense of dread about the very specific ways Bannon could use American power like a crowbar to pull the EU apart.

“The European Union is under serious threat,” Guy Verhofstadt, a former Belgian prime minister and now a senior EU official, told a London audience in late January. Its enemies, he said, now include Trump—thanks in large part to “the enormous influence of his chief political adviser, Mr. Bannon.”

Since the election, European officials have been combing the internet, including Breitbart’s archives, for clues to Bannon’s worldview and how he might counsel Trump. And what they’re finding is stoking their deepest anxieties. “They have a deep well of psychological reliance on the American-led order,” says Jeremy Shapiro, a Hillary Clinton State Department official now at the European Council on Foreign Relations in London. Now they’re bracing for an American assault on that order.

Europe as we know it has never been more vulnerable to such an assault. Economic malaise and high debt are testing the EU’s financial structures and pitting its members against one another. So is the historic influx of refugees from the Middle East and North Africa. Nationalist parties and candidates hostile to the Union are ascendant in France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands—all of which are set to hold elections this year. Russia, which may stand to gain the most from a disunited Europe, is gleefully aiding the process by disrupting Europe’s domestic politics with propaganda and hacking meant to discredit the pro-EU establishment.

The EU better be on high alert to this threat  and be prepared to react immediately when needed  

Read more:The Man Who Wants to Unmake the West: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump and the EU - POLITICO Magazine

Brexit: Britain between a rock and a hard place: First EU response to article 50 takes tough line on transitional deal - by Daniel Boffey

"Brexit and the Mouse that roare": sorry to see you go Britain

Britain will not be given a free trade deal by the EU in the next two years, and a transition arrangement to cushion the UK’s exit after 2019 can last no longer than three years, a European parliament resolution has vowed, in the first official response by the EU institutions to the triggering of article 50 by Theresa May.

A leaked copy of the resolution, on which the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, has been a close conspirator, lays bare the tough path ahead for Britain as the historic process of withdrawing from the trade bloc begins.

Across 11 pages of clauses, May is warned that the EU will stridently protect its political, financial and social interests, and that the position for the UK even during the transition period will not be as positive as it is today.

A withdrawal agreement, covering financial liabilities, citizens’ rights and the border in Ireland, will need to be accepted by a qualified majority of 72% of the EU’s remaining 27 member states, representing 65% of the population. The agreement would then need to be approved by the European parliament, voting by a simple majority.

Barnier has said that any free trade deal, to be struck after the UK leaves, would be a “mixed agreement” requiring ratification by the national parliaments of the 27 states, plus consent by the European parliament.

Sir Tim Barrow, the UK’s permanent representative to the EU, delivered a letter to the European council president, Donald Tusk, at 12.30pm notifying the EU of Britain’s intention to leave, as May stood up in the House of Commons to make a statement to MPs.

Addressing a press conference half an hour later, Tusk said: “There is no need to pretend that this is a happy day, neither in Brussels or in London. After all most Europeans, including almost half the British voters, wish that we would stay together not drift apart.”

Tusk said that Brexit would bind the remaining 27 member states together, and that the council and the European commission had a strong mandate to protect the EU’s interests. But he added: “As for me I will not pretend I am happy…”

One positive development following Brexit. It brought the other 27 member states  of the EU with a population of close to half a billion people closer together with no one of its present leaders ready to call a referendum or announce they would be leaving the EU 

EU-Digest

US Economy:Renewable Energy Industry Creates Jobs 12 Times Faster Than Rest of US

The solar and wind industries are each creating jobs at a rate 12 times faster than that of the rest of the U.S. economy, according to a new report.

The study, published by the Environmental Defense Fund's (EDF) Climate Corps program, says that solar and wind jobs have grown at rates of about 20% annually in recent years, and sustainability now collectively represents four to four and a half million jobs in the U.S., up from 3.4 million in 2011.

The renewable energy sector has seen rapid growth over recent years, driven largely by significant reductions in manufacturing and installation costs. Building developers and owners have been fueled by state and local building efficiency policies and incentives, the report explains.

But, these gains are in contrast to Trump's support for fossil fuel production, his climate change denial and his belief that renewable energy is a "bad investment".

 "Trump's current approach is basically ignoring an entire industry that has grown up over the last 10 years or so and is quite robust," Liz Delaney, program director at EDF Climate Corps, told Business Insider.

Note EU-Digest President Trump, however, who does not believe in scientifically proven evidence that Carbon Dioxide Emissions caused by fossil fuels and a variety of other factors are the main cause for global warming, has today signed several sweeping executive orders taking aim at a number of his predecessor's climate policies,  Thereby turning back the clock of American advantages in the alternative energy sector for many years. It will also jeopardize America's current role in international efforts to confront climate change.

Renewable Energy Industry:  Creates Jobs 12 Times Faster Than Rest of US | Fortune.com

Voting starts in Europe for Turkish referendum - only a no vote can stop total Turkish dictatorship

Turkish citizens in six European countries have started to vote in a referendum, the campaign for which has caused an international dispute.

Voters are choosing whether to move Turkey from a parliamentary republic to a presidential one, boosting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's powers.

Some three million people are eligible to vote outside of Turkey, almost half of them living in Germany.

But political rallies have been blocked in several countries.

This has caused a bitter row between Turkey and its European neighbours, with President Erdogan accusing the Dutch and German authorities of acting like Nazis.

In Switzerland, a rally in support of the "no" vote was held in Bern on Sunday, drawing thousands - including Kurdish demonstrators.

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Read m,ore: Voting starts in Europe for Turkish referendum - BBC N

Health Care USA: The “Dis-location” of U.S. Medicine — The Implications of Medical Outsourcing — by Robert M. Wachter, M.D.

When a patient in Altoona, Pa., needs an emergency brain scan in the middle of the night, a doctor in Bangalore, India, is asked to interpret the results.

Spurred by a shortage of U.S. radiologists and an exploding demand for more sophisticated scans to diagnose scores of ailments, doctors at Altoona Hospital and dozens of other American hospitals are finding that offshore outsourcing works even in medicine. .

Most of the doctors are U.S.-trained and licensed — although there is at least one experiment using radiologists without U.S. training.

Until recently, the need to take a patient's history and perform a physical examination, apply complex techniques or procedures, and share information quickly has made medicine a local affair.

Competition, too, has played out between crosstown medical practices and hospitals. Although there have always been patients who chose to travel for care — making pilgrimages to academic meccas for sophisticated surgery, for example — they were exceptions.

This localization was largely a product of medicine's physicality. To examine the heart, the cardiologist could be no farther from the patient than his or her stethoscope allowed, and data gathering required face-to-face discussions with patients and sifting through paper files.

But as health care becomes digitized, many activities, ranging from diagnostic imaging to the manipulation of laparoscopic instruments, are rendered borderless. The offshore interpretation of radiologic studies is proof that technology and the political climate will now permit the outsourcing of medical care, a trend with profound implications for health care policy and practice.

Skyrocketing health care costs are increasingly seen as unsustainable drains on public coffers, corporate profits, and household savings. Concern about these costs has led to wide-ranging cost-cutting efforts, often accompanied by attempts to improve quality and safety.

In other areas of the economy, a similar search for cost savings and value has created a powerful impetus for outsourcing. Although corporate globalization has been controversial, when the forces of protectionism have butted up against the demand of consumers for decent products atlow prices and the desire of shareholders to maximize returns, outsourcing has usually triumphed.

Although outsourcing is often motivated by the desire for cost reduction, health care's version may offer substantial advantages for patients.

For example, many hospitals now purchase interpretation services from outside companies, whose interpreters often speak a range of languages that individual hospitals cannot match. Outsourcing could also provide patients with access to specialized care that would otherwise be unavailable. A group of mammography experts, for example, could read remotely transmitted mammograms obtained at community hospitals, replacing less specialized radiologists. Herzlinger praised the “focused factory” in the predigital era, using examples (such as the “hernia hospital”) that required the physical presence of patients. 

In a “dis-located” world, patients may benefit from some of the quality advantages of focused factories without the burdensome travel.

Outsourcing is often initially endorsed by local providers, since the off-site professionals begin by doing work the locals are happy to forgo, such as nighttime reading of radiographs. (Most of today's overseas teleradiology is designed to capitalize on time differences — Indian radiologists read films while U.S. radiologists are sleeping.) If the arrangement meets its goals (whether these are saving money, getting a late-night dictation into the chart by morning, or allowing a radiologist a full night's sleep), its scope is bound to grow, as administrators consider other candidates for outsourcing — analysis of pathology specimens or reading of echocardiograms and even colonoscopies. By severing the connection between the “assay” and its interpretation, digitization allows the assay to be performed by a lower-wage technician at the patient's bedside and the more cognitively complex interpretation to be performed by a physician who no longermneeds to be in the building — or the country.

For the completereport go to : The “Dis-location” of U.S. Medicine — The Implications of Medical Outsourcing — NEJM

Tourism: Travel trends for 2017: City - Sand - Sea

Dutch Beach: sometimes the beach is closer than you think

Where to go on holiday in 2017? To help potential customers decide, the travel companies have already got their catalogues out. And most agree that safety will again be a top priority among holiday-makers in 2017.

The facts and figures of the past months give the tourism industry cause for optimism: the demand for holiday offerings continues unabated - in spite of the lingering threat of terrorism. The UNWTO World Tourism barometer indicated an increase of 1.6 percent in overnight stays within Europe for the turbulent year 2016. So European tourism is still growing, even if no longer as rapidly as in previous years. And safety still ranks as the top selling point.

Spain and Portugal were last year’s most popular destinations and look set to top the list for 2017, as well. Travel companies are expanding their hotel capacities wherever they can.  Tui, the world’s largest tour operator, has acquired a good 20 percent more hotels on the Canary Islands alone. FTI has taken on 75 new hotels, and Alltours a full 100. But the beach capacity remains the same. Will vacationers find a spot to spread their towels on such overcrowded stretches of sand? In any case, they’ll have to splash out more cash for their summer vacation in Spain than in previous years. Prices are going up, as well.

Turkey registered 33-percent fewer tourists in 2016. Whether the sector has any real chance exists to recover from such a steep drop remains to be seen. The tour operators haven’t started cutting hotel capacity just yet, but they’ve slashed the prices: Tui by five percent, Thomas Cook and Neckermann by eight percent. The hotels offer the same high quality for less money. But will such a bargain be enough to counter holiday-makers’ fears in 2017? 
 
Read more: Travel trends for 2017: City - Sand - Sea | DW Travel | DW.COM | 06.01.2017