• Trump
• US

73

It's soooo funny watching an episode of Trump's TV show again and project that onto his current job. In his show contestants were split into two teams to compete with each other in business with one of the team-members acting as their team leader. The teams were evaluated on tasks and behavior like communication, team building and results. At the end of every episode the losing team attended a boardroom meeting to evaluate why they lost and who contributed the least to the team. Trump ended an episode eliminating the poorest contributor from the competition with "You're fired!"

Well, "communication, team building and results". Up until today Trump didn't manage to get any of these into his pocket. His twitter behavior and press conferences are weakly expressed like from a overhyped teenager on drugs. Every morning when he wakes up and switches on the tv, his thin skin is penetrated by "fake news" based on facts he created himself. Of course "he didn't mean it that way" and still in his pyama's, he starts spitting on Twitter. Hours later poor KellyAnn Conway and Sean Spicer bend their body's and minds into weird twists to defend their boss discarding the effects on their resume's. After this, they will never get a decent job again.

Team building is obviously not his real strenght too. After almost a month, Republican grumble gets louder and louder and he still does not have his full cabinet in place and already the first resignations are in the past. Some potential candidates even refuse to be a member of this team. Of course Trump complaints about resistance from the Democrats but obviously he is not used yet to cope with a country were not everyone is "hired and fired" as he pleases. He still has to cope with a majority (2.9 M difference in popular vote) of the American people who didn't vote for him and a growing number of Republicans who are starting to recognise that this win was actually a big loss and that they should have gone with an experienced and reliable protector of their ideals.

And results, well mmmmm . . .  Nothing but chaos. Lots of presidental decretes and lots of noise around them but only symbolic stuff up until now. All his election rethoric about Obamacare, the Mexical Wall, the Muslim ban, infrastructure investments, jobs, pffffffff ... A poll unveiled that 35% of the Americans do not know that Obama-care and the Affordable-Care-Act are the same. A significant number is against the former and in favor of the latter :))). For the Mexican Wall and his trillion dollar infra investment, there seems to be no Congress majority to approve the spending. He obviously forgot that Obama already did the same thing to restart the American economic engine in 2008 with an 800B dollar infrastructure investment. So what's new? The Muslim ban was illegal and still pending. His announcements about new jobs at for instance a new plant of chipmaker Intel are just hollow. Intel would have built that plant in the US anyway as all their other sub-14-nano plants, except one in Ireland. By the way, most of the chip making machines are designed and built by the Dutch :).

Soooooooo . . . nothing, nothing, nothing.

YOU'RE FIRED!

(big thanks to all the great cartoon artists in this article: Signe Wilkinson, David Horsey, Mike Thompson and Steven Camley)

• Brexit
• US
• UK
• Europe

85

People ask me why I am so mad about Trump: "It's not even your country, it's far away, we have our own problems, do something about that!". Well that's exactly what I am doing. For decades my family and history lessons at school taught me about the Americans who saved us in WOII and are stil protecting us during the cold war and up until today. And for decades I took that for granted. Meanwhile the American dream came to me through TV, movies, music and stories from my friends and colleagues who crossed the ocean to find their personal luck, love and success. And I've even been there too for work and holidays a few times to sniff the air of that dream.

But somehow in the back of my mind there've been always some questions. Big decisions were made for us. In Europe we didn't have the "bombs" at least not in the quantity like the US and Russia so the cold war was mainly a fight between the US and the Soviets with Europe somewhere in between. The last decades or so big wars were started to "defend democracy" and protect us from terrorists. Yes, in Europe we also know democracy and we do have serious problems with terrorists. From everywhere. In the past from the IRA (Irish Republican Army), RAF (Rote Armee Fraktion in Germany), ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, armed Basque nationalists in Spain), quite a few more and recently Islamic fundamentalistic radicals too.

Nevertheless under guidance of the US (and the UK) and under the flags of the UN and NATO "we" have started or kludged a couple of huge wars like in Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen and more. No real results (except Kuwait) are delivered, all the war zones are severely instabilized and Europe is suffering from a huge refugee problem as a consequence. Reliable figures are difficult to get but rough estimates say that somewhere between 250.000 and 500.000 people were killed in those wars due to "our efforts". City's, economies, families are completely ruined.

Meanwhile Crimea is taken by Russia again. A Malaysian aircraft with about 300 people was shot by the Russians out of the air above Ukraine. Israel, Turkey, Ukraine, Libia and quite a few countries in the neighborhood of European borders are still a complete mess. And on top of that, the economic downturn, by the way started in the US due to bad legislation in the fincance sector, brought populism in huge numbers. Le Pen in France, Wilders in the Netherlands, the FPÖ in Austria, Boris Johnson in the UK and more everywhere cause instability and protectionism with Brexit as an disastrous example. And with all the above examples in the heart of Europe, nothing is really done.

To me, Trump is just a caricature of the ultimate wrong direction. He says and does everything a sensible European leader or even any human being would or at least should never do. But he is there and even attracts "fans" in Europe with his clownesque behavior. Meanwhile he is the President of the United States, the self proclaimed "leader of the world".  And that is just terrifying. Being mad at him is in fact being mad at myself having lived in a bubble of false stories. And I must admit, his strategy is satisfying. Create an enemy, condemn the past and get enough energy from that to tell your own stories. I can only hope my facts are more accurate. 

I believe it's time that Europe unites again. The French have "liberté, égalité, fraternité" as their motto and in the heart and constitution of every European country and their people something similar is close by. It's time that we break free of our "big brother": the US. Not that we should run to Russia, on the contrary, but given our long common European history we do have lots of experience collaborating with the far east countries like China, Japan, India and Indonesia and some more in Africa too.

Lets enjoy the turmoil coming from the US (they have some real good comic shows every night :)) and lets take them as an example how we shouldn't create our world. Hopefully common sense will emerge there soon and maybe we can than reboot cooperation between Europe and the US again too. But for the time being, no, we should build to our own strength.

Meanwhile in a few months elections in France, Germany and the Netherlands will set the pace. Fast forwards to a brave new world with promises of prosperity for everyone due to reliable collaboration between all European countries and their partners. Or backwards towards a tired and frightened society with every country on its own. 

Vote!

• Trump
• Europe

79

During US elections the now "normal" personal attacks on politicians showed a growing interest in Trump's hand size. He is now called "Tiny Trump" and comedians and comic artists don't hesitate to emphasize that characteristic. Personally I believe his talent to denigrate, belittle everyone who disagrees with him "Little Donald" is a better name as a symbol for his childish behavior for example every day on twitter.

Meanwhile Europe election season has started.

The new German President Steinmeier was elected on February 12th with a vast majority (73.89%). Populist Glaser form AfD was completely wiped away (3.33%). Although the election of the new president is a task of the German parliament, it might be an upbeat for the next general elections in October 2017. Far right wing lead and Frauke Petry of the German AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) immediately blowed her music on twitter: "#Bundespräsident sollte direkt gewählt werden!" (President should be elected directly!) but according to all right wing parties (when they lose), democracy should be changed (until they've won, then their power is "absolute" and the rest is "fake news"). 

In the Netherlands political parties fired up their engines in the last weeks as a prelude for parliament election day, March 15th. Dutch populist Wilders attracted quite a lot attention from the international press at his kickoff meeting. He was anxious to shout into the microphones that he was not a copy of Trump and proved that with repeating frightening and hollow key messages: "Going to be historical elections!" - "Netherlands for the Dutch (3 times in one 'coheren' sentence)". Furthermore in the election program you can read: "Ban the Islam" - "Power to the people"- "Stop spending on development aid, innovation, art, windmills, broadcasting, etc." (etc. ??? WTF! What etc.?) - "Reform tax" -  "Invest in military and police" and a few more. I guess the press laughed their butts off.  A Trumpette "avant la lettre".

Bulgarian parliament election was put forward from 2018 to March 26th of 2017 due to the resignation of pro-european prime minister Borisov because his party colleague Tsetska Tsacheva lost the presidential race at the end of 2016 from pro-russian former air force commander and socialist Rumen Radev. Of course far left is different from far right but obviously in this case their messages are quite similar: "Stop the corruption" - "Be nice to both Russia and the EU" are more specific but "Power to the people (with a possible change to majority voting as a result of the latest referendum)" and "Less immigrants" are more common among Trumpettes. Most likely outcome is another lengthy coalition negotiation with some drama but maybe times have changed. 

The first round of the 2017 French presidential election will be held on 23 April 2017. Already "US-style" personal attacking is obviously more important than vision, messages and capabilities. When a candidate like Fillon with all his experience is getting acceptable for a lot of French people, immediately his opponents like Le Pen dug deep into his past and came up with "Penelope-gate", a story where Fillon obviously paid his wife a significant salary for "assistance work".  A typical "Trumpette" trick. Of course integrity is a very valuable political asset. It's just another example that voters are constantly getting distracted and at the end of the day can do nothing more that vote with gut feelings looking at a face they like most. It's like voting from teenage girls for the most prettiest face in a new boy band.

And there is Brexit. Already an "inquiry referendum" is taken as an "indisputable vote" and PM Theresa May is just following the atmosphere set by experienced Trumpettes Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage during their campaign last year. Bragging and humiliation was their trademark. British parliament recently voted with a surprising majority for an asap invocation of EU's article 50. Obviously all parliament members forgot that the people's vote was just a thin majority with Labor as an opponent and Scotland and Northern Ireland heavily resisting. Parliament members probably believe that conservative England still "rules" and the rest should keep quiet. Tony Blair, obviously waken up by the sudden withdrawal of Labor, emerged with a good story but was tackled immediately with personal attacks like it is common these Trump-days.

Populists like Wilders (Netherlands), Le Pen (France), Petry (Germany) and Farage (England) do nothing more than as true Trumpettes "retweet"  Trump over and over again by selling fear from the outside world and protectionism as the answer. Actually I am glad that the American election came first and, at the expense of the American people,  Trump was elected to set an example of the consequences: chaos, no plans, no backup, war with the press and democracy itself and at the end of the day probably torches and pitchforks. Maybe not in the streets but in the House and Senates. Already election polls have changed significantly in the last 2 weeks as a result of the American chaos. After the initial excitement around the "guys on the barricades", people start to wonder if they want to live in a burned down world. None of the Trumpettes have shown that besides a lot of rethoric they had a real plan, a real organization behind them, realistic solutions for problems and a real story a majority could live with for many years.

So "Little Donald and his Trumpettes" perhaps scored a #1 hit but after the desastreous example in the US in the last 4 weeks, hopefully their fans recognize it's all fake and plagiate. Real music comes from real artists who know what they are doing and bring lasting songs that people will sing during their lives until they die.

Vote with your brain and party with your heart afterwards :))) To be continued . . . 

• Future

87

What makes a country big? If you don't take pride and ego into consideration, the answer is simple: the amount of natural resources and/or people (which means: tax payers). You have to have at least one of the two but having them both is better.

With natural resources you can generate money by just selling them and do something with the profit. Given the fact that almost no resources are ever endless, the Norwegian model is far superior: put a big share of the profits on the bank and invest in infrastructure. The Dutch model has proven to be quite bad: spend the money on social facilities. Not that it's bad to care for your people but this business model is doomed to fail someday and then the money is gone leaving a big black hole in social care behind.

Tax payers build the other pillar underneath a countries cashbook. If you have more people, the pile of (tax) money is bigger. You can even be generous and decrease taxes. After all, if you have the bureaucracy under control, the economy of scale makes you powerful. Just like big companies. That's why they are expanding all the time with full power on autonomous growth and buying other companies.

Small countries just don't have the investment power. They can not do big "projects" like versatile and powerful defense systems, high level and expensive industrial technologies like for cars, ships, airplanes and spacecrafts, or a state of the art infrastructure for communication and transport. The Dutch might say: "Hey, we do have Rotterdam, Schiphol and some good universities!". Yes, we have, but the power of these examples is already rapidly declining thanks to the investments of more powerful (= more money) countries like Dubai, Turkey and China.  The harbour of Rotterdam is still impressive with an 11th place after 10 Asian (!) container terminal harbours but 10 years ago Rotterdam was in the top 10 itself. The university of Amsterdam is 57th on the worlds ranking list, Delft 62 and the rest is outside the top-100.

Does this mean small countries can not be proud of themselves on their culture or their achievements? Of course they can! But it's on an other scale. Let's be honest, with less impact to the rest of the world. The smaller you are, the lesser the impact. Liechtenstein, Andora and even the Netherlands are proud countries but their impact on a global scale is less impressive as opposed to the impact of the US, China, Japan, Germany and the UK. I am just summing up the top-5 countries in the world with the highest Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Europe (with the UK) would be first or second depending on which figures you take (from the IMF, World Bank or the UN). India, Russia and Brazil are other promising top-15 countries not in the least due to their military capabilities. Funny, if California, Texas and New York were countries, they would be in the top-15 as well with California even in teh top-10! Very impressive is the rapid growth of South Korea, Taiwan, the United Arabic Emirates and Turkey. All examples of countries who are almost relentless investing in their industrial or services powers. The "traditional" top-10 will change just within a decade or so and the new top will be demanding their seats in important councils like the G-7 or the Security Council.  Germany, France, the UK and Italy have to be satisfied with the G20 and give up their currently more important seats and depend on their influence in the EU.

So what can smaller countries do? Well, still be proud on themselves of course and protect their culture, history and capabilities. But unite as well. And focus on lesser but stronger powers. It may be hard to give up aspects of self-determination but it is inevitable. Losing some military defense systems, border control, tax collection and industries might make a proud country feel bad on the short term. But they will be sooooo much more proud to play an important role in the world for the long term with their strongest capabilities as opposed to a scatter of "unimportant things".  

Imagine that some day a big spaceship shows up. Let's assume it's friendly and seeking development and trade. Just like we do. To whom are they talking to? To some congress like a hall with hundreds or even thousands of people? A group of dozens of "world leaders" representing the worlds population? That would be quite funny! 

Happy growing :) 

(this article has been published on my old website earlier)