China and Pakistan link up with fibreoptic cable

Brussels shock 'prepare for No Deal' document - RELEASED

Jean-Claude Juncker's German-born protege is heading up the European Commission's preparation for a no deal, which has culminated in a fresh warning hours ahead of Dominic Raab's first visit to Brussels as Brexit Secretary.

Mr Selmayr's work has included publishing over 60 individual notices to citizens, businesses and stakeholders across the remaining EU27 - including the risk of a no deal Brexit on aviation, fisheries and the automotive industry.

The document reads: "The European Union is working hard to reach an agreement on an orderly withdrawal, and looks forward to discussing a framework for the future relationship with the United Kingdom.

"However, there is no certainty that an agreement will be reached. And even if an agreement is reached, the United Kingdom's relationship with the European Union will no longer be one of a Member State and thus, will be in a fundamentally different situation."

○ Brexit: European Commission publishes Communication on preparing for the UK's withdrawal from the EU
○ EU Commission: Keep calm and brace for hard Brexit

This isn't America.

Family Law

A personal matter ... in a friendly surrounding many years ago, the Pond community reacted to living reality and empathy.

Just a shout out ... my daughter's ugly divorce from a narcissistic partner, well educated and a lawyer, caused much grief and hardship. The Court actions lasted seven years and we managed to keep joined custody of her son. Son-in-law belonged to the Dutch Reformed Church ... ;) Damn!

The costs were an extreme burden for my daughters and we as parents who gave her all support during those years.

The lessons I learned about matters of Dutch Family Law and the Child Care and Protection Board I was able to use in a second case of a young mother with a lovely daughter. A friend of a friend of mine. Besides once again a narcissistic person. this partner had left her in the dark about extreme psychiatric problems. Today after years of Court actions, the Appeals Court upheld the earlier decree. The girl of six years old is safe by the mother. Due to risk for safety of the girl, the biological father does not get visiting rights where he is alone with the girl, his daughter. Only with supervision of a professional in a secure setting will the father meet her. Tough call all around.

PS Spend more time on these court actions during a decade than time spend on blogging :) haha working 24/7 during retirement.

Barnier invokes unusual values of "welcome"

Is anybody actually surprised that there are people in the US who genuinely believe 3 yr olds should carry guns?

and there are people on the UK side of the table who are competent and willing to negotiate

If there are any people of that kind in the UK, now would be a perfect time to step forward.

The past two years have not been encouraging in that regard.

Barnier welcomes Raab by stressing urgency of Irish border deadline

The EU's chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, has welcomed Dominic Raab to Brussels with a thinly veiled critique of Theresa May's Chequers plan and a 13-week deadline in which to solve the problem of the Irish border.

Appearing with Barnier for the first time in the Belgian capital, the new Brexit secretary, clutching a copy of the UK's recently published Brexit white paper, called for more "vim, vigour and energy" in the troubled negotiations.

The former Foreign Office lawyer told reporters he was "looking forward to intensifying, heating up, the negotiations", after stepping into the role following the resignation of David Davis over the paper, which sets out how the UK is in effect seeking to stay in the single market for goods by following a raft of EU laws.

Macron and Salvini face off over Continent's future

En Marche officials have been courting members of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe parliamentary group (ALDE) with the hope of forming a large pro-European force after the election. But so far "Macronmania" has not infected the European Parliament; few believe Macron's group will be able to rival the EPP for dominance.

Salvini's problem is that Euroskeptics are heterogeneous and divided, and in some areas ideological enemies. On economics, for example, the National Rally and Alternative for Germany (AfD) sit at opposite ends of the political spectrum. Creating a large Euroskeptic group would require him to bridge those differences.

Still, Macron and Salvini don't have to come in first to change the way things are run in Brussels. As the most disruptive forces in the upcoming campaign, they have the capacity to drive the election debate. Traditional parties might rush to adopt some of their policies, on EU reform for Macron or immigration for Salvini -- a victory of sorts.

Neither the UK government nor the main opposition party have indicated they want to remain. What we are arguing about is the precise shape Brexit will take. If there is no deal the divorce will be acrimonious indeed, with both parties moving further apart in the short term. After that it will take a generation before the UK might be willing to rejoin, and at least a generation before the EU might be willing to let them.

This isn't about economics any more. On the UK side it is about the Eton/Oxbridge crowd taking back control. On the EU side it is about self preservation. On the Irish side it will become about re-unification - in about 10 years time. It will get a lot worse before it gets better, and I am one that has always argued that getting worse is not a necessary precursory for getting better. But sometimes societal change can take a very long time, and revolutions can take a lot longer.

All wild on Ukraine's eastern front

More than 10,000 people have been killed in the more than four years of fighting in eastern Ukraine's Donbas region. An estimated 1.6 million more have been displaced. The economy has been devastated. And there's risk of environmental damage -- contamination of the soil and air from destroyed factories, flooded coal mines, landmines and exploded military ordnance.

But for the country's once beleaguered wildlife, the war has been a godsend. Because of the ongoing fighting, there's no systematic monitoring of the region's wild animal population. But local residents, soldiers, rangers and environmentalists agree: The area is undergoing an unintended -- and unexpected -- rewilding.

As recently as 2014, wolves attacking domestic animals in eastern Ukraine were tales told by grandparents. Today, in part because of a hunting ban in the war zone, large, wild predators are flourishing -- along with other rare flora and fauna -- along the 450-kilometer frontline.

"For hundreds of years populations of big animals were controlled, and now for the first time they are uncontrolled," said Oleksiy Vasilyuk, an ecologist from the Ukrainian NGO Environment People Law. "For us, it's great news."

Instinctively I feel you're wrong about this one. If push comes to shove, and there are people on the UK side of the table who are competent and willing to negotiate, I think the EU side might be fairly flexible. Because any sort of Brexit is expensive and quite complicated to manage.

There would, of course, be no concessions. No rewards for fucking the UE around for years. That's the existential issue for the UE : preserving the status quo is preferable to Brexit, but you don't reward that sort of behaviour.

You are saying that the will is not there. I accept that analysis. But that is why the campaign I advocated is needed. This should not be partisan. If 55%+ of the electorate want a new vote on Brexit that introduces a new circumstance into the situation.

"This is not a decision I expected from the Likud leadership," he said.

And this is, of course, what the Leavers are holding out for at any cost.

Once March 19th is past, the UK is out. Not a member. Must reapply.

Not going to happen in the short run.

UK Remainers should be pushing for A50 extension.

The kids are not alright.
The Truth about Tanacon
It's not a "house part"y, when ticket buyers are defrauded, vendors are defrauded, people are injured, property is damaged, the event that exceeds venue maximum capacity, and event producers did not obtain a permit.

Civil complaints and criminal charges forthcoming: It's not me! is not going to cut it.

## Mental disorder is a communicable disease.

Intuitively I think that May, if she keeps her majority, will muddle through and deliver on a soft brexit.
This is predicated on some admittedly optimistic hypotheses : finding an alternative to the DUP in order to deliver a border in the Irish Sea (LibDems anyone?); limping over the line in March. Then starts the two-year transition period where nothing much changes materially (except economic attrition as business flees to Ireland and the continent), a Labour government can be elected, and the whole lousy idea can be canned.

Whatever the state of the "binding" and "irreversible" process, it can be rolled back. Must be rolled back.

... the puerile, base, ignorant level at which many DUP supporters and leaders operate. They make Trump look smart.

The DUP supporters are the same ethnic group absolutely controlling Greater Appalachia and are the majority or near majority in the Deep South.  Politically that gives them 30 seats in the Senate and (guessing) 120 seats in the House making them the most powerful bloc in the Federal government.

thank you.

pic.twitter.com/Di14cR7gVD

— popular comedy account "the pixelated boat" (@pixelatedboat) 19. Juli 2018

That should have read - Arlene, not May. How could I have gotten the two of them confused? A Freudian slip? Still, there are some uncanny parallels...

May is the largely titular leader of the DUP and couldn't deliver on a deal to restore Stormont she had agreed with Sinn Fein. She is not an MP and has little control over her MPs many of whom are semi-detached bungalows (upper story vacant or non-existent), ardent Brexiteers, and local chieftains who control their own constituency organisations.

There, the attitude might well be: Sure Ian Paisley and his extended family benefited from a rather grand holiday. Wouldn't you go to Sri Lanka for a luxury holiday if you got the chance? What's the harm? He's one of ours. They're all at it...

I cannot emphasize enough the puerile, base, ignorant level at which many DUP supporters and leaders operate. They make Trump look smart.

Protestants can be as conservative as Catholics on the abortion question and the figures for adherence given above are largely notional. The degree to which those adherents actually practice their faith or believe in its social and political teachings is highly variable. For instance, the UK is listed as comprising just 7% Catholics, and yet their church attendance figures are higher than for the established (Anglican) Church of England.

Abortion only really became a mainstream (and hugely divisive) political issue in many countries when the Catholic Church (particularly John Paul II) put it front and centre of their social teaching - later to be followed by many Protestant denominations, although these tend to treat it as more of a matter for individual conscience. Before that it was often treated as a private medical matter between a doctor and his/her patients, although attitudes with medical establishments also varied.

The table also only highlights those few countries who have no "restrictions as to reason" whereas the reality is that the restrictions as to reason can be highly variable ranging from the very restrictive - "only if the mother's life is in immediate danger without a termination" - to largely fictional psychiatric conditions which offer a purely formalistic barrier to its availability. There can also be a disparity between the availability of publicly funded and private abortions.

Many people have many different reasons for opposing "abortion on demand" but it has been largely conservative religious organisations which have weaponised the issue.

Choice of words  rocks and not cliffs? Underlying meaning referring to the outer Hebrides and the treacherous Scottish rocks causing this shipwreck!

Wasn't Trump on his Scottish golf course Turnberry - son's attrition to his mother - in one of his promo tours ahead of Helsinki -

○ Mary Anne MacLeod Trump

Where is Arlene?
Sammy was in the news last week gibbering about something.

Somebody needs to get off their knees. That "post-BREXIT" Parnell Plan for the homeland ain't going to write itself, yo.

Abortion "without restriction as to reason". See legend for restrictions by nation-state. (Nations labeled (Y) permit"unrestricted" abortion.)

data sources: reproductiverights.org, worldpopulationreview.com, catholic-hierarchy.org

Clearly there's no strong correlation between religious observance and "restriction as to reason". The rationale for prohibiting females unrestricted access to abortion lies elsewhere.

"Big Data, 'Big Tech,' Big Barriers to Entry" in LQD: A Civil Action

Antitrust: Commission fines Google €4.34 billion for illegal practices regarding Android mobile devices to strengthen dominance of Google's search engine

In particular, Google:

has required manufacturers to pre-install the Google Search app and browser app (Chrome), as a condition for licensing Google's app store (the Play Store);
made payments to certain large manufacturers and mobile network operators on condition that they exclusively pre-installed the Google Search app on their devices; and
has prevented manufacturers wishing to pre-install Google apps from selling even a single smart mobile device running on alternative versions of Android that were not approved by Google (so-called "Android forks").

Fork it! Google fined €4.34bn over Android, has 90 days to behave

reference
ANTITRUST ISSUES IN THE TYING AND BUNDLING OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS

A tying arrangement occurs when, through a contractual or technological requirement, a seller conditions the sale or lease of one product or service on the customer's agreement to take a second product or service.(2)