Posted on 12/04/2019 10:33:47 AM PST by SunkenCiv
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Wednesday that Turkey had dropped its block on a plan to bolster the defences of Baltic states and Poland against Russia.
He told a news conference after an alliance summit outside London that NATO leaders did not discuss the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, which Turkey views as a terrorist organisation.
Ahead of the summit, Ankara had refused to back the NATO defence plan for the Baltics and Poland until it received more support for its battle with the YPG, including other alliance members recognising it as a terrorist group.
In a final press conference after the summit, Stoltenberg also said that NATO was in favour of dialogue and a better relationship with Russia, and believed that China should be part of future arms limitations or reductions talks.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
(Reporting by Robin Emmott Writing by John Chalmers; Editing by Luke Baker)
UPDATE 1-Trump cancels his NATO summit news conference
Reuters
December 4, 2019
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/1-trump-cancels-nato-summit-151710693.html
Russia and Turkey moving closer together, at U.S. expense.
And Turkey trying to blackmail the EU nations into changing many policy stands vis-a-vis Turkey, which if the EU nations cave to it will move Islamists deeper into Europe, and if opposed will sharpen Europe divisions about (a) Nato, (b) expansion of the EU, (c) expansion of Nato and (d) countering Russian influence and intrigue vis-a-vis Ukraine directly and the rest of Europe by covert war craft and trade pressures (energy for western Europe).
Most of that would not be in play now if the EU had never considered expanding the EU to Turkey in the first place, and if Europe had never considered the Middle East refugee problem its problem. ALL the Middle East refugees should have been the problem of Middle East countries, not Europe.
Totally expected, but is an important marker for NATO (EAST) big time!
THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT MOSCOW HAS BEEN PRESSING FOR.
Not counting nukes, Turkey is far and away, stronger as a military and strategic threat, than any country in Europe at the present.
After things get rough, the pendulum will swing.
Outlook for Ukraine, Poland, Romania, Maldova, Bulgaria, Greece, Cyprus, AND Israel has now negatively and *formally shifted.
Get our cr@p out of Turkey NOW!!!!!!!!!
And put in Poland, if they’ll take it!!!!
same here. :^)
Iran's President Hassan Rouhani, Russia's Vladimir Putin and Turkey's Tayyip Erdogan meet in Sochi, Russia November 22, 2017. (photo credit: SPUTNIK/MIKHAIL METZEL/KREMLIN VIA REUTERS) The Three Amigos
Europe's major powers have dangled EEC/EU membership in front of Turkey since 1960. I doubt there has ever been any serious offer to bring it in. However, Turkey has pretty brisk trade with EU countries, not surprising given who the other neighbors are. The EU-crats wanted to undermine national sovereignty by allowing in a human sea (or subhuman I guess), creating a large, gov't-dependent underclass that would continue to vote for those who promised them benefits. The EU itself exists for no other reason than that it exists, and is a non-accountable imperial bureaucracy which destroys the rather poor democratic traditions member states had in the first place, while undermining their sovereignty. That said, I'm not too worried. Turkey remains the cork in the bottle; whatever follows Erdogan will be worse than Erdogan; meanwhile The Resistance (the real one) has been fighting back against the alien invasion.
Projected Population Change in European Countries, 2017 to 2050 | FactsMaps | November 22, 2017
According to the poll, 55% of Germans believe that European members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) should protect themselves from an attack without US help. In addition, a majority of poll participants believe the US should partially (23%) or completely (26%) withdraw its 30,000 troops stationed in Germany.
Germans in favor of 'reducing reliance' on US
I would agree with you on one point.
The entire public pension system througout the EU is not a system of invested pension funds so much as they are state subsidized defined benefit plans that cannot be sustained without more new workers coming in - for whom contributions are made - than beneficiaries needing pension pay outs, and Europe’s declining birth rate has spelled a day of recogning was coming for many decades, thus the EU expansion plans and their willingness to take in “refugees”.
If their pensions had been set up as defined contribution pension systems from the beginning (true pension systems not 401K plans) and with sufficient contributions (employer + employee contributions of at least 14% of annual pay), and fully invested outside of the government, the changing demographics would not have mattered; the funds would still be solvent, through all the market ups and downs, and paying as much pension benefit as the total contributions per person (plus improved fund value and earnings) would buy.
[According to the poll, 55% of Germans believe that European members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) should protect themselves from an attack without US help. In addition, a majority of poll participants believe the US should partially (23%) or completely (26%) withdraw its 30,000 troops stationed in Germany.]
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