by Oui
Sat Jan 1st, 2022 at 07:03:51 PM EST
Two candidates for a new cabinet posts aren't politicians ... at last the Dutch have learned from failures? The Liberal Freedom Party VVD has approved a women majority for minister posts.
To replace Health minister Hugo De Jong (CDA) ... a candidate from D66
A professional from the medical science community at the highest level who is an excellent communicator Ernst Kuipers.
@ErnstKuipers CEO of @ErasmusMC describes the importance of improving #healthcare systems and the impact of climate change on disease. #ISPOREurope
For Education and connection to university level the best Dutchman in the hemisphere for the job ... Robbert Dijkgraaf, physicist and retiring Director Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton University, NJ, USA.
Mark Rutte's fourth cabinet: what we know and has been leaked so far
More to follow on background and policy ...
[Update-1]
France EU Presidency - establishing new policy with Chancellor Schulz
Proposed EU Law: Nuclear Energy is Green
France plots an EU presidency en français, s’il vous plaît | Politico EU - June 2021 |
Macron and Johnson speak, frostily
German Reunification Sceptic
The jury is still out
"Never before in history has one country spent so much money building pyramids," said Norbert Walter, chief economist at Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt. "There has been a tremendous waste of economic resources."
I personally welcomed the reunification, there were many sceptics such as Dutch PM Ruud Lubbers. The Americans were strong proponents and the opposition was bullied to accept the new reality. Lubbers missed out on each and every International position afterwards where the US or Germany’s Kohl had a say.
Looking back, the reunification led to a high price of corrupt government subsidies. A sign ahead of EU expansion, the Euro and the roots for a shaky future. The divide created between East and West, New and Old Europe will be harmful for decades to come. A waste of effort and money.
Giants of the century … Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II all enjoy firmly established reputations as giants of the late twentieth century. Helmut Kohl is another influential figure in Modern History.
A stepping stone towards Brexit?
How 1989 changed the history of European integration
Lessons from German reunification for a European Fiscal Union
by Hans-Werner Sinn
END OF UPDATE
[Update-2]
Treuhand took the heat for privatization of East German economy | DW News - Sept. 20, 2010 |
The Treuhand trust was created in the summer of 1990 to take control of previously state-owned East German companies waiting in line to be integrated into the new unified nation. Their number totalled 12,000, and collectively they employed four million people. Such are the figures that will forever be associated with the Treuhand agency, but behind them there are human dramas, stories of success and a dramatic attempt to turn a national economy inside out.
West German manager Detlev Karsten Rohwedder was appointed chairman of the agency and made no bones about the route down which he planned to take it. His vision was to privatize as much of the GDR economy as was possible and use the proceeds generated to cover the costs incurred along the way. He once stated that the 'whole thing' was worth 600 billion deutschmarks.
But his estimate was way off the mark and by the time the Treuhand was dissembled four years later, it had run up debts to the tune of 300 billion marks.
Rohwedder, however, did not live to see the project through to the end. He had only been in office for a few months before he was shot. The assassin has remained elusive ever since ….
The Big Sell: Privatizing East Germany’s Economy
Reminds me of the big steal in Russia …
The original sin
by Jerome a Paris - Oct. 2006
These events (which I lived through myself in Moscow) are what killed democracy in Russia: a President getting the army to shoot on the Parliament over a political disagreement is not a good omen.
But worse, the West's support for Yeltsin in that crisis is what killed the Russian's belief that democracy was any better: this was just a power struggle, and "democracy", as defined by the West was just as violent, hypocritical and unfair as the system they had left - maybe even more, as economic dislocation was biting hard already, and economic chaos, crime and obscene wealth capture became associated with the period, with "democracy" and with "capitalism", again, with the blessing of the West, too scared to imagine that freely elected communists might be different than the previous kind.
Mark Ames: Cheney Starts New Cold War Over Oil-Rich Caspian Basin by Nomad
A consistent aggressive foreign policy carried by both parties to this day ..
The ruin of Russia - by Joseph Stiglitz
END OF UPDATE-2
